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South Carolina lawmaker had been polling in sixth place among Republican contenders.

United States Senator Tim Scott has withdrawn from the 2024 Republican presidential race after failing to rise above low single digits in the polls.

Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, told Fox News on Sunday evening that he had suspended his campaign based on feedback from voters.

“I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters who are the most remarkable people on the planet have been really clear that they’re telling me: ‘Not now Tim,’” he said on the Sunday Night in America programme.

Scott also dismissed the possibility of joining any of his rivals’ campaigns as running mate, saying that “being vice president has never been on my to-do list for this campaign, and it’s certainly not there now.”

Scott, who entered the race in May, had been polling in sixth place among Republican primary candidates with only 2.5 percent of the vote, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.

The 58-year-old South Carolina lawmaker had pitched himself as a staunch conservative with an optimistic vision capable of healing the deep political divisions in the US.

Scott’s exit comes as a relatively crowded Republican field struggles to make a dent in the popularity of former President Donald Trump, who is polling far ahead of the competition despite facing four criminal indictments.

Scott is the second major candidate to leave the race in recent weeks. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served under Trump, suspended his campaign late last month.

Scott on Sunday declined to immediately endorse any of his Republican rivals.

“I’m going to recommend that the voters study each candidate and their candidacies and frankly their past and make the best decision for the future of their country,” he said.

“The best way for me to be helpful is not weigh in on who they should endorse.”

More than 30 people have been trapped after an under-construction road tunnel collapsed in India.

The tunnel collapsed on Sunday after a landslide in India’s northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand – a region popular with tourists.

All of those trapped were working on the tunnel, according to officials, who said they were pumping oxygen through a pipe into the collapsed section in order to help the workers breathe.

Food is also being sent to the trapped workers.

Manohar Tamta, an Uttarakhand state relief official, said it would take “some time to bring them out”.

However, the workers have sent out signals indicating that they are safe, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, citing a state government official.

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The collapsed portion of the tunnel is about 200m (500ft) from the entrance, according to police.

About 160 rescuers from federal and state disaster relief agencies are using drilling equipment and excavators to reach the workers.

Uttarakhand state is dotted with Hindu temples and sees a huge flow of pilgrims and tourists every year.

It has expanded over the years with the massive construction of buildings and roads.

A billionaire real estate tycoon in the United States is rallying support for a high-dollar media crusade to boost Israel’s image and demonise the Hamas armed group amid global pro-Palestinian solidarity protests.

The media campaign — called Facts for Peace — is seeking million-dollar donations from dozens of the world’s biggest names in media, finance and technology, according to an email seen by news website Semafor.

More than 50 individuals are being courted, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Dell CEO Michael Dell and financier Michael Milken. They have a combined net worth of around $500bn, Semafor said.

Some of the individuals, such as investor Bill Ackman, have publicly threatened to blacklist pro-Palestine students who are critical of Israel. On October 10, Ackman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he and other business executives wanted Ivy League universities to disclose the names of students who are part of organisations that signed open letters criticising Israeli policies in Gaza.

‘Get ahead of the narrative’

US billionaire Barry Sternlicht, who started the project, said the campaign would help Israel “get ahead of the narrative” as the world has reacted to the intensive Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community”, Sternlicht wrote in an email soliciting contributions from the wealthy figures shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Semafor. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”

Israel has carried out relentless air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, killing at least 11,078 Palestinian people, including 4,500 children, displacing 1.5 million people, and wrecking much of the territory’s infrastructure, Gaza officials say.

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli territory on October 7 killed some 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials.

Sternlicht’s media drive aims to brand Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” that is “not just the enemy of Israel, but of the United States”, he wrote. The goal is to draw $50m in private donations, paired with a matching contribution from a Jewish charity. Hamas is already designated as a “terrorist” organisation by the US and the European Union for its armed resistance against Israeli occupation.

It is unclear which figures have donated, but the campaign has raised at least a few million dollars already, Semafor reported, citing “people familiar with the matter”.

It is being advised by Josh Vlasto, a communications strategist who previously worked for US Senator Chuck Schumer and former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, Semafor reported.

The US is Israel’s strongest global ally, providing it with billions of dollars of aid annually and staunch diplomatic backing. Despite the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the US government has continuously rebuffed global calls for a ceasefire and reiterated that Washington will not give Israel “red lines” in the war. On November 2, the US Congress passed a $14.3bn emergency military aid package for Israel.

However, public support for the US’s position appears to be ebbing, with nearly half of US Democrats disapproving of how Joe Biden has handled the conflict, according to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Social media giants such as Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok have been accused of censoring pro-Palestine voices by reducing their reach, a practice known as shadowbanning.

Axios reported last month that pro-Palestine posts on TikTok were being viewed four times more than pro-Israel posts. This came as people around the world have reacted with horror to the mounting death toll in Gaza where most of the killed are civilians.

