NPR News

Spending on education, health, transportation and the environment took a big hit in the compromise budget deal agreed on last week, but accounting gimmicks also played a key role in the largest-ever cuts in U.S. domestic programs.

The cuts were targeted at programs ranging from FEMA grants to first responders and high-speed-rail projects, to assistance for low-income mothers and children and community AIDS initiatives.

The Pentagon says it is looking into reports from NBC News, the Los Angeles Times and some other news outlets that two American troops — "a U.S. Marine reservist and a Navy corpsman," according to NBC — were killed in Afghanistan last week by "friendly fire" from an American drone flying overhead.

A visit this week by Pakistan's spy chief, the head of that country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, to CIA headquarters in Virginia has produced some interesting media reports about relations between the two countries' intelligence agencies.

According to The New York Times:

Two beams of light shone into the sky before dawn this morning at South Carolina's Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired 150 years ago today.

The State says "the beams angled in different directions, signifying the directions taken by the Union and the Confederacy." The newspaper says it was a "solemn" beginning to the ceremony at the site.

It doesn't look like a doctor's office, but the patch of ground in front of the Petaluma Health Center in Sonoma County, Calif., is an important part of the center's efforts to combat obesity in kids.