Emily Gibbs, 29, loves going on extreme day trips abroad for under £100
Emily Gibbs in Chamonix in the French Alps(Image: Emily Gibbs/SWNS)
A mum leaves her toddler and partner at home to embark on solo “therapy” holidays. Her escapades have included a four-hour jaunt to Chamonix that takes less time than a day in London.
Emily Gibbs, 29, adores extreme day trips as they offer her “freedom” and “adventure” while providing a brief respite from parenting her three-year-old son, who stays at home with his dad.
She has visited Monaco and Gothenburg, France, and jetted off to the French Alps this January – enjoying a “picture perfect” train ride up in the mountains before returning home in time for bed. The mum of one, who runs a housekeeping agency, spent just £100 on the entire trip, departing at 8.30am and arriving back at Luton airport at 7.50pm the same day.
Emily, from Norwich, Norfolk, said: “I love going abroad on day trips. If I have a week where I’ve not got loads going on, I’ll just look at what cheap flights I can get and then go on a day trip somewhere.
“I love the freedom of walking through an airport by myself without any bags and knowing I’ll be back in my own bed at night time. I go on family holidays with my three-year-old son and his dad too, but these day trips are my independent time, they’re like my therapy.
“Chamonix was like a winter wonderland, it was picture perfect, like a scene from a movie. There was snow hanging off the trees and little chalets everywhere.
“It was like stepping into the scene of a Hallmark movie. The highlight of my trip was definitely the train ride up the mountain.
“I was just looking out of the window thinking, ‘how on earth am I doing this right now? I was in my own bed this morning and I’ll be back there in a few hours’ time’.
“It’s fun to push boundaries and see where you can get in a day. I managed to do the whole day for exactly £100. It’s no more than I’d spent on a day out in the UK, the train from Norwich to London is £60 alone.
“It was a tiring day, but I have a three-year-old son, so it was nothing compared to the sleepless nights that mothers go through. It’s just one day and then I’ll go home and recover the next day.”
Emily chose to visit the snowy ski resort of Chamonix, France, after previously savouring extreme day trips to Monaco and Gothenburg in 2025. The busy mum shared that she adores jetting abroad on day trips because of the “sense of adventure” it gives her.
While Emily treasures family holidays with her son and partner, she views her extreme day trips as “therapy trips” where she can enjoy herself on her own terms. For each adventure, Emily sets herself a £100 budget covering transport, food and activities, and she managed to secure return flights to Geneva for this journey for just £42.
On the day of her trip in January, Emily rose at 4am and drove two hours to Luton airport. She then caught the 8.30am flight to Geneva, touching down in the Swiss city at 11am.
Emily then hopped on a one-hour bus to Chamonix at 12.15pm, arriving at 1.05pm. Despite Chamonix being a renowned skiing and winter sports resort, Emily chose to stroll around, admiring the breathtaking snow-capped alps and engaging in conversation with fellow tourists.
After spending roughly an hour immersing herself in the atmosphere, at 2pm Emily took the Montenvers Mer de Glace train up through the mountains, which cost her £27. After the train ride, Emily returned to the town centre, where she grabbed some grub and watched skiers returning from a full day on the slopes.
“It was lovely,” she expressed. At 5.15pm she caught the bus back to Geneva, before boarding the 6.30pm train home, arriving in Luton at 7.50pm.
She then embarked on the two-hour drive back to Norwich and was snuggled up in bed by 11pm. All things considered, Emily got to spend four hours in Chamonix and although she wishes she had stayed longer, she said this was ample time to do everything she wanted to on the trip.
“I always want to stay longer, but I got to go up the mountains, I didn’t rush around, I wasn’t watching my clock,” she shared.
Despite a few queues at passport control, Emily said there were no downsides to her trip and is eagerly anticipating her next extreme day trip, a girls’ trip to a spa in Bucharest, Romania. She shares her story on @littlemomentswithemily.
