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(Reuters) -Israel has formed an emergency unity government, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting in a war cabinet with centrist former defence minister Benny Gantz.

The move came as the Israeli military pounds Gaza to root out the Palestinian militant group Hamas, ahead of a possible ground offensive in the Palestinian coastal strip.

Israel has put Gaza under “total siege” to stop food and fuel reaching the enclave of 2.3 million people, many poor and dependent on aid. Hamas media said on Wednesday electricity went out after the only power station stopped working.

About 250,000 were homeless in Gaza, huddling in U.N.-designated shelters or shattered streets.

CONFLICT

* Gaza’s southern neighbour Egypt has discussed letting humanitarian aid across the border but is against creating safe corridors for fleeing Palestinian refugees, Egyptian security sources said. Egypt rejected safe corridors to protect “the right of Palestinians to hold on to their cause and their land,” one of the sources said.

* Eleven workers with the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, and five members of the ICRC, the organisations said. “Some were killed in their homes with their families.

* Israeli schools, which have been shuttered, will shift to remote learning on Sunday. The online studies “will focus first and foremost on emotional and social aspects, in order to strengthen resilience.

* Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns in response to a fresh rocket attack by Hezbollah.

* Governments around the world have arranged repatriation flights from Tel Aviv as the war escalates.

* Hamas militants holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage have threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit without warning. There was no indication Hamas had carried out its threat.

HUMAN IMPACT

* Gaza’s 75 years of woe from the end of British rule to the present day – a brief history.

* On the grass of the kibbutz in Beeri, Israel, bodies in white body bags were laid out in rows. “I thought I’d seen enough but nothing could prepare me for what happened there. The smell of bodies – as many times as I’ve showered this week – I can’t get that smell out,” a first responder said.

* “There are no wreaths left in Israel anymore,” said one of the many volunteers working to prepare funeral flowers for more than 1,200 Israelis killed since Hamas gunmen burst into Israel.

* Gazan rescuers pulled the body of a 4-year-old girl and other dead from the rubble of a municipal building where she and many others were sheltering. “They tried to escape death only to find it,” said volunteer Mohammad al Najjar.

* Israeli volunteers helped gravediggers at Israel’s main military cemetery as burials began for slain soldiers. “I decided that I’m going to do something for the people of Israel” said one.

* Hundreds of cars lie abandoned in the scramble to flee a massacre at an Israeli music festival where Hamas gunmen killed 260 people and took captives back into Gaza. The scene underlines the scale of the deadliest attack on Israel in decades.

INTERNATIONAL REACTION

* Initial U.S. intelligence reports show that key Iranian leaders were surprised by the unprecedented attacks on Israel by Hamas, according to a source.

* A surge in doctored images, mislabelled videos and graphic online violence related to the Israel-Hamas conflict prompted the EU to urge Big Tech to remove illegal content or risk legal penalties.

* Pope Francis called for the release of all hostages taken by Hamas militants. He said Israel has a right to defend itself after seeing “a feast day turn into a day of mourning” but was “very worried by the total siege in which Palestinians live in Gaza.”

* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Israel on Thursday, in a show of solidarity.

* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack was disproportionate by “preventing people meeting their most fundamental needs and bombing housing where civilians live”.

* EU humanitarian support to the Palestinian people “is not in question,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said, but the bloc must review its financial assistance.

INSIGHTS/EXPLAINERS

* How a secretive Hamas commander masterminded the attack on Israel. A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, Mohammed Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public so when Hamas’s TV channel announced he was about to speak on Saturday, Palestinians knew something significant was afoot.

* Hamas waged a campaign of deception to pull off its stunning attack.

* Biden finds himself thrust into a crisis likely to reshape his Middle East policy, and into an uneasy alliance with far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

* Palestinian statehood, Jerusalem and refugees lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

MARKETS AND BUSINESS

* Oil prices fell as fears of disruption to supplies due to conflict in the Middle East receded a day after top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia pledged to help stabilise the market.

* Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron said he would extend his five-year term “given the emergency situation and the challenges to the Israeli economy at this tough time,” the central bank said.

* The cost of insuring Israel’s debt against default surged to the highest level since 2013.

