Khawar was preparing to start medical school in Afghanistan when Taliban fighters swept into the capital Kabul, seizing power and imposing the world’s only ban on educating girls over 12.

Khawar had already bought a pile of textbooks, with dreams of becoming a cardiologist. But three years on, her days start at 4 a.m. for prayers and a long list of household chores.

But during her lunch break, she pivots to something different.

For a few hours before resuming her chores, the 22-year-old studies in secret for a degree in health sciences through the University of the People, a non-profit online university based in the United States that allows refugees worldwide, and women like Khawar, to study for free.

Alongside online schools, international efforts are ramping up to educate teenage girls and women, who are all but confined to their homes by a regime that sees them as a subservient underclass.

Some lessons occur in secret locations inside Afghanistan; others are online, on phones and on television and radio. They’re run by different people, but are all designed to reach as many Afghan girls and women as possible.

For the educators, sharing knowledge is a matter of urgency – an uneducated population is much easier to manipulate than one with a secret network of women and girls with the skills and conviction to one day lead the country.

‘A hope center’

Erfanullah Abidi was among the crush of people trying to flee Afghanistan in August 2021, in a chaotic evacuation after the United States and its allies ended their 20-year occupation of the country.

A former government employee and translator and cultural advisor for NATO, he and his family flew to Australia, where he became frustrated by the failure of online campaigns to push the Taliban to reopen schools for girls.

So, he contacted friends and recruited teachers. By February 2023, they held the first of what are now around 15 regular classes in secret locations around Afghanistan.

“It’s a face-to-face class, but each student [is] representing a group of four or five other students that we think should not attend” due to security concerns, he said.

He said it’s easy to find female teachers who are out of work due to the Taliban ban on women teaching boys, but it can be difficult to recruit ones in the right place who meet strict security requirements.

If a potential security breach is detected, classes are canceled – safety is their top priority.

Abidi says the secret classes offer more than education. “This is a hope center. This is a resilience center. This is a place where they see their future, or where they shape or form their future,” he said.

“[The Taliban] keep people uneducated, especially girls, because they will become mothers in the future. They will become parents in the future. Their ideology is to keep them uneducated so they can manipulate the children of the next generation for their terrorist ideology.”

1.4 million out of school

Three years after the Taliban takeover, UNESCO estimates 1.4 million girls are being deliberately deprived of a secondary school education.

The number of primary school students is also falling, due to a shortage of male teachers. Struggling families are also opting to send their children to work instead of school.

The Begum Organization for Women (BOW) hopes to reach girls and women inside their homes, with lessons on radio, online and on TV.

Afghan entrepreneur Hamida Aman founded BOW at the end of 2020 to defend the rights of Afghan women, but it’s become so much more than that.

From Kabul, Radio Begum broadcasts six hours of radio lessons a day, along with health, psychology and spiritual programs to women across most parts of Afghanistan.

“Our radio station is not tolerated in some provinces in the south, because they are very, very conservative. They even don’t want to hear women’s voices on the radio,” said Aman.

Every day between 10 and 20 women phone in to the station to seek advice from on-air doctors and psychologists about how to cope with life in Afghanistan, Aman said.

“Mothers are calling us to complain that their daughters are not eating anymore …. They seem depressed, they don’t talk, or they keep crying.”

Begum Academy also offers lessons online filmed in its studios thousands of miles away in Paris. The televised classes cover a wider array of subjects, presented by women for women – something that’s not allowed in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

“Right now, if you switch on the television in Afghanistan, when you pass from one channel to another, you see only men, mostly men, very few women, especially on the prime time on the evening program, only men, men, men,” Aman said.

Begum TV is also working to expand its programming to provide more light entertainment. “Our audience is asking us to have some entertainment because life is so sad, the situation is so sad, and there is nothing light and joyful,” Aman said.

Lessons from Rwanda

On August 15, 2021, Shabana Basij-Rasik, founder of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA), locked the school’s doors, burned its records and rushed her students to the airport to relocate to Rwanda.

Each year they offer a limited number of scholarships to Afghan girls to board and study, but applications far exceed available places – and they had to find a way to reach more students.

