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First lady Jill Biden, who represented the United States at Saturday's coronation of Britain's King Charles III, said there was “such beauty in the pageantry of the ceremony” and it was “just amazing to see.” “You can't imagine that moment where you actually see the crown being placed on the head of the king and then on the head on the queen,” she said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press after the ceremony in London. “It's really surreal to see and experience that moment.” Charles' wife, Camilla, also was crowned queen during Britain's first coronation in 70 years. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died last September after a seven-decade reign. An American president has never attended a British coronation and President Joe Biden asked the first lady to represent the U.S. in his place. The White House said Jill Biden's appearance marked the first time that a U.S. first lady was present for a British coronation. She brought one of her granddaughters, Finnegan Biden, 24, on the trip. “It's my honor to represent the people of the United States and I wanted to be here,” Jill Biden said. “It was so meaningful to me that I could bring Finnegan here, that we could travel together and experience this together and it's meant a lot to both of us.” The first lady spoke as she and Finnegan headed to afternoon tea following the coronation at Westminster Abbey. “We thought that was something that was so British,” she said of their tea time. “It was something we really wanted to do together.” She said sitting and watching the ceremony led her to think about the importance of traditions. “I felt as I sat there, I felt this sense of decorum and civility that binds together people of all nations,” she said. Read more: Jill Biden in UK for King Charles' coronation, visits No. 10 At the coronation, Jill Biden sat beside Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine. Jill Biden said they talked about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that Zelenska thanked her again for the support from the United States. Jill Biden said she paid close attention to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby's message that people everywhere seek hope and joy. “And I thought that was such strong message because I think that is true,” she said. "And it's true for all people everywhere, but I think it was important at this moment that the clergy brought that in to this moment in history.” The first lady attended a Buckingham Palace reception Friday that was hosted by Charles. She said Charles recounted to her his most recent telephone conversation with President Biden and asked her to “give my best to your husband.” She said she and Princess Kate chatted as mothers about the lengths to which they go to keep their children quiet in church, feeding them pieces of candy and such. “She said she didn't know if her son could sit still for two hours and we just had a good laugh over it,” Jill Biden said. “It's just something, I think, that's common to a lot of us.”

A gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others – three critically – in a shooting at a Dallas-area mall before being fatally shot by a police officer who happened to be nearby, authorities said Saturday. Authorities did not immediately provide details about the victims, but witnesses reported seeing children among them. Some said they also saw what appeared to be a police officer and a mall security guard unconscious on the ground. The shooting was the latest episode of gun violence to strike the country. It sent hundreds of shoppers fleeing in panic. Allen Police said in a Facebook post that nine victims had been taken to hospitals. Medical City Healthcare, a Dallas-area hospital system, said in a written statement it was treating eight between the ages of 5 and 61. Dashcam video that circulated online showed a gunman step out of a vehicle outside the mall and immediately start shooting at people on the sidewalk. More than three dozen shots could be heard as the vehicle recording the video drove off. An Allen Police officer was in the area on an unrelated call when he heard shots at 3:36 p.m., the police department wrote on Facebook. “The officer engaged the suspect and neutralized the threat. He then called for emergency personnel. Nine victims were transported to local hospitals by Allen Fire Department,” the agency wrote in the Facebook post. “There is no longer an active threat.” Mass killings are happening with staggering frequency in the United States this year: an average of about one a week, according to an analysis of The AP/USA Today data. The White House said President Biden had been briefed on the shooting and that the administration had offered support to local officials. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has signed laws easing firearms restrictions following past mass shootings, called it an “unspeakable tragedy.” A crowd of hundreds of people who had been shopping stood outside, across the street from the mall, Saturday evening. Officers circulated among them asking if anyone had seen what happened. Fontayne Payton, 35, was at H&M when he heard the sound of gunshots through the headphones he was wearing. “It was so loud, it sounded like it was right outside,” Payton said. Read more: Police: 5 people killed in shooting at home north of Houston People in the store scattered before employees ushered the group into the fitting rooms and then a lockable back room, he said. When they were given the all-clear to leave, Payton saw the store had broken windows and a trail of blood to the door. Discarded sandals and bloodied clothes were laying