IDF Vows To Respond To Iran Attack, Olympic Torch Lit, Awkward Chinese Building

💡 SPOTLIGHT

Latin America’s far-right populists are rewriting the history of military dictatorships

It's the most insipid kind of historical revisionism. Both in Argentina and Brazil, far-right leaders are denying the countries’ history of human rights abuses during the brutal dictatorships of the 1960s and 70s, and using it to rally support around their causes, writes Natalia Viana in Brazilian investigative news agency Agência Pública.

I bring you news from the digital front. Those who weren't paying attention may not have noticed, but in the last couple of weeks the legacy of Latin American dictatorships has been planted once and for all as the banner of the populist far right. The issue has become transnational.

On March 24, National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, Argentine President Javier Milei decided to make an unprecedented provocation, publishing an official video with a defense of the military and heavy accusations against those who fought against the dictatorship. The video renames the date the National Day for Truth and "Complete" Justice.

First, some context: Milei has no connection to the dictatorship. He is an ultra-liberal libertarian, and governs in the style of the new digital populists: on the basis of A/B tests. Like former U.S. President Donald Trump, in a calculated way, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, out of personal foolishness, Milei knows that causing debate, attacking and being attacked is the No. 1 strategy for times mediated by the algorithms of the few platforms that actually mediate public affairs.

He named Victoria Villarruel as his vice-president — the daughter of a military man involved in the harsh repression of the dictatorship — a clear affront to common sense in a country where the military who tortured and killed were punished. In Argentina, more than 1,100 people have been convicted of crimes against humanity.

Now he's betting on rewriting the history of the dictatorship because it gets clicks. [...]

— Read the full article by Natalia Viana for Agência Pública, translated into English by Worldcrunch.

🗞️ FRONT PAGE​​

La Vanguardia’s Tuesday edition features the start of Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial in New York and the risk of wider Middle East war as Israel and Iran face off. But the Barcelona-based daily also reserves part of its front page for Rafael Nadal, who is making a comeback at the Barcelona Open after a year of injuries, though the Spanish tennis great has confirmed that 2024 will be his last year on tour.

🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Israel will respond to Iran’s attack, Israel army chief says. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned his war cabinet for the second time in less than 24 hours after Tehran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend. For more, read this article from Kayhan-London, translated from Persian by Worldcrunch: Iran's Retaliation Against Israel Is An Internal Struggle With Its Own Rhetoric.

• Australian police declared the knife attack at a Sydney church a terrorist act. A 16-year-old teenager was arrested after an Assyrian church bishop and three followers were stabbed on Monday. Captured on a church livestream, it is the second stabbing in three days in Australia, after an unrelated attack left seven people dead in a popular Sydney shopping center. Those injured in the church attack are expected to recover. 

• Jury selection for Trump’s historic criminal trial continues after dozens ruled out. Sixty of 96 potential jurors were sent home after they said they couldn’t be impartial in the trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is facing hush-money charges in New York. The process to select 12 impartial jurors could take up to two weeks.

• The Olympic flame for the Paris 2024 Games was lit in Greece's ancient Olympia. The lightning will kick off an international torch relay stretching from the Acropolis to the South Pacific across 64 French territories and ending in Paris for the start of the Games on July 26. For more on the Olympics, check this article translated from French to English: What Olympic Role For The River Seine? A Deeper Look.

• Denmark’s old stock exchange in the center of Copenhagen was engulfed in a massive fire. The spire of the 17th-century building, one of the Danish capital’s most famous landmarks, which was undergoing renovation, collapsed on Tuesday morning. Deputy prime minister Troels Lund Poulsen described the blaze as “our own Notre-Dame moment,” referring to the fire that damaged the Paris cathedral in April 2019, five years ago almost to the day.

• At least 100 killed as lightning and heavy rains lash Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both countries have reported a death toll of about 50 people, urging emergency services to remain on high alert as more severe weather is expected in the coming days.

• Chinese building mocked on social media for resembling a sanitary pad. Authorities say the proposed design of the North Nanjing train station takes inspiration from plum blossoms, which the eastern Chinese city is known for, but internet users don’t agree: “Why can we all tell it is a sanitary pad immediately, but the architects can't?”

📰 STORY OF THE DAY

Muslim and Christian alike, Egypt's religious institutions make the economic crisis worse

Amid increasingly dire economic, social and humanitarian conditions in Egypt, the charitable work of Islamic and Christian religious institutions is important. Yet these institutions also support the government's failed economic policies, writes Ishak Ibrahim in Egypt-based news website Al-Manassa.

🕌⛪ Waves of soaring prices have crushed Egyptians, pushing many of them into poverty. In this context, charitable work is important. Islamic and Christian religious institutions lead this type of charitable work directly or through their affiliated bodies and associations. They help poor families meet their needs through providing cash or in-kind assistance. Even in secular countries, the role of religious institutions is no longer limited to matters of faith, theology and religious services.

🇪🇬 But such institutions often find themselves the crosshairs of secular and civil movements that view their growing charitable role as evidence of the decline of civil state institutions or that fear the spread of radical religious movements and their associated conservative cultural and social pattern. A further dilemma in Egypt is that charitable religious institutions support the government's economic policies and its repercussions through their activities and their leaders’ statements. 

🗯️ Today, this trend is strongly evident with economic issues, some of which are a matter of controversy and disagreement. Religious institutions are usually supportive of government policies and hold the weaker party and the people responsible for these crises. They completely ignore those who have actually caused such crises.

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO

➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED

#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS

200 million

Baidu's AI chatbot “Ernie Bot” has amassed over 200 million users and its application programming interface (API) is used 200 million times daily. The number of users doubled since December, with 85,000 enterprise clients. Despite this, Chinese generative AI services still trail behind Western counterparts like OpenAI's ChatGPT, which remains the most popular globally. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of all things chatbot here.

📣 VERBATIM

“This is not novelistic. I mean, somebody sticks a knife in you, that’s pretty personal. Pretty first person.”

— Salman Rushdie's memoir Knife is out today. It explores the knife attack the Indian-British novelist  survived on Aug. 12, 2022, revealing his shock and disbelief at the event. He sustained severe injuries, including blindness in one eye. Rushdie sees writing about the incident as a necessary step in confronting the truth and reclaiming his narrative, as a “knife that cuts through the truth.” “It became clear to me that I couldn’t write anything else, I had to write this first,” he said. The attacker, Hadi Matar, awaits trial. Check out this article from the Worldcrunch vault, published in the wake of the 2022 attack on Rushdie.

📸 PHOTO DU JOUR

The lighting ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympic flame took place this morning in Olympia, Greece. Lit by using the sun's rays focused via a parabolic mirror, the flame was then placed in an urn (see above) and brought to the first torchbearer, kicking off the Olympic Torch Relay, which will see the flame travel from ancient Olympia to reach Paris on July 26. — Photo: Paris 2024’s official X (Twitter) account

👉  MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH  

• Did Israel Set A Trap For Iran — Or For Itself? — FRANCE INTER

• Memories For Food: Gaza Mothers Sell Family Heirlooms To Feed Their Children — DARAJ

• Shish Kebab: Back To The Source Of Turkey's Best-Known Culinary Export— OKSIJEN

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