The White House has finally acknowledged that its carrying out attacks in Yemen and Somalia, letting the public in for the first time on its super-secret campaign against al Qaeda in those countries. The semiannual report on U.S. combat operations delivered to Congress Friday reveals that the military has been taking “direct action” which, though the report does not elaborate on what this means, is a term usually used to describe lethal attacks. The report makes no mention of drones. “In all cases we are focused on those al-Qaeda members and affiliates who pose a direct threat to the United States and to our national interests,” the Pentagon’s press secretary explained following the report’s release.

Mitt Romney wasn't as vitriolic as some Republicans in response to President Obama's new policy to stop some young illegal immigrants from being deported, but said the move would make reforming the system more difficult. “I think he action of the president today makes it more difficult to reach that long-term solution because an executive order is of course, a short-term matter and can be reversed by subsequent presidents.” Romney suggested that he supported some sort of new immigration policy, but refused to get specific, and also wouldn't say whether he would reverse the Obama decision. Romney has said he would veto the DREAM Act, a bill that would implement much the same policy as Obama announced Friday.

Despite being a key advocate for the president’s health care reform, the Catholic Hospital Association announced Friday that it is opposed to President Obama’s requirement that church-affiliated employers provide free birth control to their female employees. Religious backlash pushed the president to compromise on the rule, making an exemption for religious employers—but not nonprofits, like hospitals, that may operate in conjunction with religious groups. The hospital group wrote a letter to the Health and Human Services department, saying they’d initially found the president’s compromise to be “a good first step” but realized upon further examination that carrying it out would be “unduly cumbersome” and “unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns” of its members.

After two days of deliberations, a Manhattan federal jury convicted former McKinsey & Co. executive Rajat Gupta of insider trading. In what was one of the largest white-collar investigations mounted to date, Gupta was accused of passing privileged information to Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge-fund manager who was sentenced to 11 years in prison last year. The jury of eight women and four men found Gupta guilty of four of the charges against him and acquitted him on two counts.

After Obama administration officials told reporters on Friday that the White House had approved a policy plan to stop the deportations of hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants, President Obama spoke about the plan Friday afternoon. Obama said that the changes will make America's immigration policy "more fair, more efficient, and more just." The election year issue may prove decisive as Obama and Mitt Romney square off over every Latino vote. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Obama said that the plan is a "temporary, stop-gap measure" that will allow the U.S. to better allocate its immigration resources and "lift the shadow of deportation from these young people." The president appeared to be repeatedly interrupted by someone off-camera, with Obama at one point saying to the heckler, "I didn't ask for an argument."

Parliament is no more. Egyptian security forces have reportedly surrounded the government buildings and are blocking anyone from entering, after the country's Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved parliament. Egyptians, vowing to protest, were incensed by the ruling that the Islamist-led government was invalid and to allow Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister to serve under former dictator Hosni Mubarak, to run in a presidential-runoff election. Interim military rulers plan to announce that a new constitution will be written by a 100-person assembly. The runoff between the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi and Shafik is set for the weekend.

As pressures mount in the euro zone, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Friday that he could step in if matters get much worse. The central bank has a “crucial role” as institutions in countries that use the common currency continue to show weakness, Draghi said, and his bank “will continue to supply liquidity to solvent banks where needed.” Draghi’s comments were probably  gauged to help build international confidence as politicians and investors alike keep their eye on Greek elections scheduled for the weekend. Voters in Greece are faced with a choice between politicians who back unpopular austerity measures and others who reject the bailout conditions.

Russia responded Friday to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's charges that Moscow was sending new attack helicopters to Syria, denying that any arms deal goes beyond "defensive" technology. "There are no new deliveries of Russian military helicopters to Syria," the Foreign Ministry said on its website. Clinton said Washington had information that choppers were on their way to Damascus, but the ministry said there were only "previously planned repairs of military equipment delivered to Syria many years ago." NBC News reported that U.S. military officials said Friday that ships carrying Russian troops were on their way to Syria to guard the country's interests there.

More than a year after 16 Yale students filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, the Ivy League university has addressed the Title IX grievances, officials said in a letter Friday. The complaint came after an incident in which members of a fraternity chanted derogatory remarks outside a campus women’s center in 2011. Now, officials say the investigation into a hostile sexual climate at the school has ended. “I applaud the steps Yale has taken and has agreed to take to address immediate concerns and to put systems in place to help prevent future Title IX discrimination,” Russlyn Ali, an education department official said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work cooperatively with Yale to better ensure a safe and supportive environment for all students.”

