Sep 07(Jowhar)-Madaxwaynaha Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya Mudane Dr. Xasan Sheekh Maxamuud ayaa soo gaaray magaalada Addis Ababa ee caasimadda dalka Itoobiya halkaas oo uu kaga qaybgali doono Meertada Labaad ee Shirka Cimilada Afrika.
Duqa Muqdisho oo furaay Waddada “ VIA MOSCOW”
Sep 07(Jowhar)-Guddoomiyaha Gobolka Banaadir ahna Duqa Magaalada Muqdisho, Dr. Xasan Maxamed Xuseen (Muungaab), ayaa maanta xarigga ka jaray wadada dib loo dhisay ee VIA Moskow, taas oo isku xirta buundooyinka degmooyinka Xamar Jajab iyo Waaberi.
Pope names first millennial saint, hailed as “God’s influencer”
Under the shadow of St. Peter’s dome: a new kind of saint for a wired world
On a clear Roman morning, St. Peter’s Square felt more like a global village than the centre of a city. Flags from distant parishes fluttered beside backpacks, teenagers with earbuds threaded under their scarves stood shoulder to shoulder with nuns in habits older than the century. The Vatican estimated roughly 80,000 people had come to witness what many described as a hinge moment between ancient ritual and contemporary life: the canonisation of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati.
The scene was all texture—tapestries unfurled across the basilica’s façade, papal banners catching the breeze, the smell of roasting chestnuts from nearby vendors mixing with incense. Smartphones lifted in unison produced a soft constellation of screens. English, Spanish, Tagalog, Italian, Portuguese and Polish stitched the air into a dozen conversations. “It felt like every continent had a seat in that piazza,” said Maria Lopez, a pilgrim from Colombia. “I came for the moment, but I stay for the people.”
“God’s Influencer”: a teenager in jeans and trainers
Carlo Acutis is not the sort of saint most art historians would have painted. Born in London in 1991 to Italian parents and raised in Milan, he died at 15 in 2006 after a brief battle with leukaemia. Yet his preserved body—dressed in jeans and Nike trainers—lies in a glass-walled tomb in Assisi and has become a destination for nearly one million pilgrims in the last year alone, according to the local diocese.
“Carlo was a normal teenager,” said Antonia Salzano, his mother, speaking quietly after the Mass. “He loved football. He loved computer games. But he loved the Eucharist more than anything. He believed that holiness is for everyone.”
Where older models of sainthood were forged in monasteries or on battlefields, Acutis built his devotion at a keyboard. A self-taught coder, he documented Eucharistic miracles online and taught friends how to merge their digital talents with their spiritual lives. That blending earned him the nickname that trailed in news reports and social feeds: “God’s Influencer.” Whether you find that label charming or jarring, it carries a simple truth—the Church is acknowledging that sanctity can be cultivated within the architecture of contemporary culture.
Miracles, the paperwork of heaven
Canonisation is not folkloric adoration: it is a painstaking process of investigation that, in modern practice, typically looks for two verified miracles attributed to the candidate’s intercession. For Acutis, Vatican investigators recorded two recoveries that doctors could not fully explain: firstly, the healing of a young Brazilian child born with a rare pancreatic malformation; secondly, the recovery of a Costa Rican student who survived serious injuries after an accident. In both cases, family members said they prayed to Carlo.
- Miracle 1: Brazilian child with pancreatic malformation (healing attributed to Acutis)
- Miracle 2: Costa Rican student, serious injuries reversed (also attributed)
“Science and faith are not enemies,” said Father Marco Bernini, a Vatican official involved with the cause. “The Church’s tribunals examine medical records, call experts, and weigh testimony. When doctors say there is no medical explanation, the Church acknowledges what the people of faith have experienced.”
Pier Giorgio Frassati: the mountaineer of charity
The other figure today lifted to the altars was Pier Giorgio Frassati, an earlier kind of youthful luminary. Born in 1901 and dying in 1925 of poliomyelitis at age 24, Frassati was an engineering student who spent weekends climbing the Alps and weekdays caring for the poor of Turin. His life—equal parts risk on the rock faces and risk for the destitute—has long been a touchstone for young Catholics drawn to action as prayer.
“Pier Giorgio taught that joy and service are bedfellows,” said Sister Lucia Pellegrino, who runs a shelter in Turin inspired by Frassati’s example. “He was irreverent, and he was real. That is why young people still come to him.”
For Frassati, the second miracle needed for sainthood was recognised in 2024: the unexplained healing of a young American man who had been in a coma. With that recognition, the path was clear for today’s elevation.
What this moment says about youth, faith and the internet
Look closer and you’ll see patterns that explain why two young men—one a mountaineer, one a coder—were chosen now. Nearly 1.3 billion people identify as Catholic worldwide. Yet the Church, like many long-standing institutions, is wrestling with how to retain the attention of a generation whose attention is fragmented across apps, global crises and rising secularism. Carlo’s story answers an anxious question: Can holiness be visible in the lived, messy middle of everyday modern life?
“I told my friends about Carlo on Instagram,” said Eleanor Hauser, a 15-year-old American on a school trip. “They laughed—then they Googled him. That’s how it works now. Faith travels through networks as much as it does through catechism books.”
Experts point out that this is not merely a PR move. “Canonising younger models is a pastoral strategy and a theological statement,” said Dr. Emiliano Rossi, a theologian at the Gregorian University. “It signals to youth that sanctity is not the exclusive domain of elders or monks; it can be lived in school corridors, soccer pitches, and online forums.”
