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Middle East crisis live: Israel targets southern Beirut as Kuwait condemns Iranian missile and drone attack

Israel has issued evacuation orders to residents of seven villages in southern Lebanon, including Houmine al-Faouqa, Bnaafoul, Arab Salim, Roumine, Aazze, Arki and Jbaa. “Out of concern for your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move away from the villages and towns by a distance of at least 1000 meters to open areas,” IDF Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said in a post on X. Israel has stepped up its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, capturing the strategic hilltop Beaufort castle yesterday and ordering strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs today. Israel plans to “turn the Litani area into a zone under IDF security control, free of weapons and terrorists,” Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said.

Colombia’s far-right presidential candidate Espriella wins first round of vote ahead of runoff

The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and will face senator Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by leftwing president Gustavo Petro, in the runoff. With 100% of ballots counted, the outsider and Donald Trump admirer Espriella secured 43.7% of the vote – just over 10.3m votes – compared with 40.9% (about 9.6m votes) for Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights activist who has served as a senator since 2014. The two will face each other in a runoff on 21 June. Although polls in recent weeks had already detected Espriella’s rapid rise, most still showed him trailing Cepeda, who for months seemed to hold a solid lead. Espriella appears to have consolidated much of the vote that had previously been going to the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, who at one point polled above 20% and was running in second place but finished Sunday with just 6.9%. Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre (the Tiger), celebrated the result: “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack ... In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever,” he said in a video alongside his wife and children, all wearing shirts of the Colombian national football team. Petro posted on X that “as president, I do not accept the preliminary results” released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections. Without showing any evidence, the president claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would only “consider and accept” the results of the official scrutiny process, during which the National Electoral Council reviews the physical tally sheets, a procedure that can take days or even weeks. The lawyer Juan Carlos Galindo Vácha, who previously headed the National Civil Registry on two occasions, accused Petro of spreading “disinformation”. “Historically, in presidential elections, the difference between the preliminary count, which is unofficial, and the official scrutiny process is less than 1%. That alone undermines any claim by President Petro that there was fraud in the count,” he said in an interview with Radio Caracol. He added: “The president should show greater respect for the citizens who take part in the electoral process, whether as polling officials or electoral observers. He should not make these wild claims that even he does not understand.” Cepeda delivered his speech shortly after Petro’s post and echoed the president’s allegations, likewise without presenting evidence. The senator said there was “information regarding a certain number of polling stations” in which “atypical voting patterns” had allegedly occurred. “Only once the electoral commissions have fully clarified this matter will we comment on tonight’s results,” he added. After a wave of victories by far-right candidates in recent years in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Honduras, Colombia remains one of the few countries in Latin America still governed by the left, alongside Mexico and Brazil, which will hold its own presidential election in October. Espriella is an outspoken admirer of several rightwing leaders in the region, including the US president, Donald Trump, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei. A criminal lawyer and millionaire businessman who has never held public office, Espriella built his campaign around a promise to return to a policy of total confrontation in response to Colombia’s worsening security crisis, now considered the worst since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Espriella advocates ending Petro’s “total peace” policy of negotiating the dismantling of criminal groups – of which Cepeda is widely regarded as the architect – and replacing it with a mano dura (iron-fist) strategy inspired above all by El Salvador’s populist strongman Bukele, who has imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population as part of a controversial crackdown on gangs. Even the lawyer’s neatly trimmed beard and habitual use of baseball caps have drawn comparisons with Bukele’s style. Espriella has incorporated his tiger nickname into much of his campaign branding. He has attracted controversy by attacking journalists and, at one point, telling a radio host that he was winning over female voters because of the size of his genitals. In a speech on Sunday night, Valencia acknowledged the result and endorsed Espriella in the runoff. Despite widespread concern about security, election day itself passed peacefully. The past few months have been marked by a surge in guerrilla attacks, homicides, kidnappings, forced displacement and massacres, and last year the rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event by a Farc dissident group and later died.

