“Negotiations are going very well. We have a breakthrough,” the source said.

“There are issues still remaining, but talks are ongoing, and we remain hopeful,” the source added.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Barbara Leaf is in Doha for meetings with Qatar’s leadership, a person familiar with the meetings said.

Asked about the status of the negotiations Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant commented at a news conference on Thursday that “every channel is a possible channel.”

“One thing should be clear – we have a goal and I trust the State of Israel and the IDF… and we’ll keep doing every effort to bring the hostages and the missing back,” Gallant said.

Complete blockade

Hamas abducted more than 200 people and killed 1,400 others, including soldiers and civilians, in southern Israel on October 7. The hostages include nationals from countries including Mexico, Brazil, the United States, Germany and Thailand – as well as Israeli civilians and soldiers. The large-scale incursion represented the most deadly attack by militants in Israel’s 75-year history, and Israeli authorities have faced strong criticism for having failed to anticipate it.

In response, Israel launched a heavy bombardment of Gaza and imposed a complete blockade on the enclave. Israeli strikes have killed at least 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 children, according to a report by the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health. About 1,600 people are missing under the rubble of flattened buildings, with many of them feared dead. The ministry said on Friday the actual death toll in Gaza is likely to be much higher.

Human Rights Watch said on Monday Israel’s “collective punishment” of Palestinians in Gaza amounts to a war crime.

Qatar and Egypt have been mediating between Israel, the US and Hamas to release the hostages held by the militant group. Four hostages – two Americans and two Israelis – have been freed so far.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Wednesday that he will “have to give answers” for his government’s intelligence failures. The comments marked the first time he has talked about his own role in the security breakdownsince October 7.

This story is developing and will be updated.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court has upheld a law banning same-sex relations in the military, citing a threat to combat-readiness, in a judgment decried by the local LGBTQ community as a disappointing setback.

In a 5-4 ruling on Thursday, the court refused to declare as unconstitutional a clause in the Military Criminal Act that bans “anal intercourse” or “any other indecent act” during service and allows for punishments of up to two years in prison.

Though the law does not explicitly refer to same-sex relationships, this is how it is generally understood in practice and the law has long been opposed by LGBTQ activists who see it as discriminatory.

In the past, the law has been used to arrest dozens of people in what critics have called a “gay witch-hunt.”

The court said in its judgment Thursday that allowing same-sex relations between soldiers would jeopardize the army’s discipline and potentially upend its hierarchy.

“Even if sexual acts are consensual” they risk “causing serious harm to preserving the fighting power of the nation’s armed forces, if committed (while on duty),” it added.

Four dissenting judges, however, concluded the language of the article is “abstract and ambiguous,” while three of them also cautioned against limiting an individual’s sexual orientation in the name of “military discipline.”

It is “unclear” whether the law banned “indecent acts” only between same-sex soldiers or also between male and female ones, they added.

‘A distressing setback’

Activist group Rainbow Action Against Sexual-Minority Discrimination said the ruling was disappointing and criticized the court for failing to protect the rights of the minority.

But the group said it was encouraged by the comments of the dissenting judges, who warned against deeming sexual acts between same-sex couples as abnormal.

The dissenting judges said there is “no reason” to differentiate between consensual sexual acts by same-sex soldiers and heterosexual ones.

“This is clearly highlighting the indecent act provision of the Military Criminal Act as discriminatory against sexual minorities,” the group stressed.

Amnesty International’s East Asia Researcher Boram Jang said: “This continued endorsement for the criminalization of consensual same-sex acts within the Korean military is a distressing setback in the decades-long struggle for equality in the country.”

The researcher said the ruling underscored the widespread prejudice sexual minorities face in South Korea and the government’s lack of action to protect them by pushing for greater equality.

With a mandatory military service imposed on almost all able-bodied men between the age of 18 and 28, South Korea has one of the world’s largest active armies.

The present case, one of the few that has come before the South Korean courts, was referred to the constitutional branch by district courts after they found that there may be room for a constitutional challenge on the potentially ambiguous phrase “any other indecent act.”

Resistance to change

While South Korea does not legally recognize same-sex marriage, activists say there has been progress on LGBTQ rights in recent years.

In a landmark ruling in February, a court ruled in favor of a same-sex couple seeking equal health benefits. The decision was hailed by supporters and activists as the first recognition of the legal rights of such couples.

The plaintiff, So Seong-wook, took legal action after the government-affiliated National Health Insurance Service started charging him premium payments despite his status as a “spouse dependent” of his male partner.

But there has also been a surge of resistance from Christian and conservative groups in recent months.

In May, South Korea’s biggest LGBTQ pride celebration, Seoul Queer Culture Festival failed to get a licence to operate at its annual venue, which was used for a Christian youth concert instead.

A month later, scuffles broke out in the city of Daegu as local officials led by the mayor clashed with police during a protest against the Daegu Queer Culture Festival.

Opponents including Christian organizations had tried and failed to get a court injunction against the festival, which Mayor Hong Joon-pyo had criticized for “instilling the wrong sexual culture in teenagers.”

Golf courses, despite occupying large green spaces, are not necessarily good for the environment. Land is often cleared to make way for a fairway and maintaining the pristine turf often requires a lot of water, regular mowing and the spraying of fertilizers and pesticides – none of which is good for biodiversity.

In the US, with the number of course closures outweighing new openings every year since 2006, some are questioning how we should use these huge spaces – and asking whether, instead of golf, nature should be left to run its course.

