By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces, strengthening alliances and enhancing its nuclear weapons modernization program, a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel said on Thursday.

The report from the Strategic Posture Commission comes amid tensions with China over Taiwan and other issues and worsening frictions with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

A senior official involved in the report declined to say if the panel’s intelligence briefings showed any Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons cooperation.

“We worry … there may be ultimate coordination between them in some way, which gets us to this two-war construct,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The findings would upend current U.S. national security strategy calling for winning one conflict while deterring another and require huge defense spending increases with uncertain congressional support.

“We do recognize budget realities, but we also believe the nation must make these investments,” the Democratic chair, Madelyn Creedon, a former deputy head of the agency that oversees U.S. nuclear weapons, and the vice chair, Jon Kyl, a retired Republican senator, said in the report’s preface.

Addressing a briefing held to release the report, Kyl said the president and Congress must “take the case to the American people” that higher defense spending is a small price to pay “to hopefully preclude” a possible nuclear war involving the United States, China and Russia.

The report contrasts with U.S. President Joe Biden’s position that the current U.S. nuclear arsenal is sufficient to deter the combined forces of Russia and China.

The arsenal’s makeup “still exceeds what is necessary to hold a sufficient number of adversary targets at risk so as to deter enemy nuclear attack,” the Arms Control Association advocacy group said in response to the report.

“The United States and its allies must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously,” the Strategic Posture Commission said. “The U.S.-led international order and the values it upholds are at risk from the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes.”

Congress in 2022 created the panel of six Democrats and six Republicans to assess long-term threats to the United States and recommend changes in U.S. conventional and nuclear forces.

The panel accepted a Pentagon forecast that China’s rapid nuclear arsenal expansion likely will give it 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, confronting the United States with a second major nuclear-armed rival for the first time.

The Chinese and Russian threats will become acute in the 2027-2035 timeframe so “decisions need to be made now in order for the nation to be prepared,” said the 145-page report.

The report said the 30-year U.S. nuclear arms modernization program, which began in 2010 and was estimated in 2017 to cost around $400 billion by 2046, must be fully funded to upgrade all warheads, delivery systems and infrastructure on schedule.

Other recommendations included deploying more tactical nuclear weapons in Asia and Europe, developing plans to deploy some or all reserve U.S. nuclear warheads, and production of more B-21 stealth bombers and new Columbia-class nuclear submarines beyond the numbers now planned.

The panel also called for boosting the “size, type, and posture” of U.S. and allied conventional forces. If such measures are not taken, the United States “will likely” have to increase its reliance on nuclear weapons, the report said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

By Herbert Lash

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The dollar rose sharply on Thursday after U.S. consumer prices rose more than expected in September, lifted by an elevated cost of rent that raised the prospect of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates high for some time.

The Labor Department’s report on Thursday showed the annual increase in consumer prices last month, excluding the volatile food and energy components, was the smallest in two years, but the surprise surge in rental costs rippled across markets.

While many shrugged off the move higher in rental costs, others concluded the Fed’s mission to lower inflation to it’s 2% target isn’t quite there.

“It just drives home the recent narrative that interest rates are likely to stay fairly high for a long period of time until the Fed can really break the back of inflation,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets in Oakville, Canada.

“Getting inflation back to 2% is not going to be easy.”

The consumer price index increased 0.4% last month, with a 0.6% jump in the cost of shelter accounting for more than half of the rise.

The dollar index, a measure of the U.S. currency against six others, jumped 0.85% to 106.550 in its biggest single-day gain since March 15. The dollar rose more than 1% against sterling, and the Australian and New Zealand dollars.

While a close call, the Fed is on course to hike rates one more time, most likely in December, said Bipan Rai, North America head of FX strategy at CIBC Capital Markets in Toronto.

The euro declined 0.85% to $1.0527, while the yen slid closer to breaching the 150 mark, seen as a level Japanese officials may intervene to halt the currency from weakening further. It was last down 0.43% at 149.81 per dollar.

Owners’ equivalent rent, a measure of the amount homeowners would pay to rent or would earn from renting their property, rose even though non-official sources show a decline in rental prices.

“Since the Fed makes its decisions based on the official numbers, not on what third party sources are showing, it’s a little bit worrisome,” said Thierry Wizman, Macquarie’s global FX and interest rates strategist in New York.

“Even though September was a blip, I don’t think that it negates the overall picture of the declining inflation. I don’t think that this is going to cause (the Fed) to hike,” Wizman said. “The only thing that the market is missing is that somehow it thinks that the Fed is going to drop high for long.”

