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Hamas’ review of US President Donald Trump's Gaza plan stretched into a third day on Wednesday, a source close to the militant group said, as other Palestinian factions rejected the proposal and as Israel again bombed Gaza City.

Trump on Tuesday gave Hamas ‘three or four days’ to respond to the plan he outlined this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has backed the proposal to end Israel’s almost two-year war with the Palestinian militant group.

“Accepting the plan is a disaster, rejecting it is another, there are only bitter choices here, but the plan is a Netanyahu plan articulated by Trump,” a Palestinian official, familiar with Hamas’ deliberations with other factions, told Reuters. “Hamas is keen to end the war and end the genocide and it will respond in the way that serves the higher interests of the Palestinian people,” he said, without elaborating.

Israeli planes and tanks pounded residential neighbourhoods throughout the night, residents in Gaza City said. Local health authorities said that at least 35 people across Gaza had been killed by the military on Wednesday, most of them in Gaza City. A strike on the old city in northwestern Gaza City killed seven people, while six people sheltering in a school in another part of the city were killed in a separate strike, medics said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military issued new orders for people to leave for the south and said it would no longer allow those to return to the north, as Gaza City came under heavy bombing. 

Defence Minister Israel Katz described the move as “tightening the encirclement around Gaza on the way to defeating Hamas,” saying Palestinians willing to leave to the south would have to go through army vetting. “This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas operatives isolated in Gaza City itself in the face of the IDF’s continuing full-scale operations,” Katz said.

The Israeli military also said that starting on Wednesday it would no longer allow people to use a coastal road to move from the south to communities in the north.

It would remain open for those fleeing south, it said. Witnesses said Israeli tanks began moving towards the coastal road coming from the east, but were not yet there. In recent weeks, few people have moved from the south to the north as the military has intensified its siege on Gaza City. However, the decision will put pressure on those who are yet to leave Gaza City and also prevent hundreds of thousands of residents who have fled south from returning to their homes, likely deepening fears in Gaza of permanent displacement.

Reuters

Washington is bracing for what could be a prolonged federal shutdown after lawmakers deadlocked and missed the deadline for funding the government.

Republicans supported a short-term measure to fund the government generally at current levels through Nov 21, but Democrats blocked it, insisting the measure address their concerns on health care. They want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s mega-bill passed this summer and extend tax credits that make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people who purchase through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans called the Democratic proposal a nonstarter that would cost taxpayers more than $1trn.

Neither side shows any signs of budging.

Here’s what to know about the shutdown that began Wednesday:

What happens in the shutdown?

Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, who include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.

The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed each day of the shutdown, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400m.

What government work continues during a shutdown?

A great deal, actually.

FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.

Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.

Veteran health care also continues during a shutdown. Veterans Affairs medical centers and outpatient clinics will be open, and VA benefits will be processed and delivered. Burials will continue at VA national cemeteries.

Will furloughed federal workers get paid?

Yes. In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.

While they’ll eventually get paid, the furloughed workers and those who remain on the job may have to go without one or more of their regular paychecks, depending upon how long the shutdown lasts.

Service members would also receive back pay for missed paychecks once federal funding resumes.

Will I still get mail?

Yes. The US Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars.

What closes during a shutdown?

All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze or maintain in a shutdown.

The first Trump administration worked to blunt the impact of what became the country’s longest partial shutdown in 2018 and 2019. But on Tuesday, Trump threatened the possibility of increasing the pain that comes with a shutdown.

“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them,” Trump said of Democrats. “Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan. The plans outline which workers would stay on the job during a shutdown and which would be furloughed.

In a provocative move, the Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers in a shutdown. An OMB memo said those programs that didn’t get funding through Trump’s mega-bill this summer would bear the brunt of a shutdown.

Agencies should consider issuing reduction-in-force notices for those programs whose funding expires, that don’t have alternative funding sources and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” the memo said.

