Obama signs massive spending bill

US President Barack Obama signed into law Friday a massive government spending bill to fund operations through the rest of the fiscal year and avoid another government shutdown until at least October, according to dpa. The 1.1-trillion-dollar bill, which eases tough spending cuts in place since March 2013, overwhelmingly passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives this week. US congressional negotiators unveiled the spending bill Monday. Lawmakers quickly passed a resolution to ensure that money for the nation's museums, agency offices and national parks would not expire before the measure became law. The original deadline for passage had been Wednesday. The 1.1-trillion-dollar spending bill issues money for government functions for the rest of the budget year through September, filling in the blanks of a bipartisan budget agreement reached last month. The bill means the Pentagon will avoid a roughly 20-billion-dollar cut, and domestic agencies will receive spending increases. Despite those increases, the bill would leave agency budgets tens of billions of dollars lower than President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats had sought.