Politico - That is the thrust of arguments the Justice Department presented Thursday.

Politico - He faces a rising tide of congressional scrutiny and growing concerns.

AP - Finding an economical way to capture carbon dioxide from existing coal burning power plants is key to getting China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as well as for U.S. efforts to combat global warming, says a study being released Friday.

AP - During a 29-year absence of formal diplomatic ties with Iran, the U.S. government used many channels to gain insights about the Islamic regime's inner workings, from CIA contacts and meetings with Iranian exiles to relayed information from friendly foreign diplomats.

AP - President Barack Obama rarely equivocates when he promises that his health care plan will let people keep the coverage they have. His vow sounds reassuring and gets applause, but no president could guarantee such a pledge.

AP - The government is preparing to release a long-delayed internal report on the CIA's secret detention and interrogation program. How much of the document will be declassified for public view isn't yet known.

AP - Congressional investigators say the Labor Department has poorly managed a program that allows companies with good safety records to skip routine inspections — and mistakenly allowed some businesses with serious violations to participate in it.

AP - Hundreds of innocent civilians have been slain by soldiers and falsely identified as guerrillas killed in combat as part of a 'more or less' systematic practice by significant elements of Colombia's military, a U.N. human rights investigator said Thursday.

Time.com - States are already using the $1.2 billion the Obama Administration set aside to pay for thousands of summer jobs for low-income youth

Bloomberg - June 19 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. senators seeking to lower the price tag of a health-care overhaul below a $1.6 trillion estimate are cutting back proposed subsidies to help low-income Americans buy insurance.

AP - Car shoppers could take advantage of government incentives worth up to $4,500 this summer to send their old gas guzzler to the scrap heap in favor of a more fuel-efficient new vehicle.

Politico - A panel member tells POLITICO it was 'a very emotionally draining meeting.'

AP - In an unusual devotion of time for an American president, Barack Obama is blocking out nearly an entire afternoon to promote the importance of being a good dad as a national priority.

AP - A look at a plan passed by Congress to provide consumers with rebates of up to $4,500 to turn in their gas-guzzling cars and trucks for more fuel-efficient vehicles.

AP - Human rights groups working to end the dying in Darfur fear that the Obama administration's failure to put on record its plans to bring security to the 2.5 million people huddled in camps threatens their survival.

AFP - EU leaders gave their backing Thursday to Jose Manuel Barroso to head the bloc's executive body for a second term but his nomination still faces a major hurdle at the European parliament.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — Led by Michelle Obama, top members of the Obama administration will fan out across the country next week to participate in community service projects as part of a high-profile effort to spark volunteer work through the summer.

AP - In an unusual devotion of time for the president, Barack Obama is blocking out nearly an entire afternoon to promote the importance of being a good dad as a national priority.

Politico - Obama kicks off a town hall event today with several top athletes, actors and celebrities.

AP - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi spent her 64th birthday locked in prison Friday as global condemnation over her trial and demands for her freedom erupted across Twitter, Facebook and other Web sites and at rallies worldwide.

AP - Iraqi forces are successfully filling the security vacuum as U.S. combat troops withdraw from Iraqi cities ahead of a June 30 deadline, Iraq's U.N. envoy said Thursday.

Politico - President Obama's campaign for health care reform by this fall, once considered highly likely to succeed, suddenly appears in real jeopardy.

AP - President Barack Obama says the biblical command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself' is as pertinent now as ever.

AP - President Barack Obama says he is committed to a comprehensive immigration overhaul that includes a way that illegal immigrants can become U.S. citizens.

Politico - Obama's campaign for health care reform by this fall, once considered highly likely to succeed, suddenly appears in real jeopardy.

CQPolitics.com - When House Republicans pushed a draft resolution supporting Iranian protestors Tuesday, critics said they were seeking political points against a circumspect President Obama.

AP - Human rights groups working to end the dying in Darfur fear for the survival of 2.5 million people huddled in refugee camps if the Obama administration doesn't put on record its plans to bring security to them.

AP - German officer Wilhelm 'Wilm' Hosenfeld saved two Jews from the Nazi Holocaust, including Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose story was the basis of the Oscar-winning film 'The Pianist.' But he died in obscurity in a Soviet prison after World War II.

AP - Bleeding Heart Yard. Houndsditch. Spitalfields. Elephant and Castle.

Reuters - The Obama administration's proposed financial regulatory revamp could upend Wall Street brokerages by compelling brokers to put their clients' interests ahead of their own, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday

CQPolitics.com - When House Republicans pushed a resolution supporting Iranian protestors Tuesday, critics said they were seeking political points against a circumspect President Obama.

AP - Georgian police moved in early Friday to shut down a tent camp outside the presidential residence and arrested six activists.

CQPolitics.com - Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana plans to take a break from the grind of crafting a health care overhaul to serve as a Democratic rainmaker with a few of his friends along the Madison, Gallatin and Yellowstone rivers in the Treasure State this weekend.

