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Economic historian says Australia will largely be fine, as long as China pulls off biggest financial feat the world has ever seen

Company and former CEO made misleading statements about the jets involved in two crashes that killed 346 peopleBoeing and its former chief executive have settled an investigation by the US’s top financial regulator into allegedly misleading statements the planemaker and its then boss made about its 737 Max jets, involved in two deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.Boeing will pay $200m to settle charges that it misled investors and the former Boeing chief Dennis Muilenburg has agreed to pay $1m. Continue reading...

Special master also asked for a certified list of property seized by the FBI from the ‘winter White House’A US judge reviewing records seized from Donald Trump’s Florida home asked the former president’s lawyers on Thursday to provide any evidence casting doubt on the integrity of the documents. Trump has previously made unsubstantiated claims the documents were planted by FBI agents.

Vice-president and wife exposed to ‘massive dosages’ of ionising radiation at US ambassador’s residence, declassified files showRichard Nixon and his wife, Pat, were exposed to potentially harmful radiation while staying at the US ambassador’s residence in Moscow in 1959, according to declassified Secret Service documents.Nixon, who was vice-president at the time, was not informed of the threat, and the state department was only informed in 1976, when a member of his Secret Service detail, James Golden, revealed that detection equipment had measured significant levels of radiation in and around the Nixons’ sleeping quarters at the residence, Spaso House. Continue reading...

Special master also gives series of deadlines after judges overturn ruling that temporarily blocked DoJ from the material

With a troubling lack of knowledge and empathy, the enthusiasm of team Truss bodes mightily illLiz Truss isn’t going to die wondering. She’s only been prime minister for just over two weeks, most of which she spent touring the country in mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, and she’s already ripped up large chunks of her predecessor’s agenda. It makes you wonder how she ever managed to agree with a word Boris Johnson said. I guess ambition takes you to some dark places. No matter. Fiscal rules are for wimps! NICs are to be nixed! She’s been surprisingly active for someone whose normal delivery tends towards the comatose.The latest U-turn is on fracking. The 2019 Tory manifesto committed the party to a moratorium on fracking until such a time that the science indicated it could be done without earth tremors. But that was so three years ago. Needless to say the science hasn’t changed at all, but that’s not good enough for our Librium Liz. Continue reading...

Coalition gathers on Capitol Hill to deliver impassioned demand to improve life for low-income AmericansA coalition of faith leaders gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday to deliver an impassioned demand for more congressional action to combat poverty, telling lawmakers they have a moral obligation to improve life for low-income Americans.The faith leaders called on the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to take at least three votes on major progressive issues before midterm elections in November. Continue reading...

The Kremlin’s decision will make the war real for thousands of Russian families, and shows it is failing to hold the frontlineIn his speech on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that the Kremlin would be mobilising 300,000 military reservists to serve in Ukraine. He insisted that Russia was merely defending itself and its territories – and that the west did not want to see peace in Ukraine. Paradoxically, the response of many Ukrainians to Putin’s speech was relief – and even hope.For all these months, the Kremlin has wanted Russian people to remain distanced from the military campaign; the state will leave you alone so long as you stay away from politics and demonstrate indifference towards the war. The mobilisation might change this. Some 300,000 more families will start to feel the war personally. The move also confirms that Russia will be unable to defend territories it has occupied without more personnel. The Russian army desperately needs more troops to hold a frontline that stretches for 1,500 miles.Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting, and author of Lost Island: Tales from the Occupied Crimea Continue reading...

Danielle Cruz, 22, suffered minor injuries when the crane, attached to a boom truck, collapsed and crushed her car in the BronxA New York woman had a miraculous escape when a crane collapsed and crushed her car as she waited at an intersection.Danielle Cruz, 22, only suffered minor injuries when the crane, attached to a boom truck, smashed into her car on Tuesday in the Bronx. Continue reading...

