Headline

US On Brink Of Govt Shutdown With Funding Talks Stalled

Published

3 weeks ago

October 1, 2025

The United States government was barreling towards its first shutdown in six years Tuesday, with funding expiring at midnight barring a breakthrough on deadlocked negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.

A last-gasp meeting at the White House on Monday yielded no progress, with top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer saying afterward that “large differences” remained between both sides.

His party, in the minority in both chambers of Congress, is seeking to flex its rare leverage over the federal government, eight months into Donald Trump’s barnstorming second presidency that has seen entire government agencies dismantled.

The 100-member Senate requires government funding bills to receive 60 votes — seven more than the Republicans control.

With no sign of compromise, an afternoon Senate vote was expected on a short-term funding extension already passed by the House of Representatives, although there was little hope it would succeed.

Unless Congress passes a bill before midnight to fund federal operations, the government will partially close up shop — and plunge Washington into a fresh political crisis.

A shutdown would see nonessential operations grind to a halt, leaving hundreds of thousands of civil servants temporarily without pay, and payment of many social safety-net benefits potentially disrupted.

Trump upped the ante Tuesday when he told reporters his administration may go beyond the usual practice of temporary furloughs and fire “a lot” of federal workers — but he blamed Democratic demands for the looming crisis.

“It’s like they don’t change. They lost an election in a landslide, and they don’t change,” he said.

‘On vacation’ –

US government shutdowns are deeply unpopular, and Democrats and Republicans alike try to avoid the scenario — while blaming the other camp in the event of a closure.

Republicans have proposed to extend current funding until late November, pending negotiations on a longer-term spending plan.

Democrats want to see hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending restored, particularly in the Obamacare health insurance program for low-income households, which the Trump administration is likely to eliminate.

They also want to block Trump and Republicans from cutting approved funds later through the so-called “rescissions” process, as they did this summer. The process requires only a simple majority to pass.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson kicked off a pressure-cooker final day of brinkmanship ahead of the midnight deadline by accusing Democrats of weaponizing health care funding “to shut down the government and protect themselves from their radical base.”

The House has already passed a seven-week stop-gap funding measure, and Johnson has sought to force Senate Democrats’ hands by not bringing his chamber back to Washington this week.

But many Democrats have shown up and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries assembled dozens of his members in front of the US Capitol to berate Republicans for being “on vacation” as the shutdown looms.

“We’re ready, we’re willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward to fund the government in a way that actually meets the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety and their economic wellbeing,” he told reporters.

“But here’s what we’re not going to do: We’re not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people — not now, not ever.”

The gridlocked Congress regularly runs into deadlines to agree on spending plans.
In March of this year, with the threat of another shutdown already looming, Republicans refused to engage in dialogue with Democrats over massive budget cuts and the layoffs of thousands of federal employees.

Senate Democrats reluctantly provided the votes to end the stand-off but the decision angered the party base, which is calling on Democratic leaders to stand up to Trump.

Headline

Voters In Turkish Cyprus Reject Erdogan-backed Leader In Presidential Election

Published

1 day ago

October 19, 2025

Editor

The breakaway territory of northern Cyprus has voted overwhelmingly to replace its outgoing leader, who had the backing of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, election officials said Sunday.

Almost 63 per cent of voters in the territory, whose claim to statehood is recognised only by Turkey, backed former prime minister Tufan Erhurman as next president at the expense of Turkey’s pick, Ersin Tatar, who polled 35 per cent.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion following a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta eventually led to the creation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983.

The internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, controls the island’s majority Greek Cypriot south.

While Tatar has toed the Turkish line of two separate states on Cyprus, Erhurman has indicated he favours a federal state that would include both sides of the island.

Erhurman said there were no losers in the election and that “the Turkish Cypriot people have won together”.

Headline

Thieves Steal French Crown Jewels From Louvre In Daytime Raid

Published

1 day ago

October 19, 2025

Editor

Thieves wielding power tools raided the Louvre in broad daylight Sunday, taking just seven minutes to grab some of France’s priceless crown jewels, but dropping a gem-encrusted crown as they fled, officials and sources said.

Authorities recovered the 19th-century crown — damaged — near the museum.

The spectacular heist, one of several to target French museums in recent months, forced the closure of the Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum and home to the Mona Lisa.

President Emmanuel Macron posted on social media that “everything is being done” to catch the perpetrators and recover the stolen items.

Police are looking for a team of four thieves, Paris’s chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau told the BFMTV channel.

Soldiers patrolled the famed glass pyramid entrance, while evacuated visitors, tourists and passersby were kept at a distance behind police tape.

It was “like a Hollywood movie”, one American tourist, Talia Ocampo, told AFP.

It was “crazy” and “something we won’t forget — we could not go to the Louvre because there was a robbery”, she said.

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A culture ministry statement said eight items of jewellery had been stolen from the Gallerie Apollon that houses the French crown jewels.

“Two high-security display cases were targeted, and eight objects of invaluable cultural heritage were stolen,” said the ministry statement.

They included the emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife Empress Marie Louise, and the crown of Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III.

Beccuau said the thieves had threatened museum guards with the angle grinders they used to break into the jewellery cases.

A team of 60 investigators was working on the case, she added.

