Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a ‘Permanent’ State of War

Hamas leaders say they waged their Oct. 7 attack on Israel because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away, and that only violence could revive it.

Thousands have been killed in Gaza, with entire families wiped out. Israeli airstrikes have reduced Palestinian neighborhoods to expanses of rubble, while doctors treat screaming children in darkened hospitals with no anesthesia. Across the Middle East, fear has spread over the possible outbreak of a broader regional war.

But in the bloody arithmetic of Hamas’s leaders, the carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation. Quite the opposite, they say: It is the necessary cost of a great accomplishment — the shattering of the status quo and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel.

It was necessary to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, told The New York Times in Doha, Qatar. “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”

UNICEF defends accuracy of Gaza death toll as horror unfolds in ravaged enclave

A UNICEF spokesperson has defended the death toll being reported out of Gaza, saying the organization’s figures had historically matched those of the Hamas-controlled Gazan health ministry.

More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the past month – including thousands of women, children and elderly, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawing from sources in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Israel declared war on the Islamist militant group Hamas after its brutal October 7 attack, in which it killed 1,400 people in Israel and kidnapped about 240 others. Israel’s offensive on Gaza has since razed neighborhoods and bombed thousands of what it says are Hamas targets, including in refugee camps. Israel Defense Forces warnings have prompted many to flee to the southern part of the strip.

 

WHO says level of suffering in Israel-Gaza war hard to comprehend

Level of death and suffering ‘hard to fathom’, says WHO

The “level of death and suffering” in the Israel-Gaza war is “hard to fathom”, the World Health Organization has said.

Speaking in Geneva, the organisation’s spokesman Christian Lindmeier said there had been more than 100 strikes on health facilities since the conflict began,

He noted the death tolls of more than 1,400 in Israel, and said the figure of more than 10,000 people killed in Gaza was “a half percent of the population”.

“An average of about 160 children are killed every day. Nothing justifies the horror being endured by the civilians in Gaza.”

Earlier, Lindmeier said people in Gaza were having operations, including amputations, without anaesthesia.

• Earlier, dozens were reported killed by Israeli air strikes in the southern Gazan cities of Khan Younis, Rafah and Deir al-Balah
• The Israel Defense Forces have not commented on the strikes – but said they took control of a Hamas stronghold in northern Gaza in recent fighting
• In Israel, people across the country are marking one month since the Hamas attacks on 7 October, which saw 1,400 people, mostly civilians, killed, and more than 200 people taken hostage
• More than 10,300 people have been killed in Gaza according to the Hamas-run health ministry, including more than 4,100 children

Report: Saudi Arabia-ATP talks could change men’s tennis

The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP)  is reportedly in discussions with Saudi Arabia to engineer a dramatic change to the start of the men’s tennis season.

According to British newspaper, The Times, Saudi Arabia is keen to host a new Masters 1000 tournament just a week before the Australian Open. It would likely have a profound impact on the first Grand Slam of the year.

Masters series events are considered the second-most important tier of tournaments behind the Grand Slam  majors. A new January Masters event would undoubtedly see warm-up tournaments in Australia lose most of the top names in men’s tennis, and much of their ability to draw fans as a result.

French-Algerian activist sentenced in absentia for fleeing to France

An Algerian court on Tuesday sentenced French-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui to 10 years in prison, media reported, in a case that sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries.

Bouraoui, who fled to France through Tunisia in February, was sentenced in absentia for an “illegal exit from the territory”, one of the defence lawyers told Algerian media.

Journalist Mustapha Bendjama, who was accused of helping her escape, was also sentenced to six months in prison — time he had already served, following his arrest in February.

Bendjama was due to be released on Tuesday after having already served nine months of “arbitrary detention“, said Khaled Drareni, the North Africa representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

25 alleged fraudsters detained in Cambodia to be extradited to Japan

Twenty-five Japanese nationals detained in September in Cambodia for allegedly running a phone scam operation out of a Phnom Penh apartment will soon be extradited to Japan for arrest, investigative sources said Tuesday.

Investigators from several Japanese prefectural police authorities were dispatched to the Cambodian capital to facilitate the transfer which will take place on Wednesday at the earliest. Damage from the alleged fraud scheme is thought to run to at least hundreds of millions of yen, the sources said.

