Blog Posts by Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

Click image to see more photos. (AP/Chris Pizzello, file)

Bob Dylan, John Glenn, Toni Morrison and Madeleine Albright will be among the 13 prominent figures to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest American civilian honor, from President Barak Obama later this Spring.

Along with the musical megastar, the astronaut-turned-senator, the best-selling author and the former secretary of state, the award will go to former Justice Department official John Doar, a pivotal civil rights movement figure; William Foege, a doctor and epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox in the 1970s; the late Gordon Hirabayashi, who openly denounced the World War II-era internment of Japanese-Americans; pioneering farm worker union leader Dolores Huerta; the late Jan Karski, who fought the Nazis as a member of the Polish Underground and warned the world about the Holocaust; Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, who died in 1927; Israeli President Shimon Peres; former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; and former University of Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt.

Here are their short profiles, as released by the White House:

The White House warned Thursday that al-Qaida affiliates still hunger to strike inside the United States, possibly to avenge Osama bin Laden's death, but said there was "no credible evidence" of an active plot timed for the anniversary of the al-Qaida leader's slaying by elite American forces.

President Barack Obama met with top national security advisers to gauge the prospects that extremist groups might be looking to attack the United States one year after the May 2, 2011, raid, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at his daily briefing.

"At this time, we have no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the anniversary of bin Laden's death," Carney said in a prepared statement. "However, we assess that AQ affiliates and allies remain intent on conducting attacks on the homeland, possibly to avenge the death of bin Laden, but not necessarily tied to the anniversary."

U.S. forces killed bin Laden in a

Panetta's memo (Time)

Osama bin Laden didn't know it, but when then-CIA Director Leon Panetta jotted down this "memo for the record" on his official stationery, the world's most wanted fugitive had just days left to live.

The document is part of Time magazine's package of stories on the one-year anniversary of the Navy SEAL raid that killed the al-Qaida chief in his hideout in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.

The magazine helpfully transcribed Panetta's scrawled message to historians:

Received phone call from (National Security Adviser) Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault. The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven's hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 a.m.

Now comes complainant Republican National Committee, snark firing on all cylinders, formally requesting that a government auditor look into whether President Barack Obama has been bilking taxpayers by billing them for what amount to campaign trips to battleground states. The White House immediately dismissed the suggestion of any impropriety.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus's letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, caps an escalating campaign of complaints by Republicans about Obama's election-year travel.

"On behalf of American taxpayers, I am writing to call your attention to a case of misuse of government funds," Priebus says in the letter's opening sentence.

The controversy centers on the arcane process by which taxpayers pick up the tab for "official" trips while the president's reelection campaign or the Democratic National Committee pays for "political" travel. When a presidential foray includes both kinds of events, the cost is divided according to a formula that presidents have declined to make public. It is common for the party that does not hold the White House to complain about this part of the incumbent's "bully pulpit." And it is common for the White House to label travel trips with heavy political overtones as "official."

Combative, confident, even cocky: President Barack Obama told Rolling Stone magazine in a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday that he hopes American voters will "break the fever" gripping today's Republicans and that he felt no stage fright whatsoever when he sang Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" at the Apollo Theater in January.

"I can sing. I wasn't worried about being able to hit those notes," Obama told the magazine, which ranked the R&B crooner's 1971 hit the 60th greatest song of all time. He also said he overruled senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who urged him to give that opportunity a miss. The audio of his full answer is here.

The president—who will spend the next six months urging American voters, "Let's stay together"—slammed today's Republican Party and implied that Mitt Romney would not be able to pivot to moderate positions after staking out conservative ground to win the nomination.

"I don't think that their nominee is going to be able to suddenly say, 'Everything I've said for the last six months, I didn't mean.' I'm assuming that he meant it. When you're running for president, people are paying attention to what you're saying," Obama said. "I think the general election will be as sharp a contrast between the two parties as we've seen in a generation."

With the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden less than one week away, Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday will offer a ringing defense of President Barack Obama's national security record and hammer presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney's approach to foreign policy.

The vice president, in a 10:30 a.m. speech at New York University, "will contrast the Administration's record with the empty rhetoric of Governor Mitt Romney, who continues to distort and mischaracterize the President's accomplishments on foreign policy and national security without offering policy alternatives of his own," the Obama campaign announced. It did not offer details of the alleged distortions.

Biden, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, will also detail how "we have successfully confronted our enemies and strengthened our alliances to effectively meet the challenges we face overseas."

Click image to see more photos. (Pedro Mendoza/AP)

The Secret Service announced Tuesday that two more agents connected to the embarrassing Cartagena, Colombia prostitution scandal had chosen to resign and that the agency was moving to fire a third.

The news came shortly after President Barack Obama, taping an appearance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," blamed the uproar on "a couple of knuckleheads" in an otherwise "incredible" agency.

Assistant Director Paul Morrissey from the Secret Service Office of Government and Public Affairs announced the latest personnel news in a written statement that also specified that two other agents had been cleared of serious wrongdoing and would face "administrative action." A U.S. government official familiar with the situation told Yahoo News that could mean anything from a verbal rebuke by a supervisor to a few days of leave.

"The Secret Service's investigation into allegations of misconduct by its employees in Cartagena, Colombia, continues," Morrissey said in the statement.

Click image to see more photos. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama on Tuesday praised the Secret Service agents who guard him as "incredible" and blamed "a couple of knuckleheads" for the Colombia prostitution scandal engulfing the agency.

Obama, taping an appearance on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," also said he had met presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney "but we're not friends."

"His wife is lovely," the president said, according to a written report from the print pool reporter with him, Dave Boyer of The Washington Times. Romney, Obama said, "seems like somebody who cares about his family."

Obama, who has said he will be "angry" if allegations of Secret Service agents cavorting with prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, turn out to be true, played down the scandal's potential impact.

"The Secret Service, these guys are incredible," the president said. "They protect me. They protect our girls. A couple of knuckleheads shouldn't detract from what they do. What they were thinking, I don't know. That's why they're not there anymore."

[Poll: Young people think Obama will win re-election]

Obama's taped appearance was to be broadcast in full when "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" airs at 12:35 a.m. Wednesday. The session was recorded on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.