nearby. Once outside, Payton saw bodies. “I pray it wasn’t kids, but it looked like kids,” he said. The bodies were covered in white towels, slumped over bags on the ground, he said. “It broke me when I walked out to see that,” he said. Further away, he saw the body of a heavyset man wearing all black. He assumed it was the shooter, Payton said, because unlike the other bodies it had not been covered up. Tarakram Nunna, 25, and Ramakrishna Mullapudi, 26, said they saw what appeared to be three people lying motionless on the ground, including one who appeared to be a police officer and another who appeared to be a mall security guard. Another shopper, Sharkie Mouli, 24, said he hid in a Banana Republic store during the shooting. As he left, he saw what appeared to be an unconscious police officer lying next to another unconscious person outside the outlet store. “I have seen his gun lying right next to him and a guy who is like passing out right next to him,” Mouli said. Stan and Mary Ann Greene were browsing in the Columbia sportswear store when the shooting started. “We had just gotten in, just a couple minutes earlier, and we just heard a lot of loud popping,” Mary Ann Greene told The Associated Press. Employees immediately rolled down the security gate and brought everyone to the rear of the store until police arrived and escorted them out, the Greenes said. Read more: Teenage boy kills 8 children, guard at school in Belgrade Eber Romero was at the Under Armour store when a cashier mentioned that there was a shooting. As he left the store, Romero said, the mall appeared empty, and all the shops had their security gates down. That is when he started seeing broken glass and people who had been shot on the floor. Video shared on social media showed people running through a parking lot while gunfire could be heard. More than 30 police cruisers with lights flashing were blocking an entrance to the mall, with multiple ambulances on the scene. A live aerial broadcast from the news station showed armored trucks and other law enforcement vehicles stationed outside the sprawling outdoor mall. Ambulances from several neighboring cities responded to the scene. The Dallas office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded. Allen, a suburb about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of downtown Dallas, has roughly 105,000 residents.

America’s employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising resilience despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. The jobless rate fell in part, though, because 43,000 people left the labor force, the first drop since November, and were no longer counted as unemployed. In its report Friday, the government noted that while hiring was solid in April, it was much weaker in February and March than it had previously estimated. Job gains for those months was downgraded by a combined 149,000. And hourly wages rose last month at the fastest pace since July, which may alarm the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve. April’s hiring gain compares with 165,000 in March and 248,000 in February and is still at a level considered vigorous by historical standards. The job market has remained durable despite the Fed’s aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes over the past year to fight inflation. Layoffs are still relatively low, job openings comparatively high. Job growth was particularly strong last month among health care companies, restaurants and bars and a broad category that includes managers, administrators and technical support workers. In one sign of the benefits of a consistently tight job market, Black unemployment dipped in April to 4.7% — the lowest such level in government records dating to 1972. Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself sounded somewhat mystified this week by the job market’s durability. He and other Fed officials have expressed concern that a robust job market exerts upward pressure on wages and prices. They hope to achieve a so-called soft landing — cooling the economy and the labor market just enough to tame inflation yet not so much as to trigger a recession. Most economists doubt that the Fed will succeed and expect a recession to begin sometime this year. Last month, the proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one — the so-called labor force participation rate — was unchanged at 62.6%. The Fed would like to see labor participation grow: More people in the job market would likely put downward pressure on pay growth and help contain inflation. Average hourly wages rose by 0.5% from March to April, nearly twice what economists had expected. “Wage pressures on inflation are proving persistent,’’ Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings, wrote in a research note. “And with the participation rate failing to improve, this jobs report will not convince the Fed that they are on top of inflation.” The ever-higher borrowing costs the Fed has engineered have weakened some key sectors of the economy, notably the housing market. Pounded by higher mortgage rates, sales of existing homes were down a sharp 22% in March from a year earlier. Investment in housing has cratered over the past year. America’s factories are slumping, too. An index produced by the Institute for Supply Management, an organization of purchasing managers, has signaled a contraction in manufacturing for six straight months. Even consumers, who drive about 70% of economic activity and who have been spending healthily since the pandemic recession ended three years ago, are showing signs of exhaustion: Retail sales fell in February and March after having begun the year with a bang. The Fed’s rate hikes — 10 