Syrian President Touches Down in US, State Media Confirms Visit

November 10, 2025

Syrian president arrives in the US - state media — Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa met US President Donald Trump in May

When a Controversial Leader Lands: The Strange Normalization of Syria’s New Face

There was a hush at the gate as the plane touched down — not the thunderous, celebratory hush of official visits past, but a quieter, more complicated silence that comes when decades of violence and geopolitics are folded into a single itinerary.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the interim leader who rose to power after rebel forces swept aside Bashar al-Assad late last year, arrived in the United States this week for a visit that many would have called unthinkable not long ago. His arrival follows a rapid and controversial process: Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist, the United Nations Security Council voted to lift related sanctions, and American officials signaled they expect him to sign onto the international, US-led campaign against the Islamic State (IS).

To see him stepping off a plane bound for the White House is to watch history accelerate and contort. It is also to be reminded how often statecraft in our era chooses expediency over tidy moral clarity.

A diplomatic volte-face

“This was not a simple bureaucratic change,” said Tommy Pigott, the State Department spokesman, in a statement. “Mr. Sharaa’s government has been meeting U.S. demands on a range of issues — from cooperation on missing Americans to dismantling residual chemical stockpiles.”

Tom Barrack, the U.S. envoy who met Sharaa in Riyadh in May, told reporters that an agreement to join the U.S.-led coalition against IS was “hopefully” imminent. Behind that hopeful phrasing lies a concrete strategy: Washington plans, according to diplomatic sources, to establish a military presence near Damascus to coordinate humanitarian assistance and to monitor developments across the Syrian-Israeli deconfliction line.

For U.S. policymakers, the calculus is familiar. There is an axis of priorities — counterterrorism, humanitarian relief, regional stability — and sometimes they point in the same direction. For many Syrians, however, the sight of an erstwhile blacklisted figure arriving at the seat of American power evokes a different mix of emotions: relief, skepticism, anger.

On the ground: voices that complicate the headline

Back in Damascus, the mood is textured. At a small bakery in the old city where men argue more readily over football than geopolitics, Salem Haddad, 52, watched the news with his hands dusted in flour.

“People want roads fixed and electricity to work. They want their children to go to school,” he said. “Whether the man is on a list or not feels very far from that. But if this brings aid without more bombs, then we breathe easier.”

Across town, Lina Kassem, a schoolteacher who lost two cousins in the fighting, was blunt. “You can remove names from lists, but you can’t remove trauma with a signature,” she said. “We need justice as much as bread.”

Humanitarian workers greeted the announcement with cautious optimism. “Any mechanism that makes it easier to deliver aid to the estimated 12–14 million Syrians still in need is worth exploring,” said Dr. Marcus Elian, a veteran humanitarian coordinator who has worked in the region for two decades. “But we also need robust monitoring, transparent channels, and accountability. Otherwise you simply change the optics without helping people.”

Numbers that won’t stop whispering

To put the stakes in context: more than a decade of conflict has displaced millions, driven millions into refugee status abroad, and left infrastructure in ruins. UN agencies and international NGOs have repeatedly warned that between 12 and 14 million people in Syria still require some form of humanitarian assistance, and millions remain internally displaced. The Syrian conflict has produced one of the largest displacement crises of our generation.

Meanwhile, IS — though territorially diminished from its peak — remains a security headache in pockets across the region. For Washington and its partners, integrating another Syrian partner into the anti-IS coalition is not simply a diplomatic victory; it is also a tactical move to undercut residual extremist networks.

Grey areas: former affiliations and the price of rapprochement

Complications are obvious. Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has a history tied to Al-Qaeda. The U.S. delisted HTS as a terrorist organization as recently as July, and the wider delisting of Sharaa himself was largely expected, according to State Department briefings. But many human rights advocates see this kind of delisting as transactional, and they worry about the message it sends.

“Delisting a group with a violent pedigree without prosecutions or truth commissions is a signal that the international community will accept a new status quo in exchange for cooperation,” said Nadia Fouad, a legal scholar who focuses on transitional justice. “That risks impunity.”

Others, however, argue that bringing former belligerents into the diplomatic tent is a pragmatic necessity. “We’re trying to move actors away from violence by giving them stakes in governance and reconstruction,” said Marcus Elian. “It’s messy, and it’s imperfect, but it can be effective if paired with strong oversight.”

What the U.S. hopes to gain — and what it risks

For Washington, the immediate gains are strategic: a partner in fighting remnants of IS, a node for humanitarian coordination, and a potential stabilizing force near the Syrian-Israeli border. But the risks are political and moral. Critics warn that such moves may erode long-term credibility on human rights, and could alienate allies and Syrian communities who suffered under groups now being courted.

“This is a test of whether international policy is guided by ideals or instruments,” said Leila Haddad, a professor of international relations. “You can argue either way, but the people who live through this will judge by the outcomes: Did violence reduce? Did aid reach those in need? Was there accountability?”