Bloomberg - June 19 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. senators seeking to lower the price tag of a health-care overhaul below a $1.6 trillion estimate are cutting back proposed subsidies to help low-income Americans buy insurance.

AP - A House panel has subpoenaed documents that lawmakers say could shed new light on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's role in Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.

Politico - The proposal would create a public insurance option.

AP - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has had successful surgery to repair a fractured right elbow. The State Department says she's expected to make a full recovery.

AP - Car shoppers could take advantage of government incentives worth up to $4,500 this summer to send their old gas guzzler to the scrap heap in favor of a more fuel-efficient new vehicle.

AP - On this Friday before Father's Day, President Barack Obama plans to spend much of his workday promoting the importance of being a good dad.

AP - Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a successful operation Friday to insert a pin in her broken arm, her son said.

AP - A San Francisco man pleaded guilty Friday to causing the death of a woman in a head-on car crash when he veered onto the wrong side of the road in England.

CQPolitics.com - Sen. Roland W. Burris will not be charged with perjury in connection with the impeachment of former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, according to a state prosecutor.

AP - President Barack Obama, who barely knew his own father, had personal advice Friday for young men who become dads: 'Even if your father was not there, you can be there for your child.'

AP - The Obama administration on Friday stuck to a measured response to the uprising in Iran over a disputed presidential election, even as both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to condemn an official crackdown on mostly peaceful demonstrations in the streets of Tehran.

AP - The House on Friday impeached a federal judge imprisoned for lying about sexual assaults of two women, in the first such vote since impeaching former President Bill Clinton a decade ago.

AP - New York Gov. David Paterson will order the state Senate to meet in a special session Wednesday if battling senators fail to resolve a two-week power struggle, a state official said Friday.

AP - France wants to study the small but growing trend of burqa wear, with an eye to possibly banning the Islamic garment from being worn in public, the government's spokesman said Friday.

Reuters - President Barack Obama will sign into law on Monday a landmark bill giving the U.S. government broad regulatory power for the first time over cigarettes and other tobacco products, the White House said on Friday.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

AP - The husband of Sen. John Ensign's former mistress made 'exorbitant demands for cash and other financial benefits' through an attorney, an aide to the Nevada Republican said Friday.

AP - A U.S. warplane failed to follow all operational rules in a complex battle in Afghanistan last month that killed an estimated 26 civilians and 78 Taliban fighters, the U.S. military concluded in a report released Friday.

AP - The Obama administration is delaying by a week its release of an internal CIA report on the agency's Bush-era secret detention and interrogation program.

AP - Police investigating a series of attacks on Romanian families in Northern Ireland searched houses in Belfast and arrested two teenagers Friday.

AP - Britain's Foreign Office said Friday it had told an Iranian diplomat it was concerned by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's criticism of Britain, which he called evil.

Reuters - Democrat lawmakers on Friday proposed guaranteeing health coverage for nearly every American, despite mounting concerns the cost of doing so could torpedo the Obama administration's healthcare reform effort.

CQPolitics.com - President Obama's plan to overhaul regulation of the financial industry would create several new federal entities, expand the powers of some existing agencies and pare back the authority of others. See highlights of the plan in this sidebar table.

AP - A U.S. warplane failed to follow all operational rules in a complex battle in Afghanistan last month that killed an estimated 26 civilians and 78 Taliban fighters, the U.S. military concluded in a report released Friday.

AP - Growing up without a father left a hole in his heart, President Barack Obama told boys at the White House Friday in a remarkably personal Father's Day weekend message. He implored fathers everywhere — and the kids when they're older — to be involved in the lives of their own children.

AP - A new anti-missile system ordered for Hawaii is partly a strategy to deter North Korea from test-firing a long-range missile across the Pacific and partly a precaution against the unpredictable regime, military officials said Friday.

Reuters - Chile's U.N. Ambassador Heraldo Munoz will head a six-month U.N. inquiry into the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday.

AP - Guinness World Records said Friday that 113-year-old British World War I veteran Henry Allingham has become the world's oldest man.

AFP - US President Barack Obama warned Iran Friday that the 'world is watching' its actions, and said the United States stood with those seeking 'peaceful' justice in the post-election tumult.

CQPolitics.com - The House and Senate Friday adopted separate resolutions of support for Iranians protesting the outcome of that country's June 12 presidential election, putting Congress at odds with President Obama's more guarded approach.

AP - Growing up without a father left a hole in his heart, President Barack Obama told boys at the White House Friday in a remarkably personal Father's Day weekend message. He implored fathers everywhere — and the kids when they're older — to be involved in the lives of their own children.

AP - Colombia's coca crop shrank by nearly a fifth last year while cultivation of the bush that is the basis of cocaine rose for a third straight year in Peru and Bolivia, the world's two other coca-producing nations, the United Nations said Friday.

AP - The pharmaceutical industry would finance improved coverage under the Medicare prescription drug program and help defray the cost of President Barack Obama's health care legislation under an $80 billion deal with key lawmakers and the White House that officials said Friday night was close to agreement.