The Pentagon is tripling its spending to about $3.5 billion, on a newly expanded effort to combat the rising number of increasingly powerful homemade bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq, The New York Times reported on its Web site on Sunday. The move is a tacit acknowledgment that despite years of rising death tolls from the devices, the response has not been sufficiently focused or coordinated at the highest levels, the Times said. Full Story