ALL RECENT AP STORIES

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has assured lawmakers the Obama administration will prevent the closure of 149 small airport towers as well as end furloughs of air traffic controllers nationwide as a result of legislation passed by Congress, according to officials involved in negotiations on the bill. The disclosure came as senators sought signatures on a letter to LaHood saying that that their support of the legislation "was based on the understanding that the contract towers would be fully...

A White House official says President Barack Obama plans to name a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist to head the Federal Communications Commission. The official said Obama planned to announce Wednesday that he was nominating Tom Wheeler as the country's top telecommunications regulator. The official said Obama would name FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to serve as acting chairwoman while Wheeler awaits Senate confirmation. The official spoke on a condition of anonymity since the selection...

The United States called Tuesday for Chinese authorities to provide immediate and proper medical treatment to the imprisoned nephew of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, said to be suffering from appendicitis but denied medical parole. U.S. officials have previously voiced concern over the harsh treatment of the nephew, Chen Kegui, who was sentenced in November to three years in prison, for fighting officials who stormed his house in the aftermath of his uncle's escape from house arrest a year...

As of Tuesday, April 30, 2013, at least 2,077 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count. The AP count is three less than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT. At least 1,719 military service members have died in Afghanistan as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. Outside of Afghanistan, the department reports at least 119...

First lady Michelle Obama announced Tuesday that companies participating in a program to help veterans find work have hired or trained 290,000 veterans and military spouses since August 2011, nearly tripling the original goal of the program with about eight months to spare. Obama said Tuesday that the program called Joining Forces has also generated pledges from businesses to hire or train another 435,000 in the next five years. The new hiring projections came at a White House event with veterans...

First lady Michelle Obama says companies participating in a program to help veterans find work have hired or trained 290,000 veterans and military spouses, nearly tripling the original goal of the program with about eight months to spare. Obama said Tuesday that the program called Joining Forces has also generated pledges from businesses to hire or train another 435,000 in the next five years. The jobless rate for those veterans who served after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks fell from 12.1 percent...

The head of the country's second-largest teachers union said Tuesday governments should hold off on linking standardized test results with evaluations of schools, students and teachers until everyone is on the same page. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called for a moratorium on penalties associated with tests aligned to the national standards called Common Core benchmarks until the standards have been fully implemented. "The fact that the changes are being...

First lady Michelle Obama says companies participating in a program to help veterans find work have hired or trained 290,000 veterans and military spouses, nearly tripling the original goal of the program with about eight months to spare. Obama said Tuesday that the program called Joining Forces has also generated pledges from businesses to hire or train another 435,000 in the next five years. The jobless rate for those veterans who served after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks fell from 12.1 percent...

President Barack Obama argues that his signature health care law is already benefiting most Americans even if they don't know it. The president says despite what he calls "sky is falling" predictions, the Affordable Care Act's provisions are already in place for those with health insurance. He says what's left is to help those Americans who don't have health care coverage to obtain it. He acknowledged that is "a big undertaking" and predicted there could still be some glitches as the details...

President Barack Obama is asserting that he still retains influence in the capital despite recent setbacks. Obama says "things are pretty dysfunctional on Capitol Hill." But he invoked Mark Twain to declare that rumors of his political demise are exaggerated. He told a Tuesday news conference he remains confident that he and Congress can still achieve significant legislation. He specifically cited immigration and predicted that overhaul in the law would be a "historic achievement." Obama, however,...

Italian Premier Enrico Letta's cross-party government won a final vote of confidence vote in Parliament on Tuesday, giving life to a grand coalition that aims to put aside decades of animosity to return the eurozone's third-largest economy to growth. Letta's first order of business is a trip to Berlin, where he is expected to press German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the necessity of easing austerity politics that have put pressure on ordinary Italians in favor of growth policies. Letta will...

Depending on whom you ask, Rep. Bob Goodlatte is either trying to stand in the way of landmark immigration legislation or he illustrates the new face of the GOP trying to find common ground on a contentious issue. Either way, the soft-spoken collector of elephant figurines and signed baseballs is asserting his pivotal role in the immigration debate as it moves into a critical phase on Capitol Hill. Goodlatte, a conservative Virginian, took over as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in...