Murder of Tennessee teacher could have been avoided had police properly investigated rape accusation, lawsuit saysThe murder of a Tennessee teacher who was forced into a car near the University of Memphis could have been avoided had police properly investigated an accusation of rape against the suspect, a lawsuit filed on Tuesday claimed.Alicia Franklin said she was raped last September by Cleotha Abston, who is now charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in connection with the death of Eliza Fletcher. Continue reading...

Ex-president tells Sean Hannity: ‘Because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or wherever … There doesn’t have to be a process’Donald Trump has claimed presidents can declassify documents by the power of thought alone.Speaking to Sean Hannity of Fox News in an interview broadcast on Wednesday, the former US president said: “Different people say different things but as I understand it, if you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it. Continue reading...

Texas Republican hails ‘Ports to Plains’ highway he co-sponsored – but which was in spending bill he refused to backThe Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz called a new highway project “a great bipartisan victory” that will bring “jobs to Texas and millions of dollars to the state”.The White House responded: “Senator Cruz voted against this.” Continue reading...

Like other rich men who appear to break the law with abandon, Trump has a tendency to evade consequences. Can that last?Despite Donald Trump’s self-mythologizing ostentation – despite his gold toilets and eastern European models, despite his airplanes, golf courses, and gleaming bad taste – he always had more shamelessness than actual money. This has been painfully obvious for years, so in a way, what the New York attorney general evealed on Wednesday, first in a press conference, then in a more than 200-page legal complaint, was nothing new. Letitia James alleges that Trump lies, and he most often lies to aggrandize himself, and specifically, he lies a lot about money. He’s not as rich as he says he is.This week, James’ office filed a civil suit against Donald Trump, his three eldest children, the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Alan Weisselberg (who pleaded guilty to 15 felonies last month), and the Trump Organization itself. The lawsuit alleges a longstanding pattern of financial fraud in which, James claims, the Trump Organization deliberately inflated the value of its assets – including all of Trump’s most famously gaudy properties – when seeking loans, in order to secure more generous credit terms. Continue reading...

More and more Republican candidates are effectively inviting their supporters to contest electoral losses in the streetsOne of the most horrific legacies of Trump is the unwillingness of Republican candidates to commit to being bound by election results.Among Republican candidates for US senate, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, and JD Vance in Ohio have all refused to commit to accepting the election results this November, according to news reports.I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of the country … Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy. Now the supreme court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.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...

New York civil lawsuit accusing Trump family of ‘staggering’ fraud could derail presidential bid, experts say. Plus, the case for a ‘marriage sabbatical’

The United States’ friendlies with Japan and Saudi Arabia will be about filling out reserve spots on the roster rather than confirming the final spots in Gregg Berhalter’s starting XIIt was an unremarkable type of goal – a header from just outside the six-yard box, neatly glanced low into the far corner. More notable than the finish was the identity of the scorer and what it might mean for the US men’s national team as they play their last two games before the Qatar World Cup, starting with a friendly against Japan on Friday.Ricardo Pepi was named the MLS Young Player of the Year after scoring 13 times for FC Dallas in 2021. US head coach Gregg Berhalter had reason to be grateful for the teenager’s lethal form last September when Pepi scored on his international debut and provided two assists as the Americans recovered from a 1-0 deficit to beat Honduras 4-1 in San Pedro Sula. Continue reading...

The former track and cross-country runner sees systemic failure in how universities and the NCAA handle issues around mental health and sexual abuse allegationsLet’s be clear – Andrew Cooper is no fan of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. A former track and cross-country runner at Washington State University and the University of California, Berkeley, Cooper’s experience as an athlete at top American universities provided him with a critical eye of how the NCAA governs college sports. As a long-distance runner, Cooper has had plenty of time to think. And he believes the structure, system, and priorities of US college sports need a reboot.Cooper served inside the machine as president of the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Advisory Council at WSU and UC Berkeley. Today, he is an athletes’ rights activist who sees systemic failure in how universities and the NCAA handle issues around mental health and sexual abuse allegations. Cooper sees patterns. Continue reading...

