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Days of Palestine
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Days of Palestine
The Guardian Reveals Details of Israeli Massacre at Gaza's Al-Baqa Café
DaysofPal — New field evidence obtained by The Guardian has confirmed that the Israeli airstrike on Al-Baqa Café—a family gathering spot on Gaza's seashore—was carried out using a U.S.-made 230-kilogram MK-82 bomb. The attack killed at least 24 civilians, including women and children, and left dozens more seriously wounded. Based on analysis of bomb fragments and the size of the crater, munitions experts have verified that the MK-82, a high-explosive bomb known for its devastating blast radius and shrapnel spread, was used in the densely populated civilian area. Its deployment in such a setting, experts say, constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law. A Haven Turned into a Mass Grave The Al-Baqa Café, located along Gaza City's beach, was one of the few public spaces where families could seek a brief escape from war. It featured two floors—an upper open-air terrace and a ground-level area with windows overlooking the sea. Survivors and medical teams confirmed that the café was filled with civilians—children, mothers, students, and artists—at the time of the strike. Among the dead were a 4-year-old child, a well-known film director, a mother in her thirties, and several young students. More than 36 are feared killed, with dozens more injured, including a 12-year-old girl and a teenage boy. No military activity was reported near the area, and it was not within an evacuation zone. Legal Experts: This Is a War Crime Legal experts warn that using such a bomb in a populated area shows clear disregard for civilian lives. 'Targeting a crowded café with a bomb of this magnitude means the attacker knowingly accepted the mass killing of civilians,' said Jerry Simpson of Human Rights Watch. 'That's not just unlawful—it's a war crime.' Dr. Andrew Ford, a legal scholar at Dublin City University, added that even precision-guided munitions like the MK-82 violate the laws of war when used without strict proportionality: 'There's no justification—none—for this level of civilian harm.' Mark Schack, professor of international law in Copenhagen, noted that the MK-82 is usually reserved for hardened military targets: 'If over 30 civilians were killed, the burden of proof is immense. Otherwise, this is an indefensible breach.' Gaza's Collapse—and a Message of Terror The café strike occurred in the context of Gaza's near-total collapse: starvation, medical shortages, power cuts, and daily airstrikes. Al-Baqa Café had remained one of the last spots of semblance and community life. Its destruction sends a clear message: nowhere is safe—not hospitals, not schools, not even places of leisure. Images captured by The Guardian show a large crater, twisted metal, shattered glass, and personal items soaked in blood. Munitions analysts identified debris from a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance system and thermal batteries—evidence of a guided precision strike. Calls for Accountability Mount The International Justice Center in The Hague has urged for the incident to be added to ongoing investigations into Israeli war crimes. Trevor Paul, a former U.S. munitions expert, emphasized that even precision strikes can be criminal: 'When you know civilians are there and bomb anyway, it's not precision—it's premeditated.' Human rights groups have condemned the strike as another chapter in a broader policy of systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure, a pattern already documented since October 7, 2023. Conclusion: Not an Exception, but a Pattern What happened at Al-Baqa Café is not a tragic error—it is part of an established pattern. In a territory sealed off from the world, where food and aid are denied and movement is strangled, even cafés become execution grounds. This was not 'collateral damage.' It was a calculated strike using a high-yield explosive in a known civilian area, at a known civilian hour. The evidence is overwhelming. The silence of the international community is damning. Until there is justice, Gaza's parks, schools, and cafés will remain targets. And the world will continue watching a slow-motion genocide, bomb by bomb, strike by strike. Shortlink for this post:
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
100th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee: Four-time returning speller from Pullman to compete with Spokane Valley home-schooler
May 26—Brogue, Osprey, Drumlin, Gastronome, Eucalyptus, Rapscallion, Lithophone. These are a handful of words that secured Spokane Valley's Gabriel Aguirre one of 243 spots in the upcoming Scripps National Spelling Bee in D.C. on Wednesday and Thursday. The 11-year-old home-school student finished runner-up in the Inland Northwest Spelling Bee, behind Sandpoint's 14-year-old Andrew Ford, also home-schooled and also headed to D.C. Competition will be fierce as ever as 14-year-old Navtaj Singh, of Pullman, is competing for the fourth straight year, his final year of eligibility. His best finish was in 2023, when he tied for 12th place. Gabriel misspelled the word "Sobersides," while Andrew got it correct in their 12th round at the qualifying contest hosted at North Idaho College. Asked if he has a strategy to improve his spelling, Gabriel came up empty. "I bet there might be a formula, but I just try to practice," he said. Gabriel uses practice spelling apps on the phone, but beyond trying to memorize the whole dictionary, he's at a loss for how to better his game. He's a natural, said his mom, Whitney Aguirre. His mom doesn't push him to practice, knowing her son learns better independently, when "left to his own brain," she said. "He graduated from all the spelling books that I could find for him, so he has a natural ability to spell pretty well," she said. Gabriel taught himself to read at the age of 4, watching his older brother explore the written word and figuring he could, too. At the age of 9, he'd outgrown the curriculum for home-schooled high-schooling, stumping his mom on where to go from there. "A couple years ago, I stopped even teaching him spelling," she laughed. Gabriel isn't sure how he got so good, he said. Aguirre said part of it is a God-given ability around language, as well as memorization. When rules and patterns are involved, "his mind is like a steel trap," she said. "Gabriel has an interesting ability to comprehend a lot of details. His curiosity, coupled with that ability, have made him go way to the top," she said. Asked his favorite