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, trying to revive his political career, and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch traded verbal jabs on his past indiscretions and her liberal political supporters during a spirited debate Monday night _ their only scheduled meeting in the race for the state's vacant 1st Congressional District seat. With eight days to go before the May 7 special election, Sanford stressed his efforts to rein in spending as a three-term member of Congress and as a two-term governor....

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that he's not talking about running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 and he's not waiting to see if Hillary Clinton runs. Over his first two years as governor, Cuomo has repeatedly refused to talk publicly about running for president despite prompting by supporters. He has said such talk would hurt his ability to govern and would create a distraction, as it did for his father, Mario Cuomo, when he was governor. But Andrew Cuomo has never ruled...

The Department of Veterans Affairs is withholding bonuses for senior officials who oversee disability claims, citing a failure to meet performance goals for reducing a sizable backlog in claims processing. The backlog has increased dramatically over the past three years, and the department has come under intense criticism from veterans groups and members of Congress who have asked President Barack Obama to try to speed the process. VA spokesman Josh Taylor said Monday the savings would be used...

Arab countries endorsed a Mideast peace plan Monday that would allow for small shifts in Israel's 1967 border, moving them closer to President Barack Obama's two-state vision. Speaking on behalf of an Arab League delegation to Washington, Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani called for an agreement between Israel and a future Palestine based on the Jewish state's border before the 1967 Mideast War. But, unlike in previous such offers, he cited the possibility of "comparable,"...

President Barack Obama has met with Latino leaders ahead of an upcoming trip to Mexico and Costa Rica. Obama met Monday at the White House with leaders from National Council of La Raza, the National Hispanic Council on Aging and the League of United Latin American Citizens, plus seven other groups. The White House says they discussed economic interests the U.S. shares with Latin American nations, plus progress on poverty and inequality. Obama also assured the leaders that he'll make immigration...

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it was investigating foods that have added caffeine after Wrigley introduced a new caffeinated gum this week. A few products that have added caffeine: _ Wrigley Alert Energy Gum, contains about 40 mg a piece, or the equivalent amount found in half a cup of coffee _ Jelly Belly Extreme Sport Beans have 50mg of caffeine in a 100-calorie pack _ Arma Energy Snx markets chips, trail mix and other products that contain caffeine, including "chocolate...

Candidates in Massachusetts' second special U.S. Senate election in four years made a last dash across the state Monday to court primary voters, though few were expected to turn out in a state that has spent the past two weeks transfixed by the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath. Two Democrats, both members of the state's congressional delegation, and three Republicans are vying for their parties' nominations in the special election for John Kerry's former Senate seat in the heavily...

Schools near military bases and tribal lands will face a $60 million shortfall between now and September and aid to college students will be cut by almost $90 million, according to the Education Department's plan to carry out the automatic spending cuts mandated by Congress. In all, the Education Department lost $2.6 billion as part of failed budget negotiations that forced deep spending cuts to reduce the nation's debt. Every corner of the federal government has been slashing services to comply....

An attorney for the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center says he's not surprised the U.S. Supreme Court has turned down a request to revive portions of Alabama's immigration law. Supreme Court justices on Monday upheld a federal appeals court ruling that blocked parts of the law. SPLC attorney Sam Brooke says lower courts have already said immigration reform is a function of the federal government, not the states. Brooke says he hopes the ruling will motivate Congress to seek meaningful...

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is suggesting for the first time that the court should have stayed out of the 2000 presidential election dispute between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The 83-year-old O'Connor tells the Chicago Tribune editorial board that perhaps she and her colleagues should have turned down the Bush campaign's appeal of a Florida Supreme Court decision to allow a recount requested by the Gore campaign. O'Connor was in the majority in the high court's 5-4 decision...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has been released from a Washington hospital, two days after undergoing surgery for injuries suffered in a bicycle accident. Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the 74-year-old Breyer will wear a sling for several weeks while he heals from shoulder replacement surgery on his right shoulder. Breyer fell from his bike on Friday as he was riding near the Lincoln Memorial. Arberg said the justice thinks he may have hit an exposed tree root. It was the third serious...

