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      Donald Trump says Xi Jinping wrote him a ‘beautiful note’ after rally shooting

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      Donald Trump has said China’s president wrote him a “beautiful note” after the assassination attempt a week ago, as he continued to court leaders whom Joe Biden has criticised as dictators.In his first campaign rally since narrowly escaping the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania, Trump told a crowd in Michigan on Saturday: “[President Xi Jinping] wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened.”The Republican presidential nominee recalled how he described Xi as “a brilliant man, he controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist”, adding that the Chinese leader makes people like Biden look like “babies”.As well as familiar attacks on Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump also used the rally in Grand Rapids to hail Xi and Vladimir Putin as “smart, tough” figures who “love their country”, echoing praise he gave in 2022 of the Russian president’s strategy to invade Ukraine. In that same 2022 speech, at a rally in Georgia, Trump called North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “tough”, and said of Kim and Xi: “The smartest one gets to the top.” On Saturday, Trump said he “got along very well” with both leaders.Still wearing a small wound dressing a week after the shooting, Trump also publicly supported the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, saying he was right in saying that “we have to have somebody that can protect us”. Orbán was this week accused by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, of betraying European leaders after he travelled to Moscow for what he called a “peace mission”, holding a joint press conference with Putin in which the Russian leader told Kyiv to give up more land, pull back its troops and drop its efforts to join Nato.After meeting Trump recently in Florida, Orbán flagged the likelihood of a Trump victory, and urged European leaders to reopen “direct lines of diplomatic communication” with Russia and “high-level political talks” with China.Trump’s reference to a “beautiful note” from Xi echoes the now-famous “love letters” he received from North Korea’s Kim. In September 2018, Trump told a rally in West Virginia: “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”The Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward later obtained 25 letters between Trump and Kim for his second book on the Trump presidency, Rage.In one letter, about a meeting in Singapore in June 2018, Kim wrote: “Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched.”After a summit in Vietnam in February 2019, Kim wrote that “every minute we shared 103 days ago in Hanoi was also a moment of glory that remains a precious memory”.The summits did not reduce tensions with North Korea.With Reuters More

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      in Elections

      Brittney Griner Announces Birth of Son

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      Less than two years after her release from a Russian penal colony, the W.N.B.A. center and two-time Olympic gold medal winner said that her son was born on July 8.Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. center and two-time Olympic gold medal winner, announced on Friday that she and her wife, Cherelle Griner, have welcomed their first child, less than two years after the basketball star was released from a penal colony in Russia and made her return to the sport for the Phoenix Mercury.Griner, 33, discussed the birth of her son during an interview on “We Need To Talk,” a CBS Sports show, saying that he was born on July 8, weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces. Earlier this year, the couple said that they planned to name their son Bash.On social media, Griner and her wife had posted about their excitement about the pregnancy. After the “We Need To Talk” host asked what Griner was looking forward to about parenting, she revealed that her son had already arrived.“They say as soon as you see him, everything that you thought mattered just goes out the window,” Griner said. “And that’s literally what happens.”Griner will head to Paris for the 2024 Olympics to play for the U.S. women’s basketball team, with the first game scheduled for July 29 against Japan. She said that she was disappointed that she had to leave her newborn but that “he’ll understand.”Last month, Griner wrote on social media that she and Cherelle were celebrating their sixth anniversary.The birth announcement comes two months after the release of Griner’s memoir, “Coming Home,” which details the 10 months she spent in a Russian penal colony after being detained in an airport for possession of 0.7 grams of medicinal marijuana oil she had forgotten to take out of her luggage.At the prison, she sewed uniforms for the Russian military and survived on spoiled food.Griner was released in a December 2022 prisoner swap negotiated by the Biden administration. She had been sentenced to nine years in the penal colony.“My life became a blur of sweeping and dusting, cleaning and praying, hoping I could somehow get home,” Griner wrote in her memoir.In her first game back in the W.N.B.A. in 2023, Griner scored a team high of 18 points. This year, she returns to the United States women’s national roster. Griner won Olympic gold medals with the team in 2016 and 2021. More

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      in Elections

      Evan Gershkovich’s Conviction in Russia Won’t Stop Journalists From Seeking the Truth

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      The only surprise in the guilty verdict against Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent who was arrested in Russia last year on phony charges of espionage, was that it came so quickly. The charge itself was a farce. No evidence was ever made public, the hearings were held in secret, and Mr. Gershkovich’s lawyers were barred from saying anything in public about the case.Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest, trial and conviction all serve President Vladimir Putin’s goal of silencing any honest reporting from inside Russia about the invasion of Ukraine and of making Russians even warier of speaking with any foreigner about the war.Independent Russian news outlets have been almost entirely shut down and their journalists imprisoned or forced to leave the country, so foreign correspondents are among the few remaining sources of independent reporting from inside Russia. Mr. Gershkovich’s last published article before his arrest, on March 29, 2023, was headlined “Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone” — just the sort of vital independent journalism that challenges Mr. Putin’s claims of a strong and vibrant Russia fighting a just war.Russian prosecutors claimed that Mr. Gershkovich, acting on instructions from Washington, used “painstaking conspiratorial methods” to obtain “secret information” about Uralvagonzavod, a Russian weapons factory near Yekaterinburg, where he was arrested and tried.The existence of this massive industrial complex is well known, but the charge of espionage allowed Russian prosecutors to keep the entire proceeding secret while fueling Mr. Putin’s propaganda about efforts by the United States and Europe to destabilize Russia.Mr. Putin’s crackdown on free expression, especially about the war in Ukraine, is unrelenting. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 in detention, including Mr. Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian dual citizen and an editor with the U.S.-government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Anne Applebaum on autocracies and signs of America’s move to join them – podcast

