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Due to a lapse in funding, the U.S. federal government has shut down

New York Times: “Those looking for financial data to assess the impact of a shutdown will have to do it without help from the Congressional Budget Office and the Census Bureau, both of which are closing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is scheduled to issue its monthly jobs report this Friday, is also closing and said the jobs report would likely be postponed. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said it would stop recalls of products that do not present an imminent threat to consumer safety. The Food and Drug Administration, which inspects the majority of food Americans eat, suspended routine establishment inspections and monitoring of imported foods and drugs. The Centers for Disease Control furloughed about 68 percent of its staff and said the shutdown would significantly reduce its capacity to respond to food-borne illnesses and disease outbreaks. Federal Communications Commission officials said the agency would send all but about 38 of its 1,716 employees home for the duration of the shutdown…Officials informed lawmakers that about 72 percent of the intelligence community’s civilian work force were furloughed. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, angrily denounced the shutdown as “the biggest gift that we could possibly give our enemies.”

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