Snapchat suspends 415,000 underage accounts as Australian ban takes effect

February 2, 2026

Snapchat blocks 415k underage accounts amid Australia ban — Platforms including Snapchat, Meta, TikTok and YouTube must stop underage users from holding accounts under the legislation, which came into effect on 10 December

Australia’s digital curfew: a law to protect kids — and a new kind of backyard debate

On a humid December morning, when school holidays were still a recent memory and the surf at Bondi was dotted with kids learning to stand on boards, Canberra quietly flipped a switch that has tech companies, parents and privacy advocates arguing in different registers about what it means to be safe online.

The law, effective from 10 December, requires big platforms to prevent people under 16 from holding accounts on services such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Meta’s apps — a world-first attempt to legislate the online lives of teenagers. In the months since, tech firms and Australia’s eSafety regulator have been at work: eSafety says 4.7 million accounts have been blocked systemwide, while Snapchat reports it has disabled about 415,000 Australian accounts it believes belonged to under-16s as of the end of January.

What the law aims to do — and what it doesn’t

At its heart, the legislation is blunt and simple: prevent underage users from accessing large social platforms. Companies that fail to take what the law calls “reasonable steps” could face fines of up to AU$49.5 million. For a nation of roughly 26 million people, the move is emblematic of growing impatience with platform-led solutions to harms from sexual predation to grooming, disinformation, and the mental-health fallout linked to endless scrolling.

But blunt instruments cut both ways. The policy presumes that age can be reliably verified and that exclusion equals protection — assumptions that have prompted vigorous pushback from the platforms themselves and unease among advocates who worry about unintended consequences.

A messaging app’s plea: don’t isolate teens from their friends

Snapchat, which many teenagers use chiefly to message close friends and family, says it has been enforcing the rule and continues to “lock more accounts daily.” But the company also warned that age-estimation technology — whether based on self-declared data, AI-driven face or behavioral signals, or document checks — can be off by two to three years. In practice, that could mean a 15-year-old slipped through the net, or a 17-year-old unfairly cut off.

“We understand and share the goal of keeping young people safe,” a spokesperson for Snapchat told me. “But an outright ban risks severing the most important social ties for teens, and our view is that there are smarter, more nuanced ways to keep kids safe while respecting their need to stay connected.”

Across town, a Melbourne high-school teacher, Leah Nguyen, framed the quandary differently. “If you stop teenagers from using the apps they use to talk to mates about homework, mental health or even to organise a house party, you’re reducing their options to seek help,” she said. “We need to teach digital literacy and supervision, not build a wall.”

How technology struggles with the soft edges of age

Age verification isn’t a single button you press. It’s a patchwork of techniques — self-reported dates of birth, ID checks, biometric facial analysis, and machine-learning estimates based on behavior. Each has trade-offs.

Self-declared ages are trivial to falsify.
ID checks can be privacy-invasive and exclusionary for those without formal documents.
Biometric methods raise thorny questions about data retention, misuse, and bias.
AI estimates introduce skew and inaccuracy; a few years’ error margin is significant when the cutoff is 16.

“The technology is improving but it’s not magic,” said Dr. Samir Patel, a researcher in digital rights. “Estimating age from a photo or interaction data can be wrong in hundreds of thousands of cases. And when governments use legislation to force fast adoption, vendors can rush imperfect systems into production.”

App stores, the missing link?

Both Snapchat and Meta have urged Australia to push the responsibility up the chain to app stores. The idea: require Apple’s App Store and Google Play to verify the age of users before allowing downloads, creating a centralized checkpoint that’s harder to circumvent.

“If app stores were obliged to act, that would raise the bar for circumvention,” an industry analyst in Sydney suggested. “But it also concentrates extraordinary power in the hands of two companies, and creates fresh privacy questions: who verifies, how the data is stored, and what happens if the system itself is breached?”

Local lives and global questions

Walk through a suburban playground in Perth or a laneway café in Brisbane and you’ll see the human stakes. Parents like Marcus Allen, a father of two in Wollongong, balance anxieties about strangers and the soundtrack of his teenage son’s social life. “I want my kids safe,” he said. “But I don’t want them to be ostracised. Teenagers need spaces to talk. Cutting them off can push conversations into darker, less visible corners.”

Across the globe, countries are wrestling with similar dilemmas. The European Union’s Digital Services Act brought new responsibilities for platforms, and the United Kingdom has explored age-verification measures and content protections. Australia’s law is the first to impose an across-the-board cutoff at the platform level — and that invites scrutiny about whether regulatory zeal could produce more harm than good.

Wider implications: privacy, inequality, and enforcement

There are deeper currents here. Tightened verification systems can entrench inequality: migrants, refugees, and poor families may lack government IDs. Biometric checks can disproportionately misidentify people of certain ethnicities. And enforcement is costly — surveillance at scale is expensive, and the penalties, while heavy, don’t automatically improve systems.

