The News in 2 Minutes

From The Associated Press

AZ Senate whip says collision near on budget

PHOENIX—Arizona legislators resumed bipartisan budget talks for the first time in more than a month Thursday, but Senate Majority Whip John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, later predicted “one hell of a collision” if Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano doesn’t change course.

The state faces a projected $2 billion revenue shortfall in the $10 billion budget expected to be written for the 2008-2009 fiscal year that begins July 1.

Many majority Republican legislators are at odds with Napolitano over her call to finance school construction costs to help avoid cuts to education and other spending priorities. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers are resisting borrowing and pushing for deeper and broader spending cuts.

Legislators and Napolitano already have erased a $1.2 billion shortfall in the current budget year, largely by spending most of the state’s rainy day fund, taking money from special-purpose funds, cutting some spending and temporarily delaying some school funding.

Texas high court says sect kids should go home

SAN ANTONIO—In a crushing blow to the state’s massive seizure of children from a polygamist sect’s ranch, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that child welfare officials overstepped their authority and the children should go back to their parents.

The high court affirmed a decision by an appellate court last week, saying Child Protective Services failed to show an immediate danger to the more than 400 children swept up from the Yearning For Zion Ranch nearly two months ago.

“The high court let stand the appellate court’s order that Texas District Judge Barbara Walther return the children from foster care to their parents. It’s not clear how soon that may happen.

Stonehenge was a burial site for centuries, study says

WASHINGTON, D.C.—England’s enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates.

Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday.

And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

“It’s now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages,” said Mike Parker Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield in England and head of the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project.

Soldier suicides hit highest rate—115 last year

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on.

At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday.

Nearly a third of them died at the battlefront, 32 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. But 26 percent had never deployed to either conflict.

Army reviewing complaints over bullets

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—The military is reviewing soldiers’ complaints that their standard ammunition isn’t powerful enough for the type of fighting required in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army’s highest-ranking officer said Thursday.

But Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said it was too soon to say whether the Pentagon will switch.

Current and former soldiers interviewed by The Associated Press said the military’s M855 rifle rounds are not powerful enough for close-in fighting in cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McClellan says he believed in Bush as war started

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended his book about the Bush administration on Thursday, saying he didn’t speak up against the overselling of war in Iraq at the time because he, like other Americans, gave the president the benefit of the doubt.

“My beliefs were different then. I believed the president when he talked about the grave and gathering danger from Iraq,” McClellan, who was deputy press secretary during the lead-up to the war, told NBC’s “Today” show.

McClellan, who had worked for Bush since he was Texas governor, said his initial misgivings about a rush to war were offset by his affection for the president and respect for his foreign policy team. It was easy to believe Bush, he said, because the president wasn’t consciously trying to inflate the threat of Iraq unleashing weapons of mass destruction.

“He came to convince himself of that,” McClellan said of Bush.