Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said policymakers expect interest rates will need to move higher to reduce US

The LSU Tigers baseball team has star pitcher Paul Skenes and... a bunch of alcoholic fans, apparently. They're in college -- can you blame them?The LSU Tigers are on track to make a finals appearance in the College World Series this year, and their fans couldn't be happier. They witne...

Britain will back fast-tracking Ukraine’s Nato membership as momentum builds among Western allies to significantly change their stance over Kyiv’s attempts to join the alliance. Volodymyr Zelensky’s government may have a quick route to accession, as has been granted recently to Sweden and Finland, rather than continuing with the slower Membership Action Plan (MAP) that has preconditions for entry. Russia is adamantly opposed to Ukraine joining Nato, and even after Vladimir Putin’s invasion there has been reticence among member states over the speed of Kyiv’s accession. But as the war enters its 16th month, the position of Western allies appears to be changing. Britain’s foreign secretary James Cleverly told the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London on Wednesday: “We have seen Ukraine evolve, and evolve quickly. “Many of the requirements of the Membership Action Plan are actually being delivered. The reform of their armed forces are happening whilst engaged in conflict and I think the UK’s position is that it would be very supportive if we moved on from the Membership Action Plan. “We recognise that the offer to both Sweden and Finland did not require MAP. The Ukrainians have demonstrated their commitment to military reform required for Nato membership through their actions on the battlefield, and I think all Nato allies recognise that.” Also speaking at the conference, the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, commented: “Perhaps we don’t require the MAP mechanism, something which was planned in 2008. We are now a long way from 2008; time has passed, the situation is quite different.” The United States has been cautious about Ukraine’s Nato membership, with Joe Biden saying recently that his administration would not “make it easy” for Kyiv to join. “They have got to meet the same standards [as other entrants], that is our position,” he said. “I think it will happen, can happen, but it won’t be automatic.” However, senior White House officials indicated the president is “open to” waiving the MAP requirement for Ukraine, and Washington is facing mounting pressure from European allies to give firmer backing to Zelensky on the issue. Krisjanis Karins, the Latvian prime minister, said: “The only chance for peace in Europe is when Ukraine will be in Nato.” Failure to do so, she said, means “Russia will come back.” Nato membership for Ukraine is seen as a deterrent to Moscow from continuous attacks and attempts in the future to carry out regime change in Kyiv. A member can invoke Article 5, under which an attack on one member by an outside power is regarded as an attack on all Nato states. However, it is precisely this prospect of Nato getting directly into war with Moscow that is cited in support of making Ukraine wait until the current conflict has ended. Ukraine will be the key topic at next month’s Nato summit in Vilnius, one of the most important in its recent history. It remains unlikely that Ukraine will be offered immediate membership. The options being considered include guarantees that Western military support will continue, and that the Nato-Ukraine Commission, launched in 1997, will be upgraded to Nato-Ukraine Council, with a higher level of engagement. It will be a symbolic as well as practical move; in 2002, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia became a partner in the Nato-Russia Council but that ended with the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 2014. Meanwhile, Britain has set out a package of support for Ukraine including $3 billion in guarantees for World Bank loans and $ 305 million in bilateral assistance. The US said it will send an additional $ 1.3 billion in financial assistance to overhaul Ukraine’s energy grid and modernise other critical infrastructure. Read More Ukraine-Russia war – live: Putin claims nuclear-capable Satan 2 missiles ready for combat in ‘near future’ Zelensky: ‘Eyes of the world’ are on West’s support for Ukraine Japan's Kishida says he will attend NATO leaders' summit, stresses need for dialogue with China The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

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Success breeds success and England legend Rachel Yankey believes that the momentum from the Lionesses’ Euros crown can carry them at the World Cup despite a host of big-name absentees. Skipper Leah Williamson will miss the showpiece Down Under through injury, as will Beth Mead and Fran Kirby. It is the biggest concern for Sarina Wiegman’s squad as they look to add the global success to the European title they memorably claimed on home soil. But Yankey, who won 129 caps in a 16-year international career, has backed the team to use their experience of going all the way in 2022 to make up for the losses of established leaders. “Obviously they are missing players, which is disappointing for those individuals, but you want them to come back the fittest and strongest so you don’t want to rush them back for a massive tournament,” said Yankey, who has been assigned as a ‘Confidence Coach’, a move by Gatorade which comes in response to new data revealing that over four in ten (41%) parents believe that a lack of confidence and self-esteem are barriers which prevent teens from taking up sport. “What it is, is an opportunity for other players to really be involved in a key tournament, whether that is to gain experience or be a big part of it. “I think the squad would have learned so much from the Euros, there are different ranges of age within the squad, there are a lot of experienced players, so I think that they will be fine. “They can draw on their experiences, there is a lot of resilience within the players in that squad and I think there is good leadership and good youth. Fingers crossed they can go far. “For the players that weren’t there last year, they can look around that changing room and see so many different faces that were involved and played big parts in moments within the squad. Anybody that has been there and done it, and obviously the manager has done it twice, I think you can believe and have trust, you can settle people’s nerves by looking around and sharing experiences. “I don’t think there is just one leader in that England team. Collectively, that is their strong point. I think it will come down to how well they gel off the pitch and I’m sure they are going to do a fantastic job because they can look back on their previous experiences.” One noticeable aspect of the England squad named by Wiegman was the inclusion of just two Black players, Jess Carter and Lauren James. That is a continuation of a theme that was evident at the Euros, when Carter and Nikita Parris were the only Black players to get onto the pitch for England. The FA are aware of the issue, with Wiegman stressing that work is being done to change the make-up of the squad, while admitting it will not happen overnight. For Yankey, at one point England’s most capped footballer of either gender, and a trailblazer for Black women’s footballers, part of that trend may be due to the increased organisation of football. “There’s many different barriers that are leading to why young girls from all different backgrounds are not taking up the sport or not staying in the sport, or not getting the same opportunities to play the sport,” added Yankey, who delivered a moving Team Talk at the Gatorade’s 5v5 all-female tournament in Eindhoven, an annual five-a-side competition for 14- to 16-year-olds that featured nine female teams from across the Netherlands who all fought hard to qualify for the final and represent their local communities on a global stage. “One of the things that relates straightaway, when I think back to when I played football as a kid, I used to go out of my front door and with two boys across the road, we would go to the bottom of the street and play football. You don’t see people do that anymore. We used to go to the park and play football, you don’t really see people do that anymore. “We used to play unorganised football where we would create our games and make up our own skills. Everything is very organised at the moment and everything has a cost. “In the final years of my playing and even after retiring, I think more and more people have told me how important I was to them. Things that I didn’t necessarily think about, the way I used to have my hair braided, the colour of my skin. For some people, just the fact that I was a woman playing football. “At an early age, I understood that there was a role to play when you are playing for Arsenal and playing for England, you don’t want to let people down. But I didn’t really understand how deeply it could go into my gender and obviously my race. They weren’t things I thought about, that was really helping other people. We need more people to be going out and playing football, we need more people from different backgrounds. We need to be highlighting the game and to get more players.” Read More ‘Go get them’: William visits Lionesses to wish them good luck ahead of World Cup England World Cup goalkeeper set to leave WSL side this summer Ella Toone ‘ready and prepared’ for World Cup summer with England Qatar World Cup workers suffered ‘human rights abuses’, new Amnesty report finds Fifa accused of lying about environmental impact of Qatar World Cup Why Fifa is right about stand-off with Women’s World Cup broadcasters

