Indiana

The last time Indiana missed its deadline for passing a budget and had to shut down the government was during the Civil War. But on Monday, as lawmakers raced to hammer out an agreement over school funding, state agencies began preparing 31,000 workers to be temporarily out of a job. Republican Gov.

Gleanings from the Indiana and North Carolina primaries: * Momentum remains an elusive -- perhaps nonexistent -- dynamic in the Democratic presidential race. After Hillary Rodham Clinton's decisive win in April's Pennsylvania primary, and amid the problems plaguing Barack Obama over the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the wind seemed at the New York senator's back. Instead, Tuesday's results left the Clinton campaign becalmed, at best.

From the moment customers enter the front door, A Conservative Cafe is serving up caffeinated doctrine. Ann Coulter books sit stacked by the fireplace and a picture of President Reagan hangs on the wall. Fox News plays on all the televisions and stock market quotes scroll along an electronic ticker above the cash register. Behind the counter, owner Dave Beckham smiled proudly in a T-shirt with the face of Uncle Sam on it that read "Zip It Hippie." The T-shirt is for sale at the cafe.

How odd it looked last week to see thousands of Hoosiers flock to a noisy Sarah Palin rally in mid-October, in a state where dramatic, coming-down-the-stretch presidential campaigns are almost always distant events. Someone, it would seem, is messing with the clocks again in Indiana. But there the Republican faithful were, cheering loudly for the vice presidential nominee, just as thousands of Democrats did a week earlier in Indianapolis for Barack Obama.

Drivers of cars and trucks swerved into other lanes to avoid a 3-year-old boy, wearing only a diaper and T-shirt, who was playing along a busy Indianapolis highway after wandering away from home while his mother slept, police said. Motorists stopped along the interstate to take care of the boy until officers arrived. The boy was unhurt. His mother, Nancy Dyer, 33, faces child neglect charges.

Police and federal agents extended their search to Chicago for four children and their mother, whose ex-boyfriend authorities say shot a man and kidnapped them in Indiana the day before. Officials issued an Amber Alert and said the children and mother Kimberly N. Walker, 31, were in extreme danger.

They were expecting a big crowd this Sunday at Farmland Friends Church in rural Indiana. The sanctuary would be decked in blue and white streamers, the card tables groaning with sloppy-Joe fixings and bowls of chips. Best of all, the pews would be packed with scores of the faithful: men, women and children, shoulder to shoulder, hooting at a jumbo screen as their beloved Indianapolis Colts coasted -- God willing -- to victory over the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI.

A 51-year-old man has been charged with the 1990 slaying of his former wife after his daughter told police that he confessed to killing her, authorities said. Prosecutors on Friday charged Rodney Boesel of Gary with murder in the death of Donna Boesel, then 22, said Lake County Sheriff Rogelio "Roy" Dominguez in Crown Point. Authorities said the confession came as Alicia Boesel, 19, was looking at a machete in his home. "He said, 'What are you doing looking at that?

A pilot took his 8-year-old daughter up in a small plane Monday and crashed it into his former mother-in-law's house in southern Indiana, killing himself and the girl, authorities said. A preliminary crash investigation leads "us to believe that this was an intentional act," Indiana State Police spokesman 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said. The crash in Bedford, about 20 miles south of Bloomington, killed Eric Johnson, 47, of Bedford, and his daughter Emily, Bursten said.

A cat helped spare a family from death by carbon monoxide poisoning by jumping on the bed and meowing wildly as fumes filled the home, the owners said. Eric and Cathy Keesling told reporters that their 14-year-old cat, Winnie, played a crucial role in saving their lives March 24 after a gasoline-powered water pump in their basement caused the odorless but deadly gas to build up. About 1 a.m., Winnie began nudging Cathy Keesling's ear and meowing loudly.