The White House plans to announce today a compromise on the mandate that faith organizations cover birth-control services for their employees, according to The Washington Post, citing a senior administration official.

The official said that the White House is still determined that contraception will be available to women free.

NPR reports that the rule changes little, only that contraception would be available free. “The only truly novel part of the plan is the ‘no cost’ bit,” writes NPR’s Julie Rovner. Under the new rule, women would not have to pay a deductible or co-payment to receive prescription contraceptives.

Republicans have vowed to overturn the rule, which, has also been dividing the president’s own party, according to Bloomberg. The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have been preparing for battle over the issue for months, says The New York Times.

Sen. Claire…

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Karen Handel, who stepped down from Susan G. Komen for the Cure this week over the charity’s controversial split with Planned Parenthood, says the two organizations had a “ladies’ agreement” not to discuss the cancer charity’s withdrawal of support, says the Daily Beast.

Ms. Handel, the former senior vice president for policy, called Planned Parenthood a “gigantic bully,” saying it used Komen as its “own personal punching bag.”

She acknowledged her part in the decision but says it was not politically motivated.

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood said that “anti-choice outlets” first broke the news and that Komen followed up by making an announcement to hundreds of leaders of both charities. The media picked it up from there, she said.

A nonprofit group that organized summertime U.S. visits for foreign students has been barred from a State Department cultural-exchange program for two years for placing participants in low-wage jobs at a candy-packaging plant, says The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Cetusa, based in California, supplied some 400 workers to a Hershey plant in Palmyra, Pa., last year using an element of the J-1 visa program designed to let foreign students earn money in America while traveling and practicing their English.

Cetusa participants, many from Turkey and Ukraine, staged a protest in Hershey, Pa., in August saying they were forced to work long hours for low pay, leaving little time or money for them to travel or get to know Americans. The State Department is reviewing the organization’s work in other exchange programs and is expected to announce new restrictions on what jobs J-1 students can hold …

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An aid charity’s Bronx charter school that is targeting the area’s most challenged students is having trouble attracting applications, according to The New York Times.

Set to open this fall, the Children’s Aid College Prep Charter School—the first full-fledged academic institution developed by the Children’s Aid Society—is offering priority admissions to children who come from homeless or low-income families, suffer from disabilities, or are learning English.

With two months to go until the lottery to determine charter placements, Children’s Aid officials said they are not receiving enough applications for the school, which was announced in September. They said use of the word “weighted” in describing the school’s special lottery turned parents off and has been replaced by “preferences.”

“Reaction in the community was not great,” said Drema Brown, the charity’s vice…

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The University of Pittsburgh has received $22-million from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to further studies in energy technology and sustainability, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes.

The three-year gift will pay for faculty and graduate fellowships, equipment, and operational costs at Pitt’s Center for Energy and will supply a fund to encourage innovative research, the university said in announcing the pledge Thursday.

The center, established in 2008, studies energy delivery and efficiency, carbon management, and energy diversification. The school said the Mellon donation is one of the largest foundation gifts in its history but did not provide details.

In other education news, the founder of the firm behind Blackberry mobile devices has pledged $21-million to support the math and science departments at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, the Canadian Press reports.
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Led by House Speaker John Boehner, congressional Republicans said Wednesday that they would seek to reverse the Obama administration’s policy requiring religiously affiliated nonprofit groups to cover birth-control services for employees, the Associated Press reports.

The White House reaffirmed support for the rule, which it has characterized as part of broader efforts to focus on preventative care in the new health-care law, while signaling it was still seeking a compromise on the issue.

The administration and congressional Democrats have focused on contraceptive services as a women’s health issue, while Republicans and religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church, frame the rule as an effort to force faith groups to pay for care that violates their religious teaching.

The birth-control debate, along with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure/Planned Parenthood flap and a…

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Egypt’s prime minister reiterated on Wednesday his government’s intention to prosecute some 40 employees of international nonprofit organizations despite U.S. warnings that the case could imperil American military aid, says The Washington Post.

“The West turned against us because Egypt exercised its rights,” Kamal el-Ganzouri said at a news conference, referring to the probe of democracy-building groups Cairo accuses of operating without official sanction and meddling in Egyptian politics.

At another news conference Wednesday an investigative judge involved in the case detailed the charges, saying the suspects could face up to five years in prison and that more nonprofit groups could be raided in the coming days.

Cairo says 19 American employees of four U.S.-funded organizations, including the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, are among…

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The Huffington Post has surveyed corporate donors on whether they plan to keep supporting Susan G. Komen for the Cure despite the controversy over its relationship with Planned Parenthood. Of the 35 companies that responded to the survey, nearly all said they would continue the relationship, though some expressed concern that the charity had taken a political stand.

In other Komen news, Reuters analyzed the charity’s financial statements and found that the charity spends about half as much proportionally on research into the causes and treatment of breast cancer as it did four years ago.

The foundation has increased its spending on science in absolute dollar terms, but at a far lower rate than the growth in its revenue, the news service found.

In the year ending March 31, Komen spent $63-million on research, about 15 percent of its overall expenditure, down from 17 percent…

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Purveyors of soda and other sugary drinks are taking an increasingly public role in major medical groups’ campaigns on obesity, heart disease, and other issues, raising ire in some quarters of the health sector, the Chicago Tribune writes.

Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and other food and beverage makers have joined with professional and advocacy groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Cancer Society on numerous nutrition and health efforts, with their logos and slogans often appearing on campaign Web sites.

Organizations working with the firms say collaborating with the industry and taking advantage of its broad reach and marketing skills are essential to tackling complex health problems such as childhood obesity and to persuading the companies to offer healthier products.

Critics contend that working with companies whose main business is selling products widely…

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A late Canadian communications mogul’s charity has donated $30-million to McMaster University to pursue research and treatment involving stem cells, according to the CBC.

The Ontario university will use $24-million of the gift from the Marta and Owen Boris Foundation to establish a center to speed commercial development of discoveries made by the school’s well-regarded Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute.

The remaining $6-million will finance a new clinic where patients with complex health problems can see multiple specialists in one visit.

Owen Boris was the founder of telecommunications firm Mountain Cablevision. He died in April 2011.