Prime Minister’s Office Confirms Israel Received Remains of Gaza Hostage

November 5, 2025

Israel receives remains of Gaza hostage - PM office — A vehicle of the International Committee of the Red Cross is seen in Gaza City

A coffin, a convoy and a city that refuses to sleep: life at the margins of a fragile truce

When the Red Cross truck rolled up to the perimeter last week, there was a hush that felt more like waiting than relief. Men in army fatigues checked manifests. A small team from the Shin Bet clipped ribbon; a medic adjusted gloves. For families watching from across the barrier, the moment carried the complicated taste of closure and the unbearable salt of confirmation.

“You don’t get to think ‘closure’ in one breath,” said Miriam Adler, whose nephew remains listed as missing. “There is a story inside that casket, and for us the story keeps changing its ending.” Her voice trembled and steadied in the same sentence — a cadence familiar to anyone who has learned to live with grief that can be interrupted by bureaucracy, by politics, by the cadence of a ceasefire.

What happened — and what it reveals

Under the US-mediated ceasefire that began on 10 October, one of the most wrenching clauses was the return of all hostages, dead or alive. In recent days, Israeli authorities announced they had received the remains of a hostage via the Red Cross; Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, confirmed it had recovered a body in Shujaiya while excavating under the so-called “yellow line” that marks Israeli positions inside Gaza.

If confirmed, this would be the 21st deceased hostage handed over since the truce took effect. At the start of the agreement, Israeli tallies indicated Hamas held 48 hostages — 20 alive and 28 presumed dead. The living have since been released; the dead continue to be brought back piecemeal, a painful accounting that refuses neatness.

Voices from both sides

“We are working to complete the entire exchange process as soon as possible,” Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, told local media, acknowledging the practical difficulties: many bodies are entombed beneath collapsed buildings, sometimes weeks or months after strikes.

An official from Israel’s Prime Minister’s office was blunt: “Every returned life—or body—is a matter of national and moral urgency.” In a later statement the military said the remains had been transported to a forensic medical centre for identification, the next step in a procedure that blends science, dignity, and ritual.

Shujaiya: where excavations find more than concrete

The neighborhoods of Gaza carry stories the way old books wear fingerprints. In Shujaiya, piles of rubble are layered like sedimentary memory: apartment blocks, makeshift shops, a school with a partially intact mural. “We are digging for everyone,” said Ahmad al-Saleh, a local volunteer. “We find shoes, toys, a piece of a wedding dress — and sometimes, a person.” His hands are calloused from sifting through dust and metal; his voice has the calm of someone who has learned to compartmentalise trauma so that work can continue.

Search operations are slow, dangerous and painfully human. The militants say they need heavy machinery and more personnel to reach bodies under collapsed structures. Their critics accuse them of delaying returns for political leverage. The truth likely lies in both: a battlefield’s devastation complicates every administrative and humanitarian act.

Numbers that won’t let us look away

Statistical tallies are blunt instruments in a messy human story, yet they matter. Israeli officials attribute 1,200 deaths to the 7 October cross-border attack, and 251 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli figures. Palestinian health authorities in Gaza report the Israeli retaliatory campaign has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians; the figures diverge in methodology and meaning, but the arithmetic of loss is undeniable.

Since the truce, the United Nations’ World Food Programme says it has delivered food parcels to roughly one million people in Gaza, and aims to reach 1.6 million. Some 700,000 people now receive fresh bread daily thanks to WFP-supported bakeries. Yet, as Abeer Etefa, the WFP’s Middle East spokeswoman, warned in Geneva, “We are in a race to save lives.” The logistical obstacles — closed crossings, damaged roads, limited distribution points — mean that agency capacity is still only half of what’s needed.

The texture of scarcity

Walk through Khan Younis and you’ll see that aid is changing daily rhythms. Bakeries that once produced loaves in sleepy shifts now crank out round-the-clock bread for hundreds of thousands. “An apple costs what a kilo cost before the war,” said Nour Hammad, WFP’s spokeswoman in Gaza — a small sentence that collapses a lifetime of markets, kitchens, children’s lunches into a single, devastating price point.

Households are coping by reverting to staples: cereals, pulses, bread. Meat, eggs, fresh fruit — luxuries in a landscape where aid trucks are a lifeline and commercial supplies are often priced beyond reach. The limited crossings open — Kerem Shalom and Kissufim — mean that the north of Gaza remains especially vulnerable.

Small moments, large questions

In a makeshift clinic, a nurse named Fatima tied a scrap of cloth around a child’s arm like a tiny flag. “We do what we can,” she said. “We stitch, we feed, we listen. But sometimes the small things are not enough.” Her clinic is crowded, warm with the smell of antiseptic and the soft insistence of children’s breathing. Outside, a queue of people waits for parcels — a line that hints at dignity and dependence at once.

What does it mean when recovery requires not only ceasefires but cooperation from those who fought? What happens when humanitarian agencies plead for access and are met with silence about why northern crossings remain closed? These are not rhetorical questions for those living in Gaza and southern Israel; they are determiners of life and death.

Where to from here?

The exchange of bodies is painful work — forensic, diplomatic, ritual. Each returned person compels a country to mourn, and a community to reckon. Each day that aid does not reach vulnerable populations lengthens the shadow of the emergency.

For readers far from the border, this conflict asks us to hold two things at once: the urgency of immediate humanitarian needs, and the long shadow of geopolitical patterns that make ceasefires and aid corridors repeatedly necessary. What responsibilities do we carry as global citizens when aid deliveries are stalled, when families await the identification of loved ones, when bakeries become lifelines?

We can start by listening — not to headlines alone, but to the small, fierce voices on the ground: the medic, the volunteer, the mother who insists on naming a child even as a city is un-named by destruction. “We are not numbers,” Ahmad said as he sifted through rubble. “We are stories.” These stories are what remain when bullets and politics recede: messy, surviving, insistent. They are what must shape our response.

