DHS Dodges Partial Shutdown With 1-Week Extension

Lawmakers narrowly avoided a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security and furloughing thousands of employees Friday when they reached a last-minute deal to approve a one-week funding measure for the department.

Just two hours before the midnight deadline, the House voted 357 to 60 to fund the department for one week. The Senate passed the measure earlier in the evening by a voice vote.

Less than one hour before the vote, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent her Democratic colleagues a letter urging them to advance the seven-day measure.

Though the department will be funded, the one-week measure will set up a new round of fighting for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The dysfunction that has become all too familiar on Capitol Hill was on full display today as the House earlier failed to secure enough votes to pass a short-term funding bill that would have kept the department open for three weeks.

That last-minute strategy proposed by House Republicans failed with a vote of 203 to 224. Fifty-two Republicans opposed the measure while 12 Democrats supported it.

President Obama held a meeting in the Oval Office late Friday with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and OMB Director Shaun Donovan to discuss the potential shutdown, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. The president personally phoned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to receive an update on the situation.

The evening’s drama rounds out months of fighting between Democrats and Republicans over the funding. Republicans have wanted to link any funding for the department to immigration. Earlier this month, the House passed a bill that would fund the department through the end of the fiscal year while also blocking President Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration.

But Democrats opposed that plan, instead pushing for a clean funding bill. Earlier in the day, the Senate passed a clean funding measure with a vote of 68 to 31 to fund the Department of Homeland Security through Sept. 30.

“We passed a full-year funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said. “It means we did our job so that those men and women working in every agency can do their job to protect America. The Senate has done its job. Now, the House has to do its job.”

Lawmakers will now have one week to hammer out their differences on the funding and immigration. If not, the Department of Homeland Security will have to furlough approximately 40,000 workers. But 80 percent of its 240,000-person workforce would be required to work without pay. This figure includes 40,000 Customs and Border Protection officers, 5,000 Transportation Security Administration security screeners, and 13,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

ABC News’ John Parkinson contributed to this report.

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DHS Dodges Partial Shutdown With 1-Week Extension

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N. Korea Demands Higher Wages for Workers Employed by South

Officials say North Korea has told rival South Korea that it plans to raise the minimum wage for North Koreans employed by southern companies at a jointly run industrial park.

An official from Seoul’s Unification Ministry said Thursday that the South rejected the North’s decision because it wasn’t a mutual agreement. The official said the South offered to meet next month to discuss the wages of workers at the Kaesong industrial park in North Korea, but the North refused to consider the offer.

Analysts in Seoul say North Korea has been trying to gain the upper hand over South Korea in decision-making at the park, which has been a significant source of income for the North since it opened in 2004.

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N. Korea Demands Higher Wages for Workers Employed by South

Prince William Starts First Japan Visit _ With Green Tea

Britain’s Prince William is having afternoon tea on his first visit to Japan on Thursday, but it’s green and served by a master in the Japanese ceremonial art in a traditional tea house.

The Duke of Cambridge began his four-day stay with the tea ceremony, an almost sacred dance-like ritual, at Hama Rikyu Gardens in Tokyo. Tea is made from a bitter powder, hand-stirred into a foam with a tiny whisk of wood, preferably gulped down in about three takes.

His wife Kate, pregnant with the royal couple’s second child expected in April, stayed home.

The Edo-era style garden, which once belonged to a feudal shogun, is filled with sculpted pine trees and blossoming plum trees. Wooden bridges run over several lakes, where water birds float. Gardeners have been hard at work for days, clipping the trees and setting up lights, preparing for the visit.

After landing at Haneda airport, William boarded a boat with Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe, waving and smiling to cameras waiting on a separate boat, and then zipped across the site of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Among the other highlights of William’s trip, through Sunday, when he travels to China, is a visit to a school in the northeastern region of Fukushima, where some areas have been closed off around a nuclear power plant that went into multiple meltdowns four years ago.

William, 32, will also visit other areas devastated by the March 2011 tsunami to show support for the survivors and pay respects to those who died, according to the British Embassy in Tokyo.

The tsunami and the quake that set it off killed about 19,000 people, and displaced tens of thousands, including those whose homes were intact but contaminated by the radiation spewed from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

Japan and Britain have enjoyed friendly relations for decades, and the Japanese public is generally enamored of British royalty, having followed William since a child.

His mother Diana was so popular with the public in Japan, it set off a frenzy called “Diana fever.”

When Diana visited Japan in 1986, 1990 and in 1995, William’s father Prince Charles was almost an afterthought.

During his visit, William will be attending various dinners, including one at a “ryokan,” or traditional inn, where he will take a hot spring bath and dine with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wearing a “yukata” or kimono-style pajamas, according to the communications office for the royal family.

He will also visit a TV broadcaster and meet actors in a hit show dressed up as samurai and geisha, and go to a bookstore where Aston Martin cars will be on display, it said.

While in Tokyo, William will have lunch with Japanese Emperor Akihito and then tea, presumably black tea, with Crown Prince Naruhito at the Imperial Palace later in the week.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at twitter.com/yurikageyama

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Prince William Starts First Japan Visit _ With Green Tea

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