consecutive increases since March 2022 — are hardly the economy’s only serious threat. Congressional Republicans are threatening to let the federal government default on its debt, by refusing to raise the limit on what it can borrow, if Democrats don’t accept sharp cuts in federal spending. A first-ever default on the federal debt would shatter the market for U.S. Treasurys — the world’s biggest — and possibly cause an international financial crisis. The global backdrop already looks gloomier. The International Monetary Fund last month downgraded its forecast for worldwide growth, citing rising interest rates around the world, financial uncertainty and chronic inflation. Since March, America’s financial system has been rattled by three of the four biggest bank failures in U.S. history. Worried that jittery depositors will withdraw their money, banks are likely to reduce lending to conserve cash. Multiplied across the banking industry, that trend could cause a credit crunch that would hobble the economy.

Jill Biden has celebrated the athletic grit of wounded service members with Prince Harry, discussed the value of early childhood education with Princess Kate and sipped tea poured by Queen Elizabeth II. Now the first lady is back in London for another royal engagement. President Joe Biden has dispatched his wife to represent the United States at Saturday's coronation of King Charles III, the late queen's eldest son. No American president has ever attended a British coronation. While in London, she's engaging in a bit of soft diplomacy before the big event. Her first stop in Friday's drizzle was a familiar place: No. 10 Downing St., for her first meeting with Akshata Murty, the wife of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Murty greeted Biden with an embrace and a kiss on each cheek. “Welcome, welcome!” she said, before turning to shake hands with Finnegan Biden, one of the first lady's granddaughters. Afterward, Jill Biden and Murty met at the Downing Street residence with military veterans and their families participating in a health and wellness program. The sun had come out by the time the pair arrived at the cafeteria at Charles Dickens Primary School in the Borough area of London to meet with students who were wearing golden paper crowns as they participated in coronation-related activities. She told them to “have fun tomorrow.” The first lady will also visit the U.S. Embassy to greet staff before ending her day at a reception the king is hosting at Buckingham Palace. On Saturday, Jill Biden will represent the United States at the coronation at Westminster Abbey, seated among several hundred heads of state, royals from other nations and other guests who were invited to watch Charles and his wife, Camilla, be crowned king and queen. Afterward, she will attend a reception hosted by U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley. Jill Biden will also mingle at a luncheon Sunday hosted by Sunak and Murty at their Downing Street residence before her flight back to Washington. President Biden has received some criticism for skipping the coronation, though the White House cites the precedent of a U.S. president never attending for his decision. But the president and Charles are hardly strangers. They have chatted each other up at global climate events since Biden took office, and during the queen's funeral last year. They also spoke in April when Biden called to say he was sending the first lady to the coronation, and the president expressed interest in meeting with the king in the United Kingdom at a future date, the White House said at the time. First ladies often stand in for presidents when they can't be present. “I love seeing the first lady as our representative and I would have been thrilled for any first lady to attend,” said Lindsay Reynolds, who was first lady Melania Trump's White House chief of staff. “I don't think it is a slight in any way for the president to not be attending.” Jill Biden was just 2 years old when Charles' mother, Elizabeth, was crowned in June 1953. The queen held the throne for seven decades until her death last September at age 96. The first lady tweeted before her flight Thursday that "it's an honor to represent the United States for this historic moment and celebrate the special relationship between our countries.” Most modern-era first ladies, including Jill Biden, have engaged with members of the British royal family because the late queen had met every American president since Eisenhower, except for Lyndon Johnson. Biden was the 13th and final U.S. leader to meet the queen. They saw each other when he visited England in 2021 with his wife to participate in a Group of Seven world leader summit. At the time, the queen also invited the Bidens to have tea with her at Windsor Castle. Jill Biden told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after the queen's death that sitting in her living room was like being with one's grandmother. “And she said, ‘Let me pour the tea,’ and we said, ‘No, no, let us help,’ and she said ‘Oh, no, no, no, I’ll get this. You sit down,’” the first lady said. “And it was just a very special moment with a very special woman.” During that trip, she and Prince William's wife, Kate, met for the first time at a preschool in southwest England where they participated in a roundtable discussion on the role of early childhood education in life outcomes. They also learned about caring for bunny rabbits. The first lady also has met William’s brother, Prince Harry, several times through their work and support of military veterans. She has joined Harry for the Invictus Games, an athletic competition he founded for wounded or sick military veterans.

