TEL AVIV: As tensions between Israel and Palestine continue to escalate, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that they have struck nine rocket launch pads throughout Gaza on Tuesday.

The IDF also said it has struck the homes of 12 Hamas commanders in Gaza over the past day, including three on Tuesday morning, The Times of Israel reported. It said the three were on the home of “the deputy commander for the northern brigade in Gaza City,” the home of a “company commander” in Khan Younis and the home of another “company commander.” The commanders used their homes as command and operations centres, according to the IDF. Fresh rocket sirens were heard in the industrial park south of the city of Ashkelon and in the nearby communities of Netiv Ha’asara and Zikim.

As the Israel-Palestine conflict entered its second week, the death toll in Gaza crossed 200. About 1,500 Palestinians have been wounded.

Al Jazeera reported that at least 212 Palestinians have died since the beginning of the fighting, 61 of them children. 42 Palestinians were reportedly killed on Sunday in the deadliest single strike since the violence erupted a week ago.

Israel has said it does not target civilians, and that many of the dead were terrorists or killed by errant Hamas rockets.

Meanwhile, more than 3,000 rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel in the escalating conflict, killing about 10 people in Israel, including two children and an Indian national.

Israel fired shells towards Lebanon in response to rocket launches on Monday. A Lebanese security source confirmed to Al Jazeera that Israel had fired 22 shells towards Lebanon, after it was reported that six rockets had been fired from south Lebanon.

This comes after US President Joe Biden, in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, expressed his support for a ceasefire in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas group. “The President expressed his support for a ceasefire and discussed US engagement with Egypt and other partners towards that end. The two leaders agreed that they and their teams would remain in close touch,” according to a readout of the call released by the White House.

Biden has faced increasing pressure from Democrats, leading up to the call on Monday, particularly after an Israeli strike on a Gaza building that housed The Associated Press and other international media organisations.

Earlier, Biden had also spoken to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and discussed the violence in Gaza, in which he called for Hamas, the authority’s rival, to stop firing rockets into Israel. As the violence continues, calls for a ceasefire have been growing in the international community, with Egypt being considered a key interlocutor in dealing with Hamas and negotiating with the Israelis on efforts to achieve a ceasefire. A diplomatic source familiar with Egypt’s efforts to broker a ceasefire told The Times of Israel, “we’re close” and that it could be reached in “two days maximum.”

Israeli officials on Sunday indicated that a ceasefire could be coming after mounting pressure from US President Joe Biden and other American lawmakers following the recent airstrikes on Gaza. Senior Israeli officials told local media, ahead of a security cabinet meeting on Tuesday, that calls for de-escalation are being heard and the Jewish country will move towards a ceasefire now that a number of military objectives have been accomplished against Hamas, as well as in response to the mounting international pressure.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu directed the IDF to push ahead with Operation Guardian of the Wall, reported The Times of Israel. “We will continue to act as necessary to restore peace and security to all residents of Israel,” he added.

Earlier this month, the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict started when the unrest began in East Jerusalem over an Israeli court’s decision to evict several Palestinian families from the area.

A new in China shows that the country has about 30 million unmarried men, triggering speculations about shortage of brides there.

According to China’s seventh population census by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), out of the 12 million babies born last year there were 111.3 boys for every 100 girls. In 2010, the ratio was 118.1 to 100.

“Normally in China, men marry women who are much younger than they are, but as the population ages, there are even more older men, which exaggerates the situation,” ANI quoted Prof Stuart Gieten-Basten as saying.

Bjourn Alpermann, another professor, warned of a huge shortfall in potential brides by the time the babies born reached marriageable age. “Of these 12 million babies that were born last year, 600,000 boys will not be able to find a marriage partner their same age when they grow up,” he said.

China’s one-child policy, implemented in 1979 and withdrawn in 2016, had exacerbated the practice of sex-selective abortion in favour of boys, said Jiang Quanbao, a demography professor.

Meanwhile, SCMP reported citing the NBS that China’s fertility rate was 1.3 children per woman, well below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population.

Highlighting that men from lower classes faced the most difficulty in finding brides, Cai Yong, an associate professor of social demography warned that without marriage, they will suffer “poorer physical and psychological health”.

“As long as the preference for boys does not change, it will skew the sex ratio at birth. With such preferences, people still will find a way to select boys over girls and more female fetuses will be aborted,” he said.

Resignation of Bill Gates in 2020 from Microsoft’s Board of Directors came after the board hired a law firm to investigate a romantic relationship he had with a Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, people familiar with the matter said.

