Raw sewage, swarms of flies and mosquitoes, garbage piled high in the streets. As the heat of summer gathers, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are contending with a crisis in sanitation.

“The municipalities are not working, and waste in large piles is on our doorsteps and on the roads,” he said.

“We are seeing large quantities of flying insects for the first time… Frankly, we have insects that we see for the first time and we do not know their names, and they sting our bodies and the bodies of our children.”

Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza – launched in the wake of the October 7 attacks – is now into its eighth month and has triggered a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

Human rights groups have repeatedly sounded the alarm over “unspeakable” living conditions for Palestinians, as Israel’s military campaign has pulverized neighborhoods, damaged health infrastructure and depleted food, water and fuel supplies.

There is little sign of a resolution to the protracted and bloody conflict. A US-backed ceasefire plan was overwhelmingly approved by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) this week. But neither side has accepted it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he will continue until Hamas is destroyed and the remaining hostages are freed.

In an assessment this week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), stated that in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of displaced are sheltering, families say that shelters are overcrowded. They have reported a range of health issues, such as hepatitis A, skin diseases, and respiratory illnesses and say that access to water is also critically low.

At one displacement site, the average amount of water available per day was less than one liter per person, well below the internationally recognized minimum requirement for survival of three litres per day, according to OCHA.

A safe water supply is essential not just for drinking and cooking, but to prevent the spread of disease.

OCHA reported this week that more than two-thirds of water and sanitation facilities and infrastructure in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged due to the conflict. It added many other facilities are out of service due to challenges including “insecurity, access impediments, and lack of power and fuel to operate generators.”

OCHA said that people’s coping mechanisms are “heavily stretched,” with the most vulnerable collecting water from unreliable sources in inadequate containers, while lacking basic hygiene items like soap.

The average high temperature in Gaza in the coming week is expected to be in the low 30 degrees celsius, with warmer weather likely to worsen what is already a crisis in sanitation.

Roads ‘full of sewage’

Zayda, the Gaza City resident, told how an out-of-service swimming pool in his had become a magnet for insects.

“During the day, flies come, and at night, mosquitoes spread… We light fires at night and burn garbage until the flying insects disappear.”

Zayda spends much of the day wearing a mask, partly because some vehicles run on burned frying oil as an alternative to diesel, making breathing difficult.

“The roads are full of sewage running through the streets, waste and rubble from the bombing,” he said.

The treatment of sewage amid damage to infrastructure and a lack of fuel has become an enduring problem in Gaza.

Carl Skau, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, said after a tour of Gaza this week that a million people have been pushed out of Rafah and are now “trapped” in a “highly congested area along the beach in the burning summer heat.”

“We drove through rivers of sewage,” he said.

According to the OCHA, the delivery of some fuel supplies has helped reduce the level of accumulated wastewater in the Sheikh Radwan area in Gaza City, but “the lack of a steady flow of fuel creates a continued risk of sewage overflow into neighbouring areas.”

“There is significant damage to the sewer lines and sewage pumps, this has led to the leakage of sewage and wastewater throughout the city.”

He estimated that more than 4 kilometers of water pipelines had been destroyed or damaged, an immense stretch to repair in the middle of a war.

According to assessments by UN agencies and partner organizations published in the last week, 67% of water and sanitation facilities and infrastructure in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged due to conflict.

There are sporadic efforts to repair infrastructure. The Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross, has restored several wells in Khan Younis, Deir Al Balah and Nuseirat.

But the scale of the task, without a ceasefire and with limited fuel supplies and equipment, is far beyond the capability of local authorities in Gaza.

Fierce fighting is taking place around the Ukrainian town of Vovchansk as Kyiv’s troops seek to isolate Russian units that have advanced across the nearby border.

Heavy combat is underway at an aggregate plant on the northern edge of Vovchansk, according to military bloggers on both sides of the conflict.

One Ukrainian squad commander, Stanislav Buniatov, known as Osman, described the situation in Vovchansk, east of Kharkiv and a few miles from the state border, as “difficult but controlled” and said Russian troops are “surrounded”.

