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The federal shutdown that has idled some 800,000 government workers could be over by now — if members of Congress were able to vote on a bill that doesn't include an attack on the new U.S. health care system, President Obama says. "There are enough votes in the House of Representatives to make sure that the government reopens today," he told The Associated Press Friday.

In an interview with the news organization, published Saturday, Obama also said he believes the House and Senate would approve a bill that keeps the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations — an event that the Treasury warns could happen if legislation isn't approved by Oct. 17.

"And I'm pretty willing to bet that there are enough votes in the House of Representatives right now to make sure that the United States doesn't end up being a deadbeat," he said.

The AP interview with Obama touched on many topics. Here are some highlights:

On what a potential default would mean:

"Making sure that the United States government pays its bills — that's non-negotiable. That's what families all around the country do. If I buy a car, and I decide not to pay my car note one month, I'm not saving money. I'm just a deadbeat."

On those who pushed for the government shutdown:

"I recognize that in today's media age, being controversial, taking controversial positions, rallying the most extreme parts of your base, whether it's left or right, is a lot of times the fastest way to get attention and raise money," he said. "But it's not good for government."

On problems with websites for health care signups:

"It is true that what's happened is, the website got overwhelmed by the volume. And folks are working around the clock and have been systematically reducing the wait times," he said.

"We are going to probably exceed what anybody expected, in terms of the interest that people have."

On Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, and Israel:

"Rouhani has staked his position on the idea that he can improve relations with the rest of the world," Obama said. "And so far he's been saying a lot of the right things. And the question now is, can he follow through?"

The president says U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that Iran remains more than a year away from building a nuclear bomb, not the months away that Israeli officials have reported.

On the name of the Washington Redskins football team:

"If I were the owner of the team and I knew that the name of my team, even if they've had a storied history, that was offending a sizable group of people, I'd think about changing it," Obama said.

I'm walking through Times Square, the crossroads of the world. Just when I reach the line for cheap Broadway tickets, I see it: a giant billboard with the word "capitalism" in bright white lights and the words "works for me!" in cursive below. There's a podium and two buttons where you can vote whether the statement is "true" or "false."

Peggy Demitrack, a tourist from Cleveland, is adamant when she pushes the "true" button. She says capitalism works for anyone who strives and educates themselves.

When asked whether she has money for retirement, she adds: "Something! Yes. And you know what? Even if I didn't, if that all collapsed, I'd be down the street working for McDonalds. I would not be sitting home wanting to take something from somebody else."

Steve Lambert, the artist who came up with this idea for "Capitalism Works for Me! (True/False)," has often done pieces about advertising and the media. He was once involved in a satirical hoax in which a fake "special edition" of The New York Times announced the end of the Iraq War in 2008, with more than a million copies printed.

His new economics-themed art installation has been traveling around the country, and it's now in Times Square for a few days.

Lambert says talking about capitalism is almost impossible without sounding tedious. As he said at the Creative Time Summit last year in New York:

"If someone came up to me and said, 'Can I talk to you about capitalism?' I'd feel like they were walking up to me and saying, 'Could I talk to you about Jesus Christ?' Um ... are you going to ask me to join some organization?"

Shirley Jones starred in some of the great movie musicals of the 1950s — Oklahoma, Carousel, The Music Man — won an Oscar for her role in the film Elmer Gantry and then went on to be the mother in the classic sitcom The Partridge Family. She's just written a new memoir about her life onstage, on-screen and behind the scenes.

We've invited Jones to play a game called "Look, it's the partridge family! GET THEM!" Three questions about the sport of partridge shooting.

A Touch of Sin

Director: Jia Zhangke

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 125 minutes

Not rated; violence, profanity, animal cruelty, smoking.

With: Zhao Tao, Jiang Wu, Wang Baoqiang

In Mandarin with English subtitles

(Recommended)

Mark Ward is the U.S. State Department's senior adviser on assistance to Syria, and when he heard the Syrian border town of Azaz was overrun by an offshoot of al-Qaida in September, he knew it was time to get creative again.

"You always have to have a plan B in this kind of work," he says.

Ward is based in Turkey. His job is to oversee a growing and unusual U.S. humanitarian assistance program in rebel-held areas in seven provinces across northern Syria.

U.S. policy toward Syria was front-page news when President Obama talked about a possible missile strike, and there's been an ongoing debate about U.S. assistance to the rebels attempting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

But the main U.S. effort, which has received much less attention, is the more than $1.5 billion that the U.S. has provided for humanitarian aid and social programs since the Syrian uprising began in the spring of 2011.

By comparison, the U.S. has spent $26 million on nonlethal aid to the rebels, though the U.S. is now undertaking a program to provide arms as well.

Ward faced a new and daunting challenge when a radical Islamist rebel group ousted another rebel faction in Azaz, less than five miles from the Turkish border. Turkey then closed the nearby border crossing, shutting down a crucial highway to Syria.

"It has definitely slowed down assistance, but it hasn't stopped it," says Ward, a Foreign Service veteran. "There are other ways into Syria, but it takes longer."

Enlarge image i

Thanks to the federal government's partial shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics skipped its monthly Big Reveal at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

There was no September employment report.

Without access to the BLS numbers, data junkies were left to scrounge around for lesser reports. Maybe if they could suck in enough small hits of other statistics, they could feel that old familiar rush?

Nope. Nothing can replace that BLS high.

"You do miss it," said Harry Holzer, Georgetown professor and former chief economist for the Labor Department. "I watch it closely. It's the single best number to explain what's going on" in the U.S. labor market, he said.

The BLS report surveys both employers and households. Also, it comes out monthly, rather than quarterly. Holzer said that frequency provides enough snapshots of wages and hours to create a kind of flowing documentary about jobs.

So here we are — with no new picture to advance the story.

But instead of dwelling on what we don't have, let's think of this as "Faux Friday" — a day offering plenty of data, just not from the BLS. Simply lower your standards, pop open a near-beer and let's go over the almost-important data that we did get this week:

— ADP's payroll report showed a gain of 166,000 private sector jobs for September — in line with what employers had been adding all summer.

— Initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000 last week. That number, based on state data, was somewhat better than the expected 314,000 new claims.

— PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s Autumn Outlook survey of small and medium-size businesses showed 16 percent intend to add full-time employees during the next six months, while 8 percent plan to cut workers.

— The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said companies announced plans for 40,289 layoffs in September, down 20 percent from August.

— Glassdoor, an online site for jobs, released its quarterly Employment Confidence Survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive. That showed only 15 percent of employees are afraid of being laid off, the lowest percentage since the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

"The Fade"— a documentary by London filmmaker Andy Mundy-Castle— follows the lives of four barbers on three continents, all at the top of their game. New Jersey barber Johnny Castellanos also known as "Hollywood" is a barber to the stars. His client list includes rapper and businessman Jay Z and artists and athletes like Pharrell Williams and Amare Stoudemire.

Men travel from miles around by bicycle and foot just to sit in Offori "Tupac" Mensah's chair for a cut. His Ghanaian shop is modest but always busy.

London barber Faisal Abdu'Allah is a man who wears many hats. He brings his training as a visual artist to his shop. He also dishes out a lot of no-nonsense advice to clients—whether they've asked for it or not.

Shawn Powis takes his shop with him as he travels around Jamaica cutting the hair of notable dancehall artists like Elephant Man and Aidonia.

Although all of the men come from very different walks of life, they all have a sense of deep pride about their profession.

Director Andy Mundy-Castle tells NPR's Michel Martin that "one of the inspirations behind the film was to connect the diaspora." By following four barbers from three continents, he wanted to "look at this trans-Atlantic map that has a very harrowing past and we very rarely hear positive reflections about what's come through there."

Movie lovers have Netflix, music lovers have Spotify — and book lovers (whether they read literary fiction or best-selling potboilers) now have Scribd. The document sharing website has been around since 2007, but this week it launched a subscription service for e-book lending.

Though Scribd now has the backing of Big Five publisher HarperCollins, it began as a self-publishing site. CEO and co-founder Trip Adler says his father, a doctor, wanted to publish a medical paper. "We wanted build a site that would let him more easily just get his paper up there on the Web and distribute it, and we quickly expanded that to other kinds of content like books, school papers, essays, creative writing."

Scribd now has 80 million monthly users, and the new subscription service will allow them access to unlimited e-books on any digital device for a fee of $8.99 a month. That will include most of the books on the HarperCollins backlist.

"We thought this through on both the reader side and on the publisher's side," Adler says. "So on the readers' side we want a simple value proposition where they pay a flat monthly fee and they can read whatever they want. On the publisher's side ... we made it fit their traditional models where they get paid every single time someone reads a book, so it's almost as if they're selling books through this service."

Books

Libraries And E-Lending: The 'Wild West' Of Digital Licensing?

Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who masterminded the defeat of French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive that turned many Americans against the Vietnam War, has died at 102.

Giap, whose legacy in Vietnam is second only to Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary communist leader, died Friday at a hospital in the capital, Hanoi, a government official tells news agencies.

The general is ranked by historians as among the greatest military leaders of the 20th century. His 1954 defeat of French forces garrisoned at the northwestern province of Dien Bien Phu is considered a classic of guerrilla siege.

