Woody Allen fell in love with Diane Keaton as soon as he set eyes on her, but took a week to pluck up the courage to speak to the woman whose stellar career he would help to turbo charge. He has now paid a heartfelt tribute to his favorite actress and former partner, whose death was announced at the weekend.”I first laid eyes on her lanky beauty at an audition and thought, If Huckleberry Finn was a gorgeous young woman, he’d be Keaton,” 89-year-old Allen wrote in a long tribute in The Free Press to Keaton, whose death was announced Saturday. She was 79.”For the first week of rehearsal we never spoke a word to one another,” he said of his time acting alongside her in the 1972 film “Play It Again, Sam.” “She was shy, I was shy, and with two shy people things can get pretty dull. Finally, by chance we took a break at the same moment and wound up sharing a fast bite… The upshot is that she was so charming, so beautiful, so magical, that I questioned my sanity. I thought: Could I be in love so quickly?”Allen, the acclaimed director-screenwriter-actor who never shook allegations that he molested his adopted daughter in 1992, described later moving in with Keaton and forming a creative bond with the beloved actress.”She sat through ‘Take the Money and Run’ and said the movie was very funny and very original. Her words. Its success proved her correct and I never doubted her judgment again,” she said.”I never read a single review of my work and cared only what Keaton had to say about it. If she liked it, I counted the film as an artistic success,” said Allen, who worked alongside Keaton in several films, including “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” and “Manhattan Murder Mystery.”Keaton stood by Allen when much of Hollywood shunned the neurotic funnyman at the height of the MeToo reckoning in January 2018, tweeting “Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him.”At that time, the director was again facing accusations of sexual assault, made in 1992 by his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow. Charges against him were dropped after two separate investigations.- Troubled relationship with food -In his tribute, Allen describes Keaton’s difficult relationship with food.”She’d put away a sirloin, hash browns, marble cheesecake, and coffee. Then we’d get home, and moments later she’d be toasting waffles or packing a huge taco with pork,” he wrote.”This slim actress ate like Paul Bunyan. Only years later when she wrote a memoir did she describe her eating disorder.”    Allen concluded his tribute by saying that “a few days ago the world was a place that included Diane Keaton.” “Now it’s a world that does not. Hence, it’s a drearier world.”

The US government shutdown dragged into a third week on Monday, with Congress gridlocked in a clash over spending and no resolution in sight to a crisis that has already cost thousands of jobs.With hundreds of thousands of federal employees already on enforced leave, President Donald Trump is following through on threats to take a hatchet to the workforce to pressure Democrats to agree to Republican funding demands.Trump has vowed to find a way to pay troops due to go without their paychecks for the first time, although the uncertainty is already leading to long lines of men and women in uniform at food banks.And Trump has warned that continued refusal by Democrats to support a House-passed resolution to fund the government through late November would result in mass layoffs targeting workers deemed aligned with the opposition party. “We’re ending some programs that we don’t want — they happen to be Democrat-sponsored programs,” Trump told reporters.”But we’re ending some programs that we never wanted and we’re probably not going to allow them to come back.”Vice President JD Vance told Fox News at the weekend that Democrats could expect more pain ahead if they did not cave. Court documents filed by the Department of Justice show more than 4,000 employees were fired on Friday, with the US Treasury and health, education and housing departments hardest hit.The reductions in the workforce are part of a campaign of threats on multiple fronts to amp up pressure on Democrats to back Republican moves to reopen the government. But Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leaders in the Senate and House respectively, have dismissed the threat, predicting that layoffs will be reversed in court.- Sticking point -About 1.3 million active-duty military personnel are set to miss their first paycheck on Wednesday.The Stronghold Food Pantry, a charity supporting military families, told Time magazine it had seen an “unprecedented increase in need since the shutdown began.”Trump announced on Saturday that he would direct Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to use “all available funds to get our Troops PAID” by Wednesday.Pentagon officials are reportedly diverting $8 billion in research and development funding, and while it is not clear that the move would be lawful, it has received little pushback from either party.Republican Speaker Mike Johnson — who has kept the House on recess since September 19 — is resisting pressure to bring back members to vote on a standalone bill to release military salaries for the duration of the shutdown.”We have voted so many times to pay the troops. We have already done it. We did it in the House three weeks ago,” Johnson told reporters Friday. “The ball is in the court of Senate Democrats right now. That’s it.”The key sticking point is a Republican refusal to agree to Democratic demands for language in its government funding resolution to extend expiring health insurance subsidies for 24 million Americans.Congress was out Monday for a federal holiday — guaranteeing that the shutdown would enter a 14th day — and while Trump’s vow to ensure military pay was welcomed, it also eased pressure for either side to end the stalemate.The Senate was set to return on Tuesday to take an eighth swing at reopening the government — with little hope of a different outcome from previous votes.  Airports are seeing increasing delays as the shutdown drags on, with Transportation Security Administration workers calling in sick rather than working without pay.The Smithsonian Institution has also closed its National Zoo and museums as of Sunday.