Global Pulse

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  • Aerial footage reveals destruction in coastal Venezuela

    Aerial footage reveals destruction in coastal Venezuela

    Fresh aerial imagery captured this week has laid bare the full scale of destruction along Venezuela’s northern coastline, where two powerful back-to-back earthquakes triggered catastrophic structural failure on Wednesday.

    The port city of La Guaira, which sits just north of the Venezuelan capital Caracas along the rugged Caribbean shore, has borne the brunt of the seismic activity. Multiple multi-story residential and commercial buildings across the city have crumpled, leaving piles of concrete and twisted steel where intact structures stood just days prior. Surveys conducted by aerial drones and aircraft have allowed emergency response teams to map the full scope of the damage, much of which was difficult to access from the ground in the immediate aftermath of the quakes.

    The two major tremors, which struck within hours of one another, sent panicked residents running into open spaces across the coastal region. Local authorities have not yet released full casualty figures or details of the full impact to infrastructure, but the aerial footage makes clear that the damage is widespread. The disaster comes as Venezuela already grapples with long-running economic challenges that have stretched emergency response and public works capabilities thin, raising concerns about the speed and scope of recovery efforts in the coming weeks.

  • Neighbors dig through Venezuela rubble to search for loved ones after 2 deadly earthquakes

    Neighbors dig through Venezuela rubble to search for loved ones after 2 deadly earthquakes

    In the wake of two powerful consecutive earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on Wednesday evening, local communities launched urgent, grassroots search efforts Thursday, digging through collapsed rubble by hand to locate missing loved ones as officials confirmed a rising death toll and thousands of injuries across the affected region.

    By late Thursday, Venezuela’s Health Minister Carlos Alvarado confirmed to state media that the official casualty count had climbed to 235 fatalities, with at least 4,300 people injured. With thousands still reported unaccounted for and search operations continuing around the clock, authorities warn the final death toll is likely to rise further.

    Measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude respectively, the back-to-back quakes rank among the strongest seismic events to hit Venezuela in more than a century, with shaking felt across the entire Caribbean region. The coastal state of La Guaira, located just north of the capital Caracas, bore the brunt of the destruction, bearing the highest concentration of damage and casualties. As the site of Venezuela’s main international airport, facility closures from structural damage have created major logistical barriers for incoming aid and rescue teams.

    Survivors described scenes of utter devastation Thursday morning: entire buildings reduced to skeletal frames, multi-story structures flattened, cracked roads split open, and debris scattered across residential neighborhoods. State television broadcast dramatic rescue footage, including the extraction of a woman who survived being trapped under a concrete slab, with only her foot visible to rescuers before she was pulled free alive. But many residents reported a noticeable lack of official government search teams outside the capital in the critical early hours after the disaster.

    Dayana Delgado, a mother of three whose 8-year-old son remains missing, publicly questioned where the heavy rescue machinery promised by government officials had gone, noting that local residents were leading the search through crumpled building remains on their own. “I want to know where my child is, if he’s trapped or in a shelter,” Delgado said. In one harrowing scene, a mother collapsed in uncontrollable grief after the bodies of her 3-year-old and 10-year-old children were recovered from the rubble, while other survivors screamed names of missing loved ones or stood in stunned silence.

    Hundreds of Caracas residents spent Wednesday night huddled together in open public spaces including parks and parking lots, too afraid to return to damaged or structurally unstable buildings. Families posted handwritten missing person flyers with photos of lost relatives, while Venezuelans living abroad struggled to contact family back home after widespread damage disrupted cellular and phone service across the hardest-hit areas.

    La Guaira has a long history of catastrophic natural disasters: in 1999, devastating mudslides killed thousands of people in the region, in one of Venezuela’s deadliest natural events on record. Venezuelan authorities have confirmed they are reallocating rescue teams from across the country to reinforce search efforts in La Guaira. Cristian Carreño, a La Guaira resident, surveyed his damaged apartment building, which now leans dangerously to one side after the quakes. “I lost everything,” Carreño said. “There are people still inside, I imagine, that couldn’t get out. It’s incredibly devastating.”

    Retired schoolteacher Juan Alberto Mendaño, who was navigating through wreckage in search of survivors, encountered a dead body on his path before spotting a trapped woman signaling for help with her hand. “May God rescue her as quickly as possible,” Mendaño said. “When we heard the scream, there was nothing we could do without proper equipment.”

    The disaster comes as Venezuela already grapples with more than a decade of severe economic instability and deep political division, adding an enormous new challenge to acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who took office in January following the detention of former President Nicolás Maduro. Rodríguez, whose governing movement faces widespread questioning of its legitimacy from much of the Venezuelan public, declared a national state of emergency in a national address Wednesday night, announcing the creation of a $200 million reconstruction fund earmarked for damaged hospitals and residential buildings. On Thursday, she made a public appeal to private businesses to donate heavy construction equipment to support rescue operations. “We hope to rescue as many living people as possible,” Rodríguez said.

