Nov 25(Jowhar)-Ra’iisul Wasaaraha Xukuumadda Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya, Mudane Xamze Cabdi Barre, ayaa saakay u ambo-baxay dalka Marooko, halkaas oo uu kaga qeybgalayo Madasha sanadlaha ah ee MEdays.
Six killed in large-scale Russian strike amid U.S. peace push
Before dawn in Kyiv: sirens, smoke and a fragile pause
There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a city that has learned to expect thunder. Tonight in Kyiv, it was a brittle hush punctured by the shriek of air‑raid sirens and the distant orange bloom of explosions.
Residents who had fallen into a restless sleep under the hum of generators were hurried awake. They gathered in stairwells and metro stations, hands wrapped around steaming mugs, waiting for the all‑clear. Firefighters battled flames licking at an apartment block in the Dniprovsky quarter; neighbours clambered over shattered glass to pull out charred furniture and photographs. By morning, officials counted at least six dead in the capital and several more wounded.
“You know how we grumble about the heat in summer? This is worse,” said Oksana, a schoolteacher from Svyatoshynsky district, as she clutched a blanket and a small plastic bag of belongings. “You learn to pack a bag in the dark. You learn to listen. But there’s no learning how to lose your home.”
On the edge of diplomacy: a truncated deadline and a turbulent plan
While rescuers measured loss on the ground, diplomats scrambled over a document that could reshape the map of Europe. Washington on Saturday offered Kyiv a 28‑point framework to halt the fighting — and gave Ukraine until 27 November to accept or risk the diplomatic window closing.
The proposal touched off alarm in capitals from Berlin to Brussels. Many European leaders judged the early draft too closely aligned with Moscow’s maximalist demands: territorial concessions in the east, deep cuts to Ukraine’s armed forces and a pledge to never join NATO. For nations that have watched this war from the front row, the idea of ending it on terms that look like capitulation to an invader was unpalatable.
So diplomats retreated to Geneva for emergency talks. There they rebuilt the blueprint, at least partly, with the stated aim of “upholding Ukraine’s sovereignty.” A joint US‑Ukrainian statement heading out of those rooms called the new draft an “updated and refined peace framework,” though the exact text has not been released publicly.
What changed, and what remains contentious
According to people briefed on the meetings, the revised framework softens some of the most unpalatable language from the initial proposal. Kyiv’s delegation said the updated draft “already reflects most of Ukraine’s key priorities,” while the White House hailed the talks as progress. Still, scepticism remains.
“This will be a lengthy, long‑lasting process,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned, expressing doubts that any deal could be forced into being by the U.S. deadline. Across the continent, officials are asking blunt questions: Are we negotiating peace, or negotiating away the principles that have held Europe together since 1945?
On the frontlines: more than a military calculus
Diplomacy is happening alongside artillery. Moscow’s defence ministry claimed it intercepted some 249 Ukrainian drones overnight — one of the largest tallies reported — and Russian regions near the border reported strikes and civilian casualties of their own. In the Rostov region, the acting governor said at least three people were killed. In Krasnodar, the local governor called the shelling “one of the most sustained and massive attacks” from Kyiv’s side.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, sounding every bit the wartime leader he has become, warned that Ukraine was at a “critical moment.” He has framed the talks as existential: accept a deal that amounts to humiliation and territorial loss, and Kyiv risks its dignity; reject it and risk losing the patronage of powerful allies.
“We are not bargaining over the homeland like a commuter haggling for a seat,” said Dmytro, an aid worker who has spent two years ferrying supplies to frontline towns. “This is about whether our children will grow up under someone else’s flag.”
Numbers that matter (and the ones we cannot forget)
Some facts anchor the rising emotional tide. Russia currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine — a belt of territory that has been scarred by years of fighting and displacement. Since the full‑scale invasion began in February 2022, the human toll has been staggering: tens of thousands killed, countless homes destroyed, and millions uprooted from their lives. The war remains the deadliest and largest conflict on European soil since World War II.
Beyond the battlefield, the conflict has strained global supply chains, sent energy and food markets wobbling, and intensified debates about deterrence, alliance commitments and the future of international law.
Voices from the coalition — and from kitchen tables
Washington has insisted it is trying to bring both sides to the table equally. “The idea that the United States is not engaging with both sides equally… is a complete and total fallacy,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Yet there is an undercurrent of unease. A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration had pressed Ukraine hard and that Kyiv understood aid could be at risk if it rejected the deal. “We are not threatening,” the official added. “But everyone knows the stakes.”
In small shops and cafes in western Ukraine, people express a mix of fatigue and refusal. “We do not want to trade our homes for a promise,” said Ivan, a shopkeeper in Lviv. “You can offer us peace on paper, but if it comes at the cost of our land, it is not peace.”
Questions for the reader (and for the world)
What does peace look like after years of brutality? Can borders be rewritten without justice? When a powerful nation pushes a timetable, does that help create a durable settlement—or a brittle ceasefire that collapses with the first provocation?
These are not rhetorical games. They are the living logic of millions who will wake tomorrow uncertain whether the truce forged in conference rooms will keep the next missile from striking their street.
Why this moment matters beyond Ukraine
There is something deeply consequential about how this episode ends. If a settlement is reached that trims away sovereignty and rewards territorial conquest, it could alter the norms that have governed Europe since 1945. If talks fail and the fighting continues, the human cost will climb and global polarization will deepen.
