An explosion occurred near the building of the Turkish Ministry of Internal Affairs in the center of Ankara, and members of the presidential guard arrived at the scene, local TV channel reports.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near Turkey’s interior ministry building in the heart of the capital Ankara on Sunday. A second assailant was killed in a shootout with police. Two police officers were injured in what the interior ministry called a “terrorist attack”.
There was an attempted terrorist attack near the ministry building in Ankara: one of the terrorists blew himself up, the other was neutralized, the head of the Turkish Interior Ministry said.
Earlier Turkish media reported about axplosion.
“An explosion was heard in the Kızılay district in the center of Ankara. It is alleged that the explosion occurred near the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The roads around were closed to traffic. The presidential guard arrived,” the TV channel said in a statement.
Two police officers were slightly injured during the attack near the ministry of interior affairs, Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Yerlikaya said the assailants arrived at the scene inside a light commercial vehicle.
Turkey's government said on Sunday two terrorists carried out a bomb attack in front of the Interior Ministry buildings in Ankara, adding one of them died in the explosion and the other was "neutralised" by authorities there.
An explosion was heard near the parliament and ministerial buildings, Turkish media had earlier reported, and broadcasters showed footage of debris scattered on a street nearby.
The blast was the first in Ankara since 2016, and comes on the day that parliament was set to open a new session.
According to the channel, a person was wounded as a result of the attempted attack. The roads around the scene of the attempted attack are blocked.
Ankara General Prosecutor Office has launched investigation, while police officers asked journalists asked journalists not to report from the scene of the attack.
Turkey says terrorists set off bomb at Ankara government building
Security forces are seen outside the Interior Ministry following a bomb attack in Ankara
Turkish authorities also have banned media from broadcasting at the scene of an attempted terrorist attack, the local newspaper reported on Sunday.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, giving a thumbs-up on Saturday night after the Senate passed a stopgap measure to keep the government running. Credit... Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown on Saturday as the House, in a stunning turnabout, approved a stopgap plan to keep the federal government open until mid-November. After Senate passage, President Biden signed the bill shortly before midnight.
In a rapid-fire sequence of events on Capitol Hill, a coalition of House Democrats and Republicans voted to pass a plan that would keep money flowing to government agencies and provide billions of dollars for disaster recovery efforts. The bill did not include money for Ukraine despite a push for it by the White House and members of both parties in the Senate, but House Democrats embraced the plan anyway, seeing it as the most expedient way to avoid widespread government disruption.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had for weeks brushed off demands to work with Democrats on a spending solution, outlined the proposal for Republicans in a closed-door meeting Saturday morning and then rushed to get it on the floor under a special procedure that meant it could only pass with substantial Democratic help.
Democrats initially complained that Mr. McCarthy had sprung the plan on them and was trying to push through a 71-page measure without sufficient scrutiny. But they also did not want to be accused of putting the U.S. aid to Ukraine ahead of keeping government agencies open and paying two million members of the military and 1.5 million federal employees.
Ultimately, it was scores of his own Republican colleagues who voted to shut down the government. The measure was approved on a vote of 335 to 91, with 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting in favor and 90 Republicans and one Democrat in opposition.
The outcome was similar to a vote earlier this year to suspend the federal debt limit, and it could pose difficulties for Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, as a far-right faction had threatened to try to oust him from the speakership if he worked with Democrats to keep the government open.
But after a failed effort on Friday to win enough Republican votes to avoid a shutdown, Mr. McCarthy was out of choices if he wanted to prevent a politically and economically damaging shutdown. He put the bill on the floor without certainty it could pass.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy outlined the temporary funding proposal for members of his caucus in a closed-door meeting Saturday morning and then rushed to get it onto the floor. Credit... Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
“I like to gamble,” he said.
The House adjourned immediately after the vote, leaving the Senate to either take up the legislation or face blame for a shutdown, since there was no way for the House to consider additional legislation before Monday.
With little alternative, and Senate Republicans clamoring for the House bill, the Senate jettisoned its own stopgap measure that contained $6 billion for Ukraine and approved the House version on an 88 to 9 vote.
“The American people can breathe a sigh of relief: there will be no government shutdown,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, after the Senate vote closed about three hours before the deadline. “After trying to take our government hostage, MAGA Republicans won nothing.”
