Politico - Despite choosing a Fed Chairman and losing a friend, Obama tried to carry on with his vacation.

AP - Greece mourned its first death Thursday from a string of devastating summer wildfires, when a small water-dropping plane crashed during an island firefighting operation, killing the pilot.

AP - Over nearly a half-century, Ted Kennedy watched his beloved Senate change from a collegial boys' club known for bipartisan deal-cutting to a far less friendly place dominated by polarized parties, where broad compromise is a dying art.

AP - Attorney General Eric Holder warned his Scottish counterpart in June that the man convicted of blowing U.S.-bound Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky in 1988, killing 270 people, including 189 Americans, could get a hero's welcome if allowed to return to Libya, according to the head of a victims' families group.

AP - President Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch Kennedy cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to recruit Secret Service agents to spill secrets on the senator's behavior.

AP - On April 9, 1971, President Richard Nixon conferred with aides on how to get Ted Kennedy followed, or 'covered,' in hopes of catching the senator doing something scandalous.

AP - President Barack Obama says a bill in Congress would help him send millions more Americans to college. But the measure may fall short of Obama's goal.

AP - The U.S. military in Afghanistan acknowledged Thursday that it pays a private company to produce profiles on journalists covering the war.

AP - Representatives from five European Union embassies in Cuba visited the wife of jailed political opposition activist Darsi Ferrer on Thursday, but insisted their visit was not political.

Reuters - The Security Council extended on Thursday the mandate of U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon but sidestepped the issue of whether they could do more to stop Hezbollah building up an armed presence in the south.

AFP - Only four percent of Jewish Israelis believe US President Barack Obama's policies are pro-Israel and 50 percent oppose a temporary freeze of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a poll out on Friday showed.

Politico - Ted Kennedy's death leaves a void in Congress -- and an even bigger one back in Massachussets.

AP - Aged Holocaust survivors commemorated the 65th anniversary of the last deportations from the Lodz ghetto to Nazi death camps on Thursday, and Poland's president recalled their suffering and praised Poles who risked their lives to save Jews.

AP - Italy's state broadcaster RAI has refused to air ads promoting 'Videocracy,' a Swedish documentary examining the influence of television on Italian culture over the last 30 years, because it says the spots are an offense to Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

AFP - The European Union and human rights activists have condemned the recent execution of two convicted drug traffickers in Thailand -- the country's first use of the death penalty in six years.

Reuters - Diplomats from European Union countries angered Cuba on Thursday when they went to the home of a jailed dissident to express their concern about the case and what they view as government efforts to quell dissent.

AP - A senior military commander who predicted Britain's mission in Afghanistan could last up to 40 years was formally appointed Friday as the head of the country's army.

Bloomberg - Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- An Obama administration plan to cut Medicare payments to heart and cancer doctors by $1.4 billion next year is generating a backlash that’s undermining the president’s health-care overhaul.

Politico - Obama's helmetless bike ride has sparked a mini-controversy for those who thought it set a bad example.

CQPolitics.com - Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced Friday he will appoint George LeMieux, his former chief of staff, to succeed Sen. Mel Martinez after the Republican incumbent resigns his seat in early September.

AP - NATO's mission in Afghanistan will last 'as long as it takes' to ensure that the country is secure, the alliance's new leader said Friday during a visit to the Turkish capital.

AP - Chechnya was hit Friday by the third suicide bombing in the past week, part of a rising wave of violence in Russia's predominantly Muslim southern republics that appears to have alarmed the Kremlin.

AP - The Republican national party has mailed a fundraising appeal suggesting Democrats might use an overhaul of the health care system to deny medical treatment to Republicans.

Reuters - Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist appointed his former chief of staff on Friday to temporarily fill the U.S. Senate seat given up by Mel Martinez, a seat Crist himself is running to fill permanently.

AP - Archaeologists said Friday they have unearthed a lavish burial site at the seat of the ancient Macedonian kings in northern Greece, heightening a 2,300-year-old mystery of murder and political intrigue.

