Good morning.
A sweep of the first two nominating contests on the 2024 primary season left Donald Trump in a strong position to seize the Republican party nomination and made a rematch with Joe Biden even more inevitable.
Trump’s Republican rival, Nikki Haley, vowed to fight on despite her second place finish in New Hampshire, a state where she had hoped for an upset, and her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. But she faces long odds. There is no precedent for a candidate winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and losing their party’s nomination.
In his victory night speech, Trump previewed the crudeness of the campaign rhetoric to come if Haley does not accede to his calls for her to drop out. In his remarks, which were more angry than celebratory, Trump suggested that Haley would find herself under investigation if she became the nominee, but then declared that she had no chance of dethroning him.
“This is not your typical victory speech,” he said, surrounded by all of his vanquished Republican rivals. “But let’s not have someone take a victory when she had a very bad night.”
What did we learn in New Hampshire? The independent vote couldn’t topple Trump, but it should still make him nervous. New Hampshire is known for its independent voting bloc – which comprises 40% of the electorate. Although independent voters were not able to lift Haley to victory, their support for her could create a problem down the road for Trump. Here are some other key takeaways from the day.
Hundreds stranded in Khan Younis hospital by heavy fighting
Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants this morning near the main hospital in Gaza’s second-largest city of Khan Younis, where medics said hundreds of patients and thousands of displaced people were unable to leave because of the fighting, reports Associated Press (AP).
Reporting from Rafah, an AP journalist said Israel had ordered people to leave a swath of downtown Khan Younis that includes Nasser and two smaller hospitals as it pushed ahead with its offensive against Hamas. The UN humanitarian office said the area was home to 88,000 Palestinians and was hosting another 425,000 displaced by fighting elsewhere.
The aid group Doctors Without Borders said its staff were trapped inside Nasser hospital with about 850 patients and thousands of displaced people because the surrounding roads were inaccessible or too dangerous. Nasser hospital is one of only two in southern Gaza that can still treat critically ill patients, the group said. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry also said the hospital had been isolated.
Thousands of people fled south from Khan Younis yesterday toward the town of Rafah, reports AP. The UN said about 1.5 million people – around two-thirds of Gaza’s population – are crowded into shelters and tent camps in and around Rafah, which is on the border with Egypt.
What else is happening in the Middle East? The US has carried out strikes in Iraq against three facilities linked to Iran-backed militia, the Pentagon has said, after a weekend attack on an Iraqi airbase that wounded US forces.
Ukrainian PoWs were onboard military plane that crashed in Belgorod, Russia says
A Russian Ilyushin-76 military plane crashed this morning in Belgorod and Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that the flight was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, who were about to be exchanged.
They were killed together with six Russian crew and “three accompanying persons”, the Moscow news agency Tass reported.
A video posted on the Telegram messenger app by Baza, a channel linked to Russian security services, showed a large aircraft falling towards the ground and exploding in a vast fireball.
The authorities were investigating the cause of the crash, and a special military commission was on the way to the crash site, the defense ministry said.
What has Ukraine said? According to Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper, quoting defense sources, the plane was delivering S-300 anti-aircraft missiles used in recent devastating attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
In other news …
The Los Angeles Times said it was laying off 115 journalists, more than 20% of its newsroom, the day after members of Congress warned in a letter that sweeping media layoffs could undermine democracy in a high-stakes election year. “The LA Times laid us off in an HR zoom webinar with chat disabled, no Q&A, no chance to ask questions,” one former news editor wrote on X.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has not done enough to safeguard children after Molly Russell’s death, according to a whistleblower who said the social media company already has the infrastructure in place to shield teenagers from harmful content.
North Korea has demolished a monument that symbolised hope for reconciliation with the South, days after the regime’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said the peaceful reunification of the two Koreas was no longer possible. The Arch of Reunification – built in 2000 after a landmark inter-Korean summit – has disappeared from satellite imagery.
A nose wheel fell off a Delta Air Lines Boeing 757 passenger jet and rolled away as the plane lined up for takeoff over the weekend from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson international airport in the US, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Stat of the day: Nuclear power output expected to break global records in 2025
Nuclear power generation is likely to break records in 2025 as more countries invest in reactors to fuel the shift to a low-carbon global economy, while renewable energy is likely to overtake coal as a power source early next year, data has shown. China, India, Korea and Europe are likely to have new reactors come on stream, while several in Japan are also forecast to return to generation, and French output should increase, according to a report on the state of global electricity markets published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) today. Electricity demand is also expected to increase around the world, fuelled largely by the move to a low-carbon economy.
Don’t miss this: My life with Shere Hite – the forgotten feminist who changed sex for ever
“The US writer and feminist Shere Hite was a legend of her time who landed in my small ex-council flat in London when I was in my 20s,” writes Joanna Briscoe. “When her books about women, men and the clitoris caused outrage, the bestselling writer was forced to flee the US. She was two decades older and seemed to me to be an extraordinary, exotic creature transmuted from celluloid into strange reality in my home. To those over 50, Hite – a pivotal figure in the second wave feminist movement – was a much-photographed writer and sexologist: a mix between Germaine Greer and a movie star. To those younger, the name draws a blank. Hence the title of Nicole Newnham’s superb new documentary, The Disappearance of Shere Hite.”
Climate check: ExxonMobil’s attempt to silence activist investors should be a warning to shareholders
“ExxonMobil is ‘committed to responsibly meeting the world’s energy needs’, according to the corporate blah blah, but it is clearly not committed to allowing its shareholders to express their own opinions on the ‘responsibly’ bit of the boast,” writes Nils Pratley. “The US oil company is off to court in Texas to try to block a vote on a resolution tabled by Follow This, a Dutch green activist investor group that would like Exxon to move faster (a lot faster) on reducing emissions.
“Why is the company taking such a hard-headed approach? One suspects its real motive may be corporate America’s wider resentment of the growing number of shareholder resolutions being tabled these days.”
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