International Criminal Court Indicts Duterte on Crimes Against Humanity

September 23, 2025

Duterte charged with crimes against humanity by ICC — Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte is being held in a detention centre in the ICC in the Netherlands

From Davao’s Streets to The Hague: A Moment of Reckoning

There are moments when the air itself seems to shift, when a single legal filing reaches across oceans and settles over neighborhoods thousands of miles away. The International Criminal Court’s latest charges against former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte feel like one of those moments — a legal thunderclap that has people in Manila, Davao and beyond replaying years of grief and anger.

In a heavily redacted charge sheet dated 4 July and revealed only recently, ICC prosecutors have accused Mr. Duterte of participating in crimes against humanity linked to his notorious “war on drugs.” The document outlines three counts alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders spanning his years in office and earlier local leadership — a list that prosecutors say represents just the tip of a much larger, brutal campaign.

What the ICC alleges

The charges, as described by prosecutors, break down into three broad clusters:

Alleged co-perpetration in 19 killings between 2013 and 2016 while Mr. Duterte was mayor of Davao City.
Alleged responsibility for 14 “high value target” murders in 2016–2017 during his presidency.
Alleged involvement in 43 killings carried out during “clearance” operations targeting lower-level alleged drug users or pushers across the Philippines from 2016 to 2018.

“The actual scale of victimisation during the charged period was significantly greater, as reflected in the widespread nature of the attack,” the prosecutors wrote, adding: “The attack included thousands of killings, which were perpetrated consistently throughout the charged period.”

From arrest warrant to custody: the legal journey so far

This latest filing follows an arrest warrant issued on 7 March that focused on 43 alleged murders; Mr. Duterte was detained in Manila on 11 March, transported to the Netherlands the same night, and has been held in the ICC detention unit at Scheveningen. A scheduled appearance to hear the charges was put on hold as judges consider whether Mr. Duterte is fit to participate in proceedings.

Nicholas Kaufman, the former president’s lawyer, has characterized his client’s condition bluntly: “He is not able to stand trial as a result of cognitive impairment in multiple domains.” Counsel has urged the court to postpone the case indefinitely, setting up a legal standoff between questions of physical and mental fitness and calls from victims’ families for accountability.

Why this matters beyond paperwork

There’s an old saying in journalism: a number on a piece of paper does not capture a life. The ICC’s 76-count outline does not — and cannot — hold every bereft mother, every child who lost a father at a marketplace, every neighbor who learned to whisper names in the night. But for those families, the filing is a record, a recognition that their losses are not invisible.

“We have been waiting for someone to say what happened,” said Maria*, a woman from a neighbourhood outside Davao whose brother was killed in 2016. “It is not just about punishment. It is about truth. We need our children to know why their fathers are gone.”

Across the Philippines, reactions have been mixed and raw. A jeepney driver in Quezon City shrugged and said, “Some people cheered the tough talk when it was happening. But now? Now the same talk smells like a crime scene.” A sari-sari store owner in Davao, where Duterte made his political name, paused before answering: “He helped build our city’s streets, but I cannot forget the ones who vanished. We want fairness more than vengeance.”

Numbers and context: the fog of statistics

How many died in the “war on drugs”? There is no single, stable answer. Official police figures for deadly operations often cite thousands of deaths; human rights organizations and U.N. experts argue the toll runs much higher when extrajudicial and vigilante-style killings are included. Estimates vary: some NGOs have suggested the number of fatalities may reach into the tens of thousands when all reports are accounted for. The ICC’s language — referencing “thousands of killings” — underscores the scale that has made this more than a national crisis; it is an issue the court sees as engaging international criminal law.

What makes these figures painful is how ordinary so many of the stories are. A marketplace argument escalates. A midnight knock. A police operation that never files a full report. In neighborhoods across the archipelago, anniversaries of the killings have become small, painful rituals: a candle left on a doorstep, a crucifix or shrine at the corner where someone fell.

Voices that tug at the story’s human threads

“Accountability is not just a legal word,” said Dr. Liza Navarro, a human rights scholar in Manila. “It is the recognition that a state must answer for policies that enabled death and fear. The ICC’s role is to examine command responsibility — did leaders design and preside over conditions that made these crimes possible?”

For victims’ families, proceedings at The Hague are less abstract than they might seem. “Every time I hear them say ‘investigation,’ I imagine my son coming back,” said Ramon*, whose adult son was listed among the victims of a 2017 “clearance” sweep. “Justice feels like a long road, but it is the only road we have.”

Questions for the global reader

As you read this, ask yourself: when does rhetoric about safety cross the line into sanctioned violence? How should democratic societies balance hardline crime-fighting with the rule of law and human rights? These are not questions confined to the Philippines. They echo across democracies and autocracies alike, where leaders trade in certainty and street-level security for messy, expensive guarantees of due process.