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      Back in December Donald Trump said the quiet bit out loud when he announced he wanted to be a dictator – if only on day one. Looking around the world in the 21st century, autocracy is getting a new lease of life – authoritarian regimes are working together, and the danger to democracies like the United States is getting closer to home.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland is joined by the political commentator and author Anne Applebaum to look at what the US should be doing to tackle the growing threat of autocracy

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      in Elections

      Ukraine’s President Pleads for More Weapons With Fewer Restrictions

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      “America doesn’t shy away from its friends,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech in Washington as leaders gathered in the city for a NATO summit.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrived in Washington on Tuesday with words of gratitude and praise for American support, and pleas for more weapons and fewer restrictions on using them in his country’s war against Russia.Mr. Zelensky credited American missiles — and permission to fire them across the border into Russia — with helping his forces hold off an attack on the city of Kharkiv, stopping a Russian offensive this spring.But he asked for other restrictions to be lifted, so that Ukraine could fire at Russian military bases hundreds of miles inside Russia to destroy aircraft that fire weapons and drop bombs that he said were killing civilians and children.With more American assistance, he said, Ukraine can continue to strike against Russian targets in Crimea and help “push the occupiers” out of the southern part of the country.There were questions of which version of Mr. Zelensky would show up in Washington as leaders of NATO members gathered for a summit. Last year, he flew to the NATO summit in Lithuania after making an angry social media post criticizing alliance members for failing to offer a timeline for Ukraine to join the alliance, prompting complaints from the Biden administration and other allies.There was no sign of anger this year. Mr. Zelensky praised the United States for its early support in the war and pushed back against those who have started to think that “it’s better to delay than act.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Ukraine Says It Foiled Russian Plot Echoing String of Coup Bids

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      While the viability of the plan was not immediately clear, officials said it was a reminder that the Kremlin remained determined to bring down President Volodymyr Zelensky.Ukraine’s security service said on Monday that it had foiled yet another Russian plot to stir public unrest and then use the ensuing turmoil to topple the government, outlining a familiar tactic that Kyiv claims has been employed in string of coup attempts in recent years.The Ukrainian domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., said that it had discovered a “group” of conspirators it accused of planning to spark a riot, seize the Parliament building and replace the nation’s military and civilian leadership. Four people have been arrested and charged, according to the authorities.While offering little detail on how such an ambitious plan could have succeeded, officials said it was a reminder that more than two years after launching a full-scale invasion of the country, the Kremlin remained determined to bring down President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government by any means.On the battlefield, Russia continues to send tens of thousands of new soldiers to the front to replace those killed in the hopes of exhausting Ukraine’s military and Kyiv’s Western backers. At the same time, Russia’s relentless bombardment of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure is designed, in part, to throttle the economy and undermine the state’s ability to function.The Kremlin has also long been directing more covert campaigns aimed at destabilizing the government in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian and Western officials, in some cases attempting to stir discontent with disinformation.The plot outlined by Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency and prosecutors on Monday fit squarely in that pattern.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Russia Maintains Punishing Pace of Deadly Strikes on Ukrainian Cities

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      A barrage on Vilniansk, a town in the south, killed seven, including three children, as attacks across Ukraine in the past few days have left dozens dead, according to local authorities.A Russian missile attack on a small town in southeastern Ukraine and the fiery inferno that followed killed at least seven civilians, including three children, the country’s authorities said as they surveyed on Sunday the deadly toll of two days of fierce Russian assaults.Yuriy Borzenko, chief doctor of Zaporizhzhia Regional Children’s Hospital, said in a phone interview that, aside from those killed, dozens of others, including a pregnant woman and five 14-year-old girls, were being treated for wounds after the attack on the southeastern town, Vilniansk, which took place on Saturday.The girls were out for a walk together in the afternoon sunshine, Dr. Borzenko said, when explosions from the projectiles tore through the center of the town, engulfing shops, cars and homes in flames. Shrapnel had embedded in the skull of one of the girls, who was left in a coma, he said, “still in between life and death.”“Her parents are in really bad shape, I just saw them,” he added.As the attacks have rained down, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has reiterated his plea to loosen restrictions on the use of long-range American missiles known as ATACMS so that Ukraine can target warplanes at Russian air bases before they take to the sky on bombing runs.“Long-range strikes and modern air defense are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian terror,” he said on Sunday in a statement accompanying videos said to show the aftermath of a number of the week’s worst attacks.The strike in Vilniansk was one of a series of attacks across Ukraine, which have killed at least 24 civilians since Friday evening, according to local officials and emergency workers, who said that scores more had been wounded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russian Casualties in Ukraine Mount, in a Brutal Style of Fighting

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      More than 1,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine were killed or wounded on average each day in May, according to NATO and Western military officials.May was a particularly deadly month for the Russian army in Ukraine, with an average of more than 1,000 of its soldiers injured or killed each day, according to U.S., British and other Western intelligence agencies.But despite its losses, Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month — roughly as many as are exiting the battlefield, U.S. officials said. That has allowed its army to keep sending wave after wave of troops at Ukrainian defenses, hoping to overwhelm them and break through the trench lines.It is a style of warfare that Russian soldiers have likened to being put into a meat grinder, with commanding officers seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are sending infantry soldiers to die.At times, this approach has proved effective, bringing the Russian army victories in Avdiivka and Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. But Ukrainian and Western officials say the tactics were less successful this spring, as Russia tried to take land near the city of Kharkiv.American officials said that Russia achieved a critical objective of President Vladimir V. Putin, creating a buffer zone along the border to make it more difficult for the Ukrainians to strike into the country.But the drive did not threaten Kharkiv and was ultimately stopped by Ukrainian defenses, according to Western officials.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More