First Thing: Trump calls Zelenskyy a dictator in unparalleled relations rift

Attack follows Ukrainian leader’s claim Trump is in a Russian ‘disinformation bubble’. Plus, first Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb uncovered since 1922

Good morning.

Donald Trump intensified his attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, labeling the Ukrainian president “a dictator” in an unparalleled deterioration of relations between Kyiv and Washington.

Trump’s comments came after Zelenskyy said the US president was “trapped” in a Russian “disinformation bubble” in response to Trump blaming Ukraine for its invasion by Russia.

In another false claim, the US president accused Zelenskyy of having an approval rating of 4% – in fact, the latest poll shows he enjoys a 57% confidence rating.

In a threatening post that made it seem more likely than ever that Trump would push to end the war on Moscow’s terms, Trump wrote: “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

How is this being received in Europe? The French prime minister, François Bayrou, said on Thursday that “the risk of war has never been so high since 1945”. Denmark said it would rapidly increase defense spending.

Remains of four hostages returned to Israel

The bodies of four hostages, including a mother and her two children, were returned to Israel on Thursday after Hamas handed them over to the Red Cross.

The dead hostages were OdedLifshitz, 83; and Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, who Hamas said were killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the war.

The development followed a statement by Hamas saying it would release all remaining hostages at once if the ceasefire agreement with Israel moved to a second phase in March.

What will happen to Gaza? Arab leaders will meet in Saudi Arabia on Friday to counter Trump’s plan for a US takeover of Gaza.

Widespread backlash after after Trump calls himself ‘king’

Trump has been widely criticized after he called himself a “king” in a social media post about his administration’s decision to scrap New York City’s congestion charges.

After his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, ended the transportation department’s deal with New York for a new congestion program for Manhattan, Trump posted on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”

The White House shared the post, together with an AI-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine cover wearing a golden crown.

Who criticized it? New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, told reporters, “New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now,” while there was also pushback from Democrat lawmakers, including in Virginia and Illinois.

In other news …

Archaeologists have discovered the first pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt in more than a century, findingthe burial chamber of Thutmose II, who reigned between 1493 and 1479BC.

Trump signs an executive order aimed at ending all benefits for people in the US illegally, though it is unclear which benefits this covers as people in the US illegally do not generally qualify for any, except for emergency medical care and free K-12 education for children.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAid is increasing the risk of mpox becoming a wider global emergency, experts have warned.

Stat of the day: Germany’s far-right AfD polling at 21% – double what it secured in 2021 election

Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), looks on course to double its vote share in the country’s federal election on Sunday. According to the latest Politico poll of polls, the AfD is at 21%, double what it secured in 2021 in the previous federal election. The party, which has been actively promoted by Elon Musk and the vice-president, JD Vance, is polling only behind the centre-right CDU-CSU, which is at 29%.

Don’t miss this: The long-lost civil rights images of Ernest Cole

When the photographer Ernest Cole fled apartheid-era South Africa for New York in 1966, he felt change was coming. It was the height of the civil rights movement and he was moved to see interracial and gay couples out in public and to witness protests against systemic injustice.

But it was not long until this vision of America soured: “Within two years, he got it,” says the Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck, who has made the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro, and has now directed one about Cole. “He had a clear judgment about what segregation meant, not only in the [American] south but also in the most cosmopolitan city of the US.”

Cole died of cancer at the age of 49 in 1990, having experienced homelessness, and his work was only discovered in 2017.

Climate check: Visualizing the record heat levels that affected two-thirds of the Earth in 2024

In 2024, two-thirds of the Earth experienced at least a month of record-breaking heat, a Guardian analysis has found. See it visualized here, with interactive maps that display where and when the monthly average temperature records were smashed in the first calendar year in which scientists recorded average global temperature exceeding 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

Last Thing: Why are gen Z accepting job offers … just to ghost their new employers?

You may not have heard of career cat fishing, where a candidate accepts a job offer only to fail to turn up to their first day of work without telling their employer. But, apparently, 34% of gen Z jobseekers have done so – a higher proportion than any other generation, according to a poll.

Why? Not feeling as if they owe prospective employers anything in one part of it – but it’s not a one-way street: employers also advertise jobs that don’t exist, either to make it look as if they’re recruiting and therefore growing, or to keep their employees on their toes, or for some other terrible reason.

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