Politico - She didn't 'necessarily look at it word for word.'

AP - President Barack Obama on Thursday tapped four big Democratic Party donors for plum ambassadorships in Europe and Latin America while naming six career diplomats to posts in Africa, the Mideast and the Pacific.

AP - Lawmakers who steer money and contracts to favored companies and receive campaign contributions in return could face a House ethics committee investigation.

AP - President Barack Obama's efforts to increase taxes on multinational corporations took a hit Thursday when a new congressional estimate showed his plan would raise only three-fourths of the money the administration projected.

Time.com - The President hopes all the campaign skills that got him to the White House in the first place can help him win the health care debate

AP - Zimbabwe's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, faces a tricky task in persuading President Barack Obama to lift restrictions on aid to his beleaguered country.

Politico - Harman wants Napolitano to kill the agency’s deceptively named National Applications Office.

AP - Senior aides to President Barack Obama accompanied four Chinese Muslims and their lawyers on a flight from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to Bermuda.

AP - The American general picked to turn around the stalemated Afghanistan war paid a courtesy call on NATO defense chiefs Friday as he headed to his first day on the job in Kabul, a gesture meant to acknowledge the alliance's help even as the United States shoulders an ever-larger share of the fighting.

Politico - In an Ideas piece, Donatelli says Obama will bring America to the brink of economic collapse.

Politico - The furniture division underneath Longworth House Office Building gives new life to Capitol castoffs.

AP - The Sudanese government is allowing four aid organizations expelled from the country after its president was accused of war crimes to return under slightly different names, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Thursday.

Bloomberg - June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley have spent eight years cutting deals on issues from taxes to trade. Now what may be one of the strongest bipartisan relationships in Congress is facing its biggest test over health care.

AP - The United States and its allies must reduce the number of civilians killed in the hunt for the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday. He called the civilian deaths 'one of our greatest strategic vulnerabilities.'

AP - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration is closely watching the election in Iran but that policies are more significant than personalities in dealings with the Persian Gulf nation.

AP - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that key parties trying to promote Mideast peace will meet in Italy later this month.

AP - Swine flu is now formally a pandemic, a declaration by U.N. health officials that will speed vaccine production and spur government spending to combat the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.

U.S. News & World Report - Only a couple of months ago, exceptionally low mortgage rates were one of the few optimistic landmarks in an otherwise bleak economic outlook. After the Federal Reserve unveiled a series of initiatives beginning last fall--such as purchasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities and long-term treasury bonds--mortgage rates plunged to all-time lows. In early April, with 30-year fixed mortgage rates dropping to less than 5 percent, President Barack Obama beseeched homeowners everywhere to capitalize on the development by refinancing their mortgages. ...

AP - President Barack Obama says Iran's 'robust debate' leading up to elections shows change is possible there, and it could boost U.S. efforts to engage Tehran's leadership.

AP - President Barack Obama says a bill giving the government much greater power to regulate tobacco 'truly defines change in Washington.'

AP - Congress on Friday sent to the White House legislation that gives the federal government vast new powers to regulate and restrict cigarettes, the single largest cause of preventable death.

AP - The wife of a senator playing a lead role on a national health care overhaul sits on the boards of three health care companies, one of several examples of lawmakers with ties to the medical industry.

AP - General Motors and Chrysler executives defended the closings of hundreds of dealerships Friday as House lawmakers questioned whether the decisions would save any money or help the troubled companies rebound.

AP - In a June 9 story about health care, The Associated Press erroneously reported the year Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was first elected to the Senate. It was 1962, not 1964.

AP - A reputed Ku Klux Klansman convicted of kidnapping two black men 43 years after the abductions wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if the statute of limitations had passed.

AP - A beach vacation in the midst of World War II turned tragic for 40 U.S. soldiers, and the circumstances of their deaths in a plane crash in Australia was long kept a military secret.

Reuters - Failure to extend the United Nation's monitoring presence in Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region would undermine stability and leave ethnic Georgians there unprotected, the mission head said on Friday.

Time.com - The President hopes all the campaign skills that got him to the White House in the first place can help him win the health care debate

Bloomberg - June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley have spent eight years cutting deals on issues from taxes to trade. Now what may be one of the strongest bipartisan relationships in Congress is facing its biggest test over health care.

AP - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is praising the international body's newly-endorsed sanctions against North Korea in response to its recent nuclear tests.

Politico - It gives the FDA unprecedented authority over the marketing of cigarettes.

Politico - But Kennedy saw a steep decline in his personal wealth during 2008.

AP - The Obama administration wants to keep secret the locations of nearly four dozen coal ash storage sites that pose a threat to people living nearby.

AP - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will pay his first visit to the United Nations this fall, the next president of the U.N. General Assembly said Friday.

