Around 300,000 people turned out for a large pro-Palestinian rally in London on Saturday as police arrested scores of counter-protesters for attempting to confront the marchers.

There was heavy police presence in central London’s Hyde Park Corner as protesters chanted “free, free Palestine” and “ceasefire now.” They were also heard chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Police said they arrested 82 counter-protesters “to prevent a breach of the peace.” They said they had “faced aggression from counter-protesters.” who stormed the area “in significant numbers” as the rally was building up.

“Some politicians may be on our side, but they are too afraid to speak out,” she added.

Another protester said the number of people who had turned out for the march was “inspiring.” “We need to speak out for the voiceless,” they added.

Far-right scuffle with police

The police had promised to use “all the powers and tactics available to us” to stop the counter-protesters confronting the pro-Palestinian march.

Far-right organizer Tommy Robinson led a small but noisy demonstration to try and reach the Cenotaph, a symbolic landmark which is located in Whitehall, the London district where the Prime Minister and government departments reside.

During the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the UK has traditionally observed a two-minute silence to commemorate the moment guns fell silent marking the end of World War I in 1918.

Video posted on the ground from the anti-racist group Hope Not Hate showed far-right protestors dressed in black pushing the police lines at various points around Whitehall.

The unrest follows a political row over the pro-Palestinian protests earlier this week when Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman went off-script to accuse police of being too lenient on the demonstrators.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had initially attempted to stop the pro-Palestinian protest from going ahead.

While later accepting that the march would take place, Sunak stuck to his line that choosing to protest on this particular weekend is “not just disrespectful but offends our heartfelt gratitude to the memory of those who gave so much so that we may live in freedom and peace today.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the disorder seen at London’s Cenotaph on Saturday was a “direct result” of the words of Braverman.

“The scenes of disorder we witnessed by the far-right at the Cenotaph are a direct result of the Home Secretary’s words. The police’s job has been made much harder,” said Khan on social media, adding that London’s Metropolitan Police has his “full support to take action against anyone found spreading hate and breaking the law.”

Dr. Mohammed Ghneim has not left his hospital in Gaza City in four weeks. He can’t remember the last time he slept or ate, and his blue scrubs are stained in the blood of patients who’ve died in his arms.

His voice cracks under the weight of the horrors he’s seen: fetuses pulled from the wombs of dying mothers, children with crushed lungs struggling to breathe, and his own colleagues – doctors, nurses and EMTs – transported to the hospital morgue in body bags.

Ghneim is an emergency room doctor at Dar Al-Shifa, also known as Al-Shifa Hospital or Shifa, and is Arabic for “house of healing.” But at this hospital – the largest medical complex in Gaza – there’s far too much death.

Shifa is running dangerously low on clean water, medicine, supplies and fuel. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians, injured or displaced by Israel’s war against Hamas, continue to pack its wards, seeking shelter from the seemingly endless barrage of airstrikes.

Israeli forces on Saturday surrounded Shifa in all directions, according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director-general of the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces denied that the hospital is under siege.

An Israeli airstrike destroyed the hospital’s generator, Al-Bursh said, cutting electricity to the building, including life-saving equipment used by 39 infants in neonatal care. Three infants have already died, he added.

“We are trained to deal with mass casualties, but not like this,” Ghneim, 28, said. “We have no anesthesia to treat patients with severe pain, patients with shrapnel in their head or abdomen, people whose arms or legs have been amputated.”

Alarming scenes from inside Shifa, and other hospitals across Gaza, have sparked international calls for a ceasefire and more aid to be allowed to enter the territory, home to some 2 million Palestinians, currently closed off to the world by Israel and Egypt.

Nonprofit medical groups across the United States are mobilizing to raise funds and ship medicine and supplies to failing hospitals before it’s too late. But with the situation in Gaza spiraling and few diplomatic or humanitarian solutions in sight, many worry the delay will result in more deaths.

“I want to say to the world, this is a humanitarian crisis, this is a genocide,” Ghneim pleaded from his crowded emergency room. “Please stop this.”

‘Desperate to send help’

More than 7,000 miles away, in Houston, Mosab Nasser is making travel plans to visit communities where he can spread awareness about the situation in Gaza and raise funds for struggling hospitals.

The proud Texan, born and raised in Gaza, says it’s all he’s been doing since October 7, when Israel declared war following a brazen attack by Hamas that killed around 1,200 people and took more than 230 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel responded by imposing a siege and launching devastating airstrikes across Gaza, which Hamas governs. Israel says its goal is to destroy the militant group and return the hostages, but it is the Palestinian people living there who are bearing the brunt of the attacks.

The airstrikes have killed at least 11,025 Palestinians, including 4,506 children, and wounded more than 27,000 others so far, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws its figures from sources in Hamas-run Gaza.

Nasser says three of his relatives – all young children, including one who was only 8 months old – were killed when Israeli airstrikes caused their home to collapse, but he has no time to grieve.

As CEO of the nonprofit medical group FAJR Scientific, he is obligated to find a way to deliver aid and other resources to hospitals in need.

FAJR Scientific’s goal is to raise enough money to fill five 40-foot containers with medical supplies, surgical tools and sterile instruments, and ship them to Gaza, Nasser says.