After the U.S. became involved in the conflict in the 1960s, Giap was responsible for key campaigns against American forces, most famously a massive assault against the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies during the 1968 Tet Lunar New Year celebrations. The Tet Offensive, although a military defeat for the North, nonetheless helped turn American opinion against the war.

NPR's Greg Myre interviewed Giap in Hanoi in 2000 on the 25th anniversary of the communist victory that toppled the U.S.-backed government in the South.

At the time, Giap told Myre that the Americans were welcome to return to Vietnam, but only if they helped rebuild the impoverished country, where 58,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese, mostly civilians, died in two decades of fighting against the French and then the Americans.

"We can put the past behind, but we cannot completely forget it," Giap told reporters, including Myre, who was with The Associated Press at the time. "As we help in finding missing U.S. soldiers, the United States should also help Vietnam overcome the extremely enormous consequences of the war."

According to Reuters, Giap was "the son of a peasant scholar" born in central Vietnam in 1911. He eventually became a close friend of the revolutionary Ho, who "held him in high regard alongside former Prime Minister Pham Van Dong."

Reuters says:

"Giap's critics and his nemesis, the late U.S. General William C. Westmoreland, said he was effective partly because he was willing to sustain huge losses in pursuit of victory.

"Any American commander who took the same vast losses as General Giap would have been sacked overnight," Westmoreland was quoted as saying in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stanley Karnow's 1983 book 'Vietnam: A History.'

"Karnow wrote that Westmoreland seemed to misunderstand how determined the communists under Ho and Giap really were."

The news has only gotten worse about the sea disaster near Sicily, where a ship packed with about 500 African migrants caught fire and sank on Thursday.

When we first posted about the tragedy, the death toll stood at just under 100. Now, as Reuters reports:

"Italian divers searched on Friday for bodies trapped in the wreck of a boat packed with African migrants which sank off Sicily, killing an estimated 300 people in one of the worst disasters in Europe's decades-long immigration crisis.

"Rescue teams have so far recovered 111 bodies and expect to find more than 100 others in the submerged wreck, which is sunk in around 40 meters of water less than 1 km (0.6 miles) from the shore of the southern island of Lampedusa. After 155 survivors were pulled from the water on Thursday, choppy seas were expected to make the recovery work more difficult and there was no realistic hope of finding any more of the estimated 500 passengers on board the vessel still alive."

Five Dances might be the least talky movie I've seen in months — but it's plenty expressive. What it says, it says silently, or at least nonverbally, in the music-and-movement language of Jonah Bokaer's haunting choreography, which speaks of solitary strivings and the brief, passionate connections that punctuate them.

In fact the quiet appeal of Alan Brown's sensually photographed film (Derek McKane is the cinematographer) is in the way it extends that vocabulary into its non-dance scenes; it's a gentle, if slight, narrative full of fraught looks and knowing silences — which, frankly, might grow tiresome in another context — that communicate mood and character as clearly and lyrically as a fine dance piece.

Watch this, and tell me you don't learn something from that focus-pull at 8 seconds in, and from the tiny sidelong glance at 19 seconds:

A Touch of Sin

Director: Jia Zhangke

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 125 minutes

Not rated; violence, profanity, animal cruelty, smoking.

With: Zhao Tao, Jiang Wu, Wang Baogiang

In Mandarin with English subtitles

(Recommended)

“ I lost a game of Scattergories to Michael Jackson, and then he sang 'We Are the Champions.'

Gravity

Director: Alfonso Cuarn

Genre: Drama, Sci Fi

Running Time: 90 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense perilous sequences, some disturbing images and brief strong language.

With: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

(Recommended)

More David Wain on Ask Me Another

Ask Me Another

Five By Five, With Will Shortz

The Army rejected him because of his bad eyes — he was nearsighted — but Tom Clancy, who went into the family insurance business instead of the military, turned out to have the greatest vision of modern warfare of any writer of our time. His research into military history and technology led him to create a new form of thriller, and a hero for our time, a man named Jack Ryan whose talents as a spy and technowarrior put a name and a face to the people who battled Russians, Pakistanis, Irish nationalists and Islamists along a constantly shifting front line.

Like other contemporary best-selling entertainers, such as Stephen King, say, or James Michener, Clancy was not a great stylist. But he had a great talent for creating dramatic scenes that kept us bound to the page, reading our way through the most catastrophic events. Fortunately for us, the nuclear bombing of the Baltimore football stadium, a plot on the part of a rogue Pakistani general to destroy Moscow, and a plan by a splinter group of the IRA to kidnap Americans remain fictional. But Clancy's talent for scene-making, his gift for research, and his apparent multitude of confidential contacts with the men and women who actually lived the military and intelligence life made it possible for him to create dozens of books that seem more real than reality itself.

The best of these, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and others in the Jack Ryan series make up a saga so engrossing and so hypnotic they read like movies on the page. The action scenes evolve beautifully, as visual as anything in the movies, with the added enticement of crisp, accurate and hard-driving prose and meticulous research. As in the opening of the 1984 novel that carried him first into the public eye: "Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy was dressed for the Arctic conditions normal to the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyarnyy. Five layers of wool and oilskin enclosed him. A dirty harbor tug pushed his submarine's bow around to the north, facing down the channel. The dock that held his Red October for two interminable months was now a water-filled concrete box, one of the many specially built to shelter strategic missile submarines."

Remembrances

Tom Clancy Dies, Left 'Indelible Mark' On Thriller Genre

With the current bloom of artisanal small-batch producers across the country, you'd think that all you need to start up a new food business is a good idea and a lot of gumption. And for the most part, that's true. But when it comes to artisanal producers working with meat, you also need something else: a Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Points plan. Or, if you will, a HACCP.

A HACCP (pronounced, by those in the industry, as HASSup) aims to accomplish the admirable goal of keeping our food supply safe by planning out critical control points, monitoring, hazard analysis and all that fun stuff, making sure that you don't get a dose of Listeria along with your saucisson sec.

For dry-cured meats, which never get a turn in the bacteria-killing heat of the oven and rely instead on critical control of pH and moisture levels, this is especially important. It may seem surprising that there isn't one universally required procedure. But that's both the bane and beauty of the HACCP.

"The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service wants you to demonstrate that the food you make is safe," explains Arion Thiboumery, founder of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network. "They put out performance standards, but they don't tell you how. People have tried a lot of different ways." This focus on results, rather than process, means that as long as you meet the safety requirements at the critical control points, you have some leeway in how you get there.

"The brilliance behind a HACCP plan is that it's so flexible," extols Elias Cairo, the co-founder of Portland's Olympic Provisions, the first USDA-certified charcuterie in Oregon. "The lack of guidelines lets you produce anything you want, in exactly the way that you want, as long as you can prove that it's safe."

Cairo is clearly a big fan of the HACCP (and the USDA in general), whose adaptability has allowed him to produce cured meats that are winning fans across the country. But this flexibility comes at a cost.

Because of the sausage world's variation in process and recipe, each HACCP is uniquely tailored to each small-batch producer's process. Sausage-makers have to spend months and months familiarizing themselves with the scientific literature, taking classes and exams and providing the USDA documentation for the path they're taking — or pay significant money to consultants to come up with a plan for them, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

And once they've paid (in money or sweat) for these plans, they don't necessarily want to share their trade secrets. But one sausage maker — Underground Meats, of Madison, Wis. — is looking to establish a new model, by developing (via Kickstarter) an open source HACCP plan template for all to use.

"I think this is a large barrier to people entering the market, and if we remove it, we'll see really good products coming out," hopes Underground Meat's Jonny Hunter.

If the project's funding goal is reached, he aims to work with a third party company, possibly the University of Wisconsin, to lay out the process, and then publish the results under a Creative Commons license. "The craft is something that takes time, but the knowledge of the safety side is something that should just be open and free."

Hunter's mission seems to have struck a nerve in the artisanal meat community — as of this writing, the campaign is nearly three-fourths of the way to its $40,000 goal.

Thiboumery, of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, notes that with the age of the average butcher, like the age of the average farmer, continuing to go up every year, removing barriers to entry for new, young producers could revitalize the industry.

"I think it would be consistent with the mission of a land grant institution — let's use public money to solve a problem that we all agree should be solved."

But some, like Olympic Provisions' Elias Cairo, are a bit skeptical as to how it'll play out. The HACCP must be so specific that it'd be hard to universalize a sort of "bible" — beyond providing already-available general information on critical control points.

But Hunter thinks that while it won't be a one-size-fits-all fix, the control points, steps and scientific justifications will be a valuable jumping-off point. "People would have to tailor it individually — nobody would be able to just download it from the Internet; it needs to be specific. But if I would have had this five years ago, it would have saved me so much time."

An international team overseeing the dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons program reports that it's making "encouraging initial progress," according to the United Nations.

"Documents handed over [Wednesday] by the Syrian Government look promising, according to team members," the United Nations said in a statement on Thursday.

The joint team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations says "further analysis, particularly of technical diagrams, will be necessary and some more questions remain to be answered."

The Associated Press reports:

"The inspectors said in a statement Thursday that the team 'hopes to begin onsite inspections and the initial disabling of equipment within the next week,' but doing so depends on the work of technical groups established with Syrian experts."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered some rare, if fleeting, hope Thursday in regard to his country's relationship with Iran.

In an interview with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, he said the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani "might" offer an opportunity for diplomacy and that he would "consider" meeting him.

