Ilia Topuria and Josh Emmett will go head to head in a UFC Fight Night main event tonight, in what should be an entertaining clash of featherweight contenders. Emmett, 38, enters the bout on the back of a dispiriting loss, having been submitted by Yair Rodriguez with the interim title on the line in February. However, the American was on an encouraging win streak before that defeat, and he will feel that he can re-enter the title picture if he secures an impressive victory on Saturday. That would be more easily said than done, however, with Topuria not only unbeaten as a professional but having won 12 of his 13 fights via stoppage. In his last outing, the Georgian, 26, stunned Bryce Mitchell by submitting the submission specialist in December. An undisputed champion will be crowned in July, when Rodriguez challenges official champion Alexander Volkanovski, and the winner of Saturday’s main event may even mark themselves out as the next contender for the gold. Here’s all you need to know. When is it? The event will take place on Saturday 24 June, at the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville. The prelims are set to begin at 4.30pm BST (8.30am PT, 10.30am CT, 11.30am ET). The main card is then due to follow at 8pm BST (12pm PT, 2pm CT, 3pm ET). How can I watch it? The card will air live on BT Sport in the UK, with the broadcaster’s app and website also streaming the fights. In the US, ESPN+ will stream the action live, as will the UFC’s Fight Pass. Odds Topuria – 5/2 Emmett – 30/100 Full odds via Betway. Full card (subject to change) Main card Josh Emmett vs Ilia Topuria (featherweight) Amanda Ribas vs Maycee Barber (women’s flyweight) Austen Lane vs Justin Tafa (heavyweight) David Onama vs Gabriel Santos (featherweight) Brendan Allen vs Bruno Silva (middleweight) Prelims Neil Magny vs Phil Rowe (welterweight) Randy Brown vs Wellington Turman (welterweight) Mateusz Rebecki vs Loik Radzhabov (lightweight) Tabatha Ricci vs Gillian Robertson (women’s strawweight) Zhalgas Zhumagulov vs Joshua Van (flyweight) Trevor Peek vs Victor Martinez (lightweight) Jamall Emmers vs Jack Jenkins (featherweight) Tatsuro Taira vs Kleydson Rodrigues (flyweight) Cody Brundage vs Sedriques Dumas (middleweight) Read More Fury vs Usyk: Behind the scenes, laughter is turning to anger Joe Rogan is right: Tyson Fury has ‘no chance in hell’ against Jon Jones How to watch The Ultimate Fighter 31 in the UK What time does Topuria vs Emmett start in UK and US tonight How to watch Topuria vs Emmett online and on TV tonight Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg ‘dead serious’ about cage fight, says UFC boss

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DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 11, 2023--

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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

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No sooner had news broke of Matthew Perry’s untimely death than conspiracy theorists seized upon the tragedy. Early on Sunday, it emerged that the Friends icon had been found dead at his LA home on Saturday afternoon, after apparently drowning in his hot tub. According to US media, the 54-year-old had played a two-hour game of pickleball earlier in the day before sending his assistant out on an errand. When they returned, they allegedly found Perry unresponsive in the jacuzzi. Los Angeles Police Department officials have since told reporters that the cause of death isn’t likely to be determined for some time, but confirmed that there was no sign of foul play. And yet, this hasn’t stopped wannabe sleuths from offering up their own baseless hypotheses. High-profile anti-vaxxers were quick to blame Perry’s death on the coronavirus jab, including Kandiss Taylor, a Republican politician who recently compared Taylor Swift to Satan, and self-styled “crypto influencer” Matt Wallace. They made use of a 2021 ad campaign, for which the Friends star donned a t-shirt branded with the slogan: “Could I BE any more vaccinated?” In a further bid to hijack the sad news, theorists even edited Perry’s Wikipedia page to add: “It is unclear whether the drowning was due to complications from the COVID-19 vaccine.” Luckily, this amendment has since been deleted. More level-headed commentators spoke out against the unsupported suggestions, with one pointing out that sudden deaths do, sadly, happen, even in the young and healthy. Others condemned the conspiracy mongers for “adding more grief to grieving people”. Meanwhile, others asserted that Perry had been close to death many times before he’d received his coronavirus vaccinations, owing to his decades-long battle with alcohol and substance abuse. Indeed, the American-Canadian actor began his 2022 memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’ by addressing his issues head-on. In the opening to the book he wrote: "Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. “My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead." In a New York Times interview published in October 2022, Perry said he had been clean for 18 months and estimated that he’d “probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober." He admitted that his substance abuse started when he began drinking, aged 14, and that he later became addicted to the prescription drugs Vicodin, OxyContin, and Xanax. “I would fake back injuries. I would fake migraine headaches. I had eight doctors going at the same time,” he told The New York Times. “I would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figure out how to do it.” In previous interviews, he admitted to being in rehab at least 15 times and getting 14 surgeries on his stomach caused by his opioid abuse, Rolling Stone notes. Then, at the age of 49, his colon burst as a result of his drug addiction, leaving him hospitalised for five months, including two weeks in a coma. “The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” the 17 Again star wrote in his memoir. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.” Perry further detailed how, in late 2020, he had to pull out of filming a cameo in the Oscar-nominated satire Don’t Look Up after his heart stopped for five minutes and his ribs had to be broken to resuscitate him. In his book, Perry also opened up about his struggles while filming Friends, and recounted a confrontation he'd had with co-star Jennifer Anniston while filming. “I know you’re drinking – we can smell it,” he recalled her telling him, admitting that the plural “we” hit him “like a sledgehammer.” In the foreword to the memoir, fellow Friends legend Lisa Kudrow described Perry as “whip-smart, charming, sweet, sensitive, very reasonable, and rational.” She added: “That guy, with everything he was battling, was still there.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

On the Dan Patrick show, Paul Finebaum talked about the Michigan football team, as if his opinion actually mattered.