Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla made a surprise pitstop in India as they returned from their royal tour to Australia and Samoa.

The 75-year-old monarch and his wife reportedly enjoyed a quick break in Bengaluru, staying for a few days at the Soukya International Holistic Health Centre, according to Reuters citing multiple Indian media outlets.

The pair have visited India on numerous occasions over the years and previously paid a visit to the wellness center, which offers Ayurvedic and homeopathic treatments, yoga and meditation sessions.

“Their Majesties had a short private stopover in India to help break the long journey back from Samoa,” a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said on Wednesday. “They return to the UK this morning.”

The center is described as “a holistic health destination to restore your body’s natural balance of mind, body and spirit” on its website.

The couple broke up the journey at a location both were familiar with and had visited several times before, the source added.

The source also said that the King will resume his cancer treatment upon his return to the UK.

Charles’ journey to Australia and Samoa was his first long-haul, multi-country trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year. He wrapped up the tour at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on Saturday. Leaders ended the week-long summit in Samoa, saying the time had come for a discussion on whether Britain should commit to reparations for its role in the transatlantic slave trade.

The King is expected to return to regular overseas trips in 2025, according to Britain’s PA Media news agency.

Charles will carry out trips in the spring and autumn, on the regular foreign royal tour schedule, so long as doctors sign off on the journeys.

A palace official described the King’s recent trip as a “perfect tonic” that had lifted “his spirits, his mood and his recovery.”

“We’re now working on a pretty normal looking full overseas tour program for next year, which is a high for us to end on, to know that we can be thinking in those terms,” PA reported citing the palace official.

All the honorees will receive a grant along with organizational and capacity-building support from The Elevate Prize Foundation. They will also attend the foundation’s third annual Make Good Famous Summit in Miami.

Ron Davis Alvarez: New life through music

“We all need to learn from each other. We are an orchestra for everyone.”

Alvarez grew up in the favelas of Caracas, Venezuela. At 10, he joined El Sistema, a globally acclaimed program providing free classical music training to children from under-resourced communities. “I fell in love with music from my first class,” he said.

By 14, he was teaching classes; by 16, he was conducting. Eventually, Alvarez worked for El Sistema to help spread their innovative teaching methods worldwide. It was this work that led him to first visit Sweden in 2015.

Alvarez was in Stockholm just as unprecedented numbers of refugees were arriving in the country, most from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He was struck by their plight and wanted to help. After moving to Gothenburg the following year, he created a music group for refugees and started with 13 students. He knew playing music together would help them make friends, express themselves, and rebuild their self-esteem. He named the group the Dream Orchestra to emphasize their potential.

Eight years later, the program has more than 300 members, from 3 to 56 years old, of more than 25 nationalities. While many are immigrants and refugees, the group also includes many second-generation immigrants as well as native Swedes.

Stephen Knight: Saving the lives of dogs and their owners

“When somebody makes that decision to go into treatment, it’s one of the biggest decisions, the bravest decisions, they’ll make.”

In 2011, when Knight was 51 years old, he had lost everything to meth addiction – his family, his job, his home, and nearly his life. HIV positive and living out of his car, Knight entered rehab at the behest of his mother.

Eight months into recovery, Knight answered the door of his sober living apartment to find a friend in tears. She had relapsed, and in her arms was a 15-pound Maltese/Dachshund mix named Jayde. Knight’s friend said no one would take Jayde, and she asked Knight for a ride to a shelter so she could surrender her.

Instead, Knight became a dog dad to Jayde. He soon learned that other people struggled to find temporary homes for their beloved pets when they needed to enter rehab, often delaying or forgoing substance abuse treatment because of it.

Today, Knight and his organization, Dogs Matter, provide foster care for pets while their owners are in rehab. They vet applicants, conduct animal behavior assessments, and execute contracts that require participants to stick to their recovery plan and complete a 12-month post-release wraparound program. His nonprofit has helped more than 1,200 dogs and their owners.

Payton McGriff: Empowering girls and elevating women

“Talent and resilience and resourcefulness is so equally distributed worldwide, but opportunity is not.”

A marketing major, McGriff was pursuing her dream job in business when she took an entrepreneurship class her senior year at the University of Idaho. Tasked with creating a business or nonprofit, she remembered reading that many impoverished families who want to educate their daughters can’t afford tuition fees, school supplies, and the uniform mandated in many countries.

