House would ease aid for birth control

WASHINGTON -- The House voted narrowly Thursday to reverse a ban on contraception aid to groups overseas that also offer abortions, challenging a pillar of President Bush's foreign-aid policy.

If the proposal passes the Senate, Bush is likely to veto it swiftly and be upheld by conservative lawmakers, who say no assistance should be given to organizations that promote or offer abortions.

The measure, approved 223-201, is intended by the new Democratic majority to crack open debate on a policy it says is failing. Initiated by President Reagan in 1984 at a population conference in Mexico City, the policy bars any assistance to organizations abroad that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Democrats said an unintended consequence is an alarming shortage of contraceptives, particularly in poor rural areas. The bill would help "reduce unintended and high-risk pregnancies and abortions ... and save the lives of mothers," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who chairs the House appropriations panel that oversees the foreign-aid budget.

The House voted to attach the measure to a $34.2 billion bill that pays for State Department operations and foreign aid in 2008.

Stem-cell provision inserted into bill

Members of Congress who want taxpayer dollars spent on embryonic-stem-cell research answered President Bush's veto by advancing a spending bill Thursday that includes permission to do just that.

The Senate Appropriations Committee's 26-3 vote was the first of what is expected to be several waves of Democrat-driven efforts to reverse the effect of Bush's veto a day earlier.

The committee approved a must-pass bill for the Labor and Health and Human Services departments that includes permission to use federal funding for embryonic-

stem-cell lines derived after Bush in 2001 banned taxpayer dollars from being used on such studies.

CIA to open secret files next week

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses, the "family jewels" documenting 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Thursday.

The documents, to be released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs. "Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said.

The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists.

Seattle Times news services