Over 200,000 participants, including 235 schools, took part this year. From making their own environmental awareness videos, to organizing and running a junkyard sale, students took the initiative to do their bit towards protecting the planet and inspire positive change.

Take a look below at a selection of activities undertaken by schools around the world.

Europe

Children from The International School of Krakow in Poland created an ECOllage with trash found in their local forest. “Our piece transformed unwanted waste into an original piece of art that showcases our students’ constant collective effort to make this world a better place,” reads their Facebook post.

And the Finnish School of Kosovo decided to turn trash into treasure for their Call to Earth Day project. After collecting waste glass jars, the students painted them to create upcycled artworks that spread awareness of the importance of reusing and recycling.

Middle East

Students from Makassed Islamic High School in Lebanon decided to participate in a number of different projects, from upcycling plastic bottle lids into a giant poster, to making compost from leftover food.

Africa

Pupils from Greenwood School, in Morocco, went to Bouskoura Forest armed with gloves and rubbish bags and collected trash.

In Nigeria, children from Corona School Ikoyi created an awareness video on sustainable living and upcycling. “The bad choices we make have a great impact on our shared home, our natural habitat,” said one student.

Asia

Creating a news report-style video for this year’s Call to Earth Day, students from CHIREC International School in India explored how to tackle water scarcity in the country’s farming districts.

The Mangrove and Gardening club at United World College in Thailand decided to mark the day by collecting mangrove seed pods for their school’s mangrove nursery. After nurturing the seeds in the nursery, they plan to plant the saplings at a coastal location.

Latin America

Fifth-grade students from the New Cambridge School in Colombia used this year’s Call to Earth Day to raise awareness of plastic pollution.

While innovative young students from Dualastair School in Chile found novel ways to recycle plastic waste.

And all over the world, from Chile to Thailand, Cognita Schools took part in an artwork and video project. You can see just a small selection of their images in the gallery below.

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is spinning rapidly and altering space-time around it, a new study has found.

Space-time is the four-dimensional continuum that describes how we see space, fusing one-dimensional time and three-dimensional space together to represent the space fabric that curves in response to massive celestial bodies.

A team of physicists observed the black hole, which is located 26,000 light-years from Earth, with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a telescope designed to detect the X-ray emissions from hot regions of the universe. They calculated Sagittarius A*’s rotational speed by using what is known as the outflow method, which looks at radio waves and X-ray emissions that can be found in the material and gases surrounding black holes, otherwise known as the accretion disk, according to the study published October 21 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers confirmed that the black hole is spinning, which causes what is known as the Lense-Thirring effect. Also known as frame dragging, the Lense-Thirring effect is what happens when a black hole drags space-time along with its spin, said lead study author Ruth Daly, a physics professor at Penn State University who designed the outflow method over a decade ago.

Since the invention of the outflow method, Daly has been working to determine the spin of various black holes and authored a 2019 study that explored over 750 supermassive black holes.

“With this spin, Sagittarius A* will be dramatically altering the shape of space-time in its vicinity,” Daly said. “We’re used to thinking and living in a world where all the spatial dimensions are equivalent — the distance to the ceiling and the distance to the wall and the distance to the floor … they all sort of are linear, it’s not like one is totally squished up compared to the others.

“But if you have a rapidly rotating black hole, the space-time around it is not symmetric — the spinning black hole is dragging all of the space-time around with it … it squishes down the space-time, and it sort of looks like a football,” she said.

The altering of space-time is nothing to worry about, but illuminating this phenomenon could be very useful to astronomers, Daly said.

“It’s a wonderful tool to understand the role that black holes play in galaxy formation and evolution,” she said. “The fact that they’re dynamical entities which can be spinning … and then that can impact the galaxy that this is sitting in — it’s very exciting and very interesting.”

The spin of supermassive black holes

The spin of a black hole is given a value from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning the black hole is not spinning, and 1 being the maximum spin value. Previously there was no consensus on a value for the spin of Sagittarius A*, Daly said. 

With the outflow method, which is the only method that uses both information from the outflow and from the material within the vicinity of the black hole, Daly said, Sagittarius A* was found to have a spin angular momentum value between 0.84 and 0.96, whereas M87* — a black hole in the Virgo galaxy cluster that is 55 million light-years from Earth, was found to spin at the value of 1 (with a larger uncertainty of plus or minus 0.2) and is near the maximum for its mass.

