(CNN) -- It's been more than 30 years since high-level officials from the United States and Iran sat down together to talk face-to-face.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Baring a sudden turn in stalemated budget talks, federal workers will begin to get verbal furlough notices in the next 24 to 36 hours, according to a top union official briefed by the White House budget office on Thursday.

The national average premium for Obamacare will be $328 a month before subsidies, 16 percent less than projected by the Congressional Budget Office. The benchmark is the second-lowest cost "silver" policy for 48 states, upon which federal subsidies are based.

More than 21 hours after he started, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on Wednesday finally ended his assault on Obamacare. Cruz's remarks did not constitute a filibuster and won't block a key procedural Senate vote scheduled for 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday

At a public meeting held Thursday to discuss the status of a new sex offender in the community of Belmont, Massachusetts, the man in question came forward to address his neighbors -- and say that educating children is the only way to keep them safe.

The Justice Department is seeking dismissal of a lawsuit by the Tampa, Florida, socialite whose complaints about threatening and anonymous e-mails set off a chain of events resulting in the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus.

Ted Cruz says he wasn't elected to the Senate to stay quiet. And his refusal upon entering Congress to observe its protocol to sit back and learn like a freshman, as expected, rubbed some of his more senior colleagues the wrong way.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With a series of potential disasters hovering over the nation like a demon storm, the most prominent words of a Washington-based word cloud would be: government shutdown, continuing resolution, debt limit and Obamacare.

LONDON (CNNMoney) -- Bank of America has been fined $2.2 million for discriminating against black job candidates over two decades.

(CNN) -- The Navy was unaware until after the killings at the Washington Navy Yard that gunman Aaron Alexis had been arrested in 2004 for shooting out the tires on a vehicle and claiming he had blacked out in anger, a senior Navy official told reporters Monday.