(NNPA) - Across the U.S., another group of Black students have earned their college degrees this month, and have progressed to the next stage in their lives. But they do so carrying the burden of greater debt than their White peers, according to a new study conducted by The College Board's Advocacy and Policy Center.

ROBERT, La. (AP) -- Scientists found huge plumes of oil lurking under the surface of the water in the Gulf of Mexico, as BP hit a snag in its latest effort to slow down the oil blasting out of a broken undersea pipe.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Gulf of Mexico oil spill hasn't stained President Barack Obama nor dimmed the public's desire for offshore energy drilling, according to a new Associated Press-GfK Poll.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Resounding majorities of Hispanics consider illegal immigrants a boon rather than a burden to the United States country and condemn Arizona's strict new law targeting undocumented people, according to an Associated Press-Univision Poll that spotlights sharp divides between Hispanics and others in the U.S.

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.
Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

WATERTOWN, Mass. — Two Pakistani men suspected of providing money to Times Square car bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad were arrested by the FBI in a string of Thursday morning raids across the Northeast, law enforcement officials said.

On Wednesday, the Office of National Drug Control Policy released the months-long overdue budget and strategy for the agency, requesting a record $15.5 billion for law enforcement, interdiction, treatment and research.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Coastal states could veto offshore drilling plans under long-awaited legislation to curb global warming unveiled Wednesday.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — President Barack Obama could look up the numbers to learn the story of western New York's economy: the poverty rate, unemployment, median household income. Or he could have seen Jeff and Scott Baker's billboard as his motorcade navigated through Buffalo on Thursday: "Dear Mr. President," the brothers' sign along Interstate 190 says, "I need a freakin job. Period."

As the nation was mourning the deaths of civil rights icons Benjamin L. Hooks and Dorothy Irene Height, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s organization, was trying to resolve a nasty split in its leadership ranks that involves allegations of ethical and criminal misconduct