Looking forward: choices that will define a fragile peace

As Sharaa prepares to meet the U.S. president in the White House, the world watches a negotiation that is at once bureaucratic and existential. Will this visit speed relief to besieged neighborhoods? Will it anchor a softer version of governance in areas long traumatized by violence? Or will it entrench new power structures without addressing the grievances that fueled the conflict?

The answers will not come from a single handshake. They will emerge in checkpoints and classrooms, in the timetables for reconstruction, in the mechanisms for vetting past abuses, and in the daily grind of restoring hospitals and hope.

So I ask you, reader: when a government presses its palm to the ledger and crosses a name from a list, have we advanced toward peace — or merely shifted the balance of who gets to decide the terms? Our choices about normalization, accountability, and humanitarian priorities in places like Syria will shape not only a nation’s recovery but the moral contours of international diplomacy for years to come.

One thing is certain: as the plane doors closed behind Sharaa and the motorcade wound its way toward Washington, the question of what comes next was no longer hypothetical. It was urgent, human, and profoundly consequential.

US Senators Reach Agreement That Could End Government Shutdown, Sources Say

hanad

November 10, 2025

US senators reach deal that could end shutdown - reports — The US federal government has been in shutdown for more than a month

When American Government Ground to a Halt: A Week at the Airport and a Nation on Pause

On a damp morning at LaGuardia, a gate agent announced yet another delay and the room of weary travelers exhaled in unison—part sigh, part resignation. A toddler squirmed in a stroller; an elderly couple clutched each other’s hands like a talisman. Overhead, a flight board pinged and flashed cancellations in stubborn red. Outside, a city already used to drama watched as a Washington standoff unfolded into something more intimate: empty stomachs, unpaid bills, missed birthdays, and a thinning air travel schedule that threatened to make Thanksgiving a logistical nightmare.

What changed—briefly, and perhaps tentatively—was a deal stitched together by senators from both parties. The bipartisan agreement, announced after 40 consecutive days of what many officials called an unprecedented government shutdown, proposes a temporary funding patch to keep federal operations alive through January. It is not the end of the drama. It is, as one senator put it in the Capitol’s cavernous halls, a doorway. But for people stuck in airports and living paycheck to paycheck, even a doorway matters.

What the Deal Does—and What It Leaves Open

The measure in question is a continuing resolution: a legal bridge that keeps funding at current levels while lawmakers bargain over long-term priorities. If it survives the gauntlet of the Senate and the Republican-controlled House and then sees the president’s signature, it would immediately reverse some of the more acute harms of the shutdown.

Key provisions reportedly include restoring funding for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves more than 42 million Americans; reinstating federal employees who were fired during the shutdown and assuring they receive back pay; and guaranteeing a floor vote on whether to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits that are due to lapse at year’s end.

“This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do,” Senate Democrat Tim Kaine said in a statement, summing up why some colleagues called the accord a victory worth backing.

Not everyone cheered. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the compromise because it offers only a vote on health care subsidies rather than an automatic extension. “I can not in good faith support this CR that fails to address the health care crisis,” he told colleagues on the Senate floor. “This fight will and must continue.”

The Human Cost: Airports, Air Traffic and the Countdown to Thanksgiving

If you’ve ever stood in an airport and watched a crowd slowly lose its rhythm, you know the temperature of anxiety rises fast. Over the weekend, the Transportation Department warned that U.S. air travel could “slow to a trickle” if the shutdown endured—a dramatic image, but one grounded in tangible numbers.

FlightAware, a flight-tracking service, recorded more than 2,700 cancelled flights in a single day and nearly 10,000 delays as airports from Newark to Atlanta felt strain. At LaGuardia, over half of outbound flights reported delays; Newark’s Liberty International—New York’s snarled northeastern artery—was among the hardest hit. Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, both global hubs, saw significant disruptions too.

“I’ve been here for 25 years,” said Maria Gonzalez, a gate agent at Newark, rubbing her hands as if to smooth out the frayed edges of the morning. “But I’ve never seen passengers so worn out. They’re not angry—just scared. They don’t know if they’ll get home for Thanksgiving. They don’t know if they’ll get paid next week.”

The compounding problem was not just canceled flights; it was people. Controllers and safety-critical personnel were working without regular pay, and the Federal Aviation Administration adjusted schedules to ease pressure on a workforce operating under immense stress. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that without a reopening, Americans planning to travel for Thanksgiving—which this year falls on November 27—might find many fewer flights available. “There are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up,” he said, sounding the alarm.

Voices from the Frontline

Across the terminal, stories accumulated. A nurse returning from a conference in Boston whose shifts had been cut back; a seasonal retail worker wondering whether SNAP benefits would stretch a little further this month; a retired veteran who depends on a timely disability check to buy groceries.

