Hiroshima, the Japanese city devastated by a US atomic bomb in 1945, is at the center of a growing controversy after local officials dismissed calls to disinvite Israel from its annual ceremony promoting world peace as war rages in Gaza.

Every year on August 6, Hiroshima gathers foreign officials, along with locals, in a minute of silence at 8:15 a.m. to mark the exact moment the bomb dropped, killing tens of thousands of people and leading to the end of World War II.

Some activists and atomic bomb survivors’ groups say the ceremony is no place for Israel, which is pounding Gaza with strikes as it seeks to eradicate Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group’s devastating attack on October 7 last year.

They say the Hiroshima city government should exclude Israel from this year’s ceremony, as it has Russia and Belarus for the past two years over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

But Hiroshima authorities say they have no intention of excluding Israel.

“Russia and Belarus are not invited in order to ensure the ceremony goes smoothly.”

Israel’s war in Gaza may “prevent the smooth execution of the ceremony,” they said, stressing the move was not a gesture of protest but a practical consideration.

Calls for Israel’s exclusion

Of the two ceremonies, Hiroshima’s is the largest with representatives from 115 countries and the European Union set to attend this year.

Envoys from Russia and Belarus haven’t attended since Hiroshima excluded them in 2022 following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year. Russia used Belarus as one of the launch pads for its assault and later moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons there.

This year’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony takes place against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, where Israel’s bombardment has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced nearly the entire enclave’s more than 2 million people, who now face severe shortages of food, shelter, water and medical supplies.

“Why invite Israel if they are committing genocide-like crimes, just like Russia and Belarus?” said Tetsuji Kumada, executive director of Hiroshima’s Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization, one of the groups opposing Israel’s presence.

Another group, Hiroshima-Palestine Vigil Community, launched an online petition in May, calling for Israel’s representatives to be excluded, saying that “current global protests against Israel clearly outnumber those against Russia in both scale and frequency.”

The petition has since amassed more than 30,000 signatures.

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations from critics as well as rights groups and experts that it has broken international humanitarian law with the breadth of its response to Hamas’ attacks. It argues its war is against Hamas, not Palestinians, although anger over the extent of the destruction and civilian deaths in Gaza has swelled globally.

Japan has taken a strong stance in Russia’s war on Ukraine, pledging to stand with Kyiv, offering billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and military vehicles and equipment for mine-clearing operations. It has also imposed sanctions on Russia.

Meanwhile, Tokyo has offered humanitarian aid to Gaza, expressed “deep concern” for the critical situation in the strip and supports a two-state solution to the conflict.

According to Japanese news agency Kyodo News, the Hiroshima government referred to the war in Gaza in its invitation to Israel, urging the country to cease its offensive.

The invitation said it was “deeply regrettable that the lives and everyday existences of many people are being taken away,” Kyodo reported.

Palestinians not invited

The bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later led to Japan’s unconditional surrender and brought an end to World War II. But it also killed tens of thousands of people, both instantly and in the months and years to come due to radiation sickness.

Every year, diplomats in Japan are invited to Hiroshima to join the commemoration that highlights the importance of peace and cautions against the use of nuclear weapons.

But while some advocacy groups urged Hiroshima to shun Israel, others supported its presence.

“As a city of international peace, Hiroshima city needs to invite all nations, regardless of whether they are at war or not,” said Kunihiko Sakuma, president of Hiroshima Hidankyo, an atomic bomb survivors’ advocacy group.

Hiroshima authorities said they only send invitations to countries with embassies in Japan and have never invited Palestinian representatives to the ceremony.

At a news conference last week, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa reiterated Japan’s support for a two-state solution.

“We continue to comprehensively consider the recognition of Palestinian statehood, taking into account how to advance the peace process,” she said.

Junko Ogura contributed to this report.

At least 40 people have died after the boat they were traveling in caught fire off the coast of Haiti earlier this week, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on Friday, citing local authorities.

The vessel left Haiti on Wednesday carrying over 80 migrants, and was headed to Turks and Caicos, the IOM said. Forty-one survivors were rescued by Haiti’s Coast Guard, it also said.

In a statement, Grégoire Goodstein, IOM’s chief of mission in the country, blamed the tragedy on Haiti’s spiraling security crisis and the lack of “safe and legal pathways for migration.”

“Haiti’s socio-economic situation is in agony. The extreme violence over the past months has only brought Haitians to resort to desperate measures even more,” he said.

Haiti is grappling with gang violence, a collapsing health system, and a lack of access to essential supplies, leading many Haitians to embark on dangerous journeys out of the country.

