Good morning.
Donald Trump’s continued praise of Vladimir Putin is deepening concerns among experts who predict a second term for the former US president would damage American democracy and its global interests.
“Trump views Putin as a strongman,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank who was a national security official in the first two years of Trump’s administration. “In a way they’re working in parallel because they’re both trying to weaken the US, but for very different reasons.”
Hill voiced concerns that Trump would “get rid of vital security expertise” and that Putin backed him as a “chaos agent”. Douglas London, a retired senior CIA agent turned author, said he feared Trump would use the the security service “to spy on, silence and perhaps even bring harm to his enemies”. Meanwhile, Trump recently said there would be a “bloodbath” if he was rejected again by voters in November’s presidential election.
What has Trump said about Putin? He called him a “genius” after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and recently said Russia should “do whatever the hell they” wanted to Nato members that did not contribute enough to the alliance.
Putin claims landslide election victory
Vladimir Putin has claimed an overwhelming win in Russia’s presidential election – a vote labelled “obviously not free nor fair” by the US – as thousands of Russians protested domestically and abroad.
Putin won more than 87% of the vote, according to exit polling published by the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center and the Public Opinion Foundation. He centred on the Ukraine war during his victory speech, saying that “strengthening defence capacity and the military” would be a priority. The longtime Russian leader faced no real opposition in the race after authorities banned two candidates who had spoken out against the war.
Spurred on by Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, thousands of people took part in the “noon against Putin” protests. She encouraged Russians to vote for anyone but the incumbent, spoil their ballot, or simply attend as a show of strength.
Who else denounced the vote? Germany’s foreign ministry called it a “pseudo-election”, while the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Putin had become “addicted to power”.
Casualties reported after Israeli raids on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City
Israeli forces have seized control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after an overnight raid that resulted in reported casualties.
The Israel Defense Forces told civilians around the medical complex to leave the area, urging them to head south to al-Muwasi, an area 18 miles (30km) away. This instruction came despite a dearth of transport and the fact that children and elderly people in particular have been weakened by months of food shortages. The Israeli military also said soldiers had been instructed on avoiding harm to non-combatants within the complex.
The IDF on Monday claimed it had killed or wounded an undisclosed number of Hamas militants, while also detaining 80 people. Gaza’s health ministry said Israel’s raid had caused a fire at the medical complex’s entrance, leading to cases of asphyxiation among displaced women and children sheltering there. Neither claim could be independently verified.
Why does Israel say it targeted the complex? According to Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, the operation was based on “intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to command attacks”.
What does Hamas say? That Israel had committed a crime by directly targeting hospital buildings without caring about patients, medical staff or displaced people in it.
In other news …
The rule of law is deteriorating across the EU, according to a report from a leading civil liberties network. A number of governments are eroding democratic safeguards, with a sharp rise in protest restrictions across the bloc.
A school bus driver in New Orleans has been lauded for keeping calm in a crisis after she evacuated her vehicle moments before it exploded into flames. Kia Rousseve, 28, last week saved eight children when smoke started to come from the engine.
US lawmakers are beginning to scrutinize CATL, a leading Chinese battery maker, with potential consequences for green energy storage. Amid tensions between the superpowers, politicians are pushing for less dependency on the company that controls almost two-fifths of the global electric vehicle battery market – but experts say the domestic battery industry lags behind China’s.
Stat of the day: banks drove a 9% rise in global meat production over six years
Banks are powering increases in global meat and dairy production, in some cases in contradiction of their own deforestation policies, a report has found. Between 2015 and 2021, global meat production increased by 9%, the report by the campaign group Feedback said, while dairy production rose by 13%.
Don’t miss this: Parvati Shallow’s journey from Survivor to life coach
Reality TV star Parvati Shallow, who has schemed and charmed her way through four seasons of Survivor and the just-concluded US season of The Traitors, has traded in small-screen drama to become a life coach. Here, the Guardian’s lifestyle and wellness reporter gets a free coaching session, and learns how Shallow harnessed the lessons she learned from growing up in a yoga community in Survivor.
Climate check: South Sudan closes schools before 113F heatwave
South Sudan has shut schools in preparation for a severe heatwave that is expected to last for two weeks, though the government has not said how long the closure would last. Temperatures in the country, which is vulnerable to the climate crisis, are expected to soar to 113F (45C).
Last Thing: 90s hip-hop T-shirts are back, tailored for you
In the 1990s, T-shirts with the likes of Biggie Smalls or Bow Wow were everywhere. Now it seems the look is back – with an update. The latest nostalgia micro-trend has an ironic twist, in which people are donning T-shirts made in that style with their own faces, or the faces of partners, printed on them.
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