The Gaza representative for US-based healthcare NGO MedGlobal fled her home on the strip’s northern coast to Al-Shifa after the Israeli military declared war against Hamas in response to their deadly October 7 terror attack and called on civilians to evacuate the area in preparation for a ground operation.

More than 1.4 million people have been internally displaced in Gaza, the UN’s humanitarian office OCHA said on Monday. Many civilians have been forced to flee to refugee camps or hospitals that have surpassed capacity, often living in unsanitary living conditions.

The Al-Shifa hospital complex, she said, is overflowing with people, many of them women and girls sleeping on the floors of the hospital and outside, without access to physical or mental health care, water or privacy.

“Women are scattered all over the streets, all over the hospitals,” Musleh said. “I, personally, can’t go to the bathroom more than twice a day… amid the crowding.”

“Some are lucky if they can get a chance to use a bathroom with some 40, 50 or 60 people needing to use it.”

Musleh is one of hundreds of thousands of women in Gaza facing a desperate health crisis, since Israel’s complete blockade of the strip curtailed critical reproductive supplies, including pregnancy, postpartum and menstruation products, as well as basic necessities like drinking water and food. Meanwhile, mothers say they are dealing with the desperate reality that they have no way to protect themselves, or their children, from Israel’s relentless bombardment, which has struck residential areas, hospitals and schools.

Israel’s airstrikes have killed at least 9,155 people, according to figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. The vast majority of fatalities – 73% – are women, children and the elderly, according to the health ministry.

Human rights groups say Israel’s mass bombardment of civilian areas, evacuation orders and complete blockade of the territory amount to war crimes. Israel has said it is targeting Hamas operatives in Gaza, adding that the militant group “intentionally embeds its assets in civilian areas” and uses civilians as human shields.

Shortages push women and hospitals treating them to the brink

Reham Ahmed Al-Sadi had dreamed of having a baby girl. Now, nine months pregnant with her second child, she is preparing to give birth in a war zone, while trying to keep her family alive.

“The war destroyed my joy about my pregnancy,” she added.

Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said rampant water, food and drug shortages have unleashed an “avalanche of human suffering” in Gazan hospitals.

Rafah, the sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt through which Palestinians or aid can pass in and out remained shut for the first few weeks of the war. It was partially opened recently to allow a small number of aid trucks to trickle through – as well as a limited number of injured Palestinians and foreign nationals out.

Without essential fuel supplies, and the bombardment ongoing, nearly half of hospitals are now out of service, the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday.

In times of severe stress, women are more likely to miscarry or give birth prematurely, jeopardizing “the survival of the baby,” Haj-Hassan said. Diminished electricity supplies are a “death sentence” for patients who rely on medical equipment such as ventilators, or dialysis machines.

Premature babies require incubators, breathing machines, and infusion pumps for recovery, all of which depend on electricity, she added. “Without any of those things, those premature babies won’t survive.”

On Monday, the humanitarian agency CARE International reported pregnant patients are being forced to undergo emergency C-sections without anesthetics.  Women are being discharged within as little as three hours after giving birth due to a lack of capacity in hospitals, according to CARE.

Food shortages pose a threat to the health of the 283,000 children under the age of five as well as pregnant or lactating women, said Hiba Tibi, CARE West Bank and Gaza country director.

Haj-Hassan said some of her colleagues in Gaza only have access to 33 milliliters (about 1.12 oz) of drinking water per day – a fraction of a cup – warning that thinning water supplies hamper mothers’ abilities to breastfeed their babies or feed them formula.

Amal, who was displaced from her home in Gaza City to Khan Younis in the south of the strip, is nine months pregnant and nervously awaiting what her birth might look like.

Her next pressing concern: how to care for her child. Limited water stocks must be boiled over wood or old gas to become drinkable.

“You’re lucky if you get a bucket filled with water,” Amal said. “[Mothers] are giving their babies adult milk. They boil it. Or (to feed babies), they crush some biscuits and add water to it, then stir them together. That’s a meal.”

Haj-Hassan said there is an outbreak of diarrheal disease, and respiratory tract infections including pneumonia, because people are sheltering in close living quarters.

Eman Bashir, 32, said most of the children she knows, including her own, “are suffering from diarrhea and vomiting.” The mother of three is in Khan Younis too, having been displaced from the north after the Israeli army’s evacuation order.

She added that she had heard of some women giving birth in schools because “most hospitals are not operational.”

Lack of reproductive supplies poses ripple effects

From sexual health to menstruation, the conflict is impacting all aspects of women’s health.

Barr warned that in crisis situations, rates of sexual violence are likely to increase “because there is a feeling of impunity.”

“Most pharmacies have stopped working,” Bashir added. “Even the pills (used by women to stop their periods) are no longer enough.

“We have started regressing to the old ages, where women use pieces of cloth (during periods). Women cannot avoid facing their monthly periods in this situation.”

Amal, the resident who was displaced to Khan Younis, said she has heard of many women using birth control pills to either stop or reduce the blood flow during menstruation. Those who do not, she said, use “old methods, clothes that are washed.”

Nesma ElFar, the commercial director of MotherBeing, said that the Cairo-based health platform is working with the NGO Together For Tomorrow, to send more than 400,000 donations of sanitary products, including pads, reusable panties, wipes and diapers, to civilians in Gaza.

