In the news

LITTLE ROCK — President Barack Obama

signed a $59 billion measure to fund a troop buildup in Afghanistan, raising the total amount Congress has allotted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion.

Teresa Lewis, 41, a Virginia woman who used sex and money to persuade two men to kill her husband and her stepson so she could collect on a $250,000 life insurance policy, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 23, which would make hers the first U.S. execution of a woman in five years.

James R. Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and President Barack Obama’s nominee to oversee the nation’s 16 spy agencies, was unanimously approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee and now awaits approval by the full Senate.

David Paterson, the Democratic governor of New York, said on WORAM radio after a special prosecutor cleared him of allegations that he tampered with a witness who had accused a top aide of domestic violence, that he regrets dropping out of the race for a full term.

President Jacob Zuma

of South Africa said the country is abolishing six of its 13 traditional monarchies, which were used to gather support for white-led rule during the apartheid era before democratic elections in 1994.

Don Machacek, a Minnesota highway first responder, rescued a Twin Cities woman and her two children after the mother misjudged an exit and drove their car off a highway and into a pond in Richfield, south of Minneapolis.

Ruben Franco, a New York City judge, threw out a summons issued to a Bronx man, Julio Martinez, for wearing low-slung pants that exposed his underwear, saying that the summons appeared to be an attempt by one police officer to show his displeasure with the style.

David de Csepel, a Los Angeles resident and the great-grandson of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, a renowned Jewish art collector, said the Herzog family is hopeful about its lawsuit against the Hungarian government for the return of more than $100 million worth of paintings seized during World War II.

Bruce Garner, 59, a leathersmith in rural East Texas, said “it’s a hoot” to be reunited with an H&R nine-shot revolver that was stolen from his home in June 1989 and that Kaufman County deputies located at a pawnshop.