World/Nation Briefs October 2, 2013
No shutdown end in sight as parks, offices close
WASHINGTON - First slowed, then stalled by political gridlock, the vast machinery of government clanged into partial shutdown mode on Tuesday and President Barack Obama warned the longer it goes "the more families will be hurt."
Republicans said it was his fault, not theirs, and embarked on a strategy - opposed by Democrats - of voting on bills to reopen individual agencies or programs.
Ominously, there were suggestions from leaders in both parties that the shutdown, heading for its second day, could last for weeks and grow to encompass a possible default by the Treasury if Congress fails to raise the nation's debt ceiling. The two issues are "now all together," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Speaking at the White House, the president accused Republicans of causing the first partial closure in 17 years as part of a non-stop "ideological crusade" to wipe out his signature health care law.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, gave as good as he got. "The president isn't telling the whole story," he said. "The fact is that Washington Democrats have slammed the door on reopening the government by refusing to engage in bipartisan talks."
Americans begin to feel effects of shutdown
PHILADELPHIA - Visitors arrived to find "CLOSED" signs at the Statue of Liberty, the Smithsonian and other parks and historic sites across the country. Callers looking for help from the government reached only voicemail. And federal employees were left to wonder when they would return to work.
The first government shutdown in 17 years took hold Tuesday in ways large and small.
About 800,000 federal employees were sent home - a number greater than the combined U.S. workforces of Target, General Motors, Exxon and Google.
"After next week, if we're not working, I'm going to have to find a job," said Robert Turner, a building mechanic at the Smithsonian's American History museum in the nation's capital. He was called in for part of the day to take out the trash, turn off the water and help close up the place.
The effects played out in a variety of ways, from scaled-back operations at federal prosecutors' offices and the FBI to revoked permits for dozens of weddings at historic sites in Washington.
Inspectors seek out chemical weapons
BEIRUT - Wading into the world spotlight, international inspectors arrived in Damascus on Tuesday to begin the monumental task of overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons in the middle of a civil war.
The inspectors from a Netherlands-based chemical weapons watchdog have around nine months to complete their mission that calls for finding, dismantling and eliminating President Bashar Assad's estimated 1,000-ton arsenal.
Their task has been endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for Syria's chemical stockpile to be scrapped by mid-2014. The deadline is the tightest that the experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have ever faced.
An advance team of 19 inspectors and 14 U.N. staff members arrived in Damascus late Tuesday afternoon in a 19-vehicle convoy escorted from the Lebanese border by two Syrian Foreign Ministry representatives. The experts set up a logistics base for its immediate work, the U.N. said in a statement.
UN: Nearly 1,000 Iraqis killed in September
BAGHDAD - An Iraqi sheik cradled his grandson's tightly wrapped body Tuesday, his face grim and his eyes downcast, trailed by men bearing the coffin of the infant's mother.
The mother and son were killed the day before by a bombing in Baghdad - two among nearly 1,000 Iraqi lives lost to violence in September. The heartbreaking image, captured in an Associated Press photo, illuminates the human tragedy behind the numbers.
Sectarian bloodshed has surged to levels not seen in Iraq since 2008. More than 5,000 people have been killed since April, when a deadly government raid on a Sunni protest camp unleashed a new round of violence that showed al-Qaida in Iraq is still strong despite years of U.S.-Iraqi offensives against the terror group.
At least 979 people - 887 civilians and 92 soldiers and national policemen - were killed in September, a 22 percent increase from the previous month, the U.N. mission in Iraq said Tuesday. Baghdad was hit hardest, with 418 violent deaths. The U.N. also reported that 2,133 people were wounded nationwide in the relentless car bombings, suicide attacks and shootings.
The spike reversed a brief decline to 804 in August after the death toll reached 1,057 in July, the highest since June 2008 when 975 people were killed.
Jacksonville airport reopens after evacuation
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The Jacksonville International Airport was shut down for nearly five hours, stranding incoming planeloads of passengers on the tarmac, after police found two suspicious packages, one of which was deemed "destructive" and had to be deactivated offsite by a bomb squad.
The airport was evacuated shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday when police found one suspicious package in the terminal and another in a nearby parking garage.
- The Associated Press