Conservation nonprofits and local authorities are looking to acquire golf courses that have been abandoned due to high maintenance costs, low player numbers or other reasons, and repurpose them into landscapes that boost biodiversity and build natural defenses against climate change.

These spaces provide “huge opportunities from a conservation perspective,” says Guillermo Rodriguez, California state director of The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a conservation organization which is rewilding three of the state’s former courses.

“It’s a multiple win,” he continues. “You increase public access by taking former private golf courses (and) turning them into public properties … (you return) water back into rivers and streams and create a better habitat for the endangered species that we have in California.”

San Geronimo, California

Take San Geronimo, an 18-hole course in northern California’s Marin County, located on two waterways, which are home to endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout. Since the course’s construction in 1965, much of the water from San Geronimo and Larsen Creek was being diverted to provide irrigation for the course, affecting fish populations in the area, says Rodriguez.

In 2018, TPL purchased the 157-acre site and began converting the area back into its natural state: turning off the irrigation, removing culverts and dams built to capture water and starting to restore the habitat by planting native species. According to TPL, the rewilding process could take up to 10 years, but there are signs that wildlife is already bouncing back, with bobcats spotted roaming the area.

Rodriguez admits that initially TPL’s plan received some strong opposition from the public, especially from the golfers. But after efforts to involve locals in the design and opening hiking and biking trails in the area attitudes are changing. Now known as San Geronimo Commons, the site is a thriving center for the local community, he says.

Ocean Meadows, California

Further down the coast in Santa Barbara is another of TPL’s acquisitions: Ocean Meadows. The nine-hole course was built in the 1960s on the site of a wetland. To create it, developers filled the plain with 500,000 cubic yards of soil.

TPL purchased the 64-acre area in 2013 and started restoring the wetlands, removing the soil that had been added during construction and planting native vegetation. Since then, migratory birds have replaced birdies, and at least two pairs of threatened western snowy plovers are successfully breeding in the area’s mudflats.

With the extreme shifts in weather patterns in recent years, especially in California, the benefits of having a wetland rather than a golf course have become clear, says Rodriguez. “Floodplains are able to kind of capture this water, protect infrastructure, protect other low-lying communities, and really let nature be an important solution,” he says.

Rancho Cañada, California

Most recently, TPL acquired Rancho Cañada, a 190-acre private golf course located in Monterey. It wants to widen and restore the riverbed and banks of the Carmel River, which runs through the course, helping to protect downstream neighborhoods from flooding.

Crucially, the site will become part of a wider network of protected land, enabling a wildlife corridor from Ventana to Fort Ord. “The ability to remove fencing and create much more cohesion between the previous golf course and the surrounding public lands, really builds that connectivity back,” says Rodriguez.

Cascade Valley, Ohio

TPL is not the only organization on a mission to rewild golf courses. In Akron, Ohio, Summit Metro Parks acquired the 195-acre Valley View Golf Course in 2016, returning it to its natural state. In doing so it connected three local parks and created 1,900 contiguous acres of green space.

The site has transformed, says Mike Johnson, chief of conservation at the nonprofit. Today, 90% of the vegetation is native, whereas the same percentage was non-native or invasive when it was a golf course, he says.

“We had to undo the golf course before we could restore the landscape,” he says, adding that they removed the levees, allowing the rivers and streams to run freely, and stripped out the turf and non-native trees before establishing a native cover of vegetation.

“The response from wildlife has been huge,” he adds. “Prior to our work, we documented about 200 species of plant and wildlife that were living on the golf course at the time we acquired it. Today we have documented over 900 species of fish and wildlife that have returned to this area.”

Frodsham, UK

Across the pond, in the UK, a similar movement is underway. Frodsham golf course in Cheshire, where top Liverpool footballers like Michael Owen once teed off, was bought by the UK’s Woodland Trust last year, with the plan to plant 40,000 native trees on the site.

“It’s still too soon to report any significant changes, but this summer more wildflowers were growing across the site because the fairways, greens, tees were not being mown as they would have been when it was being managed as a golf course,” says Neil Oxley, site manager for the Woodland Trust.

The site will contribute to The Northern Forest scheme, an effort to plant 50 million trees across 10,000 square miles stretching coast to coast from Liverpool to Hull. Currently, the area only has 7.6% woodland cover, but the initiative hopes to increase this to 20%.

In other areas of the country, local councils are repurposing unprofitable municipal golf courses to create more natural spaces. Erewash Borough Council is working with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust to turn the Pewit golf course into a nature reserve, after noting that few people were using it and it was a substantial drain on the council’s resources. Brighton and Hove City Council is rewilding the 220-acre Waterhall course to restore the area’s chalk grasslands.

Yalukit Willam, Australia

In the Melbourne suburb of Elwood, Elsternwick Park golf course has been transformed into a natural oasis, providing respite from the city both for wildlife and the local community.

Bayside City Council, which decided to repurpose the course upon expiration of its lease, came up with a plan to create different habitats, from open water and swamp scrub to wetlands and woodland, that support a range of species. Although the project began in 2018 and is expected to take at least 10 years to complete, already the council has recorded more than 100 different indigenous plant species growing at the site.

The plan also includes a network of paths so that visitors can explore and learn about the urban ecology. In 2022, the site was renamed Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve to recognize the Yalukit Willam clan of the Boon Wurrung people, who traditionally owned the land.

Souad Al-Alem was one of the roughly 10,000 people forced to flee the Palestinian town of al-Majdal. It was 1948, she was a young woman and Israel’s troops were approaching the community during the Arab-Israeli war in what is now part of the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Now in her 90s and living in Gaza, Al-Alem has been forced to run again.

