Digital euro: Advantages and risks of using ECB-issued digital cash

October 19, 2025

Digital euro: Benefits and pitfalls of tapping ECB cash — The idea is that the digital euro will be as close to cash as possible, and that cash is European Central Bank money

A new kind of cash: Europe’s quietly unfolding experiment with a digital euro

Walk into a bustling Dublin café on a rainy Tuesday morning and you’ll see the same choreography everywhere: a barista with a tattooed forearm, a queue of people tapping phones to a payment terminal, and the faint chime of three-word receipts. The future of money feels mundane—tiny, frictionless, invisible. Yet behind that casual tap lies one of the biggest financial experiments Europe has ever tried to stage: converting central-bank money—the sort you keep under a mattress or in a coin jar—into something that lives on your phone.

At the European Central Bank’s quiet offices in Frankfurt, and in ministries from Copenhagen to Lisbon, an idea that once sounded like a technocratic thought experiment has picked up speed. Officials speak of a “digital euro” not as a flashy cryptocurrency but as digital cash: instant, sovereign, and designed to sit alongside banknotes and coins. “If money is digital, central-bank money should be too,” said one senior policymaker to me, leaning forward over a cluttered desk. “It’s about keeping a public anchor in a world increasingly rented out to private platforms.”

Why now? Politics, payments and the power of platforms

The timing is not accidental. Rampant digitalisation of payments has knocked cash back across the continent: between 2019 and 2024 the share of payments made with cash at physical points of sale dropped from 72% to 52% by volume, and from 47% to 39% by value. Smartphones and contactless rules have already rewritten how Europeans spend. But there’s a second, less visible driver: geopolitics.

European officials are painfully aware that much of everyday card and wallet infrastructure depends on two American giants, Visa and Mastercard. In moments of geopolitical strain, private firms have shown they can pull services with little notice—a reality that gained renewed attention during the Russia-Ukraine conflict and in conversations about regulatory shifts in Washington. A pragmatic worry has taken root: what if a future geopolitical jolt left parts of the eurozone unable to process basic card payments?

“We are not trying to be anti-American,” said a eurozone finance official, who asked not to be named. “We are trying to be resilient.”

How will it work—wallets, limits and offline use

The blueprint being sketched is simple on paper, fiendishly complex to deliver. Citizens would open a digital-euro wallet via their bank, post office or another regulated provider and load it from a regular account. The money in that wallet would be central-bank money—just like the euro cash in your pocket—rather than a commercial bank deposit or a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by a tech firm or fintech.

That last difference is the point. “A euro kept in an ECB-backed digital wallet is not a claim on a bank,” explained Dr. Ana Ferreira, a payments researcher. “It’s a liability of the central bank—so it changes the risk landscape.”

To preserve the role of commercial banks in lending, officials plan to cap how much an individual can hold in a digital wallet. Early discussions floated a figure of around €3,000 per person; simulations using that limit showed that, in a hair-raising worst-case scenario where everyone shifted the maximum from bank deposits into wallets, about €700 billion could move out of banks—roughly 8.2% of retail deposits. The modelling suggested that under extreme stress a handful of smaller banks might see buffer levels squeezed dangerously low.

“In the digital age bank runs can happen faster than ever,” warned a member of the European Parliament’s economic committee. “It’s like a fire spreading through a dry forest—if the conditions are right.”

Planners say the alarm scenario is improbable. For the wholesale transfer to occur, every consumer across the euro area would have to act in the same way at the same time. Still, the exercise has sharpened policy debates about limits, emergency liquidity backstops and the role of deposit insurance.

Practical features are under discussion too. The ECB insists the digital euro should work even when the internet does not. During an Iberian blackout this spring—when digital payments briefly failed—consumer spending in affected regions plunged by 42% and online commerce fell by 54%. Officials now emphasise an offline option: secure near-field communication (NFC) between devices, essentially letting phones behave like physical cash when networks are down (so long as the battery holds).

Privacy, surveillance and the promise of near-anonymity

Perhaps the thorniest debate is about privacy. Cash has a moral aura in Europe—the freedom to transact without intermediaries logging every purchase. Could the digital euro preserve that? Policymakers have pitched the project as “almost as private as banknotes,” though not completely anonymous. The tension is real: anti-money laundering rules demand visibility for suspicious flows, but citizens rightly expect some degree of privacy for everyday spending.

“You don’t want a central ledger that can be rummaged through by the state or monetised by corporations,” said a civil-society campaigner. “At the same time, nobody wants the payment system to become a haven for criminal finance.”

Who will accept it, and who will pay?

Adoption will hinge on a mundane but existential question: will merchants pick it up? The European Commission has even suggested merchants who accept commercial card payments should offer the digital euro too. Cost is a battleground. A PwC estimate suggested deployment might cost up to €2 billion per bank—or as much as €18 billion across the eurozone. The ECB’s counter-calculation is considerably lower, pegging total costs in the single-digit billions over several years.

In Ireland, where contactless mobile wallets have surged—some 60% of contactless transactions in the first half of 2025 used mobile wallets—consumers prize speed and low friction over ideological purity. “I don’t care if it’s called the digital euro or the shiny coin,” laughed Siobhán from Cork, tapping her phone at a bakery counter. “Just don’t charge me to buy my bread.”

Beyond payments: sovereignty, stablecoins and the global stakes

The digital euro is not only about domestic convenience. It is also defensive: a way to blunt the rise of privately issued stablecoins—digital tokens pegged to currencies whose global supply has grown toward the hundreds of billions of dollars. If a private provider were to launch a euro-equivalent and it failed, the reputational damage to the euro could be substantial. “If the ECB doesn’t provide a safe public option, the market will,” said Rebecca Christie, a European policy analyst. “And that could be messy.”

So where does this leave us, the people who actually spend and save? For most Europeans, the digital euro will land as a background feature: an app, a wallet, a silent switch when you tap for coffee. For policymakers, it is a massive institutional project that ties together technical engineering, legal safeguards and political bargaining across 20-ish economies and thousands of banks.

Will it give citizens more control over their money—or simply move control from banks to a central ledger? Will it strengthen Europe’s autonomy in a shifting geopolitical map, or will it entangle personal privacy in new ways? Those are the questions that policymakers, shopkeepers and ordinary savers must decide together.

In the end, the success of the digital euro will not be decided in a boardroom in Frankfurt but at the counter of that Dublin café, when a customer asks, “Do you take the digital euro?” and the barista replies, “Of course.” How that “of course” sounds—hesitant, pragmatic, or enthusiastic—will be the true measure of this experiment.

Hundreds evacuated by air from storm-ravaged Alaskan villages

hanad

October 19, 2025

Hundreds airlifted from storm-damaged villages in Alaska — Hundreds of people are moved by air from Bethel in Alaska (Pics: Alaska National Guard)

The Morning After: Salt, Silence and the Long Work of Remembering

When I arrived on the fringes of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the dull light after the storm, the air tasted of old ocean and new sorrow. Driftwood and smashed household goods lay in tangled piles. A child’s bright pink boot bobbed in a puddle the size of a living room. In places where houses once stood, there were only twisted foundations and the faint outline of a life that had been hauled away in minutes by a wall of water.