The US Federal Reserve voted unanimously on Wednesday to hike interest rates by a quarter point, the ninth rate hike since the central bank began combating inflation in March. The move comes amid persistent banking sector weakness, worsened in part by increasing interest rates, and after the collapse of three local banks, reports CNN. The quarter-point increase raises the federal funds rate to 5%-5.25%, the highest level in more than 15 years, it said. The Federal Reserve’s post-meeting statement re-emphasized the central bank's commitment to lowering inflation, but it did not contain the preceding release's remark that “some additional policy firming may be appropriate.” This absence raises the prospect of a future slowdown in interest rate hikes. Concerning the timing of that pause, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell stated during his post-meeting press conference that the central bank would "approach that question at the June meeting." Powell stated that support for the interest rate hike was "very strong across the board," although there was some debate about ultimately stopping rate hikes, the CNN report also said. “People did talk about pausing, but not so much at this meeting. There’s a sense that we’re much closer to the end of this than to the beginning,” Powell said. “If you add up all the tightening that’s going on through various channels, we feel like we’re getting close or maybe even there, but again that is going to be an ongoing assessment.” This discussion among Federal Reserve members may heat up in the coming weeks as borrowing becomes more difficult and the US economy approaches the widely anticipated recession. Powell, on the other hand, voiced some confidence about the US economy's resiliency, citing a sharp decline in jobs available without a large increase in the unemployment rate, added the report. There were 9.59 million job openings in March, down from a high of 12 million in March 2022, and the unemployment rate has not risen beyond 3.7% since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates last year.

The U.S. Secret Service said Monday it blocked a Muslim mayor from Prospect Park, New Jersey, from attending a White House celebration with President Joe Biden to belatedly mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Shortly before he was set to arrive at the White House for the Eid-ul-Fitr celebration, Mayor Mohamed Khairullah said he received a call from the White House stating that he had not been cleared for entry by the Secret Service and could not attend the celebration where Biden delivered remarks to hundreds of guests. He said the White House official did not explain why the Secret Service had blocked his entry. Khairullah, 47, informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations after he was told he would not be allowed to attend the event. The group has called on the Biden administration to cease the FBI's dissemination of information from what is known as a Terrorist Screening Data Set that includes hundreds of thousands of individuals. The group informed Khairullah that a person with his name and birthdate was in a dataset that CAIR attorneys obtained in 2019. Khairullah was an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump's travel ban that limited entry to the U.S. of citizens from several predominantly Muslim countries. He also has travelled to Bangladesh and Syria to do humanitarian work with the Syrian American Medical Society and the Watan Foundation. "It left me baffled, shocked and disappointed," Khairullah said in a telephone interview as he made his way home to New Jersey on Monday evening. "It's not a matter of I didn't get to go to a party. It's why I did not go. And it's a list that has targeted me because of my identity. And I don't think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling." U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was not allowed into the White House complex, but declined to detail why. Khairullah was elected to a fifth term as the borough's mayor in January. "While we regret any inconvenience this may have caused, the mayor was not allowed to enter the White House complex this evening," Guglielmi said in a statement. "Unfortunately we are not able to comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House." The White House declined to comment. Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of CAIR, called the move "wholly unacceptable and insulting." "If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?" Maksut said. Khairullah said he was stopped by authorities in 2019 and interrogated at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York for three hours and questioned about whether he knew any terrorists. The incident happened when he was returning to the United States after a family visit to Turkey where his wife has family. On another occasion, he said he was briefly held at the U.S.-Canada border as he traveled back into the country with family. The group said Khairullah helped the New Jersey Democratic Party compile names of local Muslim leadership to invite to the White House Eid celebration and over the weekend was a guest at an event at the New Jersey governor's mansion. Khairullah was born in Syria, but his family was displaced in the midst of the government crackdowns by Hafez al-Assad's government in the early 1980s. His family fled to Saudi Arabia before moving to Prospect Park in 1991. He has lived there since. He became a U.S. citizen in 2000 and was elected to his first term as the town's mayor in 2001. He also spent 14 years as a volunteer firefighter in his community. Khairullah said he made seven trips to Syria with humanitarian aid organizations between 2012 and 2015 as a civil war ravaged much of the country. "I am Syrian and you know it was very difficult to see what we saw on TV and and social media, and not respond to help people," he said. "I mean we felt very helpless."  

A windstorm in central Illinois kicked up dangerous clouds of blinding dust off farm fields Monday, causing numerous crashes that killed at least six people on Interstate 55, police said. The late morning crashes involved 40 to 60 cars and multiple tractor-trailers, two of which caught fire, Illinois State Police Maj. Ryan Starrick said. He said at least six people died, all in the northbound lanes, and more than 30 people on both sides of I-55 were transported to hospitals with injuries. “The only thing you could hear after we got hit was crash after crash after crash behind us,” said Tom Thomas, 43, who was traveling south to St. Louis. I-55 was shut down in both directions in Montgomery County, 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of St. Louis, and likely won't reopen until Tuesday. Starrick told reporters that it was a spring version of a “whiteout situation” typically seen in winter snowstorms. Gov. J.B. Pritzker described the scene as “horrific.” “The cause of the crashes is due to excessive winds blowing dirt from farm fields across the highway, leading to zero visibility,” Starrick said. Dairon Socarras Quintero, 32, who was driving to St. Louis to make deliveries for his custom frame company based in Elk Grove Village, said that after his truck hit the vehicle in front of him, he exited and moved to the side of the road to ensure his safety, then returned after the chain reaction of crashes ended behind him. Socarras Quintero said the dust continued to blow ferociously as he checked on other motorists and emergency personnel arrived. He held up his backpack, which was caked with dust even though it was inside a closed truck cab. Winds at the time were gusting between 35 mph (56 kph) and 45 mph (74 kph), the National Weather Service said. “It's very flat, very few trees," meteorologist Chuck Schaffer said. “It's been very dry across this area really for the last three weeks. The farmers are out there tilling their fields and planting. The top layer of soil is quite loose.” Evan Anderson, 25, who was returning home to St. Louis from Chicago, said a semi turned before striking his vehicle, sparing him from even more damage. “You couldn’t even see,” Anderson said. “People tried to slow down and other people didn’t, and I just got plowed into. There were just so many cars and semitrucks with so much momentum behind them.” Kevin Schott, director of emergency services in Montgomery County, said it was a “very difficult scene” and one that’s “very hard to train for.” “We had to search every vehicle, whether they were involved in the accident or just pulled over, to check for injuries,” he said, adding that people were "upset — visibly so, understandably so.” Authorities set up staging areas away from the crash site to help travelers reunite with friends and family.  