    Geoscientists explain that while Venezuela sits adjacent to multiple tectonic fault lines, its location straddling the South American and Caribbean plates means major earthquakes are far less common here than in other high-risk parts of Latin America. The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed both quakes were centered near Morón, a coastal Caribbean city roughly 170 kilometers west of Caracas. Marcos Ferreira, a geophysicist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Brazil, noted that the consecutive timing and shallow depth of the quakes amplified their destructive force dramatically. “It is as if I am screaming and then someone starts screaming, too. That amplifies the vibration and adds to the potential hazard,” Ferreira explained.

    Shortly after United Nations officials called on the Venezuelan government to lift social media restrictions to allow citizens to access life-saving emergency information, platform X (formerly Twitter) was restored for users across the country. The site had been blocked by Maduro’s administration since August 2024, implemented to suppress information sharing among opponents of his contested claim of victory in July’s presidential election.

    Multiple foreign governments have already pledged emergency assistance to Venezuela, with leaders from Mexico, Qatar, Brazil, Spain, Portugal and Canada confirming aid shipments are en route. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spoke with Rodríguez shortly after the disaster, said the U.S. was immediately deploying emergency support, while acknowledging that the closure of the main international airport creates significant logistical hurdles. “We have a whole-of-government response. It’ll be big; it’ll be fast; and it’ll be effective,” Rubio said.

    By Thursday, rescue teams from Mexico, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic had already arrived in the country, alongside an aid flight carrying emergency supplies from Mexico. “No country is prepared to provide the full response that’s needed. That’s what neighboring countries are there for,” said Dominican Air Force Major Carlos Olivares.

    Venezuela’s large global diaspora has also mobilized to support relief efforts. In Ecuador, Venezuelan expat Félix Rodríguez has turned his retail store into a local donation collection point, receiving contributions from fellow Venezuelans and local Ecuadorians alike. “My business is always ready for whatever Venezuela needs,” Rodríguez said, adding he wished all affected Venezuelans “faith and fortitude.”

    Reporting was contributed by AP journalists across multiple international locations including Mexico City, Quito, Bogota, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Buenos Aires, San Diego and New York.

  • Watch: Elephant smashes through bus windscreen during attack

    Watch: Elephant smashes through bus windscreen during attack

    Dramatic new footage has emerged capturing a terrifying encounter between a wild elephant and a passenger bus in Sri Lanka, leaving onlookers stunned and highlighting the growing tensions between expanding human communities and native wildlife populations.

    The video, recorded by a passenger on board the vehicle, documents the exact moment the massive pachyderm launched its assault against the bus, which was transporting a group of air force service members at the time of the incident. In the clip, the elephant can be seen charging directly at the front of the bus before delivering a powerful blow that completely shattered the vehicle’s front windscreen. The force of the impact sent glass fragments flying across the passenger cabin, sending the air force personnel on board scrambling for safety.

    While official reports have not yet released details on any serious injuries stemming from the attack, the incident has reignited conversations across Sri Lanka about human-elephant conflict, a longstanding issue that has grown more frequent in recent years. As agricultural development and residential expansion continue to encroach on the natural habitats of Sri Lanka’s wild elephant populations, more of the animals are wandering into populated areas and along major transportation routes, leading to more frequent dangerous encounters.

    Conservation experts note that Sri Lanka is home to roughly 7,000 wild elephants, and an average of more than 200 people and 400 elephants die each year as a result of human-elephant conflict across the island nation. This latest high-profile incident, captured on camera for the world to see, is expected to push policymakers to revisit existing strategies for mitigating conflict and protecting both human and elephant lives.

  • Rescues and prayers a day after Venezuelan earthquakes

    Rescues and prayers a day after Venezuelan earthquakes

    One day after a pair of powerful back-to-back earthquakes rocked Venezuela, rescue teams are working tirelessly across affected regions to search for survivors even as communities across the country come together to grieve and offer prayers for those impacted by the disaster. Reporting from the capital city of Caracas, BBC correspondent Vanessa Silva has documented the immediate aftermath of the tremors, which have left communities reeling from structural damage, disrupted basic services, and widespread uncertainty.

    Emergency response crews have fanned out across hardest-hit neighborhoods, clearing rubble from collapsed buildings and checking damaged infrastructure to locate any people trapped following the quakes. Local volunteers have joined official rescue efforts, bringing supplies, medical support, and comfort to displaced residents who have been forced to leave their damaged homes. Across Caracas and surrounding areas, residents have gathered in small groups to share information about missing loved ones and offer prayers for the recovery effort, creating a wave of collective solidarity amid the chaos.

    The successive tremors caught many residents off guard, with aftershocks continuing to keep communities on edge in the hours following the initial quakes. Authorities have urged residents to remain cautious as assessment teams work to map the full scale of damage to homes, roads, and public facilities. As the rescue operation moves into its second day, the focus remains on pulling survivors from damaged structures and providing critical aid to thousands of people affected by the seismic event.

