Wire Politics

President Barack Obama is wrapping up finitely detailed talks with his G-8 partners on economic and environmental challenges and turning to more photogenic events: meeting the pope and becoming the first black American president to visit a mostly black African country.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has endured weeks of insults, obnoxious questions and unwelcome drilling into her work as a judge and a lawyer - and it was all on purpose, essentially a dress rehearsal for her confirmation hearings.

Roland Burris gambled that he could accept a U.S. Senate appointment from a political pariah and still be seen as an honest, hardworking public servant. He lost.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is telling lawmakers the U.S. economy stumbled last year in part because the power and risks of an explosive derivatives market blindsided the government.

Global problems, Africa and the pope all figure in President Barack Obama's day.

The head of U.S. Central Command in Afghanistan warned that months of fighting lie ahead in what will likely be the biggest military operation there since the American-led invasion of 2001.

State-by-state look at cities, counties and communities where stimulus money will be distributed to combat homelessness and the dollars for each location, according to the Housing and Urban Development Department:

People in the United States could get lower-cost drugs from Canada over the Internet under a plan that has passed the Senate.

The Senate has again voted to allow the Obama administration to refuse to release new photos showing U.S. personnel abusing detainees held overseas.

President Obama plans to nominate Philip Murphy, a former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee, to be ambassador to Germany, the White House announced Thursday.

The Senate dealt a blow to the drug lobby Thursday by voting to permit people in the United States to order lower-cost drugs from Canada over the Internet.

Dozens of orchestras around the nation can keep playing for now, kept in tune by federal stimulus dollars aimed at saving jobs.

The political crisis in Honduras has cost the country nearly $20 million in U.S. aid - and the price tag could rise if the dueling governments aren't able to reach a solution.

The U.S. military on Thursday reluctantly turned over to Iraq five Iranians it had accused of fomenting violence in Iraq. The Iraqi government promptly invited them to meet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then released them to Iranian custody.

As President Barack Obama and other world leaders meet in Italy, a global survey released Thursday reflects wide concern that governments won't meet their budgets in this economic climate - and a universal preference to respond by cutting services rather than raising taxes.

House Democrats were working Thursday to avert a showdown with President Barack Obama and the CIA over who in Congress should receive sensitive information on the agency's covert activities.

The Illinois congressional seat that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert once held for 20 years may see a Hastert comeback.

Amid the great debates of the day over health care, global warming and economic recovery, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday there will be no pause in the action to honor Michael Jackson.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has removed an agent from his pilot duties after he refused to be sent to Afghanistan on a 60-day detail.

The Senate wants to force the Homeland Security Department to stick with a proposed Bush administration policy requiring employers to fire immigrant workers whose names don't match their Social Security numbers.

Sen. Roland Burris, whose deep ties to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich seemed to doom his Senate tenure from the start, will not run for a full Senate term in 2010. The move increases Democrats' chances of holding on to the former Senate seat of President Barack Obama.

Congressional aides said Thursday that Democratic leaders are prepared to soften a proposal that more lawmakers be briefed on secret CIA operations to make an intelligence bill more acceptable to the White House.

A group is urging Congress to enact a federal homeowners' insurance program for natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires before the next one strikes, saying such events pose a serious threat to the economy.

A U.S. government agency is demanding that Iran release seven Baha'i prisoners rather than submit them to trials on charges of spying for Israel and religious charges.

Conservative House Democrats are demanding significant changes before they can support a sweeping health care overhaul, forcing the House to join the Senate in delaying action on President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

A glance at President Barack Obama's itinerary for his overseas trip:

Joe Biden, the vice president who might have been secretary of state, is widening his role as globe-trotting diplomat, drawing praise on some fronts and puzzlement on others.

The national motto, "In God We Trust," will be engraved in the Capitol Visitor Center, responding to critics who said Congress spent $621 million on the new facility without paying due respect to the nation's religious heritage.

The bundles of bad home mortgages that panicked the Bush and Obama administrations have turned out to be not so toxic for the financial industry after all.