The News in 2 Minutes

From The Associated Press

House, Senate Democrats near deal on budget

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Democratic budget writers are closing in on a compromise $2.9 trillion  blueprint with big spending increases for military and domestic programs and a balanced federal ledger promised in five years.

The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Budget committees have been negotiating for weeks in anticipation of a mid-May deadline.

Approving a House-Senate compromise budget is a prerequisite for the orderly consideration of 13 spending bills this summer for the government’s 2008 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

Democrats promise to get the annual appropriations process back on track after Republicans failed in 2006 to pass a budget and left most of the spending bills for the current year undone.

For 2008, Democrats would award a huge $50 billion spending increase to the Pentagon’s “core” budget—the $481 billion  not directly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also are on track to boost domestic agencies’ spending by a less generous $20 billion, likely prompting a fight this fall with President Bush, who would want to spend less.

House Republicans are poised to force a vote Monday on accepting the Senate’s position on taxes.

First West Nile-positive mosquitoes confirmed

MESA, Ariz. — The state’s first West Nile-positive mosquitoes of the year have been confirmed in a batch from Clarkdale in Yavapai County, health officials said.

“We’ve had some pretty heavy rains. That’s creating backyard breeding,” said Craig Levy, head of the state Department of Health Service’s vector-borne and zoonotic diseases section. “That’s probably why we’re noticing mosquitoes a little earlier than usual.”

Revised immigration rules could admit terrorists

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today’s foreign terrorists could become tomorrow’s U.S. refugees if the Bush administration gets its way.

The intent is to grant refugee status to rebels who have fought repressive governments or advanced U.S. foreign policy objectives, particularly in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

But proposed changes to immigration rules also could cover U.S. enemies such as al-Qaida members and fighters for Hamas and Hezbollah.

Officials say the changes are meant to reverse the unintended consequences of post-Sept. 11 restrictions that have kept thousands of otherwise eligible people from a haven in the U.S.

Lawmakers, however, are skeptical of the need for such expansive changes.

“The provision in this bill would extend the waiver authority in current law to groups that are definitely not friends of the United States,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who is leading an effort to revise the amendment.

Acting on behalf of a bipartisan group, Kyl in late March blocked the amendment from appearing in the Iraq war spending bill that President Bush vetoed on Tuesday.

Kyl’s office is working on wording that would cut out what he called the bill’s “excesses.”

Canada introduces world’s heaviest coin

OTTAWA —Got change for a million? Canada does: the world’s biggest pure gold coin at 220 pounds.

The Royal Canadian mint made the coins—20 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick— mostly to seize the bragging rights from Austria, which had the record with a 70-pound, 15-inch wide 100,000-euro coin.

“They’re not doing this because there is huge demand for the gold coins,” Bret Evans, editor of Canadian Coin News said Saturday. “They’re doing it because it gives them some bragging rights in having the largest purest gold coin in the world.”