UN warns global temperatures set to exceed 1.5°C Paris target

hanad

November 5, 2025

World will overshoot 1.5C temperature rise goal, UN says — The UN says the world is facing warming of around 2.5C

A planet nudging past a line we promised to keep

On a muggy morning in Belém, the river smells like wet wood and citrus. Vendors at the market haggle over tucupi and tapioca while teenagers paint cardboard placards for the climate march. For all the rhythm and color of daily life, there is an undercurrent of unease: scientists say the global thermostat is about to tick over a limit that once felt, politically and morally, untouchable.

Last week’s United Nations Environment Programme Emissions Gap report reads like a ledger of promises postponed. The stark conclusion — the world has effectively missed its primary 1.5°C target under the 2015 Paris Agreement and will likely exceed it within the next decade — landed on laptops and newsfeeds with the thud of a wake-up call.

“This will be difficult to reverse,” the UN said. “It would require faster and bigger additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to minimize overshoot.” Anne Olhoff, the report’s lead author, put it in plain language: deep cuts now could delay the overshoot, “but we can no longer totally avoid it.”

Numbers that don’t lie (and won’t be ignored)

Concrete figures sharpen the picture. Governments’ current pledges — if fully implemented — still steer the globe toward roughly 2.3–2.5°C of warming by century’s end. Under policies already on the books, the projection is worse: about 2.8°C. Carbon pollution rose again in 2024, increasing by 2.3% to an estimated 57.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. Ten years after Paris, the world has made progress — a once-feared pathway toward 4°C warming has been narrowed — yet the remaining gap is still vast.

We should not treat these decimals as abstract. Each fraction of a degree translates into livelihoods, landscapes, and lives: at 1.5°C, at least 70% of coral reefs would be destroyed; at 2°C, that figure climbs toward 99%. Heat stress, drought intensity, and wildfire potential all climb nonlinearly. As the UN succinctly reminds us: every fraction matters.

From pledges to practice: promises on paper, emissions in the sky

It is tempting — and comforting — to pin hope on the announcements that made headlines this year. China, the world’s largest CO2 emitter, pledged in September to reduce emissions by 7–10% from their peak by 2035. Analysts note a pattern: Beijing often sets modest official targets and then exceeds them. Still, when you add up competing national ambitions, the sum still falls short.

“We are seeing some policy traction,” said Dr. Maya Alvarez, a climate policy analyst who has worked with governments in Latin America. “But traction is uneven. Energy transitions are racing ahead in parts of Europe and certain Asian economies, while coal plants are still being built and fossil fuel subsidies remain entrenched elsewhere. That disconnect is why the gap persists.”

Local voices in Belém echoed that mix of resolve and frustration. “We can see the river level changing in ways our grandparents never described,” said José Carvalho, a fisherman who depends on seasonal tides and predictable rains. “We hear promises on the news, but when the rain arrives too early or too late, the fish are gone. My son asks me if there will still be mangroves to play in. I don’t have a good answer.”

What COP30 has to wrestle with

All of this adds pressure to the upcoming COP30 summit, where diplomats, ministers, activists and business leaders will try to translate the gap into urgent action. Conversations will not be limited to emissions curves: they will include financing for adaptation and loss and damage; mechanisms for technology transfer; and the geopolitics of energy — who phases out fossil fuels, who accelerates renewables, and who pays for the transition.

“COP is the place where the political will should be forged into operational plans,” said Sindre Halvorsen, an energy transition advisor. “But willingness without finance is a species of rhetoric. Developing nations need predictable financing to protect their people now and to leapfrog dirty infrastructure.”

Human stories in a global ledger

Statistics are necessary; stories change minds. Consider the coral reefs of the Caribbean and the fishers who rely on them. An underwater scientist I spoke with on a recent field trip described reefs as cities of the ocean—bustling, fragile, irreplaceable. “At 1.5°C, we’ll still lose most of this neighborhood,” she said. “At 2°C, it’s essentially bulldozed. That’s not a slogan. It’s a way of life disappearing.”

Across the Sahel, pastoralists trace shifting grazing patterns; in Pacific atolls young families measure their days against saltwater intrusion. In cities, hospital emergency departments brace for more heat-related admissions each summer. The damage is not evenly distributed. Those least responsible for emissions often bear the worst of the consequences.

Choices ahead — and what they cost

Overshoot is not a sentence so much as a challenge. It opens a brutal math problem: either we accelerate emissions cuts harder and faster than history has shown we can, or we accept a period where temperatures exceed desired thresholds and invest heavily in adaptation and carbon removal technologies to pull them back down later.

Both paths have costs. Faster decarbonization requires political courage: eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels, upgrading grids, retrofitting buildings, and rapidly scaling renewables and storage. Overshoot-plus-removal bets on nascent technologies like large-scale carbon capture, bioenergy with carbon capture (BECCS), and enhanced weathering — all costly and unproven at the scale required.

Short-term acceleration: immediate cuts, faster renewables, demand reduction.
Managed overshoot: temporary overshoot followed by engineered removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Adaptation-heavy: accept higher temperatures and invest massively in resilience.

What can a single reader do?

It’s easy to feel small. But history shows that small actions, multiplied, can shift policy and markets. Pressure matters: voters, consumers, investors and activists together alter the economics of energy and the calculus of governments. Here are practical levers:

Demand accountability: ask candidates how they will fund rapid decarbonization and protect vulnerable communities.
Shift investments: support banks and funds that prioritize clean energy and divest from high-emission projects.
Adapt behavior where feasible: reduce waste, fly less, use public transit or electric mobility.
Support local adaptation: back community-led initiatives that protect coasts, rebuild wetlands and strengthen food systems.

How will we be remembered?

We stand at a pivot. The next decade will define how much of the planet’s richness is preserved for our children. Will we be the generation that turned grudging agreements into a global sprint? Or the one that told ourselves we tried and then watched the ledger tilt?

“The science doesn’t leave room for complacency,” Olhoff told reporters. “Delay makes the math steeper. It makes the political choices harder and the costs bigger.” The question the world — and you, as a reader — must wrestle with is simple and brutal: what price do we assign to patience?

In Belém the marchers gather, voices threading through the humid air: teachers, students, elders, fishermen, and doctors. They do not chant numbers; they chant futures. If the Emissions Gap report is a ledger of failures so far, let it also be a ledger of accountability, one that the world can still balance if we choose to act with speed, fairness, and imagination.

