Washington, D.C.

House votes to end federal estate taxes

The House voted Wednesday to eliminate federal estate taxes in 2010 and beyond, a repeal that Republicans hailed but many Democrats said would reward the richest families at the steep cost of deeper federal deficits.

House lawmakers voted 272-162 to prevent the tax on inherited estates from reappearing after its one-year disappearance in 2010. The bill would end the tax at a cost of roughly $290 billion over the next decade.

Most estates already are exempt from federal taxes. The Internal Revenue Service said just over 2 percent of people who died in 2001 left estates subject to taxation.

Las Vegas

Claim dropped on finger in chili

A Las Vegas woman who claimed she scooped up a human finger in her chili at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, Calif., has decided not to sue the fast-food chain, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Anna Ayala is dropping her claim because the police investigations, DNA tests, a search of her home and intense publicity have “been very difficult for her emotionally,” attorney Jeffrey Janoff said.

He would not say whether the decision was prompted by a report a woman in Nevada had lost her finger a month earlier in a leopard attack, and that it might be related to Ayala’s claim.

Wendy’s maintains the finger did not enter the chili in its ingredients. All the employees at the San Jose store were found to have all their fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy’s ingredients have reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.

DNA testing is still being conducted on the finger.

Wisconsin

Governor denounces cat-hunting proposal

A proposal to legalize the killing of feral cats is not going to succeed, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

“I don’t think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats,” said Doyle, a Democrat who neither hunts nor owns a cat. “What it does is sort of hold us up as a state that everybody is kind of laughing at right now.”

The proposal adopted Monday at meetings of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, a public advisory group, would classify wild, free-roaming cats as an unprotected species that kills song birds and other wildlife.

Outdoor enthusiasts approved the proposal 6,830 to 5,201.

California

Teen killed in attack after baseball game

A 13-year-old pitcher whose baseball team had just lost for the first time this season killed another teen by hitting him in the head with a baseball bat during an argument, authorities said Wednesday.

The teen, whose name was not released, was arrested Wednesday for investigation of murder.

Jeremy Rourke, 15, was pronounced dead at a hospital after the Tuesday night attack in Palmdale.

Witnesses said the two boys teased each other before the attack.