“Doctors in Gaza don’t get to go home. It’s traumatic for them,” Nasser said. “They are exhausted. Their bodies are physically at the hospital, but their minds are with their families trying to check on them.”

In some cases, Nasser says, medical workers have discovered their own loved ones among the injured or dead, compounding the fears and anxieties they already experience.

It’s not the first time FAJR Scientific has supported Gaza’s medical community. The group has led several surgical missions to Gaza and trained nearly 100 Palestinian medical workers on the ground, Nasser says. In August, they provided more than $4 million in medical supplies to hospitals across the territory.

The Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), another US-based nonprofit, is also leading efforts to assist health care workers in Gaza.

They will use the money to purchase critical medicine and supplies, including anesthetics, antibiotics and other medications to fill containers that will be sent to Gaza. The group also has more than 1,000 health-care professionals on standby to enter the enclave as soon as Israel and Egypt allow entry to humanitarian workers, Musleh says.

“We’re desperate to send help,” the Palestinian American doctor from Dayton, Ohio, said. “It’s a catastrophic situation. … There’s 10 times more patients than what the hospitals can take care of and they’re all coming with serious life-threatening injuries that need immediate attention, and a lot of people die because of that.”

FAJR Scientific and PAMA are among several US medical groups coordinating efforts. But so far, few have been able to reach hospitals under siege.

Since the start of the war, only about 900 trucks carrying international aid – but not fuel – have been allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. That’s only a trickle compared to the approximately 500 trucks that entered each day before the war. PRCS warns that Gaza will need substantially more aid to meet growing humanitarian needs.

‘Waiting for a miracle’

Ahmad Muhanna, director of Al Awda Hospital in Jabalya, says the real nightmare is treating maimed children, whose faces he sees even when he closes his eyes.

Doctors are performing surgeries, including amputations, on children without clean water, let alone anesthesia or antibiotics, he says. Many are being treated on the floor due to a lack of empty hospital beds.

Israeli airstrikes at or near medical facilities have further complicated the matter, Muhanna, 49, adds. Medical workers are in constant danger.

As of November 10, 198 health care workers have been killed and 130 others wounded in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. It also reports 21 hospitals and 51 primary health care centers are out of service.

Israel says it’s only targeting Hamas, whom it accuses of using hospitals to hide and launch attacks. The Palestinian Ministry of Health and Hamas deny such claims.

Israel says civilian deaths and the destruction of vital facilities, including hospitals, are collateral damage it tries to mitigate, and that Palestinians should flee to safer areas. But doctors in Gaza say it’s impossible to evacuate patients without causing more death, and that nowhere is truly safe.

“The Israeli air force is terrorizing us day and night above our tiny spot in the world,” said Muhanna, who believes high casualties prove Israel is not trying to mitigate civilian deaths. “They don’t have boundaries, no red lines they cannot cross. They have crossed every line by targeting women, elders, children, men, the disabled and every possible living thing.”

The chaos unfolding at Shifa, Al Awda and other hospitals across Gaza has left doctors exasperated. But with no ceasefire in sight and the borders tightly controlled, preventing vital supplies from reaching hospitals, more people will continue to die.

“We feel helpless towards our patients,” said Ghneim, the emergency room doctor at Shifa. “We want to provide patients with appropriate health care, but in many cases there’s nothing we can do.”

Meanwhile, Nasser and Musleh scramble to fundraise, buy supplies and coordinate shipping to the Rafah border crossing, where truckers anxiously await permission to enter Gaza and unload their life-saving cargo.

“The whole world turned their back on the people of Gaza,” Nasser said. “And right now we’re only waiting for a miracle.”

Three newborn babies have died in Gaza’s largest hospital after it went “out of service” amid intense fighting in the area, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, who say the facility is under siege from Israeli forces.

Doctors are now being forced to carry out artificial respiration by hand on the 36 other babies they are caring for, Al-Bursh said. Doctors have covered the babies with soft lining and blankets as part of this effort.

Ministry spokesman Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra said he was trapped inside the complex in northern Gaza, saying it was “out of service” after repeatedly being targeted by Israeli fire.

“The intensive care unit, pediatric department, and oxygen devices have stopped working,” al-Qidra said.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said it could not contact any of its staff at Al-Shifa Hospital who had described a “catastrophic situation” inside.

In a statement Saturday, the organization said “ambulances can no longer move to collect the injured, and non-stop bombardment prevents patients and staff from evacuating.”

Israel has been stepping up its offensive inside Gaza as part of its response to the surprise Hamas attacks that left 1,200 people dead.

Since then, Israel has been bombarding and blockading Gaza, an already impoverished and densely packed territory, leaving more than 11,000 people dead, according to Palestinian health officials. The assault has sparked escalating warnings about healthcare in Gaza.

The Director General for the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), Robert Mardini, said the organization was “shocked and appalled by the images and reports coming from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.”

“The unbearably desperate situation for patients & staff trapped inside must stop. Now,” Mardini said in a post on X.

Staff and patients trapped

Al-Bursh said Al-Shifa Hospital was under “complete siege” with staff and patients unable to evacuate.

There are still more than 400 people being treated at the hospital and around 20,000 displaced people seeking shelter in the hospital complex, according to Al-Bursh.