* International airlines have suspended hundreds of flights to and from Tel Aviv following the attack. Here’s a list.

* U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stuck to her view that the American economy is headed for a soft landing. “Of course the situation in Israel causes additional concerns. I’m not saying soft landing is an absolutely sure thing. But I continue to think it’s the most likely path.”

(Editing by Stephen Farrell, Gerry Doyle, Andrew Cawthorne, Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)

By Mrinalika Roy

(Reuters) – Exxon Mobil’s mega $60 billion deal for shale rival Pioneer Natural Resources could be a catalyst that will drive further consolidation in the U.S. oil and gas industry, analysts said, as they zeroed in on a handful of likely targets.

Dealmaking in the U.S. oil and gas patch has picked up pace as producers sought to replenish their inventory after years of under-investment.

The Permian Basin, the top U.S. oilfield known for its low cost of extraction, is seeing a consolidation with more than $26 billion worth of deals this year before the Exxon announcement, as per Rystad Energy data. That is more than double the entire value of deals signed in 2022 for the region.

“(The Exxon transaction) is a positive read-through to the sector overall, particularly the Permian Basin players,” said Gabriele Sorbara, managing director of equity research at Siebert Williams Shank & Co.

Rivals will “step up to try to compete with Exxon”, Sorbara said.

Future buyers are likely to be among Exxon’s closest big rivals in the Permian Basin such as Chevron and ConocoPhillips, analysts said.

“Chevron seems the most likely to respond with a transaction of its own,” said Andrew Dittmar, a director at consultancy Enverus.

The most-prized targets for Chevron could be Coterra Energy or Devon Energy, he added. Chevron had $9.29 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of June.

Others mentioned included Matador Resources, Permian Resources and Diamondback Energy.

Still, the Exxon deal, the industry’s largest since 2016, also set off worries about stiff regulatory scrutiny over anti-competitive concerns.

“I’m concerned that Exxon’s massive acquisition will reduce competition and drive up costs. Regulators should closely scrutinize this big oil merger,” U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and frequent merger critic, said.

Exxon does not anticipate antitrust hurdles to complete the deal, expected by early 2024.

“There is an excellent opportunity to create value now via consolidation because the stock market has been giving bigger companies better valuation multiples, making smaller companies relatively cheap if acquired by bigger companies in all-stock deals,” said Sven Del Pozzo, director of research and analysis – company and transactions, S&P Global Commodity Insights.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Chris Sanders in Washington; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

By Sinéad Carew and Shashwat Chauhan

(Reuters) – Wall Street’s major indexes closed higher after Wednesday’s choppy session with the release of minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s last meeting showing caution among policy makers that helped fuel investor hopes that rates would stay steady.

Fed officials pointed to uncertainties around the economy, oil prices and financial markets as supporting “the case for proceeding carefully in determining the extent of additional policy firming that may be appropriate,” according to the minutes released on Wednesday from the Sept. 19-20 meeting.

Trading was choppy on Wednesday with all the indexes starting off the session with gains before turning lower ahead of the minutes and then regaining lost ground to push higher.

Along with recent moves in interest rates and dovish comments from Fed officials in the last few days, Angelo Kourkafas, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones, said the minutes appeared encouraging for investors.

“Today’s release highlights the risk of over-tightening, and knowing what has happened over the past three weeks with interest rates, that provides some comfort to investors that we’re not going to see another rate hike,” said Kourkafas.

But he noted that upcoming Fed decisions will take into account consumer price index (CPI) readings for September, due out on Thursday before market open, as the Fed’s “data dependence hasn’t gone away.”

Earlier on Wednesday, data showed that U.S. producer prices increased more than expected in September amid higher costs for energy products, but underlying inflation pressures at the factory gate continued to moderate.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 65.57 points, or 0.19%, to 33,804.87, the S&P 500 gained 18.71 points, or 0.43%, to 4,376.95 and the Nasdaq Composite added 96.83 points, or 0.71%, to 13,659.68.

The energy index fell 1.4% and was the weakest among the S&P’s 11 major industry sectors. It was dragged down by a 3.6% slump in Exxon Mobil shares after the oil and gas producer agreed to buy rival Pioneer Natural Resources in an all-stock deal valued at $59.5 billion. Pioneer shares closed up 1.4%.

