First Thing: Biden expected to speak with Netanyahu after killing of aid workers

Following Israeli airstrikes on World Central Kitchen workers, aid organizations in Gaza are demanding the Israeli military improve and adhere to security procedures to keep them safe. Plus: the Italian island giving away its goats

Good morning.

Joe Biden is expected to have his first call with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, since the airstrikes that killed seven members of a convoy of humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza. Biden has been critical of Israel in the aftermath of the strikes, saying the Israel-Hamas war “has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed”.

Israel is being accused of systemically targeting the clearly identified convoy, car by car, even though they were in touch with WCK and were aware of the aid workers’ movements. “This was not a bad luck situation where [it was a case of] ‘oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place’,” WCK’s founder, José Andrés, told Reuters. Israeli authorities, including Netanyahu, have described the strikes on the WCK convoy as “unintentional” and have promised to investigate.

How are aid organizations responding? Some suspended their operations in Gaza after the attack, and many are demanding the Israeli military improve and adhere to security procedures intended to keep their workers safe. “The burden is on Israel to avoid harming us. We make ourselves visible when delivering aid so we protect our teams and the people in Gaza where we serve,” said Bushra Khalid, Oxfam’s policy adviser for the occupied Palestinian territories.

How many aid workers have been killed since the start of this conflict on 7 October? About 200 humanitarian workers and about 100 journalists have been killed, making this war one of the deadliest conflicts on record for these groups.

Rescuers search for survivors of Taiwan earthquake

One day after the strongest earthquake in decades hit Taiwan, killing nine and injuring more than 1,000 people, rescue teams are trying to reach more than 100 people trapped in mining areas and a national park.

In other news …

The amount of plastic packaging waste created by Amazon has increased in the US even as the online retail giant sought to phase out plastics elsewhere in the world.

In southern California, San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies have shot and killed a 17-year-old boy with mental health issues, the third child killed by San Bernardino law enforcement in less than two years and the second in less than a month.

A man from Washington state who used a megaphone to orchestrate a mob’s attack on police officers during the 6 January attack on the US Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to more than seven years in prison.

Donald Trump’s classified documents case faces delays amid arguments over the “fundamentally flawed legal premise” of whether the former president can claim immunity under federal records law.

Stat of the day: Just 57 oil, gas, coal and cement producers directly linked to 80% of emissions

Although governments pledged in Paris in 2016 to cut greenhouse gases, a study by the Carbon Majors Database of global greenhouse gas emissions has found that a powerful cohort of state-controlled corporations and shareholder-owned multinationals are the leading drivers of the climate crisis, with 65% of state entities and 55% of private-sector companies increasing production.

ExxonMobil in the US leads the way as the biggest investor-owned contributor to emissions, followed by Shell, BP, Chevron and TotalEnergie. “It is morally reprehensible for companies to continue expanding exploration and production of carbon fuels in the face of knowledge now for decades that their products are harmful,” said Richard Heede, who established the Carbon Majors dataset in 2013.

Don’t miss this: US prisoners are dying from treatable conditions

People incarcerated in state prison in New Jersey are dying years younger than the overall population, often after receiving little healthcare when they get sick. From 2018-22, men in New Jersey prisons died at an average age of 59 years and two months – Black men at just under 57 years and four months – numbers that are startlingly low compared with the overall state average age of death recorded by the New Jersey health authorities: 71 years and eight months for all men and 64 years and four months for Black men.

“What we know is that the provision of healthcare in prisons across the country is generally systemically inadequate,” said David Fathi, an attorney and the director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project.

… or this: The true cost of El Salvador’s new gold rush

After years of activism, El Salvador’s environmentalists forced their country in 2017 to issue a national ban on metal mining, the first such ban in the world. Mining posed an existential threat to the Salvadoran water supply, and a ban was the only way to protect their resources.

But since El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, took office in 2019, there have been signs that the government is considering taking up mining once again – and the activists that fought so hard for a ban are receiving threats, getting arrested and getting killed.

Climate check: The destruction of the world’s rainforests

Global rainforest loss continued at a relentless rate in 2023, with an area nearly the size of Switzerland cleared from previously undisturbed rainforests last year. This boils down to rainforests being cleared at a rate of 10 football pitches a minute. “The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss,” said Mikaela Weisse, the director of Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institution.

Last Thing: Get your goat

The wild goat population on the five-square kilometre Alicudi, the smallest of Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, has grown to six times the island’s year-round population of 100 – damaging vegetation, causing havoc in gardens, knocking down stone walls and wandering into people’s homes.

The mayor’s solution? Give them away to anyone willing to take them. “We absolutely do not want to even consider culling the animals,” said the mayor, Riccardo Gullo. “Anyone can make a request for a goat, it doesn’t have to be a farmer, and there are no restrictions on numbers.”

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