AP Posts

Gov. Mary Fallin says Oklahoma National Guard facilities and employees who are paid with state tax dollars won't process benefits for married, same-sex couples.

Lt. Gen. Kjell Grandhagen, Norway's military intelligence chief, said Tuesday his country carries out surveillance on millions of phone calls in conflict areas around the world and shares that data with allies, including the United States.

Wal-Mart said about 10 of more than six dozen Bangladesh garment factories failed safety checks in audits it commissioned. The retailer hired Bureau Veritas to check some 200 factories it uses in Bangladesh after the April collapse of the Rana Plaza building killed more than 1,100 people and highlighted often grim conditions in the country's garment industry.

The Supreme Court is refusing to intervene in the controversy surrounding the National Security Agency, rejecting a call from a privacy group to stop NSA from collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers in the United States. While the justices on Monday declined to get involved in this issue, other lawsuits on the topic are making their way through the lower courts around the country.

The Supreme Court is refusing to intervene in the controversy surrounding the National Security Agency, rejecting a call from a privacy group to stop NSA from collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers in the United States.

New Jersey residents on Tuesday approved raising the state's minimum wage by $1, to $8.25 an hour, and to provide for automatic cost-of-living increases as 10 other states already do.

Syria wants its poison gas and nerve agent stockpile destroyed outside the country because of its ongoing civil war, the chief of the global chemical weapons watchdog confirmed Tuesday. Norway has turned down a request to have the material destroyed on its territory and no other country has yet been confirmed as a possible host for the risky operation.

A government-appointed panel in Bangladesh voted Monday to raise the minimum wage for millions of garment workers to about $66 a month — still the lowest in the world and well below what workers have been seeking.

The city of Irwindale filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court Monday asking a judge to stop production of at the Huy Fong Foods factory, which makes Sriracha, claiming the chili odor emanating from the plant is a public nuisance. City officials say residents have been complaining of burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches and that some people have had to leave their house to escape the smell.

The former University of California, Davis police officer who pepper-sprayed Occupy protesters has reached a worker's compensation settlement with the university system.

A provincial parliament in Australia has become the country's first to pass a law that allows same-sex marriages. But the federal government has threatened a court challenge.

A white supremacist trying to turn a small southwestern North Dakota town into an all-white enclave has convinced a family to join him. Craig Cobb has been buying property in Leith and recruiting others with similar views to come to the community of two dozen people so he can create a voting majority and take over the town.

GOP aides say House Speaker John Boehner will ask House Republicans to approve a short-term extension of the government's ability to borrow to meet its bills.

Arizona's decision to withhold welfare checks because of the federal government shutdown appears to make it the only state to cut off funding for the very poor because of the budget crisis, according to policy experts.

As the clock struck midnight Monday, House Republicans were demanding that the Senate negotiate their demand for a one-year delay in making millions of people buy health insurance under President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law. Minutes before midnight, the White House ordered a shutdown.

Former President George H.W. Bush was an official witness at the same-sex wedding of two longtime friends, his spokesman said Wednesday. Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush, attended the ceremony joining Bonnie Clement and Helen Thorgalsen as private citizens and friends on Saturday, spokesman Jim McGrath said.

Pope Francis is keeping in place the German prelate who leads the crackdown on U.S. nuns and who also helps craft the Catholic Church's sex-abuse response.

12 people have now been pronounced dead in the Navy Yard mass shooting. "The big concern for us right now is, we potentially have two other shooters that we have not located," officials said.

12 people have now been pronounced dead in the Navy Yard mass shooting. "The big concern for us right now is, we potentially have two other shooters that we have not located," officials said.

Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell agreed in an email exchange that George Zimmerman is a “ticking time bomb.” Bracknell exchanged emails with Santiago Rodriguez, who reached out to the police chief through an online form following the latest incident involving Zimmerman and his estranged wife Shellie Zimmerman.