Politico - President Barack Obama is pushing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to go further than Obama has previously disclosed to strip the final health care reform bill of the narrow deals aimed at appeasing specific senators.

AP - Reports of sudden acceleration in the Toyota Prius have spiked across the country. But that doesn't mean there's an epidemic of bad gas pedals in the popular hybrid.

AP - Merlin Olsen, a Hall of Fame defensive lineman and member of the Los Angeles Rams' "Fearsome Foursome" who followed up football with a successful television career in "Little House on the Prairie," NFL broadcasts and commercials, has died. He was 69.

Reuters - Police clashed with stone-throwing youths in Athens on Thursday as tens of thousands of strikers protested against draconian cutbacks aimed at pulling Greece out of a debt crisis shaking the euro zone.

AP - Album lovers may rejoice a little at last: a British court says Pink Floyd, purveyor of iTunes-unfriendly concept records, cannot be unbundled.

AP - Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim is the first man from a developing nation to become the world's richest person — a shift that underlines the loosening of America and Europe's stranglehold on the top spots in the billionaires' club.

AP - Colleen LaRose spent long days caring for her boyfriend's father in a second-floor apartment in Pennsburg, a small town north of Philadelphia.

AP - Corey Haim's story is sadly familiar in Hollywood: A teen talent who discovered drugs as he tasted his first success and whose personal problems increased as his star-power faded.

AP - The earth shook and shook Thursday as dignitaries walked in for the swearing-in of Sebastian Pinera as Chile's president. It shook some more as they waited for him to join them.

AP - A troublingly high number of U.S. patients who are given angiograms to check for heart disease turn out not to have a significant problem, according to the latest study to suggest Americans get an excess of medical tests.

AP - House Democrats on Thursday stopped a Republican bid to force an investigation of Democratic leaders aimed at determining whether they covered up sexual harassment allegations against ex-Rep. Eric Massa.

AP - As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

AP - Two off-duty Pennsylvania law enforcement officers were with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger at the Georgia nightclub where a woman accused him of sexual assault, and the two men didn't see anything inappropriate, an attorney for one of them said Wednesday.

Reuters - Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim is the world's richest person, knocking Microsoft founder Bill Gates into second spot, as the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by 50 percent over the last year, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.

AP - Cathleen Griffin usually feeds her passion for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race through the Internet, but next week she'll travel to Alaska for the first time to see the winner cross the finish line in the old gold rush town of Nome.

AP - Without a TV show to do every night, Conan O'Brien is taking his act on the road.

AP - A year ago, President Barack Obama boldly, unequivocally demanded that Israel stop building settlements on the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Today he's left with little choice but to swallow a stinging and very public rebuke from America's closest Mideast ally.