Either outcome will reverberate across alliances, fuel domestic politics in capitals, and test the willingness of democracies to back principles with patience and resources. In short: the world is watching not just for Ukraine’s sake, but for what the result says about force, law and order in the 21st century.
What to watch next
- The video conference of nations supporting Kyiv — the “coalition of the willing” — due to review the revised peace framework.
- Any publication of the updated 28‑point text and how it addresses issues of sovereignty, territory and security guarantees.
- On‑the‑ground developments: whether violence escalates or eases in the days after the talks.
As night folds into another day, Kyiv’s residents go back to the slow business of living under the shadow of war — tending wounded buildings, comforting children, bargaining with the impossible. In their eyes you can read a simple, unadorned question: is this the hour we trade freedom for an uneasy calm, or the hour we keep fighting for a future we can claim as our own?
Where do you stand when diplomacy and survival collide? The answer may shape not only Ukraine’s borders, but the architecture of security for generations to come.
Xoogaga RSF oo ku dhawaaqday xabad joojin hal dhinac ah
Nov 25(Jowhar)-Xoogagga Taageerada Degdega ah ee Sudan, ayaa Isniintii ku dhawaaqay xabbad joojin bini’aadantinimo oo saddex bilood ah, maalin ka dib markii taliyaha ciidamada Sudan Abdel Fattah al-Burhan uu diiday hindise xabbad-joojin caalami ah o la soo bandhigay.
Former UK prime minister David Cameron discloses past prostate cancer diagnosis
A private moment, a public plea: Why one man’s diagnosis is pushing Britain to rethink prostate screening
The call came on a morning like any other: coffee, a brief scroll through headlines, and a radio voice cutting through the hum of household routines. For David Cameron and his wife Samantha, it wasn’t a headline that changed everything so much as another person’s story on the airwaves — the founder of Soho House speaking about his own brush with cancer.
“Samantha turned to me and said, ‘Go on, get it checked,’” Cameron later told journalists. What followed was a cascade of tests — a PSA blood test, an MRI, a biopsy — and a diagnosis that is, for many men, whispered before it is even uttered aloud. “You always dread hearing those words,” he said, recalling the instant the doctor spoke them.
That private moment, shared now with a public, has a clarity to it that can be hard to manufacture: an ex-prime minister using the platform he still holds to encourage other men to look after themselves. “I don’t particularly like discussing my personal intimate health issues,” he admitted, “but I feel I ought to.”
From personal scare to national conversation
Prostate cancer is not an obscure ailment. In the UK, around 55,000 men receive the diagnosis each year, making it the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men. Globally, prostate cancer ranks among the top two cancers affecting men, with over a million new cases reported annually in recent years. Yet despite those numbers, there is no national, routine screening programme in the UK — and that gap is precisely what Cameron wants to prompt a rethink about.
“We’ve been too sanguine about men’s health for too long,” said Dr. Aisha Khan, a consultant urologist in London who has watched diagnostic techniques evolve during her two decades in practice. “There’s genuine progress: multiparametric MRI, better biopsy targeting, and work on biomarkers. We can be smarter than the old PSA-only approach.”
Why screening is complicated
The debate over screening is not a simple tug-of-war between good and bad. At the heart of it lie uncomfortable trade-offs. PSA tests, the main tool historically used to flag potential prostate problems, are sensitive — but not specific. They pick up many abnormalities, including harmless conditions, and can lead to unnecessary biopsies and treatments. These interventions, in turn, carry risks: incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and the psychological toll of a cancer label.
“Screening isn’t a slam dunk,” Cameron acknowledged. “You’ve always got to think how many cases we discover and how many misdiagnoses are there and how many people will be treated unnecessarily.”
That caution sits alongside new technologies and trials that could change the calculus. The Transform project, launched in partnership with the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), has begun inviting men to participate in a large trial comparing modern screening approaches — including MRI-first strategies and refined biopsy methods — against the current NHS diagnostic pathway. NIHR has committed £16 million to the project, with additional funding from Prostate Cancer UK, signalling a major public and charity investment into resolving this question.
New tools, new hope: focal therapy and MRI-led pathways
Cameron’s own treatment offers a glimpse of what the future might look like for some men: a focal therapy that uses electrical pulses to target and destroy cancerous cells while sparing surrounding tissue. Known clinically as irreversible electroporation or similar approaches, these treatments aim to reduce the side effects associated with whole-gland therapy.
“Focal therapy can be life-changing in terms of preserving quality of life,” said Professor Martin Ellis, an oncologist involved in translational research. “If you can accurately map the tumour using MRI, then it’s possible to treat the disease without taking away function.”
It’s exactly this precision that trials like Transform are designed to test: can we find cancers that will cause harm, treat them effectively and minimally, and avoid harming men who would never have needed treatment at all?
Voices from the street
On a chilly afternoon outside a pub in a small town north of Manchester, men of different ages exchanged stories. “You don’t talk about these things in the pub, normally,” one man muttered, but then leaned in. “If someone like him can say it, maybe it’s easier for the rest of us.”
Tom Evans, 62, a retired mechanic, said, “I put things off for ages. You feel proper silly when you do. If a simple test can save me all that worry later, I’d do it.”
Campaigners are urging that the conversation be widened beyond celebrity or political influence. “This is about access and trust,” said Maya Patel, a campaigner with Prostate Cancer UK. “Targeted screening for men at higher risk — older men, those with a family history, men of African or Caribbean descent who are at greater risk — could be a way to balance benefits and harms.”
