News

NEW YORK — The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved redefining marriage in the church constitution Tuesday to include a “commitment between two people,” becoming the largest Protestant group to formally recognize gay marriage as Christian and allow same-sex weddings in every congregation.

The new definition was endorsed last year by the church General Assembly, or top legislative body, but required approval from a majority of the denomination’s 171 regional districts, or presbyteries. The critical 86th “yes” vote came Tuesday night from the Presbytery of the Palisades in New Jersey.

After all regional bodies vote and top Presbyterian leaders officially accept the results, the change will take effect June 21. The denomination has nearly 1.8 million members and about 10,000 congregations.

TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party scored a resounding victory in the country’s election, final results showed Wednesday, after a tight race that had put his lengthy rule in jeopardy.

With nearly all the votes counted, Likud appeared to have earned 30 out of parliament's 120 seats, in a position to be able to build a coalition government with its right-wing and religious allies with relative ease. The election was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu, who has governed the country for the past six years.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The body of a woman found in a drainage ditch 35 years ago has been identified as that of an 18-year-old Texas hitchhiker who was assaulted and killed by a former Minnesota state trooper, state authorities said Tuesday.

Michelle Yvette Busha’s remains were identified over the weekend through DNA testing. Her body was found on May 30, 1980, and had been buried anonymously at a cemetery in the southern Minnesota city of Blue Earth for the past three decades.

Robert Leroy Nelson, a state trooper at the time, had confessed to killing a woman nine years later, but investigators had been unable to determine her identity.

“This was a case of not whodunit, but who was she,” said Faribault County Sheriff Michael Gormley. Busha’s remains were exhumed in August and DNA was collected as part of a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension effort to identify dozens of unidentified human remains in the state. BCA Forensic Science Services Director Catherine Knutson said investigators built a DNA profile, and entered that information into a national database for missing persons in mid-February.