On October 7, Hamas launched a deadly terror attack against Israel from Gaza, firing thousands of rockets, going on a bloody rampage that killed 1,400 people and taking more than 220 hostage. In retaliation, the Israel Defence Forces have been conducting a massive bombardment campaign against what it says are Hamas targets in Gaza. More than 6,850 Palestinians have been killed as a result of these strikes, according to information from Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza and published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah.

Al-Alem is one of the hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the war.

Just 10 miles north of the Gaza border, not much remains of al-Majdal. Once a buzzing market place known for textile manufacturing, al-Majdal was reduced to rubble after the 1948/49 war.

All of its houses are long gone, replaced with modern Israeli buildings that are now part of Ashkelon. Only the old mosque remains standing. Nearby, an empty, overgrown field gives a hint of the size of the former town.

Some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes following the 1948/49 war, representing at least 80 percent of Arabs living in what became Israel. Like Al-Alem, more than half of those who live in Gaza today are either refugees or their direct descendants.

Many of those displaced in 1948 thought that they’d be back home in a few days or weeks. But Israel has never allowed them to return and many have lived in poverty ever since. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), more than 80% of people in Gaza live in poverty now.

Palestinians call that episode the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.

“I lived the Nakba of 1948 and now I am living the Nakba of 2023,” Al-Alem said, sitting in a tent in a makeshift refugee camp in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. “This second one is worse,” she added. She said she fled her home amid intense bombing more than 10 days ago and said she hasn’t had a proper meal or bath since then. As a diabetic, she said she was struggling without regular meals and access to her usual medication.

“There nothing to use for cleaning our faces and hands and ourselves. We can’t wash or do anything. There is nothing.  There were toilets, now there aren’t any. When we go to toilets, they are dirty because too many people are using them. I stopped going to them,” she said.

While most of the former Arab villages and towns are long gone, the collective memory lives on.

“It’s amazing how the Palestinians keep those memories alive. Most of them in the traditional way, from stories told by their fathers and grandfathers,” said Umar al-Ghubari, a Palestinian educator who works for Zochrot.

A Tel Aviv-based NGO, Zochrot was originally formed by a group of Israeli Jews with a goal to “promote acknowledgement, responsibility and accountability” for the emptied Palestinian villages and campaign for the right of return of these communities.

The first step is to spread awareness, al-Ghubari said. Zochrot operates in Hebrew, publishing information materials, organizing tours and collecting testimonies.

Al-Ghubari acknowledges that Zochrot’s work runs counter to the mainstream Israeli narrative, which tends to gloss over the issue of Palestinian expulsions during the war, preferring to highlight the contentious idea that the desert only started ‘blooming’ once Israel was founded.

Earlier this year, Israel and its allies including the United States and other Western nations skipped the first ever event at the United Nations marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba – coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding.

The Israeli government rejects Nakba commemorations, with Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan saying they “only serve to demonize Israel and further push away any chance for reconciliation.”

Al-Ghubari said that one of Zochrot’s missions is to make Israeli people more aware of the history, however uncomfortable it is.

But it’s hard going, he said. Zochrot has in the past tried to install information signs at the sites of the destroyed villages.

“We put signs up in these locations, but unfortunately, these signs would be removed almost immediately within few hours of few days because some Israelis when they come to that place, they don’t like the idea of that information being there,” he said. Al-Ghubari does not know who took the signs down.

No choice but to leave

Most people who live in Gaza today still identify as Palestinian refugees and refer to the towns and villages their ancestors were forced to flee as their homes – even if their families have now lived in the enclave for several generations.

In 1967, Israel captured Gaza during the Six-Day War with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and held it for nearly 40 years before withdrawing troops and Israelis settlers in 2005. After Hamas took power inside the enclave two years later, Israel and Egypt, which continued to have full control over entry and exit points to the enclave, including the sea, imposed a blockade that critics say transformed it into “the world’s largest open-air prison.”

Taghrid Ebead is only 35, but she too has a strong sense of belonging to al-Majdal.

“We were evacuated in 1948 to Gaza,” she said. Ebead said she grew up wondering what drove her ancestors to flee al-Majdal, asking herself why they left their home, why they would allow it to happen.

“I used to say that we will not do it again. We will not repeat it. It’s impossible to do what our families and grandfathers did,” she said.

Then IDF leaflets ordering her to evacuate started dropping from the sky, encouraging residents to move south as the Israeli air force ramped up its operation. Amid the constant airstrikes, she decided she had no choice but to leave her home in Gaza City.

The family of seven fled on foot and ended up in Khan Younis, some 20 miles south of Gaza City.

“We faced many difficulties, a lot of shelling everywhere,” she said. “We came to Khan Younis and here was nothing. The first day I slept on dust and we had no covers. A week has passed and my son is ill. We hope to go back. We have suffered a lot, we can’t cope.”

She said that now, she finally understands why her ancestors fled their homes.

“It is the fear for our children and destruction and death that made (us) leave. To our children, this will not be history because they are living it, they have seen it,” she said.

Qatar has sentenced eight Indian nationals to death, India’s government said, following their reported detention in Doha last year on espionage charges.

In a statement Thursday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said it was “deeply shocked” by the verdict and would take up the matter with Qatari authorities.

“We are in touch with the family members and the legal team, and we are exploring all legal options,” the statement said.

The Indian nationals were ex-servicemen of the Indian Navy, according to a letter dated December 23 last year by External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, which was posted by Indian member of parliament, Manish Tewari, on X, formerly Twitter.

Tewari says the letter was a written reply to him in response to concerns he had raised in parliament over the “illegal incarceration” of retired Navy officers.

