US House Passes Bipartisan Bill To Avoid Government Shutdown

Last-gasp moves to prevent a US government shutdown took a dramatic step forward Saturday, as Democrats overwhelmingly backed an eleventh-hour Republican measure to keep federal funding going for 45 days, albeit with a freeze on aid to Ukraine.

The stopgap proposal adopted by the House of Representatives with a vote of 335-91 was pitched by Speaker Kevin McCarthy just hours before a midnight shutdown deadline that would have seen millions of federal employees and military personnel sent home or required to work without pay.

The deal still has to be approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

CNN quoted an administration official as saying the White House would likely support the bill in order to keep the government open with the expectation of being able to restore Ukraine aid later. 

The shutdown crisis was largely triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who had defied their own party leadership to scupper various temporary funding proposals as they pressed for deep spending cuts.

Saturday's agreement could end up costing McCarthy his job, as the hardliners had threatened to remove him as speaker if a stopgap measure they opposed was passed with Democrat support.

Pitching his last-gasp proposal, McCarthy had appealed to both Republicans and Democrats to "put your partisanship away" and dismissed the threat to his job.

"If somebody wants to remove (me) because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try," he said.

The proposed plan would keep the government funded at current levels without the hardline-backed spending cuts that Democrats had viewed as a non-starter. But the lack of assistance for Ukraine was problematic.

Arming and funding Ukraine in its desperate war against the Russian invasion has been a key policy plank for President Joe Biden's administration and, while the stopgap is only temporary, it does raise questions over the political viability of renewing the multibillion-dollar flow of assistance.

The Democrat-controlled Senate had been prepared to vote on its own stopgap bill later Saturday -- one that did include funding for Ukraine.

"This is enough to keep the government open, and I'm not going to shut the government down over foreign aid," one House Democrat, Jared Moskowitz, told CNN, while making clear he was a strong supporter of Ukraine aid.

The freeze of all but critical government services had been set to start after midnight (0400 GMT Sunday), immediately delaying salaries for millions of federal employees and military personnel.

A shutdown would have meant the majority of national parks, for example -- from the iconic Yosemite and Yellowstone in the west to Florida's Everglades swamp -- would be closed to public access beginning Sunday.

With student loan payments resuming in October, officials also said Friday that key activities at the Federal Student Aid office would continue for a couple of weeks.

But a prolonged shutdown could cause bigger disruptions, percolating through the wider economy.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Pro-China Candidate Mohamed Muizzu Wins Maldives Presidency

Pro-China candidate Mohamed Muizzu won Saturday's presidential election in the Maldives, a result set to once again upend the archipelago's relationship with traditional benefactor India.

Muizzu, 45, helms a party that presided over an influx of Chinese loans when it last held power in the atoll nation, better known for its luxury beach resorts and celebrity tourists.

He won 54.06 percent of the vote in the run-off contest, prompting incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to concede defeat shortly before midnight.

"Congratulations to president-elect Muizzu," Solih wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "I also congratulate the people who have shown a peaceful and democratic process."

Muizzu made a brief appearance outside his party's campaign headquarters to urge supporters not to celebrate until Sunday morning, when campaign restrictions officially come to an end.

Solih, 61, will serve as caretaker president until his successor is inaugurated on November 17.

The result upends Solih's efforts to revert the country's diplomatic posture back towards New Delhi since taking office five years ago.

Muizzu played a pivotal role in an earlier government's development programme, bankrolled in part by financial largesse from China's Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

He told a meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials last year that his party's return to office would "script a further chapter of strong ties between our two countries".

Geopolitical hotspot

The Maldives sits in a strategically vital position in the middle of the Indian Ocean, astride one of the world's busiest east-west shipping lanes.

Muizzu's mentor, former president Abdulla Yameen, borrowed heavily from China for construction projects and spurned India.

Solih was elected in 2018 on the back of discontent with Yameen's increasingly autocratic rule, accusing him of pushing the country into a Chinese debt trap.

Yameen's turn towards Beijing had also alarmed New Delhi, which shares concerns with the United States and its allies about China's growing assertiveness in the Indian Ocean.