Faces in the crowd: local color and human stories
There were simple, human moments that the cameras missed. A vendor from Trastevere joked about the spike in sales of rosaries and espresso. A retired teacher from Poland sobbed quietly as she displayed a battered photo of Carlo clipped to a rosary she’d carried for years. Young Italians compared pilgrimage routes to hiking maps—Assisi versus Rome—while a Brazilian mother traced the name of the child healed by Carlo’s intercession on her palm.
“He’s not a statue to me,” said Filippo Bellaviti, 17, who came from Milan. “He’s someone who shows faith can fit inside homework and football practice. That’s hopeful.”
Beyond the rituals: questions to take home
Standing beneath tapestries that showed both young saints, one felt the pull of larger questions: What does holiness look like in an age of screens, algorithms, and global churn? How do communities form meaning today, and who gets to be a model? The canonisation of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati asks us to expand our imagination of virtue—toward courage, yes, but also toward creativity, compassion, and the courage to be ordinary and extraordinary at once.
Are saints suddenly more relatable because they wore jeans or scaled mountains? Or is this a deeper call—to see divine possibility in skills and passions we might otherwise consign to the mundane? As you read this, somewhere someone is livestreaming a Mass, teaching a prayer on TikTok, or knitting a scarf for a stranger. Small acts. Big faith.
Whether you stand within Rome’s cobblestoned squares or watch the ceremony from a living room halfway across the world, the message reverberates: sanctity adapts to culture, but it never loses its essentials. It asks for kindness. It asks for courage. And, increasingly, it asks us to notice where the sacred and the secular quietly intersect.
UN: Wildfires are brewing a toxic cocktail of air pollution
When the sky goes on a journey
Some mornings the light in my city turned the color of steeped tea. The sun rose, but it wasn’t warm—it was filtered through a haze that made faces softer and thoughts narrower. Children in schoolyards coughed; laundry dried with a faint film of soot that flaked off onto the balcony rail.
We were not living next to a factory or a coal plant. The smoke, when traced back, came from places thousands of kilometres away: fires in boreal forests, peat burning in tropical basins, farmers setting fields alight after harvest.
That is the unnerving truth the World Meteorological Organization laid out this year in its fifth Air Quality and Climate Bulletin: air pollution does not respect borders. When wildfires ignite, they create a moving, complex cloud of particles and gases that can travel across continents, changing the air you breathe in ways that are immediate and dangerous.
A witches’ brew on the winds
Wildfire smoke is not a single ingredient. It is a shifting cocktail of soot, organic carbon, volatile organic compounds and chemical fragments that react in the atmosphere. Scientists call many of these particles “aerosols.” Some reflect sunlight; some absorb it. Some seed clouds; others accelerate melting on distant glaciers when dark carbon settles on snow.
“What leaves the pyre is a witches’ brew,” said Lorenzo Labrador, a WMO scientific officer who coordinated this year’s bulletin. “Those components can travel, mix, age, and then arrive in valleys and cities hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.”
The most dangerous of those particles are PM2.5—particulate matter finer than 2.5 micrometres. They slip past the body’s defenses, embedding deep in lungs and entering the bloodstream. The World Health Organization links outdoor air pollution to more than 4.5 million premature deaths each year. The 2021 WHO air quality guideline now recommends an annual PM2.5 exposure of 5 micrograms per cubic metre or less—levels most of the world still struggles to meet.
Where the numbers spiked in 2024
The WMO bulletin mapped places where wildfire seasons pushed PM2.5 above seasonal norms in 2024: Canada’s forests, Russia’s Siberia, pockets of central Africa—and most dramatically, the Amazon basin. Smoke episodes from Canada even left a fingerprint on European air quality in certain meteorological setups. The message is blunt: a fire that ignites in one hemisphere can darken skies in another.
Voices from the frontlines
“We wake up and our throats are raw. My grandson’s asthma has become worse during these months,” said Rita Singh, 62, who farms rice and wheat in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. She described mornings when a persistent fog sits low over the fields, not merely a seasonal mist but a pall augmented by burning crop residue and household smoke.
On the other side of the globe, Aleksandr Petrov, a volunteer firefighter in Siberia, recalled hands blistered by heat and lungs made sore by ash. “You carry a smell with you for days,” he said. “Even in the village house, the curtains smell of smoke. We know the forests will grow back. The people do not have that patience.”
Dr. Maya Chen, an air-quality researcher at a university in Singapore, explained the science in plain terms: “When you have prolonged heat and drought—driven by climate change—fuels dry out. Fires are bigger, they burn hotter and longer, and they loft particles much higher into the atmosphere where winds can take them far.”
The human and economic toll
Air pollution is more than an abstract statistic. It is missed school and work days; it is births complicated by maternal exposure; it is harvests shorn by reduced sunlight and crops coated in ash. The economic ripples are enormous—lost wages, extra healthcare costs, and reduced labor productivity. Global assessments suggest the welfare and productivity losses from air pollution run into the hundreds of billions annually, if not more.
On the Indo-Gangetic Plain, where over 900 million people live, winter fog episodes laced with PM2.5 are becoming longer and more persistent—partly because millions of tonnes of agricultural residue are burned each year. “This fog is no longer just weather,” the WMO warned. “It is a symptom.”
What works—and why isolated fixes aren’t enough
The story is not all bleak. Eastern China, for instance, has seen sustained declines in PM2.5 in recent years thanks to a mix of regulations, cleaner fuels, and industrial controls. Paolo Laj, the WMO’s global atmosphere chief, pointed out that when countries commit to air quality strategies, the atmosphere records the change.
