Congressional negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on a package of bills to fund the government through the end of September 2020. Lawmakers have until the end of next week to approve spending legislation in order to avert a government shutdown. The White House has not publicly weighed in on the agreement.

The deal covers all 12 regular spending bills — which total $1.3 trillion. This figure was agreed to in a bipartisan budget package that was enacted by the president this summer.

The Senate passed a resolution Thursday formally recognizing the mass killings of more than a million Armenians in Turkey that took place a century ago.

The measure, approved without objection, is seen as a stinging rebuke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It also comes over numerous objections from the Trump administration, which has been working to defuse tensions with the Turkish leader in recent months.

Turkey has condemned the move and said it has put the relationship between the two nations at risk.

Major League Baseball announced changes to its drug use and testing policies on Thursday, removing marijuana from its "drugs of abuse" while announcing mandatory tests for cocaine and opioids. The policy will be effective starting in 2020 during spring training.

Players who test positive for prohibited substances, which include fentanyl and LSD, will be evaluated and prescribed a treatment plan. Those who don't obey the league's plan may be punished.

McDonald's should not be held responsible for the labor practices of its franchisees, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Thursday.

Updated at 3:20 p.m. ET

Sixteen-year-old activist Greta Thunberg has quickly risen to prominence with her clarion call for climate action and Time's naming her its 2019 Person of the Year this week.

Since her first school strike for action in August 2018, Thunberg has grown her protest into a global youth movement calling on the world leaders of today to take decisive action on climate change and prevent further global warming.

Since a pair of shooters opened fire Tuesday in Jersey City, N.J., the state's attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, had been reluctant to label the assault on a local kosher market specifically as an anti-Semitic act. As recent as Wednesday afternoon, even after identifying the shooters, Grewal said authorities were still not in a position to definitively assign a motive.

By Thursday, though, he was ready to say it.

New Zealand police will undertake an operation to retrieve bodies left behind following this week's volcanic eruption on White Island that killed at least eight people and injured dozens more.

Officials will attempt to recover the bodies of eight people missing and presumed dead. Eight specialists will travel to the island Friday morning local time, contingent on risk factors such as weather.

Rockets struck Baghdad's international airport compound Thursday, as the country tries to contain anti-government protests which have shaken the foundation of the Iraqi government. The attack appears to be the latest in what a senior U.S. military official described as a dangerously escalating campaign by Iran-backed militias.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos endured a withering barrage of questions on Thursday about her handling of a program meant to provide debt relief to federal student loan borrowers who say they were defrauded by for-profit colleges.

"Madame Secretary, your refusal to process claims is inflicting serious harm on students," Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said in his opening statement. "These defrauded borrowers have been left with piles of debt, worthless degrees and none of the jobs that were promised."