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Hard-right Freedom Caucus members argued the deal should have enacted deeper spending cuts and shorter borrowing limitsKevin McCarthy was all smiles on Wednesday night after the House passed the debt ceiling bill, crafted by the Republican speaker and Joe Biden, in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117.“I’ve been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming,” McCarthy told reporters. “I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done, that we would literally turn the ship and for the first time in quite some time, we’d spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight, we all made history.” Continue reading...

With spiralling deficits and little prospect of government support, higher education’s only long-term hope lies in radical changeUniversities are becoming primary victims of the chaos enveloping Britain’s public sector. News reported in the Guardian has vice-chancellors pleading for a “new model” of government funding. This follows reports that one-third of England’s universities are trading at a deficit. Since almost one-fifth of UK students in higher education now come from abroad – 125,000 of them from China – there is near panic at the Home Office’s determination to slash student immigration.Some universities, including Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield, UCL and Imperial, rely on Chinese students alone for between a quarter and a third of their income. This means that any Beijing sanction on Britain – such as for mentioning the Uyghurs too often – could turn off this tap at source. Chinese numbers are already falling, by 4% last year, and are compensated only by soaring numbers for Indians, Nigerians, south-east Asians and 135,000 dependents. This last figure the Home Office is eager to cut.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Days before the 5 June default deadline, Joe Biden has indicated he will sign the bill as soon as it reaches his desk. Plus, the work of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips goes on in the Amazon

Repayments could start with the passage of the debt ceiling deal, with supreme court to rule on forgiveness this monthThe Senate approved a House resolution on Thursday to repeal Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.The vote came during a week when student loans have been at the center of public debate. The forgiveness plan faces sharp scrutiny in Congress and the supreme court. And the choice to resume debt repayments, which have been on pause since March 2020, has been tied up in the high-profile deal to lift the debt ceiling and avert a dangerous national default. Continue reading...

Denial follows colonel saying drone used ‘highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal’ in virtual testThe US air force has denied it has conducted an AI simulation in which a drone decided to “kill” its operator to prevent it from interfering with its efforts to achieve its mission.An official said last month that in a virtual test staged by the US military, an air force drone controlled by AI had used “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal”. Continue reading...

After the Heat were outplayed and Jimmy Butler rendered all but irrelevant by the Nuggets in their NBA finals opener, Miami’s mission impossible is looking that much tougherMaybe it was the thin air. Perhaps it was fatigue in their 21st game since the end of the regular season. Or just an inevitable reversion towards normality for the postseason’s greatest overachievers.Whatever it was, it was quickly clear that anyone tuning in to the first game of the NBA finals on Thursday in the hope of witnessing a stirring mountain tale starring a brave band of odds-defying underdogs should have switched off the game and streamed The Sound of Music instead. Continue reading...

Nurse Emily Raines and her boyfriend Daniel Shifflett earn plaudits after resuscitating man whose heart had stoppedBaltimore nurse Emily Raines unplugged from work when she recently went on a Caribbean cruise with her boyfriend, Daniel Shifflett. But Raines’s break ended dramatically on the flight home, when she and Shifflett teamed up to save the life of a man whose heart stopped beating in his airplane seat.Raines and Shifflett were taking a Southwest flight home from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 1 May after going on a weekend cruise vacation to the Bahamas when they heard a flight attendant ask whether anyone onboard with medical experience could help a passenger with an emergency. Continue reading...

Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray excelled, while a weary Jimmy Butler will need to do more for Miami moving forwardJimmy Butler (SF) Bottom line: the Heat are going to need much more from their best player. Butler didn’t get to the free-throw line once as the Denver defense did a great job of forcing tough two-pointers without fouling. 6 Continue reading...

Event with the ex-president comes as the network battles second defamation lawsuit after paying $787m to settle with DominionDonald Trump and Fox News played it safe on Thursday with a town-hall event in Iowa that swerved past the former US president’s election lies and liability for sexual abuse.The uncharacteristic omissions were a striking contrast to Trump’s recent town hall on rival network CNN and likely a source of relief for both his own lawyers and those of Fox News. Continue reading...

Neither city officials nor the property owner warned residents of the danger just days before the collapseA structural engineer’s report issued last week indicated a wall of a century-old apartment building in Iowa was at imminent risk of crumbling, yet neither the owner nor city officials warned residents of the danger days before the building partially collapsed, leaving three people missing and feared dead.The revelation is the latest flashpoint after Sunday’s partial collapse of the building in Davenport, where residents have lashed out at city leaders over what they see as an inept response. Continue reading...