“Take a decade-long view,” Laj said. “Cities that regulate, switch to cleaner heating, and invest in monitoring see tangible improvements.”
Yet there is no single silver bullet. Switching to electric cars helps in urban centres, but it doesn’t stop a wildfire on a distant continent from pushing PM2.5 into your city. Cutting coal is necessary for climate and local pollution, but massive wildfire seasons—aggravated by heat and drought—require land management, firefighting investment, and cross-border cooperation.
Practical levers for change
- Build dense monitoring networks—satellite data helps, but ground stations capture the health-relevant details.
- Reduce routine agricultural burning by offering alternatives—mechanization, incentivized residue management, and market-based disposal.
- Strengthen early warning and air-quality alerts so schools can plan recess and cities can limit outdoor exposure during peaks.
- Address black carbon specifically—reducing short-lived climate pollutants protects both health and ice sheets.
- Invest in community health responses—clean cookstoves, masks distribution during peaks, and access to care.
Beyond borders: why this should matter to everyone
Ask yourself: what is the value of a blue sky? To many of us, it is aesthetic. To billions, it is life. This is a global issue because climate change lengthens fire seasons and makes extreme heat and drought more likely. It is a public health issue because PM2.5 is a silent killer. It is a social justice issue because the burden falls hardest on those who can least afford air purifiers and healthcare—children, outdoor workers, older adults and low-income communities.
There are moral and practical reasons for nations to cooperate more deeply. A soot-laden plume drifting from Canada across the Atlantic is a reminder that our atmospheric commons needs stewardship as much as any river or ocean.
Where we go from here
Somewhere between the farmer burning stubble to clear a field and the policymaker drafting emissions rules, there is an opportunity for new thinking—and for old habits to be reframed. Technology can help. Better weather forecasting, coupled with targeted advisories and international data sharing, can limit harm. Financial tools can smooth transitions for farmers and support reforestation rather than repeated combustion.
“We have examples where policy works,” Dr. Chen said. “Now we need scale and political will. People notice when the air clears; they demand action. That is how change happens.”
So what will you do when the sky turns brown where you live? Will you ask your leaders whether their air-quality plans consider distant fires as well as local emissions? Will communities push for incentives that keep fields from burning and invest in early-warning systems? The air is a daily commons—it carries our breath, our business, our future. Treating it as such may be the most practical form of solidarity we can muster.
Reform UK’s momentum keeps building, as support continues to rise
Theatrics at the NEC: Politics as Prime-Time
On a damp Birmingham morning, the National Exhibition Centre—the glass-and-concrete cathedral for conferences of every stripe—was buzzing like a festival ground rather than a political assembly.
Stalls hawked turquoise jerseys, enamel badges and glossy leaflets while conference-goers queued for coffee beneath banners that unfurled the party slogan in bold type: Make Britain Great Again. Sparks of staged pyrotechnics and strobe lights threw the hall into moments of wrestling-arena drama as speakers strode onstage to pulse-pounding music.
Jeremy Kyle, known to many as a television provocateur, prowled the aisles in the new role of roving reporter, his microphone prodding delegates and party heavies alike. He was one of the weekend’s most literal reminders that this was as much a media event as a policy convention—a show designed to be filmed, clipped and shared.
Song, Sequins and a Singing Mayor
There were lighter, stranger moments too. Andrea Jenkyns—recently elected Mayor of Lincolnshire—took the stage in a glittering sequin jumpsuit and sang a song called “Insomnia,” which she co-wrote two decades ago. Not everyone in the crowd rose to their feet in applause for the vocal performance, but the sight of a local mayor closing a political conference with a rendition of the national anthem felt like a deliberate recalibration of how politics can be staged.
“It was bonkers,” said one delegate, an exhausted but smiling man from Stoke. “You come for speeches, you get a pop concert and a singalong. That’s politics now—if you can’t get people’s attention, you’re not speaking to them.”
Showmanship Meets Messaging
If there was a theme to the weekend, it was that Reform UK has embraced spectacle as a tool. The turquoise jerseys—selling briskly—were intentional theater: a visual shorthand that recalled the red MAGA caps of America’s populist moment. It was an aesthetic choice with a political message; style here is policy-adjacent.
“It’s about creating an identity,” a campaign strategist said, asking not to be named. “You make a brand people can wear, and they do your thinking for you on the train home.”
Discipline, Discord and a Return to the Fold
But underneath the glitter, the conference also exposed the cleavage between brand and governance. Party leader Nigel Farage used his closing speech to remind members that, for all the razzmatazz, discipline matters. It was a pointed note after a year in which the party weathered public rows with former insiders—most memorably a fallout with ex-chair Zia Yusuf and public spats that spilled onto social media.
Mr Yusuf, who had publicly criticized a parliamentary intervention by the party’s Sarah Pochin, later returned to take a leading policy role. The episode, observers say, is emblematic of a party still trying to reconcile insurgent energy with the day-to-day business of political management.
“You can’t run a movement like a band,” a former local councillor grumbled. “At some point someone has to do the boring, hard graft of policy and compromise. Otherwise it’s just noise.”
Policy, Promises and the Limits of Spectacle
The weekend also revived controversial policy headlines. The party’s pledge to deport up to 600,000 asylum seekers—an idea that would require leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, its backers say—remains a flashpoint. Critics point out that the ECHR is a core element of the Good Friday Agreement: removing the UK from the convention would have implications for peace arrangements in Northern Ireland and require complex renegotiation.
“Sovereignty talk without logistics is fantasy,” said Dr. Amina Hassan, a lecturer in international law. “Rights conventions are enmeshed in treaties across borders. You can’t just sign out of one document and expect the rest of the architecture to stand unscathed.”
