Good morning.
The Ukrainian government has accused Russia of blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, and called for people living downstream to evacuate in the face of catastrophic flooding.
As aerial footage circulated on social media, showing most of the dam wall washed away and a massive surge of water heading downstream, the army’s southern operational command put up a Facebook post, accusing “Russian occupation troops” of blowing up the hydroelectric dam.
The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said that about 16,000 people were in the “critical zone” on the Ukrainian-controlled right bank of the river. He said people were being evacuated for districts upstream of Kherson city and would be taken to bus to the city and then by train to Mykolaiv, and to other Ukrainian cities, Khmelnytskyi, Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, and Kyiv.
The disaster happened on the second day of Ukrainian offensive operations likely to mark the early stages of a mass counteroffensive. It could affect any Ukrainian plans for an amphibious assault across the river.
How big is the dam? The dam traverses Ukraine’s enormous Dnipro River, holding back a huge reservoir of water. The dam is 30 metres tall and hundreds of metres wide. It was built in 1956 as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. The reservoir it contains holds an estimated 18 cubic kilometres of water, about the same volume as the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
How much damage will be caused? The areas most under threat of flooding are the islands along the course of the river downstream of Nova Kakhovka and much of the Russian-held left bank in southern Kherson. Earlier modelling of such a disaster suggested Kherson city would not take the brunt of the flood, but the harbour, the docklands and an island in the south of the city are likely to be inundated. It is unclear how many people would lose their homes.
Son of late CIA director cautions against far-right extremism in the US
A man who was three years old when his father – an American intelligence operator – sent him a letter on a vanquished Adolf Hitler’s stationery has declared himself disgusted by US extremist groups who still admire the former Nazi ruler, writes
Ramon Antonio Vargas.
“Those people have no idea – the history and foulness of that,” Dennis Helms, the son of the late Richard Helms, the CIA director from 1966 to 1973, said of the presence of neo-Nazis and antisemitism in the US. “There can be nothing that’s worse … I can’t say enough bad about that.”
Helms’s remarks came in an interview with the Guardian as the US prepared to observe Tuesday’s 79th anniversary of D-day, when allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to help liberate north-west Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. The military campaign started by that invasion culminated in Germany’s surrender on 8 May 1945, a little more than a week after the suicide of Hitler, who oversaw the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, among other atrocities.
Dennis said it was disturbing that Hitler’s regime still found such high-profile support in a country that his father spent his life serving and which helped bring Hitler’s downfall.
What did Dennis say about Trump? Though Donald Trump has condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis, Dennis noted how proponents of both have generally supported the former president, who is widely considered the frontrunner for the 2024 White House nomination. He said he imagines his father “just rotates in his grave” in Arlington National Cemetery most times that Trump speaks. “He lies all the time – he cheats,” Dennis said of Trump. “I think that he is a guy who has none of the values that my father did.”
Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, announces White House run
Mike Pence, who as Donald Trump’s vice-president narrowly escaped harm at the hands of the January 6 rioters, has declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next year, pitting him against his former boss.
Pence filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, but will formally launch his bid for the Republican nomination with a video and event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday – his 64th birthday.
The former congressman and Indiana governor, an evangelical conservative, enters a primary dominated by Trump, who enjoys commanding polling leads, well clear of his nearest challenger, the rightwing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.
A Pence run has long been expected but he has not registered significantly in polling, generally contesting third place with the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.
Who else is in the running? Other declared candidates include the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur.
In other news …
A wolverine was spotted three times last month in the eastern Sierra Nevada, a rare occurrence for an animal that’s only been seen one other time in California over the last 100 years, state wildlife officials said. While wolverines are native to California, they have been essentially extinct from the state since the 1920s.
Lawyers for Donald Trump met with top US justice department officials yesterday to complain about perceived misconduct in the criminal investigation into the former US president’s handling of national security materials and obstruction, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Iran has claimed it has created a hypersonic missile capable of travelling at 15 times the speed of sound. Iran’s state television reported that the missile – called Fattah, or “Conqueror” in Farsi – had a range of up to 870 miles (1,400km).
California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, on Monday branded his rightwing Republican Florida counterpart, Ron DeSantis, a “small, pathetic man”, and appeared to threaten kidnapping charges after a group of migrants was dumped at a Sacramento church.
China has begun digging its deepest borehole in an effort to study areas of the planet deep beneath the surface. The drilling of the borehole began on Monday in a desert in the Tarim basin in China’s north-western region of Xinjiang, according to the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency.
Stat of the day: Home Depot is selling tiny homes you can build yourself for less than $50,000
Home Depot has quietly entered the real estate market. The US home improvement store giant appeared to debut its new tiny home or “getaway pad”, by home-kit manufacturing company Plus 1, last year, and it’s garnering traction on social media as a possible solution to unaffordable housing and property damage caused by the climate crisis. The news comes in the wake of an affordable housing crisis plaguing the country, with skyrocketing rent prices and mortgage interest rates. For nearly $50,000, the pad can be delivered and assembled as a standalone extension to an existing house, like a guesthouse, or as a primary residence for those for whom home ownership is out of reach.
‘It’s a marketing gimmick’: the truth about ‘local’ food in US supermarkets
If you walk into a Whole Foods in Oakland and pick up a container of non-dairy yoghurt marked “local”, you might be surprised to learn that though the company is headquartered nearby in San Francisco, the cashews the yoghurt is made of come from Vietnam, more than 7,500 miles (12,000km) away, or Ivory Coast, about 7,300 miles in the opposite direction. This yoghurt made with ingredients from the other side of the globe points to the contradictory nature of so-called local food today: though the term holds appeal for customers, nearly two-thirds of whom perceive local food to be more environmentally friendly, experts suggest it may not always mean what you think. “Most of it is bullshit,” says Austin, Texas-based Errol Schweizer, who led grocery merchandising for Whole Foods from 2009 to 2016.
Climate check: Rich countries with high greenhouse gas emissions could pay $170tn in climate reparations
Rich industrialised countries responsible for excessive levels of greenhouse gas emissions could be liable to pay $170tn in climate reparations by 2050 to ensure targets to curtail climate breakdown are met, a study calculates. The proposed compensation, which amounts to almost $6tn annually, would be paid to historically low-polluting developing countries that must transition away from fossil fuels despite not having yet used their “fair share” of the global carbon budget, according to the analysis. The compensation system is based on the idea that the atmosphere is a commons, a natural resource for everyone which has not been used equitably. It is the first scheme where wealthy countries historically responsible for excessive or unjust greenhouse emissions including the UK, US, Germany, Japan and Russia, are held liable to compensate countries which have contributed the least to global heating.
Last Thing: Ducking hell! Apple to tweak autocorrect that replaces one of the most common expletives
Apple has announced it will upgrade its autocorrect feature that annoyingly corrects one of the most common expletives to “ducking”. “In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief. The iPhone autocorrect feature has always had its quirks, at times taking a misspelled word and substituting it with what it deems a logical option, but which ends up changing the meaning of a particular phrase or sentence. Such occurrences generally produce follow-up texts along the lines of “damn autocorrect!” But the “ducking” substitution is a longstanding source of mirth or frustration, depending on how many times one has had to rewrite their texts or scream at their device. Cnet said iOS 17 is expected to be available as a public beta in July, with the general release to come out in September.
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