The Japanese nationals detained by Cambodian authorities are men ranging from 20 to 42 years old. Investigators are trying to uncover the full extent of the operation including the group’s hierarchy, the sources said.

Developing countries owe China at least $1.1 trillion – and the debts are due

Developing countries owe Chinese lenders at least $1.1 trillion, according to a new data analysis published Monday, which says more than half of the thousands of loans China has doled out over two decades are due as many borrowers struggle financially.

Overdue loan repayments to Chinese lenders are soaring, according to AidData, a university research lab at William & Mary in Virginia, which found that nearly 80% of China’s lending portfolio in the developing world is currently supporting countries in financial distress.

For years, Beijing marshalled its finances toward funding infrastructure across poorer countries – including under an effort that Chinese leader Xi Jinping branded as his flagship “Belt and Road Initiative,” which launched a decade ago this fall.

 

Hamas-run health ministry says 10,000 people killed in Gaza since start of war

Four Palestinian men have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank today, the Israeli military and Palestinian ministry of health operating in the occupied territory say.

The four are reported to have been in a car driving through the city of Tulkarem when the soldiers opened fire. The Israeli military said the men were members of a Hamas cell that was behind numerous shooting attacks.

The occupied West Bank is separate to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. A total of 152 Palestinians have been killed in in the West Bank since 7 October, the health ministry there says.

A commission for Palestinian prisoners says 70 Palestinians were arrested overnight, including prominent activist Ahed Tamimi, as we reported in our last post.

The Commission of Detainees’ Affairs says more than 2,000 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank since 7 October, amid escalating violence in the territory.

 

The US and UK militaries owe at least $111bn in reparations to communities most harmed by their planet-heating pollution, a first-of-its-kind study calculates.
The research employs a “social cost of carbon” framework – a way to estimate the cost, in dollars, of the climate damage done by each additional tonne of carbon in the atmosphere.

“The environmental costs of maintaining the global military reach of the US and UK armed forces are astonishing,” said Patrick Bigger, research director of the Climate and Community Project and co-author of the report.

Delhi to curb cars after Diwali amid ‘severe’ pollution

India’s capital city will implement restrictions on the use of cars following the Hindu festival of Diwali. The move comes as air pollution in New Delhi is already at a hazardous level.

Delhi plans to restrict the use of cars and other vehicles following the celebration of Diwali in a bid to reduce hazardous air pollution,local officials announced on Monday.

The city’s environment minister, Gopal Rai, expects pollution to rise even more following India’s biggest national festival, which is on Sunday November 12 and is celebrated with the extensive use of fireworks — even though they are banned in Delhi.

Delhi’s current air pollution levels are between seven to eight times the safe limit set by the government, with the region enveloped in a hazardous toxic haze.

Tougher French immigration bill would expel ‘foreigners who commit crimes’

Senators in France started debating a bill Monday that is intended to toughen the country’s immigration law but advocacy organizations have criticized as a threat to the rights of asylum-seekers and other migrants.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said the legislation “is about being firm” on immigration. The bill especially is aimed at “being tougher on foreigners who commit crimes, expelling them all,” he said, speaking Sunday night on TV channel France 2.

The government said the measure would strengthen and accelerate the process for deporting foreigners who are regarded as “a serious threat to public order.”

At the same time, Darmanin, who is considered one of the most right-wing members of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government, said the bill acknowledges people who entered France without authorization and “want to regularize.”

Researchers: 13 tsunami formed in 90 minutes in mysterious event

By RYO SASAKI/ Staff Writer

November 6, 2023 at 18:31 JST

The mystery over the tsunami that formed in the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 9 deepened as researchers found that a series of 13 tsunami were generated over 90 minutes on that day.

The latter six tsunami overlapped each other, amplifying the waves to twice their original height, the research team said.

The tsunami on Oct. 9 was observed over a wide area of Japan along the Pacific, including the main islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku, but how it was generated remains a mystery.

Diver’s huge discovery of ancient coins off coast of Italy hints at hidden shipwreck

More than 30,000 large bronze coins dating back to the fourth century AD have been found by a member of the public during a dive off the coast of Sardinia, Italy—a discovery that could point to the presence of a shipwreck, according to the Italian culture ministry.

