First Thing: US and UK repel major Houthi attack in Red Sea

Authorities describe Houthi attack with drones and missiles as largest yet in the Red Sea. Plus, why speed dating is back in fashion

Good morning.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired one of their largest barrage of drones and missiles targeting shipping in the Red Sea, forcing the American and British navies to shoot down the projectiles in a major engagement, authorities said today.

No damage or injuries were immediately apparent.

The attack by the Iran-backed Houthis came despite a planned UN security council vote later today to potentially condemn and demand an immediate halt to the attacks by the rebels, who say their assaults are aimed at stopping Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

However, their targets have increasingly tenuous or no relationship with Israel and imperil one of the world’s crucial trade routes linking Asia and the Middle East to Europe. That raises the risk of a US retaliatory strike on Yemen that could upend an uneasy ceasefire that has held in the Arab world’s poorest country.

Where did the attack take place? The assault happened off the Yemeni port cities of Hodeida and Mokha, according to the private intelligence firm Ambrey. In the Hodeida incident, Ambrey said ships described over radio seeing missiles and drones, with US-allied warships in the area urging “vessels to proceed at maximum speed”.

What else is happening? The Israeli politician Nissim Vaturi has reiterated his call for Gaza to be burned down, saying “there are no innocents there”. Referring to Palestinians still in northern Gaza after repeated orders from the Israeli military for them to flee, Vaturi, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said “One hundred thousand remain. I have no mercy for those who are still there. We need to eliminate them.”

Several men arrested after dispute over secret tunnel in Brooklyn synagogue

A group of men belonging to a Hasidic Jewish community in New York were arrested on Monday amid a dispute over an illegal tunnel secretly dug into the side of a historic synagogue, which has since been closed.

Action by law enforcement after the tunnel came to light led to a brawl between police and those who had created the passageway and wanted it to remain.

The Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters, located in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City, was in chaos on Tuesday as Jewish leaders and police faced off against what Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for the Chabad, called a “group of extremist students”.

The building was once home to the Orthodox Jewish movement’s leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and draws thousands of visitors each year. Schneerson led the Chabad-Lubavitch for more than four decades before his death in 1994, reinvigorating a Hasidic religious community that had been devastated by the Holocaust.

Why did they build the tunnel? The reason for the tunnel’s creation remains undisclosed.

Armed gang storms Ecuador TV station as state of ‘internal armed conflict’ declared

Heavily armed gangsters have stormed the studio of a major television station in Ecuador during a live broadcast, prompting the country’s president to declare a state of “internal armed conflict” amid a series of seemingly coordinated attacks across the South American country.

Police special forces later arrested all the masked gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the TC Televisión network in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, at about 2pm local time on Tuesday.

Toting pistols, shotguns, machine-guns, grenades and sticks of dynamite, a number of men overran the studio during the El Noticiero news programme. With the cameras broadcasting live, the men could be seen on camera while some employees lay down on the floor and someone was heard yelling “Don’t shoot!” before the signal was eventually cut.

The newspaper El Universo said panicked reporters and camera operators flooded messaging groups with pleas for help as the outlaws rampaged through the building. “They want to kill the lot of us. Help us,” one message read.

What happened to the gangsters? Police commander César Zapata later told the TV channel Teleamazonas that officers seized the guns and explosives the gunmen had with them and that 13 people were arrested, adding: “This is an act that should be considered as a terrorist act.”

Read more: Why masked gang members stormed an Ecuadorian TV station

Armed gangs and prison breaks: how Ecuador was plunged into chaos and bloodshed

In other news …

A judge in Rome has ordered Lt Col Carlos Luis Malatto, a former Argentine army officer accused of murder and forced disappearances during Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship, to stand trial in Italy for the premeditated killing of eight people.

The Roman Catholic priest in Alabama who married a recent high school graduate after meeting her through his ministry, fleeing to Europe with her and facing law enforcement scrutiny, has been permanently ousted from the priesthood, a consequence few clergymen ever endure.

Girls as young as 16 have been arrested across the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the past week for violating the Taliban’s hijab rules. The girls – who were detained in shopping centres, classes and street markets – were accused of “spreading and encouraging others to wear a bad hijab” and wearing makeup.

Facebook and Instagram have been profiting from placing corporate adverts from companies such as Walmart and Match Group next to content potentially promoting child sexual exploitation, a legal filing alleges. The accusation is the latest in an explosive lawsuit by the New Mexico attorney general.

Don’t miss this: ‘Go and talk to strangers – it’s fun’ – why speed dating is having a moment

Lilian no longer knows how many times she’s deleted all the dating apps from her phone, writes Jordyn Beazley. Somehow, she always reinstalls them. While she says she hates “the apps”, as they are now known (begrudgingly or affectionately, depending on your success), going clubbing or hanging around at a pub is “not where you meet people”. Lilian says dating apps have made romance feel like another chore to manage. In place of locked eyes and butterflies there’s monotonous swiping, weighing up someone’s potential from a few judiciously selected snapshots. As more singles like Lilian swear off “the apps”, a new generation is bringing back an old way of meeting in real life.

Climate check: 2023 smashes record for world’s hottest year by huge margin

2023 “smashed” the record for the hottest year by a huge margin, providing “dramatic testimony” of how much warmer and more dangerous today’s climate is from the cooler one in which human civilisation developed. The planet was 1.48C hotter in 2023 compared with the period before the mass burning of fossil fuels ignited the climate crisis. The figure is very close to the 1.5C temperature target set by countries in Paris in 2015, although the global temperature would need to be consistently above 1.5C for the target to be considered broken. Scientists at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS) said it was likely the 1.5C mark would be passed for the first time in the next 12 months.

Last Thing: Field of bad dreams – Biden rival makes quip after no one turns up to 2024 event

Contemplating a New Hampshire campaign event to which not one voter showed up, the Minnesota congressman and Democratic presidential hopeful Dean Phillips told reporters yesterday: “Sometimes, if you build it, they don’t come.” He was alluding to a famous line from Field of Dreams, a 1989 film in which an Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner builds a baseball field, thereby attracting the ghosts of famous players.

Phillips is widely held to have a ghost of a chance of succeeding in his quest to deny a sitting president, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nomination. Nonetheless, the 54-year-old centrist, who is self-funding his campaign, insists Biden is too old at 81 to mount a meaningful fight against Donald Trump.

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