SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Inc. has redoubled its effort to distribute movies online, gaining a foothold in a promising but unproven business that could eventually bolster its other core products. The tech giant launched a movie rental service at its online iTunes Store Tuesday and won the alliances of...

WASHINGTON --Federal gasoline taxes should be raised up to 40 cents per gallon over five years, a special commission urged Tuesday in calling for drastic changes to fix aging bridges and roads and reduce traffic deaths. The two-year study by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study...

WASHINGTON --Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, the commissioner and union leader often at loggerheads, sat side-by-side Tuesday as Congress pressed them yet again with questions about baseball's doping problem. At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the same, wood-paneled room where...

SANTA ANA, Calif. --Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, the target of a federal corruption case, retired Monday to focus on defending himself against the charges. ''With a heavy heart, I therefore announce my retirement as sheriff, effective today,'' Carona announced on the department's Web site....

Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years under ambitious post-9/11 security rules to be unveiled Friday by federal officials. The Homeland Security Department has spent years crafting the final regulations for the REAL ID Act, a law designed...

U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives on the southern outskirts of Baghdad within 10 minutes Thursday in one of the biggest airstrikes of the war, flattening what the military called safe havens for al-Qaida in Iraq. The massive attack, carried out above approaching U.S....

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, intends to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for the White House in a timely slap at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as his own vice presidential running mate. Kerry planned to deliver his endorsement in South Carolina at a time,...

Saying ''the wolf is back'' at the door, Gov. ArnoldSchwarzenegger proposed a constitutional amendment in his State of the State address Tuesday that would force automatic cuts to the state budget to avoid large deficits like the one he is now facing. The governor wants cuts triggered when state finances...

Vote-by-mail ballots go out this week in the nation's most populous state, forcing presidential campaigns to consider using scarce dollars to lure early California voters while contests unfold in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. More than half the total votes in California's Feb. 5 primary...

Howling winds, pelting rain and heavy snow pummeled California on Friday, toppling trees, flipping big rigs, cutting power to more than a million people and threatening mudslides in fire-scarred areas. Flights were grounded in Northern California as gusts reached 80 mph during the second wave of an...