President Joe Biden scrapped expedited asylum screenings during his first month in office as part of a gutting of Trump administration border polices that included building a wall with Mexico. Now he is preparing his own version. Donald Trump’s fast-track reviews drew sharp criticism from internal government watchdog agencies as the percentage of people who passed those “credible fear interviews” plummeted. But the Biden administration has insisted its speedy screening for asylum-seekers is different: Interviews will be done exclusively by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, not by Border Patrol agents, and everyone will have access to legal counsel. The decision to use fast-track screenings comes as COVID-19 asylum restrictions are set to expire on May 11 and the U.S. government prepares for an expected increase in illegal crossings from Mexico. The Texas border cities of El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville have declared local states of emergency in recent days to prepare for the anticipated influx. Normally, about three in four migrants pass credible fear interviews, though far fewer eventually win asylum. But during the five months of the Trump-era program, only 23% passed the initial screening, while 69% failed and 9% withdrew, according to the Government Accountability Office. Those who get past initial screenings are generally freed in the United States to pursue their cases in immigration court, which typically takes four years. Critics say the court backlog encourages more people to seek asylum. To pass screenings, migrants must convince an asylum officer they have a “significant possibility” of prevailing before a judge on arguments that they face persecution in their home countries on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group. Under the Biden administration’s fast-track program, those who don’t qualify will be deported “in a matter of days or just a few weeks,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday. The expedited screenings will be applied only to single adults, Mayorkas said. Despite the administration’s assurances that people will have access to legal services, some immigrant advocates who were briefed by the administration are doubtful. Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, noted that advocates were told attorneys would not be allowed inside holding facilities. The Trump administration used fast-track reviews from October 2019 until March 2020, when it began using a 1944 public health law known as Title 42 to expel immigrants on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The speedy screenings were among Trump-era immigration polices that Biden rolled back in a February 2021 executive order. Unlike the Trump administration, the Biden administration won’t limit migrants to just one phone call. But it’s unclear how many calls U.S. authorities can facilitate, especially if there is no answer and attorneys call back, Hawkins said. Screenings initially will be limited to Spanish-speaking countries to which the U.S. has regular deportation flights, according to Hawkins and others briefed. The administration began limited screening this month in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, and later expanded to large tents in other border cities, including San Diego; Yuma, Arizona; and El Paso, Texas. Migrants will get a video presentation to explain the interview process. Mayorkas, a former federal prosecutor, didn’t speak in detail about access to legal counsel in remarks Thursday about a broad strategy that, in addition to the screenings, includes processing centers in Guatemala, Colombia and potentially elsewhere for people to come legally to the U.S. through an airport. “We have expanded our holding capacity and set up equipment and procedures so that individuals have the ability to access counsel,” Mayorkas said. The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general took issue with lack of legal representation under Trump’s expedited screening. There were four cordless phones for migrants to share when screenings began in El Paso. Guards took them to a shack to consult attorneys. Phone booths were later installed but didn’t have handsets for safety reasons, forcing migrants to speak loudly and within earshot of people outside, the inspector general said. Facilities built under Biden are more spacious with plenty of phone booths, according to people who have visited. “There are rows of cubicles, enclosed,” said Paulina Reyes, an attorney at advocacy group ImmDef who visited a San Diego holding facility in March. The administration has not said how many attorneys have volunteered to represent asylum-seekers. Hawkins said officials told advocates they are reaching out to firms that offer low- or no-cost services to people in immigration detention centers. Erika Pinheiro, executive director of advocacy group Al Otro Lado, which is active in Southern California and Tijuana, Mexico, said she has not been approached but would decline to represent asylum-seekers in expedited screenings. They arrive exhausted and unfamiliar with asylum law, hindering their abilities to effectively tell their stories. “We know what the conditions are like. We know people are not going to be mentally prepared,” she said. The Biden administration aims to complete screenings within 72 hours, the maximum time Border Patrol is supposed to hold migrants under an agency policy that’s routinely ignored. It’s a tall order. It currently takes about four weeks to complete a screening. Under Trump’s expedited screenings, about 20% of immigrants were in custody for a week or less, according to the GAO. About 86% were held 20 days or less. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has identified 480 former asylum officers or those with training to assist about 800 on the expedited screenings, said Michael Knowles, a spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees Council 119, which represents asylum officers. Despite the staffing surge, Knowles said officers worry about the pace of the work, “like an assembly line, ‘hurry up, hurry up,’ when you have lives at stake.” “All hands will be on this deck for the foreseeable future,” Knowles said. “We don’t know how long.”  

