First Thing: Gaza aid convoy deaths ‘tremendously alarming’, says US

Israeli military denies shooting into large crowds of hungry people and says most were killed in crush or run over trying to escape. Plus, the higher truth of wellness guru Jay Shetty

Good morning.

More than a hundred Palestinians were killed in the early hours of yesterday morning, Gaza health officials said, when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire, in an incident that the US president, Joe Biden, warned was likely to complicate ceasefire talks.

There were starkly different accounts of how the victims died in the chaos that took place near Gaza City in the north of the strip.

Israel’s military denied shooting into large crowds of hungry people and said most were killed in a crush or run over by trucks trying to escape. Soldiers only fired at a small group that moved away from the trucks and threatened a checkpoint, a spokesperson said.

Witnesses and survivors described bullets hitting crowds around the aid trucks, and Mohammed Salha, the acting director of the al-Awda hospital, which treated 161 casualties, said most appeared to have been shot. However, another Palestinian witness told the BBC that most of the dead had been run over by trucks.

How has the White House reacted? The White House called the deaths “tremendously alarming” and called for them to be “thoroughly investigated”. It reminded Israel that it needed to provide basic security in areas of Gaza under its control. Meanwhile, France has called for an independent investigation into the deaths.

Funeral of Putin critic Alexei Navalny to take place in Moscow

Mourners are starting to gather outside a church in Moscow where the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, is due to be remembered ahead of his burial amid uncertainty about whether police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye, writes Pjotr Sauer.

The memorial service, presided over by a priest and accompanied by choral singing, allows people to walk past the open casket of the deceased to say their farewells.

Two hours before the service, a heavy police presence was visible around the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows in the Maryino district, where Navalny used to live.

There have already been reports of arrests, with several Navalny supporters detained as they left their apartments to attend the funeral.

Who will attend the funeral? Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, is expected to attend his funeral but it is unclear who else will be allowed into the church for the service. Navalny’s wife Yulia, has said she is unsure whether the funeral will pass off peacefully. She is outside Russia.

Biden urges Trump to help him pass immigration deal as both visit US border

Joe Biden and his all-but certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, made dueling visits to Texas border towns yesterday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election-season clash over immigration.

In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande on the border with Mexico, Biden implored Congressional Republicans to “show a little spine” and support a bipartisan border security deal. Earlier this month, Republican lawmakers blocked legislation they had previously clamored for, after Trump expressed his opposition to the measure.

“It’s long past time to act,” Biden said in his remarks, challenging Trump to “join me” in calling on Congress to pass the “toughest, most efficient, most effective border security in this country has ever seen”.

There had been speculation that the US president could announce executive action during his visit, but instead he revisited complaints that lack of progress was the fault of hard-right Republicans in Congress.

What has Trump said? Trump once again sought to stoke fears of a “migrant crime” wave fueled by Biden’s border policies. “He’s destroying our country,” Trump said, speaking moments before Biden from a park in Eagle Pass.

What does Trump propose? Trump promised an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term, vowing to revive immigration policies that would allow for rapid removal of people entering the US without authorization, while promoting his signature border barrier.

In other news …

The Senate has passed a short-term funding bill following a House vote yesterday afternoon, narrowly averting a partial government shutdown that was due to occur this weekend. Ahead of the Senate vote, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, addressed the chamber floor, saying that he saw “no reason this should take a very long time”.

Health campaigners are calling for a global fund to tackle air pollution, which kills 7 million people each year. Despite this, it has never had global recognition in the same way as Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. Less than 1% of international development finance and philanthropic funding goes towards tackling it.

A majority of Iran’s angry and disillusioned electorate are predicted to stay away from parliamentary elections today, viewing the process as a masquerade of democracy intended to give legitimacy to a regime that has failed to deliver on living standards, the environment and personal freedom.

A Guardian investigation for the podcast series Black Box has revealed the names connected to ClothOff, an app that generated nonconsensual images of underage girls around the world. ClothOff, whose website receives more than 4m monthly visits, invites users to “undress anyone using AI”.

Stat of the day: More than a billion people worldwide are obese, research finds

More than 1 billion people worldwide now have obesity, with rates among children increasing fourfold across a 32-year period, according to research. Analysis of the weight and height measurements of more than 220 million people from more than 190 countries shows how body mass index (BMI) changed across the world between 1990 and 2022. Approximately 1,500 researchers contributed to the study by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). Published in the Lancet, it found that over the period obesity rates increased fourfold among children, and doubled among adults.

Don’t miss this: Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty

Delivering pop-psychology wisdom culled from sources as varied as Carl Jung, Bruce Lee and St Francis of Assisi, Jay Shetty has earned near universal acceptance. It’s a remarkable rise to fame for a man who says that just 13 years ago he was living as a penniless monk in India. Shetty’s success is largely predicated on this riches-to-rags-to-riches backstory.

His qualifications for being the world’s most prominent mental and spiritual wellness guru are, according to him, this spiritual awakening and the time he spent insolitude in an ashram “in a village near Mumbai”. But people close to Shetty have questioned whether his conversion to a life of monkhood was quite so dramatic. Celebrities call him ‘amazing’ and fans pay thousands – but what exactly do they get from this self-help guru with an iffy origin story?

Climate check: El Niño forecast to drive record heat from the Amazon to Alaska in 2024

The current climate event known as El Niño is likely to supercharge global heating and deliver record-breaking temperatures from the Amazon to Alaska in 2024, analysis has found. Coastal areas of India by the Bay of Bengal and by the South China Sea, as well as the Philippines and the Caribbean, are also likely to experience unprecedented heat in the period to June, the scientists said, after which El Niño may weaken. The analysis also found there was a 90% chance that the global temperature over this period would set a new record.

Last Thing: Museums Without Men – my project to end their shocking gender imbalance

“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” asked a 1989 artwork by the Guerrilla Girls, the all-female-identifying activist artist collective. A valid question considering, as the work went on to point out, that “less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female”. When the Guerrilla Girls went to revisit these statistics in 2012, they found little had changed. So what about today? While the gender imbalance in museums remains visibly prevalent, improvements are in sight, writes Katy Hessel.

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