NSA talks — Struggling to salvage a massive surveillance program, President Barack Obama faced congressional critics of the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ telephone records Thursday as snowballing concerns made new limitations on the intelligence effort appear increasingly likely. The lawmakers departed the rainy White House grounds without speaking to reporters. But in interviews later, they said there was a consensus that the surveillance efforts are suffering from perception problems that have undercut trust among the American people.

Anti-abortion push — A push to ban abortion at 20 weeks after conception, on the theory that the fetus can feel pain at that point, has emerged as a potent new tactic of the anti-abortion movement. Advocates saw the potential of such a measure because it taps into public concern about late-stage abortions, appears to alter the rules only incrementally and claims to be rooted in science. In the three states where such bans have been legally challenged, the courts blocked them. But proponents of 20-week bans hope that one of the cases will be accepted by the Supreme Court.

Syrian explosion — Opposition rebels attacked a weapons depot with rockets, setting off a potent series of explosions that killed at least 40 people in the Syrian city of Homs, according to opposition members. Among the dead were government soldiers and civilians. An additional 120 were injured, many of them critically, after the rebels launched rockets into the Wadi Thahab neighborhood and two other districts inhabited mostly by Alawites, members of President Bashar Assad’s minority sect, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group.

Egypt protests — Egypt’s military-backed government offered protection Thursday to supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi who end their two sit-ins — widely seen as a first step toward dispersing the vigils on opposite sides of Cairo. But the protesters responded defiantly: “Over our dead bodies!” International pressure grew for the interim government to release Morsi and create a process that includes his Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest political faction, which refuses to deal with the new authorities.

Iran sanctions — Iran reacted angrily Thursday to the approval of harsh legislation on sanctions by the House of Representatives, saying the action would further complicate stalled negotiations aimed at resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program. A Foreign Ministry spokesman decried the passage of the measure four days before the inauguration of a new Iranian president who has expressed his intent to improve relations with the United States.

Zimbabwe vote — Morgan Tsvangirai, the challenger to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, asserted Thursday that the country’s presidential election had been a “huge farce” and called on international observers to investigate what he described as widespread irregularities. Senior leaders of Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, meanwhile, said they expected a huge victory, retaining the presidency and recapturing a majority of the Parliament.

Berlusconi sentence — For years, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi navigated the labyrinth of Italian justice, always finding an exit — until Thursday, when Italy’s highest court handed him his first definitive sentence, upholding a prison term for tax fraud and sending Italy’s fragile government on the road to crisis. The court called for a re-examination of a ban on Berlusconi’s holding public office but did not reject the ban.