  • Delayed rains bring water shortages to cities and uncertainty to farms across India

    Delayed rains bring water shortages to cities and uncertainty to farms across India

    India is grappling with a cascading national crisis driven by a delayed, underperforming southwest monsoon, bringing acute water shortages to its largest commercial hub Mumbai and threatening the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers across rural regions, according to leading climate scientists and meteorologists.

    The annual monsoon, which typically arrives across South Asia in early June to nourish crops and replenish water supplies, has grown increasingly erratic in recent decades as global temperatures rise. This year, the weather system reached Mumbai roughly two weeks behind schedule, and experts warn that the combination of El Niño — the Pacific Ocean warming pattern that disrupts global weather systems — and long-term planetary heating has set the stage for scattered, insufficient rainfall across most of the country.

    Even after this week’s early downpours in Mumbai, the city’s critical reservoirs remain at dangerously low levels, prompting local authorities to implement strict water rationing to preserve supplies for essential use. Municipal water access has been cut off to commercial construction sites, private swimming pools, and other non-essential operations, forcing construction projects to scale back work amid the shortage. Long queues now stretch for hours at public water distribution points, where residents wait to collect just enough water for their daily needs.

    “To collect just 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water, I have to wait for two hours. I have to go to work, take care of my children and make sure there is water at home,” said Aishah Khan, a 33-year-old Mumbai domestic worker, echoing the frustration of millions of city residents. Local government data shows Mumbai currently holds only a 40-day reserve of stored water, and forecasters say even significant rainfall over the coming week will not be enough to fully replenish depleted reserves.

    The crisis extends far beyond urban centers, hitting India’s agricultural sector — which supports more than 90 million smallholder farmers, most working plots of less than 2.5 acres — particularly hard. In northern rural states including Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, key growing regions for millet, soybeans, and wheat, farmers have been forced to delay critical sowing operations that typically wrap up by mid-July. Many already face mounting debt from rising input costs and disrupted supply chains, and fear a poor monsoon will push them into financial ruin.

    “We are unable to plant our seeds without the rains coming. Already, we’re suffering losses. I think it’s worse this year than previous years,” said Suresh Kumar, a millet farmer in Uttar Pradesh. His neighbor Kedar Sirohi, a soybean and wheat grower in Madhya Pradesh, added, “I’m very worried but we have no choice but to wait and see now.” Farmers add that poor rainfall compounds existing pressures, including fertilizer supply disruptions linked to global conflict and trade policies they say offer little financial protection for small producers.

    Climate experts say this year’s erratic monsoon aligns with long-term trends driven by human-caused climate change. For centuries, the South Asian monsoon followed a predictable pattern: a southwest monsoon from June to September that delivered steady, sustained rainfall, followed by a smaller northeast monsoon in late autumn. But rising concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion have warmed the atmosphere, allowing it to hold more moisture pulled from the Indian Ocean. This shift has broken the historic pattern, replacing steady rainfall with a cycle of intense, destructive flooding followed by long, parched dry spells.

    “The Indian monsoon is becoming more variable as a result of global warming,” said Akshay Deoras, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in the U.K. who has studied Indian weather systems for more than 10 years. “We are seeing wet spells becoming more extreme and dry spells are more prolonged.” Deoras noted that the current national rainfall deficit, which stands at 42% according to the India Meteorological Department, is too large to be reversed even by weeks of average rainfall in already affected regions. He added that it is unlikely Mumbai’s reservoir levels will see a substantial improvement even with expected rain over the next 10 days.

    The India Meteorological Department confirms that El Niño and unseasonably dry winds from northwest India have stalled the monsoon’s northward advance, and forecasts that total rainfall between June and September will remain well below the long-term average. India ranks among the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts, according to 2023 data from European climate nonprofit Germanwatch.

    As the crisis deepens, experts argue that long-term resilience depends on urgent investment in water infrastructure and conservation. India is already the world’s largest extractor of groundwater, pumping more of the underground resource than the United States and China combined, per a 2022 United Nations report. Around 70% of the country’s total water use comes from groundwater sources, and years of over-extraction paired with more frequent dry spells have caused water tables to drop dramatically across the nation.

    “Poor rainfall does not have to translate into water stress if planning and governance systems are strengthened,” said Abhiyant Tiwari, a climate and health expert at the New Delhi office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) India. “Investing in water conservation, restoring urban water bodies and protecting smaller village ponds should be high priorities at both national and local levels.”

    Vivek Grewal, a hydrogeologist at Bengaluru-based WELL Labs, noted that the gap in resilience between farmers with access to groundwater reserves and smallholder farmers entirely dependent on monsoon rainfall widens with every dry year. “Every year there are bad rains, it exhausts the groundwater buffer,” Grewal explained. “In the cities, authorities expect reservoirs to get filled with a good monsoon but when that doesn’t happen there is an immediate impact.”

    The Associated Press contributions from Rafiq Maqbool in Mumbai and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Lucknow supported this reporting.