Depending on whom you ask, Rep. Bob Goodlatte is either trying to stand in the way of landmark immigration legislation or he illustrates the new face of the GOP trying to find common ground on a contentious issue. Either way, the soft-spoken collector of elephant figurines and signed baseballs is asserting his pivotal role in the immigration debate as it moves into a critical phase on Capitol Hill. Goodlatte, a conservative Virginian, took over as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in...

The U.S. is calling on North Korea to immediately release on humanitarian grounds an American citizen facing charges that carry the death penalty. North Korea announced Saturday that Kenneth Bae (BAY) will be tried in the authoritarian nation's Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell called for Bae's release at a news conference in Washington Monday. He said the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang was able to visit Bae on Friday....

President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin (POO'-tihn) have been discussing terrorism coordination in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. The White House says the two leaders spoke by phone Monday. A statement says Obama expressed his "appreciation" for Russia's close cooperation after the attack. The suspected bombers are Russian natives who immigrated to the Boston area. Russian authorities told U.S. officials before the bombings they had concerns about the family, but...

President Barack Obama on Monday tapped rising Democratic politician Anthony Foxx to lead the Department of Transportation, an agency at the center of Washington's fiscal fights. Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., is the first black nominee among the president's picks for open spots in his second term Cabinet. The president had faced questions, including from the Congressional Black Caucus, about a lack of diversity in his first round of nominations after winning re-election. Obama said that...

Presidents like to take credit for economic recoveries, just as President Barack Obama is angling to do now. He and his allies in Congress have "walked the economy back from the brink," his new 2014 federal budget blueprint asserts. And Democrats hope these improvements, while still slow and uneven, will give them at least a small boost in 2014's midterm races. That's a big order, considering: _Presidential claims of responsibility for economic gains rarely win plaudits from voters, yet presidents...

Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that President Barack Obama "has kept every promise he's made" about helping the state recover from Superstorm Sandy. Hours later, Obama's housing secretary approved New Jersey's plans to spend $1.83 billion in federal money to help the state rebuild and recover from the storm. Speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program six months after the deadly storm, the Republican governor said presidential politics were the last thing on his mind as he toured storm-devastated...

Presidential campaigns are long in the making, quick to be forgotten. But one part of them lives on for years: the victor's promises. President Barack Obama paved his path to re-election with fewer promises than in 2008. The ones he did lay down, though, are meaty, legacy-shaping for him and consequential to ordinary lives today and for generations to come, for better or worse. They also are extraordinarily difficult to achieve in a time of gridlock grief and budgets that are tight when they...

The issue: As the population gets older, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are eating up more and more of the federal budget, squeezing the ability of the government to pay for other programs. Today, the three massive benefit programs account for 44 percent of federal spending. Left unchanged, they will account for more than 60 percent in 25 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Unless Congress acts, the trust fund that supports Social Security is projected to run out of money...

A sharply divided Supreme Court dismissed an appeal Monday from a Louisiana man who claimed that most of a seven-year delay between his arrest and murder trial was the result of a breakdown in the state's system for paying defense lawyers in death penalty cases. The court's conservative justices prevailed in a 5-4 vote to say they should never have taken the case of Jonathan Edward Boyer, who eventually was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. The outcome...

State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday. The researchers also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars. And 10 states don't offer any dollars to pay for prekindergarten classrooms. "The state of preschool in America...

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that it's legal for a state to limit use of its Freedom of Information Act to its own residents. The court unanimously upheld a federal appeals court decision validating Virginia's limitation of its FOIA law to state citizens and some media outlets. In the case before the court, Rhode Island resident Mark J. McBurney and California resident Roger W. Hurlbert were suing Virginia for blocking them from getting public documents in Virginia that in-state citizens could...

Hours after the Boston Marathon bombings, President Barack Obama gave the standard presidential line following a tragedy: "On days like this there are no Republicans or Democrats _ we are Americans, united in concern for our fellow citizens." And, as usual, Republicans and Democrats alike quickly ignored his don't-politicize-this plea. This was inevitable. Our leaders always play politics after catastrophe, whether made by man or Mother Nature. The Newtown shootings and Superstorm Sandy. The...

Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army's hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle. Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams. But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks." It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether....

America's blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home. Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated...