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney Passes Away at 84

hanad

November 4, 2025

Former US vice president Dick Cheney dies aged 84 — Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice following the September 11th attacks (Pic: US National Archives)

A Quiet Life, A Stormy Legacy: Remembering Richard B. Cheney

Richard “Dick” Cheney died last night at 84, his family said, succumbing to complications of pneumonia and longstanding cardiac and vascular disease. The short statement that accompanied the news captured a private tenderness that often sat oddly beside the public ferocity of his years in power: “a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing.”

It is a final image that feels quintessentially Cheney — an angler’s calm, a family vignette — set against a public life that reshaped the American presidency and altered the course of the early 21st century.

From Plains to Power: The Making of a Vice President

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941, Cheney’s life was a long arc from the wide skies of the American West to the narrow corridors of Washington. He moved to Wyoming as a child, worked with his hands on power lines and coal plants in his twenties, and returned to school at the University of Wyoming to finish degrees in political science. Even his return to politics had the feel of a Western tale — practical, stubborn, uncompromising.

“He had the plainspoken look of someone who’d spent winters in a wind and summers in a trout stream,” said a long-time neighbor from Jackson Hole. “But that didn’t make him any less formidable in a room.”

Cheney’s résumé reads like a map of modern Republican governance: congressional staffer, White House operative under Nixon and Ford, member of the House for a decade, Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush, CEO of Halliburton, and then — the decision that cemented his place in history — George W. Bush’s choice as running mate in 2000. He served as the 46th vice president from 2001 to 2009, guiding a vice-presidential office that many argue was transformed into a second center of power.

The Power of the Office

Cheney believed the presidency had been diminished after Watergate and made it a mission to rebuild executive strength. He assembled an inner national security team that often operated as a government within the government, a configuration that thrilled some allies and alarmed many critics.

“He wasn’t interested in ceremonial roles,” said a former administration official. “He wanted an engine. He wanted to run the engine.”

That engine revved fastest after September 11, 2001. In the months and years that followed, Cheney became one of the administration’s most ardent voices for preemption and for aggressive counterterrorism measures. His advocacy fed decisions that would reverberate across the globe and for generations of Americans.

Iraq, Intelligence and Controversy

Perhaps nothing illustrates Cheney’s imprint more starkly than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was an unrelenting advocate for war, arguing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a direct threat to the United States. History now records that the WMDs were not there; intelligence assessments that had been used to justify the invasion were later found to be flawed.

“He truly believed the intelligence he was given,” said an academic who has studied the era. “Even when the facts on the ground didn’t match the premises, he stayed resolute.”

The human cost of that conflict is measured in complex, contested numbers: more than 4,400 U.S. service members killed, thousands more wounded, and civilian toll estimates that range widely, with some studies suggesting hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths from violence and the wider collapse of infrastructure.

Cheney’s tenure is also closely linked to a darker debate about methods. The administration authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” — waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions — measures that the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and many international human-rights bodies later described as torture. Supporters said they were necessary for national security; opponents called them a moral and legal breach that damaged America’s standing in the world.

“We were at war and we did what we had to do,” Cheney told an interviewer years later. “History will judge.”

Industry, Influence and the Personal

Between stints in government, Cheney spent five years at Halliburton and left with a retirement package reported at roughly $35 million. Halliburton subsequently became a major contractor in Iraq, a fact critics seized on as proof of cronyism and tangled motives. Supporters countered that Cheney’s decisions were driven by national security concerns, not private gain.

Politics, however, was never divorced from the personal. Cheney’s family life — his long marriage to Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary — often attracted as much attention as policy memos. Liz Cheney emerged as a hawkish Republican congresswoman, eventually breaking with her party’s dominant faction to oppose Donald Trump — a move that cost her politically but reinforced a public image of principled contrarianism.

“He taught us to reason from principle,” said Liz Cheney in a speech in the wake of the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. “Even if the price is high.”

That price was real. Her political fortunes suffered after she voted to impeach Trump, and the father-daughter alignment on certain issues — including Cheney’s later public denunciations of Trump’s threat to democratic norms — made their household a flashpoint in modern conservative politics.

Health, Humor and the Public Image

Cheney’s body had often betrayed him. He suffered his first heart attack at 37, battled chronic cardiac problems throughout his life, and in 2012 received a heart transplant. He became, in his later years, an unmistakable public figure: bald, blunt, frequently mocked by late-night comedians who compared him to Darth Vader — a comparison Cheney sometimes laughed off. Once, he even wore the villain’s mask on a talk-show stage as a piece of theatrical self-mockery.

“If people want to call me Darth Vader, that’s fine,” he quipped once. “I’ll take the dark suit.”

He had lighter infamy too: the hunting accident in 2006 when he accidentally shot his friend Harry Whittington — a story that became a staple of late-night jokes and political cartoons.

How Should We Remember Him?

There are two converging images in the obituary of Dick Cheney: the quiet fisherman who loved fly fishing and family dinners, and the hulking architect of a more muscular — and more controversial — executive power. Both are true, and both are inadequate on their own.

What do we do with leaders whose actions were consequential but deeply contested? How do societies balance national security and human rights, vigilance and restraint? These are not academic questions but living arguments that play out in parliaments and courtrooms, in veterans’ hospitals and in the surveillance of everyday life.

“He changed how people think about power in the presidency,” said a historian of American politics. “Whether that change is judged wise or ruinous depends on what you value most.”

As the global community takes measure of Cheney’s life and legacy, it is worth pausing not only to tally policies and casualties, but to remember the human contradictions: the man who loved his country and his grandchildren, who championed a robust defense and endorsed tactics others called torture, who could be tender about fly rods and merciless in meetings.

In the end, his family asked that memories be of courage, honor and kindness. The public will have its own ledger. For readers around the world — many of whom felt the reverberations of Washington’s decisions in their own streets — the question remains: how will history balance the private and the political, the creeks where he fished and the deserts where soldiers fought?