“My brother has a surgery next week,” a man named Eric said, voice tight. “If the payments don’t come through, he can’t afford the co-pay. This isn’t politics to us. This is our life.”

Union representatives for federal employees mounted a different kind of argument: protecting the long-term integrity of public service. “When you use furloughs and firings as a negotiating tool, you degrade public trust,” said a union official at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s not just money. It’s morale.”

Why This Matters to the World

For a global audience, the spectacle of the U.S. Congress clashing over funding can feel domestic—yet the ripple effects are international. Sky routes between continents are threaded through American hubs; delays and cancellations in New York and Atlanta cascade outward, affecting cargo schedules, business travel, and global supply chains. Markets, too, react to episodes of political instability. Investors watch not just the immediate economic metrics but the institutions that govern them.

Moreover, the fight illuminates a global theme: how democracies manage the balance between political negotiation and the everyday needs of citizens. When essential services—food assistance, health-care subsidies, salary payments—become bargaining chips, the consequences are felt first and hardest by the most vulnerable.

Behind the Capitol Doors

Inside the Senate, the vote that would move the continuing resolution forward passed a procedural test, signaling enough bipartisan will to advance the measure. But the path to full approval is still strewn with obstacles. The House must act, and the president must sign. All of that could take days—time that families and travel plans don’t always have.

“We are inching toward a way out,” one senior Senate aide told me, preferring anonymity because the negotiations remained delicate. “But lawmaking is slow, and healing takes longer.”

Questions for the Reader

As you read this, ask yourself: what do we expect from institutions built to serve the public? When political struggle eclipses basic needs, where should the line be drawn? And if a shutdown can disrupt 2,700 flights and jeopardize welfare for millions, what does that tell us about the resilience of the systems we rely on?

This episode will soon join the long ledger of political brinksmanship. Some will call it a negotiated relief; others will see it as a temporary bandage. What matters now—on the tarmac, in kitchens checking whether SNAP will arrive, and in hospital corridors waiting for staff to be paid—is restoring stability, restoring confidence, and listening to the quiet cost of delay.

Back at LaGuardia, the toddler finally fell asleep. The gate agent announced a boarding time that held. That small resolve—two hours, one plane, a family reunited—offers a humble counterpoint to the high-stakes, headline-driven fights in Washington. It is a reminder: while lawmakers debate, ordinary lives continue. And for those lives, time is not a negotiation. It’s the thing we all run out of.

Ukraine rushes to secure energy amid near-zero domestic power generation

hanad

November 9, 2025

Ukraine scrambles for energy with 'zero' power generation — People walk through the darkened streets of Podil district amid power outages following Russian strikes on Kyiv, Ukraine

Blackout Night: Ukraine’s Grid Hangs Between Winter and War

They came in a swarm—hundreds of small shadows against the night—striking like a fever at the heart of a country already exhausted by almost four years of conflict. By morning, cities that had learned to live with the hum of radiators and the steady glow of streetlights found themselves plunged into a brittle hush. Boiler rooms fell silent, hot water cooled in kettles, and families began to remember how to survive without electricity.

Ukrainian authorities counted the attack in brutal numbers: 458 drones and 45 missiles launched overnight, of which the air force says it intercepted 406 drones and nine missiles. But even with those defences, the damage was severe. State energy firm Centerenergo declared its generating capacity “down to zero”. Ukrenergo, the national grid operator, warned of rolling power cuts of eight to 16 hours a day while crews shuffled supplies and patched networks.

A night of repeated blows

“We were waking up every fifteen minutes to the alarms,” recalled Oksana, a nurse in Dnipro, who slept in a corridor near hospital generators. “You don’t get used to that sound. You either run, or you kneel and pray—and then you go to check the patients’ lines because that is all that matters.”

Officials described “an unprecedented number” of strikes focused on thermal power stations and gas infrastructure that Ukraine had painstakingly rebuilt after earlier waves of destruction. The attack came at a dangerous time: autumn is slipping toward a bitter winter, when central heating systems, boilers and district heating networks will be under the most strain.

How deep is the damage?

The picture is both specific and bleak. Substations feeding the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear power plants were reported targeted by drones deep in western Ukraine—sites that are, respectively, about 120 and 95 kilometres from the city of Lutsk. Kyiv’s foreign ministry urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to convene urgently, warning that the strikes constitute “deliberate endangerment of nuclear safety in Europe.”

Energy analysts cautiously tick off the worst-case dominoes: if combined power and heating plants fail for prolonged periods during sub-zero temperatures, some urban centers could face what one leading Ukrainian expert called a “technological disaster.” Cities across Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Chernihiv and Sumy were warned to expect regular outages as repairs proceed.