Nearly 20 years later, as the founder of the only all-girls boarding school in Afghanistan, I’m burning my students’ records not to erase them, but to protect them and their families.
2/6 pic.twitter.com/JErbZCSPuC

— Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) August 20, 2021

An online version of the school – SOLAx – started in March, taking a revamped Afghan curriculum to around 8,000 students spread across 41 countries.

“It’s so sad, because Afghans are now everywhere,” said SOLAx co-founder Mati Amin. “But the majority (89%) still come from inside Afghanistan, from all 34 provinces.”

Thirty-minute lessons are delivered in English, Pashto and Dari via WhatsApp, with the support of tech company Meta, which is allowing SOLAx to use its application programming interface (API) for free.

“WhatsApp is the best way to reach these girls. And we see the traction when we get students coming back, requesting up to over 1,000 lessons in recent days,” said Amin.

Work is underway to add the full Afghan curriculum for grades 7 to 12, with some modifications to encourage critical thinking and to sustain the interest of the social media generation.

“There are educated Afghan women teaching English,” he said. “And I think that’s super important. That’s another way of giving them that hope that someday they could also be in this position.”

Khawar doesn’t speak to her old school friends anymore. All of them have left Afghanistan, some of them before the Taliban takeover to take up offers at universities elsewhere.

After they graduated from high school, five of her fellow students left to study medicine in Turkey. Her school principal had implored her to go with them, but she refused, preferring to attend Kabul University, like her relatives.

“Many times, the principal of the school told me that I would regret this decision. I didn’t believe it at the time, but now I truly do regret it,” she said.

Even if she passes health sciences, she knows Taliban restrictions mean she won’t be able to work in the health sector in Kabul, so she’ll have to move elsewhere.

“I wish [the Taliban] could experience the effort I’ve put in, studying day and night, dedicating my life to this,” she said.

“They may never understand us now, but one day, they will regret it.”

A key border crossing for humanitarian aid to enter Sudan will be reopened, the country’s government said Thursday, as the war intensifies, causing a growing number of people in the country to need food, water, shelter, and medical care.

Sudan’s Sovereign Council announced it will open the Adre crossing, on the country’s border with Chad, for a period of three months. It was closed in February by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which alleged that the crossing was being used to move weapons.

The vital crossing’s reopening follows growing calls for greater humanitarian assistance in Sudan’s Darfur region, as civil war between the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to ravage the country. Sudan is at a “breaking point,” one United Nations agency said earlier this week.

At a UN Security Council meeting on August 6, the United States accused the SAF of “restricting humanitarians from accessing supplies through the critical Adre crossing.” Similarly, the United Kingdom said the armed forces were “obstructing aid delivery into Darfur, including shutting the Adre crossing, the most direct route to deliver assistance at scale.”

This comes as “famine conditions are prevalent” in parts of Sudan’s North Darfur state, including in the Zamzam camp — located near the state’s capital El Fasher and home to around half a million people displaced by civil war — according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report released in July.

Some 26 million people are in need of assistance in Sudan — more than half of the country’s population, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

More than 10 million people have fled their homes since civil war broke out in April 2023 and over half the population faces acute hunger, UN OCHA detailed.

On Tuesday, UNICEF, the UN’s children’s agency, said Sudan’s humanitarian crisis was “the biggest in the world” for children, by numbers,

“Tens of thousands” of Sudanese children are at risk of death if action is not urgently taken, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder warned at a press briefing. “Thousands of children have been killed or injured in Sudan’s war. Sexual violence and recruitment are increasing. And the situation is even worse where an ongoing humanitarian presence remains denied,” Elder said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrived in the Colombian capital of Bogotá on Thursday, for a visit to support initiatives that protect children from online harm.

The four-day visit came together following an invitation from Vice President Francia Márquez, the first Afro-Colombian to hold executive powers.

The couple were warmly greeted to Bogotá by Márquez and her partner, Rafael Pinillo. The meeting lasted around 30 minutes, during which the group had drinks and pan de bono (Colombian cheese bread) before exchanging gifts.

The two parties held talks at the residence of the vice president, who said that the “Sussexes share the same ideals and goals when it comes to championing a better, safer digital future and mental health landscape for our children and the world,” according to a journalist traveling with the Sussexes.

