WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leader of the House of Representatives -- a persuasive arm-twister and deal maker -- faces her toughest challenge yet in the coming weeks: getting 216 votes to pass final legislation revamping the U.S. healthcare system. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is scrambling to hit ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday he believed Britain would maintain its coveted top credit rating and announced a pay freeze for senior civil servants and military officers to help tame a record deficit. Setting out his economic plans weeks before an election, Brown ...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinians told U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday that Israel's new plan to build 1,600 homes for Jewish settlers challenged Washington's efforts to get indirect peace talks underway. In Jerusalem, an Israeli cabinet minister apologized for what he termed ...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Preliminary results of Iraq's parliamentary election, a vote seen as a litmus test of its young democracy, are likely to be released by Thursday, a United Nations official said Wednesday. Iraqi electoral officials, who had previously suggested the first count might be made ...

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Iceland's opposition turned up the heat on the center-left government on Wednesday to hold out for a tough new "Icesave" debt accord with Britain and the Netherlands, after a referendum rejection of its previous deal. Iceland has for months struggled to find a way ...

LOS ANGELES/DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. safety regulators and Toyota dispatched teams on Tuesday to inspect a Prius that sped out of control on a California freeway a day earlier, as the automaker struggled to reassure consumers shaken by its recall crisis. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Democrats on Tuesday cast doubt on their chances of meeting the White House's March 18 deadline for voting on a stalled healthcare overhaul, but said they are moving as fast as they can. With Democrats scrambling to line up support and determine what to include ...

Economists surveyed earlier this month in the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter said the economy is expected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2011, which is 0.1 percentage point lower than estimates made a month ago. But economists raised their 2010 growth forecast for the third consecutive month ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A television producer pleaded guilty Tuesday to trying to extort $2 million from U.S. talk show host David Letterman by threatening to reveal his affairs with women who worked on his late-night program on CBS. Robert Joel Halderman, a former producer for the CBS news program ...

CANBERRA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - A suspected mastermind of the Bali bombings was killed in a police raid in Indonesia in the latest blow to an Islamist militant movement in the world's most populous Muslim country. Dulmatin, who once trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, was one of three militants ...