The Caribbean nation’s crisis escalated earlier this year when gang warfare exploded, forcing the resignation of the then-government. The number of migration attempts by boat from Haiti have risen since then, according to IOM data.

But chaos in the country has not stopped neighboring governments from repatriating Haitian migrants by the tens of thousands.

“More than 86,000 migrants have been forcibly returned to Haiti by neighboring countries this year. In March, despite a surge in violence and the closure of airports throughout the country, forced returns increased by 46 per cent, reaching 13,000 forced returns in March alone,” the agency said in its statement.

In recent weeks, the appointment of new Prime Minister Garry Conille and the arrival of several hundred foreign forces to bolster Haiti’s National Police have offered new hope for addressing the crisis. The United Nations Security Council-backed Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, led by Kenya, is now beginning operations in Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

The highly infectious polio virus has been found in sewage samples in Gaza, putting thousands of Palestinians at risk of contracting a disease that can cause paralysis.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) both said they had carried out tests and found samples of the virus in sewage water.

“Poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2) had been identified at six locations in sewage samples collected on 23 June from Khan Younis and Deir al Balah,” WHO said Friday.

WHO said the findings are linked to the “disastrous sanitation situation” created by Israel’s brutal military assault in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 7.

“It is important to note the virus has been isolated from the environment only at this time; no associated paralytic cases have been detected,” WHO added. It said no one has yet been treated in Gaza for paralysis or other symptoms of polio, but that residents must now “contend with the threat” posed by the disease.

Various United Nations agencies – including UNICEF, the children’s fund, and UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees – are working with local health authorities to determine how far the virus has spread.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said polio vaccination rates prior to the conflict were “optimal,” but that Israel’s war against Hamas had created “the perfect environment for diseases like polio to spread.”

“The decimation of the health system, lack of security, access obstruction, constant population displacement, shortages of medical supplies, poor quality of water and weakened sanitation are increasing the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio,” Tedros warned.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza called for practices to improve hygiene and safety.

“Detecting the virus that causes polio in sewage portends a real health disaster and exposes thousands of residents to the risk of contracting polio,” it said in a statement, demanding “an immediate halt to the Israeli aggression.”

Wild polio was eradicated from Gaza more than 25 years ago, with pre-war vaccination coverage reaching 95% in 2022, according to WHO.

Poliovirus can emerge when poor vaccination coverage allows the weakened form of the orally administered vaccine virus strain to mutate into a stronger version capable of causing paralysis, a spokesman from WHO’s global Polio Eradication program said.

The United Nations’ top court said Friday that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, in an unprecedented opinion that called on Israel to end its decades-long occupation of territories claimed by Palestinians for a future state.

The advisory opinion, while non-binding, was the first time the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has expressed its view on the legality of Israel’s presence in territories it captured in the 1967 war.

An advisory opinion is not legally binding but carries moral authority and can shape international law, according to the ICJ. Friday’s opinion prompted condemnation from Israeli leaders and praise from Palestinian officials.

In its sweeping judgment, the ICJ ran through a list of Israeli practices that it said violated international law, including confiscating land, building Israeli settlements in the territories, and depriving Palestinians of natural resources and the right to self-determination. The court called on Israel to cease new settlement activity, evacuate settlers and make reparations for the damage caused.

“The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful,” the opinion read.

Judge Nawaf Salam, the president of the ICJ, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, said the court observed that “large-scale confiscation of land and the degradation of access to natural resources divests the local population of their basic means of subsistence thus inducing their departure.”

The court also found that Israel’s declaration of Jerusalem as its capital helped to “entrench Israel’s control of the occupied Palestinian territory” and said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are “in violation of international law.”

During the 1967 war, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights from neighboring Arab states. Soon after, it began establishing Jewish settlements in those territories.

The Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza for a future state, with East Jerusalem at its capital. Israel considers the entirety of Jerusalem as its “eternal capital.”

In its opinion, the court concluded that all states and international organizations, including the United Nations, are under an obligation “not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The case predates the current Israel-Hamas war, and stems from a 2022 request for an advisory opinion by the UN General Assembly. The 15 judges on the court were asked to consider “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

It is also separate from the ICJ proceedings held in January over an accusation from South Africa that Israel was committing genocide in its war against Hamas following the October 7 attacks – a claim Israel has vehemently denied.

‘False decision’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other politicians rejected the ICJ opinion.

“The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth, just as the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”

Foreign Minister Israel Katz also condemned the opinion, calling it “fundamentally warped, one-sided, and wrong.”