Márquez, who also serves as the nation’s minister for equality, told reporters Thursday: “This is their first visit to Latin America. The goal is to build bridges and open doors to attend an issue that affects the whole of humanity: cyber harassment and online discrimination.”

She pointed to her own background – as an environmental defender of African heritage – as part of the reason she is pushing for a safer digital landscape.

“Cyber harassment is a problem that doesn’t affect us only around racial issues, but also for gender and political issues. Women who want to do politics today are exposed to a level of violence on social media that affects us as human beings, affects our dignity,” she explained. “And this is not only happening to women, but the most worrisome aspect of cyber harassment is also that it’s affecting children and teenagers.”

Marquez also reiterated the importance of the Invictus Games, launched by Prince Harry a decade ago, saying the couple will meet the Colombian delegation on Friday.

“Colombia is the only country in Latin America taking part in these Games and we’re preparing for the next edition to be held in Canada in 2025,” she added.

Because of over 60 years of almost permanent civil conflict, Colombia has hundreds of thousands of military veterans, some of whom suffer from long-term injuries or chronic condition at the result of their services.

During their stay in the South American nation, the couple are expected to travel beyond the capital and visit the cities of Cartagena and Cali in the days ahead.

Prince Harry and Meghan will see these “vibrant locations,” while engaging with “leaders, youth, and women who embody the aspirations and voices of Colombians committed to progress,” the vice president’s office said when announcing the visit earlier this month.

While the trip could bare a resemblance to a traditional royal visit, it is not an official state visit as the couple are not visiting on behalf of the UK government. The Sussexes stepped back as working royals in 2020.

The couple’s visit to Colombia – their third international trip this year following Canada and Nigeria – comes ahead of the first Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in November.

The vice president has previously emphasized the need to confront “issues such as cyberbullying, online exploitation, and the mental health impact of these threats.”

Youth online safety is a key priority of the duke and duchess’ Archewell Foundation and the royal couple will be keen to learn about Colombia’s efforts in that area.

Harry and Meghan recently launched “The Parents’ Network,” a support network for those whose children have been negatively affected by social media.

In a poor Caracas neighborhood, the letter “X” is appearing on people’s homes – crude chest-high slashes of paint that residents say amount to a threat.

“There are some fifty homes in my street, and thirty-two have been marked,” said one resident, who asked to use the alias “Pablo”, due to fear of retaliation for speaking out.

The Xs appeared in Pablo’s neighborhood days after Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory at the polls on July 28 – a result disputed by the opposition and questioned by foreign observers.

Members of a Venezuelan paramilitary unit took photos of his neighbors as they stood outside their homes and called for Maduro to step down by banging pots. The next morning, “we woke up and all the houses were marked with a cross,” Pablo said.

“The following days, they would ride around the street saying this mark is for cowards and that they would come back with guns if anyone protested,” he said.

Paramilitary groups have historically been used by the Maduro regime to intimidate or attack opposition supporters. In many of Caracas’ poorest neighborhoods, they are the only law.

Another resident of the same neighborhood said her home was not grafittied, but that she is now too intimidated to join planned anti-government protests on Saturday. She is fearful of a crackdown by the government, which has already detained hundreds of opposition supporters for protesting against Maduro or casting doubt about his disputed victory.

She says that paramilitary groups have installed surveillance cameras in her area, and she does not know who to trust. The Venezuelan government recently repurposed an app originally intended to report public administration malfunctions to allow anonymous charges against opposition supporters.

“This is the app to snitch on the fascists,” Maduro himself told a recent rally, presenting the new service. It has since been blocked on Apple’s App store but is still available on Google Play.

She believes that about 80% of the area she lives in would be in favor of Venezuela’s political opposition – but are too intimidated to make their voices heard.

“A couple days after the election, two young protesters were taken away, there’s no trust among neigbhbors also because of the app,” Valentina said.

A pattern of repression

Venezuelans have felt this fear before. In 2019, when opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself to be the interim president of Venezuela, with widespread popular support, motorcycle riding colectivo members terrorized anti-government rallies with gunfire and prevented opposition lawmakers and journalists from entering the National Assembly.

