A Minnesota board on Monday certified results showing Democrat Al Franken winning the state's U.S. Senate recount over Republican Norm Coleman, whose lawyer promised a legal challenge that probably will keep the race in limbo for months.

Norman-area lawmakers crowded into the Oklahoma Transportation Commission's chambers Monday to applaud the start of a long-awaited widening and improvement project along Interstate 35 through the heart of the state's third largest city.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Jari Askins has announced her intention to run for governor in a letter saying too many Oklahomans are impoverished and college is too expensive.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Oklahoma City seized more than $15 million in 2008.

Hunting and fishing licenses that last longer and cigarettes that are less likely to cause fires are among the things 2009 has in store for Oklahomans because of new state laws.

Police say a man found dead on the Kennedy Elementary School playground in Norman with a gunshot wound to the head apparently killed himself.

Afghanistan's southern rim, the Taliban's spiritual birthplace and the country's most violent region, has for the last two years been the domain of British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers.

Seat restraints, pressure suits and helmets of the doomed crew of the space shuttle Columbia didn't work well, leading to "lethal trauma" as the out-of-control ship lost pressure and broke apart, killing all seven astronauts, a new NASA report says.

Israel is considering suspending its Gaza offensive for 48 hours to give Hamas militants an opening to halt their rocket fire, but the threat of a ground offensive remains if the truce does not hold, Israeli officials said Tuesday.

Defying U.S. Senate leaders and his own state's lawmakers, Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.