India is a member of the strategic Quad alliance alongside the United States, Australia and Japan.

But Solih's restoration of the Maldives' traditional posture itself proved controversial, with many in the archipelago disapproving of India's outsized political and economic clout.

Muizzu has vowed to free Yameen, currently serving an 11-year sentence for corruption on the same prison island where he had jailed many of his political opponents during his tenure.

In his brief appearance Saturday, Muizzu urged the outgoing president to use his executive power and transfer Yameen to house arrest.

Turnout in Saturday's poll was 85 percent, slightly higher than the first-round vote held earlier this month.

Watchdog group Transparency Maldives said there had been some incidents of "electoral violence," without specifying further details.

Officials said one voter broke open a plastic ballot box, but the ballots were saved and there was no interruption to the count.

Police reported arresting 14 people, mostly for taking photographs of their marked ballot papers and sharing them on social media.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Man With Special Needs Detained For "Misbehaving" On IndiGo Flight

A mentally disabled passenger was detained for allegedly "misbehaving" and "locking himself" inside a bathroom onboard an Indigo Hyderabad-Patna flight following a complaint against him by the crew, officials said.

The alleged incident took place on Indigo flight 6E 126.

Officials further said the accused was detained by the police after landing at the Patna airport. 

"He misbehaved on the flight and also locked himself inside the toilet onboard," the crew stated in their complaint.

Station House Officer, Airport police station, Vinod Peter told ANI, "The passenger, Kamar Riyaz, is mentally disabled and is under treatment. He was carrying medical reports. He was travelling with one of his relatives from Hyderabad to Patna."

"On a complaint filed by indigo staff, we detained him," he said, adding that further verification is underway.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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"No Posters Or Bribes, Vote For Me If You Want To": Nitin Gadkari

In a sign of his confidence in the work he has done, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said he has decided not to put up any posters or banners for the Lok Sabha elections next year, nor will he offer any inducements to voters. "I have served you. Vote for me if you like, don't if you do not want to," Mr Gadkari told a public gathering in Maharashtra. 

Speaking during the inauguration of a road in Washim on Saturday, Mr Gadkari said in Marathi that he will not bribe (give chai-paani to) the voters and that he would not indulge in corruption, nor let them indulge in it. 

"I have decided that I will not put up any banners or posters for the next Lok Sabha elections and will not give any chai-paani. You will not get the darshan of Goddess Lakshmi (a colloquial way of saying one won't get money), nor will you get domestic or foreign liquor. I will not indulge in corruption and won't let you indulge in it either," he said.

Mr Gadkari, who is the minister for Road Transport and Highways, is the Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from the Nagpur constituency.

On Thursday, the minister had said that the government is working on a policy to ensure that there are no potholes on national highways by the end of the year. The ministry is also preferring to undertake construction of roads using the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model as such projects are maintained better, he had said. 

Generally, road construction is done using three models - BOT, Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC), and Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM).

"The roads which are constructed under the EPC mode require maintenance quite early whereas, under the BOT mode, roads are better constructed as the contractor knows that he will have to bear the cost of maintenance for the next 15-20 years," news agency PTI quoted Mr Gadkari as saying. 

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S Jaishankar Explains Why Russia's Emphasis On India Is Increasing

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said India-Russia ties may not be spectacular but are very "exceptional and steady", adding that in many ways Moscow's relationship with the West has "broken down". Speaking at Hudson University, Mr Jaishankar compared Russia's ties with India to that of other countries.

"...if you consider international relations over the last 70 years, the US-Russian relations, the China-Russia relations, the US-China relations, pretty much every big relationship in the last 70 years has seen a great deal of volatility, you had sharp ups and downs," Mr Jaishankar said, adding, "India-Russia relations is very exceptional. It's been very steady."

Noting the India-Russia relations may "not be spectacular", Mr Jaishankar said they have stabilised at a certain level, but have not seen the ups and downs that Moscow's relationships with China, US, or Europe have been through.

"And that's in itself a statement," Mr Jaishankar added.

"Now, if one looks at Russia today as a consequence of what is going on in Ukraine... it seems to them clear that in many ways Russia's relationship with the West has broken down," he said.