Questions for a wider world
As you read this from anywhere on the globe, ask yourself: how do we balance the promise of early detection with the real risks of over-treatment? How does culture — the British stiff upper lip, the macho invulnerability celebrated in other societies — shape who gets diagnosed and when?
Systems matter. Where national screening exists or is being piloted, it is usually accompanied by robust counselling, shared decision-making, and state-backed pathways to ensure that a positive test doesn’t automatically mean radical surgery. The UK’s National Screening Committee is currently reviewing evidence and is expected to update its guidance. The outcome could reshape NHS practice for years.
- What’s at stake: each year, tens of thousands of UK men are diagnosed with prostate cancer; internationally, the burden is in the millions.
- What’s new: MRI-first pathways, better biopsy techniques, and focal therapies that aim to reduce side effects.
- What’s unresolved: whether a national screening programme would save lives without causing unacceptable overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
Where do we go from here?
David Cameron’s decision to speak out forces a public examination of private fears. It’s a reminder that medical advances often begin with conversations — awkward, intimate, sometimes embarrassing — that get spoken aloud. For many men, the first step is simply acknowledging vulnerability. For policymakers, the step is more technical: weighing data, funding trials, educating clinicians and the public.
“If nothing else,” Dr. Khan said, “this will reduce stigma. Men should feel they can ask questions and that their doctors will listen.”
So, will this moment prompt a shift? Will trials like Transform deliver clear answers? And will communities — across the UK and beyond — change how they talk about men’s health? The path ahead is uncertain, but the conversation has begun. Will you be part of it?
For anyone wondering where to start: speak to your GP, learn your family history, and check the guidance from your local health service or organisations like Prostate Cancer UK. Small steps can open the door to better outcomes — and, sometimes, to another quiet morning at home over coffee, with more life still to live.
Russian drones launched against Kyiv in ongoing assault on the capital
Before dawn in Kyiv: sirens, smoke and the hum of a city that will not sleep
When the first air-raid sirens cut through the thick pre-dawn air, Kyiv woke with the same jolt it has learned to expect since the full-scale war began: hurried footsteps, whispered prayers, a thousand small routines practiced until they feel like muscle memory. This morning those routines were put to the test again, as Russian drones struck the Ukrainian capital, igniting fires in at least two high-rise residential buildings and knocking out parts of the city’s power and water networks, officials said.
“You never truly get used to the sound,” said Olena, a 34-year-old nurse who lives in Pechersk and who evacuated her apartment with one bag and her cat. “But somehow you do learn how to move. We grabbed our documents, the kettle, and our little one. The neighbors were calling to each other down the stairwell. People helped each other. That’s what keeps you human.”
The hard facts — what we know right now
City officials reported that early-morning drone strikes hit two residential high-rises: one in Pechersk, a central district known for its broad avenues and government buildings, and another on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River. Pictures circulated on social media and informal channels showed smoke and flames licking upper-floor windows, while Kyiv’s air-defence units engaged targets overhead.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko, posting on Telegram, said a high-rise in Pechersk was being evacuated after the impact. Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, confirmed a separate strike on the other side of the river and showed photographs of apartments ablaze on the upper stories. Ukraine’s energy ministry described the bombardment as a “massive combined” attack aimed at energy infrastructure, and said crews would assess and begin repairs when it was safe to do so.
Importantly, authorities said there were no casualties reported so far. But the physical and psychological toll of such strikes—especially on apartment towers where entire families live stacked one above another—cannot be measured only in numbers.
A city of refuges: metro stations and midnight corridors
As has become common in recent waves of strikes, Kyiv’s metro stations filled with people seeking refuge. The cavernous platforms, tiled halls, and echoing tunnels turned into temporary living rooms, with people huddled on benches and blankets spread across the concrete. Coffee was brewed over small camping stoves. A grandmother crocheted as if she could stitch the world together with yarn.
“It’s strange how normal life finds its way into these concrete caves,” said Mykola, a university student who has been sleeping in a metro station by day and studying by phone by night. “You see parents reading to children, couples making plans. You see resilience. And you also see fear. The two sit side by side.”
The architecture of vulnerability
High-rise residential buildings concentrate lives, and in modern war they concentrate risk. When a missile or drone hits an upper floor, it imperils not just that flat but dozens of connected lives below. Windows shatter, lifts stop, stairwells become smoky and treacherous. In Kyiv—home to roughly 2.8–3 million people in the city proper—there are countless buildings like these, part of the city’s skyline, part of everyday domestic life.
In summer, chestnut trees line Khreshchatyk and children play near fountains; in winter, families toast on tiny balconies. Those small, human scenes are the ones most at risk when infrastructure is targeted. “When energy systems go down, everything is magnified,” said Dr. Hanna Petrenko, an energy-security analyst at a Kyiv think tank. “Hospitals rely on power, water treatment plants need electricity, heating systems require pumps. The ripple effects are massive.”
Energy as a weapon
The energy ministry’s stark description of a “massive” attack on power infrastructure is not mere rhetoric. Since the escalation of conflict, attacks on energy networks have been a recurrent tactic—designed to strip warmth and light, diminish civilian morale, and complicate the logistics of a city under siege. In the cold months, these strikes can tip the balance between comfort and crisis, between making do and humanitarian emergency.
“We’re not just defending buildings,” said a senior repair worker, who asked not to be named for security reasons. “We’re defending the ability for people to live normally—ifyou can call anything normal these days. Restoring a transformer can mean a hospital stays open, a child can get their medicine refrigerated, an elderly person can heat their home.”