"I don't care about the meeting. I don't have a problem with the diplomatic process," Netanyahu said.

"You're saying you would meet him?" Steve asked.

"I haven't been offered. If I'm offered, I'd consider it, but it's not an issue. If I meet with these people I'd stick this question in their face: Are you prepared to dismantle your program completely? Because you can't stay with the [nuclear] enrichment."

When states and the federal government rolled out online marketplaces to help people buy health insurance on Tuesday, you'd think that old-fashioned insurance brokers would be worried.

All told about $200 million are being spent on a new army of people to help consumers find their way. These navigators, guides or assisters, as they're called, would seem to threaten the business of traditional brokers.

Many brokers work for small independent businesses. So are brokers at risk of becoming the next travel agents, whose ranks were thinned by online shopping?

Many brokers thought so when the Affordable Care Act was passed back in 2010, says Tim Hebert, an ambitious young insurance broker in Ft. Collins, Colo. "Brokers were concerned they were going to be out of business, that the law was designed to put them out of business," he says.

Part of the law led insurance companies to dramatically cut the commissions they paid brokers. And Hebert says the new government-run exchanges were designed to make it easy to buy health insurance.

Brokers "were concerned that the exchanges would set up a federal entity, and that they would have people come to them and enroll [in the exchanges], and that brokers would not be able to help in that and would not be compensated," he says. "So we'd lose the majority or all of our clients to the exchange, putting us out of business."

At the same time, an estimated 20 million Americans, who couldn't afford health insurance before, would be able to get government subsidies to help them buy it. Brokers worried that that subsidized coverage would only be available through the new online shopping portals in every state.

The exchange in Colorado, for example, has a website designed to take people from uninsured to fully covered right at the keyboard.

Christopher Ringwood, who works for the exchange in Colorado, shows off the new site. "So I'm entering the ZIP code and county information, my month and year of birth. I'm now going to browse plans," he says. "If I want, I can add additional family members to get a quote."

The website is backed by a toll-free phone number. In Colorado alone, nearly 200 people are available to take calls.

Shots - Health News

For-Profit Online Insurance Brokers Gear Up To Sell Obamacare

With the current bloom of artisanal small-batch producers across the country, you'd think that all you need to start up a new food business is a good idea and a lot of gumption. And for the most part, that's true. But when it comes to artisanal producers working with meat, you also need something else: a Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Points plan. Or, if you will, a HACCP.

A HACCP (pronounced, by those in the industry, as HASSup) aims to accomplish the admirable goal of keeping our food supply safe by planning out critical control points and monitoring and hazard analysis and all that fun stuff, making sure that you don't get a dose of Listeria along with your saucisson sec.

For dry-cured meats, which never get a turn in the bacteria-killing heat of the oven, and rely instead on critical control of pH and moisture levels, this is especially important. It may seem surprising that there isn't one universally required procedure. But that's both the bane and beauty of the HACCP.

"The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service wants you to demonstrate that the food you make is safe," explains Arion Thiboumery, founder of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network. "They put out performance standards, but they don't tell you how. People have tried a lot of different ways." This focus on results, rather than process, means that as long as you meet the safety requirements at the critical control points, you have some leeway in how you get there.

"The brilliance behind a HACCP plan is that it's so flexible," extols Elias Cairo, the co-founder of Portland's Olympic Provisions, the first USDA-certified charcuterie in Oregon. "The lack of guidelines lets you produce anything you want, in exactly the way that you want, as long as you can prove that it's safe."

Cairo is clearly a big fan of the HACCP (and the USDA in general), whose adaptability has allowed him to produce cured meats that are winning fans across the country. But this flexibility comes at a cost.

Because of the sausage world's variation in process and recipe, each HACCP is uniquely tailored to each small-batch producer's process. Sausage-makers have to spend months and months familiarizing themselves with the scientific literature, taking classes and exams and providing the USDA documentation for the path they're taking — or pay significant money to consultants to come up with a plan for them, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

And once they've paid (in money or sweat) for these plans, they don't necessarily want to share their trade secrets. But one sausage maker — Underground Meats, of Madison, Wis. — is looking to establish a new model, by developing (via Kickstarter) an open source HACCP plan template for all to use.

"I think this is a large barrier to people entering the market, and if we remove it, we'll see really good products coming out," hopes Underground Meat's Jonny Hunter.

If the project's funding goal is reached, he aims to work with a third party company (possibly the University of Wisconsin) to lay out the process, and then publish the results under a Creative Commons license. "The craft is something that takes time, but the knowledge of the safety side is something that should just be open and free."

Hunter's mission seems to have struck a nerve in the artisanal meat community — as of this writing, the campaign is nearly three-fourths of the way to its $40,000 goal.

Arion Thiboumery, of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, notes that with the age of the average butcher, like the age of the average farmer, continuing to go up every year, removing barriers to entry for new, young producers could revitalize the industry.

"I think it would be consistent with the mission of a land grant institution — let's use public money to solve a problem that we all agree should be solved."

But some, like Olympic Provisions' Elias Cairo, are a bit skeptical as to how it'll play out. The HACCP must be so specific that it'd be hard to universalize a sort of "bible" — beyond providing already-available general information on critical control points.

But Underground Meat's Jonny Hunter thinks that while it won't be a one-size-fits-all fix, the control points, steps, and scientific justifications will be a valuable jumping-off point. "People would have to tailor it individually — nobody would be able to just download it from the Internet, it needs to be specific. But if I would have had this five years ago, it would have saved me so much time."

“ I lost a game of Scattergories to Michael Jackson, and then he sang 'We Are the Champions.'

More David Wain on Ask Me Another

Ask Me Another

Five By Five, With Will Shortz

Good morning, fellow political junkies. As we enter Day 3 of the federal government shutdown, the impasse appears no closer to a solution. Nothing like a way forward seemed to come from President Obama's White House meeting Wednesday evening with congressional leaders.

But, then, we didn't expect much from it since the president's people said he wouldn't be negotiating.

Still, there's no shutdown in news coverage, far from it. Here's a collection of some of the more interesting pieces, themes, analysis or tidbits I wanted to share this morning.

We may be at grasping-at-straws time. Or worse. Wednesday evening, as President Obama met with congressional leaders at the White House, Robert Costa of the National Review caused some initial excitement with a report of a "grand bargain" being attempted by Speaker John Boehner as he tried to cook up a dish his fellow Republicans could stomach to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. But a Boehner spokesman downplayed the effort. And the more you looked, the slimmer the reed seemed to be.

It sounds like there was much heat generated at a private meeting of Senate Republicans Wednesday as they castigated Sen. Ted Cruz for leading congressional Republicans into the box canyon of the government shutdown-Obamacare fight with no exit strategy, reported Politico's Manu Raju. Cruz also reportedly refused to take back all the nasty things he has publicly said about them.

A staggering number of poor, both working and jobless, won't be helped by the Affordable Care Act because of their states' refusal to expand Medicaid. The New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff report that more than half the nation's low-wage workers and two-thirds of poor blacks and single mothers won't get the subsidies needed to buy health insurance.

While the lawmakers and news media busily showered attention on vets at the World War II Memorial who became a handy symbol of shutdown victimhood and triumph, especially for conservatives, virtually ignored were the very sick kids, especially those with cancer, treated by the shutdown-hamstrung National Institutes of Health. The New Republic's Alec MacGillis found little attention being paid to the Children's Inn facility in a close-in Washington suburb where children in NIH clinical trials stay.

The shutdown has been a speedbump for Washington lobbyists more than anything else, reports Kevin Bogardus of The Hill. Sure, a few meetings with lawmakers have had to be cancelled and venues changed. But so far, the city's lobbyists have found plenty of shutdown workarounds.

A lot of people probably hadn't given much thought to the possibility that a few furloughed, unpaid U.S. intelligence workers might now be more easily recruited to spy for foreign nations. I know I hadn't. But James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence raised that concern at a congressional hearing Wednesday, reported NPR's Scott Neuman.

Perhaps some of the fears held by House Republicans of primary challenges will be assuaged by a new automated poll that shows Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) with a commanding lead over his Tea Party challenger. CQ Roll Call's Abby Livingson reports that Shuster led retired Coast Guard captain Art Halverson by more than 50 points. It's still early, however.

If you want to talk to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) try calling his Senate office and see if he picks up. The shutdown has caused him to take decisive action and answer his own phones, reports Politico's Burgess Everett.

Richard Rodriguez begins his latest book, Darling, with an unfussy dedication to the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, a Catholic women's group committed to helping the sick and destitute. This Baptism, if you will, is the first and surely the most straightforward indication within the book that Rodriguez intends to delve into his complex relationship with religion. Because though the path that lies beyond that dedication is weird and wonderful, readers will find that it's far from a direct route.

Rodriguez says the impetus for Darling, a collection of 10 essays about spirituality, was the Sept. 11 attacks. While much of America turned into itself in the wake of the tragedy, searching for meaning and refuge in patriotism and familiarity, Rodriguez did the opposite. "It was in the weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11 that I came to the realization that the God I worship is a desert God," he writes in the first chapter. "It was to the same desert God the terrorists prayed."

