Congress passes spending legislation

Congress passes spending legislation

WASHINGTON

Congress has approved a bill keeping the government open through Dec. 7, as lawmakers move to avert a government shutdown looming next week.

The $854 billion bill also funds the military and a host of civilian agencies for the next year.

The House approved the bill, 361-61, on Wednesday, a week after the Senate approved it, 93-7.

The measure now goes to President Donald Trump, who said he will sign it. Trump’s signature would avert a partial government shutdown set to begin Monday, weeks ahead of the Nov. 6 elections that will determine control of Congress.

Man with long immigration record charged in killings

LOS ANGELES

A man with a violent criminal history who was deported six times had no outstanding warrants when questioned last month about the disappearance of his aunt, and so he was released, Houston police said Wednesday, when the man was charged in Los Angeles with the beating deaths of three sleeping homeless men.

Immigration records are generally not public, so it remained a mystery how Ramon Escobar, 47, won an appeal in immigration court in 2016 and why he remained free after a subsequent arrest for assault.

The Aug. 30 encounter by Escobar with Houston police came two days after his aunt vanished and marked his last brush with the law before his arrest in California this week.

80,000 died from flu last winter in US

NEW YORK

An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter – the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview with The Associated Press.

Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found the size of the estimate surprising.

“That’s huge,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials previously considered a bad year, he said.

Guilty plea in molestation case

MARION, Ind.

A northeastern Indiana woman has admitted to charges that she allowed her boyfriend to molest her daughter, leaving the child pregnant at age 10.

The 33-year-old Marion woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of neglect, aiding child molesting and assisting a criminal. She agreed to accept a sentence of 20 years in prison and five years of probation.

The woman admitted during Tuesday’s hearing that her daughter told her that the boyfriend, 34-year-old Nicholas Deon Thrash, was molesting her, yet continued to let him live with them, the Chronicle Tribune reported. The woman did not report the molestation or her daughter’s pregnancy to authorities.

Man who tortured, drowned ex-roomate executed in Texas

HUNTSVILLE, Texas

A Texas inmate who taunted a jury to sentence him to death was executed Wednesday evening for torturing and drowning an East Texas woman in his bathtub and then stuffing her body into a barrel.

Troy Clark was condemned for the May 1998 slaying of a former roommate, Christina Muse of Tyler. Authorities said that Clark, a drug dealer, had worried that Muse would snitch on him.

Associated Press