The US was lurching towards a government shutdown as Barack Obama, president, called congressional leaders back to the White House for a third – and potentially decisive – effort to resolve the increasingly dramatic budget impasse.
With the first partial closure of federal operations since the mid-1990s looming on Friday night, Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, said round-the-clock talks had yielded basic agreement on spending levels, but no consensus on the nature of the cuts.
Declaring that the US was now “headed in [the] direction” of a shutdown, Mr Reid identified the Republican determination to include curbs on funding of abortion and environmental regulation in the bill as the main obstacles to an agreement.
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