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, also spoke out against the court. “The answer to The Hague – sovereignty now,” Smotrich said on X, a call for Israel to annex the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed the opinion, calling it “a watershed moment for Palestine, for justice, and for international law.”

The opinion “couldn’t be more timely or sorely needed,” the PA said in a statement, adding that it “is a vindication of their steadfastness and perseverance.” The PA also urged all states and the UN not to recognize the legality of the settlements and to “do nothing to assist Israel in maintaining this illegal situation.”

Implications of the ICJ opinion

While the ICJ has previously given advisory opinions about Israel’s presence in the West Bank, Friday’s announcement is a step further, some experts said.

The ICJ in 2004 delivered an advisory opinion on the Israeli separation barrier around the majority of the West Bank, urging Israel to remove it from occupied land. The nonbinding opinion had found that Israel was obligated to return confiscated land or make reparations for any destruction or damage to homes, businesses and farms caused by the barrier’s construction.

“That’s a major difference – not the legality of the settlements per se, but the implications of the settlements and the entire practice around them,” Lieblich said.

While ICJ opinions are not binding, they are perceived as “very authoritative statements of international law as is,” he said, adding that they may have an impact on international organizations taking this opinion to domestic courts, demanding for example that individual counties refrain from exporting weapons that may be used in the occupied territories.

This story has been updated with additional developments and context

Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Friday claimed responsibility for a deadly drone blast in Tel Aviv, the Iranian proxy group’s latest attack in what it says is a response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

The explosion in a central district home to a number of diplomatic missions, including a US Embassy branch office, killed a 50-year-old man and injured at least 10 others, according to Israeli emergency officials and police.

Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sare’e said the “significant military operation” was successfully carried out with a new drone capable of “bypassing the enemy’s interception systems.”

“We will continue to strike these targets in response to the enemy’s massacres and daily crimes against our brothers in the Gaza Strip,” Sare’e said. “Our operations will only cease when the aggression stops and the siege on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted.”

This is the first time Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial center, has been struck by a drone in an attack claimed by the Houthis. The Yemeni rebels have regularly targeted Israel with drones and missiles since the start of the country’s war with Hamas, most of which have been intercepted by Israel’s defenses.

In a televised briefing on Friday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the military suspects the drone was an Iranian-made Samad-3 model, launched from Yemen, which had been upgraded to extend its range.

He said another drone was intercepted outside of Israeli territory to the east at the same time as the attack, adding that Israel is now upgrading its air defenses and increasing aerial patrols of its borders.

An Israeli military official said the drone was detected by an Israeli aerial defense system, but not intercepted due to “human error.” It was armed with a warhead and crashed into an apartment building, the official added, without providing further details of the device’s payload.

The official didn’t provide details about what the human error was but noted that Israel’s aerial defense systems don’t always operate autonomously.

The Iron Dome defense system, for example, can operate in manual mode, where its radar detects and tracks incoming threats but needs input from an operator before launching an interceptor missile.

The military doesn’t believe further threats are imminent, the official said.

According to an initial inquiry “no sirens were activated” during the incident, the IDF said earlier.

Deadly explosion

There was no damage to the US diplomatic mission and no reports of injuries of US personnel or “locally engaged staff,” the US State Department said.

“We are in close contact with Israeli authorities to fully investigate the source of the explosion and its intended target,” the spokesperson said, adding the embassy in Jerusalem and the branch in Tel Aviv are ready to provide consular assistance to US citizens.

Emergency crews responded to “an object” that had exploded on Shalom Aleichem Street, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said.

“The dead man had suffered penetrating injuries,” MDA paramedic Roi Klein said. At least four of the injured sustained shrapnel wounds, the MDA said.

Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and opposition leader Yair Lapid criticized the Israeli government for being unable to protect the country.

Lapid said on social media that the attack showed the government “cannot give security to the citizens of Israel.”

“There are no policies, no plans, all public relations and discussions are about themselves,” he said.

Ben Gvir said the attack on Tel Aviv and other areas of Israel are “precisely why I insist on being around the table in determining Israel’s policy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in June disbanded the country’s war cabinet after former war cabinet member Benny Gantz announced his withdrawal from the body, and Ben Gvir asked to join.

Houthi attacks

The Houthis have been attacking US targets and commercial shipping in the Red Sea since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others kidnapped.

Israel’s air and ground offensive on Gaza has killed more than 38,000 people in the enclave, according to Palestinian authorities. The war has displaced almost all of the strip’s population of more than 2 million people, turned swaths of the territory into rubble and triggered a massive humanitarian crisis.

The war has also raised fears of a wider regional conflict, with the potential consequences of further human suffering and shocks to the global economy. The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, for instance, have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the most important maritime trade routes.