Maj. Gen. (retd.) Satbir Singh, Chairman of the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement, said the families of the men were “distraught.”

“These men went to train the Qatar Naval personnel, and now they are being blamed for espionage,” he said.

Singh said the organization, which works for the welfare of defense personnel, had been advocating for the men since they were detained last year, writing letters to senior Indian government figures, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Of the eight, seven were commanders and one was a sailor, he said.

“They are all ageing men and have different health issues that need attention. The families are distraught by the news,” Singh said.

The Indian ministry did not share details about the charges or verdict, nor name the citizens, but said they were employees of Qatar-based company Al Dahra.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians provide a large proportion of Qatar’s more than 2 million strong foreign workforce – which accounts for 95% of labor in the gas-rich Gulf state, according to United Nations data.

This is a developing story, more to come.

Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, once seen as a reform-minded contender to the country’s top leadership role, died of a sudden heart attack early Friday in Shanghai, state media reported.

He was 68 years old.

Li, who was nominally China’s No. 2 leader until late last year, served as the country’s premier – traditionally in charge of the economy – for a decade from 2013 to March this year under strongman leader Xi Jinping.

During his time in the role, Li navigated the world’s second-largest economy through a challenging period of rising technology and trade tensions with the United States, mounting government debt and unemployment, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

In his final year in power, the economist by training had been a strong voice warning of challenges to China’s economy amid widespread Covid-19 lockdowns, while backing efforts to boost employment and maintain economic stability.

Li, known to use his English language skills on occasion in appearances outside the mainland, was also seen as representing a different approach to China’s ties with the world, at a time when the country’s relations with the West have grown increasingly strained.

As the news of Li’s death broke Friday morning, social media users circulated a line from Li’s yearly address to China’s rubber stamp parliament in 2022, where he pledged that, “No matter how the international environment may change, China will keep the course of wider openness.”

Li, a highly educated technocrat with degrees in law and economics, was considered friendly to the private sector. He was also seen to have a diverging policy stance from Xi, who has tightened the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s control over the economy.

A reform-minded leader

Li oversaw much of China’s efforts to prop up economic growth during his decade-long tenure and remained a supporter of the global integration of China’s economy, even as he found himself increasingly sidelined by Xi.

As international doubts grew in recent years over Beijing’s resolve to continue the “reform and opening” policy, Li had repeatedly told foreign corporate executives and local officials that such economic development remained the party’s priority.

During the country’s Covid lockdowns, he held meetings instructing various government departments to clear logistical hurdles for foreign companies to resume production.

“(Li) was the only member of the Politburo Standing Committee to have openly advocated for the continuation of (former leader) Deng Xiaoping’s open-door policy, which ran counter to the instincts of Xi Jinping,” said Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation think tank in the US, pointing to Xi’s inclination toward state-controlled measures.

Li is also remembered for his focus on addressing societal ills – with social media users on Friday also pointing to his comments noting that 600 million people in China – or roughly 40% of the population – still had a monthly income of 1,000 yuan ($137).

Those remarks, made during the premier’s annual press conference in 2020, served as a reminder of China’s ongoing struggle to lift people out of poverty, even as Xi hailed China’s efforts in this regard as a point of national pride.

During the pandemic, where Beijing’s policies brought large swathes of the country to a halt, Li called local officials to “earnestly” implement policies to stabilize the economy and support small businesses and employment.

He was also the highest level official to visit Wuhan in January 2020, when the city was under lockdown and battling a surge of infections in the world’s first known Covid-19 outbreak.

Some of Li’s efforts to bolster the economy appeared to underscore his rift with Xi, and the premier was widely seen as lacking power relative to many of his predecessors.

When the premier called for the revival of street stalls as a way to jump start growth and fix a spiraling jobs crisis, his proposal met with criticism from a number of state media outlets.

The backlash from party mouthpieces sparked speculation of conflict between the two most senior party figures over how to stimulate the economy amid strict pandemic controls.

Rise under Hu Jintao

Li is widely seen as a protege of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, who presided over an era of rapid growth in China from 2002 to 2012. The men shared economic sensibilities and rose to power through the Communist Party’s Youth League, once seen as a training ground for future leaders.

The faction was known for producing reform-minded leaders hailing from humble family backgrounds, but its influence is believed to have been crushed by Xi since he came to power.

The relationship between Li and Hu was in the spotlight last year when the former top leader was unexpectedly led out of the closing ceremony of the October 2022 Communist Party Congress, where Xi further consolidated power.

In a moment of drama during a usually highly choreographed event, Hu was escorted from the room, pausing on his way out to pat a stony-faced Li on the shoulder, who nodded and turned to watch the former leader depart. State media later suggested Hu left due to health issues.

Under Hu, Li was named to the party’s top leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee, in 2007.

He previously held key roles as party chief in industrial Liaoning province and was provincial leader of Henan, an agricultural base.

Born in Anhui, Li spent his late teens doing manual labor with the Dongling Production Brigade in the eastern province during the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long social and political upheaval launched by late Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

Li was among the first batch of students to sit the college entrance exam after it was reinstated following the end of the Cultural Revolution. In 1978, he enrolled at the prestigious Peking University, where he studied law and later obtained a doctorate in economics.

Unlike Xi, Li is not considered one of China’s princelings hailing from a prominent party family. He held positions in the Communist Youth League Central Committee during the 1980s and ’90s.

His time in the top echelons of the party ended last October, when he was not named to its Central Committee during a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle that saw Xi surround himself with key allies.

