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Congressional negotiators have reached an agreement on a spending bill to keep the US government running until 30 September. The bipartisan deal boosts military spending but does not include funding for President Donald Trump's proposed wall on the Mexico border. The reported $1 trillion deal (£770bn) needs to be approved by lawmakers. On Friday Congress approved a stop-gap spending bill that averted a government shutdown at midnight on that day. That gave Congress one more week to work out federal spending over the last five months of the fiscal year. Lawmakers are expected to vote on the package in the coming days, the Associated Press reports.
The failure to act would have closed national parks and monuments and laid off federal employees. The last shutdown, in 2013, lasted for 17 days.
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Fights over short term spending bills have long been used by Republicans and Democrats as servers for broader policy fights, but with Republicans in control of Washington, President Trump has turned a sure thing into a major drama, with a Friday night deadline before much of the government shuts down.
Congressional appropriators, who are always happy to spend money together, were on a glide path to quietly do so, until Mr. Trump intervened, insisting on using the bill to get a down payment on a wall at the Mexican border that many Republicans are leery of and that he has long insisted would be paid for by Mexico. Suddenly, a spending bill that was meant to be a legislative grace note to much larger health care and tax policy bills has become the centerpiece of another battle. A bomb exploded through a subway train in St. Petersburg on Monday and it killed about 10 people and injured dozens more, government officials said. It exploded on a subway train traveling between the Technology Institute and Sennaya Square stations, according to the Russia’s federal criminal investigation agency. At the time of the attack, President Vladimir V. Putin was a few miles away in St. Petersburg, his hometown and the country’s second-largest city and former capital, on official business. Mr. Putin said all possibilities were being investigated since no one claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomb was a homemade device filled with shrapnel. It exploded in the third car just after the front of the train had entered the tunnel. Ten people died and 39 others were injured, the health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, announced live on television, and some of the wounded included children. |
Emilio Coppola
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