Catch the Beaver Moon Tonight: Stargazers Set to Spot It

hanad

November 4, 2025

Watch: 'Beaver Moon' to be visible to stargazers

Tonight’s Moon Isn’t Just Full — It’s a Moment

Look up. If the sky is clear where you are, the moon will be a little closer, a little brighter, and a touch more commanding than usual — a silver coin pinned to the night. Over the next couple of nights, including tonight through Thursday night, stargazers around the world will be treated to the year’s most dramatic supermoon, known in many North American traditions as the Beaver Moon.

“You can feel it in the way people slow down,” said Dr. Elena Morales, an astronomer at the Royal Astronomical Society. “Even in a city where the stars are few, the moon still reaches us. A supermoon is a good excuse to step outside and remember we’re all under the same sky.”

What Makes a Supermoon Special?

Technically, a supermoon happens when a full moon coincides with the moon’s perigee — the point in its elliptical orbit when it is closest to Earth. Put simply: the sun, Earth and moon line up, and the moon sits nearer us than usual.

That closeness translates into real, measurable differences. NASA and other observatories explain that a typical supermoon can appear up to about 14% larger and as much as 30% brighter than the smallest, farthest full moons. The moon won’t suddenly double in size. But when it’s near the horizon and framed by familiar foregrounds — a church spire, a stand of pines, a rooftop — that increase can feel cinematic.

Average lunar distance is roughly 384,400 kilometers. At perigee, the moon might be nearer to around 357,000 kilometers. Those numbers wobble a bit from month to month, but they’re enough to make a noticeable difference, especially through a camera lens or a good pair of binoculars.

What to Expect This Week

The full moon will be visible across multiple nights — one of the conveniences of a skywatching weekend. Observers in North America, Europe, parts of Africa and Asia can catch the moon when it climbs the evening sky, while late-night viewers in other regions will also have opportunities. Cloud cover, local weather, and light pollution will be the deciding factors.

“Even a thin veil of clouds can make the moon glow like a watercolor,” said amateur astronomer Priya Shah, who runs a neighborhood stargazing group in Toronto. “But if you want sharp detail — the maria, the craters — aim for a clear, dry night and find an elevated spot away from streetlights.”

The Story Behind the Name: Beaver Moon

Names for full moons are threaded through cultures and seasons. The “Beaver Moon” is one of those time-honored names that comes from Native American and early colonial agrarian calendars; it arrived in common parlance through sources like the Farmers’ Almanac and references to Algonquian language traditions. For many Indigenous communities, the name signaled a time when beavers were active and trappers set their final traps ahead of winter, when woodcutting, food stores and shelter had to be secured.

“These names are ecological markers,” said Dr. Naomi White, a scholar of Indigenous studies. “They connect human lives to animal cycles, weather patterns and the lived knowledge of people who have been watching the sky for generations.”

It’s a beautiful reminder: the calendar in our heads isn’t just numbers. It’s weather, migration, harvest, and ritual — a map of how communities related to the land and sky before modern timekeeping made everything abstract.

How to See — and Photograph — the Supermoon

Whether you’re a casual looker or a determined shooter, the moon is forgiving. Here are some tips drawn from photographers and skywatchers:

Find a foreground. Trees, buildings, and people give scale and soul to lunar photos.
Use a telephoto lens (200–600mm) or binoculars to make the moon’s features pop.
Stabilize: a tripod or leaning against a steady surface will reduce blur.
Camera settings: start around ISO 100–400, aperture f/8, shutter speed 1/125–1/250. The moon is bright — slower exposures will wash out detail.
Try the “moon illusion”: photograph when the moon is low on the horizon to make it feel enormous, even though it’s the same size later on.

“I always tell people: don’t only shoot for the internet’s sake,” Priya Shah said. “Try to take one picture and then just sit and look. Your eyes will appreciate the experience more than any lens.”

Light Pollution, Cultural Moments, and Quiet Reflection

There is another thread running through this small astronomical event: the steady encroachment of light pollution. Studies in recent years have estimated that a substantial majority of people on Earth now live under skies brightened by artificial light — enough that the Milky Way is invisible to much of the global population. Still, the moon’s brightness can cut through city glare and remind urban residents what a true night feels like.

For others, the moon intersects with local customs. In East Asia, autumn moon-viewing festivals have their own rituals; in Turkey and across the Muslim world, moon sightings mark important calendar moments. In fishing communities, moon phases are woven into the practical rhythms of tides and nets. The Beaver Moon carries a whisper of all those connections.

“I check the moon before I check the weather,” said Jonas Petrov, a lobsterman in coastal Maine. “Tides change, but the moon tells you something about the rhythm. Folks like me still time things by that old knowledge.”

Why It Matters — More Than a Pretty Photo

On one level, tonight’s sky is a simple offering: a luminous companion to our brief lives on a blue planet. On another, it’s a chance to reconnect. We live in an era of constant information and often-compartmentalized time; a supermoon asks us to pause collectively. It becomes a public event you can experience without an app, a place where amateurs and astronomers meet on equal footing.

So, will you step outside tonight? Will you pull a blanket over your knees, pause a busy evening, or drag your partner out of a meeting so you can both watch the earthlight spill across the same face of the moon that sailors, farmers, and storytellers have watched for millennia?

If you do, you’ll be taking part in a quiet, ancient ritual — and you might just remember how small our everyday anxieties look beneath a brilliant, borrowed sun.

Millions of Americans Face Reduced Food Aid During Government Shutdown

hanad

November 4, 2025

Millions in US to get reduced food aid during shutdown — The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding, averaging around $356 a month per household, lapsed on Saturday

When the Lights Flicker: Groceries, Courts, and the Human Cost of a Shutdown

On a cold Saturday morning beneath the fluorescent hum of a supermarket in downtown Providence, a volunteer in a bright orange vest handed a trembling woman a folded flyer. The woman — two toddlers clinging to her coat — read it as if it were a weather alert. “SNAP guidance: partial payments,” the flyer said, in small print that felt shockingly large in the quiet aisle.

