At least 29 people have died in a blaze which started during daytime repair work at a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, state media reported Tuesday.

A further eight people were injured, with seven of those in serious condition, the Istanbul governor’s office said.

The governor’s office said the fire started in the Besiktas district in central Istanbul on the European side of the city, and that all of the victims were construction workers.

The blaze started during renovations at the site, which is located underground, says Anadolu, the Turkish news state agency.

Turkish authorities have detained eight people in connection with the fire, including the business manager of the nightclub, its accountant and partners, as well as the person responsible for the metal workers related to the renovation, TRT News reported.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said authorities were collecting evidence from the site.

“A team of 3 experts specializing in occupational safety and fire is also continuing their work to determine the cause of the fire,” he wrote on X.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, sent his condolences on social media.

“May God have mercy on our citizens who lost their lives,” he wrote on X.

Imamoglu, of the opposition Republic People’s Party (CHP), was re-elected as mayor on Sunday in local elections that marked the biggest election defeat to date for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) Party.

Umut Sevdi Tangör in Istanbul contributed to this report.

Ancient glass sponges. A Barbie-pink sea pig sauntering along the seafloor. A transparent unicumber hovering in the depths.

These wonders are just an initial snapshot of fantastic creatures discovered 1,640 miles (5,000 meters) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in a pristine area that’s earmarked as a site for deep-sea mining of critical and rare metals. The natural resources are in high demand for use in solar panels, electric car batteries and other green technologies, among other uses.

The 45-day expedition to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which wrapped March 20, documented biodiversity in the abyssal plain. Using a remotely operated vehicle, the team on board the UK research ship James Cook photographed the deep-sea life and took samples for future study.

“We can assume that many of these species will be new to science. Sometimes they have been seen/observed/known before, but not collected or formally described,” said Regen Drennan, a postdoctoral marine biologist at London’s Natural History Museum.

“These specimens will be brought to the NHM London to be identified and studied for years to come.”

The voyage was the second conducted by a UK initiative known as the Seabed Mining and Resilience to Experimental Impact, or SMARTEX, project, involving the Natural History Museum, National Oceanography Centre, British Geological Survey and other institutions.

The US Geological Survey estimates that 21.1 billion dry tons of polymetallic nodules exist in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — containing more reserves of many critical metals than the world’s land-based reserves combined.

If deep-sea mining follows the same trajectory as offshore oil production, more than one-third of these critical metals will come from deep-ocean mines by 2065, the federal agency estimated.

Scientists believe many of the life-forms that call this environment home would be unlikely to recover from the removal of the nodules and are calling for protections, according to the Natural History Museum.

Weighing biodiversity and industry

In international waters, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is beyond the jurisdiction of any one country. The International Seabed Authority, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, has issued 17 exploration contracts. However, several countries, including the United Kingdom and France, have expressed caution, supporting a moratorium or ban on deep-sea mining to safeguard marine ecosystems and conserve biodiversity.

Some 6,000 to 8,000 species could be waiting to be discovered in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, according to a June 2023 study published in the journal Current Biology.

The pink amperima sea cucumber, nicknamed the “Barbie pig,” is one of the largest invertebrates living on the deep-sea floor. Along with the transparent unicumber, the creature is a type of sea pig within the scientific family called Elpidiidae. The Barbie pig grazes upon the small amounts of detritus that descend from surface waters to the seabed and are important in terms of cycling organic matter, explained Drennan, who wasn’t directly involved in the expedition.

“Many species in this family have developed long stout legs that allow them to walk across the seafloor, and elongated mouthparts to pick and choose the detritus they feed on,” Drennan said via email.

The expedition also captured images of elegant, cup-shaped glass sponges, which are thought to have the longest life span of any creature on the planet — up to 15,000 years, although the expedition team doesn’t know how old the sponges they photographed are.

Sea anemones, close relatives of jellyfish, “fill the role of large sit-and-wait carnivores on the deep sea floor, catching small swimming animals in their tentacles,” she added.