Netanyahu orders Israeli bombing of southern Beirut

Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli military to bomb the southern suburbs of Beirut, the most serious escalation of Israel’s war in Lebanon since a supposed ceasefire was announced on 17 April. The Israeli prime minister and his defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Monday they had given instructions to strike “terrorist targets” in the southern suburbs for what they called “repeated and ongoing violations of the ceasefire by Hezbollah”. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has not stopped despite the 17 April ceasefire, and Israeli strikes have killed more than 800 people in Lebanon since its announcement. Hezbollah has targeted Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, and in recent days, launched rockets towards northern Israel. The ceasefire was previously understood to exempt Beirut from Israeli strikes, though Israel has struck the southern suburbs twice in what is still a reduction from the daily bombing of the capital before 17 April. People began to leave the southern suburbs minutes after Netanyahu’s statement, with roads leading out of the area choked with cars. The displacement was a familiar one; residents there have been forced out of their homes several times over the last three months. More than a million people have been displaced because of Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley, as well as the dozens of forced evacuation orders the Israeli military has placed on towns and villages across Lebanon. On Sunday, the Israeli military captured the medieval Beaufort castle in southern Lebanon, the deepest it has reached since its 18-year occupation of the region ended in 2000. It also bombarded Tyre, levelling entire buildings in some of the most violent airstrikes yet on the southern city. Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to push even further into the country. “Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah’s control,” Netanyahu said in a statement released after the capture of the castle. “We have returned united, determined and stronger than ever.” Hezbollah remained defiant, announcing operations on Sunday against what it said were Israeli soldiers stationed outside Beaufort castle. The Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah blamed the Lebanese government for the escalation on Sunday, saying it “has proven the failure of the direct negotiation option”. European leaders have condemned Israel’s expansion into Lebanon. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for an end to the fighting, saying “nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon”. His foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, requested a meeting of the UN security council for Monday. The foreign ministers of the UK and Germany joined France in condemning the new operation. Britain’s Yvette Cooper called for the US-brokered ceasefire to be respected. The current conflict began in March, after Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader. Since then, more than 3,300 people, including children and first responders, have been killed in Lebanon. Hezbollah strikes since 2 March have killed two people in Israel and more than 20 soldiers and one contractor in southern Lebanon. The prime minister, Nawaf Salam, on Saturday accused Israel of “implementing a policy of total destruction of cities and towns”. Netanyahu has called the capture of Beaufort castle a “dramatic shift” in the campaign against Hezbollah. Israeli forces used the castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, as a base during their occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. The castle offers views across Lebanon and into northern Israel. It was built as a crusader castle around the 12th century and later occupied by Saladin’s Jerusalem army, the Ottomans, the French and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Some experts have questioned the strategic significance of the capture, and said it amounted to little more than a public relations coup. The military’s presence there would not solve the issue with Hezbollah, Orna Mizrahi, a former deputy director in Israel’s national security council, told the Associated Press. “We are damaging them in the operations, but in parallel we need to pursue a political and diplomatic solution,” Mizrahi said. Talks between senior officials from Israel and Lebanon began in April in Washington, the first in more than three decades between the countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations. Those discussions were scheduled to continue this week. Hezbollah is not taking part and has said it will not accept any results. Israel’s latest advance and the continuing violence in Lebanon present a challenge in efforts to secure a lasting peace agreement between the US and Iran. Tehran has continued to insist that any agreement to extend the current ceasefire with Washington and return shipping to the strait of Hormuz must include an end to fighting in Lebanon. Observers have suggested Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. With Agence France-Presse

Brutal and emboldened: how Nigeria’s bandit crisis spun out of control

Beneath the shade of the wide-spreading branches of a neem tree, five young gang members wearing camouflage and beanies and cradling AK47 rifles took refuge from the harsh midday sun. They passed around cold bottles of water and a popular energy drink called Fearless. To their left, a dreadlocked teenager with his own rifle rested on one of three motorcycles parked on the sparse grass. To their right, another teenager sat with his back to the others, rolling a spliff. The rendezvous of some of the most dreaded men in Nigeria took place near Batsari, a settlement in the north-western state of Katsina. The settlement lies within the Rugu forest reserve, which covers much of the state and stretches across the border into Niger’s Maradi region. Local people would describe these men as terrorists or bandits – a reference to armed criminal groups who kidnap for ransom, killing those who resist, and engage in cattle rustling. But Abu “Abu Radde” Bello, the 32-year-old gang leader, said he rejects those terms. Abu ‘Abu Radde’ Bello, the leader of a gang in Katsina state “We are not happy that people call us criminals and terrorists,” he said after midday prayers. “We are just trying to fend for our families. In the process, people are disturbing us – and that brings conflicts.” *** Bello’s denials – expressed in neutral language – belie the brutal nature of Nigeria’s banditry