When questioned, Mr Farage insisted the policy was workable, arguing the ECHR clause had been “tacked on” and would not derail peace accords. Opponents retorted that such assurance underestimates legal pathways, diplomatic consequences, and the practicalities of mass removals.
Immigration, Welfare and Fractured Lines
Inside the conference, voices were not monolithic. Sarah Pochin, one of the party’s MPs, told reporters she personally favors a policy that would limit access to benefits and NHS care for recent arrivals—a stance she acknowledged was not yet party doctrine. “If we’re serious about fairness, you have to start with residency,” she said in a conversation clearly meant for cameras.
These internal debates are signs of a party still constructing its playbook: bold headlines on the one hand, messy debates on the practical mechanics on the other.
Momentum, Money and the Lobbyists
Attendees noted an unusually robust presence of lobbyists and former Conservative operatives. “You wouldn’t see this at the Lib Dems,” one veteran of dozens of conferences observed. It’s a telling barometer: where money and influence shadow an event, people infer electability.
Some polls have suggested that Reform UK has been polling strongly in recent months—often cited figures place the party around 30% in certain national surveys since last year’s local elections—prompting nervous glances from Westminster. Whether that momentum can be sustained, and whether it translates into the concentrated support needed to form a government, are open questions.
Defections, Alliances and the Long Chess Game
High-profile defections—such as former Conservative ministers and aides flirting with the party—feed fears that Reform could become a de facto home for disaffected Tories. Nadine Dorries’ recent move and the presence of people like Jacob Rees-Mogg at fringe events underline a porous political landscape. “Politics is about coalitions,” the Rees-Moggs’ presence seemed to declare to anyone willing to read it.
But there is a paradox: absorbing more mainstream defectors risks diluting the insurgent identity that fuels Reform’s energy. If the party becomes seen merely as an offshoot of the Conservatives, it may lose its distinct appeal.
What Does This Mean for Britain—and for Us?
At the NEC, there was an unquestionable verve. Thousands left with new jerseys, brochures and a sense that they had witnessed something consequential. Yet spectacle is not governance. Glitter doesn’t draft legislation. Singalongs don’t negotiate treaties.
So ask yourself: are you drawn to politics that entertains or politics that deliberates? Is it comfort or competence you want in the places where policy meets people’s lives?
As Britain heads toward future elections, this conference may be remembered as the moment Reform UK graduated from insurgent movement to institutional contender. Or it may be seen as a high-water mark of performance politics—a clever, combustible mix of image, anger and improvisation that peaks before the hard reality of administration arrives.
“Momentum is fragile,” a campaign analyst said as the lights came down. “You can ride a wave of discontent—and sometimes that’s enough. But waves crash, and then you have to build a harbor.”
For now, the turquoise jerseys will take their place in cupboards across the country. The bigger questions—about policy coherence, international obligations, and the trade-offs between theatricality and governance—remain unresolved. And that uncertainty is where the real story lies.
Russian strikes on Ukraine kill three, including a child
Smoke over Pecherskyi: A Morning When the City Held Its Breath
When dawn broke over Kyiv, the skyline was not the familiar silhouette of cupolas and cranes but a ribbon of smoke stitching itself into the pale sky. It rose from the heart of the city — the government quarter in Pecherskyi — and from residential blocks far from the gilded domes, where ordinary life had been abruptly interrupted by an overnight barrage of drones and missiles.
Three people were killed, officials said: an infant, a young woman, and an elderly woman sheltering in the Darnytskyi district on the east bank of the Dnipro. Eighteen others were wounded, and scores of buildings — apartments, high-rises and the very seat of municipal power — smoldered or bore the jagged scars of impact.
A child among the casualties
“An entire family’s life collapsed in the span of a few minutes,” said a woman who declined to give her name, standing outside a temporary aid station where volunteers wrapped blankets around survivors. “There was a baby. A life that hadn’t even begun. How do you sleep after that happens?”
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, wrote on Telegram that a fire had broken out at the government building in the city centre after an attack that began with drones and was followed by missile strikes. Reuters journalists and witnesses saw thick black smoke billowing from the building in the Pecherskyi district, the smoke threading across the city as if to remind everyone below of the fragility of normalcy.
Neighborhoods scarred: Pecherskyi, Darnytskyi, Sviatoshynskyi
In Darnytskyi, state emergency officials described a residential building where two of its four stories were on fire and structural parts had been destroyed. In the western Sviatoshynskyi district, several floors of a nine-storey residential block were partially collapsed. Drone debris, they said, set further fires in a 16-storey building and in two more nine-storey apartments.
“The walls have been blackened, but the worst is the silence of the neighbours who no longer answer their doors,” said Ihor, a shopkeeper from Sviatoshynskyi who spent the morning salvaging what he could from his store. “You don’t plan for this. You never imagine your life will be split between ‘before’ and ‘after’ like a seam ripped open.”
Scenes from the city
Photos circulating from emergency services showed facades crumbled, stairwells exposed to the sky and smoke pouring out of shattered windows — images that mirror, in hundreds of cities across Ukraine, the human cost of modern, urban warfare. Fire crews in fluorescent jackets navigated rubble as neighbours handed over water and warm coats. Volunteers set up cots in school gyms. Churches opened doors to those seeking quiet and shelter, another familiar tableau from the war’s long months.
