Hasta La Creative!

The White House invited weather broadcasters to interview President Obama and, the administration hoped, to spread the word in a landmark report.

Antiracism groups said that a Belgian newspaper’s images depicting the president and his wife as apes pointed to a normalization of hateful political speech in Europe.

The president’s interview on “Between Two Ferns,” an online parody of celebrity interview shows, is an attempt to get young people to sign up for health insurance on the government’s website.

The State of the Union speech was seen by 33.3 million viewers, a slight dip from last year’s 33.5 million, but far off President Obama’s 2009 speech.

As he has each year of his presidency, Mr. Obama made himself available to the news department affiliated with the network covering the Super Bowl.

The White House has systematically tried to bypass the media by releasing a sanitized visual record of Mr. Obama’s activities, denying photojournalists access.

Photographers who cover President Obama are angry over what they say is the White House’s increasing practice of excluding them from events and then releasing its own photos or video.

As the Obama administration prepares to put the health care law in place, it faces an aggressive Republican campaign to prevent its success.

A National Security Agency program took e-mails and other information from companies that included Google, Apple and Facebook, according to documents that emerged on Thursday. A government official said the program targeted only foreigners abroad.

President Obama asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to scrutinize Justice Department investigations and said he was “troubled” that such inquiries could hinder reporters.