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U.S. battery maker Johnson Controls is at odds with Shanghai’s environmental regulator over tests the company says show it was not responsible for severe lead poisoning cases in children discovered earlier this year.

The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company said Wednesday that an investigation by the China Electric Equipment Industry Association found its battery factory in Shanghai’s eastern suburbs was not the cause of elevated blood-lead levels among children in a nearby community. Instead, it pinned blame on a recycling facility in the area.

Shanghai Environment Bureau official Ju Chunfang, who participated in testing the Johnson Control plant, questioned the investigation, saying it was not independent. Ju said the bureau began another investigation of its own last week.

Johnson Controls denied Ju’s contention that the company had agreed it was the largest source of lead emissions in the area.

Local officials insisted the plant, which is much larger than other battery factories in the area, had to be the cause of the poisoning cases. In an interview, Ju cited several instances of occasionally high emissions readings and prevailing wind patterns as the reason for that allegation.

Xia Qing, the scientist who led the probe cited by Johnson Controls, said it was commissioned by the Electric Equipment Industry Association and was not paid for by the battery maker.

The tests showed abnormally high lead levels at a waste recycling facility near the community whose children were poisoned, with lead levels three times the current national standard and 10 times a pending stricter national standard. Zinc levels were 15 times national standards.

“I have three conclusions. First, trust the Chinese environmental protection laws. Second, the lead poisonings were not caused by Johnson Controls. And third, pay more attention to the recycling stations and companies,” said Xia, an engineer with the China Research Academy of Environmental Science.

Soaring use of cars and electric scooters is driving strong demand for lead acid batteries, and their production and recycling are a key source of lead contamination.

China shut down hundreds of battery factories last spring after a slew of lead poisoning cases. Many have remained shut.

The lead contamination drew attention after families living in Kanghua New Village, a small block of apartment buildings erected to house farm families moved to make way for an industrial zone, said checks showed many of their children had abnormally high blood lead levels no fax payday loan.

The Johnson Controls factory suspended production in September after it reached its annual quota for lead use. The plant has sought permission to expand production, but local environmental officials say such requests will not be approved due to concerns over lead emissions.

Johnson Controls says it intends to resume production in January at the factory, which has an annual capacity of 2.5 million batteries.

“We’ve called our employees back. We’re pretty excited,” said Alex Molinaroli, president of Johnson Controls Power Solutions.

“The results corroborate our own data and prove that emissions from our battery plant could not be the cause of elevated blood-lead levels found in the community,” he said.

Johnson Controls, a major supplier to the automotive industry, had insisted all along that its plant’s emission controls would have prevented any significant contamination.

Production at a second, smaller battery plant in the area had also been stopped.

Kanghua is located just north of the zone and close to chemical, battery and electronics equipment factories.

Johnson Controls earlier said its factory has lead emissions at about one-seventh the Chinese national standard. Employees are regularly tested to ensure their blood lead levels remain low enough.

Some experts say that over time they expect use of lead-acid batteries to be phased out in favor of less toxic and more efficient charging methods, such as lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells.

But such changes could take decades.

Despite its difficulties over the Shanghai plant, the company is expanding in China, with annual capacity due to rise to 10.5 million batteries next year with the addition of a new plant in Changqing. A third plant, under construction, will have a capacity of 6 million batteries, and the company is considering locations for a fourth plant.

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Researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report.

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The Internal Revenue Service is under pressure to better police more than $100 billion of refundable tax credits it issues annually after a government watchdog questioned billions of dollars in payments.

Congress passed in October legislation authorizing a five-fold increase, to $500, in the penalty for paid tax preparers who don’t verify the eligibility of applicants for the earned income credit, by far the largest refundable tax credit.

Tax filers collected refunds of at least $55.1 billion in 2009 from the earned income tax credit, and the IRS estimated that more than $11 billion of that total was issued improperly, sometimes by mistake and sometimes as a result of fraud.

“The IRS is really stepping up enforcement,” Cindy Hockenberry, research supervisor for the National Association of Tax Professionals, said. The initial focus has been on the earned-income credit, but “they’re going to be branching out into other areas,” she said.

The association, based in Appleton, Wis., represents more than 21,000 tax preparers, accountants, attorneys and enrolled agents who work independently or for companies such as H & R Block Inc.