“We need to ask who pays for enforcement and whose rights are sidelined,” Dr. Patel said. “Legislation is not enough without transparency, independent audits, and avenues for appeal.”

The human terrain of a digital policy

Policy debates often lose sight of the messy, human moments: a teenager confiding in a friend about anxiety at 2 a.m.; a parent discovering troubling messages and needing evidence to show a counselor; an introverted child who only feels comfortable connecting through a specific app. The law treats accounts as units to be blocked or allowed, but behind every username is a person with a story.

“My daughter’s circle is on Snapchat,” said Ava Thompson, a mother in Sydney. “If she’s suddenly cut off, she may find another app that’s harder for me to monitor. These rules should come with investment in education, family support and better helplines, not just fines.”

Where do we go from here?

This is a global puzzle: how to protect children without hampering their social development or trampling privacy. Australia’s experiment will yield data. Will it reduce harm? Will it erode privacy? Will tech companies build safer, more privacy-preserving ways to verify age, or will young people find even more elusive channels? The answers will matter far beyond Canberra’s precincts.

For now, the country is watching, parents are anxious, platforms are tinkering, and teenagers are — as teenagers will — working out how to live in a world where the border between online and offline is policed in new ways.

So I’ll leave you with a question: if safety demands limits, who gets to set them — and at what cost to connection, privacy, and the messy business of growing up?

Trump orders two-year shutdown of Kennedy Center beginning this July

hanad

February 2, 2026

Trump to close Kennedy Center for two years from July — Donald Trump's name was recently added to the facade of the Kennedy Center

A Capitol on Pause: The Kennedy Center, the Fourth of July, and a Nation’s Cultural Crossroads

On a sun-bleached terrace overlooking the Potomac, where tourists once leaned on railings to watch kayakers slip by and office workers took lunch with the Washington Monument shimmering in the distance, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts feels suddenly like a paused heartbeat in the city’s chest.

“You come here for the music, the lights, the late-night conversations,” said Marcus Alvarez, a 34-year veteran usher whose hands know every aisle of the Concert Hall. “If the whole place closes, that’s not only a job for me — it’s part of the city that disappears.”

What Was Announced — and What It Might Mean

In a public post on his social platform, President Donald Trump said the institution he has recently rechristened — adding his own name to its storied title — will shutter on 4 July for roughly two years for an ambitious reconstruction. That day, of course, coincides with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a symbolic calendar touch that has left many observers rubbing their eyes.

“I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time,” the post read, promising a “Grand Reopening” that will “rival and surpass anything” previously staged there. The closure, the president added, is subject to board approval and—according to his post—fully financed.

Whether one reads this as the overhaul of a beloved national stage or the latest notch in a larger political campaign to rebrand America’s institutions, one detail is concrete: this is not just an aesthetic renovation. It is a dramatic reordering of whose stories the national arts center will serve and how.

Why the Move Feels Historic

The Kennedy Center — conceived as the nation’s cultural center and a place where diplomacy, entertainment, and civic ritual intersect — typically hosts more than 2,000 events a year and draws roughly two million visitors to its terraces, theaters, and rehearsal rooms. It was chartered to be a national venue, its name a memorial to a president whose public imagination helped define late 20th-century America.

So when a sitting president places himself atop its leadership, populates its board with political allies, and oversees a renaming, the shockwaves travel beyond the building’s limestone walls.

“This is about legacy, branding, and power,” said Dr. Elaine Park, a cultural policy scholar at Georgetown. “Monuments and cultural institutions are symbolic capital. Changing them is akin to changing civic memory.”

Artists Pack Their Bags — Or Refuse to Play

Resistance has been swift and visible. Several marquee companies and artists who had lined up to appear on the Kennedy Center’s stages announced withdrawals in the days that followed the president’s takeover.

Composer Philip Glass canceled the premiere of his new symphony, titled “Lincoln.” The Washington National Opera — a resident company with five decades of ties to the Center — said it would leave, calling the political takeover incompatible with its mission. Producers of the blockbuster musical Hamilton pulled a planned 2026 engagement. The Martha Graham Dance Company canceled its next scheduled appearance.

“We don’t perform in places that we feel have been instrumentalized to serve a partisan agenda,” said an anonymous director at a major arts organization. “The arts stage is supposed to be for people, not politicians.”

Local Color: Foggy Bottom’s Pulse

Walk the neighborhood and you meet a cross-section of Washington life: diplomatic spouses rehearsing right across the street, students from the nearby universities practicing lines in cafes, and an older crowd who still remembers the Center’s opening in the early 1970s and the Kennedy Center Honors that came to be a televised ritual each December.

“There’s a rhythm here — rehearsal, strike, encore,” said Lena DuPont, who runs a small coffee truck that parks near the center during matinees. “You can taste the city in the queues. Two lost years means we lose more than performances — we lose those small economies and the liveliness.”

