Putin received a rubber-stamp election
President Vladimir Putin yesterday extended his rule over Russia until 2030, utilizing a closely stage-managed election with no actual opposition to say overwhelming public assist for his home dominance and his invasion of Ukraine.
Western governments condemned the election, and a few Russians tried to turn the vote into a protest by forming lengthy traces at polling stations at midday. Ukraine sought to forged its personal vote of kinds, firing a volley of exploding drones at Moscow and different targets.
However the Kremlin brushed these challenges apart and launched outcomes claiming that Putin had received 87 p.c of the vote, an excellent greater quantity than within the 4 earlier elections through which he ran.
In a information convention after the voting, Putin commented for the primary time on the loss of life of the imprisoned opposition chief Aleksei Navalny, calling it an “unlucky incident.” (Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, waited in line for hours to vote in Berlin.)
The extent of the public’s true support for Putin was exhausting to guage, with opposition candidates barred from operating — the three different candidates on the poll didn’t criticize Mr. Putin — and the work of impartial ballot observers diminished to its lowest stage for the reason that days of the Soviet Union.
Putin is about to make use of his new six-year time period to additional cement his management of Russian politics and to press on with the battle in Ukraine. If he finishes the time period, he’ll change into the longest-serving Russian chief since Catherine the Nice within the 1700s.
“That’s one thing that Israel, the Israeli public, does by itself,” Netanyahu mentioned in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re not a banana republic.”
The remarks by Schumer, the Senate majority chief, have been a part of a scathing speech he gave final week, throughout which the New York Democrat additionally accused Netanyahu of placing his political survival earlier than the nice of his nation. The speech was indicative of the rising hole between Israel and the U.S. on the battle in Gaza. President Biden praised the speech however stopped in need of endorsing Schumer’s name for a brand new election.
Netanyahu, in remarks to his authorities, vowed that the Israeli army would invade Rafah, the place greater than one million Gazans have taken shelter. Displaced individuals there are terrified by the prospect of a floor invasion.
Humanitarian disaster: New approaches for getting help into Gaza have not curtailed the hunger and malnutrition there, specialists mentioned.
Trump’s allies are successful a battle over disinformation
After the riot on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, officers and social media firms labored to rein within the lies that spurred the assault. Donald Trump and his allies embarked on their own coordinated effort to block what they referred to as harmful censorship of conservatives, with monetary assist from conservative donors who’ve backed teams that promoted lies about voting in 2020.
That effort, little observed by most Individuals, has weakened checks on disinformation on-line, probably bolstering Trump’s try to recapture the presidency.
U.S. elections: Trump once more described immigrants as “poisoning” America. President Biden’s re-election marketing campaign mentioned it had raised $53 million in February, which is anticipated to widen Democrats’ cash advantage over Republicans.
The designer Phoebe Philo, who reworked the French vogue manufacturers Chloé and Celine, has been referred to as the Chanel of her technology. However Philo walked away from the trade nearly seven years in the past, turning into a fantasy virtually in a single day.
In her first interview in a decade, Philo spoke with Vanessa Friedman, our chief vogue critic, about reversing a dressmaker’s conventional trajectory by beginning her personal label after working for main manufacturers.
Stay lived: Steve Harley was a British rock star who topped British music charts with the one “Make Me Smile.” He died at 73.
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The seek for an ‘offensive’ silent movie
The 1927 silent comedy “The Callahans and the Murphys” depicted stereotypes of Irish Individuals so noxious that it was yanked from circulation and is now thought-about misplaced. That didn’t cease my colleague Dan Barry, who realized in regards to the movie whereas impulsively researching the actor Marie Dressler, from finally monitoring down a brief clip from the film, which one critic and historian described as “legendary.”
“There’s actually solely been a handful of movies that, as an alternative of merely being edited, have been pulled altogether as a result of they have been thought-about offensive,” the historian mentioned.
You’ll be able to watch that clip, which Barry present in an infinite storehouse run by the Library of Congress, and one other one found within the Irish Movie Institute’s assortment, in his article.
That’s it for in the present day’s briefing. Thanks for spending a part of your morning with us, and see you tomorrow. — Dan
P.S. Steven Erlanger, The Instances’s chief diplomatic correspondent, compares the chief of HBO’s “The Regime” to autocrats he has lined.
You’ll be able to attain Dan and the group at briefing@nytimes.com.