Cashier is the second largest occupation in America, with more than 3 million people holding the job in 2013. It soon might be a job of the past, though, as Microsoft is working on technology that would automate checkout lines in order to help businesses compete with Amazon, Reuters reports.

Earlier this year, Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar grocery store, which introduced cashier-free shopping. Customers scan a smartphone app linked to a credit card when they pass through a turnstile to get into the store, then cameras and weight sensors on shelves determine what they buy. To help keep other businesses competitive as Amazon expands, Microsoft is testing its own system that would track what people add to their carts, while also attempting to keep the technology inexpensive enough that grocery stores and other retailers can afford to use it.

"This is the future of checking out for convenience and grocery stores," Gene Munster, the head of research at Loup Ventures, told Reuters. Loop Ventures estimates the automated checkout market in the United States is worth some $50 billion. Jeva Lange

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) announced Thursday evening that House Republicans are postponing until next week a vote on a compromise immigration bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented young immigrants and fund President Trump's border wall.

This was the second time GOP leadership decided to delay the vote; they were supposed to vote on the proposal Thursday, then it was moved to Friday. Leaders felt they did not have the 218 votes needed to pass the measure, and were pressured to postpone the vote by conservatives already opposed to the legislation, Politico reports. Catherine Garcia

Conservative columnist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer died Thursday, just weeks after he revealed that he had an aggressive form of cancer. He was 68.

Krauthammer wrote a syndicated weekly column for The Washington Post, which garnered him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and earlier this month he announced in a letter published in the Post that doctors told him his cancer had returned and he only had a few weeks left to live. "This is the final verdict," he wrote. "My fight is over." Krauthammer regularly appeared on Fox News, and over his career wrote for outlets across the political spectrum, including Time, The New Republic, and the Weekly Standard.

He was born in New York in 1950, and grew up in Montreal. During his first year studying at Harvard Medical School, Krauthammer had a diving accident that severed his spinal cord. He is survived by his wife, Robyn, and son, Daniel. Catherine Garcia

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday said that President Trump's administration "never really intended" to separate migrant families who cross the border without documentation.

Sessions told CBN News that he didn't feel he took "an extreme position," and defended his use of the Bible to justify detaining children away from their parents for an indefinite period of time. Sessions was criticized after he quoted scripture to explain why the family separations were absolutely necessary, saying the separations were simply a matter of enforcing the law, which the Bible condones.

"It hasn't been good and the American people don't like the idea that we are separating families,” Sessions said on CBN. "We never really intended to do that. What we intended to do, was to make sure that adults who bring children into the country are charged with the crime they have committed."

When Sessions first announced the zero-tolerance policy last month that would prosecute every adult who crossed the border illegally, he previewed the family separations. "If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child may be separated from you as required by law," he said in May. He later stood by his statements, saying that "it is very biblical to enforce the law."

He additionally defended the administration's current hard-line immigration policies, which will continue to detain families together rather than separate children. "It's not indefinite really," Sessions said of the detentions, "because we can't hold and we will not be holding people for extended periods of time awaiting a hearing on asylum." Read more from the interview at CBN News. Summer Meza

The Trump administration has been given approval to house unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. military bases, an anonymous defense official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The Department of Health and Human Services requested permission from the Pentagon to place up to 20,000 minors on military bases starting early next month, The Washington Post reported, an idea that officials have apparently been toying with for months. Officials requested "temporary beds" to be filled through the end of the year.

Unaccompanied minors have been housed in military bases before, the Post reports, like in 2014 when the Obama administration set up temporary centers on three military bases for about 7,000 children. This recent proposal left unclear why HHS is requesting so many beds, which could be located on bases in Texas and Arkansas where agency staffers visited last week. Defense Secretary James Mattis expressed support for the idea, defending it based on the military's past efforts to house refugees and victims of natural disasters.

HHS officials will be assigned to provide care, "including supervision, meals, clothing, medical services, transportation, or other daily needs." Read more at The Washington Post. Summer Meza

Croatia locked up its spot in the World Cup Round of 16 on Thursday, thanks in part to a stunning mistake by Argentine goalkeeper Willy Caballero in the 53rd minute. In an attempt to pass the ball to his own defender, Caballero gave it straight to Croatia's Ante Rebić, who put the ball right back into the net.

"It's a howler, an absolute howler, on the biggest stage," the Fox Sports announcer groaned.

Croatia's Luka Modrić scored his team's second goal in the 81st minute, with Ivan Rakitić contributing his own in the 92nd, ending the game with a score of 3-0. FiveThirtyEight gives Argentina a 33 percent chance of making the Round of 16 at this point, with Iceland the more likely team to advance from Group D with a 46 percent chance. Jeva Lange

The White House wants to push the Departments of Education and Labor together.

The Office of Management and Budget on Thursday proposed a merger of the two departments into one Department of Education and the Workforce, its first step under President Trump's plan to shrink the federal government. Federal food stamps would be relocated to the Department of Health and Human Services, which would be given a new name, among other proposed moves, ABC News reports.

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney cited redundancy in government agencies for this and future mergers. "If it's cheese pizza, it's [under the Food and Drug Administration], but you put pepperoni on it and it becomes a USDA product," he told The Associated Press. That's why the OMB suggested a single food safety agency within the Agriculture Department.

Most changes, including the Education-Labor union, would require congressional approval, per AP. Former President Ronald Reagan similarly thought to eliminate the Education Department but couldn't get Congress on board.

The merger was reported Wednesday in the trade publication Education Week. It's the first official move in Trump's executive order mandating the reorganization of the executive branch announced in March 2017. Kathryn Krawczyk

The House of Representatives on Thursday swatted down the more conservative of two immigration bills under consideration — but the margin between passing and failing was narrower than expected.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), met its end with a 231-193 vote against, per NBC News. It would've authorized but not specifically doled out border wall funding, and contained no provisions for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients brought here illegally as children. The Goodlatte bill was expected to fail spectacularly, but only 41 Republicans opposed it, along with all Democrats.

The more moderate of the two bills, backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), is also expected to fail. It contains a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, provides $25 billion in border wall funding, and eliminates the visa lottery in favor of a merit-based system, per NBC. That vote was supposed to happen Thursday but was postponed until Friday, NPR reports. Republican lawmakers will likely use the time to try to attract more "yes" votes. Kathryn Krawczyk