Reuters - The U.S. government should not back $25 billion or more in loans to help General Motors Corp and the other domestic auto companies, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee said on Friday.

AP - When word surfaced this week that Gov. Brian Schweitzer suggested in a speech this summer that he influenced Montana's 2006 U.S. Senate race to help a fellow Democrat, Schweitzer apologized and said he was joking.

AP - Two months after the White House called a highway trust fund rescue plan a "gimmick" and threatened a presidential veto, President Bush is expected to sign legislation infusing $8 billion into the financially teetering fund that supports road and bridge projects around the country.

AFP - White House rivals John McCain and Barack Obama made a dramatic show of unity Thursday with a visit to Ground Zero on the emotional seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

AP - Barack Obama and former President Clinton talked for two hours on Thursday, their first meeting in a White House race that had once bitterly divided them. Clinton predicted that Obama will win the presidency "pretty handily."

Reuters - The House of Representatives could vote next week on energy legislation that would open nearly all of the U.S. coastline to offshore drilling while repealing some tax breaks for oil companies, Democratic leaders said on Thursday.

AP - Democratic leaders on Thursday selected the mayor of a suburban Cleveland town to replace the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones on the Nov. 4 ballot.

AFP - Barack Obama sought Thursday to refocus the ill-tempered White House campaign back onto voter anxieties as he castigated the "lies and phony outrage" of his Republican foes over a farmyard taunt.