President Joe Biden said Thursday that negotiations with Republican lawmakers to raise the U.S. government’s borrowing limit and set future spending levels are going well, while assuring Americans the country will not default on its obligation to pay its bills.

White House budget negotiators continued to talk with representatives of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to sort out the last details of a deal, but no agreement was announced as lawmakers began to leave Washington ahead of the country’s annual Memorial Day weekend.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is not scheduled to return until Tuesday — just two days ahead of June 1, the date Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the government could run out of cash to meet its obligations if the country’s existing $31.4 trillion debt ceiling is not increased so the government can borrow more money. Both the House and Senate need to approve the debt limit increase before Biden can sign it into law.

The focus of the negotiations, Biden said, was on future spending, for the budget year starting in October and beyond. Republicans are trying to sharply curb spending, while the Democratic president and his congressional colleagues are trying to keep as much funding as possible in place for their legislative priorities.

At the U.S. Capitol, McCarthy said he had directed his negotiators “to work 24/7 to solve this problem.” He said that “every hour matters” but that a deal could come together “at any time.” He has repeatedly said the government cannot continue to run up massive deficits totaling about $1 trillion annually, adding to the long-term debt total.

“We have to spend less than we spent last year,” McCarthy said. “That is the starting point.”

A key Democratic lawmaker, Representative Katherine Clark, characterized the negotiations as “a battle between extremism and common sense.” Republicans, she said, “want the American people to make an impossible choice: devastating cuts or devastating debt default.”

The Fitch Ratings agency put the United States’ AAA credit on “ratings watch negative,” warning the government is at risk of a possible downgrade because of what it described as brinkmanship and political partisanship surrounding the debate over lifting the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, including three times under Republican President Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, Fitch said it “still expects a resolution” in the current debt ceiling and budget negotiations.

A Treasury Department statement late Wednesday said the Fitch warning “underscores the need for swift bipartisan action by Congress to raise or suspend the debt limit and avoid a manufactured crisis for our economy.”

A White House statement said the move by Fitch “reinforces the need for Congress to quickly pass a reasonable, bipartisan agreement to prevent default.”

It remained unclear, however, exactly how Biden and Democrats pushing for only relatively modest cuts in government spending and Republicans pressing for steeper ones can get to an agreement, and to what extent the debt ceiling would be increased beyond its current level.

“I will not raise taxes,” McCarthy has said, rejecting a White House proposal to increase taxes on the wealthiest U.S. taxpayers and large corporations. Nor, he said, would he allow a House vote on a measure to raise the debt ceiling without accompanying it with spending cuts.

“Sixty percent of Americans believe we should not raise the debt ceiling without cutting spending,” he said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday the Biden administration says it is possible to reach a “reasonable bipartisan agreement that Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate can move forward with.”

Jean-Pierre said the American people do not want what she called “devastating cuts” sought by Republicans.

“House Republicans have said we need to make these cuts in the name of fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, but that’s not what this is about. That’s never been what this is about for them,” Jean-Pierre said. “Because even as they fight to gut investments in hardworking families, they want to turn around and protect tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and corporations.”

The government reached its existing borrowing limit in January, but the Treasury has adopted “extraordinary measures” since then to keep paying its bills. Without enough new tax receipts flowing into government coffers in the first days of June, the government would then face the difficult choice of which bills to pay.

Officials have warned that a default by the United States, the biggest global economy, could prove catastrophic, roiling the world’s stock markets, forcing job layoffs in the U.S. and hurting the U.S. credit standing, resulting in higher interest rates for borrowers.
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A car crashed Thursday into the gates of Downing Street in central London, where the British prime minister’s home and offices are located, setting off a rapid, intense security response at one of London’s most-fortified sites. 

No one was injured, and police said they were not treating the incident as terror related. Police arrested a man on suspicion of criminal damage and dangerous driving, and local officers, rather than counterterrorism detectives, were handling the investigation. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was in his office at the time of the crash. 

It was not immediately clear whether the crash was deliberate. Video footage posted on social media showed a silver hatchback car heading straight for the gates at low speed across Whitehall, the main thoroughfare in London’s government district. 

“I heard a bang and looked up and saw loads of police with Taser guns shouting at the man,” said witness Simon Parry, 44. “A lot of police vehicles came very quickly and were very quick to evacuate the area.” 

The BBC showed a photo of officers leading away a man with handcuffed hands behind his back. 

Footage shot soon after showed a car with its trunk open up against the tall metal gates. Several police officers minutely inspected the vehicle, removing items from the trunk and inside the car and placing them in evidence bags.  

About two hours after the crash, a car transporter arrived to take the vehicle away. 

Officers cordoned off a wide area of London’s government district, but lifted the barriers less than two hours after the incident took place, allowing people back into Whitehall. The street normally teems with civil servants and tourists keen to see the nearby Houses of Parliament and other historical buildings. 

