Mark Memmott

News outlets are all over this story today:

Documents released by a congressional committee reveal just how few people successfully enrolled in health insurance plans on the troubled HealthCare.gov website in early days after its Oct. 1 launch. (That summary is courtesy of our colleagues on the NPR Newscast ...

Is the boss getting on your nerves?

Did somebody leave behind an empty coffee pot again?

Are you angry because this blog has posted another stupid video?

If your day's not going so well or if you just want to take a break, we recommend spending a minute or so ...

An already dramatic story took another dramatic turn Friday when Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's lawyer challenged police to release a video that news outlets have said shows the mayor smoking what appears to have been crack cocaine.

What's more, attorney Dennis Morris suggested in an interview with CBC ...

Now that Bob Dylan's no longer talking about it not being the guitar he played when he famously went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, a sunburst Fender Stratocaster is to be auctioned by Christie's on Dec. 6.

The pre-sale hype has it going for as much ...

Some of the electronic surveillance programs of the National Security Agency have been on "automatic pilot" in recent years and have inappropriately "reached too far," Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday.

Kerry's comments are causing something of a stir.

The Guardian says they're the "most stark" remarks ...

"President Obama's top aides secretly considered replacing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2012 ticket, undertaking extensive focus-group sessions and polling in late 2011 when Mr. Obama's re-election outlook appeared uncertain," The New York Times reports.

The Times gets that news from ...

Last spring, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was compelled to say that "I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine" because of reports about a video that allegedly showed him doing just that.

Now he's back in the same uncomfortable spotlight.

"Toronto Police ...

We've rounded up some Halloween-related news. Think of this as our treat bag:

-- Bad Moms And Dads. "Eighty-one percent of parents surveyed say that they take candy from their children's Halloween candy haul for their own enjoyment (with 26 percent admitting that they sneak treats after the children go ...

Saying it has "determined that airlines can safely expand passenger use of Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) during all phases of flight," the Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday that it is advising airlines they can let fliers use their much-loved e-books, tablets and other handhelds "gate-to-gate."

Cellphone calls, however, ...

The police chief in Sanford, Fla., where neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012, will unveil rules next week that stress "volunteers are not to carry guns and not to follow suspects," our colleagues at Orlando's WMFE report.

The ...

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell by 10,000 last week, to 340,000 from 350,000 the week before, the Employment and Training Administration said Thursday.

Though it's the third straight week that claims have dropped, the number of applications is still within a range ...

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked secrets about the agency's spying and surveillance programs, "has found a website maintenance job in Russia," according to that nation's RIA Novosti news agency.

The news comes from his lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, who tells RIA ...

OK, by now you've hopefully heard that the Boston Red Sox are Major League Baseball's champions thanks to a 6-1 win Wednesday night over the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Sox won the best-of-seven World Series in six games.

With the headline out of the way, here's a cheat ...

A key deadline in the quest to rid Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime of its chemical weapons has been met, according to international observers.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announced Thursday that "the government of the Syrian Arab Republic has completed the functional destruction of ...

"The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world," The Washington Post reported at midday Wednesday.

"By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of ...

As lawmakers grill Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the botched startup of HealthCare.gov and other issues related to the Affordable Care Act, nonpartisan fact checkers are giving failing grades to President Obama's oft-repeated pledge to Americans that "if you like your health care plan, you ...

Only a relatively low 130,000 jobs were added to private employers' payrolls in October and the labor market in September was even weaker than first thought, according to the latest data from the ADP National Employment Report.

That survey from the payroll processing firm and economists at Moody's ...

We interrupt this blog to bring you a special bulletin:

Martians have invaded New Jersey!

OK, as far as we know that hasn't happened.

But we wanted to issue that faux alert because 75 years ago tonight, as our friend Korva Coleman pointed out on the NPR ...

(We last added to this post at 4:10 p.m. ET.)

"You deserve better. ... I apologize. ... I'm accountable to you."

That's what Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Americans on Wednesday morning during a Congressional hearing into problems with the Obama administration's HealthCare.gov website and Republicans' concerns ...

A photo of a Washington, D.C., mom's message to a pumpkin thief is resonating with many.

"To the person who stole my son's pumpkin," wrote Becky Reina. "Thank you for the life lesson. This will teach him that sometimes people are mean for no reason and you have ...