“The situation is very difficult and dire. After a slowdown in shelling this afternoon, the shelling and gun fire resumed, heavily targeting anything that moves,” Sarsour said, adding that medics inside the facility were working by candlelight and that food is growing scarce for both doctors and patients.

Al-Bursh said people who had been injured were instead being transported to the Al-Ahli Hospital as Al-Shifa was inaccessible.

Humanitarian agencies have been sounding the alarm about the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital. Angelita Caredda, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Middle East director, said in a statement that the group was “horrified by reports of relentless attacks on Gaza’s hospitals.”

“Patients, including babies, and civilians seeking relief are trapped under attack. It is an affront to wage war around and on hospitals,” she said.

Martin Griffiths, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, also condemned the attacks, saying that “there can be no justification for acts of war in health care facilities.”

In a statement posted on X, Griffiths wrote that people using and working at Gazan healthcare facilities “must trust that they are places of shelter and not of war.”

Other hospitals have been caught up in the fighting. On Friday the director of two facilities said Israeli tanks had them encircled.

To be at work by 9 a.m., Joseph Handal gets up at 4:30 a.m., even though his workplace, a Franciscan church in the Old City of Jerusalem, is only a few miles from his home in Bethlehem.

The journey should take 25 minutes by road. But this is the occupied West Bank. Nothing is ever simple here.

As a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, Handal needs a permit to enter Jerusalem. He does have one – but whether he can make it to work depends on his ability to get through at least two Israeli checkpoints.

With Israel at war, he says this process has become a nightmare.

After Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping some 240 others, Israel stepped up its security measures and began severely restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

Israel controls all entry and exit points to the West Bank through roadblocks and checkpoints which are staffed by soldiers and armed police. The security forces have always had the ability to close these checkpoints without warning but, since October 7, the closures have been more frequent and have lasted longer, residents and human rights watchdogs say.

For Handal and the tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians who need to get to Jerusalem for work, school, to go to a doctor or to visit family, this means daily uncertainty.

“It puts you in a position where you can’t even tell someone ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow,’ because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Mohammad Jamil, an Arabic teacher from a village near Hebron.

But while Ibrahim might be relieved when he misses school, his father is growing more exasperated by the day.

“There is no future here. No solution,” he said.

Ibrahim is a resident of Jerusalem, where he lives with his mother, an Israeli citizen. But Jamil is a Palestinian from the West Bank, which means he can’t come to visit Ibrahim as often as he’d like to. He lives and works in the West Bank and has a family visit permit to enter Jerusalem to visit Ibrahim – but it onlyallows him to go five days every three months.

Instead, Ibrahim comes to stay with him in the West Bank two days a week – an arrangement that Jamil says has become much more complicated since the war began.

New restrictions on movement can come into effect suddenly and without explanation, so people who need to move around for work must be more flexible and always leave plenty of time to spare.

“We are used to this. We live under occupation,” Handal said. Still, the complicated commute that can sometimes involve long waiting times, unexpected closures of the checkpoints and interrogation from Israeli security forces is well worth it to Handal. Average daily wages in Israel and Jerusalem are more than double what people can earn in the West Bank, according to the International Labour Organization.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since seizing the territory from Jordanian military occupation in 1967. In the early 1990s, under the Oslo Accords peace agreements, the West Bank was divided into three distinct zones: A, B and C.

Area C, which comprises about 60% of the West Bank, is fully Israeli-controlled and forms one continuous territory. Area B is under the joint control of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, while Area A is wholly within Palestinian control. Each make up about 20% of the West Bank.

Cities and villages in areas B and A are often isolated from each other, which means Palestinians wishing to go from one to another may have to pass through areas that are fully controlled by Israel.

This can prove difficult or sometimes impossible.

An Israeli checkpoint on the road that connects Handal’s neighborhood in Bethlehem with the main road out of the city has been closed to cars for at least a month. To leave it, he needs to take a taxi or drive to the checkpoint, cross the barrier on foot and then continue his journey in a different vehicle.

As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to gradually transfer control over the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, but that has not happened. Instead, dozens of Israeli settlements have been built in the West Bank, encroaching into land that Palestinians, along with the international community, view as territory for a future Palestinian state.

Approximately 500,000 Israeli Jewish settlers now live in the West Bank, according to Peace Now, an Israeli group that advocates for peace and monitors settlements. Many of these settlements are heavily guarded, fenced-off areas that are completely off limits to Palestinians.

Most of the world considers these settlements illegal under international law and Israel has been criticized for allowing their expansion – and, in some cases, supporting them with tax breaks and state-funded security. Israel views the West Bank as “disputed territory,” and contends its settlement policy is legal.

The areas around these settlements have always been prone to violence, but the situation has worsened in recent months.

More than 170 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. That’s more than were killed across the whole of 2022 by Israeli forces, according to UN figures.

Most died during clashes with security forces and raids by the IDF. According to the IDF, some of them were Hamas and Jihad militants, while others engaged in clashes.

At least eight Palestinians were killed by settlers, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The spiralling violence has prompted international outcry, including from Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights.

“I appeal as a matter of urgency for Israeli authorities to take immediate measures to take steps to ensure the protection of Palestinians in the West Bank who are being on a daily basis subjected to violence from Israeli forces and settlers, ill treatment, arrests, evictions, intimidation and humiliation,” Turk said.

