Michigan Republican representative and former presidential candidate Thaddeus McCotter announced his resignation on Friday afternoon. McCotter blames a “nightmarish month and a half” and claims it has broken the harmony he needs to sustain his family and home life. “The recent event’s [sic] totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family,” McCotter said in a statement. “Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must ‘strike another match, go start anew’ by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen.”

Economists have criticized Fed chairman Ben Bernanke for failing to take action on employment, but the poll shows that a majority on Wall Street believe he is about to do so. A Reuters poll of Wall Street economists shows the chances of the Federal Reserve launching a new round of monetary stimulus to boost growth has increased after another month of disappointing job growth in the U.S. The poll was taken Friday after the government reported that only 80,000 jobs were added in June, a number short of market predictions. Forecasts from financial institutions that do business with the Fed showed a 70 percent chance of a third round of large-scale bond purchases.

Almost 1,000 protestors were killed across Egypt last year as the country ousted Hosni Mubarak and began a rocky leadership transition. Now, the newly-elected president says he wants to clear the air. Mohammed Morsi appointed a fact-finding committee Friday, charged with investigating the killings that took place during last year’s revolution. The committee consists of a panel of judges, a state prosecutor, a general, a police commander, and six representatives of victims’ families. A point of contention will likely be the possible prosecution of military officers in connection with protestor crackdowns.

Mitt Romney called June's unemployment figures "unacceptably high," and placed the blame squarely on President Obama this Friday.  "It doesn't have to be this way," the former governor said, adding that “the president's policies are not working." The speech comes as other right-wing leaders have increased attacks on the presumptive Republican candidate's "play-it-safe strategy." Former New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu, a Romney surrogate, announced on CNN that the campaign needs to move toward "simple, tough, declarative sentences." As the economy wavers with stagnating employment figures, Romney promised Friday to cut corporate taxes and ease regulatory burdens.

So much for donation-seeking claims that Zimmerman and his wife did not have “anywhere near” the money needed to bail him out of jail. Less than 24 hours after a judge set his bond at $1 million for a second-degree murder charge in the death of Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman was released from prison for a second time after posting $100,000 bond—a standard 10 percent of the total bail. Zimmerman was reportedly bolstered by $20,000 in donations to his renewed defense fund.

Bill Johnson was slated to become Duke Energy Corp.'s new chief executive ever since Duke announced a $26 billion merger with Johnson's former company, Progress Energy Inc. That was 18 months ago. On July 2, the merger and his new position went into effect, and on July 3 (at 12:01 a.m.) Johnson resigned. Apparently, it only took a few hours on the job to realize that Johnson wasn't the right fit for the position. The abrupt change of plans has been called "very odd," but there had been speculation that former chief executive Jim Rogers might not be comfortable relinquishing control over the company. The new board's first meeting on Monday reportedly dissolved quickly into a discussion of management, ending in the decision that Johnson would not stay on as CEO. The one-day chief exec will receive up to $44.4 million in exit payments.

Although Roger Federer had lost six of seven matches to usptart superstar Novak Djokovic, the court was in his favor on Friday. Federer prevailed 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 to move to the finals, surprising many commentators who had expected him to lose. Past games between the pair have been played on clay, and on Friday's indoor grass court, the Swiss server took the advantage. “Last five or six days I haven’t been feeling that great, but I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Djokovic said. Federer hasn't won a Grand Slam title in two years–if he wins the upcoming Wimbledon final, it will be his 17th Grand Slam.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie one of the prime contenders for the Republican Vice Presidential nomination, was involved in a heated verbal dispute on the Jersey Shore Thursday night. All caught on tape, the potential VP was spending time with his family on the boardwalk when a passerby offered a remark on Christie’s education policy. But the Governor fired back, “You’re a real big shot... you’re a real big shot shootin’ your mouth off.” But this isn’t the first time Christie’s tempter has made headlines. At a news conference on Saturday, Christie called a reporter who was asking off-topic questions “stupid” and “an idiot.”

