👋 سلام*
Welcome to Tuesday, where Israel has rolled into Rafah as truce talks continue, Putin is sworn in again and we’ll meet you at the MET gala. Meanwhile, in Spain’s La Marea’s - Climática, Laura Casielles reports on a one-of-a-kind exhibition that invites visitors to imagine new ways to fight climate change.
[*Salam - Arabic]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense dedicates its front page to the mass flood that hit several cities in the Rio Grande do Sul state due to record rains and storms. At least 85 people have died, and an estimated 122,000 people have been displaced. President Lula has asked for a state of emergency to be declared.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• The Israeli military seized control of the Rafah border, as truce talks recommence. The Israeli offensive at the crossing between Gaza and Egypt took place as mediators struggled to secure a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Late Monday, the Palestinian militant group said it had agreed to the latest ceasefire proposal but Israel said the terms had been changed. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the Israel-Palestine war here.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin was sworn in for a new six-year term. The Kremlin ceremony was boycotted by the United States and a number of other Western countries due to Russia's war in Ukraine. Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, begins his new mandate more than two years after he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For more, read this recent article by Yuri Fedorov for independent Russian-language media Vazhnyye Istorii: Beyond Putin: The National Psyche That Fuels Russian Aggression.
• Britain’s Ministry of Defense has been the target of a large-scale cyberattack. On Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told Sky News that the attack targeted a third-party payroll system used by the Defense Ministry and included the names and bank details of current and former service personnel of the armed forces.
• Narendra Modi voted as India held the third phase of its massive general election. The country began voting on April 19 in a seven-phase election in which nearly one billion people are eligible to vote, with ballots set to be counted on June 4. Modi is seeking a rare, third straight term as prime minister in a vote which pits his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against an alliance of more than two dozen opposition parties. Surveys suggest he will win a comfortable majority. More about Modi’s reelection campaign here.
• South African rescuers were searching for survivors after a five-story apartment under construction collapsed. Officials in the city of George, Western Cape province, say at least five people were killed and 26 people have been pulled from the wreckage and taken to hospital but there were dozens more workers on the site when the building collapsed.
• The Federal Aviation Administration said it has opened an investigation into the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This comes after the planemaker said some employees had committed "misconduct" by claiming some tests had been completed. The FAA said it is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections to confirm adequate bonding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes "and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records."
• Katy Perry and Rihanna were not at the Met Gala. Though neither singer was present at the mega New York fashion event, AI-generated images were circulating widely on social media. One bogus image of Perry in a floral gown with a moss trim has been viewed over 13 million times on X.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
6 minutes
A fusion reactor in southern France, called WEST, has brought the world one step closer to clean, sustainable and almost infinite energy. Scientists at New Jersey's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who collaborated on the project, announced today that the reactor was able to create a super-hot material called plasma (which reached 90 million °F, or 50 million °C) and sustain it for a record 6 minutes straight.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Climate fitness: When art imagines alternatives to eco-pessimism
Presented at Madrid's Matadero cultural center until late July, “Climate Fitness, Rituals of Adaptability” features five works that invite visitors to question the social and economic structures that have led to the climate crisis and consider other possible futures, reports Laura Casielles in Spanish monthly paper magazine La Marea’s Climática media.
🏃 The concept of “climatic fitness,” which comes from biology, originally designated the capacity of an organism to adapt to an environment and its transformations. But in recent decades, it has been used in popular culture to refer to the physical and mental preparation that people undertake to face a possible environmental collapse. Curator Maite Borjabad tries to connect both interpretations in the exhibition — as a reminder of the enormous kinship between a body and an ecosystem.
🤖 Spanish artist Itziar Barrio looks at the relationship between the natural and the technological, and intertwines the idea of the cyborg with the queer. Her piece in this exhibition, “Robota MML” — the names come from a Soviet play that first introduced the word robot — is part of a trilogy in which Barrio questions the relationship between work, matter and identity.
💭 Beyond the exhibition panels, nothing is explicit in the works of Clima Fitness. The exhibition's proposal is precisely to suggest that there are many ways to think about all these and many other open questions. And that the most convenient is perhaps to take them all in — the more the better.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
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📣 VERBATIM
“It’s unacceptable.”
— Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has reacted to a recent incident involving a Chinese fighter jet that fired flares in the path of an Australian Navy helicopter flying over the Yellow Sea. Albanse raised its concerns through diplomatic and military channels, saying: “We’ve just made it very clear to China that this is unprofessional.” Beijing has yet to respond.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• The Many Enemies Of Iraqi Transgender: The State, Islamists — And Some Feminists — DARAJ
• How Xi Sees Europe: Friend, Rival Or Vassal? — FRANCE INTER
• The Giulia Cecchettin Femicide: Will Italy Finally Face Down Gender Violence? — INTERNAZIONALE
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright and Agnese Tonghini
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