The diver spotted some “metal remains” in shallow water near the town of Arzachena, the ministry said in a statement Saturday. These turned out to be “follis”—Roman bronze or copper coins also later used as Byzantine currency.

Based on their weight, the total number of coins in the find is estimated to be between 30,000 and 50,000, the ministry said. This is more than the 22,888 follis hoard found in Seaton, United Kingdom in 2013, it added.

 

BBC sees damage from blast at Gaza refugee camp as Blinken visits West Bank

Palestinian Authority says half of homes in Gaza destroyed

The health ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, has put out new figures on the impact of the the war in Gaza. It says:

• More than 50% of Gaza’s housing units have been destroyed
• Nearly 70% of its population are displaced
• 16 out of 35 hospitals that can take in-patients have stopped functioning
• 42 UNRWA buildings have been damaged
• At least seven churches and 55 mosques are damaged

As we reported earlier, Israel accuses Hamas of locating infrastructure in tunnels underneath civilian areas.

Israel says it has struck more than 11,000 “targets belonging to terrorist organisations” in Gaza and dropped more than 10,000 munitions on Gaza City alone since 7 October, when it began its campaign in retaliation for Hamas’s deadly attacks.

It’s hard to explain just how angry and frustrated people are as they wait in line for hours outside one of the bakeries here in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

People tell us they have been waiting for four or five hours, hoping to get some bread for their families. But getting it after this long wait is not even guaranteed.

As we are filming, one man interrupts us, visibly shaken.

“Over the past 25 days, I have only received one pack of bread,” he says.

“I have a whole family of at least 20 people to provide for. We have been displaced from Jabalia in the north and we’re here now in Khan Younis. How long are we going to keep living with this injustice?”

“Absolutely Appalling”A New Wave of Anti-Semitism Sweeps Across Germany

Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal, a 90-year-old with a wild mane and alert eyes, is one of the last living Holocaust survivors. He is sitting in his living room in Bendestorf, a community in the state of Lower Saxony, and talking about the anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred in Germany recent days. “We Jews are once again easy targets for all the idiots walking our streets,” he says.

The house where he lives with his wife Dagmar is nothing short of a fortress. The window panes are made of bulletproof glass, and more than 20 surveillance cameras have been installed on the property, with their images appearing on a monitor placed next to the fireplace. After the sun goes down, spotlights illuminate the property. Buterfas-Frankenthal says he has received two dozen death threats over the years. One caller smeared him as a “Jewish swine” and told him he had built a box for him, even testing it out by gassing a pig that weighed 85 kilograms.

Thousands sleep rough in Nepal after deadly quake destroys homes

Thousands of villagers in the mountains of northwestern Nepal slept outdoors Saturday night in the bitter cold after an earthquake killed at least 157 people and damaged or destroyed most homes.

Most of the houses in villages in Jajarkot district either collapsed or were severely damaged by the sudden earthquake Friday night, while the few concrete houses in towns were also damaged.

“We are waiting to cremate the bodies of our villagers and have been trying to take care of the people who were injured in the earthquake,” said Lal Bahadur Bika, a resident of Chiuri village, pointing to 13 bodies wrapped in white cloth awaiting cremation on Sunday morning.

Most houses in Chiuri village collapsed.

People used whatever they could find to set up shelter for the night, using plastic sheets and old clothes to keep them warm. Most people have been unable to retrieve their belongings from under the rubble.

Afghanistan: Opium supply drops 95% after Taliban drug ban

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers pledged to wipe out the country’s drug industry, banning poppy cultivation in April 2022. Afghanistan was the world’s biggest opium producer and a major source for heroin in Europe and Asia.

Opium production in Afghanistan has plummeted since the Taliban banned cultivation of the poppy plant, according to a UN report published on Sunday.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers pledged to wipe out the country’s drug industry, banning poppy cultivation in April 2022.

Poppy plants are the source of opium and heroin. Afghanistan was the world’s biggest opium producer and a major source for heroin in Europe and Asia before the Taliban takeover.

What did the report on Afghan opium production say?

The report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that poppy cultivation had dropped by an estimated 95% over the past year, from 233,000 hectares (575,755 acres) at the end of 2022 to 10,800 hectares in 2023.

