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MINNEAPOLIS — Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman is asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks gay marriage in Minnesota.

MINNEAPOLIS  — Minneapolis police are investigating the second fatal drive-by shooting of the weekend and have identified the victim as a 16-year-old boy.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s minority population is steadily rising and now makes up 35 percent of the U.S., boosted by a surge in Hispanic births and more Americans who describe themselves as multiracial.

Helen Thomas, the opinionated White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill 10 presidents and often exasperate them, lost her storied perch Monday in a flap over calling on Israelis to get “out of Palestine.”

Thomas, 89, who made her name as a bulldog for United Press International and was a pioneer for women in journalism, abruptly retired as a columnist for Hearst News Service.

Many recent St. Thomas graduates have endured the stress of searching for employment. But for some graduated seniors, the anxiety has finally subsided after being hired for a new job.

JERUSALEM — Israel vowed Friday to keep an Irish aid ship from breaching its blockade of the Gaza Strip, setting the stage for another maritime showdown as the vessel made its way toward the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Concern about more violence loomed large as Israel stood fast by its blockade, despite rising pressure to lift it following Monday’s raid against another aid ship that left nine activists dead.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The St. Paul school board has taken the first step in trimming $27 million from its 2010-2011 budget by cutting 117 non-tenured teachers and a principal from the district’s payroll.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants’ rights “upside down.”

Imagine you are at a computer working on your next big research project. You go to Google Books, type in a keyword and within seconds you have your pick of books from top library collections around the nation. In a few years, this will be a reality.

Intent on showing firm command of a deepening Gulf Coast environmental crisis, President Barack Obama kneeled on a Lousiana beach Friday and lamented the livelihoods and wildlife imperiled by America’s largest-ever oil spill. He flew to the Gulf Coast amid a rising crescendo of criticism as crude continued to spew into nature after an oil rig exploded and sank April 20.

In Facebook’s vision of the Web, you would no longer be alone and anonymous. Sites would reflect your tastes and interests – as you expressed them on the social network – and you wouldn’t have to fish around for news and songs that interest you.

Standing in the way is growing concern about privacy from Facebook users.

SEATTLE — Apple has surpassed Microsoft as the largest technology company in the world by market capitalization.

Apple’s move comes as the company’s iPhone, and now its iPad tablet computer, take on more of the personal computing tasks once handled by computers running Microsoft programs.

Space shuttle Atlantis is about to wrap up its flying career. Atlantis and its six-man crew are scheduled to land Wednesday morning in Florida and end NASA’s third-to-last shuttle flight. Mission Control says rain could interfere, however, and keep the shuttle in orbit an extra day.

Alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia, so for those who suffer from alcohol and drug abuse, treatment is scarce and the stigma so great that most never talk about their addiction, even to close family members. Mohammed Al-Turaiki, the chief executive of the Saudi Care for Rehabilitation and Health Care in Riyadh, is trying to change the negative image of addiction by creating a network of treatment facilities in the oil-rich kingdom. He came to Brighton Hospital in Detroit to check out the facility and its treatment programs that have long have included the  region’s large Arab and Muslim population.

A former Minnesota nurse accused of going online and encouraging depressed people to kill themselves was ordered to stay off the Internet while his criminal case is pending. A judge on Tuesday also forbade William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, of Faribault, from leaving the state except for work assignments as a long-haul trucker, the career he took up after being stripped of his nursing license.