  • ‘The face of a tortured man’: Photos of Palestinian journalist released from Israeli prison spark outrage

    ‘The face of a tortured man’: Photos of Palestinian journalist released from Israeli prison spark outrage

    Shocking before-and-after images of Palestinian journalist Mujahed Bani Mufleh, released from Israeli administrative detention, have ignited widespread anger across social media platforms, with rights groups and journalists demanding accountability over systemic abuses against Palestinian detainees. The 36-year-old father of three, from Beita in the occupied West Bank, was held without charge or trial for 14 months before being released in January 2026. Just 48 hours after regaining his freedom, Bani Mufleh was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain hemorrhage, a condition the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) attributes to deplorable prison conditions and deliberate medical neglect. The journalist has since undergone multiple emergency surgeries and faces an extended, uncertain road to recovery.

    When Bani Mufleh shared his post-detention photograph to his Instagram page on June 24, 2026, the visible dramatic deterioration in his health sent immediate shockwaves across digital spaces. In a personal reflection accompanying the images, Bani Mufleh detailed the systemic dehumanization he endured during his incarceration. “You lie awake between physical suffering and heavy thoughts, counting the hours and waiting for dawn as if it were salvation,” he wrote of his daily experience. He described being stripped of all autonomy and dignity: “I learned humiliation when every part of your day is controlled by someone else… When even your privacy and dignity are no longer yours.”

    Bani Mufleh also chronicled the persistent hunger that defined his time in custody, writing, “I learned how to be grateful and understood the true meaning of hunger; when you wait for a morsel that isn’t enough, you go to sleep with a stomach ache, and wake up with the same feeling. I learned how a loaf of bread can become a dream, and how a sip of cold water can feel like a blessing from heaven… Fourteen months taught me that blessings aren’t as vast as we thought; rather, they are these small details we took for granted.”

    The viral spread of the images quickly drew condemnation from medical professionals, journalists, activists, and ordinary social media users, who highlighted Bani Mufleh’s case as evidence of long-documented abuses in Israeli detention facilities. “This is the face of a tortured man who has barely survived an emergency procedure… whose quality of life has been reduced to almost zero forever,” one physician posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Another commentator, Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Eldin, wrote on Instagram that the images lay bare a system intentionally designed to destroy Palestinian bodies while silencing Palestinian dissent: “starvation, abuse, humiliation, and imprisonment without accountability.”

    Multiple social media users noted that administrative detention—imprisonment without formal charge or trial—functions as a deliberate strategy to debilitate detainees before release, when Israeli authorities can avoid any legal liability for the harm caused. One Arabic-language post, which also went viral, framed Bani Mufleh’s condition as proof of the cruel reality behind claims of Israeli democratic governance, noting that after more than a year of torture, starvation, and abuse, he emerged with a catastrophic health condition requiring years of treatment. The post also placed responsibility for the ongoing crisis of Palestinian detainees, who number more than 10,000, on global governments and international institutions.

    In an official statement responding to the public outcry, the PPS emphasized that Bani Mufleh’s experience is not an isolated incident, but representative of a broader, systemic “exterminatory prison system” that acts as “a tool for both the slow and direct killing” of Palestinian detainees. The organization detailed that thousands of current and former detainees have endured systematic crimes including torture, intentional starvation, total denial of adequate medical care, and widespread physical and psychological abuse, alongside constant 24/7 psychological terror. It added that hundreds of detainees are released every year in catastrophic physical and mental condition, but most cases remain hidden from public view: former detainees and their families often stay silent out of fear of re-arrest.

    Reports of torture, neglect, and deaths in Israeli detention facilities—labeled “torture camps” by leading Israeli human rights group B’tselem—have increased dramatically since the outbreak of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. According to PPS data, at least 245 Palestinian journalists have been arrested by Israeli forces since the start of the conflict in Gaza. Official data puts the current number of Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody at more than 9,500, but rights groups estimate the actual figure is far higher, as Israeli authorities have refused to release information on hundreds of additional people detained in Gaza.

  • Things to know about the Venezuela earthquakes

    Things to know about the Venezuela earthquakes

    On Wednesday, a rare and powerful double earthquake event, formally called an earthquake doublet, devastated northern Venezuela, leaving at least 188 people confirmed dead, more than 200 trapped under rubble, and over 1,500 injured. Thousands more are currently unaccounted for, with rescue officials warning that the death toll is almost certain to rise as search operations continue through collapsed infrastructure. One of the hardest-hit areas is La Guaira, a coastal region located just north of the capital city Caracas, where dozens of buildings have been completely leveled.

    According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the two major seismic events struck just 39 seconds apart along the San Sebastian fault on Venezuela’s northern Caribbean coastline. The first, a 7.2-magnitude foreshock, originated 22 kilometers (14 miles) deep, 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Caracas near the coastal town of Morón. Barely half a minute later, a stronger 7.5-magnitude mainshock hit 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep, just 16 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Morón. USGS experts confirmed that the back-to-back quakes, classified as a doublet due to their similar magnitude, close timing and proximity, resulted from shallow strike-slip faulting along the complex tectonic boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates. The event ranks among the most powerful seismic activity recorded in Venezuela in more than a century.

    Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has declared La Guaira, which sits around 165 kilometers (103 miles) east of the mainshock’s epicenter, a full disaster zone. Authorities have deployed all available rescue resources from across the country to the region, where civilian volunteers and first responders have worked around the clock to pull survivors from crumbled concrete. Footage from the scene shows survivors covered in dust and blood emerging from rubble, while distraught families grieve outside flattened homes. Grief-stricken residents have posted hundreds of missing-person flyers with photos of lost loved ones, and shared handwritten lists of unaccounted-for names across social media and community boards in a frantic search for information.

    Widespread damage extends far beyond La Guaira, reaching all the way into the capital Caracas and triggering evacuations as far away as Brazil’s Amazon region, more than 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) from the epicenter. In downtown Caracas, hundreds of residents spent the first night after the quake huddled in open public spaces including parks and parking lots, terrified to return to damaged, unstable structures for fear of aftershocks. Large swathes of the capital lost power and cellular connectivity immediately after the quake. Caracas’ main international airport sustained significant structural damage and has been closed to all traffic, subway operations across the city have been suspended, and natural gas service has been shut off as a safety precaution. Local officials have canceled classes at all schools for several days, repurposing the facilities as emergency public shelters and donation collection centers. In response to the disaster, Rodríguez announced the government has established a $200 million reconstruction fund to repair damaged hospitals and residential buildings.

    The disaster comes as Venezuela faces already severe political and economic challenges, adding an unprecedented new crisis to Rodríguez’ tenure. Rodríguez, a former vice president, assumed office in January after former President Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. authorities. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are currently jailed in New York City awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges. Rodríguez inherited a nation that has struggled with crippling economic turmoil for more than a decade, and her government already faces deep political division: large segments of the Venezuelan population reject the legitimacy of her ruling movement, even as some of her former loyalists have criticized her leadership and recent diplomatic warming toward the U.S.

    International support has already begun mobilizing to assist Venezuela’s response to the disaster. The U.S. government announced Thursday it would deploy two specialized urban search and rescue teams to the country, alongside $150 million in humanitarian aid distributed through independent nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The United Nations confirmed that international search and rescue teams are expected to begin arriving in the country within hours of the announcement. Additional aid pledges have come from Qatar and Mexico, among other nations. Meanwhile, the large Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. — which counts more than 770,000 people, with large concentrated communities in Florida, Texas and Utah — has moved quickly to organize grassroots donation drives to support disaster survivors.

  • Archbishop of Canterbury vows to help Palestinians achieve ‘freedom you deserve’

    Archbishop of Canterbury vows to help Palestinians achieve ‘freedom you deserve’

    During a high-profile visit to the occupied West Bank, the head of the Church of England, Archbishop Dame Sarah Mullally, has publicly committed to using her influential position to advocate for the peace and freedom that Palestinians are inherently owed, while framing the daily acts of persistence amid occupation as powerful examples of “faithful resistance”.

    Mullally delivered these remarks in a sermon this past Sunday at St Peter’s Anglican Church, located in Birzeit, a Palestinian Christian community in the West Bank. She told gathered worshippers that this quiet, faithful resistance does not always take dramatic forms: it can be seen in the everyday efforts of parents who navigate the complex, restrictive network of Israeli checkpoints every day just to earn a living to support their households, or to get their children to school to build a better future. It is also visible, she added, in the simple act of congregating week after week in this church to share communion together.

    “All these acts of faithful resistance point to our hope in Jesus Christ and reflect your ongoing struggle for freedom and dignity,” Mullally told the congregation. She acknowledged the profound gap in experience between her own life and the reality of Palestinians under occupation, noting that she takes for granted basic privileges that are out of reach for most people living in the territory: the ability to cross borders and checkpoints without obstruction, to gather freely with neighboring communities, and to travel to Jerusalem without restriction.

    “I will use my role as archbishop to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve,” she stated. Mullally also emphasized that the global Christian community has not forgotten Palestinian people, adding: “The church is called to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep. The church stands with you in your right to live in freedom and dignity.”

    As part of her regional tour, which also included stops in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem alongside Hosam Naoum, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, Mullally met with 26-year-old Palestinian Christian woman Layan Nasir, who has been detained by Israeli authorities three times over the past five years. After being welcomed by Nasir’s family in their home, Mullally said she would hold the family in her prayers, and ask for divine blessing and healing for Layan following what she described as the terrible trauma of her imprisonment. She also extended her prayers to all people held in what she called unjust detention across Palestine, Israel, and the entire globe.

    Mullally noted that the core purpose of her visit was to create space to listen directly to the experiences of local communities, to hear both their hopes and their anxieties, their moments of joy and the enormous challenges they face daily, and to join them in praying for justice and peace that can bring healing to both people and the land.

    This visit comes amid growing concern from senior Church of England leaders over the deteriorating situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Last year, four senior bishops from the church called on the British government to take immediate action to address escalating Israeli settler violence, warning that the ongoing aggression is eroding Palestinian life and putting the long-standing Christian presence in the Holy Land at severe risk. In their statement, the bishops highlighted that as the war in Gaza continues, conditions in the West Bank have deteriorated rapidly, with rising levels of settler violence and intimidation—including direct attacks on land and church properties in Taybeh, another Christian-majority West Bank town.