The biggest gainers were rate sensitive sectors, real estate, which added 2% and utilities which finished up 1.6% as Treasury yields fell.

U.S. Treasury yields on benchmark 10-year notes fell to a roughly two-week low, as prices rose on safe-haven flows as a war in the Middle East still raged after a deadly weekend attack by Hamas on Israel.

Israel continued to pound Gaza with retaliatory air strikes, which has killed scores of civilians, as it formed an emergency unity government on Wednesday and its army said it killed three Hamas militants.

Scuffing Wednesday’s mood was the latest initial public offering (IPO). Birkenstock Holding shares closed down 12.6% at $40.20. In its first day trading on the New York Stock Exchange the German footwear company’s shares never touched their IPO price of $46.

Drugmaker Eli Lilly gained 4.5% following the early reported success of Danish rival Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic in a trial to treat kidney failure, while dialysis firms DaVita and Baxter International slumped 16.7% and 12.3%, respectively.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.65-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.19-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 12 new 52-week highs and 10 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 44 new highs and 206 new lows.

On U.S. exchanges 10 billion shares changed hands compared with the 10.7 billion average for the last 20 sessions.

(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Shounak Dasgupta)

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -NASA on Wednesday gave the public a first glimpse of what scientists found inside a sealed capsule that was returned to Earth last month carrying a carbon-rich soil sample scooped from an asteroid’s surface, including water-bearing clay minerals.

A small quantity of the material collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft three years ago from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu was unveiled in an auditorium at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, a little more than two weeks after it was parachuted into the Utah desert.

The return capsule’s landing capped a seven-year joint mission of the U.S. space agency and the University of Arizona. It was only the third asteroid sample, and by far the biggest, returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan’s space agency ending in 2010 and 2020.

“It’s days like this that continue to amaze me,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said from the stage as he introduced the first picture of material retrieved from Bennu, a celestial artifact about 4.5 billions years old, on a viewing screen.

The image showed a loose cluster of small charcoal-colored rocks, pebbles and dust found to have been left in the outer portion of the sample-collection assembly when the asteroid’s soil was sucked through a filter into the spacecraft’s storage canister.

Technicians are still methodically disassembling hardware surrounding the inner science canister containing the bulk of the specimen, a process expected to take two more weeks.

But the “bonus” sample of overflow material was immediately examined with electron microscopes and X-ray instruments, said Dante Lauretta, principal mission investigator at the University of Arizona.

What they found was material high in carbon, nearly 5% by weight of an element essential to all life on Earth, as well as water molecules locked in the crystallized structure of clay fibers, Lauretta said.

Scientists also discovered iron minerals in the form of iron sulfides and iron oxides, “which themselves are indicative of formation in a water-rich environment,” Lauretta told a later news briefing.

Daniel Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said early analysis found the material seems to be “loaded with organics.”

The preliminary findings point to a likelihood of further discoveries that could buttress the hypothesis that early Earth was seeded with the primordial ingredients for life by celestial objects such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded the young planet.

ANCIENT RUBBLE PILE

Bennu, discovered in 1999, is described by scientists as a relatively loose clump of rocky material, like a rubble pile, held together by gravity. It measures about three-tenths of a mile (500 meters) across, making it slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall but tiny compared with the Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs.

Like other asteroids, Bennu is a relic of the early solar system. Because its present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since its formation, it holds clues to the origins and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and could prove central to studies of astrobiology.

The capsule was initially inspected at the Utah Test and Training range near the landing site, then flown to Houston for closer examination in a specially built “clean room” inside a Johnson Space Center astromaterials curation facility.

In the months ahead, the overall asteroid sample is to be parceled out into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.

At the time it landed, the Bennu sample was estimated to weigh about 250 grams (8.8 ounces), well above the minimum amount of 60 grams (2 ounces) scientists had hoped to collect. A more precise measurement will come in a few weeks, once the canister has been fully opened and all the contents weighed.

OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent nearly two years orbiting it before venturing close enough to snatch a sample of the loose surface material with its robotic arm on Oct. 20, 2020.