“Our guys are not losing their positions, occasionally conducting successful assaults, liberating positions and pushing the enemy back,” Buniatov said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.

Russian forces began coming across the border in numbers last month in a multi-pronged assault that the Kremlin said was designed to create a buffer zone that would prevent the Ukrainians from striking Russian cities such as Belgorod.

At first they took several villages close to the border and advanced to the edge of Vovchansk, which was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in September 2022 after being occupied for several months.

DeepState – a Ukrainian monitoring group – says small groups of Russian soldiers have repeatedly attempted to secure the aggregate plant, but have been repelled by Ukraine forces.

Suggesting that resupply to the Russian soldiers has become difficult, DeepState says that food and water are being delivered to them by drones.

Russian military blogger WarGonzo said on Telegram that fighting in the area is “fierce” as “Ukrainian troops are carrying out counterattacks, trying to dislodge the Russian Armed Forces from their occupied positions” but did not mention troops being surrounded.

On Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that “troops improved the situation along the front line and defeated the manpower and equipment” of Ukrainian troops in the “areas of the settlements of Vovchansk, Synelnykove and Vovchanski Khutory” in Kharkiv region.

Two employees of a pre-trial detention center in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don have been rescued after they were held hostage by six detainees in the facility for several hours on Sunday morning, according to Russian state media.

The Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Rostov region said the detainees were “eliminated” and the employees who were held were released without any injury, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Earlier, Russian state news agency TASS reported that some of the detainees involved were being held in pre-trial detention for cases of terrorist crimes and have links to the Islamic State, Russian state news agency TASS reported.

Photos and videos circulating Russian media of the incident appeared to show at least two of the detainees wearing a black band around their heads with a pro-Islamic Jihad logo and another detainee holding an ISIS flag. In one video, one man wearing the pro-Islamic Jihad logo on his forehead says the group are Islamic State.

Some anti-government bloggers have since expressed concerns that Russian operatives may have orchestrated the incident. One blogger, Vladimir Osechkin from prisoner rights group Gulagu.net, questioned how six “radically minded convicts were able to coordinate without the help of operatives” inside the facility.

The two employees, an operational officer and an inspector-supervisor, were taken Sunday morning by the group of detainees who demanded transport in exchange for the employees’ release, TASS reported citing law enforcement. The detainees were armed with a pocketknife, a rubber baton and a fire axe, Russian media reported citing law enforcement agencies.

Dozens of people have been killed and multiple others injured in an overnight Israeli airstrike on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza, according to hospital and government authorities in the Palestinian enclave.

The school, run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), was housing displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp at the time of the strike, the Gaza government media office said.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had taken “many measures” to minimize the danger in advance of the strike, including aerial surveillance and the use of “additional precise intelligence.”

The attack came after the IDF ramped up ground and air assaults in the center of the strip on Tuesday amid a deepening humanitarian crisis there. Palestinians in central Gaza have reported that the intensity and frequency of Israeli strikes in the last week have felt like the beginning of the war.

Gaza authorities said the dead and injured continue to be brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which is operating at three times its clinical capacity, “signaling a real disaster that will lead to a greater increase in the number of martyrs,” the Gaza media office said.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has supported Al-Aqsa hospital, said Wednesday it had taken in more than 70 people who had been killed, and more than 300 injured, in just 48 hours, amid an escalation in bombing and ground fighting.

Karin Huster, an MSF nurse, said in the group’s statement: “We have seen hospitals being bombed. We have seen refugee camps being bombed. We have seen humanitarian warehouses being bombed. The situation is apocalyptic.”

The latest attack also came as American, Egyptian and Qatari officials met in Doha to revive negotiations on a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The meetings follow a three-phase proposal — characterized as an Israeli plan — laid out by US President Joe Biden that would pair a release of hostages with a “full and complete ceasefire” in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said the country’s military offensive in Gaza would not be halted for any resumption of ceasefire and hostage release talks with Hamas.

