While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 12
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Israeli soldiers carry a body in Kfar Azza, an Israeli village just across the border from Gaza that was attacked by Palestinian gunmen. PHOTO: NYTIMES
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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Israel’s new war Cabinet vows to wipe Hamas ‘off the earth’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forged an emergency government on Wednesday to direct the war against Hamas, and his defence minister vowed to wipe the Palestinian militant group “off the face of the earth” over its deadly weekend attack.
Islamist Hamas gunmen invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on Saturday in a surprise assault that killed at least 1,200 people, the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israeli history.
Israel has responded with a massive bombardment of Gaza that has killed 1,055, and deployed thousands of troops around the enclave amid growing expectations it will launch a ground invasion to destroy Hamas.
In a joint statement, Mr Netanyahu and former defence chief and centrist opposition party leader Benny Gantz said they had agreed to form an emergency government comprising the two leaders and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Republican Steve Scalise appears short of votes for speaker
AFP
Republicans who control the US House of Representatives on Wednesday nominated Steve Scalise to serve as speaker following last week’s ouster of Kevin McCarthy, but delayed further action when he appeared to be short of the support needed to win a vote of the full chamber.
Mr Scalise, now No. 2 on the Republican leadership ladder, edged rival Jim Jordan in a secret ballot vote to secure his party’s nomination for the top post.
Lawmakers had been told to expect a 3pm ET (3am on Thursday, Singapore time) vote, but that hour came and went with no action after several of Jordan’s backers said they would not support Mr Scalise in a vote on the House floor.
India train derailment kills at least four, injures about 80
At least four people were killed and about 80 injured as an express train derailed in the northeastern Indian state of Bihar on Wednesday, a local official told Reuters.
Twenty-one coaches of the North-East Express train, which runs from Delhi to Assam, derailed at the Raghunathpur railway station in Bihar’s Buxar district around 1605 GMT on Wednesday (12.05am on Thursday, Singapore time), Mr Tarun Prakash, general manager of East Central Railway, said.
Some of the 80 injured were sent to Patna, the capital of Bihar, the official said.
Goldman Sachs sues Malaysia as 1MDB settlement dispute escalates
REUTERS
Goldman Sachs Group took the unusual step of suing Malaysia in a UK court amid festering disagreement over a settlement tied to its role in the 1MDB investment-fund scandal.
“We filed for arbitration against the Government of Malaysia for violating its obligations to appropriately credit assets against the guarantee provided by Goldman Sachs in our settlement agreement and to recover other assets,” a spokesman for the New York-based bank said, in an emailed statement.
Executives at the Wall Street firm had grown increasingly frustrated with the country’s demands to redo its existing 2020 pact in favour of more onerous penalties, and the lack of information tied to the looted assets the nation has been recovering.
Bennu asteroid sample contains life-critical water and carbon, says Nasa
A sample collected from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu contains abundant water and carbon, Nasa revealed on Wednesday, offering more evidence for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space.
The discovery follows a seven-year-round-trip to the distant rock as part of the Osiris-Rex mission, which dropped off its precious payload in the Utah desert last month for painstaking scientific analysis.
“This is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever returned to Earth,” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said, at a press event at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, where the first images of black dust and pebbles were revealed.