Money, Monuments, and the Question of Public Good

Beyond the immediate cultural fallout are hard questions about money and governance. The president has outlined other architectural projects — a new ballroom at the White House’s East Wing reportedly to be funded through private donations, and an enormous “Independence Arch” that would tower over parts of the cityscape. The scope of private money in public spaces raises uncomfortable questions about access, influence, and stewardship.

“When you let private money dictate the form and symbolism of public places, you risk replacing communal narratives with the narratives of the wealthy,” said Mariah Osei, director of a Washington nonprofit that maps arts equity. “That’s a pattern we’re seeing across the globe: privatization of public culture.”

To be fair, private philanthropy has long been entwined with the arts in America. The National Endowment for the Arts, a central federal funder, operates on a budget that is a sliver of federal spending, entailing that much of the arts sector’s survival depends on donors, ticket revenue, and earned income. But the difference here is the intermingling of personal branding with a public institution’s name — a move Democrats argue has no legal force, since the Center’s original naming and mission were established by Congress.

Voices from All Sides

Not everyone is opposed. Supporters who favor a major overhaul say the building — while iconic — could be modernized to meet technical, accessibility, and patron-experience needs for a new era of performance. “This place can be world-class not just in heritage but in technology and hospitality,” said Andrew Ellis, a private event planner who has staged galas in the Center’s halls. “If done right, renovation can secure its future.”

But many take issue with method as much as message. “You don’t rebrand the history of a nation by fiat,” said historian Caroline Holt. “These are civic spaces. People expect them to be accountable to the public.”

What Are We Losing — and What Do We Stand to Gain?

Two questions echo in the marble corridors of the Center: Who gets to define national culture, and how do we balance preservation with change? The answers will matter not just for the Kennedy Center’s stage calendar but for the civic imagination of the city and country.

Will the next two years become a time of creative rebirth, with inclusive planning and community buy-in? Or will the closure deepen a schism between political power and artistic freedom — a wound felt by artists, ushers, students, and audiences alike?

As you read this, you might ask yourself: does a nation’s cultural life belong to its leaders, its people, or some fragile alliance of both? And when institutions at the heart of civic ritual are shifted overnight, what is the cost to memory, to dissent, to art itself?

Looking Ahead

The Kennedy Center’s schedule still lists performances into the summer and fall, a puzzle for patrons and producers alike. For now, the center’s terraces hum with the small, human moments that make cities live: laughter over coffee, shoes tapping in rehearsal rooms, a violinist warming up on a nearby bench. Whether those sounds fall silent for two years or swell into a reimagined crescendo will be a test — not just of architecture or branding, but of how a democracy cares for its cultural commons.

“Art survives,” Marcus Alvarez said, looking toward the water. “But institutions? They have to be fought for.”

Israel Allows Limited Reopening of Rafah Border Crossing into Gaza

hanad

February 2, 2026

Israel partially reopens Gaza's Rafah border crossing — Egyptian ambulances and medical teams at the Rafah border crossing

Rafah Reopens — A Door Ajar, Not Yet Wide Open

The first sight of Rafah this week was not a ribbon-cutting ceremony or a jubilant crowd. It was ambulances idling in the mid-morning heat, Egyptian medics swapping cigarettes and plastic water cups, and a line of people with shoes soiled by the same dust that carpets Gaza’s ruined avenues.

After months of silence, Israel has allowed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to reopen for residents on foot. The move is limited, careful, and choreographed: people only, security checks at both ends, caps on daily crossings. It is, in other words, a crack in the wall rather than a door flung open.

What the reopening means, practically

European monitoring teams have been reported at the site; Israeli officials confirmed movement “for both entry and exit.” But the crossing will not instantly free a trapped population. Israel and Egypt are expected to limit numbers, require security vetting of those moving in and out, and maintain the authority to halt traffic at short notice.

For roughly two million people crammed into a narrow strip by the Mediterranean, even a small channel to the outside world is consequential. Palestinian authorities say about 100,000 people fled Gaza in the first months after the war began. Many of those left when Rafah was open; many more remain stuck on the inside, some in tents, others in ruined apartments that smell of damp and stale cooking oil.

Behind the headlines: a lifeline with strings attached

Rafah has been a lifeline for Gaza long before any of the recent politics. It is where families would cross for weddings, medical appointments, university exams, and the rare grocery shopping trip beyond the enclave. When Israel seized control of the crossing in May 2024 and effectively shuttered the Philadelphi corridor that hugs Gaza’s southern border, that everyday cross-border life stopped.

The closure has had practical, measurable consequences. Humanitarian workers and the UN reported that only a few thousand patients have been allowed out for medical treatment via Israel over the past year—while thousands more still need specialist care abroad. The Philadelphi route’s closure squeezed life-saving possibilities; hospitals in Gaza ran on generators and improvisation, and families learned to ration morphine like gold.

