USA

With a battle over his budget looming in Congress, President Bush said he wants to increase food aid for the swelling number of recession victims. He proposed an 8.3 percent hike in spending on the Women, Infants, and Children program. But Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts is likely to become the most prominent Democrat to call for delaying part of Bush's $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut, sources said. Kennedy's plan, expected to be announced Wednesday, reportedly would put off $350 billion in tax cuts to make room for additional domestic spending.

Congressional investigators accused Enron chairman Kenneth Lay of misleading his 21,000 employees in two emails last summer by giving a rosy picture of the company's financial health. On Aug. 14, Lay wrote, "I have never felt better about the prospects for the company." On Aug. 27 he advised that a "significantly higher stock price" was likely. The New York Times reported Sunday that 29 Enron executives are being investigated for selling their shares in the company between 1999 and mid-2001, netting $1.1 billion. (Story, page 1.)

Microsoft lost its bid to settle dozens of private antitrust lawsuits by donating $1 billion worth of computers and software to the nation's poorest public schools. In federal district court in Baltimore Friday, Judge Frederick Motz ruled that the proposal was unacceptable because it would give the software giant an unfair advantage over rival Apple Computer.

Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, US Navy base are each to receive a copy of the Koran and will be able to talk among themselves, a senior military official said. Twenty prisoners arrived there from Afghanistan Friday for indefinite detention as "unlawful combatants." Human rights groups have criticized the conditions of their confinement.

The father of a youth league hockey player was convicted of involuntary manslaughter late Friday for beating another man to death at their sons' practice. A jury in Cambridge, Mass., found that Thomas Junta had not intended to kill Michael Costin, but went too far during their July 2000 fight at an indoor rink in the area. Junta is liable for up to 20 years in prison, but as a first-time offender probably will be sentenced to a much shorter term, legal experts said.

Former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who died in New York, helped to guide US foreign policy through many major Cold War developments in the 1970s. But he resigned over the Carter administration's aborted attempt to rescue American hostages held in Iran. Current Secretary of State Powell remembered Vance (below, in congressional testimony in 1990) as "the pride of a generation of Americans who valued public service as the highest good."