📣 ICYMI: Hundreds of Israelis block trucks carrying humanitarian aid from entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing point

US Sec of State Antony Blinken touted the opening of Kerem Shalom as an important achievement that would allow critical aid into Gaza.

After permitting only a trickle of aid into Gaza, the Israeli govt allows nationalist fanatics to fully block the checkpoint.

@RiseGS

🇷🇺🇺🇦 “It is obvious that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives and with the emotions of our society,” Zelenskyy said in his Wednesday evening address.

He did not confirm or deny Russia’s claims, but said it had been a “very difficult day”.

Al Jazeera

🔴 @DDGeopolitics

🤔 “Those who chant from the River to the Sea, are useful idiots!”: UK PM Rishi Sunak

Netanyahu said the phrase earlier this week… does he mean only people who object to genocide are useful idiots?

@RiseGS

❗️NEW: At least 20 killed, 150 wounded after Israeli forces shell thousands of Palestinians gathering for humanitarian aid near Kuweiti Square in northern Gaza (Al Jazeera)

@RiseGS

⚠️ BREAKING: Emergency Services Discover Fragments of Apparent Missile at Site of Downed Russian Military Plane - TASS

@RiseGS

⚡️BREAKING: Suspected Perpetrator On the Run after Girl Killed at School in South-Western German Village of St Leon-Rot – DPA Citing Police

The suspect is another pupil from the school, police said.

@RiseGS

⚠️ Israeli Intel Services Use Gaza Health Ministry Death Tolls in Internal Briefings - after Finding Data Reliable Following Secret Surveillance of Palestinian Officials (Reports)

Israeli intelligence has no good independent measure of the total number of civilians the IDF has killed in Gaza, making the Health Ministry's data their main source of information. (Israeli magazine Mekomit citing two sources)

One reason the outlet reports for this is that officers conducted hundreds of AI-directed assassination strikes against suspected low-level Hamas operatives, usually by destroying entire homes and killing entire families – a practice previously termed a 'mass assassination factory.’

There was often no bomb damage assessment for these strikes, meaning there was no check on who and how many civilians were killed. This routine post-strike check was skipped to 'save time,’ Mekomit added.

@RiseGS

❌ Dead Man Walking: US Prisoner Set to Become First Executed by Nitrogen

Convicted killer Kenneth Eugen Smith has already survived one horribly botched attempt at executing him but on Thursday he will be put to death by a wholly untested method - that has been decried as inhumane by legal experts and deemed unfit even for killing most mammals.

Alabama’s Department of Corrections officials will strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney in Holman Correctional Facility and pump his lungs full of pure nitrogen.

The capital punishment is so experimental that Smith’s spiritual adviser has been required to sign a waiver that forces him to maintain a distance of at least three feet – in case the mask detaches, filling an area around him with the potentially deadly odourless, tasteless, invisible gas.

Alabama’s dark history of bungled executions has death penalty advocates raising the alarm about the potential dangers of it becoming the first state to use nitrogen asphyxia.

@RiseGS

➡️ JUST IN: Microsoft Culls 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox Employees - The Verge

The cuts work out to roughly 8% of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total.

The layoffs come the same month Riot Games, Google, Discord, Twitch, Unity, eBay, and others announced cuts.

@RiseGS