44 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza amid hunger crisis after warehouse loot
At least 44 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, rescuers said, a day after a World Food Programme warehouse in the centre of the territory was looted by desperate Palestinians.After a more than two-month blockade, aid has finally begun to trickle back into Gaza, but the humanitarian situation remains dire after 18 months of devastating war. Food security experts say starvation is looming for one in five people.advertisementThe Israeli military has also recently stepped up its offensive in the territory in what it says is a renewed push to destroy Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack triggered the war.
Gaza civil defence official Mohammad al-Mughayyir told AFP "44 people have been killed in Israeli raids", including 23 in a strike on home in Al-Bureij."Two people were killed and several injured by Israeli forces' gunfire this morning near the American aid centre in the Morag axis, southern Gaza Strip," he added.The centre, run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is part of a new system for distributing aid that Israel says is meant to keep supplies out of the hands of Hamas, but which has drawn criticism from the United Nations and the European Union."What is happening to us is degrading. The crowding is humiliating us," said Gazan Sobhi Areef, who visited a GHF centre on Thursday.advertisement"We go there and risk our lives just to get a bag of flour to feed our children."The Israeli military said it was looking into the reported deaths in Al-Bureij and near the aid centre.Separately, it said in a statement that its forces had struck "dozens of terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip" over the past day.In a telephone call Thursday with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Israel's "systematic starvation tactics have crossed all moral and legal boundaries".HORDES OF HUNGRY PEOPLEOn Wednesday, thousands of desperate Palestinians stormed a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in central Gaza, with Israel and the UN trading blame over the deepening hunger crisis.AFP footage showed crowds of Palestinians breaking into the WFP facility in Deir al-Balah and taking bags of emergency food supplies as gunshots rang out."Hordes of hungry people broke into WFP's Al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, in search of food supplies that were pre-positioned for distribution," the UN agency said in a statement.The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid starvation fears and intense criticism of the GHF, which has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory.advertisementIsrael's ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon told the Security Council that aid was entering Gaza by truck -- under limited authorisation by Israel at the Kerem Shalom crossing -- and accused the UN of "trying to block" GHF's work through "threats, intimidation and retaliation against NGOs that choose to participate".The UN has said it is doing its utmost to facilitate distribution of the limited assistance allowed by Israel's authorities.The world body said 47 people were wounded Tuesday when crowds of Palestinians rushed a GHF site. A Palestinian medical source reported at least one death.GHF, however, alleged in a statement that there had been "several inaccuracies" circulating about its operations, adding "there are many parties who wish to see GHF fail".But 60-year-old Abu Fawzi Faroukh, who visited a GHF centre Thursday, said the situation there was "so chaotic"."The young men are the ones who have received aid first, yesterday and today, because they are young and can carry loads, but the old people and women cannot enter due to the crowding," he told AFP.NOTHING HAS CHANGEDNegotiations on a ceasefire, meanwhile, have continued, with US envoy Steve Witkoff expressing optimism and saying he expected to propose a plan soon.advertisementBut Gazans remained pessimistic."Six hundred days have passed and nothing has changed. Death continues, and Israeli bombing does not stop," said Bassam Daloul, 40.The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Out of 251 hostages seized during the attack, 57 remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday that at least 3,986 people had been killed in the territory since Israel ended the ceasefire on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 54,249, mostly civilians.Must Watch
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Time of India
27 minutes ago
- Time of India
US visa curbs on Chinese students may backfire on the administration's decision
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads One night in 1978, President Jimmy Carter got a phone call at 3 a.m. from a top adviser who was visiting China "Deng Xiaoping insisted I call you now, to see if you would permit 5,000 Chinese students to come to American universities," said the official, Frank Press."Tell him to send 100,000," Carter Christmas time that year, the first group of 52 Chinese students had arrived in the United States , just ahead of the formal establishment of US-China diplomatic relations on New Year's Day. A month later, Deng, then China's top leader, made a historic visit to America during which he watched John Denver sing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and was photographed wearing a cowboy almost hard to believe how little contact there had been between the United States and modern China before that. Sinologist John K. Fairbank wrote in 1971: "Since 1950 Washington has officially sent more men to the moon than it has to China." The visits by Deng, and more important, by those first Chinese students, began a new chapter that would fundamentally change China -- and the world. The United States gained access to a vast market and talent pool, while China found a model and a partner for transforming its that chapter has closed, after the Trump administration announced that it would begin "aggressively" revoking the visas of Chinese students the millions of Chinese who have studied in the United States, myself included, it is a sobering and disheartening development. It marks a turning point that America, long a beacon of openness and opportunity, would