According to the UN, since October 7, nearly 1,000 Palestinians from at least 15 herding communities have been forced from their homes by settlers.

“In the context of the coercive environment they live in, the displacement of these communities may amount to the forcible transfer of the population, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” Turk said, adding: “Continued, widespread impunity for such violations is unacceptable, dangerous and it is in clear violation of Israel’s obligation under international human rights law.”

A group of 30 human rights and civil society organizations in Israel published a joint letter last month, alleging the settlers have been “exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities.”

US President Joe Biden also weighed in on the issue. A staunch supporter of Israel and its military response to the Hamas attacks, Biden nonetheless condemned “extremist settlers” from Israel attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.

Speaking about the violence by settlers, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement on Wednesday, saying: “There is a tiny handful of people that do not represent this public and that take the law into their own hands. We are not prepared to tolerate this. We are not prepared to accept this. We will take all action against them.”

At the same time, groups of Palestinians have regularly clashed with Israeli police at checkpoints and in other tense areas, often throwing stones and setting fires.

Jamil said he always drives his son around and makes sure he gets onto the school bus safely, because settlers have on occasion come to the area and thrown rocks at passing cars.

After a few long hours of waiting, checking with friends on updates and wondering what would happen, Handal managed to get to work on Monday.

The bus never turned up, but he found a workaround. “I have a friend from Jerusalem who took me with him. At the border they asked for my ID and permit, and they let me in. I made it – by chance,” he said.

Paid by the hour and with two young children at home, he said he couldn’t afford to sit a day out.

Iceland has declared a state of emergency, with police officials urging residents to evacuate the coastal town of Grindavík following an intense wave of earthquakes in the southwest of the country linked to a possible volcanic eruption.

Nearly 800 quakes were recorded between midnight and 2 p.m. on Friday, with the shallowest at a depth of 3-3.5 kilometers (1.86-2.18 miles), according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

In statements Friday, Iceland’s Civil Protection Agency said a magma tunnel that is forming could reach Grindavík. But as of Friday evening, the Icelandic authority said it has been impossible to tell if and where the magma might break through to the surface.

“Earthquakes may become bigger than those that have already occurred, and this sequence of events could lead to an eruption. However, there are still no signs that the magma is nearing the surface. Its progress is being closely monitored,” the Civil Protection Agency said.

Magma is a mixture of molten and semi-molten rock found beneath the surface of the Earth that can cause an eruption when it finds its way to the surface, becoming lava.

Authorities urged residents to evacuate calmly and emphasized that there is no imminent danger.

“We want to reiterate that residents MUST evacuate their homes and leave the town. But we also want to reiterate that this is not an emergency evacuation, there is plenty of time to prepare, secure things and drive out of town calmly,” the Civil Protection Agency said.

“It is clear that we are dealing with events that we Icelanders have not experienced before, at least not since the eruption in Vestmannaeyjar. We faced that together, we will face this together and we will not lose heart,”  the Civil Protection Agency added.

The US Embassy in Iceland issued a volcano alert, warning about the increased signs of volcanic activity.

“If an eruption occurs, follow the instructions of Icelandic authorities. Volcanic hazards may include lava, toxic gases, and heavy smoke from fires ignited by lava,” it said.

The world-famous Blue Lagoon thermal pool in the area has already closed due to the ongoing seismic activity.

Since 2021, there has been an eruption almost every 12 months and the latest one took place in July south of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.

Iceland sits on a tectonic plate boundary that continually splits apart, pushing North America and Eurasia away from each other along the line of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It is home to 32 active volcanoes.

A British couple died from carbon monoxide poisoning while on holiday at a luxury resort in Egypt after the room next door was sprayed with pesticide to kill bed bugs, a coroner has found.

John and Susan Cooper were staying at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in August 2018, when the room next to theirs was fumigated with a pesticide, ‘Lambda’, for a bug infestation, the UK’s PA Media reported. In some countries, Lambda is diluted with the substance dichloromethane, which causes the body to metabolize or ingest carbon monoxide.

The fumigated room, which was sealed with masking tape around the door, was connected to theirs with an adjoining door, according to PA.

The married couple returned to their room for the night but were found seriously ill the next day by their daughter. John Cooper, 69, was declared dead in the room, while his wife Susan, 63, died hours later in hospital.

Dr. James Adelely, senior coroner for the English county of Lancashire, ruled that the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of inhaling the vapor from spraying the pesticide which contained dichloromethane, PA reported.

“To this day, our family struggle to comprehend what happened,” the couple’s daughter Kelly Ormerod, who was on holiday with her parents at the time, said in a statement following the inquest.

“It should have never been allowed to happen”.

She said that “nothing would make up for the pain and loss we felt since that day,” adding: “The last few years have been the most traumatic and emotional time for all of us involved.”

Ukraine claimed it hit two Russian landing craft in occupied Crimea with sea drones in an overnight operation, the latest in a series of escalating strikes on the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

The video appears to show two sea drones approaching targets that appear to be landing craft at a dock. The second drone appears to film the first one as it hits the landing craft. As the second drone approaches its target, the video shows what looks like heavy equipment onboard.

“The boats were crewed and loaded with armored vehicles,” GUR claimed in the post on Telegram.

Russia has not officially commented on the incident.

