👋 Osiyo!*
Welcome to Tuesday, where India’s opposition is faring better than expected as votes are counted, IDF says four more hostages were killed during an Israeli operation in Gaza, and Tokyo’s touristy Shibuya neighborhood is on the wagon. Meanwhile, Kayhan-London’s Ahmad Tajaldini looks at the impact of translating the Quran from Arabic into Persian, and how it can serve Iran reform purposes.
[*Cherokee]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Berlin-based daily Tagesspiegel opens with the floods that hit southwestern Germany over the weekend. The front-page title reads “The water and the election campaign,” featuring a photo of Chancellor Olaf Scholz checking flood barriers in the Bavaria region, where water levels remain high. In its subhead, the daily asks “Will the tide decide the election?” ahead of European Parliament elections this week. As of this morning, five people died due to the floods, while thousands have fled their homes since Friday in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Modi leads in India election but landslide predictions fade. Early results from the world’s biggest election show that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP-led alliance is ahead with nearly 300 of the 543 elective seats in parliament, edging him closer to a rare third consecutive term. But Modi’s declared aim to win a 400-seat supermajority appears at risk as the opposition's INDIA alliance, which includes the Congress party led by centrist Rahul Gandhi, is doing better than expected with about 230 seats. The early trends spooked markets with stocks falling steeply.
• Israel believes more than a third of remaining Gaza hostages are dead. A government tally said on Tuesday that of the 250 people dragged into the Gaza Strip by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks, 120 remain in captivity, with 43 declared dead in absentia by Israeli officials. On Monday, Israel’s military confirmed the deaths of four more hostages, who were reportedly killed during an Israeli operation in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
• China and Hong Kong tighten security on Tiananmen massacre 35th anniversary. Checkpoints and rows of police vehicles lined a major road to Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Tuesday while Hong Kong police detained several activists in a bid to prevent attempts to mark the anniversary of the 1989 bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Read more about the iconic image captured during the Tiananmen Square protests.
• Biden expected to sign sweeping immigration order to restrict asylum on U.S.-Mexico border. This would allow U.S. officials to swiftly deport migrants who enter the country illegally without processing their asylum requests if illegal entries surpass 2,500 per day, sources told Reuters. More than 6.4 million migrants have been apprehended in their attempt to enter the U.S. illegally during President Joe Biden’s tenure — a record high that could be detrimental to his efforts to be re-elected later this year.
• Brexit champion Nigel Farage to enter UK election after U-turn. Farage announced his intention on Monday to stand as a candidate for Reform UK in Clacton in southeast England in the July 4 general election and that he would take over as leader of the hard-right party. This deals another blow to embattled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose ruling Conservative Party could be, according to recent polls, on the course for a huge defeat.
• Australia’s military to allow recruits from foreign countries to address personnel shortages. From July, New Zealand nationals who are permanent residents of Australia will be able to apply to join the Australian Defense Force (ADF), and from 2025, recruitment will be open to citizens from the UK and other countries including the U.S. and Canada. Defense Minister Richard Marles said the move was “essential to meet the nation’s security challenges through the next decade and beyond.”
• No more alcohol in public places says Tokyo’s Shibuya City. The self-governing district of the Japanese capital city — one of its most popular tourist neighborhoods — announced that from October, drinking alcohol will be forbidden in the streets from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day, as part of efforts to curb bad behavior. In October 2023, Shibuya City had banned Halloween-related activities in the district.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
How translation of the Quran in Persian can be a tool of reform in Iran
Sunnis were historically resistant to have this sacred text translated from Arabic — but especially into Persian, the language of a nation sometimes viewed as reluctantly Muslim. What does that mean today under the Sharia law of the Islamic Republic? asks Ahmad Tajaldini in Persian-language Kayhan-London.
🇮🇷 During Islam's first 400 years in the land that is today Iran, the Persian-speaking population was rarely informed of the Quran's contents. Translations into Persian, the first of which was written in Transoxiana, were limited until the 20th century. Even those were confined to princely courts or private libraries; they were inaccessible to the masses, most of whom were, in any case, illiterate.
📖 Translations increased markedly after the 1979 Revolution, with several versions published in the 1980s and 1990s with the aim of promoting religion, not Iranian culture. This has been of little use to the Islamic Republic, which always touted itself as the pious government par excellence. As more people became familiar with the book's contents, the contrast between its premises and the regime's double standards and cruelty became glaring.
💬🗨️ Differences of interpretation, if not confusion, abound in Persian translations of the Quran. This was mainly because its language is ancient and complex, and the competence of most of its translators has proved to be limited. Yet even these subjective renditions broadened public familiarity with the text, and inadvertently provoked skepticism or transformed people's views on religion.
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📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
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#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
$141 million
In the 24 hours following his conviction, Donald Trump managed to raise $53m in donations to his campaign, about one-third of the $141 million raised in May. The former President only managed to gather $76 million in the previous month, prompting Trump’s campaign to suggest that the judgment contributed to garnering support around the Republican candidate. Trump has been found guilty on all counts of falsifying business records by a New York jury last week, the first time for a current or former president in the history of the U.S. Trump and his supporters have dubbed the judgment a “political witch hunt” orchestrated by current president Joe Biden.
📣 VERBATIM
“The memory of June 4th will not disappear in the torrent of history.”
— On the 35th anniversary of Beijing’s crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square, where up to thousands lost their lives because of the Chinese army intervention, newly elected Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te commented on the event and vowed not to forget the Chinese government’s actions in a Facebook post. In Hong Kong, where a memorial for the crackdown used to be held every year, authorities have increased police patrolling in the streets to prevent possible gatherings. The last commemoration on the island was held in 2019. The Chinese Communist Party actively tries to prevent Chinese people from accessing any information on the event, going as far as making internet pages discussing the event inaccessible in many cases. Meanwhile, numerous Western consulates in Hong Kong issued statements through their social media accounts in remembrance of the event.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Gaza: Women Are The Main Victims Of The Israel-Hamas War — DARAJ
• On The Verge Of A Truce? Why Netanyahu's Hard Line Has Run Its Course — FRANCE INTER
• The Limits Of AI In Health Care — And That Singular Human Skill Called Healing — UNDARK
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet and Fabrizio La Rocca
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