“It was like someone took the map of where we lived and erased it,” said Captain Christopher Culpepper of the US Coast Guard, who has been coordinating search-and-rescue teams. “Absolute devastation in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. We are still counting and consoling.”

The scenes were stark, but not unfamiliar to people who know Alaska’s coastlines. What was different—and alarming—was the force behind it. The remnants of Typhoon Halong, a storm born thousands of miles across the Pacific, pushed a record-setting tide and surf into communities nearly 800 kilometers from Anchorage. In villages built by families who have lived here for generations, the surge swept away homes—some reportedly with people still inside—and forced 1,500 residents into makeshift shelters that now smell faintly of salt and wood smoke.

Communities on the Edge

Kipnuk and Kwigillingok together account for nearly 1,100 souls. They are largely Yup’ik communities where subsistence fishing, hunting and shared labor create a social fabric as integral to survival as canned goods and heated shelters. Now, with winter’s breath creeping closer, that fabric is at risk.

“There’s more than houses here,” said Mary Akau, a community elder from Kwigillingok, her voice small but steady. “Our stores, our smokehouses, the nets—everything gone. How do you tell a child that there will be less fish next spring?”

This is not simply a story of infrastructure. It’s a story about cultural continuity. The storm didn’t just displace bodies; it sent centuries of seasonal knowledge—where to set nets, where to haul boats, where to dry salmon—careening into uncertain waters.

An Airlift the State Hasn’t Seen in Decades

By midweek, the Alaska Air National Guard and the Coast Guard had launched what officials are calling one of the most significant airlifts in the state’s modern history. Planes and helicopters ferried hundreds out of affected villages to larger hubs where shelters, medical care and coordination centers are being set up.

“We are moving people as fast as we can,” said Lisa Haines, a state emergency manager. “The remoteness of these communities makes every rescue complicated—runways are small, weather changes quickly, and resources are not where they need to be. But we know this is urgent. Winter is coming.”

What rescuers face is both logistical and human. Remote airstrips are waterlogged or clogged with debris. Boats that once ferried supplies are missing or damaged. And the emotional toll is visible in the hollowed eyes of parents, the thin smiles of teenagers, and the stiff shoulders of elders who have seen storms but never like this.

Numbers That Matter

Here are some of the figures officials have shared so far:

1,500 residents sheltering in temporary facilities.
Nearly 800 kilometers from Anchorage—the great distance that complicates any rescue effort.
One confirmed death and two people still missing as rescue teams continue their search.
Combined population of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok: approximately 1,100.

Each number is more than a statistic. Each number is a life, a family, a winter’s worth of food or a generator that heats a house. Each is a thread in a community tapestry that will take months—maybe years—to reweave.

The Broader Picture: Storms, Warming, and the Arctic Paradox

It is tempting to separate this tragedy from climate conversations playing out in conference rooms thousands of miles away. But these events are stitched into the same global cloth. Alaska is warming roughly twice as fast as the global average, a shift that changes sea ice rhythm, storm tracks and the very way communities on the coast must prepare.

“When sea ice retreats and the ocean is warmer, storms can ride farther inland and carry more energy,” explained Dr. Emily Rivera, a climate scientist who studies Arctic systems. “These aren’t isolated incidents. The interaction of warming and changing storm patterns increases vulnerability for coastal populations.”

For the people of the Delta, the hardest months are almost upon them: a short, dark season where generators, fuel, and stored food are lifelines. Many families store fish and meat outdoors in traditional caches; those stores can be wiped out by inundation. For subsistence communities, losing a year’s harvest is not an inconvenience—it is a threat to survival.

Voices from the Ground

In a crowded shelter, a teacher named Jonas Malluk passed a thermos and said, “We teach the children to be proud of where they’re from. Now we have to teach them resilience. But resilience should not be a requirement of poverty.”

A volunteer paramedic who helped with the airlift, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the rescue as the opposite of glamour. “It’s long nights, cold coffee, counting names, listening to people cry in corners. You do the job because someone has to. But you wonder—how many times can a place be rebuilt before the people ask to move?”

Immediate Needs and the Long Road

As the initial search and evacuation wind down, what rises up is a long list of needs: temporary housing, medical care, mental health support, food and fuel, and—perhaps most pressingly—plans for both short-term recovery and long-term resilience.

Local leaders and state officials have emphasized the need for sustained support, not just a brief rush of attention. “We can drop supplies today,” one official said, “but unless plans are made for next year and the years after, this will repeat.”

Immediate: shelter, food, medical care, evacuation assistance.
Short-term: debris removal, infrastructure assessment, repair of airstrips and fuel lines.
Long-term: community-driven resilience planning, possibly including relocation strategies, funding for protective infrastructure, and support for subsistence ways of life.

What Can We Learn—and Do?

When you hear about distant storms, do you think of a headline and move on? Try this instead: imagine a child in a tiny village whose grandparents have lived in the same place for 100 years, suddenly told that winter might bring cold they cannot guard against. What would you do if that were your relative?

There are no easy answers. But there are steps communities and systems can take—more weather-ready infrastructure, better emergency airlift capacity, and, ultimately, climate mitigation that reduces the extreme swings we are witnessing.

As the people of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok begin the slow, communal work of clearing and rebuilding, an old Yup’ik proverb seemed to hang in the air: “We are the sum of each other’s hands.” In the weeks ahead, those hands will be many—local neighbors, tribal leaders, state agencies, and volunteers from across Alaska and beyond.

If you’re reading this, consider this an invitation: stay informed, support trusted relief organizations working with Native communities, and hold policymakers to promises of resilience funding. Hurricane-force weather on the margins of the Arctic is not an isolated curiosity—it is a signal. How we respond now will shape the stories those communities tell their children next year.

US warns intelligence suggests Hamas poised to breach imminent ceasefire

hanad

October 19, 2025

US alleges reports of imminent Hamas ceasefire violation — Destruction and debris of buildings in Khan Yunis following the ceasefire

An Uneasy Dawn in Gaza: The Ceasefire’s Fragile Breath

There is a peculiar hush in Gaza today — not the peaceful kind that follows a storm, but the brittle quiet of people holding their breath. Markets gape with shuttered stalls. Rubble juts from buildings like jagged teeth. Children, who have learned to count the pauses between explosions, play with toys whose bright colors seem indecent against the grey backdrop.

Into that silence came a terse warning from Washington: the US State Department has received “credible reports” that Hamas is planning an attack on Palestinian civilians in Gaza — an act the Americans say would amount to a direct violation of the ceasefire that many say is the most meaningful break in hostilities since October 2023.

“This planned attack against Palestinian civilians would constitute a direct and grave violation of the ceasefire agreement and undermine the significant progress achieved through mediation efforts,” a US State Department statement read. “Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire.”

Between Promise and Threat

The ceasefire, stitched together last week in painstaking, secretive diplomacy, is a phased bargain: Israel suspends its offensive; Hamas agrees to release the remaining hostages taken in the October 7 attack; mediators — the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey — pledge to guarantee compliance. In the fragile choreography of that deal, both trust and suspicion have to be manufactured from thin air.

