AP - It's a pretty good crowd for a summer Friday morning at Kennedy Center. From stage right (where else?) Justice Antonin Scalia enters.

AP - Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s $3.3 billion buyout of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. will mean millions of subscribers will be able to receive programming from both services, while executives say it will create huge cost savings for the industry.

AP - Homeowners struggling to make their house payments could get government mortgage relief under a rescue plan that seeks to revive the chaotic housing market and help reverse the economic downturn.

AP - Wisconsin Democrats on Friday ousted a delegate to their national convention for saying she would vote for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain in November.

Politico - Barack Obama's vice presidential search team has floated the name of a member of President Bush's first-term Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Obama's running mate.

AP - There's something familiar about this stage of the presidential campaign. A candidate running on inevitability. A candidate running on experience. A candidate complaining about a rival's media coverage.

AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for "the audacity of hopelessness" in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. troops been withdrawn as his rival advocated.

AP - An aide to Sen. Barack Obama said Friday the Democratic presidential contender believed he could visit wounded troops at a military hospital in Germany without involving them in a campaign controversy and scrapped his plans after the Pentagon raised concerns.

AP - Presidential contender Barack Obama is meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the last leg of his European and Middle Eastern tour.

Reuters - War crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic will be extradited to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague at the earliest on Monday, Serbia's chief war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said on Friday.

AP - One of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in the U.S. is teaching the food industry the truth of the adage, "Be careful what you wish for because you might get it."

AP - Barack Obama wants to sound like the voice of reason on U.S. foreign policy — the guy who would abandon Bush administration policies he sees as shortsighted, self-defeating or just plain wrong. Problem is, George Bush keeps beating him to it.

AP - Barack Obama's campaign has received roughly 10 times more money from declared U.S. donors living in Germany, France and Britain than his Republican rival, reflecting his popularity in Europe as he makes his first tour of the continent as the presumed Democratic nominee.