Joe Biden calls inflation his ‘top domestic priority’ but blames Covid and Putin – as it happened

President says he understands American’s frustration with Democrats, who control all three branches of government: ‘I don’t blame them’

After his remarks, Biden lingered at the podium to take a few questions on the topic of inflation. (He dismissed off-topic questions, including one about abortion rights.)

Asked whether he believed his agenda was to blame or had contributed to rising costs, he said his policies have “helped not hurt” the economy.

Americans have a choice right now between two paths, reflecting two very different sets of values. My plan attacks inflation and grows the economy by lowering the costs for working families, giving workers well-deserved raises, reducing the deficits by historic levels, and making big corporations and the very wealthiest Americans pay their fair share. The other path is the ‘ultra-MAGA’ plan put forward by Congressional republicans to raise taxes on American families , lower the income of American workers, threaten sacred programs Americans count on like social security, medicare and medicaid, and give break after break to big corporations and billionaires just like they did the last time in power when their top priority was the reckless $2tn tax cut the majority of that going to the wealthiest Americans which ballooned the deficit and not a penny of it was paid for,” the president said.

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Man charged with murder in alleged scheme to inherit his mother’s fortune

The man was rescued after his boat sank in 2016 but his mother was not. Investigators found the boat had been tampered with

A man found floating on a raft off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016 after his boat sank was charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with killing his mother at sea to inherit the family’s estate.

The eight-count indictment released in federal court in Burlington, Vermont, also says Nathan Carman shot and killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of an effort to defraud insurance companies, but he was not charged with that killing.

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Ex-Honduran leader seeks to subpoena Biden, Trump and Obama in drugs case

Former president Juan Orlando Hernández’s also suggests he may seek testimony from Mexican drug lord El Chapo in New York trial

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández has pleaded not guilty in a New York court to drug and weapons charges as his lawyer pledged to subpoena three former US presidents – and an imprisoned Mexican drug lord – to testify in his defence.

Hernández, who was extradited last month, wore shackles round his ankles at his arraignment in Manhattan on Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty to three criminal counts, including conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons possession.

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Pro-choice group claims arson attack on Wisconsin anti-abortion office

Madison police investigate attack on Wisconsin Family Action after claim by group calling itself Jane’s revenge

Federal agents and detectives from the Madison police department are investigating a claim by a pro-choice group that it was behind a weekend arson attack on an anti-abortion office in Wisconsin.

The headquarters of Wisconsin Family Action in Madison was attacked in the early hours of Sunday, with a molotov cocktail thrown through a window, starting a small fire, and graffiti spray-painted on an exterior wall. Nobody was hurt.

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Judge rules chef Mario Batali not guilty of sexual misconduct

Batali’s accuser has filed a lawsuit against him that remains pending despite the verdict

Celebrity chef Mario Batali has been cleared of sexual misconduct after a criminal trial in Boston.

A woman had accused Batali of forcibly kissing and groping her while taking a selfie at a restaurant in 2017. Batali’s lawyer argued that the Boston assault never happened and said the accuser had a financial incentive to lie about the encounter.

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John Kerry warns a long Ukraine war would threaten climate efforts

Exclusive: US presidential envoy says limiting global heating to 1.5C could be made harder by conflict

The longer the war in Ukraine carries on, the worse the consequences will be for the climate, the US presidential envoy John Kerry has warned.

Many countries are struggling with an energy crisis while also urgently needing to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global heating to 1.5C, he said.

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Former Guantánamo prisoner on trial in France for extremism

Saber Lahmar has been charged with encouraging jihadists to fight for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

An Algerian preacher who spent eight years in the US-run Guantánamo Bay prison has gone on trial in France for allegedly encouraging several young men to join the Islamic State group.

Saber Lahmar, a 52-year-old Algerian released by the US in 2008 and taken in afterwards by France, has been charged with encouraging jihadists to head to Iraq and Syria to fight for the extremist group in 2015.

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Beijing accuses US of ‘political manipulation’ in latest Taiwan row

State department fact sheet amended to remove line saying US ‘does not support Taiwan independence’

Beijing has accused Washington of “political manipulation” and attempting to change the status quo after the US state department quietly amended its website to remove a line stating it did not support Taiwanese independence.

In a delicate geopolitical balancing act, the US has long acknowledged, but not supported, China’s claim to Taiwan under its version of the “one China principle”. However, experts say that policy has been eroded as Beijing has become more assertive.

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Putin could use nuclear weapon if he felt war being lost – US intelligence chief

Avril Haines says Russian leader could see prospect of Ukraine defeat as existential threat, potentially triggering escalation

Vladimir Putin could view the prospect of defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime, potentially triggering his resort to using a nuclear weapon, the top US intelligence official has warned.

The warning on Tuesday came in an assessment from intelligence chiefs briefing the Senate on worldwide threats. The prediction for Ukraine was a long, gruelling war of attrition, which could lead to increasingly volatile acts of escalation from Putin, including full mobilisation, the imposition of martial law, and – if the Russian leader felt the war was going against him, endangering his position in Moscow – even the use of a nuclear warhead.

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Andy Warhol’s famed Marilyn Monroe portrait sells for record $195m at auction

The Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is one of a series made after the actor’s death in 1962 and has become the ‘pinnacle of American pop’

Andy Warhol’s famed 1964 silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe has sold for $195m at auction, setting a new a record for a work by an American artist.