Breakdown of Emily’s day in Chamonix
4am wake up
4:30am drive to Luton airport
6.45am Arrive at car park and free shuttle to airport
8.30am Flight to Geneva
11am Touched down in Geneva
12.15pm Caught the bus to Chamonix
1.05pm Arrived in Chamonix
2pm Took the Montenvers train up to the peak
3.45pm Rode the Montenvers train back down
4.05pm Explored the town and grabbed food and drinks
Jan. 22 (UPI) — A New York court judge has ordered the state to redraw its congressional map, striking down a Republican district and potentially giving the Democratic Party an advantage in securing an additional seat in the upcoming midterm elections.
Justice Jeffrey Pearlman of the Supreme Court of the State of New York issued his ruling Wednesday, declaring New York’s 11th Congressional District unconstitutional as it unlawfully diluted the voting power of Black and Latino voters.
“It is clear to the Court that the current district lines of CD-11 are a contributing factor in the lack of representation for minority voters,” Pearlman wrote in his 18-page order.
“Petitioners have shown strong evidence of racially polarized voting bloc, … they have demonstrated a history of discrimination that impacts current-day political participation and representation and they have shown that racial appeals are still made in political campaigns today. Taken together, these circumstances provide strong support for the claim that Black and Latino votes are being diluted in the current CD-11.”
Pearlman ordered the district map to be redrawn by Feb. 6, though the ruling is expected to be appealed.
The lawsuit was filed in late October by New York voters who challenged the 2024 congressional map for maintaining what they called in the court document “a fatal substantive defect: it dilutes Black and Latino voting strength in CD-11.”
New York’s 11th congressional district encompasses all of Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn. Held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, it is the only Republican seat in New York City.
In a statement, Malliotakis said she is reviewing the decision.
“Nothing changes the fact that this is a frivolous attempt by Washington Democrats to steal this congressional seat from the people and we are very confident that we will prevail at the end of the day,” she said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., celebrated the decision on Wednesday.
“This ruling is the first step toward ensuring communities of interest remain intact from Staten Island to Lower Manhattan,” he said in a statement. “The voters of New York deserve the fairest congressional map possible.”
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has said the UK will not yet be signing up to US President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace over concerns about Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s possible participation.
Cooper told the BBC the UK had been invited to join the board but “won’t be one of the signatories today” at a planned ceremony at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The foreign secretary described the board as a “legal treaty that raises much broader issues” than the initiative’s initial focus on ending the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The charter proposed by the White House does not mention the Palestinian territory and appears to be designed to replace some functions of the United Nations.
Countries including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Israel have said they will become members of the board, and at Davos, President Trump said Putin had accepted an invitation to join the initiative.
But President Putin has not confirmed this and earlier he said his country was still studying the invitation.
Speaking to the BBC’s Breakfast programme from Davos, Cooper said the UK had received an invitation to join the board and strongly supported Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza.
“That’s why we are also clear we want to play our part in phase two of the Gaza peace process,” Cooper said.
But she added: “We won’t be one of the signatories today because this is a legal treaty that raises much broader issues.
“And we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something that’s talking about peace when we’ve still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be commitment to peace in Ukraine.”
She said Putin had shown no willingness “to come and make that agreement and that’s where the pressure needs to be now”.
“But we will have continuing international discussions including with our allies,” the foreign secretary said.
Diplomatic relations between the US and the UK are on shakier ground after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European nations if his demand to hand control of Greenland to his country was not met.
But US president appears to have backed down after saying the US was exploring a potential deal on Greenland after talks with Nato, as he dropped planned tariffs on eight European countries and ruled out using force to take the island.
Cooper welcomed the apparent climbdown on Greenland and said the UK and its European allies had put forward “positive, constructive proposals” on security in the Arctic.
But when asked about the Board of Peace, Cooper echoed other UK cabinet ministers who in recent days have been expressing concerns over Putin’s potential role in the scheme, given Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The UK has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies and together with France, signed a declaration of intent on deploying troops to the country if a peace deal is made with Russia.
