The US Senate endorsed bipartisan legislation to lift the debt ceiling on Tuesday night, paving the way for legislation that pulls the country from brink of a looming debt default and signals the end of a two-week government shutdown.

The bill, a temporary fix that will last through until the start of 2014, was passed 81-18 with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans in support.

It now passes to the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, for another vote in the next few hours, where it was expected to pass the support of Democrats.

In brief remarks at the White House, shortly before the House was due to vote, president Barack Obama said he hoped the deal would "lift the cloud of uncertainty" that has hung over the country in recent weeks.

She first got into politics in Greece last year - when she bought herself a bullet-proof vest and learned how to beat up immigrants with poles hung with the national flag.

Her training over, she was a full member of Golden Dawn, the far-right party whose rage against foreigners has propelled its stiff-arm saluting leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos and 17 others into parliament in Athens in the wake of the Greek debt crisis.

A year on and the woman is Witness B, giving evidence used to arrest Mihaloliakos and five fellow Golden Dawn lawmakers. They have been charged with belonging to a criminal organization involved in many offences including the stabbing last month of a left-wing rap artist whose death has infuriated the government.

"Abusing immigrants was fun," Witness B told prosecutors last month of her days riding with a party motorcycle gang, according to a partial transcript of testimony included in prosecutors' indictment submission and seen by Reuters.

Defense lawyers challenge the testimony and the charges.

The party denies wrongdoing. Accusing the government of tactics not seen since the military junta of 40 years ago, it says it is being persecuted for its politics after standing up for ordinary Greeks against a corrupt elite that has bankrupted the nation and flung open its borders to cheap migrant labor.

Statements filed in court by purportedly penitent members of Golden Dawn paint the most detailed picture yet of the inner workings of a group that spent three decades on the far fringes of politics before becoming the fifth biggest party last year.

That picture is one of violence and intimidation not only against migrants, the testimony suggests, but also within the party - against dissenters or some who sought to leave. As such, the witnesses may be key to proving that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization, people familiar with the case said.

No date or venue has been set for a trial of the six lawmakers, three of whom have been released on bail. They face 10 years in jail if convicted of criminal association.

No, Republicans, the Gallup Poll is not a limbo contest.

Republicans seem to be playing "how low can you go." Just 28 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the GOP, according to the latest monthly Gallup tracking poll. The number " is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992," the polling company stated.

The number is 10 points lower than the party scored in the same poll in September.

Democrats, meanwhile, got a favorable rating from only 43 percent of respondents, down four points from last month.

Could the SNAP EBT (Food Stamp) disaster that occurred across 17 states last weekend have been a planned drill rather than system failure? This letter sent out by the USDA makes your brain turn.

A USDA letter has surfaced that has been sent to states across the nation. States are being told to "stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice." Which could mean that if Congress doesn't reach a deal to get federal government back up and running somebody at the Whitehouse decided you will not get your benefits. Worse yet, they have not sent anyone a letter letting people across the nation know their benefits are going to be postponed.

Would the government really wait until the very last-minute to make you aware of your loss of benefits?

Lets not forget other sensible cuts that could happen for example programs like the Department of Homeland Security, The NSA, The TSA, fusion centers, unconstitutional spying programs, cameras on the street corners and armored vehicles for our local colleges are not happening. I bet all those bills are still being paid. Why can't we cut there?

The on-going disaster of the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare is undoubtedly the most poorly planned implementation of any government program in American history. This law which forces people to buy health insurance or face a fine is one of the dumbest ideas ever conceived but it is the implementation of it that has been even dumber. The implementation has been so horrible that one has to question if this was done intentionally to plunge the entire healthcare system into chaos.

This might sound counterintuitive but it really isn't. The reason for the Obama regime to do something like this is that it would give them the pretext to justify a complete government takeover of America's healthcare system. This would be presented as the false solution to a problem that they created in the first place. If this wasn't part of a broader conspiracy, the only other explanation for the piss poor implementation is that the Obama regime put mentally retarded criminals in charge of its drafting, planning and execution.

There are so many facets to this but the Affordable Care Act should really be called the Unaffordable Care Act because it is actually increasing the cost for existing insurance policies. The amount of regulations, taxes and fees the law requires insurance companies to comply with forces them to pass on additional costs to customers. Both individuals and businesses have been severely impacted by this. Since the law has gone into effect it has caused businesses to hire more part time workers and less full time workers. This is because the law only forces businesses to provide health insurance for full time workers but not part time workers. By mandating that businesses shell out more money to provide health insurance for full time workers it discourages them from bringing on more full time help. Many businesses simply can't afford these additional costs and especially not with Obamacare dramatically increasing the cost of health insurance.