“We feel like people waiting for medicine that will never arrive,” said Layla, a 32-year-old mother of three from Rafah. “You count the days and hope someone—anyone—remembers that you are still alive.”

Humanitarian access and who gets a pass

International charities and UN agencies have been able to bring aid into Gaza at intervals, but the patchwork access left huge gaps. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will end Médecins Sans Frontières’ operations in Gaza after the charity failed to hand over a list of Palestinian staff has only made the situation murkier. Filipe Ribeiro, MSF’s head of mission in the Palestinian territories, told an Irish radio programme he hopes the reopened Rafah will “be a new door” for people and supplies.

“Every day we don’t have complete access, people die who might have lived,” Ribeiro said. “Rafah opening could ease logistics and give us some room to operate.”

But the reopening does not resolve all barriers. Israel continues to assert security prerogatives at the crossing and remains deeply cautious—some would say hesitant—about allowing foreign journalists into Gaza. Since the start of the war, the enclave has been effectively off-limits to many international reporters; a petition by the Foreign Press Association demanding entry through Israel is now before the Israeli Supreme Court.

Government lawyers argue that allowing journalists into an active conflict zone risks soldiers’ safety and reporters’ lives. The FPA counters that withholding press access deprives the global public of independent information about a humanitarian catastrophe. It points out, not without irony, that many aid workers and UN personnel are granted access while journalists are not.

Violence in the margins of a ceasefire

The reopening dovetails with a fragile, uneasy ceasefire that itself is part of a broader political plan. The deal—mediated in October—set out a phased approach: governance handed to technocrats, Hamas disarming, Israeli troops withdrawing as reconstruction begins. In practice, the roadmap has been bumpy.

Since the October deal was struck, health authorities in Gaza say more than 500 Palestinians have been killed in subsequent Israeli strikes, while militants have killed four Israeli troops. In the last week alone, Israeli forces launched some of their fiercest airstrikes since the ceasefire, killing at least 30 people in what officials described as retaliation for a truce violation. The numbers are not abstractions; they are neighbors, fathers, shopkeepers, and children.

“You cannot rebuild a life when every few days the sound of bombing reminds you that nothing is final,” said Mahmoud, a 54-year-old shopkeeper who used to sell spices near Khan Younis. “We sweep the debris and count who is left.”

Security, sovereignty, and a politics of checks

Israel’s demand for security vetting at Rafah is not surprising. It seized control of the crossing in May 2024, citing operational needs. Egyptian officials, too, will be watching. Both countries have signaled that they intend to cap the number of travellers, balancing humanitarian rhetoric with political caution.

Critics argue that these conditions perpetuate a system that treats movement as a privilege rather than a right. For Gaza’s residents, the crossing has always been about more than comings and goings—it is about dignity, about being able to reach a hospital without waiting for months on a list, about attending a funeral across the border, about children taking an exam outside the enclave.

What happens next—and why you should care

Rafah’s reopening is a modest, provisional step. If it functions as intended, it will let some sick people reach care, families reconnect, and relief convoys become simpler to route. If it is used as a bargaining chip or shut down when tensions flare, it could be yet another cruel tease for a population that has endured months of displacement, shortages, and the omnipresent hum of conflict.

This is not a story only for the region. It is about how the world manages humanitarian corridors, media access, and reconstruction in war zones. It raises larger questions: who gets to document suffering, who controls the routes that aid takes, and how do geopolitical interests shape the everyday lives of millions?

“People here don’t want headlines,” Layla said, wiping dust from her sleeve. “We want the right to live and to be seen living.”

If you take anything from Rafah’s reopening, let it be this

Small openings can matter deeply—but they are fragile and require vigilance.
Humanitarian access is about both aid and accountability; without journalists, verification is weakened.
The politics of borders often become the politics of survival in places like Gaza.

As the crossing begins its limited reintroduction of movement, imagine standing in that line, shoes dusty, documents clutched, wondering whether today will be the day your child receives treatment, or the day you finally cross to see a cousin you have not hugged in two years. Will the world notice? Will the monitors at the gate be more than a symbol?

Rafah’s reopening is a hopeful note in a dispiriting score—but hope needs more than openings. It needs sustained access, clear rules, and above all, a politics that prioritizes lives over leverage. Otherwise, this “new door” will be nothing more than another shuttered promise in a long winter of waiting.

Swiss teen confirmed as 41st victim of Alps bar blaze

hanad

February 2, 2026

Swiss teenager 41st victim of Alpine bar fire — Attendees with a banner reading 'tribute to the victims of Crans Montana, justice and truth' take part in a silent march in Lutry, near Lausanne, organised in memory of some of the victims of the fire

A New Year’s Eve That Became a Nation’s Wound

Crans-Montana, the postcard ski resort where cable cars thread between white peaks and chalets glow like lanterns at dusk, was supposed to ring in 2026 with music, laughter and the familiar clink of champagne flutes.

