CHINA PIPELINE EXPLOSION
China rushed to keep an oil spill from reaching international waters, while an environmental group tried to assess if the country's largest reported spill was worse than has been disclosed.
 

MARCELLUS SHALE
So vast is the wealth of natural gas locked into dense rock deep beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio that some geologists estimate it's enough to supply the entire East Coast for 50 years. But freeing it requires a powerful drilling process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking,"using millions of gallons of water brewed with toxic chemicals that some fear threaten to pollute water above and below ground, deplete aquifers and perhaps endanger human health and the environment.
 

CELEBS IN JAIL
Hitting bottom under Hollywood's glare, Lindsay Lohan began serving jail time Tuesday for a probation violation that underlined the starlet's inability to put a 2006 drug case behind her.
 

ASIA US AID
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Monday a raft of new aid projects for Pakistan worth $500 million. The projects, including hospitals and new dams for badly needed electricity, are part of a larger effort to win over Pakistanis suspicious about Washington's goals in the country.
 

SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE APPROVES KAGAN
The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to approve Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. The 13-6 vote sends Kagan's nomination to the full Senate, where she's expected to be confirmed as early as next week to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
 

GOLDMAN SACHS (Updated)
Goldman Sachs said Tuesday its earnings fell to $453 million as trading revenue dropped during a dismal spring for the financial markets.
 

UNEMPLOYMENT VOTE
A bill to restore unemployment benefits to millions who have been out of work for more than six months has cleared a Senate hurdle.

A battle has raged for months in the Senate over whether jobless benefits should be financed with additional federal debt, as Democrats want, or through cuts to other government programs, as most Republicans insist.
 

MOTOROLA INC
What happened to Motorola? For decades, the company's products told the story of the march of electronics into the hands of consumers: car radios in the 1930s, TVs in the 1940s and cell phones starting the 1980s.
 

AFGHAN POWER PLANT
The United States and its partners have made an enormous and costly commitment to building a new Afghanistan, but an Associated Press investigation finds that the results have been paltry. Case in point: a $100 million diesel-fueled power plant that was supposed to be built swiftly to deliver electricity to more than 500,000 residents of Kabul, the country's largest city. The plant's costs tripled to $305 million as construction lagged a year behind schedule, and now it often sits idle because the Afghans were able to import cheaper power from a neighboring country before the plant came online.
 

OIL SPILL BP
In a nail-biting day across the Gulf Coast, engineers struggled to make sense of puzzling pressure readings from the bottom of the sea to determine whether BP's capped oil well was holding tight. Halfway through a critical 48-hour window, the signs were promising but far from conclusive. Kent Wells, a BP PLC vice president, said on an evening conference call that engineers had found no indication that the well has started leaking underground.
 

U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
A federal judge sentenced a former State Department worker who is the great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell to life in prison without possibility of parole for spying for Cuba, and sentenced the man's wife to more than 5 years for helping him steal U.S. secrets.
 

IPHONE 4 PROBLEMS
Apple Inc. will give free protective cases to buyers of its latest iPhone to alleviate the so-called "death grip" problem in which holding the phone with a bare hand can muffle the wireless signal.
 

HOLIDAY ANGST
Retailers are having second thoughts about orders placed earlier this year, when the economic recovery looked stronger and Americans were more willing to spend money. Now they worry about getting stuck with pile of back-to-school and holiday stock.
 

CONGRESS PASSES SWEEPING WALL STREET BILL
Congress sent legislation to President Barack Obama Thursday that imposes sweeping new regulations on Wall Street and creates new protections for millions of consumers. The Senate's 60-39 vote came nearly two years after a financial crisis knocked the economy to its knees.
 

CHINA DONOR
Katie Cramer, adopted from an orphanage in China, has no known blood relatives and her best chance of a match will be someone from her Zhuang ethnic group, China's largest minority of 16 million. So her mother, Sherrie, of Sacramento, Calif., made the heart-wrenching decision to leave her daughter and go to China in search of a donor in the city of Katie's birth.
 

OIL SPILL METER
On April 20, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 rig workers and starting a leak of oil from the sea floor that continues. Here's a look at the amount of oil that is spilling into the gulf around the clock.
 

AFRICA MILITANTS
Intelligence officials say al-Qaida has expanded its influence with militant groups in Africa and Yemen, gaining footholds in lawless regions where it is easier to operate.
 

PLAYBOY BUYOUT
Hugh Hefner's offer to take Playboy Enterprises Inc. private drew the promise of a competing bid from the owner of archrival Penthouse magazine. That raises the possibility that Playboy's 84-year-old founder could lose control of the men's magazine he started more than half a century ago.
 