President Joe Biden is set to host President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines for White House talks Monday as concerns grow about the Chinese navy’s harassment of Philippine vessels in the South China Sea. Marcos’ visit to Washington comes after the U.S. and the Philippines last week completed their largest war drills ever and as the two countries’ air forces on Monday will hold their first joint fighter jet training in the Philippines since 1990. The Philippines this year agreed to give the U.S. access to four more bases on the islands as the U.S. looks to deter China’s increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea. Meanwhile, China has angered the Philippines by repeatedly harassing its navy and coast guard patrols and chasing away fishermen in waters that are close to Philippine shores but that Beijing claims as its own. Before departing for Washington on Sunday, Marcos said he was “determined to forge an ever stronger relationship with the United States in a wide range of areas that not only address the concerns of our times but also those that are critical to advancing our core interests.” Monday’s Oval Office meeting is the latest high-level diplomacy with Pacific leaders by Biden as his administration contends with increased military and economic assertiveness by China and worries about North Korea’s nuclear program. Marcos’ official visit to Washington is the first by a Philippine president in more than 10 years. The U.S. president last week hosted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for a state visit during which the two leaders introduced new steps aimed at deterring North Korea from launching an attack on its neighbors. Biden is scheduled to travel to Japan and Australia in May. The two sides are expected to discuss the security situation and come out with new economic, education, climate and other initiatives as part of Marcos’ four-day visit to Washington, according to two senior Biden administration officials. The officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to preview the leaders’ meeting, said the White House will use the visit to announce the transfer of three C-130 aircraft and coastal patrol vessels to the Philippines, a new U.S. trade mission focused on increasing American investment in the Philippines’ innovation economy, new educational programing and more. Increased Chinese harassment of vessels in the South China Sea has added another dimension to the visit. On April 23, journalists from The Associated Press and other outlets were aboard the Philippine coast guard’s BRP Malapascua near Second Thomas Shoal when a Chinese coast guard ship blocked the Philippine patrol vessel steaming into the disputed shoal. The Philippines has filed more than 200 diplomatic protests against China since last year, at least 77 since Marcos took office in June. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Saturday called media reporting on the encounters a “stark reminder” of Chinese “harassment and intimidation of Philippine vessels as they undertake routine patrols within their exclusive economic zone.” “We call upon Beijing to desist from its provocative and unsafe conduct,” Miller said. U.S. and Taiwanese officials have also been unnerved by recent critical comments by China’s ambassador to the Philippines, Huang Xilian, over the Philippines granting the U.S. military increased access to bases. Huang at an April forum reportedly said the Philippines should oppose Taiwan’s independence “if you care genuinely about the 150,000 OFWs” in Taiwan, using the acronym for overseas Filipino workers. China claims the self-ruled island as its own. The Philippines, like the U.S., has a “One China” policy that recognizes Beijing as the government of China but allows informal relations with Taiwan. Marcos has not explicitly said that his country would assist the United States in any armed contingency in Taiwan. The officials described Huang’s comments as one of many recent provocative actions by the Chinese to put pressure on the Philippines. The locations of three of the four new bases are concerning to Beijing — two are in the Isabela and Cagayan provinces, which face north toward Taiwan. A third, in Palawan, is near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. One official said that Marcos still desires to work closely with both Washington and Beijing but that he “finds himself in a situation” in which “the steps that China is taking are deeply concerning.” Close U.S.-Philippines relations were not a given when Marcos took office. The son and namesake of the late Philippines strongman had seemed intent on following the path of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who pursued closer ties with China. Before Marcos took office last year, Kurt Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the White House National Security Council, acknowledged that “historical considerations” could present “challenges” to the relationship with Marcos Jr. It was an oblique reference to long-standing litigation in the United States against the estate of his father, Ferdinand Marcos. A U.S. appeals court in 1996 upheld damages of about $2 billion against the elder Marcos’ estate for the torture and killings of thousands of Filipinos. The court upheld a 1994 verdict of a jury in Hawaii, where he fled after being forced from power in 1986. He died there in 1989. Biden and Marcos met in September during the U.N. General Assembly, where the U.S. president acknowledged the two countries’ sometimes “rocky” past. During their private meeting, Biden, a Democrat, stressed to Marcos his desire to improve relations and asked Marcos how the administration could “fulfill your dreams and hopes” to do that, according to the senior administration official. Marcos is also slated to visit the Pentagon, meet Cabinet members and business leaders and make remarks at a Washington think tank during his visit.