Facts For Peace, the media campaign launched by Sternlicht, aims to win back public favour for Israel, posting videos on its social media pages blaming Hamas for the plight of Palestinians and denying claims of Israeli rights violations.

The most recent video posted on its Facebook page argues that “Israel is not an apartheid state”.

This contradicts findings from Palestinian, Israeli and international rights experts, including from the United Nations, that Israel is practising apartheid through its “deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system” in the occupied territories.

Israel occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war and later annexed East Jerusalem. It withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005 but continues to maintain a siege on the territory of 2.3 million people. Israel has continued to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – a step considered illegal under international law.

Settlements pose the biggest hurdles in the realisation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, experts say. The US has condemned the settlements’ expansions but done little to stop its closest ally.

Pentagon says it targeted training facility and a safe house in response to continued attacks on US forces.

The United States has carried out two more air strikes in Syria against facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its aligned groups.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the “precision strikes” targeted a training facility near the city of Albu Kamal and a safe house near the city of Mayadeen, in response to continued attacks against US forces in Syria and Iraq.

“The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Austin said in a statement on Sunday.

Citing an unnamed local source, the Reuters news agency said the US strikes targeted a camp run by pro-Iranian armed groups in an area west of Albu Kamal, in Deir al Zor province. The other strike was near a bridge close to the city of Mayadeen, which is near the Iraqi border and is a stronghold of pro-Iranian armed groups, it added.

The Associated Press news agency said one of the sites also included weapons storage, citing a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a military operation.

The US strike is the third in just over two weeks as Washington attempts to put an end to drone and rocket attacks against its forces in Syria and Iraq that began when the Israel-Hamas war started a month ago.

US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 40 times in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed forces in recent weeks. About 56 troops have been injured in the attacks in Syria and Iraq, but all have returned to duty, according to the Pentagon.

The US has 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 more in neighbouring Iraq, which are on a mission to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of ISIL (ISIS), which took control of large swathes of both countries before it was eventually defeated.

The US is concerned that the Israel-Hamas conflict could spread through the Middle East and leave US troops at isolated bases exposed.

Iran and its supporters say the US shares responsibility for Israel’s declared war against the Palestinian armed group Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.

More than 180,000 people across France, including tens of thousands in Paris, have joined marches to condemn a surge in anti-Semitism amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.

As of Saturday, the interior minister said there had been 1,247 anti-Semitic acts since the war began on October 7, nearly three times as many as in the whole of 2022.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, former Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Holland, representatives of several parties on the left, and conservatives and centrists from President Emmanuel Macron’s party attended Sunday’s march in the French capital amid tight security.

Macron did not attend but expressed his support for the protest and called on citizens to rise up against “the unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism”.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, also stayed away, saying that the march would be a meeting of “friends of unconditional support for the massacre” in Gaza. He also questioned the attendance of Marine Le Pen given her party’s roots in anti-Semitism. The party was founded by her father who was convicted of Holocaust denial.

Police said 105,000 people had joined the Paris march, while interior ministry figures put the nationwide figure at 182,000. More than 70 events took place across the country, including in major cities Lyon, Nice and Strasbourg.

“Our order of the day today is… the total fight against anti-Semitism, which is the opposite of the values of the republic,” said Senate Speaker Gerard Larcher, who organised the rallies with lower house Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, as the marchers set off.

No major incidents were reported.

‘I feel less alone’

Holding a French flag, Robert Fiel said marching against anti-Semitism was “more than a duty”.

“It’s a march against violence, against anti-Semitism, against all [political extremes] that are infiltrating the society, to show that the silent majority does exist,” the 67-year-old said.

“We had grandparents who escaped being transported to the concentration camps, luckily they aren’t here to see that [anti-Semitism] is back,” said Laura Cohen, a marcher in her 30s.

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, numbering about 500,000 people.

“Everyone should feel like it’s their business” to combat anti-Jewish feeling, France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia told broadcaster Radio J.

Tensions had been rising in the French capital – home to large Jewish and Muslim communities – since the war began a month ago when the armed group Hamas launched a shock attack on Israel killing about 1,200 people and taking some 240 people captive.

In response, Israel began a bombardment on the densely-populated Gaza Strip that has so far killed at least 11,000 people.

Family members of some of the 40 French citizens killed in the initial Hamas attack, and of those missing or held captive, also took part in the march.

Patrick Klugman, a lawyer and a member of the “Freethem” committee working to obtain the captives’ release, said the large participation in the march was meaningful and symbolic in reassuring Jewish communities in France.

“I am very proud of my country because of this mobilisation,” Klugman said. “I feel less alone than in the past weeks and days.”

Among the recent anti-Semitic acts, Paris prosecutors are investigating an incident on October 31, when buildings in the city and suburbs were daubed with dozens of Stars of David.

The graffiti, which brought back memories of the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II and the deportation of Jews to death camps, was widely condemned.

Sunday’s march took place following a number of pro-Palestinian rallies in Paris calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Macron has recently also joined calls for a ceasefire, urging Israel to stop bombing Gaza.