Kyiv has ramped up assaults on occupied Crimea in recent months, in an attempt to undermine Russian forces. In September, the Ukrainian military unleashed a fierce attack on a Russian naval base in Sevastopol, in what was its most destructive strike on the port since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The Russian military blogger Rybar said that in the latest attack, a coordinated assault from the air diverted attention, allowing the Ukrainian sea drones to strike.

“The enemy struck the base of the Black Sea Fleet and the Federal Security Service in Chernomorske. They tried to hit the barracks with at least one Neptune anti-ship missile, but the missile landed nearby. Simultaneously, four unmanned boats entered Uzkaya Bay, targeting the Black Sea Fleet boats stationed there,” Rybar said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces intercepted three Ukrainian drones over Crimea in the early hours on Friday. No casualties were reported.

GUR claimed Russia used similar landing craft to those destroyed on Thursday in its occupation of Zmiinyi Island, an uninhabited outpost in the Black Sea between Ukraine and occupied Crimea, at the beginning of its full-scale invasion.

Since Ukraine has ramped up attacks in the Black Sea, Russian naval air defense capabilities have been degraded and such landing craft have been serving as an alternative platform for air defense systems, according to GUR.

“In the conditions of actual lack of shipboard air defense systems after a series of attacks by the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine, such boats with air defense systems on board served as cover for the invaders’ ships on the Black Sea Fleet raids,” GUR claimed.

The Ukrainian military refocused efforts on striking Crimea after Moscow resumed its siege on Ukrainian ports following the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July, preventing crucial grain exports and threatening global food security.

A pond in Hawaii looks like something right out of a fairy tale. Water at the Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge, one of the few coastal salt marshes on the island of Maui, has been bright pink since at least October 30, officials say, after its salt content surged amid an extreme drought.

Water samples sent to the University of Hawaii suggest that halobacteria is behind the pond’s new magenta hue, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Halobacteria are single-celled organisms that thrive in very salty water, like the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. The bacterium is considered a so-called extremophile because of its ability to live in such an extreme environment – in this case, one where the water salinity is twice that of seawater, Fish and Wildlife noted.

While Kealia literally means “salt encrustation,” the pond’s salinity has skyrocketed well beyond normal because of Maui’s extreme drought. The entire island is in severe or worse drought, according to the US Drought Monitor. The area where the Kealia Pond refuge is located is in what’s considered an extreme drought – the second-worst on the Drought Monitor’s scale.

The Waikapu Stream, which brings water from the West Maui Mountains down into the Kealia Pond, also flows through the area of extreme drought. Less freshwater input into the pond has driven the salt concentration up and provided a cozy haven for the brightly hued halobacteria.

Around 90% of Maui County, which includes other islands, is in at least severe drought – one that has grown even worse since a deadly wildfire ripped through Lahaina in August.

Scientists are still studying how the climate crisis will affect Hawaii, but overall there is confidence drought will get worse as global temperature increases – even in tropical areas such as this.

Just as Emperor Hirohito was announcing Japan’s surrender, two US Army Air Corps P-51 fighters attacked a Tokyo airfield on August 15, 1945 during the last few hours of World War II.

Their strafing run on Japanese forces completed, the leader of the US mission, Capt. Jerry Yellin, and his wingman, 1st Lt. Philip Schlamberg, exchanged “thumbs up” signals and flew higher to avoid antiaircraft fire from below.

When Yellin topped the clouds, Schlamberg had disappeared. The young pilot would never be seen again.

US Defense Department records show 291,557 American deaths in World War II during nearly four years of involvement in the conflict.

More than three months after Nazi Germany surrendered to Allied forces – and thousands of miles from the former battlefields of Europe – Schlamberg, a 19-year-old Jewish honor student from Brooklyn, was the last American serviceman to die.

It was the US military’s final combat mission of the war. And eerily, it was a fate Schlamberg felt was coming.

The final mission

From Ukraine to the Middle East, Sudan to Myanmar, conflict is raging across the globe as many countries honor those who fought in wars on Armistice Day – Veterans’ Day in the United States.

Yellin and Schlamberg will be among those whose sacrifice is remembered on Saturday.

Back in 1945, they thought the war should have been over by August 15.

Six days earlier, a US B-29 bomber had dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, just three days after detonating the first devastating weapon of its kind over Hiroshima. At least 100,000 people were killed in those atomic bombings, but Tokyo still did not capitulate.

“We had hoped that the second bomb on August 9 would end the war and that we would never have to fly another mission in combat,” Yellin wrote in a 2017 book, “The Last Fighter Pilot.”

But some in the Japanese military government wanted to fight until death – and its six leaders argued among themselves long into the night of August 14. Shortly before midnight, Hirohito recorded a speech that Japanese radio would play at noon the next day, saying the war was over.

By that time, Schlamberg, Yellin and other fighters from the Iwo Jima-based 78th Fighter Squadron were flying over Japan looking for “targets of opportunity” – essentially anything with military value that could be attacked from the air.

Just after noon on that August day, the American pilots dived on a Tokyo area airfield.

“We hit the field, and then climbed into a cloud embankment, with Phil flying tight in beside me,” Yellin wrote in the foreword to “The Last Fighter Pilot.”

“When I emerged from the clouds a few minutes later, Phil was gone. I would never see him again.”