While the team had found the two black holes to be spinning at similar rates, M87* is much more massive than Sagittarius A*, Daly said, so Sagittarius A* has less distance to cover and spins more times per one spin of M87*.

Sagittarius A* “is spinning much more rapidly (in comparison), not because it has a higher spin angular momentum, but because it has less distance to travel when it goes around once,” Daly explained.

Black holes and galactic history

Knowing the mass and the spin of a black hole helps astronomers understand how the black hole might have formed and evolved, Daly said.

Black holes that formed as a result of smaller black holes merging would typically see a low spin value, said Dejan Stojkovic, a professor of cosmology at the University at Buffalo who was not involved with the study. However, a black hole that was made with accretion of surrounding gas would see a high spin value.

The rate at which Sagittarius A* is spinning would indicate that a significant portion of the mass of the black hole came from accretion, he said.

“The question of whether our central galactic black hole rotates or not, or how fast it rotates, is quite important,” Stojkovic said in an email.

“Ultimately, we want to measure the properties of the center of our galaxy as good as possible. This way we can learn about the history and structure of our galaxy, put our theories to (the) test, or even infer the existence of some very interesting and intriguing objects like wormholes,” added Stojkovic, who was the lead author of a 2019 study on the hypothetical structures.

A UN report released Tuesday details a wave of violence that has swept Haiti’s rural reaches, describing gang raids on villages and alarming levels of food insecurity caused by the targeting of farmers in the country’s historic breadbasket.

The report, from the UN Human Rights Office and the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, offers a stark analysis of the spread of gangs in the poor Caribbean nation, which has seen deepening unrest since the 2021 assassination of then-President Jovenel Moise.

Past attention has largely focused on Port-au-Prince, the capital, where warring gangs have forced thousands of people from their homes and into makeshift encampments across the sprawling city. In Bas-Artibonite, the focus of the UN report and the center of Haitian rice production located some 100 kilometers from the capital, there are now more than 20 “extremely violent” criminal groups fighting for turf, it says. Some 1,690 people were killed, injured, or kidnapped from January 2022 through last month, the report also says.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted in a statement the “terrible violence against the population expanding – within and outside Port-au-Prince – and the inability of the police to stop them.”

“The situation in Haiti is cataclysmic,” he said. “We are continuing to receive reports of killings, sexual violence, displacement and other violence – including in hospitals.”

The report calls for the urgent deployment of a multinational support mission greenlit by the UN Security Council last month and the reinforcement of Haitian police. The force is expected to be led by Kenya, which has pledged 1,000 police to the mission, though the deployment has been tied up by legal challenges.

“The much-needed Multinational Security Support mission needs to be deployed to Haiti as soon as possible,” Türk said in the statement.

According to the report, violence increased drastically in the Artibonite region towards the end of last year, with gangs and vigilante groups that sprung up to oppose them vying for control. There were at least 110 attacks carried out by gangs on rival villages from January 2022 through last month, with “extreme brutality” on display, including beheadings, rapes, and kidnappings, the report says.

Brazen daylight attacks on some of the area’s busiest roadways are also common, the report found, with more than 85 people killed by gang members who erected barricades or ambushed public transport vehicles from the side of the road.

Farmers and their properties have also become “prime targets” for gangs, the report says, with gang members occupying fields and forcing farmers to pay a tax to gain access to them. “Those who dare to protest are beaten and killed, or their crops and livestock stolen,” the report says.

In April, the World Food Program noted a reduction of almost 5,000 hectares of crops across three communes of Lower Artibonite “due to the forced displacement of the agricultural workforce.”

Over 45% of the population living in Artibonite is considered acutely food insecure, the WFP found in September.

“As the current dynamics in the Lower Artibonite region demonstrate, particularly around the issue of agricultural property, a police and judicial response will not be enough to protect the human rights of the population,” the report says. “The longer it takes to deploy a specialized international force, the more robust the response will have to be.”

Finland will close the last operating checkpoint on its Russian border on Thursday, entirely shutting off the NATO country’s eastern border with Russia for two weeks.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said in the release that “Russia is enabling the instrumentalization of people and guiding them to the Finnish border in harsh winter conditions. Finland is determined to put an end to this phenomenon.”

The last checkpoint will shut at midnight on November 30, closing the eastern border until December 13, Finland’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a press release on Tuesday.

It comes amid an increasing effort by Helsinki to restrict crossings from Russia, a push that intensified following the invasion of Ukraine last year and Finland’s ascension to NATO earlier this year.