With this empathetic outlook as his foundation, Rodriguez begins a journey to try and better understand his faith by first looking at this so-called "God of the desert." On a trip to Jerusalem, Rodriguez observes, "The ecology of the desert requires that humans form communities for mutual protection from extreme weathers, from bandits, from rival chieftains." This inhospitable terrain was the birthplace of the deity that now sits at the heart of three monotheistic religions — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

Darling's later essays go beyond the Middle East, globetrotting to San Francisco, Paris, and various other locales. They touch on topics as different as Lance Armstrong's love life, Elvis Presley, and a dear friend of Rodriguez' dying of HIV in Las Vegas. Yet each story is grounded in the author, a gay, devout, Roman Catholic in his 60s, attempting to make sense of a world and a religion that have both rejected him at times.

To be sure, Darling can occasionally feel frenetic, leaping quickly between themes, cities, time periods, and even languages. One paragraph might be about a pop culture icon and the very next a sad memory from Rodriguez' youth. The result is an eccentric mlange of a book that, in a lesser writer's hands, might have turned out cluttered and unfocused. Under Rodriguez' guidance, however, all the pieces are connected slowly until the project as a whole reveals itself. It's as if you've been wandering for miles in a desert and, suddenly, your salvation appears.

Read an excerpt of Darling

After more than two decades in city government, Bill Averill has a pretty impressive mental inventory of Milwaukee real estate. He started in the city assessor's office when he was 34, after leaving a private sector job that paid better — but had no retirement benefit.

"That was one of the main reasons I went to work for the city of Milwaukee," he says. "And so I knew the pension at some time, way out in the future, would be a benefit to me."

Well, that future is now. And at 62, Bill Averill is retired — and grateful to be collecting on the pension that lured him to civil service all those years ago.

Across the country, cities with pension plans for their workers are struggling to pay out the promised funds. Some municipalities have raided retiree savings to pay for other services during the downturn, while others have simply underfunded them.

But despite a 30 percent poverty rate, declining tax base and huge foreclosure crisis, Milwaukee has a model pension program and has managed to keep its promises to retirees.

'No Magic In Pension Funding'

To be clear, no one's getting rich off their pension here in Milwaukee — the average payout is just $23,000. But based on the city's record of exceptional funding levels, Averill and city's 12,000 other retirees have good reason to believe the money will be there when they need it.

"There is no magic in pension funding," says Jerry Allen, executive director of the city's pension system. "You simply have to put money in the fund."

A recent report from Wilshire Consulting found city and county pension funds in the U.S. have assets to cover only 69 percent of liabilities. Allen says Milwaukee's funding level has hovered near or well above 100 percent for decades. The city's system consistently ranks as one of the strongest in the country.

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Among the temporary casualties of the government shutdown, besides the paychecks of 800,000 workers, are all federally funded tourist attractions.

Sure, it's a bummer for those who planned vacations around the Smithsonian museums and galleries, national parks and national monuments (although barricades didn't stop some veterans at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., Tuesday).

But the masses of displaced tourists, furloughed workers and disgruntled citizens are actually helping out some establishments, albeit temporarily.

The New Smithsonians

Antonio Manalus, from Connecticut, wanted to see the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum on his trip to the nation's capital. Instead, he ended up at the privately owned International Spy Museum.

"This place must be doing some good business," he says while perusing the gift shop. He's also planning to visit Madame Tussauds, the wax museum a few blocks away, even though that wasn't on his original wish list.

The Two-Way

What Shutdown? WWII Vets Ignore Barricades To See Memorial

It's Day Two of the Federal Government Shutdown, 2013 edition with no end in sight.

So there's a heavy focus on shutdown-related items or themes today in this morning's political mix of items and themes that caught my eye:

Many in Washington now expect the government shutdown to last longer than a few days. That makes it increasingly likely that policymakers will link an agreement on a spending bill that reopens federal agencies to a resolution in the debt-ceiling dispute as well, Politico's Manu Raju, Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown report.

Congressional Republicans may, on the whole, be less sensitive to any widespread public backlash against the federal government shutdown than they were in the last one 17 years ago because more of them represent districts that are safer for Republicans than was true in 1995-1996, writes the National Journal's Ron Brownstein.

The group of hardline conservatives who are largely dictating the House Republican Conference's shutdown strategy believe they are winning, according to a New York Times piece by Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker. But they now face growing unrest from fellow Republican lawmakers who actually want to be part of a governing party that governs.

While most Americans might think that Washington D.C. is the metro area most dominated by federal workers as a percentage of its workforce, the winner in that category is actually Colorado Springs at 18.8 percent of its working population receiving paychecks from the U.S. government. An interactive Washington Post graphic provides details.

The Affordable Care Act's health-care exchanges had a noticeably glitchy unveiling Tuesday. But the heavy use of the websites by consumers suggested a pent-up demand for health insurance that supported the contention of Obamacare's backers that the law filled what had been a great unmet need, reported Jay Hancock, Phil Galewitz and Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News.

President Obama has had a visit to Asia to begin Saturday on his schedule for months. But the government shutdown is raising pressure on the White House to reschedule partly because of the greatly reduced number of federal employees available to handle such an overseas trip's logistics, report David Nakamura and Julia Eilperin of the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama phone the Malaysian prime minister to tell him that a visit to his country was postponed.

The nation's future military officers are being severely affected by the federal government shutdown which has forced severe disruptions at U.S. military academies that go far beyond the cancellation of some athletic events. The Air Force Academy's 4,400 cadets now have no library, and no media and tutoring centers, reports Politico's Libby A. Nelson.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel attached some real faces to a recent poll result which indicated that support for the Affordable Care Act rises or falls depending on whether people are asked if they favor the ACA or Obamacare. One takeaway? We should all keep our critical thinking caps when it comes to polls in general and those on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare in particular.

It's Day Two of the Federal Government Shutdown, 2013 edition with no end in sight.

So there's a heavy focus on shutdown-related items or themes today in this morning's political mix of items and themes that caught my eye:

Many in Washington now expect the government shutdown to last longer than a few days. That makes it increasingly likely that policymakers will link an agreement on a spending bill that reopens federal agencies to a resolution in the debt-ceiling dispute as well, Politico's Manu Raju, Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown report.

Congressional Republicans may, on the whole, be less sensitive to any widespread public backlash against the federal government shutdown than they were in the last one 17 years ago because more of them represent districts that are safer for Republicans than was true in 1995-1996, writes the National Journal's Ron Brownstein.

The group of hardline conservatives who are largely dictating the House Republican Conference's shutdown strategy believe they are winning, according to a New York Times piece by Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker. But they now face growing unrest from fellow Republican lawmakers who actually want to be part of a governing party that governs.

While most Americans might think that Washington D.C. is the metro area most dominated by federal workers as a percentage of its workforce, the winner in that category is actually Colorado Springs at 18.8 percent of its working population receiving paychecks from the U.S. government. An interactive Washington Post graphic provides details.

The Affordable Care Act's health-care exchanges had a noticeably glitchy unveiling Tuesday. But the heavy use of the websites by consumers suggested a pent-up demand for health insurance that supported the contention of Obamacare's backers that the law filled what had been a great unmet need, reported Jay Hancock, Phil Galewitz and Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News.

President Obama has had a visit to Asia to begin Saturday on his schedule for months. But the government shutdown is raising pressure on the White House to reschedule partly because of the greatly reduced number of federal employees available to handle such an overseas trip's logistics, report David Nakamura and Julia Eilperin of the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama phone the Malaysian prime minister to tell him that a visit to his country was postponed.

The nation's future military officers are being severely affected by the federal government shutdown which has forced severe disruptions at U.S. military academies that go far beyond the cancellation of some athletic events. The Air Force Academy's 4,400 cadets now have no library, and no media and tutoring centers, reports Politico's Libby A. Nelson.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel attached some real faces to a recent poll result which indicated that support for the Affordable Care Act rises or falls depending on whether people are asked if they favor the ACA or Obamacare. One takeaway? We should all keep our critical thinking caps when it comes to polls in general and those on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare in particular.

It's Day Two of the Federal Government Shutdown, 2013 edition with no end in sight.

So there's a heavy focus on shutdown-related items or themes today in this morning's political mix of items and themes that caught my eye:

Many in Washington now expect the government shutdown to last longer than a few days. That makes it increasingly likely that policymakers will link an agreement on a spending bill that reopens federal agencies to a resolution in the debt-ceiling dispute as well, Politico's Manu Raju, Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown report.

Congressional Republicans may, on the whole, be less sensitive to any widespread public backlash against the federal government shutdown than they were in the last one 17 years ago because more of them represent districts that are safer for Republicans than was true in 1995-1996, writes the National Journal's Ron Brownstein.

The group of hardline conservatives who are largely dictating the House Republican Conference's shutdown strategy believe they are winning, according to a New York Times piece by Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker. But they now face growing unrest from fellow Republican lawmakers who actually want to be part of a governing party that governs.

While most Americans might think that Washington D.C. is the metro area most dominated by federal workers as a percentage of its workforce, the winner in that category is actually Colorado Springs at 18.8 percent of its working population receiving paychecks from the U.S. government. An interactive Washington Post graphic provides details.

The Affordable Care Act's health-care exchanges had a noticeably glitchy unveiling Tuesday. But the heavy use of the websites by consumers suggested a pent-up demand for health insurance that supported the contention of Obamacare's backers that the law filled what had been a great unmet need, reported Jay Hancock, Phil Galewitz and Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News.