The Chinese Ministry of Health lifted a 14-year ban on lesbians giving blood this week. The ban, which was enacted in 1998, was born out of a fear that donated blood could spread HIV and AIDS. Men who are sexually active with other men are still not allowed to donate blood, but celibate homosexuals can donate away. Xu Bin, a Chinese lesbian rights activist, tried to donate blood in after an earthquake in 2008 and was turned away because of the ban, prompting her to launch a crusade against the measure. "It's scientific that the policy doesn't mention homosexual identity but only fences off some who have certain sex behaviors, because AIDS is not caused by one's homosexual identity but improper sex behavior," she told the Global Times. "It is also our dignity and the elimination of blood donation discrimination."

And we thought the Biebs could do no wrong. Bieber was ticketed for speeding in an excess of 65 mph on highway 101 in Los Angeles, claiming to be chased by at least one vehicle containing paparazzi. An eyewitness at the scene, L.A. City councilman Dennis Zine, called authorities after seeing Bieber’s distinctive chromed car being chased by five or six other vehicles. Zine, who spent 33 years as an LAPD officer, estimated the chase exceeded 100 mph as the paparazzi engaged in reckless driving to keep up with the singer, including driving on the shoulder of the highway. But the paps weren’t the only ones breaking laws: “The way (Bieber) was driving was totally reckless, I would have arrested him if I had pulled him over,” said Zine. “I wouldn’t have given him a ticket and let him go.”

Gay Episcopalians may soon be able to get married in their own church. 16 years after homosexual faithful were first permitted to become priests, the church is considering introducing a new rule that blesses marriages between couples of the same sex. If this new liturgy is approved, Episcopalians would become the first major religious denomination to take such action to support same-sex unions. Still, while the special blessing uses traditional phrases like "I do," and "we have gathered together here today," and includes the exchange of rings, the words "husband," "wife" and "marriage," are nowhere to be found, making it clear that this blessing of same-sex unions is not exactly a full-on marriage equality endorsement.

61 children have died in Cambodia over the last three months from an unidentified disease. The World Health Organization is investigating the mysterious illness that resulted in the death of 61 out of 62 children hospitalized since April with symptoms including high fever, respiratory problems and some neurological impairment. "At this stage, we cannot rule out if this is a mixture of a number of known diseases which have been reported as one syndrome or something new," said a WHO representative in Phnom Penh. All of the patients affected were under the age of 7 and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of the disease spreading from person to person.

Lawmakers in Britain on Thursday backed a plan to hold a government inquiry into the standards in the banking industry that led to Barclays’ rate-rigging scandal. Conservatives rejected the calls by the opposition Labour Party for an independent, judge-led investigation, similar to the Leveson Inquiry. During the politically charged debate, finance minister George Osborne and Labour’s shadow minister Ed Balls traded insults over who holds responsibility for the Barclays scandal. Barclays CEO Marcus Agius stepped down on Tuesday and then appeared before Parliament on Wednesday, one week after the bank was called out by regulators for manipulating interest rates. Barclays was fined $450 million for its role in rigging the key of Libor interest rates between 2005 and 2009.

Commence the stay-at-home mom crushes. SNL’s Seth Myers is apparently the front-runner for the job of co-host on Live! With Kelly, Showbiz 411 is reporting.  Myers – who’s best known as The Weekend Update guy on SNL-- has been guest hosting on Live! since Regis retired last November. Now sources are reporting that the final three swoon-worthy contenders for the job are Seth Myers, Michael Strahan and Josh Groban. Myers is considered the favorite, though you still have time to call your bookie. Should Myers be chosen as Kelly’s new co-host, he may be able to continue hosting Weekend Update but would likely need to quit his job as head writer for SNL.

Scott Peterson and his death penalty lawyer have filed an automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court. In 2004, Peterson, a former fertilizer salesman, was convicted in the murders of his wife and unborn son and sentenced to death. Despite being found guilty of suffocating his pregnant wife and throwing her in the San Francisco Bay on Christmas Eve, Peterson has always insisted that he's innocent. In this new appeal, his lawyer argues that over-the-top publicity and media coverage of his case – which, he claims, surpassed that of even the O.J. Simpson murder trial – deprived his client of a fair hearing. "Before hearing even a single witness, nearly half of all prospective jurors admitted they had already decided Mr. Peterson was guilty of capital murder," Peterson's lawyer writes.

