First Thing: Russia launches huge strikes across Ukraine as US halts intelligence-sharing

The strikes followed European leaders committing to a huge boost in defense spending. Plus, another of Elon Musk’s Starship rockets explodes within minutes of take-off

Good morning.

Russia has carried out a vast wave of strikes across Ukraine, one day after the US stopped sharing intelligence with Kyiv, including of advance warnings of attacks.

The attacks, which came as Ukrainian and US delegations prepared to meet in Saudi Arabia for negotiations, hit facilities in several regions including Odesa and Poltava. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow tried to destroy Ukraine’s energy and gas infrastructure.

The strikes came after the US president, Donald Trump, said he was unwilling to defend Washington’s Nato allies unless they pay more for their defense. European leaders on Thursday committed to a massive increase in defense spending and pledged to continue to support Ukraine after the US pulled away from Kyiv, halting military aid as well as intelligence sharing.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, described the €800bn ($870bn) plan to boost European defense spending as “a watershed moment for Europe” and Ukraine.

Is European support for Ukraine unanimous? No – Hungary refused to endorse an EU statement that pushed back on Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating position.

China’s foreign minister condemns US imposition of tariffs as ‘two-faced’

China’s foreign minister has accused the US of “two-faced” behavior and warned that Donald Trump’s “America First” policy could lead to the “law of the jungle” after Washington hit Chinese goods with tariffs.

Speaking at the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary gathering after Washington increased tariffs on a range of Chinese goods to 20%, Wang Yi said China would “firmly counter” US pressure: “No country should think that it can suppress China and maintain good relations.”

The comments followed a sharp escalation in Chinese rhetoric in which the foreign ministry warned that China would “fight to the end” in a “tariff war, trade war or any other war”.

How has China retaliated? It has imposed tariffs of 10-15% on a range of US agricultural products.

US will reportedly use AI to revoke student visas over ‘pro-Hamas’ posts

The US state department will employ artificial intelligence to identify “pro-Hamas” social media posts by foreign students and revoke their visas, according to a report by Axios which citied senior state department officials.

The “catch and revoke” scheme will include AI-driven reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts, Axios reported, as part of Donald Trump’s pledge to deport non-citizen students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests. Some pro-Palestinian groups are Jewish themselves, and there are concerns that using AI in this way could lead to mistakes, including misidentifications, and privacy breaches.

Trump has said he will cut off federal funding for institutions that allow what he termed illegal protests, and threatened deportations, arrests, and expulsions for those who have taken part.

How have advocates responded? They’ve condemned Trump’s rhetoric as at odds with the US constitutional values of freedom of speech and assembly.

In other news …

SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded on Thursday, minutes after taking off from Texas in the second failure in a row this year for Elon Musk’s Mars program.

A secret mass grave with more than 500 bodies has been discovered at a Rapid Support Forces base north of Khartoum. The Guardian has seen evidence that people may have been tortured or starved to death there.

An unvaccinated adult has died in New Mexico after becoming infected with measles, state health officials have said, though their cause of death has not yet been confirmed.

Eurostar and French train services have been suspended after an object suspected to be a second world war bomb was found near Paris’s Gare du Nord station.

Stat of the day: World Food Programme halves food rations for Rohingya in Bangladesh

The World Food Programme has slashed food rations for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh in half due to a shortfall in funding. Daniel Sullivan, the director for Africa, Asia, and the Middle East at Refugees International, said it was a result of “indefensible harm” caused by aid cuts by the US, UK and others.

Don’t miss this: Americana anarcho-punk Sunny War on hopping trains, dropping acid and the KKK

For a while, Tennessee musician Sunny War was convinced she was living in a haunted house. She would see people and hear noises at night, and wondered if she was “going insane” or hallucinating due to her drinking. She only found out a year later, when she had the money to get her house checked out, that there were dangerous gas leaks in the heating system. She got a song out of it, anyway: Ghosts, which explores her father’s death. War talks about how discovering the punk band Crass changed her life, running away from home, hopping trains, and how the KKK “have got their guy in office now”.

Climate check: Is the climate crisis supercharging cyclones like that approaching Australia?

Tropical cyclones have been occurring for millennia, long before humanity started burning the fossil fuels that are driving planetary heating. So does the climate crisis play a role here? Experts say it’s complex: research shows that rising temperatures may be decreasing their frequency, while increasing their intensity. The effects of rising sea levels also raise the risk of more severe flooding.

Last Thing: TikTok drives a cottage cheese shortage across Australia

TikTok has discovered cottage cheese, which means good luck to those with the high-protein, low-fat cheese on their weekly shopping list: the “curd surge” has even driven a national shortage in Australia. Dieticians seem happy, though, with one telling the Guardian: “For the last decade, we’ve been trying to incorporate it into people’s diets without much success.” If only they’d known the solution lay in short-form video content.

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