Many of the life-forms that live in these depths are reliant on the polymetallic nodules, which form ever so gradually through chemical processes that cause metals to precipitate out of water around shell fragments and shark teeth, according to the Natural History Museum.

Researchers estimate that it takes roughly 1 million years for these nodules to grow just tens of millimeters in size. The largest known nodules reach around 8 inches (20 centimeters) across, which suggests that these environments have remained virtually unchanged at the bottom of the ocean for tens of millions of years.

Critics say that noise could disrupt marine mammals such as whales and dolphins, while plumes of sediment, potentially containing toxic compounds, kicked up by equipment on the seabed may disperse, harming midwater ecosystems, according to recent research.

It’s also possible, these scientists warn, that deep-sea mining could disrupt the way carbon is stored in the ocean, contributing to the climate crisis.

The Palestinian Authority is again requesting membership in the United Nations, according to a post on X from the Palestinian permanent observer mission to the UN on Tuesday.

“Today, the State of Palestine, and upon instructions of the Palestinian leadership, sent a letter to the Secretary General requesting renewed consideration to (our) membership application,” the post read.

The post included a letter, signed by UN Ambassador of the Palestinian Territories Riyad Mansour, which referenced an initial September 2011 application for membership status and requested renewed consideration this month.

In September 2011, the Palestinian Authority failed to win UN recognition as an independent member state. A year later, the UN decided that the Palestinian Authority’s “non-member observer entity” status would be changed to “non-member observer state,” similar to the Vatican.

The Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by the Fatah political party, held administrative control over Gaza until 2007, after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories and expelled it from the strip. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The US favors a reformed Palestinian Authority leading both the West Bank and Gaza as part of an eventual independent state. But Israel has rejected the prospect of the Palestinian Authority returning to Gaza after the ongoing war, and has dismissed the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the territories.

Amid intense international pressure for the Palestinian Authority to reform, a new cabinet led by Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mustafa was officially sworn in on Sunday in Ramallah, according to Palestinian official news agency WAFA.

“Our political goal is to achieve freedom, independence and liberation from the occupation, and we are working with concerned Arab and international parties to obtain full membership in the United Nations,” Abbas said during a meeting with the new government, according to WAFA.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Eight Chinese migrants have been found dead on the coast of southern Mexico, authorities said, after their boat capsized along a popular but perilous route for illegally entering the United States.

The bodies of the seven women and one man were discovered Friday on a beach in San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, the state’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Treacherous boat rides up the coast of Mexico are often used by migrants hoping to cross into the US in an attempt to bypass checkpoints on closely monitored land routes.

The Oaxaca prosecutor’s office said the migrants had traveled on a boat operated by a Mexican man, which set off Thursday from Tapachula, Chiapas state, near the Guatemala border. One Chinese man survived the trip, the statement said. It did not explain what happened to the boat’s operator.

The prosecutor’s office said it was working with federal agencies to investigate the incident and the Chinese embassy in Mexico to identify the bodies.

The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the US from Mexico has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023, more than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, US government data shows – compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.

A dangerous but popular route

Iris Wang, 35, said she chose to take the boat to reach Oaxaca instead of the bus to avoid running into police on the road, without fully anticipating the danger.

“Those few hours were a nightmare that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. It was too terrifying,” she said.

Wang said she and more than three dozen migrants were crammed into a boat roughly the size of two sedans. The vessel was so crowded that they had to sit with their legs crossed and couldn’t move at all.

The boat departed after midnight and immediately ran into a fierce storm in the pitch-black ocean.

“We were all shaken with fear. The waves were so high that we were repeatedly thrust into the air, all intertwined together, before falling to hit the bottom of the boat with a loud, painful bang. If it was a little higher, we would have been knocked out of the boat,” she said.

“I kept shaking and crying, and I silently chanted in my mind: I can’t die like this.”

Looking back at the journey, Wang said she felt incredibly lucky to have survived. “I never want to see the sea at night again,” she said.