thing about spelling, "I like correcting people," Gabriel said with a grin. Whitney home-schools all four of her kids, Gabriel the second oldest. He enjoys it, he said, and feels like he could be limited in a typical public school setting. Learning independently allows him to move at whatever pace he likes and pick whatever interests him next. He's advanced in math and working on Italian. "It can be a little bit less formal than a school can, but he's still learning, and he's doing it in a way where he takes ownership for what he's doing," Aguirre said. Gabriel and his mom are excited for their trip to D.C., looking forward to the contest but also time to jaunt around the nation's capital with 242 of the best young spellers in the country, including Navtaj, seeking to beat his record of 12th place. "One thing that I've learned is that I've managed to refine my strategy when I'm actually competing," Navtaj said in an interview, explaining that, whereas in past years he was improvising. "Now I've actually kind of come up with a strategy that I think will help me." Ever the competitor, Navtaj didn't disclose that strategy, but he said this year's Bee will be about more than just how high he finishes. "When I'm actually there, I kind of just want to take everything in," he said, "seeing as I can't go back again after that." This year marks the 100th anniversary of the National Spelling Bee, which has grown from a field of just nine contestants in its first year to a nationally televised spectacle featuring hundreds of elite spellers. The increasing degree of difficulty is evident in the winning words over the years, from "croissant" in 1970 and "luge" in 1984 to "guetapens" in 2012 and "scherenschnitte" in 2015. After the 2019 Bee ended in an unprecedented eight-way tie when even words like "pendeloque" and "auslaut" proved too easy to eliminate the accomplished spellers, organizers have made several changes in an effort to winnow the field. The 2022 competition increased the emphasis on the meaning of words, with a vocabulary round that required contestants to choose a word's definition in a multiple-choice format. That year's Bee ended with a series of increasingly obscure proper nouns, including "Senijextee," an archaic alternate spelling of Sinixt, one of the 12 bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Scott Remer, who finished fourth in the 2008 National Spelling Bee and now coaches spellers, said this year's Bee will have a preliminary test for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic. That test, he said, should help the organizers choose words that challenge the spellers without eliminating too many of them in the early rounds. "I think the hope is that the preliminaries test is going to allow the word panelists to have a better feel for the general level of the field, which will help them to calibrate the word list appropriately," he said. Twenty-six of Remer's current students qualified for this year's Bee, he said, in addition to eight of his former students, including Navtaj. Navtaj said that although he isn't working with a coach this year, he has changed how he's preparing for the Bee. "Whereas the previous years, I was focused more on memorizing patterns, this year I'm still trying to memorize a lot of patterns and stuff, but I also think it would be helpful to just see a lot of words," he said. "In a way, it's kind of like learning how to play an instrument without playing the instrument, whereas now I'm playing the instrument a lot more." Remer said that approach makes sense, because a speller's knowledge of the linguistic underpinnings of the English language tends to make spelling feel more natural — even the most obscure entries in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary from which the Bee's words are chosen. "There's something to be said for the power of intuition and kind of just feeling the word or letting the word speak to you," Remer said, adding that what feels like intuition is often the result of lots of practice and the mind unconsciously recognizing patterns. "There's kind of an interplay between intuition and conscious training," he said. "For spellers, once they've hit a certain critical mass of words that they've done — and language rules, and Latin and Greek stems and stuff like that — that's sort of when these unexpected connections occur, and when it starts becoming more fluid, and where you start realizing you know how to spell something even though you actually haven't ever seen it." Elena Perry and Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Yahoo
Wichita shooting involved teenage brothers: WPD
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Police are investigating a shooting in north Wichita involving two teenage brothers. Sedgwick County dispatchers say one of the brothers has potentially critical injuries. The shooting happened shortly after 3 p.m. in the 2700 block of East 24th Street North. Andrew Ford, a Wichita Police Department spokesperson, said it appears the two brothers were in an argument in a bedroom of the home when one of the boys brought out a gun. The 15-year-old was shot in the leg. Ford said it is early in the investigation. Police identify man killed in south Wichita shooting For more Kansas news, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news by downloading our mobile app and signing up for our news email alerts. Sign up for our Storm Track 3 Weather app by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Yahoo
Man shot twice in Wichita armed robbery; Police say ‘AR-15 style rifle' used in the crime
A male was shot twice during a reported armed robbery on Friday night in east Wichita, police spokesperson Andrew Ford said Saturday. Police were called at 9:21 p.m. Friday after the victim drove himself to Wesley Medical Center. The man reported the shooting happened in the 700 block of South Hunter, which is near Kellogg and Woodlawn. The male was treated and released. 'The victim stated that he was approached by two unknown suspects wearing dark clothing and ski masks,' Ford said in an email. 'One suspect was armed with an AR-15 style rifle, while the other was carrying a handgun. The suspects demanded the victim's jewelry, and a struggle ensued when he refused to comply. As a result, the victim was shot twice — once in the hand and once in the thigh. The suspects fled the scene with three gold necklaces.' Police are asking anyone with information on the shooting to call detectives at 316-268-4407 or Crime Stoppers at 316-267-2111. Callers can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a cash reward through Crime Stoppers.
