WASHINGTON - The White House chief of staff and other senior presidential advisers knew in late April that an upcoming report was likely to find that employees of the U.S. tax agency had inappropriately targeted conservative political groups — but they didn't tell President Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON - Don't look for the outcry over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of tea party groups to subside with the ouster of the agency's acting commissioner.

Three congressional committees are investigating and the FBI is looking into potential civil rights violations at the IRS, Attorney General Eric Holder said.

WASHINGTON - The White House on Wednesday released 99 pages of emails on last year's deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in hopes of putting an end to an issue that opposition Republicans in Congress have used for months to attack the Obama administration.

WASHINGTON - Congressional Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday challenged Attorney General Eric Holder over the Justice Department's handling of the investigation of national security leaks and its failure to talk to The Associated Press before issuing subpoenas for the news service's telephone records.

BEIJING, China - Chinese police are investigating telephone threats that led to the grounding of five flights around the country on Wednesday, though officials said no planes were in actual danger.

The Civil Aviation Administration said in a news release that the threats constituted the crime of transmitting "false terroristic information" and suspects were being pursued with all available resources. It gave no details on the specific threats.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - A new criminal defence lawyer for the widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev says his client will continue to co-operate with investigators but says he plans to keep quiet about the details of her case publicly because that could hurt the investigation.

New York lawyer Joshua Dratel, who has represented several terrorism suspects, joined Katherine Russell's legal team last week. He joins two Rhode Island-based lawyers who typically focus on civil cases.

WASHINGTON - Pentagon leaders scrambled Thursday to contain damage from an Internet video that purports to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses, an act that would appear to violate international laws of warfare and further strains U.S.-Afghan relations.

LONDON - Britain's spy agencies will face a criminal investigation into claims that intelligence shared with Moammar Gadhafi's regime led to the torture or rendition of two Libyan men and their families, authorities announced Thursday.