The IRS plans to give earned-income tax credit claims extra scrutiny during the 2012 tax filing season.

Oversight of refundable credits has become a political issue, with Republicans in particular demanding that the IRS do more to weed out ineligible recipients.

“We must balance the mandate to get refunds to those eligible as quickly as possible with ensuring that the money goes only to individuals who are eligible to receive it,” IRS deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, Steve Miller, told a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing in May.

The earned income tax credit, passed by Congress in 1975 to offset the burden of Social Security taxes for the poor, has been expanded several times with bipartisan support, as an incentive to work.

However, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George criticized the IRS’s administration of the EITC and faulted the agency for potential improper payments involving two other refundable credit programs, one for higher education and the other for families with children payday loans.

George’s reports indicate that more than $18 billion of $101 billion for the three programs may have been improperly awarded.

Unlike a regular tax credit that offsets some or all of a tax liability, a refundable credit can include a cash payment in excess of the tax owed. As a result, refundable credits offer an incentive to defraud the government, George told the House Ways and Means subcommittee in May.

Legislation is pending to narrow eligibility for a refundable child tax credit. In a report in September, George’s investigators found that in 2009 about $4.2 billion, or 15 percent of $28.3 billion in additional child tax credits, had gone to people not authorized to work in the U.S.

The IRS declined George’s recommendation to seek more documentation of eligibility. In a statement at the time, the IRS said that the law authorizing the tax credit didn’t explicitly limit recipients to holders of a specific type of identification such as a Social Security number.

The IRS also took issue with George’s findings on the American Opportunity education tax credit, which helps low- and middle-income people pay for college. The credit, part of the 2009 stimulus law, was extended through December 2012 by legislation that also extended the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush.

In a report last month, George said 2.1 million taxpayers in 2009 received $3.2 billion in American Opportunity and other education credits that may have been wrongly awarded. That’s about 17 percent of the $18.7 billion of such credits distributed by the IRS.

The IRS disputed the findings, with spokesman Terry Lemons saying they were based on “a flawed and superficial analysis.”

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Local entrepreneurs didn’t let a little thing like the toughest economic recovery since World War II stand in the way of starting new businesses.

Despite the uncertainty in the economy, the owners of restaurants, coffee shops, and service firms that opened here over the past few years found myriad ways to finance their dreams.

They’ve had to be creative though, as banks pulled back on lending after real estate loan defaults led to losses on many banks’ balance sheets. Loans of less than $1 million from locally chartered banks, which primarily went to small businesses, fell each quarter in 2010 and so far this year. And only a very slim margin of those loans went to startups, according to Julie Stackhouse, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“Small, entrepreneurial businesses have always faced a challenge of finding credit because they .

The European Commission backed the introduction of jointly issued eurobonds, coupled with stricter budgetary discipline, as the best way out of a debt crisis that’s threatening the 17-country eurozone.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday that the countries using the euro currency needed to work more closely together to dovetail their budgetary policies and avoid having one nation endanger all others by not living by its financial commitments. The crisis, which started in Greece nearly two years ago, has now spread to much-bigger economies such as Italy and Spain and there was a hint Wednesday that not even Germany is immune.

Barroso, who heads the executive arm of the European Union, said there was a need to “embrace deeper integration for the euro area” and that “implemented in the right way, the joint issuance of debt in the euro area could bring tremendous benefits.”

Barroso said it could lead to greater financial integration and to the creation of a much larger bond market, comparable to that of the United States treasuries.

Germany has opposed the use of eurobonds and has long called on profligate member states to clean up their own houses with as little outside intervention as possible. A big worry for Germany is that its low borrowing costs would get diluted if eurobonds came into issue and it would then be forced to pay higher rates to tap bond markets.

Anticipating the proposal, Chancellor Angela Merkel poured cold water on the idea in the German Parliament earlier in the day.

“It is extremely troubling, I might say inappropriate, that the Commission is now focusing on proposals on eurobonds in different varieties,” she told legislators.

Merkel argued that it was a pretense to suggest that a “collectivization of the debt would allow us to overcome the currency union’s structural flaws.”

While Merkel was voicing her opposition to the idea of eurobonds, Germany suffered what many in the markets are describing as a failed bond auction.

Despite being touted as the European bedrock of financial stability and rigor, Germany failed to raise as much money as it hoped in its latest bond auction, in a sign that even it may not be immune from the debt crisis raging across the continent.

