Good morning.
Four-day-old twins have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father went to register their birth, he has said, as Israel continued its bombardment of the territory.
Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan said his wife, Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had given birth by caesarean section four days earlier and announced the twins’ arrival on Facebook, the Associated Press reported.
On Tuesday, he went to register the births at a local government office. While he was there, neighbours called to say the home where he was sheltering, near the central city of Deir al-Balah, had been bombed by Israeli forces.
The strike killed the newborns – a boy, Asser, and a girl, Ayssel – as well as Arafa and her mother, the twins’ grandmother. The family had heeded Israeli orders to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the war. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes from AP.
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What are the latest updates in the war? The US has approved the sale of $20bn in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel, as the Pentagon says it is “committed to the security of Israel”. The approval comes as western diplomats have scrambled to prevent a major conflagration in the Middle East, after Iran and its allies blamed Israel for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.
‘We know who built this country’: Walz courts union workers in first solo event
Tim Walz held his first solo campaign event since being selected as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential nominee on Tuesday, rallying union members in Los Angeles and denouncing Donald Trump’s record on labor rights.
Speaking to thousands of union members in a darkened auditorium, Walz said he and Harris would support workers by bringing collective bargaining and other protections to “every state in the union”. The union of 1.4 million members has endorsed Harris.
“We know exactly who built this country,” Walz said. “People in this room built the middle class.”
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What are national polls saying in the presidential race? Fresh New York Times/Siena College polling shows Harris leading Donald Trump in three key states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (Harris 50%, Trump 46%). Other polls show the race effectively tied nationally.
Ohio officer indicted in fatal shooting of pregnant Black woman
A police officer in Ohio was indicted by a grand jury on murder charges on Tuesday for the 2023 fatal shooting of Ta’Kiya Young, a pregnant Black woman who had been suspected of shoplifting, authorities said.
Young, who was 21, had been suspected of stealing bottles of alcohol from a store last August when Connor Grubb, a Blendon township police officer, and another officer approached her car, the Associated Press reported at the time, and after confronting her about the shoplifting accusations and ordering her to leave her vehicle Grubb shot her through the windshield. The fetus she was carrying also died.
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What has her family said? Their attorney praised the indictment, and said that “in no scenario does someone shoplifting contribute to their murder by a police officer”.
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How many people have been killed by the police in 2024? So far this year 809, according to the Mapping Police Violence project, with Black people 2.9 times more likely than white people to be killed by police.
In other news …
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The African Union has declared a public health emergency over mpox. According to CDC data as of 4 August, there had been 38,465 cases of mpox and 1,456 deaths in Africa since January 2022.
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About 200 Rohingya people, including children, were killed in an artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians as they tried to flee Myanmar last week.
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Spanish police have arrested a man over alleged plans to sell a fake Leonardo da Vinci painting in Italy for €1.3m ($1.4m). He was thwarted by French customs officers.
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Canada’s reliance on temporary foreign workers is a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery”, a UN special rapporteur has warned.
Stat of the day: Ex-Twitter worker wins $605,000 for unfair dismissal over Musk ‘extremely hardcore’ email
Twitter has been ordered to pay a record fine of more than €550,000 ($605,000) to a former senior employee at its European headquarters in Ireland, after it was found to have dismissed him unfairly when he failed to respond to an email from Elon Musk calling on staff to be “extremely hardcore”.
Don’t miss this: Anna Marie Tendler on mental health and the men in her life
The multidisciplinary artist Anna Marie Tendler’s new book, Men Have Called Her Crazy, is an unvarnished account of her years-long struggle with depression, disordered eating and self-harm – and not her divorce with John Mulaney, she tells Lauren Mechling.
Climate check: Urban birds are teeming with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, study finds
Scientists have found that wild birds living near humans are more likely to harbor bacteria resistant to important antibiotics. “What we’re seeing are genes that confer resistance to antimicrobials that would be used to treat human infections,” said Prof Samuel Sheppard.
Last Thing: ‘I love it that a two-year-old’s paintings have created such a buzz. His brush with branding, less so’
Two-year-old Laurent Schwarz has generated excitement in the art world, with the “pint-sized Picasso” selling paintings for thousands. But, as Nell Frizzell writes, if only we could recognize the wonderful creativity for its own sake, rather than use it to sell stuff.
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