– ‘Unsellable’ –

The robbers used a powered, extendable ladder of the sort used to hoist furniture into buildings to get into a gilded gallery housing the crown jewels, said officials.

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Eugenie’s crown was recovered after the thieves dropped it as they made their escape, said the culture ministry statement.

The crown, featuring golden eagles, is covered in 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the museum’s website.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the thieves had used the furniture hoist to steal “priceless” items from two displays in the museum’s “Galerie d’Apollon” (“Apollo’s Gallery”).

The items stolen also included a necklace from the sapphire jewellery of Queen Marie Amelie and Queen Hortense and a pair of emerald earrings that once belonged to Marie Louise, said the culture ministry.

The thieves arrived between 9:30 and 9:40 am (0730 and 0740 GMT), the source following the case said, shortly after the museum opened to the public at 9:00 am.

One police source said the robbers had ridden up on a scooter armed with angle grinders and used the furniture hoist to get inside the Louvre.

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A witness named Samir, who was riding a bicycle nearby at the time, told the TF1 channel that he saw two men “get on the hoist, break the window and enter… it took 30 seconds”.

He said he saw four of them leave on scooters, and he called the police.

The robbery happened just 800 metres (half a mile) from Paris police headquarters.

The Louvre’s management told AFP it had closed because it wanted to “preserve traces and clues for the investigation”.

The director of the Drouot auction house told the LCI broadcaster he feared the jewels would be broken down into gems and precious metal to be sold, as they would be “completely unsellable in their current state”.

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– ‘Great vulnerability’ –

The Louvre used to be the seat of French kings until Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles in the late 1600s.

It is the world’s most visited museum, last year welcoming nine million people to its extensive hallways and galleries.

Nunez, the capital’s former police chief who became interior minister last week, said he was aware of “a great vulnerability” in museum security in France.

Last month, criminals used an angle grinder to break into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth 600,000 euros ($700,000).

Thieves earlier in the month stole two dishes and a vase from a museum in the central city of Limoges, the losses estimated at 6.5 million euros.

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Last year, four thieves stole snuffboxes and other artifacts from another Paris museum, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.

But thefts from the Louvre have been rarer.

A painting by French painter Camille Corot disappeared from the museum in 1998 and has never been recovered.

In 1911, an Italian worker at the museum stole the Mona Lisa, but it was recovered and today sits behind security glass.

Macron in January pledged the Louvre would be redesigned after its director voiced alarm about dire conditions inside. On Sunday, he said that that project included reinforced security.

Dati said Sunday that new security measures would be part of the renovation plan.

AFP

Headline

Pope Leo Creates Seven New Saints In Historic Vatican Ceremony

Published

1 day ago

October 19, 2025

Editor

Bells rang out Sunday over St Peter’s Square as Pope Leo XIV created seven new saints, including the first from Papua New Guinea, an archbishop killed in the Armenian genocide, and a Venezuelan “doctor of the poor.”

Also canonised during the solemn ceremony, under sunny skies in the vast plaza on World Mission Day, were three nuns who dedicated their lives to the poor and sick and former Satanic priest Bartolo Longo.

The Italian lawyer born in 1841 subsequently rejoined the Catholic faith and went on to found the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii.

“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new Saints, who, with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning,” Leo told an audience the Vatican estimated at some 55,000 people.

“May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness,” he said during his homily.

Huge portraits of the seven were unfurled from windows over the square as Leo, the first US pope, exited St Peter’s Basilica dressed in a ceremonial white cassock with a white mitre on his head, preceded by white-clad bishops and cardinals.

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints—the Vatican department charged with beatification and canonisation—read aloud profiles of the seven to applause from the crowd.

With Leo’s reading of the canonisation formula, they were officially declared saints.

In his homily, Leo described the new saints as either “martyrs for their faith,” “evangelisers and missionaries,” “charismatic founders” of congregations, or “benefactors of humanity.”

The rite of canonisation was the second for the former Robert Prevost since he was made leader of the Catholic Church on May 8.

Last month, he proclaimed as saints Italians Carlo Acutis—a teenager dubbed “God’s Influencer” who spread the faith online before his death at age 15 in 2006—and Pier Giorgio Frassati, considered a model of charity who died in 1925, aged 24.

Canonisation is the final step towards sainthood in the Catholic Church, following beatification.

Three conditions are required—most crucially that the individual has performed at least two miracles. He or she must be deceased for at least five years and have led an exemplary Christian life.

Martyrs, humanitarians

Along with Longo, those made saints Sunday were Peter To Rot, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea killed during the Japanese occupation during World War II, Armenian bishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, killed by Turkish forces in 1915, and Venezuela’s Jose Gregorio Hernandez Cisneros, a layman who died in 1919, whom the late Pope Francis called a “doctor close to the weakest.”

Also from Venezuela was Maria Carmen Elena Rendiles Martinez, a nun born without a left arm who overcame her disability to found the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus before her death in 1977. She becomes the South American country’s first female saint.

The Italian nuns canonised are Vincenza Maria Poloni, the 19th-century founder of Verona’s Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, which cares primarily for the sick in hospitals, and Maria Troncatti of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

In the 1920s, Troncatti arrived in Ecuador to devote her life to helping its indigenous population.

AFP