BASEBALL ALL-STARS
An interactive looking at the starters for the American and National Leagues for the 2010 All-Star Game, with stats, analysis and highlights of past games, has been updated with the finalized roster.
 

POLANSKI TIMELINE
The Swiss government declared renowned film director Roman Polanski a free man on Monday after rejecting a U.S. request to extradite him on a charge of having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.
 

INDIA LAND BATTLES
In 1970, agriculture accounted for nearly half of India's economy, while industry was about a fifth and services a third. Today, the picture is far different: Agriculture contributes less than 15 percent to the economy, industry accounts for 28 percent, and services 57 percent.

Behind those numbers a fundamental shift is taking place, as millions move off the land into an uncertain future, leaving in their wake land battles that have blocked power plants, mines and factories and fueled a violent insurgency in India's northeast. Against this backdrop of strife, Pathan's story has a simple message: Industrialization works if farmers get a stake in the new economy.
 

BAREFOOT BANDIT TIMELINE
For two years he stayed a step ahead of the law - stealing cars, powerboats and even airplanes, police say, while building a reputation as a 21st-century folk hero. But Colton Harris-Moore's celebrity became his downfall.

Witnesses on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera recognized the 19-year-old dubbed the "Barefoot Bandit" and called police, who captured him Sunday after a high-speed boat chase, Bahamas Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade said at a celebratory news conference in Nassau, the capital.
 

WORLD CUP FINALS 1930 - 2010
An interactive looking at scenes from memorable final matches through history, featuring a video graphic recounting the story of the World Cup trophy, and a gallery of World Cup posters from 1930 to the present, has been updated.
 

WORLD CUP TEAMS (UPDATE)
An updated interactive showing how African, underdogs and powerhouse teams fared in the last seven World Cups has been posted.
 

GOLF BRITISH OPEN 2010
An interactive looking at the Old Course at St. Andrews, site of the 2010 British Open to be played June 15-18, with photographs and hole-by-hole description is available.
 

LEBRON REACTIONS
Fans throughout the nation reacted to LeBron James' decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat for a chance to play with Olympic teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
 

GOOGLE CHINA
Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday he expects Beijing to renew the license the company needs to continue operating its search engine in China.
 

PETERSON TIMELINE
Former Illinois police officer, Drew Peterson, who has been jailed since his May 2009 arrest, is accused of slaying his third wife. Although his trial was set to begin in early July, it has since been delayed.
 

CELEBRITY ARRESTS
A probation report finds Lindsay Lohan's six drug screenings since May were clean of illicit drugs and alcohol. The reports show the screenings occurred after the actress missed a court hearing and a judge imposed new restrictions, including wearing an ankle alcohol monitor. The report was released a day after the judge sentenced Lohan to 90 days in jail and a stint in rehab for missing court-mandated alcohol education classes.
 

SOLAR PLANE
An experimental solar-powered plane took off from western Switzerland on Wednesday for a 24-hour test flight _ a key step in a historic effort to one day circle the globe using only energy collected from the sun.
 

HEAT WAVE - UPDATE
With triple-digit highs recorded from New York to Charlotte, N.C., roads buckled, nursing homes with air-conditioning problems were forced to evacuate, and utilities called for conservation as the electrical grid neared its capacity.
 

20 BURGERS OF SUMMER: CELEBRITY RECIPES
An interactive featuring 20 burgers of summer showcasing photos, enticing recipes with downloadable pdfs and a history of the hamburger has been updated. The interactive will be updated weekly with fresh content.
 

AZ IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT (update)
An interactive on Arizona's illegal immigration enforcement law with timeline update, immigration map, key provisions of SB 1070, key player bios, by-the-numbers map and graphics.
 

POSTAL RATE INCREASE SOUGHT
Fighting to survive a deepening financial crisis, the Postal Service announced that it wants to increase the price of first-class stamps by 2 cents -- to 46 cents -- starting in January. Other postage costs would rise as well.

The agency's persisting problem: ever-declining mail volume as people and businesses shift to the Internet and the declining economy reduces advertising mail.
 

MIDEAST PEACE PLANS
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Tuesday in Washington to discuss steps that could be taken to move the Mideast peace process forward.
 

AP ECONOMIC STRESS INDEX (Monthly Update)
The AP Economic Stress Index is a visual guide to the state of the economy, using a unique formula made up of a major economic indicators, from state down to the county level. To create the Economic Stress Index, AP journalists analyzed bankruptcy, foreclosure and unemployment data, then created a formula using those three indicators.