So when Washington says it has warned the guarantors of an “imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas,” it is not simply exchanging diplomatic pleasantries. It is signaling that the scaffolding holding the truce together may creak under the weight of events yet to unfold.

“We informed our partners because that’s how you try to prevent a catastrophe,” said one US official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Threats and warnings are not our preference, but sometimes you have to show consequences to keep everyone in line.”

The Human Toll: Fear Among Families

On the ground, the talk is not about diplomatic nuance. It’s about mothers pacing outside hospitals, grandparents scanning the horizon for the familiar figures of children, hostages’ families who have already weathered months of limbo and fear.

“My phone vibrates every time there is news,” said Samira, a woman in her 40s who lost a home and watched neighbors vanish into trenches of displacement. “We sleep with the radio on. We listened to the negotiators, and for a moment we believed. Now every rumour is a new scar.”

For families waiting for the pledged releases — the first phase of the agreement, which is supposed to include living hostages returning and the remains of the dead being returned to their loved ones — the possibility of any new attack is a re-opening of old wounds.

Local Scenes: Small Details That Tell a Bigger Story

At a bakery in the northern part of Gaza City, the smell of fresh bread mixes with the metallic tang of dust. The owner, an elderly man with flour on his hands, shook his head when asked about the politics of the moment.

“We do not understand who needs more violence,” he said. “We wake, we bake, we hide. The ceasefire gave us a few hours to breathe. If that disappears, what hope is left?”

Small acts of normalcy — a woman sweeping her doorway, boys trying to fly a kite between partially collapsed apartment blocks — acquire a public courage, a defiant insistence on life.

Words That Echo: Public Threats and Private Uncertainties

On the other side of the conversation, US President Donald Trump put his own stark phrasing into the mix earlier this week, writing on his Truth Social platform: “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in.” He did not define who “we” would be or what “going in” would look like; the ambiguity rippled through diplomatic circles.

Threats like that are blunt instruments. For mediators, they can be leverage; for civilians, they are whispers of renewed catastrophe. For the guarantor states — Egypt, Qatar and Turkey — the calculus is even narrower: they must balance their influence over Hamas, relations with Israel, and the humanitarian imperative of keeping aid and medical evacuations flowing.

Crackdowns, Control, and the Politics of Power

Compounding the tension are reports that Hamas has tightened its grip on Gaza’s battered urban pockets in recent days, launching internal crackdowns that critics say target dissent and undermine civil liberties. Whether these measures are about preventing spoilers to the truce or consolidating power in a moment of uncertainty, the effect is the same: civilians feel the squeeze.

“When an armed group tightens its grip, ordinary people are the ones caught between bullets and curfews,” said Dr. Lina Rahman, a regional analyst who has studied governance in conflict zones. “It is a familiar pattern: as external pressure grows, internal discipline is enforced, often harshly.”

Why This Moment Matters Globally

Why should anyone far from Gaza feel this pulse of anxiety? Because the conflict has become a mirror for larger international questions: How do you enforce a ceasefire when non-state actors and states both claim legitimacy? How do guarantors maintain credibility when threats from multiple capitals hang over the negotiations? How long can humanitarian pauses survive political and military agendas?

The deal brokered last week — involving at least four mediator countries — is an experiment in multilateral crisis management. It had a simple, human premise: stop the killing, retrieve the living, and return the remains of the dead. Its success hinges on granular, day-to-day trust between parties that have not spoken without guns in years.

Key guarantors: United States, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey
Deal elements: Israeli halt to offensive / phased hostage releases / repatriation of remains
Immediate risk: US reports of a planned Hamas attack on Palestinian civilians

The Fragile Moral Ledger

In conflict, the language of law and morality becomes urgent. Targeting civilians is condemned by international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. A ceasefire violation is not simply a political misstep — it is, for many, a moral rupture that erodes the possibility of durable peace.

“Civilians should never be bargaining chips,” said an aid worker who has spent years in Gaza and asked not to be named. “When violence against them is threatened, every promise becomes suspect.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

There are no easy answers. If Hamas proceeds with an attack on Palestinian civilians, the US has promised measures — unspecified, but ominous. If those measures involve military action, the region could tumble back into a spiral of violence that would again dwarf the fragile gains of the past week. If the attack does not happen, the ceasefire’s architects will still face the task of translating a pause into something more permanent: governance, aid flows, reconstruction and, critically, a process for addressing the underlying grievances that made war possible.

What should readers take away from this uneasy interlude? Perhaps this: ceasefires are only as real as the human trust that sustains them. They can be negotiated over mahalla tea and translated into relief convoys and press conferences, but at their core they are a fragile act of collective faith — faith that politicians, fighters, mediators and neighbors will refrain from turning civilians into targets for leverage.

So ask yourself: in a world where headlines can shift in an hour, what responsibility do distant observers have? To read? To amplify humanitarian voices? To insist that the sanctity of civilian life be more than a diplomatic talking point?

For the people in Gaza, those questions have immediate, terrifying consequences. For the rest of us, they are a test of how we value peace, justice and the human lives that history so often reduces to statistics. For now, the city waits, listening for the next sound — the wrong kind of knock at the door could change everything.

Red Cross team takes custody of bodies of Gaza hostages

hanad

October 18, 2025

Red Cross team receives bodies of Gaza hostages — Displaced Palestinians, returning to Al-Gabari neighbourhood today, face scenes of devastation in Gaza City

Two Coffins, One Crossing: A Fragile Pause Between Grief and Politics

The Red Cross convoy moved like a slow heartbeat through a landscape that has forgotten what calm feels like. Two black coffins — wrapped and sealed, anonymous and yet unbearably specific — were handed over in southern Gaza and placed under international custody as part of a fragile truce that has, for now, reduced bullets to paperwork and the worst kind of bargaining to logistics.

“They told us they were on their way to Israeli and ISA forces,” an Israeli military statement read, clinical and deliberate. But statements never capture the tremor in a neighbour’s voice when they hear the word ‘coffin’ or the way a street that housed laughter now echoes with photo posters of the missing. “We need closure,” said one relative of a hostage, speaking outside a Tel Aviv hospital. “We need to know. Even this — even their bodies — must come home.”

Numbers on a Scale Too Human

The exchange of remains is small arithmetic against an enormous ledger of loss. According to officials relaying the fragile tally, Israel returned 15 Palestinian bodies today — bringing the number handed back to Gaza to 135 — while Hamas has handed over all 20 surviving hostages and the remains of 10 out of 28 known deceased under the current agreement.

Statistics like these are meant to be precise, but they land like stones in the mouths of those who must live with them. “When you’re counting people, every statistic is a family,” said Dr. Leila Haddad, a humanitarian policy specialist based in Amman. “Numbers matter for negotiations, but they never replace the texture of grief.”

The Rafah Bottleneck: Politics at the Border

Border crossings have become more than checkpoints; they are political instruments. Rafah — the only Gaza crossing previously not under Israeli control — remains shuttered since May 2024 when Israel took control of the Gaza side. Cairo had signalled a possible reopening, but Jerusalem was quick to dampen expectations.