    Just earlier this year, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, shared his own firsthand experience of occupation during a visit to the region, recounting that he was stopped at checkpoints and intimidated by armed militias who barred him from visiting Palestinian families in the West Bank. “It was sobering for me to see this wall for real on my visit to the Holy Land, and we were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” Cottrell said.

    The warnings from Church of England leaders align with recent alerts from Palestinian church affairs officials. Just last month, a delegation from Palestine’s Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs told European Union officials that long-standing Israeli policies pose an existential threat to the centuries-old Palestinian Christian community in the Holy Land.

  • Drones and decomposing babies: What’s in UN report on Israel’s genocide of Palestinian children

    Drones and decomposing babies: What’s in UN report on Israel’s genocide of Palestinian children

    The United Nations’ leading independent investigative body focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict released a landmark 88-page report this week, concluding that Israeli security forces have systematically and deliberately targeted Palestinian children as a central component of alleged genocide in the Gaza Strip. The inquiry, conducted by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, documents widespread harm against children across Gaza and the occupied West Bank dating from October 7, 2023, stretching past the October 2025 ceasefire.

    Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the commission and an experienced Indian jurist, stated that the weight of collected evidence irrefutably confirms that Palestinian children have been intentionally targeted and killed by Israeli forces. Muralidhar emphasized that violations have persisted despite the ceasefire agreement, noting that Israel continues to disregard both the truce terms and its obligations under international law to protect Palestinian civilian children.

    This latest report builds on the commission’s earlier finding that Israel bears responsibility for genocide in Gaza, detailing two distinct pathways through which children have been targeted. The first involves direct strikes using precision weaponry, including military quadcopters and sniper rifles. The second is an indirect, systemic campaign to destroy the basic conditions required for children to survive.

    The inquiry’s compiled casualty data underscores the scale of child harm: between the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and October 7, 2025, Israeli military operations killed at least 20,179 children and injured an additional 44,143 across Gaza. These figures account for 30% of all total fatalities and 26% of all injuries recorded during the period. Children under the age of five made up at least 5,031 of those killed, including 1,029 infants under one year old and approximately 420 newborns. The commission estimates an additional 5,160 children remain trapped and buried under rubble from Israeli strikes, and notes that the true death toll is almost certainly higher, as many deaths have gone unrecorded amid the breakdown of civil governance and health infrastructure.

    Investigators documented a repeated pattern of intentional targeting of children with precision weapons, collecting testimony from 17 Gaza-based medical practitioners who described treating large numbers of children with single gunshot wounds to the head and upper torso, inflicted by Israeli snipers or drone operators. One doctor told the commission that the consistent pattern of injuries indicated Israeli soldiers were engaging in what amounted to “deliberate shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice.” Forensic analysis of 15 of these cases confirmed that 12 of the victims suffered single gunshot wounds consistent with the accounts of intentional targeting.

    The report includes detailed accounts of multiple specific, verified cases of deliberate child targeting. On January 29, 2024, Israeli forces from the 401st Brigade, 162nd Division shot and killed five-year-old Hind Rajab in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, alongside six of her family members. When two Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics traveled to the area to rescue the child, Israeli forces shelled their ambulance, killing both first responders. The commission concluded Israeli forces deliberately shot the family and intentionally obstructed the medical rescue mission.

    Less than a week earlier, on January 24, 2024, Israeli soldiers from the 98th Division operating in Khan Younis shot and killed a 15-year-old boy who had exited his family’s home carrying a white flag after receiving an Israeli evacuation order. When the boy’s 20-year-old brother ran to his aid, soldiers shot him as well. The commission ruled the shooting was deliberate.

    Additional cases include an April 12, 2024 strike by an Israeli quadcopter operator on a 10-day-old infant who was being breastfed by his mother inside a shelter tent in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The commission confirmed the operator had a clear, unobstructed view of the interior of the tent before opening fire; the baby survived but now experiences permanent seizures. On August 24, 2024, another quadcopter operator shot a four-year-old girl in the head while she ate with her family in a Khan Younis tent. She survived but was left permanently paralyzed on her left side, with the inquiry confirming she was deliberately targeted. Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, the commission documented more than 100 additional child killings and hundreds of injuries in the weeks immediately following the truce. One high-profile post-ceasefire case involved two brothers, ages nine and 10, who were killed by a drone strike from the Israeli Kfir Brigade while gathering firewood for their wheelchair-using father near Bani Suheila in southern Gaza. Israel claimed the boys were armed suspects crossing a newly established Israeli demarcation line inside Gaza known as the “yellow line,” but the commission dismissed the claim as baseless: the boys were more than 300 meters from Israeli positions, were visibly children engaged in collecting firewood, and the drone operator had an unobstructed view before firing.