There is also a geopolitical layer. The Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute in 2019, but the ICC maintains jurisdiction for crimes that allegedly began while the country was a state party. That legal tension — between national sovereignty and international accountability — is playing out under intense public scrutiny.

Where do we go from here?

The weeks and months ahead will determine more than the fate of one man. They will test international law’s capacity to adjudicate political violence, and they will measure a society’s willingness to confront crimes that were once justified as necessity.

Whether you are thousands of miles away, hearing this story as a footnote to global headlines, or standing on the corner where a life once ended, the same human question remains: can institutions, however imperfect, offer something like closure to those who have only ever known absence?

For now, the ICC file sits in Scheveningen’s cold-light corridors; in the Philippines, small altars glow at dusk. Between the two, conversations continue — about guilt, memory, and the hard work of rebuilding trust. The world is watching; the families are waiting. The true measure of justice will be in what follows the filings and the headlines.

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.

EU regulator confirms paracetamol safe for use during pregnancy

hanad

September 23, 2025

Paracetamol safe during pregnancy - EU Medicines Agency — Donald Trump urged pregnant women not to take Tylenol over an unproven link to autism

When a Tweet Echoes Around the World: Tylenol, Pregnancy and the Politics of Panic

On a grey morning in Dublin, a woman named Siobhán stood in the pharmacy queue with a crying toddler on her hip and a prescription for reassurance. “When your child has a fever at two in the morning, you don’t have time for headlines,” she told me. “You need something that works.”

Across thousands of miles in Geneva, scientists at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) were delivering a different kind of reassurance: the existing guidance on paracetamol—acetaminophen, known here by the brand name Tylenol—remained unchanged. There was, they said, no compelling new evidence to advise pregnant people to stop taking it when medically necessary.

And yet, in the volatile air of social media and political pronouncements, a single presidential nudge was enough to send ripples through maternity wards, pediatric clinics and living rooms worldwide. The claim—made publicly by a high-profile political figure—linking prenatal paracetamol use to autism, and questioning standard vaccine schedules, reopened wounds that medicine had mostly tried to soothe.

Science, uncertainty and the echo chamber

“The evidence remains inconsistent,” a WHO spokesperson told reporters in Geneva, summarising a knot of studies that have produced mixed signals rather than decisive proof. It’s an important distinction. In science, inconsistent data are a call to study more, not to change practice overnight.

That is also the stance of the EMA, which has long considered paracetamol among the safer analgesics in pregnancy—especially important, because untreated fever and pain themselves carry risks for both mother and baby. Their guidance: use the lowest effective dose, for the shortest time necessary.

Professor Kingston Mills, an immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, put it bluntly on a national radio show: “Our immune systems face many pathogens simultaneously. Vaccines take advantage of that capacity safely.” His point echoes decades of immunological research showing that combined vaccines like MMR are effective and unlikely to overwhelm a child’s immune system.

Why headlines matter more than data

Research rarely speaks in punchy soundbites. It evolves, accrues caveats, and often ends in “we need more study.” That long, cautious narrative is not good copy. Political leaders and viral posts, however, can compress uncertainty into direction—and that compression can have real consequences.

“When an authority figure makes sweeping statements about complex health questions, people panic,” said Dr. Amina Khatri, a general practitioner in Cork. “New mothers call in tears. Elderly patients ask if their vaccines are safe. The ripple effects go far beyond one headline.”

There’s also a historical context here. The public memory still bears scars from the decades-old, now thoroughly debunked, claim that vaccines might cause autism. That episode left trust frayed in some communities, and misinformation found fertile ground in the gaps between scientific reports.

Voices from the ground: fear, trust and the everyday calculus

On a rainy afternoon outside a GP surgery, I spoke with Ahmed, a new father, who admitted he had been confused by the conflicting information online. “My sister said never give Tylenol while pregnant,” he said, “but my doctor told my wife to use it when she had a fever. We had to choose whom to believe.”

Meanwhile, pharmacists report a spike in anxious callers asking if their remaining supply of paracetamol is now dangerous. “You can feel the hesitancy,” said Maeve, a pharmacist in Limerick. “People want clear answers—there aren’t any overnight.”

Scientists and health organisations have been trying to provide those answers. Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol, issued a statement pointing to more than a decade of research reviewed by regulators and specialists that found no credible link between acetaminophen and autism.

Academic voices are similarly cautious. Monique Botha, a social and developmental psychologist, emphasises that autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and many learning differences have strong genetic components and that diagnostic improvements explain much of the apparent rise in prevalence. “We are finding more people because we look for them more carefully,” she said.

The data at a glance

Global estimates of autism prevalence vary, but many high-income countries report diagnostic rates currently around 1–3% of children—partly reflecting increased awareness and better screening.
Major health bodies—including WHO and EMA—maintain that current evidence does not justify changing guidance on paracetamol use in pregnancy when medically indicated.
Vaccines such as MMR remain among the most effective tools against measles, mumps and rubella—diseases that can be deadly or cause serious long-term disability.