US president took a tumble at the end of a ceremony honoring air force graduates in Colorado; White House vows to use vetoSupreme court justices on Thursday took aim at pharmacies who overcharge the government for prescription drugs, their unanimous ruling reopening a pathway for legal action by individuals seeking to protect taxpayers’ money.The case involves “whistleblowers” ostensibly acting for the government, whom a lower court said could not sue pharmacies claiming their own “objectively reasonable” reading of the law allowed them to overbill federal health programs including Medicare and Medicaid. Continue reading...

Airline says it ‘acted lawfully’ after claims that refunds for abandoned or rescheduled flights in 2020 were not ‘timely’British Airways has been fined $1.1m (£878,000) by the US over claims it failed to pay refunds for cancelled flights during the coronavirus pandemic.The US Transportation Department said in a legal document the airline did not “provide timely refunds to passengers” for abandoned or rescheduled flights to and from the country in 2020. Continue reading...

The US president, Joe Biden, tripped and fell after handing out the last diploma at a graduation ceremony at the US air force academy in Colorado. Footage showed Biden, 80, falling to the ground before being quickly helped up by an air force officer and two Secret Service agents. He walked back to his seat unassisted. The White House communications director, Ben LaBolt, tweeted: 'He's fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands'

‘He’s fine,’ says White House after president, 80, loses his footing handing out diplomas at commencement in ColoradoJoe Biden tripped and fell after handing out the last diploma at a graduation ceremony at the US Air Force Academy on Thursday.He was quickly helped up and walked back to his seat unassisted, and the White House said the president was “fine”. Continue reading...

Proposed bill would require ‘online platforms’ to pay a fee to state news providers whose work appears on their servicesMeta is threatening to remove news content from its platforms in its home state of California if the state government moves forward with legislation that would force tech companies to pay publishers.The proposed bill would require “online platforms” like Google and Meta to pay a “journalism usage fee” to California news providers whose work appears on their services. Continue reading...

Quanishia ‘Peach’ Berry was trapped for several hours before rescuers found her in collapsed apartment buildingA woman was rescued from a six-story building in Davenport, Iowa, which collapsed last weekend – but only after having a leg removed.The 116-year-old building which housed 53 tenants partly collapsed in downtown Davenport on Sunday. Continue reading...

British brand’s profits tumble after string of errors in US operation hits salesDr Martens has revealed a slide in profits as sales of its key product – boots – fell 10% last year after the British brand made a string of errors at its US business and pulled back distribution in Latin America and China.The footwear maker said sales of its chunky sandals and shoes had risen by about 50% to become almost a third of total sales, but boot sales had suffered, particularly in America, after it focused marketing on its other products and struggled with problems at a warehouse in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Victims of con invested thousands of dollars in fake bills plastered with Trump’s face they believed would make them richWebsites launched by companies selling “Trump Bucks” to some of the former president’s most ardent supporters have been taken down.NBC reported the closures, after its investigation found several Colorado-based companies were behind the scam that promised investors they would get rich if the disgraced former president is re-elected in 2024. Continue reading...

Morris Wortman, 72, was passenger in hand-built, experimental plane that went down in New York state on Sunday, killing pilot tooA New York fertility doctor who was accused of using his own sperm to impregnate several patients died when the hand-built airplane he was in fell apart mid-flight and crashed, authorities said.Dr Morris Wortman, 72, of Rochester, was a passenger in the experimental aircraft that went down on Sunday in a pasture in Orleans county. The pilot, Earl Luce Jr, of Brockport, also was killed, the county sheriff said. Continue reading...

If off-the-record messaging is a worrying trend, the real problem is that Westminster is one big gentlemen’s clubWhat are WhatsApps? No, really, what are they? This may sound like a question asked by an increasingly puzzled grandad at Christmas, but it has become central to British politics.Westminster has, over the past few weeks, waited with bated breath to see if the messages sent to and from ministers during the pandemic would be handed over to the Covid inquiry. Heather Hallett, who is running the investigation, demanded that the full cache be released before the public evidence sessions began, but to no avail. Boris Johnson has said he has given his messages to the Cabinet Office, which decided on Thursday afternoon to launch legal action to avoid having to pass them on.Marie Le Conte is a French journalist living in London Continue reading...