As talks to end the war in Ukraine continue, President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are due to meet in Davos on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Trump repeated his often-stated belief that Putin and Zelensky were close to a deal.
Trump’s Board of Peace was originally unveiled by the White House as part of a plan to rebuild Gaza and design its future governance.
But the leaked text of the board’s founding charter goes far beyond that purpose.
The text says the board would be “an international organisation that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”.
The leaked document says the Board of Peace’s charter will enter into force once three states formally agree to be bound by it, with member states given renewable three-year terms and permanent seats available to those contributing $1bn (£740m), it said.
The charter declared the body as an international organisation mandated to carry out peace-building functions under international law, with Trump serving as chairman – and separately as the US representative – and holding authority to appoint executive board members and create or dissolve subsidiary bodies.
Last Friday, the White House named seven members of the founding Executive Board, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former UK prime minister Tony Blair.
More have now said they will join it, including Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The Vatican has said that the Pope has also received an invitation.
Good Morning Britain star Ranvir Singh shared heartbreaking news during Thursday’s show
A Good Morning Britain star made a tragic death announcement on Thursday (January 22), as tributes poured in. The popular ITV show was presented by Richard Madeley and Susanna Reid, who kept viewers updated with the latest happenings both nationally and globally.
Joining them in the studio were Laura Tobin, providing regular weather updates, and Ranvir Singh, who covered the day’s other news stories.
Ranvir shared: “The family of an 87-year-old woman, who died after falling in a pothole, says she lost her life unnecessarily. Beryl Barrett was crossing the road in Nottinghamshire when she clipped the wheel of her walking aid and fell. She died six days later on Christmas Day,” reports Wales Online.
She continued: “Beryl’s MP raised her death with the Prime Minister, saying it was time to take action. The government says it’s investing £2 billion in the East Midlands to fix roads.”
Beryl’s family had previously released a statement saying: “We, the Barrett family, would like to address the event that we believe caused the death of our mother on 25 December. She was 87 years old, living independently in Warsop. She had a very active life. She regularly attended church, bingo and met family and friends for events.”
The statement revealed that Beryl fell backwards onto the road and received assistance from “many kind members of the public” and emergency services. The family said they were informed Beryl had fractured her femur and the top of her previous hip replacement. She was transported to King’s Mill Hospital.
They added: “It was recommended that she have surgery the following week. Sadly and absolutely unnecessarily, she went into respiratory failure and passed away on Christmas Day.
“We believe that, if that accident hadn’t occurred [despite her underlying health issues], she would not have passed away in this way.”
Beryl’s MP, Steve Yemm, demanded improvements to the county’s roads on Wednesday (January 21). Upon hearing of Beryl’s heartbreaking death, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, extended his “deepest sympathies” to her family.
He said: “I will make sure the roads minister meets the family at the earliest opportunity. It shows why tackling potholes really matters. We are investing £2 billion in the East Midlands to fix the roads and improve local transport. We are also putting in place tough new standards so that councils must prove they are fixing roads properly.”
Bert Bingham, a cabinet member on Nottinghamshire County Council, expressed his condolences: “We are deeply saddened to hear about the passing of a resident in Warsop in December, and our thoughts are with their family and friends. Any reports of incidents on our highway resulting in injury are taken extremely seriously and are investigated to establish the circumstances in which they occurred. In this case, we do not feel that it is appropriate to comment further until any relevant investigations have taken place.”
Elsewhere, Richard and Susanna brought viewers breaking news on today’s GMB, reporting that multiple individuals remain unaccounted for following a devastating landslide at a campsite in the popular New Zealand destination of Mount Maunganui.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV1 and ITVX at 6am
Reporting from Washington — Republicans have a boatload of presidential candidates, and Democrats have one clear front-runner, but in both parties most voters seem satisfied with their choices so far, a new poll indicates.
The latest survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center also finds that interest in the presidential campaign has risen notably as candidates have begun to enter the field. Two-thirds of voters said they were thinking about the campaign, up 8 points in two months. But fewer than 1 in 3 say they are thinking “a lot” about presidential politics this far ahead of the November 2016 election.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 57% say they have an excellent or good impression of their party’s candidates, while among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 54% do, the poll found.