She connected with her professor, who encouraged her to join a spring break trip to his home country of Togo. There, she saw first-hand the reality of what girls faced and sought solutions. “A uniform is typically one of the more expensive pieces,” McGriff said. “They can be one of the most cost-effective ways to keep girls in school.”

Ultimately, McGriff founded Style Her Empowered, known as SHE. In their first year, the group hired local seamstresses in Togo and provided uniforms and school fees to 65 girls. But the girls quickly outgrew their uniforms. That problem led to her team’s creation of ‘the uniform that grows.’ Designed by the seamstresses – with input from the students, McGriff, and others – the dress now has adjustable elements that create a tailored fit for every body type and enable it to grow up to a foot in length. The uniform can fit a girl for up to three years, adjusting six sizes; when outgrown, it can be handed down to younger girls.

Today, SHE provides 1,500 girls a year in Togo with free uniforms, school fees, supplies, tutoring, and much more, while also bringing opportunities and education to the women they employ.

Rachel Rutter: Supporting ‘the newest newcomers’

“They’ve already been through so much trauma, it can be jarring when they arrive here and realize that it’s really just beginning.”

As an immigration lawyer who works closely with unaccompanied migrant children, Rutter knows how long and difficult their journeys are and the desperate situations they are fleeing. Early on, she saw the hurdles her young clients had to overcome after arriving in the US. They lacked stable housing and consistent meals and needed mental health and academic support.

“I saw that these kids don’t just need legal status, they also need all of these other things if they’re going to really heal and be successful,” Rutter said.

Compelled to fill in those gaps, she created Project Libertad in 2015. The nonprofit provides free legal representation, essential and social services, and newcomer support programs to immigrant youth. The organization has assisted more than 1,100 individuals, representing more than 90 young people in immigration cases.

Through their Immigrant Children’s Defense Project, Rutter and her group protect vulnerable youth across Pennsylvania, helping them apply for immigration status and representing in court those who are facing deportation.

Yamilée Toussaint: Lighting up the stage with STEM

“I just started to wonder about a world where the benefits that you get from dance can lead to the outcomes that we’re looking for in STEM.”

Growing up, Toussaint had a love for math but says the dance studio was her “home away from home.” This dual passion led her to study mechanical engineering at MIT, where she was also head of the dance team. She noticed that she was one of only two Black women in her major. Later, while teaching high school math, she became determined to empower girls of color to get excited about science, technology, engineering, and math.

In 2012, she created STEM From Dance, a nonprofit program that combines dance with STEM education to make these subjects more engaging and accessible. Today, the program works with girls of color ages 8 to 18 in nine cities across the US and is free to its participants.

The organization’s school and summer programs typically attract girls who identify as dancers but are hesitant about STEM. Through the supportive community and hands-on projects, the girls begin to see themselves as programmers, engineers, and innovators.

“Through dance, we’re able to create this atmosphere that feels comfortable,” Toussaint said. “And with that space, we’re able to introduce something that feels kind of intimidating.”

Working in small groups, the girls choreograph dance routines that include STEM elements, such as LED light strips that they code to light up with the music. The girls also create songs through computer science that they incorporate into their performance. To date, more than 2,000 girls have benefitted from the program.

The analysis found that a network dubbed “Storm-1516” — which has a history of producing staged videos and deepfakes that parrot the Kremlin’s propaganda – has close connections with a group created by the late Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI), founded by the former Wagner mercenary boss in 2021, is part of a multi-pronged disinformation effort that has increasingly pivoted from false claims about the Ukraine war to focus on the 2024 US presidential election. The group, which casts itself as a “human rights” organization, is led by Mira Terada, a Russian woman who served more than two years in a US prison on money laundering charges.

The R-FBI organization and the Storm-1516 campaign are among a multitude of active Russian disinformation efforts, many of them overlapping, according to US and European intelligence sources. They use American and foreign social media influencers to promote propaganda and disinformation in the West.

In recent weeks, the network has invented stories out of whole cloth targeting Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. They range from fabricated claims that Harris was responsible for a hit-and-run in San Francisco and shot an endangered rhino while on safari in Zambia, to a baseless allegation that Walz sexually assaulted a student.

