LONDON (AP) — A stabbing at a children's dance class in northwest England on Monday killed two children and injured nine other people, police said. A 17-year-old boy was arrested and a knife seized after the bloody attack, police said.
A witness described seeing bloodied children running from a community center where a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga event for children aged about 6 to 11 was taking place in Southport, a seaside town near Liverpool. An advertisement for the event promised “a morning of Taylor Swift-themed yoga, dance and bracelet making.”
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Emergency services work at the scene in Southport, England, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police work at the scene in Southport, England, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
A police scenes of crime officer (SOCO) works at the scene in Southport, Merseyside, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police secure the area, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, in Southport, Merseyside, England, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
A police scenes of crime officer (SOCO) works at the scene in Southport, Merseyside, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Emergency services work at the scene in Southport, Merseyside, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police and emergency services arrive at the site where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, in Southport, Merseyside, England, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police secure the area, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, in Southport, Merseyside, England, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “horrendous and deeply shocking.”
Merseyside Police said officers were called at about noon to an address in Southport, a seaside town of about 100,000 people near Liverpool. It called it a “major incident” but said there was no wider threat to the public.
Detectives were not treating the attack as terror-related, the force said.
The suspect, who has not been identified, lived in a village about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the site of the attack, police said.
The North West Ambulance Service said medics treated eight people with stab injuries. The injured were taken to local hospitals, including a children's hospital.
Bare Varathan, who owns a shop down the street, said he saw between seven and 10 bleeding children running from the Hart Space, a community hub that offers classes for expectant mothers, babies and children.
“They had been stabbed here, here, here, everywhere," he said, indicating the neck, back and chest. “They were all aged about 10. One of them was really seriously injured."
Ryan Carney, who lives with his mother in the street, said his mother saw emergency workers carrying children “covered in red, covered in blood. She said she could see the stab wounds in the backs of the children.”
“All this stuff never really happens around here," he said. “You hear of it, stabbings and stuff like that in major cities, your Manchesters, your Londons. This is sunny Southport. That’s what people call it. The sun’s out. It’s a lovely place to be.”
Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot 16 kindergarten pupils and their teacher dead in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The U.K. subsequently banned the private ownership of almost all handguns.
Mass shootings and murders with firearms are rare in Britain. where knives were used in about 40% of homicides in the year to March 2023. Several headline-grabbing attacks and a recent rise in knife crime have stoked anxieties and led to calls for the government to do more to clamp down on bladed weapons.
Emergency services work at the scene in Southport, England, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police work at the scene in Southport, England, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
A police scenes of crime officer (SOCO) works at the scene in Southport, Merseyside, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police secure the area, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, in Southport, Merseyside, England, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
A police scenes of crime officer (SOCO) works at the scene in Southport, Merseyside, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Emergency services work at the scene in Southport, Merseyside, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police and emergency services arrive at the site where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, in Southport, Merseyside, England, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Police secure the area, where a man has been detained and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a reported stabbing, in Southport, Merseyside, England, Monday July 29, 2024. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a government shutdown deadline, the Senate rushed through final passage early Saturday of a bipartisan plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid, dropping President-elect Donald Trump's demands for a debt limit increase into the new year.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had insisted Congress would “meet our obligations” and not allow federal operations to shutter ahead of the Christmas holiday season. But the day's outcome was uncertain after Trump doubled down on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal — if not, he said in an early morning post, let the closures “start now.”
The House approved Johnson's new bill overwhelmingly, 366-34. The Senate worked into the night to pass it, 85-11, just after the deadline. At midnight, the White House said it had ceased shutdown preparations.
“This is a good outcome for the country, ” Johnson said after the House vote, adding he had spoken with Trump and the president-elect “was certainly happy about this outcome, as well.”
President Joe Biden, who has played a less public role in the process throughout a turbulent week, was expected to sign the measure into law Saturday.
“There will be no government shutdown," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
The final product was the third attempt from Johnson, the beleaguered House speaker, to achieve one of the basic requirements of the federal government — keeping it open. And it raised stark questions about whether Johnson will be able to keep his job, in the face of angry GOP colleagues, and work alongside Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who called the legislative plays from afar.
