Same-sex marriage is now legal in New York after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that was narrowly passed by state lawmakers Friday, handing activists a breakthrough victory in the state where the American gay rights movement was born.

New York becomes the sixth state where gay couples can wed and the biggest by far.

With the help of an audacious between-the-legs trick shot, Andy Murray will head into the second week of Wimbledon again carrying the hopes of a nation for a first homegrown men's champion in 75 years.

The fourth-seeded Murray advanced to the fourth round by defeating Ivan Ljubicic 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (4) in a match that ended at nearly 10 p.m. Friday under the roof on Center Court.

As Osama bin Laden watched his terrorist organization get picked apart, he lamented in his final writings that al-Qaida was suffering from a marketing problem. His group was killing too many Muslims and that was bad for business. The West was winning the public relations fight. All his old comrades were dead and he barely knew their replacements.

Faced with these challenges, bin Laden, who hated the United States and decried capitalism, considered a most American of business strategies. Like Blackwater, ValuJet and Philip Morris, perhaps what al-Qaida really needed was a fresh start under a new name.

The Van Gogh Museum says it is shutting its doors for six months for renovations starting next year, the latest major Dutch museum to close for reconstruction.

Director Axel Rueger said Friday the museum's most important paintings will move to the Hermitage Amsterdam so they can still be viewed during the work, scheduled to last from October 2012 through March 2013.

After 16 long years, the arrest of notorious Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger appeared to end a long, frustrating manhunt that had embarrassed the FBI and raised questions about its efforts to find one of its most wanted fugitives.

But Bulger's capture could be only the beginning of a new scandal for the Boston FBI and others.

Forget mice. A Swiss cat named Speedy has an eye for finer things.

Speedy has stolen so much loot that its owner had to post leaflets throughout a northern Swiss town saying "Help, our cat steals!" and inviting people to recover their missing things.

Archaeologists have begun excavating a 4,500-year-old wooden boat found next to the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of Egypt's main tourist attractions, Egypt's top antiquities official said Thursday.

The boat is one of two buried next to the pharaoh Khufu in what appeared to be a religious custom to carry him in the afterlife. Khufu, also known as Cheops, is credited with building the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The United States hit two pillars of the Iranian economy with sanctions Thursday, targeting the Islamic republic's national airline carrier and a major port company on charges that they facilitate illegal weapons trade and help the mighty Revolutionary Guard corps in destabilizing activity in Iran and nearby countries.

The Treasury Department's action blocks any assets in the United States belonging to Iran Air, Tidewater Middle East Co. and three other firms. It also prevents Americans from doing business with them.

Days before a college football player was arrested on a U.S. Airways flight at San Francisco airport following a dispute over his saggy pants, the airline allowed another man wearing skimpy women's panties and mid-thigh stockings to fly, according to a passenger and airline spokeswoman.

Jill Tarlow, a passenger on a June 9 flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Phoenix, took a photo of the scantily clad man, which she provided to the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper published the photo in its Wednesday edition.

A bone fragment at least 13,000 years old, with the carved image of a mammoth or mastodon, has been discovered in the southern U.S. state of Florida, a new study reports.

While prehistoric art depicting animals with trunks has been found in Europe, this may be the first in the Western Hemisphere, researchers report Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.