As they flew that day, the US pilots listened for the word “Utah” to come over their radios. The codeword would indicate Japan had surrendered and hostilities could cease.

Some of the American warplanes flying over Japan on August 15 did hear “Utah” broadcast. Those in Yellin’s group didn’t.

According to Yellin’s account, the pilots in the 78th Fighter Squadron would only find out after they’d flown the three hours back to their airfield on Iwo Jima – way too late for Schlamberg to avoid his fate.

A premonition of death

Yellin, Schlamberg and the rest of the squadron had learned of their August 15 mission the night before at a briefing in a Quonset hut on Iwo Jima.

With no word of Japanese surrender, the American pilots had been ordered to keep up the pressure on Tokyo. The squadron would fly over the Japanese capital in the morning, the fliers were told.

According to the book, Schlamberg then leaned over and whispered to Yellin: “If I go on this mission, captain, I’m not coming back.”

Worried about how such a thought could affect Schlamberg’s confidence in combat, Yellin suggested he see the unit’s flight surgeon, who could order him not to fly that day.

But the 19-year-old would have none of it, according to Yellin’s account.
“I’m going to fly the mission,” Schlamberg said.

Who was Philip Schlamberg?

The youngest of 10 children of Jewish-Polish immigrants, the young flier was “the great hope of the Schlamberg Family,” his niece, Melanie Sloan, wrote in a foreword for “The Last Fighter Pilot.”

“They had a very tough life,” Sloan wrote, surviving on public assistance with Philip and his siblings illegally selling ice cream on Coney Island to help make ends meet.
Still, her uncle was a scholar, earning valedictorian honors at Abraham Lincoln High School, Sloan wrote.

In “The Last Fighter Pilot,” Yellin and main author Don Brown wrote that Schlamberg hoped to attend college, but didn’t have the finances.

“Though he’d been accepted to college, he had no money for tuition and books,” they wrote.

But Schlamberg’s smarts were unquestioned.

Sloan said that through a search of US military records she obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, she found that her uncle had the highest IQ ever recorded in Army Air Corps entrance exams.

“The Last Fighter Pilot” says when the service saw those scores, Schlamberg was offered his pick of jobs and chose to be a fighter pilot.

Hating Japan

It was Jerry Yellin’s choice to be a fighter pilot too.

In the 2021 documentary film about this life, “Jerry’s Last Mission,” he recalled the immediate aftermath of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that drew the United States into the war.

“I felt devastated, like everybody in this country. We all hated the whole country of Japan,” he said.

Thanks to a boyhood fascination with airplanes and pilots from World War I, he knew where he had to be in the conflict that the US military was entering.

“I had my mother and father sign the papers when I was 18 years old. I said, ‘I’m going to fly fighters against Japan,’” he said in the film.

The decision that he should fight in the Pacific rather than against Nazi Germany in Europe came despite the fact he was Jewish, and had felt the pain of anti-Semitism when his New Jersey home was vandalized with Nazi symbols in 1936.

Yellin was only two years older than Schlamberg, but in the war years, that was an eternity.

He began his training earlier and arrived before his wingman for combat on the island of Iwo Jima, still more than half occupied by Japanese troops when he landed his P-51 there on March 7, 1945.

Yellin recalled his first vivid memory of the island, the bodies of Japanese soldiers stacked in mounds off the airstrip and truckloads of dead US Marines nearby.

But what haunted him more, for years after the war ended, were the memories of his 16 Iwo Jima-based squadron mates who were killed in action, including Schlamberg.

“I knew it was OK for the Japanese to die, but I didn’t think it was OK for the American guys that I knew to die,” he said in “Jerry’s Last Mission.”

“I almost felt unworthy of being alive, because these guys died,” he said. “I lived and they died, and I couldn’t figure out why.”

The death of Schlamberg, Yellin’s wingman on his 19th wartime engagement and the final combat mission of nearly four years of conflict, was particularly hard for the US captain.

In a 2020 story on the New Jersey website Montclair Local, Yellin’s son Michael told of his father’s pain when the pilot took his wingman’s belongings to Schlamberg’s mother in Brooklyn.

“She told my father, ‘It should have been you who died, instead of my son.’ He understood, but it scarred him for the rest of his life,” Michael Yellin said.

A healing – with family

“When I came home from the war, I was not a decent human being. I was a killer,” Yellin said in the movie.

But two members of his family changed Yellin’s life.

His wife, Helene, pushed him to travel to Japan in 1983, he said in the film. During that trip, he saw Japanese war veterans up close and felt a kinship, he said.

Meanwhile, Helene fell in love with the country her husband had once hated. And she said Japan seemed the kind of place that their son Robert would like. So prodded, Yellin later encouraged Robert to go on a short homestay program there.

Robert accepted and never looked back, eventually marrying a Japanese woman and starting a family with her.

And the father of his new daughter-in-law was a former fighter pilot too. Taro Yamakawa trained to fly Zero fighters as a kamikaze pilot, but was never assigned a final mission, according to Yellin.

Yamakawa told him, “Any man that could fly a P-51 against the Japanese and live must be a brave man, and I want the blood of that man to flow through the veins of my grandchildren,” Yellin said.

There would be three of those grandchildren, and with them, hatred was replaced by love.

“I was a happy guy, killing people, killing my enemy – then – and now they’re my family,” he says in the film as he rides a bullet train through the Japanese countryside.

