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Shutdown looms as both parties stand their ground

admin - Latest News - September 24, 2025
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Both Democrats and Republicans are standing their ground ahead of the government funding deadline on September 30, making the path to avoiding a shutdown uncertain. NBC News’ Sahil Kapur reports.



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Sept. 24, 2025, 6:20 PM EDTBy Dalila MuataThis week, dozens of Christian creators on TikTok prepared for what they thought would be a biblical Rapture. In Australia, Tilahun Desalegn said he sold his car. Thousands of miles away in Colorado, Melissa Johnston created flowcharts and care packages for those who would be left behind.In Chicago, De’Mico Harden began documenting the signs — pointing out anytime the clock struck 9:23, a date that was among the three-day window when the Rapture was supposed to take place.But by Wednesday afternoon, no such end had come — instead, confusion and disappointment had set in for some believers. Many had been posting videos to TikTok about what people should expect when the Rapture occurs, namely that Jesus will take true believers to heaven as Earth enters an apocalypse.“OK, um, Rapture update, Wednesday, 9/24, sorry to report, I don’t think it actually happened,” TikTok creator AveragePickleballGuy said. “Everybody I know is still here. … A lot of people on my comments have told me that I was duped and didn’t know what I was talking about. I just kind of fell into this, I didn’t have all the facts, so I wanted to issue a public apology to anybody who took me seriously.”The prediction that the Rapture would begin on Sept. 23, during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, appeared to originate with a South African pastor named Joshua Mhlakela, who had shared his theory in an interview with religious YouTube channel Centtwinz TV in June.Pastor Joshua Mhlakela’s Rapture prediction went viral in June.Got Reality? via YouTubeMhlakela doubled down on the theory in a later appearance on the podcast, saying that when the Rapture happens, people will disappear in the blink of an eye and “God’s judgment will leave the world unrecognizable.”As the date neared, his apocalyptic prophecy, which he projected with “100% confidence,” went viral.“For believers, the Rapture represents the ultimate validation,” Landon Schnabel, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University, said. “Rapture beliefs create powerful in-group/out-group dynamics. Believers develop a sense of special knowledge and moral superiority, while simultaneously feeling persecuted by a world that doesn’t understand them.” The Rapture now joins the ongoing list of doomsday theories that have captivated the masses, such as the 2000 Y2K bug or when the ancient Mayan calendar predicted the apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012.But according to Schnabel, what sets this Armageddon apart from the rest is the explosive reaction from the public. Interest in the word “rapture” increased by 1,000% in the last three days, with a search volume of over 1 million, according to Google Trends. Peak interest in “rapture” in the U.S. hit around midnight on Tuesday, the day Mhlakela had said it would happen. On TikTok, more than 290,000 posts use the #rapture hashtag.The meme-ification of the Rapture across social media also helped thrust the prediction into the mainstream. Many of the videos posted to TikTok are sketches or jokes surrounding the theory. Even Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” poked fun at the theory.“Previous predictions spread through niche religious networks or required mainstream media coverage to go viral,” Schnabel said. “TikTok’s algorithm can take a South African preacher’s prediction and put it in front of millions of young people in hours.” In the last 24 hours, some who gave up after waiting for the Rapture to arrive have called on Mhlakela to apologize for his “fake Rapture prophesy.”Mhlakela could not be reached by NBC News. He is expected to appear on Centtwinz again on Friday for an exclusive interview, the YouTubers said in their Instagram story on Wednesday.Others online wanted TikTokers who pushed Mhlakela’s theory to admit they were wrong.But some believers continue to hold out hope, which Schnabel said is unsurprising. “The public mockery actually strengthens believers’ commitment by confirming their persecution narrative,” he said. “The social bonds created around shared belief are often stronger than the belief itself.”Or, as TikToker Desalegn put it in a video to his followers Wednesday: “At this point, I’ve got nothing to lose but to continue to believe.”Dalila MuataDalila Muata is the newsroom coordinator for NBC News Digital. 