“The opening will be considered based on how Hamas fulfills its part — returning the deceased and implementing the framework,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, tightening the valve on movement yet again. For Gazans, the difference between a crossing that opens and one that stays closed is not abstract: it is medicine arriving or an ambulance idling in the dark; it is a university student missing exams in Cairo or a grandmother unable to see grandchildren who have long lived in Egypt.

Before the war, more than two million people lived squeezed into Gaza’s 365 square kilometres. A functioning Rafah would allow for medical referrals, family reunions and the flow of humanitarian supplies that a battered health system so sorely needs.

On the Ground: The Wastewater, the Rubble, the Human Will

Tom Fletcher, the UN relief coordinator, drove through neighbourhoods that used to be ordinary streets and found “vast wastelands.” He and his team inspected a wastewater treatment plant in Sheikh Radwan where pumps were smashed, and sewage pooled in the wreckage. “This is about dignity,” Fletcher told reporters as he watched residents attempt to dig latrines among the ruins. “We have a 60-day surge plan — a million meals a day, tents for winter, rebuilding health services. But it’s a massive, massive job.”

The UN figures provided to mediators show that 950 trucks crossed into Gaza from Israel on Thursday — a crucial lifeline but barely a bandage over a wound that will take years to heal. Aid agencies continue to press for Rafah to be reopened to speed the flow of food, fuel and medicines. Turkey has reportedly staged search-and-rescue teams at the Egyptian border, waiting for permission to assist in body-recovery efforts.

When Ceasefire Lines Blur: The Bus and the Yellow Line

Even as negotiators tally exchanges and plan aid convoys, violence punctuates the ceasefire’s margins. Gaza’s civil defence agency says nine members of the Abu Shabaan family were killed when, returning to check a home in Zeitun, the bus they were on was hit. The Israeli military says troops fired after a vehicle crossed the so-called “yellow line,” a buffer established in the agreement, claiming that warning shots were ignored and that the vehicle posed an imminent threat.

“We were trying to see if anything was left of our house,” said a neighbour who helped recover bodies. “There was shouting, then silence. It breaks you — how quickly a day can flip from hope to ashes.”

Such incidents underscore how brittle the pause is. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza since the truce, but many now find their homes unrecognisable: streets gone, landmarks buried, neighbourhoods transformed into unmarked fields of rubble.

Faces of the Conflict: Personal Stories and Political Echoes

One of the bodies returned to Israel was identified as Eliyahu Margalit, 75, who was killed during the 7 October 2023 attack that sparked this long war. “He leaves behind a wife, three children, grandchildren,” read an official notice. His daughter, Nili, had been freed earlier under the exchange agreement. “Eliyahu loved gardening,” Nili told a reporter at a memorial. “Even now, all I want is his little hands back, the smell of him, the soil under his nails.”

On the other side of the boundary, Gaza families fold photos into their pockets and carry them like talismans. An informal shrine in a refugee camp held laminated portraits of the missing, strings of plastic beads and small cups of tea. “We hang pictures at the market and at mosques,” said Layla, a volunteer with a local aid group. “People look at them as they buy bread. We need them to remember names.”

What This Means Beyond the Border

There are larger questions that refuse to stay in the realm of statements and tallies. What does dignity mean in a city without running water? How do societies hold memory when nearly every physical marker is destroyed? And for Israelis watching their leaders, what does it mean to demand accountability while the machinery of politics grinds on?

Prime Minister Netanyahu declared he will run in the November 2026 elections, telling a right-wing channel, “Yes, I intend to run — and I expect to win.” It is a reminder that wartime decisions are folded into election cycles, that grief and national security become campaign issues, and that accountability — at home and abroad — is never far from electoral calculus.

“Politics will try to harvest from grief,” said Professor Jonathan Weiss, a political scientist who studies conflict and reconciliation. “But the real work is rebuilding infrastructure, restoring trust, and creating space where families can mourn without being drawn into the machinery of politics.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

As the coffins move, as trucks queue and as negotiators haggle over crossings and crossings of lines, the people of Gaza and Israel live in the margin between temporary relief and enduring settlement. The exchange of bodies is one narrow corridor of closure in a broader maze of loss, displacement and political urgency.

What would true progress look like? It might begin with safe, predictable crossings; with uninterrupted aid pipelines; with a credible, independent inquiry into civilian casualties; and with a commitment to rebuild — not just buildings, but systems that protect health, education and livelihoods. It might also begin with small acts: neighbours sharing tea across a demolished courtyard; families naming their dead, aloud, in public spaces; medics being able to work without fear of a sudden strike.

Can grief be negotiated? Not really. Can dignity be restored? Perhaps, but only if the pause becomes more than a temporary stopgap and becomes a path toward real accountability and reconstruction. In the meantime, two coffins, 950 trucks, and the faces at shrines remind us that the human cost is immediate, the politics unrelenting, and the need for compassion — and concrete action — as urgent as ever.

In Trump’s America, One Week Can Upend the Political Landscape

hanad

October 18, 2025

A week is a very long time in politics in Trump's America — Donald Trump commuted the seven-year prison sentence imposed on disgraced former congressman George Santos

A Week That Felt Like a Year: Washington’s Thunderstorm of Politics and People

There are phrases that feel tired until a moment demands them. “A week is a long time in politics” is one of those old saws — and this week, it felt like an understatement. Walking the streets between rallies and press rooms, one senses the country being tugged in a dozen directions at once: from court filings to kitchen-table anxieties, from foreign capitals back to the small towns that sell soybeans to the world.

It began with a phone ping — the kind of headline that has the power to momentarily stop a newsroom. The president announced a clemency move for a former congressman whose rise and fall had been tabloid theater and civic scandal combined. The reaction ranged from triumphant whoops at some rallies to weary dismay in living rooms where people are watching paychecks and prices shrink instead of news cycles expand.

The street’s answer: protest, prayer and sting of pepper

In Chicago, the hour after sundown looked as if it had been lifted from a dystopian postcard. A small but determined crowd gathered outside an ICE detention center — clergy among them, civic organizers, families who had come to watch loved ones led away. Videos filmed on phones now trace the arc of the night: officers pushing back, pepper-balls arcing through the air, and, in one gut-punching frame, a pastor in his collar recoiling as a spray finds his face.

“I was praying,” said Father Miguel Santos (not the politician), his voice still raspy from the sting. “We came to sing and to ask for mercy. You don’t come to a fence to be shot at like an animal.”

The scale of the immigration enforcement effort has swollen. According to figures circulating from the Department of Homeland Security this week, ICE said it received more than 150,000 applications after a recruitment push and has issued roughly 18,000 tentative job offers on top of roughly 6,500 current staffers. Independent analysts have pointed to a far larger footprint: a Cato Institute data leak suggested that more than 25,000 officers — including nearly 14,500 federal agents seconded from agencies like the FBI and ATF — have been detailed into immigration task forces.

Those numbers aren’t abstract. They have meaning in midwestern fields where seasonal workers have traditionally harvested crops, and on city sidewalks where people ask whether the state’s capacity to police is growing faster than its ability to build trust.

