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officials, as well as the Obama administration itself. Health care markets for the uninsured would open as scheduled on Tuesday.
• Deleting the money to implement the law, the GOP's dream scenario, would indeed cripple Obamacare. But that's much less likely to happen than a government shutdown. Obama wouldn't allow the ruin of his hard-fought namesake legislation.
• Part of the reason a shutdown wouldn't stop the health care law is that government doesn't grind to a halt. National defense, law enforcement, air traffic control and other activities involving the safety of human life and the protection of property continue.
• Ditto for big entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, whose "mandatory" funding does not have to be renewed annually by Congress. The Affordable Care Act is the newest addition to that club of budget heavyweights.
• ___

• MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia says it is ready to help ensure security for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons.
• Russian news agencies quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov confirming that Russia would help guard the facilities where the weapons are being destroyed.
• Ryabkov, speaking Thursday during an arms exhibition in Nizhny Tagil, said he hoped that other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization would also participate. The organization includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
• U.N. inspectors returned to Syria on Wednesday to continue investigating three incidents of suspected chemical weapons use this year.
• The U.S. and its allies accuse the Syrian government of carrying out an attack near Damascus on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people. Syria and Russia blame the rebels for the attack.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawmakers who oversee U.S. intelligence agencies are

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