Mark Memmott

Without directly saying so, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert all-but-confirmed last night that he was off the air for two days last week because his 91-year-old mother Lorna has been ill.

Former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who famously faced a sexual assault charge in New York City last year — a charge that was later dropped — is now being questioned by police in France about whether he was a customer of an alleged multinational prostitution ring.

His attorney, though, says Strauss-Kahn has a defense.

The top of the news today about the ongoing financial crisis in Europe is that:

"Greece won a second massive financial bailout early Tuesday morning when its partners in the 17-country eurozone finally stitched together a $170 billion rescue, meant to avoid a potentially disastrous default and secure the euro currency." (The Associated Press)

The $25 billion settlement with five banks unveiled Thursday, which aims to give some mortgage relief and other help to homeowners who got hurt when the housing bubble burst before the 2007-2009 recession, has been viewed with skepticism by some folks in the nation's hardest-hit housing markets, as NPR's Greg Allen reported.

Reports are popping up on various newssites that, as The Associated Press puts it, "President Barack Obama will announce a plan to accommodate religious employers outraged by a rule that would require them to cover birth control for women free of charge, according to a person familiar with the decision."

The social worker who watched in horror last Sunday as a Washington state man blew up the house that his two young sons had gone into moments before says he had never before seemed dangerous.

But she knows now, Elizabeth Griffin-Hall tells ABC News, that "Josh Powell was really, really evil."

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- 'Situation Could Not Be More Dire,' Syrians In Besieged City Say.

-- Rep. Bachus Is Focus Of Ethics Investigation Into Possible Insider Trading.

On CNN last evening, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was asked about the Pentagon's plan to open up more jobs to women in the military — and to bring them closer to, but not right into, combat roles.

The Washington Post broke this story last evening:

"The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee over possible violations of insider-trading laws, according to individuals familiar with the case.

From inside the Syrian city of Homs, where activists say several hundred people have been killed by government forces in the past week and troops are preparing for what could be a "ground offensive" in coming days, residents say the "situation could not be more dire," NPR's Kelly McEvers reports.