That pattern of repression appears to be ramping up today.

Pablo accuses colectivo members of making threats, such as being taken to prison, blacklisting for vital government benefits for cheap gasoline and food handouts. There have also been threats of overt violence in the past few days, though he maintains he will keep protesting.

“Young people are [taken] out of their houses, houses are marked with a cross at their doors.  Journalists have been detained, four of them have been accused of terrorism. This is happening as we speak,” she said.

Since the contested election, Maduro has been at the forefront of the government crackdown, ordering the opening of two new prisons to accommodate detained protesters and openly calling for everyone in the streets to be imprisoned.

Maduro has also endorsed what is informally referred to as “Operation Knock-Knock,” that has seen security services knocking at opposition members’ doors.

“Knock Knock! Don’t be a crybaby… You’re going to Tocorón (a jail)” Maduro shouted at a rally last week.

Even after Venezuela’s electoral and judicial authorities announced the victory of Maduro, they have not shown detailed results and electoral records to support it, prompting anger and concern across the country and abroad.

Meanwhile, the team of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia has released independently collected polling station data that, although partial, appears to suggest that Maduro lost.

Numerous countries say they will not recognize the official election result until the vote tallies are published in full.

In a report shared Tuesday, a panel of experts from the United Nations said the presidential election lacked “basic transparency and integrity.” They also strongly criticized the National Electoral Council (CNE) for announcing the winner without revealing the tabulated results from each of the country’s polling stations, saying it had “no precedent in contemporary democratic elections.”

“The note … from the UN is giving us a lot of hope. The world must know that we have a neo-Nazi for president,” Pablo said.

“Is Botox a sin?” A bearded man wearing a traditional white Muslim cap reads the question from a sheet of paper, then looks up to address his TikTok audience.

“Yes, it is a sin,” he smirks. “You must accept that you will age. Do you still want to look like you are 20, when you are 80? No one will believe you.”

Abul Baraa, a German-speaking Salafi preacher, is reaching thousands of followers with Q&A clips like this, which counterterrorism experts say can eventually leave followers ripe for recruitment by terror groups. Salafism is an ultra-orthodox, puritanical strain of Islam followed by a minority of Muslims.

The preacher’s casual and relatable style has helped him amass a following of more than 82,000 on TikTok and tens of thousands more on other social media platforms, where he has published more than 2,000 videos.

“The most commonly known influential preacher in the German-speaking world right now, the ‘It’ model, so to say, is Abul Baraa,” Nicolas Stockhammer, a counterterrorism expert at the University of Vienna, explains.

“TikTok radicalization – it is a new term for this phenomenon… And ISIS-K is one of the profiteers of this dynamic. They appeal specifically to those very young adolescents.”

In light of an alleged terror plot on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, there is renewed concern about online extremism among youth. The 19-year-old alleged mastermind of the attack was radicalized online, Austrian authorities say, although it is unclear how.

Abul Baraa, a 51-year-old German citizen, has repeatedly denied any connection to ISIS or any other jihadi groups.

But his content is seen as the first stop on the path to extremism, according to Kaan Orhon, a deradicalization case worker at the Green Bird association in Bonn, Germany. He says Abul Baraa’s name comes up as a common denominator in the radicalization of almost every youngster he works with.

“He is the rock star of the Salafist scene in Germany,” Orhon explains. “He is extremely popular with young people because he caters to needs, questions, interests that young people have, but that are not picked up by any other Islamic theological institutions.”

‘Like a gateway drug’

Questions answered by Abul Baraa may be as benign as “Is it okay to play Fortnite?”– a popular video game.

Abul Baraa answers this one in a two-minute stylized clip, with images of the video game in his backdrop.

“These games are not to be played. We are Muslims. We love Allah and we hate pluralism,” he says.

Keeping young people from engaging in the modern world is Abul Baraa’s objective, experts say. In promoting an anti-West, Salafi ideology, Orhon says, his content pulls viewers away from their communities, leaving their young minds vulnerable to extremist influence.

“What makes him dangerous is that he is like a gateway drug for more radical actors,” explains Orhon, who describes Baraa’s discouragement of activities and interests that are not religiously permissible as laying “a groundwork of isolation.”

