WASHINGTON — His party divided and his polls sagging, President Bush prodded rebellious Senate Republicans Wednesday to help resurrect legislation that could provide eventual citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

"It's a highly emotional issue," said Bush after a session in which several lawmakers bluntly told him their constituents do not trust the government to secure the nation's borders or weed out illegal workers at job sites.

To alleviate the concerns, the president said he was receptive to an emergency spending bill as a way to emphasize his administration's commitment to accelerated enforcement. One congressional official put the price tag at up to $15 billion.

"I don't think he changed any minds," conceded Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., a supporter of the legislation. But Martinez added that the president's appearance had helped nudge "people on the fence" to be more favorably inclined.

One Republican widely viewed as a potential convert, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, said he was not yet persuaded. "At the end of the day, I've got to be able to sit down and know myself that we are going to secure our border," he said. "Today, I do not feel that way."

U.S. DIPLOMAT ACCUSES IRAN OF ARMING TALIBAN

PARIS — A senior U.S. diplomat accused Iran on Tuesday of transferring weapons to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan — the most direct comments yet on the issue by a ranking American official.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking to reporters in Paris, said Iran was funding insurrections across the Middle East — and "Iran is now even transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

"It's a country that's trying to flex its muscles, but in a way that's injurious to the interests of just about everybody else in the world," he said. "I think it's a major miscalculation."

In Afghanistan last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Iranian weapons were falling into the hands of Taliban fighters, but stopped short of blaming the government itself.

Iran's possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq has long been hotly debated, and last month some Western and Persian Gulf governments charged that the Islamic government in Tehran is also secretly bolstering Taliban fighters.

E-MAILS SHOW TB PATIENT'S FAMILY OF LITTLE HELP

ATLANTA — Health officials trying to stop a globetrotting honeymooner with a dangerous form of tuberculosis got little assistance from his lawyer father and his future father-in-law, a TB expert who not only balked at stopping the Greek wedding but went to the ceremony himself, according to e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.

Some of the 181 pages of e-mails, obtained through a public records request, suggest that the 31-year-old groom's father, Ted Speaker, was clipped and combative in phone conversations with health officials.

E-mails from Fulton County officials portray groom Andrew Speaker's father-in-law, CDC microbiologist Robert Cooksey, as initially unhelpful, at least before May 22, when tests showed that Andrew Speaker had a more dangerous form of TB than previously understood.

"This is terrible news. I hope the father-in-law will be more forthcoming now," reads a May 22 e-mail written by Beverly DeVoe-Payton, director of the Georgia Division of Public Health's tuberculosis program, to other state health officials regarding the new test results.

But CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said Tuesday that Cooksey had already begun to cooperate and provided the agency with Speaker's phone number in Europe.

IRAQ LOLLIPOP FACTORY RAID YIELDS EXPLOSIVES

BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces on Tuesday raided a lollipop factory being used to make bombs, finding boxes of explosives and two tons of fertilizer in the basement of the facility in northern Iraq, an Iraqi officer said.

The entry room to the al-Arij factory was booby-trapped and the building was empty because the workers fled after apparently being tipped off to the raid, according to the officer, army commander Brig. Gen. Nour al-Din Hussein. He said an anti-aircraft gun was hidden on the roof.

Hussein, commander of Iraq's 4th Brigade, said the Christian owner of the lollipop factory was killed three years ago. He said the facility was currently rented to people whom police refused to identify for security reasons.

The troops, who found candy boxes filled with explosives, oxygen cylinders and two tons of fertilizer in the basement, spent three hours destroying the payload in controlled blasts in an industrial area of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Bodies are often found in the area, located in the city's eastern section. The U.S. military said it was looking into the report.

The discovery illustrated the challenges faced by U.S. and Iraqi troops trying to stop the unrelenting violence even as militants consistently find new ways to thwart stepped-up security measures.

ARMY RESERVISTS ORDERED FOR SCREENINGS

WASHINGTON — For the first time since the Iraq war began, the Army is notifying thousands from a special category of reservists that they must report this summer for medical screening and other administrative tasks.

The decision to issue "muster" orders for 5,000 members of the Individual Ready Reserve, or IRR, is not a prelude to a new mobilization or deployment of reservists to Iraq, an Army spokesman said. Instead it is part of a new effort to fix an IRR call-up system that failed on multiple fronts early in the Iraq war.

One problem was that the Army simply could not contact many of its IRR members; it had allowed them to ignore the requirement that they notify the Army of a change in residence. Some turned out to be deceased; others were physically unfit for duty or faced personal problems that barred them from serving.

To correct that the Army is now requiring that they show up in person for what it calls a one-day "physical muster." The idea is to ensure that when and if more IRR members are needed for Iraq or other active-duty deployments the Army will at least know which are fit for duty and where to find them.

RESPIRATORY THERAPIST ADMITS MOLESTATION

SAN DIEGO — A former respiratory therapist pleaded guilty Tuesday to molesting young, brain-damaged patients at the hospital where he worked for 25 years. Wayne Albert Bleyle, 55, admitted to eight counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child and four counts of exhibiting a minor in pornography.

Under a plea agreement, Bleyle would serve 45 years and eight months in prison. With credit for good behavior, he would serve at least 85 percent of that sentence. He had faced a sentence of up to 165 years if he had been convicted in a trial.

Bleyle, who worked at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, appeared gaunt and pallid in a loose-fitting navy suit. He answered procedural questions in a firm, quiet voice.

Bleyle admitted abusing four of his patients, including a 2-year-old girl. Two of the children have since died, according to prosecutors.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth So denied bail and scheduled sentencing for July 25.

50-TON WHALE WAS MORE THAN A CENTURY OLD

BOSTON — A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago.

Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3›-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

"No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.

The whale, which was nearly half a football field long, had a bomb lance fragment lodged a bone between the its neck and shoulder blade. The fragment was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce said.

'SOPRANOS' RATINGS BEAT MOST NETWORKS

NEW YORK — The 11.9 million viewers who watched "The Sopranos" finale brought HBO to the edge of a historic feat: a show on a pay cable network available in about 30 million homes was more popular last week than all but one show on the far larger world of broadcast television.

Only the premiere of NBC's "America's Got Talent," with 13 million viewers, did better, Nielsen Media Research said.

ABC, CBS and Fox are all available in 111 million homes for no extra charge, and nothing they aired last week did better than "The Sopranos."

It was the fourth most-watched episode of "The Sopranos" since the epic mob drama premiered on HBO in 1999, and best since the 2004 season premiere. With on-demand services, multiple showings on HBO this week and DVR recording, it's almost impossible to draw a bead on how many people will actually watch the finale.

And it seemed like everyone who watched had a strong opinion about the finale, which ended abruptly during a scene with Tony Soprano and his family at a diner.

WALL STREET DROPS

NEW YORK — Wall Street plunged Tuesday as investors, driving the Dow Jones industrial average down nearly 130 points, grappled with a seemingly relentless rise in bond yields.

It was a fitful trading session that saw stocks tumble, claw their way back and then plummet again when the yield on the 10-year Treasury note soared to a five-year high of 5.27 percent. The climb in bond yields exacerbated jitters about mortgage rates rising, which could hurt the already sluggish housing market, and about the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates, which would slow down corporate dealmaking.

Surging takeover activity had helped boost stocks to record levels until a week ago, when the benchmark 10-year Treasury note's yield passed 5 percent, unnerving stock investors and triggering a selloff.

"It's partially an excuse to take profits, but there are also some legitimate concerns that if bond yields get high enough, they will present an attractive alternative to stocks, and that higher interest rates will reduce private equity activity," said Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research Inc.