“We are in a process of continuous engagement to wear down the enemy. Any negotiations with the terrorist organization Hamas will only be conducted under fire,” Gallant said in a recorded video statement.

South Korean activists sent balloons carrying K-pop and K-dramas on USB sticks to their northern neighbor on Thursday, days after North Korean balloons of trash and “filth” floated in the opposite direction.

The activist group Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK) released the giant balloons in the early hours of Thursday morning, with videos showing them floating away, some dragging giant posters visible from afar while others carried smaller plastic packages.

Inside the packages were 200,000 leaflets condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, 5,000 USB sticks containing South Korean music videos and television shows, and 2,000 one dollar bills, according to FFNK.

Groups such as FFNK have been sending these kinds of balloons for years, carrying items prohibited in the isolated totalitarian dictatorship – including food, medicine, radios, propaganda leaflets and pieces of South Korean news.

In May, North Korea responded by sending its own giant balloons back south – containing trash, soil, pieces of paper and plastic, and what South Korean authorities described as “filth.”

Pyongyang claimed to have sent a total of 3,500 balloons carrying 15 tonnes of trash to its neighbor, according to state media KCNA, citing North Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il.

Those balloons began landing in the South last week, temporarily disrupting flights and prompting authorities to warn residents to stay indoors. As of Monday, the South Korean military had found about 1,000 balloons.

South Korean activists say they will continue to send the balloons north – even though doing so was banned by the government years ago.

FFNK leader Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector who fled to the South years ago, described the materials they sent as “letters of truth and freedom.”

As a young man in North Korea, these balloons had offered him a rare glimpse into the outside world, he said. He recalled being in a public square in 1992 when “I heard a huge balloon in the sky.”

“This round thing suddenly popped with a loud bang, then leaflets fell from the sky. I knew I wasn’t supposed to look at those things, so I put one in my pocket and went to the bathroom to check it out,” he said.

The leaflet he pocketed contained stories about North Korean defectors and their escapes, some of whom had crossed into China before heading toward South Korea.

Eight years later, Park fled the North – arriving in South Korea in 2000, and beginning his mission to send balloons across the border in 2006.

The leaflets he sends carry information about the Kim family, including the assassination of the leader’s half-brother Kim Jong Nam — as well as booklets about South Korea’s economic and political development, including photos of the main Seoul airport and the country’s fighter jets.

Meanwhile, some South Korean residents living near the border are now on edge.

“I lived through the Korean War and other difficulties, and I was worried … What if we have another war?” said 84-year-old Song Kwang-ja, a resident of Yongin city, on Thursday.

“That reminded me of the old days. I still get goosebumps thinking and talking about it,” she said, adding that the balloons “felt like a childish prank.”

The incident has also worsened strained relations between the two countries. South Korea announced this week it would resume “all military activities” near the demarcation line – suspending a 2018 agreement signed by both nations at a brief time of relatively warm relations.

A man has died after falling from a 1,981 foot (604-meter-high) cliff in Norway that featured in a “Mission Impossible” film.

Preikestolen, known in English as “Pulpit Rock” is a cliff in southwestern Norway overlooking the Lysefjord. It is one of Norway’s most famous mountain hikes and sees more than 300,000 visitors a year, according to the country’s official tourism website.

Nina Thommesen, police attorney for the Sør-Vest politidistrikt, confirmed that a man in his 40s had died on Monday. She said the man was traveling alone and was found with his phone and ID. He has not yet been officially identified, but the police say they are “reasonably certain” of his identity.

Two witnesses were questioned on Monday, including one who saw the incident happen. He explained that the man slipped and fell.

Although it is “the most iconic natural landmark in Norway,” according to the non-profit which manages the site, Preikestolen grew in fame when it was featured in the sixth “Mission Impossible” film, starring Tom Cruise.

It was used as a filming location – doubling for Kashmir – in “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” for an action sequence at the end of the 2018 film, where the film’s two central characters fall off the cliff.

