Author: CNN

The House is expected to vote this afternoon to pass a stopgap bill to keep the government open, putting Congress on a path to avert a shutdown and setting the stage for a broader funding fight in the new year.

If the House passes the bill, the Senate will next need to approve the measure. Government funding is currently set to expire at the end of the week on Friday, November 17.

In the first major test of his leadership, newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson is pursuing an unusual two-step plan that would set up two new shutdown deadlines in January and February.

If you are just reading in, catch up on the latest:

What the bill would do: The bill would extend funding until January 19 for priorities including military construction, veterans’ affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department. The rest of the government — anything not covered by the first step — would be funded until February 2. The proposal does not include additional aid for Israel or Ukraine.

The plan would give lawmakers more time to attempt to negotiate and pass full-year spending bills, though major partisan divisions would make that effort fraught and complicated. Johnson has argued that his plan would prevent Congress from passing a massive spending bill in December — a scenario that has played out many times before when lawmakers have faced a deadline right before the winter holidays.

Freedom Caucus opposes Johnson’s plan: The short-term funding plan has already resulted in backlash from some conservatives, a dynamic that will force House Republican leaders to turn to Democrats for votes to pass it as the GOP holds only a narrow majority in the chamber.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly 30 hardliners, has taken an official position against Johnson’s two-part government funding plan. This comes after Johnson met with the group last night, in hopes of assuaging their concerns over the bill, according to a source familiar.

A number of conservatives oppose the stopgap bill because it would not implement the deep spending cuts they have demanded. Instead, it would extend funding at current levels. As a result, it will need significant Democratic support to pass the House.

Republican leadership is bringing the bill to the House floor under a procedure known as suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

Read more about the bill.

CNN’s Kristin Wilson, Annie Grayer and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.

CNN
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To most people, the words Swiss sport and Emmental might trigger thoughts of Roger Federer eating cheese.

Yet to those familiar with the sprawling countryside and farmlands of the Swiss heartland region where the cheese originated, there’s been a traditional game synonymous with the area for centuries.

Sending projectiles hurtling through the air at 200 miles per hour, all rise – and then duck – for Hornussen.

Risk and reward

Described as a hybrid of baseball and golf, Hornussen sees two teams of 18 take turns hitting and fielding the “Nouss” or “Hornuss,” a puck named after hornets for its buzzing sound as it whistles through the air.”

Armed with a 3-meter (9.84-foot) carbon stick called a “Träf,” hitters take to a raised batting ramp in front of a playing area – the “Ries” – some 300 meters (980 feet) long and 10 meters (32 feet) wide. Their task is to strike the puck from the sloped platform, known as the “Bock,” as far as they can down the field.

Scoring starts if they reach the 100-meter line, with an additional point awarded for every 10 meters past the marker. Crucially though, points are only registered if the Nouss lands, with fielders spread at intervals seeking to block the puck from landing with bats, or “Schindels.”

The sport’s format has drawn comparisons to golf, with some even suggesting it was a forerunner to the sport’s modern incarnation.

“The similarity is that like a ball, you hit a puck, and you hit it far away, but here you want to make some goals, not holes,” said Michael Kummer, member of national championship winning team Hochstetten Hornussen.

“People from other countries call Hornussen the ‘Farmer’s Golf’, so I think there’s some similarities.”

Yet while in golf only an errant shot is likely to present any danger to others, in Hornussen, putting yourself in harm’s way is an essential part of the game. With pucks of pressed plastic whizzing towards you at speeds akin to an F1 car, stopping them is a feat as treacherous as it is tricky. Though players often wear helmets and shielding gear, some take to the field without any such protection.

“It’s really dangerous if you don’t see the Nouss or if one hits the bat and, two meters before the face, the Nouss changes direction,” Kummer explained.

“If it goes in the eyes or around the head it’s really dangerous.”

Originating in the mid-17th century in the Emmental valley and, barring brief forays into neighboring Germany, Hornussen has never left Switzerland, with few teams existing outside the west-central canton of Bern.

The need for vast expanses of open grass to contest games forms part of the reason the sport has been limited to the rural area of Emmental, Kummer explains, adding that ventures into Germany ultimately fell short when teams couldn’t find enough players.

