Sep 30 update

Hard-right Republicans in America’s House of Representatives voted down a last-ditch stopgap funding bill, sponsored by their own party, aimed at preventing a government shutdown. They are demanding swingeing cuts to America’s discretionary spending. The defeat is another blow to Kevin McCarthy, the beleaguered speaker of the House. Parts of the government are now expected to shut down on October 1st.

America said there is an “unprecedented” build-up of Serbian troops on Serbia’s border with Kosovo. Antony Blinken, America’s Secretary of State, spoke to Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s president, and called for “immediate de-escalation”. Last weekend four people died in a shoot-out between Serbian gunmen and Kosovar police.

Romania, a NATO member, reported a possible violation of its airspace during drone attacks by Russia on infrastructure in Ukraine, a neighbouring country. Earlier, authorities in Vinnytsya, a region in western Ukraine, ordered an evacuation after an infrastructure site was reportedly attacked by Russians. They did not specify what had been hit.

Dianne Feinstein, America’s longest-serving female senator, died aged 90. The Democrat from California spent three decades in the upper chamber, where she led efforts to ban assault weapons and investigate the CIA’s torture programmes. Previously she had a long political career in San Francisco, where she was mayor. Her health had declined in recent years, leading many to question her fitness for office.

Spain’s People’s Party, a conservative party which won the most seats in recent elections but fell short of a majority, narrowly lost a vote to form a government—its second such attempt. The second largest party in parliament, the centre-left Socialist Workers’ Party, will now try to form its own government. It is seeking the backing of regional separatist parties.

Scott Hall, who was charged alongside Donald Trump in the racketeering case in Georgia, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanours. He is the only one of Mr Trump’s 18 co-defendants to have taken a plea deal. Mr Hall was accused of trying to illegally access voter data to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, and will testify against other defendants (who all deny wrongdoing) in exchange for five years’ probation.

A Nevada grand jury charged Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former gang leader from Las Vegas, with the murder of the rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996. Mr Davis has repeatedly said that he was inside the Cadillac used for the drive-by shooting that killed Shakur, including in a tell-all memoir from 2019. Las Vegas police said Mr Davis’ own statements “reinvigorated” the case.

Word of the day: yi mei lun, a moniker from Taiwan used to describe the “US scepticism” narrative being spread by disinformation from China. Read the full story.

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PHOTO: AP

Another congressional governance failure

Without a political miracle on Saturday, the American government will shut down on October 1st for the fourth time in a decade. Earlier in the week, the Senate passed a stopgap funding bill full of Ukraine aid that made it dead on arrival in the Republican-led House of Representatives, which has yet to approve legislation to keep the government open. Millions of government workers, including congressional staffers, could soon miss paychecks. Federal services, such as environmental inspections and passport processing, could cease.

This legislative failure has been driven by a small but powerful faction of House Republicans that seeks to force through ultra-conservative policies and topple Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House. Mr McCarthy became the weakest House leader in memory after 15 rounds of voting in January, but he can take heart knowing that, in 1856, Nathaniel Banks won the job only after the 133rd ballot. Banks, however, never had to contend with a government shutdown. A path out of this mess remains elusive.

PHOTO: ALAMY

Slovakia’s nail-biter election

Slovaks vote in early parliamentary elections on Saturday, after the governing coalition lost a no-confidence vote in December. The result is too close to call. For the past six months Smer, the party of former prime minister Robert Fico, has been leading the polls. But recently Progressive Slovakia, a liberal party led by Michal Simecka, has gained an edge. Slovakia is ruled by a caretaker government appointed by Zuzana Caputova, the sitting president and a former member of Progressive Slovakia.

Mr Fico’s party has taken on a pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian line. Opponents fear that if it comes to power, Slovakia, hitherto a staunch supporter of Ukraine, will become an ally to Hungary, obstructing efforts within the EU and NATO to aid Ukraine.

