First Thing: Joe Biden under renewed pressure to step aside

Actor George Clooney joins Democratic senator to publicly call on president to consider broader picture. Plus, lawyers gear up to fight for the ocean

Good morning.

Joe Biden has come under renewed moral pressure to abandon his presidential candidacy amid appeals by a succession of senior Democrats for him to consider the broader picture.

Peter Welch, a long-serving member of Congress from Vermont, became the first Democratic senator to publicly call on the 81-year-old to withdraw from the race. “We cannot unsee President Biden’s disastrous debate performance,” Welch said of last month’s televised head to head with Donald Trump.

The actor George Clooney, one of the Democratic party’s biggest fundraisers, called on Biden to step aside to save democracy from Trump. “We are not going to win with this president,” Clooney said.

What happens next? All eyes will be on Biden’s press conference at the Nato 75th anniversary event later today as he takes off-script questions from the media.

Israel orders Palestinians to leave Gaza City as IDF steps up offensive

The Israeli military told all Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza City and head south on Wednesday as it stepped up a military offensive in the territory that has killed dozens of people over the past 48 hours.

On Tuesday, an airstrike on the entrance of a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza killed at least 31 people, including eight children, according to officials at the nearby Nasser hospital.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration will resume shipping 500lb bombs to Israel – but will continue to hold back on supplying 2,000lb bombs over concerns about their use in densely populated Gaza, officials said.

What did Unwra say after the evacuation order? “People continue to flee from a place to another looking for safety, but nowhere is safe in the Gaza Strip. No school. No hospital. No UN building,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on X, adding: “4 schools in Gaza have been hit in the last 4 days.”

What’s the latest aid situati? A US military pier, built two months ago as a way to bring sea-borne humanitarian aid into Gaza, is to be permanently dismantled within a few days. The pier has been criticized from the start for failing to address the causes of why Israel was blocking aid into Gaza.

How Hungary’s PM became the spoiler of the Nato summit

Viktor Orbán, the conservative Hungarian prime minister, enraged his Nato allies by meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping en route to Washington in what he has called his “peace mission”.

Orbán has been seeking to negotiate a settlement to the Ukraine war, without consulting other EU countries or the Biden administration.

On Thursday the Hungarian PM is planning to fly to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to meet Trump, but looks likely to shun a meeting with Biden.

How has Hungary held up funding for Ukraine? It was among a small set of countries that opposed an annual funding pledge proposed by Nato’s general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, and blocked a €6.6bn ($7.1bn) aid package to Ukraine being prepared by EU countries as part of the European Peace Facility for almost a year.

In other news …

Nikki Haley is releasing the delegates she won during this year’s Republican primary, so that they’re free to support Trump at next week’s convention.

The actor Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial started on Wednesday, almost three years after the fatal shooting on the movie set of Rust.

A man was caught trying to smuggle more than 100 live snakes into mainland China, by cramming them into his pants.

A woman who was swept out to sea while swimming at a beach in Japan has been rescued about 50 miles off the coast, 36 hours after she went missing.

Stat of the day: Urban heat island effect making cities up to 8F hotter

Almost 34 million people in 65 large US cities, or 15% of the country’s population, are experiencing temperatures 8F higher than surrounding areas, according to analysis from Climate Central. That’s largely due to built environmentssuch as parking lots and asphalt sidewalks, creating an urban heat island effect. Las Vegas set a new record on Wednesday as it marked a fifth consecutive day over 115F.

Don’t miss this: Trash talk – New York City has finally discovered the wheelie bin, and it only cost $1.6m

“On Monday the mayor of New York, with Jessica Tisch, the sanitation commissioner, by his side, unveiled New York City’s first official trash bin,” writes Arwa Mahdawi. “Did the city really need to spend millions of dollars so that a bunch of highly paid management consultants could make a PowerPoint presentation saying: ‘You might think about putting your loose rubbish in a bin?’”

Climate check: How lawyers are gearing up to fight for the ocean

A rising number of lawsuits in courts around the world are holding governments and corporations to account for their treatment of the seas and those who rely on them. There have been more than 2,500 lawsuits relating to the climate crisis around the world – and many relate to the ocean. “My aim was to motivate people, organisations and states to take legal action to enforce ocean protection,” one attorney says.

Last Thing: Hip-hop band Cypress Hill makes 1996 Simpsons joke come true

On Wednesday night, the London Symphony Orchestra’s musicians played Cypress Hill’s acclaimed Black Sunday album at the Royal Albert Hall. The orchestra is making a Simpsons bit from 1996 finally a reality, in which Cypress Hill speculated that they had mistakenly booked the London Symphony Orchestra – “possibly while high”.

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