Human stories, human costs
The images that travel fastest—photos of flames against a twilight sky, the face of a child clutched by a parent on a metro bench—are only part of the story. There are quieter losses: a family’s passport burned, a violin smashed by flying glass, the plate of varenyky cooling on a windowsill. These are intimate, domestic tragedies that feed into the larger narrative of displacement and endurance.
“We moved three times last year,” said Kateryna, who runs a small bakery near the Dnipro. “Every time it’s the same thing: pack a little, leave a lot behind. But then the bakery customers come in, they laugh, they order bread, and for a moment it feels like before. That is why we keep going.”
What this means for the world beyond Kyiv
When a capital is repeatedly hit—its lights fading in and out, its people sleeping in tunnels—the reverberations are global. Energy security is now a geopolitical issue for democracies worldwide, not only a local technical problem. Supply chains, humanitarian corridors, and international aid logistics all become more complicated. And the moral calculus of targeting energy infrastructure—civilian vs. military necessity—grows more fraught.
How should democracies balance support for a besieged city with the realities of a modern battlefield? What does it mean for global norms when civilian infrastructure is deliberately targeted? These are not hypothetical questions: they are ethical and strategic challenges that diplomats, defense planners, and aid agencies must weigh.
Practical resilience—small measures, big impact
In the short term, communities stitch together resilience with practical tactics: neighborhood generators, battery banks for phones, solar panels on rooftops where possible, water bottles stacked in stairwells. NGOs and municipal services coordinate to redistribute heat sources, charge devices, and care for vulnerable residents.
- Local civil-defense teams, often volunteers, help evacuate and triage.
- Energy crews perform high-risk repairs to get hospitals and water treatment back online.
- Community kitchens and volunteer groups provide warm meals and blankets.
What to watch next
Officials in Kyiv will continue to assess damage and restore services “as soon as the security situation allows,” the energy ministry said. For residents, the immediate horizon is practical and painfully narrow—restore heat, patch windows, comfort neighbors. For the rest of the world, the horizon is longer, asking whether the rules that once governed conflict will hold, and how societies can protect civilians when vital infrastructure becomes a battlefield.
Will this pattern of strikes harden international resolve, or will it normalize a new kind of warfare where winters in cities become a bargaining chip? The answer will shape policy, aid, and how we prepare urban centers for crises to come.
For now, Kyiv breathes through the smoke and the sirens, through the quiet heroism of energy workers and the warm hands of neighbors sharing tea on a metro bench. “We’ll fix what we can,” said Olena as she returned to check on her apartment’s hallway. “We’ll keep living, because that’s what resists fear.”
What would you do if night turned sudden and loud? How do societies keep ordinary life going when the lights go out? Kyiv’s small acts of survival are a blunt reminder that resilience is not a national abstraction—it is a daily, human practice.
Scientists amazed as wolf exploits crab traps to scavenge meals
A Wolf, a Crab Trap, and a Lesson in Wild Intelligence
On a gray morning along British Columbia’s ragged central coast, a motion-triggered camera blinked awake and recorded something that made scientists rub their eyes—and then watch the footage again, slowly, as if savoring a secret told twice.
It wasn’t the usual drama of wolf-on-beach: snarling, sprinting, the raw, staccato business of predation. This was a sequence of patient, precise acts—like watching a locksmith at work. A lone female wolf swam out into the cold surf, seized a wavering float, towed it to shore, tightened a line, hauled a submerged crab trap up from the depths, then chewed through its netting to reach the bait inside.
For the researchers who set those cameras in May 2024 as part of an eradication program against invasive European green crabs, the footage read like an unexpected page in a nature documentary. “I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time we saw it,” said an environmental biologist involved in the study. “It was deliberate. It wasn’t brute force—it was problem-solving.”
The Scene: Salt, Stones and Science
The cameras were not there to study wolves. They were there because crab traps baited and sunk in deep water had been turning up empty onshore. The traps were part of a coordinated effort with Heiltsuk Nation partners to remove Carcinus maenas—the European green crab—a tiny invader that punches above its weight, gnawing at eelgrass, outcompeting native shellfish and unsettling coastal food webs.
Green crabs are on the IUCN’s list of the world’s 100 worst invasive species for a reason: across the globe they’ve altered estuaries and coastlines, damaged livelihoods that depend on clams and oysters, and strained conservation efforts. In British Columbia, communities and scientists have been mobilizing to keep these crabs from taking hold.
So when bait disappeared from traps sunk well offshore—places never exposed at low tide—researchers assumed a marine predator was to blame. The remote cameras offered an answer they hadn’t expected: a terrestrial carnivore making marine-minded moves.
The Act: A Different Kind of Foraging
Watch the clip and you see rhythm and economy. The wolf does not thrash. She swims with the efficient body roll of a predator accustomed to water. She bites the buoy, not the trap itself, and with measured tugs swims the apparatus toward the strandline.
On the sand she alternates between pulling and pacing, testing tension in the line as if gauging how much strength the contraption demands. When the trap clatters onto the beach, she clamps her jaws around the webbing and works, patiently chewing a hole large enough to extract the bait.
“It was a carefully choreographed sequence,” one co-author of the paper told me. “You watch and realize this isn’t random. This is learned technique.”