Testimony counters claims that the bank ignored signs of malfeasance, including Epstein’s large monthly cash withdrawalsJP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said in a court deposition that he did not recall ever hearing about convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein or his sexual abuse crimes against teenage girls until the financier was arrested in 2019, countering claims that the bank ignored signs of malfeasance, including Epstein’s large monthly cash withdrawals.In transcripts of the deposition obtained by the Guardian, Dimon was asked if he had ever heard the name Jeffrey Epstein before the arrest. Dimon responded: “Not that I recall.” He said he first heard about Epstein “when the story blew wide open. He was arrested, and all the stories came out about all the people he knows. And the reason I remember that is I was surprised that I didn’t know about it before.” Continue reading...

Derek Myers, 31, says he sent at least seven payments of $150 to a top Santos deputy as part of effort to get job in Republican’s officeA man who was briefly an aide to the New York congressman and fabulist George Santos said he got his job after sending payments to a top deputy of the scandal-embroiled Republican.Derek Myers, 31, told House ethics committee staff on Wednesday that in January, while he was trying to get a job in Santos’s Washington office, he sent at least seven $150 payments to Vish Burra, its director of operations. Continue reading...

Bipartisan agreement to raise the $31.4tn debt ceiling passed US House, allowing president to argue only he can bridge divideSometimes presidencies are about things that don’t happen. Joe Biden will be breathing a mighty sigh of relief that the economic asteroid hurtling towards planet earth turned into a near miss: America is apparently not going to default on his watch.As a bipartisan deal to raise the $31.4tn debt ceiling passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, Biden could also claim vindication for the underlying theory of his presidency: that in the age of polarisation it takes an apostle of bipartisanship and a 36-year veteran of the Senate to reach across the aisle and make deals with his opponents. Continue reading...

A US Senate hearing burst into laughter after Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said 'I don’t want reality' during a session on race and education. Mullin was questioning a witness about whether a book meant to teach children about racism was appropriate for early learning classes. After his remark prompted laughter in the hearing room the senator said he 'misspoke' and returned to hectoring his witness, Cheryl Morman, president of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Associations

Conspiracy theorist and challenger for Democratic presidential nomination makes comments in interview but backtracks laterRobert F Kennedy Jr, the conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, told an interviewer he had “conversations with dead people” every day.Kennedy’s uncle, John F Kennedy, the 35th US president, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. His father, Robert F Kennedy, the US attorney general and New York senator, was killed in Los Angeles five years later. Continue reading...

Authorities say Faye the swan was abducted, and that three suspects had been arrested for grand larceny and criminal mischiefThree teenagers in New York state were arrested for allegedly stealing a swan cherished by its local community before killing and eating the bird.The disappearance of the well-known swan, called Faye, and her four cygnet offspring on Saturday caused concern in the village of Manlius, in upstate New York. Continue reading...

In a democracy, this type of extortion should not be permitted – but Republican rule isn’t based on democracyThe debt ceiling drama seems to be nearing its end, as the US House of Representatives passed legislation that would lift the debt ceiling in accordance with a deal reached last weekend between Joe Biden, the president, and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House. The Republicans have been fighting to force cuts in spending and/or eligibility for food stamps (Snap), Medicaid, childcare and pre-schools, education and grants for higher education.By linking these and other provisions to the lifting of the debt ceiling, the Republicans tried to use the threat of default on the public debt to force Democrats to accept them. The legislation, which now goes to the Senate where it is expected to pass, did not satisfy most of their desires.Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC and the author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy Continue reading...

Solomon Peña and two alleged accomplices charged after attacks in December and January on homes of Democrats in New MexicoA failed Republican candidate was indicted on federal charges including election interference in connection with a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of state and local lawmakers in Albuquerque, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed on Wednesday.The indictment filed in US district court in Albuquerque charges Solomon Peña and two alleged accomplices with additional conspiracy and weapons-related charges in connection with the shootings in December and January on the homes of four Democrats including the current state house speaker. Continue reading...

Markwayne Mullin says he ‘misspoke’ when questioning witness about childcare and teaching of raceQuestioning a witness about childcare and the teaching of race, the Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said: “I don’t want reality.”The remark prompted laughter in the hearing room. Continue reading...