Instead, a basement bar named Le Constellation — a subterranean room where teenagers and young adults gathered to welcome the year — became the scene of an inferno that has now claimed 41 lives.

On January 1, a spark flew. On January 31, an 18-year-old Swiss national who had been fighting for life in a Zurich hospital died, bringing the official toll to 41, the Wallis canton public prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud announced. “The death toll from the fire at Le Constellation bar on January 1, 2026 has now risen to 41,” she said, adding that her office would not release further details as the criminal probe continues.

Counting the Loss — Names, Ages, Origins

The faces behind the numbers are young. Those killed were aged between 14 and 39; most were teenagers. Only four victims were older than 24.

Among the dead are 23 Swiss nationals — including one dual French-Swiss citizen — and 18 foreign visitors: eight from France (one of them holding French-British-Israeli nationality), six Italian teenagers (one an Italian-Emirati dual national), and one each from Belgium, Portugal, Romania and Turkey.

Across hospitals, the list of the wounded remains long. Authorities report 115 injured in total, many with severe burns. Swiss hospitals were treating 37 patients as of the latest count, while international burn centers cared for others: 44 patients had been transferred to four neighboring countries — 18 in France, 12 in Italy, eight in Germany and six in Belgium.

How a Celebration Turned to Catastrophe

Prosecutors say the blaze likely ignited when revelers lifted champagne bottles fitted with sparklers too close to the ceiling. The sparklers came into contact with sound-insulation foam, which can be highly combustible under the right conditions. Within moments, a sticky, choking smoke filled the basement and the jubilant crowd became trapped in a crush for narrow exits.

“It happened so fast,” said Camille Dubois, 26, who lives in Crans-Montana and arrived on the scene after the alarm. “One moment the music was loud and everyone was smiling, the next there was a wave of heat and a smell I’ll never forget. People were running, pushing, crying. I found my cousin outside, black on her face, shaking. We carried her to the ambulance.”

Fire safety specialists say the dynamics of nightclub and bar fires are unforgiving: dense crowds, limited exits, interior cladding that can burn, and toxic smoke that incapacitates faster than flames spread. In the most extreme cases — think of previous nightclub disasters around the world — hundreds of lives can be lost in minutes.

Legal Questions and an Ongoing Investigation

Four people are under formal criminal investigation: the co-owners of Le Constellation, the municipality’s current head of public safety, and a former local fire safety officer. The charges have not been made public, and prosecutors have cautioned against speculation.

“We are committed to a thorough, impartial inquiry,” a spokesperson for the cantonal prosecutor’s office told me. “This tragedy raises urgent questions about compliance, oversight, and the adequacy of safety regimes for venues catering to young people.”

Locals have been asking the same. “We love this town’s energy — the nightclubs, the people from everywhere,” said Hans Müller, owner of a ski-equipment shop. “But we also need to ask: were the regulations followed? Who is responsible for inspecting these places? The grieving families deserve answers.”

Wounds That Won’t Be Measured Only in Numbers

Hospitals are grappling not only with the physical injuries — severe burns, respiratory trauma from smoke inhalation, and crush injuries from panicked crowds — but with a tidal wave of psychological aftereffects. Burn units in Geneva, Zurich and beyond have reported upticks in admissions and long-term care plans for survivors.

“Recovery will be a marathon, not a sprint,” said Dr. Sophie Marin, a burn specialist from a Swiss university hospital. “Treating burns is complex. Patients need surgeries, skin grafts, physiotherapy, and psychological trauma care. Some will require months or years of rehabilitation.”

Families of victims are navigating an impossible landscape: the ritual of mourning under a microscope, the logistics of repatriating bodies or arranging extended stays for relatives who are critically ill abroad. Community centers have become centers of support; volunteers deliver warm clothes, food and assistance with paperwork.

Crans-Montana: A Place of Alpine Beauty and Now a Site of Mourning

Crans-Montana, set in the Valais (Wallis) canton, is a multilingual resort where French is commonly spoken and where mountain holidays mix with high-end hospitality. In winter, the town usually hums with skiers swapping stories over fondue, snowboarders crowding lifts, and families bundled against the cold strolling the main streets.

“It’s a place with big hearts,” said Amina El Idrissi, who runs a bakery on the main promenade. “People come to escape, to celebrate. This feels like a winter that never ends.”

Local traditions like DIY New Year’s celebrations — sparklers at table settings, bottles popped with fanfare — suddenly look more dangerous when paired with combustible materials and crowded, enclosed spaces. How do you balance revelry with safety? The question is as Swiss as it is universal.