The Harris campaign has previously expressed concern that media coverage could amplify false Russian claims. Responding to a request for comment on the Russian disinformation narratives attacking Harris and Walz, Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokesperson for the campaign, said: “Vladimir Putin wants Donald Trump to win because he knows Trump will roll over and give him anything he wants. We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections.”

NBC and Wired have also covered the narratives, attributing them to Storm-1516.

Clemson said it was able to connect Storm-1516 to R-FBI by using scraped data and social listening software to analyze their historical, technical and organizational ties.

“We have found Storm-1516 to be tightly connected to the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI). Their behavior is much too closely linked than would reasonably occur by accident or simple correlation in aims,” Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren, co-directors of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, wrote in their report published Wednesday. “R-FBI affiliated individuals also frequently share Storm-1516 narratives on their own blogs or news pages. All of this is done at strategic times and routine rates not possible by chance.”

The disinformation campaign has ramped up ahead of the November 5 election, and as US intelligence agencies warn of a major Russian government-backed effort to influence the vote in favor of former US president Donald Trump, who they assess is the Kremlin’s preferred choice. The Biden administration in September announced a sweeping set of actions to tackle the Russian campaign, including unveiling criminal charges against two Russian nationals, sanctions on 10 individuals and entities, and the seizure of 32 internet domains.

Warren and Linvill note that the themes and methods used by Storm-1516 and R-FBI are consistent with those deployed by Prigozhin’s now defunct Internet Research Agency (IRA), widely known as Russia’s troll factory.

One of the recent fake Storm-1516 videos, which was shared by R-FBI network members, showed a man alleging an endangered black rhino was killed during a “diplomatic visit” to Zambia. “It was a female American politician. Her name was Kamala,” the ranger said, claiming that she shot a young rhino while on safari at North Luangwa National Park, and the incident was “swept under the rug.”

Another staged video attributed to the network featured a young woman claiming that Harris paralyzed her in a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. US intelligence agencies assessed that a Russian operation produced the video. Like other disinformation that has gained traction, the video appeared to be staged with an actor rather than manipulated using AI. It was shared by a fake news outlet, “KBSF-TV.”

Many of the websites associated with the Russian disinformation network sound like American media outlets, with names such as The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Times and DC Weekly – a technique that was also used by the IRA.

But they are just fronts for narratives invented in St. Petersburg, where Wagner has its headquarters – an office also used by R-FBI, according to Russian media reports.

Influencers linked to R-FBI come from around the world and, according to Clemson, are often the first social media accounts identified “sharing specific Storm-1516 narratives.”

One American has been actively involved in spreading the fake stories: John Mark Dougan, a former Florida sheriff’s deputy who fled to Moscow in 2016 after facing felony charges of wiretapping and extortion in the US. Granted asylum in Russia, Dougan has become a vocal player in the Kremlin’s disinformation ecosystem, but a senior European intelligence official says he is a small cog in a much larger wheel.

Dougan is part of a constellation of characters promoting pro-Russia talking points through fake videos and websites. A Clemson report last year connected Dougan to the fake news website DC Weekly through a domain and internet protocol address shared by his personal website and two sites marketing his books. The use of real people is a departure from tactics used by Prigozhin’s IRA, which often distributed disinformation through bot networks, but much of the messaging is the same.

An official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters last week that the content contained “several indicators of manipulation that are consistent with the influence efforts and tactics with Russian actors.” The US State Department said there was no record of a Kazakh exchange student at the Minnesota school at that time.

On October 24, the same X account carried fake video purporting to show an individual ripping up mail-in ballots for Trump in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Within three hours it was reposted tens of thousands of times.

Yes, this video showing mail-in ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, PA is fake. And yes, its the Russians.

This Storm-1516 narrative appeared less than three hours ago and it’s already been shared on X tens of thousands of times.

It’s gonna be a rough couple of weeks. pic.twitter.com/IMbaMm8YVF

— Darren Linvill (@DarrenLinvill) October 24, 2024

Local election officials swiftly debunked the video. A day later, the ODNI, FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the video had been manufactured and amplified by Russian actors. Linvill said Clemson identified the video as a Storm-1516 narrative based on the way it was produced and distributed, adding: “It’s gonna be a rough couple of weeks.”

