Stunning Congress, House Speaker Boehner announces plans to resign; tea party declares victory
WASHINGTON (AP) — Plunging Congress into deeper turmoil, House Speaker John Boehner abruptly announced his resignation Friday, shutting down a tea party drive to depose the nation’s highest-ranking Republican but opening up fresh troubles for the GOP.
The 13-term Ohio lawmaker, second in line to the presidency, shocked his rank-and-file when he told them of his plans in an emotional closed-door meeting. He said he would step down from the speaker’s job he’s held for nearly five years, and from Congress, at the end of October.
One important result: A government shutdown threatened for next week is all but sure to be averted — but only for now. A new December deadline and a potentially market-rattling fight over the government’s borrowing limit still lie ahead.
Boehner’s announcement came one day after a high point of his congressional career, a historic speech by Pope Francis to Congress at the speaker’s request.
It also came before what would have been a new low: a potential floor vote to oust him as speaker, pushed by Republican tea partyers convinced he was capitulating in a struggle over Planned Parenthood funding that threatened a government shutdown next Thursday. Such a formal challenge against a speaker has not been used in the House for over 100 years.
UN summit approves 15-year blueprint to eradicate extreme poverty and combat climate change
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — With the bang of a gavel, international leaders approved an ambitious 15-year plan Friday to tackle the world’s biggest problems, from eradicating poverty to preserving the planet to reducing inequality. Now comes the tough part: Drumming up support and money to achieve the goals and transform the world.
Pope Francis gave his backing to the new development agenda in an address to the U.N. General Assembly before the summit to adopt the 17-point plan opened, calling it “an important sign of hope” at a very troubled time in the Middle East and Africa.
When General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft struck his gavel to approve the development road map, leaders and diplomats from the 193 U.N. member states stood and applauded loudly.
Then, the summit immediately turned to the real business of the three-day meeting — implementation of the goals, which is expected to cost $3.5 trillion to $5 trillion every year until 2030.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set the stage, saying the agenda “embodies the aspirations of people everywhere for lives of peace, security and dignity on a healthy planet.”
US, China agree to fight cybertheft — but skeptical Obama also issues new sanctions threat
WASHINGTON (AP) — Skeptical of Chinese assurances on cyberspying, President Barack Obama on Friday laid out a fresh threat of sanctions for economic espionage emanating from China, even as he and President Xi Jinping pledged their countries would not conduct or support such hacking.
“The question now is: Are words followed by action?” Obama said, standing alongside Xi at a White House news conference.
Obama’s wariness underscored deep U.S. concerns about what officials say is China’s massive cyber campaign to steal trade secrets and intellectual property from American companies. While China has publicly denied being behind such activities, U.S. officials say their counterparts in Beijing have begun to take the matter more seriously, as well as the potential impact on ties with Washington.
“Confrontation and friction are not the right choice for both sides,” Xi said, speaking through an interpreter.
The spying tensions cast a shadow over Xi’s state visit to Washington, a grand affair complete with a formal welcome ceremony and a black-tie dinner. Obama faced criticism from some Republicans for honoring China with a state visit given the cyber concerns, as well as U.S. worries about Beijing’s human rights abuses and assertive posture in territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.
Saudi Arabia accused of neglect, mismanagement of Islam’s sites over deadly disaster at hajj
MINA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia faced new accusations of neglect Friday in the hajj disaster that killed over 700 people, the second tragedy at this year’s pilgrimage overseen by the kingdom’s rulers who base their legitimacy in part on protecting Islam’s holiest sites.
Leading the criticism was regional Shiite powerhouse Iran, which always seeks an opportunity to undermine its Sunni adversary.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in New York that at least 140 Iranians were killed. He suggested that “ineptitude” by the Saudi authorities involved in organizing the hajj was to blame for the two accidents this month that have resulted in at least 830 deaths.
In Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned a Saudi envoy for the second time in as many days to hear protests over the incident, a vice president blamed Saudi “mismanagement,” and thousands marched in the streets and denounced the Saudi royal family.
Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars and undertaken massive construction projects to make the annual hajj safer for the world’s Muslims, and the last serious loss of life had occurred nine years ago.
In the search for Mexico’s 43, a classmate’s brutal killing goes unnoticed, unpunished
SAN MIGUEL TECOMATLAN, Mexico (AP) — Unlike the families of the 43 students who disappeared a year ago, Julio Cesar Mondragon’s loved ones were left with a body to bury. But there is little comfort in that, because Mondragon’s corpse bore witness to the horror of his final moments.
His autopsy showed several skull fractures, internal bleeding and other injuries consistent with torture. His face had been flayed, a tactic often used by the drug cartels to incite terror. Photos of his bloody skull were uploaded to the Internet.
International attention has been focused on the 43 students who vanished a year ago Saturday, but six others died at the hands of police in those hours, including Mondragon, a 22-year-old father of girl who is now 1 year old. According to an independent group of experts, the disappearances and the killings were the result of a long, coordinated attack against students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa who had come to the southern city of Iguala to commandeer buses for a protest.
But the events of last Sept. 26 were far from isolated. Some 25,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico since 2007, and hundreds from the Iguala area in the last year alone. The disappearance of the students has drawn attention to others who have been lost, as well as brutal drug cartels, official corruption, government indifference and languishing legal cases.
According to Mexico’s former attorney general, the 43 disappeared in an attack by police and the Guerreros Unidos drug gang because they were mistaken for rival gang members. The attorney general said last November they were killed and burned to ash in a giant pyre in the nearby Cocula garbage dump.
As UN session starts, Rouhani says US relations can progress if nuclear deal is implemented
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is holding out the possibility for improved relations with the United States if the international nuclear deal that has caused controversy in both the U.S. and Iran gets fully implemented later this year.
Asked specifically about the possibility of freeing Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, who has been held for over a year in an Iranian prison, Rouhani said he favored freeing U.S. prisoners in Iran and all Iranians held in U.S. jails, but the matter was mainly in the hands of Iran’s judiciary.
Speaking to a group of editors Friday after arriving for the annual U.N. General Assembly, Rouhani said implementation of the nuclear deal would improve the atmosphere to allow progress to be made.
Rouhani started his meeting with editors by pointing out the July nuclear framework agreement reached among Iran, the European Union, Germany, the United States and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council had altered the diplomatic landscape for Iran at this year’s assembly. The deal lays out a plan of action for Iran to eliminate nuclear stockpiles and enrichment capacity for the next 15 years in exchange for lifting most economic sanctions against Iran.
“This year, we have passed the threshold,” Rouhani said.