The influx of Chinese migrants spotlights the urgency many now feel to leave their homeland, even amid what Chinese leader Xi Jinping has claimed is a “national rejuvenation.”

Many Chinese who left the country point to a struggle to survive.

Three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions left people across China out of work – and disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight grip on all aspects of life under Xi.

And hope that business would fully rebound once restrictions ended a year ago has vanished, with China’s once envious economic growth stuttering.

Other migrants nod to restrictions on personal life in China, where Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on free speech, civil society and religion in the country of 1.4 billion.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included an image of a Japanese passport. It has been replaced.

A mayoral candidate has been assassinated and three others injured in a shooting in the Mexican city of Celaya, in the latest violence to mar the run-up to the country’s looming general election.

Bertha Gisela Gaytán, a mayoral candidate for Celaya, died on Monday after being shot while campaigning in the community of San Miguel Octopan, the Guanajuato state prosecutor’s office said, describing her death as an assassination.

Three other people were also injured in the attack, including a candidate for Celaya’s city council Adrián Guerrero.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Federal Public Security said Tuesday that Guerrero was currently considered missing, correcting its earlier declaration that he had died following injuries sustained in the same attack.

Authorities said investigators and forensic experts were at the scene collecting information to track the killers.

Gaytán’s death is the latest in a spate of killings that have taken place in the run-up to Mexico’s general election, which is expected to be held on June 2.

Gaytán had been campaigning for Morena, the party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Lopez Obrador on Tuesday condemned the attack, saying, “These events are very regrettable because they are people who are fighting to assert democracy, who are in the streets, showing their faces, fighting for others and it hurts a lot that this happens in our country.”

Morena said it deeply regretted the “cowardly murder of our colleague.”

“We send our condolences and all solidarity to her family, friends and loved ones. We demand that the Guanajuato prosecutor’s office and the corresponding authorities investigate, arrest those responsible, and bring justice.”

According to the public affairs consultancy Integralia, from September to March, at least 12 candidates were killed and hundreds reported acts of violence against them.

Criminal gangs are known to finance campaigns during election season, intimidating candidates and violently intervening to compel politicians to cooperate with them, according to a report from Integralia Consultants. It added that criminal organizations center their attacks at the municipal level because mayors can offer them impunity in the territory due to their links with law enforcement and the local economy.

Guanajuato, a major manufacturing hub and production site for many of the world’s top carmakers, has been convulsed in recent years by brutal turf wars between rival drug gangs, who value it for the same reason as the carmakers: road and rail networks that lead straight to the US border.

Shortly before Monday’s attack, Gaytán had told a political rally that she had requested security. “Assistance has already been requested through the state legal system in the party. We are looking at this issue, to see how it is resolved. The citizens are with us, they take care of us, but of course we are going to have [security] protocols,” Gaytán said.

Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo condemned the attack, saying it will not go unpunished.

He also said he would work with state officials to make sure those who participate in electoral processes have all the protection they need.

On June 2, more than 100 million Mexicans will be called to vote in a general election where 20,375 positions will be elected, of which 19,746 are local and 629 are federal, including the presidency.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to shut down news network Al Jazeera following the passage Monday of a sweeping law allowing the government to ban foreign networks perceived as posing a threat to national security.

Netanyahu said he intended “to act immediately in accordance with the new law” to stop the Qatari-based news outlet’s activity in the country, according to a post on social media platform X following the passage of the law.

Al Jazeera Media Network, which has produced dogged, on the ground reporting of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, slammed the decision in a statement, vowing it would not stop the network from continuing its “bold and professional coverage.”

The new law gives the prime minister and communications minister authority to order the temporary closure of foreign networks operating in Israel – powers that rights groups say could have far-reaching implications on international media coverage of the war in Gaza.

Its approval by Parliament Monday comes months into Israel’s war against Hamas and as Netanyahu faces mounting public pressure – and large public protests – over his handling of operations in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s government has also long complained about Al Jazeera’s operations, alleging anti-Israeli bias.