Germany’s Financial Agency said its latest euro6 billion ($8.1 billion) auction of 10-year bonds met with only 60 percent demand. It blamed “the extraordinarily nervous market environment” for the weak demand.

Since Greece pushed the eurozone into its ever-worsening financial mess last year, many member states have seen their cost of government borrowing rise to record levels. Germany’s borrowing rates though have dropped sharply as investors buy up its bonds as a safe haven.

Germany has long been reluctant to bail out member states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, insisting it was up to their governments to live by sound economic principles and win investor confidence.

Barroso said that eurobonds, or so-called stability bonds, “will not solve our immediate problems.”

Still he said “stability bonds are examples of reinforced governance, of a strong will to live together in the euro area and a good example of discipline.”

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Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Except for his time in the military, James Coplin, 53, has lived his entire life in a modest brick house much like those of his neighbors in the 3600 block of Hickory Street.

Across the street is a stretch recently cleared of similar dwellings owned by St. Louis University. In their place is vacant ground, behind which looms St. Louis University Hospital.

Coplin, who works for a cleaning company, says he believes that SLU is now interested in houses on his side of the street. He said that two or three times in recent months a real estate agent has dropped by to ask if he is interested in selling.

“I told him to make an offer, but he never did,” Coplin said.

SLU’s purchases on Hickory are among dozens it has made in recent years near the medical school, city records show. As it did on Hickory, SLU often demolishes the homes and other structures it buys, then plants the sites with grass. As for the school’s plans for the future with its accumulated real estate, details are scarce.

The real estate agent who knocked on Coplin’s door declined to identify who he was representing but referred a reporter to SLU. University officials did not respond to numerous requests for information about the school’s development plans.

Within the past two years, SLU has bought houses across the street from Coplin’s lifelong residence, he said. Leases on the street’s rental properties were not renewed, he added. As tenants moved out, crews moved in to board up the houses.

“A couple of months later, they started tearing them down,” he said.

SLU has largely consolidated its property holdings in the approximately 60-block area bounded by Chouteau Avenue, South Compton Avenue, Park Avenue and 39th Street. Within the area of recently purchased parcels is SLU’s new track and recreation field, but much of the recently purchased property is vacant. The university also has bought some industrial tracts north of Chouteau between South Compton and South Spring Avenue.

SLU’s president, the Rev. Lawrence Biondi, did not respond to a request for information about long-range campus development.

In a statement provided Friday, a university spokesman said SLU generally did not discuss real estate matters, including plans for acquiring property. But the spokesman said that like many urban universities, SLU has bought property near or adjacent to its campus for potential expansion.

The purchase attracting the most attention is that of the Pevely Dairy complex at Chouteau and South Grand Boulevard. SLU disclosed in August that it had bought the historic buildings from developer Rick Yackey, who had planned to convert the vacant structures into apartments and commercial space.

At the time, the university said it had no specific plan for the site. Only after SLU’s intent to demolish the buildings was publicized this month did the university say it planned to replace the structures with a building for its SLUCare physician’ practice.

Clayton Berry, SLU’s spokesman, said Friday that the university studied the Pevely buildings extensively and determined they did not meet the needs of a modern health care facility.

“SLU is planning to construct a multimillion-dollar outpatient ambulatory health center that will provide a wide variety of health care services and procedures for hundreds of thousands of adult and child patients,” he said. “This significant investment isn’t just essential for the university, but also will benefit the neighborhood, the city and the region.”

The city’s Preservation Board is scheduled to consider at its meeting Nov. 28 SLU’s application filed Oct. 26 for permits to tear down the Pevely complex. The city’s Cultural Resources Office has denied the university’s application. Mayor Francis Slay tweeted on Tuesday that the office would not approve an application to demolish the buildings.

SLU’s move to raze the Pevely buildings, which are on the National Register of Historic Places, prompted formation of the Pevely Preservation Coalition and a Facebook page, “Save the Historic Pevely Dairy.”

Many of the coalition’s members also led the effort this year to save the 1960s “flying saucer” building on South Grand near SLU’s main campus. Yackey, the saucer building’s owner, eventually agreed to preserve the unusual structure and incorporate it into a new retail development.

Randy Vines, a participant in both preservation efforts, said destruction of historic buildings made no sense when SLU owned plenty of vacant property suitable for its SLUCare expansion.

