WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A key witness in the federal perjury trial of former baseball ace Roger Clemens could testify early next week, a prosecutor said on Thursday, setting the stage for a potential courtroom confrontation.

Brian McNamee, Clemens’ former personal trainer, could testify “before Tuesday,” prosecutor Steven Durham told U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton.

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) – New York Yankees pitcher Andy
Pettitte testified on Wednesday in Roger Clemens’ federal
perjury trial that there was a 50-50 chance he had misheard his
friend and former teammate say he used human growth hormone.

In a second day of cross-examination by the defense,
Pettitte said he might have misunderstood Clemens when the ace
pitcher told him in 1999 or 2000 that he had used human growth
hormone to recover from injury.

WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) – New York Yankees pitcher Andy
Pettitte, a key witness against former teammate Roger Clemens in
his perjury trial for alleged use of performance-enhancing
drugs, testified on Tuesday that Clemens had been his longtime
friend and mentor.

Pettitte is one of the most anticipated witnesses in trial
of Clemens, charged with lying to Congress in 2008. Both Yankee
aces had worked with the same personal trainer, Brian McNamee,
another important figure in the case.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte took the witness stand on Tuesday to testify against former teammate Roger Clemens, charged with lying to Congress about his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs.

Pettitte, one of the most anticipated witnesses in the federal perjury trial, was a longtime friend of Clemens and used the same personal trainer, Brian McNamee.

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – A lawyer for former
baseball ace Roger Clemens derided as a “show trial” on Monday
the Capitol Hill hearing during which the onetime pitcher was
pressed by lawmakers about performance-enhancing drugs.

At the federal perjury trial of Clemens, attorney Rusty
Hardin argued that a report on drug use by former U.S. Senator
George Mitchell for Major League Baseball was for a private
business investigating its own employees and not a matter for
Congress.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Robert Caro has spent almost 40 years writing his monumental prize-winning biography of President Lyndon Johnson, but says it is not the 1960s leader that held his fascination for so long, but how political power works in America.

With the long-awaited fourth volume of his Johnson biography “The Passage of Power” due out on Tuesday, Caro said he never wanted to write just about the life of the president who rammed through civil rights and welfare laws that transformed the nation but then was destroyed by the Vietnam War.

WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) – An Obama administration
proposal to restrict child labor on farms has been withdrawn
after criticism from agricultural groups.

The rules, which were supported by child labor advocates,
would have banned children younger than 16 from using most
power-driven farm equipment, including tractors, if they had not
taken a training course.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – German analysts who have studied photos of six new North Korean missiles unveiled at a military parade in Pyongyang this month have concluded that they were low-quality fakes.

German missile engineers Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker of Schmucker Technologie said their findings cast doubt on the impoverished Communist state’s claims of military strength.

ARLINGTON, Va, April 25 (Reuters) – A federal hearing began
on Wednesday on whether to bar two CVS Caremark Corp
drugstores in Florida from selling potentially addictive
painkillers as part of a government crackdown on prescription
pain pills, especially oxycodone.

The CVS drugstores, both in Sanford, ranked 23rd and 37th
respectively among the thousands of U.S. pharmacies for
distribution of oxycodone, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
district supervisor Gayle Lane told the court.

WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) – Roger Clemens’ lawyer
rejected federal charges of perjury against the former pitching
star, saying on Tuesday Clemens is opposed to steroid use and
simply told the truth in denying he had used them.

“You are sitting in judgment to decide whether it is a crime
to deny a crime,” attorney Rusty Hardin told jurors in his
opening statement at the trial of Clemens, who is charged with
lying to Congress in testimony concerning performance-enhancing
drugs.