While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 20
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Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant meets soldiers in a field near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Defence minister says troops will soon see Gaza ‘from inside’
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told troops gathered at the Gaza border on Thursday that they would soon see the Palestinian enclave “from inside”, suggesting an expected ground invasion with the aim of annihilating Hamas could be nearing.
Israel pounded Gaza with more air strikes on Thursday over the Oct 7 rampage by Hamas gunmen who killed 1,400 Israelis.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak followed US President Joe Biden with a visit to demonstrate Western support for the war against Hamas militants.
Israel has put the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people under siege and bombarded the enclave in strikes that have killed thousands and made more than a million homeless.
Biden, Zelensky discuss further military assistance
US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday discussed Washington’s continued military support for Kyiv’s drive to evict Russian forces, with the Ukrainian leader expressing thanks for supplying long-range missiles.
The two men spoke in advance of Mr Biden’s scheduled address on the need to spend billions of dollars in assistance for both Ukraine and Israel.
The White House account of the conversation said Mr Biden “underscored the continued strong bipartisan support in the United States for Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and democratic future”.
Jordan keeps up floundering fight to be House speaker
Hardline conservative Jim Jordan vowed to continue his floundering bid for speaker of the US House of Representatives on Thursday, after his fellow Republicans abandoned a backup plan to allow the leaderless chamber to resume business.
Mr Jordan, who has lost two votes for speaker this week, emerged from an hours-long closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans to say he would press ahead with a third vote.
“I’m still running for speaker and I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race,” Mr Jordan told reporters, adding that he wanted to talk to some of the more than 20 fellow Republicans who have voted against him.
China’s military making risky moves, adding nukes
China’s military has been taking increasingly dangerous actions to deter US forces in the Asia-Pacific region, including maneuvers to intimidate US aircraft, while also bolstering its nuclear capabilities, the Pentagon said in a report released on Thursday.
The United States has recorded more “coercive and risky” air intercepts by the Chinese military in the past two years than in the previous decade, the Defence Department said in its annual report to Congress on China’s military might.
At the same time, China is continuing to build up its strategic nuclear arsenal and had most likely amassed 500 nuclear warheads as of May, the Pentagon said, an increase of about 100 over last year’s estimate.
US inflation is ‘still too high’ says Fed chairman
US inflation is “still too high” despite a recent slowdown, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said on Thursday, leaving the door open for a new interest rate hike.
Additional evidence of “persistently above-trend growth,” or a reversal of the recent decline in job openings and softening of wage growth could cause the Fed to reconsider its current rate pause, he told a conference in New York.
If the US economy develops in this way, it “could put further progress on inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy,” he said in a speech that was briefly disrupted by climate change protesters.
