Good morning.
Joe Biden has pledged unflinching support for Israel, calling the assault by Hamas that left nearly 1,000 people dead an “act of sheer evil”, as reports emerge of a massacre at a kibbutz.
Yesterday, journalists were allowed into the Kfar Aza kibbutz, on the border with Gaza, where people were killed after Hamas broke through the border on Saturday.
“Mothers, fathers, babies, young families killed in their beds, in the protection room, in the dining room, in their garden,” Maj Gen Itai Veruv, of the Israel Defence Forces, told the BBC as his troops searched homes for bodies of victims. “It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre.”
Rampaging fighters armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades gunned down dozens of residents and mutilated some of the bodies, Veruv and other soldiers said.
In a televised speech from the White House, Biden said at least 14 Americans were killed in the weekend’s attack by Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza, and an as yet unknown number of Americans were being held hostage.
What’s happening in Gaza? More than 900 people in Gaza have been killed in retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, and Israel is enforcing a blockade that has sealed off the besieged territory of 2.3 million people from food, fuel and other supplies. Frightened residents of Gaza have described bombardments striking residential buildings, hospitals and schools, while humanitarian workers have said nowhere is safe.
What has the US said about Gaza? The US is discussing the possibility of creating a safe passage for Gaza’s civilians as Israel’s air force continued to pound the enclave. The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that talks on safe passage were being held with Israel and Egypt.
Abortions in North Carolina drop by 30% in wake of new restrictions
Abortions in North Carolina fell by more than 30% after the state enacted new abortion restrictions on 1 July, including a 12-week abortion ban, data released today by the Guttmacher Institute shows.
North Carolina abortion clinics performed more than 4,200 abortions in June and 2,920 abortions in July. Nearby states did not see a comparable surge in abortions, suggesting that patients denied abortions in North Carolina had to self-manage their own – or went without.
“Having to turn away patients over and over again is truly just soul-crushing,” said Calla Hales, who runs A Preferred Women’s Health Center, a network of clinics with two locations in North Carolina and two in Georgia, which has a six-week abortion ban.
“We’re having to try our best to help patients but they’re going through incredible financial and logistical difficulties to get here. And then there’s the patients who just can’t make it, or have to be turned away because they’re just too far, or have some other condition that isn’t compatible with doing a non-hospital abortion. It weighs a person down.”
What else does the new law say? The 12-week ban included a requirement that abortion patients show up for an in-person consultation at an abortion clinic at least 72 hours before their abortion. That requirement was devastating for patients and providers, Hales said. It confused patients and left providers scrambling to schedule patients twice at already crowded clinics. This rule is a huge obstacle for out-of-state residents who either have to take two trips or find accommodation to stay multiple days.
Two US House Republicans make their bid for the speaker’s gavel
The prominent Republican party members Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan made their pitches for the powerful role of speaker of the US House of Representatives yesterday amid mounting pressure from a war in the Middle East and another looming government shutdown.
Lawmakers exiting a closed-door forum said neither Scalise, the House majority leader, nor Jordan, who chairs the judiciary committee, would have a clear advantage when Republicans begin to vote for a nominee by secret ballot on Wednesday. “We’ve got two good leaders within our party, with good perspectives on where the party needs to go and an understanding and an emphasis on reuniting the party,” Mike Garcia told reporters.
Before voting for a candidate today, Republicans will have to decide whether to keep internal disagreements behind closed doors by requiring any nominee to win 217 Republican votes, enough to elect the next speaker on the House floor over Democratic opposition. Current rules require only a simple majority.
“The first order of business is figuring out a rules change that works for the conference,” said the congresswoman Kat Cammack.
What does the Republicans’ narrow majority mean for the vote? The narrowly divided caucus – Republicans hold a 221-212 majority in the House – raised some worries that neither candidate would be able to win enough support to be elected speaker in the first round of voting. In January this narrow majority made it possible for a fraction of their members to force Kevin McCarthy to endure 15 grueling floor votes to become speaker. He was ousted last week.
In other news …
Federal prosecutors added major allegations to the indictment charging the House Republican George Santos with fraud and lying about his campaign finance disclosures, presenting evidence that he stole donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards without their knowledge.
The supreme court is to review whether the South Carolina map, which was redrawn by Republicans, discriminated against Black voters. The court will hear the redistricting case after a panel ruled that Republicans had undertaken an “effective bleaching” in redrawing the state’s seven congressional districts after the 2020 census.
Kari Lake, the Republican candidate who lost the race for Arizona governor but never conceded her loss, announced a run for US Senate in the western state yesterday. A former TV news anchor, Lake made her move into politics by making repeated false claims about elections.
California has become the first state to ban the use of “excited delirium” in recording a cause of death, prohibiting the pseudoscientific diagnosis that authorities have frequently cited to justify killings at the hands of law enforcement. Excited delirium suggests that people can develop superhuman strength due to drug use.
Stat of the day: Thousands bought ‘golden passports’ through Dominica’s $1bn scheme
The Caribbean state of Dominica has sold citizenship to thousands of individuals including a former Afghan spymaster, a Turkish millionaire convicted of fraud and a former Libyan colonel under Muammar Gaddafi, the first detailed examination of the country’s controversial “golden passports” scheme has found. The findings are from Dominica: Passports of the Caribbean, an investigation by the Guardian and 14 other international news organizations in partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). According to official declarations, Dominica’s golden passports scheme – one of the world’s biggest – has raised more than $1bn (£822m) since 2009.
Don’t miss this: ‘Happy rebirth!’ – Chinese women shake off taboos around divorce to celebrate freedom
In a karaoke room filled with balloons, confetti and cake, a 34-year-old woman dances with a dozen friends celebrating her “rebirth of the past”. The woman, who posts on Chinese social media under the name Sushi, had just ended her four-year marriage. Shaking off social stereotypes around divorce that suggest she should feel shame and failure, she decided to throw a party with all of her girlfriends. “If I had known divorce would be so happy, I would have done it a long time ago!” she wrote on social media.
As the divorce rate in China rises and attitudes to separations change, divorce parties and inspiring content about the lives of newly single women are gaining thousands of likes on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese video-sharing social media app.
Climate check: Human emissions made deadly South American heat 100 times more likely
The deadly heat in central South America over the past two months was made 100 times more likely by human emissions that disrupted the climate, scientists have shown. Temperatures have exceeded 40C in late winter and early spring in the southern hemisphere, affecting millions and leading to heat-related deaths. This year’s El Niño has been partly to blame, but a rapid study by researchers at World Weather Attribution revealed that the human-made climate crisis was by far the main cause of the unseasonable warmth. If global heating rises to 2C above pre-industrial levels, similar heatwaves will be expected every five or six years. The world has now heated by about 1.2C.
Last Thing: Female frogs appear to fake death to avoid unwanted advances, study shows
When it comes to avoiding unwanted male attention, researchers have found that some frogs take drastic action: they appear to feign death. Researchers say the findings shed new light on the European common frog, suggesting females do not simply put up with the male scramble for mates – a situation in which several males can end up clinging to a female, sometimes fatally. “It was previously thought that females were unable to choose or defend themselves against this male coercion,” said Dr Carolin Dittrich, the first author of the study from the Natural History Museum of Berlin. But the research suggests females are not passive as previously thought, she said.
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