That folded piece of paper is where policy meets pantry. Behind the legal filings and headline-grabbing tweets, tens of millions of Americans are now recalculating how to feed their families while politicians trade ultimatums. The government shutdown — inching toward what would be the longest in U.S. history — has forced a wrench into the nation’s safety net, leaving about 42 million people who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) watching the grocery cart instead of the calendar.

How we got here — and who’s holding the checkbook

Late last week, federal judges in Rhode Island and Massachusetts told the White House to dip briefly into a $4.65 billion emergency fund to cover part of SNAP’s November bills — a stopgap amid a deeper $9 billion tab. But the Department of Agriculture, which runs SNAP, told a federal court in Rhode Island it would not make up the difference with other pots of money, meaning only roughly half of recipients’ usual benefits would be disbursed.

The arithmetic is brutal. SNAP benefits average about $356 per household each month. For many families, that figure is the difference between a full cart and a week’s worth of instant noodles. With payments lapsed, as one official put it, “people don’t ask: where will I sleep? They ask: where will my children get dinner?”

At stake beyond SNAP are related programs such as WIC — the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children — and Head Start services that wrap nutrition into early childhood support. Many local programs began shuttering or curtailing services as federal assurances faded.

Voices from the line

“I stood in line and watched people hand back cartons of milk,” said Maria Lopez, a food pantry coordinator in a working-class neighborhood outside Providence. “This is not charity theater. This is people’s lives.” Her hands, ink-stained from tracking donations, folded around a list of names and dates. “When a mother has to decide which child gets the last apple, that’s a moral emergency.”

Across town, James Carter, a 48-year-old warehouse worker, described the arithmetic facing millions: “We live paycheck to paycheck. SNAP isn’t a handout — it’s groceries. It’s the food that lets my asthma stay in check. It’s the peanut butter my kid loves. To have that rolled back halfway? That’s scary.” He said he expects delays in payment and is already rationing meals.

These are not isolated anecdotes. Nonprofits and advocates have framed lawsuits arguing that partially cutting SNAP during a shutdown violates legal and moral duties, and judges in New England temporarily forced the executive branch to reallocate emergency funds. But the administration countered that the emergency reserve was meant for natural disasters, not budget standoffs — a legal divide that now defines millions of grocery lists.

Politics on public plates

At the center of the drama is a broader bargaining chip: subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. Roughly 20 million Americans rely on those premium subsidies. With a signature enrollment window looming, Democrats say they will not reopen the government without a guarantee these subsidies will continue; Republicans have said they will not negotiate until the government reopens.

President Donald Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said he had asked government lawyers to “clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told networks there’s a process to follow. Yet back in the aisles, those legal clarifications feel abstract and late.

“The letter of the law is as plain as day,” said Senator Patty Murray, the top Senate Democrat on spending, “Trump should have paid SNAP benefits all along. Just now paying the bare minimum to partially fund SNAP is not enough, and it is not acceptable.” Her words cut to a central tension: the difference between legality and humanity.

Counting the costs — and the ripple effects

42 million Americans rely on SNAP — roughly one in eight people.
SNAP funding for November is estimated to cost about $9 billion; judges ordered an emergency fund disbursement of $4.65 billion.
SNAP averages about $356 per month per household — often a modest but essential supplement to wages.

Those stats are stark on paper. In neighborhoods, they translate into shorter meals, cut vitamins, pulled-back job training in Head Start classrooms, and the quiet shame some feel when balancing the grocery needs of a spouse, a toddler, and an elderly parent. They also feed a broader conversation circling many democracies right now: what happens when governance grinds to a halt and safety nets take hits as a result?

A human question made political

Will a partial payment suffice? Some local officials argue that even halting benefits for days would impose harms that cascade into healthcare systems, schools, and local charities. “You can’t heal kids of hunger with paperwork,” said Dr. Hannah Lee, a public health professor who studies food insecurity. “Nutrition in early childhood literally shapes brain architecture. An interruption may have effects that last long after the shutdown ends.”

Advocates point to synchrony: food insecurity correlates with higher emergency room use, worse chronic disease control, and greater school absenteeism. And in regions where the cost of living is high, even $356 a month barely offsets spiraling grocery bills. In such places, a 50 percent cut can tip a household into crisis within a week.

What this moment asks of us

As you read this, ask yourself: what does a country look like when a single vote can determine whether a child eats next week? When a judge’s ruling moves faster than elected leaders? These are blunt questions, but they speak to a deeper civic question: how we prioritize public welfare amid political brinksmanship.

There are no simple answers. Some argue for clearer legal authorities to prevent exactly this kind of stalemate; others call for political courage to decouple essential services from budget fights. On the ground, the fix is being improvised: churches, food banks, and community groups are stepping in where federal processes sputter.

“We don’t want to be the safety net of last resort,” Maria Lopez said, folding another flyer into an envelope. “But when the system pauses, we will feed what we can. Still, it’s not enough to rely on goodwill.” Her voice had the tired cadence of decades of service honesty — and the quiet firm belief that people deserve better than temporary charity.

Looking forward

The courts have ordered temporary relief; the White House has said it will find a lawful path. Yet the shadow of delay remains. For millions, the question is not legal theory but whether there will be cereal in the cupboard. For leaders, the question is whether political calculus will give way to practical compassion.

Until then, grocery aisles, food pantries, and kitchen tables will tell the real story — not of budgets and rulings alone, but of what a nation chooses to protect when the lights flicker and a family stares down an empty pantry.

Deadly mountain storms and avalanche kill nine people in Nepal

hanad

November 4, 2025

Mountain storms and avalanche kill nine people in Nepal — According to the Himalayan Database, an expedition archive, at least 1,093 people have died on peaks since 1950 (file pic)

When the Mountains Turn: Snow, Silence and the Cost of Climbing in Nepal

The Himalayas have a way of making you feel both small and incandescently alive. One minute their ridges are gilded in gold at dawn; the next they rearrange lives with the casual cruelty of weather. Over the past few days that ancient, indifferent grandeur has swallowed nine people — climbers from Italy, France, Germany and Nepali guides — in two separate tragedies that have left communities from Kathmandu to remote mountain villages reeling.