Ahead of party conference, the talk is of singing the national anthem. But that’s Labour, always fighting yesterday’s battlesThere’s no through line to this era of Conservatism. It unfolds randomly like prog rock, ear-bleeding thrash straight after a flute solo. First, their only agenda was to reduce the deficit, then they were all about levelling up, now they want to increase the deficit and stop levelling up, and what they say doesn’t really matter, because it doesn’t happen anyway. Very often they deliver the exact opposite, and you have to conclude that the real agenda was to sever the links between language and meaning, cause and effect, promise and outcome.What they cannot escape, however, is the passage of time. Twelve years have now gone by, and it would be time-consuming and complicatedly disrespectful to recap how much hardship, how much lasting damage they have caused. They can and will start culture wars to plug the rhetorical gaps, but on the material realities facing most Britons, they have only one option: a narrative of impotence. The UK is poorer because the good times couldn’t last for ever; energy is more expensive because of unavoidable exogenous shocks; inflation is high because of energy; interest rates are high because of inflation; look over there, Germany is having a right time of it too. We’re in decline because so is the world. Any line other than this would require them to take some responsibility, which would interrupt their messaging that they “got the big calls right”.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The quarterback’s performances with Denver should improve as he settles in. But his game is not aging well and he needs to adaptAre we confident that this Russell Wilson-Nathaniel Hackett marriage isn’t some kind of Nathan Fielder bit?The plan: to hire a coach who cannot count; to trade a boatload of draft picks and players for an aging, “mobile” quarterback who looks increasingly immobile; to hand that quarterback a five-year, $245m contract with $165m guaranteed at signing; to hire a series of coordinators who’ve never coordinated units or called plays before; to sell one of the league’s most prestigious franchises to an owner who doesn’t know the name of the commissioner. Continue reading...

His release from prison has not proved his innocence or guilt – but it has highlighted how we are all guilty of pretending we know more than we doI know for certain whether Adnan Syed was guilty. Syed, who has just had his conviction overturned after serving almost 23 years for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, once said that only he and her murderer could be 100% certain whether Syed was innocent – but nope, sorry, I know. I’ve listened to Serial – the 2014 podcast that popularised Syed’s case – twice. I’ve spent countless hours on Reddit forums dedicated to everything the podcast missed. I’ve spotted telling remarks made in telling tones. I have read the doodled diary extracts of a strangled teenage girl. I know whether Syed is a murderer. Get rid of judges, juries and executioners: replace them with me.I’m being facetious, obviously – there’s a reason I haven’t told you whether I’m so sure of Syed’s innocence or of his guilt. This is because I know, logically, that the certainty that surges in my chest is no such thing at all. Obviously I don’t know whether Syed committed murder more than two decades ago; obviously I don’t know whether he was framed by corrupt detectives at the Baltimore Police Department. I am just one of 340 million listeners, and about as geographically and temporally removed from the case as it’s possible to be. But still, I am certain – and I’m troubled by that, and troubled by other people’s certainty too.Amelia Tait is a freelance features writerDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

New York civil lawsuit accusing Trump family of ‘staggering’ fraud could derail presidential bid, experts sayDonald Trump’s legal perils have become insurmountable and could snuff out the former US president’s hopes of an election-winning comeback, according to political analysts and legal experts.On Wednesday, Trump and three of his adult children were accused of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a “staggering” fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves. Continue reading...

Restrictions sought by Letitia James include bans on Trump and his children that would tear his real estate empire from his controlPenalties being sought in the civil fraud suit brought by the New York state attorney general’s office against Donald Trump and three of his adult children could potentially result in the end of the Trump Organization, his real estate empire, in its current form.The former US president, as well as Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, were named as defendants in a sprawling 214-page complaint filed by New York attorney general Letitia James for allegedly falsely inflating his net worth by billions to enrich himself and secure favorable loans. Continue reading...