That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when furloughed federal workers returned to their jobs once the shutdown was over. A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but eliminate their positions, which would trigger another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that’s already faced major rounds of cuts due to efforts from the Department of Government Efficiency and elsewhere in Trump’s Republican administration.

What agencies are planning

Health and Human Services will furlough about 41 percent of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website.

As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.

Meanwhile, research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the House of Hope will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.

At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused.” For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee.

The National Park Service plans to furlough about two-thirds of its employees while keeping parks largely open to visitors during the federal shutdown, according to a contingency plan released Tuesday night. The plan says “park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors.”

The plan also allows parks to enter into agreements with states, tribes or local governments willing to make donations to keep national park sites open. The park service has more than 400 sites, including large national parks such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, national battlefields and historic sites.

Sites could close if damage is being done to park resources or garbage is building up.

Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree National Park in California.

Smithsonian Institution: Museums, research centers and the National Zoo will remain open through at least Monday.

Impact on the economy

Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said a short shutdown doesn’t have a huge impact on the economy, especially since federal workers, by law, are paid retroactively. But “if a shutdown continues, then that can give rise to uncertainties about what is the role of government in our society, and what’s the financial impact on all the programs that the government funds.”

“The impact is not immediate, but over time, there is a negative impact of a shutdown on the economy,” he added.

Markets haven’t reacted strongly to past shutdowns, according to Goldman Sachs Research. At the close of the three prolonged shutdowns since the early 1990s, equity markets finished flat or up even after dipping initially.

A governmentwide shutdown would directly reduce growth by around 0.15 percentage points for each week it lasted, or about 0.2 percentage points per week once private-sector effects were included, and growth would rise by the same cumulative amount in the quarter following reopening, writes Alec Phillips, chief US political economist at Goldman Sachs.

AP

At least 69 people were killed in a powerful earthquake that hit a central Philippine province where dozens of peple were killed by a powerful earthquake Tuesday night.

The magnitude-6.9 earthquake that hit at about 10 pm trapped an unspecified number of residents in collapsed houses, nightclubs and other businesses in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu province, officials said.

Rescuers scrambled to find survivors Wednesday. Army troops, police and civilian volunteers backed by backhoes and sniffer dogs were deployed Wednesday to carry out house-to-house searches for survivors.

The epicenter of the earthquake, which was set off by movement in an undersea fault line at a dangerously shallow depth of 5 kilometers, was about 19 kilometers northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu province where about half of the deaths were reported, officials said.

The death toll in Bogo was expected to rise, according to officials, who said intermitted rain and damaged bridges and roads were hampering the race to save lives.

AP

US War Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed ‘fat generals’ and diversity initiatives that he said led to decades of decay in the military and told a rare gathering of commanders on Tuesday they should resign if they do not support his agenda. Joining Hegseth was US President Donald Trump, who also delivered an address to the assembled admirals and generals in Quantico, Virginia that floated the idea of using deployments to US cities as “as training grounds for our military.”

The remarks by Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, and Trump, a former reality television star, had a made-for-TV element to them after top US military officials were summoned on short notice last week to the impromptu event. “Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the ‘Woke Department’,” Hegseth said as he kicked off the event. “But not anymore”

Addressing an auditorium full of top brass who flew in from around the world, Hegseth defended his firings of flag officers, including the top US general, who is Black, and the Navy’s top admiral, who is a woman. He said the officers he relieved were part of a broken culture.

He promised sweeping changes to how the Pentagon handles discrimination complaints and investigates accusations of wrongdoing. He said the current system has top brass walking on “egg shells.” “If the words I’m speaking today are making your hearts sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign,” Hegseth said. “I know the overwhelming majority of you feel the opposite. These words make your hearts full.”

Hegseth said it was “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.” He said all fitness tests would be set to male benchmarks only and emphasized the importance of grooming standards. “The era of unprofessional appearance is over. No more beardos,” Hegseth told the audience, which sat in silence.

Democrats broadly condemned the event, which they said sought to drive partisan politics deep into the US military.

Reuters