Senate GOP readies overdue spending bills

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans put finishing touches Thursday on a $385 billion package of overdue spending bills that would cut education, Amtrak and other programs by nearly $10 billion from levels approved last year when Democrats were in charge.

Incoming Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, planned for his panel to vote on the legislation as early as Monday.

Eager to move onto next year's budget, Republicans controlling the House and Senate are hoping to quickly complete the 11 bills within limits that President Bush has set to underline GOP devotion to fiscal discipline.

"These bills are vital to really start ... our economic engine," Stevens said on the Senate floor.

Democrats say the new package would shortchange schools, domestic security and other programs by billions of dollars. That presages a lengthy battle -- and possibly a rising price tag -- when the measure reaches the full Senate, and later when House-Senate bargainers craft a compromise.

Post office beginning rate increase process

WASHINGTON -- The post office is beginning the process of seeking a rate increase even as it awaits congressional action that would make the step unnecessary.

The internal process of preparing for a new rate case has started, postal vice president Azeezaly Jaffer confirmed Thursday. The amount of any increase won't be determined until that analysis is completed.

Last fall, a financial review discovered that the Postal Service had paid too much into a retirement program for workers who joined the agency before 1983.

Correcting that error could permit the post office to cut its payments into the system by $2.9 billion in 2003 and $2.6 billion in 2004. Postmaster General John E. Potter said that money could allow the next rate increase to be delayed until 2006.

Teen charged in death caused by ice throwing BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- A teenager was charged with homicide for allegedly throwing a basketball-size chunk of ice from a bridge, killing a 33-year-old passenger in a minivan.

Dennis Gumbs, 15, of Allentown, also was charged Wednesday with propelling an instrument into a vehicle on a roadway and four counts of reckless endangerment, state police said. He was held in the Lehigh County Prison and prosecutors want to try him as an adult.

Gumbs' attorney, Rebeca Torres, expressed sympathy for the family of the woman who was killed. Torres declined to comment on specifics of the case but said the boy's parents were "devastated that he is even charged with these offenses."

Elaine C. Cowell of Mohrsville was returning from a ski trip with her husband and three children Friday when the 18-pound chunk of ice smashed through their van's windshield, authorities said.

Woman sought in child abuse case captured

NEWARK, N.J. -- A go-go dancer who was supposed to be caring for three young brothers found dead or starving in a locked basement was captured after a four-day manhunt Thursday when a stranger turned her in.

Authorities had been looking as far as North Carolina for Sherry Murphy since Saturday, when two of the brothers were found emaciated and starving in her home. The next day, authorities discovered the body of the third brother stuffed into a purple plastic storage bin.

The case has touched off a furor over New Jersey's child welfare system, which had investigated complaints about the family but closed the case last year.

Murphy, 41, was arrested on child endangerment charges.

The man who turned her in had seen her crying at a phone booth near a go-go bar and offered her a place to stay after she told him she had just arrived from the South with nowhere to go, Mayor Sharpe James said. Jean Claude Dessources later recognized Murphy from news reports.

--From wire reports