WASHINGTON The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Thursday said he has requested

EXTON, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 3, 2023--

The Crown's sixth season dramatizes five incidents from Princess Diana's last days

An Arizona man was fatally mauled by a black bear that attacked him unprovoked while he was having his morning coffee on Friday.

That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson has been sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for the rapes of two women two decades ago

Since the break up of Pangea that formed the world, we have been taught that there are seven oceans. But now, scientists believe a brand new ocean is currently forming as the continent of Africa is slowly beginning to split in half. Researchers have found two large parts of the land within Africa have begun to separate and it's believed a whole new ocean will form in the divide. Africa is the second-largest continent in the world, with a landmass of more than 30 million square kilometres, and is also the second-most populous. Many of its 54 countries are landlocked, however for some that could be about to change. Geologists believe countries such as Uganda and Zambia could come to have their own coastlines if the two land masses continue to separate. In the peer-reviewed journal, Geophysical Research Letters, experts have confirmed that the split in the African continent is creating a way for a new ocean to form. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter Scientists have identified the exact location where the continent first started to split, very deep underground. The crack first began to appear in 2005 in Ethopia’s deserts. The crack is known as the East African Rift and is 35 miles long. The start is positioned at the meeting point of three tectonic plates which have been gradually pulling apart from each other. Christopher Moore, a Ph.D. doctoral student at the University of Leeds, told NBC News: “This is the only place on Earth where you can study how continental rift becomes an oceanic rift.” Moore and other researchers have used satellite radar to monitor the volcanic activity in East Africa as this is associated with tectonic shifts. Despite being able to monitor movement, the split is a very gradual process, and scientists believe it will take another 5 to 10 million years for the new ocean to fully form. 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.

The $85 billion firm owned by Liechtenstein’s royal family is sending its cash well off the beaten path

Weeks of sniping back-and-forth between the White House and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has finally yielded a deal: America will not default on its debt obligations, should Congress act and pass the legislation before Thursday. On Saturday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden announced the end of negotiations and the agreement upon a deal late into the evening, with the text of the legislation itself soon to follow. The new compromise both touches on Republican priorities while also safeguarding Joe Biden’s legislative accomplishments. But it comes after weeks of bitter fighting. Republicans accused the White House and congressional Democrats of out-of-control spending, ignoring their rivals’s derisive reminders about the debt incurred by a GOP-led tax cut passed in 2017 that largely benefited wealthier Americans. Democrats, meanwhile, blamed Republicans for holding the country’s credit rating and ability to pay its loans hostage, and for seeking cuts to social welfare programs like food assistance for needy families. As we inch closer to Thursday’s deadline, let’s take a look at what leaders in Washington have come up with to break the deadlock. No more debt drama (for now) The first and most significant achievement of this deal: it raises the debt ceiling through the end of 2024. That guarantees the GOP won’t be able to wage a fight over the issue again, particularly as the presidential campaign season heats up later this year and into the next. Any debt ceiling battle during campaign season, particularly in the summer or fall of 2024, would take Joe Biden off the campaign trail and put his focus firmly on Washington at a time when either of his likely general election opponents, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, would be free to continue their politicking. In total, the deal calls for raising America’s debt limit by $4 trillion. Signing away that leverage for the next year is already proving to be one of the toughest pills for congressional conservatives in both the House and Senate to swallow, especially given the lack of other major concessions in the pending legislation. Spending caps The GOP’s big win in the negotiating process, this legislation is set to freeze federal spending at the current level, with the exception of military funding, through 2024. And growth of that spending will be capped at 1 per cent if Congress cannot agree upon a stopgap spending deal in January of 2025. This is a significant restriction for the federal government over the next year, and notably puts in place much stricter spending limits than members of Congress agreed to during the last debt limit fight in 2019. The language allowing for defence spending to increase while domestic programmes face a spending freeze is already irking progressives, who have long argued that the US military’s bloated budget should be at the top of the list for reforms. Caps set by this compromise are simultaneously the biggest victory for Republicans as well as their failure; while the spending caps are certainly more than what Democrats were demanding, they also eliminate the possibility of Republicans using the debt ceiling to make real cuts to programmes already implemented by the Biden administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislation. That means that Mr Biden’s 2021-2022 legislative agenda will remain largely intact, despite demands by conservatives to roll back huge parts of it, like efforts to forgive student loans or expand green energy production. Work requirements for food stamps One of the GOP’s efforts to stem the tide of federal spending is centred around the issue of providing food assistance to low-income families. The new legislation is set to expand work requirements for the SNAP programme from the current age cap of 49 to a new cap of 54, meaning that Americans within that age bracket will have to prove employment to receive benefits. The issue may seem oddly specific for Republicans to hold up America’s ability to pay its debts upon, but tightening the restrictions fo federal assistance has long been a target of the GOP, and originally the party wanted to expand those work requirements to Medicaid as well. The new work requirements will sunset in 2030, unless extended before then by a GOP Congress. IRS funding halted The other specific ask that Republicans managed to secure in their compromise with the White House was a halt, at least in part, to a plan to fund new hiring initiatives at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), America’s tax collection agency. The beleaguered agency was set to receive more funding for agents that the federal government said were to assist taxpayers with filing issues and shore up the IRS’s capabilities; Republicans painted the issue instead as an effort to hire an army of IRS auditors to go after taxpayers for suspected fraud, a non-starter for the party that has long sought, particularly among its conservative wing, to diminish the power and capabilities of both the IRS and other federal agencies. But some conservatives are already complaining that the cuts aren’t enough. Congressman Chip Roy exclaimed angrily after the deal was announced that “98%” of the funding for the expansion of the IRS’s services would still go through. Covid aid The deal has one more minor win for Republicans — a provision to return Covid aid funding that has yet to be appropriated. Millions of dollars in this aid still remains unspent by the federal government, though Democrats have used it thus far to fund a number of federal health programmes which they warn could face cuts if the aid is rolled back entirely. Read More Debt ceiling agreement gets thumbs up from biz groups, jeers from some on political right President attends 2nd grandchild's graduation as daughter of Biden's late son leaves high school Democrats look set to back debt limit deal – while right-wing threatens to blow it up AP News Digest 8:40 a.m. Debt-ceiling deal: What's in and what's out of the agreement to avert US default Asylum-seekers say joy over end of Title 42 turns to anguish induced by new US rules

Chinese consumers have been snapping up billions worth of items in China’s first major online shopping festival after emerging from the pandemic as merchants slash prices, but analysts say that consumer confidence still remains weak as China re-emerges from the pandemic

A New Jersey man who was a Princeton University student when he stormed the U.S. Capitol has been sentenced to two months of incarceration for interfering with police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters

In response to the GOP party getting 'attacked', Gutfeld decided to balance it out by comparing the appearances of women from the two parties

The Justice Department is seeking 33 years in prison for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol