Mark Sullivan, director of the U.S. Secret Service, defended his agency on Wednesday against accusations it has displayed a "pattern of misconduct" during a Senate hearing prompted by a recent scandal involving agent solicitation of prostitutes in Colombia. This is "not a systemic problem," Sullivan told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. [...]

Mitt Romney says he welcomes scrutiny of his business record at Bain Capital, but insists the upcoming election is more about the state of the economy and whether President Obama has made things "better" for the American people. In an interview with Time Magazine's Mark Halperin, Romney defended his assertion that his tenure at Bain [...]

Republicans are trying to capitalize off a recent video featuring a South Carolina AFL-CIO leader bashing a piñata bearing the face of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Haley sent out a donation request via Twitter, calling on people to stand with her against what she calls...

Two weeks after President Barack Obama declared his support for gay marriage, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that he has "no problem with it." Powell, who is doing a series of television interviews to promote a new book, endorsed Obama in the 2008 election but hasn't said who [...]

Hewlett-Packard says it's laying off 27,000 workers, 8 percent of its work force, as it restructures the business.

Robert Champion Jr., the Florida A&M University band member who died last fall following a hazing ritual on a bus, was beaten to death with drumsticks and bass-drum mallets, according to more than 1,500 pages of evidence released by prosecutors on Wednesday. Eleven band members are facing felony hazing charges in Champion's Nov. 19 death. [...]

In a wide-ranging, campaign-style rebuttal of Republican attacks on his handling of world affairs, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that "exceptional" America had "led from the front" in the Libyan war. Delivering the commencement speech at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Obama was clearly taking aim at conservative criticisms that [...]

Mitt Romney said Wednesday that under his new K-12 education plan, federal education funds will follow low-income or disabled American children so that they can attend any school in their state, including private ones. Under Romney's plan, $26 billion in annual federal education money that flows to districts based on the number of low-income and [...]

Egyptians relished their first free leadership vote on Wednesday, with Islamists pitted against secular figures in a contest unthinkable before a popular revolt swept President Hosni Mubarak from power 15 months ago. Voting passed off calmly for the most part, but candidate Ahmed Shafiq, who was Mubarak's last prime minister, came under attack from protesters who threw stones and shoes at his convoy as he voted at a Cairo polling station late in the day. Shafiq, 70, was not hurt in the melee, witnesses said. ...

The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden has been sentenced to 33 years in jail for treason. Shakil Afridi, 48, had been accused of running a fake hepatitis B vaccination program, collecting DNA samples reportedly used by U.S. intelligence officers to track bin Laden to Abbottabad, where Navy SEALs killed him [...]

Romney is a portrait in business success rather than selfless altruism, Yahoo!'s Walter Shapiro writes.