In a statement after Senate passage of the bill, Mr. Biden called it “good news for the American people.” He added, “I fully expect the speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”
Members of both parties said they were confident they could win money for Ukraine in the weeks ahead, but the failure to provide any money in the bill was a reflection of diminishing Republican backing for added funding for Kyiv.
It pointed to a potentially nasty fight ahead over funding Ukraine’s war effort, coming on the heels of a visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington last month to make the case for continued U.S. support. Congress has approved about $113 billion in military, humanitarian and economic aid in four packages since the invasion by Russia, and Mr. Biden has requested another $24 billion.
“This bill is a victory for Putin and Putin sympathizers everywhere,” said Representative Mike Quigley of Illinois, the only Democrat to vote against the bill, who said he did so because it did not include aid to Ukraine. “We now have 45 days to correct this grave mistake.”
Hard-right Republicans refused to support the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution, because it essentially maintained funding at levels set when Congress was under Democratic control last year.
Reporters interview members of Congress after a failed effort to break the impasse on spending in the House on Friday. Credit... Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
“Instead of siding with his own party today, Kevin McCarthy sided with 209 Democrats to push through a continuing resolution that maintains the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer spending levels and policies,” Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “He allowed the D.C. Uniparty to win again. Should he remain speaker of the House?”
A much larger contingent of Republicans also refused to back the measure, which also left out severe immigration restrictions many of them had demanded.
Before the vote, Mr. McCarthy said he recognized that the legislation might spark a challenge to his job but said he was willing to risk it to push a bill through that would keep the government open.
Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who has threatened to try and oust Mr. McCarthy, was not willing to reveal his timing. He said, however, that Mr. McCarthy’s speakership was “on tenuous ground.”
In the end, Democrats celebrated the outcome. “Extreme MAGA Republicans have lost,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said as he walked to the House floor to vote in favor of the bill. “The American people have won.”
The day on Capitol Hill was full of twists and turns. As House Democrats stalled Mr. McCarthy’s plan on the floor to allow time to study it, fire alarms rang out in the Cannon House Office Building, forcing its evacuation. It was later determined that Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, had triggered the alarm, though he claimed it was inadvertent.
“The American people can breathe a sigh of relief: there will be no government shutdown,” said Senator Chuck Schumer after the Senate passed a stopgap measure to keep the government running. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times
“It was like riding a mechanical bull all week,” said Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican.
Despite the intense effort involved, the stopgap bill is only a temporary solution to the spending fight, which is likely to be quickly rekindled. The House and Senate are both struggling to approve yearlong spending bills and House Republicans have canceled an October break to focus on the spending legislation.
The gulf on spending between the two parties — and the two chambers — remains vast.
House Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts, a cutoff of aid to Ukraine and immigration restrictions amid a wave of asylum seekers streaming across the southern border as the price of any agreement. Senators of both parties argue that Congress should adhere to higher funding levels established in a deal that President Biden negotiated with Mr. McCarthy earlier this year, and they back continued assistance to Ukraine.
Before the sudden turn of events on Saturday, federal agencies were bracing to close if no stopgap were enacted. The armed forces and other so-called essential workers such as air traffic controllers and airport security workers would have remained on the job but without pay until the standoff was resolved. Food and medical assistance to millions of low-income mothers and children would have been in jeopardy.
The biggest obstacle to a resolution was that the House, where Republicans hold a tiny minority, is in the grips of a right-wing faction that has made it clear it is willing — perhaps even eager — for a shutdown to drive home its message that Washington is broken and federal spending is out of control. That bloc refused to back any plan that would even temporarily avert a lapse in federal funding.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, seen after the House passed a stopgap measure to fund the government on Saturday. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Facing a choice between a shutdown and the far-right, Mr. McCarthy again relied on Democrats to dodge a crisis.
“What I am asking, Republicans and Democrats alike, put your partisanship away,” Mr. McCarthy said before the House vote. “Focus on the American public.”
How Each Member Voted on the Senate Stopgap Spending Measure
Senate stopgap spending vote
Answer
DemocratsDem.
RepublicansRep.
IndependentsInd.
