WASHINGTON — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is poised to trim the number of civilian furlough days from 14 to 11 or fewer as it tries to find ways to deal with mandatory spending cuts, and is likely to let the military services expand the types of workers that will be exempt from the unpaid day off requirements, military officials say.Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to announce a decision on the hotly contested issue as early as today, and officials said the final decision continues to be refined.Congressionally mandated automatic budget cuts initially forced the Pentagon to warn that the bulk of its 800,000 civilians would be forced to take 22 unpaid days off — one in each of the last 22 weeks of the fiscal year. When lawmakers approved a new spending bill at the end of March they gave the Pentagon greater latitude to find savings, and the furlough days were cut to 14.

NEW YORK — The country's four biggest cell phone companies are set to launch their first joint advertising campaign against texting while driving, uniting behind AT&T's “It Can Wait” slogan to blanket TV and radio this summer.AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile will be joined by 200 other organizations backing the multimillion dollar effort.