Beyond Kyiv: ripples across the country
The strikes were not confined to the capital. Explosions rattled Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, cutting power to parts of the city; Odesa in the south reported damaged civilian infrastructure and fires in apartment blocks; Kryvyi Rih saw attacks targeting transport and urban infrastructure, officials said — although, in that case, no injuries were immediately reported.
“This is not just about damaged buildings,” said Marina Petrenko, a volunteer with a regional aid network. “When a transport hub, a school or an apartment block is hit, it fractures the web of everyday life. The elderly lose access to pharmacies. Parents lose access to childcare. The ripple effects are enormous.”
The tactics: drones, missiles, and civilian spaces
What began as a cascade of small, unmanned drones — the kind of weapon that has repeatedly blurred the line between battlefield and backyard — was followed by heavier missile strikes. Officials in Kyiv accused the attackers of intentionally striking civilian targets; Timur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, wrote on Telegram that Russia was “deliberately and consciously striking civilian targets.”
Whether launched to hit military or logistical nodes or to terrorize, the effect is often the same: civilian spaces become targets, making ordinary routines — walking to the store, taking a child to school, sleeping — fraught with danger.
Why drones matter
Drones have become a grim protagonist in this conflict. Small, relatively cheap and increasingly sophisticated, they can evade traditional air defences and strike with a precision that is maddening in its potential for harm. Across Ukraine, as of mid-2024 and into 2025, militaries on both sides have adapted to this new normal: layered air defences, mobile interceptors, and constant civilian alerts.
“We’re fighting a war where the sky is no longer a benign space,” said a military analyst who researches aerial threats and asked not to be named for security reasons. “Drones lower the threshold for damage, and when used in series they can saturate defences and inflict both material and psychological damage.”
Human cost and the wider picture
Three people killed, eighteen injured. These are numbers recorded on paper, but each digit represents a family, a set of routines upended, and a neighborhood that now has an empty place at table. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the war has caused widespread loss: millions displaced internally and abroad, billions in infrastructure damage, and a toll on civilian life that is not fully captured by casualty tallies alone.
“If you walk through Kyiv today, the cost isn’t just the blackened walls,” said Dr. Olena Hrynenko, a psychologist working with trauma survivors. “It’s the mistrust, the sleepless children, the grandparents who no longer dare to walk to the market. Recovery will take years — perhaps a generation — and the healing work has to begin now, even as the war continues.”
International echoes
With western Ukraine under threat, Poland activated its own and allied aircraft to ensure air safety, according to the operational command of the Polish armed forces — a reminder that the conflict’s shocks reverberate beyond Ukraine’s borders. Governments and international bodies continue to juggle diplomatic pressure, sanctions, military aid, and humanitarian assistance, even as the violence reshapes neighborhoods and national conversations about security.
What does resilience look like?
Amid the rubble and alarm, ordinary acts of kindness persist. Volunteers ferry medicines across checkpoints. A bakery in Sviatoshynskyi handed out loaves for free to those queuing at the temporary shelters. Strangers shared their powerbanks. In a country used to defying the shock of each fresh assault, small rituals of solidarity have become, paradoxically, the architecture of endurance.
“We cannot let this define us,” said a young teacher who spent the morning registering displaced children at a makeshift classroom. “There will be mourning, yes. There will be anger. But there must also be school, there must be birthdays, there must be bread. That is how we keep our humanity.”
Questions to sit with
As you read this from wherever you are in the world, consider: what does it mean when civilian spaces are no longer safe? How should communities and governments balance immediate protection with long-term recovery? And what role do global actors play when the lines between military targets and everyday life blur?
These are not rhetorical exercises. They are the contours of policy, aid and empathy that will shape what comes next — for Kyiv, for Ukraine, and for any city that learns in the hard way that the modern battlefield reaches into living rooms and nursery rooms alike.
For now, Kyiv holds its breath and then exhales in small, stubborn acts: a bowl of soup shared on a cold stairwell, a firefighter going back into the smoke, a volunteer sewing warm hats for children who woke up to ash on their lips. The headlines will say “attacks” and “tally”; the city knows the softer, more painful ledger by heart.
British police arrest 425 protesters during Palestine Action demonstration
Westminster at a Crossroads: When Protest Becomes a Crime
It was the kind of London afternoon that pins memory to place: a gray, indifferent sky, the Parliament buildings towering like an old argument, and the river running its patient course. But beneath that familiar backdrop, voices rose loud and uneven—chants, the slap of footsteps, the rustle of cardboard placards. “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” read one sign, raw with felt-tip urgency. Within hours, police fences tightened, squads pushed forward, and by the day’s end more than 425 people lay detained, cuffed and ushered into police vans. The Metropolitan Police confirmed the figure late last night.
A crowd, a slogan, a ban
On paper the scene was deceptively simple: a demonstration in front of the Houses of Parliament. In reality it was a collision of law and conscience. The group at the heart of the controversy, Palestine Action, was proscribed under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 earlier this year following a string of high-profile vandalism incidents—among them damage to a Royal Air Force base that authorities estimate cost roughly £7 million.
The ban makes it an offense to “support” or “encourage support” for the organisation. That legal framing has turned routine protest into a potential criminal act. According to Metropolitan Police briefings, “the majority of these arrests were made for supporting a proscribed organisation.” Before yesterday, police had already arrested more than 800 people in connection with Palestine Action activity; 138 of those had been formally charged.
On the ground: voices from the crowd
The human geography of the protest was immediate and varied. There were retirees who came with conviction and carefully folded placards; students who had sprinted out of lectures; fathers who had brought children, who watched with wide, baffled eyes as lines of officers moved in. I spoke with Polly Smith, 74—an erstwhile school librarian who calls herself a “professional protestor” and would not be drawn into cliché. “These people are not terrorists,” she said, breath visible in the cold air. “If saying ‘stop killing civilians’ is terrorism, then what does that make the rest of us?”
