'It WAS him': Defense admits Tsarnaev bombed Boston Marathon

BOSTON - The question, for all practical purposes, is no longer whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev took part in the Boston Marathon bombing. It's whether he deserves to die for it.

In a blunt opening statement at the nation's biggest terrorism trial in nearly 20 years, Tsarnaev's own lawyer flatly told a jury that the 21-year-old former college student committed the crime.

"It WAS him," said defense attorney Judy Clarke, one of the nation's foremost death-penalty specialists.

But in a strategy aimed at saving Tsarnaev from a death sentence, she argued that he had fallen under the malevolent influence of his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan.

"The evidence will not establish and we will not argue that Tamerlan put a gun to Dzhokhar's head or that he forced him to join in the plan," Clarke said, "but you will hear evidence about the kind of influence that this older brother had."

U.S. won't bring federal charges in Ferguson shooting

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department cleared a white former Ferguson, Mo., police officer on Wednesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices it called discriminatory and unconstitutional.

The dual reports marked the culmination of months-long federal investigations into a shooting that sparked protests and a national dialogue on race and law enforcement as the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black person to hold that office, draws to a close.

In pairing the announcements, the Obama administration sought to offset community disappointment over the conclusion that the shooting of Michael Brown was legally justified with a message of hope for Ferguson's majority-black citizens. Officials announced 26 recommendations, including training officers in how to de-escalate confrontations and banning the use of ticketing and arrest quotas, for the police force and municipal court.

Holder called the federal report a "searing" portrait of a police department that he said functions as a collection agency for the city, with officers prioritizing revenue from fines over public safety and trouncing the constitutional rights of minorities.

U.S. ambassador to South Korea slashed on face and wrist

SEOUL, South Korea - U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert was slashed on the face and wrist by a man wielding a knife with a 10-inch blade and screaming that the rival Koreas should be unified, South Korean police said Thursday.

Media images showed a stunned-looking Lippert staring at his blood-covered left hand and holding his right hand over a cut on the right side of his face, his pink tie splattered with blood.

The U.S. State Department condemned the attack, which happened at a venue in a performing arts center in downtown Seoul as the ambassador was preparing for a lecture about prospects for peace on the divided Korean Peninsula, and said Lippert's injuries weren't life-threatening. Lippert was in surgery at Seoul's Severance Hospital, a hospital official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the operation was still underway. The official didn't have details on the severity of the injuries.

YTN TV reported that the suspect - identified by police as 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong - screamed during the attack, "South and North Korea should be reunified."

A witness, Ahn Yang-ok, the head of the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, told YTN that Lippert had just been seated for breakfast ahead of the lecture organized by the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation when a man ran toward the ambassador from a nearby table. A separate, unidentified witness said that as Lippert stood for a handshake, the suspect wrestled the ambassador to the ground and slashed him with a knife.

Can health care law survive major new challenge?

WASHINGTON - Sharply divided along familiar lines, the Supreme Court took up a politically charged new challenge to President Barack Obama's health overhaul Wednesday in a dispute over the tax subsidies that make insurance affordable for millions of Americans.

The outcome in what Justice Elena Kagan called "this never-ending saga" of Republican-led efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act appears to hinge on the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts, whose vote saved the law three years ago, and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Roberts said almost nothing in Wednesday's 85 minutes of lively back-and-forth, and Kennedy, who voted to strike down the health law in 2012, asked questions of both sides that made it hard to tell where he might come out this time.

Otherwise, the same liberal-conservative divide that characterized the earlier case was evident in the packed courtroom with the same lawyers facing off as in 2012.

Millions of people could be affected by the court's decision. The justices are trying to determine whether the law makes people in all 50 states eligible for federal tax subsidies to cut the cost of insurance premiums. Opponents say that only residents of states that set up their own insurance markets can get federal subsidies to help pay the premiums.

Committee subpoenas Clinton emails in Benghazi probe

WASHINGTON - A House committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya, attacks issued subpoenas Wednesday for the emails of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who used a private account exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state - and also used a computer email server now traced back to her family's New York home.

The subpoenas from the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi demanded additional material from Clinton and others related to Libya, spokesman Jamal D. Ware said. The panel also instructed technology companies it did not identify to preserve any relevant documents in their possession.

The development on Capitol Hill came the same day The Associated Press reported the existence of a personal email server traced back to the Chappaqua, New York, home of Clinton.

- The Associated Press