Sare’e, the Houthi spokesperson, said the operation targeting Tel Aviv was carried out with a new drone called “Yafa” that can “bypass the enemy’s interception system and (is) undetectable by radars.”

Fabian Hinz, a research fellow for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, wrote on X that Houthi claims shouldn’t be taken at face value.

“In general, Houthi claims are a mixed bag. Sometimes they are accurate, sometimes they are exaggerated, sometimes they are just straight-up fabrications,” he wrote, adding that “their factual claims have to be taken with a much bigger grain of salt than Iran’s or Lebanese Hezbollah’s.”

He said however that the drone used in the Tel Aviv attack is likely to be a Sammad, “the Houthi’s standard long-range strike drone” that has already been used in attacks against Israel, but with a more powerful engine.

For the Houthis, he wrote, an extended drone range would be attractive “as it would allow them to strike targets further away, fly routes evading enemy defenses, and attack from unexpected angles.”

“They will capitalize on it, not just inside Yemen but also outside Yemen,” Nagi said, adding that the attack took place ahead of the rebel group’s weekly rallies, which take place every Friday in support of Gaza in Houthi-controlled Yemeni cities. The attack “gives momentum” to these rallies, he said.

The drone attack Friday in Tel Aviv comes after the Houthis claimed earlier this month that they had targeted ships in the Israeli port of Haifa with a number of drones in joint military operations with Iran-backed militias based in Iraq.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

The Aljamal family was widely respected in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp. They were known as pious and prominent members of the community. While people knew they had connections to Hamas, neighbors say no one could have guessed how deep those links truly went.

When Israeli forces stormed the Aljamals’ building on June 8 they found Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, hostages who had been captured from the Nova music festival on October 7, cowering in a darkened room.

The experience of the three men – alongside that of Noa Argamani who was held in another house nearby, belonging to the Abu Nar family – echoes testimony from previously released hostages. They describe being confined among the civilian population, rather than in Hamas’ vast tunnel network under Gaza.

“Had we known, had he told us, we would have taken safety precautions, hide or move to somewhere else,” one neighbor, Abu Muhammad El Tahrawi, said.

Dr. Aljamal, 74, was a general practitioner and also led the call to prayer at the local mosque, waking early every day to get there before dawn.

“He was a pious man,” neighbor Abdelrahman El Tahrawi said. “He leads the prayer, then he goes back to his home. He didn’t mix with people, didn’t complain about other people, and no one complained about him. He was a man who minded his own business.”

Dr. Aljamal’s son Abdallah, 36, was a freelance journalist who most recently wrote for the US-based Palestine Chronicle, for which he filed regular dispatches on the war in Gaza.

Abdallah had served as a spokesman for Gaza’s Ministry of Labor as recently as 2022, a position entrusted only to Hamas members, according to political analysts. He also showed his support for the group on social media. On Facebook, he posted pictures of his young son dressed in the fatigues of Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and on October 7 openly praised the group’s attack on Israel. In a 2022 video post, Abdallah commended the Hamas operation to kidnap Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held in Gaza between 2006 and 2011, and proclaimed: “Brothers, all of us are prepared to die for the resistance.”

Public support for Hamas as a political movement in Gaza has ranged from 34 to 42% over the past seven months, according to polls by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Polling in Gaza faces multiple challenges, including population displacement, people’s reluctance to criticize Hamas publicly and the risks to personal safety in war time. The true level of support for Hamas may be lower, according to Dr. Mkhaimar Abusada, associate professor of Political Science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, who is now based in the Egyptian capital of Cairo.

A higher proportion of Gazans are more broadly supportive of armed resistance, the polling suggests, despite more than nine months of war that has obliterated the strip.

Some people who were not affiliated with Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups took part in the October 7 incursion into southern Israel, streaming through the border fence after it was breached by fighters – some stealing from Israeli communities and others taking hostages back into Gaza. At least 1,200 people were killed and some 250 people in total were taken from Israel into the strip, according to Israeli authorities.

Despite the level of support in Gaza for Hamas, which has governed the territory since 2007, far fewer people would be accepted into the trusted inner circles of the Islamist movement.

Hostages being held by civilians under the direction of Hamas is unlikely unless they have very strong ties to and are well trusted by the group, according to Abusada.

“Hamas only trusts Hamas when it comes to those very sensitive issues such as Israeli hostages,” he said.

There may be other reasons why Hamas chose to house hostages in civilian homes, however.

Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said that approach fits Hamas’ strategy to get Israel “bogged down in the urban centers of Gaza and push them into a counterinsurgency that cannot end, which is the perpetual war Hamas says it wants.”

