Financial regulators have built an elaborate computer apparatus to scan stock markets for signs of insider trading, but the radar isn’t pointed at Congress. Instead, it is designed to detect more conventional forms of insider trading — a corporate lawyer acting on advance word of a merger or an accountant leaking details about a company’s earnings. A senator who calls his broker after receiving a closed-door briefing might not even raise a blip. Read full article > >

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For SEC, investigating insider trading in Congress presents complications

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION appears to have found an elegant way out of its contraceptive problem — or, perhaps more to the point, to the political problem created by its approach to contraceptive coverage. As we wrote after the previous policy was announced last month, increased access to contraception is important; requiring contraception as part of the standard health insurance package, without deductibles or co-payments, makes sense. But given the strong objections of the Catholic Church to contraception, it also makes sense to exempt religious employers from having to spend their own money on a service that violates their moral views. The administration recognized the need for such a carve-out, but it erred in drawing it too narrowly, to cover churches but not Catholic hospitals, charities and other such religiously affiliated institutions. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: President Obama’s win-win reversal on contraception

Blue Ivy Carter, the much-heralded baby daughter of Beyonce and Jay-Z , has officially made her public debut. The president and first lady of hip-hop have shared their first baby photos via Jay-Z’s Web site, Life + Times , an apparent follow-up to Beyonce’s public appearances earlier this week, her inaugural ones since giving birth . Read full article > >

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Blue Ivy Carter: The first photos of Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby have been revealed

The Maryland men’s basketball team has lost starting point guard Pe’Shon Howard for the rest of the season after the sophomore tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during practice Thursday. Read full article > >

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Maryland vs. Duke: Terps to face Blue Devils without injured point guard Pe’Shon Howard

Even though I didn’t know Yeardley Love, I feel that we had a lot in common. Our early lives were both marked by privilege. We both discovered and tested our strength in the burgeoning world of female athletics. We both went away to college — looking forward to bright futures as strong, able women — and were drawn to charismatic athletes from similar worlds of affluence and entitlement. Read full article > >

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Yeardley Love’s story — and mine

The radical Yemeni American cleric who was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen in September personally directed the plot to take down a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, according to a Justice Department memo . Read full article > >

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Awlaki directed Christmas ‘underwear bomber’ plot, Justice Department memo says

BEIRUT — Two suicide bombers struck compounds housing security services in the Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday, reportedly killing 28 people and wounding 238 in the worst violence to hit the country’s relatively calm commercial capital since the uprising began last March. Read full article > >

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Bombers strike Syrian city of Aleppo as offensive continues in Homs

President Obama will send Congress a 2013 spending plan that would raise taxes on the rich and pump nearly $500 billion into new construction projects over the next decade, launching an election-year debate over the budget that promises starkly different visions for managing government debt and the sluggish economy. Read full article > >

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Budget to raise taxes on the rich, hike federal spending

A quotation by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , clumsily shortened when inscribed in granite on his memorial at the Tidal Basin, will be replaced and his full words restored, officials said Friday. Interior Secretary Kan Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said the correction to the so-called “drum major” quotation will more accurately reflect King’s original meaning in a sermon he delivered two months before he was assassinated. Read full article > >

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Martin Luther King Jr. quotation to be replaced on memorial

NEW DELHI — Hundreds of people marched in New Delhi on Friday to protest an ambitious free-trade agreement being negotiated between India and the European Union that patient groups and health activists say could severely curtail India’s production and export of affordable drugs for millions living with HIV in developing countries. Read full article > >

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India-E.U. trade pact could boost AIDS treatment costs, health workers say

NEW DELHI — Hundreds of people marched in New Delhi on Friday to protest an ambitious free-trade agreement being negotiated between India and the European Union that patient groups and health activists say could severely curtail India’s production and export of affordable drugs for millions living with HIV in developing countries. Read full article > >

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India-E.U. trade pact could boost AIDS treatment costs, health workers say

Apple’s been having a great week in the stock market and is now hovering at $495 per share as of noon Friday. The rally on the market also gave the Cupertino, Calif.-based company some additional bragging rights: As of Thursday morning, Apple’s market cap was bigger than the values of Google and Microsoft combined. Read full article > >

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Apple worth more than Google, Microsoft combined

KHAR NIKAH, Afghanistan — Inside a cold room surrounded by sand-filled Hesco barriers in the remote Gereshk Valley, British forces are teaching a group of young Afghan fighters how to protect their village from the Taliban. Read full article > >

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In Helmand, training Afghan Local Police is a challenge

On a bridge outside Berlin one gloomy morning 50 years ago Friday stood Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of a CIA spy plane that was shot down over the Russian Ural mountains. He had waited 21 months for this moment. He had survived a plane crash, weeks of harsh interrogation and the brutal conditions of a Soviet prison. He was on the threshold of freedom, and his heart was thumping heavily. Read full article > >

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A spy swap’s legacy persists, 50 years on

The government’s $25 billion settlement Thursday with banks over fraudulent foreclosure practices begins a long-promised reckoning with the financial industry over its role in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, officials said. Read full article > >

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Settlement launches foreclosure reckoning