For the premiere of the film, 2,000 people hiked 4 kilometres (2.4 miles) to the cliff to see it projected by lasers at night. Cruise praised the premiere, calling it “the most impossible screening” of the film.

The film was expected to have a positive impact on the area and local tourism, according to the Preikestolen non-profit, who work to preserve the area and keep it safe for visitors.

At least four people were killed and more than 20 others injured when a passenger train collided with a freight train in the Czech Republic on Wednesday night, authorities said.

Rescue operations have ended and authorities will investigate what caused the crash in the city of Pardubice, police said Thursday.

About 380 people were traveling aboard the passenger train, the Fire Rescue Service said. It was traveling overnight from Prague to the city of Chop in western Ukraine, according to operator RegioJet’s website.

The freight train was carrying calcium carbide – a hazardous industrial chemical – although the first two wagons were empty, so no leak occurred, the fire department said.

Footage after the crash on news website idnes.cz showed at least one carriage off the track, while police showed a line of emergency service vehicles and a helicopter in a post on X, Reuters reported.

This story has been updated with additional information.

South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) party faces a mammoth challenge as it needs to form a government with its political rivals after suffering a seismic blow in last week’s election.

On Wednesday, the ANC’s national spokesperson insisted that any coalition government would be in the interests of unity and stability and hinted at a government of national unity of some kind.

“The ANC has taken the position that we must all act in the interest of our country and its people, and work on a national consensus on the form of government that is best suited to move South Africa forward at this moment in our history,” Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri told a press briefing.

Still, some of the same parties that sought the ANC’s demise will now have to play a part in governing South Africa.

For decades, the ANC could rule alone, but support for the the party plummeted to around 40% in last Wednesday’s elections, down from 57% in 2019.

Analysts and opinion polls had forecast losses for the ANC but a pivotal factor in the party’s staggering decline was former President Jacob Zuma and his newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which capitalized on widespread discontent within the ANC’s traditional voter base.

Zuma’s revenge

Zuma – a fierce critic of current ANC leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – was forced to resign as president in 2018 and has been looking for political revenge ever since.

His MK party, named after the ANC’s former armed wing, appears to have achieved just that – formed just five months ago, it is now the third-largest party in South Africa, receiving almost 15% of the vote.

Zuma positioned MK as “a party that is meant to restore the ANC to its former glory,” said political analyst Tessa Dooms, programmes director at the Rivonia Circle non-profit organization/political think tank in Johannesburg. She says many MK voters saw this ballot as a protest vote.

Despite Zuma being barred from running for parliament by the Constitutional Court because of a previous contempt of court violation, the 82-year-old’s face remained on the ballot paper.

Zuma is no stranger to controversy or the courtroom. He has faced hundreds of corruption, fraud and racketeering charges over the years. He has always denied all of them and became known as the “Teflon President” because few politicians could have survived the scandals he weathered.

Ramaphosa replaced him as president when Zuma was finally forced to resign. Later revelations of “state capture” – or rampant corruption riveted the nation in an anti-corruption commission. Much of the focus was on Zuma’s relationship with the influential and wealthy Gupta brothers.

With the ANC’s popularity now at an all-time low and as Ramaphosa’s political future hangs in the balance, Zuma could have the last laugh. But it is too early to tell.

Due to the poor election showing, South Africa’s political landscape has been fundamentally altered, leaving the ANC with the daunting task of forming a coalition government.

In many countries, coalition talks can take months, but South Africa’s constitution gives rival parties a short window to do something they have never really done before: come together.

According to the constitution, rival parties have a mere 14 days to create a coalition after the final election results are announced.

The outcome of these talks will likely determine Ramaphosa’s future as president.

Ramaphosa’s allies in the party are digging in. On Sunday, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula warned potential coalition partners that the president’s resignation is “not going to happen.”

The potential coalition partners present starkly different political ideologies and policy priorities.