‘Under fire, under death, under ethnic cleansing, under injustice’

Palestinian mothers are balancing their own health care needs with caregiving responsibilities for their children, many of whom are affected by the psychological trauma of war.

“When asked why, [the child] said, ‘I just want to die. I can’t deal with the fear of dying anymore,’” Haj-Hassan added. She said medical workers use the term “wounded child no surviving family,” to describe children in Gaza who have been orphaned by war.

So many aspects of motherhood, once routine, are now a matter of life or death.

“Every day, a sister and mother, a woman loses her husband, her father, her brother. These are the women of Palestine. These are the women of Gaza,” said Musleh, the 50-year-old woman sheltering in Al-Shifa.

“We are under fire, under death, under ethnic cleansing, under injustice – under the injustice of the world, which sees with its eyes what is happening and is silent.”

Scientists widely agree that an ancient planet likely smashed into Earth as it was forming billions of years ago, spewing debris that coalesced into the moon that decorates our night sky today.

The theory, called the giant-impact hypothesis, explains many fundamental features of the moon and Earth.

But one glaring mystery at the center of this hypothesis has endured: What ever happened to Theia? Direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive. No leftover fragments from the planet have been found in the solar system. And many scientists assumed any debris Theia left behind on Earth was blended in the fiery cauldron of our planet’s interior.

A new theory, however, suggests that remnants of the ancient planet remain partially intact, buried beneath our feet.

Molten slabs of Theia could have embedded themselves within Earth’s mantle after impact before solidifying, leaving portions of the ancient planet’s material resting above Earth’s core some 1,800 miles (about 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A bold new idea

If the theory is correct, it would not only provide additional details to fill out the giant-impact hypothesis but also answer a lingering question for geophysicists.

They were already aware that there are two massive, distinct blobs that are embedded deep within the Earth. The masses — called large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs — were first detected in the 1980s. One lies beneath Africa and another below the Pacific Ocean.

These blobs are thousands of kilometers wide and likely more dense with iron compared with the surrounding mantle, making them stand out when measured by seismic waves. But the origins of the blobs — each of which are larger than the moon — remain a mystery to scientists.

But for Dr. Qian Yuan, a geophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and the new study’s lead author, his understanding of LLVPs forever changed when he attended a 2019 seminar at Arizona State University, his alma mater, that outlined the giant-impact hypothesis.

That’s when he learned new details about Theia, the mysterious projectile that presumably struck Earth billions of years ago.

And, as a trained geophysicist, he knew of those mysterious blobs hidden in Earth’s mantle.

Yuan had a eureka moment, he said.

Immediately, he began perusing scientific studies, searching to see whether someone else had proposed that LLVPs might be fragments of Theia. But no one had.

Initially, Yuan said, he only told his adviser about his theory.

“I was afraid of turning to other people because I (was) afraid others would think I’m too crazy,” Yuan said.

Interdisciplinary research

Yuan first proposed his idea in a paper he submitted in 2021. It was rejected three times. Peer reviewers said it lacked sufficient modeling from the giant impact.

Then he came across scientists who did just the type of research Yuan needed.

Their work, which assigned a certain size to Theia and speed of impact in the modeling, suggested that the ancient planet’s collision likely did not entirely melt Earth’s mantle, allowing the remnants of Theia to cool and form solid structures instead of blending together in Earth’s inner stew.

“Earth’s mantle is rocky, but it isn’t like solid rock,” said Dr. Steve Desch, a study coauthor and professor of astrophysics at Arizona State’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. “It’s this high-pressure magma that’s kind of gooey and has the viscosity of peanut butter, and it’s basically sitting on a very hot stove.”

In that environment, if the material that makes up the LLVPs was too dense, it wouldn’t be able to pile up in the jagged formations that it appears in, Desch said. And if it were low enough in density, it would simply mix in with the churning mantle.

The question was this: What would be the density of the material left behind by Theia? And could it match up with the density of the LLVPs?

(Desch had authored his own paper in 2019 that sought to describe the density of the material that Theia would have left behind.)

The researchers sought higher-definition modeling with 100 to 1,000 times more resolution than their previous attempts, Yuan said. And still, the calculations lined up: If Theia were a certain size and consistency, and struck the Earth at a specific speed, the models showed it could, in fact, leave behind massive hunks of its guts within Earth’s mantle and also spawn the debris that would go on to create our moon.

“That was very, very, so very exciting,” Yuan said. “That (modeling) hadn’t been done before.”

Building a theory

The study Yuan published this week includes coauthors from a variety of disciplines across a range of institutions, including Arizona State, Caltech, the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and NASA’s Ames Research Center.

When asked whether he expects to encounter pushback or controversy over such a novel concept — that slabs of material from an ancient extraterrestrial planet are hidden deep within the Earth — Yuan replied: “I also want to stress this is an idea; this is a hypothesis.

“There’s no way to prove this must be the case,” he added. “I welcome other people to do this (research).”

Desch added that, in his view, “this work is compelling. It makes a very strong case.” It even seems “sort of obvious in hindsight.”

Dr. Seth Jacobson, an assistant professor of planetary science at Michigan State University, acknowledged that the theory may not, however, soon reach broad acceptance.

“These (LLVPs) — they’re an area themselves of very active research,” said Jacobson, who was not involved in the study. And the tools used to study them are constantly evolving.

The idea that Theia created the LLVPs is no doubt an exciting and eye-catching hypothesis, he added, but it’s not the only one out there.