“A small cordon remains in place outside Downing Street after a car collided with the gates earlier this afternoon,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. “The incident is being dealt with by local officers in Westminster and isn’t currently being treated as terror-related.” 

Downing Street is a narrow street with a row of Georgian houses that includes the prime minister’s official residence at No. 10. 

Public access to the street is restricted and the heavy steel gates are protected at all times by armed police officers. Bollards and metal crowd barriers also help keep threats at bay. 

Seats of power around the world are often magnets for protest and sometimes violent attack. The incident came three days after a man crashed a rented truck into a security barrier outside the White House in Washington, got out and began waving around a Nazi flag. Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, has been charged with damaging U.S. property. 
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Russia and Belarus signed a pact Thursday allowing Moscow to relocate an undisclosed number of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus as Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine enters its 16th month.

The Kremlin says it will maintain control of the shorter-range warheads to be transferred to its ally. It was not announced when the weapons would be sent there but Russian President Vladimir Putin has said storage facilities in Belarus would be completed by July 1.

The U.S. and Western allies have often warned Russia against the use of tactical nuclear warheads in the Ukraine conflict but also said at times they do not believe Moscow was on the verge of doing so.

Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for use in killing enemy troops and destroying armaments on the battlefield. They can be deployed for relatively short-range attacks and have a much lower yield than nuclear warheads fitted to long-range strategic missiles that can wipe out whole cities.

Both Belarusian and Russian officials characterized the transfer of the tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus as a response to Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive to try to retake Russian-controlled territory in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin, in Minsk at a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, said, “Deployment of nonstrategic nuclear weapons is an effective response to the aggressive policy of countries unfriendly to us.”

Shoigu said, “In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere.”

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya blasted the new agreement.

“We must do everything to prevent Putin’s plan to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, as this will ensure Russia’s control over Belarus for years to come,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press. “This will further jeopardize the security of Ukraine and all of Europe.”

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Greek authorities have been caught on film apparently forcing asylum seekers into a life raft and abandoning them at sea. Human rights groups have long accused Athens of such practices. Greece denies carrying out so-called pushbacks and says it has launched an investigation into the video. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Steve Bannon, a one-time advisor to Donald Trump, is set to go on trial on May 27, 2024, on criminal charges over a push to fund the former U.S. president’s signature wall along the U.S. southern border, a New York judge said in a court hearing on Thursday.

New York state prosecutors in Manhattan accuse Bannon of defrauding donors who contributed more than $15 million to the “We Build the Wall” fundraising drive. According to the indictment, Bannon concealed his role in diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars to the drive’s chief executive. 

Bannon, 69, has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, conspiracy and scheming to defraud. 

Justice Juan Merchan at the brief hearing gave Bannon’s lawyers until Oct. 6 to file a possible motion to dismiss the charges. Merchan said he would rule on any such motion at a hearing on April 29. 

Bannon was initially charged over the fundraising push by federal prosecutors in Manhattan but received a presidential pardon from Trump during the final hours of his term. That pardon covered federal but not state charges.

Brian Kolfage, a decorated U.S. Air Force veteran who led the funding push, was sentenced last month to 4-1/4 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of misappropriating funds for the campaign. An associate, Andrew Badolato, was sentenced to three years in prison.  

Another defendant in the case, Timothy Shea, is set to be sentenced on June 13 after his conviction at trial last October. 

Construction of a border wall was a key element of Trump’s hardline immigration policies during his presidency, supported by his fellow Republicans but opposed by Democrats and immigrant advocacy groups.

 
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Art from across Africa is on display in a newly renovated gallery at the Denver Art Museum in the U.S. state of Colorado. VOA’s Scott Stearns shows us what is on display.
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 Many residents of Guam remained without power and utilities Thursday after Typhoon Mawar tore through the remote U.S. Pacific territory the night before and ripped roofs off homes, flipped vehicles and shredded trees.

There were minor injuries reported but no fatalities, according to the governor’s office.

The central and northern parts of the island received more than 2 feet (60 centimeters) of rain as the eyewall passed. The island’s international airport flooded and the swirling typhoon churned up a storm surge and waves that crashed through coastal reefs and flooded homes.

“We are waking up to a rather disturbing scene out there across Guam. We’re looking out our door and what used to be a jungle looks like toothpicks — it looks like a scene from the movie ‘Twister,’ with trees just thrashed apart,” said Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“Most of Guam is dealing with a major mess that’s gonna take weeks to clean up,” he added.

The strongest typhoon to hit the territory of roughly 150,000 people since 2002, Mawar briefly made landfall around 9 p.m. Wednesday as a Category 4 storm at Andersen Air Force Base on the northern tip of the island, weather service officials said.