start shutting its doors to Chinese who aspire for a good education and a future in a society that values freedom and human curbing people-to-people exchanges, President Donald Trump is taking a decisive step toward decoupling from China. To treat Chinese students and professionals in science and technology broadly not as contributors, but as potential security risks, reflects a foreign policy driven more by insecurity and retreat than by the self-assurance of a global to the new policy in China, reflected in the US Embassy 's social media accounts, was mixed. Some commenters thanked the United States for "sending China's brightest minds back." Others drew historical parallels, comparing the Trump administration's isolationist turn to China's Ming and Qing dynasties -- once global powers that declined after turning inward and were ultimately defeated in foreign invasions. One commenter remarked that the policy's narrow-mindedness would "make America small again."The shift also comes at a time when many young Chinese, disillusioned by political repression and economic stagnation under Xi Jinping's leadership, are trying to flee the country to seek freedom and opportunities."Xi is pushing many of the best and the brightest to leave China," said Thomas E. Kellogg, executive director of Georgetown's Center for Asian Law and a leading scholar of legal reform in China. "The US should be taking advantage of this historic brain drain, not shutting the door to many talented Chinese young people."The number of Chinese students in the United States dropped to about 277,000 in the 2023-24 academic year, a 25% decline from its peak four years earlier, according to government data. Students from China remained the second-largest group of international students, after those from India. In fact, applications for post-graduation temporary employment permits rose by 12% in 2023-24 over the prior year, signaling more interest in working in the United States despite the new visa policy will leave many of these students with little choice but to leave, or at the least reconsider their future in the United States.I interviewed a doctoral candidate in computer science at a top US university, a young man from China who first dreamed of studying in America at 17, when he began to question Chinese government propaganda. He arrived eight years ago and never seriously considering returning. But now, facing the threat of visa revocation, he said he is no longer sure if he can -- or even wants to -- stay."America doesn't feel worth it anymore," he said, asking me not to identify him for fear of retribution from Washington. The immigration process is fraught with anxiety, he said, and the returns no longer seem to justify the stress. He said he was exploring work visa options in Canada, Australia and Western Europe, even though he has a job offer from a big tech company on the West Coast of the United States."The pay might be lower," he said, "but those countries offer more personal freedom."His experience is in stark contrast to that of Dong Jielin, who was among the first Chinese students to come to the United States after the Cultural Revolution. When she arrived at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982 on a U.S. scholarship, she knew little about the country beyond what the Chinese state media had portrayed: a capitalist society in perpetual crisis and a people living in didn't take long for her perception to shift. "The moment I walked into a supermarket, I could see that life here was far from miserable," she told me in an interview. Encounters with Americans quickly dispelled other myths as well. "They were not vicious or hostile," she said. "They were warm and kind."Dong went on to earn a doctoral degree in physics, build a career in finance and technology, become a U.S. citizen and raise a US government has good reasons to worry about national security risks from China, including espionage and intellectual property theft. The FBI calls the Chinese government the most prolific sponsor of talent recruitment programs that aim to transfer scientific and technological breakthroughs to also makes sense to block people with ties to China's military industrial it's something else entirely to deny visas to 18-year-old students simply because they are Chinese and hope to pursue a STEM degree in the United officials often say they aim to distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people. That distinction was emphasized during Trump's first term. It's largely absent policy now targets anyone with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. But the party has nearly 100 million members, about 1 in 7 Chinese. And most children in China grow up as members of the Young Pioneers and Communist Youth League, school-based party organizations. It's just the way of life in a country ruled by a Leninist one commenter put it on the US Embassy's WeChat account, "How could any Chinese not be associated with the Party?"The policy is also very likely to found that Chinese undergraduates at US universities were more predisposed to favor liberal democracy than their peers in China. However, they said, exposure to xenophobic, anti-Chinese comments by Americans significantly decreased their belief that political reforms are desirable for China. Those who experienced discrimination were more likely to reject democratic values in favor of autocratic who have studied abroad also face growing suspicion at home. The government and some employers believe that exposure to Western values makes their fellow Chinese politically Mingzhu, chair of the appliance giant Gree Electric, said recently that her company will never hire a graduate from a foreign university. "There are spies among them," she the Chinese internet, some people compared her to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who announced the visa Jielin, the former student who was among the first to come to the United States, said the experience had a profound impact on her life, giving her the opportunity to explore the frontiers of science and is understandable, she said, that the government is raising screening standards for student visas. "But I believe the vast majority of those who stay in the US will, over time, become loyal American citizens," she said, just like herself.
