
Welcome to Wednesday, where the fighting in Gaza intensifies despite international calls for ceasefire, COVID deaths hit a new record in India and a flooded Italian village resurfaces. Le Monde"s correspondent Louis Imbert reports from the West Bank where more and more young supporters of the ruling Fatah party are joining the clashes with Israeli forces.
• Israel-Gaza fighting intensifies despite ceasefire calls: Israeli forces carried out dozens of airstrikes on Gaza and Hamas militants continued to launch rockets on Wednesday, despite international calls for a ceasefire. On Tuesday, France called for a UN Security Council resolution on the violence, as the death toll in Gaza rises to 219 and to 12 in Israel.
• Daily COVID deaths hit record in India: India reported the highest daily COVID death toll of any country, with 4,529 deaths in the last 24 hours, driving the overall toll to more than 283,000. The country registers the world's third highest number of deaths from the pandemic after the U.S. and Brazil.
• Pelosi calls for China Olympics "diplomatic boycott": U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the US and other major countries to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, over China's reported treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
• Lebanon foreign minister quits after ISIS comments: Lebanese Foreign Minister Charbel Wehbe resigned after his comments on the rise of ISIS in Gulf States provoked a diplomatic backlash.
• Criminal fraud inquiry over Trump Organization: The New York attorney general's office says that its investigation over the Trump Organization was no longer "purely civil." New York attorneys have been scrutinizing former President Trump's financial business before he took office.
• Ex-FARC leader killed in Venezuela: Former prominent leader of the Colombian FARC rebel group Jesus Santrich has been killed in Venezuela, in a military operation led by Colombia.
• Italy's lost village resurfaces: Repair work at a reservoir in the Italian lake of Resia, in the north of the country, has revealed the ruins of Curon, a village that had been flooded to make way for a hydroelectric plant in the 1950s.
"The government, unable to respond to Rabat's blackmail," writes Spanish daily ABC as diplomatic tensions rise between Spain and Morocco over a migratory crisis in the enclave of Ceuta.
Beyond Gaza: Seething youth in the West Bank are radicalizing
For fear of losing legitimacy to Hamas, supporters of the ruling Fatah party have joined the riots that have left at least 19 people dead since Friday, reports the French daily Le Monde"s correspondent Louis Imbert from the village of Silwad in the West Bank.
The entrances to Silwad are littered with the remnants of larger clashes. On Friday, Mohammad Hamad, a 30-year-old resident of the village, was killed by soldiers. The two days of rioting have left 19 people dead, according to the health services, across a hundred Palestinian towns and villages. This is a death toll not seen in the West Bank since 2002. But this is the first response in this West Bank that broods over its marginalization, far from the conflict in Jerusalem and far from Gaza where Hamas has been embroiled in an all-out war with Israel since May 11.
These clashes should not be underestimated, although they are certainly not on the same scale as the bombing and destruction in Gaza. The young men had not experienced this level of violence in years. "We were 10 years old during the last war in Gaza in 2014, we didn't do much. This time it's ours! The sultaPalestinian Authority will say what it wants; it can't stop us from defending Al Aqsa," says 17-year-old Rami, cooling off from the clashes.
A senior Palestinian officer noted that the mood among the security forces is dark. There is a good opportunity to overturn the balance that makes them the deputies of the Israeli forces, guardians of an order devoid of any political purpose. "The majority of the riot organizers are Fatah supervisors, who feel ashamed. They are trailing behind Hamas and the Jerusalem activists. They know that we risk losing the support of the population," says Qaddoura Fares, a Fatah supervisor and president of the Palestinian Prisoners Club. "But this is still just a short-lived emotional reaction."
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-$1.04 billion
Tata Motors, owner of carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, is reporting a stunning quarterly loss of $1.04 billion in comparison to analysts' forecasts of a $365.4 million profit. India's largest automotive manufacturing company attributed the deficit to asset write-downs and restructuring costs, while also warning about the consequences of a current global semiconductor shortage.
An eggy diversion causes confusion in Belgian town
In a country with three official languages, it's inevitable that some translations are going to get scrambled. But in Jette, a commune near Brussels, a recent road sign alerted drivers of an "omeletje" which means "omelet" in Dutch. The translator clearly didn't have a strong grasp of Dutch or just jumbled some letters, as they meant to write "ommetje," meaning "detour."
As the Brussels Times reports, several passers-by "noticed the sign near the commune's Saint Peter's church this weekend, and questioned if the sign was really pointing people towards the well-known egg dish."
"It often happens that an entrepreneur does not know Dutch and/or French very well and yes an incorrect translation from the internet," Bernard Van Nuffel, alderman for Public Works, tells Flemish news outlet Het Nieuwsblad.
But adding more mystery, the sign also included the French word "omelette" instead of "déviation" for "detour." Further, the Dutch word "wegomlegging" is more commonly used than "ommetje." So normally, this sort of bilingual warning would read "Deviation - Wegomlegging."
Is there some creative wordplay being fried up?
Van Nuffel says the sign might be the work of a mysterious artist, as a similar one appeared a few months ago in Laeken, a Brussels suburb. No matter the culprit, Van Nuffel doesn't suspect any, er, fowl play.
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Usually to get that much money from Jeff Bezos you have to divorce him.
— During his opening roast at the Disney 2021 upfronts, host Jimmy Kimmel mocked all broadcast networks, including Amazon Prime and its decision to splurge $465 million on one season of a Lord of the Rings series.
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