It wasn't just Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted last week to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. 17 House Democrats voted against the Obama-appointed AG, and apparently, since 2009 that group of legislators has received over $1.3 million in financial aid from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The DCCC's objective is to help Democrats get elected to Congress in order to create a Democratic majority, but the group isn't necessarily committed to party cohesion. Dissent within the party and the financial aid from the DCCC could turn tensions inward, with Democrats arguing over who's suited to represent the party in Congress and why the Democratic party doesn't have the same clout as, say, the NRA, to convince legislators to vote a certain way.

While touring Ohio yesterday, President Obama got an emotional thank-you for his health-care overhaul. Stephanie Miller sobbed as she "thanked him for getting the Affordable Health Act passed," and told the president about her sister who died from cancer. "Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, she was told her income was too high for Medicaid," Miller told reporters after the encounter. Meanwhile, House Republicans are on the move to repeal the legislation that was deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court last week. The House Rules Committee will meet Monday to discuss its plan to quash Obamacare.

Over 100 countries sent representatives to Paris Friday to determine what can be done to end the violence that's been raging in Syria for over a year, resulting in close to 16,000 deaths. French President Francois Hollande opened the meeting by declaring Syria a threat to world peace and insisting that it is "a human and political necessity" to step in. As Syrian allies Russia and China block efforts to intervene, U.N. Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-Moon plans to release a report on the U.N.'s monitoring mission in the country. A member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's inner circle, Syrian Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, has reportedly defected and fled to Turkey on Friday.

The first time he tried to raise money for a defense fund, Zimmerman got his bond revoked after the court found he and his wife had been deceitful about the money they raised. But that hasn't stopped him from seeking donations again, hours after a Florida judge set his bail at $1 million. In their pitch for donations on a website, Zimmerman's team says the defendant and his wife "do not have anywhere near" the money needed to bail him out, and appeals to "those who feel Mr. Zimmerman was justified in his actions."

The other multimillionaire moderate Mormon is still peeved with his party. Jon Huntsman, who ran a go-nowhere presidential campaign before getting pummeled in New Hampshire, said Friday that he wouldn't attend the Republican national convention in Tampa this August. In fact, they’d have to do without him at all GOP events, the former Utah governor said, "until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States." In March, Huntsman was uninvited from a Republican National Committee event after he called for the formation of a third-party—a move that some said could prefigure an independent run. In his campaign for the Republican ticket, Huntsman spent millions in personal cash only to finish a distant third in New Hampshire, and dropped out of the race. He has formally endorsed Mitt Romney.

The U.S. Department of Education is expected to announce Friday that Washington and Wisconsin have been granted waivers releasing them from the obligations of No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush's key education legislation. These are just the latest states to be let off the hook from the law's most demanding conditions. The Obama administration has given over half the states in the country a pass from the legislation's general provisions in the past five months. "The more waivers there are, the less there really is a law, right?" suggested Andy Porter, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's graduate school of education.

Some 80,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in June, and the unemployment rate remained steady at 8.2 percent, according to a monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number is a disappointing figure for economists hoping for a respite from the tepid job growth of the last several months, and came in below market expectations. (Jobs growth for May was revised slightly upward to 77,000.) For African-Americans, unemployment jumped to 14.4 percent in June, while the rate for Hispanics stalled at 11 percent. The political fallout for President Obama began almost immediately, with RNC chair Reince Priebus calling the report "devastating." After the jobs report was released, Wall Street saw dips in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite Index. 

Clearly Brad Pitt’s liberalism is not hereditary. The actor and his superstar wife once said they wouldn’t get married until everyone in the United States was allowed to (turns out they’re not that patient). But his mother, Jane, has some strikingly different views on same-sex couples—not to mention abortion and President Obama. Mama Pitt penned a letter to Springfield, Mo.’s News-Leader this week. She described Obama as “a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same sex-marriage.” She also insisted that, even though Mitt Romney is a Mormon, he’s still “a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality.”