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Obama aims to limit scope of terror fight
President Barack Obama on Thursday announced new restraints on targeted killings and narrowed the scope of the long struggle with terrorists as part of a transition to a day he envisions when the nation will no longer be on the war footing it has been on since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Continue reading...
Boy Scout vote OKs gay kids in troops
In a step its chief executive called “compassionate, caring and kind,” the Boy Scouts of America on Thursday ended its long-standing policy of forbidding openly gay youths to participate in its activities. Continue reading...
IRS official who took 5th replaced
She’s on leave; her unit’s agents targeted Tea Party groups
A day after she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, Lois Lerner was replaced Thursday as director of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversaw agents who targeted Tea Party groups. Continue reading...
House OKs bill on student-loan rates
The House on Thursday passed legislation to head off a doubling of student-loan interest rates on July 1, instead tying rates to prevailing market trends and ending federal subsidies. Continue reading...
Active hurricane season forecast
Federal forecasters Thursday called for 13-20 named Atlantic storms this hurricane season, seven to 11 that will strengthen into hurricanes and three to six that will become major hurricanes. Continue reading...
U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen
Official U.S. figures on drone strikes and estimated deaths remain classified. Continue reading...
The nation in brief
QUOTE OF THE DAY “Today we finally have some justice for me and others. But gay youths will still be told they are no longer welcome when they turn 18.” Matt Comer, who was forced out of the Boy Scouts after he started a Gay-Straight Alliance as a teen, on the vote to allow gay youths to participate in scouting Article, 1A Continue reading...
Names and faces
In the new film Behind the Candelabra, veteran entertainer Debbie Reynolds has just three major scenes to flesh out one of the most complicated figures in piano-playing showman Liberace’s life: his loving but sometimes manipulative mother, Frances. Continue reading...
In the news
U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, a six-term Alabama Republican, said he is resigning from Congress, effective in August, to become vice chancellor of government relations and economic development at the University of Alabama System. Continue reading...
Rockslide yields 2nd child’s body
Authorities on Thursday recovered the body of a second child killed when a rockslide hit a group of fourth-graders in a St. Paul park a day earlier and announced that the popular fossil-hunting area would be closed indefinitely. Continue reading...
Funerals begin for tornado victims
Three days after one of the most destructive tornadoes to strike Oklahoma in decades, people filed into a mortuary chapel Thursday morning amid heavy rain and flashes of lightning for the first of two dozen funerals. Continue reading...
Boy Scouts lift gay ban for youths
GRAPEVINE, Texas — The Boy Scouts of America's National Council has voted to ease a long-standing ban and allow openly gay boys to be accepted as Scouts. Continue reading...
IRS replaces official who oversaw targeting
WASHINGTON — A day after she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, Lois Lerner has been replaced as director the Internal Revenue Service division that oversaw agents who targeted tea party groups. Continue reading...
Arkansas' teen birth rate U.S.' highest, report finds
The nation's record-low teen birth rate stems from robust declines in nearly every state, but most dramatically in several Mountain States and among Hispanics, according to a new government report. Continue reading...
IRS official swears she never misled Congress
Lerner then takes Fifth, shuns panel
The Internal Revenue Service official who first disclosed that the agency had targeted conservative groups denied Wednesday that she had ever provided false information to Congress. She then invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify. Continue reading...
