First Thing: Trump says US does not need Nato after strait of Hormuz rebuff | US news

Good morning.

Donald Trump has said the US does not need Nato, after a number of the organization’s members rejected his call to send their warships to reopen the strait of Hormuz.

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office, the US president described the rejection of his calls as a “very foolish mistake”, adding without evidence: “Everyone agrees with us, but they don’t want to help. And we, you know, we as the United States have to remember that because we think it’s pretty shocking.”

A number of US allies have questioned Trump’s shifting rationale for the war against Iran. There has also been pushback internally: the US national counter-terrorism center director, Joe Kent, quit on Tuesday, saying Iran posed no imminent threat to the US. And some have argued morale is thinning onboard the USS Gerald R Ford: currently stationed in the Red Sea, the world’s largest aircraft carrier has been at sea for almost nine months and has recently suffered fire damage.

The war, in which at least 2,000 people have been killed, is in its third week with no end in sight. Iran’s army chief Amir Hatami on Tuesday vowed retaliation for Israel’s killing of the chief of the national security council, Ali Larijani. Israeli missiles pounded central Beirut on Wednesday morning, while an Iranian missile strike on central Israel killed two people.

Juliana Stratton wins Illinois Democratic Senate primary race

The Illinois lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, has won the Democratic primary race to succeed the state’s US senator Dick Durbin, defeating the US representative Raja Krishnamoorthi.

With nearly 90% of the vote tallied, Stratton – a progressive backed by the governor, JB Pritzker – was leading Krishnamoorthi by more than six percentage points on Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press.

Stratton had been behind her more moderate rival until recent weeks, when she benefited from a funding injection from the governor as well as a hardening sentiment on immigration as Chicago recovered from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on the city.

Millions of children dying from preventable causes, report reveals

Most of the 4.9 million children who died in 2024 could have been saved, a UN report has found, as an expert warned that aid cuts were “reversing decades of progress”.

Progress towards ending the preventable deaths of children under five by 2030 has slowed by 60% since 2015, the report found. Sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia have persistently had the worst rates of child death, largely driven by the deaths of newborns.

The most common causes were premature birth, pneumonia and trauma suffered by the child during birth, while infectious diseases were also significant. Severe malnutrition was an underlying cause for many children who died of other conditions.

• How are aid cuts affecting healthcare provision? 6,600 health facilities were affected by last year’s aid cuts, with a third forced to close, according to monitoring by Global Health Cluster.

In other news …

• A 93-year-old former Belgian diplomat should be tried for alleged complicity in the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of what was then the newly independent Congolese state, a Brussels court has ruled.

• Europe must prepare for drone strikes by non-state actors including terrorists and criminals, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned, as access to the technology spreads.

• Instagram will remove end-to-end encryption for private messages in May, allowing Meta to view all users’ messages, after years of criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups.

Stat of the day: Judge orders more than 1,000 Voice of America employees to be reinstated

A Republican-appointed federal judge has ordered that more than 1,000 Voice of America (VOA) staffers return to work after the Trump administration in effect dismantled the news outlet. The US district judge Royce Lamberth ruled that attempts to shutter operations of the independent federal agency overseeing VOA were illegal and mandated that employees return to work by 23 March.

Well actually: ‘Strong evidence’ shingles vaccination lowers dementia risk

Despite the fact that one in three Americans get shingles, vaccination rates remain low. Experts say more people should consider taking up immunization against the viral infection, as there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that it may lower the risk of dementia, stroke and heart attack.

Don’t miss this: Alex Villa spent more than a decade in jail for the murder of an off-duty police officer in Chicago. The problem? He almost certainly didn’t do it

The Guardian US investigative reporter Melissa Segura has been investigating how the murder of a Chicago police officer, Clifton Lewis, in 2011 led to three men being imprisoned for a crime they say they did not commit. One of the men, Alex Villa, refused to confess and the case was plagued by allegations of misconduct across the legal system. “The case shows that grave injustices don’t always need grand plans,” writes Segura, adding: “Yet it’s also the story of what happens when people who do care about justice fight back.”

Climate check: Reduced physical activity due to global heating will lead to rise in health issues, study says

Global heating is making exercise undesirable and even dangerous in many parts of the world, and researchers warn that this will have deepening knock-on effects on people’s health as temperatures continue to rise. Reduced physical activity is already a big global health problem and is responsible for an estimated 5% of all adult deaths, according to the study.

Last Thing: Why is everything branded with a cartoon character these days?

From smiling bagels to anthropomorphic coffee cups, one illustration style is popping up everywhere at the moment. The design dates from a 1920s and 30s animation technique known as “rubber hose”, named after US cartoon characters with “exaggerated facial expressions” and “flailing rubber hose limbs without joints”. Whether you’ve spotted it on merch for an independent pizza place or for a brew pub, here’s why it has become ubiquitous.

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