Good morning.
Western leaders are hoping that a round of meetings at a security conference in Munich will put overwhelming pressure on Israel not to press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah, which aid organisations have said would have catastrophic consequences. One NGO said it would cause a “bloodbath”.
The pressure on Israel to avoid a ground offensive is coming from almost all quarters, including allies such as the US, the UK, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The shadow of a return to the international court of justice and a new Algerian-sponsored UN security council resolution is looming over Israel.
Since Tuesday, Egypt has been hosting ceasefire talks that have included the US and Qatar. No breakthrough has been achieved. Western capitals fear that if Hamas and Israel cannot agree on a pause within days, Israeli and Hezbollah attacks in Lebanon will escalate, making further negotiation difficult.
On Thursday Israeli forces raided the largest hospital still functioning in the Gaza Strip. Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, was hit directly by tank fire overnight, killing one person, according to staff, and ground troops stormed the premises about an hour later. Patients, medical personnel and displaced civilians began to flee.
What terms does Hamas want for a ceasefire? Hamas is no longer holding out for a permanent ceasefire but wants a six-week humanitarian pause leading to a ceasefire.
What is Benjamin Netanyahu saying about the ceasefire talks? Negotiations appear to be stalling. The Israeli prime minister said on Friday: “Israel will continue to oppose the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.”
What has been the human cost of Israel’s war on Gaza so far? The offensive has killed more than 28,500 people, displaced more than 85% of Gaza’s population and reduced more than half of the territory’s infrastructure to rubble. The World Food Programme says one in four people in Gaza are facing extreme hunger.
FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business
The FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian energy company.
Prosecutors said Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, to “protect [Burisma], through his dad, from all kinds of problems”.
The allegations became a flashpoint in Congress over the summer as Republicans demanded that the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations as they pursued investigations of Biden and his family. They acknowledged at the time that it was unclear if the allegations were true.
The new development sharply undermines the thrust of congressional Republicans’ corruption accusations that the US president was making money from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Who is Smirnov? An FBI informant, not an agent. The indictment was unclear on whether Smirnov was a US citizen and did not specify his country of origin. It said he became an informant in 2010 and speaks Russian.
What could be the consequences for Smirnov? Smirnov was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
Fulton county DA denies wrongdoing over relationship with Trump prosecutor
Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, denied wrongdoing while testifying at a court hearing on Thursday. She rebutted accusations that her romantic relationship with a deputy prosecutor on the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump meant she should be disqualified from the case.
The district attorney testified that her relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade started months after he was retained to work on the case – charging Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state – and ended in summer 2023.
Willis sought to undercut allegations that she had engaged in a sort of kickback scheme through Wade’s hiring, as alleged by defence lawyers for a co-defendant of Trump’s, Michael Roman, where she benefited from Wade’s earnings.
“You’re confused. You think I’m on trial,” Willis said to lawyers questioning her. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
What happens next? The hearing will continue for a second day on Friday before the Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee.
What is the case against Trump? A sprawling indictment that charges the former US president and his top allies with violating Georgia’s racketeering statute over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
How significant could this hearing be? If Willis is relieved from bringing the case, it would result in the disqualification of the entire district attorney’s office, throwing into disarray the criminal prosecution against the former president.
In other news …
Greece became the world’s first Christian Orthodox nation to legalise same-sex marriage, after the Athens parliament passed the landmark reform amid scenes of jubilation and fury in the country.
The UK Labour party won two byelections from the ruling Conservatives last night, putting further pressure on the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and raising the prospect of a change in government.
The 2024 evisceration of journalism and media jobs continued on Thursday with staff cuts at the Intercept and Vox Media’s NowThis.
The US failure to vote through a fresh military aid package for Ukraine is already having an impact on the battlefield, said Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg.
Venezuela’s government has ordered the local UN office on human rights to suspend operations, giving its staff 72 hours to leave and accusing the office of having a “colonialist, abusive” attitude.
A coalition including the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s party (PPP) has agreed to form Pakistan’s next government, shutting out Imran Khan’s party despite it getting the most votes.
Don’t miss this: OpenAI launches Sora tool that instantly creates video from text
OpenAI revealed a tool on Thursday that can generate videos from text prompts. The new model, Sora, can produce realistic footage up to a minute long. It released examples such as videos of woolly mammoths, and Tokyo at night. “We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion,” a blogpost said. OpenAI did not disclose how much footage was used to train Sora or where the training videos may have originated, but told the New York Times it used publicly available and licensed copyright videos. The company has been sued multiple times for alleged copyright infringement.
Climate check: Plastics producers deceived public about recycling for 30 years, report reveals
Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a report from the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI). Industry insiders over the past several decades have referred to plastic recycling as “uneconomical”, the report shows. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused,” said the CCI president, Richard Wiles.
Last Thing: ‘I sort the post in Antarctica’
“There are five of us now living together in a Nissen hut in Port Lockroy, a harbour on the west side of the Antarctic peninsula,” Laura Büllesbach tells Naomi Larsson Piñeda. “It was established as a British base in the 1940s and has a stunning backdrop of glittering mountains and glaciers. As well as looking after the museum, we monitor the environment and keep track of our neighbours, the penguins. As postmaster, I’m in charge of sorting the mail that gets sent here, the southernmost post office in the world. In five weeks I’ve processed 20,000 letters. My favourite letter was a note from two children asking questions about penguins.”
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