Fields, Food and Finance: Where Policy Meets the Dinner Table

Out on the plains — where a single crop can make or break a county — farmers say they’re seeing the consequences. The Department of Labor raised its own red flag this week about labor shortages in agriculture tied to the enforcement surge, warning of potential disruptions in the food supply chain. In the U.S., even when shortages don’t result in empty shelves, they translate quickly into higher prices — a brutal arithmetic for households where half the population already reports difficulty covering bills.

“We missed a third of our crew this season,” said Rachel Fleming, who runs a midsize soybean farm in Iowa. “The bins are full but the barns are empty. The market doesn’t care about our prayers.”

Markets elsewhere threw up their own alarms. Gold jumped nearly 10 percent in a single week, a move that economists call a flight to safety. For a brief, dramatic moment gold’s market valuation edged past the euro as the second-largest store of value after the U.S. dollar — a symbolic if brittle measure of where global investors are putting faith amid political uncertainty and high interest rates.

These ripples feed into wider anxieties: rising mortgage costs, a housing shortfall, and climbing delinquency in auto loans and subprime mortgages. The vocabulary of crisis — “déjà vu,” “2008,” “systemic stress” — crept back into boardrooms and coffee shops alike.

Capitol Shutdown: A Normalized Abnormality

Meanwhile, the federal government has been operating in a kind of bureaucratic limbo. Weeks into a partial shutdown, life in Washington had an odd, numb rhythm: the military kept getting paid, social safety nets continued to drip, and many federal workers were furloughed or told to operate without a paycheck. For some, the shutdown has become routine — not the emergency it used to be.

“We’re used to the theatrics,” said a congressional staffer who asked not to be named. “But used doesn’t mean okay. It’s hard to serve people when your own house isn’t being funded.”

Political maneuvers pepper the stalemate. A newly elected representative in Arizona remains unwelcome on the House floor despite having won a by-election; when seated, she plans to push to unseal archival documents tied to a high-profile criminal investigation that many hoped would lead to fuller transparency.

Foreign Deals, Media Wars and the Shape of Power

Global diplomacy and domestic politics collided this week in ways that felt jarringly close to home. A presidential trip brought a fragile phase-one peace announcement in the Middle East to the headlines even as neither principal belligerent showed up at the signing table. At the same time, Washington quietly OK’d a multibillion-dollar currency swap to prop up a friendly foreign government — a move that infuriated public servants on furlough and farmers who say their exports are collateral damage in trade wars.

“Why are we bailing out another country while my paycheck is on hold?” asked Jason Lee, a civil servant at a federal agency who is furloughed. “It looks like politics, not policy.”

Back home, the Pentagon touched off a fresh storm by limiting press access — asking journalists to sign agreements barring disclosure of unauthorized material. Major media outlets refused; several lost their accreditation. Veteran defense reporters compared it to a blunt attempt to control the narrative, and press freedom advocates saw it as another skirmish in a larger erosion of transparency.

At the same time, the shape of American media was changing. Consolidations and billionaire backers loomed, with major acquisitions hinting at a future where a few tech-financial conglomerates could wield enormous sway over what people see and hear.

Enemies, Courts and the Long View

On the legal front, the administration’s list of targets continued to grow. Former senior officials and critics saw charges leveled for alleged mishandling of information; lawyers argued about precedent and motive. The repetition of legal fights — and the hiring of lawyers associated with post-election challenges — suggested an internal logic: when politics is war, courts are battlefields.

“This is about power, more than justice,” said Laura Kim, a constitutional law professor. “We’ve moved into a season where litigation is a tool of governance.”

So What Now? Pulling Threads Together

There is a cheap comfort in saying a week will pass and things will return to normal. But normal has been stretched thin, like taffy. People are watching the price of grains, their neighbors’ paychecks, the makeup of national police forces, and the credentials of a free press. They’re asking whether democracy can weather the accumulation of these strains.

Will “No Kings Day” — a network of protests that attracted millions in the spring — be stronger this round, or will fatigue dim the resistance? Will policy choices on migration and enforcement be adjusted to protect both borders and communities? Will market nervousness be soothed or sharpened by decisions in the coming weeks?

These aren’t questions for pundits only. They are the lived realities of people standing in lines at food banks, farmers checking weather apps as well as markets, reporters in credential lines and parents doing the math on health-care premiums. They deserve answers that go beyond slogans and soundbites.

So walk with me, reader: pay attention not just to the headlines but to the small places where policy touches life. Watch how a single cabinet decision echoes in a church basement, a farmyard, a city bus. That’s where the long week becomes a long story — and where the course of a nation is quietly, insistently decided.

Israel Receives Remains of Hostage Handed Over by Hamas

hanad

October 18, 2025

Israel receives body of hostage returned by Hamas — Teams carry out excavation work to recover the bodies of Israeli hostages killed during the Israeli attacks on Khan Younis, Gaza

A Coffin, A Crossroads: What One Returned Body Reveals About Gaza’s Fragile Ceasefire

The metal hum of the Red Cross convoy was the kind of sound that makes you hold your breath — not from expectation, but from a weary, brittle hope.

Late one evening, under the blurred orange of floodlights and the salt-sour smell of the Mediterranean wind, a coffin believed to hold a hostage’s remains was handed over in Gaza. The International Committee of the Red Cross took custody of it and began the slow, careful work of moving it to Israeli army hands, according to an Israeli military statement. For families on both sides of this conflict, a single coffin can be a doorway to grief and to the complicated logistics of truth and closure.

Small gestures under enormous strain

“We were told to be ready,” said a woman who described herself as an aunt of a missing person, voice trembling over the phone. “All week my brother kept waking and asking if the phone had rung. When it did at night, it felt like a blow and a balm at once.”

The handover is one small, bruised part of a larger pause: a US-brokered ceasefire, negotiated with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, has largely halted major fighting. It has also exposed how fragile a pause can be when the work of burying the dead, identifying bodies and returning loved ones collides with politics, engineering and the wreckage of war.

Counting the missing and the dead

Numbers keep a rough ledger of what has happened — and what remains unresolved. Israel says it has received nine of 28 bodies that Hamas had held in Gaza. Earlier in the week, 20 living hostages taken during Hamas’s 7 October 2023 assault were returned. But dozens more remain unaccounted for, and families wait on every detail with a patience worn thin.

On the Gaza side, the Hamas-run health ministry has tallied at least 67,967 deaths since the war began — a figure the United Nations considers credible, though it does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. International agencies warn that more than half of the victims are women and children. These are not abstract numbers: they are a litany of funerals, of emptied chairs at tables, of schools converted into mass graves and hospitals reduced to triage tents.

“We are burying the past and the present at once”

“We are burying the past and the present at once,” said a 43-year-old community nurse in Gaza City, who asked not to be named for safety reasons. “Every day we are called to identify bodies under rubble. Sometimes all we can do is record a name.” Her voice was flat but not defeated — more like someone who has become fluent in sorrow.

Hamas has said it is committed to handing over all remaining bodies but has also appealed for heavy machinery to speed searches of rubble where people may be entombed. “We need diggers, excavators, cranes,” an unnamed Hamas official told mediators. “There are areas of collapse only machines can reach.” Israel, stressing that militants know where bodies are located, warned that time is limited.