President Obama has had a visit to Asia to begin Saturday on his schedule for months. But the government shutdown is raising pressure on the White House to reschedule partly because of the greatly reduced number of federal employees available to handle such an overseas trip's logistics, report David Nakamura and Julia Eilperin of the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama phone the Malaysian prime minister to tell him that a visit to his country was postponed.

The nation's future military officers are being severely affected by the federal government shutdown which has forced severe disruptions at U.S. military academies that go far beyond the cancellation of some athletic events. The Air Force Academy's 4,400 cadets now have no library, and no media and tutoring centers, reports Politico's Libby A. Nelson.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel attached some real faces to a recent poll result which indicated that support for the Affordable Care Act rises or falls depending on whether people are asked if they favor the ACA or Obamacare. One takeaway? We should all keep our critical thinking caps when it comes to polls in general and those on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare in particular.

The number of people who leave their countries to work abroad is soaring, according to the United Nations. More than 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, up from 150 million a decade ago.

And migration isn't just from poor countries to rich countries any more. There also is significant migration from rich country to rich country — and even from poor country to poor.

Beginning Thursday, the U.N. will hold a high level meeting on the subject in New York.

Moving For Work

In the Philippines, at the offices of Industries and Personnel Management in Manila, some 30 nervous applicants sit in hard plastic chairs watching a video about a day in a life of an employee at a duty free shop at the international airport in Dubai, on the Persian Gulf.

As soothing music plays in the background, the video shows workers — in robin's egg-blue jackets — looking almost robotic as they cheerfully assist customers in checkout lanes and count money.

In a call center in Rancho Cordova, Calif., on Tuesday, all the workers wore the same T-shirt: "Keep Calm And Go Live."

They were ready and waiting to take calls from consumers who could buy health insurance on California's new insurance marketplace for the first time. So the T-shirts urged calm, but the mood was ecstatic and emotional among the architects and key backers who gathered to flip the switch on the Golden State's exchange.

Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state's exchange, addressed a cheering crowd in this Sacramento suburb and drew a stark contrast to the grinding politics of Washington, D.C., that shuttered much of the federal government.

"While Washington is talking about shutdown, we're talking about startup," said Lee, as he declared an end to the era of a punishing individual insurance market.

"Gone are the days of invasive questions when you apply for insurance about your allergies, your asthma, your diabetes, your cancer. Gone," said Lee. "You're never going to be asked that again. Gone are rates based on your answers to those questions."

On The East Coast

While the mood was equally buoyant at a Hampton, Va., rally, the circumstances for people wanting insurance in the state couldn't have been more different. At Enrollfest, one of the few Obamacare events in Virginia, organizer Gaylene Kanoyton was quick to point out that "the state is not providing any resources. So, we just have to go ahead and move on. It is a grassroots effort. It is up to all of us as citizens to come together."

Kanoyton managed to get a dozen local agencies, health centers and advocacy groups to set up tables at the Boo Williams Sportsplex in the city in southeastern Virginia. She advertised the event in churches, community centers and on the radio, and says that some 400 people showed up.

Among them was Brenda Harrell, 57, a former hairstylist who's lived in Hampton all her life.

"I'm here to get some insurance, some coverage," Harrell said. "I've been out of work over a year, I have heart and respiratory failure, denied for Medicaid, and still don't have any coverage. I haven't seen a doctor for my breathing for over a year."

She brought along her portable oxygen tank. She has $19,000 in medical debt already and can't afford new tubes for the tank. She's just been using the same ones over and over, she says.

Now she has a glimmer of hope as she sits down with a certified application counselor from a local health center to help her sign up on the federal government's enrollment site, www.healthcare.gov.

But the site is overloaded. They try four times, but can't do much more than enter Harrell's name and set up a password. And even if they could, Harrell would still probably be out of luck. Her income is less than $10,000 a year — too much to qualify for Medicaid in a state that's not expanding the program, and too little for a subsidy to help her buy a plan on the exchange.

It will be a different story for people in similar situations in California. The state was an eager, early and bipartisan adopter of the Affordable Care Act, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a consumer advocacy group.

"We were the first state in the nation to set up an exchange and that was under a Republican governor," Wright said. "Our bill to set up the pre-existing insurance program was co-sponsored by a Republican in our legislature."

While 2.6 million uninsured Californians are expected to qualify for a subsidy to buy private insurance, another 1.4 million will be newly eligible for Medicaid. All told, there are 5 million uninsured Californians who will have to decide what kind of coverage they want to buy to comply with the law's mandate that they have health insurance.

The big fight among members of Congress over the Affordable Care Act could spell big pay cuts — as much as $12,000 — for their employees.

How is this possible? Congressional staffers are most likely wondering the same thing.

Look back to the drafting of the act four years ago. At the time, Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley argued that if the health insurance exchanges were good enough for ordinary Americans, they should be good enough for members of Congress and their staff members. Democrats went along with his argument, and it was included in the law.

Now, however, the health insurance benefits of some 16,000 congressional staff have been sucked into the contentious Obamacare debate, and all congressional — and some executive branch — staff could end up taking big pay cuts.

Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate are now calling it a matter of "fairness" to end a special sweetheart deal (Twitter hashtag: #FairnessForAll). The way they describe it, members of Congress and their staff were given special treatment by the Obama administration to get "taxpayer-funded subsidies" to help pay for their health insurance.

But a closer look at the actual text of the so-called Vitter amendment shows that the subsidy we're talking about here is the "government contribution" toward those staffers' health care insurance premiums. Replace the word "government" with "employer," and it becomes clear that the money is simply the same health insurance benefit that most Americans get from their private employers, companies large and small.

The problem began with a drafting glitch in the bill: The final language does not account for the employer's share of the insurance premium. Even Grassley has acknowledged that eliminating the employer's contribution was not what he had in mind. To address this, leaders in both chambers worked with the White House over the summer to come up with a rule that allows the existing employer contributions to keep flowing — about $5,000 for singles and $12,000 for family coverage.

And that's where things stood until Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter began pushing to eliminate that benefit — not just for Congress and its staff (the target of the Grassley amendment) but also for the president, the vice president and political appointees in the executive branch.

So far the Senate has shown little interest in agreeing to this plan. But if House Republicans succeed in enacting it in return for passing a spending bill, the financial pain for their own employees could be considerable.

Because while members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year, most of their staff members make a fraction of that. In the case of a lower-paid staffer who is supporting a family, the loss of the employer share could amount to a 20 percent cut or more from the total compensation package.

In fact, at the lower salary levels, it could qualify congressional staffers for generous tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act or even make them eligible for Medicaid, depending on which state they live in and whether they have families.

S.V. Dte is the congressional editor on NPR's Washington Desk.

If you are trying to buy a home, you just got good news: The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it is not going to try to drive up long-term interest rates just yet.

Stock investors are happy for you. They like cheap mortgages too because a robust housing market creates jobs. To celebrate, they bought more shares, sending the Dow Jones industrial average up 147.21 to an all-time high of 15,676.94.

Unfortunately, if you are a retiree who wants a higher return on your savings in the bank — well, sorry. The interest paid to you will be meager.

In fact, the Fed's surprising announcement on interest rates created lots of winners and losers. But before sorting them out, let's first look at what happened:

Policymakers for the central bank met this week and concluded that the U.S. economy is still weak enough to need their help. They said they recognize that the country has seen "improvement in economic activity and labor market conditions," but they added that the Fed still has to tamp down interest rates as officials "await more evidence that progress will be sustained."

Their decision stunned most economists, who believed Fed officials were ready to switch gears away from the long-standing policy of restraining interest rates. The low-rate strategy has been in place throughout the Great Recession and slow recovery.

But many experts say it's time for a change. They think the economy is strong enough to allow interest rates to start to return to historical norms.

Back in June, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself suggested such a switch would come by year's end.

But since then, interest rates on mortgages have been ratcheting up on their own — in anticipation of the coming change. Ditto for interest rates on Treasury securities.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Bernanke and his fellow policymakers sprang their surprise. After taking a harder look at the most recent information, they decided not to change course after all.

They are worried that congressional Republicans and the White House might have another big showdown this fall, which could rattle markets. And Fed officials don't like seeing the latest higher mortgage rates, which have been scaring off some potential homebuyers.

"The tightening of financial conditions observed in recent months, if sustained, could slow the pace of improvement in the economy and the labor market," the Fed officials said in a statement.

So for the time being, the Fed will not back off its strategy of buying $85 billion a month in bonds to push down on long-term interest rates. It could still taper those purchases by year's end if the policymakers think conditions have changed, but for now, the low-rate strategy is firmly in place.

As a result, these groups cheered the Fed announcement:

Homebuyers and sellers. Thirty-year fixed mortgage rates, which jumped from about 3.5 percent in April to around 4.5 percent recently, are more likely now to halt their upward march. That may prompt more people to get into the homebuying market.

Stock owners. Shares become more valuable when investors can't get much of a return from interest payments on insured securities. So stock prices shot to record highs as of Wednesday's close.

Gold owners. The price of gold surged more than 4 percent to about $1,360. The hike came because gold gets more attractive in times of economic uncertainty and inflation. Some people believe the Fed's current policies eventually will lead to inflation.

And these groups found little to celebrate:

Gas guzzlers. The price of oil — just like gold — rose on inflation fears. By late afternoon, U.S. crude had risen more than $3 per barrel to a high of $108.49.