Time of India
37 minutes ago
- Time of India
World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts
For decades, Bangalore, India, has been an incubator for scientific talent, sending newly minted doctoral graduates around the world to do ground breaking research. In an ordinary year, many aim their sights at labs in the United States . "These are our students, and we want them to go and do something amazing," said a professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, Raj Ladher. But this is not an ordinary year. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trading CFD dengan Teknologi dan Kecepatan Lebih Baik IC Markets Mendaftar Undo When Ladher queried some 30 graduates in the city recently about their plans, only one had certain employment in the United States. For many of the others, the political turmoil in Washington has dried up job opportunities in what Ladher calls "the best research ecosystem in the world." Some decided they would now rather take their skills elsewhere, including Austria, Japan and Australia, while others opted to stay in India. As the Trump administration moves with abandon to deny visas, expel foreign students and slash spending on research, scientists in the United States are becoming increasingly alarmed. The global supremacy that the United States has long enjoyed in health, biology, the physical sciences and other fields, they warn, may be coming to an end. Live Events "If things continue as they are, American science is ruined," said David W. Hogg, a professor of physics and data science at New York University who works closely with astronomers and other experts around the world. "If it becomes impossible to work with non-U.S. scientists," he said, "it would basically render the kinds of research that I do impossible." Research cuts and moves to curtail the presence of foreign students by the Trump administration have happened at a dizzying pace. The administration has gone so far as moving to block any international students at all from attending Harvard University, and more than $3 billion in research grants to the university were terminated or paused. At Johns Hopkins University , a bastion of scientific research, officials announced the layoffs of more than 2,000 people after losing $800 million in government grants. An analysis by The New York Times found that the National Science Foundation , the world's preeminent funding agency in the physical sciences, has been issuing financing for new grants at its slowest rate since at least 1990. It is not merely a matter of the American scientific community losing power or prestige. Dirk Brockmann, a biology and physics professor in Germany, warned that there were much broader implications. The acceptance of risk and seemingly crazy leaps of inspiration woven into American attitudes, he said, help produce a research environment that nowhere else can quite match. The result has been decades of innovation, economic growth and military advances. "There is something very deep in the culture that makes it very special," said Brockmann, who once taught at Northwestern University . "It's almost like a magical ingredient." Scientists believe that some of the international talent that has long helped drive the U.S. research engine may land elsewhere. Many foreign governments, from France to Australia, have also started openly courting American scientists. But because the United States has led the field for so long, there is deep concern that research globally will suffer. "For many areas, the U.S. is absolutely the crucial partner," said Wim Leemans, the director of the accelerator division at DESY, a research centre in Germany, and a professor at the University of Hamburg . Leemans, who is an American and Belgian citizen and spent 34 years in the United States, said that in areas like medical research and climate monitoring, the rest of the world would be hard-pressed to compensate for the loss of American leadership. There was a time when the U.S. government embraced America's role in the global scientific community. In 1945, a presidential science adviser, Vannevar Bush, issued a landmark blueprint for post-World War II science in the United States. "Science, the Endless Frontier," it was called, and among its arguments was that the country would gain more by sharing information, including bringing in foreign scientists even if they might one day leave, than by trying to protect discoveries that would be made elsewhere anyway. The blueprint helped drive the postwar scientific dominance of the United States, said Cole Donovan, an international technology adviser in the Biden White House . "Much of U.S. power and influence is derived from our science and technology supremacy," he said. Now the United States is taking in the welcome mat. Brockmann, who studies complex systems at the Dresden University of Technology, was once planning to return to Northwestern to give a keynote presentation in June. It was to be part of a family trip to the United States; his children once lived in Evanston, Illinois, where he taught at the university from 2008 to 2013. He cancelled the talk after the Foreign Ministry issued new guidance on travel to the United States following the detention of German tourists at the U.S. border. That warning he said, "was kind of a signal to me: I don't feel safe." Donovan said it was too early to tell whether Europe, say, or China could take over an international leadership role in science. Ladher, the Bangalore researcher, said that so far, Europe has been taking up some of the slack in hiring his graduates. "Austria has become a huge destination for many of our students," he said. In Bangalore, one graduate student who is waiting to defend her doctoral thesis on cell signaling and cancer said it was widely believed in India that U.S. labs were unlikely to hire many international students this year. That has led many of her colleagues to look elsewhere, said the student, who asked not to be named because she still planned to apply for positions in the United States and did not want to hurt her chances. The American scientific community, she said, has long been revered abroad. "It is sad to see that the hero is coming down from the pedestal," she said.
United News of India
44 minutes ago
- United News of India
Hamas says consulting with Palestinian factions on Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by U.S.
Gaza, May 31 (UNI) Hamas said on Friday that it is consulting with Palestinian forces and factions regarding the Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. A source from the movement, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the consultations aim to examine the details of the proposal and ensure its compatibility with Palestinian interests ahead of determining a final position. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that his government accepts Witkoff's proposal for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, Israel's state-owned Kan TV news reported. Quoting a senior Israeli official, Kan reported that the proposal includes a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of 10 living hostages and 18 bodies in two phases. Israel would release 1,236 Palestinian detainees and prisoners, along with the bodies of 180 Palestinians. Basem Naim, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said Thursday in a statement that the movement had received the Israeli response to the U.S. proposal. According to Naim, the Israeli position fails to address key Palestinian demands, including a complete cessation of hostilities and the lifting of the long-standing blockade on Gaza. He said the proposal would allow for the continuation of "the occupation" and humanitarian suffering, even during any temporary truce. "Nevertheless, the movement's leadership is evaluating the proposal with a sense of national responsibility, particularly in light of the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people," Naim said. UNI XINHUA ARN