President Barack Obama had gone to his residence after a difficult week when an urgent email brought him rushing back to the Oval Office. The suspect in the Boston bombings had been apprehended. "They have him in custody, it is white hat," White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco wrote chief of staff Denis McDonough. That was reference to the cap that 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was seen wearing in surveillance video that led to his capture. Soon Monaco was briefing the president on...

State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday. The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars. Those findings _ combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars _ complicate President Barack Obama's...

America's blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home. Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated...

President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx as his new transportation secretary, a White House official said Sunday. If confirmed by the Senate, Foxx would replace outgoing Secretary Ray LaHood. Foxx is Obama's first black nominee among the new Cabinet members appointed for the second term. The president faced criticism early in his second term for a lack of diversity among his nominees. The official insisted on anonymity to avoid public discussion of the...

Even before the explosions, polling suggested that Massachusetts voters weren't excited about the looming special election to replace former U.S. Sen. John Kerry. But in the days after bombs ripped through the Boston Marathon's crowded streets, politics were all but forgotten as authorities launched an unprecedented manhunt and a region grappled with terror. It didn't matter that competitive primary contests were 15 days away; everything was put on hold. "There are things that are more important...

One of the architects of failed gun control legislation says he's bringing it back. Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday said he would re-introduce a measure that would require criminal and mental health background checks for gun buyers at shows and online. The West Virginia Democrat says that if lawmakers read the bill, they will support it. Manchin sponsored a previous version of the measure with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. It failed. Manchin says there was confusion over what was in...

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Sunday that the FBI is investigating in the United States and overseas to determine whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing received training that helped them carry out the attack. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with joining with his older brother, Tamerlan, who's now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The bombs were triggered by a remote detonator of the kind used in remote-control toys, U.S....

Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call. In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said. The conversations are significant because,...

Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army's hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle. Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams. But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks." It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether....

The Federal Aviation Administration said that the U.S. air traffic system will resume normal operations by Sunday evening after lawmakers rushed a bill through Congress allowing the agency to withdraw furloughs of air traffic controllers and other workers. The FAA said Saturday that it has suspended all employee furloughs and that traffic facilities will begin returning to regular staffing levels over the next 24 hours. The furloughs were fallout from the $85 billion in automatic-across-the-board...

U.S. officials say investigators have found no evidence that a conservative Muslim friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev had any connection to the Boston Marathon bombing. Tsarnaev is one of two suspects in the bombing. He died in a shootout with police. Family members have said he grew up religiously apathetic but hardened his Islamic views in 2008 or 2009 under the influence of a Muslim convert, known to the family as Misha. Two U.S. officials close to the investigation say the FBI has identified an...

Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call. In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said. The conversations are significant because,...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is in a Washington hospital after shoulder replacement surgery following a bicycle accident. Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg says the 74-year-old Breyer is expected to make a full recovery following the operation Saturday. Breyer injured his right shoulder in a fall Friday near the Korean War Veterans Memorial. The justice previously broke his collarbone in an accident in 2011 and sustained broken ribs and a punctured lung in a bicycle mishap in 1993, before...

Biographical information for two senior aides who are advising President Barack Obama on the latest developments in the Boston Marathon investigation and who are longtime friends, having first met around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks: NAME _ Lisa Oudens Monaco. BIRTH DATE _ Feb. 25, 1968. EDUCATION _ Bachelor of arts in American history and literature, Harvard University, 1990; law degree, University of Chicago, 1997 EXPERIENCE _ Clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Roth, 1997-1998; counsel...

Self-declared education reformers have had considerable success across the country over the past few decades, from charter school expansion and private school tuition vouchers to new limits on teachers' job protections. But perhaps nowhere have the triumphs marked a bigger political upheaval than in Alabama, where the new Republican supermajority is dominating the state teachers' organization that was long the epicenter of power. Alabama Education Association chief Henry Mabry accuses Republicans...

President Barack Obama had gone to his residence after a difficult week when an urgent email brought him rushing back to the Oval Office. The suspect in the Boston bombings had been apprehended. "They have him in custody, it is white hat," White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco wrote chief of staff Denis McDonough. That was reference to the cap that 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was seen wearing in surveillance video that led to his capture. Soon Monaco was briefing the president on...