Humanitarian supply lines — progress and limits

The temporary lull in fighting has opened a narrow window for aid. The UN World Food Programme has been averaging about 560 tonnes of food into Gaza per day since the ceasefire began — a substantial increase from zero convoys, but still far short of estimated needs. With famine conditions present in parts of Gaza, UN officials have repeatedly said that aid flows must scale up to thousands of trucks each week to avert mass starvation.

“We are not where we need to be,” said Abeer Etefa, a WFP spokesperson, at a Geneva briefing, noting that logistics remain nightmarish. Only 57 trucks reached southern and central Gaza one recent day — a “breakthrough,” she said — but the target is 80–100 trucks daily, and northern Gaza remains grimly inaccessible because of closed crossings and damaged roads.

Hospitals are collapsing under the strain. The World Health Organization has warned that infectious diseases are running rampant and that only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partially operational. “Whether meningitis, diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses — we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work,” Hanan Balkhy of WHO told AFP. In such conditions, the vacuum of governance and services becomes a conveyor belt toward more death.

Politics and accountability: The ICC and the shadow of warrants

In another corner of international law, the International Criminal Court has become a lightning rod. The court rejected Israel’s request to appeal arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, a decision that ricocheted through diplomatic channels. In November, judges found “reasonable grounds” to believe the officials bore responsibility for crimes in Gaza — a finding that inflamed passions in Israel and in parts of the United States.

“This is not about politics; it is about the rule of law,” said a human rights lawyer in The Hague, who asked to remain anonymous. “If accountability is negotiable, we have a problem.” Meanwhile, Israel and allied governments have contested the court’s jurisdiction and its authority to issue such warrants — underscoring how legal processes and battlefield realities now intersect in ways that will shape the region for years.

What comes next: borders, governance, and an international force?

Ceasefires are fragile by nature, and the plan being advanced includes not just pauses in shooting, but the heavy-lift tasks of reopening crossings, disarming militants, and rebuilding a devastated territory. Mediators and Western governments are already discussing an international stabilisation force to help hold the peace. France and Britain, coordinating with the United States, are pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to provide a legal basis for such a mission — one that would likely borrow from precedents like Haiti and permit “all necessary measures” to fulfil its mandate.

Potential contributors include Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar and others, with Indonesia’s president even signalling a willingness to deploy tens of thousands of troops if called upon, under a UN mandate. Yet any stabilisation mission will face an immediate dilemma: security without legitimacy is empty, and operations in a place scarred by decades of distrust require more than soldiers — they require credibility, resources, and a plan for governance, reconstruction and reconciliation.

Questions for the world — and for ourselves

Who cares for the living when so many of the dead still need names? Can an international force help stitch together security and humanitarian relief without becoming another foreign presence that people resent? And perhaps most urgently: how do we turn the logistics of aid and the mechanics of law into something that feels human again?

When I asked a father in Kfar Saba, where a recently returned body was buried, what he wanted most now, he said simply: “A grave with a stone that says his name. Let him not be a number.” That single sentence carries the weight of an entire people’s yearning — for dignity, for acknowledgement, for the quiet rituals that let us grieve and begin to reckon with what was lost.

These are not just questions for leaders in capitals or judges in far-off courtrooms. They are questions for anyone who watches the news and wonders what our obligations are to strangers whose lives now intersect with ours through images, headlines and, sometimes, through a shared humanity that surfaces, startling and plain: we can count the bodies, but can we also count the ways we are responsible?

As convoys roll and diplomats draw maps of futures yet to be built, a coffin moves slowly across a checkpoint. It is a small act in the scale of geopolitics, and a monumental one in the life of a family. It is a reminder that amidst negotiations, legal rulings and military postures, the human story — grief, memory, and the desire for closure — remains stubbornly, urgently central.

Prince Andrew effectively cut off from royal family and public duties

hanad

October 18, 2025

Prince Andrew effectively banished from royal family — The UK's Prince Andrew is to stop using his remaining titles and honours, including the Duke of York

A Dynasty in Slow Motion: What Prince Andrew’s Fall From Grace Says About Power, Privilege and Accountability

On a crisp morning in Windsor, where clipped lawns and centuries of ceremony cross the horizon, a small but seismic decision quietly landed like a stone in a still pond.

Prince Andrew — the second son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, a man who has lived at the center of Britain’s monarchy for more than six decades — has relinquished the use of his title as the Duke of York. For centuries the royal household has been a study in continuity and ritual; this is disruption of a rare sort, the kind that sends ripples through palace corridors and living rooms alike.

“This was never simply about a title,” said a former palace aide who asked not to be named. “It’s about the institution protecting itself. King Charles has been watching a story that refuses to go away.”

The shadow that won’t lift

The shadow belongs, still, to Jeffrey Epstein — the disgraced financier who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. The stories, the documents, the photographs, the civil suits and the court filings have continued to surface, each new revelation stubbornly resurrecting questions about judgment and proximity to power.

For Prince Andrew the damage was cumulative. He stepped back from public duties in 2019 after an interview that many viewed as tone-deaf and self-defeating. In the years since, leaks and released emails have repeatedly undercut his public defenses. One 2011 email — disclosed in recent reporting — in which he wrote to Epstein, “it would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it,” provided a line that palace communicators could not smooth away.

“People think removing a title is ceremonial. It isn’t,” observed Dr. Amrita Sethi, a scholar of modern monarchies. “Symbols are the currency of royal power. When you start removing them, you are telling the public a story about limits.”

What changed, and what hasn’t

The move to strip the use of a dukedom feels both decisive and symbolic. It signals that even those born to privilege can be placed at the margins of royal life, yet it also reveals the limits of internal discipline. Andrew will remain a prince by birthright — that is part of the anatomy of royalty — but will no longer use the Duke of York title in official capacities. He retains use of Royal Lodge, a 30-room house near Windsor he occupies under a long lease, and he retains family ties even as his public role withers.

“It’s exile in plain sight,” said Carol-Anne Miller, who runs a tearoom near Windsor Castle. “He might be living around the corner, but for the pageants and for the public, he’s gone.”

Some see the action as overdue. Public institutions are under pressure globally to demonstrate accountability. The MeToo movement and a broader erosion of deference to elites have created an environment where silence or half-measures no longer suffice.

“You can pay a settlement,” said legal commentator Marcus Reid. “You can deny liability. But you can’t buy back public trust. That’s earned over a lifetime, and once lost it’s brutally hard to restore.”

Lives intersecting with headlines

People on the streets of Windsor have watched the story unfold as a kind of ongoing domestic soap opera. On Saturdays the market is full of locals — fishermen in wellies, mums with prams, retirees who remember coronations. Their observations are less about legal nuance than about character.

“He used to wave at the school runs,” said Lisa, a teacher who has lived in the town for three decades. “We all have friends who make mistakes. But this wasn’t a single lapse. It was… persistent. It made people uncomfortable.”

Across the Atlantic, civil suits and revelations continue to patchwork the image of how wealth and power can bend systems and shield behavior. Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers, brought a civil claim against Prince Andrew that was settled in 2022 for a multimillion-pound amount; the prince made no admission of liability. Her testimony and accounts have been central to public scrutiny. Giuffre has announced plans to publish a memoir about her experiences — another chapter that promises to keep attention focused on this entanglement.