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Donald Trump issued pardons and commuted dozens of sentences for people incarcerated for drug crimes while he was in the White House. His administration also hailed the passage of the First Step Act during his presidency as a rare bipartisan achievement towards criminal justice reform. But during his presidency, and throughout his 2024 campaign for the Republican nomination for president, with a string of violent, provocative statements from inside the White House and to crowds at campaign rallies, he has called for executing people convicted for drug crimes. In an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier that aired on 20 June, the host noted that Mr Trump’s demands to kill drug offenders would have applied to people like Alice Marie Johnson, a high-profile formerly incarcerated person who was pardoned by Mr Trump during an Oval Office event in 2020. “She’d be killed under your plan,” Mr Baier said. “Huh?” Mr Trump said after a pause. “No, no, no. Oh, under that? Uh, it would depend on the severity,” he said. “She can’t do it, OK? By the way, if that was there? She wouldn’t be killed, it would start as of now. So you wouldn’t go to the past.” He also stated that Ms Johnson would not have committed any crime, if she knew that a potential sentence, if convicted, was her death. In 2020, one day after she praised his administration during the Republican National Convention, Mr Trump granted a full pardon to Ms Johnson, who had served 22 years of a life sentence on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering. He had already commuted her sentence in 2018, but he issued a surprise pardon – effectively deleting her conviction and restoring her rights as a citizen – the day after she delivered a supportive speech at the RNC. “We’re going to give a full pardon. We’re going to do it right now. That means you have been fully pardoned. That’s the ultimate thing that can happen. That means you can do whatever you want in life and just keep doing the great job you’re doing,” he told her during an Oval Office event. Kim Kardashian had also personally lobbied him to take up her case at the White House. “Some say you do the crime, you do the time. However, that time should be fair and just,” Ms Johnson said during her RNC speech in 2020. “We all make mistakes. None of us wants to be defined forever based on our worst decision.” Republican officials and right-wing pundits have relied on “tough-on-crime” messaging – after 2020 uprisings against police violence, a steady stream of sensational crime coverage across media networks, and the villainizing of so-called “progressive prosecutors” in Democratic-led cities. GOP candidates competing with Mr Trump for the 2024 nomination are now turning to the former president’s attempts at criminal justice reform, zeroing in on Mr Trump’s support for the First Step Act. The law shortened some federal prison sentences, gave judges alternatives to mandatory minimum penalties, and retroactively applied 2010’s Fair Sentencing Act to eliminate racial disparities in prison sentences for cocaine possession. Ron DeSantis called the First Step Act a “jailbreak bill.” Mr Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence said “we need to take a step back” from the law. Meanwhile, after praising China’s policy of capital punishment for drug traffickers while he was in the White House, Mr Trump has directly called on members of Congress to approve the death penalty for the same crimes in the US in his 2024 campaign. “Under Democrat [sic] control the streets of our great cities are drenched in the blood of innocent victims,” Mr Trump said at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania weeks before formally declaring his candidacy last year. “We would solve that problem so fast” he added. “I’m calling on Republicans and Democrats immediately to institute – to get to Washington and institute the death penalty for drug dealers. You will no longer have a problem.” Mr Trump’s push to execute drug dealers would appear to violate the US Constitution as affirmed by the US Supreme Court, which has held on multiple occasions that death sentences for non-lethal offences are considered cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment. Read More Trump news – live: Judge sets Mar-a-Lago classified papers trial date as Hunter Biden reaches plea deal Trump calls Fox News ‘hostile’ as he declines to commit to first GOP debate on network Donald Trump helped release drug prisoners. Now he wants to execute them