‘Creative punishment’

Kozlov described physical and psychological abuse he received at the hands of his guards. One in particular, he said, “was a big fan of creative punishment” who on one occasion forced him to spend two days on a mattress without moving or talking as a penalty for standing near an open window, and on another occasion covered him with blankets in the summer heat for washing his hands with drinking water.

“I was trying to breathe through the space between the mattress and blankets,” he said.

During that time the hostages could hear the family, including children, going about their daily lives on the floor below, according to Aviram Meir, the uncle of Almog Meir Jan. In the weeks before Israel’s hostage raid, the Aljamal family had been continuing as usual, outwardly at least, and Abdallah’s most recent article for the Palestine Chronicle was published just the day before.

Then, on the morning of June 8, Israeli forces stormed Nuseirat.

Zainab said in the post that the family had been waiting for the moment they would be killed by Israeli forces. “Since the start of the war, we have been waiting for this moment. We did not know how it would come and in what horrific way it would happen, but we were aware that it would inevitably come.”

As the three hostages were rescued from the Aljamal house, around 200 meters (650 feet) away Israeli forces carried out a simultaneous raid on a second apartment block – which was home to the Abu Nar family, according to Israeli officials – to retrieve Argamani.

Argamani had become one of the most recognized Israeli hostages when widely circulated footage showed her being hoisted onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away from the Nova music festival on October 7 as her partner was seized and made to walk with his hands behind his back.

Less is known about Argamani’s captors. Her family members told Israeli media she had been held by a relatively well-off family who made Argamani wash dishes for the household, reportedly telling her she was lucky to be held by them as other hostages were experiencing much worse.

In a video released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that shows Argamani’s rescue, troops are seen inside an apartment on the upper floor of a building, passing a small kitchen.

According to unofficial lists of those killed circulated on Arabic-language media and social media, Mohamed Ahmad Abu Nar died alongside his wife and child in Israel’s  Nuseirat operation last month. Three relatives of Abu Nar also posted on social media announcing he had been killed by Israeli forces that day.

‘A normal man’

Bilal Mazhar, a 16-year-old student, said his window was opposite the window of the apartment in which Argamani was being held, just half a meter away, but he never saw any sign of her presence until Israeli forces brought her out.

“They pulled her out normally and no one intervened, and there was no shooting at them,” Mazhar said.

Mohamed Ahmad Abu Nar seemed to share very little online about his life, and local people were reluctant to share many details about the Abu Nar family, but they did express surprise and concern that a hostage had been held in their midst.

“He had young children at home,” said Khalil Al-Kahlot, a civil servant in Gaza. “No one would expect him to hold a hostage like this, in homes and among people.”

“They are people in Hamas, but we did not know that,” said another neighbor of the Abu Nar family. “If we had known there was something there, no one would have stayed in the area.”

After Israeli forces evacuated the hostages, airstrikes hit both of the buildings they were rescued from and now only rubble remains at each site.

Many locals questioned why so many Palestinians had to die for the Israeli forces to rescue just four hostages.

Al-Kahlot said: “People died because they were freeing her, and no one was looking at us.”

Sometimes, a book can have a life-changing impact. For Payton McGriff, that turned out to be true.

McGriff was a sophomore at the University of Idaho when she read Half the Sky, which examines the oppression of women in developing countries. She was shocked to learn that 129 million girls worldwide are not enrolled in school.

“In much of the world, women and girls are responsible for the lion’s share of household duties and so a woman’s perceived value is what she can contribute to the home,” said McGriff, now 29. “It’s seen that girls won’t ever be putting (their) education to use.”

Additionally, many impoverished families who want to educate their daughters can’t afford tuition fees, school supplies, and the uniform mandated in many countries.

“A uniform is typically one of the more expensive pieces,” McGriff said. “They can be one of the most cost-effective ways to keep girls in school.”

Studies have shown that providing free uniforms can reduce dropout rates by 16 percent and absenteeism by more than 35 percent. This simple solution took root in McGriff’s mind and started her journey helping women and girls transform their lives.

Today, her nonprofit, Style Her Empowered – known as SHE – provides 1,500 girls a year in the African country of Togo with free uniforms, school fees, supplies, tutoring, and much more.

More than a college project

A marketing major, McGriff was pursuing her dream job in business when she took an entrepreneurship class her senior year. Tasked with creating a business or nonprofit for a class project, she remembered the notion of the school uniform and developed an idea. She sought feedback from Romuald Afatchao, a professor from Togo, and he encouraged her to join a spring break trip to his hometown of Nôtse to do field research.

