AP - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and to join top international diplomats in assessing the stalled Mideast peace process.

CQPolitics.com - With the end of the first quarter just two weeks away and a difficult health care vote looming, the campaigns of some vulnerable House Democrats caught in the middle of the contentious fight aren't optimistic about what they'll show in their first fundraising reports of 2010.

CQPolitics.com - Here's a bulletin for you: Anytime a campaign releases a polling memo, it is making an argument, not merely offering survey data for your information. Polling memos aren't written to make you smarter.

AP - It may not bode well for Rep. Travis Childers that many voters in his rural Mississippi district have stronger opinions about President Barack Obama's health care plan than they do about the Democratic congressman.

AP - Days from now, a stately black schooner will sail through a narrow channel into Havana's protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights — the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby.

Politico - Obama makes a more personal pitch that resonates with many skeptics.

Politico - Republicans prepare to sentence healthcare to a slow, procedural death.

AP - The U.N.'s top human rights official criticized Israeli and Palestinian authorities on Wednesday for failing to properly investigate alleged war crimes last year in the Gaza Strip.

Reuters - The European Union has urged Georgia's government to avoid exacerbating regional tensions after a Georgian television station broadcast a fake news report about Russian forces heading for the capital Tbilisi.

Reuters - Some things in the central Jakarta district of Matraman have barely changed since the late 1960s, when United States President Barack Obama lived and played there.

AP - The government is announcing a recall of some 1.2 million high chairs, saying they pose a fall hazard to children.

Politico - Morning Score asked its panel of House race experts 'Which vulnerable members of Congress are playing their cards right on health care? If a bill passes, how would a smart member of your party play that news?'

Politico - The DNC circulated a memo Wednesday to Democratic lawmakers, committee staff and strategists urging them to highlight the New York Times's profile of Mitch McConnell that depicted the Senate minority leader as a maestro of obstruction.

AP - House Democrats are on track for a Sunday vote on sweeping health care legislation that will expand coverage to millions of uninsured while also reducing the federal deficit, leaders said Thursday.

AP - California Sen. Barbara Boxer's re-election campaign is shaping up as the fight of her political career, according to a Field Poll released Thursday.

Politico - The bill will cost $940 billion over 10 years -- figures that should help ease worries of fiscal hawks.

AP - A prominent archbishop called Thursday for justice for sexual abuse victims in Germany's Roman Catholic Church, saying they need to feel they can finally speak openly about their suffering.

AFP - EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton condemned 'any kind of violence' on Thursday after Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, where she was on a brief visit, fired a rocket into Israel, killing one man.

AFP - President Barack Obama's historic health overhaul legislation would cut 130 billion dollars from the US budget deficit through 2019, according to figures provided by Democratic lawmakers.

AP - President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul would be the most significant effort to reduce the nation's deficit since the balanced budget act of the 1990s.

AP - Congressional budget scorekeepers say President Barack Obama's health care bill would reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over 10 years.

Politico - The Michigan Dem says his decision to withhold his vote for health reform has triggered the behavior.

AP - Congressional Republicans are in full cry against tactics the Democrats want to use to pass a less-than-popular overhaul of the nation's health care system.

AP - A federal grand jury reportedly has issued subpoenas in a probe of Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who has been under scrutiny for his efforts to find lobbying work for the husband of his former mistress.

AP - The Veterans Affairs Department is taking steps for the first time to make it easier for veterans of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars to get disability benefits for malaria, West Nile Virus and other diseases.

AP - President Barack Obama says the U.S.-Israeli relationship is not in crisis.

AP - Former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S. fundraising for Haiti, will make their first joint visit to the Caribbean nation on Monday to assess the nation's earthquake recovery needs.

AP - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says that Iran's first, Russian-built nuclear power plant is set to be launched this summer.

AFP - US President Barack Obama Thursday called on lawmakers to break out of Washington's 'partisan morass' and help create more jobs, before signing a 17.6 billion dollar employment bill into law.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — Democratic health care efforts got an important boost Thursday as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the $940 billion health care package could reduce federal deficits $130 billion over the next 10 years.

AP - A union official says the nation's largest labor federation is strongly endorsing the Obama administration's health care overhaul bill and plans to push wavering lawmakers for support.

AP - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is predicting an all-out assault by Republicans and the insurance industry as Democrats prepare to push their health care overhaul through Congress.

Politico - In an Ideas piece, GOP rep says W.H. is trying to be the “honest broker” in Israel and Palestine.

Politico - Trip is delayed to June; Gibbs says 'passage of health care reform is of paramount importance.'

Reuters - Palestinian militants launched their first deadly rocket attack on Israel in over a year, killing a Thai worker on Thursday in a strike that challenged Gaza's Hamas rulers and prompted Israel to threaten a powerful response.

