Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.
US woman who joined Isis pleads to come home
As Islamic State prepares for the loss of the last town in its shrunken “caliphate”, some who left the west to join the group now want to go home. Hoda Muthana, an American woman who travelled to Syria and became one of Isis’s most prominent online activists, told the Guardian she “deeply regrets” that decision and wants to return to her family in Alabama with her 18-month-old son. Muthana is thought to be the only American among an estimated 1,500 foreign women and children at the al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria.
In a newly released audio clip, she tells the Guardian: “I realised I’ve made a big mistake. I know I’ve ruined my future and my son’s future and I deeply, deeply regret it.”
Isis Briton. Shamima Begum, a British teenager who fled to
Syria in 2015 and recently gave birth at the al-Hawl camp, has said she is desperate to return to the UK.EU Isis fighters. Trump has demanded the EU take back and put on trial the 800 Isis fighters from European countries who have been captured in Syria by US-backed forces.
McCabe: Trump dismissed US intel on North Korea missiles
Andrew McCabe, a former acting director of the FBI, has claimed Donald Trump dismissed US intelligence advice regarding the North Korean missile threat, choosing instead to believe the word of Russian president, Vladimir Putin. In an interview to promote his memoir, McCabe told 60 Minutes he had heard from FBI colleagues, who were in a meeting with Trump, that the president said explicitly: “I don’t care. I believe Putin.”
25th amendment. The Republican senator Lindsey Graham has said he intends to subpoena McCabe over his claim that justice department officials discussed invoking the 25th amendment to remove Trump from power.
Nobel prize. The Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, nominated Trump for the Nobel peace prize after his summit with North Korea last year only because the White House asked him to, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun has reported.
Facebook called ‘digital gangsters’ in UK report on fake news
A stinging report by the UK parliament has described Facebook and its top executives as “digital gangsters”, concluding the company flagrantly broke privacy and competition law while allowing disinformation and fake news to be funnelled to its users. The report by the digital, culture, media and sport select committee is the result of an 18-month investigation, and singles out the social media firm for obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle Russia’s attempts to manipulate elections.
Zuckerberg in contempt. Mark Zuckerberg was personally accused of contempt of parliament for refusing on three occasions to give evidence, instead sending junior executives who were unable to answer the committee’s questions.
Tech regulation. David Pegg lays out the key points in the committee’s 108-page report, including its recommendation that social media be regulated under law.
Catholic bishops gather in Rome for summit on sexual abuse
The senior Vatican official who will lead a four-day summit on clerical sexual abuse has said the church’s credibility is “strongly at stake”. With more than 100 senior Catholic bishops arriving in Rome for the meeting, which begins on Thursday, Father Federico Lombardi said the issue must be tackled “with depth and without fear”. Pope Francis, who will also be present, said on Sunday that sexual abuse was “an urgent challenge”, though he has previously warned that expectations for the summit must be “deflated”.
McCarrick defrocked. The summit comes days after Francis defrocked Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal and archbishop of Washington DC, who was found guilty by the Vatican of sexually abusing minors. McCarrick is the most senior figure to be removed from priesthood in modern times.
Crib sheet
Senior Polish government officials may cancel a planned trip to Israel after the Israeli acting foreign minister Yisrael Katz suggested antisemitism “was innate among the Poles before the Holocaust, during it and after it too”.
Four Indian soldiers and a civilian have been killed in a firefight in the disputed Kashmir region, where authorities are hunting for suspected members of the Islamist militant group that killed 44 Indian paramilitary police in a suicide bombing last week.
Almost 100 current and former Walmart workers have launched gender discrimination lawsuits against the world’s largest retailer, alleging unequal pay and a lack of advancement opportunities for women.
YouTube is to blame for a startling rise in the number of people who believe the Earth is flat, according to researchers who interviewed attendees at two key Flat Earther conferences.
Must-reads
Ilhan Omar takes her turn in the spotlight
The new Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota Ilhan Omar is already learning to weather controversy, after her comments about the Israel lobby and a confrontation with the conservative grandee Elliott Abrams. Sabrina Siddiqui reports.
The battle between Radiohead and EMI’s Guy Hands
Radiohead shocked the music industry in 2007 when they released their seventh album, In Rainbows, online and without a label. As Eamonn Forde writes in an extract from his new book, it came down to a battle between the band and the private equity firm who had just bought EMI.
How the Panama Papers have tightened the noose on Maduro
Until 2016, the Venezuelan elite who’d grown rich from their links to the Chávez and Maduro government liked to launder their money through Panamanian real estate. The release of the Panama Papers all but put a stop to that, as Mat Youkee reports from Panama City.
A different vision of Holocaust remembrance
Germany’s Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones”, are memorials to individual victims of the Holocaust, small brass blocks placed among the cobblestones outside their last-known freely chosen residence. The idea was conceived by artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, writes Eliza Apperly. There are 70,000 such stones across Germany.
Opinion
The Trump administration does not just dislike the European Union, it wants to destroy it, says Natalie Nougayrède. And Mike Pompeo’s tour of Budapest, Bratislava and Warsaw last week was designed to drive a wedge between eastern and western Europe.
Through his choice of destinations, Pompeo amplified divisions between countries formerly behind the iron curtain and those that weren’t. This astutely plays on sensitivities, manipulated by demagogues, that have marred the EU’s capacity to unite in recent years.
Sport
Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500 for the second time in four years on Sunday, after a series of crashes took out all but 14 of the cars in the field. Hamlin dedicated the victory to JD Gibbs, the co-founder of his team, Joe Gibbs Racing, who died last month.
You’d be forgiven for assuming America’s various lower-level professional and elite soccer leagues were working together to build a promotion/relegation pyramid, from regional leagues up to a national league that could rival or even merge with Major League Soccer. But you’d be wrong, as Beau Dure explains.
Sign up
The US morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.