Trump's last-minute demand was almost an impossible ask, and Johnson had almost no choice but to work around his pressure for a debt ceiling increase. The speaker knew there wouldn’t be enough support within the GOP majority to pass any funding package, since many Republican deficit hawks prefer to slash the federal government and certainly wouldn’t allow more debt.
Instead, the Republicans, who will have full control of the White House, House and Senate next year, with big plans for tax cuts and other priorities, are showing they must routinely rely on Democrats for the votes needed to keep up with the routine operations of governing.
“So is this a Republican bill or a Democrat bill?” scoffed Musk on social media ahead of the vote.
The drastically slimmed-down 118-page package would fund the government at current levels through March 14 and add $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers.
Gone is Trump’s demand to lift the debt ceiling, which GOP leaders told lawmakers would be debated as part of their tax and border packages in the new year. Republicans made a so-called handshake agreement to raise the debt limit at that time while also cutting $2.5 trillion in spending over 10 years.
It’s essentially the same deal that flopped the night before in a spectacular setback — opposed by most Democrats and some of the most conservative Republicans — minus Trump’s debt ceiling demand.
But it's far smaller than the original bipartisan accord Johnson struck with Democratic and Republican leaders — a 1,500-page bill that Trump and Musk rejected, forcing him to start over. It was stuffed with a long list of other bills — including much-derided pay raises for lawmakers — but also other measures with broad bipartisan support that now have a tougher path to becoming law.
House Democrats were cool to the latest effort after Johnson reneged on the hard-fought bipartisan compromise.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said it looked like Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, was calling the shots for Trump and Republicans.
“Who is in charge?” she asked during the debate.
Still, the House Democrats put up more votes than Republicans for the bill's passage. Almost three dozen conservative House Republicans voted against it.
“The House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working-class Americans all across the nation,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, referring to Trump's “Make America Great Again” slogan.
In the Senate, almost all the opposition came from the Republicans — except independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said Musk's interference was “not democracy, that's oligarchy.”
Trump, who has not yet been sworn into office, is showing the power but also the limits of his sway with Congress, as he intervenes and orchestrates affairs from Mar-a-Lago alongside Musk, who is heading up the new Department of Government Efficiency.
The incoming Trump administration vows to slash the federal budget and fire thousands of employees and is counting on Republicans for a big tax package. And Trump's not fearful of shutdowns the way lawmakers are, having sparked the longest government shutdown in history in his first term at the White House.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now,” Trump posted early in the morning on social media.
More important for the president-elect was his demand for pushing the thorny debt ceiling debate off the table before he returns to the White House. The federal debt limit expires Jan. 1, and Trump doesn't want the first months of his new administration saddled with tough negotiations in Congress to lift the nation's borrowing capacity. Now Johnson will be on the hook to deliver.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted — increasing his demand for a new five-year debt limit increase. "Without this, we should never make a deal."
Government workers had already been told to prepare for a federal shutdown that would send millions of employees — and members of the military — into the holiday season without paychecks.
Biden has been in discussions with Jeffries and Schumer, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “Republicans blew up this deal. They did, and they need to fix this.”
As the day dragged on, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell stepped in to remind colleagues “how harmful it is to shut the government down, and how foolish it is to bet your own side won’t take the blame for it.”
At one point, Johnson asked House Republicans at a lunchtime meeting for a show of hands as they tried to choose the path forward.
It wasn’t just the shutdown, but the speaker’s job on the line. The speaker’s election is the first vote of the new Congress, which convenes Jan. 3, and some Trump allies have floated Musk for speaker.
Johnson said he spoke to Musk ahead of the vote Friday and they talked about the “extraordinary challenges of this job.”
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., celebrates as the Senate begins voting on the government funding bill just in time to meet the midnight deadline, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., celebrates as the Senate begins voting on the government funding bill just in time to meet the midnight deadline, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters after passing the funding bill to avert the government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters after passing the funding bill to avert the government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Capitol is pictured in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., emerges from a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., emerges from a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., talks with reporters after attending a meeting with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., as the House works on a spending bill to avert a shutdown of the Federal Government, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
FILE - President-elect Donald Trump poses for a photo with Dana White, Kid Rock and Elon Musk at UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden, Nov. 16, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks briefly to reporters just before a vote on an interim spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. The vote failed to pass. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
