[Updated at 12:58 p.m. ET] In rare bipartisan accord, normally quarrelsome U.S. lawmakers passed a measure designed to end budget-related air traffic controller furloughs blamed for widespread flight delays.
The House of Representatives approved the legislation, capping a major congressional initiative as delays snarled traffic at airports. The House vote comes a day after unanimous approval by the U.S. Senate.
The measure - which is expected to be signed into law by President Obama - gives the Transportation Department budget planners new flexibility for dealing with forced spending cuts.
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One of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitives was picked up Saturday in Nicaragua, according to a federal law enforcement official.
The official did not provide details on how Eric Toth, 31, was located and apprehended. Toth is a former Washington private school teacher who was wanted on child pornography charges.
According to the FBI, in June 2008, images of child pornography were found on a school camera Toth had been using. He allegedly also produced such images in Maryland.
U.S. officials are working on returning him to the United States to face charges.
Toth was put on the Ten Most Wanted list in March 2012, and there was a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to his arrest.
An arrest has been made in connection with possibly contaminated letters sent to President Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
Paul Kevin Curtis was arrested by the FBI at his home in Corinth, Mississippi, the department said in a statement.
Discovered Tuesday, the letters were addressed to Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and to Obama. The justice department release said a third letter was sent to a Mississippi justice official.
The letters to Wicker and Obama were stopped at a government mail-screening facility after initial tests indicated the presence of the deadly poison ricin.
Because initial tests can be "inconsistent," the envelopes have been sent off for additional tests, an FBI statement said. The FBI does not expect to receive results from the tests until Thursday, federal law enforcement sources told CNN.
The letters read: "To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance."
They were signed "I am KC and I approve this message," a source said.
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South Korea's government said Sunday it believes North Korea may test a missile around April 10, citing as an indicator Pyongyang's push for workers to leave the Kaesong Industrial Complex by then.
Seoul "is on military readiness posture," said South Korea's Blue House spokeswoman Kim Haeng in a briefing. She said national security chief Kim Jang-soo also based the assessment on North Korea's hint to foreign diplomats in Pyongyang to send personnel out of the country.
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Julia Pierson was sworn in Wednesday as director of the Secret Service. She is the first woman to lead the agency responsible for protecting the president and controlling counterfeiting of currency, among other duties.
FULL STORYA new North Korean propaganda video shows images of what appears to be an imagined missile attack on U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the White House and the Capitol.
The roughly 4-minute video was posted Monday in the YouTube channel of the North Korean government website Uriminzokkiri.
It carries a montage of clips of different weapons, including artillery guns firing and large missiles on display at military parades.
Just before the 3-minute mark, it cuts to footage of target sights honing in on the White House and then a simulated sequence of the Capitol's dome exploding.
FULL STORYA snowstorm that set snowfall records in Chicago yesterday is now giving an unscheduled day off for nearly 1 million students in states to the east.
More than 905,000 public school students are not going to classes Wednesday because of the winter storm slamming the United States, according to school districts in Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio.
The numbers are a reflection of major districts only, and do not include many smaller districts in the storm-affected area.
The storm could dump as many as 20 inches of snow west of the nation's capital. At least 93,406 customers were without power Wednesday morning in Virginia, Ohio and West Virginia, according to numbers provided by local power companies.
Six inches of snow in Chicago. A foot or so plastering the Upper Midwest. And up 20 inches expected just west of Washington D.C.
Surely, there's a silver lining to these snow clouds though, right? Don't they bring much-neeed moisture to parched states?
Not quite.
Snow is very fluffy, and it takes up to a foot of it to squeeze out an inch of rain, meteorologists say.
FULL STORYPresident Obama will be publicly sworn in for a second term in office today. Watch CNN.com Live for all your inauguration coverage.
Today's programming highlights...
8:40 am ET - Obamas, Bidens go to church - President Obama, Vice President Biden and their families begin their day by attending a service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington.
Sen. Daniel Inouye, 88, a long-serving Democrat from Hawaii and a wounded veteran of World War II, has died, Capitol Hill sources tell CNN.
Inouye died of respiratory complications at 5:01 p.m. EST Monday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his office said.
FULL STORYFour people were injured Saturday after a flash fire broke out in the ductwork of the State Department building in Washington, fire officials said.
One person was in a "life-threatening condition" and two others were in serious but non-life threatening condition at Washington Hospital Center, authorities said. The fourth person fell from a ladder and hurt his knee.
The fire broke out after 11 a.m., as construction crews were working on the premises, and was extinguished on short order, said Lon Walls, a spokesman for Washington's fire department.
FULL STORY[Updated at 10:50 a.m. ET] People are being allowed back into the Canadian Embassy in Washington after police have given the "all clear" after a report of a suspicious package inside. FULL POST
An anti-jihad ad that has caused a stir in other cities now has another destination for its message: the subways of Washington.
The ad by the American Freedom Defense Initiative states, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
Jihad - Arabic for "struggle" - is considered a religious duty for Muslims, although there are both benign and militant interpretations of what it means.
Last month, the American Freedom Defense Initiative posted the ads in the subways of New York and San Francisco.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations posted a response ad that reads, “Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.” Another one reads, “Support peace in word and deed.”
And the council is ready to try to counter the new ads in the nation's capital.