Finland’s Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said in the press release that it is necessary to close the entire eastern border with Russia, adding that the decision was taken to “protect Finland’s national security against this Russian hybrid operation.”

The Finnish Border Guard said in a social media post that “Finland’s goal is to end the illegal entry from Russia.”

“Finland takes care of its own border security and the Finnish Border Guard is ready to quickly implement new decisions of the Government,” the border guard added.

Finland shares an 830-mile-long border with Russia. The crossing was one of the few entry points for Russians after many Western countries shut their air space and borders to Russian planes in response to the Ukraine invasion.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Tuesday that Finland’s decision to close all border checkpoints with Russia will harm Finnish citizens, also calling it “irrational.”

“They closed the border, how can we react? Finnish citizens will suffer,” said Grushko on the sidelines of the Primakov Readings forum in ​Moscow.

“We can comment on some rational decisions, then we can look for some kind of logic. But sometimes the decisions are simply irrational,” he said, adding that only about 700 migrants during this period tried to cross the Russian-Finnish border.

On November 16, the Finnish government announced it would temporarily close four crossing points along its border with Russia from this week until February 2024, in an effort to stop illegal border crossings.

In Tuesday’s press release, Finland’s interior ministry said entry into Finland at the eastern border has continued despite restrictions.

“Since the beginning of August, almost 1,000 third-country nationals have arrived in Finland without a visa via the border crossing points at the eastern border. Most of them have applied for asylum in Finland,” the ministry said.

“In such very exceptional circumstances, the short-term total closure of the eastern border is a necessary and proportionate measure to put an end to this phenomenon and to limit the serious consequences that it has for national security and public order,” the ministry added in Tuesday’s press release.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday accused Russia of using migration as a “tool” to create “pressure” along its border with Finland.

“We have seen them using energy, we have seen them using cyber attacks, we have seen them using different kinds of clandestine operations to try and undermine our democracies. The fact that Russia is using migration as a tool is now another example of the attempt to put pressure on neighbors,” Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Brussels.

NATO has not received a request from Finland for support in guarding its borders, Stoltenberg said, adding that he is “confident that Finland is capable of dealing with” the issue itself.

He welcomed the move by the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, to deploy 50 guards along the Finnish border.

Helsinki closed its border at the end of September 2022, around the time traffic over the frontier intensified as Russians tried to flee President Vladimir Putin’s “partial mobilization” of hundreds of thousands of citizens to fight in the war. More than 8,500 Russians crossed the border in one day alone.

Earlier this year, the Finnish Border Guard also began the pilot phase of constructing an eastern border barrier fence along some key parts of the border.

“That’s terrifying. Being pulled, dragged, pushed … under gunfire probably,” he said on Tuesday.

It’s one of the details that his daughter is slowly sharing of what happened after she was kidnapped on October 7 and taken to Gaza, a place she now calls “the box.”

“She’s coming out slowly, little by little,” Hand said.

Emily, who turned 9 in captivity, was held with her friend Hila Rotem-Shoshani and Hila’s mother Raaya before the children were released last Saturday.

Raaya looked after Hila and Emily like they were both her daughters, Hand said. And the separation of Hila from her mother two nights before the girls were freed – in contravention of agreements made between Hamas and Israel – was “another step of cruelty,” he said.

From death to captivity to hope

Emily had been at a sleepover at Hila’s house when Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Be’eri. Hand was trapped in his house for hours, unable to reach his daughter, as the community was ravaged – about 130 residents killed and others captured.

But nearly a month later, the Israeli army told him it was “highly probable” Emily was alive and a hostage of Hamas. Hand said the military had been piecing together bits of information and intelligence. None of the remains at Kibbutz Be’eri were identified as those of Emily. There was no blood in the house where she slept. And cellphones belonging to Hila’s family had been tracked to Gaza.

Celebration with Beyoncé video and family dog

Eight weeks after he had last seen his daughter, Hand was informed Emily was on the list of the second batch of hostages to be released under the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.

He tried to hold back his excitement as he reached the base where the freed hostages were being taken. There was a long delay and then word that she was with the Red Cross.

“All of a sudden the door opened up and she just ran. It was beautiful, just like I had imagined it, running together,” Thomas said. “I probably squeezed her too hard,” he added, giving his view of the now iconic video of the reunion where he greets his daughter with her nickname “Emush.”

