NYT selection of articles for the first part of June

From now onwards we are pleased to offer you also some selection of articles from an American newspaper with standing, worthy of your attention.

We hope to please you with these offers of our selected articles from the New York Times.

June 01 – June15

Thursday 9 June

The Northern Crimean Canal has been reopened.Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Russia restores rail links to the south of Ukraine

Russia is cementing its grip on southern Ukraine, extending infrastructure that could help it claim permanent dominion over the region. The repair work would allow Moscow to fortify a “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea and build on efforts to claim control through the introduction of Russian currency and the appointment of proxy officials. Follow the latest updates from the war.

Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, said yesterday that the military and Russian Railways had together repaired about 750 miles of track in southeastern Ukraine and set the conditions for traffic to flow from Russia through Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region to occupied territory in Kherson and Crimea. These claims could not be verified.

Satellite imagery reviewed by The Times showed that water was again flowing through parts of the Northern Crimean Canal in Crimea that had been dry until March. The 250-mile canal is an important source of freshwater that Ukraine cut off in 2014 with bags of sand and clay after the Kremlin annexed the peninsula.

Fighting: Even as Russia sought to entrench its control in the south this week, guerrilla warfare has emerged inside the occupied regions, with a series of attacks targeting Russian supporters and proxies.

Sievierodonetsk: In the east, where both armies are fighting for control, Ukrainian officials were weighing whether to withdraw their forces from the city, which is the last major pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the Luhansk region that has been blasted by weeks of Russian shelling.

In other news from the war:

Russia and Turkey announced no progress toward allowing grain exports from Ukraine. In a symbolic vote, the European Parliament recommended that Ukraine be granted candidate status for membership in the E.U., Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said on Twitter.

The crash took place yards from the site of a fatal terrorist attack in 2016.Michael Sohn/Associated Press

Car drives into a school group in Berlin

A car plowed into a crowd of people on a busy Berlin sidewalk yesterday morning, killing a female teacher on a school trip and injuring 14 teenage students traveling with her, before crashing into the window of a store. Five of the victims have life-threatening injuries, officials said.

The driver was a 29-year-old German man of Armenian origin who lives in Berlin and whom a Berlin state senator described as “a mentally impaired person.” A police spokesman said they knew of no motive, but were investigating whether the crash was intentional or accidental and perhaps caused by “an exceptional medical situation.”

The schoolteacher who was killed was from the western state of Hesse, according to officials. It was not clear if there were any people injured aside from the students. As of last night, the police had not released the names of any victims and were waiting to alert their families.

Site: The area was yards from the location of a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in 2016 in which 12 people died after an attacker drove a stolen truck into a crowd of people. The square has since been reinforced to protect the large numbers of people who pass through it every day.

More than 90 women are suing the F.B.I. for failures in its investigation of Larry Nassar, the former doctor for U.S.A. Gymnastics. In the abortion rights debate, some progressive organizations have adopted inclusive language that moves away from terms like “women” or “breastfeeding.” In a new study, a treatment for metastatic breast cancer was found to be stunningly successful, slowing tumor growth and extending life to an extent rarely seen with advanced cancers.

June 10

We’re covering the fight for the Donbas region in Ukraine and the Jan. 6 hearings.

Ukrainian regional police officers patrolling the city of Lysychansk.Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Donbas’s fate is ‘being decided’

President Volodymyr Zelensky described the battle for Sievierodonetsk as a crucial moment in what is increasingly a war of attrition in eastern Ukraine. “The fate of our Donbas is being decided there,” he said.

Ukrainian forces are outgunned by the Russians. The city is burning as the sounds of gunfire echo from vicious street-by-street combat. If Sievierodonetsk and its sister city Lysychansk fall, Russia will control all of Luhansk, one of two provinces in the Donbas region.

Ukraine’s defense minister said his country “desperately needs heavy weapons, and very fast.”

Both sides are still struggling to control what Zelensky has called “dead cities,” as Russian bombardment further destroys the metropolises in the east. Here are live updates.

Deaths: Ukraine is keeping its casualty numbers secret. But on the front lines, fresh graves show how relentless the fighting has become.