Nigel, 62, who runs a small recycling company and declined to give his surname, echoed the sentiment. “The ban feels totally inappropriate,” he told me as officers approached. “They should be spending their time trying to stop genocide, not trying to stop protesters.” Minutes later he was among those taken away.
Not everyone at the march was resolutely peaceful. Skirmishes broke out as some demonstrators tried to prevent arrests. The Met said more than 25 people were detained for alleged assaults on police officers and other public order offenses. “Our officers were subjected to intolerable abuse,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart later said, describing incidents of punching, kicking and spitting. “We will not tolerate violence against police or the public.”
What was at stake
For many of the protesters, the march was less about one group than about a principle: the right to speak, assemble and call attention to suffering overseas. Around the square there were conversations in Arabic, English, French—people trading stories of relatives in Gaza, of friends who had fled. A teacher I met, Aisha Hassan, wore a keffiyeh and carried homemade leaflets listing casualty figures from Gaza. “We’re not here to vandalize; we’re here to witness,” she said. “If our only recourse is to stand and be heard, then we will.”
Legal lines, moral questions
The government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action has sparked a broader debate that resonates far beyond Westminster. Rights organisations—including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the UN human rights office—have criticized the ban as disproportionate and a threat to free expression. “Proscribing campaigning groups for their views—and for the tactics of some—is a dangerous escalation,” an Amnesty spokesperson said in a statement. “It risks criminalising legitimate protest.”
On the other side, officials argue that the state must draw boundaries where protest becomes direct action that risks public safety or targeted damage. The government has been granted permission to appeal a judicial decision that allowed one of Palestine Action’s co-founders, Huda Ammori, to challenge the ban in court.
If convicted of supporting a proscribed organisation, most defendants face up to six months in jail. Those found guilty of organising or orchestrating activities tied to the group could face sentences of up to 14 years—penalties that critics say are crushingly disproportionate for political expression.
Bigger currents: global protests and national security
This is not just a London story. Around the world, governments are balancing three competing pressures: preserving public safety, preventing violent or destructive acts, and protecting the democratic right to dissent. In the age of viral footage and fast-moving movements, the line between civil disobedience and illegal action often blurs in public perception and on legal textbooks alike.
Just yesterday, thousands of other Londoners marched in separate pro-Palestinian demonstrations elsewhere in the capital—while, simultaneously, Israel launched new strikes on Gaza, saying it intended to seize Gaza City in operations it framed as necessary to defeat Hamas. The war next door, and the images on social media, feed the urgency here. For many protesters, a legal ban at home feels like another layer of displacement—their voices restricted when they most want to be heard.
Questions for us all
What should a democratic state do when activism crosses into property damage? Where should the line be drawn between security and censorship? And perhaps most urgently: how do we create spaces where people can grieve and protest without risking criminal sanction?
When I asked a young woman named Leila why she kept coming back to protests despite the arrests, she smiled, not a bitter smile but a resolute one. “Because history remembers the ones who stood,” she said. “We are not naive about consequence. But silence is its own sentence.”
What to watch next
- The legal appeal over the ban and the ongoing judicial challenge by Huda Ammori—this could set precedent for how the UK treats politically motivated direct action.
- Further policing operations and the number of charges laid—so far, 138 charged and hundreds more arrested.
- Public debate: will civil society groups coalesce in defense of free speech, or will the specter of vandalism harden opinion in favor of stronger policing?
As the sirens faded and the placards were folded away, Westminster returned to its habitual rhythm. But the questions stirred there did not vanish with the crowd. They spread, quietly and insistently, through living rooms and classrooms across Britain and beyond: how do we contest power without losing our voices? How do we protect one another without muzzling dissent?
London has always been a theatre for argument. Yesterday that theatre brimmed with urgency, pain and protest. The law will do its work; the courts will make their decisions. But on the pavement, in the faces of those taken into custody and in the whispered conversations of those who stayed behind, the story felt less like a legal docket and more like a moral reckoning. What side of that reckoning do you find yourself on?
Ruushka oo weerar culus ku qaaday caasimada Ukriane ee Kyiv
Sep 07(Jowhar)-Ugu yaraan 2 qof ayaa ku dhimatay dhowr iyo toban kalena waa ay ku dhaawacmeen weerar habeeninmo oo uu Ruushka ka geystay caasimadda Ukraine ee Kyiv.
Trump Intensifies Crackdown Threats, Issues Stark Warning to Chicago
“Department of War” at the River: Chicago Becomes a Symbol in a New National Drama
There is a particular light that falls across the Chicago River in late summer — silver on steel, the city’s towers standing like witnesses. It is the kind of ordinary beauty that makes it hard to imagine tanks or troops marching down LaSalle Street. And yet, that image was splintered this week when a presidential post promised something close to urban martial law: “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.”
The words landed like a slap in a city still raw from the last time federal force moved near its neighborhoods. Governor J.B. Pritzker answered in kind, publicly calling the threat “not a joke” and warning that “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
From a Social Feed to a Show of Force
The line came not from a podium but from a social media post — accompanied by an AI-generated image of the president and a swaggering, darkly comic riff on the famous line from the Vietnam film Apocalypse Now: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.” In the movie, the line is about napalm; here it was repurposed as a spectacle. For many Chicagoans the post felt less like satire and more like a threat.
