Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/189264
6B Daily News – Wednesday, October 9, 2013 WORLD BRIEFING Obama, Boehner trade barbs WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner traded heated rhetoric yet also showed signs of compromise Tuesday, a frustratingly inconclusive combination that left an eight-day partial government shutdown firmly in place and the threat of an unprecedented national default drawing closer. Stocks fell significantly — the Dow Jones average by 159 points — as political gridlock endured. And, in the latest in a string of dire warnings, the International Monetary Fund said failure to raise America's debt limit could lead to default and disrupt worldwide financial markets, raise interest rates and push the U.S economy back into recession. Even the deaths of U.S. servicemen over the weekend in Afghanistan were grist for the politicians. The Pentagon said that because of the partial shutdown it was unable to pay the customary death benefits to the survivors. Republican House Speaker John Boehner said Congress had passed legislation last week permitting the payments, adding it was ''disgraceful'' for the administration to say otherwise. In Congress, a plan by Senate Democrats to raise the debt limit by $1 trillion to stave off a possible default drew little evidence of support from Republicans. And a proposal by the House Republicans to create a working group of 20 lawmakers to tackle deficit issues drew a veto threat from the White House, the latest in a string of them as the administration insists the GOP reopen the government and avert default before any negotiations on deficit reduction or the three-year-old health care law can take place. Government efforts to protect health, safety are slowed WASHINGTON (AP) — The government shutdown has slowed or halted federal efforts to protect Americans' health and safety, from probes into the cause of transportation and workplace accidents to tracking foodborne illness. The latest example: an outbreak of salmonella in chicken that has sickened people in 18 states. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that it was recalling some of its furloughed staff to deal with the outbreak, which has sickened more than 270 people. Before then, the CDC had only a handful of scientists working on outbreak detection, severely hampering its ability to track potentially deadly illnesses With federal workers on leave, the states have had to pick up much of the slack. In the case of food safety, state labs are investigating foodborne illnesses and communicating with each other — without the help of federal authorities, in many cases — to figure out whether outbreaks have spread. Dr. Christopher Braden, head of the CDC division that investigates foodborne illness, said the agency will be able to better monitor the salmonella outbreak with the recalled federal staff. But the agency is monitoring more than 30 outbreaks.