Some feisty Republicans are challenging a claim widely held among GOP leaders that the party must support more liberal immigration laws if it's to be more competitive in presidential elections. These doubters say the Republican establishment has the political calculation backward. Immigration "reform," they say, will mean millions of new Democratic-leaning voters by granting citizenship to large numbers of Hispanic immigrants now living illegally in the United States. The argument is dividing...

A national group of prominent GOP donors that supports gay marriage is pouring new money into lobbying efforts to get Republican lawmakers to vote to make it legal. American Unity PAC was formed last year to lend financial support to Republicans who bucked the party's longstanding opposition to gay marriage. Its founders are launching a new lobbying organization, American Unity Fund, and already have spent more than $250,000 in Minnesota, where the Legislature could vote on the issue as early...

Republicans are struggling to recruit strong U.S. Senate candidates in states where the party has the best chances to reclaim the majority in Washington. It's a potentially troubling sign that the GOP's post-2012 soul-searching could spill over into next year's congressional elections. The vote is more than 18 months away, so it's early. But candidate recruitment efforts are well underway, and thus far Republicans have been unable to field a top-tier candidate in Iowa or Michigan. In those...

Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that Arizona Sen. John McCain probably would have beat his boss in the 2008 presidential election had the economy not collapsed. Biden's comment about McCain and President Barack Obama came during the opening dinner of an annual forum among the Red Rocks of Sedona in northern Arizona. He and McCain, a Republican, touched on the gun control debate following the Newtown shootings and the bombings in Boston, but made no mention of Syria. Just as the night came...

Vice President Joe Biden says GOP Arizona Sen. John McCain probably would have defeated his boss in the 2008 presidential election had the economy not collapsed. Biden on Friday said the election between Barack Obama and McCain would have been incredibly close, but McCain could have squeaked out a victory. Biden made the comment during a forum that's part of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University. The two touched on the gun control debate following the...

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his supermodel wife, Carla Bruni, were clearly taken with President Barack Obama and his family back in 2011. The Sarkozys gave the Obamas more than $41,000 worth of presents that year, becoming the most prolific foreign gift-givers to the first family, documents released Friday show. The gifts ranged from designer golf and travel bags and fine crystal to soaps and perfumes, according to the State Department's Office of Protocol, which catalogs gifts...

Gov. Rick Perry said Friday he's disgusted a California newspaper ran a cartoon that depicts him boasting about booming business in Texas, then shows an explosion, a week after a fertilizer plant explosion killed 14 people in a Texas town. Perry said he wants an apology from the Sacramento Bee on behalf of the town. The cartoon in Thursday's edition shows Perry crowing that "Business is Booming," flanked by signs saying "Low Tax!" and "`Low Regs!" It's a play on the Republican's often-repeated...

The Internal Revenue Service has recouped more than $5.5 billion under a series of programs that offered reduced penalties and no jail time to people who voluntarily disclosed assets they were hiding overseas, government investigators said Friday. In all, more than 39,000 tax cheats have come clean under the programs. But there's more. Government investigators suspect that thousands of other taxpayers have quietly started reporting foreign accounts without paying any penalties or interest. The...

Furloughed air traffic controllers will soon be heading back to work, ending a week of coast-to-coast flight delays that left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious. Unable to ignore the travelers' anger, Congress overwhelmingly approved legislation Friday to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to withdraw the furloughs. The vote underscored a shift by Democrats who had insisted on erasing all of this year's $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts, not just the most publicly painful...

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley will step down after a five-year tenure during which he improved the service's handling of nuclear materials, but had to deal with scandals surrounding aircraft contracts, sexual assaults by service members and the mishandling of war dead. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement Friday that Donley is returning to private life. His last day on the job is June 21. "His leadership came during a challenging time for the Air Force, and he helped instill...

U.S. intelligence agencies added the mother of the Boston bombing suspects to a government terrorism database 18 months before the bombings, two officials told The Associated Press. She called it "lies and hypocrisy" and said she has never been linked to crimes or terrorism. The CIA asked for the Boston terror suspect and his mother to be added to a terrorist database in the fall of 2011, after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that both had become religious militants,...