Why this matters
Tool use has long been a marker scientists point to when discussing cognition in animals. We expect it from primates, certain birds, and marine mammals: chimpanzees fashion sticks to fish for termites; New Caledonian crows bend hooks; sea otters use stones to crack open shellfish. But canids—wolves, foxes, dogs—have rarely been observed applying objects to purpose in the wild.
This footage, published in the peer-reviewed journal Ecology and Evolution, is being called “the first known potential tool use in wild wolves.” If this interpretation holds, it nudges open a window on canid problem-solving that many of us didn’t know existed.
Voices from the Coast
In the small community of Bella Bella, home to the Heiltsuk Nation, elders and fishers have always watched the shoreline closely—both for weather and for stories. “Our people have known the land and the sea are connected,” said a Heiltsuk community member involved in the project. “When animals teach us something new, it’s another reminder that we share these places in ways we’re still learning to read.”
Local fishers, who’ve hauled crabs and set traps for decades, offered a rueful chuckle. “We thought seals were the usual scavengers,” said a long-time commercial harvester. “But the wolf—pulling a trap? That’s a trick I didn’t expect from a dog.”
Learning, Culture, and Coastal Life
One of the striking possibilities the scientists raise is that this wolf’s behavior may have developed through trial-and-error in a landscape where human danger is low and marine resources are abundant. Coastal wolves—often called island or coastal wolves—are known to incorporate fish, shellfish, and even intertidal invertebrates into their diets in ways their inland cousins do not.
That means opportunities to experiment. A pup observing an older wolf tugging at a float might learn a useful trick. A trick over years can calcify into culture—socially transmitted behavior that travels through the pack like folklore.
“How do we define innovation in wildlife?” asked a behavioral ecologist who reviewed the footage. “If one wolf figures out a method and others copy it, that’s culture. It changes how a population interacts with its environment.”
Other animals that use tools
- Chimpanzees: sticks to fish for termites and rocks to crack nuts.
- Crows and ravens: hooks fashioned from twigs and wire to extract grubs.
- Sea otters: rocks used as anvils to open shellfish.
- Dolphins: marine sponges as protective tools when foraging on the seafloor.
The Broader Picture: Invasion, Stewardship, and Respect
This story sits at the intersection of several global threads. There’s the ongoing battle against invasive species—how do you protect fragile coastal ecosystems from a small crustacean that can reshape a shoreline? There’s the conversation about animal cognition and what it reveals about non-human minds. And there’s Indigenous stewardship, the collaborative science practiced with the Heiltsuk Nation, which blends traditional knowledge with modern monitoring techniques.
It also prompts a question that stretches beyond a single clip: what else are animals figuring out as human footprints recede from some wild places and intensify elsewhere? The coastal wolf’s ingenuity is a reminder that intelligence in nature is not confined to faces that look back at us; it’s woven into movement, experimentation, and adaptation.
Final Thoughts
Next time you walk a shoreline and watch a buoy bob, consider the possibility you’re not the only one who sees its promise. This wolf’s work—swimming, hauling, chewing—reads like a line in a long conversation between sea and land, between species and place. It asks us to listen a little harder.
And it asks something of you, the reader: when you look at animals in the wild, do you look for the familiar story of hunting and fleeing, or are you ready to be surprised by a different narrative—one of problem-solving, culture, and shared lives on the edge of sea and shore?
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Announces Completion of Relief Mission
A Quiet End to a Loud Experiment: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Steps Away
At dawn in a neighborhood that has become a mosaic of rubble and resilience, a queue once stretched like a braided rope of need through a dust-choked alley. Men carried infants on their shoulders; women clutched shopping bags that had become lifelines; elders sat on overturned crates and counted the hours. For months, these lines led to one of four distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—a US- and Israeli-backed private relief operation that announced this week it has finished its mission and will withdraw from Gaza.
The foundation’s parting statement leaned on numbers: more than 187 million free meals delivered directly to civilians. The gesture will register as a lifeline to many. But numbers rarely tell the whole story. How aid is delivered—by whom, under what rules, and at what cost to civilian trust—has become a battleground in its own right.
What Happened
In May, as international access to Gaza tightened under Israeli restrictions, GHF moved into a role traditionally occupied by the United Nations. Where the UN-run system once sustained approximately 400 distribution points across the territory, GHF’s operation compressed food distribution into four centres. That centralization, its backers argued, reduced theft and redirected aid where it was most needed. Its critics—UN agencies, rights groups, and local residents—said it concentrated risk and eroded impartial humanitarian norms.
The controversy escalated through the summer. A UN-mandated expert panel alleged the GHF model had been “exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas,” and UN special rapporteurs called for the mission to be shut down. The UN human rights office reported that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid at distribution sites managed by the foundation. Hamas and other Palestinian leaders accused the foundation of complicity in a broader “starvation policy”—charges the foundation and its Western supporters have strongly denied.
Voices on the ground
“When you stand in that line, you are not just asking for bread,” said Aisha, a mother of three from Gaza City whose name has been changed for safety. “You are asking the world to remember you exist. Sometimes the trucks come, sometimes they do not—the moment you are closest to help is when you are most exposed.”
“We had to be pragmatic,” said an aid worker who helped run one distribution site and asked not to be named. “With so many UN logos gone and pipelines blocked, people were starving. We made choices that meant fewer points but more controlled delivery. It saved some lives—but it made others feel like targets.”
