👋 Բարև*
Welcome to Friday, where Donald Trump is found guilty of all 34 charges in a hush money trial, new Israeli airstrikes kill at least 12 in Rafah and a Spanish town puts a damper on wild bachelor and bachelorette parties. Meanwhile, Persian-language media Kayhan-London looks at how the Iranian regime is struggling to dispel suspicions of foul play in the recent helicopter crash that killed President Raisi.
[*Barev - Armenian]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“GUILTY,” says the New York Times, as former U.S. President Donald Trump is found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme. As the world’s press reacts to the historic moment of Trump becoming the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes, Worldcrunch has the latest with our collection of 17 U.S. and international front pages, fresh off the press.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. A New York jury found the 45th president guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. After two days of deliberation, the 12-member jury pronounced Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts he faced. Click here to see how the world is covering Donald Trump’s conviction, Worldcrunch has gathered front pages from around the globe.
• Israeli forces killed at least 12 Palestinians in a dawn airstrike on Rafah. Fighting raged in several other areas of the enclave while Israel carried on with its offensive on Rafah, southern Gaza, a day after saying its forces had taken control of a buffer zone along the nearby border between Gaza and Egypt which gives it effective authority over Gaza's entire land frontier.
• Three people have been killed and at least 16 injured in Russia’s latest strikes on Ukrainian city Kharkiv. Meanwhile, American President Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia. This only applies near the Kharkiv region where Russian forces have made gains in recent weeks after a surprise offensive in the area. Read this piece translated from French to English, to know more about the U.S.’ steps towards taking this decision.
• The U.S. and Britain struck 13 Houthi targets in several locations in Yemen. This comes in response to a recent surge in attacks by the Iran-backed militia group on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over the Israel-Hamas war. The Houthi rebels said the airstrikes killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others.
• South Africa appears heading to a national coalition government for the first time, as ANC falters. With more than half of votes counted across the country’s nine provinces, the African National Congress party, which has ruled the country since the end of apartheid, had tallied just under 42% of the national vote. These numbers represent a huge drop from the 57.5% it received in the last national election in 2019, although the final results from Wednesday’s election have not yet been declared.
• At least 15 people have died due to heat-related ailments over the past 24 hours in India. As temperatures continue to rise, heat-stroke related deaths have also been reported from the states of Bihar, Rajasthan and Jharkhand and the national capital, Delhi. The extreme heat comes as India is holding its general election, the results of which will be declared on June 4.
• Spanish town bans public displays of affection with sex dolls. Badly behaved bachelor and bachelorette party goers could soon face heavy fines if they overstep the mark in a Spanish resort town. The authorities in the town of Platja d’Aro located on Spain’s Costa Brava, 60 miles northeast of Barcelona, have introduced fines up to $811 for anyone daring to go out in public in costumes depicting genitalia or carrying sex dolls.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
1.38 trillion won
South Korean tycoon Chey Tae-won has been ordered to pay his ex-wife 1.38 trillion won ($1 billion) in cash, the country’s largest ever divorce settlement. The Seoul High Court ruled on Thursday that Roh So-young, who Chey was married to for 35 years, was entitled to a portion of his company shares. The court put Chey’s worth at around 4 trillion won, meaning Roh would take an estimated 35%.
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📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Why Iran's regime can't quash Raisi assassination suspicions
In spite of the Iranian regime's inclination to conclude the matter of the president's recent fatal helicopter crash, murmurs around a possible murder plot or a foreign strike are not going away, reports Persian-language media Kayhan-London.
🇮🇷 Suspicions of foul play in the recent helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi are increasingly turning into a headache — and maybe eventually something far worse — for the Iranian regime. Broadly, those who suspect Raisi might have been killed are two groups, respectively blaming Israel or a power clique inside the regime, each of which would have had their own potential motives. Right now, the skeptics will pounce on any word, like those of Raisi's mother, as evidence of a plot.
💭 Brazen accusations would of course land one in jail or worse in Iran, so politicians will always, in this and similar cases, make murky suggestions which are as complex as they are deniable of any direct beliefs or even questions. The result is political hieroglyphics. One legislator, (a religious conservative and former minister of culture) Mustafa Mirsalim, has said for example that Raisi had "taken a case of secrets" with him to the afterworld.
🔍 The official line will likely not stop the speculation. Unofficial sources have said that after the crash, security agents prevented Raisi's father-in-law, Ahmad Alamulhuda, a senior cleric in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, from holding his theology class, suggesting a rift between Alamulhuda and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over the state's refusal to properly clarify the incident. The reports cannot be confirmed, though Alamulhuda's absence was noted at a funeral service in Khamenei's compound in Tehran.
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💬 LEXICON
Worldle
The New York Times, the owner of hit online game Wordle, is legally challenging a geography-based spinoff, called Worldle. The New York Times accuses Worldle of “creating confusion” and attempting to capitalize on the “enormous goodwill” associated with the brand. The creator of Worldle, software developer Kory McDonald, responded: “There’s a whole industry of [dot]le games. Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags.” (NB: At Worldcrunch, we can sympathize: more than once, we’ve seen our name misspelled “Wordcrunch”. In our case, we are about both words and worlds!)
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Has Macron Paved The Way For Biden? A Decisive Moment For Ukraine — FRANCE INTER
• Ukraine, Israel And The West: A Dangerous Double Standard On Weapons Supplies — DIE ZEIT
• Egypt's Women Face Abuse On All Means Of Transport — And Uber Is No Safer — AL-MANASSA
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright and Ione Gildroy
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