In an analysis of 25,000 fake stories posted by Storm-1516 and websites affiliated with Dougan between July 2023 and February 2024, Clemson researchers found just 49 included three or more images or video. Of those 57% were identified as Storm-1516 narratives, and 27% were stories from the R-FBI, showing a shared ecosystem.

“While there is no evidence Dougan is responsible for the creation of the narratives themselves, he claims responsibility for a series of AI-generated, fake news websites that have been used to covertly disseminate Storm-1516 messages,” Clemson said in their report.

‘Centralized and orchestrated from above’

In May 2021, Mira Terada arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, after serving jail time in the US. She was greeted by one of Prigozhin’s closest aides, Maxim Shugaley, who presented her with flowers, according to a video posted on his Telegram account.

Shortly after, Terada announced she would head up Prigozhin’s R-FBI (its name a nod to the Federal Bureau of Investigation adding him to its most-wanted list). The organization describes itself as a “independent non-profit organization supported by private donations from Russian citizens” and publishes content in Russian, English, German, and French.

Once known as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “chef,” Prigozhin ran the Wagner paramilitary force before falling foul of the Kremlin and leading a short-lived mutiny in June 2023. He died in a mysterious plane crash two months later, but his influence still looms large.

Terada attended the headquarters’ opening in November 2022 along with other key figures in Russia’s information landscape: Konstantin Pridybaylo, a prominent journalist with state media outlet RT, and Ruslan Ostashko, a Russian TV presenter whose Telegram channel has nearly half a million subscribers.

The Biden administration has sought to blunt RT’s influence ahead of the elections and expose what it says is the Russian state media network’s key role in the Kremlin’s global intelligence and influence operations. In September, the US Justice Department charged two RT employees for covertly funneling nearly $10 million into a US company to create and amplify content that aligned with Russian interests.

Still, Gerard says that R-FBI and other Russian operations are unlikely to influence the outcome of the US election. “Their goal is less ambitious. They simply want the international community to believe that they have the power to influence, to destabilize. They want to be spoken about,” he said.

To that end, Terada has gathered a network of would-be influencers to propagate a range of false stories. She also chairs the BRICS Journalists Association (BJA), which includes foreign reporters in Russian allied states.

Terada has appeared with those reporters, and John Mark Dougan, at media events and conferences. In March – in one of several public appearances together – she stood with Dougan at the launch of his book “Betrayal of the Truth,” and quoted the Russian ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin as saying the book was a “way to convey the truth about the incredible crimes of American globalist minorities against humanity.”

Last week, The Washington Post reported that Dougan had connections with Dugin’s Moscow institute, the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, and cited documents obtained by a European intelligence service that it said showed Dougan was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.

Another prominent figure in propagating Russian disinformation is American Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who in 2020 accused then-presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexual harassment.

Reade defected to Russia in 2023 and became a contributor to RT. She has shared Storm-1516 narratives on her X profile 32 times over the last year, and has appeared on the R-FBI website six times, according to Clemson.

The links between Terada’s group and other Russian disinformation efforts are at best opaque, which is likely no accident. The Kremlin has opted for nodes of activity, some closely related to the state’s intelligence services, others less so.

“It’s very centralized and orchestrated from above, but it can sometimes be chaotic and less coherent. There are actors that take their own initiative… and it’s hard to tell sometimes if individuals are acting alone or as a part of a group.”

The Clemson researchers also acknowledge the challenges in establishing the exact organizational relationship between Storm-1516 and R-FBI, but said they were part of a “common structure.”

“The Storm-1516 narratives have had the biggest impact of any Russian disinformation operation the last four years… It means that whoever’s behind Storm-1516 is the most impactful actor. And the strongest evidence that I have is that an entity, either in or behind the R-FBI, is behind Storm-1516,” Warren said.

Sean Lyngaas contributed reporting.

Clemson researchers gathered the full set of R-FBI reports by scraping their website and used qualitative hand coding of individual R-FBI reports to organize them into categories and then counted those over time. To document the connections between the R-FBI influencers and the R-FBI and Storm-1516, researchers used the scraped data from the R-FBI website to find all mentions of those personalities and their full account histories on X (from Sprinklr) to measure how often and early they shared Storm-1516 and R-FBI content.

