Good morning. We’re covering President Biden’s efforts to curb Russia and China’s influence in the Middle East, and Egypt’s repressive system of pretrial detention. |
| President Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, during the GCC + 3 Summit meeting, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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Biden hopes Mideast alliances will contain Russia and China |
In a series of encounters with Arab strongmen in Saudi Arabia this weekend, President Biden emphasized why he was strengthening ties with allies he had previously criticized for anti-democratic behavior. |
“We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran,” Biden said at a meeting with Arab leaders on Saturday. |
Biden’s effort here to negotiate greater oil production in the Middle East is driven by the need to make Russia pay a steep price for invading Ukraine. So far, the Russians have managed to maintain much of their oil revenues in part because of the jump in the price of oil. Biden also pushed for closer telecommunications agreements with the Saudis — an industry in which China has been able to wield its influence abroad. |
| Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has seen increased Russian shelling in recent weeks.Mauricio Lima for The New York Times |
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Zelensky urges civilians to stop ignoring air raid sirens |
The wail of air raid sirens has become so common in Ukraine that some locals now often ignore them and go about their life. |
A U.S. military official said that between 100 and 150 civilians may have been killed in Russian strikes in Ukraine last week, including an attack in the city of Vinnytsia that killed 23 people, among them Liza Dmytriyeva, a 4-year-old with Down syndrome. On Sunday, at least 10 Russian missiles rained down on Mykolaiv in the second significant attack on the southern port city in two days. |
The “vicious cycle” of Egypt’s pretrial detentions |
In Egypt, it has become almost routine for security forces to arrest someone, accuse them of terrorist activity without proof, and detain them for months or years without ever having to prove their case at trial. |
Pretrial detentions have become Egypt’s chief engine of mass repression under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has cracked down on his critics on a vastly greater scale than his predecessors. |
One case involved the arrest of a politician mulling running against el-Sisi; another, two women on a Cairo subway overheard complaining about rising fares; a third, a young conscript who posted a Facebook meme of el-Sisi wearing Mickey Mouse ears. |
But while detentions have ramped up in recent years, they have operated almost entirely in the dark — no public records exist of how many people are held in pretrial detention. An analysis by The New York Times counts for the first time the number of detainees and exposes the circular legal process that can hold people indefinitely. |
In the six months from September 2020 to February 2021, about 4,500 people were trapped in pretrial detention, a number based on a conservative estimate. At least one in four of the detainees had spent more than a year in detention, their cases extended without trial over and over again. |
Behind the scenes: The Times spent the better part of a year digging into Egypt’s detention system by examining handwritten logs, translating them and manually checking each name for verification. Here’s how we counted the detainees. |
| A photo released by Chinese state media showing Xi Jinping visiting Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, on Wednesday.Yan Yan/Xinhua, via Associated Press |
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| Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy in Rome on Friday.Angelo Carconi/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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- The global economy is sliding toward danger, confronting an unusual combination of slowing growth and rising prices.
- A drug kingpin convicted of orchestrating the torture and murder of an American federal agent was captured in northern Mexico.
- World’s fastest man: American sprinter Fred Kerley won the men’s 100-meter race at the track and field world championships. Follow along for updates from the event.
- The head of Documenta, one of the art world’s most important events, has resigned, a month after a banner featuring antisemitic imagery was installed at the exhibition.
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| Villagers hired by Eden Reforestation Projects planting trees in the northern part of Goiás State, Brazil.Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times |
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Seeking to alleviate both the local problems of deforestation and the global problems of biodiversity loss and climate change, companies and nonprofits have been promoting worldwide campaigns for planting trees — with the aim of growing a trillion new trees. But reaching that goal is easier said than done. |
Lives Lived: Ivana Trump, the glamorous Czech-American businesswoman whose marriage to Donald Trump in the 1980s established the pair as one of New York’s quintessential power couples of that era, died at 73. |
Some 29 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have premiered since 2008 — an average of almost two per year. In those 14 years, critics predicted that audiences would eventually get tired of superhero movies. In The Times, one media analyst warned of “superhero fatigue” in 2011. Asked about it last year, a quarter of U.S. adults said they enjoyed superhero movies but were getting tired of them. |
But that sentiment is not reflected at the box office. “Thor: Love and Thunder” opened last weekend and earned $302 million worldwide, grossing more in its U.S. debut than previous Thor movies. Earlier this year, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” made $954 million worldwide. And 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” finished its run at $1.9 billion. |
Next up: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” this November. Its 2018 predecessor made $1.3 billion. |
| Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Sue Li. Prop stylist: Nicole Louie. |
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This sous-chef salad includes vegetables, canned tuna and hard-boiled eggs. |
Isaac Fitzgerald’s new memoir “Dirtbag, Massachusetts” is about male misbehavior and the struggle to make sense of oneself. |
This week’s pop playlist features songs from Lizzo, Pink, Marcus Mumford and others. |
That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Matthew |
The latest episode of “The Daily” is about the James Webb Space Telescope. |
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