US news | The Guardian

Reports of fights breaking out over a book reading about inclusive families forced police officers to separate clashing groupsA protest over a Pride month assembly at a Los Angeles elementary school reportedly broke out into fights, forcing police officers to separate groups of protesters and counter-protesters who clashed over the school’s teaching of LGBTQ+ issues.Tensions at Saticoy elementary school, part of the Los Angeles unified school district, have been rising since last month over the Pride assembly the school has planned to hold on Friday. Continue reading...

President described how ‘no one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed’ during brief speechJoe Biden celebrated Congress’s approval of a debt-ceiling suspension in a speech delivered from the Oval Office on Friday night, a day after the Senate passed the compromise bill brokered by the president and the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.Biden described the bill’s enactment as “essential to the progress we’ve made over the last few years” in “keeping full faith and credit of the United States of America and passing a budget that continues to grow our economy and reflects our values as a nation”. Continue reading...

Colonel clarifies comments about ‘rogue AI drone’ that supposedly killed its operatorA US air force colonel “misspoke” when he said at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference last month that a drone killed its operator in a simulated test because the pilot was attempting to override its mission, according to the society.The confusion had started with the circulation of a blogpost from the society, in which it described a presentation by Col Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force and an experimental fighter test pilot, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May. Continue reading...

National Weather Service issues air quality alert for Richmond while Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states affectedThe historically intense wildfires that battered the Nova Scotia province on the eastern coast of Canada have had a severe effect on air quality as far south as Virginia and Maryland, the US National Weather Service alerted.Four wildfires have destroyed hundreds of buildings and homes and displaced tens of thousands of people, hitting the Halifax municipality hardest. But the blazes have also sent smoke billowing over New York City, and have prompted officials from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia to report negative effects on their air quality. Continue reading...

Family says Lauren Brooke Robinson, who reportedly contracted fungal meningitis, began to feel ill months after February surgeryA Texas woman has died after contracting fungal meningitis in an outbreak that has been linked to a cosmetic procedure performed in Mexico.Lauren Brooke Robinson, 29, died on Wednesday from a fungal meningitis infection after receiving cosmetic surgery in Mexico, the local TV news station KBMT reported. Continue reading...

It’s starting to get crowded in here Continue reading...

Age, cognitive health and physical fitness are all fair concerns but the president’s tumble could have happened to anyoneIt’s a story so benign and unremarkable that it’s embarrassing it’s getting any coverage at all: man trips, falls, stands back up and walks it off. Except, of course, that the man is Joe Biden, who at 80 and seeking re-election is currently competing to be the oldest president in US history.On Thursday, Biden was at the US Air Force Academy graduation ceremony handing out the last diploma when he tripped over a black sandbag. He got back up with a hand from Secret Service agents, and walked himself back to his seat. By all accounts, he was fine.Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind Continue reading...

Ella Irwin oversaw content moderation at the struggling social network, which has been plagued with woes since Musk’s takeoverTwitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, has resigned from the company, marking the latest high-profile departure from the struggling social network since Elon Musk acquired it in October.Irwin confirmed her departure to news outlets on Thursday but declined to comment further. Fortune earlier reported that Irwin’s internal Slack account appeared to have been deactivated. Continue reading...

Plaintiffs argue new law is illegal because it is a direct attack on free speech guaranteed by the US constitutionA coalition of publishers, booksellers, librarians and readers filed a lawsuit on Friday against the Arkansas state government, over a book ban law set to go into effect in August.Carol Coffey, the president of the Arkansas Library Association and a plaintiff in the case, told the Guardian: “Library workers across Arkansas are rightly concerned that the overly broad edicts of Act 372 will prevent them from serving their patrons as they have always done, by providing a wide variety of materials to fill their information needs, and perhaps more importantly, materials that allow each child to see themselves in the books in their library.” Continue reading...

