No federal budget

No federal budget

WASHINGTON

A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job — approving a budget for the government year that begins Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until after the Nov. 2 elections. With their House and Senate majorities on the line, Democratic leaders called off votes and even debates on all controversial matters.

Bomber still alive

WASHINGTON

Scotland’s prognosis that the Lockerbie bomber had three months to live was not justified, medical experts told Congress on Wednesday, and a senator questioned whether the process was deliberately manipulated to pave the way for the bomber’s release from prison last year. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi served eight years of a life sentence for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed all 259 people on board, most of them Americans, and 11 people on the ground. Suffering from advanced prostate cancer, al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds in August 2009 by Scotland’s government. He returned to Libya, outraging people on both sides of the Atlantic. He still is alive.

Is it another Earth?

WASHINGTON

Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: not too hot, not too cold. Just right. Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.

Bus crash kills driver

BETHESDA, Md.

Kids and their parents who spent Wednesday sightseeing in the nation’s capital were headed home to Pennsylvania when their bus plunged off a highway and rolled, killing the driver and injuring at least a dozen, authorities said. The Pennsylvania-based Wolf’s Bus Lines Inc. bus careened some 45 feet off a skyramp of the Capital Beltway and stopped below along Interstate 270 in Bethesda, a suburb of Washington, D.C., police said. Driver Joseph A. Clabaugh Jr., 66, of Hanover, Pa., was killed.

Raids nab suspects

MEXICO CITY

Mexican marines captured 30 suspected Gulf cartel members and seized an arsenal of weapons during two days of raids in a northern border state torn by drug gang battles, officials announced Wednesday.

Associated Press