Conservative savers. If you like to keep your money in very safe securities, your interest income will stay depressed. For example, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note plunged to 2.71 percent after the announcement, down from 2.90 percent.

Job seekers. Not that you needed anyone to tell you this, but the Fed said the economic outlook is not great. It sees growth of 2.3 percent at best this year, down from its earlier forecast of growth as strong as 2.6 percent.

People who lose their jobs and the health insurance tied to them will have new coverage options when the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces open in October.

But consumer advocates are concerned many of these unemployed people may not realize this and lock themselves into pricier coverage than they need.

Today, the only option for many laid-off workers is to continue their employer-provided coverage for up to 18 months under the federal law known as COBRA, short for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that established the insurance option.

Because people have to pay the entire premium plus a 2 percent administrative fee, however, the coverage can be a financial hardship for people who are scrambling to keep up with expenses after losing their jobs.

Many of these people will likely be better off buying a plan on the state health insurance marketplaces, also called exchanges. Plans sold there must cover a set of 10 essential health benefits, and consumers can choose among four plan types with different levels of cost sharing. Tax credits to offset some of the premiums will be available to people with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($11,490 to $45,960 for an individual in 2013),often making exchange coverage significantly more affordable than COBRA.

"COBRA was a transitional type of coverage while you're between jobs, but now we have a subsidized form of coverage available, exchange plans with subsidies," says Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A little homework upfront can pay off later. People who enroll in COBRA and later decide they want to switch to an exchange plan generally won't be allowed to do so until the exchange's next annual open enrollment period. An exception would be if they exhaust their COBRA coverage.

During the first year of exchange operation, the annual enrollment period for coverage that will be available starting in January runs for six months, from Oct. 1 through the end of March 2014. In subsequent years, open enrollment for exchange plans will be shorter, running from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7.

"Particularly in the beginning, it could be common that people don't understand all their options," says Laurel Lucia, a policy analyst at the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Signing up for COBRA instead of an exchange plan could have serious financial repercussions. An analysis of premiums for plans on 12 state marketplaces by Avalere Health found that a mid-level individual plan would cost $336, on average. About 80 percent of exchange enrollees will qualify for subsidies that will reduce their costs.

Meanwhile, the average monthly cost for single coverage in an employer-sponsored plan is $490, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2013 employer health benefits survey. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) But the employee pays 17 percent, or just $83, of that amount, because the employer covers 83 percent of the total, on average. Once people sign up for COBRA, however, they're typically responsible for the whole premium.

Chicken wing restaurants continue to pop up everywhere in this country — there are Wingstop, Buffalo Wild Wings, Aaron Sorkin's West Wings. Now, McDonald's is getting in on the act with Mighty Wings. They're available in three-piece, five-piece, and Who-Am-I-Kidding-I've-Got-Nothing-Left-To-Prove-piece.

Peter: I was as surprised to find an actual bone in this as I would be to find a bone in a banana.

Eva: How McDonald's got the bones in the nugget is the modern version of the classic ship in a bottle mystery.

Ian: Yeah, Mighty Wings are basically McNuggets With Choking Hazards.

Miles: The new advertising calls them "bold," and it's not kidding. One of these wings just asked my girlfriend out.

Enlarge image i

After weeks of wondering what would happen, Americans now know:

1. Congress missed the midnight funding deadline for the new fiscal year, triggering disruptions in government operations.

2. That will slow economic growth, at least in the short term.

But just how far the damage will go is far from clear. Economists say they can't refine their predictions because they have no idea how long the shutdown might last or how many federal workers may be furloughed.

Among the questions they are pondering: If, as is now expected, the Labor Department fails to release the September unemployment report on Friday, will that lack of key data rattle investors?

"Getting some clarity would be a big relief for the markets," said John Canally, economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm.

Uncertainty about the scope and duration of the federal disruption reflects the division of responsibilities among branches of government. It's up to Congress to agree on a funding mechanism to reopen the government. But it's up to the Obama administration to determine exactly which workers are "essential" for the protection of life and property.

In some federal workplaces, the "essential" line might be bright and clear. For example, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, visitors will be turned away, but pandas will get fed.

But other calls will be much more complicated, and directions from supervisors have been murky so far, according to Michael Roberts, a Food and Drug Administration employee who serves as president of Chapter 212 of the NTEU, a union representing workers at several federal agencies.

"We've been getting conflicting information, with no clear guidance at the moment," Roberts said.

To the best of his understanding, many workers may be told to stay home for a few days but then could be recalled as "essential." For example, imports may start coming into this country without inspection — until someone determines that certain shipments represent "the highest level of risk," he said.

So exactly how high does a risk have to be before inspectors get called back? No one knows, and the answer may be a moving target, he said. "You would think we'd have an idea what's going on by now," Roberts said.

Even trying to determine how many people the government employs can be tough because of part-timers. A census report shows the government employs about 2.62 million people. And of those, perhaps 800,000 could be called nonessential, or at least that's the most commonly reported estimate.

IHS Global Insight economist Paul Edelstein says that if Congress were to keep the shutdown going for, say, three weeks or more, then the gross domestic product — i.e., the sum of all goods and services — would lose momentum. Instead of growing by the expected 2 percent this quarter, the economy might slow to just a 1.5 percent pace, he said.

That would translate into 75,000 fewer net jobs for the economy this fall, coming on top of the loss of income for those 800,000 workers' salaries.

The government shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy, President Obama warned Monday.

FDA worker Roberts said the loss of federal paychecks will have an impact on many families, from park rangers to secretaries to inspectors. "We have people who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," he said. "They don't know when or if they will be paid."

That means lots of households will be cutting back on spending, and that worries store owners.

"Our industry is keenly concerned," said Greg Ferrara, spokesman for the National Grocers Association. "There's a lot riding on this for us."

Many restaurant owners are worried, too. Andy Thompson, a co-owner of the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, Va., says many of his customers come to visit the nearby Shenandoah National Park — especially now during the peak of leaf-viewing tourist season.

If federal workers in Virginia lose paychecks and the park gates remain locked for long, then his restaurant could feel the pinch.

But he said business owners have come to expect poor economic results from Congress when it comes to orderly budget planning. "Everyone has that feeling: Why can't they get it together?" he said.

The sound of Buddhist chants wafts through an annex of the Songtang Hospice, the first private facility of its kind in Beijing. A group of lay Buddhists is trying to ease the passage of a recently departed soul of a patient.

When I first visited this place nearly two decades ago, the average patient stayed just 18 days. Now, it caters to people who are not terminally ill, and the average stay is about five years.

China is home to the world's largest aging population, and its attitudes and treatment of the elderly are changing. In the past, there was little mention in China of the rights of the elderly. Instead, ancestor worship and Confucian respect for the elderly were the norm.

But since this summer, Chinese law requires adult offspring to visit their elderly parents and look after their emotional needs. A number of cases of parents suing their deadbeat kids for emotional support have gotten heavy play in the Chinese media.

Law Meets Reality

Upstairs at the hospice, Huang Xuebing is visiting his mother, who has now been here for around five years and whose health is declining. Huang visits her here every day, but he still blames himself for not taking better care of her.

"In China, when you take care of a parent, you take care of him or her in your home, and you take care of them until they die," Huang says. "We call this filial piety. If you put a parent in an old age home, many people consider this unfilial. But we have no choice."

Huang says he tried to take care of his mother at home, but the caregivers he hired all quit. Huang's family comes from northeast China, and his mother's medical insurance will only pay for her treatment in her home province. So Huang uses all of his mother's pension, plus contributions from his siblings, to pay for his mother's stay at the hospice.

Huang admits he's struggling to reconcile his obligations to his mother versus those to society.

"I come here every day, but I have to take time out from work for it," he says. "When I come here to sit by her bedside and look after her every day that means that I haven't contributed to society in any other way, right?"

The challenge of caring for China's elderly is evident in the demographics. As of last year, China had about eight working-age people for every senior citizen. By midcentury, there will be only two people supporting each senior. This is because people are living longer, and they're having fewer children, in part because of China's one-child policy.

In another room of the hospice, I met a cheerful-looking 94-year-old retired teacher named Lian Yicheng. She says her daughter visits her just twice a month, and that's just fine by her.

"If there's nothing wrong, I don't ask her to come here," she says. "It's a three-hour round trip for her, so a visit takes up half her day. I tell her I'm fine, I'm alive and kicking, what's there to come over and see?"

She was separated from her children first during World War II. When the Japanese army invaded her home town of Wuhan, she fled to the wartime capital of Chongqing, then known as Chungking. She was separated from them again during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, so she got used to fending for herself.

Lian believes that how each person looks after his or her parents is a matter of individual character. She doesn't think it's something you can regulate by law.

"It's something you have [to] cultivate gradually. You can't force it," she says. "My daughter has her work and her own activities. She can't live in the past, according to the feudal thinking and Confucian ways of my generation."

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In a rare move, the top Marine on Monday forced two generals into retirement after concluding they should be held accountable for failing to secure a base in Afghanistan against a Taliban attack that killed two Marines.

Gen. James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said that Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus and Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant "did not take adequate force protection measures" at Camp Bastion, a sprawling British-run airfield in southwestern Afghanistan that was the Taliban target.