Beyond the headline: trust, power and public health

This episode exposes a familiar global tension: how to navigate scientific uncertainty in a hyperconnected, politicised world. When elected officials speak about health, people listen, often more than they listen to scientists. Words from the top can either calm a nervous public or ignite fear.

“Authority must carry responsibility,” said Dr. Sarah Cassidy, a psychologist who has worked in research and clinical settings. “We must not drag discredited claims back into the spotlight. Headlines can undermine months or years of careful public health work in an instant.”

Her sentiment speaks to a wider truth. Public health doesn’t happen in labs alone. It happens in supermarkets, in taxis, in living rooms where a child’s fever is feared and a parent must decide whether to dose with paracetamol or endure the night. It happens where trust is fragile and clarity is precious.

What can readers do?

Talk to your clinician. If you’re pregnant and concerned, your obstetrician or GP knows your individual situation best.
Look to broad scientific consensus rather than single social-media posts.
Pay attention to public health guidance about vaccines—communities rely on herd immunity to protect the vulnerable.

So as you scroll past the next viral claim, ask yourself: is this a study, an opinion piece, or a soundbite? Who stands to gain from the panic? And crucially—who is likely to bear the consequences if fear drives people away from life-saving vaccines or from medical treatments that reduce risk?

In the end, medicine is both science and social practice. It needs good data, yes—but it also needs patient trust. We all have a role in protecting that fragile thing: by seeking careful counsel, by resisting sensationalism, and by remembering that when it comes to health, the most dangerous thing is not uncertainty—it is action taken in its name without evidence.

Zelensky, Trump to Meet at UN Summit Following Drone Attacks

hanad

September 23, 2025

Zelensky to meet Trump at UN summit after drone attacks — Ukrainian emergency workers on the scene following a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia this week

Night of Drones: How War Reimagined the Sky

There was a strange, mechanical hush over Kyiv in the hours before dawn — not the quiet of sleep, but of people holding their breath. The air itself felt crowded, heavy with the distant thunder of missiles and the closer, higher-pitched whine of little kamikaze drones sweeping in waves like locusts. By morning the tally was grim: Ukrainian officials reported three missiles and roughly 115 drones launched at targets across the country overnight, while Moscow said its air defences had engaged dozens of incoming craft aimed at the Russian capital.

Two civilian lives were lost in that single night — one in the Zaporizhzhia region, one near the Black Sea port of Odesa — a reminder that the front line has been redrawn into places where ordinary people live, shop, work and wait for trains home. “We are not soldiers in uniform,” said a teacher in Odesa, rubbing her temple as she described the longer blackout hours. “We are mothers and fathers trying to put food on the table. Yet the sky decides whether we get to tomorrow.”

From Kyiv to Moscow: An Escalation of Reach

This was not an isolated episode. It was part of a pattern that’s been intensifying: long-range strikes, a deluge of low-cost, hard-to-intercept drones, and attacks not only on military sites but on the grids, bridges, and railway hubs that stitch Ukraine together.

Russia’s Defence Ministry posted on Telegram that anti-air systems had downed 81 Ukrainian drones by midnight and another 69 in the early hours — figures Moscow released to underscore the scale of the exchange. Moscow’s mayor said debris was being examined and that Moscow’s largest airport, Sheremetyevo, experienced delays as flights were disrupted. In the border regions — Belgorod, Tula and Sevastopol — governors reported intercepts, some fallen debris and minor fires, and advised parents to keep children home.

Numbers That Tell a Story

Numbers can go cold quickly, but they help orient. Consider these figures:

Three missiles and an estimated 115 drones launched at Ukraine overnight, according to Kyiv’s air force.
Two civilians killed in Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions during those strikes.
Ukrzaliznytsia — Ukraine’s state railway — employs roughly 170,000 people and has become a strategic target.
The World Bank estimates around 30% of Ukraine’s railway network is in a “damage-repair” cycle.

The Railway as Lifeline and Target

If you want to understand the war’s new geography, go to a station. Stand on Kyiv’s central platform at night and watch the sleeper carriages line up like silent promises: a bun loose under a seat; a thermos with cooling tea; the faint smell of diesel as locomotives swap power. These are not abstract targets. They move commuters, evacuees, militaries, and supplies. Since all civilian flights have largely been grounded at times during the war, the rails are Ukraine’s arteries.

Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the CEO of Ukrzaliznytsia, has repeatedly warned that Russia’s drone campaign is now tailored to disrupt this lifeline. From the safe corner of a rail coach at Kyiv’s station, he described how the enemy’s calculus has shifted: cheaper, plentiful drones can now be used not just to strike industrial or military targets, but to sow panic among passengers by hitting substations and locomotives.

“They want us to stop moving,” a night-shift dispatcher said, as a woman with two children shuffled onto a delayed overnight service. “They want people to think the safest place is nowhere. But people still come. They board, press their heads to the glass, and keep going.”