“When you see those words, you don’t just hear policy — you feel the possibility of violence,” said Marisol Rivera, a community organizer on the city’s Southwest Side. “This is about making people afraid to come to protests, afraid to walk home at night, afraid that the city they love could be occupied.”
What followed was predictably public: thousands of protesters marched through downtown Chicago, carrying banners that read “Stop this fascist regime!” and “No Trump, No Troops.” The parade routed past the riverfront tower that bears the president’s name; onlookers jeered and offered rude gestures to the building’s glass façade. The energy was as much show as resistance — a civic performance aimed at a national audience.
Echoes in the Capital and on the West Coast
This is not an isolated scene. Earlier, tens of thousands demonstrated in Washington after the National Guard and federal agents were deployed there under a declared “crime emergency,” marching beneath inverted American flags — a traditional sign of national peril. Los Angeles, too, saw confrontations after ICE agents, sometimes masked and operating in unmarked cars, were accused of snatching people from the streets without warrants.
Legal fights have already begun. Constitutional scholars point to the Insurrection Act — a 19th-century statute that allows the president to use federal military force to suppress insurrection or enforce federal law — as the likely hinge point for any large-scale domestic troop deployment. But many civil libertarians say the threshold for using that law has not been met, and that its invocation risks eroding norms the republic has depended upon for nearly two centuries.
“When you start talking about troops in American cities,” said Prof. Lena Mahoney, a constitutional law expert, “you’re not talking about a policy tweak. You’re talking about a paradigm shift in how this country sees dissent, policing, and federal power.”
What “Department of War” Signals
On paper the president signed an order rebranding the Defense Department as the Department of War, calling it a “message of victory.” The secretary of the renamed department offered a headline-ready affirmation, arguing that the United States must “decisively exact violence to reach its aims.” To many, the rhetoric underscored a growing readiness to frame domestic challenges as battles rather than as civic problems to be solved by law, public health, and community work.
Words have weight. In cities like Chicago — where the El rattles past neighborhoods of mixed-income housing, blues clubs, and little storefront churches — language that frames policing and migration as theater or war has real consequences. For many residents, it felt like another sledgehammer blow aimed at communities already suspicious of heavy-handed state action.
Voices from the Street
“I raised my kids here,” said Tyrone Daniels, who runs a barbershop on the Near West Side. “We’ve seen police change, seen mayors change. But the idea of the federal government rolling in with soldiers? That’s something else. It would tear at the fabric of neighborhoods.”
A younger protester, a student wrapped in a patchwork flag, put it bluntly: “You can’t intimidate people into not wanting a country where they belong.”
Activists have compiled growing lists of incidents they say show the dangers of using federal force in cities. They point to aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, alleged abuses by masked agents, and the friction created when federal priorities clash with local strategies for safety and rehabilitation. These are not abstract worries. They are worries rooted in anecdotes, court filings, and municipal budgets.
Why This Matters Beyond Chicago
Ask yourself: what does it mean when the commander-in-chief frames domestic policy as war? The question cuts beyond Chicago and into the heart of democratic norms around dissent, local autonomy, and civil liberties. It brings to mind broader global patterns: leaders who amplify threats and justify extraordinary measures often end up curtailing basic freedoms in the name of order.
And yet, the debate also reveals a deeper anxiety in parts of the country. Many Americans — particularly in cities confronting concentrated gun violence, opioid crises, and visible homelessness — demand decisive action. Political leaders have weaponized that demand, promising quick, muscular solutions. The risk is that short-term triumphalism may sacrifice long-term democratic practices and trust.
Possible Outcomes and Questions for the Future
- Would a federal troop deployment in Chicago require invocation of the Insurrection Act, and under what legal basis?
- How would local police and community organizations react? Cooperation could vary block by block.
- Would such a move quell violence, or would it inflame tensions and create new flashpoints?
These are not merely legal hypotheticals. They are strategic, moral, and human questions. If the federal government moves into cities as a matter of policy, what becomes of local democracy? How do you rebuild trust after a neighborhood has been “stabilized” by soldiers rather than social workers, negotiators, and youth programs?
Living Through an Uncertain Moment
Walking along the river after the protest, you see the city’s contradictions in miniature: a kid selling cold water on a corner, the smell of garlic and tomato from a nearby pizzeria, a woman folding handbills about a community clinic. These ordinary scenes are the social tissue that policy decisions, in the end, can protect or rip apart.
“We want safety,” said Pastor Emily Okafor, who runs a small church outreach program on the South Side. “We want our kids to grow up. But soldiers in the streets don’t do that work. They don’t tutor, they don’t clean up leaded playgrounds, they don’t get kids to evening classes.”
So the debate continues: which tools work in which contexts? Which institutions do we trust to keep us safe and free? And perhaps most urgently: when the leader of a nation speaks about “war” at home, how do citizens respond? By fear, by acquiescence, or by taking to the streets in a chorus of dissent?
Chicago, like other cities now in the spotlight, is forcing the country to answer these questions in real time. The next scenes of this political drama will matter — not only for the skyline and the river, but for the habits of governance and public life that will shape generations to come. What would you choose if you had to decide between order and liberty? Between immediate control and the slow work of rebuilding?
British police detain 300 protesters during Palestine Action demonstration
Under the shadow of Parliament: a city divided, a law contested
On a damp Saturday in central London, a crowd gathered like a living mural against the silhouette of the Houses of Parliament—placards bobbing, voices braided into a single, urgent chorus. The air smelled faintly of diesel from the red buses and of reheated coffee from the nearby stalls. For hours the chants rose and fell: anger, grief, defiance. By evening, police figures would say roughly 300 people had been taken into custody. For many who came to protest, the arrests were not a surprise—they were the point.