President Barack Obama vowed Friday to join Planned Parenthood in fighting against what he said are efforts by states to turn women's health back to the 1950s, before the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, and singled out the GOP-governed states of North Dakota and Mississippi for criticism. "When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they're not just talking about you," Obama said, becoming the first sitting president to address the abortion-rights group...

The likely deadline for Congress to prevent the government's first default will be later than earlier thought, a Washington think tank has found. The Bipartisan Policy Center said Friday that the government probably won't reach the brink of default until early September or early October. It had previously said default would come in July or August. Congress acted to suspend the government's borrowing cap in February, and it will be reset next month. The Treasury Department then can resort to accounting...

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a Missouri law banning protests within 300 feet of funerals but struck down a broader law that could have kept protesters even further away. The decision by a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stems from a challenge to a pair of 2006 Missouri laws enacted after protests of military members' funerals by a Kansas-based church that denounces homosexuality. The appeals court said one law barring protests "in front of or about any location at which...

The White House says President Barack Obama is delivering the commencement address at Ohio State University on May 5. The university says it will be Obama's fifth visit to the campus in little more than a year. Last May, Obama kicked off his successful drive for re-election with a rally at the university. He also won the political battleground state in the 2008 and 2012 elections. Obama's other commencement speeches this season are scheduled for all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta on May...

Alaska, known for its live-and-let-live lifestyle, is poised to become the next battleground in the push to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The state has a complicated history with the drug, with its highest court ruling nearly 40 years ago that adults have a constitutional right to possess and smoke marijuana for personal use in their own homes. In the late 1990s, Alaska became one of the first states to allow the use of pot for medicinal reasons. Then the pendulum swung the other...

A bill to require Internet shoppers to pay sales taxes for online purchases may be cruising through the Senate but it will soon hit a roadblock in the House. "There's a lot of political difficulty getting through the fog of it looking like a tax increase," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., one of the main sponsors of the bill in the House. The bill would empower states to reach outside their borders and compel online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet....

With disgruntled passengers complaining about airline flight delays, Republican lawmakers and the airline industry pounced on the Obama administration. The glitch was invented by the White House for political reasons, they charged, and officials waited until the last minute to warn Congress and the airlines of the impending upheaval. They were wrong on the first count, and partly right on the second. The FAA has no choice but to cut $637 million as its share of $85 billion in automatic, government-wide...

With flight delays mounting, the Senate approved hurry-up legislation Thursday night to end air traffic controller furloughs blamed for inconveniencing large numbers of travelers. A House vote on the measure was expected as early as Friday, with lawmakers eager to embark on a weeklong vacation. Under the legislation, which the Senate passed without even a roll call vote, the Federal Aviation Administration would gain authority to transfer up to $253 million from accounts that are flush into other...

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Thursday that the way the U.S. grants asylum to immigrants may need to be addressed after the Boston Marathon bombing. Accused Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are ethnic Chechen brothers from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. The family was granted asylum. "People getting asylum because they are in the minority, but engaging in aggressive tactics in their home country that may cause...

The hospital-room questioning of the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings is generating concern about whether he should have been interrogated without first being told of his constitutional rights to silence and a lawyer _ and, conversely, whether federal agents actually should have had more time with him before he was read his rights. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faced 16 hours of questioning before he was advised of his Miranda rights, and investigators say he told them of his role in the...

The California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty. Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski said his bill would help California widen the pool of prospective jurors and help integrate immigrants into the community. It does not change other criteria for being eligible to serve on a jury, such as being at least 18, living in the county that is making the summons, and being proficient in...

More than 100 crucial gauges that warn of imminent flooding or lack of needed water will be shut down starting next month as part of the federal government's automatic budget cuts. Some are in the nine states threatened with spring flooding, U.S. Geological Survey officials said in interviews with The Associated Press. In rivers where flooding is imminent, such as near Fargo, N.D., officials are scrambling to keep needed monitors working and make the cuts elsewhere. Details are still to be...

An alleged accomplice in a major spy case involving Cuba helped recruit a friend and colleague to spy for the Cuban Intelligence Service against the U.S., the Justice Department said Thursday. Marta Rita Velazquez, once a legal officer at the State Department's Agency for International Development, is accused of conspiracy to commit espionage by helping Ana Belen Montes get a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency, where Montes engaged in espionage. Montes is serving a 25-year prison sentence....

