World events 14 in a concentrated form, understandable
World events 14.
NATO defense ministers will discuss Ukraine at a meeting today in Brussels, a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made an urgent appeal to them for air defenses as Kyiv moves to extend its counteroffensive into the winter.
To see important ads, turn off your ad blocker! Article continued below:Overnight, air defenses shot down 28 out of 33 Russian drones, the Ukrainian air force command said.
World events 14, China and India.
China and India agreed to maintain peace along their common border in the 20th round of talks between the neighbors on the worst dispute over the issue in two decades.
Relations between the nuclear-armed countries have soured since at least 20 Indian and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed in a skirmish in June 2020 along the 3,488-kilometer (2,167-mile) disputed Himalayan border.
Diplomat.
The EU’s top diplomat starts a three-day visit to China with a delicate task: pushing back against Chinese subsidies that the bloc says disadvantage European companies, while trying to prevent the $900 billion relationship from imploding into a trade war. The deadly assaults on Israel by Hamas are also likely to cast a long shadow on talks.
World events 14, Republican Party.
Discord in the Republican Party means Steve Scalise’s bid to become US House speaker could drag out for weeks, delaying action on fiscal deadlines and new aid for Israel. Scalise can’t afford to lose more than four GOP votes to win against Democrats united in support of their party leader, Hakeem Jeffries.
Google.
Google says it has worked hard to disrupt the ability of President Vladimir Putin’s government to use its services to spread disinformation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But a widely used Android service called Discover continues to serve up misleading propaganda to Russian audiences.
Russia.
The Russian ruble headed for its best day in a month after the government imposed some capital controls as it seeks to reverse the third-biggest currency depreciation in emerging markets this year.
World events 14, Japan.
Japan’s government will ask a court to order the disbandment of the fringe religious group whose activities were cited as motivating the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Argentine.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez filed a legal complaint against election frontrunner Javier Milei after the outsider encouraged citizens to stop saving in pesos, heating up the presidential race with just 10 days to the key vote.
World events 14, Israel.
As Israel reels from a shock Hamas assault that claimed 1,200 lives, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has vowed to wipe the Palestinian militant group “off the face of the Earth.”
A wartime cabinet has been formed to lead the Jewish state through a widely expected ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, and uproot Hamas from the isolated Palestinian enclave it’s ruled for 16 years.
Already, Israel has unleashed thousands of airstrikes and imposed a siege, cutting off power and water.
Public pressure to avenge slain Israelis, many of them unsuspecting civilians including children and elderly people snatched from their homes, as well as partygoers ambushed at a music festival, is immense.
The carnage has Israelis thinking primarily about how to restore their sense of safety. Officials say they’ve moved from a policy of managing Hamas to destroying the group, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union, so it can never attack Israel again.
Yet, history suggests that approach will not bring peace.
Hamas didn’t exist when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization and its late leader Yasser Arafat, who’d used the country as a springboard for cross-border operations.
The PLO left but from that war was born the Lebanese militant group now known as Hezbollah. Hamas itself was founded in 1987, around the start of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation.
Gaza is among the most densely populated places in the world, with some 2 million people living in a 140-square-mile strip. Egypt and Israel control its borders. Whether or not they support Hamas, Gazans have nowhere to go.
Repeated aerial wars on Gaza have killed thousands over the years but failed to crush Hamas or the Palestinian quest for statehood. A ground invasion, with Israeli soldiers going house to house on Hamas’s home turf, risks turning into a bloody quagmire.
It’s a tragic cycle familiar to Middle East observers.
“If they just go in and kill the Hamas operatives of today,” said Seth Moulton, a US Congressman who served four tours as a US Marine in Iraq, “you could well have twice as many tomorrow.”
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