“It was only when she stepped back that I could see her face was chiseled, like mine, whereas before it was chubby, girly, a young kid face.”

Like the other hostages, Emily has lost body weight and Hand said he had never seen her so pale.

And he was jolted when she spoke to him.

“The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips,” he said. “She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”

A photograph of father and daughter released by the Israel Defense Forces shows a glimpse of the situation, Thomas said.

“You could just see glassy-eyed terror,” he said.

But he also saw a sign of the child he knew when he offered her his phone in the van leaving the handover.

“The first thing she did was get a Beyoncé song on,” he said, adding that she was also smiling and was starting to laugh again.

He had taken the family dog Johnsie to the reunion to offer and receive unconditional love in case Emily was angry at him for not coming to rescue her – a fear he has held since he learned she was alive.

But Emily told her father she thought he had been taken hostage too.

And when he asked her how long she thought she was gone, she replied “a year.”

“Apart from the whispering, that was a punch in the guts. A year.”

Deprivation, but now recovery

The hostages had enough food to survive and plenty of water to drink, Hand said. “They always had a breakfast, sometimes lunch, sometimes something in the evening.”

Emily was so hungry she learned to like eating plain bread with olive oil.

She said “nobody hit us” and Hand imagines that just the strength of voices was enough to control her. The children could not make noise and were allowed to do little but draw and play with some cards.

He is so grateful that Emily was held with Hila and Raaya for the most part, getting solace from knowing Emily had someone to care for her. “She looked after them like her own two kids.”

Emily lost her mother to cancer when she was just 2 years old. And Hand has had to tell her that her “second mom” was killed on October 7. Narkis Hand was Hand’s former wife, and mother to Emily’s two half-siblings.

“That was very hard. We told her and her little eyes glazed over and she took a sharp intake of breath,” he said.

Along with her sorrow, her pale skin and hollowed out face, Emily has returned with a head full of lice, Hand said.

But she is slowly coming back. She tries to stretch out the days with her family but when she finally goes to bed she really sleeps.

And she hasn’t shut down. “Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want any comfort, I guess she’s forgotten how, to be comforted” Hand said.  “She went under the covers of the bed, the quilt, covered herself up and quietly cried.”

She didn’t want to be touched so Hand just waited until she was ready. “She’s a very determined little girl, very strong, I knew that her spirit would get her through it.”

Emily and Hila now look out for each other, Hand said. They celebrated Hila’s 13th birthday with a cake in hospital on Monday and a cake was brought for Emily too, for the 9th birthday she missed in Gaza.

Thomas’s focus is now split. He must get Emily well. And he will do all he can to get Raya back home and all the other hostages too. And he hopes the support he felt while Emily was missing will stay strong.

“We have to get Raaya back for Hila, back for Emily, back for justice,” he said.

“Don’t go silent on us now,” he implored the world. “Bring them home, bring them home.”

France will ban smoking on beaches and public parks, the country’s health minister said on Tuesday, presenting a series of measures as the government looks to prevent 75,000 tobacco-related deaths per year.

The measures — part of a government plan to combat smoking — aim to create a “tobacco-free generation by 2032.”

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, French health minister Aurélien Rousseau said that smoking on beaches, public parks, forests and some other public spaces, including close to schools, will soon be banned in France.

Rousseau also announced a gradual price increase for cigarettes, saying that a packet would cost 12 euros ($13) in 2025, and 13 euros ($14) by 2027.

France had already said in September it would ban disposable e-cigarettes.

“What we want with this plan is to stop trivializing smoking,” Rousseau told BFMTV.

“The fun, leisure aspect of smoking has to go,” he continued, adding that “200 preventable tobacco-related deaths per day… is a number we should not get used to.”

A herd of wild elephants in Malaysia trampled on a car traveling along a major highway after it struck a baby in their group, local authorities said Monday.

The car, a white Perodua Axia, was being driven by a 48-year-old man, along with his wife and son, 23, according to a statement issued by police in Gerik, in the Malay Peninsula.

The family of three were driving on a major highway from the island of Penang to the northeastern coastal state of Terengganu at around 7.35 p.m. local time on Sunday, when it crashed into the elephant calf.

It had been drizzling and foggy at that time, Gerik Police added, and the car was “negotiating a left bend on the highway” when it hit the baby elephant.

“The car slammed into the young elephant that was walking on the road with the herd,” said Zulkifli Mahmood, Chief Superintendent at Gerik District Police. The calf fell to the ground upon impact, he added.

