First Thing: Netanyahu says Israel not seeking to occupy Gaza

Prime minister appears to soften statement that Israel could be responsible for Gaza’s security indefinitely. Plus, what has turned a pond in Hawaii bright pink?

Good morning.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel does not seek to conquer, occupy or govern Gaza after its war against Hamas, but a “credible force” would be needed to enter the Palestinian territory if necessary to prevent the emergence of militant threats.

The Israeli prime minister suggested earlier this week that Israel would be responsible for Gaza security indefinitely, drawing pushback from the US, Israel’s main ally. Speaking on Fox News yesterday, Netanyahu said: “We don’t seek to conquer Gaza, we don’t seek to occupy Gaza, and we don’t seek to govern Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, has described Israel’s decision to allow four-hour pauses in fighting as “very cynical and cruel”.

“There has been continuous bombings, 6,000 bombs every week on the Gaza Strip, on this tiny piece of land where people are trapped and the destruction is massive. There won’t be any way back after what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip,” Albanese told reporters in Adelaide, Australia.

• Why is Israel striking near hospitals in Gaza City? The strikes come as the Israeli military pushes deeper into dense urban neighbourhoods in its battle with Hamas militants. Israel has accused Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals and using the al-Shifa hospital complex as its main command centre. The claim has been denied by the militant group and hospital staff, who say Israel is creating a pretext to strike it.

Democratic senator Joe Manchin will not seek re-election in 2024

West Virginia’s controversial Democratic US senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and will instead “fight to unite the middle”.

The 76-year-old senator, who for years has held an outsized degree of power within the Democratic party and often defied its leadership, appeared in July at an event held by a political group exploring a third-party presidential bid.

Manchin’s appearance with the centrist No Labels group prompted speculation that he was considering a run for the presidency, which alarmed Democrats as it could weaken Joe Biden’s candidacy.

Yesterday afternoon, Manchin put out a statement saying: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.”

• What does this mean for the Democrats? It will make the Democrats’ quest to preserve their majority in the Senate even more difficult. Manchin was one of three Democratic senators representing red states who are facing voters next year, and the party is not viewed as having a strong replacement candidate in West Virginia, a deeply Republican state.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak hospitalized after stroke in Mexico City

The Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, was hospitalized for a “minor but real stroke” yesterday in Mexico City while he was in the city to speak at a business conference. After a brief stay in hospital he said he was flying home, according to ABC News.

Wozniak, 73, told ABC he was at his computer in the morning when he felt vertigo and dizziness. He had been scheduled to speak at the World Business Forum in Mexico City, a two-day gathering billed as the world’s most important management event. Other advertised speakers were Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer in microfinance awarded the Nobel peace prize.

The convivial Wozniak, who teamed up with the late Steve Jobs to found Apple in 1976, had been scheduled as the conference’s closing speaker on Wednesday afternoon.

• Was he in good health before his trip to Mexico? Wozniak suffered the “health problem” shortly before he had been scheduled to arrive at the event, the source said, declining to elaborate.

In other news …

• A federal judge has upheld the Biden administration’s approval of the Willow oil-drilling project in a remote part of northern Alaska, a decision environmental groups said would have “tragic consequences” for the Arctic. A district court judge, Sharon Gleason, rejected requests by a grassroots Iñupiat group and environmentalists to reverse the approval for the project.

• Russia is intensifying its assault on Avdiivka and nearby towns, the Ukraine military says. Ukraine’s general staff, in its latest evening report, said its forces had repelled 11 attacks near Avdiivka, 15 in the nearby Maryinka sector and 22 further north-east in Bakhmut, a town seized by Russian in May.

• The Spanish right-wing former politician Alejandro Vidal-Quadras is recovering in hospital after being shot in the face on a central Madrid street. Police said they were not ruling out any theories for the attack, including a possible link to the former European lawmaker’s ties with the Iranian opposition.

• Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has revealed that multiple political parties approached him last year to ask if he would run for US president, after a poll revealed 46% of Americans would support his campaign. “That was an interesting poll that happened and I was really moved by that,” Johnson said.

Stat of the day: people never visited by loved ones more likely to die earlier, study finds

Everyone should visit friends and family at least once a month to prevent loneliness and reduce the risk of dying earlier, according to new research. Academics at the University of Glasgow have calculated that not seeing loved ones at least once a month and living alone significantly increased people’s risk of dying. The researchers found that people who were never visited by friends or family were 53% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease and had a 39% increased risk of death compared with those visited daily. People experiencing more than one form of social isolation were at an even higher risk, with those living alone who never saw friends or family having a 77% higher risk of dying from any cause.

Don’t miss this: Ukrainian film-makers ‘looking for right angle’ as military drone operators

On 23 February 2022, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Yaroslav Pilunskiy was working in Rome, colour-editing a film with a big international team. His only contact with drones, at that point, had been flying a simple model to scout movie locations. Now he is a crack military drone operator for the armed forces of Ukraine.

“It is another life: it feels like 10 years ago,” he says of his career in cinema. So complete is the transformation, that the name of that final film project eludes him. “Sometimes I think: did I imagine it all? Maybe it’s a defence mechanism in the brain.”

Climate check: drought blamed as Maui pond turns bright pink

A pond in Hawaii has turned bubble-gum pink, in what scientists believe may be the result of “halobacteria” thriving on water with unusually high salt levels. Maui’s drought is thought to be contributing to the situation at the Kealia pond national wildlife refuge on Maui. Normally, Waikapu stream feeds into Kealia pond and raises water levels there, but Wolfe said that has not happened in a long time. When it rains, the stream will flow into Kealia’s main pond and then into the outlet area that is now pink. This is likely to reduce the salinity and change the water’s colour. No one at the refuge has seen the pond this color before, not even people who have know it for 70 years.

Last Thing: shop like a billionaire? I bought six items from Temu – the app that’s sweeping the world

There are only 15 pairs left, I am told, and a little egg-timer icon adds to the sense that my chance to own these “Funky chicken leg print calf socks” is running out, writes Hilary Osborne. (Three days later, there are 12 left – clearly, they are not flying off the shelves.) This is Temu. The success of the Chinese app has been swift: it is the most downloaded app in the US and UK and has had more than 100m downloads in the US and Europe since January.

Adverts for Temu may be following you around the internet. Some are for practical things: reusable sandwich wrappers and T-shirts. Others are far less practical: plush toys shaped like cups of bubble tea and teaspoons shaped like shovels. What unites them is that, on the face of it, they cost next to nothing. But are the items any good?

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