Numbers that matter

458 drones and 45 missiles were launched overnight;
Ukraine shot down 406 drones and nine missiles, according to military reports;
Centerenergo reported its generating capacity reduced to zero;
Ukrenergo said rolling cuts of 8–16 hours per day could be expected;
Ukraine’s Naftogaz called this the ninth major strike on gas infrastructure since early October;
Ukraine’s School of Economics estimated that attacks have halted roughly half of the country’s natural gas production.

Across the border: tit-for-tat strikes and civilian cost

War is never a clean ledger. Ukrainian strikes have struck back at Russian fuel depots and refineries in recent months, and Moscow reported damage to electricity and heating networks in regions such as Belgorod, Kursk and Voronezh. Governors in those regions said more than 20,000 residents there were left without power after fires and outages. Russian authorities, in turn, extended a petrol export ban to stabilise domestic fuel prices.

“This is no longer a matter of tanks and trenches,” said Dr. Hanna Petrenko, an energy policy researcher based in Lviv. “It is a campaign to dismantle the wires that keep life comfortable. Once you cut heat and light, you are cutting at the social fabric—hospitals, schools, homes.”

On the streets and in the kitchens

In Kyiv, elderly residents gathered in the foyer of a panel-block building to swap stories and thermos tips. “My neighbour taught me how to boil a kettle on a tiny camping stove without filling the whole flat with smoke,” laughed Mykola, 72, whose son had bought him a small gas burner. “We joke, but it’s serious. You cannot leave an old person without heat.”

In universities, students turned to libraries and cafes that still had power—where generators hummed—for warmth and Wi‑Fi. In small towns, bakers fired up wood ovens early and sold bread to families who could not heat their own kitchens. These adaptation stories are quiet, practical acts of civic ingenuity. They are also flashes of human warmth in otherwise clinical wartime statistics.

What the experts fear

Ukrainian energy officials warn that the strikes are strategically timed to sap reserves before winter. The country’s reliance on centralised district heating makes urban populations especially vulnerable. “If two major combined heat-and-power plants go offline for more than three days while temperatures dip below minus ten degrees Celsius, the consequences could be catastrophic for Kyiv,” energy specialist Oleksandr Kharchenko told local media earlier this week.

Beyond immediate suffering, analysts see a wider pattern: modern conflict is increasingly an assault on civilian infrastructure. Targeting energy grids aligns with a global trend of weaponising supply chains and utilities, from cyber sabotage to aerial bombardments.

Policy and geopolitics

Ukraine’s foreign minister publicly appealed to international actors—naming China and India—for pressure on Moscow, underscoring how energy and diplomacy remain intertwined. A meeting of the IAEA board has been requested to examine risks to nuclear systems. And across Europe, governments are watching closely: an extended campaign against energy infrastructure in Ukraine could ripple into markets already shaken by supply disruptions since 2022.

Where do we go from here?

There is a grim rhythm to recovery: crews rush to repair, generators are rerouted, and communities find makeshift solutions. But the sense of precariousness lingers. “Every restoration is a promise,” said a Centreenergo technician who declined to give his name. “We mend what we can tonight so families can sleep tomorrow. But promises cost tools, fuel, time—and the enemy returns.”

What does resilience look like in a country that has been fighting to keep its lights on? It looks like municipal workers exchanging batteries and space heaters, mothers boiling water in thermoses to keep children warm, engineers working round the clock on substations, and diplomats trying to keep international institutions engaged. It looks like neighbors sharing generators and soup.

And it asks an uncomfortable question of the rest of the world: how do we treat infrastructure in an era when civilian systems are strategic targets? How do international law, global diplomacy, and humanitarian aid evolve when the lights themselves can be weaponised?

A final thought

Walking through a Kyiv neighbourhood the morning after the attack, I saw a boy of eight helping an elderly woman carry a crate of firewood. For a moment the war seemed to be measured not just in missiles and graphs, but in small acts of care. In the undecorated face of winter approaching, these are the gestures that will sustain people—until the machines are fixed, the pipes are mended, and, one hopes, the politics change.

Will the coming months deepen a new normal of rolling blackouts and improvised warmth? Or will international pressure, repairs and hard-won resilience keep citizens safe through the cold? The answers will arrive slowly, in restored substations and in the stories told over shared bowls of soup. For now, the lights flicker, and people keep talking, keeping watch, and keeping each other warm.

Israel confirms return of Israeli officer’s remains from Gaza

hanad

November 9, 2025

Israel says it has received officer's remains from Gaza — Chemi Goldin, brother of Hadar Goldin, spoke at an event in Hostages Square last month

A Long-Closed Wound: The Return of a Soldier’s Remains After Eleven Years

On a gray morning that felt heavy with memory, a blackened coffin crossed from Gaza into Israel under the watchful eyes of the Red Cross. For the tens of thousands who have lived with interrupted endings — with anniversaries that never resolved into funerals, with photographs whose smiles remain frozen in mid-sentence — the moment landed like a physical punctuation mark: an old pain had been acknowledged, at least for now.