Representatives Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney on the first day of hearings on the Capitol riot.Kenny Holston for The New York Times

The U.S. begins Jan. 6 hearings

The House panel investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol opened public hearings in Washington on Thursday night and began setting out the findings from its nearly yearlong investigation.

Lawmakers began the session by presenting previously unreleased video testimony from people close to former President Donald Trump. They also shared footage revealing the role of the far-right group the Proud Boys in the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Together, the testimony and the lawmakers’ interpretations were used not only to highlight the threat that the activities that led up to the attack posed to American democracy but also to put Trump in the center of what Representative Bennie Thompson, the committees’s chairman, called “a sprawling, multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the election.”

“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,” he said.

Resources: The Times has constructed an exhaustive timeline of the attack — the planning beforehand, the events at the Capitol and the preparation for the hearings.

Trump: Lawyers plan to question Trump under oath as part of a separate investigation into his business practices that is being led by the New York State attorney general’s office.

Related: The F.B.I. arrested Ryan Kelley, who is running for governor in Michigan. He faces misdemeanor charges, including disorderly conduct, in connection with the Capitol riot.

Members of a W.H.O. investigative team in Wuhan, China, in February 2021.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A new report on Covid’s origins

A team of international scientists assembled by the World Health Organization to look into the origins of the pandemic said that bats likely carried an ancestor of the coronavirus that may have then spilled over into a mammal sold at a wildlife market.

But the experts said that more Chinese data was needed to study how the virus spread to people — including the possibility that a lab leak played a role.

The team, which was appointed by the W.H.O. in October as it tried to reset its approach to studying the pandemic’s origins, said that Chinese scientists had shared information with them, but gaps in Chinese reports made it difficult to determine when and where the outbreak emerged. No new data pointed to a lab leak, the new report said, but the group said that they wanted to evaluate any evidence that emerges in the future.

Looking ahead. Independent experts said it was unclear how the team, which follows a previous group of scientists that the W.H.O. sent to China in early 2021, could help the organization break through the political barriers in China that have stalled the publication of most information about the virus’s origins.

Peter Dejong/Associated Press

As inflation continues to rise, the European Central Bank says that it will raise interest rates next month for the first time in 11 years.

June 11

U.K. Officials Won’t Investigate Political Donation Flagged for Russian Origins

A bank alert had said a $630,225 Conservative Party donation originated in a Russian account. The authorities say there’s no evidence that a crime was committed.

June 12

After a Political Storm, Gay Days Return to Disney

An L.G.B.T.Q. tradition at Disney World took on new significance this year, when Disney was ensnared in a heated cultural debate.

Eavesdropping on the Secret Lives of Dolphins in New York Harbor For two years, an array of six underwater microphones tracked the feeding noises of marine mammals newly prevalent in New York waters.

June 13

We’re covering gun control in the U.S. and Poland’s abortion ban.

President Biden meeting last week with Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the lead Democratic negotiator on gun reform legislation.Doug Mills/The New York Times

U.S. senators reach deal on gun safety

Three weeks after 19 children and two teachers died in a gun massacre at a Texas elementary school, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators yesterday struck a deal on a gun control bill. The agreement includes enhanced background checks for people under the age of 21 and a provision to close the “boyfriend loophole” by extending to dating partners a prohibition on gun ownership for domestic abusers.

The deal, which still faces a perilous path in Congress, amounts to notable progress. But it falls far short of the sprawling reforms that President Biden, gun control activists and a majority of Democrats have long championed, such as universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.

Democrats hailed the plan, which would also toughen federal laws to stop gun trafficking and ensure that all commercial sellers are conducting background checks, as an opportunity to pass the most significant gun safety legislation in decades. The backing of 10 Republicans suggested that the plan could yet draw the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate.

Next steps: Senators were still haggling over crucial details, including how much additional time law enforcement would have to review juvenile and mental health records for prospective gun buyers younger than 21.

Quotable: Biden urged Congress to pass a gun safety measure quickly, saying there were “no excuses for delay.” He added: “Each day that passes, more children are killed in this country.”

Barbara Skrobol visiting the grave of her sister-in-law Izabela Sajbor and her unborn child in Cwiklice, Poland.Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times

The risks of Poland’s abortion ban

As the U.S. faces the prospect that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that has made abortion legal for nearly 50 years, Poland offers a glimpse of a country where the procedure is already practically out of reach even in the gravest circumstances, with sometimes tragic consequences.

