The Newspapers -- National Parks Closed; ObamaCare Fully Funded

The Wall Street Journal

When I heard the first words of the president's speech -- "the national parks are closed" -- I knew how bad this government shutdown was really going to be. After all, the White House has been closed to tourists for the past year or so. The military will get paid. Social security recipients will get paid. Medicare will be funded. ObamaCare will be funded. No more oil and gas permits for drilling on federal land will be issued -- much of the Bakken will be affected, I suppose.

Union rift over at UPS: a rift between top leadership of the Teamsters union and rank-and-file members over labor settlements, a development that could unnerve corporate shippers and hurt its holiday shipping business.

USPS could benefit if UPS stumbles: Amazon plans to hire 70,000 seasonal workers for its U.S. warehouse network this year, a 40% increase that points to the company's upbeat expectations about the holiday selling season.

And then this: Wal-Mart is building a pair of dedicated warehouses to handle Internet orders and speed up shipments, its latest move as it tries to catch up to online rival Amazon.

The two new fulfillment centers—one of which opened this month in Ft. Worth, Texas, and will handle the upcoming winter holiday load. The second distribution center, on the East Coast, will open early next year in Bethlehem, Pa., about 10 miles from Amazon's own Lehigh Valley warehouse operations. It will put Wal-Mart within a day's haul of a third of the shoppers in the U.S. and Canada.

Why Austin? AT&T is following plans by Google to offer ultrafast Internet service in Austin, Texas, by the middle of next year.

The Los Angeles Times

The Senate votes to shut-down government.

More than 800,000 federal workers were to spend Tuesday, the first day of the new fiscal year, on unpaid furloughs as agency managers executed contingency plans for the costly process of closing down operations indefinitely.

The official word to shut down came from the White House just before midnight Monday. Hours earlier, the Senate, by a 54-46 party-line vote, killed a House measure that would have funded government agencies for six weeks but delayed key parts of Obamacare for a year.

I thought the Senate GOP was not supporting the house; the vote suggests something else.

Los Angeles Unified is taking back the iPads they issued. Out of control. This was a $1 billion program. The students were able to hack the system, getting around firewalls.

Did anyone else miss this: it's not even the top story --

Most power was restored to UC Berkeley overnight after a powerful explosion Monday evening left four people with minor burns and caused the campus to go dark.

Some power was restored to the campus as of 11:15 p.m., and university officials were slated to give an update on the situation Tuesday morning.

The blast and fire north of California Hall, which forced students to scramble for safety and sent a dark cloud of smoke into the air, was probably caused by the theft of copper wire from an off-campus electrical station, a UC Berkeley spokesman said.