While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 9
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Debris covers a road after Hurricane Beryl moved through the area in Matagorda, Texas.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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Storm Beryl kills two, knocks out power as it churns across Texas
Tropical Storm Beryl’s howling winds and torrential rain killed at least two people, closed oil ports, grounded hundreds of flights and knocked out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses in southeast Texas on July 8.
Beryl, the season’s earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, weakened from a hurricane after pounding the coastal Texas town of Matagorda with dangerous storm surges and heavy rain before moving across Houston, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The storm, which was expected to rapidly weaken as it moved inland, swept a destructive path through Jamaica, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines last week. It has killed at least 12 people in the Caribbean and Texas.
Hamas accuses Israel’s Netanyahu of trying to hinder ceasefire talks
via REUTERS
Hamas accused Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 8 of putting obstacles in front of ceasefire negotiations amid talks aimed at reaching a deal to end the war in Gaza.
The group called on mediators to intervene and stop what it called “manipulations and crimes” by Netanyahu, in a statement on its Telegram account.
Netanyahu said on July 7 that any Gaza ceasefire deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until its objectives are met.
India’s Modi hugs Putin on first Russia visit since Ukraine offensive
via REUTERS
Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew into Moscow on July 8 and warmly hugged President Vladimir Putin on a visit that treads a fine line between maintaining a longstanding relationship with Moscow and courting closer Western security ties.
The visit is Mr Modi’s first since Russia launched its campaign in Ukraine and since he was returned to power last month as leader of the world’s most populous country.
After meeting Moscow’s Indian community, Mr Modi had an informal meeting with Mr Putin at his residence at Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, where the leaders drank tea on a terrace, rode in a golf cart together and visited stables.
A mother shields her baby amid chaos at bombed Kyiv hospital
REUTERS
Moments after a Russian missile smashed into a Kyiv hospital where her infant son was being treated, Svitlana Kravchenko rushed to cover the two-month-old with a cloth in order to protect him from the debris and dust in the air.
Her voice quivering, the 33-year-old spoke as she emerged from a bomb shelter after one of the worst Russian missile strikes on Kyiv in months. July 8’s rare daytime attack all but destroyed sections of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.
“It was scary. I couldn’t breathe,” Kravchenko told Reuters, as rescue workers and soldiers searched for survivors in the huge pile of rubble and ruined buildings.
Fritz topples Zverev in five-set thriller to reach Wimbledon quarters
REUTERS
Taylor Fritz blew a hole in Alexander Zverev’s perfect serving record at this year’s Wimbledon by producing a storming comeback from two sets down to topple the German fourth seed with a 4-6 6-7(4) 6-4 7-6(3) 6-3 victory to reach the quarter-finals.
For two-and-a-half sets on July 8, Zverev’s serve was impenetrable, as it had been during the championships as he notched up 56 successive holds over the course of four matches.
Zverev looked well set to reach the last eight of the grasscourt major for the first time as he led by two sets to love and was locked at 4-4 in the third.