“I didn’t come to break the law,” said Eileen Carter, 74, a retired nurse from Camden, her voice hushed by age and resolve. “I came because I felt like I had to stand in the street and show the world that what’s happening matters.” Her placard read simply: ‘Stand Up For Gaza.’ She paused, as if weighing the consequences of her own words, and then added, “If that’s enough to put me in a cell, then let them do it.”
The Metropolitan Police had been unambiguous in their warnings all week: explicit support for Palestine Action—a group proscribed under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000—could result in arrest. The ban, introduced in July after a series of high-profile acts of vandalism and a costly attack on a Royal Air Force site said to have caused roughly £7 million in damage, converts political solidarity into a potential criminal offence. The net cast by the legislation has already swept up hundreds; police records show more than 800 people had been arrested prior to this weekend, and 138 charged with offences linked to supporting or encouraging a proscribed organisation.
Faces in the crowd: stories that complicate the headlines
Not all who came were militants or masterminds. Many were parents holding the hands of teenagers, students with backpacks still damp from the drizzle, and older citizens who grew up in an era where the right to protest was sacrosanct. “I’m here because my son is still in Gaza,” said Layla Hassan, 39, who had travelled from East London. “I don’t support vandalism. I support people being allowed to speak.”
“They’ve turned civil disobedience into a security threat,” said Mark Hughes, 62, a CEO of a small recycling company who declined to give his surname in full. “When the state acts like this you have to ask: who exactly are they trying to protect?” He was detained by officers as the crowd surged against a police cordon. Around him, an ebb and flow of skirmishes broke out—pushed shoulders, shouted curses, and the metallic clang of police radios. The chants occasionally shifted into a single, pointed refrain: “Shame on you!”
The human cost of a legal label
To be proscribed under the Terrorism Act is to be legally frozen in the public imagination. Supporters of the ban argue it is necessary to protect public safety and to deter acts of deliberate damage or violence. Critics, from the United Nations to Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have described the move as an overreach: a silencing of dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism. “This is not just about one organisation,” said Dr. Imran Khalid, a civil liberties scholar at a London university. “It’s about where we draw the line between criminal action and political expression, and whether we allow the state to draw that line so broadly that it erodes basic democratic freedoms.”
Legal experts point to the stark penalties: those convicted of supporting or encouraging a proscribed organisation can face up to six months’ imprisonment for certain offences, while organisers or those found to be more directly involved could be jailed for up to 14 years. The government has been granted permission to appeal an earlier court ruling that allowed Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori to legally challenge the ban—an appeal that will likely set new precedents for how protest is policed in the UK.
Two demonstrations, one city in flux
At the same time as the arrests near Parliament, several thousand people poured into other parts of London, holding a separate demonstration to protest Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Their numbers were larger, their banners more varied—some reading ‘Ceasefire Now,’ others invoking international law. The protests unfolded against the backdrop of new military strikes by Israel aimed at taking Gaza City in operations it described as necessary to dismantle Hamas. Across the capital, conversations about international law, human rights, and the limits of protest spilled into cafés and living rooms.
“People are terrified,” said Amira Suleiman, a university student who had been at both demonstrations. “Terrified for our relatives, terrified for our rights here. They’re linked.”
What the numbers say—and what they don’t
The arrests and charges provide a quantitative snapshot: hundreds detained, dozens charged. But numbers alone can’t capture the frayed feelings a protest like this exposes—the sense that the state’s security apparatus and citizens’ political impulses are colliding in a new, harsher way. They also raise questions about selective enforcement. Why are some groups targeted for proscription while others, which may express controversial or disruptive views, remain legally active?
- Reported arrests at recent demonstration: approximately 300
- Total arrests linked to Palestine Action prior to Saturday: over 800
- People charged with supporting/encouraging proscribed organisation: 138
- Damage attributed to prior Palestine Action acts at an RAF site: approx. £7 million
- Potential prison sentences: up to six months for many offences; up to 14 years for organisers
Local color: London as both stage and audience
On the pavement by Westminster, a man selling roasted chestnuts watched the arrests with a detached fury. “I’ve been here forty years,” he said. “London is a place where people make their voices heard. It’s part of our DNA. Now it feels like something’s being suffocated.” Nearby, a group of schoolchildren craned their necks as they were led past by teachers, their eyes wide, taking in what adults often call complex politics in phrases that are simpler and truer: “Why are those people in handcuffs?”
It was impossible not to notice the small, human moments: a woman offering bottled water to arrested protesters as they were guided into vans, a grey-haired man folding up a placard with a careful, tired reverence, and a young medic tending to a demonstrator with a torn hand. These vignettes threaded the drama with everyday tenderness—reminders of the ordinary lives that lie behind political labels.
Where do we go from here?
As legal battles over the ban continue to make their way through the courts, the protest in front of Parliament will not be easily forgotten. It raises urgent questions: how do democratic societies balance the imperative to keep citizens safe with the equally important need to protect dissent? When does policing become political? And perhaps most pressing: in an age of polarized news cycles, how do we ensure that the human stories beneath the banners don’t get flattened into slogans?
The answers will not be found in a single courtroom or on a single pavement. They will emerge slowly, in policy debates, in law reports, in conversations around kitchen tables, and in the courage of ordinary people who keep showing up. “I’m not a criminal,” Eileen said one last time, as she prepared to leave. “I’m a witness.”
What, then, does your witness look like? How will you listen to the next protest that comes down your street, and what will you do when the law and conscience seem to point in different directions?
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