MEMPHIS, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 23, 2023--

Housing prices in Sweden have resumed a decline as the Nordic nation’s economy is in a recession and

TL;DR: Snag a 16-foot set of 20 LED colored crystal ball solar lights for just

With the US government just weeks away from being legally unable to pay its bills for the first time, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet at the White House on Tuesday. The meeting is an attempt to break what has become an economy-threatening logjam over Republican demands for Mr Biden to endorse rolling back large swaths of his legislative record. The Oval Office confab will be the first face-to-face sit-down between the two men since 1 February, when Mr Biden and the House Speaker met for what the White House described as a “frank and straightforward dialogue”. This time, the president and speaker will be joined by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. After their last meeting, Mr McCarthy told reporters outside the West Wing that the meeting with Mr Biden that the meeting left him hopeful that he and the president could “find common ground”. It was the first meeting the California Republican had with the president since he won the speaker’s gavel after a week-long marathon of 15 separate ballots. Mr McCarthy also said he’d told Mr Biden that he wanted to hammer out an agreement that would see the GOP-controlled House vote to raise the US statutory debt limit “long before” the June deadline laid out by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Ms Yellen notably warned in January that the Treasury had begun taking “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on the nation’s sovereign debt. Since that February meeting, the White House and the House of Representatives have remained far apart on what is needed before legislation allowing the US to resume issuing new debt instruments can reach Mr Biden’s desk for his signature. For his part, the president’s view has remained consistent since the beginning of the year. Mr Biden has repeatedly said that Congress should pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase and negotiate on spending cuts desired for next fiscal year when Congress begins work on a budget. Mr McCarty, who only gained the Speaker’s gavel after promising far-right members of the House Republican Conference that he’d weaponise the debt limit to extract massive cuts to programs favoured by Democrats, is insisting that he and House Republicans have provided a solution to the problem with what the House calls the “Limit, Save and Grow Act”. That legislation, which passed the House with a bare majority of GOP votes last month, would provide just a year’s worth of relief coupled with spending provisions that slash non-defence spending by as much as 20 per cent. Among the programmes on the chopping block: President Joe Biden’s student debt relief initiative, as well as funding for new IRS personnel. The plan would also add new work requirements for adults on Medicaid, cap the growth of the federal government, and impose 2022 limits on discretionary spending. The White House said in response to the bill’s passage that Republicans were attempting to “strip away health care services for veterans, cut access to Meals on Wheels, eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans and ship manufacturing jobs overseas”. While the House-passed bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, thus far Mr McConnell and Senate Republicans have backed up Mr McCarthy’s demand for Mr Biden to sign off on GOP-endorsed austerity measures in exchange for Republican votes to allow the US to continue paying its’ debts. Prominent GOP figures frequently claim that raising the statutory debt limit to enable the US to continue meeting financial obligations — a practice that was once routine under presidents of both parties and met no objections when it was done under Mr Biden’s predecessor — is akin to authorising new spending. That claim, however, is not how the debt limit works. Raising the debt limit does not increase or decrease the amount of money that is spent on programmes that have already been authorised by Congress and have had funds allocated to them in appropriations legislation. Experts say a failure to raise the debt limit would force the government to default on its debt and precipitate a worldwide financial crisis. The last time the US flirted with that disastrous outcome was 2011, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. Mr Biden, then the vice president under Barack Obama, led the negotiations with congressional leaders that headed off a default, but not before the US had its credit rating decreased for the first time in history. That 2011 dispute ended with Republicans suffering a drop in their approval ratings and facing accusations of endangering the US economy for political reasons. It also came along with an unprecedented downgrade in America’s credit rating. Those same charges are being raised again now by the White House and the president’s allies in Congress, who are holding firm on Mr Biden’s call for a clean debt limit boost. With both sides as far apart as they were three months ago, it’s unclear whether the White House expects Tuesday’s congressional confab to end with any positive progress on ending the impasse and preventing a default. One clue as to what Mr Biden’s advisers may be thinking can be found in the president’s travel schedule. The White House has said Mr Biden will travel to New York on Wednesday for what it describes as remarks on “why Congress must avoid default immediately and without conditions, and how the House Republican Default on America Act will cut veterans’ health care visits, teachers and school support staffs, and Meals on Wheels for seniors”. White House aides have also refused to describe the Tuesday meeting as a negotiating session. At Monday’s daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary reiterated the president’s position opposing any negotiations and demanding a clean debt ceiling increase. “There shouldn't be negotiations on the debt on the debt limit. This is something that they should get to regular order and get to work on. We should not have our House Republicans manufacturing a crisis on something that has been done 78 times since 1960. This is their constitutional duty, Congress must act. That's what the President is going to make very clear with with the leaders tomorrow,” she said.

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 9, 2023--

The United States rebounded from their first defeat of the Basketball World Cup to demolish Italy on Tuesday and reach the semi-finals, while Serbia...

