World/Nation

• Congressmen from Idaho split on budget

BOISE (AP) - Idaho's Republican congressmen again parted ways on a budget vote.

Eight-term U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson on Thursday aligned with House Speaker John Boehner and other backers of the measure that passed 332-94.

That didn't stop second-term Rep. Raul Labrador from branding the bi-partisan package "a bad deal, plain and simple."

For Simpson, it protects funding for the Idaho National Laboratory, shores up rural schools' budgets - and reduces the federal deficit by $23 billion, all without raising taxes.

Labrador, meanwhile, wrote the measure off as yet another empty "promise of future spending decreases in exchange for actual spending increases today."

• Boehner blasts tea party, then House OKs deal

WASHINGTON - Battle-fatigued and suddenly bipartisan, the House voted Thursday night to ease across-the-board federal spending cuts and head off future government shutdowns, acting after Speaker John Boehner unleashed a stinging attack on tea party-aligned conservative groups campaigning for the measure's defeat.

The legislation, backed by the White House, cleared on a vote of 332-94, with lopsided majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike voting in favor. Final passage is expected next week in the Senate.

The events in the House gave a light coating of bipartisan cooperation to the end of a bruising year of divided government - memorable for a partial government shutdown, flirtation with an unprecedented Treasury default and gridlock on immigration, gun control and other items on President Barack Obama's second-term agenda.

Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, hailed the vote, saying it "shows Washington can and should stop governing by crisis and both sides can work together to get things done."

Minutes after the budget action, the House approved a broad military policy bill that aims to curb sexual assaults, cover combat pay for U.S. forces and fund new aircraft and ships. That vote, too, was lopsided, 350-69, sending the bill to the Senate, which plans to adjourn for the year next week.

In the end, the budget debate in the House was tame by comparison with Boehner's criticism of Republican-favoring outside groups that at times have been more of an obstacle to him than Democrats.

"I think they're misleading their followers," the Republican speaker said of the groups, whom he pointedly also blamed for last fall's politically damaging partial government shutdown.

"I think they're pushing our members in places where they don't want to be. And frankly, I just think that they've lost all credibility" by opposing legislation before the details are known."

He mentioned no organizations by name, although it appeared he was referring to Heritage Action and Club for Growth, both of which have sought to push the House further to the right than the Republican leadership has been willing to go.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a chief GOP architect of the deal, made the conservatives' case for support. The measure "reduces the deficit by $23 billion. It does not raise taxes and it cuts spending in a smarter way," said the Budget Committee's chairman, whose handiwork could well be challenged in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

The second-ranking Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, joined other party leaders in swinging behind the measure, even though he noted that he represents 62,000 federal workers and said future government employees will pay higher pension costs because of the bill. "This agreement is better than the alternative" of ever deeper across-the-board cuts, he said.

The agreement, negotiated by Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington - and endorsed by the White House - would set overall spending levels for the current budget year and the one that begins on Oct. 1, 2014.

• Missing man was working for CIA

WASHINGTON - In March 2007, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson flew to Kish Island, an Iranian resort awash with tourists, smugglers and organized crime figures. Days later, after an arranged meeting with an admitted killer, he checked out of his hotel, slipped into a taxi and vanished. For years, the U.S. has publicly described him as a private citizen who traveled to the tiny Persian Gulf island on private business.

But that was just a cover story. An Associated Press investigation reveals that Levinson was working for the CIA. In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts - with no authority to run spy operations - paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world's darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S.

• North Korea killsleader's uncle

PYONGYANG - North Korea said it had executed Kim Jong Un's uncle as a traitor for trying to seize supreme power, a stunning end for the leader's former mentor, long considered the country's No. 2.

In a sharp reversal of the popular image of Jang Song Thaek as a kindly uncle guiding leader Kim Jong Un as he consolidated power, the North's official Korean Central News Agency indicated that Jang instead saw the death of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, in December 2011 as an opportunity to challenge his nephew and win power.

- The Associated Press