1. Israel's prime minister ordered the military to make a plan to defeat the last Hamas fighters in Rafah on Gaza's border with Egypt while evacuating hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians from the area. The Palestinian Authority said it's an effort to drive the people from their land. An unnamed Israeli source said the plan would be to move people north of the combat zone.

2. President Biden said Israel's military campaign in Gaza was "over the top," while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas' ceasefire proposal was delusional. The UN's secretary-general pledged action to stem any infiltration of Hamas into its ranks, and the US said it would not resume funding of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency until the agency finished its investigation into whether staff participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

3. The Ukrainian president's replacement of popular army chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi with ground-forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi comes as Kyiv faces ammunition shortages and uncertainty over the future of US military aid. It also could complicate troop management as Russia builds offensive pressure in the east. Moscow called the Russian-born Syrskyi a traitor.

4. Former prime ministers and bitter rivals Nawaz Sharif and the jailed Imran Khan ran in an election marred by delayed results and militant attacks. The army said everything went fine. Khan’s aide said his party would form a government and called on supporters to protest if final election results are not released. The US, UK and EU sought an investigation into the process, and the result portends more turmoil and financial instability.

5. The White House blasted a report from a Justice Dept. special counsel that said President Biden was suffering memory lapses. Vice President Kamala Harris said the report was “clearly politically motivated.”

6. The UN is seeking $4.1 billion in aid for civilians caught up in the 10-month war in Sudan, while UNICEF warned that 700,000 children there were likely to suffer from malnutrition and that tens of thousands could die.

7. Australia will introduce laws giving workers the right to ignore unreasonable calls and messages from their bosses outside work hours.

Source: Reuters
=FRESH NEWS