The scope of the damage was difficult to ascertain early on, with power and internet failures making communication on the far-flung island difficult. Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said in a video message late Thursday morning that roads were passable, but residents should avoid driving and stay home due to ongoing strong winds.

“We have weathered the storm,” Leon Guerrero said, adding that “the worst has gone by.”

As the typhoon crept slowly over the island, it sent solar panels flying and crumbled part of a hotel’s exterior wall to the ground, according to videos posted on social media. At what felt like its peak intensity, the winds screeched and howled like jets, and water swamped some homes.

Leah del Mundo spent the night with her family in their concrete home in Chalan Pago, in central Guam. She told The Associated Press they tried to sleep but were awakened “by violent shaking of the typhoon shutters and the whistling strong winds.”

“It’s not our first rodeo,” she said via text message. “We’ve been through worse. But we brace ourselves for the cleanup, repairs, restoration afterwards.”

Winds peeled back the roof of Enrique Baza’s mother’s house in Yona, allowing water to damage everything inside.

“My mom’s house didn’t escape,” he said, adding that his mother stayed with him in his concrete home during the storm.

He drove around in a pickup truck looking for supplies to repair his mother’s roof, but most stores were without power and only accepting cash. Many wooden or tin homes he passed were badly beaten or collapsed.

“It’s kind of a shock,” he said.

In Tumon, on Guam’s northeastern shore, winds tore a granite countertop from a hotel’s outdoor bar and tossed it into the air. Guests scrambled to stack chairs to brace the doors, and windows buckled and creaked.

“It was like a freight train going on outside,” said Thomas Wooley, who recounted how wind and rain pushed through the aluminum shutters of his family’s concrete home overlooking Tumon Bay. When day broke, he found their outdoor china cabinet toppled and its contents shattered on the ground. A chainsaw-wielding relative helped clear downed branches.

“We’ve got tons of work to do,” Wooley said. “It’s going to take a few days to clean it up.”

Guam’s weather service office in Tiyan said it would shut down operations in the morning for workers to get home to families and assess damage at their homes. Counterparts in the Honolulu office took over their duties.

In a sign of how much help Guam might need, the Navy ordered the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group to head to the island to assist in the recovery effort, according to a U.S. official. The Nimitz, along with the USS Bunker Hill, a cruiser, and the USS Wayne E. Meyer, a destroyer, were south of Japan and expected to arrive in Guam in three or four days, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ship movements not yet made public.

Guam is about 3,800 miles (6,115 kilometers) west of Hawaii and 1,600 miles (1,575 kilometers) east of the Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

By Thursday afternoon, Mawar was centered 135 miles (217 kilometers) northwest of Guam and 150 miles (241 kilometers) west of Rota, Guam’s neighbor to the north, moving west-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph).

Power was also knocked out for all of Rota, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. said late Wednesday. The island has about 2,500 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The storm strengthened to 155 mph (249 kph) winds Thursday and regained its status as a super typhoon, according to the weather service. Mawar, a Malaysian word that means “rose,” was forecast to maintain this intensity for the next two days.

After moving away from Guam, the storm is expected to track generally northwest over a large, empty of expanse of ocean for days, and it could threaten Taiwan next week.

Guam is a crucial hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific, with about 6,800 service members assigned to the island, according to the Pentagon. Military officials evacuated personnel, dependents and employees, sent ships out to sea and moved aircraft off the island or secured them in protective hangars.
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A Lebanese judge has banned the country’s central bank governor Riad Salameh from travelling, days after Beirut received an Interpol Red Notice following a French arrest warrant, a judicial official said Wednesday. 

Salameh has been the target of a series of judicial investigations both at home and abroad on allegations including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud and illicit enrichment, which he denies.   

French investigators suspect that during his three decades as central bank chief, Salameh misused public funds to accumulate real estate and banking assets concealed through a complex and fraudulent financial network.   

On Wednesday, judge Imad Qabalan questioned Salameh and “decided to release him pending investigation, ban him from travelling, and confiscate his Lebanese and French passports,” the official told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.   

Activists say the travel ban on the central bank chief helps shield him from being brought to justice abroad — and from potentially bringing down others in Lebanon’s entrenched political class.   

“The Lebanese judiciary, with the exception of a few judges, has shown that it is not independent. It is biased for politicians who steer it the way they want,” charged lawyer and activist Karim Daher.   

“The corrupt Lebanese regime… has no interest in Salameh being tried abroad and spilling the beans” about the political class’s financial activities, he told AFP.   

Interpol circulated a Red Notice last week after a French magistrate issued a warrant for Salameh, who failed to appear for questioning in Paris before investigators probing his sizeable assets across Europe.   

An Interpol Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant but asks authorities worldwide to provisionally detain people pending possible extradition or other legal actions.   

