First Thing: Eight hurt in incendiary device attack at Colorado rally for Israeli hostages

The Guardian

4 days ago

Good morning.
Eight people have been injured in an attack in Boulder, Colorado, after a man is alleged to have thrown an incendiary device into a crowd and yelled: 'Free Palestine'. The FBI is treating the incident as an 'act of terrorism'.
The 45-year-old man, identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, is alleged to have thrown the device into a group of people who had assembled in a pedestrianised zone for a peaceful rally for Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
'It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism,' Mark Michalek, a special agent in charge of the FBI's Denver field office, said, citing witnesses.
Who are the victims? Six of the people wounded were between the ages of 67 and 88, police said, and their injuries ranged from minor to 'very serious'. When police responded, they found people with injuries consistent with burns. Four were taken to a local hospital, while two had to be airlifted to a hospital in Aurora.
Ukraine has launched a 'large-scale' drone attack against Russian military bombers in Siberia, striking more than 40 warplanes thousands of miles from its own territory, a security official has said, after it smuggled the drones to the perimeter of the airfields hidden in the roofs of wooden sheds.
On the eve of peace talks, the drone attack on four separate airfields was part of a sharp ramping up of the three-year war, with Russia launching waves of drones at Ukraine. Meanwhile, Moscow said sabotage was to blame for two train derailments that left seven people dead.
Video from several military airfields across Russia showed destroyed aircraft and planes engulfed in flames, though the full extent of the damage remained unclear.
What has Russia been doing? It has also been launching attacks ahead of the second round of direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Turkey on Monday. Russian shelling and air attacks killed five people outside Zaporizhzhia, south-east Ukraine, while at least six others were injured in a drone attack in Sumy, regional officials said.
The rightwing opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki has narrowly won Poland's presidential election, dealing a huge blow to the prime minister Donald Tusk's reform agenda.
Nawrocki won Sunday's run-off with 50.89% of votes, the electoral commission said early today. His rival, Rafał Trzaskowski, Warsaw's liberal mayor and Tusk ally, got 49.11%.
Nawrocki's candidacy was backed by the rightwing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which was defeated by Tusk's pro-European Civic Coalition in parliamentary elections in late 2023. Sunday's victory will make it difficult for the government to pass any big reforms before the 2027 parliamentary election, given Nawrocki has the power of veto as president.
How much power does the Polish president have? While the role is largely ceremonial, it does have some influence over foreign and defence policy, as well as the critical power to veto new legislation. A veto can only be overturned with a 60% majority in parliament, which Tusk's government does not have.
More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire yesterday as they went to receive food at an aid distribution point set up by an Israeli-backed foundation in Gaza, according to witnesses, with a hospital run by the Red Cross confirming it was treating many wounded.
Senior officials at the US Department of Veterans Affairs have ordered VA physicians and scientists to seek clearance from political appointees of Donald Trump before publishing in medical journals or speaking with the public, the Guardian has learned.
China has accused the US of 'seriously violating' the fragile US-China detente that has been in place for less than a month since the two countries agreed to pause a trade war that risks upending the global economy.
Over the last eight years, the anthropologist Anand Pandian has crisscrossed the US to try to make sense of why the rifts in its national culture run so deep. After logging many thousands of miles on local highways and country roads, striking up conversations with strangers on park benches and in derelict shopping malls, he writes that he has come away with a much better understanding of why things are as stuck as they are, and what it would take to truly change them.
It began with a lobbyist's pitch, writes Ames Alexander of Floodlight. The Tennessee representative Rusty Grills says the lobbyist proposed a simple idea: repeal the state's requirement for reflective roofs on many commercial buildings. In late March, Grills and his fellow lawmakers voted to eliminate the rule, scrapping a measure meant to save energy, lower temperatures and protect Tennesseans from extreme heat. Study after study has confirmed the benefits of light-colored roofs but it was another win for a well-organized lobbying campaign led by manufacturers of dark roofing materials.
Officials near the US border near Canada faced relentless attacks by a swarm of honeybees that had escaped after a truck carrying hives overturned. About 14m bees flew free around 4am local time Friday and soon began to sting the sheriff deputies who arrived to help, forcing them to take refuge in their patrol cars.
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