There, McGriff saw the reality of what girls faced. She met Elolo, a young woman who started her chores at 3:30 a.m. so she could attend school and did homework by streetlight at night since her house had no electricity. Her family’s financial struggles meant she eventually had to quit school so her brothers could continue.

“It made all of the stories that you read in the book so real,” McGriff said. “Talent and resilience and resourcefulness is so equally distributed worldwide, but opportunity is not.”

McGriff interviewed groups of girls about obstacles that made attending school difficult. They mentioned a lack of money and support, but when she asked about uniforms, the reaction was immediate.

“Every girl stood up and raised her hand so high and, not only that, told a very expressive story about how she had been shamed out of school because she didn’t have her uniform,” she said. “I realized, ‘Okay, this is a place to start.’”

McGriff returned home, pitched her education project at entrepreneurship competitions, won $35,000 in seed money, and eventually turned down her dream job to bring her vision to life. She graduated in May 2017 and returned to Togo.

The ‘uniform that grows’

That first year, the group hired local seamstresses and provided uniforms and school fees to 65 girls. But they soon ran into a problem.

“We realized a problem that probably every parent on the planet would find obvious,” McGriff said. “Our students were outgrowing them very quickly.”

Her team wanted to create an adjustable uniform that could last students longer but couldn’t find patterns that worked. Eventually, the seamstresses – with input from the students, McGriff, and others – designed their own solution, and the uniform that grows was born.

The dress now has adjustable cords running along the side that create a tailored fit for every body type, while extra fabric hemmed underneath enables it to grow up to a foot in length. The uniform can fit a girl for up to three years, adjusting six sizes; when finally outgrown, it can be handed down to younger girls.

What’s more, 100% of the fabric scraps are recycled into reusable menstrual pads made by SHE seamstresses and distributed to the students, who previously stayed home from school during their period because they lacked sanitary supplies.

Empowering girls and elevating women

Today, SHE serves girls in Nôtse as well as 20 rural villages in southern Togo, where 69 percent of households live below the poverty line. Girls in these areas are at a higher risk to drop out of school, so SHE strives to remove all financial barriers by also providing tuition fees and school supplies. Once enrolled, students receive weekly tutoring sessions. As a result, SHE’s students consistently pass their exams at higher rates than the national average.

“Our students have increased their proficiency and performance in school dramatically,” McGriff said. “If given the opportunity, they thrive.”

SHE continues to develop new ways of supporting their students. The group recently created a mobile learning lab that brings books and supplies to under-resourced communities, as well as afterschool Girls Clubs where student ambassadors are trained to run workshops for their peers.

“It’s all (done) with this tone of empowering girls and helping girls to understand their rights and their opportunities in society,” she said. “We see our students really start to blossom.”

McGriff also brings opportunities to the women that SHE employs. Twenty seamstresses work full-time at the group’s two factories, and their average salary is 75 percent higher than Togo’s minimum wage. All employees get generous benefits, like unlimited paid sick leave, three-months paid maternity leave, and free childcare.

And that’s not all. On average, women in Togo only have around three years of education – about half that of men – and 55 percent are illiterate. When McGriff realized that most of the group’s seamstresses had little formal education, she started a ‘paid to learn’ program to help teach them basic literacy, math, and financial skills.

The seamstresses also travel to the villages with other staffers to help distribute uniforms and school supplies. They’re proud of their role in helping girls get opportunities they didn’t have.

“Watching them flourish is really just … incredibly inspiring,” McGriff said. “When you’re part of SHE, you’re part of this movement.”

Locals taking the lead

McGriff supervises the project remotely from Idaho, ensuring that the local women who run the program in Togo take the lead in shaping the organization. Eventually, McGriff hopes SHE can become self-sustaining so her role can be further reduced, which has been her goal from the beginning.

“The vision for starting SHE was always for it to become locally led because local women understand the challenges and the solutions far better than I ever could,” she said. “I may have struck the original match that started SHE. But what I’m so beyond inspired by is watching our team carry the torch.”

One important member of that team is Elolo, who McGriff met on her first visit to Togo. Elolo was the first girl enrolled in the program, eventually graduated from high school, and is now the group’s Assistant Director and has recruited hundreds of girls to SHE. What’s more, with her salary, she’s been able to care for her family and install electricity in their home. Her success makes McGriff beam with pride.

“Elolo is just the epitome of when you educate a girl, you educate a community,” she said. “She is a role model for every girl in our program who can see themselves in her.”

McGriff eventually hopes to replicate SHE worldwide. Although she’s thousands of miles away from the women she works with, she feels a strong sense of connection to them.