One other theory, for example, posits that LLVPs are actually heaps of oceanic crust that have sunk to the depths of the mantle over billions of years.

“I doubt the advocates for other hypotheses (about LLVP formation) are going to abandon them just because this one has appeared,” Jacobson added. “I think we’ll be debating this for quite some time.”

Australia’s troubled ties with China in recent years have had far-reaching costs – sweeping trade curbs from Beijing devastated the Australian wine industry, hit the livelihoods of farmers and fishers across the country, and impacted billions of dollars in trade.

Now, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is headed to Beijing for a landmark trip – the first for an Australian leader in seven years – widely seen as a step forward in both sides’ efforts to stabilize the relationship after years of economic tension.

Stakes are high for the four-day visit, which begins on Saturday and will see Albanese meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang and make stops in Beijing and Shanghai.

The two countries have only in recent months begun to emerge from a diplomatic deadlock that escalated from 2020 when Beijing slapped punishing trade restrictions across a swath of Australian exports.

At the time it was seen as political retaliation for then prime minister Scott Morrison’s calls for an international inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in China, though relations had been deteriorating for some time.

China’s Foreign Ministry blamed Australia for the trade issues, in 2020 accusing it of “violating the basic norms governing international relations,” though its commerce ministry has cited anti-dumping and other reasons for the curbs.

Both sides have much to gain from a step back in those economic tensions, and in recent months have been working hard to pave the way for the trip.

How well the leaders manage the relationship also has important implications for the Indo-Pacific, where smooth communications between China and Australia, a key US ally, could play a stabilizing role in the increasingly contentious region. Leaders from Washington to Seoul will likely be watching closely.

Albanese’s trip also carries symbolic overtones, marking 50 years since the first official visit by an Australian leader to Communist China after the two countries established ties.

A visit to mark that diplomatic milestone represents a step forward in relations, according to Jingdong Yuan, an associate professor at the University of Sydney who specializes in Asia-Pacific security.

“This visit is very symbolic, but still very important. They’ve come this far from the bottom just 18 months ago – this is a good beginning (for them) to explore where they can cooperate,” he said.

Speaking from the northern city of Darwin before his departure on Saturday, Albanese said the upcoming trip was the result of a “patient, calibrated and deliberate approach that we have to the relationship with China.”

“The fact that it is the first visit in seven years to our major trading partner is a very positive step,” he said, according to Reuters.

On the table in Australia-China talks

A range of tensions, however, will cast a shadow over the proceedings. Analysts say the meetings could lay the groundwork for expanded communication, but won’t be enough to turn back the clock on what has now become a fragile relationship.

Beijing’s economic campaign sharpened rising concerns in Australia over alleged Chinese espionage and political interference, its ambitions in the neighboring Pacific Islands, and its detention of Australian citizens.

Journalist Cheng Lei, detained in 2020, was released last month before Albanese’s trip was announced, but writer Yang Hengjun remains in prison since being detained in 2019 on espionage charges, which he denies.

Beijing, meanwhile, has become increasingly alarmed by Canberra’s growing security ties with Washington amid deepening US-China rivalry. China had already chafed for years over Australia’s public expression of national security concerns, including its ban on telecoms provider Huawei in 2018.

The election of Albanese’s Labor government last May allowed for a shift in those tensions, with Beijing gradually rolling back many of its trade controls since then – including on barley, timber, and coal – as the new Australian leadership dialed down the rhetoric.

Canberra announced Albanese’s trip late last month, shortly after the two countries reached a deal that could see the end of tariffs on wine – one of the most glaring sore points in that tranche of trade curbs, whose resolution the leader said would be worth about 1.2 billion Australian dollars ($773.6 million) to Australia.

During his meetings with Chinese officials, Albanese will likely push for lifting outstanding curbs, like those on lobster – and raise issues including China’s aggression in the South China Sea and its detention of Yang.

“When it comes to China what I say is we’ll cooperate where we can, we will disagree where we must, and we’ll engage in our national interest and I will always make representations on behalf of Australians,” Albanese told reporters on Wednesday, after confirming he was in touch with Yang’s family.

For Beijing, the Australian leader’s visit provides an opportunity to push for more Chinese access to Australia’s resources and renewable energy sectors, according to Elena Collinson, who manages research analysis at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute.

Chinese leaders may also look for Albanese to support China’s entry to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a free trade pact between countries on both sides of the Pacific, she said.

For China, the visit coincides with its push to repair ties with other US-friendly economic partners, like those in Europe — part of bid to prevent them from falling too closely in step with America’s China policy.

“As tensions simmer with the US and its own economic position teeters on the precarious, it is in (China’s) interests to inject some stability into its relations with a resource-rich US ally,” Collinson said.

US relations loom

Albanese is heading to Beijing less than two weeks after he met with US President Joe Biden in Washington.

There, the two leaders expressed their shared concern over “China’s excessive maritime claims” in the South China Sea.

They also hailed the AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the US and the United Kingdom – which is supporting Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, and the Quad, an informal grouping with Japan, India and the US.

As he aims to repair ties with China, Albanese will need to walk a line between these interests and China’s suspicions about the aims of these blocs, analysts say.

