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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.

1. The House passed a Republican bill to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending.

The chamber’s Republican leadership pulled together enough support to narrowly pass the legislation late this afternoon. The bill aims to unravel major elements of President Biden’s domestic agenda in an bid to force him to negotiate over government spending — or risk a catastrophic debt default.

The legislation, which is dead on arrival in the Senate, would raise the debt ceiling for one year in exchange for freezing spending at last year’s levels for a decade — a nearly 14-percent cut. The bill would also roll back parts of Biden’s landmark health, climate and tax law, impose work requirements on social programs, and expand mining and fossil fuel production.

Republican leaders have framed the legislation as an opening offer to Democrats and a way to get the White House to come to the negotiating table.

In other politics news, the Montana House voted to bar a transgender lawmaker from the House floor for the remainder of the legislative session.

Last year, under pressure from its employees, Disney criticized a Florida education law opponents had labeled “Don’t Say Gay” and halted political donations in the state. In response, DeSantis moved to revoke Disney World’s self-governing privileges, and even floated the idea of developing a prison near the resort’s entrance.

For Republican politicians like DeSantis, the party base’s discontent over the new corporate tendency to value signal — behavior they denounce as “woke” — has proved an opportunity.

But attacking a culture superpower like Disney is a tricky business. Brands of Disney’s scale have emerged from past political standoffs without much of a scratch.

3. The U.S. and South Korea agreed to cooperate on nuclear weapons.

American officials said the U.S. would give South Korea a central role in the strategic planning for the use of nuclear weapons in any future conflict with North Korea. In return, South Korea agreed to not pursue its own nuclear arsenal.

The agreement, announced during President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to Washington, is meant to assure the South that the U.S. will use its nuclear arsenal, if needed, to dissuade or respond to an attack from the North. It is also a striking admission that the idea of disarming North Korea is no longer plausible.

In news from the war in Ukraine, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke by telephone in their first known contact since Russia’s invasion.

Also, recently leaked documents included unsubstantiated intelligence about Vladimir Putin’s health. A Ukrainian politician claimed that the Russian leader was undergoing chemotherapy.

4. The writer E. Jean Carroll took the witness stand today in a case accusing Donald Trump of rape.

In the second day of a trial in a lawsuit she brought against Trump, Carroll described in harrowing detail how an amusing encounter at a at Bergdorf Goodman nearly 30 years ago turned into a terrifying case of rape and ended her romantic life forever.

“I was extremely confused, and suddenly realizing that what I thought was happening was not happening,” Carroll said, becoming emotional as she recounted the scene.

Carroll’s lawyers are asking the jury in Federal District Court to find Trump liable for battery and defamation, and, if he is found responsible, to award monetary damages. Carroll was able to bring the case under a new New York law allowing sexual assault victims to sue the people they say abused them. Trump has repeatedly accused Caroll of lying about the encounter since she first discussed it publicly in 2019.

5. Britain blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion bid for the video game powerhouse Activision.

British antitrust regulators said the American tech giant had failed to show that its planned acquisition would not harm competition in the cloud gaming sector, a nascent part of the gaming industry. The surprising decision to block the deal inflicted a possibly fatal blow to what would be the largest consumer tech acquisition since AOL bought Time Warner two decades ago.

The ruling was also a clear victory for proponents of regulating the big tech giants. Their efforts, fueled by fears that the companies wield too much power over online commerce and communications, have been stymied in the U.S. by recent court losses and legislative failures.

In other tech news, Twitter’s verification changes have made it harder to distinguish genuine accounts from fakes, convulsing the platform that once seemed indispensable for following news.

6. The pope will allow women to vote for the first time at a meeting of bishops.

Women will participate in an influential meeting in October that advises Pope Francis on church policy, the Vatican announced today. The decision to allow women to vote in the meeting — known as the Synod of Bishops — marks an important step toward giving them more say in the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church.

The rule change does not go as far as some advocates for more female involvement had hoped. For years, they have asked Francis to allow women to become deacons, a step which he has yet to endorse.

7. A new women’s cricket league is offering Indian girls big-league dreams.

The new $500 million Women’s Premier League is offering the kind of opportunities that never existed before in India. For girls in Indian villages, the dream of potentially playing professional cricket offers them an escape from the boredom of village life, and a chance to chart their own path in a country where the vast majority of women do not work.

The new league is also a financial opportunity. Wealthy investors are betting that fans of the country’s most popular sport will follow the women’s game with the same kind of vigor that turned the men’s league into one of the most valuable sports organizations on the planet.

8. Nicolas Cage’s newest movie role is also one of his loopiest.

Few actors have managed to sustain the acting range of Cage for as long as he has. Since the 1980s, he has nimbly bounced between action (“National Treasure”), comedy (“Moonstruck”) and horror (“Pay the Ghost”).

In his most recent movie — “Renfield,” which came out this month — Cage plays a narcissistic vampire dark lord that is impossible to take seriously. We ranked it against Cage’s other roles over the last decade, finding his vampire performance to be more wacky than almost every other one.

10. And finally, why do apes love to spin?

A gorilla in the Calgary Zoo named Zola gained a bit of global fame after videos of him whirling in circles spread online. But it turns out that it’s pretty typical behavior: Other great ape species also seem to regularly enjoy stimulating their senses through spinning, according to a recent study.

It may look funny, but humans do it too — potentially for the same reason: it’s fun and exhilarating. Our love for gyration is evidenced by the enduring popularity of playground merry-go-rounds, revolving park rides and the irresistible draw of somersaulting down a hill.

Have a dizzy night.

Brent Lewis compiled photos for this briefing.

Have any feedback? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.