At least 51 people have died in flash floods in southeastern Spain, the regional government of Valencia said on Wednesday.

Some locations in southern and eastern Spain received up to 12 inches of rain in just a few hours on Tuesday.

Footage from the city of Valencia showed muddy water flooding through the streets, tearing down walls and sweeping away parked cars.

Valencia’s regional leader Carlos Mazón told reporters earlier on Wednesday that some bodies were found as rescue teams began to reach areas previously cut off by the floods, adding, “Out of respect for the families we are not going to give any more details.”

The death toll is expected to rise as authorities said the current figures are “provisional.”

Mazón also urged residents in the provinces of Valencia and Castellón to avoid travelling by road.

The Valencia area averages 77 millimeters (3.03 inches) of rain for the entire month of October.

Chiva, just east of Valencia, received 320 millimeters (12.6 inches) of rain in just over four hours, according to the European Severe Weather Database.

Flooding was also reported in and around the cities of Murcia and Malaga, with more than 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain falling in some areas.

The human-caused climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more severe, scientists say.

As the world warms due to fossil fuel pollution, it’s driving more frequent and more intense rainfall events. Hotter oceans fuel stronger storms and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture which it wrings out in the form of torrential rainfall.

Rainfall warnings continue through Wednesday for portions of eastern and southern Spain, according to Spain’s Meteorological Agency, AEMET, with the threat of heavy rain expected to continue through the end of the week.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The excitement was evident in a Tokyo bar on Wednesday morning, Japan time, as fans chanted for their homegrown hero.

“Shohei! Shohei! Shohei!” erupted in Fields Shibuya, a sports dining bar, as the All-Star player stepped to the plate against the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the World Series, later turning into deafening cheers when the Dodgers’ designated hitter ripped a single.

“Ohtani’s performance is high level,” said Ryosuke Matsumoto, 22, who was among the crowd in the sports bar. “I’m very happy that a Japanese player is doing so well in the Major Leagues. That’s how I became a fan. I’m proud of him.”

There would be little else for fans of Ohtani and the Dodgers to cheer for in Game 4, as the Yankees prevailed 11-4, but the excitement is sure to return for Game 5 on Wednesday (Thursday morning in Japan) at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

The appearance of Ohtani in this year’s edition of the World Series has captivated Japan and emerged as a television ratings phenomenon.

Earlier this week, the Dodgers’ 4-2 win over the Yankees in Game 2 drew an average of 15.9 million viewers, marking it as the highest-rated Major League Baseball postseason game in Japan’s history, according to the press release.

“Ohtani is an honorable person in Japan. Everyone shouts Ohtani, Ohtani, and it makes me extremely happy. We never had any Japanese person like that before. It’s our dear Ohtani,” said Mamoru Tanaka, a manager of the bar.

The first two games of the seven-game series between the Dodgers and the Yankees, averaged of 15.15 million viewers in Japan, according to Major League Baseball  — at times, more viewers than in the US. Japan’s population is approximately 124.5 million compared to the US, which has a population of about 334 million, as of last year.

The viewership in Japan is even more notable, given that the event aired during daytime hours.

“Since it’s on a weekday, people are watching the game between work or school. Young people are looking at the scores on social media. A lot of people can’t watch, and I think most of the people watching the game live are elderly people,” said Matsumoto.

When combined with US viewership, the first two World Series games have averaged 29.7 million viewers across the two countries.

For Game 3 in New York, the World Series drew an average of 13.6 million viewers in the US, making it the most-watched Monday night World Series game since 2013 – reflecting a heated enthusiasm also in the US, according to Fox Sports.

The excitement around Ohtani extends well past the TV screen.

Even viewers in the US can see a growing influence throughout the season. The logo for Daiso, a Japanese retail chain, would regularly be seen in center field as home runs were captured on TV footage.

MLB has shown a remarkable 225% increase in social media engagement, with views across various platforms rising by 229%, the league reported, reflecting the growing excitement surrounding the World Series and its star players.

The excitement in Japan for the Dodgers is not only about Ohtani. The team added Japanese pitching sensation Yoshinobu Yamamoto last off season on a 12-year, $325 million deal.

Yamamoto was the winner of Sunday’s Game 2, throwing 6 1/3 innings while only allowing one hit to the vaunted Yankee offense – all contributing to the fan enthusiasm in Japan.