For the GOP, that’s a notable switch from this point four years ago, when only 44% said they had such a positive view. The field at that time had only a couple of well-established political figures in it. Partisans on both sides have a more positive view of the choices than they did in the run-up to the 2004 election, when about 4 in 10 rated their parties’ candidates as excellent or good.
The survey asked for specific impressions of Hillary Rodham Clinton and six GOP presidential hopefuls — Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee.
Bush, the former governor of Florida and brother and son of former presidents, was the best-known on the GOP side, with only 12% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying they could not rate him. He also had the largest share with a negative impression, 35%, compared with 52% positive.
Walker, the Wisconsin governor, was the least known, with 36% not able to rate him. He also had the best ratio of positive to negative opinions, with only 17% unfavorable compared with 46% favorable. The numbers reflect the good start Walker has had in his as-yet-unofficial campaign, but also the fact that he has yet to establish a clear image for many.
Conservative Republicans are more likely than moderates or liberals to have opinions about the GOP field. They are a bit less positive about Bush than are moderates and liberals, but not dramatically so, with 37% of conservative Republicans and 34% of the party’s moderates and liberals having an unfavorable view of him.
Both Walker and Rubio, the Florida senator, get significantly more favorable opinions from conservatives than nonconservatives in the party — a potentially important factor in a party where conservatives dominate the primary voting.
Clinton’s ratings have declined, but she remains extremely popular among Democrats or Democratic leaners, with 77% having a favorable opinion of her. That’s down from 86% last summer, but still a much higher number than any of the Republicans garner among their partisans.
Among the public at large, opinion is closely divided on Clinton, with 49% viewing her favorably and 47% negatively. Her ratings are down most sharply among Republicans, 17% of whom now say they view her favorably.
The youngest Democrats, those aged 18 to 26, were least likely to have a positive view of Clinton, with 65% viewing her favorably. Among other age groups of Democrats, about 8 in 10 had a favorable view.
Although some liberal activists have pined for alternative candidates, 81% of liberal Democrats viewed Clinton positively, compared with 74% of conservatives and moderates. And despite her potential appeal as the first female elected president, male Democrats were about as likely to have a positive view of Clinton as females.
By contrast with Clinton’s generally positive ratings among Democrats, Vice President Joe Biden’s star has faded. Only 58% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents viewed him favorably, and among voters overall, 39% have a favorable view compared with 48% who view him unfavorably.
The Pew survey, conducted May 12-18, polled 2,002 adults, including 1,497 registered voters. The margin of error for the registered voter sample was +/- 2.9 percentage points.
For more on politics and policy, follow @DavidLauter on Twitter.
DENVER — Mikael Granlund and Cutter Gauthier scored in the shootout and Lukas Dostal stopped 40 shots as the Ducks defeated the NHL-leading Colorado Avalanche 2-1 for theirfifth straight win Wednesday night.
Jeffrey Viel scored in his second straight game as the Ducks opened a six-game trip.
Artturi Lehkonen scored for Colorado, and Scott Wedgewood made 16 saves.
Alex Killorn played in his 1,000th game. He spent 11 years with Tampa Bay, winning the Stanley Cup twice, before signing with the Ducks as a free agent in 2023.
Colorado forward Valeri Nichushkin returned after missing Monday night’s win over the Washington Capitals. He was involved in a car accident on his way to the rink and was held out as a precaution.
The Avalanche played without Gabriel Landeskog (upper body), defenseman Devon Toews (upper) and forward Joel Kiviranta (lower body). Forward Logan O’Connor has yet to play this season as he recovers from offseason hip surgery.
The cancellations affect six routes, which includes London, as well as Brussels, Lisbon, and Porto.
This works out to 400,000 passengers a year who visit the islands.
Ryanair’s CCO Jason McGuinness said at the time that they were “disappointed” and were left with “no alternative”.