“Albanese can deliver the message, with regard to the Quad or AUKUS … Australia has this long history being part of (such) security arrangements – and (they) do not necessarily target China,” said Yuan in Sydney, who is also director of the China-Asia Security Program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Albanese can also convey that what China does “could impact the direction of these arrangements,” he said, adding that Australia could provide an example to other middle powers with close ties to Washington about how to play a role in conveying messages between the US and China and navigating relationships with both powers.

Xi, meanwhile, is expected to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Fransisco later this month and meet with Biden, as the powers also seek to stabilize their fraught relations.

Easing of tensions with Australia could also help create a positive atmosphere ahead of those high-stakes talks.

And as China marks this new milestone with Australia, analysts say the Chinese leader and his officials may be taking note of the outcome of its economic campaign against the country.

“Beijing came to learn that the weaponization of trade did not force a close US ally to back down,” said Collinson. “And only served to intensify other countries’ suspicion and wariness of its motives.”

A brutal arson attack on the Jewish cemetery in Vienna on Wednesday left parts of the building close to ruins, pieces of scripture in tatters, and swastikas emblazoned on the walls outside.

But the attack stirred up painful memories, too. “It takes us back to times where the books were burned,” Engelmayer said. “It is an attack on the spiritual values of the religion and of humanity which happened here.”

Now, incidents like these feel all too common. Across Europe, in the weeks since Hamas’ brutal attacks in Israel sparked a war between Israel and the militant group, a spate of antisemitic assaults have shaken Jewish communities.

“After the seventh of October, antisemitism grew dramatically here in Austria, here in Europe, all over the world,” Deutsch said.

Small children were wondering whether they should go to Jewish schools, he added. For older people, “the Holocaust comes back in their mind,” he said.

“That’s not the life we want.”

‘The scale is completely different’

The spike in antisemitic attacks in Europe has been wide-reaching.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Monday that since October 7, there have been more than 800 antisemitic acts in the country, nearly twice as many as in the whole of 2022.

In London, the first week after Hamas’ attacks saw a 1,353% rise in antisemitic incidents, the Metropolitan Police reported.

And on Wednesday, Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, said in a video message that “Jewish communities are moving their members to avoid certain places for their own safety – and this is happening today, here in Germany, almost 80 years after the Holocaust.”

“People are harmed in the street and social media is full of death threats. People get threats,” he said.

“Governments in most countries do not understand that they have to immediately increase the level of alertness and the level of security around Jewish institutions and Jewish neighborhoods. This is very, very alarming.”

When an attack happens, it leaves local Jewish leaders and residents in shock and afraid.

The fire that spread through his cemetery shocked Austria. The country’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said he “strongly” condemned the attack. “Antisemitism has no place in our society and will be fought with all political and legal means. I hope that the perpetrators will be found quickly,” he said.

Alongside the fear, defiance

For Tal Yeshurun, the painful impact of Hamas’ October 7 attacks continues. Yeshurun, who lives in Dublin, Ireland, had four family members killed in the attack, and a further seven are missing.

The body of one of his relatives “was so badly mutilated that it took them two weeks to actually identify any remnants of DNA to connect,” Yeshurun said.

He still has hope. “I believe 100% that my seven family members are alive and are taken care of. I have to, there’s just no other way.”

But as he waits for news, he has been forced to deal with fear and uncertainty at home.

“I feel like a big, big part of communities in Europe and the US don’t understand the magnitude of what’s going on here,” he said. “We have to be blunt about it. There’s an existential threat for Israelis and Jews all over the world.”

“You try to (keep) to yourself, (to) not have large gatherings of Israelis or Jews,” he said, reflecting on the rise of antisemitic incidents across Europe. “Not to be associated with anything written in Hebrew, not to speak Hebrew. Not to go to places which are considered Jewish, like a synagogue.”

But alongside the fear, the rise in antisemitic incidents has been met with defiance.

“We’re going on to live our Jewish lives,” Engelmayer said in Vienna, after the attack on the cemetery. “The schools are open, the synagogues are open. We won’t let our enemies scare us.”

Aliza Samuel walks carefully through debris left strewn across the ground, picking up a bracelet before coming across some small clay trinkets that had been handmade during the Nova Music Festival.

“People just dropped everything and left,” Samuel says. “(Hamas) just tore everything apart.”

“I think it’s important for me to come back,” she says. “No matter how painful it is…the world needs to know what happened here.”

But the terror of it all soon comes flooding back.

“I hear everything,” she says. “I hear the screaming, I hear the bikes, and I hear the gunshots.”

Traumatized but trying to process her experience, she recalls the moment that she has played over and over in her mind.

“I saw one of my friends, she was begging for her life,” she says. “She asked him to not kill her, to not kill her, to not kill her, and they didn’t care, they were laughing.”

She explains how, shortly after the break of dawn, her four friends were forced to line up and kneel down in the dust of an arid field.

From her hiding place behind the trees, she overheard the single final word her friends heard from their murderers.

“Enjoy,” the Hamas militants said in English, as they laughed, before shooting the three men and one woman at point-blank range, she said.

A few hours earlier, the friends had all been dancing and having fun together just a few hundred meters away at the festival, an event billed as a celebration of “unity and love” to mark the Jewish holiday Sukkot.

But the group of thousands of young partygoers proved to be an easy target for the Hamas attackers who broke through Israel’s defenses, descending on the festival via paragliders and motorbikes, massacring festivalgoers and taking others as hostages.