A large fire has broken out at the site of one of Britain’s biggest defense companies.

Emergency officials said early Wednesday that fire crews and police were responding to the blaze in the vicinity of BAE Systems in Barrow-in-Furness, northwest England.

BAE Systems is one of the largest defense contractors in Europe. Its subsidiary, BAE Systems Submarines, headquartered in Barrow-in-Furness, builds and assembles the UK’s nuclear submarines.

“There is no nuclear risk,” Cumbria Police said in a statement on X. “However, people living nearby are advised to remain indoors and keep doors and windows closed.”

A similar advisory was also shared by the Cumbria Fire & Rescue Services on its X account.

Police said the incident was reported around 12:44 a.m. local time on Wednesday. It did not say the cause of the fire.

Two people have been hospitalized after suffering suspected smoke inhalation, it added.

Photos shared on social media showed flames and smoke rising from an industrial building near the shipyard.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Authorities in Taiwan are warning residents along its eastern coast to brace for the impacts Super Typhoon Kong-rey, which has rapidly intensified as it barrels towards the island after bashing the Philippines.

Kong-rey, moving northwest over the Philippine Sea, reached super-typhoon strength on Wednesday, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC). With winds of 240 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour), it is the equivalent of a Category 4 Atlantic hurricane.

The powerful typhoon is forecast to make landfall early Thursday (Wednesday evening ET) in Taitung, a sparsely populated county on Taiwan’s mountainous southeastern coast.

“As the typhoon continues to move towards the northwest, almost the whole of Taiwan will be covered by the storm circle later tonight,” meteorologist Chu Mei-lin, with the island’s weather agency, said in a press conference on Wednesday morning.

The Central Weather Administration (CWA) issued a sea warning Tuesday as the storm drew closer. On Wednesday, it also issued a land warning for two southern counties expected to be hit by the storm’s outer bands.

Forecasts show the powerful storm could weaken slightly ahead of making direct landfall on its southeastern coast, but it is still expected to unleash intense downpours, bringing flash flooding, storm surges and the risk of landslides.

“We urge everyone to make preparations accordingly,” Chu warned.

Chu added that waves could reach up to eight meters high when the typhoon makes landfall. There will also be heavy rainfall across Taiwan on Thursday, including in Taipei.

Taiwan’s military has placed about 36,000 soldiers on standby to assist with rescue and relief work, according to its Ministry of National Defense.

More than 6,000 first responders have also been put on standby to assist in response to the typhoon, according to the Central Emergency Operations Center. Most flights and ferries across Taiwan are so far operating as usual, the center said on Wednesday.

Taiwan generally has a strong track record of responding to major typhoons, though remote villages in more mountainous regions can be particularly vulnerable to landslides. Earlier this month, Typhoon Krathon killed four people as it brought particularly heavy rains to the south of the island.

Two outlying islands of Taiwan, Green Island and Orchid Island, suspended work and classes on Wednesday, according the county government.

In recent days, northern parts of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon have been lashed by the outer bands of Kong-rey, known locally as Leon, as authorities ordered evacuations and warned of its impacts after already seeing devastation last week from Tropical Storm Trami, known as Kristine, which killed at least 130 people.

As of Wednesday morning, Kong-rey continued to skirt the island’s north as it moved towards Taiwan.

Montecarlo is a small city in the province of Misiones, Argentina, with just under 20,000 inhabitants. Those who walk through its neighborhoods can find cobblestone streets, but most of the roads are made of dirt. Anyone who wants to travel from this town to Posadas, the provincial capital, has to drive for about three hours.

María (who asked not to be identified by her real name to avoid being recognized in her city) says that in Montecarlo, all the neighbors know each other. She has four children: the oldest is 13 years old, and the youngest is just over a year old.

As she speaks, she breastfeeds her baby, and explains that for some time now, she has been in charge of all the household and childcare responsibilities: her husband lost his registered job in February and had to move to a nearby town where he does cleaning work in fields.

In July, María noticed a delay in her period despite using contraceptives. The situation at home was not easy, and supporting four children on an informal income made it difficult for her family to get through each month. She says that having another child was not an option. As soon as she suspected she might be pregnant, she went to her regular gynecologist, who had helped her deliver her children.