Repair crews have become a different kind of frontline. Track electricians, crane operators and welding teams routinely scramble to restore power after substation strikes, often working through the blackness in temperatures that can bite. The immediate disruption after an attack usually lasts six to 12 hours, Pertsovskyi said: diesel engines temporarily replace electric locomotives; crews reroute trains where they can. But the cumulative toll is economic and psychological. Passenger confidence frays; freight volumes fall; timetables slip.

Patterns, Purpose and the Human Cost

Why target rails and civilian grids? “Their first aim is to sow panic among passengers,” Pertsovskyi told reporters, “Their second aim is to hit the overall economy.” That strategy has a cold logic: interrupt internal mobility, slow logistics, and create an atmosphere where normal life becomes riskier and more expensive.

Experts note that the proliferation of Shahed-style drones and similar systems — relatively cheap to produce and often expendable — has changed the cost calculus of warfare. Once, using a precision-guided munition against rail infrastructure might have been reserved for high-value military objectives. Now, saturate the night with drones, and the calculus flips: a small investment can have disproportionate disruption.

“In modern conflict, infrastructure becomes both shield and target,” said a European security analyst in Brussels. “Attacking nerves — power substations, rail hubs — is asymmetric. It avoids the radar cross-section of main battle tanks but hurts the whole society.”

Diplomacy in Shadow of War

These battlefield dynamics are playing out as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepares for high-stakes diplomacy in New York, including a meeting with US President Donald Trump. For Kyiv, the ask is blunt: more and better air defences, faster deliveries of long-promised systems, and firmer sanctions on Moscow. Ukrainian leaders argue that delays in strengthening air defences translate directly into more lost lives.

Back home, in a small town station in western Ukraine, an elderly man clasped a chipped mug and said, “The world sends thoughts. We need shelter. We need something that stops the drone.” His voice was not angry; it was exasperated and practical. “Thoughts don’t fix a broken substation.”

Beyond the Bilateral: A Global Moment

There is a larger question here: how do democracies and international institutions respond when the tools of war become cheap, small and distributed? When roughly a third of a nation’s rail network is perpetually in a damage-repair loop, when airports can be delayed by debris hundreds of miles away, what resilience looks like must be rethought.

Poland, Estonia and Romania have all — at different times — felt the ripple effects of air or drone incursions, underscoring that the conflict’s reach is not contained by borders. NATO members’ concerns have risen alongside the rising tempo of long-range aerial incidents that complicate alliance security calculations.

So ask yourself: when infrastructure is weaponised, how do we protect movement, trade and day-to-day life without militarising every public space? How do we balance deterrence and diplomacy? These are not distant, theoretical dilemmas. They are questions for rail conductors, emergency room nurses, diplomats and citizens who commute through stations that have become, in a sense, small war zones.

Small Acts, Big Courage

At the end of the platform, a young mother adjusted her child’s scarf and smiled at a volunteer handing out bread and hot tea. “We will keep travelling as long as we must,” she said softly. “We cannot surrender our lives to fear.”

That is the everyday courage that keeps a country moving: electricians welding by torchlight to bring a substation online again, scheduling officers rerouting late-night freight, and volunteers handing out thermoses on platforms where the next train could be delayed by hours. The war aims to break habit and normalcy; each repaired track, each resumed timetable, is a small defiance against that strategy.

In rubble, in smoke, under the hum of drones and the roar of politics in far-off halls, life presses on. The question for the international community is whether it will move beyond statements and into measures that meet the pace of the threat — whether the global response will be as agile as the skies have become.

Doctor likens Gaza City’s conditions to a horror film amid crisis

hanad

September 23, 2025

Situation in Gaza City 'like a horror movie', says doctor — A woman mourns as bodies of people killed in Israeli attacks are brought to Al Shifa hospital

Inside Al-Shifa: Medicine at the Edge of Human Endurance

When I first stepped into Al-Shifa Hospital by the light of a failing generator, the air hit me like a memory — hot, metallic, and heavy with the tang of antiseptic that wasn’t quite antiseptic anymore. Dr. Nada Abu Alrub, an Australian physician who came with a volunteer medical team, walked me through corridors where time had been stretched thin by exhaustion and grief.

“You come expecting to treat cases,” she said, voice low, “but you find yourself triaging humanity.” Her hands, stained with the day’s work, gestured toward a room where a newborn’s cry fought through the din. “We are improvising surgeries without proper sterilisation. We are choosing who gets a chance with two gloves and one IV line.”

Dr. Abu Alrub’s account is not theatrics. It is a dispatch from a place where the normal architecture of life has collapsed: homes reduced to skeletal frames, water turned into a luxury, food disappearing behind barbed bureaucracies and dwindling cash. “People have lost everything,” she told me, “and they sleep in the hospital because it’s sometimes the only roof left standing.”