“Seeing this, the other (five) elephants rushed towards the car and started trampling it.”

The herd then left the area after the calf “got back up,” Mahmood said.

Gerik Police did not specify if the three family members had been inside the car during the incident but no deaths or serious injuries were reported in the police statement.

Photos provided showed extensive damage to the front and sides of the white vehicle, with its side doors caved in. All windows were also smashed.

Authorities did not provide further updates about the condition of the elephant baby.

Elephant-human encounters

As a result of Malaysia’s rapid development of highways, wild elephants across the peninsula have lost large amounts of forest cover, forcing many to venture out to roads to find food, conservationists say.

In the latest accident, Gerik police warned drivers to exercise more caution on highways as herds of elephants regularly roam the area.

Signs warning drivers of elephant crossings are also put up along many highways, particularly in the country’s north but accidents have still occured.

In 2017, a baby elephant was discovered dead on the side of a highway, apparently killed by a car believed to have been speeding, elephant conservation group Management and Ecology of Malaysian Elephants (MEME) said at the time.

Other elephant encounters are also reported on several highways.

In May 2022, a lone adult elephant was spotted walking along a highway also in the Gerik area. Videos shared on social media showed the elephant ambling past bewildered drivers.

In 2020, a distressed adult elephant trampled on a car that had been traveling on the same highway as the latest incident. The elephant was believed to have panicked after several vehicles started honking at it, local authorities said at the time.

“Guys, leave me here. I can’t walk,” pleads a Ukrainian soldier sitting in a narrow trench under constant Russian bombardment.

His legs have been injured by shrapnel and he is bleeding through the bandages. He smokes a cigarette as he lies on the ground, the unit’s medic crouches low in the trench trying to patch him up.

Moments before, four enemy tanks passed just meters away, forcing him and his fellow soldiers to bury themselves into the black fertile earth, which shakes as the tanks roll overhead.

The unit’s assault mission was to recapture 150-meters of trenches along the tree line in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, which has become one of the most contested spots on the Ukrainian frontline.

Avdiivka has been on the frontlines since pro-Moscow separatists seized large portions of the Donbas region, including the nearby city of Donetsk, in 2014, and has been under fire since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

It is seen by Ukrainian and Russian forces as a heavily fortified stronghold, with entrenchments built up over the past eight years. Fierce fighting has raged in Avdiivka for more than a month as Russian forces launch a large-scale attack with round-the-clock shelling and waves of soldiers and armoured vehicles deployed in an attempt to encircle the town.

Russian forces have been repelled by the Ukrainian troops who are heavily entrenched in the area.

Among them in Avdiivka’s trenches, the Ukrainian company’s commander Oleh Sentsov is under fire and rallying his men.

Sentsov, 47, was a famous Ukrainian filmmaker, imprisoned by the Russians for five years in 2014, and is now a soldier fighting with the 47th Mechanised Brigade, part of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

He has fought in some of the war’s fiercest battles so far — Bakhmut,  Zaporizhzhia region and now Avdiivka.

On October 19, he and his fellow soldiers filmed a 5-hour battle on helmet and body cameras, illustrating the cruelty of war and horrors of the trenches.

As Sentsov and his unit fought to hold ground in the tree line, two Russian brigades began advancing through the area.

He and his men found themselves fighting from all sides, caught in a pincer movement by Russian troops. Sentsov and his unit came under constant fire from enemy drones, artillery, and tanks passing within a few meters of their positions.

Drone footage taken by the Ukrainian military showed four Russian tanks firing on the tree line, where three Ukrainian assault groups were entrenched, spread out over a kilometer.

Sentsov’s unit, in the middle of the grouping, were the only ones to be spared.

“Of all the operations my company conducted, this was the first time we failed to complete the mission,” said Sentsov.

Three men in his team were injured, including Sentsov. A paramedic can be seen in the video working quickly to apply chest seals and bandages to her wounded comrades.

“We were driven out of there because we were not able to hold our positions. So we retreated. Our group withdrew, with injuries but survived. But the other two groups that were attacking at the same time together with us were almost completely destroyed,” he said.

The fight for the city

The attack on Avdiivka comes as the front lines of the war remain relatively static, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive continuing to move much more slowly than initially anticipated.

Analysts say the Russian aim is to encircle the city and take over an area of high ground near an industrial facility which would give Russia effective fire control over Ukrainian supply routes.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the fighting in Avdiivka an “onslaught” and said the battle will be the one that in many ways will “determine the overall course of the war.”

