AP - Fess Parker, a baby-boomer idol in the 1950s who launched a craze for coonskin caps as television's Davy Crockett, died Thursday of natural causes. He was 85.

AP - President Barack Obama on Wednesday took to the Fox News Channel, derided by his White House as a wing of the Republican Party, to sell his embattled health care overhaul in an interview punctuated with interruptions from the host and chiding from the guest.

AP - Historic health care change in the balance, Democrats plowed fresh billions into insurance subsidies for consumers on Thursday and added a $250 rebate for seniors facing high prescription drugs, last-minute sweeteners to sweeping $940 billion legislation headed for a climactic weekend vote.

AP - A cruise liner hit by an outbreak of intestinal illness for a third straight trip from South Carolina returned a day early Thursday as operator Celebrity Cruises brought in extra crew to scrub the ship down for three days.

AP - From Grimm's fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality.

AP - Sandra Bullock is on a career high. America's Sweetheart and "Miss Congeniality" was repeatedly anointed as Hollywood royalty this year, sweeping awards season and capping it off with an Oscar for her role as a devoted mom in "The Blind Side."

AP - A Holocaust survivor claims in a new book that Anne Frank distracted younger children from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by telling them fairy tales — an account disputed by at least one Frank authority and a childhood friend of the diarist.

Reuters - Some Tea Partiers say they can pinpoint the precise moment when they made it clear to the Republican Party they had no intention of being its lapdog.

AP - President Barack Obama has said he wants to focus laser-like on the public's top concern: jobs. But the ongoing effort to remake the nation's health care system keeps getting in the way.

AP - Porsche shot to the top of a closely watched study of long-term vehicle dependability, overtaking U.S. and Japanese rivals, J.D. Power and Associates said Thursday.

AP - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Russian counterpart clashed openly Thursday over the planned launch this summer of Iran's first, Russian-built nuclear power plant, highlighting a split in views over how to steer Iran away from nuclear weapons.

AP - An international fleet of warships is attacking and destroying Somali pirate vessels closer to the shores of East Africa and the new strategy, combined with more aggressive confrontations further out to sea, has dealt the brigands a setback, officials and experts said Thursday.

AFP - Actress Sandra Bullock abruptly canceled Thursday a planned visit to London for the UK premiere of the film "The Blind Side" for which she won an Oscar, amid speculation about her marriage.

AFP - Husky, shar pei, terrier or mutt, today's dogs descended from wolves that probably lived in the Middle East, not Europe or Asia as many thought, according to a study published Wednesday in the British science journal Nature.

AP - The signs of Maria Pinto's rise were clear when Michelle Obama entered the world stage wearing her designs, also favored by Oprah Winfrey.

The Christian Science Monitor - Remember Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky?

Reuters - Bernard Madoff, the swindler who orchestrated a multibillion dollar fraud, was attacked by another inmate at the federal prison where he is serving a 150-year sentence, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.