WASHINGTON — Blackwater chairman Erik Prince vigorously rejected charges Tuesday that guards from his private security firm acted like a bunch of cowboys immune to legal prosecution while protecting State Department personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I believe we acted appropriately at all times," Prince, a 38-year-old former Navy SEAL, calmly told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

His testimony came as the FBI is investigating Blackwater personnel for their role in a Sept. 16 shootout that left 11 Iraqis dead. The incident and others, including a shooting by a drunk Blackwater employee after a 2006 Christmas party, led to pointed questions by lawmakers about whether the government is relying too much on private contractors who fall outside the military courts martial system.

"We're not getting our money's worth when we have so many complaints about innocent people being shot," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., committee chairman, at the conclusion of a nearly six-hour hearing. "And it's unclear whether they're actually being investigated by the State Department, because we haven't had any cooperation."

The committee agreed not to look into the Sept. 16 incident during Tuesday's hearing after the Justice Department requested that Congress wait until the FBI concludes its investigation.

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House takes up bill requiring Bush plan on Iraq troops

WASHINGTON — The House takes up legislation today that would require President Bush to submit a plan for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The bill would require the administration to report to Congress on the status of redeployment plans in 60 days. Follow up reports would be required every 90 days thereafter.

Initially, Democratic leaders considered the bill too mild and instead focused on tougher measures that ordered troops home this fall. But those measures didn't pick up enough Republican support.

The latest bill doesn't set any timetable for a withdrawal and Republican leaders have said they will not oppose it.

Thwarted in efforts to bring troops home from Iraq, Senate Democrats on Monday helped pass a defense policy bill authorizing another $150 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vote was 92-3.

The developments underscored the difficulty facing Democrats in the Iraq debate: They lack the votes to pass legislation ordering troops home and are divided on whether to cut money for combat, despite a mandate by supporters to end the war.

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Files raise questions on Guantanamo decisions

Two dozen prisoners were cleared for transfer from Guantanamo Bay last year even though U.S. military panels found they still posed a threat to the United States and its allies. Dozens more were cleared even though they didn't show up for their hearings.

One Saudi arrested in Afghanistan was approved for release after offering a peculiar account that he had gone to the Taliban-controlled country to lose weight.

Pentagon documents obtained by The Associated Press show seemingly inconsistent decisions to release men declared by the Bush administration to be among America's most-hardened enemies. Coupled with accusations that some detainees have been held for years on little evidence, the decisions raise questions about whether they were arbitrary.

Human rights groups contend the documents show the military panels, known as Administrative Review Boards, often are overridden by political expediency at Guantanamo, where about 340 men are still held.

"What it says on your passport is more important than what it says in your ARB," said Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, noting that European citizens at Guantanamo were among the first to get out amid intense lobbying by their countries. "It's all about diplomatic pressure."

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Soldier gear now costs 100 times more than in WWII

WASHINGTON — As official Washington argues over the spiraling price of the war in Iraq, consider this: Outfitting a soldier for battle costs a hundred times more now than it did in World War II. It was $170 then, is about $17,500 now and could be an estimated $28,000 to $60,000 by the middle of the next decade.

"The ground soldier was perceived to be a relatively inexpensive instrument of war" in the past, said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, head of the Army agency for developing and fielding soldier equipment.

Now, the Pentagon spends tens of billions of dollars annually to protect troops and make them more lethal on the battlefield.

In the 1940s, a GI went to war with little more than a uniform, weapon, helmet, bedroll and canteen. He carried some 35 pounds of gear that cost $170 in 2006 inflation-adjusted dollars, according to Army figures.

That rose to about $1,100 by the 1970s as the military added a flak vest, new weapons and other equipment during the Vietnam War.

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Cleveland police charge mother in bathtub drowning

CLEVELAND — A woman on Tuesday was charged in the bathtub drowning deaths of her two young daughters, and was being held in jail on suicide watch. City prosecutors filed two counts of aggravated murder against Amber Hill, 22, after a coroner ruled the deaths of the girls, ages 4 and 2, were homicides.

Hill had no documented history of neglecting the girls, but had herself been the victim of abuse by their father, Jamie Cintron, according to authorities and court records.

"We never had a call of any maltreatment of the children," said Jim McCafferty, director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services. "The kids were clean and well cared for. It's just a sad situation."

Cintron, 23, said Hill called him at work Monday and said their children "are at peace," police Lt. Thomas Stacho said. He then went to the woman's apartment and pulled the girls from the water in the bathtub.

Hill, who neighbors said was studying to be a nursing assistant, was calm and showed no emotion when she was taken away by police, Stacho said. The girls were placed on life support and were pronounced dead at a hospital.

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Halle Berry talks about her pregnancy on 'Oprah'

CHICAGO — Halle Berry says she and her boyfriend, Gabriel Aubry, tried and tried and tried to get pregnant. "So there was a lot of staying home and doing what you do. Like, all the time, around the clock," the 41-year-old Oscar-winning actress said Tuesday on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

One negative pregnancy test followed another, "and finally, after about 35 tests, we finally got a positive test," Berry told Winfrey in one of her first interviews since announcing last month that she was expecting her first child with Aubry, her boyfriend of two years.

Berry, who is about three months pregnant, told Winfrey she doesn't want to know the sex of the baby.

"There's so few genuine surprises in life anymore that, why not have a huge surprise?" she said. "And I like fantasizing one day it's a girl, one day it's a boy."

Berry won the best-actress Oscar for 2001's "Monster's Ball." She also won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for 1999's "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge."

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Truck that drives itself lurches from lab to streets

OSHKOSH, Wis. — Sitting high in the cab of the hulking lime-green TerraMax truck, a driver can be excused for instinctively grabbing the steering wheel. There's no need. TerraMax is a self-driving vehicle, a prototype designed to navigate and obey traffic rules — all while the people inside, if there are any, do anything but drive.

During a recent test on property owned by manufacturer Oshkosh Truck Co., TerraMax barreled down a dusty road with its driver seat empty. It stopped at a four-way intersection and waited as staged traffic resolved before obediently lurching on its way.

If the Defense Department gets its way, vehicles like TerraMax — about as long as a typical sport utility vehicle and almost twice as high — could represent the future of transportation for the military's ground forces.

Consider 80 soldiers driving a convoy of 40 trucks across the Iraqi desert, said Joaquin Salas, spokesman for the Oshkosh, Wis.-based company. If most of those vehicles could drive themselves, the same convoy might manage with just 10 soldiers.