Israel subsequently announced a war against Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza and launched the coordinated assault. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began a massive aerial bombardment of Gaza, pounding the tiny strip of land with air strikes, artillery fire and helicopter gunships, followed by a ground offensive.

The IDF says it is targeting the vast network of underground tunnels below Gaza that harbor the Hamas leadership along with their fighters and weaponry. But the onslaught has also led to an immense toll on Palestinian civilians, with more than 9,100 people killed in Gaza since October 7 – the majority of them women and children – according to the latest figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave.

People ‘had nowhere to run’

Walking back to her tent where she was sleeping when it all started, Samuel recalls the moment she was jolted awake soon after sunrise by the sound of Hamas rockets flying towards them from Gaza. She said she immediately woke her friend, and they fled their tent to try to find a concrete shelter.

Many of the other festival goers were asleep or still dancing, and either didn’t hear the alarm, or ignored it, placing their trust in Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system to protect them.

But Samuel and her friend didn’t want to take any chances, so they started running. As they sought cover, they suddenly spotted Hamas fighters appearing in the skies above them on paragliders, shooting at people from the air as they came in to land.

Panicking, the pair sprinted across the open farmland surrounding the festival site and dived into a ditch behind a line of large trees. Samuel worked on trying to calm her friend down, clamping her hand over her mouth to stop her screaming, as they began to realize what was unfolding. Others were also hiding behind the trees, “trying not to breathe,” she added.

“(Hamas) came from everywhere,” she said. “(The people) had nowhere to run.”

“I saw Hamas take a bunch of people and went to their commander, and asked if to kill them or to take them,” she said. “And once they were dead, they didn’t stop, they just kept shooting them, and you just saw the body just jump and jump from the bullets, after they were dead.”

Samuel said the Hamas attackers mostly spoke in Arabic, but occasionally they would speak some English. In the parts she could understand, she overheard them express confusion and delight at how far they had made it into Israel and how many people they had been able to attack.

After hiding in the ditch for hours, Samuel and her friend eventually saw army vehicles arrive and decided to make a run for it – stepping through “pools of blood” to escape. Finally, they found some Israeli soldiers who helped them get to safety.

Later, she learned that another male friend at the festival was also found dead – shot in the leg and then later beheaded at a nearby kibbutz.

‘Complete carnage’

Helping Samuel through this trauma is her cousin, Dr. Shlomo Gensler, an ICU doctor who was a first responder on October 7.

A rocket alarm sounds during the visit to the scene – and everyone drops to the ground. Samuel begins to panic, breathing rapidly and shaking. Gensler quickly calms her down, assuring her that she is safe.

Gensler, who is still treating patients who were injured that day, walks back through the area where he triaged injured patients during the Hamas attacks. Leftover medical equipment and bullet casings still litter the ground where he worked that night.

“It was just complete carnage, and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Gensler said.

After seeing the first dead body arrive, he said, “we didn’t realize what would be coming up after that, where it was just hundreds of bodies afterwards, and nonstop.”

Gensler witnessed “houses and villages on fire” nearby, along with seeing civilian cars that had been blown apart by shoulder-propelled grenade launchers, with bodies lying next to them.

Knowing the victims were targeted for being Jewish due to Hamas ideology, and seeing the evidence of “premeditated” intent, made the scenario more emotional, he added.

“There was one soldier who came here and he was shaking,” Gensler said. “And I just (held) him in my arms. And this is a big soldier crying in my arms…and I said, you’re going to be OK.”

Now, as Israel wages war across the border, Gensler is following the unfolding humanitarian disaster. “I really cry about the kids in Gaza that are suffering,” he said, adding that they routinely used to treat sick Palestinian children from the strip at his hospital.

But he still wants to remind the world about what happened on October 7 to honor “the people that were slaughtered.”

For those who made it out alive, they are starting to deal with survivor’s guilt for their fallen friends.

“(I’m) sorry that I couldn’t be there for them and save them.. and I am sorry that God didn’t save them,” Samuel said.

“They were amazing people,” she said. “I’m gonna do everything I can to live my life in their name.”

At least 129 people have been killed in an earthquake that struck a remote part of northwestern Nepal overnight on Friday and toppled multiple buildings as officials warned that the death toll could rise.

The quake measured magnitude 5.6 according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and hit some 42 kilometers (about 26 miles) from Jumla, Nepal, in Karnali province. It struck at a comparatively shallow depth of 18 kilometers and the tremors could be felt as far away as India’s capital New Delhi.

In Jajarkot district, close to the quake’s epicenter, 92 people were confirmed dead and another 55 injured. In nearby Rukam West district, 37 were killed and 85 injured, Kadayat said.

Footage from Reuters showed multiple houses reduced to smashed piles of bricks and timber in Jajarkot.

Earthquakes are common in Nepal, which lies where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet to create the towering Himalayan mountain range.

At least 9,000 people were killed in 2015 when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit, damaging some one million homes and buildings across swathes of the nation and causing $6 billion in damage.

Officials told Reuters that they feared casualties would rise in Friday’s quake because they had not been able to establish contact in the hilly area near the epicenter, some 500 kilometers (300 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, where tremors were also felt.

“The number of injured could be in the hundreds and the deaths could go up as well,” Jajarkot district official Harish Chandra Sharma told Reuters by phone.

“Many houses have collapsed, many others have developed cracks. Thousands of residents spent the entire night in cold, open grounds because they were too scared to go into the cracked houses as aftershocks struck,” Sharma added.