The move clears the way for the justice department to assess whether criminal charges against the former president are warrantedIn a stark repudiation of Donald Trump’s legal arguments, a federal appeals court on Wednesday permitted the justice department’s to resume its use of classified records seized from the former president’s Florida estate as part of its ongoing criminal investigation.The ruling from a three-judge panel of the US court of appeals is a victory for the justice department, clearing the way for investigators to continue scrutinizing the documents as they consider whether to bring criminal charges over the storage of sensitive records at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House. In lifting a hold on a core aspect of the department’s probe, the court removed an obstacle that could have delayed the investigation by weeks, if not months. Continue reading...

Her lawyer said she is eager to ‘clear up any misconceptions’ in helping Donald Trump overturn the 2020 US electionConservative activist Virginia Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with the House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection, her lawyer said Wednesday.Attorney Mark Paoletta said Thomas is “eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election”. Continue reading...

Letitia James’s civil suit accuses ex-president of inflating his net worth by billions in order to ‘enrich himself and cheat the system’The attorney general of New York state has filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his children involved in the family real-estate business, for falsely inflating his net worth by billions in order to enrich himself and secure favorable loans.Announcing the suit in New York on Wednesday, Letitia James also said referrals had been made to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service – a move sure to anger the former US president and increase consternation among his inner circle about the depth of his legal predicament.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

Efforts to legalize sports betting have sparked a $400m battle – and left voters scratching their headsThe campaign that could bring legalized sports betting to California is the most expensive ballot-initiative fight in US history, costing $400m and counting, and pitting wealthy Indigenous tribes against online gambling companies over a potentially multibillion-dollar marketplace.Californians have been bombarded with advertising for months, much of it making promises far beyond a plump payoff from a game wager. Some ads coming from the consortium of gambling companies barely mention online betting. Continue reading...

Letitia James accuses former president and his family of fraudulently inflating their net worth for financial benefits

Political leaders including Kamala Harris gathered to remember the British monarch in sombre event at National CathedralHer final gift to her many admirers in America was an hour and a half of ceremony, sanctity and peace in a city overrun by loud political acrimony.The Queen was remembered on Wednesday at a thanksgiving service at Washington National Cathedral, an elegant event that brought together Americans of all political stripes, obliged to park their rancour at the bronze gate. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy also spoke to the UN, saying Ukraine’s forces would continue their counter-offensive

Third outsized rate increase in a row as central bank struggles to fight runaway inflation, increasing the cost of everythingThe Federal Reserve announced another sharp hike in interest rates on Wednesday as the central bank struggles to rein in runaway inflation.The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points, the third such outsized rate increase in a row, bringing the Fed rate to 3%-3.25% and increasing the cost of everything from credit card debt and mortgages to company financing. Continue reading...

Letitia James, attorney general of New York state, has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and members of his family for doctoring their finances in order to obtain favourable borrowing terms.In a statement on Wednesday, James said: 'The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, and senior executives of the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms.'Allen Weisselberg, a former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, and Jeffrey McConney, a former controller, were also named in the suit.

Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian’s Unchecked reports the Senate Republican leader vowed never to speak to Trump againThe Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said Donald Trump was “crazy” and vowed never to speak to him again after the Capitol attack – then voted both to call Trump’s impeachment unconstitutional and to acquit the former president in his second Senate trial.McConnell’s deliberations are reported in a forthcoming book, Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, by Rachael Bade of Politico and Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post. An extract was published on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Thomas Lane is already serving a two-and-a-half-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rightsA former Minneapolis police officer who pleaded guilty to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd was sentenced on Wednesday to three years.Thomas Lane is already serving a two-and-a-half-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights. In the state case, prosecutors and Lane’s attorneys agreed to a recommended sentence of three years, to be served at the same time, in a federal prison. Continue reading...