At least three woman have died in the 17 months since Poland eliminated an exception permitting abortion in the case of fetal abnormalities, a decision enabled by a high court dominated by judges loyal to the conservative government. Only one in 10 Poles support the stricter ban. The rest of the population is roughly split between reverting to milder restrictions and legalizing terminations.

Since the ban was passed, abortion-rights activists have been threatened with prison for handing out abortion pills, and the number of Polish women traveling abroad to get abortions has swelled further. Technically, the law still allows abortions if there is a serious risk to a woman’s health, but critics say it fails to provide necessary clarity, paralyzing doctors.

No return: “Once you start chipping away at the right to abortion, it’s hard to go back,” said Krystyna Kacpura, the president of the Federation for Women and Family Planning, an advocacy group. “We are now at a point where the risks to women’s physical and mental health have reached a new quality.”

Smoke filling the air over Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine, on Sunday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Russia gains traction in Sievierodonetsk

Russia is poised to encircle Sievierodonetsk, a city critical to its goal of seizing Ukraine’s east, while the neighboring city of Lysychansk is squarely in Moscow’s sights. Ukrainians have dwindling weaponry with which to defend their territory, prompting Ukrainian officials to call on NATO allies for faster delivery of longer-range weapons. Follow the latest updates.

With the momentum of the war shifting more decisively in Russia’s favor, Ukraine’s allies in Europe and elsewhere may soon find themselves forced to confront far more fundamental questions than what sort of weapons to provide, including whether to put pressure on Ukraine to reach a peace agreement with Russia or risk Russian escalation with more aggressive military support.

Ukraine is suffering horrific losses in the Donbas region, where the fight for Sievierodonetsk is playing out. By Ukraine’s own assessment, it is losing 100 to 200 people a day, in part because of Russian material superiority and in part because of Ukraine’s determination to fight on despite the increasingly bleak picture in the east.

Support: E.U. officials say they will try to tap a nine billion euro ($9.5 billion) funding pot to jointly procure military equipment. The bloc is also wrestling with the broader and politically fraught question of how to move forward with Ukraine’s bid for E.U. membership.

Continue reading the main story

Malin Fezehai for The New York Times The worst drought in four decades and a sharp rise in food prices caused by the war in Ukraine have left almost half of Somalia’s people facing acute food shortages.

June 14

The New York Stock Exchange on Monday.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

U.S. stocks enter a bear market

Wall Street stocks tumbled yesterday, with the S&P 500 falling 3.9 percent to close the day nearly 22 percent below its Jan. 3 peak. The steep decline — the seventh bear market in the past 50 years — is a rare and grim marker of investors’ concerns as a crucial report showed inflation accelerating and the World Bank issued a dire warning on global growth.

Ukrainian soldiers in Lysychansk.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Europe’s competing aims in Russia

As the leaders of France, Germany and Italy prepare to visit Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, for the first time since the war began, they and other Western politicians must decide whether to respond to Ukraine’s calls for more arms or to press harder for negotiations with Moscow to end the war. Follow the latest updates from the war.

The tactics that served Ukraine well early in the war have been less effective in the Donbas region in the east, where Russian forces are relying on their immense advantage in long-range artillery. They are poised to take the blasted city of Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost Ukrainian outpost, and are closing in on nearby Lysychansk.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, is insisting that his country regain every scrap of lost territory. But Ukrainian forces are running out of ammunition for their Soviet-era artillery, and Ukrainian officials contend that Russian artillery in the east is outfiring their own, 10 to 1. Western officials fear that a long war could bring in NATO countries and lead Russia to escalate its campaign.

Analysis: The divisions in Europe are a struggle between the eastern “justice party” that wants Russian forces pushed back and punished, and the western “peace party” that wants the war to end quickly, minimizing short-term damage, said Ivan Krastev, who leads the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In other news:

In the Ukrainian village of Husarivka, a Russian soldier’s burned corpse has drawn crowds. The Times reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a former Marine, wrote about the urge to stare at war’s destruction. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Taiwan to rethink its own military strategy against China and has served as a stark warning that the island may be inadequately prepared for a full-scale attack. At home, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, is fighting for his political survival. In Ukraine, he has been immortalized as a croissant.