Lauretta said preliminary analysis of the first bits of the sample showed that orbital observations of the asteroid had “predicted the mineralogy very accurately.”

NASA is due to launch a separate mission on Thursday to a more distant asteroid called Psyche, a metal-rich body believed to be the remnant core of a protoplanet and the largest known metallic object in the solar system.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Will Dunham)

Google Insiders Question Bard Worth amid Massive Investments

Google insiders are having second thoughts about the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Bard. Barely a year after unveiling it as a response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google product managers and engineers have started questioning whether the enormous resources put together to develop the AI tool are worth it.

Bard Concerns

Concerns about Bard’s reliability have been laid bare on chart platform Discord as part of discussions between high-profile people working on it. Dozens of messages reviewed show how the AI-powered tool is being used and critiqued by some people who know it best, especially the company’s leaders. Dominik Rabiej, a senior product manager for Bard, has already suggested limiting people’s use of the tool to creative or brainstorming applications.

Nevertheless, the debate about Bard’s limitations and potential on the Discord channel is unsurprising as it is part of the development process. Since launching the tool, Google insists it is eager to hear people’s feedback on improving it. The company has been clear about its limitations, including the possibility of the tool generating convincing-sounding lies.

The skepticism comes despite Alphabet’s Google adding new features and upgrades to make Bard highly competitive to take on ChatGPT. The AI tool can now analyze photos and generate responses to queries in dozens of languages. Google has integrated the tool into its most popular services, such as Gmail, Maps, Docs, and YouTube.

The massive integration is part of Google’s push to fend off the threat posed by ChatGPT, which has been integrated into Microsoft’s search engine Bing. Google unveiled Bard as one way to protect its search engine by offering people an alternative to ChatGPT-triggered searches online.

Amid the upgrades and integration into core products, Google has to contend with a wave of complaints about the tool. For starters, there have been concerns that Bard sometimes generates made-up facts. The device has also been accused of giving potentially dangerous advice. Even though Google has introduced a search button that helps people double-check the tools generated responses, the complaints have kept on piling.

In addition to complaints about responses, Google has also been embroiled in controversy over the working conditions of people or contractors that work on training Bard. Most workers have been crying out when asked to complete tasks within minutes. The search giant has also been accused of providing low-quality information as it tries to keep up with competition.

Bard Long Term Use

Amid the challenges, Alphabet’s Google has no option but to ensure Bard works and becomes a preferred AI tool in the burgeoning sector. It is the only way the tech giant will succeed in safeguarding its monopoly on search. Microsoft has already invested about $10 billion in OpenAI as it sees ChatGPT as the tool to enhance Bing’s competitive edge on search.

As Generative AI explodes into the scene, Google search dominance is under threat more than ever as most people resort to AI-powered tools for searching online. Google’s faltering on Bard could pose a significant danger to its search position with the emergence of more buzzy tools from OpenAI to others.

By Maayan Lubell and Emily Rose

KFAR AZA, Israel (Reuters) -A baby’s crushed crib lying outside a burnt-out home. Corpses strewn on streets. Body bags lined up on an outdoor basketball court. The stench of death everywhere.

Just a few days ago this was the sleepy, scenic kibbutz of Kfar Aza, an Israeli farming community of about 750 people, many of them families with young children. Now it’s become a charnel house after Hamas gunmen burst out of the Gaza Strip on Saturday and laid waste to the village.

“Mothers, fathers, babies, young families killed in their beds, in the protection room, in the dining room, in their garden,” Israeli Major General Itai Veruv said on Tuesday, the seasoned soldier visibly shaken as troops went door-to-door to collect the bodies of residents killed in their homes.

“It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre,” Veruv said. Some victims were decapitated, he added. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve served for 40 years.”

Kfar Aza, just 3 km from the Gaza Strip, was among the communities hit hardest by the Hamas assault on southern Israel, which Israeli officials say has killed at least 1,000 people, mostly civilians gunned down in their homes, on the streets or at a dance festival.

Retaliatory Israeli strikes have killed at least 830 Gazans and flattened whole districts, Palestinian officials say.

