SAN DIEGO -- U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says a $400 million federal effort will include an upgrading of security at the U.S.-Mexico border. During a California visit Wednesday, Napolitano announced the security upgrades will include searches of rail cars traveling into Mexico as well as inspections of other Mexico-bound vehicles, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Thursday. The Homeland Security official also took time to praise U.S.-Mexico relations and Mexico's commitment to such security efforts. "I ... [full story]

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Attorneys William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. defrauded their clients in a diet-drug case out of $94.6 million, an assistant U.S. attorney alleges. Assistant U.S. Attorney E.J. Walbourn said in U.S. District Court the two defendants facing wire fraud charges allegedly took an unfair percentage of a $200 million settlement of a 2001 case involving the diet drug, fen-phen, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal said Thursday. The settlement came after the anti-obesity drug was pulled ... [full story]

INVERNESS, Fla. -- Health officials said Thursday that a bobcat that attacked an elderly man and a young boy in Citrus County, Fla., appears to have been rabid. Virginia Crandall, a Citrus County Health Department registered nurse, said as a result of the rabies diagnosis, both 71-year-old Frank Womack and 10-year-old Johnathon Knecht will have to undergo a regimen of shots during a four-week period to ensure their health, The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune said. "The treatment is ... [full story]

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Florida woman said she survived being attacked by two pit bull terriers in Orlando, Fla., by biting and kicking at the enraged animals. Tracy Lindsey, 22, said while recovering at the Orlando Regional Medical Center that the thought of her daughters, 3-year-old Gabriel and 18-month-old Annabel, urged her to fight for her life, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel said Thursday. "I tried everything but it wasn't much of a fight," Lindsey told the newspaper. ... [full story]

CHICAGO -- Federal prosecutors in Chicago said they would file documents Thursday in a "significant criminal matter," likely the indictment of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Federal prosecutors faced a Tuesday deadline for indicting the ousted Illinois governor on a wide variety of charges, including an alleged scheme to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. The U.S. attorney's office issued a statement saying it would "provide a court filing late this afternoon ... regarding ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- The founder of a Web site filled with U.S. congressional staffers' salaries and financial disclosures says he doesn't mind being the scourge of Capitol Hill. Jock Friedly, who dubs his LegiStorm.com site "transparency's sidekick," tells The Washington Post he has "never found it to be a problem to be a hated person." "I'm perfectly happy when people are yelling at me," he says. His site, which first provided a database of publicly available but hard-to-find congressional ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- Blackwater security guards' alleged falsehoods in a Baghdad shooting incident went unpunished because of morale, U.S. State Department records say. Quoting newly released data, USA Today said the top security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq refused to punish the guards for making false statements in a 2005 shooting because he did not want to lower the morale of those contracted to work security. Federal investigators concluded that four guards were not justified in ... [full story]

NEW YORK -- A man's death from a gang shooting 49 years ago has become the oldest reclassified homicide in New York Police Department history, a police official said. William Jenkins, a member of the Viceroy street gang, was 18 when he was shot through the stomach and back by a rival Dragon member in Spanish Harlem Oct. 21, 1960, police records show. The shooting rendered Jenkins a paraplegic, The New York Times said. After Jenkins, who continued ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats propose lifting export controls classifying satellite technology as weaponry, a move observers say could revitalize the U.S. industry. House hearings on the controls open Thursday, and proponents of the change say they have the support of President Barack Obama and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, The New York Times reported. The export revision is not a sure thing, conservatives said, citing national security arguments ... [full story]

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. -- U.S. public libraries increasingly are becoming havens for depressed, unemployed people who say they have nowhere else to go in tough times, librarians say. "I guess I'm not really used to people with tears in their eyes," reference librarian Rosalie Bork of Arlington Heights (Ill.) Memorial Library tells The New York Times. "It has been unexpectedly stressful," she says. "We feel so anxious to help these people and it's been so emotional for ... [full story]

BOSTON -- An immigration judge Wednesday allowed the aunt of U.S. President Barack Obama to stay in the United States until February 2010, officials said. U.S. Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro continued the deportation case of Zeituni Onyango for 10 months during a closed-door hearing in Boston, allowing the half-sister of Obama's late Kenyan father to remain in the country until then, The Boston Globe reported. Smiling broadly as she emerged from a brief hearing, Onyango said, "praise ... [full story]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Construction workers preparing a building site adjacent to a cemetery in downtown Montgomery, Ala., unearthed a mass grave from the 19th century, police say. The grave found Tuesday is believed to contain victims from an epidemic of yellow fever that swept through the city in the 1870s, CNN reported Wednesday. "Based on the information we have from historical documents kept by the actual cemetery, it does appear that it may be remains from a ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- The largest U.S. tobacco tax hike took effect Wednesday, dramatically raising the price of tobacco products to fund a federal children's health insurance plan. The increase, which raises the so-called sin tax from 39 cents to $1.01 and applies to all tobacco products, comes as more than two dozen cash-strapped states consider boosting their own tobacco taxes this year, USA Today reported. Congress passed legislation last year that would have raised the tobacco tax to ... [full story]