(Continued from page 24)

ond round just might.
• Several federal agencies found lots of loose change that helped them through the automatic cuts in the 2013 budget year that ended Sept. 30, allowing them to minimize furloughs and maintain many services. Most of that money, however, has been spent.
• The Pentagon used more than $5 billion in unspent money from previous years to ease its $39 billion budget cut. Furloughs originally scheduled for 11 days were cut back to six days. The Justice Department found more than $500 million in similar money that allowed agencies like the FBI to avoid furloughs altogether.
• Finding replacement cuts is the priority of budget talks scheduled to resume this week, but many observers think the talks won't bear fruit. Agencies that have thus far withstood the harshest effects of the across-the-board cuts in 2013 are bracing for a second round of cuts that'll feel a lot worse than the first.
• A drop in participation and lower-than-expected food prices allowed a widely supported food program for low-income pregnant women and children to get through this year without having to take away anyone's benefits. A second round of automatic sequestration cuts could mean some women with toddlers lose coverage next year.
• ___

• BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian activists say a mortar round has hit a Damascus suburb, killing a man and his four children.
• The British-Based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that the round landed on the man's car in the residential area of Jaramana. The Observatory said many more were wounded, including the children's mother.
• It was part of a series of salvos that slammed into the neighborhood on Sunday evening.
• It wasn't clear who fired the shells. There are frequent clashes in a nearby town between Syrian forces loyal to the government of President Bashar Assad and rebels trying to overthrow him.
• The Observatory receives its information from a network of activists on the ground.
• ___