June 15

How Much Damage Have Marjorie Taylor Greene and the ‘Bullies’ Done to the G.O.P.?

How to tell the Squad and the MAGA caucus apart. It’s not hard. – Thomas B. Edsall

The burial ceremony for a Ukrainian solider killed in the Donetsk region.Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

‘They’re going to set those terms for themselves’

The U.S. will not pressure Ukraine into negotiating a cease-fire even as Russia grinds out steady gains on the ground in the country’s embattled east, Colin H. Kahl, a top Pentagon official, said yesterday. “We’re not going to tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate, what to negotiate and when to negotiate,” he added. “They’re going to set those terms for themselves.”

The comments came as Ukraine’s attempt to hold on to its territory in the eastern Donbas region reached a critical juncture. Some Western officials are now questioning Ukraine’s ability to hold off Russian forces, while western European nations fear a prolonged war that raises the risk of drawing NATO into the fighting. Follow the latest updates from the war.

NATO defense ministers will meet today and tomorrow in Brussels. Finland and Sweden’s applications for membership are stalled over objections from Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, who argues that the would-be members sympathize with the Kurdish militants he sees as terrorists. “It is not possible for us to be in favor,” he said.

In other news from the conflict:

The eastern city of Sievierodonetsk is now cut off after the last bridge linking it with Ukrainian territory to the west was destroyed. Ukraine claimed to have steadily regained territory in the south and said its forces were within 12 miles of the occupied city of Kherson. A Russian court extended the pretrial detention of Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. basketball star, for another 18 days.

President Biden at the Port of Los Angeles.Samuel Corum for The New York Times

Biden’s options to rein in inflation dwindle

President Biden is weighing whether to roll back some of the tariffs imposed on Chinese goods during the Trump administration, in hopes of mitigating the most rapid price gains in 40 years, according to officials.

Business groups and some outside economists said it would be a significant step that the president could take to immediately cut costs for consumers. But some administration economists privately estimate the tariff reductions would reduce overall inflation by as little as a quarter of a percentage point, after it hit 8.6 percent in May.

The tariff discussion comes at a precarious time for the economy. Persistent inflation has shattered consumer confidence, driven the markets into bear territory — down 20 percent from January — and inflamed fears of a recession. Biden has said taming inflation rests mainly with the Federal Reserve, which is trying to cool demand by raising interest rates.

Context: The China tariffs are raising the price of goods for American consumers by essentially adding a tax on top of what they already pay for imported goods. In theory, removing the tariffs could reduce inflation if companies cut — or stopped raising — prices on those products.

Related: Cryptocurrency’s unregulated nature allowed a multitrillion-dollar industry to rise overnight. Now, those same structures have sent it crashing down.

Refugees were picked up in the English Channel in May 2021.Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Court halts migrant deportations to Rwanda

A last-minute ruling from the European Court of Human Rights grounded a chartered aircraft that was scheduled to take migrants from Britain to Rwanda, in an unexpected setback to a new, hard-line policy from the British government that seeks to deport would-be asylum seekers 4,000 miles away.

The ruling came at the end of a day of uncertainty, as the small number of people awaiting deportation attempted legal challenges to resist removal from Britain. Although Britain is no longer part of the E.U., it is a member of the Council of Europe and a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore accepts judgments from the court.

The plan has been roundly criticized by human rights advocates, civil servants and such high-ranking public figures as Prince Charles. It comes at a time when immigration into Britain from countries outside of the E.U. is rising. Critics have accused Boris Johnson, Britain’s struggling prime minister, of deliberately stoking the issue for political advantage.

Response: In a statement, the home secretary, Priti Patel, described the verdict as “very surprising.” She added: “We will not be deterred from doing the right thing and delivering our plans to control our nation’s borders. Our legal team are reviewing every decision made on this flight, and preparation for the next flight begins now.”

• A court in Zimbabwe convicted Jeffrey Moyo, a freelance reporter for The Times, on charges of breaching the country’s immigration laws, in another blow for the free press in the increasingly authoritarian country.
• A dispute between Canada and Denmark over Hans Island, a kidney-shaped piece of rock in the Arctic, has been resolved after decades of whimsical sparring.