WORLD

Congress sent President Joe Biden a short-term spending bill on Thursday that would avert a looming partial government shutdown and fund federal agencies into March.

The House approved the measure by a vote of 314-108, with opposition coming mostly from the more conservative members of the Republican conference. Shortly before the vote, the House Freedom Caucus announced it “strongly opposes" the measure because it would facilitate more spending than they support.

Nevertheless, about half of Republicans joined with Democrats in passing the third stopgap funding measure in recent months. The action came a few hours after the Senate had voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill by a vote of 77-18.

Palestinian militants battled Israeli forces in devastated northern Gaza and launched a barrage of rockets from farther south on Tuesday in a show of force more than 100 days into Israel's massive air and ground campaign against the tiny coastal enclave.

The fighting in the north, which was the first target of Israel's offensive and where entire neighborhoods have been pulverized, showed how far Israel remains from achieving its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.

Indian-American Nikki Haley, who finished third in the Iowa caucuses, has said that she is the only Republican candidate who could take on frontrunner Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden and avert a "Trump-Biden nightmare".

The Iowa caucuses on Monday formally kicked off the beginning of the long process by which the Republicans and Democrats choose their nominees for the presidential election on November 5.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday interacted over a phone call and discussed positive developments in India and Russia's "Special & Privileged Strategic Partnership and agreed to chalk out a roadmap for future initiatives".

The discussions included Russia's presidency of the BRICS Summit.

Thousands gathered on the streets of Copenhagen Sunday for a once-in-a-thousand-year event: the voluntary abdication of its queen. In an afternoon ceremony at Denmark's Christiansborg Palace, Queen Margrethe II officially signed a declaration that voluntarily ended her 52-year reign—the longest of any of the country's monarchs, ever. Once signed, the crown was officially transferred to her son, who will now be known as King Frederik X.

The handover had been in the works since the 83-year-old queen's New Years address, when Margrethe announced to the country that she would step down on January 14, the same date she ascended to the throne following the death of her father in 1972. Her abdication was the first voluntary one for a Danish royal in 900 years: the last one was in 1146, when King Erik III Lam gave up the throne.