It began with a storm that seemed to come out of nowhere, or perhaps out of a season that is itself changing. Cyclone Montha, a low-pressure system that dumped unusual volumes of rain and snow, hammered much of Nepal last week. Trails were cut, trekkers stranded, and on the slopes the consequences proved fatal.

Yalung Ri: A base camp buried

At the base camp of Yalung Ri — a 5,630-metre peak that stands near the high border with Tibet — an avalanche detached and thundered down the slope into a group of 12 people, officials say. Seven were killed: three Italians, two Nepali climbers, a German and a French national. “I have seen all seven bodies,” said Phurba Tenjing Sherpa of Dreamers Destination, the company that organised the expedition for part of the group. His voice, cracked and raw with exhaustion, carried the factual bluntness of a man who has spent his life in the company of mountains.

Rescuers managed to save the rest. Two French climbers and two Nepali companions were flown to Kathmandu for urgent care, arriving at Era Hospital as daylight took on a brittle clarity after the storm. “We owe our lives to the pilots,” one survivor said later — a simple sentence that felt enormous.

Panbari: Lost on Camp 1

Earlier, in western Nepal, two Italian mountaineers — named by Italy’s foreign ministry as Alessandro Caputo and Stefano Farronato — were confirmed dead after being cut off by heavy snowfall while at Camp 1 of Panbari, a 6,887-metre peak. Local authorities reported that the pair had been out of contact since Friday; the confirmation arrived the following morning. “Their deaths were confirmed this morning by local authorities,” the ministry said in a brief statement. They had been caught in relentless snowfall at roughly 5,000 metres above sea level.

Numbers That Don’t Capture the Pain

Statistics attempt to translate tragedy into context, but they can feel sterile next to grieving families. Still, the record matters. The Himalayan Database — a long-standing archive of climbers and expeditions — notes that since 1950 at least 1,093 people have died on Himalayan peaks. Avalanches account for almost a third of those fatalities, a grim reminder that falling ice and snow remain the mountain’s most indiscriminate killers.

Put another way, roughly 350 lives have been lost to avalanches in seven decades of Himalayan climbing. Each number hides a story: novice trekkers who underestimated the season, seasoned alpinists who trusted a forecast, Sherpa guides who shouldered disproportionate risk to ferry ropes and oxygen canisters for clients.

Voices from the ridge — what people are saying

“We come for the mountain, not to fight it,” said Lobsang Gurung, a retiree from Solu who now ferries supplies to climbing teams. “When the weather is angry, there is nothing to do but wait and pray.”

Dr. Mira Acharya, a Kathmandu-based meteorologist, pointed to shifting patterns. “We are seeing storms in windows that climbers considered predictable,” she explained. “Warmer air can carry more moisture; when that moisture hits high, cold air, it falls as snow — and sometimes in one heavy burst rather than in steady accumulation. It complicates forecasting and raises avalanches risk.”

On the ground, rescue teams and hospital staff speak in tones that mix fatigue with resolute duty. “Helicopters are real heroes, but they can’t fly in every condition,” said Senior Police Officer Gyan Kumar Mahato of Dolakha district. “When the storm shuts down everything, the only options are patience, prayer and hard, slow digging.”

Local Color: The Lives Behind the Lifts

To understand the Himalayas is to understand a landscape threaded with prayer flags, tea houses with steaming masala and yak caravans that move like slow, stubborn weather. Villages cluster in highland shadows, each household linked in some way to trekking seasons. For some, guiding and portering are livelihoods; for others, the presence of foreign climbers has become an economic lifeline.

“My niece saved for her wedding with money from guides,” a woman from Dolakha, Sunita Tamang, told me over a steaming cup of butter tea. “If the season is gone, how will they marry? The mountains give and the mountains take.”

That double-edged relationship — a source of pride, identity and income — makes tragedies like these resonate beyond the immediate families. Guesthouses are quieter, yak drivers worry about loads, and the Sherpa community counts not only the dead but the costs to mental health and long-term security.

What This Means for Adventure and Policy

These deaths arrive at a fraught intersection: climate change, growing adventure tourism, and limited rescue capacity. Autumn, the season when many of these climbs were attempted, is the second busiest time for expeditions in Nepal. The days are shorter and colder than spring, but the skies can be clearer — until they aren’t. As extremes become more erratic, climbers and operators must adapt.

Emergency logistics remain a challenge: helicopters, high-altitude medevacs and trained mountain rescuers are finite resources.
Climate scientists warn that shifting weather windows increase unpredictability, complicating climb planning and risk assessments.
The human cost is disproportionate for local guides: Nepali climbers and Sherpas continue to face the greatest exposure to hazards while often seeing the smallest share of gains.

“This is not just a mountaineering problem,” said Dr. Arun Singh, an expert in mountain livelihoods. “It’s about how communities that depend on risky tourism can be protected. Insurance, better weather infrastructure, stricter permitting during off-windows — there are policy levers, but they require political will and international cooperation.”

What Should We Take Away?

When I stood below a ridge yesterday, the prayer flags snapped in a cold wind that smelled faintly of wood smoke and earth. The mountains were indifferent, but the people who live in their shadow are not. They grieve, they ration hope, they pull survivors from the snow and wrap them in warm blankets.

So what do we ask of those who continue to go? Are we entitled to test ourselves against such raw nature when local communities shoulder so much of the risk? How do we balance human aspiration with the responsibility to protect the people whose lives intertwine with these peaks?

Climbing will always be a negotiation with danger. But as weather grows less predictable and global attention on the Himalayas intensifies, perhaps the conversation can shift: toward safer practices, fairer compensation for Nepali workers, and better early-warning systems that might save lives. If the mountains teach anything, it is humility. We ignore that lesson at our peril.

For now, helicopters rise and fall against the serrated skyline, stretchered forms move through hospital corridors, and families begin the long, private work of grieving. The counts will be updated, investigations opened, and mountaineering forums will buzz with analysis. But under it all, in the villages and tea houses and base camps, lives have been altered in ways numbers cannot fully capture.

What would you do if the mountain you loved asked too high a price?