In his statement on X Monday, the prime minister accused the network of being a trumpet for Hamas and accused it of “actively participating in the October 7 massacre and inciting against IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers.”

Al Jazeera, which is funded in part by the Qatari government, said these were “slanderous accusations” that “jeopardize” not only the reputation of Al Jazeera but also the safety and rights of its employees worldwide.

Rights groups condemned the move to shutter Al Jazeera and the law’s potential implications.

In a statement the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “deeply concerned” by the new legislation.

“The law grants the government the power to close any foreign media outlets operating in Israel, posing a significant threat to international media within the country,” program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said, adding it would “contribute to a climate of self-censorship and hostility toward the press.”

The White House also called reports of the move to shutter Al Jazeera “concerning.”

“The United States supports the critically important work journalists around the world do. And that includes those who are reporting in the conflict in Gaza,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday during a press briefing.

The move also comes during a critical period for relations between the Israeli and Qatari governments. The Gulf State has played a key role in ceasefire negotiations in the on-going war.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas began on October 7 when Hamas carried out a deadly attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to Israel.

Israeli forces have since launched months of ongoing bombardment and ground operations in the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza, where the death toll stands higher than 32,000, according to the Ministry of Health in the strip.

Targeting Al Jazeera

The new law places a raft of restrictions on Al Jazeera in Israel, giving the government authority to take action against offices operated by the network and confiscate equipment and reporters’ press cards. It can also restrict its broadcasts and public access to its website.

Al Jazeera has an office in Jerusalem, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.

Since the start of the war, it has produced critical, on-the-ground coverage of Israeli military operations and their humanitarian impact on the embattled enclave.

Last month, a United Nations spokesperson condemned the reported arrest and assault of Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul while he was reporting from the Al Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.

Several Al Jazeera reporters and their family members have also been killed in Israeli air strikes, according to the network.

On October 25, an air raid killed the family of Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, including his wife, son, daughter, grandson and at least eight other relatives, it said.

Al Jazeera broadcast Dahdouh as he walked into the morgue to view the bodies of his family in a heart-wrenching moment that provided a window for the world into the grief and loss experienced by many Gaza residents as Israeli’s military operations got underway.

Israeli’s passage of the law and move to ban the network comes amid mounting concerns from press freedom groups about causalities among journalists operating in war zones there and what they describe as obstruction of journalistic work by Israeli authorities.

As of April 1, 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ preliminary investigations showed at least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began.

Palestinian journalists, including those working for a handful of international news agencies still operating inside Gaza, are vital witnesses to what is happening there. Israel’s military have taken some foreign reporters inside Gaza on a small number of escorted trips since October 7. But both Israel and Egypt, which control Gaza’s borders, have so far refused to let international journalists have unfettered access.

Venezuela is battling a record number of wildfires, according to data released on Monday, as a climate change-driven drought plagues the Amazon rainforest region.

Satellites registered more than 30,200 fire points in Venezuela from January to March, the highest level for that period since records started in 1999, according to Brazil’s Inpe research agency, which monitors all of South America.

That includes fires in the Amazon, as well as the country’s other forests and grasslands.

Man-made fires that are often set to clear land for agriculture are spreading out of control thanks to high temperatures and low rainfall in northern South America, as well as a lack of prevention planning, researchers say.

Scientists blame the drought on climate change and El Niño, a natural warming in the eastern Pacific that roils global weather patterns.

While the rainy season has brought relief in recent months further south in Brazil’s Amazon, the fires in Venezuela could be a worrying sign for what’s ahead once the dry season arrives there, said Manoela Machado, a fire researcher at University of Oxford.

“Everything is indicating we’re going to see other events of catastrophic fires — megafires that are huge in size and height,” Machado said.

The region’s most intense fires typically occur in Brazil in August and September along the southeastern edge of the Amazon, where deforestation for agriculture is most aggressive.

