Good morning.
Joe Biden and the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, have held a “productive” phone call on the continued impasse over the debt ceiling and promised to meet today after the president returned to Washington.
McCarthy, speaking to reporters after the call, said there were positive discussions on solving the crisis and that staff-level talks were set to resume later on Sunday.
Asked if he was more hopeful after talking to the president, McCarthy said: “Our teams are talking today and we’re … meeting tomorrow. That’s better than it was earlier. So, yes.”
Biden, who arrived back at the White House late yesterday evening after his trip to Japan, said the call with McCarthy had gone well. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he added.
Speaking from the G7 summit in Japan on Sunday, Biden said he would be willing to cut spending together with tax adjustments to reach a deal, but that the latest offer from Republicans on the ceiling was “unacceptable”.
What will happen if a deal isn’t struck? Less than two weeks remain until the 1 June deadline, upon which the Treasury department has said the federal government could be unable to pay all its debts. Without raising the debt limit, the US government will default on its bills, a historic first, with likely catastrophic consequences. Federal workers would be furloughed, global stock markets would crash and the US economy would probably drop into a recession.
US and Papua New Guinea sign security agreement amid Pacific militarisation concerns
The US has signed a new security pact with Papua New Guinea amid concerns inside the country about increasing militarisation as the US competes with China for influence in the Pacific.
The state department said the agreement would provide $45m to help improve security cooperation, including protective equipment for the PNG defence force, plus help in mitigating the effects of climate change, tackling transnational crime and HIV/Aids.
But a draft copy of the defence cooperation agreement leaked last week sparked concern in PNG about the extent of US military involvement in the country, with reports it gives US personnel and contractors legal immunity, allows aircraft, vehicles and vessels operated by or on behalf of the US to move freely within its territory and territorial waters and exempts US staff from all migration requirements.
Students at several universities have held protests at campuses against the signing of the agreement, amid concern it would upset China.
What has PNG’s prime minister said? James Marape denied that US staff would have legal immunity and said no amendments would be made to the constitution or laws of the country. He said the country faced significant security challenges. “I need to strengthen and protect my country’s borders and ensure the safety of my people,” he said. “So this has nothing to do with geopolitics, this cooperation will strengthen our defence and help build our capacity.”
Bakhmut remains ‘epicentre’ of combat, Ukraine’s armed forces say
Fighting is continuing in Bakhmut, Ukraine’s armed forces have said in their morning update, after Russia claimed to have completed the “liberation” of the eastern city over the weekend. Ukrainian officials rejected the claims.
“[In Bakhmut] the enemy continues to lead offensive actions. Fighting for the city of Bakhmut continues,” the armed forces said, adding that over the past day Russian forces had “unsuccessfully tried to recover lost positions south of the [nearby] settlement of Ivanivske”. Russia had also carried out airstrikes on Bakhmut.
It has been impossible to verify the conflicting statements over the devastated city, which has assumed symbolic importance as a measure of which side has the resilience to prevail in the war overall.
Confusion has reigned over the situation in Bakhmut after the Russian claim, which cannot be verified independently. Ukrainian officials said they still had a foothold in the city and were encircling it, while the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said at a G7 summit in Hiroshima on Sunday: “Bakhmut is not occupied by Russian Federation as of today. There are no two or three interpretations of this.”
What else happened at the G7 summit? The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not meet at the G7 summit. Lula da Silva said he was “upset” they did not manage to meet, adding his Ukrainian counterpart seemed uninterested in negotiating peace with Russia.
Why is China upset? Beijing has accused the G7 nations of collaborating to “smear and attack” China, after the weekend summit issued a communique that warned Beijing over its “militarisation activities” in the Asia-Pacific region. After the summit, China summoned the Japanese ambassador to register an official protest, and warned the UK to stop “slandering” the country to avoid further damage to bilateral relations.
In other news …
A documentary about the lives of three women living under the Taliban, co-produced by Jennifer Lawrence, has premiered at the Cannes film festival. Bread and Roses follows three Afghan women in the weeks after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 after the withdrawal of US troops.
The FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation police are investigating the fatal shooting of a tribal member by US border patrol agents in southern Arizona. Raymond Mattia was shot by agents after calling them for assistance after finding a number of migrants had trespassed into his yard.
Stella Assange has said the life of her husband, Julian Assange, is “in the hands of the Australian government” as she pleaded for Canberra to do more to influence the US to stop the pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder, who has been waiting behind bars in London under threat of extradition to the US for 1,500 days.
A Gurkha soldier veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan has achieved mountaineering history after reaching the top of Mount Everest. Hari Budha Magar made it to the summit of the world’s tallest mountain at 3pm on Friday having started the climb on 17 April – exactly 13 years since he lost his legs after an IED explosion.
Don’t miss this: ‘There was all sorts of toxic behaviour’: Timnit Gebru on her sacking by Google, AI’s dangers and big tech’s biases
‘It feels like a gold rush,” says Timnit Gebru. “In fact, it is a gold rush. And a lot of the people who are making money are not the people actually in the midst of it. But it’s humans who decide whether all this should be done or not. We should remember that we have the agency to do that.”
Gebru is talking about her specialised field: artificial intelligence. The Ethiopian-born computer scientist, who was the co-leader of Google’s small ethical AI team, lost her job after pointing out the inequalities built into AI. But after decades working with technology companies, she knows all too much about discrimination.
Climate check: How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’
Deep in the Mojave desert, a sparkling blue sea shimmers on the horizon. Visible from the I-10 highway, it is an improbable sight: a deep blue slick stretching for miles across the Chuckwalla Valley, forming an endless glistening mirror. But something’s not quite right. Closer up, the water’s edge appears pixelated, with the look of a low-res computer rendering, like frozen waves. Over the last few years, this swathe of desert has been steadily carpeted with one of the world’s largest concentrations of solar power plants, forming a sprawling photovoltaic sea. On the ground, the scale is almost incomprehensible. The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone – the ground zero of California’s solar energy boom – stretches for 150,000 acres, making it 10 times the size of Manhattan. But experts warn environmental damage means it is ‘solving one problem by creating others’.
Last Thing: Couple who helped Koreans stranded in US blizzard feted as heroes in Seoul
A US husband and wife who sheltered 10 South Korean travelers in their home during a deadly snowstorm last Christmas have gone to Seoul and been feted as heroes. Alexander and Andrea Campagna went to South Korea’s capital as part of a 10-day tour of the city organized as a token of gratitude for the husband and wife who opened up their home in Buffalo, New York, to strangers in need. “To see everyone in Korea again is such a blessing,” Andrea Campagna, 43, told reporters in Seoul in reference to those whom she and her husband aided. “They ended up in the right place at the right time. Now we have people we can call friends for a lifetime.”
The blizzard on 23 December that brought together the Campagnas and their newfound Korean friends was brutal. Officials said more than 22in of snow fell in Buffalo that day, and 40 people died for reasons linked to the blizzard, which the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, memorably described as “a war with Mother Nature”.
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