Congress averts govt shutdown

WASHINGTON With US congress set to pass an interim spending measure on Friday, President Donald Trump has been saved the embarrassment of celebrating his 100 days in office with his government partially shut down because of lapsed funding.

The instrument, passed by the House of Representatives and was expected to be cleared by the senate later, will keep the government funded for a week beyond Friday midnight when funding was set to lapse.

Congress now has another week to pass a regular funding bill to keep the federal government running for the rest of the fiscal year, ending September 30, and avert a shutdown that was last seen in 2013, in President Barack Obama’s second term.

The fate of the spending bill had been plunged into uncertainty by the White House’s attempts to include in it $1.5 billion funding for one of Trump’s key election promises, a wall along the border with Mexico.

Trump had promised to start work on it as among his first tasks in office and the administration was keen to be able to show progress on this front and include it among the achievement of his first 100 days in office. Republicans did not have the numbers needed to offset defections and make the necessary numbers in the upper chamber. As a reality TV star, Donald Trump liked to say “predictable is bad”. The first 100 days of President Trump could carry the motto “unpredictable is constant.”

While the whimsy of the administration’s early days is palpably reduced, New Delhi remains uncertain about the strategic bedrock of the relationship. The deciding factors: The trajectory of Trump’s relations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and how the US sees Afghanistan’s future. The Indian government has met every star in the Trump constellation. From son-in-law Jared Kushner to ideologue-in-chief Stephen Bannon, from self-effacing secretary of