crisis. Hundreds of gangs like his have roamed across vast swathes of un-policed land in northern Nigeria since 2011, razing villages to the ground and maiming, torturing, raping and killing with unrestrained ruthlessness. A young boy in the mining town of Nahuta, which has been targeted by armed gangs The recruits, mostly ethnic Fulani herders, are the most prominent non-state actors in this part of Africa’s most-populous country. Between 2010 and 2023, there were 13,485 deaths linked to banditry in the seven states that comprise Nigeria’s north-west region, according to the conflict monitor Acled. The crisis has its roots in conflicts between farmers and nomadic herders over land and resources that have become more intense because of the climate crisis, deforestation and rapid population growth. Some herders formed vigilante groups, which morphed into criminal gangs. Fulanis, who are almost entirely Muslims, are present in more than 20 countries in Africa. Though Bello was born in Nigeria, and has a national ID card, he remembers playing shadi – a ritual game of endurance where young suitors take turns whipping each other to impress potential brides – with Fulani from elsewhere, and some of his kinsmen know motorcycle routes all the way to Mali. Bello’s gang gathered under a tree To the south, in the north-central region, similar factors are driving conflicts between Fulani militia and vigilante groups that have sprung up in largely Christian farming settlements. Analysts say Donald Trump’s otherwise debunked claims of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria are closest to being true here. In the north-west however, where farmers are of Hausa ethnicity, the violence pits Muslim against Muslim. The crisis stems in part from a lack of state presence in large parts of the country. Huge areas have been abandoned by the state, including territory designated by the federal government as nature reserves. In the Batsari local government area, for example, several settlements, including the rendezvous point chosen by Bello’s gang, are not even on the map. In the absence of law enforcement, non-state actors have moved in and become the law themselves. Across the country, various groupings, such as the militants of the Niger delta, secessionists in the south-east, jihadists in the north-east and bandits in the north-west, use these ungoverned spaces to hide out, keep abductees, and wage war against security personnel with less knowledge of the terrain. A customs authority building on the Nigeria-Niger border Successive administrations have struggled to contain these interlinked security issues and previous gains have been erased in recent years. In 2022, terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria dropped to 392, the lowest level since 2011, according to the Global Terrorism Index. In 2025, that number soared to 750, the largest increase globally. Bandit leaders have pointed accusing fingers at authorities, saying government corruption is a bigger sin than abduction. Porous borders and an underfunded security architecture have also contributed to a feeling of insecurity. In Batsari, Bello recited longstanding grievances against the state government. “They promised to build hospital, school, dam and [give us] tap water,” he said. As the crisis festers, some say the lines are blurring between opportunistic banditry and ideological jihadism, with consequences for a common enemy – the state and its citizens. The rise of Lakurawa, a hybrid insurgency that has emerged in the last decade in the north-central region, has become cause for concern in particular. It started as a vigilante group fighting bandits but morphed into a terrorist outfit levying a religious tax on communities in return for protection. *** The bandits’ success has given them an air of impunity. Younger gang members show off their loot on TikTok, while older ones have become influential in political circles. In November, 25 schoolgirls were abducted from a Kebbi school by the notorious bandit leader Ado Aleru. Two sources working in intelligence and the presidency told the Guardian anonymously that the abduction was carried out to pressure the government to release Aleru’s nephew and some of his men, who had been arrested on their return from hajj in Saudi Arabia. The schoolgirls were released within a week. Sources with knowledge of the operation said the same to Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based senior researcher at the Good Governance Africa thinktank. Clockwise from top left: gang members rest with their motorcycles; a bubble-wrapped motorcycle; a gang member straddles his motorcycle while a man prays next to him; one of the gang members “He [Ado Aleru] pressed all the buttons within the government that he could [to secure the release of his nephew],” Samuel said. “I think he didn’t make headway. So he masterminded the abduction of those 25 girls … the bottom line is that not only was ransom paid for the release of the girls but 11 people, all the people that these guys demanded, were released.” There are mounting concerns that the Kebbi case could embolden other bandit groups to use similar tactics to secure concessions. A young refugee in Nahuta. She and her family have been unable to go back to their farms due to bandit attacks Meanwhile, communities tired of ineffective government intervention have tried to negotiate truces with the gangs. One such deal was struck in late 2025 between Bello’s gang and the nearby gold mining town of Nahuta. Under the terms of the deal, gang members have freedom of movement and access to the local market as long as they stop their attacks and do not bring guns into populated areas. Gang members work side-by-side with local people in mining pits, and use the same food vendors and sex workers. Gangs that have struck deals say they are keeping their guns for protection from rivals and security agencies. *** In Batsari, Bello declined to answer questions about why his gang had abducted people. “Things happen,” he said. Inquiries about the source of their weapons were met with laughter. But Bello was prepared to discuss why he had picked up guns rather than go to court to settle disputes over cattle or land. “We are not educated,” he said. “We are not lawyers or judges. We don’t know how to start and where to go to.” A community near Batsari Another gang member, Haruna, interjected: “What has been happening is a calamity … us Muslims fighting each other is a loss, not gain. We want the government to help us so that when we go for grazing no one will oppress us and we will not oppress anyone.”

Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally – study

“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell. Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires. The disasters in 2025 included a Scottish “megafire” that torched more than 100,000 hectares – contributing to the UK breaking its record for burned area – and the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, which were among the most destructive in US history. Record-breaking blazes in Spain and Portugal burned more than half a million hectares, while South Korea had its biggest and deadliest wildfire season on record. Fires accounted for more than 38% of insured losses from weather disasters in 2025, the study found. “2025 shows that a ‘quiet’ fire year globally can still be devastating,” said Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. “We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts.” Changes in land use mean wildfires burn less of the planet than they have historically done, but global heating is creating conditions allowing them to spread, increasing the danger at what researchers call the wildland-urban interface, where people are most at risk. Adverse weather, inflamed by carbon pollution, turned some of last year’s fires into explosive infernos. In southern California and South Korea, the researchers found, high winds and dry vegetation pushed fires through densely populated areas, causing “exceptional mortality, mass evacuations, and major infrastructure losses”. In the Mediterranean, meanwhile, drought and extreme heat drove severe blazes, from Portugal to Turkey. “These conditions do not cause the fires, but in the event of a fire, we have material that is more flammable than usual – because it is drier – and wind conditions that fan the flames,” said David Garcia, an applied mathematician at the University of Alicante, who was not involved in the study. “This makes large fires more likely to occur.” An attribution study Garcia co-authored last year found the extreme weather fuelling the flames in Portugal and Spain last year was made 39 times more likely by climate breakdown. “If we continue to warm the planet, large-scale fires will continue to increase,” he said. The overall reduction in global burned area led to a drop in carbon dioxide emissions to their third-lowest level on record. In Canada, though, extreme wildfire emissions were recorded for the third year in a row. Since 2023, boreal forests in North America have emitted close to 4bn tonnes of CO2, exceeding the total emissions of the preceding 15-year period. As well as heating the planet, the pollutants in wildfire smoke lead to huge numbers of people dying from breathing dirty air. The toxic particles spewed by Canadian wildfires in 2023 killed 82,000 people, according to a study published in September, with smoke even choking cities in the US, Europe and Africa. Adrián Regos, a landscape ecologist at the Biological Mission of Galicia, Spain, who was not involved in the study, said last year’s events illustrated how a relatively small number of extreme fires could dominate the ecological, social and economic consequences of an entire fire season. “The broader pattern highlighted by this study is consistent with what we are observing across southern Europe: while total burned area may fluctuate from year to year, climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme fire-weather conditions, and fuel accumulation associated with rural abandonment is making many landscapes more vulnerable to large, fast-moving fires,” he said. “The challenge is therefore not only reducing the number of fires, but increasing the resilience of landscapes and communities to extreme events.”

Monday briefing: Does Trump’s $1.8bn ‘anti-weaponization fund’ signal a new era of law and disorder?

