Domestic items added to war-funding bills

Domestic items added to war-funding bills

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans have broken with President Bush to help Democrats add support for veterans and the unemployed to a bill paying for another year of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The 75-22 vote also added billions of dollars in other domestic funds such as heating subsidies for the poor and money for fighting wildfires to funding for military operations overseas.

Shortly afterward, the Senate voted 70-26 to approve $165 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, when Bush’s successor will set war policy. All told, the measure contains $212 billion over the coming two years, plus about $50 billion more through 2017 for veterans education benefits.

Fight over research lab

WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s oldest farm groups said Thursday a proposed foot-and-mouth disease research laboratory on the U.S. mainland, near livestock, could be an inviting target for terrorists. Commercial livestock representatives and the Bush administration insisted it would be safe to move an island lab to sites near animals.

Testimony at a House hearing showed deep divisions between farmers and ranchers over where to conduct research on the most infectious animal-only disease in the world. Such work now is confined to the 840-acre Plum Island, N.Y., off the northeastern tip of Long Island.

Foreclosure scam revealed

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Hundreds of homeowners facing foreclosure have fallen victim to scam artists who told them they could hang on to their properties by placing them in phony “land grants,” authorities said Thursday as they announced the breakup of the alleged scheme.

In a joint announcement, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, San Diego County prosecutors and the FBI said they had shut down Federal Land Grant Co., a San Diego-based business that allegedly persuaded hundreds of homeowners, most of whom did not speak English, to pay $10,000 each for the bogus protection from foreclosure.

The homeowners were falsely told that by transferring their land back to the federal government they could protect it from any lender’s claim.

Wildfires in Calif., Fla.

CORRALITOS, Calif. — Gusty winds fanned a wildfire Thursday that burned several homes, forced evacuations and closed schools in the mountains of central California, where rugged terrain frustrated efforts to get a handle on the fast-moving blaze.

Hundreds of people fled as the more than 4-square-mile fire continued to grow despite more than 500 firefighters and a swarm of tanker planes and helicopters dousing the area.

In Florida, a wildfire forced the evacuation of dozens of homes in the Deerhaven area north of Orlando. The blaze started Wednesday and has scorched more than 1,000 acres. It was 20 percent contained Thursday.

Sentenced for caging teen

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A former Ohio woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for keeping her 17-year-old adopted son caged in her home in Jacksonville, Fla.

Brenda Sullivan pleaded guilty in January to three counts of aggravated child abuse. Prosecutors agreed to drop lesser child-neglect charges. The teen weighed 49 pounds when child welfare workers found him in 2005 in what appeared to be a cage.

Sullivan lived in Akron, Ohio, before moving her family to Florida, and had previously told a judge that Ohio authorities told her to keep the boy, who had severe medical and emotional problems, in a crib. Two other children, 13-year-old twins the Sullivans adopted as infants, both testified they were kept in similar cages.

’Copter strike kills 8

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A U.S. helicopter strike north of Baghdad killed eight people in a vehicle, including at least two children, Iraqi officials said Thursday, insisting all the dead were civilians. The U.S. military said six were al-Qaida militants but acknowledged children were killed.

AP Television News footage showed the bodies of three children in blood-drenched clothes — the eldest appearing to be in his early teens — along with the bodies of five men, at the hospital in Beiji, where the dead were taken after Wednesday evening’s strike.

Iraqi and U.S. officials each put the number of slain children at two. The reason for the discrepancies between the two accounts and the TV footage was not known.

Combined dispatches