A world watching

October 02, 2013 - Daily News Briefing

If Washington gets back to business quickly, the world will probably see the shutdown as just another quirk of a nation that likes to describe itself as exceptional.

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Hailing it as an “historic day,” President Obama pressed forward his flagship health-care program Tuesday, inaugurating new insurance exchanges to expand access for those without coverage despite the shutdown taking hold across much of the government. Obama said the opportunity to access affordable insurance is life-changing for those who could not do so before the launch of the exchanges, now open for enrollment for six months starting Tuesday. The Obama administration hopes to sign up 7 million people during the first year.

Visitors on Tuesday arrived to find “CLOSED” signs at the Statue of Liberty, the Smithsonian, and other US parks and historic sites across the country. Callers looking for help from the government reached only voice mail. And federal employees were left to wonder when they would return to work. The first government shutdown in 17 years took hold in ways large and small. About 800,000 federal employees were sent home.

Israel’s prime minister declared Tuesday that his country will never allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, even if it has to act alone, and dismissed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “charm offensive” as a ruse to get relief from sanctions. Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to the UN General Assembly, played the spoiler to Iran’s overtures to warm ties with the US after decades of estrangement. Last week, the US and Iranian presidents spoke on the phone, the highest level contacts between their countries in 34 years.

Pope Francis says he doesn’t want a “Vatican-centric” church concerned about itself but a missionary church that reaches out to the poor, the young, the elderly, and even to nonbelievers. That’s the vision he laid out as he opened a landmark meeting Tuesday on reforming the 2,000-year-old institution. Francis convened the inaugural meeting of his eight cardinal advisers for three days of brainstorming on revamping the antiquated Vatican bureaucracy and other reforms.

Wading into the world spotlight, international inspectors arrived in Damascus 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, which calls for finding, dismantling, and eliminating President Bashar al-Assad’s estimated 1,000-ton arsenal.

Torture is widespread in Libyan jails run by militias that toppled Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in 2011, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday. UN investigators, who had periodic access to various detention centers, said there is evidence that 27 people have been tortured to death in the prisons, 11 of them this year, according to a report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Support Mission in Libya.

An employee of the company that owned the doomed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig testified Tuesday in New Orleans that he was surprised when BP scrapped his team’s design to stop the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Robert Turlak, a Transocean Ltd. manager, was a witness for his employer at a federal trial that is focusing on BP’s response to the April 2010 well blowout. BP’s trial adversaries argue the company could have sealed the blown-out well much sooner if it had employed a capping strategy that Turlak and others had devised. It was ready for installation in early June.

New York City Opera says the company will file for bankruptcy protection and wind down operations after failing to raise enough money to stage the rest of its season. The company announced Sept. 12 that it needed $7 million by the end of September.

A new survey of US Jews has confirmed some of the community’s worst fears: One in five American Jews say they have no religion, and their ranks appear to be growing. Jews in this category feel pride in being Jewish and a strong sense of belonging to the greater Jewish community. But they say their connection is based mostly on culture and ancestry, not necessarily on belief in God or observance of religious law. A large majority said remembering the Holocaust, being ethical, and advocating for social justice formed the core of their Jewish identity.

US factory activity expanded last month at the fastest pace in 2-1/2 years, an encouraging sign that manufacturing could lift economic growth and hiring in the coming months. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said Tuesday that its manufacturing index rose in September to 56.2, the highest since April 2011. That’s up from 55.7 in August and the fourth straight increase in the index. A reading above 50 indicates growth.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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