Republican Kevin McCarthy has been elected as the new US Speaker after winning the 15th vote as tensions boiled over in Congress.
Mr McCarthy’s party had taken control of the House – the US lower chamber – following the midterm elections in the autumn, with a slim 222-212 majority.
Usually, election of the Speaker follows seamlessly, as a formality, with the leader of the largest party a shoo-in for the job.
However, recent splits in the Republican Partymeant that did not happen until the 15th round of voting.
In the 14th ballot, Mr McCarthy received 216 votes – one shy of the number needed for a victory – as a small faction of right-wing hardliners held out.
He finally won, on the 15th ballot, on a margin of 216-211.
He was elected with the votes of fewer than half the House members only because five in his own party withheld their votes – not backing Mr McCarthy as leader, but also not voting for another contender.
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“My father always told me, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” he told cheering fellow Republicans.
US President Joe Biden congratulated him on his success and said he is “prepared to work with Republicans” when he can.
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However, the Republican party are now likely to turn the fight on the President and the Democrats, with Mr McCarthy promising subpoenas and investigations.
“Now the hard work begins,” Mr McCarthy said.
‘Stay civil’
After four days of ballots, stretching into a 14th round, a tense exchange ensued, with Mr McCarthy seen walking to the back of the chamber to confront Rep. Matt Gaetz, who did not vote for him.
Mr Gaetz was one of the six remaining Republican holdouts, and voted “present” in the 14th and 15th round.
This essentially meant he registered that he was in the House for the vote, but did not back anyone as the next Speaker.
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‘An utterly extraordinary few hours’
A hostile back and forth took place after Mr McCarthy approached him, while a number of Republican lawmakers began to crowd them.
Rep. Mike Rogers, who did back Mr McCarthy in the vote, appeared to lunge in the direction of where Mr Gaetz was sitting, but was held back by other members.
Rep. Richard Hudson – another Mr McCarthy supporter – was also seen grabbing Mr Rogers around the mouth, but it was unclear what the argument was about.
Meanwhile, in another incident, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was seen waving a mobile phone around while on a phone call to a person saved as ‘DT’, implied to be Donald Trump.
Sharing the image on her Twitter account, the GOP member from Georgia wrote: “It was the perfect phone call.”
Despite many of the rebel Republicans being supporters of Mr Trump, the former president had repeatedly backed Mr McCarthy for Speaker.
McCarthy’s extensive concessions
A handful of far-right Republicans, from the conservative Freedom caucus, had felt Mr McCarthy was not conservative enough for the job, despite him agreeing to many of the detractors’ demands.
One of the most difficult requests that Mr McCarthy has agreed to is the reinstatement of a longstanding House rule that would allow any single member to call a vote to oust him from office.
That will sharply cut the power he will hold when trying to pass legislation on critical issues including funding the government, addressing the nation’s looming debt ceiling and other crises that may arise.
The Speaker is one of the most powerful positions in US politics, and this week’s failed votes marked the highest number of ballots for the speakership since 1859, two years before the start of the American Civil War.
Sessions to decide on the person for the job had rumbled on for hours in the chamber this week – one even topping eight hours.
What does the US Speaker do?
The Speaker of the House is one of the most powerful positions in US politics.
They oversee the daily business and set the running order in the House of Representatives.
Using their position, an effective Speaker can make or break a US President’s agenda, or, if from the same party as the President, effectively hinder opposition to their policies.
The Speaker is taken from the party with the largest majority in the House and so depending on their allegiances can be a help or a hindrance to the US President.
Previously the role was held by Democrat Nancy Pelosi. But after losing the House to the Republicans in the recent midterm elections, the position will now switch hands.
Since winning control of the House, Republicans have vowed to make voting investigations into US President Joe Biden and his family’s business dealings as a top priority.
In December, a White House statement accused House Republicans of planning to go after Biden “with politically motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories”.
For days, the people of Paiporta have been dealing with the devastation of their town. But what hurts them now is the sense that they have been forgotten by their country.
As we walk through this town, what we see is relentless hard work – clearing mud, pumping out water, recovering cars.
But none of it is being done by people in uniform. Paiporta is being saved by its own residents, by friends, and by volunteers.
“The town feels like chaos,” says Cristina Hernandez, who moved here a year ago from Madrid
“Nobody has organised anything so we are doing our best. We feel we are abandoned by the government and there are also a lot of thieves in the night, so we are scared.
“It is a nightmare not only because of the floods but also because of the anarchy that we are living through now. After the catastrophe, the worst thing is that we are still scared.
“We don’t have food or clothes. Some of our friends are still missing and some have lost their houses with all their things in them.
“So it is pretty sad that we see trucks going past but nobody is helping with the mud and clearing the houses, so we are alone.”
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As if on cue, we can see a helicopter flying above us, but it passes by. She shakes her head.
“We see them, but we don’t know what they are doing,” she says. It is, at the moment, a cruel sight – a tantalising vision of help that comes and goes.
Around us is a tapestry of devastation – dozens and dozens of wrecked cars, many of them lying in a lake of stagnant water. Cloying mud covers piles of debris. On the road, there is a child’s booster seat, a shoe and a small purse. Tangled wires lie like a web.
Along the road, every house is affected, splattered with mud. You can see the dark waterline where the water reached its highest point.
Ruth is sweeping water along the street, time after time, pushing it towards an open manhole cover. She rests for a second, then starts again.
She takes a break and tells me that she has not seen a policeman, a soldier, a doctor or any other official. “It’s only us who clean up,” she says. “Where are they?”
