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Officials are slowly lifting the bans on water use in areas that have been affected by last week's chemical spill.

Travelers will find gasoline prices are down considerably from last Thanksgiving. But consumer confidence is slumping too. So AAA, the auto club, says it expects to see a dip in holiday travel, compared with 2012.

The largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history took a step forward Tuesday when a judge said the city can go forward with its Chapter 9 bankruptcy case. Now a manager will work to cut pension costs and make deals with creditors. Detroit is $18.5 billion in debt.

A congressional vote to renew extended unemployment benefits may have to wait until the new year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will push for it in January if a last-minute extension fails to come together.

More than 60 percent of parents with children in kindergarten through grade 5 reported increased security precautions, according to a recent poll. It was the first national survey since the 1999 Columbine tragedy to ask parents how schools reacted to a mass shooting.

Decades ago, amid fears of rapid population growth, a biologist and an economist made a bet about how many people the planet could sustain. Global population is now estimated to top 7.1 billion. So who won the famous bet?

In this first full week of 2014, tech headlines came fast and furiously out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, and beyond.

A chemical used to wash coal seeped into the Elk River near Charleston on Thursday. Customers in more than 100,000 homes and businesses that get their water from one local company have been advised not to drink, wash or bathe with what's coming from their taps. More than 480,000 people live in the affected area.

Some of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's relatives have alleged that a mysterious man may have turned him toward radical Islam. That man — known as Misha — has told a writer for The New York Review of Books that he'd had no contact with the bombing suspect for three years and that "I wasn't his teacher."

The Secret Service made some immediate changes after the president's death 50 years ago this month: Open limousines were out. And it began taking a more aggressive approach to its advance work. Over the years, the service has established counter-sniper units, assault teams and surveillance units.