Israeli officials said the remains are believed to be those of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, a 23‑year‑old officer killed during the 2014 Gaza war. Forensic teams in Israel are now working to determine the identity, a clinical task that will nonetheless be charged with far more than biology. If confirmed, Goldin would be the 24th deceased captive whose remains Hamas has returned to Israel since the ceasefire that began on 10 October.

How a Life Folded into History

On 1 August 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, Goldin’s unit was searching for the very tunnels that have since become symbols of this conflict’s subterranean geography — a labyrinth of earth that has carried fighters, contraband, and grief. Israeli spokespeople say he was ambushed in Rafah and dragged into a tunnel; Hamas and its armed wing have not publicly acknowledged possessing his remains until this transfer.

“For eleven years we’ve lived between hope and the unbearable pause of not knowing,” said a relative who asked to remain anonymous. “This is not closure yet — not until the doctors say yes — but it is the first step back to a life where we can grieve properly.” The family’s relief was palpable, but so was the guardedness common to those who have held their breath through previous false alarms.

The Exchange Machinery: Red Cross, Ceasefire Terms, and Forensics

The return came through mechanisms set up under a US-brokered ceasefire and facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The agreement has been painstaking and uneven: releases of living hostages, returns of bodies, and the slow movement of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel in exchange. According to Israeli authorities, at the start of the truce Hamas held 20 living hostages and the remains of 28 deceased; since then all living captives have been returned and 23 remains handed over. Goldin’s would be the 24th.

These figures matter because they reveal what this deal is: a transactional patch on a wound that is still actively bleeding. “There is a brutal arithmetic to modern hostage diplomacy,” said Dr. Lena Mor, a scholar of conflict mediation. “One body, one barter, the human reduced to leverage. But the Red Cross plays an indispensable role as guarantor and limited neutral intermediary in these exchanges. They enable what would otherwise be impossible.”

The forensic process now underway is exacting. DNA samples will be matched against family references, dental records, and military databases. The confirmation will be quiet, technical — and afterward the public, political, and personal chapters will reopen: a funeral, renewed questions about past negotiations, and the old calls about ‘no soldier left behind’ that have animated Israeli politics for years.

Lives in Limbo: Voices from Gaza

Back in Gaza, the return of hostages’ remains and the release of prisoners has done little to calm the everyday anxieties of displaced families. Samah Deeb, 33, who was forced from northern Gaza to a temporary shelter in the center of the Strip, spoke with a fatigue that is difficult to disguise.

“They give us names and paper, but our nights are still the same,” she said. “We feel like hostages of the politics. My children ask if they will ever sleep in a real home again. I don’t have an answer.” Her voice, like the tents around her, seemed to carry the smell of dust and unwashed clothes, a domesticity that war has made public.

Another displaced resident, Mohammed Zamlout, laid out the priorities he hears echoed across neighborhoods: the return of ruins to habitability, the rebuilding of schools, the restoration of basic services. “We don’t ask for celebrations,” he said. “We ask to return to our streets, to fix the water pipes, to get electricity back, to teach our children without fear.” These desires — practical, ordinary, urgent — are the fragile scaffolding of any long-term peace.

Numbers That Don’t Capture the Whole Story

Statistics circulate and harden into frames: an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures recorded 1,221 Israelis killed in the Hamas-led assault of 7 October 2023, most of them civilians. Gaza’s health ministry, whose figures the United Nations uses as a primary reference, counts 69,176 Palestinian fatalities from the subsequent Israeli military campaign, the vast majority reported as civilians. The health ministry notes its aggregate figures do not distinguish combatants from non-combatants.

These numbers are large enough to numb a mind but also precise enough to be politically contested. They are used as currency in international diplomacy and as a ledger for grief. “Deaths become political objects,” Dr. Mor added. “Yet each statistic hides a person who cooked, loved, and had plans for tomorrow.”

Beyond the Transfer: What Comes Next?

The return of remains is not the same thing as reconciliation. It is, however, a grim step toward concluding chapters that have remained open too long. In Israel, the narrative of duty — “we do not leave our own behind” — has been reinforced by later military and political leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the transfer as proof of persistence, while other voices used it to reopen debates about the costs of prolonged conflict and the politics of exchange.

At the same time, Gaza’s residents who have seen bodies returned and prisoners freed are still staring at the rubble of their streets. Will the ceasefire’s next stages — disarmament, administration, the return of infrastructure rights — hold? Who will govern the process of rebuilding? How will ordinary people be involved in decisions about their futures?

These questions are both local and global. They ask whether the international community can transcend cycles of retaliation, whether humanitarian law can be applied with both precision and compassion, and whether recovery can be a process led by civilians rather than dictated by victors.

