Good morning.
Israel and Palestinian militants stopped firing for several hours early this morning after Joe Biden called for “a significant de-escalation”.
The eight-hour pause in attacks – the longest since the start of the conflict 11 days ago – came as efforts to secure a ceasefire appeared to gain momentum. But the attacks later restarted when air-raid sirens sounded in Israel near Gaza and Israel’s military said a fighter jet had hit a rocket launcher.
France, which has circulated a UN resolution, has put pressure on the US to demand a truce and issued a joint statement with Egypt and Jordan calling for an immediate ceasefire. In a phone call on Wednesday, the US president told the Israeli prime minister that he expected “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire”.
Israel carried out more than a dozen airstrikes on Gaza in the early hours of the morning. Rocket sirens sounded in Beersheba in southern Israel.
Both sides on Wednesday said a truce was not imminent despite growing international pressure.
Since the start of the conflict on 10 May, 228 Palestinians have been killed and the death toll in Israel is 12.
The oldest living survivor of the Tulsa massacre calls for justice in US Congress
The oldest living survivor of the Tulsa massacre testified in Congress yesterday, telling lawmakers: “I am here seeking justice.”
Viola Fletcher, who is 107, was seven years old at the time of the 1921 racist attack on the city’s “Black Wall Street”. On 31 May and 1 June 1921, a white mob killed an estimated 300 African Americans and robbed and burned more than 1,200 businesses, homes and churches.
Fletcher and her brother, who is 100, are seeking reparations for the atrocity that has been actively covered up for decades.
“I am here seeking justice,” said Fletcher, appearing before a House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee before the massacre’s centenary. “I am here asking my country to acknowledge what happened in Tulsa in 1921.”
The US House has voted to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack
The House of Representatives has voted in favor of a bill to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly 6 January attack on the US Capitol – but it still faces hurdles in the Senate.
The vote fell largely along party lines. Thirty-five Republicans voted for the bill, but 175 Republicans voted against it.
It is unclear whether the bill, which the former president Donald Trump has criticised as a “Democrat trap”, can make it through the Senate. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said yesterday he would not support it.
Investigate the Capitol attack? Republicans prefer to back the big lie, writes David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief.
Meanwhile, Republicans are rebelling against mask-wearing rules in the House chamber.
Democrats will today introduce a $30bn bill to cancel water debts and bail out utility firms in the Senate. The legislation will include low-interest loans for providers which would allow them to recoup money without resorting to fines and shutoffs.
Bodies are washing up in the Ganges in rural areas as coronavirus continues to devastate India
As coronavirus continues to spread from India’s cities to rural areas, thousands of bodies are reportedly washing up from the Ganges.
On Wednesday, India reported another record number of deaths – 4,529 – and the country’s official death toll is over a quarter of a million, but the real toll is estimated to be up to five times higher. There is no record of how many bodies have been found in the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but unofficial counts estimate it is more than 2,000.
In the village of Gahmar in Uttar Pradesh, fishing boat worker Raju Chaudhry, 15, told Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Saurabh Sharma that he had recently seen “around 50 bodies a day washing up, over many days”.
Rural villages, where healthcare infrastructure is insufficient or absent, are home to 65% of India’s population.
How are officials reacting? In Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of 235 million, the government has started door-to-door testing in 97,000 villages but has yet to reach many remote areas.
In other news …
Barack Obama called his successor Donald Trump a “madman” and a “racist, sexist pig”, according to a new book. Battle for the Soul by Edward-Isaac Dover claims the former president was candid in his criticism with donors and advisers. Meanwhile, Obama has weighed in to America’s interest in UFO sightings, confirming that “footage and records” of unidentified objects exist.
The right has seized Trump’s playbook to blame migrants for environmental damage. Arizona’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit that frames the climate crisis as a nativist issue, reports Oliver Milman.
Climate disasters caused more internal displacement than war in 2020, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). Out of more than 40m new displacements last year, 30m were a result of storms, floods and wildfires.
The world’s largest iceberg – nearly four times the size of New York City – has formed in Antarctica. The 4,320 sq km object, named A-76, broke off the Ronne shelf and is floating in the Weddell Sea.
Stat of the day: date mussels, shellfish illegally harvested by organized crime groups in Italy, take 18-36 years to grow and can live for more than 50 years
The cigar-shaped mollusc, reportedly in demand from members of the Neapolitan mafia, has been the subject of a three-year police investigation in Italy’s Campania region involving wire taps, surveillance and close to 100 suspects. Fishing for or selling date mussels is illegal in the EU but they can fetch up to €200 ($240) on the black market.
Don’t miss this: how mercury invades the most vulnerable communities in the US and Canada through water
In this arresting illustrated story, Julia Louise Pereira explains how the harmful chemical builds up in river systems over time.
Last Thing: Lego launches first LGBTQ+ set
The rainbow-themed creation features 11 minifigures, most of which have no specific gender, and is called Everyone Is Awesome. Designer Matthew Ashton originally created the set for his desk, but it soon attracted attention and on 1 June will go on sale to mark the start of Pride month. “Other members of Lego’s LGBTQ+ community came by to tell me they loved it,” he tells Helen Russell at Lego HQ in Billund, Denmark. “So I thought, ‘maybe it’s something we should share’.”
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