A marriage of convenience

First, there is the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), a broadly centrist and pro-business party that has heavily criticized the ANC for many years.

Led by John Steenhuisen, it is seen by many as a party for White South Africans, something the DA rejects. Steenhuisen has not ruled out going into a coalition with the ANC.

A DA-ANC alliance, however it would form, would likely keep Ramaphosa in his job, say analysts.

“The only way Ramaphosa stays is through a DA-ANC coalition. Outside that, the other parties, MK and EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters), have made it clear the first point of negotiation is he must go,” said TK Pooe, a senior lecturer at Wits School of Governance.

If the ANC were to pair with the DA, which received 21.8% of the vote, their combined support would amount to more than 60%, an outright majority. However, this relationship would require both parties to make some major compromises.

While in government, the ANC’s flagship policy for driving economic inclusion and racial equality in post-apartheid South Africa has been its Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy, known as triple-BEE or simply BEE.

The BEE policy has been criticized by some as neither broad-based, nor empowering.

In contrast, the DA has said it would replace BEE with an “Economic Justice Policy” that “targets the poor black majority for redress, rather than a small, connected elite.”

The DA is also against the ANC’s flagship National Health Insurance Act (NIH) in its current form. The act, which was signed into law two weeks before the election, seeks to provide universal health care for all and gradually limit the role of private health insurers.

However, both parties believe in the primacy of South Africa’s constitution and both have promised to crack down on corruption. Awkwardly, the DA is currently pressing corruption charges against the ANC’s deputy president, Paul Mashatile.

In a move to appease internal critics, the ANC-DA coalition could be expanded to include smaller parties, or the ANC could form a minority government with a “confidence-and-supply” agreement with opposition partners like the DA and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), where they remain outside of government but support it on key votes in exchange for policy concessions.

A bitter pill to swallow?

If the ANC decides to pursue coalition talks with MK, then Zuma will want Ramaphosa out, solidifying his revenge.

However, if South Africa’s president maintains his grip on the ANC, a coalition with MK is unlikely.

The MK party’s manifesto also demands an overhaul of the country’s constitution to restore more powers to traditional leaders.

By appealing to his Zulu base, Zuma’s party has also stirred ethnic and tribal tensions, a strategy that, while electorally effective, risks deepening divisions in South Africa, Verwoerd added.

The ANC’s policies, grounded in the principles of non-racial and non-tribal governance, are at odds with this approach.

It is also currently unclear how much MK actually wants to govern. Despite doing well at the polls, the party has demanded a re-run, threatened court action, and suggested boycotting the first sitting of Parliament. However, it has provided no evidence of voting irregularities.

The other option for a coalition is the EFF, led by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, who was expelled from the party more than a decade ago. The breakaway party espouses land expropriation without compensation and sweeping state nationalism, including nationalizing the Reserve Bank.

Malema has said he would give the EFF vote to the ANC on the condition that his deputy, Floyd Shivambu, becomes Minister of Finance in an effort to control fiscal policy.

South Africa’s business community and middle class are broadly nervous about an EFF–ANC coalition and its effect on investor confidence. The DA calls it part of a “doomsday” option because of the potential impact on investment and trade.

The EFF won just under 10% of the vote, so any coalition with the ANC would need to include at least another party in the mix to give it a healthy majority. The IFP, with almost 4% of the vote, could be such a kingmaker.

Aside from a classic coalition deal or a “confidence and supply” agreement, another hypothetical option on the table would be a “government of national unity” (GNU), bringing in all the major parties.

This scenario would hark back to the post-apartheid era when South Africa operated under a GNU to oversee the new constitution, led by Mandela as president and FW de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki as deputy presidents, between April 1994 and February 1997.

With less than two weeks to finalize coalition agreements, South Africa’s political future remains uncertain; the ANC must navigate this complex landscape to form a stable government and address the challenges that have led to its diminished support, while Ramaphosa’s leadership hangs in the balance amidst Zuma’s dramatic comeback.