Beyond one man: a larger cultural moment

Ask yourself: why does this story grip people not just in Britain but in New York, Delhi and Sydney? The answer touches something universal. It’s not merely the salaciousness of a scandal. It’s the core question of how systems respond when those at the summit are implicated — and whether institutions prioritize reputation over truth.

Recent polling over the past few years has shown younger generations in Britain becoming less inclined to support hereditary privilege. In YouGov surveys, the gap between older and younger respondents on questions about the monarchy’s role has been widening — a sign that symbols matter less to many, but accountability matters more.

“Institutions that relied on automatic reverence are discovering the cost of that dependency,” Dr. Sethi said. “The Crown’s challenge is to modernize its moral leadership without losing what makes it distinct.”

What comes next?

For Prince Andrew, life will be quieter and lonelier, perhaps more private than the public has seen in years. For the palace, it is a delicate balancing act: to signal to a skeptical public that the institution polices itself, while also preserving the mystique and uninterrupted continuity the monarchy sells to its supporters.

For the rest of us, this episode invites reflection. How do we weigh mercy against accountability? How do institutions survive scandal without losing legitimacy? And how do victims of abuse find redress in systems not designed with them in mind?

“We are in an era where people demand to see consequences,” said a human rights lawyer with experience in transnational abuse cases. “Titles can be taken away. That’s a start. But consequences also mean reform: better oversight, more transparency, and a willingness to face uncomfortable truths.”

As winter approaches and the royal household prepares for its rituals — the Sandringham Christmases, the liturgies at St. George’s, the slow pageant of anniversaries and memorials — the palpable question is whether these rituals can coexist with the unnerving overlap of privilege and accountability laid bare in recent years.

We watch with the curiosity of onlookers and the weight of citizens. The story is not over. It will be written in court filings and biographies, in memoirs and editorial columns, and perhaps in small acts of repair that will test whether an ancient institution can adapt to modern moral demands.

And we ask you, the reader: when an institution is more than a person, how should it answer — and to whom? The answer will shape not just a family, but the idea of public life itself.

New blood test identifies 50 cancers, shows promising early results

hanad

October 18, 2025

Blood test for 50 cancers delivers 'exciting' results — The blood test looks for the "fingerprint" of dozens of cancers, often picking up signs before symptoms even appear (stock pic)

The Blood Whisper: How a Single Test Could Rewire Cancer Detection — and What It Still Can’t Tell Us

It begins with a quiet prick of a needle, a small vial of blood that hums with invisible stories. In a bright clinic on the outskirts of a Midwestern town, a retired teacher named Linda sat on a plastic chair and watched the nurse cap the tube. “It felt like any other blood draw,” she told me. “But I left thinking this little sample might tell me something I wouldn’t have known until it was too late.”

That sense of small, patient hope is exactly the promise behind Galleri — a multi-cancer, blood-based screen designed to read the genetic and chemical fingerprints that tumours leave in the bloodstream. Presented recently at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Berlin, fresh results from the Pathfinder 2 study add weight to the idea that a single annual test could change how we find cancer.

What the new study shows

At its heart, Pathfinder 2 asked a practical question: when you add Galleri to the usual screening we already offer — mammograms for breast cancer, colon checks for colorectal cancer, and so on — what more do you find? Researchers enrolled more than 23,000 adults in the United States and Canada who had no symptoms and followed them for at least a year.

The headline numbers are striking. The test flagged a “cancer signal” in 216 people; of those, 133 were subsequently diagnosed with cancer — a positive predictive value of 61.6% in this cohort. In plain language, when Galleri suggested cancer might be present, it was right roughly six times out of ten. Even more remarkable: the test correctly ruled out cancer in 99.6% of people who ultimately did not have the disease — an exceptionally high specificity that keeps false alarms low.

And there’s a second, practical gift in the results: in 92% of cases, Galleri could point clinicians to the organ or tissue of origin. That matters because if a blood test tells you, for example, “this looks like it came from the pancreas,” doctors can aim CT or MRI scans more quickly and efficiently rather than launching into broad, costly investigations.

Most encouraging for patients — and painfully important for survival — was the stage at diagnosis. More than half (53.5%) of the cancers detected were stage I or II, and about 69.3% were found at stages I–III. Early-stage detection often means more treatment options and better outcomes.

Voices in the room: cautious optimism

“We’re really very excited,” said Harpal Kumar, president of International Business and BioPharma at Grail, the company behind Galleri, and a former head of Cancer Research UK. “This is another step along the way in really transforming cancer outcomes.”

Across the hallway from the conference hall, not everyone celebrated without caveats. “These findings are promising and reflect technical progress,” said Dr. Elena Morales, a medical oncologist who has worked in community and academic settings. “But we must remember: detecting a cancer signal is not the same as preventing a death. We need randomized data showing an impact on mortality and quality of life before we recalibrate national screening programs.”

That distinction is crucial. Modelling published earlier this year in BMJ Open suggested that annual multi-cancer screening could reduce late-stage diagnoses by about 49% and cut deaths by roughly 21% within five years compared with usual care. Models are helpful maps, not the territory — they forecast possibility, not proof.

Why this test matters globally

For decades, population screening has been a narrow art: regular checks for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer in many countries, and lung screening in selected high-risk groups. But the majority of cancers — including pancreatic, ovarian and certain upper gastrointestinal tumours — have no widely adopted screening tests and typically present late.

“Imagine being able to identify cancers that have been stealthy for years,” said Professor Adamu Kato, an epidemiologist who studies early detection strategies in resource-constrained settings. “It’s not just a question of saving lives, it’s also about saving the kind of suffering that comes from late diagnosis — long hospital stays, limited treatment options, the emotional and financial toll on families.”

There’s also a practical economics to consider. If Galleri reliably narrows the search to a specific organ, it can reduce the number of broad, expensive scans and invasive procedures that follow a non-specific symptom. In the Pathfinder 2 study, adding Galleri to existing screening increased the number of cancers found in a year by more than seven-fold compared with usual programs alone — a potent multiplier.

Not a silver bullet

Still, every advance in medicine must be weighed against potential harms. No test is perfect. Even at high specificity, false positives will occur and cause anxiety. False negatives — when an existing cancer isn’t detected — are also possible, offering false reassurance. Overdiagnosis, detection of indolent tumours that would never have caused harm in a person’s lifetime, is another risk that carries its own cascade of treatment and distress.

“We need to think about access and equity too,” warned Dr. Ayesha Rahman, a primary care physician who works in an underserved urban clinic. “If a test costs hundreds or even a thousand dollars and isn’t covered by public health systems, the very people who could benefit most might be left out.”

That’s an ethical knot. Precision tech has the power to widen disparities as quickly as it narrows diagnostic uncertainty. Policy choices — coverage, pricing, integration with public screening programs — will determine whether this becomes a universal tool or an added perk for those who can pay.

Where we go next

Large randomized trials are already underway in several countries to see if earlier detection translates into fewer cancer deaths. The medical community rightly wants hard outcomes: lives saved, not just tumours found. In the meantime, Pathfinder 2 offers a real-world look at how a blood test could sit alongside, and enhance, the screening we already do.