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Oct. 2, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Mithil Aggarwal, Jay Ganglani and Peter GuoNEW DELHI — In India, some of the biggest jobs in tech come to you.Graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (ITT), one of the country’s most prestigious universities, are recruited directly by Indian companies as well as American firms looking to lock down some of the world’s top talent in fields that will dominate the future, such as artificial intelligence and robotics.Many of them also continue their studies in the United States, where India overtook China last year as the biggest source of foreign students. But policy decisions and other moves by the Trump administration, including the recently announced $100,000 fee for the H-1B skilled immigrant work visa, now have those graduates thinking twice about going to America. “About 20 students are graduating from my department, and nearly 10 to 15 have a postdoctoral offer from the U.S.,” said Ajaykumar Udayraj Yadav, a materials science and engineering doctoral candidate working on energy storage systems, who is among the student volunteers at the Office of Career Services at IIT’s New Delhi campus.“But the way they’re seeing the situation develop in the U.S., these students are unwilling to take them up,” he said. Trump administration raises fee for H-1B visas to $100,00000:49While offers to work directly in the U.S. are few and far between, more common is relocation via the H-1B program after working in Indian offices for a few years. Out of the 400,000 H-1B visas approved in the 2024 financial year, 71% of the grantees were born in India, according to the Department of Homeland Security. China was a distant second at less than 12%. Among the top H-1B employers are tech giants such as Amazon, Meta and Google, as well as consulting firms such as Accenture and Deloitte, according to the DHS data. U.S. tech leaders who once held H-1B visas include Satya Nadella, the chairman and chief executive of Microsoft; Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and its parent company, Alphabet; and Elon Musk.It was a tried and tested formula that held up for decades, enabling what was the Indian dream.But on Sept. 19, a surprise proclamation from President Donald Trump increased the fee for new H-1B visa applications to $100,000, up from $2,000 to $5,000 per application. The increase, on top of a series of deportations and immigration arrests affecting Indians and other foreign nationals, has stung young science and tech talent in India and spurred other countries to try to scoop them up instead.“Our migration policy works a bit like a German car. It is reliable, it is modern, it is predictable,” Philipp Ackermann, the German ambassador to India, said in a video posted on X four days after Trump’s H-1B announcement. “We do not change our rules fundamentally overnight. Highly skilled Indians are welcome in Germany.” The same day, British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said the United Kingdom would ease routes to bring high-skilled workers into the country. China, meanwhile, launched its own special visa for foreign tech talent on Wednesday. “China welcomes outstanding talent from all industries and sectors around the globe to come to China, take root in China, and work together to advance human society,” foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing last month.Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order introducing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. Andrew Harnik / Getty ImagesYadav, the doctoral candidate, said the trend among Indian students is shifting away from the U.S. and toward European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, which have high English fluency and a quicker and more reliable path to citizenship.“The dream would be to get a great job in India, but if someone mentions going abroad, I personally keep Europe as a better option compared to the U.S.,” he said, adding that this was also an opportunity for India to find ways to retain its talent.Asian destinations such as South Korea, home to Samsung and other tech giants, have also risen in popularity.Priyanshu Agrawal, a 20-year-old computer science senior at IIT, said he already has a job offer from a South Korean company and has no plans on going to the U.S. “If there are restrictions like these, then people wonder why go to a country that isn’t so welcoming,” he said. “You stop seeing the advantage of going there.”Trump’s proclamation said the H1-B program had been “deliberately exploited” to replace American workers with “lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” The announcement was another setback to U.S.-India relations, which have sharply deteriorated after Trump slapped damaging tariffs on Indian imports, complained about Apple manufacturing iPhones in India and made overtures to Indian archrival Pakistan. “This will create another pressure point in U.S.-India relations,” said Gil Guerra, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a Washington-based think tank. “One potential consequence of this is another uptick in irregular Indian migration as legal pathways become even harder to pursue.”India’s foreign ministry said the H-1B fee increase, which applies only to new visa applicants, “is likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families.”Analysts say it may hurt the U.S. more.“This decision will cause U.S. businesses to offshore and drive innovation and entrepreneurship outside of the United States,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “The proclamation shows utter contempt for some of the most productive, innovative, and law-abiding people in American history.” In addition to allowing American companies to hire directly from India, the H-1B program also helps some of the more than 330,000 Indians studying in the U.S. to stay in the country after they graduate.“Universities will suffer and so will countless college towns with the drop of international student demographic,” said Sudhanshu Kaushik, executive director of the North American Association of Indian Students.“I hope a recourse happens,” he added.Mithil Aggarwal reported from New Delhi, and Jay Ganglani and Peter Guo from Hong Kong.Mithil AggarwalMithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter/producer for NBC News.Jay GanglaniJay Ganglani is NBC News’s 2025-26 Asia Desk Fellow. Previously he was an NBC News Asia Desk intern and a Hong Kong-based freelance journalist who has contributed to news publications such as CNN, Fortune and the South China Morning Post.Peter GuoPeter Guo is an associate producer based in Hong Kong.
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