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Aerial footage captures aftermath of floods
I start to ask her if she is angry with the government, and she interrupts. Her fury is palpable. “Angry? I am so, so angry with the government.
“I don’t care which political party you support, because my flag is Spain. And this is so bad.”
She wanders off, then returns and gently grabs my arm. “Come this way,” she says. “The world should see this.”
We round a corner and come to a street that is entirely packed with a wall of cars, mixed with huge piles of debris.
A fridge freezer, a microwave. Ruth clambers on top of a shattered bonnet and pulls me alongside her. “Nobody can reach these houses; nobody has looked in these cars,” she says. “They have forgotten.”
It’s not true to say that no officials have come to Paiporta. We see local police, civil guard, ambulances and firefighters. As we’re leaving, we even see a military truck pull up.
But nobody seems to be coordinating any of this. At one point, I saw a policeman try to take control of a vehicle recovery, but nobody listened to him. He had a short row with his colleague, and then they both drove off.
As for the military, I had a chat with one of the officers as they stood by the road, waiting for a lorry to move so they could drive in.
The soldier was evidently frustrated. “We want to help, we know we can help, but so far we don’t have the orders about what we have to do,” he said.
“So you need a chief – someone to take control?” I asked. A question answered with a deep, long nod.
Paiporta has suffered grievously in these floods. At least 60 people are dead, a figure that shocked Cristina when I told her. They have no access to the internet, of course, and cannot leave their town. “There will be more,” was her response.
But what makes that pain so much worse is the time it is taking to be helped. Last year, I went with my colleagues to an appalling earthquake in Morocco, and within two days there were well-equipped Spanish response teams helping out, saving lives and leading the response.
And yet now, in their own country, the response is sluggish and indecisive.
A French offer to send in help was turned down. We are told that huge numbers of troops are being mobilised but we have seen hardly any and the ones we’ve met don’t know what they’re supposed to do.
These towns are desperate for leadership, reassurance, help and certainty. Instead, right now, they are fending for themselves.
Moscow has warned the US it should take Russia’s nuclear warnings seriously to avoid World War Three.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and who served as the country’s president from 2008 to 2012, warned the US on Saturday it was “wrong” to believe “that the Russians will never cross a certain line”.
He told Russian-state broadcaster RT that Moscow believed the current US and European political establishments lacked the “foresight and subtlety of mind” displayed by the late Henry Kissinger.
“If we are talking about the existence of our state, as the president of our country has repeatedly said, your humble servant has said, others have said, of course, we simply will not have any choice,” Mr Medvedev said.
Russia has been signalling for weeks to the West that Moscow will respond if the US and its allies help Ukraine fire longer-range missiles deep into Russia.
US diplomats have previously said Washington is not seeking to escalate the war in Ukraine.
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It’s not the first time Mr Medvedev has warned of a serious escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
Back in September, he threatened that Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian territory of Kursk had given Russia formal grounds to use nuclear weapons.
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It comes as Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv became the subject of an overnight aerial attack which lasted until midday today and saw one person injured, city officials said. All drones had been shot down.
“This year, we have faced the threat of ‘Shahed’ drones almost every night – sometimes in the morning, and even during the day,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia.
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North Korean troops are near the Ukrainian border
Kyiv’s military said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine in October alone.
Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.
An 18-month-old boy and his 10-year-old sister are among 25 people who were killed in a series of Israeli strikes on central parts of Gaza, hospital officials have said.
Sixteen people were initially reported to have been killed in two strikes on the central Nuseirat refugee camp on Thursday, but officials from the Al Aqsa hospital said bodies continued to be brought in.
The hospital said they had received 21 bodies from the strikes, including some transferred from the Awda hospital, where they had been taken the day before.
Strikes on a motorcycle in Zuwaida and on a house in Deir al Balah on Friday killed four more, hospital officials said, bringing the overall toll to 25.
Five children and seven women are among those who have been confirmed dead.
The mother of the 18-month-old boy is missing and his father was killed in an Israeli strike four months ago, the family has said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA earlier reported that 57 people had died in the Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific strikes but said its troops had identified and eliminated “several armed terrorists” in central Gaza.
It also said its forces had eliminated “dozens of terrorists” in raids in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area – home to one of the territory’s refugee camps.
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It comes as the Israeli military said on Friday it killed senior Hamas official Izz al Din Kassab, describing him as one of the last high-ranking members, in an airstrike in Khan Younis.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have over the past few weeks resumed intense operations in the north of Gaza, claiming they are seeking to stop Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping.
Meanwhile, top UN officials said in a statement on Friday that the situation in northern Gaza is “apocalyptic” and the entire Palestinian population in the area is at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.
The overall number of people killed in Gaza in the 13-month war is more than 43,000, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported this week.
It comes as at least 41 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Baalbek region on Friday, the regional governor said.
The deaths were confirmed hours after Lebanon’s health ministry said 30 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country in the past 24 hours.
It is not clear if any of those killed in the Baalbek region were included in that figure.
In recent days, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the northeast city of Baalbek and nearby villages, as well as different parts of southern Lebanon, prompting roughly 60,000 people to flee their homes, according to Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese official representing the region.
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Israel has issued evacuation orders for people living in parts of Lebanon
Israel’s military said in a statement that attacks “in the area of Beirut” had targeted Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites, command centres and other infrastructure.
Israeli planes also pounded Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighbourhoods, according to the Lebanese state news agency.
More than 2,800 people have been killed and 13,000 wounded since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
Meanwhile, in northern Israel, seven people, including three Israelis and four Thai nationals, were killed by projectiles fired from Lebanon on Thursday, Israeli medics said.