Trump vows to slash New York City funding if Mamdani wins

hanad

November 4, 2025

Trump threatens to restrict NYC funding if Mamdani wins — Polls suggest Zohran Mamdani has a clear lead in the mayoral race

The City on Edge: A Mayor’s Race, a President’s Warning, and a Moment that Feels Bigger Than New York

Walk the avenues of New York City these days and you can feel the election the way you feel the subway rumble beneath your feet: a low, constant vibration that makes even the unlikeliest things — a deli owner pausing mid-slice, a schoolteacher lingering outside a classroom — sound charged. Tomorrow the city will choose a mayor, and more than municipal policy is at stake. The campaign has become a vortex where local concerns—rent, transit, public safety—meet national theater: former President Donald Trump, using his Truth Social megaphone, has threatened to cut federal funding if progressive Democrat Zohran Mamdani wins.

“It would be a complete and total economic and social disaster should Mamdani win,” Trump posted, a declaration that landed like a thunderclap across Queens stoops and Manhattan townhouses alike. He warned that federal support would be “highly unlikely” beyond the legal minimum, and urged voters to rally behind Andrew Cuomo — the former governor who, after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, is now charging forward as an independent.

For a city that craves stability but thrives on reinvention, that threat has the air of a pressure test. What happens when federal patronage — money for housing, transit, security — becomes a bargaining chip in a fight about ideology and experience?

On the Ground: Voices from Bodegas to Borough Halls

“You don’t play with my rent money,” says Rosa Martinez, who has run a small bodega in Jackson Heights for 23 years, wiping her palms on an apron inked with last month’s receipts. “We need someone who can keep the lights on in the neighborhood. This talk of withholding funds scares people who don’t even follow politics.”

Across town, a 54-year-old MTA bus driver, Luis Hernandez, shrugs and says: “Fare-free buses sound nice — depends how you pay for them. I just want buses that arrive on time.”

These voices matter because they translate abstract threats into tangible fears: will shelters have beds? Will the city get disaster aid after a storm? Will school buildings be fixed? Federal funding touches everything from lead paint abatement to summer youth programs, and when the specter of withdrawal looms, even the most routine services begin to feel precarious.

Policy on Paper — and the Questions It Raises

Zohran Mamdani, 34, has captured attention with a bold, progressive platform. He proposes taxing the city’s wealthiest, raising the corporate tax rate, freezing rent increases for rent-stabilized units, expanding publicly subsidized housing, and piloting fare-free buses across the city.

“Mamdani represents a new generation of leaders who see the cracks in our system and want to seal them,” said Dr. Laila Rahman, an urban policy researcher at a Brooklyn think tank. “But every progressive policy requires a financing plan. The conversation about funding is crucial.”

Not everyone is convinced. “Experience matters,” one longtime public school principal told me over coffee in a cafeteria near City Hall. “The ideas are exciting, but you have to be able to steer the ship when there’s a storm.” That line of thinking helps explain why Andrew Cuomo — who served as governor of New York State — is now being framed by some voters as the safe, experienced alternative, despite the controversies that dogged his tenure.

The Nationalizing of a Local Race

Presidential involvement in city elections is not new, but the tenor is striking. Trump’s blunt warning turns a municipal contest into a referendum on federal access and partisan loyalty. It forces voters to consider whether municipal governance should be treated as a partisan risk assessment: electing a mayor the White House disfavors could, the implication goes, mean real financial consequences.

“This is about power, not policy,” says Marcus Ellison, a veteran political strategist who has worked campaigns across the country. “When national actors try to influence local outcomes by dangling or threatening funds, it changes how municipal leaders must approach governance. They have to be able to negotiate with four different layers of government and survive political crosswinds.”

For many New Yorkers, the national spotlight is both flattering and exhausting. The city is a global brand — a center of finance, culture, and ideas — but it is also a place where people live paycheck to paycheck, where a rent increase can mean the difference between staying and moving out of the only home you’ve known.

When Obama Calls

Adding another layer to these dynamics, former President Barack Obama reportedly called Mamdani this weekend to offer his support and to be a “sounding board” should Mamdani win. The conversation — confirmed by Mamdani’s campaign — was short but symbolic.

“It felt like getting a nod from someone who knows what the job’s pressures are,” Mamdani said in a campaign statement. “President Obama and I spoke about bringing new kinds of politics to this city.”

That outreach highlights a broader pattern: established national Democrats are trying to shepherd the party into a post-2016, post-pandemic era where progressive energy must be squared with electability concerns. The question for voters is stark: do they want sweeping transformation in city policy now, or a more cautious course that prioritizes short-term stability?

Big Ideas, Bigger Stakes

New York’s challenges are not unique. Cities around the world wrestle with income inequality, unaffordable housing, aging infrastructure, and a public trust chafed by perceived corruption or incompetence. The outcome of this race could serve as a test case for how progressive municipal governance can be funded, implemented, and defended in an era of polarized national politics.

Population scale: New York is home to roughly 8.5 million people — a scale that magnifies policy impacts.
Housing crunch: Tens of thousands of households face severe housing cost burdens every year, pushing debates about rent policy and subsidized housing to the forefront.
Transit and mobility: Public transit is the city’s circulatory system; proposals like fare-free buses are as transformative as they are logistically complex.

How the city negotiates its future will inform similar debates internationally — from London to São Paulo — about how to marry robust social programs with fiscal responsibility.

So What Will You Do?

If you’re reading this from within the five boroughs, tomorrow’s choice is yours to make — as it is for the millions of voices that collectively breathe life into the metropolis. If you’re elsewhere, consider this: what does it mean when a national leader suggests withholding the lifeblood a city needs? How should local democracy respond when funding becomes political leverage?

“Voting is about the kind of city we want to live in,” said Aisha Clarke, a community organizer in the Bronx, as she taped campaign flyers onto a lamppost. “It’s about whether we’re willing to bet on change or cling to what’s familiar because it feels safer.”

Tomorrow, New Yorkers will choose. And when the ballots are counted, the ripple effects will travel far beyond municipal boundaries — not only shaping how a city is run, but also how democracy itself functions under pressure from both local urgency and national politics.