Roman Gorilyk is now little more than a skeleton. His ribs and collarbones are sticking out, his belly is sunken, his shoulder and hip joints clearly visible under his pale skin.

Gorilyk’s extreme emaciation appears to be the result of the two years he spent in Russian captivity. The former checkpoint guard at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine was detained by Russian troops in March 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

He was finally released on Friday, one of 75 Ukrainians exchanged for 75 Russian prisoners of war.

The Ukrainian authorities released several photographs of Gorilyk, 40, on Wednesday to show the toll they say Russian captivity has taken on him.

“The condition of Roman and other Ukrainian prisoners of war evokes horror and associations with the darkest pages of human history – Nazi concentration death camps,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian government body, said in a statement posted on Telegram alongside the photos.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the prisoners returned to Ukraine in a “horrifying” state. “The torture by starvation is monstrous, the beatings and violence are sophisticated,” he said in a statement posted on X, accusing Russia of ignoring international human rights agreements.

“There are no Geneva Conventions anymore… Russia again thinks it can avoid being held accountable for massive war crimes,” he said.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the set of international laws that regulate armed conflict, prisoners of war must be treated humanely and with dignity, and must be provided with basic daily food rations that are “sufficient in quantity, quality and variety to keep prisoners of war in good health and to prevent loss of weight or the development of nutritional deficiencies.”

The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said Gorilyk was among 169 guards who were taken by the invading Russian forces and transported to Russia via Belarus. It said that 89 of these people are still being held captive, and that Moscow is using them in exchange for Russian servicemen captured in battle.

American John Poulos was sentenced on Tuesday to more than 42 years in prison by a Colombian court, after he was found guilty of aggravated femicide in the killing of a young Colombian DJ named Valentina Trespalacios, as well as crimes of concealment, alteration or destruction of evidence.

The killing occurred in Bogotá in January 2023, and has since captured public attention in Colombia. Before her death, Trespalacios was beginning to gain success at music festivals and had been in a romantic relationship with Poulos since 2021, according to accounts from her family and lawyers who took her case.

The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia said in a statement after the ruling that its prosecutors had proven that Poulos struck and suffocated his partner and tried to hide the body.

“The security camera records show that the aggressor wrapped the victim’s body, hid it in a suitcase and abandoned it in a garbage container in the town of Fontibón, in the west of Bogotá. It was found there hours later by the authorities,” the AG office said.

During Tuesday’s court proceedings, the judge considered that the evidence presented by the prosecutors was sufficient to determine Poulos’ guilt, imposing a prison sentence of 42 years and eight months – about five years less than what prosecutors had requested.

Additionally, the judge prohibited Poulos from approaching or attempting to communicate with Trespalacios’ family for 20 years, and ordered that he be expelled from Colombia once he completes his sentence.

Poulos’ defense team has said it will appeal the judgement. It had argued that Poulos was innocent of femicide and that he should instead be tried for homicide, which would carry a lesser sentence.

In Colombia, femicide — the killing of a woman because of her gender — is considered a more serious crime than homicide. Under Colombian law, femicide is often punished with a higher penalty.

Defense lawyer Fredy Spíndola told the Focus Noticias channel that he and his client believe the witnesses “were all in cahoots, that they all said the same thing.”

The victim’s legal team, meanwhile, celebrated the sentence, saying it recognizes that Trespalacios was a victim of various types of violence.

“It is a fair decision for us, which is also consistent with the material evidentiary elements, with the theory of the case that we had from the beginning. From the beginning, we established that we were facing objectification, an instrumentalization of a woman through various factors, psychological violence, violence of various types, including physical violence,” lawyer Miguel Ángel del Río told Focus Noticias.

Poulos was detained in Panama in January 2023, when he was trying to fly to Turkey. He was then deported to Colombia, where he denied the charges against him. He was sentenced almost a year and a half after Trespalacios’ death.

Del Río also pointed out that only until the conviction is made final in a second-instance appellate court will Trespalacios’ family be able to seek reparation for damages.