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stopgap spending legislation that will make sure the government won't shut down on Oct. 1. It passed early Saturday morning by a 62-30 vote.
• Left behind for a postelection session is a pile of unfinished business on the budget and taxes, farm policy and legislation to save the Postal Service from insolvency.
• The GOP-controlled House had beat its retreat Friday morning after taking one last, futile slap at Obama -- passing a bill entitled the "Stop the War on Coal Act." The measure, dead on arrival in the Senate, was aimed at boosting the coal industry in its battle against new environmental regulations while hurting Obama's political prospects in coal states like Ohio and Virginia.
• The Democratic-controlled Senate's middle-of-the-night session came after a spitting match between Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the chamber's Republicans over Reid's insistence on advancing legislation by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana to boost access to public lands for hunting and fishing. Tester is perhaps the Senate's most endangered Democrat and Republicans protested that he was being given special treatment in a nakedly political move to boost his reelection chances. The measure eventually cleared a procedural hurdle on a sweeping 84-7 vote.
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• ISLAMABAD (AP) -- The use of drones in Pakistan normally brings to mind images of U.S. spy planes attacking tribal areas. But drones now are being used to capture a different kind of picture in the country -- showing some of the world's highest mountains being scaled by world-class climbers through some of Earth's thinnest air.
• Drones, or remote-controlled aircraft, have long been the domain of the American military and are used extensively in Pakistan's tribal areas near the Afghanistan border to spy on and target militants. Recently, however, civilians have increasingly turned to drones to shoot ground-breaking footage of adventure sports.
• This summer a Swiss expedition used remote-controlled helicopters to shoot rare footage of climbers on the Karakoram, one of the world's most demanding and formidable mountain ranges.
• "People are going to see footage from the Karakoram that no human being has ever seen," said Corey Rich, a photographer and videographer from Lake Tahoe, California, who was on the expedition.

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