Yet for Kummer, it is this very rootedness in Switzerland that makes Hornussen – alongside yodeling and schwingen, a form of wrestling – a pillar of the nation’s sporting culture.

“With yodelling and schwingen it’s one of the three culture sports of Switzerland and we like it,” he said.

Around 260 teams are active across a multi-league pyramid in Switzerland, with the top teams fighting it out for the Swiss Championship.

And as winners of the last five titles, Kummer’s Hochstetten are very much the Bayern Munich of the Hornussen world.

With Hochstetten boasting a number of tall, strong players, at first glance it would seem that physical attributes are hugely influential in a team’s performance. Yet Kummer insists that size matters only up to a point.

“We have some big guys, but we also have small guys and it’s one of the nice things about this sport,” he said.

“The small guys can also make a good play in the field and they can hit the Nouss as long as the big guys.”

Take Kumer’ teammate Simon Ernie; though relatively diminutive in stature compared to some of his peers, Ernie was the league’s top scorer during his team’s most recent title winning campaign.

“He is the Lionel Messi of Hornussen, and he’s also a small guy,” Kummer said. “He’s one of the smallest on our team.”

Sometimes it feels like Congress is trying to parody itself.

As lawmakers stagger toward the Thanksgiving recess after some of the ugliest and most unproductive weeks in years, the place is coming completely unglued.

Despite the House passing a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open beyond this week, representatives acted out a farce Tuesday. The joke was on Americans deprived of a serious, functioning government.

Kidney shots and cage matches: In one extraordinarily frivolous episode on Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy – until recently the most powerful elected Republican in the country – was accused of delivering a painful blow to Rep. Tim Burchett, one of the GOP rebels who ousted him as speaker. “It was a clean shot to the kidneys,” the Tennessean told CNN’s Manu Raju.

The former GOP leader repeatedly denied the claim, blaming a tight hallway for the collision. Then, in a flash of bravado, McCarthy added: “If I kidney punched someone, they would be on the ground.”

But it wasn’t even the most fiery showdown of the day.

Across Capitol Hill in the world’s so-called greatest deliberative body, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin was spoiling for a prize fight. He told Sean O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to “Stand your butt up!” and challenged him to a bout. Mullin was angry at past tweets in which O’Brien apparently called him a “clown.”

A flabbergasted Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders waved his arms, banged his gavel and complained that he was supposed to oversee a hearing not a cage match.

The normally sleeping confines of the wonkish Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had never seen anything like it. But Mullin, posing as a Sooner State folk hero, explained to reporters he had no choice but to answer the bell. “You don’t do that in Oklahoma. You don’t run your mouth unless you’re gonna answer the call,” said the former Mixed Martial Arts fighter.

A disaster averted — or perhaps just postponed: In a minor miracle, the chaotically dysfunctional House of Representatives did manage to take steps Tuesday to avert a threatened government shutdown, passing a plan to temporarily fund the federal machine. The Senate still needs to approve the measure, which would only delay the next funding deadlines until early next year.

But even the House’s vote exposed the forces that threaten to tear the chamber apart again soon, with 93 Republicans opposing the bill. Conservatives are smarting at rookie Speaker Mike Johnson’s failure to include massive spending cuts that have no chance of getting past the Democratic-run Senate or Biden’s White House and that would guarantee a shutdown that would damage the GOP and bring pain to millions of Americans.

Their recalcitrance meant that Johnson was forced to rely on Democratic votes to get it through the House, using exactly the same maneuver that cost McCarthy his job last month.

So effectively, because the GOP majority in the House is so divided, it’s only operable if Democrats want it to be.

Read more of Collinson’s analysis.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing accounts of sexual violence.

Israeli police are using forensic evidence, video and witness testimony and interrogations of suspects to document cases of rape amid the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Women and girls caught in the rampage were brutalized sexually, as well as physically tortured and killed, witnesses to the aftermath say.

Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers have collected more than 1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped. He added that investigators do not have firsthand testimony, and it is not clear whether any rape victims survived.

About 1,200 Israelis were killed and more injured that day in villages and farms near Gaza when Hamas militants struck across the border in coordinated attacks, taking more than 240 hostages and precipitating the current war. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Police Commissioner Shabtai Yaakov said the investigation could potentially lead to prosecutions, but for now, documentation is the primary mission.

Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a human rights law expert at Hebrew University, has formed a civil commission with colleagues to document evidence of the atrocities, fearing that as the war devastates Gaza and the lives of thousands of Palestinians, the world seems willing to look over the violence against Israeli women and girls.

She pointed to a United Nations statement just a week after the terror attacks that did not mention sexual violence.

“It’s much worse than just silence or an insult to us as Israeli women and to our children and to our people,” she said of the UN. “When they are failing to acknowledge us, to acknowledge what happened here, they are failing humanity.”

Read more about the harrowing accounts given to CNN.

CNN
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Here’s a look at the life of David Cameron, former prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Birth date: October 9, 1966

Birth place: London, England

Birth name: David William Donald Cameron

Father: Ian Cameron, a stockbroker

Mother: Mary (Mount) Cameron

Marriage: Samantha (Sheffield) Cameron (June 1, 1996-present)

Children: Florence Rose Endellion, 2010; Arthur Elwen, 2006; Nancy Gwen, 2004; Ivan Reginald, 2002-2009

Education: Eton College; Brasenose College, Oxford, 1988 – First Class honors degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Religion: Anglican

Is a descendant of King William IV.

Was the 12th prime minister to take office during Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.

The first Conservative (Tory) prime minister since John Major in 1997.

Serves on the board of the ONE campaign, an organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and preventable disease.

Chairman of Patrons at National Citizen Service (NCS), a youth development program launched when Cameron was prime minister.

1988-1992 – Works at the Conservative Party Research Department.

1992 – Becomes special adviser to Norman Lamont, the chancellor of the exchequer.

1993 – Is special adviser to Home Secretary Michael Howard.

1994-2001 – Head of corporate affairs for media company Carlton Communications.

1997 – Runs unsuccessfully for a parliamentary seat from Stafford.

2001 – Becomes a member of Parliament (MP) representing the town of Witney, in Oxfordshire, and serves as a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

2003 – Is appointed shadow deputy leader in the House of Commons.

May 2005 – Is appointed shadow education secretary.

December 6, 2005 – Is elected leader of the Conservative Party.

February 25, 2009 – His son Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy, dies at the age of 6.

May 6, 2010 – No one party receives a majority in parliamentary elections. The Conservatives win 306 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, 20 seats shy of a majority.

May 11, 2010 – Queen Elizabeth II invites Cameron to be the new prime minister after Gordon Brown’s resignation. Cameron announces his intent to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrat party.

July 20, 2010 – Makes a trip to the United States, meeting with President Barack Obama.

July 20, 2011 – Cameron addresses an emergency session of the House of Commons about the phone hacking scandal at News Corp. Cameron defends his ties to Rupert Murdoch and former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who previously worked as Cameron’s communications director.

June 14, 2012 – Cameron testifies before the Leveson Inquiry regarding the News Corp. phone hacking scandal.

September 26, 2012 – Appears on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

May 7, 2015 – With all the results in, Cameron and his Conservative Party claim an outright majority in Parliament, with 331 seats out of 650, and can form a new government.

June 24, 2016 – Following the UK vote to leave the European Union, Cameron announces his resignation saying he will leave when a new leader is appointed.

July 13, 2016 – Cameron resigns. Home Secretary Theresa May replaces him.

September 12, 2016 – Cameron announces he will stand down immediately as a member of parliament, saying he doesn’t want to be a “diversion to the important decisions that lie ahead for my successor in Downing Street and the Government.”

January 2017 – Becomes president of Alzheimer’s Research UK.

March 6, 2018 – The BBC and other British media report that Cameron has become a paid consultant to Illumina, a US-based genomics company, and is serving as vice chairman of an investment fund called the UK-China fund. He is banned from lobbying until July 2018, according to the UK’s Advisory Committee of Business Appointments, which approved his new positions.

September 2019 – Cameron’s memoir “For the Record” is published.

January 16, 2023 – New York University Abu Dhabi announces that Cameron will teach a three-week January Term course titled “Practising Politics and Government in the Age of Disruption.”

November 13, 2023 – Cameron says he has “gladly accepted” the title UK Foreign Secretary, following the firing of Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Cameron is awarded a Barony, which enables him to sit in the House of Lords and work in government.