Jajarkot district has a population of 190,000 with villages scattered in remote hills. Pictures released by AFP news agency showed survivors gathering at Jajarkot’s main hospital.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to the loved ones of those killed in the earthquake.

“Deeply saddened by loss of lives and damage due to the earthquake in Nepal,” Modi wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “India stands in solidarity with the people of Nepal and is ready to extend all possible assistance. Our thoughts are with the bereaved families and we wish the injured a quick recovery.”

This is a breaking story and will be updated

Nigeria’s government has come under fire over a budget that included a 6 billion naira ($6.3 million) presidential yacht and luxury cars, as the country grapples with mounting debts and a cost-of-living crisis.

Lawmakers rejected the plans for a presidential yacht before approving the N2.1 trillion ($2.7 billion) supplementary budget on Thursday, following a public outcry. The money was allocated instead to a student loan program.

The budget still allocates funds for purchasing SUV vehicles for the presidency, amounting to N2.9 billion ($3.6 million), and to cover the cost of renovating the president’s residential quarters, estimated at N4 billion ($5 million).

It also includes official vehicles worth N1.5 billion ($1.9 million) for the First Lady’s Office, despite the fact that Nigerian laws do not formally recognize this office.

A ‘spending problem’

Nigerians, many of whom who are struggling to make ends meet, reacted in anger to the proposed budget, prompting the lawmakers to make changes.

“Nigerians are facing some of the harshest economic realities of their existence. It shows a remarkable lack of empathy for the President to spend so profligately at a time when soldiers fighting the war on terror are dying and should be better motivated to build morale, pensioners are being owed, civil servants take home pay can no longer take them home, and fuel and food inflation is approaching 30%,” said former presidential aide Reno Omokri in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“These are wasteful spendings… Nigeria doesn’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.”

Government ‘hypocrisy’

Other analysts say it is “hypocrisy” for the government to spend on luxuries while impoverished citizens suffer hardship caused by the president’s economic reforms.

More than 80 million Nigerians live on less than $2 a day, representing “the world’s second-largest poor population after India”, according to the World Bank.

“It is very provocative that amid all these fiscal challenges, the federal government is bent on wasting resources on mundane things … and maintenance of the luxury lifestyles of its functionaries.”

Presidential aide Bayo Onanuga said in a statement issued before the yacht was removed from the budget that it was “an operational naval boat with specialized security gadgets suitable for high-profile operational inspection and not for the use of the president.”

Onanuga added that “the naval boat was ordered by the navy under the previous administration.”

Nigeria owes over a billion dollars, according to its debt management office, and plans to borrow more this year.

Local media reported Thursday that the Nigerian House of Representatives reallocated the amount for the presidential yacht to the student loan scheme before passing the spending bill.

The supplementary budget was also approved by the country Senate after MPs from both parliaments merged their report on the budget.

Economic woes

Nigerians have been grappling with above-average inflation for years.

However, the devaluation of the local currency, which has pushed it to record lows against the dollar, has led to even more price spikes and greater hardships.

Nigeria’s imports-driven economy relies on the dollar for international trade. In June, the Nigerian government announced it was lifting controls on foreign currencies, an economic reform it said would enable the local currency exchange freely against the dollar. But this has further weakened the Nigerian naira, which currently exchanges at over N1000 to a dollar on the black market.

Nigeria’s inflation rate hit 26.72% last month – its highest level in 20 years. Food inflation also rose to more than 30% year-on-year in September, 1.3% higher than the previous month. Transport costs had already risen sharply after Tinubu ended a fuel subsidy during his inaugural speech in May, saying it was unsustainable and a drain on public finances.

In an Independence Day address in October, Tinubu asked Nigerians to make sacrifices until his economic reforms began to take effect, urging them to “endure this trying moment.” However, many have pointed out that no attempts have been made to curb the huge costs of its government.

Tinubu runs a 48-member cabinet that data intelligence company Stears says is the largest of any Nigerian president since the country’s return to democratic rule in 1999.

Last month, Nigeria’s Senate unveiled plans to acquire luxury vehicles for its 469 members despite the country’s struggling economy. Sunday Karimi, who heads the Nigerian Senate’s services committee, told local media that the decision was made because of the bad state of the roads in the country.

According to Karimi, senators “need the vehicles for oversights, to travel all over our constituencies,” adding that “If you look at Nigerian roads all over the federation, we have a serious problem because… most of our roads are terribly bad,” he said.

“You said there’s no money, you want to remove subsidy. You have removed it, and people are still feeling the impact. And then that same money, instead of channeling it to productive ventures and see how it can ameliorate the sufferings of the people, it is just (being used) for their own selfish benefits to live large in luxury,” he said of the government’s actions.

Five hundred years ago, a teenage girl who was part of the Inca culture was sacrificed and buried near the summit of Ampato, a dormant volcano in the Andes Mountains. Since the discovery of her incredibly well-preserved frozen remains in 1995, she has become known by many names — the “Ice Maiden,” Juanita and the Lady of Ampato — but little was known about who she really was.

Now, Swedish artist Oscar Nilsson and a team of researchers from the Center for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw and the Catholic University of Santa Maríahave have collaborated to create a 3D reconstruction of Juanita’s face.

