AFP - The US Senate has given a major boost to a program to combat AIDS and malaria around the world, voting to triple funding for a cause championed by President George W. Bush.

AP - Seeking to blunt GOP efforts to permit oil exploration off Atlantic and Pacific coasts, House Democrats are pushing legislation they say would spur oil drilling on already available lands in Alaska, the West and the western Gulf of Mexico.

AP - European bankers and some of their U.S. clients can expect a grilling from a Senate panel looking into offshore tax abuses that investigators believe are costing American taxpayers about $100 billion a year.

AP - Four Democratic senators, including Sen. Carl Levin, on Wednesday called on the State Department's inspector general to investigate whether agency employees encouraged lucrative oil deals between Iraq and several Western companies.

Reuters - In what likely is the last big showdown between President George W. Bush and congressional Democrats over the popular Medicare health care program, the U.S. Congress on Tuesday voted to override his veto of a bill to keep doctors' payments from being slashed.

AP - Sens. Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar said Tuesday they will push bipartisan legislation this year that would triple humanitarian spending in Pakistan but threaten to cut military aid unless Islamabad does more to fight terrorists.