What GHF Said
In its announcement, GHF framed the mission as complete and successful. “After delivering more than 187 million free meals directly to civilians living in Gaza, GHF today announced the successful completion of its emergency mission,” the foundation wrote, noting ongoing talks with other international organizations and with the Civil-Military Coordination Centre, a US-led task force monitoring the truce in southern Israel.
“It’s clear they will be adopting and expanding the model GHF piloted,” John Acree, GHF’s executive director, said in the release. The implication: private, tightly monitored aid operations may become a more common blueprint when states restrict traditional humanitarian access.
A divided chorus of responses
The US State Department publicly thanked GHF and suggested its oversight helped bring Hamas to the negotiating table, giving credit to the model for supporting the ceasefire reached on 10 October and the associated hostage-prisoner exchange. Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesperson, wrote on social media that the foundation’s measures to prevent looting and diversion had been instrumental in achieving the pause in hostilities.
Not everyone shared that appraisal. Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for Hamas, demanded accountability. “We call upon all international human rights organisations to ensure that it does not escape accountability after causing the death and injury of thousands of Gazans,” he wrote on his Telegram channel, accusing the organisation of covering up a policy that amounted to collective punishment. Whether the grounds for legal or moral reckoning will translate into action remains unclear.
Between Aid and Geopolitics
This is not simply a story of logistics. It is a microcosm of how humanitarian action has shifted in an era of intense politicization and shrinking trust. When aid delivery becomes entwined with military and diplomatic objectives, its neutral character is often the first casualty.
Consider the practical trade-offs. Concentration of aid at fewer sites can streamline security and reduce theft; it can also create chokepoints where civilians are exposed and compressed. Independent monitoring—an essential pillar of humanitarian ethics—becomes harder when the entities running the aid are perceived as politically partial. International humanitarian law and long-standing relief principles emphasize neutrality, impartiality, and independence. When these are perceived to be in doubt, the very act of giving aid can become a flashpoint.
Dr. Leila Mansour, a humanitarian policy analyst who has worked in multiple conflict zones, put it frankly: “There is no neutral ground left in some theatres of conflict. Donors seek results; governments seek control; humanitarian organisations seek access. When a private foundation backed by states deploys in place of the UN, it raises legitimate questions about who is accountable to whom.”
Quick Facts
- Meals delivered by GHF: more than 187 million (as claimed in the group’s statement).
- Distribution centres run by GHF: 4, compared with approximately 400 former UN-run points.
- Ceasefire in Gaza: A US-brokered pause and hostage-prisoner exchange took effect on 10 October (first phase of a wider process).
- Population impacted: Gaza is home to roughly 2.3 million people, many of whom were displaced or dependent on external food assistance during the conflict.
What Comes Next?
GHF says other international organisations and the Civil-Military Coordination Centre will take up and expand its model. That could mean more centralized, militarily monitored aid systems—less vulnerable to theft, perhaps, but also more tightly tied to political objectives. For civilians in Gaza, the urgent question is whether the flow of food, medicine, and reconstruction funds will be steady, impartial, and safe.
“We need predictable deliveries, yes,” said Khaled, a small-business owner near Khan Younis. “But we also need dignity. Handing out food under cameras and cages feels like charity dressed as control.”
Accountability will be another test. International actors will be watching whether independent investigations into the deaths at distribution sites advance, whether families receive answers, and whether lessons from this fraught episode translate into policy change.
Broader Questions for the Reader
What happens when the mechanics of relief are repurposed as tools of statecraft? When is the price of safe, efficient delivery too high because it compromises principles that protect civilians? And who speaks for communities on the receiving end of aid?
If nothing else, the GHF episode serves as a stark reminder that humanitarian aid is never purely technical. It is threaded through with politics, ethics, power—and human faces waiting in the dust for a meal that might mean the difference between life and death.
As Gaza begins to imagine reconstruction and as the international community debates new models of aid, the quiet emptying of those four warehouses marks not only an end but an invitation—to rebuild systems that truly serve people first.
Soomaaliya iyo Turkiga oo ka wada hadlay xoojinta iyo horumarinta xiriirka diblomaasiyadeed
Nov 24(Jowhar)-Wasiirka Arrimaha Dibadda iyo Iskaashiga Caalamiga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya, Mudane Cabdisalaan Cabdi Cali, ayaa maanta xafiiskiisa ku qaabilay Safiirka Dowladda Turkiga ee Soomaaliya, Ambassador Alper Aktas.
Fifty Nigerian schoolchildren kidnapped in raid break free from captors
They Came at Dusk: A Community on Edge After One of Nigeria’s Largest School Kidnappings
The sun had just dipped behind the low Niger State hills when the first frightened parents began to arrive at St Mary’s co-educational school. Some were drawn by the siren of rumours; others by the small tribe of ambulances and policemen. A woman in a faded wrapper clutched a thermos of hot tea as if it would steady her hands: “I knew something was wrong when my son didn’t come to fetch water after prayers,” she told me, voice tight with fatigue. “We have been waiting since Friday.”
In the days that followed, the slow, wrenching rhythms of reunion and despair played out in public. Fifty children — a small, miraculous number when set against the scale of the crime — slipped back into the arms of parents and neighbours after daring escapes, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). Their stories are vivid: flashlights in the bush, a broken strap, a chance to run. “They came in the night, like thieves in the harmattan,” one liberated boy said, rubbing his eyes. “We were scared, but we ran.”
