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President Joe Biden has told Israel that the US would withhold the supply of offensive weapons if it moved ahead with a full invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, in his starkest warning yet over its conduct of the war against Hamas.
Biden’s comments, in an interview with CNN during a trip to Wisconsin, came after Washington had already paused a shipment of munitions heading to Israel, amid concern over its operations in Rafah, where more than 1mn Palestinian civilians have been sheltering.
The US has opposed Israel’s plans for an assault on Rafah, hoping instead to help broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to free hostages held in Gaza and reach a ceasefire lasting at least six weeks.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centres,” Biden said. Here’s more on the step his administration had been unwilling to take until now.
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Gaza crisis: The flow of crucial aid into the territory — already severely constricted by eight months of war — has slowed to a trickle after Israeli troops moved into Rafah this week and halted traffic at two major border crossings.
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Opinion: The Israel-Hamas war has made it much easier for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to depict Biden’s “liberal international order” as a hollow shell, writes Edward Luce.
Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:
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UK economy: The Bank of England is expected to keep interest rates unchanged today, but investors will be watching for signals of summer rate cuts. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has its residential market survey, while the Recruitment and Employment Federation and KPMG release their jobs report.
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Xi in Europe: Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Hungary after praising its “independent” foreign policy. The last leg of his regional tour, which experts say is aimed at exploiting divisions in the EU, coincides with the bloc’s Europe Day, which marks the Schuman declaration seen as the beginning of today’s union.
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Russia: Financial markets are closed for Victory Day. A military parade will be held in Moscow’s Red Square to commemorate victory in the second world war.
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Companies: Results are expected from 3i, Enel, Ferrovial, ITV, Telefónica and Warner Bros Discovery. Balfour Beatty and Wood have annual meetings and trading updates.
Five more top stories
1. EU countries have agreed to use an estimated €3bn in profits from Russia’s frozen state assets to jointly buy weapons for Ukraine. The deal struck by the bloc’s 27 ambassadors yesterday only targets profits made by Belgium’s central securities depository Euroclear, where about €190bn of Russian central bank assets are held. Read the full story.
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Convict mobilisation: Using a tactic from Moscow, Kyiv will start recruiting prisoners, including men convicted of murder or fraud, to fight against Russia.
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Russian espionage: The UK government said it would expel Russia’s defence attaché for spying to counter “malign activity” from Moscow.
2. Exclusive: Sultan al-Jaber will invite Big Oil and Silicon Valley chiefs for climate talks in Abu Dhabi in his final flourish as president of the UN COP28 summit just days before COP29 begins in Azerbaijan. Jaber, who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, will host the “Change Makers Majlis”, or special gathering, at the start of November to discuss artificial intelligence and the energy transition.
3. Bridgewater Associates’ new chief executive Nir Bar Dea said he had overhauled the hedge fund after just a year in charge, in a bid to restore the firm’s investment performance and mark a break from founder Ray Dalio. “Everything has to get rewired,” Bar Dea said. “It’s like taking a brain and a heart out of a human and then planting a new brain and a new heart.” Read his interview with the Financial Times.
4. Shares in Arm dropped by as much as 10 per cent after it issued lacklustre projections for revenue this year. The UK chip designer, one of the biggest beneficiaries of an artificial intelligence boom since it listed on Nasdaq in September, forecast revenues of between $3.8bn and $4.1bn for the year to March 2025. Analysts had expected revenues of $4.01bn. Here’s more from the SoftBank-backed group’s results.
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AI and rights: We need a constitution that ensures the technology’s achievements do not come at the expense of basic civil protections, writes Vivienne Ming, co-founder of Dionysus Health.
5. Exclusive: Labour has promised to consult business on its pledge to improve UK worker rights in a document seen by the FT. The plans are an attempt to put the policies “into a form that our candidates can campaign on”, Sir Keir Starmer’s party said this month, and will be publicly unveiled in the coming weeks. Here’s more on the party’s “New Deal for Working People”.
Want more insights into the coming UK general election? Sign up for our Inside Politics newsletter by Stephen Bush.
The Big Read
“It’s the worst presidency with regard to energy policy I’ve ever seen,” one Texas oil executive said of Joe Biden. The president has made tackling climate change a central priority for his administration and vowed to crack down on the fossil fuel industry. This has made him an unpopular man in the sector especially compared with Donald Trump, who has promised a policy of “drill, baby, drill” if re-elected. Yet their rhetoric belies an inconvenient truth for both presidential candidates: America’s oil and gas industry has flourished under Biden.
We’re also reading . . .
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EU-China rivalry: Brussels’ new anti-subsidy rules are powerful but have set the bloc on a confrontation course with Beijing it can’t entirely control, writes Alan Beattie.
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UK defence: EU plans to “spend European” post-Brexit have set off alarm bells among executives who fear Britain’s defence sector could be excluded, writes Sylvia Pfeifer.
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Anglo American: The group’s journey from industrial behemoth to takeover target reflects South Africa’s decline as a mining powerhouse.
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Transatlantic gap: Europe urgently needs to narrow the productivity gap with the US or risk losing out on more growth, the head of Sweden’s central bank told the FT.
Chart of the day
Bonds issued by some of the world’s poorest countries have been the best performers in sovereign debt markets this year, shrugging off the impact of high US borrowing costs, which often spook investors in riskier economies.
Take a break from the news
For 50 years, Beigel Bake has had an amicable rivalry with its Brick Lane neighbour, the Beigel Shop. Together, the “white one” and the “yellow one” — referring to the colour of their signs — were a London landmark. But the recent closure of the latter has left the surviving shop’s owner with mixed feelings and created a hole in the East End, writes Emma Jacobs.
Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm and Gordon Smith
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