Then 67, Li was one year short of the unofficial retirement age for senior Chinese Communist Party leaders.

He was succeeded as premier earlier this year by former Shanghai party chief and Xi loyalist Li Qiang.

Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said that Li’s exit from power meant that there were not many reform-minded senior cadres left in the leadership.

“This is the hard reality we are going to face. China has departed from the future that Li’s vision had represented,” he said.

European Union leaders have stopped short of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, instead appealing for humanitarian “pauses” to provide aid, as the UN warned its operations were being “paralyzed” by Israel’s bombardment of the besieged enclave.

The communique, released after meetings Thursday in Brussels, follows several failed attempts by the UN Security Council to pass a resolution on the Israel-Hamas war, with member states preparing to vote on another draft resolution – this time put forward by Jordan on behalf of Arab states – on Friday.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told diplomats gathered at the United Nations Assembly Hall that “collective punishment is not self-defense.” The resolution calls for a “cessation of hostilities,” the release of hostages, and the rejection of “any attempts at forced transfer of the Palestinian civilian population.”

More than 2 million people trapped in Gaza are living through a deepening humanitarian crisis, hastened by daily airstrikes and an Israeli blockade of life-saving fuel. Israel says Hamas is stockpiling fuel for its own use and has called on the militant Palestinian group that governs Gaza to share it. Health services have been crippled by power shortages and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes amid the bombing.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 7,028 people in Gaza, including thousands of children, since October 7, according to figures released Thursday by the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Pressure is building on the international community to persuade Israel to allow desperately needed aid into Gaza; the United Nations and several countries in the region have called for an immediate ceasefire, while others advocate for a “humanitarian pause” in fighting.

But the world has so far failed to unite around a common position on the crisis, nearly three weeks since the outbreak of violence, sparked by Hamas’ brutal October 7 terror attacks and kidnapping rampage that killed over 1,400 people in Israel and saw over 200 people taken to Gaza as hostages.

Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan on Thursday said requests for a ceasefire were “not an attempt for peace,” but “an attempt to tie Israel’s hands, preventing us from eliminating a huge threat to our citizens.”

“Israel is not at war with human beings, we are at war with monsters,” he added, saying, “our goal is to completely eradicate Hamas’s capability and we will use every means at our disposal to accomplish this.”

His comments came as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s forces are preparing for the “next stages” in its war against Hamas, which is widely expected to come in the form of a ground incursion.

“The maneuvering will begin when the conditions are right. These conditions are complex because so is the campaign. The troops are ready,” Gallant said in a briefing in Tel Aviv.

For a second night, Israel’s military conducted “targeted raids” in northern Gaza overnight on Friday after vowing to continue ground raids over the coming days.

The raids included aircraft and artillery strikes in the area of Shaja’iyah, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. Video published by the IDF showed tanks and armored vehicles moving on a road near agricultural land as well as strikes on buildings and open areas.

The incursions are intended to kill Hamas militants, lay the foundations for an all-out invasion and neutralize explosive devices and reconnaissance posts, IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, six people were injured when a rocket struck the Red Sea resort city of Taba, in Egypt, early on Friday, according to official sources cited by Egypt-affiliated Al-Qahera News.

The rocket hit an ambulance building and a residential area of the hospital’s administration in the city, which shares its border with Israel. It is unclear yet who fired the rocket.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said at a press briefing Friday that Israel will cooperate with Egypt and the US to “tighten the defense in the region against threats from the Red Sea area.” Hagari said an aerial “threat” had been detected in the Red Sea area, which he said he believed was the cause of the strike in Egypt.

List of Gazans killed

The health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza on Thursday published a 212-page report listing thousands of names described as “documented deaths since October 7” in Gaza which it blamed on Israeli military “aggression.”

The ministry said the death toll is likely to be much higher and said its report excludes casualties who have not been identified, those buried without being brought to hospital for registration, or those still missing – who number around 1,600.

The list, which does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but which does list age, sex and the victim’s ID card number, followed US President Joe Biden’s comments that he had “no confidence” in the figures of civilian casualties reported by the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel, along with the US, has expressed doubts about the casualty numbers being reported out of Gaza, but has not provided evidence that they are exaggerated.

White House spokesman John Kirby called the Gaza-based ministry “a front for Hamas,” though when asked he did not dispute that thousands of Palestinians, many innocent civilians, had been killed.

The prime minister of the US-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said the PA’s own health authority considers the numbers to be “correct.”

“They are our numbers,” Shtayyeh said in an interview Thursday with Al Jazeera. “These numbers are fed to us from the hospitals of Gaza every single day (and) are received by our Ministry of Health.”

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority is run by a rival faction to Hamas, and operates the umbrella Ministry of Health which maintains a relationship with the ministry in Gaza. Death tolls for Gaza are released both in Gaza and Ramallah daily.

UN agency ‘paralyzed’ by lack of fuel

Israel has also accused Hamas of controlling life-saving fuel supplies in Gaza, as basic services such as hospitals, bakeries and UN humanitarian operations are on the verge of shutting down due to a lack of fuel.

Juliette Touma, the communications director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the agency will be forced to halt operations altogether if it does not get enough fuel – crucial for generating power for hospitals and desalinating water.

“UNRWA continues to struggle with very limited and dwindling fuel supplies,” Touma said. “Rationing of deliveries continues, including to medical facilities and bakeries. UNRWA is being paralyzed due to the lack of fuel deliveries into the Gaza Strip.”

The IDF said that the problem is not a lack of fuel in Gaza, but that it is in the hands of Hamas.