In one short Q&A posted on YouTube, Abul Baraa asks: “Can you be friends with a kafir? That means that you are friends with someone who is not a Muslim. This is against our religion.”

Once isolated, the teenagers influenced by Abul Baraa may become ripe for the picking by radical groups like ISIS-K, an active affiliate of ISIS stemming from central Asia, say Stockhammer and Orhon.

“That’s the point where his distancing becomes insincere, because he knows that he lays the groundwork where other actors are picking his target audience up and leading them further into radicalization,” Orhon says.

‘Every time they try to find something new so they can silence us’

German security services have had Abul Baraa on their radar for years.

Born Ahmed Armih, the preacher grew up in Lebanon before moving to Germany around 2002.

He became the chief imam of Berlin’s As-Sahaba Mosque, where he built and maintained connections with violent jihadi figures, according to local German authorities. The mosque was searched by police in 2018 on suspicion of terrorist financing. It is now closed.

Baraa eventually moved his preaching to Lower Saxony, a state in northwestern Germany, where he joined an association of preachers known as the “German-speaking Muslim Community,” or DMG. He delivered sermons at the group’s mosque in Braunschweig until June of this year, when German authorities banned and dissolved the DMG for extremist activity.

“The ban on the DMG is a hard blow to the Salafist scene in Lower Saxony and beyond. By banning the scene, we are depriving German-speaking Salafist preachers of their most important platform for spreading their extremist ideology,” Daniela Behrens, Lower Saxony’s minister of the interior and sport, said in a statement announcing the ban.

The crackdown pushed Abul Baraa to establish and develop a presence on social media, where he remains a prolific producer of content. This week he responded to media reports linking him to the suspected Taylor Swift concert plot with a TikTok video and a livestream.

“Dear brothers and sisters, as you’ve observed, there is currently a massive campaign against us,” he says in the TikTok clip. “Every time they try to find something new so they can silence us.”

Abul Baraa’s followers are likely to be presented with more extremist content by social media algorithms built to fuel and feed their interests.

And groups like ISIS-K are ready to take advantage, actively seeking to recruit minors because it presents a challenge to law enforcement.

“The calculation of ISIS-K and those people who are behind this dynamic is that… it’s not so easy to prosecute them by law because they are too young,” Stockhammer says.

The suspected Taylor Swift concert plot was stopped, but European security officials fear ISIS-K is already recruiting for its next attack from the fringes of the internet, where young minds may be susceptible and alone.

Sweden confirmed its first case of the viral infection mpox on Thursday, which was also the first case outside Africa, a day after the WHO declared the disease a global public health emergency for the second time in two years.

The person was infected while staying in a part of Africa where there was a large outbreak of the disease, Olivia Wigzell, director-general at the Swedish Public Health Agency told a press conference.

The World Health Organization made its announcement over mpox, which spreads through close contact, after an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo spread to nearby countries of a more serious type of the disease.

“We have now also during the afternoon had confirmation that we have one case in Sweden of the more grave type of mpox, the one called Clade I,” Health and Social Affairs Minister Jakob Forssmed told the press conference.

Wigzell said the person who was infected had received care and instructions in line with the health agency’s recommendations.

“The case is the first caused by Clade I that has been diagnosed outside the African continent. The affected person has also been infected during a stay in an area of Africa where there is a large outbreak of mpox Clade I,” she said.

New Zealand is set to extradite internet mogul Kim Dotcom to the United States after the country’s justice minister gave his approval on Thursday.

Dotcom, who was born in Germany but has New Zealand residency, had been fighting his extradition to the US since 2012. He is facing charges relating to his file-sharing site Megaupload, which was shut down by the US government the same year.

New Zealand Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has now signed an extradition order for Dotcom, according to a government statement issued Thursday, paving the way for his deportation.

“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” Goldsmith said, according to the statement.

“As is common practice, I have allowed Mr Dotcom a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision. I will not, therefore, be commenting further at this stage.”

A defiant Dotcom took to X, formerly Twitter, later on Thursday to write: “I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving.”

