A jury has reached a verdict on whether the gunman who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 is eligible for the death penalty

Ryan Koss claimed that he had known Williams for many years as a fellow actor and a member of the local theater community

Police in South Africa say a group of gold miners from an unregistered, rival union are holding hundreds of colleagues underground for the second day over a union dispute

In 2019 when Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast was just 20 years old, Maddy Spidell fell head over heels for him

Veering away from a default crisis, the House overwhelmingly approved a debt ceiling and budget cuts package, sending the deal that President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated to the Senate for swift passage in a matter of days, before a fast-approaching deadline. The hard-fought compromise pleased few, but lawmakers assessed it was better than the alternative — a devastating economic upheaval if Congress failed to act. Tensions ran high as hard-right Republicans refused the deal, but Biden and McCarthy assembled a bipartisan coalition to push to passage on a robust 314-117 vote late Wednesday. “We did pretty dang good,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said afterward. Amid deep discontent from Republicans who said the spending restrictions did not go far enough, McCarthy said it is only a “first step." Biden, watching the tally from Colorado Springs where Thursday he is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy, phoned McCarthy and the other congressional leaders after the vote. In a statement, he called the outcome “good news for the American people and the American economy.” Washington is rushing after a long slog of debate to wrap up work on the package to ensure the government can keep paying its bills, and prevent financial upheaval at home and abroad. Next Monday is when the Treasury has said the U.S. would run short of money and risk a dangerous default. Biden had been calling lawmakers directly to shore up backing. McCarthy worked to sell skeptical fellow Republicans, even fending off challenges to his leadership, in the rush to avert a potentially disastrous U.S. default. A similar bipartisan effort from Democrats and Republicans will be needed in the Senate to overcome objections. Overall, the 99-page bill would make some inroads in curbing the nation’s deficits as Republicans demanded, without rolling back Trump-era tax breaks as Biden wanted. To pass it, Biden and McCarthy counted on support from the political center, a rarity in divided Washington. A compromise, the package restricts spending for the next two years, suspends the debt ceiling into January 2025 and changes some policies, including imposing new work requirements for older Americans receiving food aid and greenlighting an Appalachian natural gas line that many Democrats oppose. It bolsters funds for defense and veterans, and guts new money for Internal Revenue Service agents. Raising the nation's debt limit, now $31 trillion, ensures Treasury can borrow to pay already incurred U.S. debts. Top GOP deal negotiator Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana said Republicans were fighting for budget cuts after the past years of extra spending, first during the COVID-19 crisis and later with Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, with its historic investment to fight climate change paid for with revenues elsewhere. But Republican Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus helping to lead the opposition, said, “My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut.” For weeks negotiators labored late into the night to strike the deal with the White House, and for days McCarthy has worked to build support among skeptics. At one point, aides wheeled in pizza at the Capitol the night before the vote as he walked Republicans through the details, fielded questions and encouraged them not to lose sight of the bill’s budget savings. The speaker has faced a tough crowd. Cheered on by conservative senators and outside groups, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus lambasted the compromise as falling well short of the needed spending cuts, and they vowed to try to halt passage. A much larger conservative faction, the Republican Study Committee, declined to take a position. Even rank-and-file centrist conservatives were unsure, leaving McCarthy searching for votes from his slim Republican majority. Ominously, the conservatives warned of possibly trying to oust McCarthy over the compromise. One influential Republican, former President Donald Trump, held his fire: "It is what it is,” he said of the deal in an interview with Iowa radio host Simon Conway. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said it was up to McCarthy to turn out Republican votes in the 435-member chamber, where 218 votes are needed for approval. As the tally faltered on an afternoon procedural vote, Jeffries stood silently and raised his green voting card, signaling that the Democrats would fill in the gap to ensure passage. They did, advancing the bill that hard-right Republicans, many from the Freedom Caucus, refused to back. “Once again, House Democrats to the rescue to avoid a dangerous default,” said Jeffries, D-N.Y. “What does that say about this extreme MAGA Republican majority?” he said about the party aligned with Trump’s ”Make America Great Again” political movement. Then, on the final vote hours later, Democrats again ensured passage, leading the tally as 71 Republicans bucked their majority and voted against it. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the spending restrictions in the package would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the decade, a top goal for the Republicans trying to curb the debt load. In a surprise that complicated Republicans' support, however, the CBO said their drive to impose work requirements on older Americans receiving food stamps would end up boosting spending by $2.1 billion over the time period. That's because the final deal exempts veterans and homeless people, expanding the food stamp rolls by 78,000 people monthly, the CBO said. Liberal discontent, though, ran strong as nearly four dozen Democrats also broke away, decrying the new work requirements for older Americans, those 50-54, in the food aid program. Some Democrats were also incensed that the White House negotiated into the deal changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act and approval of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline natural gas project. The energy development is important to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., but many others oppose it as unhelpful in fighting climate change. On Wall Street, stock prices were down Wednesday. In the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell are working for passage by week's end. Schumer warned there is ”no room for error." Senators, who have remained largely on the sidelines during much of the negotiations, are insisting on amendments to reshape the package. But making any changes at this stage seemed unlikely with so little time to spare before Monday's deadline. ___ AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller, AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Seung Min Kim and Jill Colvin and video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Debt ceiling deal advances pipeline and tweaks environmental rules. But more work remains. Republicans get their IRS cuts; Democrats say they expect little near-term impact Progressives and conservatives complain as Biden-McCarthy debt deal passes