Kfar Aza attack survivor Avidor Schwartzman said he hid with his wife and one-year-old daughter in the safe room of their house for more than 20 hours before being rescued by Israeli soldiers and emerging to confront a scene of “pure hell”.

“There were bodies everywhere. Dead bodies everywhere,” the 38-year-old said. “We saw our little piece of paradise, our little piece of heaven, was totally burnt – burnt and with blood everywhere.”

GUNMEN BREACH KIBBUTZ FENCE

On Tuesday, Israeli Defence Forces took foreign press through the kibbutz, where ruins of burnt-out houses oversaw streets scattered with dead residents and militants, torched cars and piles of broken furniture and other wreckage.

There was no official death toll from the Kfar Aza kibbutz as of Tuesday evening, with Israeli soldiers still searching homes they suspect may be booby-trapped with explosives.

The military spokesperson at the site said at least dozens of residents had been killed in the attack. She added that the military hadn’t yet pieced together the precise chain of events, with fighting having only completely ended late on Monday.

The Hamas gunmen rammed through the kibbutz’s fence, possibly using an earthmover, clearing the way for dozens of other gunmen to enter through the breach, she said.

Militants also arrived on motorcycles and a hang-glider, the spokesperson added. Veruv, the major general, put the total number of gunmen to enter the kibbutz at about 70.

Waves of the attackers, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, stormed the village, a reserve soldier told Reuters, declining to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Some of the militants’ bodies could still be seen lying on streets around the kibbutz, wearing black shirts, khaki trousers and army vests. One still had his hand on a pistol.

‘OUR WORST NIGHTMARES’

Schwartzman told Reuters he was woken at about 6.30 am on Saturday by the booming sounds of rockets and that he and his family moved to their safe room an hour later after receiving a kibbutz-wide text telling them it was dangerous to be outside.

“We heard shootings and we were basically barricaded in for 21 hours until the army rescued us,” his wife, Keren Flash, took up the account. “We kept hearing shootings and gunfire and bombs and alarms, and we just didn’t know what was happening. Our worst nightmares.”

Soldiers were still securing the streets of the kibbutz, once neatly lined with palm trees, banana plants and single-storey houses with verandas.

Outside one home, the body of a resident lay covered by a purple bed sheet with a bare foot protruding, as if only sleeping. A pillow lay nearby with other accoutrements from their everyday life.

Bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard in the distance. Jets could be heard above and smoke could be seen rising from Gaza. Sirens warned of incoming rockets intercepted overhead.

One soldier shouted: “Tell the world what you saw here.”

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Additional reporting by Janis Laizans and Emily Rose; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Pravin Char)

By Napat Wesshasartar and Chayut Setboonsarng

BAAN NONG SAENG, Thailand (Reuters) – When 26-year-old Natthaporn Onkaew headed for Israel two years ago to join thousands of fellow Thai migrants and take a job as a farm worker, his father warned him not to go.

“I asked him: ‘Are you sure that you want to go to this dangerous country where there are conflicts all the time?’ But he said it was fine,” Thawatchai Onkaew said at the small family home in the sleepy northeastern village of Baan Nong Saeng.

Now his words have come hauntingly true: Natthaporn is among 11 Thais and scores of other hostages taken by Hamas militants in their unprecedented assault on Israel at the weekend.

His parents have not been able to contact him since Friday and recognised him in a photo on social media of hostages sitting with hands seemingly tied behind their backs.

“He was going to play soccer with his friend. Then he hung up the phone,” his mother Thongkoon Onkaew said of their last phone call, her voice trembling as she sat with relatives and neighbours on plastic chairs around a table.

“I want them to release my son … I’m speechless. It’s completely dark,” she said. “Help the hostages as soon as possible. This is the only thing I want to tell the (Thai) government.”

FAMILY BREADWINNER

Natthaporn is the family’s sole breadwinner, sending remittances of 30,000-40,000 baht ($812-$1,083) each month to his family in the village in Nakhon Phanom province surrounded by sugarcane plantations and rice fields.

The money covers school fees for his 12-year-old sister.

He is one of 30,000 Thais working in Israel, mainly in the agricultural sector. Thousands are now looking to return.

