Good morning.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed Russia’s pledge to drastically cut back its military activity in northern Ukraine, saying “Ukrainians are not naive people” and vowing to continue defensive military efforts.
Zelenskiy said in a video address early on Wednesday: “Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion and over the past eight years of the war in Donbas that only a concrete result can be trusted.”
Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin, said after talks in Istanbul on Tuesday that Moscow wanted to “increase mutual trust, create the right conditions for future negotiations and reach the final aim of signing a peace deal with Ukraine”, and that the Kremlin would “radically reduce military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv”.
Ukraine’s president said that while there had been “positive” signals from the latest talks, “they do not drown out the explosions of Russian shells”.
Has Russia halted attacks as promised? The mayor of Chernihiv, Vladyslav Atroshenko, said the Russians had lied and were continuing to indiscriminately attack the encircled city, which is less than 100 miles north of the country’s capital.
Why is Abramovich playing peacemaker after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? The emergence of the publicity-shy oligarch at the heart of peace negotiations has surprised many.
What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 35 of the Russian invasion.
Records show long gap in Trump phone logs as January 6 violence unfolded
The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is reportedly looking at a “possible cover-up” of White House records focusing on Donald Trump’s phone logs from that fateful day, which bear an unexplained gap of seven hours and 37 minutes covering the period when the violence was unfolding.
Documents obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News put flesh on the bones of one of the great mysteries of January 6: why White House phone logs contain holes in the record despite evidence the then president busily made calls at the height of the insurrection.
The documents reveal that Trump’s diary shows an entry at 11.17am when he “talked on a phone call to an unidentified person”. The next entry is not until 6.54pm – 457 minutes later – when Trump asked the White House switchboard to place a call to his communications chief, Dan Scavino.
Between those times Trump addressed a rally on the Ellipse, exhorting supporters to “fight like hell”; hundreds of Trump followers overran police barricades and stormed the Capitol building.
What did the Washington Post journalists say? Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) and Robert Costa reported that the long gap between call logs was of “intense interest” to elements of the January 6 committee. They quoted an unnamed member of the panel who said they were investigating a “possible cover-up”.
Joe Biden signs landmark law making lynching a hate crime
The first federal legislation making lynching a hate crime, addressing a history of racist killings in the US, became law yesterday.
The bill, passed by the Senate this month, is named afte Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Joe Biden signed the bill surrounded by Kamala Harris, members of Congress and top justice department officials. He was also joined by a descendant of Ida B Wells, a Black journalist who reported on lynchings, and Rev Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till.
The bill makes it possible to prosecute as a lynching any conspiracy to commit a hate crime that results in death or serious bodily injury. According to the bill’s champion, the Illinois congressman Bobby Rush, the law lays out a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines.
Why has it taken this long to bring in? Congress first considered anti-lynching legislation more than 120 years ago. Until March of this year, it had failed to pass such legislation nearly 200 times.
What did the vice-president say? “Lynching is not a relic of the past. Racial acts of terror still occur in our nation. And when they do, we must all have the courage to name them and hold the perpetrators to account,” she said.
In other news …
Jada Pinkett Smith promoted healing in an Instagram post on Tuesday, her first public comment since her husband slapped the comedian Chris Rock at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. In an Instagram post yesterday, Pinkett Smith said: “This is a season for healing. And I’m here for it.”
Israeli paramedics have said at least five people were killed in a shooting attack in a Tel Aviv suburb, the third such incident in less than a week. Amateur video broadcast on Israeli television stations showed a man dressed in black and pointing an assault rifle walking down a street in Bnei Brak.
California’s first-in-the-nation taskforce on reparations for African Americans has voted to direct state compensation to the descendants of enslaved and free Black people who were in the US in the 19th century. Basing compensation on lineage would have the best change of surviving a legal challenge, they said.
Police in Canada have laid a new charge against a “devil priest” hiding in France amid allegations he sexually abused multiple Inuit children. The case against Johannes Rivoire received renewed focus this week when Canada’s Inuit leader requested the pope personally intervene during a visit to the Vatican.
Stat of the day: Cathay Pacific plans world’s longest passenger flight covering more than 16,600km and avoiding Russia
Cathay Pacific is planning the world’s longest passenger flight by rerouting its New York to Hong Kong service over the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, the airline has said, in a new path that steers clear of Russia. The flight path will cover “just under 9,000 nautical miles” (16,668km, or 10,357 miles) in 16 to 17 hours, Cathay said in a statement to Agence France-Presse. The airline declined to be drawn on the reasons for its flight path giving a wide berth to Russia’s airspace, according to Bloomberg.
Don’t miss this: How we lost our sensory connection with food – and how to restore it
No human activity is more multi-sensory than eating, but to eat in the modern world is often to eat in a state of profound sensory disconnect, writes Bee Wilson. We order groceries on a computer, or takeaways on a phone, and they arrive wrapped in plastic. Vegetables are sold pre-chopped and almost all salad is pre-washed. Any hint of the soil the food grew in has been erased. We judge the goodness of food by the words on the packet rather than by our own senses. It shouldn’t have to be this way.
Or this: How the pandemic created a new generation of stoners
The Covid-19 pandemic sparked a number of shake-ups to the social order – a burgeoning anti-work movement, a sharp economic swoon, and tiresome new polarities in the culture war. But as lockdown orders marched on, many weed agnostics dived in to the community with gusto, forming a new cohort of pandemic-era stoners. According to the data analytics firm Headset, legal marijuana sales increased by 120% in 2020, and 61% in 2021.
Climate check: US transition to electric vehicles would save more than 100,000 lives by 2050 – study
A speedy nationwide transition to electric vehicles powered by renewable energy would save more than 100,000 American lives and $1.2tn in public health costs over the next three decades, according to a report. Analysis by the American Lung Association highlights the public health damage caused by the world’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels, and provides a glimpse into a greener, healthier future – should political leaders decide to act.
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