Good morning.
Israel will not restore power, water or fuel to Gaza until the hostages taken by Hamas over the weekend are freed, an Israeli minister has said. Israel believes Hamas is holding about 150 Israeli hostages inside Gaza.
Israel Katz, Israel’s energy minister, said: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”
In the US, Joe Biden has condemned the attack by Hamas militants on Israel at the weekend as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”, with Israeli jets continuing to strike Gaza, an enclave running desperately low on medical supplies, according to the World Health Organization.
“Silence is complicity,” Biden said. “I refuse to be silent.” He said he had spoken again to Benjamin Netanyahu and that the US was “surging” additional military assistance to the Israel Defence Forces.
What’s happening on the ground today? At about 4.30am, Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza. It did not provide details. Israel is expected to launch a ground offensive in Gaza in the coming days.
Trump demands apology after Forbes cuts him from wealthiest list again
Donald Trump demanded an apology from Forbes magazine after it dropped him from its list of the 400 wealthiest people in the US for the second time in three years.
“I hereby demand a full apology from the failing Forbes magazine,” the former president wrote on Truth Social yesterday, the reportedly struggling social media platform he set up after being expelled from mainstream platforms over the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Forbes released its Trump-free list last week, saying his net worth was down $600m from a year before. Trump has been on the list since the 1990s, other than in 2021.
In response, Trump complained about “really dumb writers assigned to hit me hard” and bragged about huge leads in Republican presidential polling he holds despite facing 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats.
How has Forbes responded? Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes and the author of a 2020 book, White House Inc: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency Into a Business, tweeted: “Hey Donald Trump, if you want to point out a single false fact in any of the articles I’ve published about you – or in the book I wrote about you – feel free. In the meantime, I’m going to keep reporting – and carefully fact-checking every word I publish.”
What else is going on for Trump? A federal judge is today expected to weigh whether the lawyers for Trump’s two co-defendants, charged with trying to obstruct the US justice department from retrieving classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago club, had conflicts of interest and should be ordered off the case.
‘We lie on the floor till someone buys us’: shocking allegations of UAE agencies’ abuse of domestic workers
Women seeking jobs as domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates allege they are being detained and abused in squalid accommodation, while recruiters sell them over apps and social media platforms to household employers, according to interviews and documents seen by the Guardian.
In a series of interviews conducted over several years, 14 women from east Africa and the Philippines recounted their experiences with recruitment agencies, including alleging they were denied food, held captive and treated violently.
The Guardian has also seen evidence that the women are being marketed in an “exploitative” way reminiscent of slavery, according to one expert, with employers charged less for the services of black domestic workers and being told they did not even need to provide them with proper bedrooms.
The women’s testimony gives a rare insight into what life is like in domestic worker agency accommodation as people wait, in limbo, for an employer to take them on. It is a process that can take months, with women often being returned to the agencies at the whim of an employer.
In other news …
The former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has pleaded guilty to fraud at Southwark crown court in London after failing to declare more than £400m ($490m) of overseas assets to the UK government. Ecclestone had pleaded not guilty to the charges in August, but changed his plea at a case management hearing today.
New York Republicans in the US House yesterday moved to expel one of their own: George Santos, the serial fabulist and accused fraudster who faces new charges under a superseding federal indictment. In response, Santos said he was going nowhere, asking his “fellow Americans” to “stay strong”.
In 2013, Brett Hemphill dived more than 40 storeys deep in Texas’s Phantom Springs underwater cave system to set a national record. Last weekend, his diving colleagues pulled his body out of that same treacherous labyrinth, days after the 56-year-old had gone missing during an expedition.
On the sixth day of Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial, Caroline Ellison, his ex-girlfriend and colleague, described how relief washed over her when the FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapsed. Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, broke into tears as she described FTX’s final days.
Taylor Swift says the documentary film from her billion-dollar Eras concert tour will offer one-day early access showings in the US and Canada because of high demand. “Look what you genuinely made me do,” the singer wrote on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter yesterday.
Don’t miss this: ‘It’s like trying to quit smoking’ – why are one in seven of us addicted to ultra-processed foods?
We know ultra-processed foods (UPFs) such as crisps, fizzy drinks and ice-cream can be extremely harmful to health, are designed to be hyper-palatable and are overeaten, writes Rachel Dixon. Now researchers believe they are not just hard to resist – they are actually addictive. An analysis of 281 studies in 36 countries by scientists from the US, Spain and Brazil, published in the BMJ, found that 14% of adults and 12% of children have a food addiction, and the food they are addicted to is ultra-processed.
But surely food cannot be addictive in the same way as alcohol or tobacco, Dixon asks Chris van Tulleken, a doctor and the author of Ultra-Processed People. “I totally agree that food is not addictive,” he says. “But UPF is not really food. The purpose of food is to provide nourishment. UPF’s primary purpose is profit and financial growth.”
Climate check: politicians, not public, drive U-turns on green agenda, says UN biodiversity chief
Government backtracking on environmental promises is being driven by politicians and vested interests, not the public, the acting UN biodiversity chief has said, as he called for greater support for those experiencing the short-term costs of green policies. David Cooper cited the recent citizens’ assembly on biodiversity in Ireland and the vote in Ecuador against continuing with oil and gas exploration in the Amazon rainforest as moments when the public had pushed for stronger environmental protections.
“We see some backtracking in different parts of the world but a lot of this is political groups trying to find wedge issues to gain a marginal advantage in an upcoming election,” he said. “When the public are allowed to express their views, they come up with good decisions … People are actually ahead of the governments.”
Last Thing: Fat Bear Week – female bear 128 Grazer wins after ‘stuffing salmon in her face’
A large female bear, described as boasting a combination of “skill and toughness”, has been crowned the winner of Fat Bear Week, the annual competition to see which Alaska bears can pack on the most pounds before hibernation season. The victorious bear, called 128 Grazer, beat competition from 11 other bears in Katmai national park in Alaska to clinch the title in an online vote. “Congrats to the 2023 Fat Bear Week champion, 128 Grazer!” the national park service said in a Facebook post. “With a dominant performance … Grazer’s resilience and strength is the epitome of Katmai’s brown bears.”
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