“Some of it was stockpiled before, some of it stolen from the UN, some of it’s stolen by Hamas from private vendors,” he said.

Israel continues to block deliveries of fuel altogether to Gaza, saying that Hamas would only divert it for military use.

With fuel rapidly running out, UNWRA is being forced to make difficult decisions over diverting power between bakeries and hospital wards with more than 600,000 people now displaced and relying on a single piece of bread each day, Alrifai added.

Twelve aid trucks carrying water, food, medicine and medical supplies – but no fuel – entered Gaza from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Thursday, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

A total of 74 trucks have entered the strip since humanitarian aid transfers resumed several days ago, PRCS said.

In normal times, the figure would be about 455 per day, the United Nations has said, meaning basic supplies are trickling into the enclave at a much slower pace than needed.

The head of UNRWA warned the current aid provisions to Gaza were just for “show” and “nothing more than crumbs,” as he warned that hunger and disease were becoming major issues in the besieged enclave.

“Over the last week, I followed closely the focus about the number of trucks entering Gaza. Many of us saw in these trucks a glimmer of hope. This is, however, becoming a distraction,” Philippe Lazzarini said at a press conference in Jerusalem on Friday.

“We should avoid conveying the message that few trucks a day means the siege is lifted for humanitarian aid. This is not true,” Lazzarini added. “The current system in place is geared to fail. What is needed is meaningful and non-interrupted aid flow.”

This story is developing and is being updated.

Wild beavers have returned to London’s Ealing district after an absence of 400 years.

A family of five Eurasian beavers – a breeding pair and their three offspring – were transported from Scotland and released Wednesday at the Paradise Fields wetlands area, in Ealing, west London.

The Ealing Beaver Project hopes the beavers can help reduce the risk of flooding, as well as engaging people in nature.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan was at the release. “[Beavers] are nature’s way of building dams … helping the wider ecosystem,” he said. “It’s good for humans, it’s good for nature, it’s good for our city.”

His Rewild London Fund provided almost £40,000 ($49,000) in funding for the project.

Sean McCormack, chair of Ealing Wildlife Group, one of many groups behind the beaver initiative, said: “Paradise Fields is a little oasis of nature adjoining a big retail park and adjoining urban Greenford.

“Greenford is a high flood risk zone, and that’s only going to be exacerbated by climate change. The beavers should build a series of dams through the site and create wetlands … this acts as a giant sponge.”

Wild beavers were hunted into extinction in the UK over 400 years ago for their meat and fur pelts. In recent years, they have been reintroduced to Devon, southwest England, and in 2022, they were legally defined as a protected species in England, paving the way for further conservation and rewilding.

In March 2022, beavers were released in Enfield, north London, and last month it was announced that a baby beaver had been born there, the first beaver birth in London for hundreds of years.

The Ealing site will be closed to the public for one month, to give the beavers time to settle, but by the end of the year the area will be fully open to visitors.

“We are part of nature, we need to live alongside nature,” said McCormack. “Beavers are a good example of the ecosystem services provided to us.”

Lewiston. Monterey Park. Orlando. Las Vegas. Newtown. Parkland. San Bernardino. Uvalde. Nashville. Louisville.

Ubiquitous gun violence in the United States has left few places unscathed over the decades. Still, many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But critics of the Second Amendment say that right threatens another: The right to life.

America’s relationship to gun ownership is unique, and its gun culture is a global outlier.

As the tally of gun-related deaths continue to grow daily, here’s a look at how gun culture in the US compares to the rest of the world.

There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS). No other nation has more civilian guns than people.

The Falkland Islands – a British territory in the southwest Atlantic Ocean, claimed by Argentina and the subject of a 1982 war – is home to the world’s second-largest stash of civilian guns per capita. But with an estimated 62 guns per 100 people, its gun ownership rate is almost half that of the US. Yemen – a country in the throes of a seven-year conflict – has the third-highest gun ownership rate at 53 guns per 100 people.

While the exact number of civilian-owned firearms is difficult to calculate due to a variety of factors – including unregistered weapons, the illegal trade and global conflict – SAS researchers estimate that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million civilian guns available, which is around 46% of the world’s civilian gun cache.

About 44% of US adults live in a household with a gun, and about one-third own one personally, according to an October 2020 Gallup survey.

Some nations have high gun ownership due to illegal stocks from past conflicts or lax restrictions on ownership, but the US is one of only three countries in the world where bearing (or keeping) arms is a constitutional right, according to Zachary Elkins, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Comparative Constitutions Project. Yet the ownership rate in the other two – Guatemala and Mexico – is almost a tenth of the United States.

The gun debate in those countries is less politicized, Elkins said. In contrast to the US, Guatemala and Mexico’s constitutions facilitate regulation, with lawmakers more comfortable restricting guns, especially given concerns around organized crime, he said. In Mexico, there’s only one gun store in the entire country – and it’s controlled by the army.

In the US, firearm manufacturing is on the rise, with more Americans buying guns.

In 2018, gun makers produced 9 million firearms in the country – more than double the amount manufactured in 2008, according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). More recently, January 2021 marked the biggest annual increase since 2013 in requests for federal background checks necessary for purchasing a gun – a nearly 60% jump from January 2020.

And in March 2021, the FBI reported almost 4.7 million background checks – the most of any month since the agency started keeping track more than 20 years ago. Two million of those checks were for new gun purchases, making it the second highest month on record for firearms sales, according to the National Shooting Sports Federation, the firearms industry trade group that compares FBI background check numbers with actual sales data to determine its sales figures.

Almost a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns, according to an April 2021 Pew survey. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent, including by suicide, homicide and unintentional injuries.

