U.S. President Donald Trump signed legislation on Wednesday to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, just two hours after the House of Representatives voted to restore food assistance, pay hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
The Republican-led House approved the bill 222–209, with Trump’s backing helping unify his party despite strong Democratic opposition over the failure to secure extended federal health insurance subsidies.
Trump's signature on the bill, (the funding package was cleared by the Senate earlier in the week), will bring federal workers idled by the 43-day shutdown back to their jobs starting as early as Thursday.
However, it remains unclear how quickly full government services and operations will resume.
"We can never let this happen again," Trump said in the Oval Office during a late-night signing ceremony that he used to criticise Democrats.
"This is no way to run a country."
The deal extends funding through to 30 January, leaving the federal government on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.
The shutdown's end offers some hope that services crucial to air travel in particular would have some time to recover with the critical Thanksgiving holiday travel wave just two weeks away.
Restoration of food aid to millions of families may also make room in household budgets for spending as the Christmas shopping season moves into high gear.
It also means the restoration in coming days of the flow of data on the U.S. economy from key statistical agencies.
Some data gaps are likely to be permanent, however, with the White House saying employment and Consumer Price Index reports covering the month of October might never be released.
By many economists' estimates, the shutdown was shaving more than a tenth of a percentage point from gross domestic product over each of the roughly six weeks of the outage, although most of that lost output is expected to be recouped in the months ahead.
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Cuba has released extensive details of a deadly midweek shootout at sea, showing rifles, pistols and nearly 13,000 rounds of ammunition that it says were carried by a group of exiles who attempted to enter the island by speedboat.
Four people were killed and six detained after armed Cuban exiles aboard a Florida-registered speedboat were intercepted at sea on Wednesday, drawing swift reactions from Washington, Havana and Moscow.
Iran’s top diplomat said that the next round of nuclear talks is expected in less than a week after what he described as “progress in the most serious exchanges” between Tehran and Washington. The statement follows the third round of nuclear talks on Thursday (26 February) in Geneva.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, arrived in Geneva and may hold talks with U.S. officials, according to the RIA news agency.
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are escalating, with Washington ordering a significant military build-up in the region and multiple countries evacuating diplomatic staff amid fears of further instability.
Israel has launched a pre-emptive missile strike against Iran, the Defence Minister said on Saturday, as the military sounded air raid sirens to prepare the public for possible retaliation.
The situation in Cuba was heating up and called for restraint following a deadly incident involving a Florida-registered speedboat off the coast of the Caribbean island, the Kremlin said on Thursday (26 February).
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, arrived in Geneva and may hold talks with U.S. officials, according to the RIA news agency.
Ankara has rejected media reports claiming it plans to deploy military forces into Iranian territory in the event of a U.S. attack on the Islamic republic.
Cuba has released extensive details of a deadly midweek shootout at sea, showing rifles, pistols and nearly 13,000 rounds of ammunition that it says were carried by a group of exiles who attempted to enter the island by speedboat.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers said on Friday (27 February) they were ready to negotiate after Pakistan bombed their forces in several Afghan cities, including Kabul and Kandahar, and Islamabad declared the neighbours were now in "open war".
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are escalating, with Washington ordering a significant military build-up in the region and multiple countries evacuating diplomatic staff amid fears of further instability.
Two people were killed and around 40 injured when a tram derailed in central Milan on Friday (27 February), a spokesperson for the local fire service said.
Colombia’s commerce minister, Diana Marcela Morales, has said she will propose raising tariffs on certain Ecuadorian goods from 30% to 50%, as a trade dispute between the neighbouring countries intensifies.
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