Wider Lessons: Safety, Regulation, and Youth Culture

This tragedy forces a reckoning that extends beyond canton borders. Across Europe and beyond, venues that cater to young crowds face the tension between an informal, pulsing nightlife culture and stringent safety standards. Enforcement varies by place; oversight can be diffuse, divided between municipal inspectors, fire departments, and public safety agencies.

“We must ask whether safety culture kept pace with nightlife culture,” said Elena Rossi, a public policy researcher who studies crowd safety. “Young people are drawn to intimacy and authenticity — small basement bars, secret parties. Regulators must adapt without killing the culture, and venue operators must put lives ahead of aesthetics or profit.”

And what about the tools of celebration? Sparklers, cold fireworks, stage pyrotechnics — these are alluring and photogenic. But when used without rigorous risk assessments they can be lethal.

Where We Go From Here

The investigations will take time. So will healing. For now, Crans-Montana and the broader Swiss community are in mourning, arranging vigils, lighting candles in windows, and trying to make sense of a loss that feels incomprehensible.

As you read this, think about the last time you celebrated in a crowded room. Did anyone check the exits? Did the venue have a visible safety plan? Would you know what to do if the worst happened?

These are uncomfortable questions. They are also necessary. In this moment of collective grief, authorities must balance compassion with accountability. Survivors need care, families need answers, and communities need to know how such a catastrophe can be prevented.

“We owe this to the young people who went out to celebrate and never came home,” said Marie-Claire Dubois, a teacher whose sister was hospitalized after the blaze. “We must change how we think about safety — not as a bureaucratic burden but as a promise to protect life.”

In the shadow of the Alps, with snow still falling and the smell of pine in the air, Crans-Montana’s lights have dimmed. But the questions this fire raises will shine bright long after the embers cool. The world is watching, and the answers we find will matter not only here, but everywhere people gather to celebrate.

Rebuilding Gaza: Price Tag, Priorities, and Practical Challenges

hanad

February 2, 2026

Rebuilding Gaza: costs and considerations — Palestinians struggle as heavy rain and storms damage their tents in al-Maqusi area north of Gaza City

The Weight of a City: Gaza after the Rubble

Walk through Gaza today and your shoes grind on history: ceramic tiles from a childhood kitchen, a rusted refrigerator door with a cartoon magnet still clinging to it, shards of concrete that once framed classrooms and clinics. The air tastes of dust and salt and a stubborn, human defiance. For the 2.1 million people who call this narrow coastal strip home, daily life has been reduced to the mathematics of survival—how many liters of water, how many blankets, how many days until the next knock on a tent wall.

The numbers are brutal but essential. More than 80% of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed; roughly 60 million tonnes of debris now litter a land mass little larger than a large city borough. The United Nations pegs the reconstruction bill at north of $70 billion spread over decades. At least 1.5 million people—about three-quarters of the population—are living in tents or improvised shelters, exposed to winter rains and the humiliation of displacement.

Rubble as a Problem and a Resource

“This is not simply rubble. Every pile is a household, a school, a life,” says an engineer who has been coordinating salvage operations in northern Gaza. “But it is also raw material. If handled rightly, it could be a foundation—literally—for rebuilding.”

Clearing the debris is an unenviable logistical nightmare. To picture it: the ruins could fill nearly 3,000 container ships. At the current UNDP pace of crushing about 1,500 tonnes a day across a handful of sites, it would take more than a century to process everything. Mosul’s post-ISIS cleanup, by comparison, was only a fraction—Gaza’s pile is several times larger.

Recycling crushed concrete into aggregate, reusing steel when safe, and turning demolition waste into roadbed material are all possible. Yet doing so requires machinery, permits, trained teams and—importantly—safety. The debris may hide human remains, and more immediately dangerous, unexploded ordnance.

Hidden Killers: Human Remains and Unexploded Ordnance

“There are things under that dust that will stop you in your tracks,” a deminer explains, voice ragged from long shifts. “Bodies. Bombs that did not go off. We don’t just remove the rubble; we have to find what it is hiding.”

Gaza’s health authorities estimate thousands of people may still lie beneath collapsed buildings—some estimates point toward as many as 10,000 missing. In the first three weeks after the ceasefire, UN teams recorded 560 unexploded ordnance items; demining experts caution that a conservative average is that about 10% of munitions fail to detonate on impact, creating a long tail of risk for any clearance operation. Add the complexity of underground tunnels and collapsed infrastructure, and the task becomes a delicate choreography between recovery and safety.

Where Do You Put a City’s People?

Camps have long memories. In Gaza they are not temporary by inclination but by circumstance: the refugee camps that were planted across the territory in 1948 hardened into permanent slums over decades. That history is a warning.

“If you set up makeshift camps with no view of permanence, you lock generations into poor housing, poor sanitation and poor opportunity,” says a humanitarian planner who has worked on displacement responses across the Middle East. “Yet, people need roofs now.”

