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According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, there is a possibility that the majority of the state's latest earthquakes were caused because of the subsurface injection of wastewater from oil and natural gas drilling operations.

Geologists said that they have been putting efforts to examine the cause of hundreds of earthquakes that have shaken the homes and the nerves of people in central and north-central Oklahoma. At central and north-central Oklahoma, the speed of oil and gas drilling has sped up in recent years.

On Wednesday, a New York judge allowed two Stony Brook University lab animals the right to have their day in court. The university, which is supposed to be holding the chimps, could be asked to release the primates.

This decision appears to recognize chimpanzees as legal persons for the first time. The ruling marks the first time in the Unites States that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeas corpus that normally enables human prisoners to challenge their detention. There is a possibility that the judicial action might sway additional judges to do the same with other research animals.

On Tuesday, Portland City Council permitted ride-sharing companies to operate in the city. Approval has been given for a four-month-long project that includes certain regulations and also requires firms to provide access to disabled riders.

The meeting took place for more than four hours in which the council has voted 3-2 to allow app-based ride services, including Uber and Lyft to operate in Portland. Mayor Charlie Hales is in the favor of the plan and has voted in the favor.

"This is a change that none of us wanted. The cab companies didn't want it. I didn't want it. It's a change that - like a lot of change that is all around us right now - is coming pretty fast", affirmed Hales.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is urging lawmakers to allow troops to carry personal firearms on military bases for protection.

In an interview Tuesday, Cruz said, "Now, I will acknowledge, I may have misspoken in New Hampshire when I said that I had been pressing John McCain, and what I had been pressing was the Armed Services Committee. John McCain is the new chairman of it, so I sent a letter to the previous chairman".

In a gathering in Litchfield, New Hampshire on Sunday, Cruz said he has spoken to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the committee and asked him for a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing. He wants to have the hearing so that the issue of denying soldiers the ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights can be discussed.

The Obama administration's top drug enforcement official is expected to resign in mid-May amid a scandal over sex parties with prostitutes.

Michele Leonhart, who has served the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) since 2007, will step down as the sex scandal involving drug agents and cartel-hired prostitutes has tarnished the agency's repo and lawmakers, expressed no confidence in her leadership.

Leonhart has come under heavy criticism at Capitol Hill since the Justice Department inspector general's report last month documented a series of episodes in which agents working abroad took part in sex parties with prostitutes.

A very large diamond attracted a lot of people and mesmerized them with its flawless cut. At a Sotheby's auction in New York, it was sold for $22 million. It is a 100-carat, D color, emerald cut internally flawless diamond and is the largest of its clarity and cut and also the first of its kind to be displayed at auction.

Gary Schuler, the head of Sotheby's jewelry department in New York, said before the sale of the diamond, "People everywhere have been drawn to it from across the room and they are in awe of its size, particularly when they put it on their hand. They can't believe there's a diamond this pure of such impressive scale".