What Happened at St Mary’s
Gunmen attacked St Mary’s school in Niger State on a Friday evening, seizing hundreds of children in one of the nation’s largest mass kidnappings in recent memory. CAN reported that 303 pupils and 12 teachers were taken. The school, which has a total enrolment of about 629 students, lost nearly half its children in a single, brutal operation. Children taken ranged in age from about eight to 18.
This raid did not come in isolation. Earlier the same week, armed men stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi State and abducted 25 girls. Across the country, these episodes have triggered panic and a cascade of school closures: the national education ministry ordered 47 boarding secondary schools to shut their dormitories while authorities reassess security measures.
Numbers That Refuse to Be Ignored
- 303 pupils and 12 teachers reported abducted from St Mary’s.
- 50 students have escaped and returned home, according to CAN.
- 47 boarding secondary schools were ordered closed nationwide by the education ministry.
- Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with roughly 216 million people, and the social ripple effects of such attacks extend far beyond any single village.
Voices From the Ground
“There is no night that feels safe anymore,” said Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, CAN chairman in Niger State, his hands laced on the makeshift stage where grieving families gathered. “We rejoice for the children who have returned, but our prayers are for the rest. We need swift action to bring them back.”
A local schoolteacher, who asked to be identified only as Mariam, described the fear that now hangs over classrooms. “Parents are calling to take their children home even though we try to reassure them. How do you explain that the place meant to teach them maths and English has turned into a target?”
Security analysts say this pattern of abductions is both strategic and opportunistic. “Kidnappings of students have become a revenue model for organised criminal gangs,” explained Dr Amina Bello, a security specialist at a leading Abuja think tank. “They’re also a means to humiliate the state — to point to the failures of protection. The combination is devastating: economic motives overlaid with the broader insecurity that plagues many rural communities.”
History of Trauma: Chibok and a Nation’s Memory
For many Nigerians, the wounds reopen the moment the headlines flash. Memory goes back to April 2014, when nearly 276 girls from Chibok were taken by Boko Haram in one of the world’s most notorious kidnappings. Years later, some remain missing; some freed girls continue to live with trauma and social stigma.
These historical echoes make each new abduction feel less like an isolated crime and more like part of a relentless story. “We have to remember that these are not just statistics,” a local imam said quietly, as he handed out bottled water to distraught families. “Every child is someone’s whole world.”
Why Schools Are Targets
There are multiple, overlapping reasons: poverty in rural areas, armed groups operating with impunity, and the absence of rapid, effective security responses. Kidnapping students is a high-profile way for criminals to secure ransom payments and media attention, and it exploits gaps in protective infrastructure — from underfunded local police posts to long stretches of unlit roads where patrols are rare.
“Schools are both soft targets and lucrative ones,” Dr Bello said. “The criminals calculate that communities will pay to get their children back. That makes it a persistent model unless you address both security and socio-economic drivers.”
The Human Cost: Beyond Fear
The immediate horror is obvious: children snatched, teachers taken, families shattered. But the longer grief is quieter and more insidious. When boarding schools close, children lose days, months, even years of education. Parents, already stretched thinly by rising prices and uncertain incomes, must decide whether to risk sending their children back. The dropout rates among older boys and girls climb. Futures are re-rolled like dice.
“My daughter dreams of becoming a doctor,” said Fatima, a mother in the nearby town, her hands stained from preparing cassava. “Now she’s scared to go back to class. Who will step in and promise safety and hope?”
What Comes Next?
Authorities say they are investigating and have vowed to pursue the perpetrators, but parents and civil society are pressing for more concrete measures — better intelligence, regional coordination between state and federal forces, community early-warning systems, and a faster humanitarian response to support traumatised children.
International voices have also joined local ones. Religious leaders have appealed for restraint and rescue; citizens abroad have held vigils and shared petitions. Yet the most immediate pressure rests on the families and neighbours who wake early each day to head back to uncertain fields and quiet classrooms.
Actions People Want to See
- Increased, community-integrated security patrols around schools.
- Investment in protective infrastructure — lighting, perimeter fencing, emergency communications.
- Trauma counselling and emergency education programs for affected children.
- Transparent investigations and accountability to deter future attacks.
Where Do We Turn From Here?
For the parents hugging their freed children, the future is cramped with immediate needs: food, health checks, paperwork for school re-enrolment, and a search for the rest. For those whose loved ones remain missing, every sunset is another tightening wound.
And for readers far from Niger State, there’s an uncomfortable question: how do we bear witness without turning pain into spectacle? How do we demand, across borders and languages, that the places meant to be safe — churches, schools, classrooms — are guaranteed that safety?
Perhaps the clearest demand is simple: protect children. Not as ideology, but as an urgent, practical imperative. When a school becomes a battlefield, the toll is not only the children taken; it is the future deferred for an entire community. The task now is to restore not just those children to their homes, but trust to the places that raise a society.
As one mother said, wiping a tear that refused to fall, “Bring our children back, and then teach us how to sleep at night.”
Taoiseach travels to Angola for EU-African Union summit talks
A Taoiseach in Luanda: A Summit, a Railway and the Quiet Noise of Big Power Chess
When Micheál Martin stepped off the plane in Luanda, the air clung to his jacket like warm breath. The capital’s scent — diesel, grilled fish, and jasmine from a nearby garden — met him before the formalities did. He had come for a summit that reads like a global to-do list: an EU–African Union gathering meant to remake ties, broker deals, and quieter still, reassign influence.
