Politics

Gay marriage was put to a vote in Maine on Tuesday in a closely watched referendum that gay-rights activists across the country hoped would prove for the first time that their cause can prevail at the ballot box.

Would abortions be easier or harder to obtain under the health care overhaul legislation that the House of Representatives is likely to consider later this week?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made an impassioned plea Tuesday to a joint session of Congress to work together on efforts to curb global warming and to help forge a binding climate-change deal at an international meeting next month.

Attorneys for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area that left 10 dead, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to stop his execution.

The House on Tuesday condemned a U.N. report that accuses Israeli forces and Palestinian militants of war crimes in Gaza last winter as "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy."

Despite a rising nationwide toll of sickness caused by the H1N1 flu virus and an intensive push by the government to have people vaccinated for it, almost half of Americans say they aren't likely to get the vaccine, according to a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll.

Republican Bob McDonnell tapped Virginia's independent voters Tuesday to win a landslide election for governor just a year after the state bucked tradition and voted for Barack Obama.

Some notable races and measures in Tuesday's election:

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is locked in a surprisingly tight race with his Democratic challenger for a third term as New York mayor.

Chris Christie, an aggressive former prosecutor who racked up a perfect conviction rate in public corruption cases and became the darling of New Jersey's Republican Party establishment, has unseated the deep-pocketed but unpopular Gov. Jon Corzine.