Just six months after Minnesota voters turned back an effort to ban gay weddings, lawmakers are poised to make the state the first in the Midwest to pass a law allowing them.
The startling shift comes amid a rapid evolution of public opinion nationally in the debate over marriage. But with Minnesota and possibly Illinois set to broaden the definition to include same-sex couples, coastal states may soon have some company in enacting changes.
Gay marriage momentum expands to 2 Midwest states
Afghanistan: Bomb kills 15, including 6 Americans
A security firm has confirmed that four civilian contractors killed in a suicide car bombing in Afghanistan were Americans.
Thursday's bombing in Kabul also killed two American soldiers and nine Afghan civilians, including two children. DynCorp International says four of its employees were working with U.S. forces training the Afghan military when the blast occurred.
Tornadoes tear through Texas towns, killing six
At least six people were killed and seven were missing after as many as 10 tornadoes ripped through north-central Texas Wednesday evening, leaving a trail of destruction from the worst severe storm outbreak in the United States so far this year.
Authorities warned the death toll could rise from the storms, which struck from early evening to around dusk, flattening homes and uprooting trees across at least four counties near the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Benghazi emails show CIA deputy director did most of editing on talking points
President Barack Obama succumbed to days of withering criticism Wednesday, releasing dozens of emails in an effort to demonstrate that the White House did not try to cover up information about the September 2012 attacks on diplomatic facilities in Libya that killed four Americans.
The documents show that substantive changes to a set of talking points intended for use by Congress about the attacks were made by the Central Intelligence Agency. A senior intelligence official, briefing reporters under the condition that he not be further identified, said the changes were made to avoid impeding a federal investigation into the deaths and prejudging who might have been behind the assault.
How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach
For almost a decade, the United States has been standing in the way of an idea that could lead to cures for some of the world's most devastating illnesses. The class of maladies is known as neglected diseases, and they almost exclusively affect those in the developing world.
The same idea, if realized, might also be used in more affluent nations to goad the pharmaceutical industry into producing critical innovations that the free market has yet to produce - things like new antibiotics, which are likely to be used judiciously, and are unlikely to be wildly profitable.
U.N. ‘strongly’ condemns Syrian government attacks on civilians
The U.N. General Assembly “strongly” condemned the Syrian government Wednesday for its “indiscriminate” shelling and bombing of civilians and “widespread and systematic” human rights violations in a conflict that has dragged on for more than two years and left more than 70,000 people dead.
The resolution, co-sponsored by most Arab and Western governments, was adopted by a vote of 107 to 12, with 59 abstentions. The United States backed the resolution and Russia opposed it, putting them on opposite sides as they struggle to start talks between the Syrian government and opposition on a political transition.
World’s fish have been moving to cooler waters for decades, study finds
Fish and other sea life have been moving toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters, part of a worldwide, decades-long migration documented for the first time by a study released Wednesday.
The research, published in the journal Nature, provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has broad repercussions for fish harvests around the globe.
US tax agency chief resigns over targeting of conservative political groups
US President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service has resigned in the wake of news that the government financial agency targeted conservative political groups seeking tax relief for extra scrutiny.
Steven Miller, who was not in charge of the IRS at the time of the wrongdoing, will step aside in light of the bureau’s “inexcusable” misconduct. A visibly angry Obama said that the extra screening for Tea Party groups before the presidential election last year was “an outrage.”
Scientists successfully create human stem cells through cloning
After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been removed.
The result is a harvest of human embryonic stem cells, the seemingly magic cells capable of morphing into any of the 200-plus kinds that make up a person.
Page 3 of 881
