The Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday it is launching a public-private initiative aimed at preventing 1 million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years. HHS announced the Million Hearts initiative will aim at encouraging Americans to make healthy choices, such as not smoking and reducing consumption of foods with sodium [...]

The House approved a short-term bill Tuesday, extending the Federal Aviation Administration’s operating authority through January and federal highway and transit programs through March. The AP reports the Senate is expected to vote on the measure later this week. House and Senate leaders agreed last week on the 22nd short-term extension of the FAA since [...]

A Senate subcommittee approved $630 billion for defense spending in fiscal year 2012 Tuesday, freezing the Pentagon’s base budget at $513 billion for a second straight year while seeking nearly $118 billion for U.S. wars abroad. The Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee‘s proposed defense budget is $26 billion less than the amount requested by President Barack [...]

Children 12 years old and younger soon will be able to keep their shoes on while going through airport security, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday. New DHS policy, to be rolled out in the coming months, also includes other ways to screen young children without resorting to a pat-down, Napolitano said. Napolitano made [...]

The U.S. intelligence community continues to investigate a credible and specific threat it received last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday. The threat was timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, prompting increased security measures in both New York City and Washington. Mueller testified before the Senate Homeland Security [...]

NASA launched an unmanned, solar-powered spacecraft on Saturday on a 250,000-mile, three-and-a-half month voyage to recover some of the most detailed information about the moon ever recorded. The twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory is taking a low-energy trajectory to the moon, whose surface and gravity it will map for 82 days. A United Launch [...]

President Obama has proposed to pay for the American Jobs Act he sent to Congress on Monday largely through tax increases on wealthy Americans. The largest revenue-increasing measure applies to individuals with adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000 or couples with more than $250,000. It would take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, when Bush-era [...]

The top two U.S. intelligence chiefs told a joint Congressional intelligence committee hearing Tuesday al-Qaida is weaker 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, but is still a threat and that domestic terrorists may be inspired by al-Qaida. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director David Petraeus both testified before the panel in [...]

Efforts to protect the nation’s food supply from terrorism have no centralized coordination, according to a Government Accountability Office report. In an 81-page report released Tuesday, GAO said no single agency is in charge of overseeing the federal government’s progress in implementing food and agriculture defense policies. The Agriculture Department‘s efforts are bogged down by [...]

NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen has called on the U.S. and European countries to open up their defense markets to international competition. Speaking Monday at an industry event in London, Rasmussen recognized imminent budget cuts and said ”we can’t ask the allies to spend more, we have to ask them to spend better.” For him, that means [...]