Lebanon does not extradite its nationals, but Salameh could go on trial in Lebanon if local judicial authorities decide the accusations against him are founded, an official previously told AFP.   

Qabalan asked the French judiciary to refer Salameh’s file to Beirut in order to “determine whether the Lebanese judiciary will prosecute him for the crimes he is accused of in France or not,” the official added.   

Salameh “asked the judge to try him in Lebanon and not to extradite him to France,” the official said. 

Also Wednesday, Germany notified Lebanon’s general prosecutor that it too had issued an arrest warrant for Salameh, the judicial official said, adding that Munich’s public prosecutor would submit the warrant to Interpol shortly.   

Salameh has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and continues to serve as central bank governor. His mandate ends in July.   

In March 2022, France, Germany and Luxembourg seized assets worth $130 million in a move linked to a probe into Salameh’s wealth.   

In February, Lebanon charged Salameh with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of its own investigations.   

The domestic probe was opened following a request for assistance from Switzerland’s public prosecutor looking into more than $300 million in fund movements by Salameh and his brother.   

This year, European investigators have questioned Salameh in Beirut, also hearing from his assistant Marianne Hoayek, his brother Raja, a Lebanese minister and central bank audit firms.   

The judicial official said Wednesday that a judge had notified Raja Salameh and Hoayek that they were due to appear before the French judiciary respectively on May 31 and June 13.   

Since 2019, Lebanon has plunged into an economic crisis deemed by the World Bank as one of the planet’s worst since the mid-19th century.
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As a Chinese envoy continues talks in Europe after meetings in Ukraine, a senior U.S. State Department official said there is not much indication that China is willing to use its influence in Moscow to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. A Czech lawmaker is also skeptical of China’s peacemaking efforts. VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching has more.
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Fitch Ratings has put the U.S. credit rating at risk of downgrade because of the potential that the U.S. government will not be able to come to an agreement to raise its debt limit and be able to pay its bills. 

Fitch said Wednesday it “still expects a resolution” but that there is an increased risk the debt limit will not be raised in time. 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the government could run out of money to meet its obligations, such as interest on government bonds, salaries for federal workers and government contractors and stipends to pensioners, as early as June 1. 

A Treasury Department statement late Wednesday said the Fitch warning “underscores the need for swift bipartisan action by Congress to raise or suspend the debt limit and avoid a manufactured crisis for our economy.” 

A White House statement said the move by Fitch “reinforces the need for Congress to quickly pass a reasonable, bipartisan agreement to prevent default.” 

White House budget officials and House Republican negotiators have been meeting this week as they try to resolve the impasse.  Discussions have involved both increasing the debt limit and trimming future federal spending.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Wednesday that the negotiations were still productive, but days of talks have yet to produce an agreement that both sides believe could win a majority vote in both houses of Congress.    

“I firmly believe we will solve this problem,” McCarthy said. “We’re not going to default.”   

It remained unclear, however, exactly how President Joe Biden and Democrats pushing for only relatively modest cuts in government spending and Republicans pushing for steeper ones could get to an agreement, and to what extent the debt ceiling would be increased beyond its current $31.4 trillion level.    

“I will not raise taxes,” McCarthy said, rejecting a White House proposal to increase taxes on the wealthiest U.S. taxpayers and large corporations. Nor, he said, would he allow a House vote on a measure to raise the debt ceiling without accompanying it with spending cuts.    

“Sixty percent of Americans believe we should not raise the debt ceiling without cutting spending,” he said.    

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that the Biden administration believes it is possible to reach a “reasonable bipartisan agreement that Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate can move forward with.” 

Jean-Pierre said the American people do not want what she called “devastating cuts” sought by Republicans. 

“House Republicans have said we need to make these cuts in the name of fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, but that’s not what this is about. That’s never been what this is about for them,” Jean-Pierre said. “Because even as they fight to gut investments in hardworking families, they want to turn around and protect tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and corporations.”   

The government reached its existing borrowing limit in January, but the Treasury adopted “extraordinary measures” since then to keep paying its bills. Without enough new tax receipts flowing into government coffers in the first days of June, the government would then face the difficult choice of deciding which bills to pay.    

Officials have warned that a default by the United States, the biggest global economy, could prove catastrophic, roiling the world’s stock markets, forcing job layoffs in the U.S. and hurting the U.S. credit standing, resulting in higher interest rates for borrowers.    

The U.S. government has raised its debt ceiling 78 times over several decades, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, and three times under former President Donald Trump.    

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has officially entered next year’s presidential election. But to face the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, President Joe Biden, he will have to vanquish former President Donald Trump. The story from VOA’s chief national correspondent, Steve Herman, at the White House. Videographer: Saqib Ul Islam
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