WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers moved closer to a deal on Monday to fund the government through next year, potentially avoiding a shutdown that would have further damaged Congress' tattered reputation ahead of the 2012 election. The group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers tentatively agreed on how to fund a wide range of government functions from homeland security to protecting the environment, congressional aides said. ...

DES MOINES (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pledged on Monday to remain faithful to his third wife, fighting back against rivals who have raised his past infidelity as an issue. Gingrich made the vow on a day his poll numbers in Iowa declined slightly, although he still has a substantial lead with three weeks to go before Iowa holds the first U.S. presidential nominating contest of the 2012 election year. ...

After photos from Lindsay Lohan's upcoming Playboy pictorial were purportedly leaked last week, founder Hugh Hefner has decided to go ahead and release the whole January/February issue featuring the troubled actress a week early. A day after the cover made its way to the Internet, the entire 11-page pictorial was posted via a digital magazine [...]

Across a wide array of measures, Americans are now as dissatisfied with Congress as they were immediately before the 2006 and 2010 electoral landslides that ousted the majority party in one or both chambers, according to a year-end United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll.

A freelance photographer for the New York Times covering an Occupy Wall Street protest at the World Financial Center on Monday clashed with police officers there. At least 17 protesters on the scene were arrested in the atrium of the building, according to the Times. A video uploaded to YouTube shows several NYPD officers repeatedly [...]