President Barack Obama blames the media for creating a "phony controversy" over racial remarks by a Black Agriculture Department official that were posted on the Internet. His administration ousted the employee, but then apologized and offered to rehire her.

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – The National Urban League, known for its hundreds of affiliates tucked in mostly inner city neighborhoods across the nation is confronting the human faces of unemployment, home loss and economic blight every day.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Officers from a single Arizona county helped deport more than 26,000 immigrants from the U.S. through a federal-local partnership program that has been roundly criticized as fraught with problems.

BAGHDAD – A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

PHOENIX (AP) -- A federal judge dealt a serious rebuke to Arizona's immigration law on Wednesday when she put most of the crackdown on hold just hours before it was to take effect.

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief claims his organization doesn't know who sent it some 91,000 secret U.S. military documents, telling journalists that the Web site was set up to hide the source of its data from those who receive it.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) – It's practically a daily ritual: Accused drug traffickers and assassins, shackled and bruised from beatings, are paraded before the news media to show that Mexico is winning its drug war. Once the television lights dim, however, about three-quarters of them are let go.

LONDON (AP) -- BP is jettisoning CEO Tony Hayward, whose verbal blunders made the oil giant's image even worse as it struggled to contain the Gulf oil spill, and will assign him to a key job in Russia, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

CHICAGO — Rod Blagojevich's defense attorney could find himself behind bars even as he works to keep his client out of prison.

WASHINGTON — Operatives inside Afghanistan and Pakistan who have worked for the U.S. against the Taliban or al-Qaida may be at risk following the disclosure of thousands of once-secret U.S. military documents, former and current officials said.