A catalogue of shortages

Across the hospital, the list of absences reads like a how-to on catastrophe: no mattresses, scarce gauze, few antibiotics, minimal anaesthesia. Staff are living on hospital cots and stolen hours of sleep — two hours at a stretch, they joke, but there is no real laughter.

An emergency nurse named Samir — early thirties, with a voice rough from sleeplessness — told me, “We have been here for two years straight in shifts that never stop. My sister called the other day and said our block was hit again. I don’t know if I should go home or stay because home is not safe, but without me here someone else will die.”

These are not isolated anecdotes. The Israeli military has said that more than 550,000 people have fled Gaza City in recent weeks alone, a mass movement that comes on top of a population the UN estimated at roughly one million in late August for the same urban area. Staggering numbers, but behind each is a person, a family, an elder who remembers a different city.

The city under relentless assault

From high above, the skyline of Gaza City is an essay in gray: smoke plumes, toppled minarets, rows of gutted buildings. Residents speak of “constant bombing” — warplanes, tanks, and drones knitting a terrifying soundtrack. Saja Al-Kharoubi, 26, who grew up in Al-Daraj, told me, “There is nowhere to run. We try to leave, but transport is out of reach. We had ten shekels left when we left. We used it to buy bread.”

The military says its operations aim to eliminate armed groups within the city and to “secure the release of hostages.” The conflict’s origin — Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack — left 1,219 people in Israel dead, according to official tallies compiled by news agencies, and 251 hostages taken, of whom numbers remain disputed but about 47 were reported still in Gaza. Those facts sit beside another set of tallies: Gaza’s health ministry, run by the territory’s authorities, places the death toll at tens of thousands — a figure the United Nations has said is the best available estimate for now.

Numbers, by themselves, are blunt instruments. But they provide a chilling context: when a hospital runs out of sterile gloves, the loss that follows is intimate and immediate — a mother with a fever, a child with a shrapnel wound, a man with a failing heart — each one a life that statistics can flatten if they are not accompanied by human stories.

When every decision is ethical triage

“There comes a moment when ethics and survival overlap,” said Dr. Miriam Hart, an international humanitarian surgeon who has worked in conflict zones for 20 years. “If you only have one dose of blood, you have to choose. That’s a choice no clinician should have to make. It breaks the profession.”

Back at Al-Shifa, nurses and medical students craft operating instruments from scavenged parts, rinse re-used equipment as best they can, and carry out amputations in rooms that smell of antiseptic and human sorrow. “We operate in survival mode,” another young doctor whispered. “You learn to let go of perfection because nobody has that luxury here.”

Cross-border echoes: Lebanon and the broader region

As Gaza burns, the conflict’s embers have lit skirmishes across borders. In southern Lebanon, a drone strike rocked the town of Bint Jbeil, killing five people — three of them children, according to Lebanese authorities. The strike underlined how the theatre of war has expanded and how civilians far from Gaza’s hospitals are paying a price in broken families and shattered futures.

Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s parliament speaker, described the attack as a message meant to intimidate people returning to their villages. “When children die, the wound runs deep,” Berri said, his voice carried on state media. The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah target, but also acknowledged that civilians were killed — a grim confirmation of the porous nature of modern combat where households can become collateral.

Is this how modern warfare should look? Assets and laws intended to protect civilians seem brittle in the face of urban combat married to aerial power. That brittleness raises questions about accountability, proportionality, and the international community’s capacity to intervene before a humanitarian situation becomes irreversible.

The world watches. Does it act?

International organisations and aid agencies keep sounding the alarm. A UN coordinator described Gaza as “teetering on the brink of humanitarian collapse” — a phrase repeated often enough to lose sting, but not meaning. Food, clean water, and medical supplies are chronically insufficient. Access is hindered by security concerns, damaged infrastructure, and bureaucratic restrictions.

What can be done? Humanitarian experts offer a three-point prescription:

Immediate and unfettered corridors for medical supplies and fuel to power hospitals;
A temporary cessation of hostilities in populated areas to allow civilian movement and aid distribution;
International mechanisms to investigate alleged violations of civilian protection laws.

Small gestures multiply. An internationally coordinated airlift can mean hundreds of vaccines; a single convoy of baby formula can keep infants alive. But political will is the linchpin, and it is often the scarcest resource.

Faces behind the numbers

Walking past a makeshift tent camp, I met Huda, a grandmother of five. Her hands were bruised from carrying water. “We left with only the clothes on our backs,” she said. “My neighbour’s child asks every night if the sirens are our lullaby. How do you tell a child that the world is not supposed to sing that song?”

Her question lingers. It is easy to become numb to rolling casualty counts. It is harder — and essential — to see the torn fabric of daily life, the routines rent away by shock and displacement.

Dr. Abu Alrub told me she plans to stay beyond her scheduled rotation. “I came to help,” she said simply, “and I cannot leave while people have no clean water and no safe place to sleep. If medicine is what keeps someone alive, then I will sit with them and give it.”