    Beyond Gaza, the inquiry documented widespread child targeting in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Between October 7, 2023, and October 20, 2025, Israeli forces killed 213 Palestinian children in the West Bank, with investigators confirming a systemic pattern of labeling boys as “terrorists” or “future terrorists” to justify targeting. One case details the January 25, 2025 killing of a two-year-old girl, shot in the back of the head by soldiers from the Menashe Brigade while the child ate dinner with her family in southern Jenin. She is the youngest child killed in the West Bank since the start of the current conflict. Another case records the January 28, 2025 shooting of a 10-year-old boy by soldiers from the Ephraim Brigade during a raid on his family’s home in Tulkarm. CCTV footage confirmed the boy was unarmed; Israeli forces delayed an ambulance transporting him to care for 30 minutes, and one soldier openly told the boy’s father, “I am the one who shot your son. God willing, he will die.” The child succumbed to his injuries on February 7, 2025.

    The report also documents widespread violence against children carried out by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Between January and June 2025 alone, settlers carried out more than 1,000 attacks across 230 Palestinian communities. Specific incidents include the April 2025 knife-point abduction of two siblings under five years old who were playing outside their home; settlers dragged the children to an olive grove and tied them to a tree. In August 2024, armed settlers abducted two 15-year-old boys who were herding cattle, beat them, sexually assaulted them, and fractured one boy’s leg, with one settler urinating on the victim.

    Mistreatment of detained Palestinian children is another core finding of the report. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have detained more than 1,655 children in the West Bank, 600 of whom were arrested in 2025 alone. As of December 31, 2025, 51% of all detained children are held under administrative detention—imprisonment without charge or trial—the highest share ever recorded. The commission collected consistent testimony of abuse: children are beaten, blindfolded, forced into painful stress positions on sharp gravel, terrorized by attack dogs from the moment of arrest, and denied food, water, and medical care by prison authorities. Multiple accounts confirm systemic sexual violence against detained boys, including rape by prison guards. One 17-year-old boy from Ramallah died in March 2025 at Megiddo Prison; Israeli authorities had been aware of his head trauma, severe malnutrition, and weight loss since December 2024 but failed to provide any medical care. A post-mortem confirmed he died from prolonged, severe starvation, with the commission ruling his death amounts to the war crimes of torture, inhuman treatment, and wilful killing, and that Israeli prison authorities are directly responsible.

    The report also details the systematic destruction of Gaza’s child-serving infrastructure, including hospitals and schools. All three of Gaza’s major pediatric hospitals were attacked and forced to close within the first two months of hostilities. Before October 2023, Gaza operated 178 incubators across eight neonatal intensive care units; Israeli attacks and the ongoing siege reduced that number to just 54 by November 2024, forcing medical staff to place three or four infants in a single incubator. At Al-Nasr Paediatric Hospital, Israeli forces cut power, gave staff just 30 minutes to evacuate, and blocked evacuation efforts for remaining patients. When a ceasefire allowed investigators access weeks later, four dead babies were found decomposing in the neonatal unit, still connected to non-functional life support machines. At least 15 newborns died of preventable hypothermia between December 2024 and February 2025, a direct result of the conditions created by the Israeli siege. Israel’s blockade and attacks on reproductive healthcare have pushed miscarriage rates up by as much as 300% since October 2023, and by October 2024, Gaza women were three times more likely to die in childbirth than before the war. As of March 2026, 70% of all newborns in Gaza are premature or underweight.

    In the education sector, Israeli forces hit 459 of Gaza’s 564 school buildings between October 2023 and October 2025, with more than 97% of all schools suffering damage or complete destruction. More than 668,000 school-age Gaza children have missed three full academic years and been locked out of formal education. The inquiry documented multiple cases of Israeli soldiers filming themselves during controlled demolitions of schools and posting the footage online. In one video, a soldier can be heard saying, “In my childhood, I’ve always dreamed of blowing up my school. Today I’m blowing up a school. Wow.” In another, a soldier mocks Palestinian students, saying they will “not be engineers any more.” The commission confirmed the 252nd Division carried out deliberate demolitions of at least two UN-run schools in Beit Hanoun in November 2023, and that Israeli forces have seized dozens of other schools to use as military bases, weapons storage, and barracks.

    Systemic starvation of children has been another key tactic, the report finds. By October 2025, UNICEF had recorded 151 child deaths from malnutrition caused by Israel’s siege and blockade, with July 2025 seeing 24 children under five die from starvation-related causes. The blockade also derailed a planned fourth round of polio vaccinations for 600,000 Gaza children scheduled for April 2025, allowing polio to re-emerge in Gaza in August 2024, 25 years after the disease was eradicated from the territory.

    Investigators also documented a widespread pattern of dehumanization of Palestinian children, with at least 35 instances of Israeli soldiers filming themselves destroying or mocking children’s toys, schoolwork, and personal belongings in wrecked Palestinian homes, schools, and public spaces, then posting the footage to social media. The commission concluded these are not isolated incidents, but reflect an institutionalized culture of dehumanization across Israeli military units, with no disciplinary action taken by commanders against soldiers responsible for the acts.