He and other coalition members want SLU to preserve at least the four-story main building and smokestack at the Pevely complex, which dates to about 1913 and sits prominently south of the university’s main campus.

“The greater result we’re hoping for is to force SLU to change its vision for that part of its campus,” Vines said.

Another coalition member, architect Paul Hohmann, said university officials might have a dozen better locations to expand SLUCare.

“SLU has acres and acres and acres of land all over the place to build their medical office buildings,” he said. “You’ve got to think they have a 20-year master plan on what to do with all that property. After all, they’re buying it. But if they have such a plan, they’re not showing it.”

Master plan or not, SLU officials may be smart to continue to buy as much property as possible near campus, said Bob Lewis, president of Development Strategies, a consulting firm.

“They’re protecting themselves, if nothing else,” he said. “Don’t wait around. If it becomes available, grab it.”

Lewis noted that the effort to redo the Pevely complex as apartments never got going. That plan took a hit in 2009 when a fire destroyed one of the three main buildings. SLU’s decision to buy properties near its medical center complex could bolster two growing economic sectors

Firing tear gas and rubber bullets, Egyptian riot police on Sunday clashed for a second day with thousands of rock-throwing protesters demanding that the ruling military quickly announce a date to hand over power to an elected government.

The police battled an estimated 5,000 protesters in and around central Cairo’s Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 18-day uprising that toppled authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February. Tear gas filled the air as protesters, many chanting “freedom, freedom,” pelted the police with rocks.

Sunday’s clashes, which come a day after two people were killed and hundreds wounded in similar violence in the capital and other cities, are stoking tensions eight days before the start of the country’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections. Public anger has risen over the slow pace of reforms and apparent attempts by Egypt’s ruling generals to retain power over a future civilian government.

“We have a single demand: The marshal must step down and be replaced by a civilian council,” said protester Ahmed Hani, referring Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s military ruler and Mubarak’s longtime defense minister.

“The violence yesterday showed us that Mubarak is still in power,” said Hani, who was wounded in the forehead by a rubber bullet. He spoke over chants of “freedom, freedom” by hundreds of protesters around him.

Rocks, shattered glass and trash covered most of the ground in and around Tahrir early Sunday, while a cloud of white smoke caused by the use of dozens of tear gas shells hung in the air. Several hundred protesters were camping out on the lawn of the square’s traffic island, and protesters manning barricades into the square checked the IDs of anyone entering the plaza.

The windows of the main campus of the American University in Cairo, which overlooks the square, were shattered and stores were shuttered. “The marshal is Mubarak’s dog,” said one of a fresh crop of graffiti in the square.

Yahya el-Sawi, a 21-year-old university student, said he was enraged by the sight of riot police beating up protesters already hurt in an earlier attack by the security forces. “I did not support the sit-in at the beginning, but when I saw this brutality I had to come back to be with my brothers,” he said.

Many of the protesters had red eyes and coughed incessantly. Some wore surgical masks to fend off against the tear gas. A few fainted, overwhelmed by the gas.

Sunday’s clashes, which were mostly on a road leading from Tahrir to the Interior Ministry, appeared likely to grow.

Protesters were using social networking sites on the Internet to call on Egyptians to join them, and there were reports of several demonstrations headed to the square, including one from Cairo University guaranteed approval cash advance loans.

The military, which took over from Mubarak, has repeatedly pledged to hand over power to an elected government but it has yet to set a specific date. According to one timetable floated by the military, the handover will take place after presidential elections are held late next year or early in 2013. The protesters say this is too late and accuse the military of dragging its feet. They want a handover to take place immediately after the end of parliamentary elections in March.

On Saturday, police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons, clearing the square at one point and pushing the fighting into surrounding side streets of downtown Cairo.

A 23-year-old protester died from a gunshot, said Health Ministry official Mohammed el-Sherbeni. At least 676 people were injured, he said. Another protester was killed in Alexandria, where clashes also took place, said a security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists.

After nightfall, protesters swarmed back into Tahrir in the thousands, and running battles with the police in the streets took place throughout the night. Acrid smoke of tires set ablaze mixed with the stinging white smoke of tear gas.

The government urged protesters to clear the square.

A member of the military council, Maj. Gen. Mohsen el-Fangari, said protesters’ calls for change ahead of the election were a threat to the state.