Where do we go from here?

As readers around the world scroll past headlines, it is worth pausing: What responsibility does distance confer? Can we translate outrage into sustained pressure for safe passages, ceasefires, and unfettered humanitarian access? History will judge not just decisions made in the heat of conflict, but also the decisions not made.

Is there space for empathy to become policy? For counting to turn into care? The hospital corridors I walked were full of people asking these same questions — patients, doctors, children who only know the sound of military engines. Their answers are immediate: send supplies, insist on protection for civilians, keep telling their stories until the world acts.

When the next convoy arrives — if it arrives — someone will be there to open the crate of medical supplies. Someone will be there to welcome the sterile gloves. For now, the work continues in dimly lit operating rooms, in the back of ambulances, and under tents where life persists in defiance of everything designed to snuff it out.

China orders widespread school closures as Typhoon Ragasa approaches

hanad

September 23, 2025

China orders school shutdown as Typhoon Ragasa nears — Man walks past sandbags prepared to hold back floodwaters, as Super Typhoon Ragasa approaches Hong Kong

When the Sky Went Quiet: Cities Brace as Super Typhoon Ragasa Roars Toward Southern China

By the time the shops rolled down their metal shutters and the last ferry slipped back to port, the air over southern China had acquired that peculiar pre-storm hush—heavy and expectant, like a room waiting for an announcement. In a region that has learned to read the weather with a practiced stoicism, there was no flippancy this time. Officials ordered schools, markets and businesses closed across at least ten cities. Tens of millions of people—workers, students, vendors, commuters—were told to stay home as Super Typhoon Ragasa gathered itself over the South China Sea, a spinning, furious machine of wind and water.

Shenzhen—one of China’s gleaming tech hubs, home to more than 17 million residents and the offices of countless factories that feed global supply chains—was one of the hardest-hit cities on paper. Emergency management authorities in the city announced the evacuation of roughly 400,000 people and an almost cinematic run of instructions: “Except for emergency rescue personnel and those ensuring people’s livelihood, please do not go out casually,” the statement said, as work and market closures rolled in across the afternoon.

Streets of Anticipation

Walk through any neighborhood in the Pearl River Delta these hours and you would have seen the same scene: market stalls lashed down, blue tarpaulins flapping like prayer flags, supermarket aisles shorn of fresh vegetables—shoppers who’ve learned the value of anticipating shortages. In Chaozhou, Zhuhai, Dongguan and Foshan—cities that stitch together the manufacturing heartland of Guangdong—factories began to shut their assembly lines. A worker at an electronics plant in Dongguan, who asked to be identified as Li Wei, told me, “We were told to pack up and leave by lunchtime. It took a while to say goodbye to the machines. They supply families across the world, and today, they stay silent.”

The sense of urgency was not theatrical. Ragasa, according to Hong Kong’s weather service, was churning with maximum sustained winds of around 230 kilometres per hour as it moved over the South China Sea. That speed is equivalent to a powerful Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale—capable of devastating winds, dangerous storm surges, and intense, damaging rainfall. The Philippines, where Ragasa clipped northern islands earlier, reported at least one fatality and more than 10,000 people evacuated.

Human Stories Behind the Statistics

Numbers matter, but they can flatten the small, loud details that make storms feel like real life. “We have lived through many typhoons,” said Mrs. Chen, a 62-year-old grandmother from Foshan, as she stacked sandbags outside her courtyard home. “But each one feels different now—stronger. We cover the windows, we lift the furniture, and we pray.” Her hands trembled not from age but from the adrenaline of preparation, the same hands that added eggs and rice to the emergency bag her neighbor’s children carried.

Not everyone could evacuate. In Shenzhen’s low-lying districts, migrant workers lived in high-density dormitories where owners scrambled to secure rooftops and charge phones. “I work at a factory that makes circuit boards,” said Arman, who came from abroad and has been here three years. “We were paid for half a day, told to go home early. But ‘home’ is a bunk bed in a room with eight people. You try to find a dry corner and sleep.”

Local Culture, Local Resilience

There are rituals to readiness here that tell you as much about culture as about climate. Vendors in Zhuhai wrapped fresh fruit in plastic and stacked it near the store’s interior; elders in Foshan checked the knotting on their fishing boats and the ropes that tie shrine lanterns; a kindergarten in Chaozhou converted its soft playroom into a shelter for staff who couldn’t return home. Such small acts carry a century’s worth of lessons about the sea and the sky.

Climate Context: Is Ragasa a New Normal?

Scientists are cautious about attributing any single storm to global warming, but the pattern is becoming harder to ignore. Studies, including assessments in the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, indicate warming seas and more energetic storms. Warmer ocean temperatures feed the intensity of tropical cyclones, and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, delivering heavier rainfall.

