USA

President Bush will ask Congress for just under $200 billion this week to pay for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported. Citing Pentagon sources, the newspaper said the request, if passed, would make next year the most expensive so far and – in Iraq costs alone – would put it over the $600 billion mark.

Security for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to be reinforced by city and state police in New York Monday amid growing protests over his scheduled appearance at Columbia University. School officials said they would not cancel the question-and-answer forum with students despite complaints by political and religious leaders and the public that the hard-line leader does not deserve a platform. His request to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site was rejected last week.

Negotiators for General Motors and the United Auto Workers Union were to resume bargaining on a new contract Sunday, amid reports that they were near a settlement on the key issue: the automaker's obligation to pay healthcare costs for more than 500,000 retirees and their spouses. GM reportedly wants the union to set up and run a trust fund into which the company would pay a still-unspecified sum to take the liability off its books.

A neo-Nazi website is being "reviewed" by the FBI to determine whether it breaks any laws, a bureau spokeswoman confirmed over the weekend.A posting on the site late last week listed the home addresses and phone numbers of the black teenagers accused of beating a white student in rural Jena, La., and encouraged users to "get in touch and let them know justice is coming." The Rev. Jesse Jackson has called for federal protection for the youths and their families.

With federal funding far short of the projected cost of construction, the state of Alaska officially dropped plans to build the controversial "bridge to nowhere." The span, ridiculed by critics as a symbol of pork-barrel spending, would have cost close to $400 million and would have linked the town of Ketchikan to its airport on a nearby island.

Rex Humbard, whose death was reported in Florida late Friday, was one of the first evangelists to use television to reach his audiences. He first appeared on the medium in 1949, and by the 1970s his "Cathedral of Tomorrow" broadcasts were seen around the world. His 1979 tour of Brazil drew an estimated 1.2 million people.