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is one in a series of portraits Warhol made of the actress following her death in 1962 and has since become one of pop art’s best-known pieces.

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Writer’s essay on why she plagiarized her book removed for … plagiarism

Jumi Bello’s essay was briefly published on the Literary Hub website until it was revealed she had again lifted material

An author’s online essay on why she used plagiarized material in a novel pulled earlier this year has itself been removed after editors found she had again lifted material.

Jumi Bello’s essay, I Plagiarized Parts of My Debut Novel. Here’s Why appeared just briefly Monday on the website Literary Hub. Bello’s debut novel, The Leaving had been scheduled to come out in July, but was cancelled in February by Riverhead Books.

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Ex-pro wrestling star ‘Sunny’ charged in DUI crash that killed Florida man

Toxicology test confirmed Tamara Lynn Sytch had blood-alcohol level three times over the legal limit at time of the accident

A member of the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame crashed into and killed a man while driving drunk in central Florida earlier this year, authorities said.

Tamara Lynn “Sunny” Sytch caused the wreck that killed Julian Lasseter on 25 March but it was not until later that a toxicology test confirmed the 49-year-old former pro wrestling personality had a blood-alcohol level more than three times over the legal limit at the time of the accident, police said in a statement to the Guardian on Monday.

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Senate Democrats aim to reveal which Republicans oppose abortion ahead of midterms – live

Nancy Pelosi has assailed Republicans in her weekly “Dear Colleague” letter to fellow Democrats, saying once Roe v Wade abortion protections are overturned, basic human rights will be next.

In the missive, the House speaker says it is “urgent and essential” that Democrats share with the American public the “dangers of the Republican agenda” in the wake of the supreme court’s draft ruling ending almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections:

Republican state legislators across the country are already advancing extreme new laws, seeking to arrest doctors for offering reproductive care, ban abortion entirely with no exceptions, and even charge women with murder who exercise their right to choose.

These draconian measures could even criminalize contraceptive care, in vitro fertilization and post-miscarriage care, dragging our nation back to a dark time decades into the past.

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Washington Post wins public service Pulitzer for Capitol attack coverage

Paper beat out two other finalists, the New York Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Washington Post has won the 2022 Pulitzer prize for public service journalism, for The Attack, its account of the deadly assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January 2021.

The paper beat two other finalists: the New York Times, for challenging official accounts of US military engagements in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, for an exposé of electrical fires in city rental operations.

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Second set of human remains found in receding Lake Mead waters

The shrinking reservoir in Las Vegas gave up its second discovery just a week after a barrel was found containing a man’s body

Authorities in Nevada have recovered another set of human remains from Lake Mead as a devastating drought has depleted the massive reservoir outside Las Vegas.

Two sisters paddle boarding in the lake on Saturday spotted the bones, which they initially thought were the remains of a bighorn sheep.

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Jill Biden makes unannounced visit to Ukraine and meets first lady

Surprise trip on Mother’s Day as Biden meets with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenskiy

US first lady Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine on Sunday, holding a surprise Mother’s Day meeting with the nation’s first lady, Olena Zelenskiy, as Russia presses its punishing war in the eastern regions.

US president Joe Biden has not visited the country, though he expressed a desire to when he was in Poland this spring, following Russia’s invasion in February, but at that time Russian tanks were advancing on the capital, Kyiv, and he hinted that his security advisers held him back.

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Gillibrand calls abortion rights ‘fight of generation’ after ‘bone-chilling’ court draft opinion

New York Democrat urges her party to stand up to concerted efforts from Republicans seeking to abolish constitutional right

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday called the battle over abortion rights in the US the “biggest fight of a generation”.

The New York Democrat urged her party to stand up to Republicans seeking to abolish the constitutional right, and called the draft US supreme court opinion leaked last week, revealing a conservative-leaning super-majority supports overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, “bone-chilling”.

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US unveils new sanctions on Russia, targeting services, media and defense industry

New measures are primarily intended to close loopholes in existing sanctions and to tighten the noose around Russian economy

The US has unveiled a new layer of sanctions on Russia, targeting services, Russia’s propaganda machine and its defence industry on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s planned Victory Day parade.

The new measures were announced as leaders from the G7 group of industrialised democracies held a virtual summit with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a show of solidarity.

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Clothes, shoes, passports: migrants forced to dump possessions at US-Mexico wall

Personal belongings left behind, including files and passports that could prove crucial in processing claims

In Yuma, south-west Arizona, just a short distance from a gap in the 30-foot-high border barrier between the US and Mexico, Fernando “Fernie” Quiroz collects piles of shoes, shoelaces and clothing from the dirt road and carries them to a large red dumpster already overflowing with personal belongings.

Every day, hundreds of people arrive at gaps in this stretch of border wall to request political asylum from uniformed federal border agents who stand waiting under a rudimentary metal shade structure in the Sonoran desert heat.

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British scientist says US anti-abortion lawyers misused his work to attack Roe v Wade

Giandomenico Iannetti, a pain expert at UCL, angrily denies that his research suggests foetuses can feel pain before 24 weeks

A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationally in America.

Giandomenico Iannetti said his research, which used imaging to understand the adult brain’s response to pain, had been wrongly interpreted to make an anti-abortion argument.

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