The Sept. 14, 2012, attack by 15 Taliban fighters caught the Marines by surprise and resulted in the deaths of Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible, 40, and Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27. The Taliban also destroyed six Marine Harrier fighter jets valued at $200 million and badly damaged others. It was one of the most stunning and damaging attacks of the war. Fourteen of the 15 attackers were killed; one was captured.

Gurganus, who was the top American commander in that region of Afghanistan at the time, did not order a formal investigation after the attack. In June, Amos asked U.S. Central Command to investigate, and he said he decided to take action against the two generals after reviewing the results of that investigation.

"While I am mindful of the degree of difficulty the Marines in Afghanistan faced in accomplishing a demanding combat mission with a rapidly declining force, my duty requires me to remain true to the timeless axioms relating to command responsibility and accountability," Amos said.

Amos added that Gurganus bore "final accountability" for the lives and equipment under his command, and had made "an error in judgment" in underestimating the risk posed by the Taliban in the Bastion area of Helmand province, which included his own headquarters at a sprawling base known as Camp Leatherneck.

Sturdevant was in charge of Marine aviation in that region of Afghanistan. Amos said Sturdevant "did not adequately assess the force protection situation" at Bastion.

Amos asked the two generals to retire and they agreed.

Gurganus, who had referred to the Taliban's penetration of Camp Bastion's supposedly secure perimeter as a "lucky break," had been nominated for promotion to three-star rank; that nomination had been put on hold during the investigation. He will retire as a two-star.

A few weeks after the Taliban attack, Gurganus told a news conference that "there's no mystery" to how the Taliban managed to get onto the supposedly secure base and launch their deadly attack using rocket-propelled grenades.
Gurganus said they used simple wire cutters to penetrate the perimeter fence, which was not equipped with alarms. "We have sophisticated surveillance equipment, but it can't see everywhere, all the time," he said. "This was a well-planned attack. I make no excuses for it. This was well planned and it was well executed."

In fact, at least one of the guard towers near the Taliban fighters' entry point was unoccupied at the time, officials have said.

If you're wondering how long the shutdown will last, well, don't hold your breath.

As of this writing, there are no indications that talks are underway — or even in the offing.

Indeed, the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected House legislation Tuesday morning calling for a House-Senate conference to try and settle the disagreement behind the first federal government shutdown in 17 years.

Senate Democrats spurned the House request because they reject Republican efforts to couple continued funding of the government to GOP attempts to hamstring the Affordable Care Act. Democrats insist they're not opposed to revising Obamacare; they're just not going to do it in the face of government-shutdown or debt-default threats.

"No matter how many times they try to extort the American people and the Democrats here in the Senate, we're not going to relitigate the health care issue," Sen. Harry Reid said on the Senate floor, explaining why his Democrats voted down the House request for a conference. "We're not going to do that. If they have problems with (Obamacare) we'll be happy to sit down and talk with them about a reasonable approach to do that. But we're not going to with a gun to the heads of the American people."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took aim at Iran and its new president, Hasan Rouhani, in a speech at the United Nations Tuesday, saying that Iran is trying to fool the international community into easing sanctions on it, even as the country expands its nuclear program.

"Rouhani thinks he can have his yellowcake and eat it too," Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly, referring to yellowcake uranium, a concentrated form of the radioactive element.

The Israeli leader spoke one week after Rouhani's U.S. visit, which included a speech at the U.N. and a telephone chat with President Obama — the first conversation between the two countries' leaders since the 1970s. News had previously emerged that the pair had exchanged letters.

In his speech, Netanyahu accused Iran's leader of engaging in a charm offensive that is meant to take international pressure off his country without making tangible concessions over its nuclear program.

"I mean, this is a ruse; it's a ploy," he said.

Netanyahu listed elements of what he called Rouhani's strategy.

"First, smile a lot. Smiling never hurts," he said. "Second, pay lip service to peace, democracy, and tolerance."

He continued by saying Rouhani is offering "meaningless concessions" to have sanctions lifted, all while ensuring that Iran can continue its nuclear program. Iran has long insisted on its right to pursue the program, saying that its goal is to produce nuclear energy.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I could believe Rouhani. But I don't," Netanyahu said. "Because facts are stubborn things."

In his speech, the Israeli leader said that in Rouhani's previous roles in Iran's government during the 1980s and '90s, he was in a position to know about deadly international attacks that targeted Jews and Americans.

"Rouhani stood at this very podium last week and praised Iranian democracy," Netanyuahu said. "But the regime he represents executes dissidents by the hundreds, and jails them by the thousands."

Saying that Iran has enriched uranium and acquired advanced centrifuges for its nuclear program, Netanyahu asked, "Why would a country with vast natural energy reserves invest billions in developing nuclear energy?"

"Iran is not building a peaceful nuclear program," he told the delegates and leaders in the U.N. chamber. "Iran is developing nuclear weapons."

The speech follows Netanyahu's visit to the White House Monday, when discussions centered on Iran, Syria and efforts to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu said he urged President Obama to maintain and even tighten sanctions on Iran.

During his American trip, Netanyahu has said that before the sanctions are lifted, Iran's words must be matched by actions that satisfy the international community. He listed some of his requirements Tuesday, saying that Iran must cease to enrich uranium and remove its stockpiles of the material.

As NPR's Parallels blog has noted, the U.S.-Iranian relationship has previously experienced "bouts of optimism" — only to return to a stalemate. And while experts voice skepticism over the recent moderation of Iran's tone, they also note that Rouhani has the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

These days, many people wear their vegetarianism as a badge of honor – even if it's only before 6 p.m, as food writer Mark Bittman advocates. (Actually, he wants us to go part-time vegan.) There's even a World Vegetarian Day, which happens to be today, fyi.

But more than 100 years ago, when Hitl, the world's oldest continually operating vegetarian restaurant, opened its doors in Zurich, it was an entirely different story.

"The first several years, people entered Hiltl through the backdoor," says Peter Vauthier, the head of Hiltl guest relations.

The Swiss, you see, have long been a pretty meat-loving bunch. "If you didn't eat meat, it meant you had no money," he says. Vegetarianism, in other words, was kind of a badge of shame.

Fast food, it turns out, isn't quite as fast as it used to be.

A new study finds that McDonald's posted its slowest drive-through times since this survey was first conducted 15 years ago.

At McDonald's, customers will spend on average 3 minutes and 9 seconds from the time they place their orders until they receive their food. That's about 10 seconds more than the industry average — and a lot slower than a decade ago, according to the study, which was commissioned by QSR, an industry trade publication.

And McDonald's wasn't alone in slowing down: Other chains, like Chick-fil-A, also saw their drive-through performance slow down.

Among the reasons for the more sluggish service: Today there are more choices on the menu, and the products themselves are more complex — flavored lattes, smoothies and salad bowls, for example. All of that can take longer to prepare and adds to the time spent waiting in the drive-through line.

Speed, of course, is essential to the drive-through experience, and drive-throughs are hugely important to chains such as McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell.

"Usually the drive-through accounts for 60 percent or 70 percent of all business that goes through a fast-food restaurant," notes Sam Oches, editor of QSR.

Of course, consumers also want their orders prepared correctly and on that score, Oches says, "accuracy is still really high."

The American quest for speed and convenience is now prompting some so-called fast casual chains like Panera to expand their drive-through offerings.

"It's a defensive thing, if nothing else," says Bob Goldin, an executive vice president with food and restaurant industry research firm Technomic. As Goldin puts it, you don't want to lose a customer who's in a hurry.

House Republicans and Senate Democrats could not reach agreement by the midnight deadline on a spending bill to keep the government operating, triggering an immediate shutdown of nonessential services and the furlough of nonessential personnel potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Updated at 1:40 a.m. ET, House Speaker Boehner's Comments:

NPR Coverage Leading Up To Shutdown

The Two-Way

The Looming Shutdown: Senate Rejects Second House Measure

After weeks of wondering what would happen, Americans now know:

1. Congress missed the midnight funding deadline for the new fiscal year, triggering disruptions in government operations.

2. That will slow economic growth, at least in the short term.

But just how far the damage will go is far from clear. Economists say they can't refine their predictions because they have no idea how long the shutdown might last or how many federal workers may be furloughed.

Among the questions they are pondering: If, as is now expected, the Labor Department fails to release the September unemployment report on Friday, will that lack of key data rattle investors?

"Getting some clarity would be a big relief for the markets," said John Canally, economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm.

Uncertainty about the scope and duration of the federal disruption reflects the division of responsibilities among branches of government. It's up to Congress to agree on a funding mechanism to reopen the government. But it's up to the Obama administration to determine exactly which workers are "essential" for the protection of life and property.

In some federal workplaces, the "essential" line might be bright and clear. For example, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, visitors will be turned away, but pandas will get fed.

But other calls will be much more complicated, and directions from supervisors have been murky so far, according to Michael Roberts, a Food and Drug Administration employee who serves as president of Chapter 212 of the NTEU, a union representing workers at several federal agencies.

"We've been getting conflicting information, with no clear guidance at the moment," Roberts said.

To the best of his understanding, many workers may be told to stay home for a few days but then could be recalled as "essential." For example, imports may start coming into this country without inspection — until someone determines that certain shipments represent "the highest level of risk," he said.

So exactly how high does a risk have to be before inspectors get called back? No one knows, and the answer may be a moving target, he said. "You would think we'd have an idea what's going on by now," Roberts said.

