IN BRIEF

SENATE BACKS BILL TO PUMP $700 BILLION INTO MILITARY

The Senate has overwhelmingly approved a sweeping policy bill that would pump $700 billion into the military, putting the U.S. armed forces on track for a budget greater than at any time during the decade-plus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senators passed the legislation by a 89-8 vote Monday. The measure authorizes $700 billion in military spending for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, expands U.S. missile defenses in response to North Korea’s growing hostility and refuses to allow excess military bases to be closed.

FOSTER COUPLE HOSTED SUBWAY ATTACK SUSPECTS

One of the suspects detained in Britain over last week’s London subway bombing is an 18-year-old refugee from Iraq, and the other is a 21-year-old who may be from Syria.

Both men stayed with a British couple that served as foster parents for several decades to many refugees.

The disclosure came as police stepped up their investigation into Friday’s attack on a packed London Underground train. Commuters returned to Parsons Green station Monday.

IRAQ SUSPENDS KURDISH INDEPENDENCE VOTE

Iraq’s top court on Monday temporarily suspended the northern Kurdish region’s referendum on independence that’s due next week, a decision that put further pressure on the Iraqi Kurds to call off the controversial vote.

The move is the latest in a number of rulings from Iraq’s central government attempting to stop the vote. Last Tuesday, Iraq’s parliament voted to reject the controversial referendum, and on Thursday, the lawmakers voted to dismiss the ethnically mixed Kirkuk province’s Kurdish governor who supports the referendum.

Staff and wire reports