First Thing: Gaza aid could enter as soon as Friday, says Biden

Twenty trucks are preparing to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, but US president says aid will halt if it is seized by Hamas. Plus, Naomi Klein on populists, conspiracists and real-world activism

Good morning.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid will enter Gaza from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula in the coming days, according to the White House, after Joe Biden’s whirlwind visit to Israel that followed a deadly blast at a hospital in the besieged territory.

After hours of talks with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his war cabinet, the US president said Israel had agreed to allow the opening of the Egypt-Gaza Rafah crossing to deliveries of desperately needed food, water and medical supplies on condition that the humanitarian assistance was not diverted by Hamas for its own use.

“The people of Gaza need food, water, medicine and shelter,” Biden said. After the US president’s departure from Israel, Netanyahu’s office said Israel “would not foil the supply of humanitarian aid via Egypt”.

The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is the latest world leader to visit Israel. He’s there for talks with its leaders, and will later travel to other countries in the region for further discussions. Downing Street said Sunak would push for humanitarian aid to Gaza “as soon as possible”, and to allow UK nationals trapped in Gaza to leave.

Why did the US veto the UN’s call for ‘humanitarian pause’ and corridors into Gaza? The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the resolution, carefully crafted by Brazilian diplomats, was unacceptable because it made no mention of Israel’s right to self-defence. The UK abstained, saying the resolution lacked mention of the way Hamas was using ordinary Palestinians as human shields.

What happened at Al-Ahli Arab hospital? Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli airstrike for the explosion that Gaza’s health ministry said on Wednesday had killed 471 Palestinians and wounded 314 others. Israel has said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which has denied blame. Forensic reviewing of open source videos and news broadcasts have given a clearer picture of what happened on Tuesday night.

Jim Jordan to keep up flailing bid for US House speaker in third round of voting

The US House of Representatives was prepared today to vote for a third time on congressman Jim Jordan’s flailing bid to become speaker, after the hard-right Ohio Republican failed to convince enough of his colleagues to deliver him the gavel.

Uncertainty reigned on Wednesday, when the House adjourned once again without electing a speaker. Jordan, the Donald Trump loyalist who led the congressional effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and now chairs the House judiciary committee, vowed to stay in the race even as his path forward had all but disappeared.

“We’ll keep talking to members, keep working on it,” Jordan told reporters after the vote.

Republican infighting has kept the speaker’s chair vacant since the historic ouster of the Republican Kevin McCarthy earlier this month.

How did the vote go yesterday? Twenty-two Republicans and all Democrats opposed Jordan, leaving him far short of the 217 votes needed to ascend to the speakership. Four Republicans who had supported him on the first ballot flipped against him yesterday. Only two Republicans who initially voted against Jordan, Doug LaMalfa of California and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, dropped their opposition.

EU warns of ‘child soldiers’ exploited by drug gangs

Children exploited by drug gangs face the same plight as “child soldiers” forced into killing and maiming people for criminals and cartels, the EU has said, as it launched a series of initiatives to crack down on cocaine smuggling.

The European commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, said young people were becoming caught up in an increasingly booming and brutal trade that was one of Europe’s biggest security threats.

“They are being radicalised and groomed to become killers. They are the drug gang equivalent of child soldiers,” she said. “The drugs trade orchestrated by organised crime is one of the most serious security threats facing Europe today, and the situation is escalating.”

Johansson, who is Swedish, cited the arrest last week in a Stockholm suburb of a 16-year-old in connection with the killing of two women, one in her 20s and one in her 60s, while children were in the house. He was arrested in possession of an automatic weapon and was linked to another murder.

What does the EU plan to do? The EU wants to strengthen strategies to disrupt the recruitment of children, including the identification of early signs such as children involved in shoplifting or dropping out of school. Brussels also wants to develop a European drug alert systemto quickly let national authorities and drug users know when new dangerous substances enter the market. A new alliance between the ports of Europe will see intelligence shared more effectively, it said.

In other news …

A judge warned Donald Trump and others at his New York civil fraud trial to keep their voices down yesterday after the former president threw up his hands in frustration and spoke aloud to his lawyers while a witness was testifying against him.

A Russian-American journalist working for Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has been detained in Russia and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, according to her employer and a journalist watchdog group. Alsu Kurmasheva was being held at a temporary detention centre.

Amazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses. It has started testing Digit, a two-legged ​r​obot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes.

Neomelodica star Tony Colombo and his wife, Tina Rispoli, were among 27 people arrested this week during a crackdown on members of the Naples mafia. They are both suspected of working with the clan of jailed mobster Marco Di Lauro, police said.

Stat of the day: Netflix says password crackdown working as it adds 8.8 million new users

Netflix announced its global crackdown on password sharing was working and unveiled plans to increase prices as it announced its latest quarterly results on Wednesday. The streaming media company added 8.8 million new subscribers over the last three months, far better than expected and up from 2.4 million in the same quarter last year. The increase came even as a strike by Hollywood actors and writers threatened to affect the rollout of new shows. The price of a basic Netflix subscription in the US will rise by $2 to $11.99, while premium subscriptions will rise by $3 to $22.99. In the UK, a basic subscription will rise by £1 to £7.99, with premium memberships increasing by £2 to £17.99.

Don’t miss this: Naomi Klein on populists, conspiracists and real-world activism

Naomi Klein is aware that her new book, Doppelganger, looks strange. A distorted picture of her face stares at you from the front cover. “Everyone who holds it looks like they’re holding my severed head, including me. It feels like Macbeth,” she says. But the weirdness is intentional. It’s supposed to capture what she’s writing about – a mirror world where her sense of self becomes distorted. Her starting point is her very own doppelganger, the writer Naomi Wolf. For more than a decade Klein has repeatedly been confused with Wolf. What at first irked her became more frustrating – destabilising, even – as it moved to social media and Wolf dived full on into conspiracy culture, allying with the far right in the process. The two are so frequently mixed up that social media algorithms began to autocomplete Klein’s name when people were writing about the latest thing Wolf had said or done.

Climate check: Drought turns Amazonian capital into climate dystopia

A withering drought has turned the Amazonian capital of Manaus into a climate dystopia with the second worst air quality in the world and rivers at the lowest levels in 121 years. The city of 1 million people, which is surrounded by a forest of trees, normally basks under blue skies. Tourists take pleasure boats to the nearby meeting of the Negro and Amazon (known locally as the Solimões) rivers, where dolphins can often be seen enjoying what are usually the most abundant freshwater resources in the world. But an unusually dry season, worsened by an El Niño and human-driven global heating, has threatened the city’s self-image, the wellbeing of its residents and the survival prospects for the entire Amazon basin.

Last Thing: Three-year-old visits all 63 US national parks (with her parents)

A three-year-old girl has visited all 63 US national parks to complete a goal her family set only weeks after she was born. The aptly named Journey Castillo’s parents, Eric and Valerie Castillo, have also staked the claim that their daughter is the youngest person known to have gone to every one of the country’s national parks. The couple from San Antonio, Texas, has said they want to inspire other families to get outdoors together and savor the sights and sounds that the world has to offer.

“Our thing was: ‘Let’s … instillin Journey a passion for nature, instill in her [that] she can handle the strenuous part of the traveling, the environments, the weather changes, different cultures,” Valerie Castillo told the Guardian.

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