In Venezuela, roughly 400 firefighters fought a major blaze over the Easter holiday weekend that is threatening the lush Henri Pittier National Park, a beachfront preserve with rare cloud forests, according to the national park service.

“I am shocked, if not to say alarmed, by this fire,” said Carlos Carruido Perez, who lives nearby. “I had never seen a fire of this magnitude and this damage to the environment.”

Venezuela’s environment ministry said last month it had launched a coordinated effort with helicopters and additional equipment to fight the fires in Henri Pittier.

The ministry said last week it was mounting further firefighting efforts along a highway that cuts through the park.

In Venezuela’s Amazon region further south, there are 5,690 active fires as of late March, according to NASA data. That accounts for more than half of all the blazes burning in the entire Amazon across nine countries.

The fires are blanketing with smoke Guayana City, Venezuela’s largest urban center in the Amazon, according to a Reuters witness.

In the nearby town of Uverito, authorities evacuated 315 families from their homes due to the threat of fire, local media reported.

Some 360 square kilometers have burned in Uverito, an area six times the size of Manhattan, according to Jose Rafael Lozada, a forestry engineer and retired professor at Universidad de Los Andes in Merida, Venezuela.

Miracle-working firefighters

The same hotter, drier weather helping to feed fires in Venezuela is driving fires across the border in Brazil’s Roraima state, which are threatening indigenous reserves there.

Venezuela and Roraima have seen only 10% to 25% of their normal rainfall levels in the last 30 to 90 days, said Michael Coe, director of the tropics program at the US-based Woodwell Climate Research Center.

The region is in a vicious cycle in which climate change contributes to dry and hot conditions that worsen fires, with those fires in turn releasing greenhouse gasses that further drive climate change, Lozada said.

Fires generally do not occur naturally in the wet rainforest. Humans set the vast majority of fires to clear forest for farms and ranches, a long-held practice, he said.

“People burn the same, but the drought is more extreme. The vegetation is drier, the rains are scarce and we see the consequences: a small burn turns into a fire of great magnitude,” Lozada added.

The Amazon drought has upended life in the world’s largest rainforest since last year as it pushed river levels to record lows, killed endangered dolphins and disrupted boats carrying food and medicine to dozens of cities.

Despite a wealth of information tracking fires and flagging the climate risks that lie ahead, governments throughout the region are still failing to mount a robust response to prevent and combat the fires, Oxford’s Machado said.

Governments should ban setting fires during dry periods, mount faster targeted response to stop fires before they get out of control and hire firefighters year-round instead of temporarily, she said.

In Venezuela, Lozada, firefighters and other experts said the government response was lacking.

Venezuela’s information ministry and parks service did not respond to requests for comment.

“The forest is unprotected due to a lack of equipment to fight forest fires,” said William Lopez, a union leader with the state-owned forestry company Maderas del Orinoco.
“Firefighters have to work miracles to be able to fight fires without equipment.”

Foreign nationals were among seven aid workers killed in an Israeli military strike as they were delivering food to starving civilians in Gaza, according to non-profit group World Central Kitchen and authorities in the besieged enclave.

World Central Kitchen said its aid workers were traveling in a “deconflicted zone” in two armored cars branded with the charity’s logo as well as “a soft skin vehicle.”

“Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route,” the group said in a statement.

Those killed include a dual US-Canada national, as well as people from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, and a Palestinian, the group said.

“I am heartbroken and appalled that we – World Central Kitchen and the world – lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF,” World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore said in the statement.

“The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished,” Gore added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it is “conducting a thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Tuesday that he had spoken to World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres to express “the deepest condolences of the Israel Defense Forces to the families and the entire World Central Kitchen family.”

World Central Kitchen said it was pausing its operations following the deadly strike and assessing the future of its operations in Gaza.

The Washington headquartered charity provides meals to disaster-struck regions and communities around the world. It is one of the few aid organizations delivering desperately needed food in Gaza where 2.2 million people do not have enough to eat, and where aid agencies warn half of the population is on the brink of starvation and famine due to Israel’s throttling of aid and widespread destruction.

