DolphinMath

JERUSALEM, May 16 (Reuters) - Israeli government splits over the war in Gaza broke open this week, after the Defence Minister publicly demanded a clear strategy from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as troops returned to battle Hamas fighters in areas thought to have been cleared months ago.

The comments from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who said he would not agree to setting up a military government in the enclave, reflect growing unease in the security establishment at the lack of direction from Netanyahu over who will be left to run Gaza when the fighting stops.

They also brought out the sharp split between the two centrist former army generals in the cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who both backed Gallant's call, and the hard right nationalist religious parties led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who condemned the comments.

SYDNEY, May 16 (Reuters) - Armed forces were protecting New Caledonia's two airports and port after a third night of violent riots that have killed four people, the Pacific Island's top French official said on Thursday morning, adding at least four alleged instigators were under house arrest.

In three municipalities on the French-ruled island, gendarmes faced about 5,000 rioters, including between 3,000 and 4,000 in the capital Noumea, France's High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said in a televised press conference.

Two hundred people have been arrested, and 64 gendarmes and police injured, while road barricades put up by the protesters were causing a "dire situation" for medicine and food for the population, he added.

The White House has condemned an attack on an aid convoy heading to Gaza by Israeli settlers who threw packages of food into the road and set fire to the vehicles.

Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward, pointing towards a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded, and the number of those who have so far been fully identified.

After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.

They showed 24,686 dead which appeared to be a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 which had been reported earlier in May, with 7,797 children and 4,959 women confirmed dead, about half the toll cited in previous reports. But the UN said on Monday that estimated overall death toll remained about 35,000.

Hackers and fraudsters are gaining access to sensitive drug ordering tools and then advertising some of the most tightly controlled drugs in the country, including fentanyl.

“Tap the fuck in,” a message posted to a large crime-focused Telegram group chat in October read. The user included a photo of a Macbook Pro in a darkened room with a hand hovering above the keyboard. On the screen were blue and white boxes; a dashboard used by doctors and other medical industry professionals to order prescriptions. The panel displayed various pieces of information, such as the prescribing physician, the patient’s required dose, and the patient’s name.

In the middle of the screen read the text “oxyCODONE (oxyCODONE 5 mg oral tablet).”

404 Media has uncovered a wide-spanning scheme in which criminals break into various panels used by doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and even wholesale narcotics providers, and then leverage that access to order controlled substances like oxycodone. Some of the hackers then appear to sell these substances for profit online. Because the hackers are using legitimate ordering tools designed for industry professionals, when a prescription request lands at a pharmacy, it can look as legitimate as any other.

A team of United Nations experts tasked with gathering information on sexual violence linked to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel found “reasonable grounds to believe” that some victims were sexually assaulted, including rape and gang rape, according to a U.N. report released Monday.

“In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed,” a press release announcing the report’s findings said. “The mission team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.”

The 23-page report said the team also found “clear and convincing information” that some of the women and children taken back to Gaza that day by Hamas as hostages were subjected to “rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” There were “reasonable grounds to believe,” it said, “that this violence may be ongoing.”

TEL AVIV, Israel - The U.S. military on Saturday said it began dropping food over the Gaza Strip, a war-torn enclave desperate for humanitarian aid.

A "a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop into Gaza" of over 38,000 meals along the coastline using C-130 aircraft was conducted by U.S. and Jordanian air forces, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

In the wave of AI controversies and lawsuits, CNET has been publicly admonished since it first started posting thinly-veiled AI-generated content on its site in late 2022— a scandal that has culminated in the site being demoted from Trusted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia.

Considering that CNET has been in the business since 1994 and maintained a top-tier reputation on Wikipedia up until late 2020, this change came after lots of debate between Wikipedia's editors and has drawn the attention of many in the media, including some CNET staff members.

Why Read Swisher’s Burn Book when you can read KARA SWISHER : The Heroic Biography of a defining force in Tech Journalism (The Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech journalist).

China could soon be sending giant pandas to the U.S. for the first time in years, reigniting “panda diplomacy” between the two countries.

The China Wildlife Conservation Assn. has secured agreements with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the Madrid Zoo Aquarium of Spain regarding the conservation of giant pandas, according to Xinhua, China’s news agency.

Tensions are escalating between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) following the advance of M23 rebel forces in recent weeks towards the city of Goma in eastern DRC.

Dozens have reportedly been killed in the assault and the United Nations has accused M23 of ‘indiscriminate bombing’. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi has accused the Paul Kagame-led Rwandan government of backing M23 to destabilize the country. Rwanda has described the situation in eastern DRC as a national security threat and vowed to defend itself.

SHAMBHU, India, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Thousands of protesting Indian farmers facing off with security forces have come under the protection of the Nihang Sikhs, a warrior sect dating back to the 1600s distinguished by their ink-blue robes and ancient weapons such as swords and spears.

The farmers, who are also mainly Sikhs and who hail from the northern state of Punjab, are demanding higher prices for their crops, and began marching to the capital Delhi earlier this month to press their demands to the government.