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Government shutdown only hours away in the US
A new vote is being held in the US House of Representatives among indications of a government shutdown beginning at midnight on Saturday.
Faced with a rebellion by fellow hard-line Republicans, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is trying to secure agreement on a temporary 45-day respite. It’s not clear if the measure – stripped aid to Ukraine – will pass.
The fourth shutdown to occur over the past decade, it could affect everything from air travel to marriage licenses. Most government employees will be furloughed without pay, and crucial nutrition programmes will be halted.
It follows a hard-right revolt in the US House of Representatives. Republicans control the House by a slim majority, while Democrats hold the Senate by a single seat.
That means spending bills to keep the government open require buy-in from both parties in order to advance through both chambers to President Joe Biden’s desk.
On Saturday morning, Speaker McCarthy said he would put a 45-day continuing resolution (CR) plan to the floor – a stop-gap would keep federal agencies open until Congress can agree on a new funding bill.
The CR would include disaster relief funding, but would not include US foreign aid for Ukraine, which Democrats have been insisting on.
A rebel faction of right-wing Republicans has, so far, held up negotiations in the House, the lower congressional chamber, with a demand for significant cuts in spending, including a call for no more US funding of the war in Ukraine.
Receiving vocal support online from former President Donald Trump, the hard-liners have tanked efforts by Mr McCarthy to shepherd legislation needed to break the impasse through the House.
While the Speaker could ostensibly turn to Democrats for the votes he would need to approve a spending measure, it is a move that would likely trigger an effort by the rebel faction to oust him from his plum leadership post. McCarthy has also refused to take up a short-term funding bill making its way through the Senate. The bill, which includes $6bn (£4.9bn) for Ukraine and $6bn for disaster aid, is a last-ditch effort to avert a lengthy shutdown and appears to have strong bipartisan support in the upper chamber.
On Friday, House Republicans’ short-term funding measure, which included strict border policies championed by the hardliners, was rejected by as many as 21 members of the party and failed to pass.
In a closed-door meeting, Mr McCarthy said that Republicans would have to opt for the House bill or the Senate’s version, or risk being blamed for a shutdown. But the rebel lawmakers asserted they would not budge for anything less than a long-term spending bill with their priorities addressed. “This take it or leave it or I’ll blame you won’t work on us,” South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a moderate who voted against the House bill on Friday, wrote on X. “I’m in this for the long run and have no problem taking on DC to do it.”
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, slammed Mr McCarthy for bringing up “truly radical” proposal that could not make it through both chambers. “The Speaker needs to abandon his doomed mission of trying to please Republican extremists,” he said. The White House backed Mr Schumer’s calls for the House to get behind his spending bill.
“The path forward to fund the government has been laid out by the Senate with bipartisan support – House Republicans just need to take it,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote in a statement on Friday.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “The failure of House Republicans to act responsibly would hurt American families and cause economic headwinds that could undermine the progress we’re making.” Ms Yellen warned that “key government functions”, including loans to farmers and small businesses, food and workplace safety inspections, and major infrastructure improvements would all be affected.
Shutdowns take place when Congress is unable to approve the roughly 30% of the federal budget it must approve before the start of each fiscal year on 1 October.
This means that, on Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal workers except those deemed “essential” will be at home without pay. Many of these employees live paycheque to paycheque, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
More than 1.4 million active-duty members of the military and tens of thousands of air traffic controllers will be among those working, without pay.
It is a troubling development for any federal workers holding student loan debt. Loan repayments for over 40 million people will restart on Sunday after being paused since the start of the pandemic.
The shutdown will also have an immediate impact on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which provides grocery assistance to seven million pregnant women and new mothers.
A prolonged shutdown could also affect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a grocery benefit known as “food stamps” that serves 40 million low-income Americans, and hinder the implementation of a new programme to serve free breakfast and lunch to students in high-need school districts.
Museums, national parks, research facilities and communities health centres with federal government oversight or funding are likely to suspend operations for the period of the shutdown.
Additionally, the government agency at the helm of relief and recovery from natural disasters is currently scrambling to conserve cash in the event a shutdown collides with an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season.
Budget disputes that cause this kind of disruption do not occur anywhere else in the world and has been criticised as an example of Washington’s growing dysfunction and partisan divides.
The last government shutdown, under Mr Trump in 2019, lasted a record 34 days.
It erased $11bn in economic output, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and federal workers were seen standing in line at food banks.
(BBC)
The India and Zimbabwe women’s teams are all set to play an international fixture against each other for the first time when Zimbabwe tour India for white-ball fixtures this October.
The tour comprises three T20Is and three ODIs and will be Zimbabwe’s first visit to India; India are yet to tour Zimbabwe for bilateral fixtures.
The three T20Is will be played in Raipur on October 16, 18 and 20, and the ODIs are on October 23, 25 and 28 in Baroda.
The fixtures were announced by the BCCI on Wednesday, along with two home series for the India A women’s side against Australia A in September and England A in December. Both those series comprise three T20s, three List A games and one multi-day fixture.
The India Under-19 women’s team will also host Sri Lanka U-19 in June and July for three T20s and three 50-over games, and England U-19 in November and December for five T20 fixtures.
The Australia A men’s side will tour India for two multi-day fixtures and three one-dayers in September and October, while the Australia U-19 side will visit India for two multi-day fixtures and three one-dayers also in September and October.
[Cricinfo]
Oil prices have dropped and global stock markets have risen following reports that the US and Iran are close to a deal to end the war.
Brent crude futures, the global benchmark oil price, fell to $97 (£73) a barrel after the reports before rebounding to over $101. The price was over $108 earlier in the day.
The FTSE 100 index of London’s largest public firms and Germany’s Dax index closed over 2% up while the French Cac 40 was up 3%. Asian indexes also ended the day higher while the US S&P 500 was up by more than 1% over the day.
The market movements come after Axios reported that the US believes it is close to a one-page document which will end the war and set up detailed nuclear talks.
Hours later, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson told Iranian Students’ News Agency that the US proposal to end the war with Iran was still being considered.
However, not long after that, Trump suggested a deal could still be a way off.
He said on Truth Social that any agreement by the Iranians is “a big assumption” and that a failure to come to a deal will result at bombardments “at a much higher level and intensity ” than was the case during Operation Epic Fury.
Oil prices are still much higher than the $70 a barrel they were hovering around before the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, which has caused caused production and transportation of oil in the region to slump.
Central to the conflict is Iran’s threat to attack oil ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway south of the country, in response to US-Israeli strikes since 28 February.
About a fifth of global oil and gas shipments usually cross the strait, which has been effectively closed for weeks. Global gas prices have also soared since the conflict began.
As for stock markets, the big European bourses are lower than they were at the end of February, while the S&P 500 climbed by more than 1%.
The main Asian markets all rose on Wednesday, with the South Korean Kospi closing up 6.45%, the Hong Kong Hang Seng ending the day up 1.22%, and the Japanese Nikkei finishing 0.38% higher.
The Hang Seng is down since the start of war, but the other two are up.
[BBC]
Pakistan Women 343/4 in 50 overs (Sadaf Shamas 101, Gull Feroza 100, Sidra Amin 59; Christina Mutasa 1-19, Lindokuhle Mabhero 1-52, Olinder Chare 1-40, Nomvelo Sibanda 1-61) beat Zimbabwe Women 137 in 39 overs (Runyararo Pasipanodya 33*; Fatima Sana 3-15, Diana Baig 1-23, Momina Riasat 2-39, Rameem Shamim 2-20, Syed Aroob Shah 2-18) by 206 runs
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