What happens next will probably depend on whether Mr Fico or Mr Simecka can find coalition partners among the smaller parties. Voters should not stand down just yet: if neither party can form a stable government, a new election will be in the offing.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

The Australian football final kicks off

When the Collingwood Magpies and the Brisbane Lions run onto Melbourne Cricket Ground for the Australian Football League’s grand final on Saturday, the cheers will be quieter than usual. The showcase, which attracts 100,000 spectators, has been rocked by a furore over tickets. An unusually high number of corporate allocations meant even some top-tier members, who pay for guaranteed seats, were left without spots.

But that won’t deter the punters for long. Relative to population, the AFL is the best attended domestic-sports league in the world. Some 9.6m Australians support one of its 18 clubs; one-in-21 Aussies are club members. In 2022 the league generated over A$944m ($601m) in revenue. And since September 22nd, fans have been able to indulge their passion for its brawny tactics in Xbox’s new game, AFL 23. Like its spectacular “marks”—acrobatic catches that provide some of the sport’s most exciting moments—Australian football is flying high.

PHOTO: COURTESY THE ESTATE OF OFELIA RO

A show of art from Colombia’s Caribbean coast

Ofelia Rodríguez liked to collect things. At markets in Mexico and her native Colombia, she unearthed items such as a child’s doll and a figurine of a man. Objects that others discarded were her treasure. Over five decades the surrealist artist, who died recently, produced paintings, sculptures and drawings that have been exhibited across the Americas and in Europe. A new show featuring more than 50 of her works opens on Saturday in Britain at Spike Island, a gallery in Bristol.

Her colourful creations combine these objets trouvés with myths and symbols from the Caribbean coast. Animal horns curve up from an orange wooden crate (one of her “magic boxes”), which opens to reveal a pile of jean buttons, nestled like coins in a purse. Gabriel García Márquez, a great Colombian author, once said that “surrealism runs through the streets” of Latin America. Rodríguez’s alluring, at times jarring, art is a case in point.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Weekend profile: Lina Khan, America’s top trustbuster

In 2017 Lina Khan, then a student at Yale Law School, published a controversial article. In it she argued that Amazon, the e-commerce giant, was a monopolist and that the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust laws failed to rein it in. Since being appointed the regulatory agency’s youngest-ever chair in 2021, she has launched an aggressive antitrust campaign against big corporations. On Tuesday she took on her old foe: Amazon. The FTC and 17 states sued the company, alleging that it illegally keeps prices high, charges sellers unfair fees and stifles competition.

Ms Khan, now 34, was born in Britain to Pakistani immigrants. Her family moved to America when she was 11. Her interest in corporate misbehaviour sparked early: as a high-school newspaper editor, she ran critical coverage of a branch of Starbucks that was preventing teenagers from sitting in the cafe, which was picked up by the New York Times.

Before law school, she worked for the New America Foundation, a left-leaning think-tank, where she became interested in—and incensed by—corporate consolidation. When asked about her hobbies in 2021, she listed photography and “trying to find the most obscure industry where I can find consolidation”. On her honeymoon Ms Khan ploughed through a book on corporations and American democracy. (Her husband, a cardiologist, opted for Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”.)

Since taking over the FTC, she has led it with a single-minded vision, sometimes bruising the morale of long-time staffers in the process. She has pushed through new rules, including banning “non-competes” (which bar employees from working for a competitor) and asserting the agency’s authority to pursue privacy violations. Her past work informs her work, but may also constrain her mandate: Amazon lobbied for Ms Khan to recuse herself from investigating it, alleging bias.

Last year the FTC filed more merger lawsuits than in any year for over a decade, including an attempt to block Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a video-game developer. Although victories in court have been limited, Ms Khan’s leadership has reframed public thinking about trustbusting. Companies have become more wary: deals are down in America, suggesting firms are avoiding larger acquisitions. Politicians, too, are more willing to bash big companies. If Mr Biden fails to win re-election, Ms Khan’s tenure will be up next year. But cases take years to wind their way through the courts. Ms Khan’s legacy may outlast her.