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Prosecutors allege more than a million Medicare recipients had their information stolen and used by the defendants for fraudulent claims

US federal prosecutors charged 11 people on Friday in a Russia-based scheme to bilk Medicare – the American health insurance program for the elderly and disabled – out of $10.6bn through fraudulent billing for expensive medical equipment.

The “transnational criminal organization” orchestrated a “multi-billion-dollar health care fraud and money laundering scheme” that included purchasing dozens of medical equipment companies from prior legitimate owners to perpetrate the fraud, according to the indictment dated 18 June.

More than a million Medicare recipients had their personal information stolen and used by the defendants to file for billions of dollars in claims from Medicare and its supplemental insurers, prosecutors said in the filing.

Feeling stalled in life in the face of economic obstacles, young Chinese consumers are finding comfort in “small indulgences” such as milk tea and Labubu figurines.

Young people in China may not be buying cars or houses, but there’s always money for milk tea and toys.

It’s a challenging time to be a young person in China: The world’s second-biggest economy is growing far slower than it was when their parents were their age, with the U.S.-China trade war threatening to further weigh on growth. Competition for jobs is cutthroat and monthly youth unemployment stands at about 15% on average, with Chinese universities churning out a record 12.22 million new graduates this year.

Feeling “besieged” in life in the face of these economic obstacles, young Chinese consumers at home and abroad are finding comfort in smaller purchases.

Within hours of the ruling, which curbs nationwide injunctions, challengers filed new court papers seeking to block Trump's plan via a different legal avenue.

Almost as soon as the Supreme Court released its ruling limiting the ability of judges to block Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship, challengers brought new legal claims seeking the same result by a different means.

While the court on Friday said judges cannot issue sweeping "universal injunctions" that can apply nationwide in many cases, it left open the option of plaintiffs seeking broad relief via class action lawsuits.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed such a lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of immigrants whose children may not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth if Trump's order were to go into effect.

In a separate case in Maryland, in which groups had obtained a nationwide injunction, lawyers filed an amended complaint seeking similar class-wide relief for anyone affected by Trump's plan within hours of the ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Exclusive: Operation Wedlock lasted up to 20 years and took MI5 teams across world amid panic about ‘another Philby’

Britain’s spy chiefs were forced to launch one of the most sensitive and risky investigations since the cold war over fears a senior officer at the foreign intelligence service MI6 was a double agent for Russia.

The extensive hunt for the alleged mole, called Operation Wedlock, was run by MI6’s sister agency, MI5, which deployed a team of up to 35 surveillance, planning and desk officers, who travelled across the world.

One trip took an entire surveillance team to the Middle East for more than a week, the Guardian has been told, where the officers were put up in a CIA safe house. This trip was particularly hazardous, it’s understood, because the officers travelled to the country without the knowledge of its government, and would have been illegal under international law.

As the supreme court upends precedent again and again, the liberal justices reveal the divisions within the legal body

On Friday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered an acidic sermon against the court’s 6-3 decision to end lower courts’ practice of issuing nationwide injunctions to block federal executive orders, reading her dissent directly from the bench in a move meant to highlight its importance.

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” states Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

Edward Coristine, 19, has been given a job at Social Security Administration after quitting Elon Musk’s ‘department’

Edward Coristine – the 19-year-old who quit Elon Musk’s controversial so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) earlier this week, where he gained notoriety in part for having used the online moniker “Big Balls” – has in fact been given a new government job, this time at the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Coristine, whose lack of experience and super-loyalty to Musk saw him become a flashpoint for outrage at Doge’s ruthless but haphazard efforts to slash government spending and fire thousands of workers, resigned from Doge earlier this week.

However a spokesperson for the SSA, Stephen McGraw, told Wired magazine that Coristine was now working for that department.

The Supreme Court on Friday handed a significant victory to Donald Trump - and future American presidents - when curbing lower courts' power to block executive orders.

Trump was beaming as he addressed reporters at the White House briefing room podium, calling it a "big, amazing decision" which the administration is "very happy about".

The court's decision not only impacts Trump's birthright citizenship order, but also emboldens him to enact many of his other policy actions that have been temporarily thwarted by similar injunctions.

Johnny Noviello was detained by US immigration in Florida over a 2023 conviction and died while awaiting deportation

Authorities in Canada are seeking information about the death of a 49-year-old Canadian man who died while in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody in Florida this week.

In a statement, Ice, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said Johnny Noviello, 49, died on 23 June after being found unresponsive at a federal detention center in Miami, where he was being detained “pending removal proceedings” from the US.

Noviello is the ninth person to die in Ice custody this year, and the fourth to die in a Florida facility, according to the Miami Herald.

The case grew out of a conservative religious challenge to the approval of HIV prevention treatments that insurers are required to provide at no cost to patients.

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to an Affordable Care Act provision that set up a panel to recommend preventive care services that insurers must provide at no cost to patients.

The court, split 6-3, ruled in favor of the Trump administration, which was defending the law, saying the task force members are lawfully appointed under the Constitution's appointments clause.

The task force members are under the supervision of the health and human services secretary, a position held by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which addresses any concerns that it is not accountable to the executive branch, the court found in an opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Three conservative justices dissented.

The Supreme Court on June 27 upheld a Texas law requiring pornographic websites verify users are at least 18, in a case that pitted concerns about protecting minors against worries about violating the First Amendment rights of adults.

The court split 6-3 along ideologically grounds with the three liberal justices dissenting.

Eighteen other, largely conservative states have enacted similar laws in recent years as access toa growing cache of online pornography has exploded and the material has become more graphic.

The Trump administration wants to end automatic birthright citizenship as enshrined in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to take steps to implement its proposal to end automatic birthright citizenship, handing a major win to the government.

The court granted a request by the Trump administration to narrow the scope of nationwide injunctions imposed by judges so that they apply only to states, groups and individuals that sued. That means the birthright citizenship proposal can likely move forward at least in part in the states that challenged it as well as those that did not.

The court was divided on ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.

Madonna ‘Donna’ Kashanian, 64, was taken by plainclothes officers from her home in New Orleans

A 64-year-old Iranian woman, who has lived in the US for 47 years, was detained by immigration agents on Sunday morning while gardening outside her home in New Orleans.

According to a witness, plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles handcuffed Madonna “Donna” Kashanian and transported her to a Mississippi jail before transferring her to the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, reports Nola.

Kashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran. Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met.