Behind the official headlines — meetings, handshakes, cameras — is a city and a continent that refuse to be footnotes in other people’s geopolitics. Angola, this summit’s host, is a place where glossy hotel lobbies sit beside markets so loud you can hear the cadence of deals being made. The Taoiseach’s arrival follows a quick u-turn of world leaders who left the G20 in Johannesburg and landed here, where Europe, Africa, and other powers will spend two days hashing out cooperation on everything from trade and energy to security and migration.
Why Luanda, Why Now?
This is the seventh EU–AU summit, and it arrives in the shadow of a shaken global order. Two headlines loom large: the crisis in Ukraine and the scramble for Africa’s resources and loyalties. Before the social niceties of Luanda begin, European leaders will huddle — an informal European Council meeting about Ukraine — a reminder that alliances and old commitments still press on the European agenda.
And yet the summit is also a milestone: 25 years since the EU and the African Union formally began a partnership. That quarter-century anniversary is both a celebration and a challenge. Has Europe kept pace with Africa’s accelerating dynamism? Can it position itself as a reliable partner while other actors — China, the United States, Russia — pursue their own agendas?
At the Top of the Agenda
Officials have set out a dense agenda. Expect discussions on:
- Security cooperation, including counterterrorism and maritime patrols;
- Trade and investment frameworks to boost jobs and industrialization;
- Energy partnerships — especially clean energy transitions and access;
- Migration management that balances human rights with border concerns;
- Access to critical minerals for the green technology push.
These items look simple on a brochure and fiendishly complicated in reality. Each line intersects with sovereignty, local expectations, and history.
Trade, Influence and the Numbers That Matter
Europe is not a bystander. The EU is the leading source of foreign direct investment for Africa and its largest commercial partner; bilateral trade in goods and services hit about €467 billion in 2023. Those figures give Brussels bargaining power, yet raw numbers do not translate automatically into trust.
Meanwhile, Africa is no longer the “continent of the future” speech. It is present, young — roughly 1.4 billion people — and strategically vital. Its minerals are indispensable for the global green transition: cobalt, copper, and other rare materials are essential to batteries, wind turbines, and the devices we use every day. That reality has turned the continent into a renewed diplomatic battleground.
Global Gateway, Lobito Corridor — Big Promises, Local Proof
The EU comes armed with the Global Gateway, an umbrella plan to finance infrastructure that can rival China’s Belt and Road ambitions. In Angola, one of Global Gateway’s marquee projects is the Lobito corridor — a railway intended to link the mineral-rich interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to the Atlantic seaboard. Housed under the glow of international partnership, it is also being touted as a way to lessen Europe’s dependence on Chinese supply chains for critical minerals.
Yet promises and rails are different things. “Investment must move from PowerPoint to the factory floor,” said Ikemesit Effiong, who watches African economies from a consultancy in Lagos. “Europe’s credibility now depends on whether projects deliver real value — jobs, processing capacity, and functioning hospitals — not just visibility for Brussels.”
Luanda Up Close: Voices on the Street
Walking through the Miramar market, vendors trade more than mangoes and peanuts. They trade memories of unmet pledges and cautious optimism about the future.
“They come with nice maps and speak of corridors,” said Ana Maria, a market seller who has lived in Luanda for 40 years. “But I want to know: will my son get an apprenticeship? Will the road to our clinic be fixed?”
Across town, João, a high-school science teacher, watches the summit through a different lens. “We need partners who invest in education, not only in extractive pipelines,” he told me. “If the Lobito corridor brings wealth but no schools, we just export our children.”
An EU diplomat, speaking on background, acknowledged the gap: “We must be honest. There has been a messaging problem. We can finance projects, but building sustainable local capacity requires longer timelines and deeper collaboration.”
A Local Critic and a Global Observer
Not everyone is convinced by promises of mutual benefit. “Too many projects are designed in Brussels and delivered by contractors who fly in and out,” said Samir Mendes, a Luanda-based civil-society activist. “If this summit is to matter, it must change procurement rules, support local industry, and protect communities.”
Analysts beyond the continent also watch, noting that the US showed uneasy distance at the recent G20 and that China’s deep pockets continue to shape African infrastructure. Russia, meanwhile, threads military and political influence into its ties. The result is complex geopolitics with Africa at the center — not as a pawn, but as a player with leverage.
What Is at Stake — for Europe, for Africa, for the World?
This summit asks a deceptively simple question: how do two blocs build a partnership that is equitable, sustainable, and resilient? For Europe, the stakes are access to resources and strategic partnerships for a green transition. For Africa, the stakes are dignity, industrial growth, and the ability to set terms that advance domestic priorities.
There is also a moral dimension. Migration flows, driven by climate change, conflict, and lack of opportunity, link Europe and Africa through human stories as much as economic charts. Young Africans are the majority of the continent’s population. Failure to create meaningful jobs — from manufacturing to digital services — will fuel the same challenges policymakers are trying to fix.
Leaving Luanda — Questions More Than Answers
When leaders fly out of Luanda, they will carry communiqués, memoranda and photo-ops. But the real test will be what happens after the delegates leave — when rails are built, when revenues are shared, and when local factories open their doors.
Will Europe move beyond sponsorship to partnership? Can investments translate into tangible improvements in health, education and employment? And perhaps most importantly: will African voices shape projects on their own terms?
As this summit begins, stand in Luanda’s evening light and ask yourself: what kind of partnership do we want to see between continents? One that is transactional, or one that is transformational?
Those questions have no simple answers. But in the bustling markets and quiet classrooms of Luanda, they are already being lived out. The world will be watching — and listening.
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