    In its final conclusions, the commission ruled that there are reasonable grounds to confirm Israeli authorities and security forces have continued to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the West Bank. On the charge of genocide, the inquiry notes that the deliberate targeting of children is a key piece of evidence establishing genocidal intent: as the bearers of Palestinian biological and social continuity, targeting children is a deliberate strategy to destroy the Palestinian people as a group. The commission named specific Israeli military units responsible for documented killings, urged the International Criminal Court to prioritize crimes against children in its ongoing investigation into the situation, and called for full accountability for all commanders bearing responsibility for the violations. Israel did not respond to any of the commission’s 13 requests for information or access to Israeli territory for the investigation.

  • What to know about earthquake early warning systems

    What to know about earthquake early warning systems

    A string of significant seismic events stretching across three continents has put modern earthquake early warning (EEW) systems in the spotlight, demonstrating how mobile technology is buying vulnerable populations critical extra seconds to reach safety when shaking begins.

    Over a single week in early June, seismic activity triggered alerts for millions of people across North America, South America and Asia. The sequence opened with a moderate quake rocking parts of California, United States, and closed with two powerful back-to-back earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude striking northern Venezuela — one of the most intense seismic sequences to hit the South American nation in more than 100 years. The events came just weeks after a magnitude 6.5 quake near Mindanao in the Philippines claimed 37 lives. Even in nations without a national public EEW infrastructure, consumer mobile technology stepped in to deliver advance warnings to at-risk residents.

    Today, more than a dozen nations and territories operate formal public EEW programs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), including the U.S., Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Romania, China, Italy and Taiwan. While Venezuela does not maintain a national system, many of its Android phone users still received advance warnings of the recent powerful quakes through Google’s crowdsourced Android Earthquake Alerts platform. For 39-year-old Caracas-based writer Pericles Sánchez, that advance notice meant enough time to get his entire family outside to safety before shaking reached his neighborhood. “It wasn’t until we were already outside that we started to feel it,” Sánchez said, adding his family’s home escaped structural damage.

    On the U.S. West Coast, the USGS runs a dedicated EEW platform called ShakeAlert for California, Oregon and Washington, which distributes alerts through multiple channels including the state-run MyShake mobile app. When the recent moderate quake hit California, more than 4 million users received advance alerts through the interconnected system, according to USGS scientist Robert de Groot.

    Though modern EEW technology is saving lives today, it remains a relatively new innovation that continues to evolve rapidly. The world’s first public EEW launched in Mexico in 1991, and the country now disseminates large quake alerts through broadcast networks, mobile apps and public alarm systems, alongside regular nationwide earthquake response drills to prepare residents. After the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 22,000 people and triggered the catastrophic Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, Japan dramatically expanded its EEW infrastructure to include offshore monitoring. Its cutting-edge Seafloor Observation Network for Earthquakes and Tsunamis (S-Net) uses thousands of miles of undersea cables and sensors to monitor activity along the offshore subduction zone where destructive quakes often originate. The system, widely regarded as the most sophisticated in the world, has added an extra 20 seconds of warning time for most quakes and cut tsunami alert delivery times by as much as 20 minutes. California’s MyShake app, launched in 2019, has pushed out 6.8 million alerts for 194 separate seismic events to date, state data shows.

    All EEW systems operate on the same core scientific principle: earthquakes generate sequential waves that move at different speeds. Faster, lower-intensity P-waves arrive first, followed by far more dangerous, slower S-waves and finally the most destructive L-waves. Most traditional public systems use a network of ground-based seismometers to detect initial P-waves, rapidly process data to estimate the quake’s location and magnitude, and push alerts to at-risk regions before destructive shaking arrives. Alerts are distributed through multiple channels, including national Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) systems, dedicated mobile apps and regional public warning networks. Having overlapping distribution channels creates critical redundancy in case one system fails, de Groot explained. “It’s always good to have more than one way of getting alerts. It’s the reason why you carry a spare tire in your car or carry some small bills in your wallet because the ATM may not work,” he said.

    Google’s Android system uses a different crowdsourced model that leverages built-in accelerometer sensors already included in every Android device — the same sensors that rotate a phone’s screen when the device is turned. When multiple stationary phones in one region detect P-wave activity, the data is sent to Google’s central processing center, which confirms the seismic event and pushes alerts to nearby users. This model allows EEW coverage to extend to nations that lack the funding or infrastructure to build a traditional national seismometer network.

    Because alert signals travel at the speed of light — far faster than seismic waves move through the Earth’s crust — warning time correlates directly with distance from the quake’s epicenter. People closest to the epicenter typically get the shortest warning windows, sometimes only a few seconds or no warning at all before shaking begins, while people further away get more preparation time, almost always less than a minute. The level of detail included in alerts also varies by distribution channel: standard WEAs are limited to 90 characters broadcast directly from cell towers, while app-based alerts from platforms like MyShake or Google often include extra context such as the distance to the epicenter and estimated magnitude. All official alerts, regardless of format, include the universal safety instruction to “drop, cover, hold on.”

    This reporting was compiled from contributions by journalists across the U.S. and Mexico, with on-the-ground sourcing from Venezuela and California.