By giving his WhatsApps to the Covid inquiry, the former PM has revealed Sunak’s reticence for what it really isBoris Johnson will haunt Rishi Sunak till the end. The current prime minister is desperate to put the recent past behind him, to persuade the country that he represents a new government and a fresh start. But every time he steps forward, the last prime minister (but one) sticks out a leg to trip him up.The latest move came this morning, when just hours after the government had announced it would rather go to court than hand over Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and notebooks to the Covid inquiry, the former PM himself popped up to say he was “perfectly content” for Lady Heather Hallett and her team to see them, duly sending her a whole lot. Thanks a bunch, Boris.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Former vice-president, expected to announce bid for White House, told by letter that justice department would not be filing chargesThe US Department of Justice has closed its investigation into former vice-president Mike Pence without filing any charges related to classified documents found in his Indiana home, a department official said on Friday.The department notified Pence through a letter, the official added. Continue reading...

Fossil vanished shortly afterwards and was found again after a social media callout and donated to museum in Santa CruzA woman taking a Memorial Day weekend stroll on a California beach found something unusual sticking out of the sand: a tooth from an ancient mastodon.But then the fossil vanished, and it took a media blitz and a kind-hearted jogger to find it again. Continue reading...

As Ron DeSantis attacks LGBTQ+ rights and threats are reported, planned events are canceledKristina Bozanich knew that this year’s Pride month event in the central Florida town of St Cloud would have to be modified to comply with a new law approved by Governor Ron DeSantis last month. One in a series of bills signed by DeSantis this year that escalated his assault on LGBTQ+ rights, the Protection of Children Act prohibits minors from attending “sexually explicit performances” and authorizes the punishment of businesses that knowingly allow children to attend such events by issuing fines and suspending or revoking their alcohol licenses.The inaugural Pride month event that Bozanich organized in St Cloud last year featured an open-air parade and a drag show performance. This year, the 30-year-old photographer had scheduled a private event on 10 June at a gym that would once again include a drag show and would be open only to adults who had bought tickets in advance. Continue reading...

Jon Waldman says attacks have weighed on his conscience and that Atlanta shooting earlier this month was ‘final straw’A Georgia gun shop owner said he is closing his store in the wake of several mass shootings targeting young children, as the country reels from recent attacks and an escalating rate of killings.Jon Waldman, a gun shop owner in Duluth, Georgia, said that he had already closed his store and will have the gun inventory cleared out by 15 June, NBC News reported. Continue reading...

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear: Trump is leading the other Republican contenders, and Biden is far from safeThe Republican field swells but the 45th president’s commanding lead holds. Like Jeb Bush – another Florida governor and defeated Trump rival – Ron DeSantis has demonstrated himself inadequate to the task. By the numbers, DeSantis trails Trump nationally and in the Sunshine state. DeSantis was born there. Trump only recently moved there. To be the man you gotta beat the man, and right now DeSantis is going nowhere fast.Ill-at-ease and plagued by a pronounced charisma deficit, DeSantis can’t even decide how to pronounce his own surname. He is 44 years old. That’s plenty of time to nail down this personal detail. Continue reading...

Change is part of broad Department of Defense initiative, which includes renaming numerous installationsFort Bragg shed its Confederate namesake on Friday to become Fort Liberty, in a ceremony some veterans said was a small but important step in making the US Army more welcoming to current and prospective Black service members.The change was part of a broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis that sparked a national reckoning on police brutality and enduring systemic racism in American society. Continue reading...

Dodgy plotting, confusing character motivations and the distinct sense that it had fallen in love with itself – the tale of the Roys was good. But not as good as it thought it wasThere are many things Succession landed right on the jaw. The ranks of writers and executive producers brought with them great experience of many areas central to the show: politics, finance, five-star hospitality and, of course, the media. So no doubt the concept of the day five contrarian hit piece will be familiar to them.I come not to bury Succession – maybe to even praise it a bit – but all the hype around this show has gone too far. On Tuesday morning, after watching Shiv, Ken and Romey zing at one another one final time I felt like that rogue dude in The Lego Movie. Everything about Succession, it seemed, was awesome. Not only that, it was insightful. The characters were multifaceted, many-layered scum that you would also really miss. It was the show that caught the spirit of our time, and all from the perspective of those ambling on to a private jet. Continue reading...