Quoting Wall Street Journal, CNN reported that some Microsoft Directors began an investigation in 2019 into the woman’s allegations of prior sexual relationship with Bill Gates. During the probe, some board members decided it was no longer suitable for Gates to sit as a Director at the software company he started and led for decades, the people said.

Gates resigned before the Board’s probe was completed and before the full board could make a formal decision on the matter, another person familiar with the matter said, reported Wall Street Journal. “Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Running short of oxygen for patients of Covid-19, Nepal has requested mountain climbers of ongoing Spring Expedition to bring back their canisters so that it can be refilled to supply medical gas (oxygen) to the patients. With Covid-19 surging in the country, patients are gasping for oxygen as there is a dearth of oxygen containers.

Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) has requested climbers to bring back their empty or unused cylinders so that it can be used for oxygen refilling.

“We now are facing the second wave of infection which has created grave kind of situation and crisis, matter is going out of hand. Cylinders (oxygen) which arrived back from the expedition can be used at this hour of crisis. We are lending our hands to government, various associations and those who are working on it,” said Santa Bir Lama, president of NMA.

“In the ongoing expedition all the climbers are on base camp, they possess ample number of cylinders. We have requested owners and operators to bring back cylinders immediately after completion of expedition to use it for the benefit of people,” Lama added. ANI

The future battlefield belongs to attack drones or flying artillery shells and China is now is looking to buy Kamikaze drones. Michael Peck in an article in The National Interest said that the US ally Israel first taught China about suicide drones. Now Beijing is looking for its own. China got its first taste of suicide drones when Israel sold it the Harpy in the 1990s, to the displeasure of the US government. The Chinese military wants two types of suicide drones, according to an announcement posted on a Chinese military procurement Web site. The desired technical specifications of the drones, or the number to be purchased, are classified, reported The National Interest.

As per Peck, Chinese drone manufacturers do have products that might satisfy the demands of the People’s Liberation Army.

In 2018, China Aerospace unveiled the CH-901, which Chinese media described as being 4 feet long and weighing 20 pounds, with a speed of 150 kilometers (93 miles) per hour, a range of 15 kilometers (9 miles), and an endurance of two hours. The larger WS-43 is a 500-pound weapon with a range of 60 kilometers (37 miles) and an endurance of 30 minutes.

Called “loitering munitions” by military customers who are understandably reluctant to refer to them as suicidal, these weapons seek to bridge the gap between artillery shells – which can’t stay up in the air – and strike drones like America’s Reaper and Predator, which are big and expensive unmanned aircraft.

Loitering munitions feature a propeller, wings, a warhead, and a camera. They orbit an area, scanning it with their cameras to identify targets and transmitting the images back to the operator. When the operator sees a worthwhile target, he can command the drone to perform a death-dive on the target, reported The National Interest.

The potential uses of these weapons are numerous. Aerovision’s Switchblade, which the US Marine Corps ordered in 2018, is a handheld 6-pound weapon that fits inside a soldier’s backpack.

Switchblade is designed for situations such as troops encountering a mortar on the reverse slope of a hill that can’t be hit by direct-fire weapons. Instead of waiting for artillery or airstrikes, a rifleman can pluck a Switchblade from his backpack and destroy the target.

Or, if hitting a sniper in a building risks collateral damage to civilians, a Switchblade can be flown through the window. Its warhead is no more powerful than that of a grenade, but that’s still powerful enough to take out a mortar or sniper.

Israel’s Harpy, designed to knock out enemy radar sites, is a much larger weapon. Introduced in 1990 as probably the world’s first suicide drone, the 300-pound Harpy has a range of up to 250 miles and an endurance of two hours. It is similar to a traditional anti-radiation missile that homes in on signals from a radar station.

However, unlike a missile, it can stalk an area for hours, waiting for an unwary operator to switch on radar before it autonomously flies toward the target, reported The National Interest.

For the US military and other potential Chinese adversaries, this is one more advanced weapon that they may encounter in battle. Like drones in general, loitering munitions can be hard to detect and shoot down, especially the smaller models.

Even worse, those Chinese loitering munitions may be popping up outside of China. Beijing may have become the world’s No 2 arms exporter, whose aircraft, tanks, and rifles can be found across the globe. This means that American soldiers could face Chinese-made suicide drones in hotspots such as Africa and the Middle East, said Peck.

WITH ANI INPUTS