Al Pacino will become a father again at 83. Robert De Niro, 79, just had his seventh child. What’s the endgame for this fantastic actors’ smackdown?Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are forever destined to be intertwined. The two greatest actors of their generation – the two greatest actors of most generations – Pacino and De Niro will spend the rest of eternity being compared. People will tie themselves up in knots over who did the best work, who was the best in The Godfather Part II, who won their first scene together in Heat, who was the least bad in Righteous Kill.And now the comparisons have started to spill out from their professional efforts. A couple of weeks ago Twitter blew a gasket trying to work out whether Al Pacino was sexier than Robert De Niro. The competition between them is fierce, and never lets up. Just days after De Niro announced that he’d become a father again at the age of 79, Pacino has announced that he’s about to become a father again at the age of 83. Continue reading...

Conservative activists in America are doing everything they can to treat LGBTQ people as less than humanPride Month is here, and this year it’s happening in a tough environment.American corporations – although eager to declare their support for LGBTQ+ people in order to better market their products – are often quick to retreat when protests follow.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

The House passed a deal brokered by Joe Biden and Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy with a final vote of 314 to 117

The goal is to deflect and distract – to use scapegoating, racism and outright lies to disguise what’s really going onRepublican leaders have mastered the art of manufacturing crises to divert the public’s attention from the real crisis of our era – the siphoning of income, wealth and power from most Americans by a small group at the top.Consider the fake fears they’ve been whipping up:Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Exclusive: Two Trump lawyers considered a ‘murder-suicide pact’ where one would resign if the other was firedDonald Trump’s legal team for months has weathered deep distrust and interpersonal conflict that could undermine its defense of the former president as the criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago nears its conclusion.The turmoil inside the legal team only exploded into public view when one of the top lawyers, Tim Parlatore, abruptly resigned two weeks’ ago from the representation citing irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn. Continue reading...

The governing body for the game in Canada has been questioned by MPs looking into abuse and poor governance. But some believe little progress has been madeTestimony by newly elected Canada Soccer president Charmaine Crooks has been called “revisionist” by a former board member after her appearance in front of members of parliament investigating sexual misconduct within sport.Crooks joined Concacaf president Victor Montagliani and other former Canada Soccer presidents and executives as they faced criticism from the Canadian parliament’s Heritage Committee for poor governance and failing to take allegations of abuse seriously. Continue reading...

William ‘Bill’ Cooley, the first general to face a military trial, will end his career on Thursday as a colonelA two-star US air force general convicted last year of abusive sexual contact for forcing his sister-in-law to kiss him will lose his rank on retiring, officials said.William “Bill” Cooley was a major general but will end his career on Thursday as a colonel, officials said. The statement said the air force “expects its leaders to embody our core values and holds them accountable if they fall short of expectations”. Continue reading...

The controversial film championed by the BJP is an Islamophobic fantasyTwo weeks after I was born in the curfewed town of Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh, the Aligarh riots of 1990 broke out. What began as skirmishes exploded into widespread bloodletting after three leading Hindi daily newspapers published front-page headlines reporting the targeted killing of Hindus inside a hospital run by Muslims. Those killings turned out to be the fevered imaginings of two Hindu “eyewitnesses”. But the actual massacres ignited by this fake news eventually left about a hundred people dead, the vast majority of them Muslims.A fortnight ago, I watched the new Bollywood hit The Kerala Story, in a rundown cinema in Delhi. The sluggish air conditioning seemed to have given up against the sultry May heat. A group of (largely) young Hindu men packed out the theatre. Occasionally, they broke out into passionate chants of “Jai Shri Ram”, the cry that often accompanies videos of “vigilante violence” committed against Muslims. Yet when they streamed out of the theatre, they looked more horrified than enraged, like sports fans numbed after their side has taken one beating after another. The rolling spectacle of an all-round “Hindu humiliation” – including graphic scenes depicting Hindu women being violently raped by Muslims – had lasted for more than two hours.Asim Ali is an independent political researcher and columnist based in Delhi Continue reading...

Denver or Miami? Our contributors pick the winner, key players and dark horses before the NBA’s grand finale tips offA lot has been made of the importance of a balanced roster with continuity, but, somehow, still not enough. The Nuggets are the prime example of this: their core has been together for years, they’ve had the same coach the entire time, their role players know their roles and execute them brilliantly, and they have arguably the best player in the league in Nikola Jokić to tie it all together. CDL Continue reading...

