Nation/world briefs

House Republicans have modified a bill that would restrict abortions to include exceptions for rape and incest after the GOP sponsor of the legislation raised a firestorm by declaring that very few rapes result in pregnancies. The legislation, which challenges the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision on a woman's right to abortion, would ban almost all abortions after a fetus reaches the age of 20 weeks. It is scheduled to come up for a vote in the full House next week.

President Obama handed plum posts to key campaign boosters. Here's a look at his picks:

Denmark: Rufus Gifford raised upward of $700 million as the head of Obama's 2012 finance operation.

Spain: James Costos is an HBO vice president.

Germany: John Emerson is an investment manager and former White House official.

Vatican: Ken Hackett stepped down last year as the president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services.

Ethiopia: Patricia Marie Haslach, a veteran diplomat who has worked in Iraq, Pakistan and Laos.

A military judge rejected a new defense strategy by accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The judge, Col. Tara Osborn, said that she would not allow Hasan to argue that he shot Fort Hood soldiers to protect Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, as he had proposed. She said the "defense of others" strategy "failed as a matter of law." Hasan, 42, an Army psychiatrist, proposed his new defense after successfully petitioning the judge to allow him to defend himself.

Nine agents from South Korea's National Intelligence Service wrote more than 5,000 posts on the Internet in a psychological warfare campaign against North Korea since 2009, using some of them to attack domestic opposition parties and their candidates ahead of South Korea's presidential election last December, state prosecutors said. Won Sei-hoon, the former director of the intelligence agency, faces trial on charges of breaking the national election law and of violating a separate law that prohibits government intelligence officials from meddling in domestic politics.