“Ragasa is textbook for what we expect in a warming world—more energetic and potentially more destructive storms,” said Dr. Mei Lin, a climatologist at a university in Guangzhou. “We are already seeing more instances of rapid intensification, where storms strengthen far quicker than models predicted just two decades ago. That makes preparation windows smaller and evacuation decisions harder.”

So What Does This Mean for Cities?

Modern megacities like Shenzhen have invested heavily in infrastructure—sea walls, drainage tunnels, and emergency management systems. Yet the confluence of dense urban populations, vital manufacturing centers, and warming seas creates an acute vulnerability. The closures across Guangdong ripple beyond local inconvenience; they echo through global industries in the form of delayed shipments, paused production runs, and fragile just-in-time supply chains.

“Every major factory shutdown in the Pearl River Delta nudges inventories in the U.S., Europe and beyond,” said Marcus Hale, a logistics analyst who tracks electronics supply chains. “People think of storms as local. They’re not. They’re part of a global system where a halted conveyor belt in Dongguan can mean a delayed phone launch in San Francisco.”

Practicalities: How People Prepare

Across the cities, authorities offered clear, if somber, advice: stay indoors unless you are an emergency worker; seek higher ground if you are in a flood-prone area; check emergency shelters and evacuation routes; keep emergency kits of water, food, batteries, and medicine.

Evacuation figures: Shenzhen ordered about 400,000 people to move to safer areas.
Regional impact: At least ten cities suspended schools and businesses, affecting tens of millions.
Storm strength: Ragasa registered peak sustained winds of roughly 230 km/h over the South China Sea.
Human toll: The storm had already caused at least one death in the Philippines, with over 10,000 evacuated there.

Voices from the Ground

“We are not hiding from nature,” said Zhang Qiang, an emergency coordinator in Foshan. “We are learning to live with it more intelligently—better forecasting, better evacuation—but we must also reduce our long-term risk by tackling emissions and building resilience.”

A schoolteacher in Zhuhai, Mei Yong, wrapped her voice around a half-laugh and half-cry: “You teach kids to be calm in a drill. But when the real thing comes, you see who remembers what to do. I hope these children remember how to help others—older people, neighbors—when they grow up.”

Looking Forward: A Shared Question

As Ragasa spins toward land, the story is both immediate and existential. What do our cities look like in a world where such storms are more powerful and potentially more frequent? How do global trade, local livelihoods, and communal care adapt to a climate that is reshaping risk?

These are not simple questions. They require investment in infrastructure, changes in how supply chains are built, and the political will to pair short-term protective measures with long-term climate action. They also require human generosity and small acts: neighbors checking on the elderly, workers helping each other secure dormitories, strangers sharing rides to safe locations.

When the wind finally subsides and city life resumes—sifted and a little changed—there will be stories of loss and stories of quiet heroism. There will be statistics to sort through and policy debates to continue. But there will also be the ordinary work of rebuilding, and, perhaps, an expanding sense that in a warming world, preparedness is not a luxury: it is the common language we must learn—together.

What would you do if a city on the other side of the globe called for immediate evacuation? How can the systems we depend on—food, medicine, communication—become more resilient? Ragasa is both a test and an invitation to reckon with those questions.

Gaza solidarity protests close Italian ports, trigger clashes in Milan

hanad

September 23, 2025

Gaza protests in Italy block ports, clashes in Milan — Protesters marched near the Colosseum in Rome as part of the demonstration

When Harbors Hold Their Breath: Italy’s Port Workers, Protest Lines and a Country Caught Between Conscience and Commerce

On a wind-swept morning in Genoa, the harbor felt less like a place of departure and more like a human barricade. Men and women in orange safety vests stood shoulder to shoulder, their faces wind-burned and determined, as ferries slipped past the blockade and seagulls circled like indifferent witnesses.

“We don’t want our docks to be a corridor for killing,” said Marco, a port worker whose hands still smelled faintly of diesel and coffee. “If someone is sending weapons through our pier, then we decide — not them.”

It was not just Genoa. From Milan’s central station to Naples’ main rail hub, from the rusted gates of Livorno to the industrial ramparts of Trieste, Italy’s unions turned a slow-creeping anger into a day-long stoppage. Dockworkers blocked access roads to ports. Protesters tried to halt motorways close to Bologna. In Naples, demonstrators forced their way into the railway station and for a few tense minutes stood on the tracks, breath visible in the cool morning air as delayed commuters watched on.

Clashes erupted. Police in riot gear and protesters met under the Venetian glass of Milan’s central station; a Reuters witness described clouds of tear gas and the chaos of chanting voices competing with the roar of city traffic. Italian media reported similar skirmishes elsewhere.

The human choreography of a protest

These were not random outbreaks of frustration. For the striking dockworkers, the actions were deliberate and framed by a precise moral argument: Italy should not be used as a staging post for arms shipments to Israel as it prosecutes its offensive in Gaza.