“What is the point of being in Tahrir?” he asked, speaking by phone to a private TV channel. “What is the point of this strike, of the million marches? Aren’t there legal channels to pursue demands in a way that won’t impact Egypt … internationally?”

“The aim of what is going on is to shake the backbone of the state, which is the armed forces.”

In a warning, he said, “If security is not applied, we will implement the rule of law. Anyone who does wrong will pay for it.”

Saturday’s confrontation was one of the few since the uprising to involve the police, which have largely stayed in the background while the military took charge of security. There was no military presence in and around the square on Saturday or on Sunday. The black-clad police were a hated symbol of Mubarak’s regime.

Some of the wounded had blood streaming down their faces and many had to be carried out of the square by fellow protesters to waiting ambulances. Human rights activists accused police of using excessive force.

Police arrested 18 people, state TV reported, describing the protesters as rioters.

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The government delivered a blow to some desperate patients Friday as it ruled the blockbuster drug Avastin should no longer be used to treat advanced breast cancer.

Avastin is hailed for treating colon cancer and certain other malignancies. But the Food and Drug Administration said it appeared to be a false hope for breast cancer: Studies haven’t found that it helps those patients live longer or brings enough other benefit to outweigh its dangerous side effects.

“I did not come to this decision lightly,” said the FDA’s commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg. But she said, “Sometimes despite the hopes of investigators, patients, industry and even the FDA itself, the results of rigorous testing can be disappointing.”

Avastin remains on the market to treat certain colon, lung, kidney and brain cancers. Doctors are free to prescribe any marketed drug as they see fit. So even though the FDA formally revoked Avastin’s approval as a breast cancer treatment, women could still receive it _ but their insurers may not pay for it. Some insurers already have quit in anticipation of FDA’s long-expected ruling.

However, “Medicare will continue to cover Avastin,” said Brian Cook, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The agency “will monitor the issue and evaluate coverage options as a result of action by the FDA but has no immediate plans to change coverage policies.”

Including infusion fees, a year’s treatment with Avastin can reach $100,000.

The ruling disappointed patients who believe Avastin is helping to curb their incurable cancer.

“It’s saved my life,” said a tearful Sue Boyce, 54, of Chicago. She’s taken Avastin in addition to chemotherapy since joining a research study in 2003. Her breast cancer eventually spread to her lungs, liver and brain, but Boyce says she is stable and faring well.

“So I’m hoping the insurance company will grandfather me in to continue taking it,” she said.

The Avastin saga began in 2008, when an initial study suggested the drug could delay tumor growth for a few months in women whose breast cancer had spread to other parts of the body. Over the objection of its own advisers and to the surprise of cancer groups, FDA gave Avastin conditional approval _ it could be sold for such women while manufacturer Genentech tried to prove it really worked.

The problem: Ultimately, the tumor effect was even smaller than first thought. Across repeated studies, Avastin patients didn’t live longer or have a higher quality of life. Yet the drug causes some life-threatening risks, including severe high blood pressure, massive bleeding, heart attack or heart failure and tears in the stomach and intestines, the FDA concluded. In two public hearings _ one last year and one this summer _ FDA advisers urged the agency to revoke that approval.

“The science is clear: Breast cancer patients are more likely to be harmed than helped by Avastin,” said Diana Zuckerman of the National Research Center for Women and Families in Washington.

Genentech had argued the drug should remain available while it conducted more research to see if certain subsets of breast cancer patients might benefit, and some patients and their doctors had argued passionately for the drug.

“There certainly are patients who benefit tremendously,” said Boyce’s oncologist, Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. “We’ll just be battling with the insurance companies.”

“For those not fortunate enough to be on Medicare or an insurance plan that covers it, it’s a death sentence,” Christi Turnage of Madison, Miss., said of the FDA’s decision. Her breast cancer had moved into her lungs before she began Avastin three years ago and the spreading stopped, but Turnage said her insurer is ending coverage and she will seek financial help from Genentech’s access program.

Hamburg said that she considered those arguments but that scientifically there are no clues yet to identify who those rare Avastin responders would be _ putting a lot of people at risk in order for a few to get some as-yet-unknowable benefit. She urged Genentech to do that research, saying the FDA “absolutely” would reconsider if the company could find the right evidence.

Genentech, part of Swiss drugmaker Roche Group, pledged to begin that research.