The dollar’s recent weakness has been driven by declining Treasury yields as bond prices rallied on the Fed’s softer stance on future rate rises. Bond yields move opposite to their price. The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose 10.6 basis points (bps) to 4.7032%. The benchmark note hit its highest since 2007 last week at 4.887% but dropped sharply this week.

Also in the mix for currency investors on Thursday were sluggish British growth figures, which showed the economy partially recovered in August after a sharp drop in July. The pound initially did not significantly react but later fell 1.15% to $1.2174. The pound was the best performing G10 currency in the first half of this year, thanks to better-than-expected economic data and sticky inflation that drove expectations the Bank of England (BoE) would be increasing rates for longer than most peers. It then had its worst month in a year in September, as those factors reversed, before steadying this month. Thursday’s CPI release came after Wednesday’s mixed report on U.S. producer prices, and minutes from the Fed’s September meeting. 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,” the minutes showed. The Swiss franc had been set to strengthen for the seventh successive session, the longest streak since July 2020. But the franc retreated, with the dollar up 0.72% at 0.9085.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash, additional reporting by Alun John in London, S. Siddarth in Bengaluru and Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Mark Potter and Jonathan Oatis)

By Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices reversed early gains on Thursday in a volatile session, after a large build in U.S. crude stockpiles outweighed expectations that U.S. interest rates had peaked.

Brent futures settled up 18 cents to $86.00 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 58 cents to $82.91 a barrel. Prices had risen more than $1 a barrel earlier in the session.

Prices pared gains after U.S. government data showed U.S. crude inventories rose by 10.2 million barrels in the last week to 424.2 million barrels, much higher than analyst expectations for a 500,000-barrel rise. [EIA/S]

Lower refining utilization rates and higher net imports added to the crude build, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho.

“That was ultimately a very bearish EIA report,” Yawger said. “The assumption is you’re going to get storage builds here because refineries have been shut down (during maintenance season).”

U.S. crude output also hit a record 13.2 million barrels per day in the week, the data showed.

Supporting crude futures earlier, world shares rose and the dollar and bond market borrowing costs held steady ahead of U.S. inflation data and European Central Bank meeting minutes that will add to the debate on where interest rates are heading.

Data on Thursday showed that U.S. inflation was slowing, further supporting expectations that the Fed will freeze interest rate hikes next month.

Lower U.S. bond yields are stoking risk appetite, which in turn is supporting equities and oil, UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said.

“Both the Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz and Russia’s deputy prime minister Novak reiterating their ongoing collaboration to balance oil markets are helping,” he added.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said in a Russian TV interview that it was necessary to be “proactive” on bringing stability to the oil market, which had recently been hit by concerns that the Israel-Hamas war could disrupt supplies from the Middle East.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak also reassured markets, saying the current oil price factored in the Middle East conflict and showed that the risk from it was not high.

Novak also said on Thursday that Russia will further ease its fuel exports ban if necessary. Last week, it lifted restrictions on pipeline diesel supplies.

Meanwhile, the IEA lowered its oil demand growth forecast for 2024, suggesting harsher global economic conditions and progress on energy efficiency will weigh on consumption.

The agency now sees 2024 demand growth at 880,000 barrels per day (bpd), compared with its previous forecast of 1 million bpd.

However, it raised its 2023 demand forecast to 2.3 million bpd from a forecast of 2.2 million.

In contrast, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries stuck to its forecast for relatively strong demand growth next year, expecting it to reach 2.25 million bpd.

Russian crude oil and product exports rose in September by as much as 460,000 barrels per day, the IEA estimated on Thursday, despite Western sanctions and Moscow’s pledge to cut output in tandem with OPEC.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York; additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Trixie Yap in Singapore; editing by David Gregorio and Kirsten Donovan)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. investigators on Thursday proposed $270,000 in fines for a General Motors and LG Energy Solution joint venture battery plant in Ohio for safety and health violations.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigators examining the cause of a March explosion and fire at the Ultium Cells plant prompted the agency to issue 19 safety and health violations, 17 of them serious.

OSHA inspectors found the company exposed workers to hazards by failing to train them on safety and emergency response procedures and did not comply with federal standards for personal protective equipment use.

Ultium Cells said on Thursday it has taken “safety seriously and have requested a hearing with OSHA, which is the next step in this process.”

OSHA said it had also issued a hazard alert letter asking the company to voluntarily reduce accumulations of metal dust and protect employees from unsafe metal dust exposure.

