Parents and Families

The firestorm buffeting the Internal Revenue Service intensified Friday as lawmakers began what they promised would be an extensive effort to learn whether there was any political motivation or White House involvement in the agency’s recently acknowledged misdeeds.

LENNEWITZ, Germany — Many Europeans see American farming and its reliance on genetically modified crops as more Frankenstein than Farmer in the Dell.

Now, the opposition here to U.S. agricultural practices is threatening to become a major battle in discussions starting next month that could sweep away trade barriers between the United States and Europe.

The General Services Administration doled out cash awards to senior executives based on votes of confidence by colleagues who recognized their efforts at grooming talent and running “terrific and productive meetings,” a new report reveals.

Slogging through a drizzly Rose Garden news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Obama took a break to ask for some rain protection.

“I am going to go ahead and ask folks, why don’t we get a couple of Marines — they’re going to look good next to us — just because I’ve got a change of suits but I don’t know about our prime minister,” he said as two Marines appeared at the podiums with umbrellas. “There we go. That’s good.” He gestured to the soggy press corps, adding, “You guys I’m sorry about.”

The owners of a vineyard who landed Virginia’s first deal to sell wine in China were so thankful for the help of the state officials who negotiated the agreement that they decided to show their gratitude.

Alethea Allen, a Virginia resident, graduated this week from Wesley Theological Seminary in Northwest Washington after years of divinity classes. But she has no intention of becoming a minister.

Instead, Allen plans to keep practicing as a pediatrician in the Winchester area. Her seminary training, she said, will help her be a better doctor.

DANIEL WERFEL, whom President Obama tapped on Thursday to lead the Internal Revenue Service, has a record of shaking up stolid federal bureaucracies. When he gets to his new agency, he shouldn’t hold back.

Brittany Lofton spots them all the time: teens and college students clutching their beat-up cellphones, with screens so cracked that spider-web-like patterns creep across the glass.

Sure, the screen’s razory shards make reading a text and posting Instagram photos super blurry, not to mention slightly painful.

Two senior military officers said for the first time Friday that they were “open” to proposed legislation that would overhaul military law in response to an epidemic of sexual assaults, acknowledging that victims lack faith in commanders to handle the problem.

CINCINNATI — The fog of scandal hangs over a boxy, modernist, 10-story building that looks like a monument to paperwork. Shrubs and chain smokers flank its front entrance here on Main Street, in the heart of downtown. Every day, 2,000 employees go to work at various federal agencies in this John F. Kennedy-era structure, whose chief tenant is the Internal Revenue Service — which is having just about the worst week an agency can have.

BALTIMORE — President Obama insisted Friday that he is focused on improving the lives of middle-class Americans, despite being buffeted in Washington by a trio of controversies that have threatened to distract him from his second-term agenda.

Michelle Obama encouraged the graduates of Bowie State University on Friday to live up to the legacy of their university’s founders and the leaders of the civil rights movement by promoting the importance of education in the black community.

Watson, IBM's supercomputer named after company founder Thomas Watson, was on Capitol Hill Thursday to show off what it has learned since it dove into health care roughly a year ago.

"I thought I was coming up to play chess with a computer," said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) as he took the podium in the House Energy and Commerce committee room during an event hosted by IBM and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), vice chair of the committee. But the now-famous servers were nowhere in sight, since Watson's computing power is now accessible to authorized users through the cloud.

We're only three days into the Senate Judiciary Committee's markup of S. 744, the Gang of Eight's immigration bill, but already 48 amendments to the bill have been adopted. Forty two passed by voice vote, and six by roll call. Many are technical corrections but a few make real, serious changes to the bill. Let's go through them, day by day.

Most people enjoyed "The Office" most for the antics of boss Michael Scott, or the touching relationship between paper salesman Jim Halpert and erstwhile receptionist Pam Beesly. I liked the show, which aired its finale after nine seasons Thursday night, best when it gave us a window into the business practices of this particular office.

East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, also known as the Stasi, posed a major challenge during my three-year stint as an attache at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn during the 1960s. Detecting and preventing Stasi agents from penetrating the security of U.S. diplomatic facilities in West Germany was a 24-7 undertaking.

At the end of a truly dismal week in his presidency, President Obama remains lucky in one crucial category: his opposition.

It has been only a few days since two administration scandals — the IRS harassment of conservative groups and the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records — dropped into the Republicans’ lap. But instead of turning public outrage to their advantage, Republicans have already begun overreaching, turning legitimate areas of inquiry into just some more partisan food fights.

Jorge Rafael Videla, the remorseless Argentine army commander who came to power in a coup that launched the most barbaric period of the country’s modern history, including thousands of extrajudicial killings and kidnappings, died May 17 at a prison near Buenos Aires. He was 87.

News organizations are wary about getting too close to the people they cover. Personal or professional entanglements with a source can compromise reporters' objectivity and foster perceptions of favoritism among readers or viewers.

Even President Obama's use of umbrellas has become a scandal in the eyes of some Republicans.

On Thursday, during a joint press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, Obama signaled to two Marines and asked them to protect him and his guest from the rain.