News from NPR

President Obama's already shortened trip to Asia was canceled Thursday, the White House calling it a casualty of the government shutdown. The White House said Obama personally called the leaders of Indonesia and Brunei to deliver the news.

The famed hall's five full-time stagehands are on strike, and that's already forced the cancellation of one gala. Tax records show their average total compensation is more than $400,000 each a year. The dispute is over whether they'll also be working in the hall's new Education Wing.

Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer told a Park Service ranger she should be ashamed for carrying out orders that the World War II Memorial, like other national parks and monuments, be closed. That led to a tense exchange with a passerby, who said it's lawmakers who are to blame. See the video.

In a report, the department warns that a default could do damage to the economy to rival the Great Recession.

Oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have already been evacuated in anticipation of the storm, which is expected to make landfall as early as Saturday.

The international team says it hopes to begin onsite inspections and the initial disabling of equipment within a week.

The partial shutdown continues. The two sides haven't publicly shifted their positions. So once again we turn to that sage of the baseball diamond, Yogi Berra, for the best line on the news that keeps repeating.

A ship packed with African migrants trying to reach Italy apparently caught fire before sinking. It's thought there were about 500 people on board. The vessel had set off from Libya, authorities say.

A scant increase last week is another sign that the labor market is on the mend, economists say. There were 308,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance, up 1,000 from the week before.

Twin challenges — a shift in opinion about the stock by an influential research firm and a YouTube clip of a fire that destroyed a Tesla Model S — seem to have shaken investors a bit.