Good morning. It has been two weeks since details of a settlement in the case of Trump v the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) first emerged. An out-of-court agreement with the US president created a $1.8bn fund for the Trump administration to dish out at its discretion. In response, the outrage has been unrelenting. Critics argue the result stinks of cronyism and corruption, effectively a “scheme for the Trumps to reward political friends while indirectly benefiting the family”. There has been rare pushback from within Trump’s own party: more than a dozen Republican senators have reportedly urged the administration to change course. YouGov polling found a majority of Democrats and Republicans oppose the fund. On Friday, a federal judge reopened the case, after a bipartisan group of federal judges filed a lawsuit in Florida arguing the settlement “is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court”. For today’s First Edition, I spoke to Guardian US political enterprise editor, George Zornick. We discussed the background to this case, Trump’s term of self-enrichment and how his (relatively) new team is covering Trump’s second presidency. First, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | A trove of government documents about Peter Mandelson contains no record of any measures taken to mitigate serious security concerns over his appointment as Washington ambassador, the Guardian has learned. Health news | A daily pill can double survival time in patients with the world’s deadliest cancer, according to the results of a clinical trial that experts are saying is a “gamechanger” and one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades. Lebanon | European leaders have condemned Israel’s expanding incursion into Lebanon, after its military captured the medieval Beaufort castle and Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push even deeper into the country. Employment | An Indian citizen who came to the UK to work as a care worker through the post-Brexit visa scheme has been awarded nearly £30,000, because his employer failed to give him a single day of work for a year. UK news | Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta. In depth: ‘The level of graft and self-enrichment is truly unprecedented’ The settlement is a response to a federal case dating to January 2024, when an IRS contractor was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking the tax returns of high-net worth individuals. These revealed Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017, and no federal income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years. Trump sued the IRS for $10bn over the leak, explains George. It seems to be a habit of his. A federal judge ordered a hearing to determine whether a president could sue federal agencies he oversees. “The IRS wrote an internal memo saying the lawsuit is weak and should be fought … Somewhere along the way, the administration overruled that position and settled.” An agreement was announced: in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, US authorities would be “forever barred” from auditing the past tax returns of Trump and his family. “It also created a $1.8bn fund to provide financial restitution to people subject to ‘weaponised lawfare’ from the federal government,” says George. This has been widely criticised as a slush fund of taxpayer cash to benefit Trump allies. Acting US attorney general, Todd Blanche, suggests anyone, not just Trump’s associates, can apply for financial restitution from the fund – although ultimately a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general, not a court or a jury, will get to decide on the merit of those applications – a highly unusual way of administering publicly funded compensation schemes. Of the five commissioners appointed to oversee payouts, four are to be selected by Blanche himself, Trump’s personal lawyer turned legal enforcer. The fifth will be appointed in consultation with congressional leadership. “These commissioners can be fired at any time, and for any reason, by Trump himself. The idea that this is a non-partisan fund? I am sceptical,” says George. It’s down to the sheer scale of stories like this emanating from the United States that the Guardian US’s political enterprise team was assembled. “Every day here … [there are] constant curve balls. It puts such pressure on the bandwidth of reporters and the attention span of readers,” says George. But with people specifically tasked with examining abuses of power at the federal level, George’s team are able to keep laser-focused. “We have the flexibility, once our teeth are in a story, to stay there.” The White House is occupying much of their attention. “In my lifetime, and the modern era,” George tells me, “the level of graft and self-enrichment we are witnessing is truly unprecedented. I say this in a journalistically neutral way: there is no modern parallel.” *** Power for profit In 2016, in advance of his first presidency, Trump signalled he’d cede day-to-day control of his businesses to avoid conflicts of interest. Despite a 2017 announcement that he was handing control of his empire to his sons, Donald Jr and Eric, it soon transpired the fledgling president retained direct ties to his commercial ventures. “His message then was, ‘I am stepping back from all of this’,” says George. “It wasn’t believable.” Trump has lamented the lack of deals he made during his first tenure. This time, there’s no such pretension: “I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to,” he told the New York Times. In January, the New Yorker suggested that Trump and his family have racked up profits in the region of $4bn by leveraging his presidential position. The Trump family has been busy. “[Trump’s sons] Eric and Don Jr, and [son-in-law] Jared Kushner are conducting deals in places that are key to US foreign policy, building towers, golf courses and resorts.” None of this is likely a coincidence, George believes. “Foreign governments, as part of their strategy to deal with Trump, are green-lighting projects where you wonder: would that really