“Every chain that leads to a battlefield is made of choices,” said Elena, a union organizer in Livorno, as she handed out sandwiches at a makeshift aid station for protesters. “We are choosing to interrupt those chains.”

Thousands marched or observed picket lines in other cities. Schools in some regions closed for the day. Public transport ran at reduced capacity in places where union stoppages hit. Yet airlines remained unaffected and, officials said, the national rail network managed the disruption with limited cancellations.

Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, who praised those who did go to work and minimized the strikes’ rail impact, warned against what he called “political mobilisation” by far-left unionists. “Today’s strike is causing the cancellation of only a limited number of trains,” he said, a comment that landed like a pebble in a pond of already tense public debate.

Flags, Friction and a Country’s Political Compass

There was drama, yes — flags snapped in the wind, voices rose, and police lines held — but beneath the spectacle was something quieter: a negotiation about Italy’s political identity.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads a right-wing government that has long been a staunch European backer of Israel. Her cabinet has ruled out recognising a Palestinian state and framed its foreign policy in terms of stability and alliance cohesion. The dockworkers’ day of action, by contrast, drew a map of conscience — labor’s insistence that civilian infrastructure not become a pipeline for war.

Walking through Milan after the protests, I heard an old shopkeeper, who asked to be unnamed, tell a young student, “We sell shoes, we make bread, but we refuse to be tools for war.” There is, in that exchange, the uncomfortable friction between daily life and geopolitics.

What the stoppages meant on the ground

Ports: Entrances blocked in Livorno; early morning gatherings in Genoa and other port cities.
Rail: Delays and cancellations on regional routes; some demonstrators briefly on train tracks in Naples.
Urban centers: Clashes and tear gas near Milan central station; roadblocks around Bologna.
Public services: Schools closed in some regions; metros largely operational in big cities like Milan.

Spain’s Dilemma: Ethics Meets Complex Military Dependence

Meanwhile, just across the western Mediterranean, Spain is wrestling with a related, but technically knotty, question: how do you cut military ties with a partner when their technology is entangled in your own defenses?

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced an arms embargo earlier this year, calling out what he described as the crisis in Gaza and seeking to “consolidate in law” a halt to weapons trade with Israel. The government has already canceled contracts, notably to the tune of nearly €700 million for Israeli-designed rocket launchers and another €287 million deal for anti-tank missile launchers.

But the cancellations expose a web of dependencies. Investigations in Spanish media revealed Israeli technology embedded across the armed forces: electronics upgrades in training jets, radios for tanks, ammunition components and missile guidance systems — technology often integrated and maintained by Israeli firms.

“This is not merely about contracts; it’s about capabilities,” said David Khalfa, a Paris-based researcher. “Israel tests these systems in combat; that experiential edge is hard to replace.”

Defense analyst Félix Arteaga, from Madrid’s Elcano Royal Institute, argued the challenge is also industrial. “You cannot snap your fingers and replace proprietary systems. If replacement comes from the United States, Spain may be trading one dependence for another,” he warned.

The wider stakes — hunger, law, and the limits of policy

At the heart of these protests and policy shifts are raw human costs. Gaza’s health authorities report significant civilian casualties since the conflict escalated last October. International agencies warn of catastrophic food insecurity: the IPC recently described the unfolding situation as an “entirely man-made famine” in parts of Gaza, and the UN’s human rights chief linked this famine to policies on the ground. The world’s largest association of genocide scholars passed a resolution stating that legal criteria have been met to consider acts in Gaza under the rubric of genocide, an assertion that has reverberated through diplomatic corridors.

When politics and morality collide, you get a scramble for practical answers — replacement suppliers, emergency procurement, legal instruments. You also get a population asking quieter questions: what kind of country do we want to be?

Local Voices, Global Questions

Maria, a teacher in Naples who joined the picket line, put it simply: “My students learn about history. I don’t want classrooms built on someone else’s suffering.”

And yet the problem is not binary. In Madrid, defense ministry officials argue that national security and alliance commitments cannot be abandoned overnight. “We’re in the middle of a technological revolution in our armed forces,” one inside source said. “Choices have consequences.”

So what happens next? Will Italy’s port actions be a brief flare or the beginning of a longer movement of labor-driven foreign policy? Will Spain find the industrial wherewithal and political will to untangle from embedded military technologies without jeopardising its security?

There are no easy answers. But these protests remind us that geopolitics is not carried only by diplomats in conference rooms; it moves along docks and rail lines, in the hands of the people who keep a country running. When they stop, the rest of society is forced to take note.

As the sun set over the Ligurian Sea and the last of the banners were folded away, someone lit an espresso cup and raised it like a small, defiant beacon. “We can’t always change the world,” an elderly dockworker said, “but we can stop working for what we don’t want to build.” The question that lingers — for policy makers and citizens alike — is whether that gesture will ripple beyond a single day into lasting change.

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