Designers and aid agencies are pushing for “future-oriented” interim settlements—layouts that can evolve into real neighborhoods, complete with plots reserved for permanent homes, pre-laid infrastructure corridors and connections to employment hubs. The alternative is the slow accretion of poverty: tarpaulins to tin shacks to congested alleys that become slums for decades.

Property, Law and the Long Tail of Conflict

Underpinning every decision about who gets what plot of land is a thicket of legal claims. Land records in Gaza interweave Ottoman-era deeds, British-mandate registrations, Palestinian civil law, Israeli military orders and informal claims. Untangling ownership is not merely bureaucratic; it is political and deeply personal. For displaced families, the fear is that “reconstruction” will erase their right to return to what remains of their neighborhoods.

Water, Sewage and the Skeleton of a City

Before anyone can raise new walls, the veins of a city—the water and sewer pipes—must be mended. Gaza City reports more than 150,000 metres of ruptured pipes and the destruction of roughly 85% of water wells within the municipal boundary. The result: roughly 70% of Gaza City’s water production is disrupted, compounded by constraints on importing steel and other “dual-use” materials necessary for repairs.

The collapse of sanitation systems is not just an inconvenience; it is a public-health emergency with global echoes. Cholera outbreaks, groundwater contamination and the loss of agricultural irrigation are all downstream effects that will ripple beyond Gaza’s borders unless addressed quickly and comprehensively.

Security, Politics and the Myth of Rapid Rebirth

Visionary presentations in distant conference halls often clash with what happens at builders’ feet. When lofty plans for glass towers and data centres are pitched as a “New Gaza” that can be built in three years, the response from locals is often a rueful shake of the head.

“They can show you renderings on a screen,” a displaced shopkeeper says, “but who will be able to afford those apartments? Who will own the land? We’ve seen blueprints before—what we need is stability and dignity for ordinary people.”

Practical reconstruction depends on stable security, clear governance, and sustained imports of materials and expertise. Yet on-the-ground reports show checkpoints, shifting lines of control, and intermittent violence that makes large-scale projects risky. Even troop withdrawals have been conditioned on disarmament talks, the terms of which remain undefined. The simple fact is that cranes and concrete need protection and consent to operate; without that, rubble-clearing teams and builders cannot work safely.

What Would Real Recovery Look Like?

It would start modestly and humbly: clearing priority corridors (hospitals, water pump stations, shelters), training community-based clearance teams, and scaling rubble recycling plants. It would pair emergency housing that can upgrade to permanent homes with legal clinics to mediate property claims. It would be financed in tranches that tie reconstruction to measurable benchmarks of safety and local participation, not as a corporate branding exercise for luxury developers.

Globally, reconstruction is an ethical test. How do wealthy donors balance the impulse to “do something big” with the need to respect local agency and ownership? How do we make sure that the jobs and contracts generated by rebuilding actually go to Gazans, and that the new Gaza does not become a sanitized showcase for outsiders while leaving ordinary people behind?

Physical scale: More than 60 million tonnes of rubble—enough to fill nearly 3,000 container ships.
Damage: 80% of buildings damaged or destroyed; UN estimate of over $70 billion in reconstruction costs.
Displacement: At least 1.5 million people living in tents or makeshift shelters.
Clearance pace: Current crushing rate—about 1,500 tonnes/day—would require more than a century to process all rubble.

A Question of Who Rebuilds and For Whom

When planners stand before a model of glass towers and seaside promenades, I ask you: who are those promenades for? For the people who have known rationed water for years? For families with few legal titles? Or for an ideal of urban glamour that has never existed here?

Reconstruction is not only an engineering challenge; it is a moral and political journey. If the world cares about Gaza, action must be patient, rooted in local leadership, and informed by the memories embedded in every cracked tile and every closed schoolyard. The stakes are not only buildings but the shape of a society that could either heal—or harden into a new, prolonged injustice.

So, what kind of future do we want to help build? One that goods and logos can claim, or one that listens first to the people who lived in those neighborhoods before they were reduced to dust? The answer will define not only Gaza’s skyline but the conscience of the international community. Which will we choose?

Mitchell’s name dropped from scholarship after Epstein links surface

hanad

February 2, 2026

Mitchell name removed from scholarship over Epstein links — Former Senator George Mitchell said on multiple occasions that he had no contact with Epstein following his conviction (File image)

The Name on the Door: When a Scholarship’s Glow Meets a Shadow

There is a particular hush that descends when an institution removes a name from a plaque. It is quieter than the clatter of headlines, but louder in the rooms where memory and meaning are negotiated. This week, the US‑Ireland Alliance ripped a small but symbolic page from its own history: the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, a program born to celebrate peacemaking and transatlantic ties, will no longer carry the name of the man who chaired the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement.

For those who have walked the limestone corridors of Irish universities, who have argued late into the night in Dublin coffeehouses, or who wear last year’s Mitchell Scholar lapel pin like a private badge of honor, the change is startling. It is the kind of institutional pivot that raises a simple, ugly question: when a name is tainted by association, what do we owe the people who built something around it?