Dotcom is the flamboyant founder of Megaupload, a website which was used by millions as a fast and easy way to store massive files in a “locker” online and share them with others. Soon after his site was shut down, Dotcom was arrested by New Zealand police who descended on his luxury mansion in Auckland in two marked helicopters and had to cut their way into a locked safe room to reach him.

Along with three co-defendants, Dotcom was indicted by a US grand jury on a range of charges including conspiracy to commit racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy to infringe copyright on a commercial scale and money laundering. The four men are accused by US authorities of profiting from copyright infringement through the website.

Dotcom and his co-defendants deny the accusations and had been fighting hard against extradition, arguing that Megaupload was simply a file-sharing website and that they shouldn’t be blamed for what others were uploading to it.

Three New Zealand courts ruled against them, throwing out that argument and claims that they couldn’t be extradited on charges of profiting from copyright infringement because it is not a crime in New Zealand.

The final decision on whether to extradite Dotcom rested with the justice minister.

US law is heavily weighted in favor of copyright holders, and has been criticized for stifling innovation and harming consumers, and for exporting US copyright regulations to other countries through free trade agreements.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war against Hamas, the health ministry in the enclave said Thursday, yet another dark milestone in the 10-month-old conflict.

The ministry said 40 people had died in Gaza during the past 24 hours, taking the total number of deaths since October 7 to 40,005 – about one in every 55 people in the enclave. More than 92,401 have been injured.

The soaring figures give a window into the daily suffering, malnutrition and volatility in Gaza after 10 months of conflict.

And the milestone has been passed at a particularly unpredictable point in the conflict. A new round of ceasefire talks are due to begin Thursday, after the killings of senior figures in Hamas and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah upended the leadership of both organizations and made the negotiations appear precarious.

The news follows an especially deadly weekend for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. At least 93 people were killed overnight into Saturday when an Israeli strike hit a school and mosque in the eastern part of Gaza City where displaced people were sheltering, according to local officials.

The strike was almost universally condemned, including by some of Israel’s closest allies.

Fading hopes for a ceasefire

Israel launched its war against Hamas after the militant group’s cross-border October 7 attacks, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. More than 100 of those hostages remain in Gaza, their families back home pleading for a breakthrough to secure their safe return.

Hopes of a hostage-for-ceasefire agreement seemed to diminish in recent weeks after Israel launched a series of strikes against senior figures in Hamas and in Hezbollah, which has been sparring with Israel on a near-daily basis since October, in solidarity with Hamas.

But Egyptian and Qatari mediators have conveyed to Israeli officials in recent days that Yahya Sinwar, the new head of its political bureau following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, wants a ceasefire deal, an Israeli source familiar with the matter said.

A hardliner and, according to Israel, one of the masterminds behind the deadly October 7 terror attacks, Sinwar was previously believed to be dismissive of a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Hamas said Sunday it has asked mediators to implement a ceasefire plan based on previous ceasefire talks such as those put forward by US President Joe Biden and the UN Security Council in July.

International pressure is intensifying for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement with Hamas.

A drumbeat of Western criticism of Netanyahu’s actions has grown louder in recent weeks, with the election of a Labour government in the United Kingdom and the confirmation of US Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for November’s presidential election. Harris’ comments on Gaza signal a shift in tone from Biden’s steady support of Israel.

Harris said Saturday that “far too many” civilians have been killed in Gaza, saying a deal “needs to get done now.”

And Netanyahu faces anger from some quarters at home. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum, a powerful voice in Israel, has for months repeatedly called on Israel and Hamas to finalize a hostage-and-ceasefire deal.

“A deal is the only path to bring all hostages home. Time is running out. The hostages have no more to spare. A deal must be signed now!” the forum said in a statement last week.

A humanitarian catastrophe

A ceasefire deal would provide a reprieve for the approximately 2.2 million Palestinians who have been living in nightmarish conditions in Gaza.

Nearly everyone living in Gaza has been displaced in the conflict, with many people forced to flee repeatedlyas the Israeli military operation expanded, often into places it previously said had been cleared of Hamas fighters.

In recent days, some 75,000 people southwest Gaza after Israeli evacuation orders were issued, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini.

Less than a sixth of the area of Gaza is not under Israeli evacuation orders, Lazzarini said late last month.