AP - Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who has been embroiled in a sex scandal for months, canceled his planned participation in a Catholic religious service for the remission of sins Friday after his presence was deemed problematic.

Reuters - The 'pay czar' tasked by the U.S. government with ruling on the eye-popping compensation of some of Wall Street's top earners is far from a stranger to big paychecks and the trappings of wealth.

CQPolitics.com - A soft-spoken political insider, George LeMieux is a loyal soldier to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist who has done a variety of jobs for him, including deputy attorney general, chief of staff and campaign guru.

AP - Liberals and conservatives, at odds over health care, are competing to use the legacy of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to further their goals.

AP - The Justice Department says the alleged leader of a group of Muslim rebels who took U.S. citizens and others hostage in the Philippines in 1995 has been extradited to the United States to stand trial.

AP - Some seniors could end up paying 20 percent more for their Medicare prescription drug plans under health care legislation in the House — but overall prescription drug spending would decrease for seniors under the bill.

AP - The state Supreme Court has ordered another competency hearing for a man who killed 13 people in a 1982 shooting rampage in northeastern Pennsylvania.

AP - In the early hours before President Barack Obama's historic inauguration, U.S. Rep. John Lewis' phone rang. It was Edward Kennedy.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — Did we read that right?

AP - The U.S. military is bungling its outreach to the Muslim world and squandering good will by failing to live up to its promises, the nation's highest-ranking military officer wrote Friday.

AP - The Obama administration said Friday that two Democratic senators falsely took credit for steering millions of dollars to projects in their home state, even as officials acknowledged that the Homeland Security secretary met with the lawmakers and discussed financing the projects.

Politico - About 25,000 people, including a tearful Maria Shriver, file past the coffin of the late senator.

Politico - Florida gov. promised not to appoint himself, so he did the next best thing: he appointed his alter ego.

AP - Inconclusive election results in Afghanistan, disappointing voter turnout and the prospect of rising ethnic tensions and political turmoil are new roadblocks to the Obama administration's plan to turn around a backsliding war.

AP - The number of post offices being considered for possible closure to save money seems to be growing.

AP - A Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut that has fought for years to prevent the release of documents generated by lawsuits against priests for alleged sexual abuse wants conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to take up the case.

Reuters - Two Syrians held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay have been sent to Portugal, the Justice Department said on Friday, the latest move as President Barack Obama tries to close the controversial facility by January.

McClatchy Newspapers - BOSTON — Judy Blackiemore remembered when Ted Kennedy spoke to her high school in Lynn, Mass., in 1974.

AP - The Obama administration said Friday that two Democratic senators falsely took credit for steering millions of dollars to projects in their home state, even as officials acknowledged that the Homeland Security secretary met with the lawmakers and discussed financing the projects.

Politico - Huckabee: Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die' under Obama plan.

AP - Fourteen years after a mass kidnapping of four Americans and other vacationers at a Philippine resort, an alleged Muslim militant accused of leading the hostage-taking has been brought to the United States to face criminal charges.

Politico - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today slammed the news media for its coverage of the health-care debate, accusing news organizations of paying too much attention to rowdy town-hall meetings. “The press has not been” focused enough “on what we’ve been doing,” Reid told listeners in a telephone town hall meeting with Nevadans Friday afternoon, arguing that the media has focused on town hall attendees “yelling and screaming” rather than discussing the substance of the health-care reform effort. 

AFP - China has informed the United States it will scrap from Tuesday higher tariffs on imported auto parts following a World Trade Organization ruling, a top US trade official said Friday.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — CIA interrogators were justified in exceeding even the broad authorizations the Justice Department gave them to handle terrorist suspects, former Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview for broadcast Sunday, suggesting that any aggressive tactic was justified in the goal of preventing another terrorist attack.

AP - President Barack Obama has arrived in Boston to deliver the eulogy at Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's funeral.

Politico - The eulogy “is more about his impact on the country' than the president and senator’s relationship.

AP - Some seniors could end up paying 20 percent more for their Medicare prescription drug plans under health care legislation in the House.

Politico - It was an Irish wake with an edge.