House passes defense policy bill

House passes defense policy bill

WASHINGTON

The House defied a veto threat from President Barack Obama on Friday and approved a $612 billion defense policy bill that Democrats complain busts budget limits on military spending and makes it harder for the president to close the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The vote was 269 to 151 for the legislation, a blueprint for next year’s spending on military and other national-security programs.

While Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill, 41 Democrats disregarded Obama’s objections and joined the GOP lawmakers in passing it. Another 143 Democrats voted against it.

Penn State says it was victim of hack

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.

Penn State University was the victim of a cyber-attack in which hackers stole usernames and passwords issued by the College of Engineering, prompting the school to begin notifying 18,000 people whose Social Security numbers or other personal information were stored on the targeted computers.

There’s no evidence any of that personal information was stolen in the attacks, Penn State said Friday, and investigators found that only a small number of the stolen College of Engineering accounts were used by the attackers to access the network.

The FBI notified Penn State of the hacking in November, but the school kept quiet for months while it investigated the breach and took steps to prevent a recurrence.

Man who shot at Zimmerman arrested, charged

LAKE MARY, Fla.

A man who shot at George Zimmerman during a confrontation earlier this week along a busy central Florida road has been arrested.

Matthew Apperson was charged Friday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and firing a missile into an occupied conveyance, Lake Mary police reported in a news release. Apperson turned himself in at the police department Friday evening.

Zimmerman’s attorney, Don West, has said the former neighborhood-watch volunteer recently had moved to another state but came back to the Orlando suburb of Lake Mary for Mother’s Day. He was driving to a doctor’s appointment Monday when Apperson intentionally fired his gun into Zimmerman’s truck without provocation, detectives said.

1,000 survivors of violence, hunger at sea land in Asia

LANGSA, Indonesia

More than 1,000 people fleeing persecution in Myanmar and poverty in Bangladesh came ashore around Southeast Asia, describing killings, extortion and near-starvation after surviving a harrowing journey at sea.

An increasingly alarmed United Nations warned against “floating coffins” and urged regional leaders to put human lives first. The United States urged govern- ments not to push back new boat arrivals.

The waves of weak, hungry and dehydrated migrants who arrived Friday were the latest to slip into countries that have made it clear they’re not welcome. But thousands more are still believed stranded at sea in what has become a humanitarian crisis no one in the region is rushing to solve.

Associated Press