“We are so bonded by this incredible work that we get to do together,” McGriff said. “We’re watching each other explore our full potential. … It’s so girl power. It’s so fun.”

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Huge protests across Bangladesh escalated into deadly violence this week with clashes between students, pro-government supporters and armed police fueling widespread anger over civil service job quotas opponents say are discriminatory.

Dozens of people have reportedly been killed and hundreds injured in the violence, which has seen riot police use tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters and crowds of demonstrators armed with sticks filling the streets and university campuses in the capital Dhaka and other cities.

State broadcaster Bangladesh Television (BTV) was off air on Friday after student demonstrators allegedly set fire to its headquarters, according to local media, and protesters have called for a nationwide shutdown in a major challenge to the government of longstanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Mobile and internet services have been cut, schools and universities ordered to close, and security forces deployed to quell the unrest, with human rights groups accusing authorities of using unlawful force against protesters.

Here’s what you need to know.

Why are students protesting?

Many Bangladeshi students are demanding an end to the government’s quota system, which reserves more than half of civil service posts for certain groups.

Some 30% of those highly sought-after jobs are reserved for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, a seminal moment in the nation’s history as it successfully won freedom from a much larger ruler.

Many of the country’s contemporary political elite are related to that generation – including Prime Minister Hasina, a daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the widely regarded founder of modern Bangladesh who was assassinated in 1975.

The reserved roles are linked to job security and higher pay, and protesters say the quota system is discriminatory and favors supporters of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party. They are demanding recruitment based on merit.

“A government job is a really good opportunity,” said Maruf Khan, 29, a Bangladeshi studying in Australia, who has joined rallies supporting the protests in Sydney. “About 500,000 to 600,000 people are competing for 600 to 700 government jobs and on top of that it includes a 56% quota. It’s not easy.”

Driving the anger is high unemployment levels in the country, especially among young people. Bangladesh has seen strong economic growth under Hasina, but it has slowed in the post-pandemic era and, as the World Bank notes in its latest overview, inequality has “widened in urban areas.” In a nation of 170 million people, more than 30 million are not in work or education.

In 2018, the quota system was scrapped following similar protests but in June the High Court reinstated it, ruling its removal was unconstitutional. On July 10, the Supreme Court suspended the quotas for one month while it took up the case.

Critics and protesters say the quota system creates a two-tier Bangladesh where a politically connected elite benefit by their birth.

“The freedom fighters have sacrificed a lot for the nation … for that reason this quota was a logical thing in the past,” said student protester Tahmeed Hossain. “But there have been at least two generations after that. Nowadays, the quota … has rather become a form of discrimination. It has become a cultural propaganda to create a stronghold in the country.”

Why did the protests escalate?

The protests began at the prestigious Dhaka University on July 1 and later spread to other campuses and cities nationwide in almost daily street gatherings that included rail and road blockades.

The demonstrations became violent on July 15 when members of the Bangladesh Chatra League – the student wing of the ruling Awami League party – reportedly attacked student protesters inside the Dhaka University campus.

Since then, clashes between security forces, protesters and government supporters have escalated, with Bangladesh deploying its paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion, which was sanctioned by the United States in 2021 after “widespread allegations of serious human rights abuses.”

“Someone threw a small thing at us that blew up and I heard shots. I started running and realized that I had been hurt by some splinters in my hands. The police then attacked us with tear shell in the building,” he said. “One of my friends got hit by a (rubber) bullet in the leg. Some of my friends got their heads smashed and are currently under treatment in the hospital.”

Another protester in Dhaka, Hassan Abdullah, said Thursday: “There are tear (gas) shells just 50 meters away from me as I am talking to you. The police are constantly bursting sound grenades right now.”

Reports of the number of people killed has varied widely, with the Dhaka-based newspaper Prothom Alo saying 19 people were killed on Thursday alone and the Agence France-Press news agency reporting 32 deaths, citing its own tally compiled from hospital data.

Authorities have also moved to block online communications.

Internet monitoring site Netblocks confirmed a “near-total national internet shutdown” across Bangladesh on Thursday. “The new measure follows earlier efforts to throttle social media and restrict mobile data services,” it said on X.

What has the government said?

The demonstrations are the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Hasina since she secured a fourth consecutive term in January elections, which were boycotted by the main opposition party to protest what they said was a widespread crackdown on their ranks.

Hasina has announced a judicial investigation into the killings and called on protesters to await the verdict of the Supreme Court.

“I especially urge everyone to wait patiently until the Supreme Court verdict comes. I believe our students will get justice from high court, they will not be disappointed,” Hasina said in a news conference Thursday.

