World Briefing: September 10, 2024

An Israeli strike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others early Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted “significant” Hamas militants and disputed the death toll. It was among the deadliest strikes yet in Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the Gaza coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of civilians to seek shelter from the Israel-Hamas war. Gaza’s Civil Defense said its first responders recovered 40 bodies from the strike and were still looking for people. It said entire families were killed in their tents. - AP

David Knowles, the Telegraph journalist behind the award-winning Ukraine: The Latest podcast, has died. Mr Knowles, 32, who worked as a senior audio journalist and presenter, died while in Gibraltar on Sunday following what was believed to be a cardiac arrest. He joined The Telegraph in 2020 as deputy head of social media and was later promoted to head of social media. Upon the outbreak of the Ukraine war in 2022, Mr Knowles launched Ukraine: The Latest, a weekday podcast that is still running two years later. This year, Ukraine: The Latest won the Best News Podcast at the Publisher Podcast Awards. Mr Knowles’s father, Peter, described his eldest son as someone who “loved life and he lived it just as well as he could”. He said: “David’s commitment to journalism was intense. He was never more proud than when he finally shrugged off a management job title and regained a title with the word ‘journalist’ in it, and he was utterly engaged with the story of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the impact on its people, making four trips to the country and always planning the next.” Chris Evans, the editor of The Telegraph, said: “David was a talented and popular journalist who was perhaps best known for helping to make our Ukraine podcast such a success. Before that, he was an impressive leader of our social media team. We would like to offer our sympathy to his family and friends.” - The Telegraph

Russian officials say they shot down 144 Ukrainian drones around the country overnight in a wave of attacks that have killed one woman, set residential buildings on fire and grounded flights in Moscow. The governor of Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, said several flats in two high-rise apartment buildings in Ramenskoye in Moscow region were set on fire. Mr Vorobyov said a 46-year-old woman died and three people were injured in Ramenskoye, while 43 people were evacuated to temporary accommodation centres. Ukraine has so far not commented on the attacks. - BBC

In a rare and uncomfortable lecture by Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi of his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, Berlin was accused of ignoring the war crimes of Israel in its war in Gaza. He said international humanitarian law was one of the biggest victims. “I have to be very honest if I may Annalena, the standing of countries like Germany is also a victim [of this conflict]"

Two Western media executives with long experience in Hong Kong have accused global accounting firm BDO of breaking international rules by helping the city's government liquidate the company, which was run by the jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai. The two U.S.-based directors of Lai's Next Digital Ltd filed a complaint with the British government in December, alleging BDO improperly "acted as a quasi-governmental agency at the behest of the (Hong Kong government), with no judicial oversight" to shut down Lai's media enterprise, including the popular Apple Daily newspaper. The allegations by Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Mark Clifford, a former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, are in a 32-page complaint reviewed by Reuters. Lai, a vocal critic of China's Communist Party, on trial on national security charges that could result in a life sentence, was the founder and controlling shareholder of Next Digital. It once employed more than 2,000 people but was shut down in June 2021 after a mass police raid and a freeze on its assets. - Reuters

Former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has demanded a “new industrial strategy for Europe”, calling on the EU to raise investments by €800bn a year to fund radical and rapid reform to stop the union falling behind the US and China. As well as backing a wholesale overhaul of how the EU raises investment funding, including “new common funding and common assets”, the former Italian premier’s highly anticipated report commissioned by the EU calls for Brussels to drive forward a significant reorientation of economic policy. Key recommendations include relaxing competition rules to enable market consolidation in sectors such as telecoms; integration of capital markets by centralising market supervision; greater use of joint procurement in the defence sector; and a new trade agenda to increase the EU’s economic independence. “Never in the past has the scale of our countries appeared so small and inadequate relative to the size of the challenges,” Draghi wrote in the report for European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. “The reasons for a unified response have never been so compelling — and in our unity we will find the strength to reform.” - FT

While accepting the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media on Sunday night, Angelina Jolie lamented the “state of the world today,” admitting, “I feel sick” while adding she feels “a part of the failure of the system.” Jolie, who has spent years on various humanitarian projects between film projects, said in her speech published by Deadline, that she was drawn to direct films about war “to understand how people can be driven to commit such acts of violence and cruelty against their fellow human beings.” She added, “When I am asked how I feel about the state of the world today, I admit I feel sick. After pushing for basic human rights for all people, only to see the reality worsen for so many, I feel a part of the failure of the system.” Her latest directorial piece, Without Blood, also premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday night shortly after she accepted the award. “She is technically brilliant,” Salma Hayek, who stars in Without Blood, said of Jolie. “And she is, in my experience, and this is very brave to say this, the best actor/director I have ever worked with and that’s a lot to say because I’ve worked with really incredible, incredible directors.” - Daily Beast

Much of Sudan’s health system has been devastated by months of conflict, with more than 100 attacks on healthcare facilities in the over 500 days of conflict leading to significant casualties among health workers and patients, WHO said Monday. The insecurity has forced many health workers to flee with their families, worsening the shortage of medical staff. This exodus has further weakened the health system's ability to provide essential services, leaving many Sudanese without access to critical care.

This Briefing is reprinted with the author's permission. Please find the original here.