The reconstruction, unveiled on October 24, is part of an exhibition at the Andean Sanctuaries Museum in Peru called “Capacocha, following the Inca Divinities.” The exhibition includes the latest research about Juanita and her life, as well as the findings from other Incan mummies discovered along the peaks of the Peruvian Andes.

“For many years, mummies were treated as objects in the museum,” said Dr. Dagmara Socha, bioarchaeologist at the Center for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw and curator of the exhibit. “By conducting scientific research and facial reconstruction, we want to restore their identity. A well-made reconstruction allows us to show the people who were behind the story we want to tell.”

Finding Juanita

The Inca Empire, which lasted from around 1200 to 1533, once stretched for 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) across what is now Peru and Chile. One of the most crucial rituals to the Incas was capacocha, Socha said, which involved human sacrifices with offerings of prestigious goods such as ceramics, precious metals, textiles and seashells.

The rituals were carried out to appease deities and sacred places and protect the community from disasters such as droughts, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, according to researchers. The peaks of the Andes were considered sacred places, and children and young women, considered beautiful and pure, were chosen for the sacrificial rituals. Their sacrifices were thought to bring honor to their parents and an afterlife of bliss.

Once sacrificed, the children and young women were considered “mediators” between humans and deities. It was believed that the children became reunited with their ancestors, who were thought to watch from the towering peaks of the Andes, the researchers said.

Dr. Johan Reinhard and assistant Miguel Zarate discovered Juanita when they ascended Ampato in September 1995. They reached the summit, 20,708 feet (6,312 meters) above sea level, only to discover that part of its ridge had collapsed, exposing an Inca burial site and tumbling the contents about 229 feet (70 meters) below.

Reinhard and Zarate spotted a bundle of cloth, and lifting it, they found themselves looking into the Ice Maiden’s face. Carefully, they brought Juanita down the mountain, where she is kept to this day in a chamber set at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Celsius) in the Andean Sanctuaries Museum of the Catholic University of Santa María, where museumgoers can see her on display.

Studies have revealed that Juanita was a healthy girl between 13 and 15 when she died from a blow to the head.

She was buried in ceremonial clothing, along with ceramic objects, gold and silver female figures, a Spondylus shell, food, woven bags and pottery. The ceramic objects were decorated with geometric figures, which are still being studied and may have been part of an Inca communication system.

Coming face to face

In 2018, Socha and a team of archaeologists and scientists began a five-year project to research Juanita as well as other remains and objects found on the snow-covered Ampato, Misti and Pichu Pichu volcanoes.

During their work, the team discovered that some of the children and women chewed coca leaves and drank ayahuasca in the weeks before their deaths. The findings suggest that hallucinogenic plants and psychotropic stimulants may have been used to reduce anxiety before their deaths.

The team conducted CT scans of Juanita in March 2022 and used the results to create a 3D model of her skull that Nilsson could use to guide his reconstruction.

Tomography scans of her body and skull, combined with research about her age, complexion and other characteristics were used to create digital images. Nilsson used tissue depth markers based on the measurements of her skull to envision the proportions of her face, which included high cheekbones.

His process of bringing Juanita’s face to life took half a year, and he spent 400 hours working on the model.

Known for his work in recreating faces from the past, Nilsson employed a forensic reconstruction technique that relied on a variety of scientific analyses to make Juanita look as realistic as possible.

“It is a fantastic job I have, but I also feel a great deal of responsibility to get the reconstruction as accurate as I can,” Nilsson said. “But it is the best work I can imagine. I hope you will be able meet an individual from the past and to create an emotional bond to history, and her story that is so unique and remarkable.”

Reproductions of the headdress and shawl she wore were naturally dyed and made from alpaca wool by Centro Textiles Tradicionales in Chinchero and Cusco, Peru.

Visitors to the exhibit can also learn about the results of the research, see artifacts from the burials and hold replicas of them. They can even walk in the footsteps of Juanita from Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, across ranches, or tambos, where the caravan rested before the sacrifice, and all the way up to the peaks.

“Using (virtual reality) goggles, the visitors can make a virtual pilgrimage in the footsteps of capacocha, following the remains of Inca roads to the tambos — the last stops — on the slopes of Chachani, Misti and Pichu Pichu,” Socha said.

For the researchers who have spent years studying Juanita, the arduous process to bring her back to life was worth it.

“The face gives us the hyperrealistic impression of looking at the living person,” Socha said.

“It was for me a very emotional moment after working so many years with these mummies, to be able to finally look at her face.”

Pablo Escobar’s notorious “cocaine hippos” are facing a cull, according to a statement from Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development Thursday.

The herd, which the Colombian government said currently stands at 169 animals, has rapidly reproduced from the original population of one male and three females the drug kingpin owned as part of his private collection of exotic creatures.

After Escobar’s death in 1993, authorities relocated most of the other animals in the collection, but not the hippos – because they were too difficult to transport. Free from any natural predator, the rising population poses an environmental challenge. If “strong measures” are not taken to control them, the population could boom to “1,000 individuals by 2035,” the statement said.

This new phase to control the hippo population involves three strategies: sterilization, relocation and “ethical euthanasia,” it added.

“All three strategies have to work together,” Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said in the statement. “Here we are in a race against time in terms of the permanent environmental and ecosystem impacts that are being generated and that is why we cannot say that only one strategy is effective for our objective, which is to control the population.”

In 2021, scientists recommended culling the hippos to prevent long-term negative effects, but other scientists are calling instead for a castration program, citing concerns over animal welfare.