The White House declared Thursday that U.S. intelligence indicates Syrian President Bashar Assad has twice used deadly chemical weapons in his country's fierce civil war, a provocative action that would cross President Barack Obama's "red line" for a significant military response. But the administration said the revelation won't immediately change its stance on intervening. The information, which has been known to the administration and some members of Congress for weeks, isn't solid enough to...

Top congressional Democrats are examining whether gaps in federal regulations might be placing at risk those who work and live near more than 6,000 fertilizer plants like the one that exploded in West, Texas. The probe comes as investigators try to determine what caused the April 17 fire and explosion that killed 14 and injured hundreds. California Rep. George Miller, top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, also is asking the Government Accountability Office to examine...

The Obama administration on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that found the president's recess appointments to a labor agency unconstitutional. In a petition seeking review, the Justice Department said the decision undermines a key presidential power that has been used for more than a century to appoint hundreds of government officials while the Senate is out of town. The government asked the high court "to remove the resulting constitutional cloud over...

House Republicans will tackle the immigration issue in bite-size pieces, shunning pressure to act quickly and rejecting the comprehensive approach embraced in the Senate and endorsed by President Barack Obama, a key committee chairman said Thursday. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., declined to commit to finishing immigration legislation this year, as Obama and a bipartisan group in the Senate want to do. He said bills on an agriculture worker program and workplace enforcement...

Sen. Claire McCaskill is holding up the nomination of Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, tapped to serve as vice commander of the U.S. Space Command, until the Missouri Democrat gets more information about Helms' decision to overturn a jury conviction in a sexual assault case. "As the senator works to change the military justice system to better protect survivors of sexual assault and hold perpetrators accountable, she wants to ensure that cases in which commanders overturned jury verdicts against...

A senior House Democrat called on House Speaker John Boehner Thursday to retract a report blaming former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for security deficiencies at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya before last September's deadly attack. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a letter to Boehner that the report, written by the Republican chairmen of five committees, misrepresents an important document and suggests that Clinton lied to Congress. In addition to pulling the report, Cummings...

Jimmy Carter praised George W. Bush's attention to Africa. Bill Clinton joked about his art work. President Barack Obama saluted his attempt to change immigration laws. And George H.W. Bush simply thanked the crowd for honoring his son. At times reflective, at others amusing, the current and former presidents took to the stage Thursday in a rare joint appearance to salute a member of their exclusive club. Bush responded with praise for the men and women of his administration and offering a tribute...

Presidential campaigns are long in the making, quick to be forgotten. But one part of them lives on for years: the victor's promises. President Barack Obama paved his path to re-election with fewer promises than in 2008. The ones he did lay down, though, are meaty, legacy-shaping for him and consequential to ordinary lives today and for generations to come, for better or worse. They also are extraordinarily difficult to achieve in a time of gridlock grief and budgets that are tight when they...

The issue: In recent years, America has had many scenes of mass shootings. The campus of Virginia Tech. A shopping center in Tucson, Ariz. A movie theater in Aurora, Colo. A temple in Oak Creek, Wis. None put gun control back on the national agenda in a serious way. Then came the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., after last year's election, and that all changed. Or so it seemed. ___ The promise: "We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must...

Republicans say spending for House operations, including lawmaker offices, has dropped by more than $200 million since they took control three years ago. GOP lawmakers said Thursday they saved the money mainly by trimming the budgets of committees, leadership offices and individual lawmaker offices. The House imposed an 8.2 percent reduction on lawmakers' personal office budgets in March, after automatic, across-the-board cuts in most federal programs took effect. That came on top of 11 percent...

President Barack Obama is honoring the presidency of George W. Bush, at the dedication of the Bush library in Dallas. On a day when politics was set aside, the president described his Republican predecessor as a "good man" and as a leader who demonstrated strength, resolve and compassion. Obama called the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center a "Texas-sized party" befitting the former president. All five living American presidents are gathered in Dallas for the dedication. Obama...