Thailand’s government said it did not have information on the hostages’ conditions, but is in touch with Israeli authorities and hopes Hamas will not harm them.

Among numerous nations with citizens caught up in the conflagration, 18 Thais have also been killed and nine injured.

Thailand and the Philippines are among the largest sources of migrant workers for Israel, the Filipinos mainly in healthcare.

($1 = 36.9200 baht)

(Reporting by Napat Wesshasartar, Thomas Suen and Chayut Setboonsarng, Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

(Reuters) – Israel vowed to escalate its response to an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas with a ground offensive, while U.S. President Joe Biden pledged support for Israel and issued a warning to anyone seeking to take advantage of the situation.

Hamas militants holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage have threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit without warning, but despite Israel razing sections of Gaza and more airstrikes overnight there was no indication Hamas had carried out its threat.

CONFLICT

* The Israeli military said dozens of its fighter jets struck more than 200 targets overnight in a neighbourhood of Gaza City.

* Gaza’s health ministry said at least 900 people have been killed and 4,600 wounded in the crowded coastal enclave. Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported the weekend death toll had reached 1,200. 

* On Saturday, Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip rampaged through parts of southern Israel, in the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel’s history.

* “Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be. We started the offensive from the air, later on we will also come from the ground,” said Israeli Defence Minister Yoavv Gallant, speaking to soldiers near the Gaza fence.

* Israel has called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists, as Israeli airlines added flights to bring reservists back to the country.

* The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Israeli strikes had since Saturday destroyed more than 22,600 residential units and 10 health facilities and damaged 48 schools.

* Two members of Hamas’ political office were killed in an air strike in Khan Younis, a Hamas official said. They were the first senior Hamas members killed since Israel began pounding the enclave.

* On Israel’s northern border, a salvo of rockets was fired from southern Lebanon towards Israel, prompting Israeli shelling in return, three security sources said. More shells launched from Syrian territory landed in open areas in Israel, prompting Israel to return fire, the military said, further raising fears that the violence could lead to a wider war.

HUMAN IMPACT

* A 21-year-old Israeli woman said she had “no tears left” after her father, sister, grandmother and cousin went missing on Saturday and video showed her 12-year-old brother being taken by gunmen.

* Gazans like Plestia Alaqad, 22, are running for their lives. After her apartment block was hit, she took refuge in a friend’s home but then got a call it would be targeted too. After a brief stay in a hospital, where she charged her phone, she headed to another home.

* Gazan rescuers pulled the body of a 4-year-old girl and other dead from the rubble of a municipal building where she and many others were sheltering. “They tried to escape death only to find it,” said volunteer Mohammad al Najjar.

* The distraught parents of a Thai seized in Israel sent a plea: “Help the hostages as soon as possible.” His parents recognised their son in a photo shared on social media of hostages sitting with hands seemingly tied behind their backs. “He was going to play soccer with his friend. Then he hung up the phone,” his mother said.

INTERNATIONAL REACTION

* President Joe Biden called the attacks by Hamas “an act of sheer evil” and at least 14 U.S. citizens were killed. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Israel on Thursday, in a show of solidarity.

* Egypt is moving to prevent a mass exodus south from the Gaza Strip, as Israeli bombardments halted crossings.

* European Union foreign ministers met to try to resolve divisions over whether to continue aid payments to Palestinians.

* Iran’s top authority Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tehran was not involved in the Hamas attack, though he “kissed the hands” of those doing damage to Israel.

INSIGHTS/EXPLAINERS

* How a secretive Hamas commander masterminded the attack on Israel. A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, Mohammed Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public so when Hamas’s TV channel announced he was about to speak on Saturday, Palestinians knew something significant was afoot.

* Hamas attack turned an Israeli kibbutz “paradise” into hell

* Hamas waged a campaign of deception to pull off its stunning attack.

* Biden finds himself thrust into a crisis likely to reshape his Middle East policy, and into an uneasy alliance with far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

* Palestinian statehood, Jerusalem and refugees lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

* Biden pledging aid to Israel raised questions about whether Washington can ramp up defense aid to Israel without jeopardizing aid for Ukraine, especially since Congress controls spending and the House is in limbo without a speaker to put legislation to a vote.