“The company’s focus on the future must include an emphasis on workplace safety to ensure the well-being of its employees,” OSHA Area Director Howard Eberts in Cleveland said.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said the union has “been sounding the alarm for months about Ultium and these high-risk, high-skill EV battery operations. This is dangerous work that deserves to be compensated well.”

OSHA said Ultium needs to install required machine guarding, train workers in hazardous energy control and emergency response procedures and make other changes.

The workplace safety agency has one open inspection at the Ultium facility following a June 27 fire and three inquiries, including into a report that the company exposed workers to chemicals after a pressure gauge failed in August resulting in battery slurry leaking onto the plant floor.

Since the Warren, Ohio, facility began battery cell production in August 2022, OSHA has cited the plant 11 times, the agency said.

(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Bill Berkrot and Richard Chang)

By John Davison, Humeyra Pamuk and Sabine Siebold

JERUSALEM/TEL AVIV/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Israel’s government showed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO defence ministers graphic images of dead children and civilians on Thursday, saying they were killed by Palestinian group Hamas as it builds support for its response.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office also released on social media a picture of a dead infant in a pool of blood and the charred body of a child, part of an apparent effort to stoke global anger against the Gaza militants over Saturday’s attack.

Blinken, who flew into Tel Aviv earlier on Thursday, told reporters he was shown photographs and videos of a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded and young people burned alive in their cars or hideaways.

“It’s simply depravity in the worst imaginable way,” Blinken told a news briefing. “Images are worth a thousand words. These images may be worth a million.”

Netanyahu has vowed to annihilate Hamas following its deadly assault on unsuspecting Israeli communities on Saturday, which killed more than 1,300 people, the deadliest attack on Israel since it was founded in 1948.

The Israeli airforce has launched intense bombing raids on Gaza over the past five days and is massing tens of thousands of troops along the border ahead of a possible ground invasion.

Gaza authorities said more than 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, including children, have already been killed and more than 6,000 wounded. A land invasion in the densely populated territory could send the toll much higher.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant played a video to his counterparts at NATO’s Brussels headquarters that he said showed horrific scenes from the surprise Hamas attack.

“Children were tied up and shot. Yes, I repeat, children, tied up and shot,” he told fellow ministers by video link according to a text of his address sent to Reuters.

‘HORRIFIC PICTURES’

In a message on the social media site ‘X’, Netanyahu’s office released what it said were “horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters”.

It added: “Hamas is inhuman. Hamas is ISIS,” comparing the Palestinian group to the Islamic State, which was notorious for its brutality and gory execution videos.

The images of the dead infants were included in the video played to NATO. It was not released to the public, but was later seen by Reuters in Jerusalem. Reuters could not independently verify the material.

“They were horrific pictures of the attacks and the victims of the attacks,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, saying it “confirmed the brutality of the attacks”.

The White House said it had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the images.

Hamas has denied its militants harmed civilians, accusing Israel and the West of spreading false reports to incite violence against Palestinians.

Deputy Hamas chief, Saleh Al-Arouri, said the group’s fighters had only aimed to attack the Israeli military and had been surprised by the swift collapse of army units. “The plan was to target the army’s Gaza team and fight occupation soldiers only,” Arouri said in quotes published by Hamas.

The video shown to NATO, apparently taken from a mix of social media published by Hamas and unidentified phone videos, showed the bodies of scores of dead civilians, as well as the body of an Israeli soldier in uniform with his head missing.

There were no images to suggest militants had beheaded babies — a particularly explosive accusation that first emerged in Israel’s media and initially confirmed by Israeli officials.

U.S. President Joseph Biden had suggested on Wednesday that he had seen images of children beheaded by militants. The White House later clarified that U.S. officials had not seen any evidence of this.

Netanyahu has not repeated a claim by his office earlier this week that Hamas had indeed cut off the heads of children, nor did Gallant repeat that accusation to NATO ministers.

But medics, international human rights organisations and journalists have documented that militants killed women, children and the elderly as well as young men and soldiers in their rampage.

Foreign reporters shown sites targeted by Hamas, witnessed ruins of burnt-out houses and streets scattered with dead residents and militants.

NATO officials said they did not expect the alliance to be directly involved in the conflict. But multiple NATO states, above all the United States, have offered Israel military aid.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after the NATO meeting on Thursday that Washington was not placing any conditions on its security assistance to Israel and expected Israel’s professional military to “do the right things”.