“Today @WCKitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza,” Andres, the charity’s founder, wrote on X. “I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family.”

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he added.

“These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless…they are not nameless.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese identified the Australian victim as Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom.

“This is someone who volunteered in Australia to help people during the bushfires. This is someone who was volunteering overseas to provide aid through this charity for people who are suffering tremendous deprivation in Gaza,” Albanese said.

“Australia expects full accountability for the deaths of aid workers, which is completely unacceptable.”

He said the Australian government has already contacted the Israeli government directly, and that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had requested a “call-in” from the Israeli ambassador to Australia.

Polish authorities confirmed that one of its nationals, Damian Sobol from the town of Przemysl, was killed as well.

Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said he personally asked Israel’s envoy to the country to deliver an “urgent” explanation. Sikorski said he was assured “that Poland would soon receive the results of the investigation into this tragedy.”

Saif Issam Abu-Taha, a Palestinian driver and translator working with World Central Kitchen, was named as one of the victims by Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza.

Hamas condemned the attack in a statement on Tuesday, urging the international community and the United Nations to “take action.”

“This crime once again confirms that the occupation continues its policy of deliberate killing of innocent civilians, international relief teams, and humanitarian organizations, in its efforts to terrorize those working in them and prevent them from carrying out their humanitarian duties,” it said in the statement.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said on X that the White House was “heartbroken and deeply troubled” by the killings. Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Beijing was “shocked” by the attack.

Other charities were quick to mourn the losses and praise World Central Kitchen’s commitment to helping those in need in the face of danger.

Matthew Hollingworth, the World Food Programme’s Palestine director praised the “life-saving work” of those killed, while Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland called for an immediate ceasefire.

“Nowhere else are so many aid workers killed,” Egeland said.

Aid workers under attack

World Central Kitchen was “an NGO that that the IDF worked very closely with, because part of what World Central Kitchen did was to bring food to Gaza through the sea,” Ravid said.

“The IDF wanted to show that by working with this organization, it is addressing the food shortages in Gaza,” he added. “And now a few days later, the IDF allegedly hits … aid workers from this organization.”

Ravid pointed out that this isn’t the first time aid workers have allegedly come under fire by Israeli forces. The vast majority of aid workers who have been killed have been Palestinians and their families.

Since the latest war began following Hamas’ October 7 murder and kidnap rampage through southern Israel, at least 165 workers with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) have been killed, the agency said last month.

The World Central Kitchen has made headlines in recent years for coordinating food relief for thousands of people after an earthquake devastated Haiti, Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, wildfires scorched Southern California, and a refugee crisis intensified on the Venezuelan border.

In March, the non-profit led an initiative to ship 200 tons of food aid to Gaza – which it said was the first maritime shipment of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave.

The shipment included enough ingredients for 500,000 meals that World Central Kitchen planned to distribute in the strip, where hundreds of thousands people are on the brink of famine.

This is a developing story and has been updated.

A child has died and two others have been seriously injured in a school shooting in Finland, according to the country’s national police.

The victims were 12 years old. A suspect, also aged 12 and a student at the same school, fled on foot but was later caught by police in a suburb north of the Finnish capital Helsinki, according the country’s public broadcaster, YLE.

Officers were called to Viertola school in the city of Vantaa at around 9 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) Tuesday, YLE said.

The handgun used in the shooting was licensed to a close relative of the shooter, YLE reported, adding that police said they have no details about the motive. The suspect has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

Pupils were kept inside their classrooms after the shooting and authorities urged people to avoid the school and remain indoors.

Viertola primary school lies about 18 kilometers (11 miles) north of Helsinki. It has around 800 students between 1st and 9th grade and around 90 staff members.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said the shooting was “deeply shocking.”

“My thoughts are with the victims, their families and the other students and staff of the Viertola school,” Orpo wrote on X.

Finland enjoys a strong tradition of hunting and its gun ownership rates are among the highest in the world, but school shootings are extremely rare.