Compromise package to suspend debt ceiling passed US Senate late on Thursday with 63 votes to 36The bipartisan bill to solve the US debt ceiling crisis just days before a catastrophic and unprecedented default was on its way to Joe Biden’s desk on Friday as the US president prepared to address the nation and hailed “a big win for our economy and the American people”.The compromise package negotiated between Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, passed the US Senate late on Thursday. Continue reading...

Documents show disgraced financier tried to connect with Larry Nassar and underscore failings by federal prison agencyTwo weeks before ending his life, Jeffrey Epstein sat in the corner of his Manhattan jail cell with his hands over his ears, desperate to muffle the sound of a toilet that wouldn’t stop running.Epstein was agitated and unable to sleep, jail officials observed in records newly obtained by the Associated Press. He called himself a “coward” and complained he was struggling to adapt to life behind bars following his July 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges – his life of luxury reduced to a concrete and steel cage. Continue reading...

Conveniently, the device he used most during the pandemic cannot be switched on due to security reasonsDid you see that story about the Indian government official who drained an entire reservoir to retrieve a phone? Amazing that it turned out to be not even the most ludicrous government-phone-retrieval story this week.As you may by now have read, Boris Johnson can’t give the phone he used for most of the pandemic to the Covid inquiry because of security reasons. He says he still has the phone – then again, he says a lot of things. I think the phone has faked its own death and is living in sin beneath the North Sea with Rebekah Vardy’s agent’s phone. Can we drain the North Sea? Keir Starmer could suggest it’s one of the things we should do instead of drilling in it. Continue reading...

This bill cuts programs for the most vulnerable, and is totally unnecessary – why doesn’t Biden invoke the 14th amendment?Let’s be clear. The original debt ceiling legislation that Republicans passed in the House would have, over a 10-year period, decimated the already inadequate social safety net of our country and made savage cuts to programs that working families, the children, the sick, the elderly and the poor desperately needed.The best thing to be said about the current deal on the debt ceiling is that it could have been much worse. Instead of making massive cuts to healthcare, housing, education, childcare, nutrition assistance and other vital programs over the next decade, this bill proposes to make modest cuts to these programs over a 2-year period. This bill will also prevent a global economic catastrophe by extending the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025 – when we will have to go through with this absurd process once again.Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress Continue reading...

With just days before the 5 June default deadline, president Joe Biden has indicated he will sign the bill as soon as it reaches his deskThe Senate narrowly passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling on Thursday night, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a federal default that could have wreaked havoc on the US economy and global markets.The final vote was 63 to 36, with 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supporting the bill while five Democrats and 31 Republicans opposed the legislation. Sixty votes were needed to pass the bill. Continue reading...

Dev Shah, whose hobbies include playing the cello and solving maths problems, wins $50,000Dev Shah, a 14-year-old boy from Largo, Florida, has won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee, nailing the word “psammophile” – meaning an organism that thrives in sandy soils – in the 15th round of the contest’s finals.On Thursday, he edged out fellow eighth-grader Charlotte Walsh, 14, from Arlington, Virginia, who finished in second place after she misspelled “daviely” – a Scottish-rooted word for listlessly – in the 14th round. Continue reading...

Network edits out baseless claims about ‘stolen’ 2020 election, which could have provoked further lawsuitsFox News hosted a town hall event in Iowa with Donald Trump on Thursday night, allowing the president to repeat his well-worn grievances and lies. But remarkably, the pre-taped hour-long prime-time special hosted by Sean Hannity excluded any mention of Trump’s conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from him.The first installment of the broadcast came just two weeks after CNN broadcast a chaotic, lie-laden town hall with the former president that has been harshly criticised by journalists within and outside the network. Continue reading...

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...