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These 2 are rare anywhere Zookeeper Nadja Radovic holds two 12-day-old white lion cubs Wednesday in Belgrade Zoo, Serbia. The two examples of an extremely rare subspecies of the African lion were born in the zoo. White lions are unique to the Timbavati area of South Africa and are not albinos, but a genetic rarity.
AP PHOTO
WASHINGTON
Senate OKs stopgap funds
Up against a midnight deadline to avoid a government shutdown, the Senate passed legislation Wednesday that temporarily would extend spending on most federal programs at current levels while raising Congress’ budget by 6 percent.
The measure, approved by a 62-38 vote that sends it to President Obama’s desk, would keep the government open for one more month. Obama is virtually certain to sign it before day’s end.
The stopgap measure is needed because Congress has failed to complete work on the 11 remaining spending bills for agency budgets.
The community activist group ACORN was in line for another hit as Democrats added language saying the organization could not receive federal dollars under the stopgap measure or any prior legislation.
KENYA
2,600 lbs. of ivory seized
Authorities in Ethiopia and Kenya have seized more than 2,600 pounds of bloodstained ivory from about 100 illegally killed elephants at airports, the head of Kenya’s Wildlife Service said Wednesday.
Julius Kipng’etich said trained dogs sniffed out a consignment of bloodstained tusks at Kenya’s national airport late Tuesday. Another shipment of tusks sent by the same individual had been seized Monday at the airport in Ethiopia’s capital.
Both shipments were sent as unaccompanied luggage to Bangkok. Police have launched an investigation and wildlife officials said they will continue to patrol the airport with dogs.
FORT DIX, N.J.
Army name shelved
After 92 years, Fort Dix is being merged with the neighboring McGuire Air Force Base and Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station to make the military’s first three-branch base, a 65-square-mile behemoth stretching through farmland and forests and given the clunky moniker Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
As of today, the Fort Dix name will be gone and the Army will be reduced to a tenant on the land.
The merger was a compromise from the 2005 round of military base closures and realignments. The three continue to exist and with essentially the same functions: training and mobilization for the Army, logistics and transport for the Air Force, designing and testing aircraft components for the Navy.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
Baby taken, mom stabbed
A newborn snatched from a Nashville home was missing and his mother recovering from stab wounds that she said happened when she struggled with the woman kidnapper posing as an immigration agent, authorities said Wednesday.
The mother, 30-year-old Maria Gurrolla, told reporters she had never seen the woman before she showed up at her door Tuesday evening. She said the woman got a knife from the home and stabbed her several times.
Gurrolla said she did not see the woman take the baby because she ran to a neighbor’s home to get help. When she returned, her 3-year-old daughter was unharmed, but her son was gone.