“The more Russian forces are destroyed near Avdiivka now, the worse the overall situation and the overall course of this war will be for the enemy,” he said.

Since the start of the renewed Russian offensive on the city, Ukraine claims it has delivered massive blows to Russian military personnel and equipment. And Russia seems to have shifted to the “meat-grinder” tactic it used on Ukrainian forces defending the city of Bakhmut.

“The enemy is assaulting, throwing more and more flesh,” the head of the Avdiivka city military administration Vitalii Barabash said last month. “The Russians decided to push on, they keep going despite the losses.”

Barabash said Monday that fierce fighting continues in the industrial zone on the outskirts of a coke plant but Ukrainian troops were holding the line.

“All enemy attacks from the south and north have been repelled. The defense line is holding,” he said in a post on telegram.

“The military positions are shelled around the clock. Small arms battles continue around the clock.”

Despite heavy 24-hour shelling, nearly 1,300 residents remain in Avdiivka, according to the National Police in Donetsk region.

Acceptance of death

Sentsov said he believes that acceptance of death is essential for those who are fighting.

“If a person does not allow the thought that he or she might be killed, there is nothing for them to do in the war. You have to accept that you can be killed. But it is always scary,” he said.

Fighting in the trenches has become an integral part of the war in Ukraine.

Small assault groups are battling for each meter of dug-up soil. Soldiers usually go in at night or morning, capture a part of the trench and start moving through it, often while the enemy troops are still there.

“This is how the war is fought. 90% of the assault actions take place in this way,” said Sentsov.

“It’s good when you hear the voices of Russians on the positions. It means that they are giving themselves away. You understand where they are. It’s worse when you don’t hear them. You think they are not there. You walk down the trench and they are there. It is an ambush.”

For Sentsov, organizing people on the set of a big movie is not much more difficult than organizing people in a unit.

“You need to have combat skills but the main thing is to organize people,” he said.

Sentsov said Ukraine must prepare for a long war and develop a strategy in case the war grinds on for years.

“We have not lost, but have not won this war yet. We need to stop thinking about what will happen after the victory and think about how to ensure this victory happens as soon as possible… There will be no victory tomorrow,” he said.

The father of four, whose youngest is just one year old, said he must continue fighting for his country’s right to exist.

“All wars are terrible. There are no good wars. People always suffer and die in war. The only question is why they suffer and why they die. Russians are being fooled by Putin’s propaganda. .. Ukrainians are fighting mostly as volunteers for their freedom on their own land,” he said.

“Right now, people are dying for freedom near Avdiivka, near Robotyne, and other places. And there is nothing more important than that.”

As any smoker will tell you, quitting tobacco isn’t easy – and it’s something New Zealand’s new government just isn’t prepared to do right now.

A year after passing a world-leading smoking ban designed to save thousands of lives and prevent new generations of young adults from smoking, New Zealand has announced a u-turn to help pay for tax cuts, infuriating public health officials and anti-tobacco groups.

Introduced last year, the anti-smoking law banned the sale of tobacco to anyone born or after January 1, 2009.

The legislation was due to be implemented by July 2024 and would have included harsh penalties for violations such as fines of up to NZ$150,000 ($96,000).

The country’s new Prime Minister Chris Luxon, whose conservative National Party entered a coalition alliance with the populist New Zealand First party and the libertarian ACT New Zealand party following elections in October, defended the controversial move, saying he disagreed with parts of the policy and argued that a ban would result in a black-market boom.

Luxon said smoking rates in the country had been on the decline and reiterated that he remained committed to reducing tobacco use.

New Zealand’s initial smoking ban was hailed by public health officials around the world.

Months after New Zealand’s announcement, Britain also unveiled plans to phase out smoking for new generations.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the British government remained committed to phasing out smoking, even after New Zealand’s reversal. “We are committed to that,” the spokesperson said. “This is an important long term decision and step to deliver a smoke free generations.”

New Zealand’s new finance minister Nicola Willis on Saturday said the measures would be axed before March 2024, with revenue generated from cigarette sales going towards tax cuts.

Smoking leads to more than eight million deaths globally each year, according to the World Health Organization – with one in four people across the world using tobacco.

Smoking rates in New Zealand, already among the world’s lowest, have been falling and were at their lowest since records began, experts noted, with an estimated 56,000 smokers quitting in 2022.

