Presidents face off in New York. A government shutdown is postponed. And NASA celebrates water on Mars.
It’s Tuesday, and here are five things to know for your new day.
UNITED NATIONS
Showdown: It was supposed to be Obama vs. Putin, but it turned into Obama vs. Putin/Xi/Rouhani/Castro. President Obama found his foreign policy under attack yesterday at the U.N.’s annual global meeting, which a U.S. president traditionally uses to command the spotlight. Obama made his speech, but then Putin spoke, proposing a coup against U.S. global leadership and seeking to wrest control of a coalition battling ISIS away from America’s grip. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Cuban leader Raul Castro all made addresses questioning seven decades of U.S. global leadership.
AFGHANISTAN
Breakdown: The war in Afghanistan may no longer be front and center, but that doesn’t mean the country is close to being peaceful. The government there is still fighting the Taliban, which had captured the provincial capital of Kunduz. A spokesman for Afghanistan’s interior ministry confirmed late yesterday the city had fallen into “the hand of enemies.” But early this morning the word out of the country was that Afghan troops had already begun a counteroffensive to retake the city.
WASHINGTON
Shutdown: Will there be a government shutdown? Probably not this week. The Senate passed a stopgap bill that funds the government through mid-December. The House is expected to pass it today, beating Wednesday’s deadline. Conservatives in the House will be angry, because they wanted to strip funding for Planned Parenthood from the bill. They even threatened to oust House Speaker John Boehner over it. But they lost that leverage when Boehner announced his retirement last week. So the bill will probably pass in the House with the help of Democratic votes. But the country isn’t out of the woods yet. The bill only funds the government through December 11, so we’ll have to go through all of this again, just in time for Christmas. Yeah, America!
MARS
Countdown: NASA didn’t announce the discovery of little green men yesterday during its big Mars announcement, but the agency may have found the next best thing: flowing water. NASA scientists said life-giving water still flows periodically on the surface of the Red Planet. The discovery of water by itself doesn’t offer evidence of life on Mars, but it does boost hopes that microbes would have a watery refuge to cling to for existence. Maybe by the time we get to Mars — in the 2030s, according to NASA administrators — we’ll have a definitive answer on the life question.
PAUL WALKER
Takedown: Here’s a lawsuit that’s going to raise some eyebrows. The daughter of Paul Walker has sued Porsche, claiming the sports car Walker was killed in had multiple design flaws. Walker, you may remember, died in a car crash in 2013. A police investigation said it was speed that killed the “Fast & Furious” star. But the suit says the car — a Porsche Carrera GT — “lacked safety features … found on well-designed racing cars” and was so dangerous it “doesn’t belong on the street.” Porsche said it hasn’t seen the lawsuit yet, so it wouldn’t comment on specifics. The rest of us are left wondering what kind of safety features would help someone survive a 90 mph crash.