Businesses destroyed by fire were still recovering from Sandy
Businesses destroyed by fire were still recovering from Sandy
SEASIDE PARK, N.J. — A massive fire spitting fist-sized embers engulfed dozens of businesses along an iconic Jersey shore boardwalk Thursday, as workers racing to contain the blaze’s advance ripped up stretches of walkway only recently replaced in the wake of superstorm Sandy.
That last-ditch effort to save the heart of the town’s tourism business — and its very economic survival — appeared to have worked. Two hours after public works crews ripped out a 25-foot swath of boardwalk that had been hurriedly rebuilt for a visit to Seaside Heights by Prince Harry in May, the flames had not advanced past the break.
Heavy equipment filled the breach with tall walls of sand to form makeshift dunes holding back not waves but fire.
“So far, so good,” said Robert Matthies, the mayor of neighboring Seaside Park, where the blaze began around 2:30 p.m.
GOP leaders stymied
on spending bill
WASHINGTON — GOP leaders eager to avoid blame for a possible government shutdown next month appear confounded by conservatives’ passion for using fast-approaching deadlines to derail the implementation of President Barack Obama’s health care law.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, conceded Thursday his plan was all but dead for quickly passing a temporary spending bill that also defunds Obamacare, make the Senate vote on each idea separately and then send only the portion for keeping the government open to the White House for the president’s signature.
Meanwhile, new freelance effort by rank-and-file Republicans to condition keeping the government open or preventing a debt ceiling default on delaying Obamacare for a year hit a brick wall of opposition from Democrats vowing to never let the health care law be delayed or unraveled.
Nonetheless, some Republicans floated the idea of postponing all of the unimplemented portions of the new law for a year — including a requirement that virtually everyone buys health insurance and with new tax subsidies to help many people pay for it — in exchange for raising the government’s borrowing cap and easing tens of billions of dollars in broad, automatic spending cuts.
“Let’s give them something and then we get something in exchange,” Rep. John Fleming, R-La., said. “We give the administration the debt ceiling increase they want. We give them maybe some sequestration dollars that they would like to have. And in exchange we delay Obamacare, which I think the president should want. … He’s already delayed big chunks of it. It’s not ready for implementation.”
Kerry rejects offer on chemical weapons
GENEVA — Striking a tough tone, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry opened swiftly convened talks with Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons Thursday by bluntly rejecting a Syrian pledge to begin a “standard process” by turning over information rather than weapons — and nothing immediately.
That won’t do, Kerry declared at an opening news conference, a stone-faced Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at his side. “The words of the Syrian regime in our judgment are simply not enough.”
“This is not a game,” Kerry said of the latest developments in a series that has rapidly gone from deadly chemical attacks to threats of retaliatory U.S. air strikes to Syrian agreement with a Russian plan to turn over the weapons and, finally, to the crucial matter of working out the difficult details.
“We believe there is nothing standard about this process at this moment because of the way the regime has behaved,” Kerry declared. And he kept alive the threat of U.S. military action, saying the turnover of weapons must be complete, verifiable and timely.
By wire sources