“This is home to me. This is a much a home to me as America, because my family lives here.”

Fitting endings

Yellin died in December 2017, shortly after “The Last Fighter Pilot” was published.
A US Air Force obituary, published when Yellin was laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in 2019, noted his postwar struggles.

“Although his flying career was short, he witnessed more turmoil than any human being should ever have to witness,” the obituary said. “Yellin was discharged in December 1945 and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, before it was recognized as such.”

Yellin’s ashes are interred in a columbarium in Arlington.

Schlamberg is remembered with an inscription on a stone tablet at the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. No trace of him or his P-51 have ever been found.

In the foreword to “The Last Fighter Pilot,” Yellin recounted how World War II’s end was fitting for the times.

“With the news emerging in 1945 of the Nazi atrocities against Jews half a world away, how ironic that the war’s final mission would be flown by a couple of Jewish pilots from New York and New Jersey,” it says.

“And that the final combat life in the defense of freedom would be laid down by a teenage Jewish fighter pilot who had not yet learned to even drive a car.”

Forget Italy’s most famous active volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, which destroyed Pompei in 79 AD.

The most dangerous volcanic threat in Italy right now is one you’ve probably never heard of: Campi Flegrei, or the Phlegraean Fields.

This unassuming plain, which stretches 200 kilometers (125 miles) under the bay of Naples and the islands of Capri and Ischia to the outskirts of the city of Naples, is a giant caldera, or depression, left by a supervolcano some 2 million years ago.

It is now the site of multiple volcanoes that have been active for 39,000 years, many of which lie underwater. It’s also populated with villas, small villages and shopping malls and home to 800,000 people and a hospital under construction. More than 500,000 of the locals live in what Italy’s civil protection agency has deemed a “red zone,” an area encompassing 18 towns that’s at highest risk in the event of an eruption. An additional 3 million residents of Naples live immediately outside the eastern edge of the caldera, according to the civil protection agency.

The last major eruption of Campi Flegrei was in 1538, and it created a new mountain in the bay. Seismic activity in the area has been intensifying since December of 2022, according to Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), and experts fear that the volcano could be reawakening after generations at rest.

The densely populated region, which is less than 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Vesuvius, is prone to a seismic phenomenon known as bradyseism, defined by cycles of uplift and gradual lowering of the ground. The last time the region saw such activity was 1984, when the ground rose 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) before it began a slow descent accompanied by seismic activity similar to what is happening in the area now.

Currently in a state of positive bradyseism, when the ground moves upward, the entire volcanic zone is also experiencing a surge in earthquakes that has rattled nerves and sent residents seeking safety out into the streets. In September, the strongest earthquake in 40 years struck the region, and that 4.2 magnitude quake was followed by one of a similar strength just days later.

So far in 2023 Campi Flegrei has recorded more than 3,450 earthquakes, 1,118 of which occurred in August alone. This is more than triple the previous year’s total, according to INGV’s data. More than 500 earthquakes occurred in October, the strongest of which hit 4.0 magnitude, followed by a dozen aftershocks.

Until the beginning of May, the quakes were almost all under 3.0 magnitude, according to INGV.

Many experts think the local population should be better prepared to cope with the seismic activity and the possibility of an eruption. On October 5, the country’s civil protection agency laid out an updated evacuation plan, which calls for the movement of half a million people over a 72-hour period of time on roads many locals fear won’t accommodate such intense traffic. The last time a such a plan had been studied was in 2019, and the findings showed the evacuation plan was lacking.

Carlo Doglioni, head of the INGV, gave testimony on the potential outcomes of the seismic activity before the Italian government’s Environmental Commission’s lower chamber on September 28.

“There are two possible scenarios relating to the evolution of the situation in the Campi Flegrei: the best is that the ongoing bradyseism crisis ends as happened in 1983 to 84; the worst is an eruption similar to that of 1538,” he said.

“It is an evolution that we do not know and that we are monitoring,” Doglioni said.

What’s behind the increase in activity

Dr. Giuseppe De Natale, a research director at the INGV in Naples, said the current cycle of uplift is associated with pressure below the surface of the caldera. “We don’t know exactly the depth of the increase of pressure, it could be between zero and 3.5 kilometers,” he said.

There are two hypotheses as to what could be causing the current increase in seismic activity at Campi Flegrei, according to De Natale.

The first — and potentially most dangerous — possibility is that it could be an “intrusion of magma coming from the magma chamber located about 8 kilometers deep,” De Natale said.

The second, which he said is more likely, is that there is a large “degassing” of gases created by the magma coming from the deep magma chamber. The degassing at the same depth as the magma chamber is what he believes has caused the ground to rumble.

“The problem is the rocks,” De Natale said. “The shallow rocks cannot hold high levels of pressure, so if the pressure increases too much, there could happen complete fracturing of the rocks, which is generally the cause of the eruption of a volcano.”

Dr. Benedetto De Vivo, a retired professor of geochemistry at the University of Naples and an expert on bradyseism, agrees that the crater is degassing, and doesn’t think that the rising land is due to magma alone. These gases, he believes, are caused by the magma below the caldera receding, not rising. But he said it is impossible to know exactly what is happening.

“We can use statistics to create models, but we cannot predict the natural process because we do not know all of the variables in play,” De Vivo said.