Amid the celebration surrounding the opening of son George W. Bush's presidential library Thursday, former first lady Barbara Bush brushed aside talk of a Jeb Bush run for the White House in 2016. Appearing in an interview from Dallas on NBC's "Today" show, Mrs. Bush was asked if she thought that Jeb, the former governor of Florida, should seek the presidency. "He's by far the best qualified man," Mrs. Bush said, "but no." "We've had enough Bushes," she said, saying "it's not just four families,...

President George W. Bush says he's encouraged by signs of progress in overhauling the U.S. immigration system. But the former president also says he hopes the bill passes on its own, and not because of lawmakers' fears of alienating the Hispanic community. Bush tells "CBS This Morning" he understands the politics of fellow Republicans softening their stand on immigration after last year's presidential election. But he also says, quote, "I hope that's not why it happens. I hope it happens because...

First the Republican-led House approved a federal budget that's heavy on spending cuts. Then the Democratic-controlled Senate approved one that leans more toward tax increases. Then at last, President Barack Obama put out his own budget plan, two months late, coming down someplace in between. Sounds like progress, right? Check back on that. The competing proposals are more likely to produce just more budget gridlock. There are kids in preschool who hadn't been born when Obama and congressional...

Liberals' loud objections to White House proposals for slowing the growth of huge social programs make it clear that neither political party puts a high priority on reducing the deficit, despite much talk to the contrary. For years, House Republicans have adamantly refused to raise income taxes, even though U.S. taxes are historically low, and the Bush-era tax cuts were a major cause of the current deficit. And now, top Democrats are staunchly opposing changes to Medicare and Social Security...

The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which houses Bush's library and museum along with his policy institute, will be dedicated in a ceremony Thursday on the campus of Southern Methodist University. Here are some facts on the center: _ The about 226,000-square-foot center is located on 23 acres. _ The grounds include a 15-acre urban park that recreates a Texas prairie. _ The library and museum holds more than 70 million pages of paper records, 43,000 artifacts, 200 million emails and 4 million...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged the nation to change its immigration and education systems to ensure a robust American economy in remarks Wednesday before the World Affairs Council in Dallas. A suburb away, former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered her first paid speech since leaving the helm of the State Department earlier this year. The dueling appearances came on the eve of the opening of George W. Bush's presidential library, stoking speculation about each of their political futures....

A day before sharing the stage with his Republican predecessor, President Barack Obama raised money for Democrats at a supporter's sprawling home in Texas. Even as he sought to build up his party on Wednesday, Obama hinted at a more bipartisan tone set to envelop Dallas on Thursday, when the Obamas attend the dedication ceremony for former President George W. Bush's presidential library. He vigorously defended the Republican whose record as president he derided in both of his presidential campaigns....

The Energy Department did not realize for four months that troubled automaker Fisker Automotive Inc. had missed a crucial production target that was required as part of a half-billion dollar government loan, documents released Wednesday show. The mistake allowed Fisker to obtain an additional $32 million in government funding before the loan was suspended in June 2011. The Obama administration did not make the suspension of the $529 million loan public until early last year, nearly eight months...

Federal officials are implementing a new policy that guarantees legal counsel to detained immigrants who can't represent themselves because of severe mental disorders or conditions that render them mentally incompetent. The national policy announced by Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security officials this week comes after a yearslong legal fight led by the American Civil Liberties Union through a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles. "Providing legal representation to people with significant...

The federal government added the name of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect to a terrorist database 18 months before the deadly explosions, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The CIA made the request to add Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name to the terrorist database after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that he had become a follower of radical Islam. About six months earlier, the FBI had separately investigated Tsarnaev, also at Russia's request, but...

Sen. Max Baucus' decision not to run for re-election in 2014 leaves the Montana Democrat with more than $4.8 million in campaign money _ and no campaign to spend it on. Baucus has several options for what he can do with all that cash, according to Federal Election Commission regulations. The only real restriction is that he can't keep it for himself. He could transfer any amount to national, state or local Democratic committees. He could donate to other candidates _ within state and federal contribution...

Attorney General Eric Holder says he will not need to furlough any Justice Department employees in the current fiscal year. The attorney general says he will be able to avoid furloughs because of additional money in the recently enacted legislation, combined with aggressive steps to freeze hiring and cut contracting and other costs. Holder said Wednesday in a memo to all employees that even though there will be no furloughs, the $1.6 billion reduction stemming from automatic, across-the-board...