During the consultation, María asked about her options for accessing an abortion, but the doctor told her he didn’t perform such procedures and asked her to leave.

After this initial negative response, María got an appointment at the local public hospital. There, she also asked for help, but they couldn’t provide her with information about her alternatives. So, she sought of a third option: she traveled to Eldorado, a neighboring city to Montecarlo, where the public hospital has a family planning section.

There, they sat her down with other patients and explained to all of them how the abortion procedure worked. When some of them asked if the hospital would provide the medication, they were told there wasn’t enough, and they would be given a prescription to buy the abortion-inducing drug misoprostol privately.

“At that moment, I didn’t have 100,000 pesos (about 73 dollars at the parallel exchange rate in July). My husband had lost his registered job, so I went to the public hospital to get it for free,” she explains, adding that she tried to inquire about misoprostol with professionals at the public hospital in her area, but they also didn’t have free medication.

“When I asked, they replied: no, we don’t have any. I started crying, going back home, I was overwhelmed with despair because my husband had gone far away to work, and I was left alone. It felt like every door was closed to me. And I got home crying with my baby in my arms”, María recounts.

Since the start of his administration, the government of Argentina’s President Javier Milei halted the purchase of essential supplies for abortion access and has not delivered a single box of misoprostol, mifepristone, or manual vacuum aspiration cannulas, essential elements to guarantee abortion access for pregnant individuals, according to an information request filed by rights group Amnesty International.

Abortions were legalized in Argentina in 2021 in all cases up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. According to the legislation, a person who wants an abortion has the right to do so safely and free of charge.

However, exercising this right is becoming increasingly difficult in the country this past year, as confirmed by organizations dedicated to monitoring reproductive rights in Argentina, such as Amnesty International, the Latin American team of Justice and Gender, and the Safe Abortion Access Network, among others.

According to the report presented in May by the National Directorate of Sexual and Reproductive Health of Argentina’s Ministry of Health, the distribution of medications and equipment for manual vacuum aspiration had not been carried out until that month due to lack of stock, and the guarantee of these supplies for the remaining months would depend on the progress of the public tender, which at the time of the official response, was underway.

Searching for a workaround

As a last resort, María searched for alternatives online. This is how she came across Amnesty International, an organization that works for the promotion and defense of human rights. Through a form on their website, she shared the obstacles she faced in accessing an abortion in her province, and within a week, professionals from the NGO contacted her and guided her on how to obtain the medications for free to assert her right to a legal, safe, and free abortion.

María is one of the cases where Amnesty International had to intervene to ensure a safe abortion. The law states that individuals who wish to access this procedure must have their right guaranteed within no more than ten days. It took nearly a month for María to get an abortion.

According to the organization, complaints about barriers to accessing voluntary termination of pregnancy through the complaint form available on their website increased by 80% in the year up to August 2024 compared to the previous year.

The contrast with data from previous years is striking, Galkin explains. “While in 2023, nearly 150,000 treatments of the misoprostol and mifepristone combination were guaranteed or distributed nationwide, this year the provinces have not received stock, and we have been confirming this with public information requests to various provinces,” she detailed.

Galkin from Amnesty highlighted that provinces are not only reporting a lack of access to supplies for legal voluntary termination of pregnancy but also a shortage of contraceptive methods. “There is a lot of concern about the impact this will have on family planning,” she emphasized.

A temporary solution

According to Amnesty International and RedAAS, provincial governments are seeking alternatives to fill the gap left by the national government in reproductive health.

“Some provinces have immediately made direct purchases because, otherwise, women’s and pregnant individuals’ rights end up being violated,” explains Galkin.

Ramos adds: “Provinces are purchasing in quantities that probably won’t meet the entire demand, but there is a willingness from some provinces to take on the purchase of supplies.”

The problem with leaving it to each province, both specialists explain, is that it deepens inequalities across different regions of the country, as not all regions have the same resources.

Ramos asserts that the impact of this withdrawal by Milei’s government on public health policies could be twofold: “Women who end up not accessing abortion and who may resort to unsafe abortions or continue a forced pregnancy. Those are the options for a woman who wants an abortion and can’t get the procedure.”