The ads were initially blocked, but on Friday, U.S. District Judge Mary Collyer ruled that the D.C. transit system must allow the advertisements because of free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
"We don't think it's controversial," said Pamela Geller, the executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative. "It's truth. Telling the truth now is equated with 'hate' and 'bigotry' in an attempt to silence and demonize the truth-tellers. That makes my ads all the more important.”
According to Geller, the American Freedom Defense Initiative ads have two missions: “to affirm the truth about the barbaric jihad against free people” and to affirm free speech.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is working with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace, knows it can’t get the ads removed. Instead, the groups want the D.C. transit officials to help reduce the negative impact of the posters.
“With respect to your response in this matter, it is not our desire that (the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority) disallow advertisements that contain any political speech,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement. “I do believe there are measures WMATA can take to mitigate the affect hate speech has on the community.”
A 14-year-old gave birth Sunday night, and Monday was on her way to becoming a reality TV star.
The teenager is Mei Xiang, the female giant panda at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. It was her second successful pregnancy with 15-year-old Tian Tian, the zoo's male giant panda, in seven years.
"We are thrilled that Mei Xiang had a successful pregnancy since 2005," said Dennis Kelly, the zoo's director. "I'm cautiously optimistic as we haven't seen the cub yet, but we know that Mei is a good mother. Like everyone else, I’m glued to the panda cam for my first glimpse of the cub!”
Kelly isn't the only one watching the "panda cam" that monitors the David M. Rubenstein Family Giant Panda Habitat. So many people are trying to get a glimpse of the new cub that the streaming video online is getting jammed. You can try to access the view here or from the zoo's website. MTV and TLC, take notice.
The U.S. House will proceed with a vote Thursday on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Holder has been cited for withholding documents in the "Operation Fast and Furious" weapons operation.
Fast and Furious was a federal operation that involved agents' allowing illegal sales of guns believed to be destined for Mexican drug cartels. The idea was to track the sellers and purchasers, but things went awry when weapons found at murder scenes were traced back to the program.
Fast and Furious: By the numbers
As the proceedings continue with Holder, here's a bit of background on his time as Attorney General, as well as a timeline of the events involving Fast and Furious. (For an in-depth breakdown, you can also read more about the Fast and Furious investigation, which started with an agent's death.):
French prosecutors have widened an investigation into former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged participation in a prostitution ring.
Authorities said Monday that Lille police will open a preliminary inquiry into acts alleged to have taken place between 15 and 18 December 2010 in Washington D.C..
CNN was waiting to hear back from Strauss-Kahn's lawyers Monday morning.
The French newspaper Liberation reported earlier this month that the allegations stemmed from statements made by two women it describes as "escort girls," who were interviewed by Belgian police as part of an investigation into a prostitution ring run out of the Carlton Hotel in Lille, near France's border with Belgium.
According to the newspaper's account of the depositions, the women said they had accompanied two associates of Strauss-Kahn on a visit to Washington, where they had stayed at the W Hotel.
One of them alleged that Strauss-Kahn had used force against her during a sexual encounter at the hotel, despite her protests.
The newspaper did not specify how it obtained the statements. CNN could not independently confirm the report.
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Chuck Brown, known as the "Godfather of Go-Go," a genre blending funk, jazz and soul and other musical forms, died Wednesday, his manager said.
Brown, 75, died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, manager Tom Goldfogle said. The performer, whose career spanned four decades, died of multi-organ failure from sepsis.
"Go-Go" originated in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s.
Brown, with the Soul Searchers, had a big hit with "Bustin' Loose." The guitarist and singer became a familiar figure on stage with his brim hat and sunglasses.
According to CNN affiliate WJLA, Brown had recently postponed numerous shows due to failing health.
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President Barack Obama said in an interview with ABC that "it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."
With his Wednesday announcement, the president reversed his longstanding position on the issue. It came on the heels of his own vice president and education secretary saying they were in favor of gay marriage.
According to an ABC blog post, Obama further described his thought process as an "evolution" that progressed as he discussed the issue with staff members, gay and lesbian service members and his own family.
He said he thinks Americans are growing increasingly comfortable with the concept of gay marriage and cited his own daughters' views on the matter.
“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” he said. “You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents.
"And Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them, and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”
Read CNN's full coverage of President Barack Obama's stance on gay marriageA fourth congressional committee will look into the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia, joining the acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security as well as internal reviews by the agency, the military and the White House.
The top legislators on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said Tuesday they sent a letter to Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan asking for information on the incident last month in Cartagena, Colombia, that has resulted in nine agents resigning or in the process of being forced out.
=Three other Secret Service agents were cleared of serious misconduct, and the military is investigating the alleged involvement of 12 service members.
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Editor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community.
Star-struck space lovers gazed skyward Tuesday to watch space shuttle Discovery's journey to Washington after a series of nostalgic fly-bys on the back of a NASA Boeing 747. The flight departed from Florida's Kennedy Space Center en route to Dulles International Airport in Virginia. It will spend its retirement at a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum facility in Chantilly, Virginia.
Space shuttle Discovery arrives in Washington
The photo at the top was shot by rocket technician Danny Mills of Cape Canaveral, Florida, who joined several other iReporters in documenting the shuttle's journey from point A to point B. Mills went over to Cocoa Beach to see the shuttle. He used an often-mentioned word to describe his feelings.
"There's a lot of life left in the shuttles, and everyone I talked to this morning feels the same," he said. "We're really sad to see them stop flying. It was really bittersweet." FULL POST
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