Invitation to Reflect

How do we measure closure after years of waiting? Is a returned body enough to stitch a family back together, or does it merely reopen the map of loss? If you think about the way history stacks upon ordinary life in war zones, what obligations do distant observers have — from human rights groups to everyday readers in places far from Rafah and Tel Aviv?

The coffin that arrived this week is a small, stark symbol in a landscape filled with ruins and politics. It calls on us to remember that beyond the numbers are lives interrupted, homes uninhabited, and futures deferred. It asks us, quietly: will we allow this to be merely another moment in a cycle, or can it be the beginning of the long, hard work of repair?

For the Goldin family, for the families who still wait, and for the displaced civilians in Gaza trying to reassemble their days, the answers will come slowly — and they will be earned, not given.

Russian strikes damage Ukrainian energy infrastructure, leaving three dead

hanad

November 9, 2025

Russia hits Ukraine energy facilities, kills three people — Ukrainian firefighters extinguish a fire at the site of a Russian drone strike in the city of Chuguiv, Ukraine yesterday

Nightfall and the humming silence: Ukraine’s energy grid under siege

When the blackout came to Dnipro last night, it arrived like a held breath released. Streetlights winked out mid-conversation, kettles cooled on stoves, and somewhere in a nine-storey block a building groaned as a drone tore through concrete and glass. By morning, two people were dead, six wounded, and a jagged scar of rubble marked an otherwise ordinary apartment block.

“We woke to the smell of smoke and the sound of people shouting in the dark,” said Maria, 42, who has lived in Dnipro for two decades. “My neighbour’s door was smashed. We huddled under blankets and traded battery torches like treasures. It’s not just a building — it’s our lives laid bare.”

Numbers that won’t leave you alone

Ukrainian air force reports said Russian forces launched 458 drones and 45 missiles overnight; defenders say they shot down 406 drones and nine missiles. Those figures—while staggering—do not capture the human toll: interrupted water in Kharkiv, rolling power cuts in Kremenchuk, and the fear of homes growing cold as winter approaches.

Energy analysts in Kyiv warn the strikes are not random. Over months, Moscow has turned its fire toward the arteries of civilian life—power plants, gas facilities, railway depots—pieces of infrastructure that make ordinary routines possible. The consequence: a country one year into a long winter season, bracing for the prospect of heating outages.

Frontline facts that ripple across every home

The Kyiv School of Economics estimated that attacks have shuttered roughly half of Ukraine’s natural gas production capacity. Ukraine’s chief energy specialist, Oleksandr Kharchenko, has been blunt: if Kyiv’s two major heat-and-power plants were to go off-line for more than three days during a cold snap—when mercury plunges below -10°C—the result would be a “technological disaster.”

“We are not talking about inconvenience,” said Dr. Iryna Kovalenko, an energy policy scholar based in Kharkiv. “This is systems failure. Hospitals, schools, and apartment blocks rely on centralized heating and water pumps that run off electricity. Take out the energy, and the city stops being livable.”

On the ground: water buckets, bakeries, and the hum of restoration crews

In Kharkiv, the mayor reported a “noticeable shortage of electricity” as pumps faltered and taps ran dry. In Kremenchuk, local officials said electricity, water and partial heating were cut. In Odesa, authorities reported damage to an energy facility late on Friday, though initial statements suggested there were no fatalities.

At the edges of these cities, life goes on in stubborn, textured ways. A baker by the river in Kharkiv kept kneading dough by candlelight so she could sell hot bread in the morning. Municipal crews in Dnipro shifted from sweeping leaves to sifting through rubble; men and women in fluorescent vests and heavy boots became impromptu grief counsellors as much as rescue workers.

“We fix what we can,” said Oleksiy Kuleba, Ukraine’s restoration minister, in a short briefing. “The focus is on rapid restoration of heat, light and water.” It was a practical vow, the sort that must be kept by installing generators, re-routing power, and coaxing battered systems back to life.

Why the energy grid is a target — and what that means globally

Targeting civilian infrastructure has become a grim tactic of modern warfare. By striking energy hubs, attackers can achieve outsized disruption: emboldening front-line advances while also sowing chaos in rear areas. Those strikes affect not just Ukrainians but global markets and geopolitics. Europe watches anxiously as winter demand threatens to collide with diminished supply, and as countries weigh emergency stockpiles and contingency plans.

At home, Kyiv has responded in kind—stepping up attacks on Russian oil depots and refineries to constrict Moscow’s energy revenues. The tit-for-tat escalates an energy war within the larger conflict, demonstrating the strategic centrality of fuels and kilowatts on a battlefield that no longer fits the neat categories of soldier and civilian.

The reciprocal strikes

Last night’s exchanges included counterstrikes that reached deep into Russian territory. Regional governors in Volgograd and Saratov reported power disruptions and damage after Ukrainian drones reportedly hit energy infrastructure. In the northern Vologda region, three drones struck a substation; authorities said they were assessing damage but reported that supplies continued uninterrupted.