have been allowed otherwise?” The domestic market is proving just as lucrative. “The sons have been particularly fast to spin up companies – whether drones, AI, crypto – which have been pretty good at winning big government contracts.” Last week, ProPublica reported that the White House asked the Pentagon to give a $620m loan to a company with ties to Trump’s eldest son. The Trump family cryptocurrency firm, meanwhile, has seen their wealth balloon by billions. A minority stake is owned by the UAE: its $500m investment steered $187m to Trump family entities. *** An administration uninhibited Allegations of self-enrichment from Trump’s first term focused on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “People would spend money eating, staying renting the ballroom, hopefully on a weekend the president was there” – all of which, critics argued, was a way to keep a steady stream of income flowing towards the president’s businesses. Since taking office again, this has continued, “but in the second term, it’s a lot more out in the open”, says George, adding that he believes it’s been “turbo-charged”. A 2024 supreme court ruling would certainly embolden any president looking to push limits and line pockets. In Trump v United States, justices decided former presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts”. “This is defined very broadly in the judgment,” says George. “It also gives the president the power to pardon anyone in the administration,” he says. “Now, anyone working in the Trump administration who sees an opportunity to make money in a legal grey area or worse, knows Trump can pardon them at the end of his term.” George thinks the effects of the ruling go further. “You know that if you want that pardon in late 2028, you better stay in Trump’s good graces,” he says. And if Trump now looks invincible to many of his supporters, you can see why: “[He left] the White House in the middle of a pandemic with terrible approval ratings. There was a riot in the capital. He [was then] hit with all these charges,” says George. Going into the 2024 election, Trump stood accused of 91 felony counts. But then: “He beat the charges and came back to the White House.” *** The new normal? It’s widely understood that, in Washington DC, money talks. The US federal lobbying industry was worth billions long before Trump’s presidency. Wealthy donors are also handed plum jobs by Democrats. “This has always been somewhat the case,” says George. “People in each party raise billions from wealthy individuals and special interests to campaign. Certain positions are quite clearly patronage jobs.” But George distinguishes this from what we are witnessing now: “It’s apples and oranges. This is the blending of his business pursuits with the business of being president, and allowing people he appoints to enrich themselves as they go about conducting the business of the White House.” With the midterms coming in November, Trump’s opponents are looking for leverage. “Democrats will likely focus on corruption,” he says, “and the potential 2028 candidates already doing so. If they win with that message and mandate, and control Congress – two big ifs – you can see an early 2029 far-reaching anti-corruption package coming out of Congress.” Still, the supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling is going nowhere soon. “The bigger question,” says George, “is the extent of the corrosive effect on American democracy, and to what extent people become numb to it.” In recent months, he has been thinking about the optics Trump creates in the Oval Office. “When he has cameras in, Trump sits at the desk with all his people standing around him. It is almost like a king: I am the boss, I will do what I want and take my spoils.” What else we’ve been reading This morning’s New start after 60 story from a woman who became a full-time carer – about the ways our world can expand even as it feels as if is shrinking – is surprising in the most wonderful of ways. Poppy Noor, newsletters team When Reform took control of Durham county council, cutting every penny of funding for the city’s annual Pride event was a priority. Hannah Al-Othman has a heartwarming report on how trade unions stepped in to keep the event afloat. This year’s parade held on Saturday was the biggest in its history. Michael I easily get stuck in the habit of eating the same (delicious) meals over and over again. So Ann Lee’s list of Korean dishes to try – including some dumplings that sound particularly appetising – made me very excited. Poppy I’m obsessed with Saturday magazine’s This is how we do it column, and this week’s was fascinating: “I was looking for a one-night stand. Now we’re married with two babies.” Michael I was touched looking through the images from photographer Martin Parr’s funeral. He found beauty in life’s small details, and the send-off his family organised, inspired by his work, felt like a window into something very intimate and resonant. Poppy Sport Football | About 75 people had to be rescued from height and 16 people were arrested during Arsenal’s victory bus parade on Sunday, emergency services said. Women’s FA Cup | Manchester City’s Khadija Shaw has been praised for not allowing speculation about her future to hinder her performances, after she scored the first goal in Sunday’s 4-0 Cup win over Brighton. Cycling | Jonas Vingegaard completed his Giro d’Italia triumph, securing the first part of a coveted Grand Tour double in a procession finale around Rome won by the home hero Jonathan Milan. The front pages “Mandelson files show no mitigation of security concerns over top US job”, is the Guardian’s front page today. Elsewhere on the political front, the Times leads with “Reform vote in unions at same level as Labour” and the Mail splashes “You’ve not won anything yet, Andy!”