MARKETS AND BUSINESS

* Investors are on guard for an oil price spike amid Middle East turmoil.

* Global stocks rose, but violence in Israel made for nervy trading.

* FACTBOX: What are the global firms with a presence in Israel doing after the Hamas attack?

* World Bank chief Ajay Banga said the Gaza conflict is an economic shock ‘we don’t need’.

* The rapid spread of misleading claims and doctored images has put the focus on Elon Musk’s X platform. The EU urged Musk to tackle the spread of disinformation on X after the Hamas attack.

(Editing by Stephen Farrell, Gerry Doyle, Andrew Cawthorne, Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) – Utah sued Chinese-owned app TikTok on Tuesday, accusing it of harming children by intentionally keeping young users spending unhealthy amounts of time on the short-video sharing platform.

The Utah suit is the latest action challenging the popular app in the United States, with Indiana and Arkansas bringing similar suits.

Last month, a federal judge blocked California from enforcing a law meant to protect children when they use the Internet.

“What these children (and their parents) do not know

is that TikTok is lying to them about the safety of its app and exploiting them into checking and watching the app compulsively, no matter the terrible effects it has on their mental health, their physical development, their family, and their social life,” said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes in a filing.

Utah’s suit filed in state court said the videos leverage “highly powerful algorithms and manipulative design features — many of which mimic features of slot machines” and the result “of these manipulative tactics is that young consumers become hooked.”

ByteDance-owned TikTok, which has more than 150 million U.S. users, said in response to the suit it “has industry-leading safeguards for young people, including an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18 and parental controls for teen accounts.”

Reyes said the state’s investigation is ongoing and he will ask a court next week to compel TikTok’s compliance with investigative subpoenas.

Utah is seeking civil penalties as well as an injunction prohibiting TikTok from violating state law that protects consumers from deceptive business practices.

Indiana’s lawsuit against TikTok, brought in December, is pending in state court.

Arkansas also sued both TikTok and Facebook-parent Meta in March “for pushing addictive platforms.”

Last year, a group of Republican lawmakers said “many children are exposed to non-stop offerings of inappropriate content that TikTok’s algorithm force-feeds to them.”

On Thursday, a judge will hear arguments in TikTok’s lawsuit seeking to block Montana’s first-of-its kind state ban on the use of TikTok before it takes effect Jan. 1. Montana’s legislature approved legislation to ban TikTok citing spying concerns.

Congress has been considering legislation for months that would enable the Biden administration to restrict or ban TikTok over concerns of potential spying. TikTok has said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Rod Nickel)

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) – Utah sued Chinese-owned app TikTok on Tuesday, accusing it of harming children by intentionally keeping young users spending unhealthy amounts of time on the short-video sharing platform.

The Utah suit is the latest action challenging the popular app in the United States and comes as Congress has been considering legislation for months that would enable the Biden administration to restrict or ban TikTok over concerns of potential spying.

“What these children (and their parents) do not know

is that TikTok is lying to them about the safety of its app and exploiting them into checking and watching the app compulsively, no matter the terrible effects it has on their mental health, their physical development, their family, and their social life,” said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes in a filing.

ByteDance-owned TikTok, which has more than 150 million U.S. users, denies it improperly uses U.S. data and did not immediately comment.

Utah’s suit filed in state court said the videos leverage “highly powerful algorithms and manipulative design features — many of which mimic features of slot machines” and the result “of these manipulative tactics is that young consumers become hooked.”

Utah is seeking civil penalties as well as an injunction prohibiting TikTok from violating state law that protects consumers from deceptive business practices.

The Utah lawsuit is similar to an action brought against TikTok by Indiana in December. That case is pending in state court.

Arkansas also sued both TikTok and Facebook-parent Meta in March “for pushing addictive platforms.”

On Thursday, a judge will hear arguments in TikTok’s lawsuit seeking to block Montana’s first-of-its kind state ban on the use of TikTok before it takes effect Jan. 1. Montana’s legislature approved legislation to ban TikTok citing spying concerns.

Last year, a group of Republican lawmakers said “many children are exposed to non-stop offerings of inappropriate content that TikTok’s algorithm force-feeds to them.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Rod Nickel)