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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Palm Beach Post, 2751 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33405-1233. © Copyright 2019 GateHouse Media LLC. All rights reserved. By Rukmini Callimachi and Eric Schmitt The New York Times Days after the Islamic State group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his heir apparent were killed in back-to-back attacks by U.S. forces in northern Syria, the group broke its silence Thursday to confirm their deaths, announce a new leader and warn America: “Do not be happy.” In an audio record- ing uploaded on the Telegram app, the Islamic State mourned the loss of Baghdadi, who led the organization for nearly a decade, and its spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, who was killed a day after Baghdadi and who had widely been considered a potential successor. The audio recording was the first word from the Islamic State confirm- ing the death of its leader, which President Trump triumphantly announced Sunday as a huge blow to the world’s most fearsome terrorist group. Trump and Pentagon officials said Baghdadi blew himself up with a suicide vest, also kill- ing two children, after he was cornered Saturday in a dead-end tunnel during a U.S. military raid in a northern Syrian village. Al-Muhajir was killed Sunday in an airstrike else- where in northern Syria. The Islamic State announcement said that Baghdadi had been succeeded as leader by Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi, whom it identified as the “emir of the believers” and “caliph.” Almost nothing is publicly known about Qurayshi, including his real name, and counter- terrorism analysts were scrambling Thursday to try to figure out who he is. “Nobody — and I mean nobody outside a likely very small circle within ISIS — have any idea who their new leader ‘Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi’ is,” Paul Cruickshank, editor of the CTC Sentinel at the Combating Terrorism Center, said in a tweet Thursday. “The group has not yet released any mean- ingful biographical details which might allow analysts to pinpoint his identity.” Daniele Raineri, a jour- nalist and analyst who has been studying the Islamic State’s leader- ship structure for more than a decade, said that the group’s leaders often acquire a new nom de guerre with the appoint- ment to a new position, meaning Qurayshi may have had a completely dif- ferent name last week.The al-Qurayshi appel- lation at the end of his name indicates that he is being portrayed as a descendant of the Quraysh tribe of the Prophet Muhammad, a lineage that the Islamic State considers to be a prerequisite for becoming a caliph or ruler of a Muslim theocracy. Islamic State names new leader, confirms al-Baghdadi’s death By Andrew Taylor The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a long-overdue, $209 bil- lion bundle of bipartisan spending bills Thursday, but a bitter fight over funding demanded by President Donald Trump for border fencing con- tinues to imperil broader Capitol Hill efforts to advance $1.4 trillion worth of annual Cabinet agency budgets. The 84-9 vote sends the measure into House- Senate negotiations but doesn’t much change the big picture. There has been little progress, if any, on the tricky trade- offs needed to balance Democratic demands for social programs with President Donald Trump’s ballooning border wall demands. Democrats are again fil- ibustering a much larger measure anchored by the $695 billion Pentagon funding bill over Trump’s plans to again transfer billions of dollars from the Pentagon to the border wall project. Passage of the annual appropriations bills is one of the few areas in which divided government in Washington has been able to deliver results in the Trump era, despite last winter’s 35-day partial government shutdown. A sense of optimism in the aftermath of a July budget and debt deal has yielded to pes- simism now, and the poisonous political fall- out from the ongoing impeachment battle isn’t helping matters. The budget pact blended a must-do increase in the government’s borrowing cap with relief from the return of stinging auto- matic budget cuts known as sequestration that were left over from a long- failed 2011 budget deal. At issue are the agency appropriations bills that Congress passes each year to keep the government running. The hard-won budget and debt deal this summer produced a top- line framework for the 12 yearly spending bills, but filling in the details is proving difficult. While it appears likely that lawmakers will prevent a government shutdown next month with a government-wide stopgap spending bill, the impasse over agency appropriations bills shows no signs of breaking. Democrats say White House demands for $5 billion for Trump’s long- sought U.S.-Mexico border wall have led the GOP-controlled Senate to shortchange Democratic domestic priorities. They say negotiations can’t begin in earnest until spending hikes permit- ted under the July budget deal are allocated among the 12 appropriations subcommittees more to their liking. Trump is demanding a huge border funding increase that comes mostly at the expense of a major health and education spending bill. “I am not opti- mistic,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. “I don’t see the Senate taking action that would enable us to have an active negotiation with them. They haven’t set the groundwork. And until they figure out the (sub- committee allocations) — although we are having very nice conversations — I don’t see progress.” Current stopgap spend- ing authority expires Nov. 21 and another measure will be needed to prevent a shutdown reprising last year’s 35-day partial shuttering of the gov- ernment. All sides want to avert a repeat shut- down, but it can’t be entirely ruled out because of the dysfunction and bitterness engulfing Washington these days. Staff discussions on a new stopgap continu- ing resolution, or CR in Capitol Hill shorthand, haven’t yielded agree- ment yet. Democrats, including Lowey, have floated the idea of a stop- gap CR into February, which would likely punt the budget battle past any Senate impeachment trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is pressing for a CR of shorter duration in hopes of wrapping up the unfin- ished budget work by Christmas. McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spoke by telephone on Monday, congressional aides said, in hopes of breaking the logjam. Border wall, impeachment battle imperil budget progress Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, walks to the podium with Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., left, and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington. [JACQUELYN MARTIN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS] By Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor The Associated Press WASHINGTON — By claiming a right to Syria’s oil, President Donald Trump has added more complexity — as well as additional U.S. forces and time — to an American military mission he has twice declared he was ending so the troops could come home. Extending the mis- sion to secure eastern Syria’s oilfields happens to fit neatly with the Pentagon’s view — sup- ported by some Trump allies in Congress — that a full withdrawal now could hasten a revival of the Islamic State group, even after the extrem- ists lost their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a U.S. raid. The military acknowledged on Thursday that an Army unit with armored vehicles, including Bradley infantry car- riers, is now operating in the Deir el-Zour oil region. It did not say how many soldiers are being added there, but officials have said the eventual force there likely will be about 500, including roughly 200 who had been there even before Trump was persuaded to revise his plan for a near-total withdrawal, which he announced on Oct. 14. Trump has offered varying descriptions of the military’s role in eastern Syria. On Oct. 25 he said, “We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil.” Three days later, he went further, declaring the oil to be America’s. “We’re keeping the oil — remember that,” he said in Chicago. “I’ve always said that: ‘Keep the oil.’ We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month? Keep the oil.” White House officials since then have declined to explain what Trump meant by “we’re keeping the oil” or his estimate of its value. Pentagon offi- cials have said privately they’ve been given no order to take ownership of any element of Syria’s oil resources, includ- ing the wells and stored crude. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday he inter- prets Trump’s remarks about keeping Syria’s oil as meaning that the extremists must be denied access to it. Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011. Since that time, its oil production has shrunk from a peak of about 400,000 barrels a day to an estimated 80,000 barrels, said Jim Krane, an energy expert at Rice University. US role in Syria grows more complex with Trump claim to oil