Budget office estimates impact of shutdown
WASHINGTON – Furloughing federal workers in last month’s partial federal shutdown cost the government 6.6 million work days, according to a White House budget office report Thursday.
Taxpayers will cover the $2 billion cost of providing back pay to the 850,000 workers sent home during all or part of the 16-day shutdown. After Congress decided in the middle of the shutdown to pay Pentagon workers, 400,000 federal employees were kept off the job.
The Obama administration has said the shutdown and uncertainty over raising the government’s borrowing cap will curb economic growth in this quarter and may have meant that 120,000 fewer private sector jobs were created in early October.
The budget office says closing national parks cost communities $500 million in lost spending by visitors, while the Internal Revenue Service delayed $4 billion in tax refunds and will have to put off next year’s filing season by up to two weeks.
Senate sets hearings on Yellin confirmation
WASHINGTON – The Senate Banking Committee has announced that it will hold a confirmation hearing next week to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Janet Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve.
Yellen is expected to win the committee’s approval sometime after the hearing Thursday and to be confirmed later by the full Senate. A Senate vote hasn’t been scheduled and might not come until January.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said he will delay a Senate vote on Yellen and other Obama nominees until the administration lets survivors of last year’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, speak with congressional investigators.
Obama last month chose Yellen, now vice chairwoman, to succeed Ben Bernanke, who plans to leave the Fed when his second four-year term as chairman ends Jan. 31.
New kind of asteroid discoverd by Hubble
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – This is one strange asteroid.
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a six-tailed asteroid in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scientists say they’ve never seen anything like it. Incredibly, the comet-like tails change shape as the asteroid sheds dust. The streams have occurred over several months.
A research team led by the University of California, Los Angeles, believes the asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, is rotating so much that its surface is flying apart. It’s believed to be a fragment of a larger asteroid damaged in a collision 200 million years ago.
Scientists using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii spotted the asteroid in August. Hubble picked out all the tails in September.
Associated Press
