Shorts (left)
Treasury warns Congress over raising debt ceiling
WASHINGTON — Unless Congress raises the debt ceiling, the Treasury Department said Monday that it expected to lose the ability to pay all of the government’s bills in mid-October.
That means a recalcitrant Congress will face two major budget deadlines only two weeks apart, since the stopgap “continuing resolution” that finances the federal government runs out at the end of September.
Members of Congress are sharply divided over what to include in measures financing the government and raising the debt ceiling.
Some Republican lawmakers have said they want to see an increase in the debt limit paired with other measures to decrease the deficit. “We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling without real cuts in spending,” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio told reporters last month.
Republicans have also floated the idea of insisting on delaying parts of the Affordable Care Act as part of any deal.
—Annie Lowrey, The New York Times
Israeli raid on Palestinian camp turns deadly
QALANDIA, West Bank — Israeli security forces shot and killed three Palestinian men Monday when violent clashes broke out during a raid on a refugee camp that lies between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, according to witnesses and the Israeli military.
The raid was the deadliest episode in the West Bank in months and came less than a week after a Palestinian man was killed in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank when troops on a similar mission encountered violent protests.
The Israeli military said that its troops were in the Qalandia camp to back up security forces seeking to arrest a resident described by the military as a “terror operative.” Hundreds of residents threw rocks, firebombs, iron bars and other items at the security forces, including from rooftops, and soldiers were called in to aid them.
The military later said an investigation indicated that camp residents had also fired at the soldiers and that the forces felt their lives were in danger, a standard that then allows the use of lethal force.
—Isabel Kershner, The New York Times
Official denies inquiry into Egyptian activists
CAIRO — A spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry on Monday denied reports in the state news media over the weekend about an investigation into two prominent activists, Asmaa Mahfouz and Esraa Abdel Fattah, who are sometimes associated with the left-leaning April 6 group.
The reports, which were noted in an article on Saturday in The New York Times, attracted attention as evidence that the government installed last month by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was widening its crackdown on dissent beyond the Islamist supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi.
The reports indicated that the government was reviving old accusations against the activists about working on behalf of foreign powers to stir unrest in Egypt. Both activists are known in Western capitals for their work around the revolt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, so reports of the investigation complicated the new government’s efforts to win international recognition. But the reports of an investigation of Abdel Fattah was especially noteworthy because she has been an outspoken supporter of Sissi’s ouster of Morsi.
A spokesman for the public prosecutor told journalists last week that his office had referred the accusations against the two to a special security service for investigation.
—David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times