AP Posts

Organizers of the world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade say they're ending a ban and allowing a gay group to march under its own banner for the first time. The prohibition on identified gay groups in the centuries-old New York parade had made participation a political issue. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to march this year, and Guinness beer dropped its sponsorship.

Six years into a natural gas boom, Pennsylvania has for the first time released details of 243 cases in which companies prospecting for oil or gas were found by state regulators to have contaminated private drinking water wells.

Hours after reaching an agreement to buy the company, the restored chief of the New England's Market Basket supermarket chain celebrated with workers in a rally at headquarters Thursday, saying he loved them and appreciated their efforts in helping him regain control.

Burger King is in talks to buy doughnut chain Tim Hortons and create a new holding company headquartered in Canada, a move that could shave its tax bill. Such an overseas shift, called a tax inversion, has become increasingly popular among U.S. companies and a hot political issue.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has pleaded not guilty to charges in a new indictment that accuses the utility of lying to federal investigators looking into a fatal pipeline explosion in a San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood. Steve Bauer, an attorney for the company, entered the plea in court on Monday to all 28 counts in the indictment, including obstruction of justice.

A child born in 2013 will cost a middle-income American family an average of $245,340 until he or she becomes an adult, with families living in the Northeast taking on a greater burden, according to a report out Monday. Those costs — food, housing, childcare and education — rose 1.8 percent over the previous year.

Iran's foreign minister said Friday it is unlikely to reach a final nuclear accord with world powers by a November deadline. Parliament's news website quoted Mohammad Javad Zarif as saying that even if a general agreement is reached before the deadline, the two sides will require more time to discuss details. "Hence, it is unlikely to reach a final conclusion before a four-month span," he said.

A state Senate candidate from western New York is stepping away from her campaign after acknowledging an extramarital relationship that she says began this month.

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy claims the April confrontation between the federal government and his armed supporters was part of an age-old spiritual battle between good and evil.

Police said Thursday they're deciding whether to arrest an 80-year-old man who shot a fleeing, unarmed burglar despite her telling him she was pregnant, but they have arrested the woman's accomplice on suspicion of murder for taking part in a crime that led to her death.

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that more investment in infrastructure and job training is needed to increase economic opportunities in the nation's cities. Biden spoke at the National Urban League conference, where the theme is "One Nation Underemployed." Biden said the keys to putting more people in better-paying jobs and spurring economic growth in cities are workforce training to meet today's business needs and improving roads, bridges and other transportation.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Denver struck a blow to Colorado's voter-approved gay marriage ban, calling it unconstitutional but issuing a temporary stay to give the state a chance to appeal. The ruling could be another step toward a showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question of gay marriage bans once and for all.

Senior U.S. officials and lawmakers butted heads Wednesday over the American response to Iraq's expanding Sunni insurgency, with Republicans saying drone strikes should have been authorized months ago and even Democrats questioning the Obama administration's commitment to holding the fractured country together. The U.S. is now conducting about 50 intelligence sorties over Iraq a day, they said, from about one flight a month a few months ago.

Thousands of older rail tank cars that carry crude oil would be phased out within two years under regulations proposed Wednesday in response to a series of fiery train crashes over the past year, including a runaway oil train that exploded in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people. Accident investigators have complained for decades that the cars are too easily punctured or ruptured, spilling their contents, when derailed.

House Republicans want to slash President Barack Obama's emergency spending request for the border, speed young migrants back home to Central America, and send in the National Guard. They put the House on a collision course with the Democratic-run Senate, and increased the likelihood that congressional efforts to address the crisis on the Southern Border, where unaccompanied kids and teens have been showing up by the tens of thousands, will end in stalemate.

Suicides among active-duty military have increased a bit so far this year compared with the same period last year, but Pentagon officials say they are encouraged that more service members are seeking help through hotlines and other aid programs. Pentagon documents show there were 161 confirmed or suspected suicides as of July 14, compared with 154 during the same time frame in 2013. The uptick was among the Air Force and Navy, while soldiers and Marine suicides went down.

In a sign of increased caution about flying near combat zones, U.S. and European airlines halted flights to Israel Tuesday after a rocket landed near Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines suspended service between the U.S. and Israel indefinitely. US Airways scrapped its one flight to Tel Aviv Tuesday. Germany's Lufthansa and Air France also suspended flights. The actions come days after a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine with 298 people on board.

For the first time, working-class whites make up less than half of Ohio's eligible voters, part of a demographic shift in a key Midwestern swing state that is pushing political parties to widen their appeal beyond the once-dominant bloc. Nationwide, working-class whites are more likely to be socially conservative, less optimistic about their futures and skeptical of big government. But in Ohio, the group has been much more politically divided: encompassing deeply religious, GOP-leaning conservatives in rural areas as well as unionized blue-collar Democrats in cities.

A federal appeals court has delivered a serious setback to President Barack Obama's health care law, potentially derailing billions of dollars in subsidies for many low- and middle-income people who bought policies. However, the White House says health subsidies under the Affordable Care Act will continue to flow for the time being despite the major setback delivered by the court.

A year after filing for bankruptcy, Detroit is building momentum to get out, especially after workers and retirees voted in favor of major pension changes just a few weeks before a judge holds a crucial trial that could end the largest public filing in U.S. history. Pension cuts were approved in a landslide, according to results filed shortly before midnight Monday. The tally from 60 days of voting gives the city a boost as Judge Steven Rhodes determines whether Detroit's overall strategy to eliminate or reduce $18 billion in long-term debt is fair and feasible to all creditors.