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Daily Briefing

How a secretive Hamas commander masterminded the attack on Israel, Republicans will try to unite around a new speaker, and the use of weather derivatives surges as extreme climate events rock the globe.

Plus, NASA will provide a first peek at a returned near-Earth asteroid sample.

By Kate Turton

Today's Top News

Smoke billows following Israeli strikes in Gaza City. REUTERS/Saleh Salem

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza repeatedly overnight ahead of a possible ground offensive to root out Hamas. Here's a brief history of Gaza's 75 years of woe.
Only a few days ago the sleepy, scenic kibbutz of Kfar Aza was just another Israeli farming community. Then Hamas gunmen burst out of the Gaza Strip and laid waste to the village. Listen to reporter Maayan Lubell describe the scene of devastation in the kibbutz.
A Gazan woman packed her family's belongings and gathered her six children into a car after a terrifying night of air strikes that damaged their home, crying: "What did my children do to deserve this?"
Israel calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood.

IN OTHER NEWS

Republicans in the US House of Representatives will try to unite around a new speaker to lead their fractious and narrow majority, a week after a small group of dissidents ousted Kevin McCarthy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the NATO military alliance headquarters in Brussels in search of more air defense systems, artillery and ammunition to help his country through another wartime winter.
Britain's London Luton Airport suspended all flights after a car fire set off a wider blaze that led to the partial collapse of one of its multi-storey car parks.
Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who had been detained in China on national security charges for more than three years, returned home after being released.

Business & Markets

Energy companies, hedge funds and commodity traders are stepping up their use of financial products that let them bet on the weather, as they seek to protect themselves against - or profit from - the increasingly extreme global climate.
Exxon will buy shale rival Pioneer in an all-stock deal valued at $59.5 billion that would make it the biggest producer in the largest US oilfield, securing a decade of low-cost production.
China has reaped savings this year of nearly $10 billion through record purchases of oil from countries under Western sanctions, according to Reuters' calculations based on data from traders and shiptrackers.
The "golden path" some Federal Reserve officials see leading to lower inflation without high unemployment may, like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, prove hard to find as they navigate a world of fast-adjusting markets and a new Middle East war.
Southeast Asian countries are taking a business-friendly approach to artificial intelligence regulation in a setback to the European Union's push for globally harmonized rules that align with its own stringent framework.
India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh has permitted the resumption of most production at a factory owned by Marion Biotech, which produced cough syrups Uzbekistan linked to the deaths of 65 children last year, an order seen by Reuters shows.

As Turkey intensifies war on Kurdish militants in Iraq, civilians are suffering

Schlier Namiq stands by the grave of her husband, Aram Kakakhan. A local official said Kakakhan gave logistical support to the PKK. His family denies this. REUTERS

Seventeen-year-old Samir Saado was finishing his cleaning shift at the village medical center when an airstrike hit the building.

"I didn't see anything other than dust and smoke," said Saado, a member of Iraq's minority Yazidi community. "My leg was stuck under the rubble. I called for help and people were coming but the planes kept striking."

At least four civilians were killed that day, Aug. 17, 2021, local officials said.

The strike was part of escalating attacks by Turkish aircraft and drones in mainly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria, which have since continued, a Reuters data analysis shows.

Read our special report on the violent incidents in Iraq

And Finally

A capsule containing a sample from an asteroid was parachuted into the Utah desert. NASA/Keegan Barber/Handout via REUTERS

NASA is set to provide a first peek for the public at what scientists found inside a tightly sealed canister that was returned to Earth last month carrying the largest soil sample ever scooped up from the surface of an asteroid.

The material collected by the OSRIS-REx spacecraft three years ago from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu will to be unveiled at NASA's Johnston Space Center in Houston.

The capsule contains by far the biggest asteroid sample returned to Earth

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