But she has been accused of enflaming protester anger by reportedly calling them “razakar,”  an offensive term used for those who allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani army during the 1971 independence war.

“We expected an apology from our prime minister for comparing us to traitors of 1952 and 1972, and a solid solution to quota reform,” said protester Salman Farsi. “What did the students do to deserve this tag?”

“This is a people’s movement against the authoritarian government,” Hossain said.

“This is not just about quota protests anymore, this is much bigger than that, in simple quota protests the government wouldn’t go around hurting and shooting students. This shows the current fascist and autocratic nature of the government, who has been upholding the power without any proper voting system.”

What has global reaction been?

Bangladeshi students have held smaller protests elsewhere, including in New York’s Times Square, the Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney and the Danish capital Copenhagen.

The US said it was “continuing to monitor the reports of violence from the ongoing protests in and around Dhaka,” a State Department spokesperson said in a briefing on Thursday.

“Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are essential building blocks to any thriving democracy, and we condemn the recent acts of violence in Bangladesh.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for restraint on all sides and urged the government to investigate all acts of violence, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

“The secretary-general encourages the meaningful and constructive participation of youth to address the ongoing challenges in Bangladesh. Violence can never be the solution,” Dujarric said.

An explosion near the US Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv that killed at least one person early Friday is being investigated as a possible drone attack, according to Israeli authorities.

The blast, which occurred in a central district home to a number of diplomatic missions, killed a 50-year-old man and injured at least eight others, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said. Four people sustained shrapnel wounds, it added.

The Israel Defense Forces said it is looking into reports that it was an aerial attack, possibly from a drone. Police officers and bomb disposal experts are on the scene, according to Israeli police.

Emergency crews responded to an “an object” that had exploded on Shalom Aleichem Street, the MDA said.

“The dead man had suffered penetrating injuries,” MDA paramedic Roi Klein said.

Police urged local residents “not to touch any rocket remnants that may contain explosives.”

“Following the incident of an explosion in the Tel Aviv area, large police forces have arrived at the scene and are working to secure the area and conduct searches for suspicious objects and additional threats,” the Israeli Police spokesperson’s unit said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

United Nations agencies say that a new round of evacuation orders by the Israeli military in Gaza has prompted the largest displacements since October – making the delivery of emergency rations even more difficult than previously.

The World Food Programme said in a post on X Thursday: “Many distribution points have had to shut down. Only a few bakeries remain operational. We urgently need increased deliveries of food and greater capacity to deliver hot meals.”

A spate of evacuation orders issued  by the Israel Defense Forces in late June and earlier this month increased the number of people displaced in Gaza from 1.7 million to 1.9 million, according to a UN assessment.

The WFP says it has provided more than 600,000 people in Gaza with food assistance this month, and more than 500,000 people with food parcels and wheat flour. But the agency also reported having to further cut rations in central and southern Gaza to ensure broader coverage for people who have been newly displaced.

“WFP still needs to deliver more fuel to the bakeries and other services, so they can provide emergency support to displaced families,” it said. “Basic commodities are available in markets in southern and central Gaza – but are unaffordable for many people – the shortage of commercial goods means food is sold at astronomical prices.”

On Wednesday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the Israeli military had stopped all aid missions from going north of Wadi Gaza into central Gaza.

“This means humanitarian workers were unable to reach any of the hundreds of thousands of people in need. It also made it impossible for them to collect supplies from the northern entry point of Erez West,” it said.

Gaza’s health sector remains under great stress. According to the World Health Organization, 15 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functional, and 1,500 of the usual 3,500 hospital beds in Gaza are available – 600 of them in field hospitals.

Both the International Red Cross and the Gaza Health Ministry underlined the challenges to providing health care on Thursday.

“The ambulance and emergency system is no longer able to respond to all calls and missions to transport the wounded and injured,” the Health Ministry said because of a lack of ambulances, the arrest of paramedics by the IDF and a lack of gasoline.

The Health Ministry said that primary health care was affected by shortages of about 60% of basic medications, as well as damage to many health centers, especially in Khan Younis in the south.

It said infectious diseases continued to spread and had affected some 1.7 million people, and there was a shortage of blood units.

One of the field hospitals under pressure is run by the International Committee for the Red Cross in Rafah, which is at capacity after “repeated large-scale casualties,” the ICRC Said Thursday, noting that a Saturday attack in Al-Mawasi resulted in children requiring treatment for shrapnel wounds.

“The number of patients who had to be resuscitated after the large influx of injured on Saturday is inconceivable,” said the ICRC’s Dr. Pankaj Jhaldiyal.