“There are no borders to this technology,” a local analyst in Moscow told a friend in Kyiv over the phone, as the two spoke of a conflict that now extends into regions hundreds of kilometres from the front line. “Wherever there is a node of energy, there is a target.”

Fighting for towns, fighting for hope: Pokrovsk, Kupiansk, and the human geography of war

Beyond infrastructure, the grinding, house-by-house battles continue. Russian forces said they advanced around Pokrovsk and Kupiansk; Kyiv acknowledged the fighting as fierce but insists Ukrainian units remain engaged across all contested towns. Open-source front-line maps show incremental Russian gains near Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, but not the encirclement Moscow’s Defense Ministry has claimed.

In Pokrovsk, a town where the battle has raged for more than a year, residents speak of daily life in fragments—school sessions by rotation, markets open in bursts, and the constant calculation of whether it’s safe to walk a child to kindergarten.

“You learn to parse the sounds,” a mother of two told me, her voice low. “A far-off boom means the children stay in the basement. A close one means goodbye to plans. You make tea in a thermos just in case the lights go.” Her eyes were pragmatic, tired, full of something like endurance.

Small villages, big consequences

Russia reported seizing Vovche, a tiny village listed as having just 13 residents in Ukraine’s 2001 census. Whether symbolic or strategic, such captures point to the micro-geographies of war: tiny settlements that matter because of roads, railways, or the moral map of occupation and resistance.

For families in these places the math is simple and brutal: lose the power and you lose the water pump; lose the water pump and you lose sanitation; lose sanitation and health crises follow. Then winter makes everything sharper and far less forgiving.

Questions to sit with

So where does a country find the buffers to withstand attacks on its lifelines? How do cities redesign systems that are both efficient and resilient to sustained assault? And perhaps most important: what are the human costs we are willing to accept in geopolitics that prize energy as leverage?

These are not questions for engineers alone. They are for policymakers, neighbors, and the international community that watches from afar, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with strategy. The coming months will test not just infrastructure but a society’s capacity for care—how quickly it can regroup, repair, and rewarm homes and hearts.

What can be done right now

Accelerate repairs to critical pipelines and plants with international technical aid.
Prioritise power to hospitals, water stations and heating plants during outages.
Establish community warming centres stocked with supplies in cities at risk.
Expand diplomatic pressure and sanctions aimed at protecting civilian infrastructure under international law.

Final image

As night fell again across Ukrainian towns, municipal crews worked under portable lights. People passed on blankets and boiled chia seeds over camping stoves. Children drew by torchlight. In a country that has faced bombs, blackouts and bitter cold, there remains a stubborn warmth: the human impulse to share what little you have. That, perhaps, will be as vital as any generator when the temperature dives and the power lines are down. What would you do if the lights went out in your town tonight?

Philippines Reports First Fatalities as Super Typhoon Bears Down

hanad

November 9, 2025

Philippines records first deaths as super typhoon nears — A motorist wades through a flooded highway due to heavy rain brought by Typhoon Fung-wong in Remedios T Romualdez, Philippines

When the Sea Roared: Inside the Storm That Washed Over the Philippines

Before dawn, the sky over Catanduanes looked like it had been painted with a frantic hand—heavy, bruised clouds pressed low to the earth, and the palm trees along the coast had already begun their slow, unwilling bow. By mid-morning the wind had risen to a howl that made the corrugated roofs vibrate. In town squares and temporary evacuation centers, people bundled children and blankets, their faces lit by the weak glow of battery-powered lamps and the brighter, harsher light of worry.

By official count, nearly 1.2 million people were moved out of harm’s way as Super Typhoon Fung-wong swept across central and eastern Philippines, bearing winds measured at some 185 kilometres per hour with gusts reaching up to 230 kph. The storm’s outer bands reached nearly the breadth of the archipelago, promising days of rain and wind that meteorologists warned could dump 200 millimetres—or more—of rain in many places.

A sudden, heartbreaking turn

For the Tagarino family in Catbalogan City, Samar, the evacuation was meant to be routine—yesterday’s instructions, today’s obedience. Juniel Tagarino, a local rescue worker, remembers watching the family flee their low-lying home only to return minutes later. “She went back inside,” he said softly, speaking as if rehearsing the memory. “We thought she’d come right back out. We found her hours later, under debris and an uprooted tree.” The 64-year-old woman was one of at least two confirmed dead as the typhoon lashed the islands.

Her story is not an anomaly but an echo of the chaos storms make in their wake—imperfect information, fraught decisions, the human impulse to protect what feels permanent even as the world liquefies around it.

Scenes from the frontline: surf, roofs, and prayer

In Virac town, Catanduanes, Edson Casarino, 33, described the sea as if it had turned into a living thing. “The waves started roaring around 7am,” he said. “When they hit the seawall, it felt like the ground was shaking.” Video from the road shows floodwaters climbing halfway up the entrance of a local church—congregants now transformed into evacuees, pews laden with blankets, and the church bell silenced by the wind.

