Authorities say Russia’s southern Belgorod region that borders Ukraine has come came under attack from Ukrainian artillery fire

PARIS France, already on its highest security alert, is to boost security at airports around the capital and

By Moira Warburton and Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON The White House and congressional Republicans on Thursday are expected to

Congress has passed the debt ceiling package, just days before the Treasury Department would have run out of sufficient funds to pay all of the nation's obligations on time and in full.

Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales has resigned following fierce criticism for kissing Jenni Hermoso on the lips at the...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of private military group Wagner, has vowed to retaliate after accusing Russia's military leadership of killing a "huge amount" of his forces in strikes -- a claim that defense officials quickly denied.

U.S. stock index futures were muted on Friday as the country's top lenders report results against the backdrop

Donald Trump and Joe Biden made strange royal references this weekend. In a rant on his Truth Social page on Saturday, Mr Trump referred to himself as “The King” in an extended, somewhat inscrutable metaphor about the relationship between him and Fox News. “Well, it’s happened, just as I predicted,” Mr Trump wrote. “The Golden Goose that was so beautiful is being slaughtered by Fools. MAGA has left Fox for more promising “prairies.” Long live the King. The only solution for Fox News is to bring back Trump Allies and MAGA—Backing No Personality Ron DeSanctimonious has been a disaster….” Mr Trump has been fuming at the conservative news network for years, after Fox was early in (correctly) calling the key battleground state of Arizona for Joe Biden during the 2020 election. Things only escalated during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the network, in which embarrassing internal communications showed top Fox anchors and leadership questioning or outright mocking Donald Trump and his election-related conspiracies. “Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers, who will again be leaving in droves - they already are,” the former president said on Truth Social. “There is MASSIVE evidence of voter fraud & irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election. Just look at the documentary ‘2000 MULES’ and you will see large scale ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, or votes cast without Legislatures approval, or just recently, the FBI/Twitter Files Scandal. RIGGED!!!” Mr Trump wasn’t the only one with a monarchy moment in recent days. On Friday, speaking before the National Safer Communities Summit in Connecticut, Mr Biden ended a speech about gun violence with the phrase, “God Save The Queen.” Mr Biden, who often speaks of his pride in having Irish-American heritage, is usually more known for making headlines by being slightly sceptical of the British monarchy. Last month, during a fundraising event in New York, the president said he visited Northern Ireland for the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in April to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around.” Read More Nikki Haley's husband begins Africa deployment as she campaigns for 2024 GOP nomination Trump can’t bully his way out of his latest legal woes – he’s just too stubborn to know when he’s beaten Watch live: Joe Biden kicks of re-election campaign in Pennsylvania with union rally

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday’s meeting between him, other Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden had produced no forward progress on an agreement to stave off what economists say would be a catastrophic default on America’s sovereign debt. Mr McCarty, who has kept the House in recess for the last two weeks and for a majority of the days since he and Mr Biden last met on 1 February, told reporters outside the White House that Mr Biden and both Republican and Democratic leaders had merely reiterated the positions they held when the House Speaker and the President met 97 days before. “Nothing has changed since then ... everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn't see any new movement,” he said. The California Republican’s last meeting came just a few weeks after he eked out enough votes to claim the Speaker’s gavel with support from extremist and white nationalist members of the House Republican Conference, many of whom demanded that he use the need to lift the government’s century-old statutory debt ceiling as leverage to force Mr Biden to roll back much of the legislative record he and Democrats accomplished over the prior two years. Since that February meeting, the White House and the House of Representatives have remained far apart on what is needed before legislation allowing the US to resume issuing new debt instruments can reach Mr Biden’s desk for his signature. For his part, the president’s view has remained consistent since the beginning of the year. Mr Biden has repeatedly said that Congress should pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase and negotiate on spending cuts desired for next fiscal year when Congress begins work on a budget. Mr McCarthy characterised Mr Biden’s insistence that the Congress lift the debt ceiling on its’ own and address the spending cuts Republicans covet during the regular budgeting process as intransigent even though Republicans have not introduced a budget proposal for the next fiscal year. He also accused Senate Majority Leader Check Schumer of trying to stymie negotiations so Congress would be left without a choice but to pass the “clean” debt ceiling increase desired by Democrats and Mr Biden. “Chuck's whole idea before was to take us to the brink and someone's going to have to break right. I don't want to play politics with this. I think this is too important,” said the Speaker, who suggested the only reason Mr Biden had called a meeting was because the GOP-led House had passed a bill to raise the debt limit while enacting drastic cuts to government programmes favoured by Democrats. That legislation, which passed the House with a bare majority of GOP votes last month, would provide just a year’s worth of relief coupled with spending provisions that slash non-defence spending by as much as 20 per cent. Among the programmes on the chopping block: President Joe Biden’s student debt relief initiative, as well as funding for new IRS personnel. The plan would also add new work requirements for adults on Medicaid, cap the growth of the federal government, and impose 2022 limits on discretionary spending. The White House said in response to the bill’s passage that Republicans were attempting to “strip away health care services for veterans, cut access to Meals on Wheels, eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans and ship manufacturing jobs overseas”. While the House-passed bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, thus far Mr McConnell and Senate Republicans have backed up Mr McCarthy’s demand for Mr Biden to sign off on GOP-endorsed austerity measures in exchange for Republican votes to allow the US to continue paying its’ debts. Prominent GOP figures frequently claim that raising the statutory debt limit to enable the US to continue meeting financial obligations — a practice that was once routine under presidents of both parties and met no objections when it was done under Mr Biden’s predecessor — is akin to authorising new spending. That claim, however, is not how the debt limit works. Raising the debt limit does not increase or decrease the amount of money that is spent on programmes that have already been authorised by Congress and have had funds allocated to them in appropriations legislation. Experts say a failure to raise the debt limit would force the government to default on its debt and precipitate a worldwide financial crisis. The last time the US flirted with that disastrous outcome was 2011, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. Mr Biden, then the vice president under Barack Obama, led the negotiations with congressional leaders that headed off a default, but not before the US had its credit rating decreased for the first time in history. That 2011 dispute ended with Republicans suffering a drop in their approval ratings and facing accusations of endangering the US economy for political reasons. It also came along with an unprecedented downgrade in America’s credit rating. Those same charges are being raised again now by the White House and the president’s allies in Congress, who are holding firm on Mr Biden’s call for a clean debt limit boost. Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that unless Congress acts, the US will by 1 June cease having the legal ability to issue debt instruments that allow the government to pay for spending already authorized and incurred. Despite attempts by reporters to get Mr McCarthy to guarantee that the US would not default, the House Speaker repeatedly refused to make such a promise.

SYDNEY Vanuatu's President Nikenike Vurobaravu has rejected a request to dissolve the Pacific Island nation's parliament after political

Former President Donald Trump hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for disgraced former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Thursday night as Giuliani struggles to pay his mounting legal bills

The Supreme Court on Tuesday wiped away a lower court decision upholding the stalking conviction of a Colorado man who sent hundreds of messages to a woman over Facebook.