. The Telegraph runs with “Reeves looks at PFI to fund new towns” while the i Paper says “Leadership rivals back revolution in UK voting system”. Metro has “Sturgeon: 25ft motorhome? I didn’t spot it”. The Express leads on “Cancer hope for millions as drug doubles survival”, and on the same story the Mirror says “Precious gift of time”. Lastly, the FT splashes “Wall St’s bulls bet US stocks rally has further to go”. Today in Focus ‘A husband expects a yes’: wife schools and the Christian nationalist movement Alaina Demopoulos, a features writer for Guardian US, reports on the Christian influencers telling women to submit to their husbands. And Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, explains what a shifting culture on women’s rights means for policy. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad It’s a tonic for burnout, anxiety and insomnia, and it’s not the latest peptide or wellness trend. Although it can’t cure all ailments, being outdoors in nature is “a great healer”, according to Guardian readers, who responded to a recent study finding that almost half of adults in the UK spend fewer than three hours a week outdoors in nature, and shared stories about why being in nature means so much to them. Hannah Powell, who has dealt with burnout and functional neurological disorder told us: “I have to look at plants every day.” David Lynch, meanwhile, says of being outside: “I am more fully human, my whole self. Anxiety levels drop, all worldly concerns are put in perspective and I feel younger.” Others shared the gratitude they feel to be in green spaces. In the words of reader Yve: “I believe that nature and being outdoors is a great healer.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. 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Ukraine war briefing: Big drone deal awaits Trump signature, says Zelenskyy

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the US to conclude a drone deal with Ukraine. “The US wanted to test all types of our drones. We agreed to the way they wanted to test, train with, and use our systems in the air, on land, and at sea. But we still don’t have a bilateral drone deal – a big framework document,” Zelenskyy posted after discussing the topic on CBS Face the Nation. Middle Eastern countries have come under Iranian attack – often using the same Shahed drones that Russia fires at Ukraine – as a result of the war started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has been dismissive of Ukraine’s widely acknowledged expertise in the wartime use of drones, claiming the US does not need Ukraine’s help. That has been belied by Middle Eastern countries jumping into deals to source Ukrainian defensive drones and training for personnel. “The drone deals we have are with some countries in the Middle East and Europe, and now we are preparing a big drone deal with the EU. I hope we will reach the same agreement with our American partners,” Zelenskyy said, while acknowledging that Ukraine could also benefit from US expertise. “American companies have advanced AI technologies we don’t have. In turn, we have many things they don’t have, due to our extensive experience on the battlefield. I think this cooperation can be huge … for this, we need President Trump to say yes.” Ukraine on Sunday launched more strikes on Russian energy sites. The Ukrainian general staff said drones struck Rosneft’s Saratov oil refinery in south-western Russia, causing a large fire. It said the refinery was supplying Moscow’s war effort. The Russian local governor, Roman Busargin, confirmed a Ukrainian drone attack, while Astra – an independent Russian news channel – said an oil refinery was on fire at Saratov. Ukraine also struck the Lazarevo pumping station in Russia’s Kirov region north-east of Moscow, more than 1,200km (745 miles) from Ukrainian-controlled land. The station helps ship Russian oil from Siberia to Belarus. The Russian regional governor, Alexander Sokolov, confirmed a drone strike in the Kirov region. Drones also set on fire a fuel depot in Russia’s south-western Rostov region, said the local governor, Yuriy Slyusar. Ukraine’s general staff confirmed the strike at the town of Matveev Kurgan which local authorities said caused a large fire. A truck driver died early on Sunday as Russian drones hit a parking lot in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, according to local administration head Vyacheslav Chaus. Meanwhile, 40,000 people were left without power after a Russian attack on Chernihiv, a local energy company said. Russian drones struck the city of Dnipro and an oil refinery in Ukraine’s Rivne region, causing fires, authorities said. The head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, of which Dnipro is the capital, said one person was killed and nine were injured in Russian attacks in the province. A Russian-appointed official said a Ukrainian drone struck an apartment building in the city of Henichesk in a Russian-held part of southern Kherson region, killing a child and injuring 11 people. Ukraine received a new Iris-T missile launcher from Germany on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said as he appealed to allies for more air defence ammunition. “We also need missiles for air defence systems to have sufficient capabilities to repel Russian attacks,” he said. Iris-T is a short-range missile that can intercept other missiles as well as drones, rockets and aircraft, but unlike Patriot it is not considered a match for ballistic missiles. In the Face the Nation interview, Zelenskyy said Russia treated abducted Ukrainian children “essentially as combatants” and Kyiv had evidence they were being trained to fight against fellow Ukrainians. “They taught these children to hate their native country, to hate [their] native people. And Ukrainians, can you imagine, such young Ukrainians – young boys – come to the battlefield and kill [other] Ukrainians,” he said. Russia had separated abducted Ukrainian siblings, adopting them out to different families, and offered to trade some children for captured Ukrainian soldiers in prisoner swaps. The international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, the Russian ruler, for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions. In the same interview, Zelenskyy said he wanted to press on with talks on securing peace before the onset of winter to take account of Kyiv’s improved strategic position against Russia.