New Zealand’s policy reversal drew shock and condemnation from public health officials and anti-tobacco groups, who criticized the new government for prioritizing the economy and the tobacco industry ahead of human lives.

“What’s going on here is that we had a set of measures that would have substantially reduced smoking, was modelled to save 80,000 lives and they’ve (the new government) have reversed it – and they’re doing it just to fund tax cuts,” Verrall said.

The anti-smoking group Health Coalition Aotearoa (HCA) expressed disappointment at the new coalition’s plans to repeal the smoking ban.

“This is a major loss for public health, and a huge win for the tobacco industry whose profits will be boosted at the expense of Kiwi lives,” the group said in a statement, adding that there was still massive support from New Zealanders for the world-leading smoke-free amendments.

“Turning the tide on harmful products that are entrenched in society cannot be done by individuals or even communities,” HCA said. “It takes good – and brave – population level policies.”

Throughout the 50 days Noam and Alma Or were held captive in Gaza, one thought kept the siblings going: reuniting with their mother, who they’d been separated from on October 7 during Hamas’ brutal attacks on their community.

But when Noam, 17, and Alma, 13, were released together on Saturday, “this dream had been shattered by the fact that she was murdered,” said the siblings’ maternal uncle Ahal Besorai.

“When they first crossed the border and reunited with their grandmother and older brother, the first news that they had to confront was the fact that their mom is no longer alive. And that was a terribly emotional and traumatic moment for them,” Besorai added.

The siblings’ father Dror remains missing, believed captive in Gaza.

The family had lived in the Be’eri kibbutz, a close-knit farming community of about 1,100 residents, located close to the Gaza border. But the idyllic kibbutz became the scene of bloodshed and devastation on October 7, as one of the main targets for Hamas militants who poured over the border and laid siege to nearby communities.

The militants murdered more than 120 Be’eri residents, including children, and kidnapped others. They set people’s homes on fire, looted, stole and destroyed what they could. In total, some 1,200 people, most civilians, were slain by Hamas militants across southern Israel that day.

It was amid this chaos and terror that Noam and Alma were separated from their parents and taken hostage by Hamas. While in Gaza, they were taken to a house and kept in a room with another woman from their kibbutz, said Besorai, who also grew up in Be’eri.

He didn’t describe in detail what the siblings had gone through, saying he didn’t want to add to the burden of families with loved ones still held hostage. But, he said, “it wasn’t pleasant, to say the least. It was horrible.”

Hamas is believed to have held more than 200 hostages in Gaza prior to the releases negotiated with Israel. Under the breakthrough truce agreement, groups of Israeli citizens and other nationals have been freed every day since last Friday, while Israel has released Palestinian women and children detainees from its prisons, many of whom have never been charged or sentenced.

The initial four-day truce was extended by an additional two days on Monday, as stories began to trickle out from the families of freed hostages, giving the first insights into what life had been like in captivity.

Noam, Alma and the third woman in their room shared a diary, but the siblings weren’t allowed to bring it with them during their release, said Besorai. In fact, they didn’t realize they were being released at all, with Hamas taking measures to conceal that fact from the third hostage, he added.

Militants took the siblings out of the room “on a ploy that they are going to the toilet, then handcuffed them, blindfolded them, took them to the car that took them to the place where they are being handed over to the Red Cross,” said Besorai. “They tried to hide it from the lady who stayed behind, all on her own – so maybe (that) put some psychological pressure on her.”

Even after what the siblings had endured, Noam – who Besorai described as a “beautiful person” – voiced compassion for those in crisis-stricken Gaza, where more than 14,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7 according to data from Hamas-run health authorities there.

“When they were walking (from the Hamas vehicle) to the Red Cross, and they were holding hands, Noam told his sister Alma, that he just felt very sorry because they were surrounded by Gazans, civilians. He said, ‘I feel so sorry for them because they are staying here, and we are going home,’” Besorai said.

Now that the siblings are free, the family is focused on their recovery; they lost weight over the past two months, but are otherwise “sort of okay,” Besorai said. Still, he worries about the toll that captivity has taken on them, and the trauma that may linger.

“When I spoke to them, the first time I spoke to Alma, the 13-year-old niece, she had this enormously big smile and glittering eyes when she came to the Zoom call,” he said.

“And this is what stuck in my head: What is behind these glittering eyes? What is deep inside them following this horrible ordeal? It is just very difficult for me to assess.”