Trump due in China for high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping | First Thing

The FBI director, Kash Patel, denied under oath recent allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless” during a fiery congressional hearing.

Democrats challenged him over the “extremely alarming” allegations in the Atlantic last month, which they argued would amount to a “gross dereliction” of duty. The FBI director has sued the magazine and the reporter of the article, Sarah Fitzpatrick, for defamation.

• What did the Atlantic allege? It reported that Patel’s alcohol consumption had become “a recurring source of concern across the government”, which made him a “national-security vulnerability”, citing interviews with more than two dozen people including current and former FBI officials. Patel denies all the allegations, calling them “outrageous” and “malicious”.

Nebraska Democratic Senate primary winner says she will drop out to support independent in general election

Democrat Cindy Burbank and the independent, Dan Osborn. Photograph: Cindy Burbank campaign and Getty Images

Cindy Burbank, a Democratic challenger who said she intends to drop out of November’s race for the Senate in Nebraska to clear the way for an independent candidate, has won the state’s Democratic primary.

Burbank ran against William Forbes, who Democrats contend is a Republican plant in the race, with the intent to drop out if she won. Forbes, a pastor who has voted for Trump and opposed access to abortion, is registered as a Democrat.

• What is going on**?** While the state Democratic party endorsed Burbank for the primary, it has backed Dan Osborn, an independent, for the general election. He is seen as the best hope to beat the Republican senator Pete Ricketts in November.

In other news …

A firefighter tries to put out a blaze after an air attack in Dnipro. Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

• Russian forces launched attacks in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday, killing at least six people, regional officials said, after the expiry of a three-day ceasefire on Monday.
• The head of the World Health Organization has told countries to prepare for more hantavirus cases, following the outbreak onboard the MV Hondius and considering the virus’s “long incubation period” of six to eight weeks.
• The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, withstood calls to resign on Tuesday. Starmer’s position has been in peril after a set of damning local election results for his Labour party last week led to multiple ministers resigning.
• More than 110 Nobel laureates have called for the immediate and unconditional release of Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist and Nobel peace prize laureate, after she was transferred to hospital.

Stat of the day: US inflation jumped to 3.8% in April amid war with Iran

The inflation figure is the highest since 2023. Photograph: Richard Levine/Alamy

US inflation jumped to 3.8% in April, according to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as the war in the Middle East continued to drive energy prices and everyday costs for Americans. The inflation figure is the highest since 2023. The Bureau’s energy index increased 17.9% for the 12 months ending April.

Wellness Wednesday: My year trying San Francisco’s most experimental depression treatments

‘In the epicenter of Silicon Valley’s high-octane, experimental culture, I wasn’t alone in my quest to get well.’ Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian

“The Bay Area in the mid-2010s was a petri dish for the wellness industry,” writes the author Carly Schwartz, from ketamine to transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy to fecal analysis. Schwartz wanted a solution for her mental health struggles. “I forged ahead in earnest, sampling every avant garde mental health treatment on the table,” she writes.

Don’t miss this: The 100 best novels of all time. How many have you read?

Spoiler alert: top spot goes to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Illustration: Lisa Sheehan/The Guardian

This week the Guardian is publishing a countdown of the greatest novels ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. Spoiler alert: top spot goes to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. “Anyone who reads this novel cannot come out of it unchanged,” one of the panellists said. Disagree with the list? Tell us your favorites.

Climate check: Trump’s rollback of toxic gas rules limits EPA’s authority to protect public health, analysis says

Recent research has found EtO is about 60 times more carcinogenic than thought when the last regulations were developed in 2006. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s proposals for rescinding 2024 regulations for toxic ethylene oxide (EtO) pollution – part of a broader aim to limit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s authority over hazardous emissions – could result in an increase of 7.8 tons of the carcinogenic gas released per year, according to a Harvard analysis.

Last Thing: Truck gets stuck in hole it was sent to fix

Workers from Stabilised Pavements found their vehicle stuck. Photograph: Jason Bryant/JasonBryant/BNPS

On a rural road in Somerset, England, a truck found itself stuck in the sinkhole it had been sent to fix. Workers were forced to abandon the vehicle after it became trapped at a near 45-degree angle. The name of the company? Stabilised Pavements.

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