So what should you, as a reader standing at your own kitchen counter, take away? First, science is moving toward less invasive, more comprehensive ways to detect disease. Second, promising early results should not be mistaken for finished business — more evidence is coming. And third, the choices we make about access and integration will be as consequential as the technology itself.

When I asked Linda how she felt about the test now, she paused and looked toward the window. “It’s like being handed a map in a foreign city,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you won’t get lost, but it means your chances of finding the right street are a lot better.”

Will this map lead us out of late-stage despair and into a future where cancer is caught earlier, treated more gently, and survived more often? The path is opening — blood by blood — but it will take wisdom, solidarity and rigorous science to walk it.

Israel Confirms Identity of Deceased Hostage Returned by Hamas

hanad

October 18, 2025

Israel identifies body of dead hostage returned by Hamas — Protesters standing with portraits of Israeli hostages including Eliyahu Margalit (pictured bottom left) in October 2024

Returned, Remembered: The Quiet, Sharp Grief After a Body Comes Home

When the small white van eased into the driveway of Kibbutz Nir Oz late on a cool evening, the air around the cluster of low-slung houses seemed to hold its breath. Word spreads differently in places like this — by murmured phone calls, the slow clink of teacups set down in doorways, the rustle of movement in corridors once so familiar. Families gathered not for celebration, but to receive the body of a man who had been stolen from them in the first hours of a war that still will not stop reshaping their lives.

Officials in Jerusalem confirmed overnight that the remains returned by Gaza via the Red Cross have been identified as 75-year-old Eliyahu “Eli” Margalit, a retired gardener and lifelong resident of the kibbutz. He was taken during the Oct. 7, 2023 assault that tore through border communities and ignited the conflict that followed. For his loved ones, the arrival of his remains is a confluence of relief, sorrow, and the thin comfort that comes with having someone to put in the ground.

Homecomings that are not yet home

The transfer, coordinated by humanitarian intermediaries and medical authorities, brought an end to weeks of uncertainty. “We got the call at midnight,” said Yael, a neighbor who has lived at Nir Oz for three decades and who asked that her last name not be used. “You don’t ever imagine it will be your friend. Then you see the flag, the careful way they handle him, and everything that was ordinary falls away.”

On paper, some facts are straightforward: Mr. Margalit was 75; his daughter, Nili, had been among those abducted and was returned under an earlier hostage release in November 2023; he leaves behind a wife, three children and grandchildren. But the numbers — like the tally of hostages or the dead — are lacework over a much more jagged reality. Israeli officials say 28 hostages are known to have died in captivity; to date, the militant group has handed over the remains of 10 of those people and returned 20 surviving hostages as part of a negotiated pause in fighting. Parties to the agreement had been expected to complete the handover of all the living and the dead by a set deadline, a deadline that has now lapsed and become another contested point.

“Returning a body is not the end of the story,” said Dr. Helena Abramov, a forensic anthropologist who has worked on identification efforts in conflict zones. “It is a crucial step in allowing families to grieve, to perform their rituals, and to establish a form of truth. But closure — if any exists — is partial. Many questions remain: about how he died, about who else is still missing, about the terms of the trade that brought these remains home.”

A chorus of voices, a clash of narratives

From the prime minister’s office came a terse refrain familiar in wartime: a vow not to relent until all the abducted are returned. “We will not spare any effort to bring every fallen and living hostage home,” an official statement read, its cadence part admonition, part promise.

From the other side, Hamas spokespeople emphasized compliance with agreed terms. “We continue to uphold the ceasefire framework and are working to complete the prisoner exchange process,” a statement attributed to a spokesperson said, reiterating that the militant group had fulfilled parts of the agreement while urging the other side to meet its own obligations.

Between those statements are families like the Margalits’ — people whose days are now full of the ordinariness of mourning: deciding on burial rites, sitting shiva with neighbors, collecting photographs and stories to tell and retell so the person who is gone does not evaporate into a headline. “Eliyahu loved the almond trees along the east fence,” Nili reportedly told a friend after her father’s return. “He would prune them every winter like he was pruning the sky.” Such small, luminous details are the scaffolding of a life, and their retrieval is as important to many families as the official pronouncements.

Why the return of remains matters — and why it complicates peace

Humanitarian law has long held that the dead have rights too: to identification, to dignified handling, and to return to their families when possible. The Red Cross and other agencies frequently act as intermediaries in such exchanges, because they are among the few organizations both sides accept as neutral enough to oversee sensitive transfers. Yet even these operations are not merely administrative. They are political acts loaded with symbolism, bargaining power and public emotion.

“When a body is returned, it changes the bargaining table,” said Michael Lichtenstein, a former negotiator who has worked on hostage recovery in several conflicts. “It removes an element of ambiguity; it forces parties and publics to confront the human consequences of policy. That’s why returns are both sought and delayed: they are humanitarian, and they are leverage.”

This tug-of-war is visible in the numbers: the specific count of bodies delivered, the pace of returns, the sequencing of prisoners and hostages. Each move is read and reread through the prism of strategy and suffering. For families, however, the calculations are less abstract. The task is visceral: to lay out a body to face beloved faces one last time, to observe religious rites — or, for some, to decide alternatives when traditional rituals are impossible.

Local color: life along the border

Nir Oz sits within the thin, green strip of Israeli farmland that breathes with the ebb and flow of seasons and geopolitics. Mornings used to begin with the mooing of cows and the clatter of tractors. Now the soundscape is different: distant military vehicles, hums of drones overhead, gatherings that alternate between prayer and debate. Still, neighbors recall simpler times — barbecues under studded skies, children chasing each other between almond trees.

“We met for Friday salads and music under an old eucalyptus,” said Reuven, a retired teacher who runs a community library in the kibbutz. “Now, we meet mostly to count and to mourn. That is the cruelty of this place — life insists on continuing, but the seams have been torn.”

Asking the hard questions

What does a return mean for justice? For reconciliation? For the political calculations that govern every ceasefire and exchange? When the dead are returned, does it reduce pressure for a broader resolution, or does it create the space where people can actually speak? These are not academic queries: they shape policy, and they shape the contours of grief.

Readers who watch these events from afar might wonder: How do societies rebuild after such dislocation? How do neighbors, who once harvested tomatoes together, learn to trust again? The answer is both mundane and profound: in small acts of remembrance and the slow labor of rebuilding social ties. For the Margalit family, rebuilding will begin with the burial, with stories told to grandchildren, and with the careful tending of a garden where the grandfather once worked.

In the weeks ahead, more bodies may be returned, more names confirmed, more doors closed and then reopened. Each is its own world of sorrow and memory. As diplomats haggle and politicians posture, those left behind will keep doing the work few headlines fully capture: preparing graves, carrying candles, and — sometimes — finding reasons to laugh at an old joke that refuses to die.

What would you do if your community was rewritten overnight? How would you honor both the living and the dead amid a landscape of loss? These are not abstract questions; they are the quiet reckonings families like the Margalits confront now, with hearts that beat like everyone else’s and stories that insist on being told.

12 3...111 Page 1 of 111