Even trying to determine how many people the government employs can be tough because of part-timers. A census report shows the government employs about 2.62 million people. And of those, perhaps 800,000 could be called nonessential, or at least that's the most commonly reported estimate.

IHS Global Insight economist Paul Edelstein says that if Congress were to keep the shutdown going for, say, three weeks or more, then the gross domestic product — i.e., the sum of all goods and services — would lose momentum. Instead of growing by the expected 2 percent this quarter, the economy might slow to just a 1.5 percent pace, he said.

That would translate into 75,000 fewer net jobs for the economy this fall, coming on top of the loss of income for those 800,000 workers' salaries.

The government shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy, President Obama warned Monday.

FDA worker Roberts said the loss of federal paychecks will have an impact on many families, from park rangers to secretaries to inspectors. "We have people who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," he said. "They don't know when or if they will be paid."

That means lots of households will be cutting back on spending, and that worries store owners.

"Our industry is keenly concerned," said Greg Ferrara, spokesman for the National Grocers Association. "There's a lot riding on this for us."

Many restaurant owners are worried, too. Andy Thompson, a co-owner of the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, Va., says many of his customers come to visit the nearby Shenandoah National Park — especially now during the peak of leaf-viewing tourist season.

If federal workers in Virginia lose paychecks and the park gates remain locked for long, then his restaurant could feel the pinch.

But he said business owners have come to expect poor economic results from Congress when it comes to orderly budget planning. "Everyone has that feeling: Why can't they get it together?" he said.

After weeks of wondering what would happen, Americans now know:

1. Congress missed the midnight funding deadline for the new fiscal year, triggering disruptions in government operations.

2. That will slow economic growth, at least in the short term.

But just how far the damage will go is far from clear. Economists say they can't refine their predictions because they have no idea how long the shutdown might last or how many federal workers may be furloughed.

Among the questions they are pondering: If, as is now expected, the Labor Department fails to release the September unemployment report on Friday, will that lack of key data rattle investors?

"Getting some clarity would be a big relief for the markets," said John Canally, economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm.

Uncertainty about the scope and duration of the federal disruption reflects the division of responsibilities among branches of government. It's up to Congress to agree on a funding mechanism to reopen the government. But it's up to the Obama administration to determine exactly which workers are "essential" for the protection of life and property.

In some federal workplaces, the "essential" line might be bright and clear. For example, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, visitors will be turned away, but pandas will get fed.

But other calls will be much more complicated, and directions from supervisors have been murky so far, according to Michael Roberts, a Food and Drug Administration employee who serves as president of Chapter 212 of the NTEU, a union representing workers at several federal agencies.

"We've been getting conflicting information, with no clear guidance at the moment," Roberts said.

To the best of his understanding, many workers may be told to stay home for a few days but then could be recalled as "essential." For example, imports may start coming into this country without inspection — until someone determines that certain shipments represent "the highest level of risk," he said.

So exactly how high does a risk have to be before inspectors get called back? No one knows, and the answer may be a moving target, he said. "You would think we'd have an idea what's going on by now," Roberts said.

Even trying to determine how many people the government employs can be tough because of part-timers. A census report shows the government employs about 2.62 million people. And of those, perhaps 800,000 could be called nonessential, or at least that's the most commonly reported estimate.

IHS Global Insight economist Paul Edelstein says that if Congress were to keep the shutdown going for, say, three weeks or more, then the gross domestic product — i.e., the sum of all goods and services — would lose momentum. Instead of growing by the expected 2 percent this quarter, the economy might slow to just a 1.5 percent pace, he said.

That would translate into 75,000 fewer net jobs for the economy this fall, coming on top of the loss of income for those 800,000 workers' salaries.

The government shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy, President Obama warned Monday.

FDA worker Roberts said the loss of federal paychecks will have an impact on many families, from park rangers to secretaries to inspectors. "We have people who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," he said. "They don't know when or if they will be paid."

That means lots of households will be cutting back on spending, and that worries store owners.

"Our industry is keenly concerned," said Greg Ferrara, spokesman for the National Grocers Association. "There's a lot riding on this for us."

Many restaurant owners are worried, too. Andy Thompson, a co-owner of the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, Va., says many of his customers come to visit the nearby Shenandoah National Park — especially now during the peak of leaf-viewing tourist season.

If federal workers in Virginia lose paychecks and the park gates remain locked for long, then his restaurant could feel the pinch.

But he said business owners have come to expect poor economic results from Congress when it comes to orderly budget planning. "Everyone has that feeling: Why can't they get it together?" he said.

With the seeming certainty of a federal shutdown at the stroke of midnight, there's been some polling in the past week or so aimed at divining the political fallout.

Who will be blamed?

Will it be House Republicans, with their unyielding efforts to defund and delay Obamacare, or Democrats (and President Obama) who will be viewed as unwilling to compromise?

Here's a short guide to some recent polling:

— A survey published last week by the folks at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked: "Who is more to blame if agreement is not reached?" The results: Republicans, 39 percent; Obama administration, 36 percent; both, 17 percent.

— A CNN/ORC International poll conducted over the weekend asked much the same question and got a less favorable result for the GOP. Some 46 percent said a shutdown would be the fault of Republicans, while 36 percent said the president would be more responsible. Thirteen percent said both sides would be to blame.

— Asked by Gallup last week whether it was more important for political leaders in Washington to stick to beliefs or compromise, Americans overwhelmingly chose "compromise" — by a margin of 53 percent to 25 percent. Since Republicans, Democrats and the president all claim to be sticking to their principles, it's not entirely clear what's to be made of the result.

Lastly, another poll published last week by Gallup could offer some additional clues. It asked whether respondents considered themselves "a supporter of the Tea Party movement, an opponent of the Tea Party movement, or neither." Supporters were at 22 percent (down 10 percentage points from three years ago), while 27 percent said they opposed the movement. Just as telling, perhaps, was that 51 percent responded that they are neither a supporter nor an opponent.

A spate of car bombs exploded during Baghdad's morning rush hour Monday, killing at least 47 people and wounding dozens more. Most of the bombs struck areas with large Shiite populations; various news agencies are reporting that from nine to 14 separate bombs were detonated.

Many of the car bombs resulted in far more injuries than deaths. But at least one explosion was especially deadly. According to the BBC and Reuters, an attack in Baghdad's Sadr City district killed at least seven people.

From Reuters:

" 'The driver said he would move it soon, but the car exploded a few minutes later,' said Abu Mohammed, a worker at the scene.

"Footage from the scene showed the remains of a car torn in two surrounded by damaged taxis and bits of metal melted in the heat of the blast."

House Republicans and Senate Democrats could not reach agreement by the midnight deadline on a spending bill to keep the government operating, triggering an immediate shutdown of nonessential services and the furlough of nonessential personnel potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

It will be the first government shutdown since 1996, when President Bill Clinton was in the White House.

NPR Coverage Leading Up To Shutdown

The Two-Way

The Looming Shutdown: Senate Rejects Second House Measure

In a rare move, the top Marine on Monday forced two generals into retirement after concluding they should be held accountable for failing to secure a base in Afghanistan against a Taliban attack that killed two Marines.

Gen. James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said that Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus and Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant "did not take adequate force protection measures" at Camp Bastion, a sprawling British-run airfield in southwestern Afghanistan that was the Taliban target.

The Sept. 14, 2012, attack by 15 Taliban fighters caught the Marines by surprise and resulted in the deaths of Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible, 40, and Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27. The Taliban also destroyed six Marine Harrier fighter jets valued at $200 million and badly damaged others. It was one of the most stunning and damaging attacks of the war. Fourteen of the 15 attackers were killed; one was captured.

Gurganus, who was the top American commander in that region of Afghanistan at the time, did not order a formal investigation after the attack. In June, Amos asked U.S. Central Command to investigate, and he said he decided to take action against the two generals after reviewing the results of that investigation.

"While I am mindful of the degree of difficulty the Marines in Afghanistan faced in accomplishing a demanding combat mission with a rapidly declining force, my duty requires me to remain true to the timeless axioms relating to command responsibility and accountability," Amos said.

Amos added that Gurganus bore "final accountability" for the lives and equipment under his command, and had made "an error in judgment" in underestimating the risk posed by the Taliban in the Bastion area of Helmand province, which included his own headquarters at a sprawling base known as Camp Leatherneck.

Sturdevant was in charge of Marine aviation in that region of Afghanistan. Amos said Sturdevant "did not adequately assess the force protection situation" at Bastion.

Amos asked the two generals to retire and they agreed.

Gurganus, who had referred to the Taliban's penetration of Camp Bastion's supposedly secure perimeter as a "lucky break," had been nominated for promotion to three-star rank; that nomination had been put on hold during the investigation. He will retire as a two-star.

A few weeks after the Taliban attack, Gurganus told a news conference that "there's no mystery" to how the Taliban managed to get onto the supposedly secure base and launch their deadly attack using rocket-propelled grenades.
Gurganus said they used simple wire cutters to penetrate the perimeter fence, which was not equipped with alarms. "We have sophisticated surveillance equipment, but it can't see everywhere, all the time," he said. "This was a well-planned attack. I make no excuses for it. This was well planned and it was well executed."

In fact, at least one of the guard towers near the Taliban fighters' entry point was unoccupied at the time, officials have said.