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👋 A jaaraama!*
Welcome to Friday, where Tehran downplayed an Israeli drone attack, voting starts in the world’s biggest democracy and a new study shows that massive urban development in China is causing cities to literally sink. We also feature a story from Cairo-based Al-Manassa on how Egyptian relations with the U.S. could change with a Trump return to the White House.
[*Fula, West and Central Africa]
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Hamburg-based weekly Der Spiegel wonders on its cover if Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are both moving the world toward “The Next Big War.”
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• After reported Israeli attack on Iran, Tehran indicates it will not retaliate. Major military bases near Isfahan, central Iran, were hit by airstrikes early Friday, confirmed by sources as an attack by Israel. Tehran played down the attack and told Reuters it had not yet identified the foreign source of the attack. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but had previously said it planned to retaliate against Iran for its unprecedented strikes on Israel on Saturday that were repelled by anti-aircraft defenses. Meanwhile in Israel, far-right government allies mocked their own military’s apparent response to Iran as “lame.”
• U.S. stops UN from recognizing Palestinian state through membership. At the UN Security Council on Thursday the U.S. vetoed a draft resolution to allow Palestine to be admitted to membership of the UN. Britain and Switzerland abstained from the vote, while the 12 other council members voted yes. Palestine is currently a non-member observer state. Read more about the UN, Palestine and Israel on Worldcrunch.
• Russian strikes kill nine in central Ukraine. Three children were also killed in the attacks on Dnipro’s station, a maternity hospital and private homes. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack highlights the need for every city to have air defenses. Meanwhile, a man in Poland has been arrested on suspicion of supplying information to Russian military intelligence in an alleged plan to kill Zelensky.
• The world’s biggest election starts today in India. Almost a billion people are eligible to vote in the parliamentary election, in the first of seven voting days that will end on June 1, with results being expected three days later. Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping for a rare third consecutive term in power. Read more about Modi’s reelection campaign, translated from French by Worldcrunch.
• Lawyers select jurors to serve in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial. The 12 jurors were selected following a series of impartiality checks to rule in the first-ever trial with a former U.S. President as defendant. Trump is accused of 34 counts of fraud, related to hush-money that was paid to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
• Taylor Swift releases her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department. The album was announced at the Grammy Awards this February and was released today. The album has already received four and five star reviews and has been called Swift’s “most personal” by Rolling Stone magazine. Ask yourself: “Taylor Swift or Shakespeare?” with this comparison from a literature professor on Worldcrunch.
• A Brazilian woman tried to use a corpse to secure a loan. The woman tried to get the dead man, who she claimed was her uncle, to sign papers for a loan of R$17,000 ($3,400), however police determined that the elderly man had already been dead for several hours. Suspicious bank employees filmed the incident and alerted the police. An investigation is ongoing to ascertain the woman's relationship to the deceased and whether others were involved in the attempted fraud. The incident quickly gained attention on social media, with the word “cadáver” (corpse) trending.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
45%
A study of nationwide satellite data released today shows that 45% of China's urban land is sinking faster than 3 millimeters per year. Causes are the weight of the human-built structures and the changes in the water levels due to the rising temperatures. With China's urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion of subsiding land in China could therefore translate into a substantial threat to urban life,” said the team of researchers from the South China Normal University.
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📰 STORY OF THE DAY
U.S.-Egypt: How relations could change with a Trump return to the White House
Will former U.S. President Donald Trump maintain his “dealmaker” approach towards Egypt in case he finds his way back to the White House? asks Ahmed Zaki in Egypt-based news website Al-Manassa.
🤝 It's worth noting that Cairo bet on Trump before his first election amid tense ties with the administration of then Democratic President Barack Obama. In the final months of the 2016 campaign in the U.S., President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt made several public remarks that appeared to endorse Trump against his rival Hilary Clinton. That went against a longstanding Egyptian foreign policy not to publicly support any American presidential candidate before election day.
🇪🇬🇺🇸 Will Trump maintain his approach towards Egypt and the broader Middle East if he reaches the White House for the second time later this year? The answer to this question may depend on the profound transformations that the region is currently going through, especially in the face of Israel's war on Gaza. The war has affected the U.S. plans to withdraw from the Middle East and shift its military might to the Pacific region to contain China.
💰 Of course, Cairo will be in urgent need of major financial support to address its deep economic crisis. Trump is likely to try to barter his administration's support for Cairo through grants and economic aid in exchange for it being a partner in a new deal of the century that would include his approach to the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
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➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📣 VERBATIM
“Just a normal Friday, a weekend, and people are enjoying the weekend.”
— Iranian TV presenter Gisoo Misha Ahmadi told Iranian channel Press TV that “nothing out of the ordinary is happening” in Isfahan, despite reports of explosions at airbases near the major city in central Iran. Although on high alert, Tehran is downplaying the attack, which sources attribute to Israel in retaliation to Iran’s unprecedented assault on Israeli soil late last week.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Iran-Russia-China: Axis Of Evil Or Alliance Of Convenience? — FRANCE INTER
• France-Senegal: Witness To A Neo-Colonial Breakup? — LES ECHOS
• Does Wisdom Come With Age? Only If You Do The Work — SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
✍️ Newsletter by Ione Gildroy and Agnese Tonghini
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