It is then unsurprising that the US has more deaths from gun violence than any other developed country per capita. The rate in the US is eight times greater than in Canada, which has the seventh highest rate of gun ownership in the world; 22 times higher than in the European Union and 23 times greater than in Australia, according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data from 2019.

The gun-related homicide rate in Washington, DC – the highest of any US state or district – is close to levels in Brazil, which ranks sixth highest in the world for gun-related homicides, according to the IHME figures.

Globally, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from the highest rates of firearm homicides, with El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia and Honduras topping the charts.

Drug cartel activities and the presence of firearms from old conflicts are both contributing factors, according to the 2018 Global Mortality From Firearms, 1990-2016, study.

But gun-related violence in Latin America and the Caribbean is also exacerbated by weapons that come from the US. About 200,000 firearms from America cross Mexico’s border every year, according to a February 2021 US government accountability office report, citing the Mexican government.

In 2019, about 68% of firearms seized by law enforcement in Mexico and sent to the ATF for identification were traced back to the US. And around half of guns the ATF checked after they’ve been seized in Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama were manufactured in or officially imported to the US.

While personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a firearm, 63% of US gun-related deaths are self-inflicted.

Over 23,000 Americans died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 2019. That number accounts for 44% of the gun suicides globally and dwarfs suicide totals in any other country in the world.

At six firearm suicides per 100,000 people, the US rate of suicide is, on average, seven times higher than in other developed nations. Globally, the US rate is only lower than in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory with relatively high gun ownership (22 guns per 100 people).

Multiple studies have reported an association between gun ownership and gun-related suicides.

One of those studies, conducted by researchers at Stanford University, found that men who owned handguns were almost eight times as likely to die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds as men who didn’t own a gun. Women who owned handguns were 35 times as likely to die by firearm suicide, compared to those who didn’t, according to the 2020 study, which surveyed 26 million California residents over a more than 11-year period.

Regular mass shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon. The US is the only developed country where mass shootings have happened every single year for the past 20 years, according to Jason R. Silva, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University.

To compare across countries, Silva uses a conservative definition of a mass shooting: an event that leaves four or more people dead, excluding the shooter, and that excludes profit-driven criminal activity, familicide and state-sponsored violence. Using this approach, 68 people were killed and 91 injured in eight public shootings in the US over the course of 2019 alone.

A broader definition of mass shootings reveals an even higher figure.

They counted as many as 417 mass shootings in 2019. And in 2022, 213 mass shootings have already been recorded.

State gun policies also appear to play a role. A 2019 study published in the British Medical Journal found that US states with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings.

US President Joe Biden’s administration renewed calls for gun reform after mass shootings in Colorado, South Carolina and Texas last year. In March 2021, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would require unlicensed and private sellers, as well as all licensed sellers to do federal background checks before all gun sales – and to ensure that buyers are fully vetted before making the sale.

The bills are now stuck in the Senate where, despite some Democrats’ efforts to build bipartisan support, there has been no indication they have the votes to overcome the 60-vote filibuster.

For decades, political roadblocks have stalled such efforts in the US. And that partisan divide is reflected in the population as well, with 80% of Republicans – and 19% of Democrats – saying gun laws in the country are either about right or should be less strict, according to the April Pew survey.

Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to drive demand for more guns, experts say, with gun control activists arguing the time for reform is long overdue.

Researchers from Washington University at St Louis’ Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute presented this argument to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2018, saying that the US government’s “failure” to prevent and reduce gun-related violence through “reasonable and effective domestic measures has limited the ability of Americans to enjoy many fundamental freedoms and guarantees protected by international human rights law,” including the right to life and bodily integrity.

UN bodies have also underlined these concerns, pointing to America’s “stand your ground” laws, which allow gun owners in at least 25 states to use deadly force in any situation where they believe that they face an imminent threat of harm, without first making any effort to deescalate the situation or retreat. A 2019 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights report said that the law can encourage people to respond to situations with lethal force, rather than use it as a last resort.

In a 2020 essay published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank, gun control advocate Rukmani Bhatia said that the US gun lobby has seized a rights-based narrative “to justify, dangerously, the right to bear, carry, and use firearms.”

Stand your ground legislation, she said, “warps people’s understanding about their rights to security and, in the worst cases, empowers them to take away another person’s right to life.”

Meanwhile, countries that have introduced laws to reduce gun-related deaths have achieved significant changes.

A decade of gun violence, culminating with the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, prompted the Australian government to take action.

Less than two weeks after Australia’s worst mass shooting, the federal government implemented a new program, banning rapid-fire rifles and shotguns, and unifying gun owner licensing and registrations across the country. In the next 10 years gun deaths in Australia fell by more than 50%. A 2010 study found the government’s 1997 buyback program – part of the overall reform – led to an average drop in firearm suicide rates of 74% in the five years that followed.

Other countries are also showing promising results after changing their gun laws. In South Africa, gun-related deaths almost halved over a 10-year-period after new gun legislation, the Firearms Control Act of 2000, went into force in July 2004. The new laws made it much more difficult to obtain a firearm.

In New Zealand, gun laws were swiftly amended after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Just 24 hours after the attack, in which 51 people were killed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the law would change. New Zealand’s parliament voted almost unanimously to change the country’s gun laws less than a month later, banning all military-style semi-automatic weapons.

