WORLD BRIEFING: January 9, 2024
Required reading….
Read my CNN Opinion OpEd here
President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday named education minister Gabriel Attal as prime minister in a bid to give new momentum to his presidency, with the 34-year-old becoming France's youngest and first openly gay head of government, a source close to the presidency told AFP. The reshuffle comes ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris and European parliament elections this summer where Macron’s centrist forces risk defeat at the hands of the far-right under Marine Le Pen - France 24
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel Tuesday for high-stakes talks with top officials to push them to better protect civilians and allow in more aid as the war in Gaza shifts to a new phase. US President Joe Biden said Monday he's been quietly working to persuade the Israeli government to "reduce — significantly get out of Gaza." Meanwhile, about one in every 100 people in Gaza has been killed since October 7, according to Palestinian statistics. It comes as a British doctor said the situation at one Gaza hospital is "beyond any doubt the worst thing" he'd seen in his career - CNN
Al Jazeera has accused Israel of the targeted killing of two of its journalists in Gaza as the head of the advocacy group Reporters without Borders decried a “never-ending slaughter” in the territory that had killed 79 journalists in the span of three months. Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria were killed while on assignment for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based media network said in a statement. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded. The health ministry in Gaza confirmed the deaths and blamed an Israeli strike. Dahdouh was the eldest son of Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, two other children and a grandson were killed by a previous Israeli strike in October - Guardian
Israel will face accusations at the International Court of Justice this week of committing genocide in the Gaza war. It rejects the allegations as a “blood libel.” - NYT
Ukraine's Energy Ministry says 1,025 settlements were without electricity on January 9 as the war-wracked country grapples with a wave of unusually cold weather, snowfall, and high winds that even forced Russia to pause its relentless waves of drone and missile strikes. The ministry said that blizzards and the icing of power lines had led to outages in the Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Mykolayiv, and Kirovohrad regions - RFE/RL
The number of people killed in Kyiv as a result of the Russian missile attack on December 29 has increased to 33, capital officials reported. During the dismantling of destroyed building structures in a warehouse in the Shevchenkivsky district, one more person was found dead - Suspilne
Ukraine has shifted almost entirely into a defensive mode. Its soldiers say that operating near the front line is more dangerous than ever - NYT
Boeing's latest 737 MAX crisis deepened on Monday after United Airlines said it had found loose bolts on multiple grounded MAX 9 aircraft, raising new concerns among industry experts about how its best-selling jet family is manufactured. US regulators grounded 171 of the aircraft after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines-operated plane flight not long after taking off from a Portland, Oregon, airport on Friday.