In spite of objections by the local residents that drilling could trigger more seismic activity, De Natale won approval in 2009 to lead a team of volcano experts from 18 countries in 2012 on a mission to drill a pilot hole 501 meters (1,644 feet) deep into the caldera in an attempt to see exactly what was going on. However, Rosa Russo Iervolino, who was mayor of Naples at the time, halted the drilling project before it began, citing concerns for the population. In 2012, after she left office, the project was briefly reinstated by the new mayor, Luigi di Magistris, but by then funding had dried up and only the borehole was drilled.

Planning around a natural enigma

Supervolcanoes are among the most perplexing and least understood natural threats in the world.

What distinguishes a supervolcano from an ordinary volcano is the amount of volcanic material it has ejected during past eruptions — a reflection of the volcano’s explosive power.

A supervolcano is one that has ejected more than 240 cubic miles of material and reached a level 8 — the highest threat — on the Volcano Explosivity Index or VEI, according to the US Geological Survey. The VEI index measures how much debris is ejected, at what height, and for how long the eruption lasts. Yellowstone, which erupted 2.1 million years ago, was one of the largest ever known eruptions. The most recent eruptions of other notable supervolcanoes, including Long Valley in California, Toba in Indonesia, and Campi Flegrei, were all around the same size.

Scientists have a 2,000-year record of activity on Campi Flegrei. Pillars at the Roman Temple of Serapis in the city of Pozzuoli in the middle of the caldera, which were excavated in the 18th century, show evidence of holes made by molluscs, revealing the pillars were once underwater. The base of the temple is connected to the sea by a series of underground tunnels, and the rising and falling of the ground caused by bradyseism has resulted in the water flooding and then draining out of the structure, making it possible to observe the seismic phenomenon over time.

In 2016, the regional government designated the Campi Flegrei area  “yellow”  under its warning system, the second of four levels that move from green to red to indicate the danger to the population from the movement of the ground.

Italy’s civil protection agency said in October it would be moving some parts of the area to next level, orange, given the intensity of the recent activity. The INGV now has to sign off on the level change, which it is expected to do since it originally petitioned the civil protection agency for the move. Upping the level to orange will allow civil protection agencies to evacuate the area most vulnerable to the effects of bradyseism and the continuing earthquakes more easily and keep the most vulnerable populations safe, officials say.

During a meeting with the civil protection agency and government on November 7, the INGV also determined that 15,000 buildings, including 125 schools and other academic structures, are in the high-risk area. A directive will be released November 27 outlining a new protocol for evacuations, drills and potentially moving some institutions from the area temporarily until the current cycle of bradyseism subsides.

The likelihood of an eruption

Parts of the volcano could be weakening due to the effects of bradyseism, according to a paper published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment in June. But the situation remains unpredictable, experts say.

“What we expect depends on whether the ground keeps rising. If it carries on moving at its current rate, we expect the number of small earthquakes per day will fluctuate over weeks from just a handful to the swarms of a few hundred events, as felt in mid-August and late September,” said study coauthor Christopher Kilburn, a professor of volcanology at University College London.

“Any larger magnitude earthquakes are most likely to occur during the swarms. These are the classic signals of crust being stretched to breaking point.”

However, this does not mean an eruption is inevitable.

“It’s the same for all volcanoes that have been quiet for generations,” said study coauthor Stefano Carlino, a volcanologist from the Vesuvius Observatory, in news release accompanying the paper.

“Campi Flegrei may settle into a new routine of gently rising and subsiding, as seen at similar volcanoes around the world, or simply return to rest,” Carlino said. “We can’t yet say for sure what will happen. The important point is to be prepared for all outcomes.”

A first step toward preparing should be avoiding population increase by prohibiting more construction in Campi Flegrei, which is one of the most developed areas in Italy, said Dr. Benedetto De Vivo, a retired professor of geochemistry at the University of Naples.

He also said there should be a better evacuation route with wider roads so that people who live in the densely populated area could evacuate within 24 hours. “We cannot construct even one more home in the area,” he said.

Italy’s volcano experts are wary about making specific predictions about volcanic eruptions for fear of being held accountable if they are wrong, according to the INGV.

Seven scientists were convicted of manslaughter for telling residents of L’Aquila in central Italy not to worry about an increase in seismic activity in 2009. An earthquake that struck a few days after one scientist had appeared to say it was OK to relax and have a glass of wine killed more than 300 people. The scientists were eventually acquitted on appeal, but the experience left the scientific community in Italy shaken.

One of the largest kinds of volcanic eruptions, called an “ignimbritic eruption” — such as the one that occurred in the Campi Flegrei area around 39,000 years ago — is not what Natale believes could happen any time soon.

“It is difficult to study these potential huge eruptions, very rare but very catastrophic, and this is one of the most important but also the most challenging areas of vulcanology,” Natale said.

He said the next Campi Flegrei eruption — if one were to occur in the near future — would most likely be more in line with the last significant activity in 1538, which created the 133-meter-tall (463-foot-tall) Monte Nuovo cone visible in the sea. However, due to population growth, the impacts of a similar event could look very different in present day.

“That (1538) was a very small eruption, that, if it would happen today, in a densely urbanized area, would be very destructive anyway,” Natale said.