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Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) was ousted as speaker Tuesday night, plunging Congress into confusion over who would lead the GOP in the House of Representatives. It remained unclear Wednesday morning who would fill that role, as multiple Republicans jumped into the candidate pool. Immediately after the vote to push McCarthy out, Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) ascended to temporarily fill the role as speaker pro tempore. Under House rules, McHenry will serve until the election of the next House speaker or speaker pro tempore. McHenry could make the case to run for the position permanently, though he has previously indicated he would not want to be speaker. He currently serves as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.The House is expected to hold a candidate forum Tuesday...

BAKERSFIELD —  Minutes before the vote that cost California’s Rep. Kevin McCarthy his job as speaker of the House, three Republican voters lunching in his hometown cursed the scorched-earth politics in Washington.The conservative women said McCarthy had been left with two bad choices in the days before his ouster: Risk a revolt from the hard right and cut a deal with Democrats to pass a funding bill, or acquiesce to the hard-liners and shut down the federal government, wrecking the economy.Ultimately, they thought, McCarthy did the right thing — and paid the price on Tuesday.“He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t,” said Leslie Walters, a real estate agent and registered Republican, as she finished eating with two friends on the patio of the 24th Street Cafe, a 1950s-style joint in d...

Travis Gienger stood on the stage smiling and dressed in an orange jacket as an enormous blob of a pumpkin lay flat on a scale in front of him. Officials had just given the ginormous gourd the greenlight to be weighed Monday at the 50th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, Calif., considered the Super Bowl of competitive pumpkin-growing.“Wow!” an announcer said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. That’s amazing.”Gienger, of Anoka, Minn., shifted on his feet. Two growers had just broken a California record with their 2,497-pound pumpkin, and Gienger remembers hoping he could just squeeze by and win. The announcer began hyping up the crowd.“Oh, my god, here we go!” the announcer said. Gienger’s pumpkin tipped the scales at 2,749 pounds, and utter pandemonium broke out. Gi...

WASHINGTON —  What is Hamas, and what does it want?The radical Palestinian militant organization that has ruled the Gaza Strip for more than 15 years has sustained a bitter, lethal animus toward Israel that goes much deeper than sentiments found inside Palestinians’ other main ruler in the region, the Palestinian Authority.Hamas is a Sunni Islamic group that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and whose goals from the beginning have been to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation through any means necessary.The group was born in the dire poverty of the Gaza Strip under stifling Israeli military occupation in the 1980s and ’90s, and eventually built an active and well-armed military wing with help from neighbors such as Iran.From early on, Hamas was seen as a challenger to the Pal...

A Saudi dairy company that grows hay in Southern California and Arizona for export to the Middle East is set to lose several leases that allow it to pump unlimited water from government-owned farmlands. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs announced this week that the state has terminated one of the leases held by the company, Fondomonte, and will not renew three other leases when they expire in February. Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science. The action, although partly focused on details of the company’s rental agreements, reflects concerns among some political leaders about the use of water to export alfalfa and other water-intensive crops at a time when chronic shortages are prompting calls to rein in water use along ...

ANJAR, Lebanon — Hilda Doumanian stood in the main hall of the Anjar museum, scanning the glass cases holding items her ethnic Armenian forebears salvaged from their lands before they escaped to Lebanon more than eight decades ago. “This appears to be our fate: to be forcibly displaced every few decades,” she said, walking up to one of the displays: A collection of rust-encrusted kitchenware and bundles of braided silk from a village loom. Ancient-looking rifles. Religious vessels. Bibles so old their pages appeared more suspended dust than paper. “The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century,” she said, slowly shaking her head in resignation, referring to the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire. “Now in the 21st century we see the first genocide, and it’s Armenians ag...

SAN FRANCISCO —  For one last day, Dianne Feinstein reigned.She reigned over this lovely, enchanted, vexing and deeply troubled city. The city where she was born, the city that nurtured and sustained and tortured her, and sometimes broke her heart.Dignitaries arrived and tributes flowed from around the country as those closest to the late U.S. senator and former mayor gathered for a final remembrance outside San Francisco’s majestic City Hall.President Biden, in taped remarks, extolled Feinstein’s character and steel-rod spine. “She was always tough, prepared, rigorous and compassionate,” Biden said. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer hailed her as “one of the Senate’s great deal-makers.”“There are many adjectives that rightly describe Dianne Feinstein,” he said. “Strong. Unflappabl...

MEXICO CITY —  Branding the scourge of fentanyl deaths the “top of the agenda,” America’s senior diplomat on Thursday implored Mexico to help stop the flow of the drug into the U.S., but it was unclear whether he received a meaningful commitment from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in Mexico City for a series of high-level security and economic talks, said in a news conference he had “no doubt about Mexico’s commitment to working collaboratively ... a commitment in words and deeds.”But López Obrador has been slow to acknowledge the depths of the fentanyl crisis, preferring until recently to blame U.S. consumption and not the role of Mexico in production and supply of the synthetic opiate, which is fabricated using chemicals from China.Mex...

The Biden administration announced an additional $9 billion in student debt relief for tens of thousands of borrowers Wednesday, days after federal student loan payments resumed after a three-year pause during the pandemic.The move gives relief through fixes to income-driven repayment plans and public service loan forgiveness, and by canceling debt for borrowers with total and permanent disabilities, the White House said in a statement.Here’s what you need to know.What does it mean? The measure will forgive some $9 billion in federal student loans to about 125,000 borrowers. The latest round of relief is part of the Biden administration’s changes to federal programs to address bureaucratic obstacles and widespread breakdowns that prevented some borrowers from having debt waived; those and...

LONDON —  For many under-18s in Britain, it’s a rite of passage: loitering outside the corner store, mustering the pluck to try to buy a package of cigarettes without their underage status being detected.But under a proposal this week by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, those now 14 or younger would never be allowed to smoke legally. In an echo of a law enacted in New Zealand in December, England would increase the legal smoking age, currently 18, by one year, every year, beginning in 2027.The announcement of one of the most stringent policies on tobacco globally was made to great fanfare by Sunak, who used his speech at the Conservative Party Conference — arguably the most important prime ministerial vehicle on the British political calendar — to unveil his plans. Although Brits have broadly e...