The number of people seeking unemployment aid barely changed last week and the average over the past month fell to a fresh five-year low. A decline in layoffs is helping strengthen the job market.

The military has released the names of the seven Marines who died in a mortar explosion during a training exercise in Nevada.

The Senate has passed a huge spending bill to keep the government open through the end of September, preventing a government shutdown but leaving in place automatic spending cuts that will mean job furloughs for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

A mortar shell explosion Monday at an Army depot in Hawthorne, Nev., killed seven Marines and injured eight other servicemen. Here are profiles of victims identified by family members:

21-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Josh Taylor from Ohio and 23-year-old Roger Muchnick from Connecticut were among the seven who died after a mortar shell explosion during mountain warfare training in Nevada's high desert.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has signed bills placing new restrictions on firearms exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot in a movie theater in suburban Denver.

The head of the Colorado Department of Corrections has been shot and killed at his home, and authorities say the gunman is on the loose.

General Motors is recalling nearly 27,000 Buicks and Cadillacs in the U.S. to fix a problem with the automatic transmissions.

A bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of Twinkies to a pair of investment firms.

Researchers in Germany said Tuesday they have completed the first high-quality sequencing of a Neanderthal genome and are making it freely available online for other scientists to study.

The U.S. government won't appeal a court decision blocking it from requiring tobacco companies to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages.

Wisconsin officials say they will close down a well-known nude beach on weekdays to reduce problems with outdoor sex and drug use.

The Statue of Liberty is scheduled to reopen by Independence Day, about eight months after it was closed because of Superstorm Sandy.

Carnival Cruise Lines says the Carnival Triumph will be out of service longer than first expected after it was crippled by an engine fire in the Gulf of Mexico last month, leaving 4,200 people stranded for five days.

A 75-year-old Detroit-area woman was convicted of second-degree murder on Tuesday for shooting her teenage grandson six times during an argument last spring.

Artists Against Fracking say the group and supporter-celebrities, including Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, haven't been told to register as lobbyists in their campaign to stop gas drilling in New York, but will if required to continue their cause.

Severe thunderstorms have raked across a wide area of the South, packing strong winds, driving rain and some baseball-size hail.

In response to the budget cuts that took effect March 1, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a re-evaluation of the underpinnings of the defense strategy that President Barack Obama announced 14 months ago.

Chrysler is telling owners of about 2,500 Dodge Challenger muscle cars not to drive them because they can catch fire.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today about validity of Arizona's voter registration law. It tries to keep illegal immigrants from voting by demanding that all residents show documents proving their U.S. citizenship before registering to vote in a national election.

A man convicted of illegally gaining access to AT&T's servers and stealing more than 100,000 email addresses of iPad users is facing sentencing.

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday cited two companies, Dialing Services and Democratic Dialing, for making illegal automated calls to mobile phones. Each of the companies placed more than one million illegal calls to cell phones "during certain months in 2011 and/or 2012."

A woman whose shooting of a former Cubs baseball player in 1949 inspired a book and the movie "The Natural" has died.

Olen Burrage, one of the men acquitted in the case of three civil rights workers killed by Ku Klux Klansmen in Mississippi in the 1960s, has died. He was 82.

Authorities outside Philadelphia have identified an armed man who barricaded himself inside the bathroom of a sporting goods store and killed himself.