WASHINGTON – While the noisy debate over same-sex marriage drags on, a growing number of local governments and businesses have quietly granted spousal-type benefits to gay employees — but stopped just one step short of the altar

WASHINGTON – Alexis was 5 years old when her mother dropped her off at her grandpa’s house one afternoon in the fall of 2001 — and never came back

WASHINGTON – Advocates say a law that was supposed to make it easier for grandparents to enroll their grandkids in local schools may be tripped up by “excessively bureaucratic” paperwork that school systems have imposed

WASHINGTON – The parent company of Pepco and Conectiv has hired the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to investigate the power companies’ response to the half-million customers who were left without electricity in the wake of Hurricane Isabel

WASHINGTON – The number of people without health insurance in Maryland grew at one of the fastest rates in the country last year, but the state still had a smaller percentage of uninsured people than the nation as a whole, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday

WASHINGTON – Maryland’s median household income of $55,394 was one of the highest in the nation in 2002, despite a slight drop from the year before that mirrored a nationwide decline, the Census Bureau reported Friday

WASHINGTON – On the second anniversary of Sept

SILVER SPRING – Silver Spring resident Pearline Reid, 85, won’t be seeing her grandchildren Sunday, on Grandparents Day — she said she plans to see them instead over Christmas when she travels to their home in Jamaica