On why Russia's emphasis on India is increasing, Mr Jaishankar said, "...India will and has come into calculations as well. So I would predict a Russia that would consciously focus on the non-Western world away from Europe, away from the United States, look much more at Asia, look possibly at other regions as well. But Asia is economically the most active. So I guess that's what you're going to see."

Further, the EAM underscored India's increasing footprints in the global economy and its increasing trade with the Middle East countries.

"We have to understand today that as India becomes a larger consumer, a bigger economy, our salience in the Middle East countries calculations, especially the Gulf economies, is that much higher. We are the largest trade partner of the UAE and we would be among probably the top three of the Saudis," Mr Jaishankar said.

Earlier this week, Mr Jaishankar met his UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly session in New York City. The two appreciated the rapid progress in India, and UAE bilateral cooperation and valued regular exchange of perspectives on regional and global issues.

"Always a pleasure to meet FM @ABZayed of UAE, this time in New York. Appreciate the rapid progress in our bilateral cooperation. Value our regular exchange of perspectives on regional and global issues," EAM Jaishankar wrote on X.

"They discovered during COVID that the Gulf is actually dependent on daily food consumption for what comes out of India. So the economies have really got very, very deeply meshed..." Mr Jaishankar said during an interaction at the Hudson Institute.

A discussion at @HudsonInstitute on India's role in a New Pacific order. https://t.co/ZR3C9SBDKz

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 29, 2023

UAE and India along with Saudi Arabia, the US and European Union (EU), had recently announced an ambitious infrastructure plan - the 'India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor'. This initiative launched at the G20 summit in New Delhi, seeks to reshape the trade route between the Gulf, Europe and South Asia, connecting them by rail and sea links.

Mr Jaishankar is currently in the last leg of his US visit. Earlier, he was in New York for the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Wrapping up his New York visit, the EAM arrived in Washington, DC on September 28.

Mr Jaishankar will also address the 4th World Culture Festival, which is being organised by the Art of Living Foundation of spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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10 Years To 18: The History Of Age Of Consent In India

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"Very Sorry": Kannada Star's Apology To Actor Siddharth Amid Cauvery Row

Kannada superstar Shivarajkumar, popular as Shivanna among fans, apologised to actor Siddharth, whose promotional event in Bengaluru for his upcoming film Chithha was interrupted by the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike Swabhimani Sene on Thursday over the Cauvery water row.

"On behalf of our industry, I am very sorry Siddharth. Ours is a land that loves and enjoys all languages," Mr Shivarajkumar said.

Siddharth, who works predominantly in the Tamil and Telugu film industry, had to walk out of the event midway on Thursday, triggering a massive backlash from Tamil Nadu, embroiled in a fight with Karnataka over water from the Cauvery River.

The pro-Kannada outfit, protesting over the Cauvery river row, said it was not the appropriate time for the actor to promote his film given Tamil Nadu's demand for the release of Cauvery water by Karnataka.

Earlier today, Shivarajakumar spoke about the Cauvery water-sharing dispute and said that both states should come together to find a proper way to resolve the issue without "hurting sentiments".

"We must put pressure on both the governments and get an amicable result. There should be a better way than this bandh. We have to search for a better way. I will try to speak to both the governments and take the film industry people too for better cooperation," the superstar said.

Karnataka has been witnessing protests over the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu after the Supreme Court refused to intervene in the decisions of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) and its assisting body Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) that directed the state to do so.

In the latest decision, the CWRC had ordered Karnataka to ensure the release of 3,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at Biligundlu starting September 28 till October 15, 2023. In the earlier spell, it was 5,000 cusecs.

Speaking to reporters today, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said, "There was a meeting of the Cauvery Management Authority today. We have submitted all our facts. I will hold a meeting with retired Supreme Court Judges today. I will talk with our legal team if we can question this in the Supreme Court. We will decide what to do after talking to them. Let us see what happens next."

"Kannada Okkoota", a federation of Kannada organisations, called a state-wide strike in Karnataka today to protest against Tamil Nadu's demand that Karnataka releases water from the Cauvery River.

The two states have been at loggerheads for decades over sharing water from the river.

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