Seeing the former founder of Theranos turn herself in should have offered the thrill of schadenfreude. Instead I felt sympathyIt is an image that, for any number of vilified public figures, is supposed to offer the audience a measure of closure: a version of the perp walk to the front door of the jail. On Tuesday, Elizabeth Holmes, erstwhile founder of the blood testing startup, Theranos, self-presented to a federal prison in Texas to begin her 11-year sentence for fraud. So much about Holmes has turned out to be phoney that, on looking at the photos and feeling the first peckings of sympathy, I instantly checked myself to see where I was being manipulated.Still, a measure of sympathy remained. Holmes was dressed in jeans and a sweater, her black turtle-neck long retired along with the contrived pitch of her voice. It is always curious in these circumstances to consider what the fraudster tells herself has actually happened, how far into denial the internal narrative goes. On the evidence of her own testimony and the interview Holmes gave to the New York Times last month, she is deeply invested in the story of her own victimisation, both by her former business partner and boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, currently serving his own almost 13-year sentence, and by Silicon Valley itself. Even the wording of her apology – “I am devastated by my failings” – seemed designed to position her not as the instigator of her own bad behaviour but as just another of its passive victims.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

As adults, we are taught to keep a lid on our emotions. It has left me longing for the days of relentless, unbridled mirthA cute video of a baby laughing its head off has been doing the rounds on Twitter this week. He is sitting in a cardboard box as it’s dragged along by the family dog. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa) may frown at such a caper, but their concerns wouldn’t bother this bairn, for the lad’s quite helpless with mirth. Naturally, his joy is infectious.When I was not much older than a baby, I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin. In the live recording of Stairway to Heaven at Madison Square Garden in 1973, Robert Plant follows up the lyric about forests echoing with laughter with a question for the crowd: “Does anyone remember laughter?” he enquires plaintively. Even as a devotee of his work, I remember thinking this plea a bit on the dismal side. But now, looking at the delight of the baby in the box, I find myself asking a similar question: does anyone remember laughing like that? You know, laughing and fearing you may never stop laughing, laughing so hard it hurts, laughing so uncontrollably that you’re crying, actually crying. It does still happen, of course, but less often. Or perhaps that’s just me.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The House debated legislation to increase the US debt limit until January 2025, before passing the bill by a vote of 314 to 117. Republican representatives passed the bill overwhelmingly. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, praised Democrats for pushing back against 'extreme Maga Republicans' before Kevin McCarthy took to the floor claiming the bill would deliver the 'largest savings in American history'. The White House tactically avoided pushing back against the line to avoid inflaming the hard right. 'Tonight, we’re gonna give America hope,' McCarthy said

Divisions were revealed, between and among party members, but both sides are counting the passage as a winThe US House of Representatives passed the much-debated debt ceiling bill on Wednesday evening, moving the country closer to avoiding a potentially catastrophic default. Next up in line is the Senate, the Democrat majority chamber, which would push the bill to Joe Biden’s desk.But the vote on Wednesday revealed the divided lines, not only between Republicans and Democrats, but within the parties. Here are some key takeaways from this vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act: Continue reading...

The bill has reached the crucial 218 threshold to pass – though some Republicans may attempt to derail the processMike Pence is expected to launch his 2024 presidential bid within the next two weeks, The Messenger reports.In a screenshot of an email sent by former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to delegates of the Georgia Republican Party, Lake wrote: Continue reading...

Federal prosecutors have obtained audio in which the former president acknowledged he retained a classified paper on IranFederal prosecutors obtained audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting where Donald Trump suggested he should have declassified a military document about Iran he admitted retaining, according to people familiar with the criminal investigation into his retention of national security papers.The document at issue is understood to be classified as “secret” – significant as the justice department typically prefers to charge espionage cases involving retention of materials at that level, rather than “top secret” papers that might be too sensitive or “confidential” papers that are too low. Continue reading...

Given how good the US adaptation of the British comedy was, I am hopeful about the new series, starring Felicity Ward as the incompetent boss

With 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supporting the measure, Biden has called on the Senate to quickly take up the legislationThe House passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling on Wednesday, clearing a major legislative hurdle with just days left before the US is expected to default.The final House vote was 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supporting the measure. In a potentially worrisome sign for the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, 71 members of his conference opposed the deal that he brokered with President Joe Biden. Continue reading...