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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half of privately insured women are getting free birth control under President Barack Obama's health law, a major coverage shift that's likely to advance.
• This week the Supreme Court allowed some employers with religious scruples to opt out, but most companies appear to be going in the opposite direction.
• Recent data from the IMS Institute document a sharp change during 2013. The share of privately insured women who got their birth control pills without a copayment jumped to 56 percent, from 14 percent in 2012. The law's requirement that most health plans cover birth control as prevention, at no additional cost to women, took full effect in 2013.
• The average annual saving for women was $269. "It's a big number," said institute director Michael Kleinrock. The institute is the research arm of IMS Health, a Connecticut-based technology company that uses pharmacy records to track prescription drug sales.
• The core of Obama's law -- taxpayer-subsidized coverage for the uninsured -- benefits a relatively small share of Americans. But free preventive care-- from flu shots to colonoscopies --is a dividend of sorts for the majority with employer coverage.
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• BAGHDAD (AP) -- A spokesman for Iraqi counterterrorism forces says government airstrikes have targeted a group of Sunni militants trying to overrun the country's largest oil refinery, and claims as many as 30 insurgents were killed.
• Sabah al-Nuaman says a government plane targeted around eight vehicles attacking military forces defending the Beiji oil refinery north of Baghdad early Friday. Fighters from the Islamic State extremist group have been trying to capture the Beiji facility from some two weeks.
• Al-Nuaman also says a helicopter gunship hit a house in the town of Qaim near the Syrian border where a gathering of the jihadi group's local leaders was taking place. He says there were several casualties, but did not have a concrete figure.

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