Unlike the real world, where managers and employees are judged on results and held accountable for their performance, in Washington, D.C., loyalty and partisanship almost always come first. Accountability comes later, if it comes at all.

This happens in every administration, and President Obama's is no different, as we've seen with the fatal mistakes made regarding the Fast & Furious gun program and in the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Democrats, claiming to see these as partisan witch hunts designed to hurt the administration politically, circled the wagons. Obama stood loyally by Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton

Loyalty is generally a good thing, in politics, as in life. But Kathleen Sebelius and her agency's rollout of Obamacare is different.

Sebelius' department had 3½ years to prepare to implement the Affordable Care Act. No one ever suggested that commandeering one-sixth of the American economy would be an easy task. (Many Republicans suggested the opposite and were dismissed as killjoys for their efforts.) But after the debacle of the last two weeks, liberals and Democrats - not conservatives or Republicans - should be calling for Sebelius's head.

The administration's handling of the implementation of Obamacare over the past three years has been a slow-moving train wreck: a mixture of embarrassing delays, hard-to-justify waivers, and assorted bad news about the unintended consequences of the law. Some of this was Sebelius's fault, some of it was not.

The crowning blunder came 10 days ago with the rollout of healthcare.gov website, the centerpiece of the administration's effort to sign individuals up for coverage through the government-run health care exchanges that are at the heart of the legislation. To say this was vitally important to the overall success of the law is an understatement. It is the aspect of Obamacare that the president himself has said is utterly essential - and backed up those words by letting the federal government shut down rather that give in to Republican demands to gut it. Nonetheless, its premiere was a giant flop - and Kathleen Sebelius is responsible.

President Barack Obama is risking "impeachable" offenses with the way he is handling the debt limit debate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a post on her Facebook page Monday.

"Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense," Palin wrote.

In her statement, Palin also accused the president of "scaremongering" on the debt ceiling. She suggested that a default could be averted by paying interest on the debt through daily revenues collected by the United States, an idea that has been recently touted by several conservative voices on the right.

"It's also shameful to see him scaremongering the markets with his talk of default. There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution," she said, also adding that the president was trying to "furlough reality" when talking about the debt limit.

Palin was in Washington on Sunday, when she visited the World War II Memorial and protested the government shutdown's impact on veterans. She will visit Iowa next month for the Faith & Freedom Coalition's fall fundraiser.

Jose DelReal is a POLITICO fellow.

France's safety watchdog said on Tuesday it was standing by existing recommendations for mobile phones, wifi and cellphone relay antennas, saying their emissions had "no demonstrated impact" on health.

The National Agency for Health, Food and Environmental Safety (Anses) said that, in lab tests, electromagnetic emissions had had a "biological" effect on cells, although evidence for this was "limited."

But it saw no grounds for recommending any changes to existing laws as there was "no demonstrated impact" on health.

It said, though, it would make a recommendation that children and big users of mobile phones limit their exposure to the devices.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced Sunday that her government was creating a secure email system to try and shield official communications from spying by the United States and other countries.

"We need more security on our messages to prevent possible espionage," Rousseff said on Twitter, ordering the Federal Data Processing Service, or SERPRO, to implement a safe email system throughout the federal government.

The agency, which falls under Brazil's Finance Ministry, develops secure systems for online tax returns and also creates new passports.

Hospitals are cutting thousands of jobs, undercutting a sector that was a reliable source of job growth, even through the recession.

Hospitals, a reliable source of employment growth in the recession and its aftermath, are starting to cut thousands of jobs amid falling insurance payments and inpatient visits.

The payroll cuts are surprising because the Affordable Care Act (ACA), whose implementation took a big step forward this month, is eventually expected to provide health coverage to as many as 30 million additional Americans.

"While the rest of the U.S. economy is stabilizing or improving, health care is entering into a recession," says John Howser, assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Health care providers announced more layoffs than any other industry last month - 8,128 - largely because of reductions by hospitals, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. So far this year, the health care sector has announced 41,085 layoffs, the third-most behind financial and industrial companies.