New York Jets coach Robert Saleh said the team would welcome the return of Aaron Rodgers this season if doctors agree the 39-year-old superstar quarterback has recovered from the ruptured Achilles he suffered in...

Raven Software released Season 4: Mercenaries of Fortune on Wednesday, giving fans a glimpse at the mass amount of content.

The 2023/24 Premier League season is under way and you can follow every game and every goal right here with The Independent. This year sees Manchester City try to defend their crown and claim a historic fourth title in succession. Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering City, who also won the Champions League and FA Cup last season, will have to see off Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and the rest to claim an unprecedented sixth league title in seven years. Meanwhile Luton Town are making their first appearance in the Premier League, having risen from non-league in an incredible decade of progress. They followed Championship winners Burnley and second-placed Sheffield United in earning promotion to the top flight. Follow the latest action from the Premier League below.

Art fans have been left convinced of “time travel” after spotting what they're claiming to be an “iPhone” in a piece of art from 1882. The 19th-century image shows the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns holding a rectangular item in a piece of art by the artists R. Josey and James Archer. It is titled The Betrothal of Burns and Highland Mary and depicts the poet and his love, Mary Campbell, as they declare their love for one another. In the engraving, Burns is dressed in outdoor clothing with a hat in one hand and his coat draped over his arm. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The other hand appears to be holding the object which he is handing to Campbell, who stands barefoot across the River Ayr from him. Josey and Archer’s engraving pre-dates the invention of the iPhone by around 125 years, with London beginning the operation of the world’s first coal-fired public electricity generating station at the time. But, while the device certainly resembles an early-generation iPhone, there is a simpler explanation that does not involve time travel. When Burns and Campbell declared their love for one another, they signified the moment with the tradition of exchanging Bibles across a running stream. Their plans to marry were formed in 1786 over the river in west Scotland with the ancient tradition, suggesting that the object depicted is a religious book, not a time-travelling iPhone. It’s not the first time a modern-day item has been spotted in an early piece of art after a “Nike trainer” was supposedly seen in a painting from the 17th century. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Elon Musk has told advertisers to “go f*** yourselves” if they try to pull marketing from X. The chief executive of the platform, formerly known as Twitter, suggested that companies were attempting to “blackmail” him by threatening to pull ads. Mr Musk has faced criticism in recent days over a tweet that led to accusations of antisemitism. Many of the world’s biggest companies and the site’s biggest advertisers pulled their marketing from his platform in response. He initially said that he was “sorry” for the tweet and denied any suggestion he was antisemitic. But he also said that any advertisers who pulled marketing because of that tweet should “go f*** yourselves”. “Don’t advertise,” he said at the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit. “If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*** yourself. Go f*** yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.” At one point he added the words “Hey Bob,” an apparent reference to Robert Iger, chief executive of Walt Disney, which pulled ads on X. Billionaire Elon Musk told advertisers that have fled his social media platform X over antisemitic content to “go fuck yourself” in a fiery Wednesday interview. His profanity-laced remarks followed a moment of contrition in a New York Times DealBook Summit interview, as he first said “I’m sorry” for a tweet that agreed with an anti-Jewish post on X on Nov. 15. Musk has faced a torrent of criticism since he on Nov. 15 agreed with a user who falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth.” On Wednesday Musk said he had “handed a loaded gun” to detractors, describing his post as possibly the worst he had made during a history of messages that included many “foolish” ones. The “Great Replacement” theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a “white genocide.” Musk‘s post drew condemnation from the White House for what it called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” Following the post, major U.S. companies including Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal parent Comcast suspended their ads on X. A report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters precipitated the advertiser exit, which said it found ads next to posts that supported Nazism. The platform filed a lawsuit last week against Media Matters for defamation. In the wake of the condemnation, Musk traveled to Israel and toured the site of Hamas’ assault in the country on Oct. 7. On Monday, he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday in a live-streamed conversation on X. Musk on Wednesday said the trip had been planned before his message and was “independent” of the issue. Musk in Israel said he is against antisemitism and anything that “promotes hate and conflict” and stated that X would not promote hate speech. “The fact that you came here speaks volumes of your commitment to try to secure a better future,” Netanyahu told Musk during the conversation. The two men previously met at Tesla’s headquarters in California in September to discuss the merits and dangers of advanced artificial intelligence. During the conversation, which took place shortly after Musk attacked the Anti-Defamation League, Netanyahu urged the billionaire to strike a balance between the protection of free speech online and fighting hate speech. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Elon Musk mocked for trying to resurrect QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy Elon Musk set to meet Netanyahu and hostage families in Israel Elon Musk weighs in on Dublin riots claiming country’s PM ‘hates the Irish people’ Elon Musk’s antisemitic comments have pushed X advertisers over the edge Musk files defamation suit against Media Matters over Nazi X post claims OpenAI staff ‘threaten to quit over ousting of Sam Altman’

CASTRIES, Saint Lucia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 4, 2023--