Galkin concludes: “It has been demonstrated, in two years of implementation, how it has contributed to reducing, for example, the maternal mortality rate from abortion by 53% from 2020 to 2022. Legal voluntary termination of pregnancy is another health service that must be included in the mandatory medical program and must be available to the population because it is a public health issue.”

Portions of southern and eastern Spain were hit by severe flash flooding on Tuesday, as some locations received up to 12 inches of rain in just a few hours.

Footage from the city of Valencia showed mud-colored water flooding through the streets, tearing down walls, and sweeping away parked cars.

Extreme rain warnings were in effect for some areas including around Valencia, according to Spain’s Meteorological Agency, AEMET. These warnings called for the potential of 200 mm (4 inches) of rain in less than 12 hours.

In some locations, the rainfall estimates were exceeded in even shorter periods of time. Chiva, which is east of Valencia, received 320 mm of rain in just over four hours, according to the European Severe Weather Database.

The Valencia area averages 77 mm (3.03 inches) for the entire month of October.

Flooding was also reported in and around Murcia and Malaga with over 100 mm (4 inches) of rain falling in some of these areas.

A strong upper level low pressure is moving northward into the region from Africa.  The strong system is bringing a significant amount of atmospheric instability to the region.  Extreme amounts of rainfall are also being enhanced with moisture from the Mediterranean Sea and upslope flow into higher terrain which acts to squeeze out additional moisture.

Rainfall warnings continue through Wednesday for portions of eastern and southern Spain, according to AEMET. The warnings north of Valencia are for rainfall totals in excess of 100 mm (4 inches) and rainfall rates of 30 mm per hour (1.18 inches per hour).

Areas of southwestern Spain will see the threat of heavy rain continue through the end of the week.

The photo shows a large crowd of more than 200 people, crouching low amid the rubble of Jabalya in northern Gaza. Mostly men, many are almost naked, some are elderly, some visibly wounded. There’s at least one child among them.

Their tired faces give a glimpse into their misery. The men at the front are anxiously staring straight ahead, while those toward the back stretch their necks to see what is going on.

The photo, taken in Jabalya on Friday, shows residents of the refugee camp who tried to leave the area after being forced by the Israeli military to evacuate amid its ongoing ground operation there.

According to Khalaf, the men in the crowd seen in the photograph were asked to come forward five at a time, to be screened by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) before being allowed to proceed to Gaza City, which has been designated by the Israeli military as a safe place.

“Some individuals were selected for detention while others were released. Most of us ended up in Gaza City. The situation was terrifying and deeply saddening as we witnessed elderly men and injured individuals in distress, with no one showing them compassion or mercy.”

The little girl seen in the photograph is Jouri Abu Ward. The three-and-a-half-year-old was riding her bike, trying to get to Gaza City, when she and her father were detained at the checkpoint.

Repeated strip-searches in Gaza

The IDF encircled Jabalya and launched a new ground operation there more than three weeks ago, cutting off most supplies and forcing people to leave amid heavy fighting. The IDF said it saw signs of Hamas rebuilding in the area, despite a year of heavy bombardment and two previous ground operations which the IDF had claimed were successful.

Due to security protocol, “clothes are not immediately returned to the detainees,” the IDF statement continued, adding that the clothes are returned as soon as it is “possible to do so”

The Geneva Conventions, a set of international laws that set out the rules of armed conflict, says that any detainees must be treated humanely. The rules explicitly prohibit acts that “outrage upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

The International Red Cross says that intrusive searches, including strip searches of detainees “should be undertaken only if absolutely necessary” and not in front of other detainees.

The United Nations and other human rights organizations have criticized Israel’s military for detaining and stripping people during its military campaign in Gaza, accusing it of weaponizing the practice.

The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel said last month that it found that “forced nudity, with the aim of degrading and humiliating victims in front of both soldiers and other detainees, was frequently used against male victims.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also condemned Israel for what they said was a widespread practice.

In a July 2024 report about Israel’s treatment of detainees and prisoners, Amnesty International said that public forced nudity for long durations violates the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment and amounts to sexual violence.

Human Rights Watch has also accused the Israeli government of allowing these kinds of practices. “Israeli authorities have for months turned a blind eye as members of their military published dehumanizing fully or seminude images and videos of Palestinians in their custody,” said Balkees Jarrah, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.