The president’s latest pledge to defend the island contradicts the US’s longstanding One China policyIn May 2001, the new US president told an interviewer that the United States was obligated to go to war with China if it attacked Taiwan. The United States would do “whatever it took” to defend the island, George W Bush vowed.Then-Senator Joe Biden was not impressed. Taking to the Washington Post to pen “Not So Deft On Taiwan,” Biden scolded the president. “Words matter, in diplomacy and in law,” he wrote. The fact was that the United States possessed no formal obligation to defend Taiwan. As Biden explained, the United States had purposefully abrogated such a commitment and adopted the Taiwan Relations Act, for which Biden had personally voted in 1979. True, the law required the United States to help Taiwan to defend itself and declared a threat to the peace and security of the region to be “of grave concern to the United States.” But it did not obligate American forces to fight on the island’s behalf.Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a lecturer at Yale Law School and Catholic University. He is the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy Continue reading...

For the first time since the welfare state was created, the food bank will be our safety net and charity our last line of defenceHaving been promised an energy price freeze, millions of hard-pressed families will be shocked and fearful when, on 1 October, they are hit with a 25% rise in their fuel bills.After a summer of doing nothing the government looked as if it had done a lot, but it has not done anywhere near enough. In 10 days’, the cap on energy bills will rise to an unprecedented £2,500 a year. This is an average increase of £10 a week, on top of April’s rise of £14 a week. Fuel costs will, according to Jonathan Bradshaw and Antonia Keung at York University, consume an unprecedented 20% of the income of 4.1 million families in October. By May, that figure could rise to 7.4 million. For 2.2 million families, energy bills will take up an unpayable 30% of their income, and this could rise to 3.8 million families by May.Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010 Continue reading...

News of ‘stunning’ attempt to rescind dramatic election night call contained in The Divider, by Peter Baker and Susan GlasserThe Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted the network to withdraw its famous call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, citing pressure from Donald Trump’s campaign and saying the swing state should be “put back in his column”, a new book says.The news is contained in The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, published in the US on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The Russian leader’s fantastical speech shows he recognises that his country is losing its war on UkraineThe Russian president Vladimir Putin’s speech this morning, announcing partial mobilisation and warning of possible retaliation for western actions against Russia, will renew fears of reckless nuclear blackmail. But overall, it should be seen as more reassuring than troubling.The good news here is that Putin’s announcement of emergency measures shows he recognises Russia is losing in its war of imperial expansion. The less good news is that if he believes even a tiny fraction of the lies and fantasies he reeled off during the speech, his grip on reality is even shakier than we previously suspected.Keir Giles works with the Russia and Eurasia programme of Chatham House; he is the author of Russia’s War on Everybody Continue reading...

Judge Raymond Dearie tells ex-president’s lawyers ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’ over reluctance to declare documents’ statusThe independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home said on Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of Trump lawyers’ reluctance to say whether they believed the records had been declassified.“We’re going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Department of Justice in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master. Continue reading...

Wishing to see Trump called to account need not make us champion a 100-year-old statute used to target whistleblowersLiberal pundits and Twitter accounts are cheering the investigation into Donald Trump for holding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. What they may not know is that they are also throwing their support behind one of the most pernicious and terrible laws that exists: the Espionage Act. Holding Trump accountable doesn’t mean we should all become cheerleaders for the often-abused law primarily used to prosecute whistleblowers and threaten journalists.Ever since the 100-year old Espionage Act was cited in the warrant for the search of Trump’s Florida residence, Twitter and cable news are rife with misinformation about the law and what it means. Those clamoring for Trump to be prosecuted under the act are spreading a ton of misleading statements in the process.Trevor Timm is executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation Continue reading...

Democrats hailed the Inflation Reduction Act as a climate crisis victory – so why the secrecy over an oil and gas pipelines bill?As climate change batters America with heatwaves, droughts and floods, lawmakers should be asking a simple question about any bill: does it increase or decrease the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the ecological emergency?Somehow, though, that query is still not being asked right now in Washington, even as Democratic leaders are promising to advance a bill to gut environmental laws and expedite oil and gas pipelines.David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of The Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign speechwriterJulia Rock is a reporter for The Lever Continue reading...

Russian president announces partial mobilisation and makes threats on west, saying ‘we will use all the means at our disposal’. Plus, the Hollywood sign gets a facelift