Total
Yes
46
39
3
88
No
0
9
0
9
Rep. Jamaal Bowman Pulls Fire Alarm in House Office Building
Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat of New York, at the Capitol in May. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, pulled a fire alarm in the House Cannon office building on Saturday as his party was trying to delay a vote on a stopgap spending bill, prompting an evacuation of the building and investigations by the Capitol Police and the House Administration Committee.
The alarm was triggered at the same time that House Democrats at the Capitol were stalling a vote on a spending measure to keep the government operating for another 45 days. Speaker Kevin McCarthy had unveiled the bill just minutes earlier, and Democrats were scrambling to read the bill and determine whether to support it. Later in the day, the bill passed 335 to 91, with more Democrats voting for it than Republicans.
In a statement released Saturday night, Mr. Bowman said that he had not pulled the alarm to delay the vote, as some Republicans had presumed. He said that as he was rushing to the Capitol to cast a vote, he came to a door in the Cannon building that would not open.
“I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused,” Mr. Bowman said. “But I want to be very clear: this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote.”
He added that he met with the sergeant-at-arms and Capitol Police after the incident at their request to explain what had happened.
The House Administration Committee began an inquiry on why the alarm was triggered, said its chairman, Representative Bryan Steil, Republican of Wisconsin, in a statement. The Capitol Police said the building was briefly evacuated. “An investigation into what happened and why continues,” a police spokesman, Paul Starks, said.
Republicans were quick to link the alarm to the vote on the spending bill. At a news conference after the spending measure passed, Mr. McCarthy criticized Mr. Bowman, suggesting he set off the alarm in an attempt to obstruct proceedings. “When we found that an individual elected to Congress would pull a fire alarm, that’s a new low,” he said.
Representative Nicole Malliotakis, Republican of New York, has drafted a motion to expel Mr. Bowman from the House, her office said.
“This is the United States Congress, not a New York City high school,” Ms. Malliotakis wrote on X. “To pull the fire alarm to disrupt proceedings when we are trying to draft legislation to AVERT A SHUTDOWN is pathetic.”
Menteri Koordinator Bidang Perekonomian Airlangga Hartarto/Ist
Dibentuk sebagai salah satu forum kemitraan yang memprioritaskan pembangunan ekonomi daerah untuk mengurangi kesenjangan serta meningkatkan daya saing dan kesejahteraan masyarakat di sub-kawasan, Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand, Growth Triangle atau IMT-GT terus menunjukkan resiliensi dalam menjaga kondisi perekonomian di tengah berbagai tantangan global saat ini.
“Saya senang menyambut Anda di Batam untuk Pertemuan Tingkat Menteri IMT-GT ke-29 Pertemuan tahun ini menandai 30 tahun berdirinya IMT-GT, sebuah momen yang sangat penting untuk meninjau kembali kerja sama kita agar tetap relevan dalam situasi yang dinamis,” kata Menteri Koordinator Bidang Perekonomian Airlangga Hartarto saat membuka Pertemuan Tingkat Menteri (PTM) IMT-GT ke-29 di Batam, hari Jumat, 29/09/2023.
Airlangga menuturkan, Pendapatan Domestik Bruto di kawasan telah menunjukkan kenaikan yang sigfinikan dari USD20 miliar pada tahun 1993 menjadi USD405.7 miliar di tahun 2021.
Total perdagangan dan investasi kawasan yang terus tumbuh, masing-masing dengan nilai total USD727 miliar dan USD20.1 USD pada tahun 2022. Meski sempat melambat saat terjadinya pandemi Covid-19, sektor pariwisata di kawasan juga mampu kembali bangkit dan terus tumbuh secara
signifikan.
“Ketidakpastian global, perubahan iklim, kerawanan pangan dan energi, kita perlu dorong tranformasi digital, kembangkan ekonomi kreatif, hijau dan biru serta maksimalkan sektor-sektor unggulan, seperti pariwisata, pertanian dan industri halal,” kata Airlangga.
Airlangga juga kembali menekankan pentingnya IMT-GT untuk terus meningkatkan konektivitas fisik dan digital dalam mendukung integrasi kawasan, serta bersinergi dengan masterplan konektivitas ASEAN 2025.