AP - Paris police have freed two suspects detained in the probe into the kidnapping of a 5-year-old British boy in Pakistan.

CQPolitics.com - Republicans from both chambers are working to rally opposition in the House and lodge procedural challenges in the Senate that could tie up the Democrats' health care overhaul.

AP - A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to a Republican campaign committee and companies in Nevada in a probe of Sen. John Ensign, who has been under scrutiny for his efforts to find lobbying work for the husband of his former mistress.

Politico - The NRSC is to turn over documents related to Ensign’s tenure as NRSC chairman.

Politico - Nobody calls Barney Frank’s aides “little punk staffers.”

AP - A retired American general says Dutch troops failed to defend against the 1995 genocide in the Bosnian war partly because its army included openly gay soldiers.

AP - The U.N. peacekeeping chief says it's time for the international community to take 'concrete steps' to allow Afghans to take charge of their future — and to ensure that 'Afghanization' becomes more than a slogan.

Reuters - Bowing to political pressure at home, President Barack Obama on Thursday scrapped his trip to Indonesia and Australia next week to stay in Washington for a final push for a healthcare overhaul.

CQPolitics.com - The Senate Banking Committee's top Republican said the GOP will 'keep our options open' for the March 22 markup of legislation that would overhaul the nation's financial system.

AP - A U.S. official says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plan to meet next week amid troubles in the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Politico - Republicans hold a credible chance to pick up the seat of the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) in a May special election, according to a new poll. Democrat Mark Critz holds a narrow 36 to 31 percent lead over Republican businessman Tim Burns, with a significant 31 percent undecided.

AP - The Veterans Affairs Department took steps Thursday to make it easier for veterans of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars to get disability benefits. To qualify for the new streamlined status, they must have malaria, West Nile Virus or one of seven other diseases.

AP - Bye bye, Cornhusker Kickback. Hello, extra money for Tennessee and North Dakota.

AP - A former Scotland Yard drug squad detective was jailed Thursday for his role in a botched attempt to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine into Ireland.

AP - Simone Veil, a French political icon who survived Nazi death camps and went on to become a moral figurehead for France, was inducted Thursday into the Academie Francaise — the sixth woman to cross the portals of the centuries-old institution.

AFP - US President Barack Obama on Thursday scrapped a planned trip to Asia in favor of making an 11th-hour drive to help steer his historic health care overhaul through a cliffhanger Sunday vote.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — A Democratic plan for new federal power over health insurance rates was dropped Thursday from the final health care bill, squeezed out by the way the Democrats are pushing the bill through Congress.

CQPolitics.com - Federal investigators have issued subpoenas to the National Republican Senatorial Committee for documents relating to Sen. John Ensign's (R-Nev.) tenure there, the committee confirmed Thursday.

AP - Hoping to diffuse a fight between friends, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed Thursday to meet next week in Washington to confront face to face an embarrassing dispute over Israeli land claims.

AP - Bye bye, Cornhusker Kickback. Hello, special treatment for Tennessee and North Dakota.

AP - Congressional Democrats on Thursday trimmed their original student loan plans, reduced spending for community colleges, and eliminated early childhood money from a broad rewrite of a college aid bill piggybacked on to fast-track health care legislation.

AP - A retired U.S. general says Dutch troops failed to defend against the 1995 genocide in the Bosnian war because the army was weakened, partly because it included openly gay soldiers.

AP - A court in Normandy on Thursday convicted a 38-year-old woman of killing six of her newborn babies — a deed she acknowledged — and sentenced her to 15 years in prison.

AP - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Iran's new Russian-built nuclear power plant will begin operating this summer, even as the United States called for Russia to delay the startup.

CQPolitics.com - Republican Jim Gibbons, a former college wrestling coach who is challenging Democratic Rep. Leonard L. Boswell, held a fundraiser with former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that some of Gibbons' opponents say is evidence that he is the choice of GOP political insiders.

Politico - As Sen. John McCain works to beat back a primary challenge from the right, Arizona businesswoman Nan Stockholm Walden is taking a look at entering the Senate race on the Democratic side.

Politico - Yearlong reform push picks up unmistakable momentum as votes begin falling into place.

AP - With the Mideast peace process stalled and U.S.-Israeli relations in crisis, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton headed Wednesday to a Mideast strategy meeting of top international diplomats.

Politico - New 'This Week' host defies Washington's Sunday talk show conventions.

Politico - Former commander says gays in military contibuted to 'worst massacre in Europe since World War II.'

AP - The deal looked simple enough: U.S. military equipment suppliers bribed an African defense minister's salesmen to secure part of a $15 million gig to outfit a presidential guard.