While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, May 14
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Displaced Palestinians sheltering in a school prepare to flee Rafah.
PHOTOS: REUTERS
White House: We do not believe genocide is occurring in Gaza
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on May 13 that President Joe Biden’s administration did not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel in its war with Hamas as a genocide.
Sullivan, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated, that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in “hell,” and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake.
“We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition,” Sullivan said.
Four dead, several feared trapped under billboard in freak accident during Mumbai rainstorm
The billboard, located next to a busy road in the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar, collapsed on some houses and a petrol pump.
PHOTO: REUTERS
At least four people are dead, 61 injured and more than 40 feared trapped after a massive billboard fell during a rainstorm in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on May 13, local officials said.
The rainstorm was accompanied by gusty winds, causing the billboard, located next to a busy road in the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar to collapse on some houses and a petrol pump.
A rescue operation for the people remaining trapped under the billboard is ongoing. Fire services, police, disaster response officials and other authorities are all involved in the rescue efforts, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the civic body that runs Mumbai, said on X.
Collapsed Baltimore bridge to be blasted into pieces, removed from crippled ship
REUTERS
US crews in Baltimore plan to set off controlled explosions on May 13 to allow them to remove a portion of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge from the bow of the massive container ship that toppled the span in March.
The detonations will break the bridge’s truss into small sections, enabling salvage crews to use cranes and barges to haul away the twisted metal wreckage, the US Army Corps of Engineers said. The work had been planned for May 12 but it was delayed because of weather conditions.
Afterwards, crews will refloat the 948-foot Dali ship, remove it from the main channel and fully reopen the port, the Corps said.
Melinda Gates to step down as co-chair of Gates Foundation
REUTERS
Melinda French Gates is stepping down as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world’s biggest private charitable foundations that she co-founded with her former spouse more than 20 years ago, she said on Monday.
Bill and Melinda Gates filed for divorce in 2021 after 27 years of marriage but had pledged to continue their philanthropic work together.
“Under the terms of my agreement with Bill, in leaving the foundation, I will have an additional US$12.5 billion (S$16.92 billion) to commit to my work on behalf of women and families,” Melinda Gates said in a post on X.
Dazzling auroras fade from skies as sunspot turns away
AFP
The spectacular auroras that danced across the sky in many parts of the world over the weekend are fading, scientists said May 13, as the massive sunspot that caused them turns its ferocious gaze away from Earth.
Since May 10, the most powerful solar storm to strike our planet in more than two decades has lit up night skies with dazzling auroras in the United States, Tasmania, the Bahamas and other places far from the extreme latitudes where they are normally seen.
But Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at France’s Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, told AFP that the “most spectacular” period of this rare event has come to an end.