Lebih jauh, Airlangga menyampaikan untuk mengoptimalkan kolaborasi dan kolektivitas serta menyerukan para Kepala Daerah IMT-GT yang tergabung dalam Chief Ministers and Governors Forum (CMGF) untuk merubah paradigma dalam merencanakan pembangunan daerah.
“Kita perlu beralih pandangan individual ke pembangunan berwawasan kolektif, fokus pada peningkatan sinergi dan keselarasan, untuk memperkuat konektivitas. Gunakan pengalaman 30 tahun kerjasama untuk membuat terobosan baru. Pemerintah pusat dan daerah perlu memaksimalkan CMGF sebagai wadah koordinasi dan kerjasama yang berorientasi pada hasil serta perwujudan kolaboratif para pemangku kepentingan lokal dan berorientasi kawasan,” tegas Airlangga
Amid Kiev's botched counteroffensive, which has shown no progress since its initiation in early June, there is a growing number of Ukrainian soldiers opting to surrender by raising a white flag.
Clayton Morris, an American journalist, has expressed his astonishment at a series of videos showcasing the significant surrender of Ukrainian armed forces (UAF) servicemen. This surrender was seen even through the utilization of a newly established Russian radio frequency.
“This is amazing. This is a story the Western media does not want you to see,” Morris said on his YouTube channel, referring to “tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers laying down the weapons and surrendering to the Russian troops.”
According to a reliable source, recently there has been a significant increase in the number of Ukrainian troops utilizing a dedicated radio frequency to communicate their willingness to disarm. The revelation comes after the individual's statement was reported by Russian media. The frequency was set up by Russian forces in mid-summer.
🪖 WATCH Ukrainian servicemen surrender to Russian forces in Svatovo-Kremennaya area of Donbass
The servicemen used an open channel to contact the Russian Army, and brought boxes of ammunition with them, a source close to the situation told Sputnik.
“Now more than 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen have already chosen life and used the 149.200 ‘Volga’ frequency to surrender. The captives are well-fed and provided with all necessary medical care,” the source said.
After the start of Kiev's counteroffensive in early June, Governor Yevgeny Balitsky of the Zaporozhye region confirmed that a large number of Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen began surrendering in great numbers.
“Unlike in spring when one or two Ukrainian soldiers surrendered, now whole UAF units are laying down the arms; surrendering, there were no company [units]; we even witnessed platoon surrenders,” Balitsky pointed out.
He added that the Ukrainian POWs have decent living conditions and that no one beats or tortures them.
The remarks came after a source in the Russian special services told Sputnik that on the Zaporozhye frontline, Ukrainian soldiers are being urged to surrender with the help of leaflets in the form of hryvnias, which are being dropped on UAF positions.
“We are working to prevent pointless bloodshed among by Ukrainian soldiers. We are distributing leaflets asking those servicemen to surrender,” the source stressed.
The leaflets contain information on how UAF troops can contact the Russian military to discuss the time and place of surrender, according to the insider.
📹 Left to their own fate: Ukrainian recovery team abandons wounded soldiers, drives away
A Ukrainian emergency recovery team exhibited serious “weakness” and low morale, deputy commander of the Tsar's Wolves brigade code named "Okhota" (Hunt) told Sputnik, providing video footage of these events.
In the video, a detachment of Ukrainian servicemen can be seen moving through a forest belt (0:16), who then come under Russian mortar fire from a BARS-1 volunteer battalion. According to “Okhota”, the scene took place in the Zaporozhye Region this July.
Later in the clip, a Ukrainian evacuation armored vehicle is seen arriving (0:29) and releasing a smoke screen (0:33), but only takes those on board who manage to run to it, while leaving more seriously wounded servicemen behind (01:00). Such instances are common among Ukrainian troops on the battlefield, Okhota stressed.
Since early June, the UAF has been trying to advance on the Zaporozhye, Yuzhnodonetsk and Artemovsk fronts, not least with the help of combat units trained and armed by NATO instructors.
Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized earlier this month that Ukrainian troops had failed to achieve any significant success on all the frontlines.This week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed reporters that during the failed counteroffensive in Kiev, the UAF suffered substantial losses of over 17,000 soldiers and more than 2,700 pieces of weaponry, all within the span of September alone. Since the start of this botched push, the UAF have lost at least 84,000 soldiers, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
