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Welcome to Thursday, where an Israeli airstrike on a UN school in Gaza kills at least 40 people, world leaders and WWII veterans gather in Normandy to mark 80 years since D-Day, and a hiker raises doubts over China's tallest waterfall. Meanwhile, Agência Pública’s Marina Amaral urges Brazilian authorities to heed the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, to avoid flood-hit Porto Alegre following the same path as New Orleans.
[*Nǐhǎo - Cantonese]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Daily French newspaper Ouest-France has partnered with the English daily newspaper The Guardian to dedicate its front page to the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Today’s edition is historic: the bilingual eight-page special cover is completely devoted to the D-Day Landings, the Battle of Normandy and France’s liberation. World leaders and veterans are gathering in Normandy this week for a series of major commemorations to mark the major anniversary.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israeli strike on Gaza school kills more than 40 displaced Palestinians. The Israeli military said that Hamas militants were operating from within the school, located in the Nuseirat refugee camp. A Hamas official said 40 people, including women and children, were killed in Thursday’s strike, as they sheltered in the UN-run building. The raid came after the military announced a new ground and air assault in several refugee camps in central Gaza. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the war in Gaza here.
• Vladimir Putin warns Moscow could arm countries with a view to attacking Western targets. The Russian president made the statement on Wednesday while criticizing the West's delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine. This comes after several countries, including the United States, have given Ukraine the green light to strike targets inside Russia.
• The Netherlands kicks off four-days of voting across the European Union. Voting for the European Parliament elections began on Thursday. Polls will be held in Ireland and the Czech Republic on Friday, Malta, Slovakia and Latvia on Saturday and in the rest of the 27 EU countries on Sunday. Since the last EU elections five years ago, populist, far-right and extremist parties are leading governments in three EU nations and appear to have surging public support across the continent. Read more about the state of the European Union here.
• Six crew members were killed after an explosion on a fishing boat in the Philippines. Coastguard officials reported the deaths on Thursday, adding that six crew had been rescued from the F/B King Bryan after the blast and resulting blaze the previous day about 5 miles off Naga city in Cebu province.
• Parties in Narendra Modi's alliance demand more funds for regional states. The Indian Prime Minister was named leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Wednesday, after his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its outright majority and found itself reliant on support from regional parties. Allies asked for federal cabinet positions as negotiations began to form a coalition government. Read more about Modi and his greatest nemesis: his own ego.
• Ceremonies begin in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day landings. At the British ceremony in Ver-sur-Mer, veterans were applauded as they took their seats, decorated with bright red poppies. World leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden and King Charles III have traveled to northern France to participate in the commemorations.
• Tokyo launches new initiative to create more couples. Called “Tokyo Futari Story,” the site offers counsel and general information for potential lovebirds online, and a dating app is also in development. Tokyo hopes to offer it later this year, accessible through phone or web, a city official said Thursday. Marriage is on the decline in Japan, as the country’s birth rate fell to an all-time low, according to health ministry data released on Wednesday. For more, we offer this article from French daily Les Echos, translated by Worldcrunch.📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Brazil floods: Lessons for Porto Alegre from New Orleans' post-Katrina mistakes
Similarities have been drawn between the cases of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Porto Alegre, which last month experienced the worst flooding in 80 years. But the U.S. reconstruction was an enormous failure, and Brazil should not look at it for solutions, writes Marina Amaral in investigative news agency Agência Pública.
🏗️ Mayor Sebastião Melo has hired Alvarez & Marsal, a U.S. consultancy "that worked on Katrina" — the devastating 2005 hurricane that caused 1,392 deaths and an estimated $186.3 billion in damages in and around the southern U.S. city — to draw up a reconstruction plan for Porto Alegre. Melo still doesn't know how much it will cost: A&M has offered to work for free for two months before submitting a bill to the mayor's office.
⚠️ In addition to the apparent lack of decision making criteria, without listening to Brazilian experts, as revealed by the news website Matinal, Melo seems to be unaware of A&M's disastrous performance in New Orleans. A&M's legacy is the dismissal of more than 7,000 public school teachers, the privatization of education and health, the intensification of police and militia violence (which risks happening in Porto Alegre) and, finally, the whitewashing of the New Orleans population.
📉 To this day, the original population of New Orleans has yet to recover: there are now 100,000 fewer inhabitants than in 2005, when the city had a population of almost 500,000. The Black population, including those who have finally managed to return, accounts for 60% of the total, many of them clustered on the outskirts after losing their homes in gentrified neighborhoods during the reconstruction. Many are still struggling to pay off their housing debts.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com💬 LEXICON
人造瀑布
A social media uproar erupted in China after a hiker's video revealed that water from Yuntai Mountain Waterfall, China's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, was coming from a pipe during the dry season. Accused of creating an “artificial waterfall” (人造瀑布, pronounced Rénzào pùbù), the Yuntai tourism park operators admitted to have added a "small enhancement" to ensure visitors had a worthwhile experience. While some social media users understood the park's actions, others criticized it for disrespecting the natural order and misleading tourists.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
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#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
$3.012 trillion
Nvidia became the world's second-most valuable company on Wednesday afternoon, when the chipmaker’s market capitalization hit $3.012 trillion, putting it just ahead of Apple at $3 trillion — but behind Microsoft. Shares of Nvidia gained 5.2% on Wednesday, continuing an extraordinary streak of gains for the California-based firm, whose graphics processing units have fuelled a boom in artificial intelligence.
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