(Additional reporting by Andy Gray in Brussels; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Edmund Blair)

(Reuters) – Israel said on Thursday there would be no humanitarian exceptions to its siege of the Gaza Strip until all its hostages were freed, after the Red Cross pleaded for fuel to be allowed in to prevent overwhelmed hospitals from “turning into morgues”.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip in retribution for the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.

CONFLICT

* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv to show solidarity with Israel, help prevent the conflict from spreading and try to free hostages. Standing beside him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Thank you, America, for standing with Israel, today, tomorrow and always”.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell accused the Israeli government on Tuesday of breaking international law by imposing a total blockade of Gaza in response to the attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel.

* The British government ordered families of its diplomats in Israel to leave the country, after advising against all non-essential travel to Israel.

* Egypt said it was directing international aid flights for Gaza to an airport in northern Sinai near the Gaza border. Egypt said it is trying to enable the delivery of relief but also signalled that any exodus of Gazans south across the border would be unacceptable.

* Israel’s El Al Airlines said it would operate flights this Saturday from the United States and Asia to bring back reservists, breaking a 40-year policy of not flying on the Jewish Sabbath.

HUMAN IMPACT

* Israeli air strikes have made major cemeteries in Gaza dangerous to reach so mourning families are burying their dead in informal graveyards dug in empty lots. “”As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk,” said the ICRC’s regional director.

* When Israel called up its reservists and declared war this week, the response was swift and overwhelming.”This is different, this is unprecedented, the rules have changed,” said one.

How an Israeli kibbutz ‘paradise’ turned into hell. Corpses strewn on streets. Body bags lined up on a basketball court. The stench of death everywhere.

INTERNATIONAL

* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reassured Israel of Washington’s support during a trip to the Middle East that aims to prevent the conflict with Hamas from spreading.

After Israel, Blinken will head to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He is likely to continue on to other Arab countries, U.S. officials say.

* NATO defence ministers watched stunned as their Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant showed them “shocking” and “horrific” video from the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, diplomats said.

   * Iran’s foreign minister accused Israel of seeking “genocide” by enforcing a siege against Gaza, according to Iranian state TV.

* Governments around the world have arranged repatriation flights from Israel. Here is a list.

* Turkey is prepared to send humanitarian aid to Palestinians but it is hard to deliver it under the current circumstances, a Turkish defence ministry official said.

* France has no formal trace implicating Iran in the Hamas attacks on Israel, a spokesperson of the French foreign ministry said.

* The X social media platform has removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts and taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content since the militant group’s attack on Israel, its chief executive Linda Yaccarino said.

INSIGHTS

* A factbox on the Gaza Strip, devastated by conflict and economic blockade.

* The war falls under a complex international system of justice that has emerged since World War Two.

* The conflict hinges on statehood, land, Jerusalem and refugees, pitting Israeli demands for security against Palestinian aspirations for a state of their own.

* “He is elusive. He is the man in the shadows.” The secretive Hamas mastermind behind the assault: Mohammed Deif.

   * The Israel-Hamas war upends Biden’s two-pronged Mideast strategy: brokering Israeli-Saudi detente and containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

MARKETS AND BUSINESS

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

* International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva said the “heartbreaking” Israel-Hamas conflict threatened to darken an already murky global economic outlook. “We are closely monitoring how the situation evolves, how it is affecting, especially oil markets,” Georgieva said.

* International airlines have suspended hundreds of flights to and from Tel Aviv following the attack by Hamas militants on Israel. Here are airlines that have temporarily halted flights.

(Reporting by Stephen Farrell)

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)

(Reuters) – Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza on Thursday, but gave no details, as Israel 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.

CONFLICT

*  Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza on Thursday. It did not provide details.

* Israeli military says death toll now 1,200, more than 2,700 injured, scores taken hostage.  The death toll in Gaza has risen to 1,200, with around 5,600 wounded, Palestinian media reported, citing Gaza’s health ministry.  

* 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.

* 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 electricity was cut after the only power station stopped working.

* About 340,000 were homeless in Gaza, huddling in U.N.-designated shelters or shattered streets.

  * 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 Mohammaalal 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.

* Iranian and Saudi leaders in breakthrough telephone call, discuss Israel-Palestinian conflict, call for end to violence.

* 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 but”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 showolidarity. Blinken will also visit Jordan, but but not visit the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he ordinarily meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. 

* 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 butbloc 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 Deifly 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 YaronYaron 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 softing. “Of course the situation in Israel causes additional concerns. I’m not saying soft softing 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 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)

(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)