Between 2011 and 2019, four males were castrated and two females were sterilized, but this did little to slow the hippos’ progress. Putting the hippos on birth control was similarly ineffective. There have also been plans to relocate some of the population to India, the Philippines and Mexico, with the logistics of sending 60 to India currently being analyzed, the statement said.

“We are looking to implement this plan in the shortest possible time, precisely so that the impacts cease,” Muhamad explained.

According to the ministry statement, sterilization will cost the country an average of 40 million pesos ($10,000) per animal, and will begin from next week, with an aim to sterilize 40 per week.

The minister concluded by emphasizing that hippos have been declared an “invasive exotic” with “aggressive characteristics,” and that “their presence represents a threat to ecosystems and risks for the communities that surround them.”

Research has shown negative effects of hippo waste on oxygen levels in bodies of water, which can affect fish and ultimately humans. Hippos also pose a threat to agriculture and to the security of people in affected areas, according to a 2021 study. In April, a hippo descended from Escobar’s collection died after being hit by a car.

Israeli ground forces are closing in on Gaza City, the largest and most densely packed population center in the Palestinian enclave, satellite imagery and videos from open and official sources suggest.

“IDF forces encircle Gaza from the air, land and sea, surrounding the city of Gaza and its surroundings,” Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said on Friday. “The fighters are advancing in battles during which they are destroying above ground and underground terrorist infrastructures and eliminate terrorists.”

Since the IDF launched its ground offensive into Gaza a week ago, the latest phase of its war against Hamas, its troops have pushed forward on three axes – from Gaza’s northwest border along the Mediterranean coast, from the northeast near Beit Hanoun, and from east to west, along the south of Gaza City – in an apparent effort to divide the strip into two.

Israeli troops have moved deeper along that western stretch, towards the sea, according to European Space Agency satellite imagery from Wednesday, which indicated that the forces were approximately less than a kilometer away from completely encircling Gaza City.

While the imagery is low-resolution, it appears to show the tracks from heavy armored vehicles snaking across the strip, south of the urban center, nearly reaching the coast.

Videos showing Israel’s advance south of Gaza City have yet to surface, but footage shared by the IDF and circulating on social media in recent days showed Israeli troops had moved in the northernmost communities in Gaza – Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Atatra – and were sitting on the perimeter of Gaza City from the north.

Satellite imagery and footage have also shown Israeli forces on Salah al-Din Road, a highway running the length of the strip, seemingly blocking anyone still in Gaza City from moving south. One video, filmed by freelance Palestinian journalist Yousif Al Saifi and which surfaced on Monday, showed an Israeli tank opening fire on a car on the road.

The urban area encompassing Gaza City is home to nearly 2 million people living in an 88-square-mile expanse, which equates to about 21,000 people per square mile.

More than 9,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, according to figures released Friday by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. More than 23,000 others have been injured, the ministry said.

Israel launched its offensive in response to the shock Hamas assault on Israel, when the militant group carried out surprise cross-border raids, killing more than 1,400 people and taking more than 240 hostages.

In preparation for its ground incursion, Israel ordered the evacuation of people from northern Gaza just after the war began, instructing residents to move south of Wadi Gaza, a waterway bisecting the center of the strip. But it wasn’t until two weeks later, on October 28, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the “second stage” of the war and a singular goal: “to destroy this enemy.”

In the week since, the Israeli army’s movements have been slow but deliberate, as they have progressed towards Gaza City, where the IDF says Hamas has fighters and command centers among the civilian population and a vast tunnel system underground.

“The defenses are not just the tunnels, which are immense. It’s booby traps, snipers, suicide bombs, anti-tank missiles, a variety of capabilities that were prepared upfront as their defenses against any action of the IDF inside the Gaza Strip,” Eisin said.

Satellite imagery taken on Monday showed several breaks in the border wall and vehicle tracks where Israeli forces had crossed into northwestern Gaza before proceeding south on the beach and through farmland. Other imagery showed similar breaches to the northeast and east.

Photos released by the IDF on Tuesday showed soldiers even deeper in the strip, just to the north of the Al Shati refugee camp, only three miles or so from the center of Gaza City.

Due to the high risk of IEDs, mines or similar boobytraps, the IDF is using heavily armored bulldozers to clear what the military refers to as “safe lanes” through obstacles, so that tanks and ground forces can pass through. The bulldozers are also used to push through rubble-strewn streets, destroy buildings, and create defensive positions for infantry.

It is unclear how many civilians are still in Gaza City, where they face a growing humanitarian crisis, as medical supplies, drinking water and food run dangerously low, and Israeli troops draw closer.

A doctor at the city’s main hospital, Al-Shifa, said Friday that dwindling fuel stocks had plunged wards into darkness and cut off fundamental functions like oxygen generation. The hospital has been inundated with patients, as well as displaced people desperately seeking protection from Israel’s assault.

“Unless there’s electricity, this hospital will turn into a mass grave,” Dr. Abu-Sittah said. “It’s as simple as that. if we cannot keep the ventilators running. If we can’t take our critically wounded patients back to the operating room, then there’s nothing for this place other than to come and die.”

At least 21 people were injured at Al-Quds Hospital when Israeli airstrikes hit nearby in Gaza City’s Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood, according to a statement by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Friday morning. Thousands are sheltering at the hospital.