“A team led by a state-appointed emergency manager said Friday that Detroit is defaulting on about $2.5 billion in unsecured debt and is asking creditors to take about 10 cents on the dollar of what the city owes them.

But many Democrats were also pensive through the weekend. Their apprehension stemmed from the months they’ve spent eyeing a slew of gubernatorial candidates without any emerging as the consensus candidate that many feel would guarantee a Corbett defeat next year…

Addressing a rally called by Sunni Muslim clerics in Cairo, the Sunni Islamist head of state also warned Assad’s ally, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah, to pull back from fighting in Syria…

“The IMF’s advice is to . . . slow the fiscal adjustment this year – which would help sustain growth and job creation – but hurry up with putting in place a medium-term road map to restore long-run fiscal sustainability,” said Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director…

The hard-line conservatives aligned with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, placed at the back of the pack of six candidates, indicating that Iranians were looking to their next president to change the tone, if not the direction of the nation, by choosing a cleric who served as the lead nuclear negotiator under an earlier reformist president, Mohammad Khatami…

From the earliest times, government — at first perhaps just the local warlord — has at least provided a safe physical space for trade. Before 2000 BC, Chinese, Egyptian, and Babylonian governments not only established market places; they also built roads and canals to them. They created and enforced systems of weights and measures, and even forms of money. They also drew up sets of rules, such as the Code of Hammurabi, and provided courts to resolve disputes. Later, under the Roman Empire, of course Christ found money-changers in the temple courtyard, along with all sorts of other merchants — because that was a nice, safe, central location for a market…

Sanders said the so-called war on drugs has failed for two reasons. First, he said, addiction to drugs is a disease, not a crime…

Brewer, a conservative and avowed foe of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, announced her support for the Medicaid expansion in January, but faced stiff resistance from fellow Republicans in Arizona’s House and Senate. During a marathon session that began Wednesday afternoon and stretched into the wee hours of Thursday morning before culminating in a final vote late Thursday afternoon, a handful of Republicans joined Democrats in the House and Senate to pass the Medicaid expansion…

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery raised objections about a judge hearing a civil case brought by a firm that paid his wife a referral fee and whose principals have contributed to his campaign, according to sources in the justice system.

At the annual gathering of the foundation established by her husband, Mrs. Clinton delivered a speech that plunged her back into the heart of the conversation about the country’s future, highlighting the need for creating jobs for young people and expanding early childhood development programs…

The high court’s unanimous judgment reverses three decades of patent awards by government officials. It throws out patents held by Myriad Genetics Inc. on an increasingly popular breast cancer test brought into the public eye recently by actress Angelina Jolie’s revelation that she had a double mastectomy because of one of the genes involved in this case.