While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 26
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
US President Joe Biden (right) shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting at the White House, on July 25.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
Biden presses Israel’s Netanyahu for Gaza ceasefire
US President Joe Biden pressed for a ceasefire to the nine-month-old war in Gaza in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 25, with Vice-President Kamala Harris due to meet the Israeli leader later in the day.
They were the first face-to-face talks for the two men since Mr Biden travelled to Israel days after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel, hugged Mr Netanyahu and pledged American support.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said gaps remain between Israel and the Hamas militants who run the Palestinian enclave in the drive for a ceasefire but “we are closer now than we’ve been before.”
State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said: “I think the message from the American side in that meeting will be that we need to get this deal over the line.”
Humanity suffering ‘extreme heat epidemic,’ UN chief warns
REUTERS
Humanity is suffering from an “extreme heat epidemic,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on July 25, calling for action to limit the impacts of heat waves intensified by climate change.
“Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic – wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world,” he said.
“That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit. And halfway to boiling.”
Wildfires force evacuations, smoke chokes swathes of US
REUTERS
Thousands of people were evacuated in Northern California overnight, as yet another rapidly growing wildfire raged, joining hundreds of blazes in the Pacific Northwest and Canada that are sending smoke across swathes of the region, fire officials and weather services said.
The Park Fire in Butte County, California, exploded overnight from about 560 hectares on July 24 to about 18,000 hectares on July 25, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
It’s burning in California’s Central Valley about 130km north of the state capital Sacramento, and was only 3 per cent contained on July 25 morning, said Cal Fire public information officer Dan Collins.
OpenAI enters Google-dominated search market
OpenAI said on July 25 it is selectively rolling out SearchGPT, an artificial intelligence-powered search engine with real time access to the information from the Internet.
The move puts the Microsoft-backed startup in direct competition with Google, the dominant search engine in the market.
OpenAI said it has opened sign-ups for the new tool, which is currently in the prototype stage and is being tested with a small group of users and publishers.
Team Singapore settling in well in Paris Olympic Village
Saiyidah Aisyah is a battle-hardened rower who has come back from retirement after Rio 2016 and injury to make it to her second Olympics.
Even then, the Singaporean was star-struck when she saw two-time Wimbledon men’s singles champion Carlos Alcaraz at the Olympic Village dining hall when she arrived on July 22.
Saiyidah, 36, said: “I saw (fellow Spanish tennis star Rafael) Nadal first but he was already swarmed with people. When I went up to Alcaraz, I was telling him – I’m so sorry, I have to be one of these people who annoy you – and he was so nice and said it’s okay. I was grinning from ear to ear.”
