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WASHINGTON - The firestorm buffeting the Internal Revenue Service intensified Friday as lawmakers began what they promised would be an extensive effort to learn whether there was any political motivation or White House involvement in the agency's recently acknowledged misdeeds. Fueling those concerns, J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's top tax watchdog, said Friday that he had informed top Treasury officials last summer about problems related to the special attention the agency was paying some conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status.

Unlike some nonprofit groups that have obtained tax-exempt status to help influence elections with millions of dollars in TV ads, the Greenwich Tea Party Patriots of South Jersey say they have no desire to flood the airwaves. They just want to pay less for U.S. mail. But the group's application for 501(c)(4) status, submitted in early 2011, has yet to be approved or denied by the IRS. And amid a scandal unfolding in Washington that has led to the ouster of the IRS's acting chief, the group claims it was unfairly targeted by the agency and is threatening litigation if not granted tax-exempt status by Friday.

Community activists and an interfaith group want Philadelphia City Council to amend a lease agreement between the city and US Airways Group to boost the salary of 1,500 low-wage airport workers and require future hiring for ground-service jobs to come from neighborhoods around Philadelphia International Airport. Several dozen clergy and members of Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild (POWER) held a prayer vigil Thursday outside Mayor Nutter's office demanding that the interests of Philadelphia's dominant airline not be put above the needs of skycaps, aircraft cabin cleaners, and wheelchair attendants, who earn poverty wages from subcontractors with low-bid airline contracts.

WASHINGTON - Everyone killed or injured in last month's Boston Marathon bombings will receive some compensation from the $30 million in donations pledged for victims so far, according to a formula released Wednesday by the administrator of the One Fund Boston. The protocol issued by Kenneth Feinberg lists no specific dollar amounts because money is still trickling in, Feinberg said in an interview. But it sets out four categories of injuries, reserving the largest compensation for the families of the people killed, double amputees, and those with permanent brain damage.

WASHINGTON - At various points over the last two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency's inspector general. The documents, obtained by the Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where "statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run. " Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.

Eating healthy is something Marian McMullan tries to do. She is used to parsing food labels loaded with calories, carbs, sugars, and serving sizes. But there's one thing McMullan has never understood: dietary fiber. When the topic came up at a Bryn Mawr Family Practice group medical appointment, McMullan jumped in to ask registered dietitian Judy Matusky to break the code. How many grams does a person need every day? McMullan asked. Matusky told the nine strangers in the room, done in soothing green tones, that a person needs 25 grams of dietary fiber daily.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their exemption applications, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

They were standing next to each other in the pouring rain in Morrisville's Williamson Park, but they didn't exactly see eye to eye. Onstage, an anti-gun violence rally was in full swing, with preachers, parents and former Gov. Ed Rendell advocating for universal background checks on guns. In the crowd, anti-gun violence advocates intermingled with pro-gun rights protesters who had finished up a rally of their own an hour earlier. Men toting rifles and handguns stood at the front of the crowd and shouted at speakers on-stage while anti-gun violence protesters tried to drown them out with cheers and chants.

BEIRUT - Syria will supply "game-changing" weapons to Hezbollah, the chief of the Lebanese militant group said Thursday, less than a week after Israeli air strikes on Damascus targeted alleged shipments of advanced Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah. Israel has signaled it will respond with air strikes to any weapons shipments, meaning it could quickly get drawn into Syria's civil war if the Hezbollah chief's declaration is more than an empty threat. Tension has been rising in the region since Israel struck targets inside Syria on Friday and Sunday.

Addressing urban violence as a problem that grips cities large and small, the Philadelphia-based organization Mothers in Charge hosted its first national conference on the impact of violence this week. The two-day conference at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown Hotel, which concluded Tuesday, featured grassroots activists, law enforcement officials, medical experts, and others. Dorothy Johnson-Speight, founder and executive director of the group, said her organization was hosting a national conference "because violence is a national problem.