Britain tightened its gun laws and banned most private handgun ownership after a mass shooting in 1996, a move that saw gun deaths drop by almost a quarter over a decade. In August 2021, a licensed firearms holder killed five people in Plymouth, England, marking the worst mass shooting since 2010. After the incident, police said the gunman’s firearm license had been returned to him just months after it was revoked, due to assault accusations. The British government then asked police to review their licensing practices and said that they would be bringing forward new guidance to improve background procedures, including social media checks.

Many countries around the world have been able to tackle gun violence. Yet, despite the thousands of lost lives in the US, only around half of US adults favor stricter gun laws, according to the recent Pew survey, and political reform remains at a standstill. The deadly cycle of violence seems destined to continue.

How CNN reported this story:

When comparing US statistics with other developed countries we used a UN definition found in the United Nations’ World Economic Situation and Prospects report – which intends “to reflect basic economic country conditions” and is not strictly aligned with the UN Statistics Division’s classification known as M49.

This story has been updated.

A Ukrainian police officer inspects a half-destroyed building when, suddenly, he rushes to the ground, ducking for cover.

There’s little to police these days in Avdiivka as most of the people who used to live in this frontline city are gone. But some 1,600 have remained, and this unit — the White Angels — are there to evacuate them to safety.

The city had been left on the frontline when pro-Moscow separatists seized large portion of the Donbas region, including the nearby city of Donetsk, in 2014, and has been under fire since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But on October 10, Moscow began a concentrated push, sending waves of soldiers and armoured vehicles while also intensifying shelling of the city. The attack on Avdiivka comes as the front lines of the war remain relatively static, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive continuing to move much more slowly than initially anticipated.

Some analysts had initially suggested the Russian move was designed to force Kyiv to divert some of the forces it had been using for its attacks along the southern and eastern front lines, but Ukrainian officials say the goal is actually to make advances while Kyiv is focused elsewhere.

“The situation is tense,” Soloviy said, explaining people can no longer leave on their own, they have to wait to be evacuated. “Because of the increased shelling, people have started to sign up more often (for evacuation).”

Many of Avdiivka’s residents had already fled before the full-scale invasion, leaving the city with a pre-war population of around 30,000.

“Most of the people remaining in the city are elderly, mostly men. They [stayed because] did not want to leave their homes,” Soloviy explained. “Now the situation is grim. Just so you understand, 10-15 bombs are dropped every day.”

Between airstrikes and artillery, supply lines into the city have also slowed down and so Solviy’s unit has had to step in.

“At the moment, we are the only ones bringing in the aid. We bring in humanitarian aid, bread, medicines,” he said. “We go every day, there are no days off.”

“There used to be three grocery stores operating in Avdiivka. Two of them were destroyed by missiles. Now only one sad little grocery store is open,” he added. “There is nowhere to buy bread so once a week, we bring some so people can get bread.”

A battle-hardened city

When people began leaving Avdiivka in 2014, the Ukrainian military moved in, fortifying the city and building up its defenses, turning it into a stronghold.  Nine years and a full-scale invasion later and the frontline near Avdiivka has barely shifted.

Video of the White Angels unit driving into the city shows a city covered in yellow and blue. Dozens of Ukrainian flags dot the route, but so do crumbling walls and shattered windows – entire buildings, some several stories high, razed to the ground.

“The situation has not changed radically – it is tough,” the head of the Avdiivka city military administration Vitalii Barabash said in daily update on Wednesday. “The defense line around the city and in the city itself is constantly under fire. (The Russians) are firing with everything they have.”

Airstrikes, missiles and artillery, constantly pointed at the city and its surroundings. Russia has been able to make small gains west of Krasnohorivka, to the north of Aviidvka, but those marginal advances have come with a heavy price tag and Moscow’s still a long way off from its objective.

“Russian troops continue to try to encircle Avdiivka, making numerous attempts to storm it,” the Ukrainian National Guard said in an update Wednesday. “Our soldiers are steadfastly holding the line, inflicting significant losses in manpower and equipment on the enemy.”

On the ground, the fighting constant and fierce.

“Small arms battles and artillery duels continue around the clock,” Barabash explained. “The assault continues 24/7.”

And after losing a large chunk of military equipment, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, in the first few days of the offensive, Russia seems to have shifted to a tactic it knows well, the same it used on Ukrainian forces defending the city of Bakhmut.

“The enemy is assaulting, throwing more and more flesh,” Barabash explained. “The Russians decided to push on, they keep going despite the losses.”

But for those who go to Avdiivka day in and day out, that’s where the comparisons end.

“I don’t think it’s the same as Bakhmut. Avdiivka is a battle-hardened town, it’s been through a lot,” Solviy said. “People there are used to it.”

No building left intact

While Moscow’s strategy has failed to play out as intended, it has still exacted a toll on Avdiivka. The city’s sole hospital is still functional but unable to provide advanced care.

“The hospital operates as a stabilization point. Here patients are stabilized and we further transfer them to other cities, where people are provided with more professional help,” Solviy explained, adding there’s not enough staff for the demand. “There is a chief physician Vitalii Sytnik and up to 10 nurses.”

Aside from the hospital, Avdiivka’s civilian infrastructure is all but gone.

“There is not a single building left intact,” Barabash said on Wednesday, while Solviy shared a similar view.

“Everything is destroyed,” the officer said. “Back in the summer, there were hopes that we might come back. There had not yet been heavy destruction.”

“Now it is an irreversible process. The city is a ruin,” he added.

But while some people remain, Solviy will continue his daily trips to Avdiivka, hoping to ease the suffering and provide some comfort.

“I could have been a regular cop, shuffling papers in my office. I chose to be a White Angel,” he said. “It can be scary. Sometimes the fear just takes over, but then it goes away and I keep going.”