AP - Excerpts from the testimony of Amanda Knox, the U.S. student on trial for murder and sexual assault in the 2007 slaying of her British roommate. Knox took the witness stand Friday in Perugia, Italy, where she is being tried with her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of Italy, and testified sometimes in English, sometimes in Italian, according to her choice.

Reuters - U.S. President Barack Obama is eager to discuss a long-delayed free trade agreement with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe when the two leaders meet on June 29, the White House said on Friday.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON -- As expected, the House of Representatives on Friday strongly endorsed new, extensive legislation to regulate tobacco.

CQPolitics.com - Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, who has struggled with alcoholism and addiction, announced Friday that he has checked himself into a medical facility for treatment.

AP - A White House spokesman says the Obama administration hasn't decided whether or not to release Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States.

AP - Republicans on a key House panel won a vote Friday to make doubly sure that Guantanamo Bay detainees won't be given immigration benefits that would allow them to stay in the United States if they're released.

Politico - He says it's “not right” to call President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a “racist.”

AP - The Obama administration said Friday it is prepared to confront ships believed to be carrying contraband materials to North Korea but will not try to forcibly board them, in accordance with new U.N. sanctions.

AP - The Federal Election Commission has issued a draft advisory allowing Rep. Pete Visclosky to use campaign funds for the legal bills he's incurring in the federal investigation of a now-defunct defense lobbying firm.

U.S. News & World Report - Sonia Sotomayor--President Obama's pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter--has not yet been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but her history of education decisions is already drawing close attention from education law experts as they consider the direction she might take on schools if confirmed, Education Week reports.

AP - U.N. climate delegates completed their first rough sketch of a new global warming agreement Friday, a draft replete with gaps and competing ideas that await decisions by political leaders.

AP - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram wishing former U.S. President George H.W. Bush a happy 85th birthday, saying he deserves to be considered among the 'most authoritative' world leaders.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — Oil prices shot past $72 a barrel this week, and a growing number of experts point to Wall Street speculators as a key reason why Americans are suddenly paying a lot more for oil and gasoline.

AP - The spat between Republicans and Democrats about when to hold hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation really has nothing to do with the calendar.

Politico - It could be tricky for the W.H. health care czar to avoid every issue that affects her former firms.

AP - The thousands of new U.S. troops deploying in Afghanistan can lessen the reliance on airstrikes that sometimes kill civilians and undermine support for the fight against the Taliban, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.

AP - Legislation to be outlined next week in the Senate Finance Committee will likely include a new tax on workers with the costliest employer-provided health coverage, officials said Friday, but with implementation delayed until 2013 to minimize any political fallout.

AP - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport asked the Connecticut Supreme Court on Friday to reconsider a ruling that would make public thousands of pages of documents that detail alleged sexual abuse by priests.

AFP - US President Barack Obama on Friday removed Laos and Cambodia from a blacklist, opening the way for US loans to companies doing business in the former US adversaries.

AP - U.S. officials say three Guantanamo Bay detainees have been sent home to Saudi Arabia.

Politico - Rural communities absorbed nearly twice their share of the Chrysler dealership closings.

AP - The White House press secretary says President Barack Obama still struggles with a nicotine addiction, but the spokesman would not say whether the president still smokes cigarettes.

AP - Billionaire Bill Gates has picked up an honorary degree from Britain's Cambridge University.

Reuters - High food prices have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first half of 2009, the head of the U.N. World Food Programme said on Friday, raising the total number of hungry people to over 1 billion.

AFP - President Barack Obama on Friday set up a task force to craft the first US national policy for sustainably managing the country's oceans, drawing praise from environmentalists who said the move was long overdue.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama promised change, but he's following one time-honored tradition: doling out plum ambassadorships to friends and big-money party donors.

CQPolitics.com - President Obama's choice to be general counsel of the Army, Donald M. Remy, withdrew his nomination late Friday.

AP - Legislation to be outlined next week in the Senate Finance Committee will likely include a new tax on workers with the costliest employer-provided health coverage, officials said Friday, but with implementation delayed until 2013 to minimize any political fallout.

AP - Dozens of communities nationwide are at risk from a coal ash spill like the one that blanketed a Tennessee neighborhood last year, but the Obama administration has decided not to tell the public about it because of the danger of a terrorist attack.

Reuters - The presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua, both fierce critics of U.S. policy, on Friday accused President Barack Obama of failing to deliver on his promise to make a new start in ties with Latin America.

Politico - Well-heeled lawmakers like Sen. John Kerry report paper losses worth tens of millions of dollars.

AFP - US envoy George Mitchell is to hold talks with Syrian leaders Saturday on his first visit to Damascus as President Barack Obama's administration steps up its efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.