PUNXSUTAWNEY — Preparations for Groundhog Day 2019 began back on Feb. 3,

MONTPELIER, Vt. — People may need to trim back their Christmas tree expectations this year.

By John Rogers And Julie Watson

By Alanna Durkin Richer

By Bob Salsberg

DES MOINES, Iowa — If it seems like lottery jackpots are getting larger and larger, it’s because they are getting larger and larger.

WELLFLEET, Mass. — A man was bitten by a shark Saturday in the water off a Cape Cod beach and died later at a hospital, becoming the state’s first shark attack fatality in more than 80 years.

JACKSON, Miss. — Meeting on the campus of Jackson State University on a recent Friday afternoon, dozens of black women came together to strategize about the upcoming midterm elections, opening the gathering with a freedom song.

BOSTON — An expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences called for fundamental reforms to ensure the integrity of the U.S. election system, which is handicapped by antiquated technology and under stress from foreign destabilization efforts.

BOSTON — The black Boston city councilor whose upset primary win over a 10-term congressman stunned Massachusetts’ political establishment called her victory “surreal” Wednesday and said the wave of inclusiveness sweeping the nation is the best way to counter President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday sided with Asian-American students suing Harvard University over the Ivy League school’s consideration of race in its admissions policy, the latest step in the Trump administration’s effort to encourage race-neutral admissions practices.

It was the 1980s at Yale University, and Brett Kavanaugh’s classmates were protesting South Africa’s apartheid system, rallying for gay rights and backing dining hall workers in a labor dispute.

There’s no question that the costs of car ownership, from gas and parking costs to routine repairs and maintenance, can be drag. But ditching the car altogether may actually be more expensive.

Confidentiality agreements have come under fire during the #MeToo movement as one way abusive men have been able to hold on to their jobs, and keep harassing more women.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A publicist says Robin Leach, whose voice crystallized the opulent 1980s on the TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” has died. He was 76.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Democrats tested the strength of their “blue wave” against President Trump’s grip on America’s white, working class Tuesday as the 2018 primary season lurched closer to an end in two Midwestern battlegrounds.

BOSTON — Is self-driving government in the future?

WASHINGTON — When an audience member at a town hall asked California Sen. Kamala Harris earlier this year to reject corporate donations, her answer was noncommittal. “Well, that depends,” she said.

NEW YORK — Facebook faced a day of reckoning Thursday as its shares plunged in the biggest one-day drop in stock-market history.

PROVIDENCE — Now that women in the Navy can wear ponytails, men want beards.

NEWARK, N.J. — A $13 billion project to build a new rail tunnel into New York is scrambling to stay in the running for key federal funding as a July 14 deadline looms.

Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing examination of the reverberations of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies across America and beyond.

MASHPEE, Mass. — A modest courthouse and a fledgling police force, a housing development for American Indian families and a school where students are taught exclusively in the tribe’s ancestral language. These are the visible signs of an independent tribal nation that has grown on the famous…

BOSTON — In these complex times, a simple question about the quintessential American holiday of fireworks, cookouts and parades isn’t always so simple.

HARTFORD — A federal judge in New York has ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has violated the federal Clean Air Act by failing to curb ozone air pollution that blows into Connecticut and New York from the west.

BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — China’s hunger for American lobsters is helping keep prices high to U.S. consumers, but a tariff on the seafood does not appear imminent.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Spring? What’s that?

One of a package of stories marking Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of access to public information.

One of a series of stories marking Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of access to public information.

PROVIDENCE — When the U.S. Navy sought the first female sailors to serve on submarines, Suraya Mattocks raised her hand because she thought it would be a cool job, not because she wanted to blaze a trail. She did anyway.

BOSTON (AP) — The sun came out across much of the Northeast on Friday as utilities tackled the arduous task of restoring power to hundreds of thousands of customers who lost electricity during the storm that hit the region this week, all with the possibility of a third nor’easter in the offing.

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Accompanying the routine payments and price forecasts sent to some Northeast dairy farmers last month were a list of mental health services and the number of a suicide prevention hotline.

BOSTON — Tens of thousands of utility workers in the Northeast raced to restore power to more than 1.5 million homes and businesses just days after a powerful nor’easter caused flooding and wind damage from Virginia to Maine.

In Jim Crow America, it’s no wonder that Jack Johnson was the most despised African-American of his generation.

PARKLAND, Fla. — A former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a Florida high school Wednesday, killing at least 17 people and sending hundreds of students fleeing into the streets in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since a gunman attacked an elementary school in Newtown…

NEW YORK (AP) — Flynn the bichon frise has won best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club.

John Grosso knew it was highly unlikely that a monster wave was barreling toward the Connecticut coast, but when a tsunami warning appeared out of the blue on his phone Tuesday, he felt a twinge of fear. His co-workers, who got the same alert, asked whether they should evacuate.

PHILADELPHIA — The rain and hail that pelted Philadelphia for much of the day dissipated just as people across the city spilled out of sports bars, apartments and houses.

CONCORD, N.H. — Experts who fear road salt is starting to take a toll on the nation’s waterways are turning to beet juice, molasses, and even beer or cheese waste to make them safer.

PORTLAND, Maine — Federal fishing regulators on Tuesday approved a compromise they said would expand the amount of coral habitat preserved in the Atlantic Ocean while also protecting fishing interests.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Actor and screenwriter Paul Rudd picked up his 2018 Man of the Year award from the nation’s oldest collegiate theatrical organization at Harvard University on Friday night.