“Quite often, people have just a few hours to pack whatever they can & start all over again, mostly on foot or on a crowded donkey cart for those who can afford it,” he said Sunday on the social media platform X.

Earlier this week Fikr Shalltoot, the Gaza Director for aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the impending milestone “means that 40,000 families are grieving, and their hearts are broken.”

“Many people are losing hope and some are losing faith, but mostly people are losing trust in the international community. They are angry and disappointed and believe that the world has failed them and let them down,” she said in a statement.

This story has been updated.

A Russian court has sentenced a Russian-American woman to 12 years in prison for treason after she made a donation of just over $50 to a US-based charity supporting Ukraine.

Ksenia Karelina, 33, had pleaded guilty to the charges. She was detained in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg earlier this year while visiting her grandparents.

The verdict was announced Thursday after a closed-doors trial at Sverdlovsk regional court that ended last week. Investigators said Karelina had sent money to purchase equipment and ammunition for the Ukrainian army, RIA Novosti reported.

Karelina’s lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, told Russian media he would appeal the verdict.

Her conviction comes two weeks after Russia and the West carried out the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, where 24 people, including  former US Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, were released as part of a sweeping deal involving at least seven countries.

Ahead of the verdict, Mushailov told Reuters she hoped to be included in a future swap.

“An exchange is impossible until the court verdict comes into force,” he told reporters. “After the verdict, of course, we will work in this direction.”

Karelina, a Los Angeles resident and amateur ballerina who became a US citizen in 2021, traveled to Russia in January to visit her grandparents.

The couple had been on holiday in Istanbul, Turkey, from which Van Heerden returned to California while Karelina flew to Russia – her first visit home in several years.

Van Heerden said Karelina never spoke about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “She doesn’t watch the news, she doesn’t intervene with anything,” he said.

The organization to which Karelina reportedly gave money, the New York-based non-profit Razom for Ukraine, said it was “appalled” by her detention.

Karelina’s conviction comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin in April last year increased the maximum sentence for treason from 20 years to life in prison, as part of the crackdown on dissent that has intensified over two-and-a-half years of war.

Her trial was held in the same court in Yekaterinburg where just last month Evan Gershkovich was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison, before his release in the prisoner swap. Both cases were heard by Judge Andrei Mineev.

A US citizen has been sentenced to 15 days in a Russian prison on charges of “petty hooliganism” for attacking a police officer, according to Moscow court officials.

The American man, identified as Joseph Tater, was on Wednesday given an “administrative penalty in the form of administrative arrest for a period of 15 days” by the Meshchansky Court of Moscow, according to a post on the official Telegram channel of the Moscow City Courts of General Jurisdiction.

Tater was found guilty of disorderly conduct, Russian state media TASS reported, following previous reports of police detaining a foreigner who violated public order while staying at a hotel in Moscow.

“He behaved aggressively, swore, and used foul language,” TASS quoted the court’s press service as saying, adding that Tater had “hit a [female] police officer” during detention.

Tater is also facing a criminal case for using violence against a government official, TASS said, adding that the American could face imprisonment for up to five years.

The US State Department said Wednesday it was aware of the reports about Tater.

“I don’t have specifics given privacy concerns,” State spokesperson Vedant Patel said. “We’re working to get as much information as we can, working to ascertain the consular situation, and see if consular access is available,” he said, without giving further details.

There are several American citizens serving sentences in Russia on drug or theft convictions, including Marc Fogel, who was convicted in 2022 for illegal possession of cannabis.

Fogel, who worked in Moscow as a teacher, was arrested on drug charges in 2021 after entering the country with cannabis. He was sentenced to 14 years at a hard labor camp in Russia.

His family and lawyer have said a doctor had recommend cannabis to him to treat “severe spinal pain.”

Fogel was not included in the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War, which happened earlier this month.

Twenty-four detainees were freed in the historic swap, which included Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician and one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was also freed.

Separately, TASS reported that Russian-US dual national Ksenia Karelina pleaded guilty in a Russian court to treason charges, after being arrested for donating $51.80 to a charity that provides humanitarian aid to people affected by the war in Ukraine.

Karelina, 33, was detained in Yekaterinburg in February while visiting her grandparents.