Opium production also dropped from 6,200 tons to 333 tons in 2023.

The Taiwanese American cousins going head-to-head in the global AI race

By Michelle Toh and Wayne Chang, CNN

Jensen Huang and Lisa Su have a lot in common.

The chief executives of Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) aren’t just two of the most powerful people in the global AI chip industry, they’re also family.

The connection was first acknowledged by Su in 2020, and more recently, has been fleshed out in detail by Jean Wu, a Taiwanese genealogist.

The two didn’t grow up together, which may make it easier considering they now compete against each other atop one of the world’s most closely-watched sectors.

US says up to 400,000 remain in north Gaza as ground offensive goes on

As we’ve been reporting, the UN refugee agency (Unrwa) has confirmed a school that it runs in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza has been hit.

Juliette Touma, Unrwa’s director of communications, has told the BBC it is “another sad day” for the agency.

The school, which like many other Unrwa facilties is currently functioning as a shelter for people fleeing fighting, has been “severely impacted due to hits it received” early this morning, she said.

Touma said according to initial reports, 20 people, believed to include children, may be among the dead with “dozens and dozens” injured.

 

Rescue workers in Nepal began digging through the rubble of collapsed houses with their bare hands on Saturday, searching for survivors after the country’s worst earthquake in eight years killed 157 people and shook buildings as far away as Delhi.
The 5.6-magnitude quake hit the far west of the Himalayan country late on Friday and was measured by the US Geological Survey at just 11 miles (18km) deep.

Local officials said it had not been possible to establish contact in the area near the epicentre in Jajarkot, a hilly district with a population of 190,000 and villages scattered in remote hills.

Iran: Rallies mark 1979 US Embassy seizure, support for Gaza

Demonstrators in Iran also condemned US support for Israel in its war against Hamas militants in Gaza that has left thousands dead.

Thousands of people protested outside the former US Embassy in Tehran, on the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the building, state media reported.

Iranian state news agency IRNA reported demonstrations in more than 1,000 cities nationwide.

Protesters chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” while condemning Washington’s support of Israel as it strikes the Gaza Strip.

Israel declared war on Hamas militants who rule the enclave after militants launched a terror attack on Israeli soil on October 7 that killed 1,400 people and took some 240 more hostage.

Striking Bangladesh garment workers clash with police as factories reopen

Striking Bangladesh garment workers clashed with police on Saturday near the capital as factories reopened in defiance of a protest campaign demanding a near-tripling of wages

Bangladesh‘s 3,500 garment factories account for around 85 percent of the South Asian country’s $55 billion annual exports, supplying many of the world’s top names in fashion including Levi’s, Zara and H&M.

But conditions are dire for many of the sector’s four million workers, the vast majority of whom are women whose monthly wages start at 8,300 taka ($75).

Police said some 600 businesses shuttered over the week had reopened in areas worst-hit by the strike, which saw some factories ransacked and set alight.

Japan asserts Fukushima treated water safe in China, S Korea meeting

Japan on Saturday emphasized the safety of the ongoing release into the sea of treated radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, during a meeting of environment ministers involving China and South Korea.

“We have confirmed that there is no impact on people and the environment,” Japanese Environment Minister Shintaro Ito told the meeting in Nagoya, central Japan. China has criticized Japan over the water release and imposed a blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports.

Chinese Ecology and Environment Minister Huang Runqiu referred to “nuclear-contaminated water,” as Beijing often does, and called for “thorough consultations with other stakeholders, especially neighbors” regarding its disposal “in a responsible way.”

This city never slept. But with China tightening its grip, is the party over?

As the scattered patrons hop from one deserted bar to the next, it’s hard to believe the near-empty streets they are zigzagging down were once among the most vibrant in Asia.

It is Thursday evening, a normally busy night, but there are no crowds for them to weave through, no revelers spilling onto the pavements and no need for them to wait to be seated. At some of the stops on this muted bar crawl, they are the only ones in the room.

It wasn’t always this way. It might seem unlikely from this recent snapshot, but Hong Kong was once a leading light in Asia’s nightlife scene, a famously freewheeling neon-lit city that never slept, where East met West and crowds would spill from the bars throughout the night and long into the morning – even on a weekday.