In 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, an 18-year-old schoolboy, opened fire at his high school in the southern Finnish town of Tuusula, killing eight people and wounding 10 others before turning the gun on himself. He had left a suicide note saying goodbye to his family.

In 2008, just months after the Tuusula shooting, Matti Juhani Saari, 22, opened fire at another school in the country, killing 10 before also shooting himself.

After the shootings, the Finnish government issued new guidelines on the use of firearms, particularly handguns and revolvers.

As scientists scramble to understand why the world’s oceans are in their second year of record-breaking heat, one of the most important programs to gather ocean data in the US is in danger of going dark and cutting off research at a critical time for the planet.

Known as the “eyes” of the oceans off US coasts, the Integrated Ocean Observing System, or IOOS, is a little-known but vital program within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It uses over 1,000 monitoring instruments to track currents, water temperature, oxygen levels, acidification, algae and more in the oceans and the Great Lakes, providing data to users inside and outside the federal government.

Its data is used in everything from hurricane forecasting and fisheries to Coast Guard search and rescue – IOOS data can help the Coast Guard narrow down a search area by two-thirds.

Despite President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate goals, his recent budget proposal would slash the program’s funding from $42.5 million to $10 million. That cut – more than 75% – is far steeper than cuts proposed during the Trump administration.

Unless Congress adds more money, that level of funding would devastate the program, researchers say; not only would new instruments not be added, but buoys that have been measuring data for years would literally get pulled out of the water.

“Essentially, we would have to go dark,” said Gerhard Kuska, a marine scientist who heads up the program’s mid-Atlantic region. “That means years of continuous data sets would be in jeopardy of stopping.”

Kuska said his reaction was “shock” when he heard how much Biden’s budget allotted for the program. In his first year in office, Biden’s budget proposed close to $70 million for IOOS.

“It is completely inconsistent with the priorities of this administration,” Kuska said. “These are the kinds of things in their ocean justice and climate policies. It seems very out of character; it seems very illogical and for us, indefensible, to pull the rug out from under us.”

Inexplicable ocean changes

Scientists who work with the IOOS program say it’s an especially critical time to maintain the instruments, which transmit data used to understand changing ocean conditions on short and long timescales.

Ocean data collection is “the only way we can really understand what is happening,” said Kristen Yarincik, executive director of the IOOS Association, the nonprofit that works with NOAA collecting data.

The data from IOOS instruments is also critical for hurricane forecasting and predicting how rapidly a storm could intensify.

“We always talk about the models; well, where do you think the data comes from?” said marine scientist Ellen Prager. “Those are ocean observations, and we improve those forecasts by having them.”

Tracking the impact of sea level rise

Another important function of the program is stationing low-cost flooding sensors in multiple communities around the country, helping them track water levels in real time.

IOOS has added 97 water level stations along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida in the last few years. That is triple the 32 sensors NOAA installed in the Southeast region as part of its National Water Level Observing Network – a sophisticated system that measures sea level rise.

The IOOS water level sensors are cheaper and more rudimentary than NOAA’s instruments, but that means they can be installed in more places, filling the gaps and giving more communities data on flooding in real time.

“We’re just getting to a lot more places,” said Debra Hernandez, executive director of the Southeast regional association running ocean observations.

The benefits to communities are vast, Hernandez said. The sensors can help police and emergency responders track the water’s rise and plan their response, alerting community members if they need to evacuate. They can also let people know when the water has receded and it’s safe to return home.

The sensors can also track just how high the water can get in some areas.

“It gives them a local reality check,” Hernandez said. “What we’re trying to do is to enable communities to tell their own stories, to have data that engineers and town officials can listen to. Sometimes an emotional plea doesn’t make your case as effectively as holding up a graph or chart, something with some scientific rigor.”

Hernandez is worried the water level sensors would be some of the first things to go if IOOS funding is slashed in the budget.

“We would not be able to maintain most of those systems,” Hernandez said. “At least half of the water level sensor network would be compromised with this funding cut.”