Israel seizes strategic castle in deepest incursion into Lebanon in 26 years

Israeli troops have captured a clifftop castle as they made their deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years, further shattering a nominal US-brokered ceasefire and complicating efforts to extend the separate truce between Washington and Tehran. After days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military had captured Beaufort Castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, which it had used as a base during its previous occupation of southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) already controlled territory up to the Litani River in its campaign against Hezbollah, but troops are now pushing towards the Zahrani River, about six miles north. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, requested an emergency meeting of the UN security council on Monday to discuss Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, which he described as unacceptable. “Nothing can justify the prolongation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon and its increasingly deep occupation of Lebanese territory,” he said. Images and footage showed Israeli and Golani Brigade flags flying over Beaufort Castle, which overlooks much of southern Lebanon, giving it strategic importance, as shelling echoed across the surrounding hills and plumes of smoke rose from the area. The IDF said it had “launched an operation in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki area of southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and expand its control of the area”. Israeli forces appear to be positioning themselves for a potential encirclement of Nabatieh, a city that serves as an economic centre and a cultural heartland for southern Lebanon. Prof Yagil Levy, the head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at the Open University of Israel, described the latest advance as no more than “victory of image”. “There was already debate in 1982 over how necessary the capture of Beaufort really was,” he said. “It attempts to present an accomplishment within a public discourse that increasingly assumes that Israel is not winning. “Protests are growing in the northern communities, criticism is emerging from within the military over soldiers’ vulnerability to drone attacks, Hezbollah remains intact, and there is no realistic plan for its disarmament.” The advance also poses a challenge to stalled negotiations between the US and Iran, as Tehran wants any deal to include the end of fighting in Lebanon as well. Observers have said Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. The fighting in Lebanon has been the broadest spillover of the Iran war, displacing more than 1.2 million people as a result of Israeli strikes and evacuation orders since 2 March. A truce officially began on 17 April but has never been observed. Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other daily of violations as justification for their attacks. For many in Lebanon, Nabatieh carries a significance that extends beyond its strategic value. Long regarded as a symbol of resistance, the city has repeatedly been on the frontline of Israeli military campaigns and is deeply embedded in the political and historical memory of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces have moved past the towns of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Mayfadoun in recent days and are approaching Choukine, where local people were ordered to evacuate on Saturday amid fears of further military operations. Taking over Nabatieh would deal a blow to Hezbollah’s morale, said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, a thinktank based in Beirut. Addressing fears of a virtual annexation, he said: “Given the level of destruction in the so-called ‘yellow zone’, the range of possibilities is between denying the return of the population, and annexation/settlement in a similar fashion to the West Bank. “Annexation is no longer a wild conspiracy theory. There are ministerial statements to this effect from Israel’s finance and national security ministers, among others.” Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, accused Israel on Saturday of “pursuing a scorched-earth policy and collective punishment” by “destroying towns and villages, and forcing their inhabitants into exile” in the south of the country. He said the country was facing a “dangerous” escalation and called for “a swift and real ceasefire”. The actions would bring “neither security nor stability” to Israel, he said. Salam defended his government’s engagement with its southern neighbour after military delegations held security talks in Washington on Friday. More US-brokered negotiations are planned next week. He said the outcome of the talks was not guaranteed, but called them “the least costly path for our country and our people”. The Lebanese health ministry said eight people, including three women, had been killed after a strike on southern Lebanon on Sunday. Reuters reported the Israeli military as saying one of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said earlier on Saturday that it had targeted the air traffic control unit at the Meron base in northern Israel, a strategic surveillance and command facility near the Lebanese border. The group also claimed responsibility for rocket fire towards Kiryat Shmona, one of the Israeli communities most exposed to the conflict. Videos on social media appeared to show beachgoers in northern Israel running for shelter as Hezbollah rockets were launched towards the area, according to local media. The barrage was the first fired from Lebanon towards the coastal city of Nahariya in three weeks. The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks had killed at least 3,371 people since 2 March, when Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in support of Iran. The group said it had attacked Israel in retaliation for the death of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes when the war erupted on 28 February. Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report