“We are disappointed with the outcome,” said company chief medical officer Dr. Hal Barron. “We remain committed to the many women with this incurable disease and will continue to provide help through our patient support programs to those who may be facing obstacles to receiving their treatment in the United States.”

The breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure said that it respected the FDA’s decision and that it was time for researchers to concentrate on finding so-called biomarkers that would tell which drug is right for which patient.

“Each type of cancer is very different from another in important ways, and in the end it’s no surprise that Avastin’s effectiveness may not be equivalent against all types of cancer,” said Dr. Neal Meropol of University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, who has long used Avastin for colon cancer.

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U.S. builders started slightly fewer homes in October but submitted plans for a wave of apartments, a mixed sign for the struggling housing market.

Builders broke ground on a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 628,000 homes last month, down 0.3 percent from September. That’s roughly half the 1.2 million homes that economists say must be built to sustain a healthy housing market.

Building permits, a gauge of future construction, rose nearly 11 percent. The increase was spurred by a 30 percent increase in apartment permits, which reached its highest level in three years.

New-home construction and sales are in the midst of one of its worst years in history. Demand for new homes is weak and historically-low mortgage rates and plunging home prices have done little to help.

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Congressional bargainers have agreed to increase the size of mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration in a compromise being hailed by the housing industry but criticized by conservatives.

Under the deal by House and Senate negotiators, the FHA would be able to insure mortgages worth up to $729,750 in the most expensive regions of the U.S. for the next two years. The ceiling had been raised to that level during the financial crisis, but by law it dipped down to $625,500 on Oct. 1.

However, in a bow to conservatives, the bargainers would not increase the current $625,500 limit on mortgages that can be backed in expensive communities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled mortgage giants, and by the Veterans Affairs Department.

Realtors and home builders had lobbied hard to raise the loan limits for all four entities, arguing that the last thing the country’s stubbornly weak housing market needs is stricter limits on government-backed mortgages. They were backed by members of Congress of both parties from areas where housing costs are high, like Southern California and New York.

“We’d have liked broader language, but the FHA is still an important part of the puzzle,” Jamie Gregory, a lobbyist with the National Association of Realtors, said Tuesday.

Conservatives and a majority of House Republicans oppose the increase, saying the government should reduce its involvement in subsidizing housing in hopes that the private market would step up.

In a written statement, the president of the conservative Club for Growth called increasing FHA’s loan limits “beyond ridiculous” and said his group would note how lawmakers vote on the issue when they rate members of Congress seeking re-election. He said raising the limits does the opposite of reducing the federal role in housing markets _ something that many conservatives and the Obama administration say they want to strengthen the private market and protect federal taxpayers payday advance.

It has so far cost the government about $170 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, which nearly collapsed in 2008 because of risky loans in their portfolios.

The size of loans that federal agencies can back is based on a formula that includes a region’s median housing cost. More than a fifth of the country’s roughly 3,100 counties would be affected by the higher FHA loan limits.

FHA insurance is often used by buyers who put down small down payments. The agency has insured more than 40 million homes since it was established in 1934, and last year three quarters of those it insured were first-time buyers.

“It’s good news for the more than 600 counties that faced loan limit decline,” said Robert Dietz, an economist for the National Association of Home Builders. “FHA is important for first-time home buyers, so that will help support housing demand.”

The provision was included in a bill financing the departments of Housing and Urban Affairs, Commerce, Justice, Transportation and several other agencies for the rest of the government’s fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. It would also keep all other federal agencies functioning through Dec. 16 as lawmakers continue working on permanent spending bills.

The Democratic-run Senate had voted to increase the loan limits in its housing bill, but the version approved by the Republican-led House left the ceilings alone.

The House and Senate are expected to approve the overall compromise legislation later this week.

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Thailand’s prime minister is urging people in flooded areas to be patient because the government is working as hard as it can to drain the water.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said Monday the flooding situation that has plagued the country since late July is improving as waters recede. However, she noted that water spreading across western Bangkok could drain more slowly than in other areas of the capital.

She urged people to “tolerate the flooding situation and turn unity into power to struggle through the crisis payday advance low fees.” Yingluck made the comments on her Facebook page.

The national death toll from Thailand’s worst floods in more than half a century has reached 562. The floods are still affecting 22 of the country’s 77 provinces.

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