First Thing: Biden comes out fighting after report questions his memory

‘My memory is fine,’ president tells reporters in testy exchanges over special counsel investigation. Plus, Tucker Carlson meets Putin

Good morning.

President Joe Biden came out swinging last night, saying “my memory is fine” in prickly exchanges with the press pack, after a report from the justice department questioned his ability to remember key events and facts.

The year-long investigation by the special counsel Robert Hur into improper retention of highly classified documents found Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed documents from his time as a senator and as vice-president.

But among the reasons Hur gave for not bringing charges – including that the documents may have been taken to his home while he was vice-president – was a concern that jurors would not believe that Biden knowingly kept the documents.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” he wrote.

Hur is a Republican who served in senior roles at the justice department during the Trump administration.

What did Biden do? Sensitive records were found in 2022 and 2023 at Biden’s Delaware home and at a private office. Some were seen by a writer working on Biden’s memoir.

What did Hur say about Biden’s mental state? Hur claimed that in an interview last year, Biden’s “fuzzy” and “faulty” memory saw him struggle to recall important episodes in his personal and professional life, including when his son Beau died.

How did Biden respond? “How in the hell dare he raise that?” he said about Hur’s comments relating to his son. Asked by the media why at the age of 81 he planned to run for re-election against Donald Trump, 77, Biden said: “Because I’m the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started.”

Putin tells Tucker Carlson the US ‘needs to stop supplying weapons’ to Ukraine

In a rambling two-hour interview in Moscow, the rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson spoke to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who said the US “needs to stop supplying weapons” to Ukraine.

Putin spent more than 30 minutes giving a history monologue that took viewers as far back as the ninth century. When Carlson finally coaxed him into the 21st, Putin accused the US and other western countries of prolonging the war in Ukraine.

Putin accused Boris Johnson, the former UK prime minister, of dissuading Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, from signing a peace deal in the early stages of the conflict.

The decision to interview Putinhad been widely criticised. Hillary Clinton said before the video was published that Carlson was a “useful idiot” for Putin who parrots his “pack of lies about Ukraine”.

What did Putin say about the war in Ukraine? Russia’s message to the US, he said, was: “If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks.”

Why did Carlson interview Putin? He’s been a critic of US support for Ukraine and has referred to Zelenskiy as a “Ukrainian pimp”. Before publishing, Carlson said many “media outlets are corrupt – they lie to their readers and viewers” and Americans “should know” what’s happening in the region.

What did Putin say about the jailed reporter Evan Gershkovich? Carlson asked if Russia would release Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned for nearly a year on trumped up spying charges. Russia was “ready to talk” about his release, Putin said, but also claimed Gershkovich was “caught red-handed” spying.

Jair Bolsonaro surrenders passport in Brazil coup attempt investigation

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has surrendered his passport as part of a police investigation into the attempted coup on 8 January 2023 that sought to keep him in power, his lawyers have said.

Federal police on Thursday carried out 33 searches and made four arrests across Brazil, seizing Bolsonaro’s passport at the Liberal party headquarters. The four suspects taken into police custody reportedly include former aides to Bolsonaro.

In a statement, federal police said the operation, which was authorised by the supreme court, was looking into “a criminal organisation that attempted a coup d’etat and the abolition of the democratic state of law, to obtain advantages of a political nature by maintaining the then president of the republic in power”.

What happened on 8 January 2023? A failed rightwing uprising in which thousands of radical Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through the capital, Brasília, after their leader failed to win re-election.

What did federal police say? The group of suspects disseminated disinformation about fraud in the 2022 elections before the vote took place “as a way of making a military intervention viable and legitimate”, police said in a statement.

What charges could Bolsonaro face? A congressional committee report said in October that he should be charged with four crimes which could land him in jail for a total of 29 years: coup d’etat, the violent abolition of the rule of law, criminal association and political violence.

In other news …

The US warned Israel against conducting an offensive in Rafah, the last refuge of Palestinians fleeing the Israeli army’s assault on Gaza. The UN has said such action would only “increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare”.

Pakistan’s election was marred by both allegations of vote rigging and two Islamic State militant attacks, as the caretaker government said mobile networks were suspended on Thursday for security reasons.

An aide to Zelenskiy, said the lack of US funding for Ukraine would have serious battlefield consequences, after Senate Republicans sank a bill for a combined $60bn of aid for Ukraine and Israel.

The Iraqi military said the US’s military presence in the country had become a “factor for instability” and must be ended, after a US drone strike in Baghdad killed three militia members.

An Italian court has sentenced a people smuggler to 20 years in prison, for involvement in a shipwreck last year that killed at least 94 people off the coast of Calabria.

Stat of the day: asthma ER admissions fell 41% in 2020 amid better air quality

A new study based on Oxford in the UK found that emergency hospital admissions for asthma dropped 41% in 2020, compared with the five years before. Different air pollutants decreased by between 18% and 33% during a period when there was less traffic due to Covid restrictions, according to the study led by the University of Birmingham’s Suzanne Bartington. “Large-scale measures to improve air quality have potential to protect vulnerable people living with chronic asthma in urban areas,” the study concluded.

Don’t miss this: ‘I fly planes into hurricanes’

Most pilots avoid the worst weather, but we fly directly towards it, Megan Gaston tells Phoebe Weston. It can feel like being on a rollercoaster going through a car wash. Some updrafts are so aggressive planes have been known to shoot up by 1,500ft in a few seconds, so you go from being pinned to your seat to suddenly feeling weightlessness. It can be surreal being inside the eye of a hurricane, 800 miles over the ocean – you feel insignificant in that moment and aware of the power of mother nature. But it helps us provide emergency services with data on when and where these storms will hit land.

Last Thing: the 20 greatest kisses on film – ranked!

“You like me because I’m a scoundrel,” Han Solo tells Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, as they lean in for a kiss. As Valentine’s Day looms, the Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw rates some of the greatest movie kisses – from Jack and Rose in Titanic to Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca to Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.

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