Good morning.
Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe has died, aged 67, after being shot while making a campaign speech in the western city of Nara.
In footage broadcast by Japanese media, two loud bangs were heard – possibly from a shotgun – and Abe was seen falling to the ground after the second shot. TBS Television reported that he was hit on the left side of his chest and apparently also in the neck.
A suspect, a 41-year-old man from Nara named by police as Tetsuya Yamagami, was arrested at the scene, the public broadcaster NHK said.
Abe was the country’s longest-serving prime minister. He resigned in 2020. The current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, condemned the shooting as “barbaric and malicious” and said the motive of the suspect, reportedly a member of the maritime self-defence force from 2002 to 2005, was as yet unclear.
How did the suspect obtain the weapon? Japan has a near zero tolerance of gun ownership and an extremely low rate of gun crime. The weapon used is reportedly thought to have been homemade.
How many gun deaths are there each year? There were six reported in 2014, according to the National Police Agency, and the number rarely exceeds 10, in a country of 126 million people.
Tributes flooded in from around the world. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, were among the first leaders to pay their condolences.
Follow our liveblog for updates on the attack.
Boris Johnson quits but clings on to power
Boris Johnson resigned on Thursday after a slew of cabinet ministers quit their posts, but he has indicated he hopes to remain as prime minister for months to come.
While his resignation has kickstarted the scramble to replace him in the top job, some senior Conservatives are pushing back against pressure to accelerate his replacement as party leader, calling for a full contest involving members.
Johnson told his new interim cabinet on Thursday afternoon that no major policies would be implemented before a successor is found, while Labour said the government was in paralysis amid the chaos.
What next? On Monday there will be elections to the executive of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, which will set the rules and timetable for the leadership contest.
Who do the members want to succeed Johnson? Ben Wallace and Penny Mordaunt this week topped a YouGov poll of Conservative members.
A majority of voters (53%) believe Johnson should resign from parliament when he ceases to be prime minister, a YouGov poll suggests.
UN warns of ‘looming hunger catastrophe’ due to Russian blockade
The world faces a growing hunger emergency that threatens to escalate dramatically within the next two years, the director of the UN World Food Programme has said, with 50 million people in 45 countries presently “just one step from famine”.
Patrick Beasley called for a number of moves to be made to avert the crisis, chief among them for Russia to immediately lift its blockade on 25m tonnes of Ukrainian grain. Disrupted fuel and fertilizer markets are also to blame for the critical situation. Beasley said that if solutions were not found, the world would see “the spectre of multiple famines” due to a real crisis of food availability.
The number of people categorized as “acutely food insecure” by the UN before the pandemic was 130 million; it now stands at 276 million.
How has the war affected food security? Russia and Ukraine usually account for close to one-third of the world’s wheat exports and 80% of sunflower oil exports. Russia is one of the world’s top fertilizer exporters.
The dire warning came as Vladimir Putin claimed Moscow had barely started its campaign in Ukraine. He dared the west to fight Russia and said the chance for negotiations would recede as the conflict continues.
Highland Park suspect’s father to be investigated over gun application
Police announced that the father of the Highland Park gunman is to be criminally investigated in connection with the Independence Day attack for signing an affidavit supporting his son’s application for a gun license.
Robert Crimo Jr, the father of Robert Crimo III – who is suspected of killing seven people at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb – sponsored his son’s firearm owner application in 2019.
Speaking to media before the announcement of the investigation into him, Crimo Jr denied any responsibility for the attack. “I had no, not an inkling, warning, that this was going to happen,” he told ABC News.
Previously his son had had two encounters with local police. This included an incident in September 2019 where he allegedly threatened to “kill everybody” in his family.
In other news …
The former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for violating George Floyd’s civil rights. Chauvin is already serving a 22-and-a-half year sentence for murder and manslaughter.
Canada’s national police force admitted it routinely uses powerful spyware to surveil citizens and can also remotely turn on the camera and microphone of a suspect’s phone or laptop, as well as access text messages, email, photos, videos, audio files, calendar entries and financial records.
Sacha Baron Cohen has defeated Roy Moore’s $95m defamation lawsuit over his appearance on a comedy TV program featuring a so-called “pedophile detector”. The judges ruled the show was “clearly comedy”.
The Georgia bureau of investigation is investigating the vandalism of “America’s Stonehenge” after unknown individuals blew up the Georgia Guidestones granite monument on Wednesday.
Stat of the day: investment in plant-based meats jumped from $1bn to $5bn in two years
Investment in alternative proteins has soared from $1bn in 2019 to $5bn in 2021, according to one of the world’s biggest consultancy firms. Research by the Boston Consulting Group found that investing in plant-based meats leads to far greater cuts in emissions compared with other green investments, with it being 11 times more effective than zero-emission cars.
Don’t miss this: concerned medical students on the Roe reversal
After the supreme court ruling, Georgia will probably ban most abortions after six weeks. For medical students such as fourth-year Mackenzie Bennett, who are pursuing their medical education in states poised to ban abortion services, the ruling affects not just the training they will receive, it leaves them grappling with the personal, moral and practical challenges of a common (and sometimes life-saving) healthcare procedure becoming criminalized, writes Gray Chapman.
Clinical training opportunities for providing abortions are already limited in the US – typically, students who want that training have to seek it out. In the wake of Roe’s overturning, those opportunities will become even more limited, forcing some students to travel out of state to seek out full-spectrum training.
… or this: ‘Anyone who is shocked by what’s happening has not been paying attention,’ says Barbara Kruger
The artist Barbara Kruger has choice words for those just tuning in, writes Laura Feinstein. “The repeal of Roe should come as no surprise,” she said, pointing to the US’s fraught history of suppressing minority rights while fostering white supremacy.
“Any surprise at the current state of things is the result of a failure of imagination. Of not understanding the force and punishment of what has happened and worse, what is yet to come.” She believes that this failure of imagination has contributed to what has devolved into, in her words, an “increasingly volatile time of reckoning and vengeance”.
Last Thing: you be the judge: should my housemate water my plants while I’m away?
In the latest instalment of the Guardian’s domestic drama series, we have Shaneel, a plant-lover who complains that his roommate Zubir lets his plants wilt when he goes on vacation. Zubir says he does his best to take care of them, but, ultimately, they’re not his responsibility. What do you think?
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