How we got here

The Alliance’s decision follows the release of new documents connected to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, who was first arrested in 2006 and later convicted in 2008 for soliciting a minor, remains a pivot around which many reputations have been reexamined.

The newly released files include emails that suggest efforts to organize meetings between Epstein and former Senator George Mitchell in 2010 and 2013. The documents, however, are threaded with uncertainty: many names are redacted, and there is no smoking‑gun confirmation that any meeting occurred. Senator Mitchell — now 92 — has repeatedly said he had no contact with Epstein after the 2008 conviction.

“We are extremely proud of the programme and the scholars, and this turn of events in no way diminishes their achievements,” Trina Vargo, founder and president of the US‑Ireland Alliance, told staff and stakeholders in a statement. “This decision allows us to focus on our mission to strengthen the ties between the US and the island of Ireland. Given the current state of the relationship, that is more important than ever.”

More than a name: what the scholarship meant

Launched in 1998, the George J Mitchell Scholarship was more than an award. It was a promise: each year, a group of American post‑graduate students would cross the Atlantic to study in Ireland and Northern Ireland, to live among communities still healing from conflict, and to become part of a network that stretched from Boston to Belfast. For many alumni, the program was transformational — a bridge between two societies that added intellectual curiosity to the political rapprochement that the Good Friday Agreement enshrined.

“I remember my first morning at Trinity, fog over the Liffey, and a professor telling me that peace here is a verb, not a noun,” said one former scholar who asked to remain anonymous. “That ethos was always tied to the name on the scholarship. It made this feel like more than a fellowship.”

The practical fallout

Practically, the Alliance said it will temporarily refer to its cohort as the US‑Ireland Alliance Scholars while it consults with alumni, the Irish Government, donors, and other stakeholders about a permanent path forward. The program is already paused while the Alliance works to build an endowment; in 2024 the Irish Government pledged it would match raised funds up to €20 million.

“We need time,” Vargo added. “There are many conversations to have before we update our website, social channels, and other public materials.”

On the ground

In a small café near St. Stephen’s Green, a tutor from a Belfast community college stirred her tea slowly and sighed. “Names carry stories. When you change them, you aren’t just removing a word — you are rewriting how people remember you, and themselves.”

A donor who has supported the Alliance for years, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the decision was prudent. “Institutions must account for risk — reputational and moral. No one wants to see the work of young scholars overshadowed by a scandal.”

Between facts and feelings

There is an uncomfortable space between the raw facts of the documents and the felt urgency to act. The emails suggest attempts were made to create meetings; they do not prove meetings happened. Names are redacted. The man at the center of the scholarship says he had no contact after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. Yet public trust can shift faster than we can gather incontrovertible proof.

“Institutions increasingly must balance due process with precaution,” said Dr. Maeve O’Connor, a professor of ethics at a Dublin university. “That tension is global: donors, donors’ scandals, and the echo of their actions force organizations to decide whether a name amplifies a cause or distracts from it.”

Bigger questions: legacy, power and accountability

What this episode underscores is broader than any single scholarship. It is about the way we build legacies and the unpredictable ways those legacies can fracture. Across Europe and North America, universities, foundations, and cultural institutions have wrestled with whether to keep names attached to buildings, programs, or endowments linked to wealthy benefactors whose conduct later becomes indefensible.

How do we honor the public work of someone like George Mitchell — the chair of the negotiations that helped end decades of violence in Northern Ireland — while acknowledging the moral complexities that emerge? Is removing a name an erasure or a necessary correction? Does it weaken the memory of the Good Friday Agreement, or does it protect a living program and its beneficiaries from taint?

“You can’t sanitize history,” said a Belfast historian I spoke with on the phone. “But you can choose how you enshrine it. Names are not neutral.”

What comes next

The Alliance’s path forward will be slow, deliberate, and watched. They will confer with scholars, the Irish Government — which has skin in the game through its matching pledge — and donors. They must balance fundraising needs with moral clarity, protect a network of alumni whose work reverberates in classrooms and civic life, and preserve the academic and cultural exchange that lies at the scholarship’s heart.

For the scholars themselves, the immediate task is practical: continue to study, to teach, to write. For the wider public, the task is reflective: to consider how institutions should respond when names once worn as shields reflect light backward at uncomfortable angles.

A final thought

History is a crowded room filled with voices that need listening to. Sometimes the most humane choice is to rearrange the furniture so that everyone can be seen more clearly. The US‑Ireland Alliance has chosen to step back from a name and to keep the program itself in view. For the young scholars who will one day write the next chapters of transatlantic cooperation, the question remains: which names will they choose to carry forward, and why?

What would you do if you had to decide whether a name stays on a program you love? Would you keep it to honor a complex past, or change it to protect the future?

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