Worker Killed as Historic Medieval Tower Partially Collapses in Rome

hanad

November 4, 2025

Worker dies after medieval tower partly collapses in Rome — Rescuers evacuated the worker who was trapped in the medieval tower 'Torre dei Conti'

Dust over the Forum: a medieval tower collapses, a worker dies, and Rome holds its breath

The sky above the Fori Imperiali—usually clear enough to read the stones’ weathered faces—turned the color of chalk the day the Torre dei Conti came down. A white plume rose like a ghost from the windows of the 13th-century tower, drifting across a broad avenue where tourists and Romans often wander shoulder to shoulder. What looked at first like a cloud of ordinary construction dust became the scene of a human tragedy.

Emergency crews pulled a worker from beneath falling masonry late in the afternoon. He was rushed to hospital in critical condition and, according to local media reports and city officials, did not survive. Another man, pulled free almost immediately, was taken to hospital with serious head injuries. Two other workers suffered minor wounds and refused treatment on site. No firefighters were hurt.

What unfolded: a timeline of the collapse

The day’s events were unnervingly precise.

Around 11:30am local time, part of the Torre dei Conti—29 metres tall and perched along the Via dei Fori Imperiali—first shed masonry to the street below.
Roughly 90 minutes later, while firefighters were operating aerial ladders at the scene, a second collapse occurred. Clouds of dust poured from the tower’s upper windows, and video shared widely on social media captured falling stone and the abrupt scramble of crews and onlookers.
Rescue teams worked for hours. One worker was trapped under rubble and later recovered, but in grave condition; another was removed quickly with serious head trauma. The construction site has been seized as authorities opened an investigation into the causes, Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported.

Voices from the street

“It sounded like a thunderclap. Then the dust—everything was just white,” said Maria Rossi, who runs a small café near Piazza Venezia and watched the scene unfold from behind her counter. “I told my customers to get down. We all thought it was another earthquake at first.”

“We rescued a man late yesterday and he was in very serious condition,” Rome police chief Lamberto Giannini told reporters, his voice steady, the weight of the rescue evident in his face. “The construction site has been secured. We must find out what happened.”

Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, visited the scene and spoke briefly with emergency crews and journalists. “This is a deep wound in the heart of the city,” he said. “Our priority is to support the families and ensure a thorough investigation. We also owe it to Rome’s heritage to understand whether more lives could have been protected.”

A tower with a thousand years of stories

The Torre dei Conti is more than a pile of stones; it is a living fragment of Rome’s layered history. Built in the early 13th century by relatives of Pope Innocent III, it once rose higher than it does today—reduced over centuries after earthquakes in the 14th and 17th centuries and adapted for new uses. For a time it housed municipal offices, and in recent decades it stood silent, an austere sentinel beside the traffic and tourists of modern Rome.

It was scheduled to be reborn: a four-year restoration project, partly funded by the European Union, was converting the tower into a museum and conference space. The work was intended to finish next year and, because of the EU-funded program, the area immediately around the works had been closed to pedestrians.

“Restoring these monuments is never only about aesthetics,” said Dr. Elena Marchetti, an archaeologist who has worked on conservation projects around Rome. “The tower is a palimpsest—every change a layer of history. But that very complexity makes interventions delicate. You’re doing surgery on an organism that’s been living for eight hundred years.”

The wider stakes: heritage preservation, safety, and funding

What happened at the Torre dei Conti is not simply a local tragedy; it raises wider questions that cities across the globe wrestle with. How do we preserve fragile, centuries-old structures while keeping workers and the public safe? Who bears responsibility when restoration becomes risky—contractors, municipal authorities, or funders?

“Conservation is under-resourced across Europe,” noted Paolo Benetti, a structural engineer who consults on historic buildings. “Historic masonry behaves in unpredictable ways, especially after centuries of earthquakes, pollution and vibration from traffic. Add the pressure of fixed schedules and budgets, and corners can be cut—sometimes with fatal consequences.”

Italy, with its dense concentration of historic sites—its city center inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980—faces this balancing act constantly. The country’s monuments draw millions of visitors annually and are central to local economies, yet they also require sustained investment: careful scaffolding, slow-moving conservation techniques, monitoring systems that detect shifts in stone and mortar.

Questions that linger

Officials have seized the construction site as they investigate. Authorities will want to know whether the collapse was caused by structural weakness, human error, a lapse in safety protocols, or some combination thereof. They will examine contracts, the sequence of work, and adherence to regulations.

“We need a full inquiry,” said a city official involved in overseeing cultural projects. “If there were failings, they must be identified and corrected so no family suffers like this again.”

Will this tragedy change how Rome approaches restoration projects? It must, many experts say. More frequent structural monitoring, clearer safety protocols for workers, and a willingness to slow down projects when risk is detected are among the measures being discussed. There is also talk of better transparency about restoration work in historically sensitive areas.

In the shadow of the Colosseum

Standing midway along the Via dei Fori Imperiali, the Torre dei Conti has always been in the shadow of the Colosseum’s colossal silhouette. The two are part of the same urban tapestry—ruins braided with modern life: scooters weaving a careful path between museum buses, vendors selling gelato, tourists photographing every column.

“You see these stones and you think they’ll last forever,” Maria the café owner said, stirring sugar into a cup and looking down the avenue at the tower. “But they are old. They need care. And men and women who work on them need to come home at night.”

As an investigation unfolds, Rome will have to reckon with grief, with accountability, and with how it chooses to steward its past. It will be a test of municipal will and of the systems that fund and manage cultural heritage across Europe.

What can we learn—and what will we do?

When you visit a historic center, do you think about the people who keep it standing? Would you expect the same safety standards for a restoration in a small village as in a capital city? This event asks us all to consider the invisible labor behind our monuments—and how society values that labor.

At the base of the tower, police tape flutters in the Roman breeze. Workers gather in small clusters, some shaking their heads, others talking in low voices about what went wrong. Above them the stones keep their silence.

Rome has lost a worker; a family mourns. The city will seek answers, and the world will watch one of its oldest urban centers grapple with the cost of preserving a past that, when it crumbles, can crush the present.

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