Karin Kneissl is known for her links to Russia, including dancing with Vladimir Putin at her wedding.

The world's largest car maker is investigating a system fault but says a cyber attack is unlikely.

President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, panned a short address given by his former boss on Tuesday as nothing more than panicked bluster in response to two criminal indictments filed by prosecutors in New York and the US Department of Justice. Mr Kelly spoke to The Washington Post after the ex-president appeared at his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, in front of a crowd of $1,000-a-pop attendees gathered hastily to hear his post-arraignment remarks. And he chalked up the president’s threats to go after Joe Biden and his family with the full power of a weaponised Department of Justice as president to little more than a tantrum. “He’s scared s***less,” said Mr Kelly. “This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this.” “For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, ‘I’m not going to pay you. Take me to court.’ He’s never been held accountable before,” added the former senior White House official and retired Marine Corps general. It was a comment that was simultaneously unsurprising yet notable due to the credence it lends to the idea that Donald Trump’s inner circle of advisers has done nothing but shrink since he took office in 2017 and left unceremoniously just four years later. In particular, Mr Trump is reported to have iced out all but those who agree most closely with his strategy and tactics, leaving behind even previously close aides like son-in-law Jared Kushner as he becomes further and further ensnared in legal entanglements. Mr Kelly was long seen as one of the president’s cool-headed influences in the White House, often clashing with more fervent True Believers in the administration like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. His brush-ups with the former eventually led to Mr Bannon departing the White House entirely before the end of Mr Trump’s first year in office. But Mr Kelly himself eventually left the White House, too, replaced by yes-men Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows who fed the president’s ego and enabled his most controversial actions, including his refusal to accept his election defeat to Mr Biden in 2020. Mr Meadows was most recently reported by The Independent to be cooperating with federal investigators in two probes examining his former boss’s undertakings as part of an immunity deal: One into the January 6 attack, and another dealing with presidential records and classified material taken from the White House. Mr Kelly is one of many former Trump White House staffers who have denounced their former boss since leaving his service; in 2020, Mr Kelly was reported to have described then-President Trump as one of the most dishonest people he has ever known in a CNN report. “The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,” Mr Kelly has told close friends, according to the news outlet. Mr Trump was indicted last week on 37 criminal counts related to his handling of presidential records, including classified documents reportedly related to US defense and the military. He faces a separate 32-count indictment in New York, a result of a 2016 hush money scheme involving porn star Stormy Daniels. Read More Trump indictment – live: Trump speech lambasted as ex-president celebrates birthday post-arrest Special counsel Jack Smith stared at Trump throughout historic court appearance, report says Ex-Trump lawyer says evidence in indictment is like ‘a gun with Trump’s fingerprints on it’ Trump’s second arraignment: Watch how it happened Fox News calls Biden ‘wannabe dictator’ as it shows Trump speech on nuclear secret charges Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked for telling CDC chair: ‘I dont want my staff educated’

Major League Cricket got underway in Texas on Thursday, and the most serious attempt yet to establish a domestic competition in the United States provided all the...

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass said Thursday he doesn’t believe an anti-LGBTQ+ social media post he shared last month was hateful

A photographer survived a 2002 train crash in India and took the first pictures of the tragedy.

State Farm is stopping new home insurance sales in California, citing wildfire risks and skyrocketing construction costs, the company announced Friday.