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Vice President Joe Biden says his task force on reducing gun violence is facing an unexpected obstacle: slim or outdated research on weapons. Public health research dried up more than a decade ago after Congress restricted the use of some federal money to pay for those studies.

President Obama quietly nominated Ronnie White, who was rejected for a federal judgeship in 1999, to the bench last month. Experts say they can't remember a time when a judge who's been voted down in the Senate has been renominated.

Top aide Denis McDonough is moving into the chief of staff's office. Justice Department official Lisa Monaco is taking on the counterterrorism post.

Agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have spent months testing new plastic weapons, and report that the guns can be lethal and hard to detect. The findings come just as a federal law that requires guns to be composed of at least some metal to help people in schools and airports detect them is set to expire.

Gun control advocates acknowledged they'll face big obstacles in Congress to a new ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But they say the shooting last month of 20 schoolchildren in Connecticut could make a difference.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are pressing for the release of a so-called torture report on Bush-era interrogation practices. But there are several hurdles to clear before portions of the report might become declassified.

A new book reveals details of the historic 1971 burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pa., that exposed domestic surveillance abuses committed by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The bureau never solved the case. Now, for the first time in four decades, the people behind the burglary have told their story.

The lawsuit takes aim at provisions that limit early voting periods and require a government photo ID as an illegal form of discrimination against minorities at the ballot box, according to a person briefed on the Justice Department's plans.

Judge Richard Leon says the sweeping NSA collection of U.S. phone metadata constitutes an unreasonable search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment. The federal judge stayed the ruling waiting for a likely appeal from the Justice Department.

The deal also includes a record $4 billion in criminal penalties. Family members for some of those victims had urged stiffer sanctions.