Three more accusers testified in the sex-abuse trial against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on Thursday, bringing to eight the number of accusers to take the stand in the trial's first four days. One accuser said Sandusky called himself the "tickle monster," and then embraced him in a shower. Another said he spent more than 100 nights at the coach's home and was forced into sex acts. A third alleged victim said he loved Sandusky, but became angry with the coach because he never reached out to him after he moved away. Sandusky faces 52 criminal counts of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years.

This is precisely why you don’t try to pry a dead mouse from the jaws of a stray cat. An Oregon man has been diagnosed with the plague after he was bitten by a stray cat that his family knew and had befriended. The man, in his 50s, is in critical condition, while the cat, which officials say probably has the plague, is being tested by the CDC. How rare is the plague in Oregon? It’s the fifth case since 1995.

Amid all the talk of Kevin Durant's superiority over LeBron James, Miami backed up its star and showed he isn't passing on the torch just yet as the Heat beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 100-96 in game two of the NBA Finals, evening the series at a game apiece. James and Durant both scored 32 points, but the former had eight rebounds and five assists to Durant's three boards and one dish—and the crucial victory.

Europe’s common currency may become even more of a common liability, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown cautioned on Friday. In a column published by Reuters, Brown wrote that countries like France and Italy, and not just nations with smaller economies like Greece and Portugal, may be forced out of the euro zone. “The standard, but often empty, language of summit communiqués will simply not do when the euro area is finally approaching its own day of reckoning,” Brown wrote. While some have said that the euro has resulted in two Europes, one embroiled in debt and the other carrying their burden, Brown disagreed. “Even German banks, which are some of the most highly leveraged, are not immune from needing more capital,” he wrote.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is going on a six-state trek by bus, including returning to Iowa for the first time since losing the caucuses there to Rick Santorum. He aims to sway undecided voters living outside the big cities in his "Every Town Counts" tour, where he'll also visit a number of key swing states like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. 

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing on Friday new air quality standards to lower the amount of soot that can be released into the air. The Obama administration's move will please environmental groups but risks backlash from congressional Republicans in an election year, and could add to a critical image of the president stifling economic growth and causing job losses.

The doctor of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is worried about the Nobel laureate's health after she fell ill and vomited at a news conference in Switzerland Thursday. "Her lack of rest and her extremely tight schedule are very worrisome," doctor Pyone Moe Ei said Friday in Rangoon. The 66-year-old has low blood pressure and gets motion sickness easily, and had similar health problems during her campaign for parliament earlier this year.

President Obama visited the new 1 World Trade tower Thursday, hailing the rebuilding and signing one of the final steel beams that will be added to the building. "We remember. We rebuild. We come back stronger!" Obama wrote. He and the first lady went up to the 22nd floor and stared down at the National September 11 Memorial below. "It's beautiful," he said of the two massive fountains that mark where the twin towers once stood. "You don't expect how powerful it is."

It’s a dream come true for some young illegal immigrants.  The Obama administration told the Associated Press on Friday that as many as 800,000 immigrants will be affected by a new plan to stop deportation and begin offering work permits. The initiative, which comes in the middle of a difficult election year in which the Latino vote will likely prove crucial, will embrace illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children and who have not fallen into trouble with the law. “Many of these young people have already contributed to our country in significant ways,” wrote Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a memo. The policy shift, which sidesteps congressional involvement, was to be officially announced Friday, the Associated Press reported. Elsewhere on the Web, the Drudge Report illustrated the story on its homepage with a photo of Obama eating what appeared to be Mexican food while standing next to a man in a sombrero.

The last fugitive of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo that carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin gas attacks in 1995 was finally arrested Friday. Police nabbed 54-year-old Katsuya Takahashi after 17 years on the run, and Takahashi is suspected of murder in the attack that killed 12 people and left thousands ill. Former cult leader Shoko Asahara and a dozen other former members are now on death row.

The U.S. is expanding its secret intelligence forces in Africa to spy on terrorist hideouts, but many of the spying missions are actually being run by contractors who supply the aircraft, pilots, and personnel to collect intelligence from airspace above Uganda, Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Contractors were previously used to conduct airborne spying operations in Latin America in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Pentagon often turns to outside contractors for “deniability,” according to an expert with the Brookings Institution, but “it rarely turns out that way,” he adds. “When things go bad, you can have two scenarios. Either the contractors are left holding the bag, complaining about abandonment, or else some kind of abuse happens and they’re not held accountable because of a mix of unclear legal accountability and a lack of political will to do something about it,” he says.