There is a rural, hands-on ingenuity that surfaces in moments like these. In towns across Bicol, families followed an old, practical ritual: tying down roofs with heavy ropes and anchoring them to the ground. “We do the tradition of strapping down the roofs with big ropes so they won’t be blown away,” said Roberto Monterola, a provincial rescue official. The ropes—a simple, communal technology—often stand between a house and the sky’s appetite.

Evacuation realities

Authorities urged residents in vulnerable coastal and riverine zones to heed evacuation orders—especially in Aurora province, where officials warned Fung-wong could make landfall as early as tonight. Schools and government offices were shuttered across Luzon, including in the capital, Manila, where nearly 300 flights were cancelled. In many towns, churches and school gyms have become improvised shelters, the thin line between vulnerability and safety.

But evacuations themselves are a perilous choreography. With the country already reeling from Typhoon Kalmaegi just days earlier—a storm that, according to government figures, cost at least 224 lives and left 109 people missing—search and rescue teams were stretched thin. “We cannot risk the safety of our rescuers,” said Myrra Daven, a rescue official in Cebu, where Kalmaegi’s devastation was concentrated. “We don’t want them to be the next casualties.”

Flooded streets and a widening crisis

Guinobatan, in Albay province, a town of roughly 80,000, saw streets turn into churning rivers. The Bicol River Basin—low-lying and historically flood-prone—began to fill, as officials had anticipated. Across the southern part of Luzon, residents waded through waist-deep water, clutching children and pets, dragging mattresses and plastic containers that might keep possessions afloat for a few more hours.

Bagamanoc and other coastal villages were filmed trudging through murky water, faces streaked with rain and the salt of sea foam. “I live near the shore, and the winds there are now very strong,” said Maxine Dugan, who sought refuge in a Sorsogon church. “The waves near my house are huge. I’m scared, but I know there’s no shame in coming here.”

Numbers that mean real people

Statistics only tell part of the story, but they matter. The country typically faces around 20 tropical cyclones each year; a handful will make landfall, and a few will leave irreversible scars. Fung-wong’s vast radius means this is not a problem for one province alone but for the whole nation—a mosaic of islands, each with different vulnerabilities.

Evacuated: nearly 1,200,000 people across the archipelago
Winds: sustained speeds around 185 kph; gusts up to 230 kph
Rainfall: expected 200 mm or more in many areas
Recent toll from Typhoon Kalmaegi: at least 224 dead and 109 missing

These are more than numbers. Each figure hides a neighbor’s name, a child’s fever, a family waiting under tarps to know if a house will be there when the water retreats.

On a warming planet, storms grow meaner

Scientists have cautioned for years that the physics of a warming planet make storms more dangerous. Warmer oceans provide extra energy; warmer air holds more moisture; the result can be rapid intensification and heavier rainfall. That’s not an abstract climate model—it’s what we see in the swollen rivers and uprooted trees lining Philippine streets.

“The trend is clear: tropical cyclones can pack a harder punch in a warming world,” said a Manila-based climate scientist who asked not to be named. “Communities that once withstood seasonal storms may now find their thresholds exceeded. We need infrastructure, forecasting, and social safety nets to adapt faster than the climate is changing.”

What happens next—and what it asks of us

There will be rescue crews, satellite images, relief goods, and the patchwork of corrupted roads and disrupted power lines. There will also be quieter reckonings: farmers surveying ruined rice paddies, fisherfolk counting net losses, children who won’t go to school for weeks. Recovery in the Philippines is a long, layered process—one that requires not just immediate aid but sustained investment in resilient housing, early warning systems, and better land use planning.

So what do we owe each other as the storms become more frequent and more vicious? How do we balance the urgency of the present with the planning for a safer future? And what does it mean, in practical terms, to make a nation resilient—especially when the sea seems to be reclaiming old boundaries?

For the families huddled in school gyms and church halls tonight, these questions are not theoretical. They are a matter of when—and whether—they can return home. For the rest of the world, Fung-wong offers another moment to pay attention: to send aid, yes, but also to listen to local knowledge, invest in adaptation, and halve the risk now to reduce the loss later.

As the typhoon moves inland and the roar begins to fade, the real work will begin—measuring damage, reopening roads, and stitching lives back together. In this country of islands, the rituals of resilience are already being rehearsed—ropes pulled tight, mattresses stacked, voices lifted in prayer and song. They are small acts of defiance against a storm that wants to erase certainty.

Will policymakers, donors, and citizens act with the same urgency? Will we learn from each storm enough to blunt the next? For the people of the Philippines, answers are needed now—not tomorrow. For the rest of us, watching and waiting, the question is the same: how will we respond when the sea comes knocking at our own doors?

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