Regulators seized troubled First Republic Bank early Monday and sold all of its deposits and most of its assets to JPMorgan Chase Bank in a bid to head off further banking turmoil in the U.S. San Francisco-based First Republic is the third midsize bank to fail in two months. It is the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history, behind only Washington Mutual, which collapsed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis and was also taken over by JPMorgan. First Republic has struggled since the March collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and investors and depositors had grown increasingly worried it might not survive because of its high amount of uninsured deposits and exposure to low interest rate loans. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said early Monday that First Republic Bank's 84 branches in eight states will reopen as branches of JPMorgan Chase Bank and depositors will have full access to all of their deposits. Regulators worked through the weekend to find a way forward before U.S. stock markets opened. Markets in many parts of the world were closed for May 1 holidays Monday. The two markets in Asia that were open, in Tokyo and Sydney, rose. "Our government invited us and others to step up, and we did," said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. As of April 13, First Republic had approximately $229 billion in total assets and $104 billion in total deposits, the FDIC said. At the end of last year, the Federal Reserve ranked it 14th in size among U.S. commercial banks. The FDIC estimated its deposit insurance fund would take a $13 billion hit from taking First Republic into receivership. Its rescue of Silicon Valley Bank cost the fund a record $20 billion. Before Silicon Valley Bank failed, First Republic had a banking franchise that was the envy of most of the industry. Its clients — mostly the rich and powerful — rarely defaulted on their loans. The bank has made much of its money making low-cost loans to the wealthy, which reportedly included Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Flush with deposits from the well-heeled, First Republic saw total assets more than double from $102 billion at the end of 2019's first quarter, when its full-time workforce was 4,600. But the vast majority of its deposits, like those in Silicon Valley and Signature Bank, were uninsured — that is, above the $250,000 limit set by the FDIC. And that worried analysts and investors. If First Republic were to fail, its depositors might not get all their money back. Those fears were crystalized in the bank's recent quarterly results. The bank said depositors pulled more than $100 billion out of the bank during April's crisis. San Francisco-based First Republic said that it was only able to stanch the bleeding after a group of large banks stepped in to save it with $30 billion in uninsured deposits. Since the crisis, First Republic has been looking for a way to quickly turn itself around. The bank planned to sell off unprofitable assets, including the low interest mortgages that it provided to wealthy clients. It also announced plans to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce, which totaled about 7,200 employees in late 2022. Investors remained skeptical. The bank's executives have taken no questions from investors or analysts since the bank reported its results, causing First Republic's stock to sink further. And it's hard to profitably restructure a balance sheet when a firm has to sell off assets quickly and has fewer bankers to find opportunities for the bank to invest in. It took years for banks like Citigroup and Bank of America to return to profitability after the global financial crisis 15 years ago, and those banks had the benefit of a government-aided backstop to keep them going.