(Continued from page 33)

down Tuesday as a long-running dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law stalled a temporary funding bill, forcing about 800,000 federal workers off the job and suspending most non-essential federal programs and services.
• The shutdown, the first since the winter of 1995-96, closed national parks, museums along the Washington Mall and the U.S. Capitol visitors center. Agencies like NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency will be all but shuttered. People classified as essential government employees -- such as air traffic controllers, Border Patrol agents and most food inspectors -- will continue to work.
• The health care law itself was unaffected as enrollment opened Tuesday for millions of people shopping for medical insurance.
• The military will be paid under legislation freshly signed by Obama, but paychecks for other federal workers will be withheld until the impasse is broken. Federal workers were told to report to their jobs for a half-day but to perform only shutdown tasks like changing email greetings and closing down agencies' Internet sites.
• The self-funded Postal Service will continue to operate and the government will continue to pay Social Security benefits and Medicare and Medicaid fees to doctors on time.
• ___

• NEW YORK (AP) -- From New York's Liberty Island to Alaska's Denali National Park, the U.S. government closed its doors as a bitter budget fight idled hundreds of thousands of federal workers and halted all but the most critical government services for the first time in nearly two decades.
• A midnight deadline to avert a shutdown passed amid Congressional bickering, casting in doubt Americans' ability to get government services ranging from federally-backed home loans to supplemental food assistance for children and pregnant women.
• For many employees of the federal government, the shutdown that began Tuesday meant no more paychecks as they were forced onto unpaid furloughs. For those still working, it meant delays in getting paid.
• Park Ranger and father-to-be Darquez Smith said he already lives paycheck-to-paycheck while putting himself through college.
• "I've got a lot on my plate right now -- tuition, my daughter, bills," said Smith, 23, a ranger at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park in Ohio. "I'm just confused and waiting just like everyone else."
• ___