
Gina McCarthy's already bumpy road to becoming Environmental Protection Agency administrator took another detour Thursday morning when Senate Republicans boycotted a committee vote on her nomination, blocking it for now.

Two people familiar with the process say President Obama is close to naming Thomas E. Perez, a civil rights official in the Justice Department, as his choice to head the Department of Labor.
They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock `n' roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.