He added: “After 10 years of year-round Ryanair operations, one of Europe’s most remote regions will now lose direct low-fare flights to London, Brussels, Lisbon, and Porto due to ANA’s high airport fees and Portuguese Govt. inaction.”
The cancellations mean there are no budget airlines that operate flights to the Azores, flying to Ponta Delgada Airport.
This just leaves British Airways offering UK flights, which start from £113 one way. Flights from London Heathrow take around 4hr10.
Mr McGuinness also said: “As a direct result of these rising costs, we have been left with no alternative other than to cancel all Azores flights from 29 March 2026 onwards and relocate this capacity to lower cost airports elsewhere in the extensive Ryanair Group network across Europe.”
The budget airline has scrapped thousands of flights in recent months due to an increase in airport costs and fees.
According to the UN, more than 1,800 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians – about five per day – were documented in 2025.
Published On 22 Jan 202622 Jan 2026
Share
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has approved the issuance of gun licences to Israelis in 18 additional illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as the right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushes to expand illegal outposts that undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
“The importance of the decision lies in the fact that these settlements will now be able to submit applications for a personal weapon licence,” Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister, wrote on Telegram on Wednesday, claiming that the efforts were to “enhance self-defence and increase personal security”.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Israeli settlers have been emboldened by a wide-scale armament programme spearheaded at the start of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip by Ben-Gvir, and the near-total impunity they enjoy when carrying out attacks.
Israelis living illegally in the occupied West Bank have been armed with military-grade weapons ranging from US-made M16s to pistols and drones. Israeli authorities maintain that holding arms is necessary for their safety, but local and international organisations have long documented the organised, forced displacement of Palestinians from their ancestral lands.
Last year, Israel formalised plans to develop the illegal E1 settlement project, and this year, it is expected to push forward the plan to expand settlements near Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and across Ramallah.
In December, another 19 settler outposts built without government approval were retroactively approved by Israel’s government as official settlements. In all, the number of settlements and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50 percent since 2022 – from 141 to 210 now.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2024 that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.
In his statement, Ben-Gvir added that more than 240,000 Israelis have received gun permits since the expansion of the policy, compared with about 8,000 permits issued annually in previous years.
“An unprecedented number,” he said, adding that this contributed to “thwarting attacks, preventing infiltration, and stopping attackers even before security forces arrived”.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1,800 settler attacks against Palestinians – about five per day – were documented in 2025, resulting in casualties or property damage in about 280 communities across the West Bank, and besting the previous year’s record of settler attacks by more than 350.
A total of 240 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 55 children, were killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025.
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – the annual Alpine gathering of the global elite – to declare that now is “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism”.
This, of course, was a reference to the current ambitions of Macron’s counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, who, in addition to recently kidnapping the president of Venezuela and repeatedly threatening to seize the Panama Canal, has made a great deal of noise about taking over the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland.
Trump himself took to the podium in Davos on Wednesday for a typically rambling speech, during which he alternately babbled about windmills, snidely complimented Macron on his “beautiful” reflective sunglasses, and declared that he would not “use force” in the acquisition of Greenland – which he also accidentally referred to as Iceland.
Indeed, Trump’s designs on the island have got Europe’s panties in a bunch, and the European Parliament has announced its unequivocal condemnation of “the statements made by the Trump administration regarding Greenland, which constitute a blatant challenge to international law, to the principles of the United Nations Charter and to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a NATO ally”.
Following Macron’s intervention at Davos, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that European leaders had “lined up” in opposition to the “new colonialism” denounced by the French leader.
Now, it goes without saying that the categorically demented Trump should by no means be encouraged in his predatory international endeavours. But it bears pointing out that, when it comes to colonialism and imperialism, Europe is hardly one to talk.
Let’s start with France, which continues to rule a dozen territories scattered across the globe – many of them marketed as exotic holiday destinations – including the Guadeloupe islands in the Caribbean Sea and the archipelago of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean.
While these territories have officially moved beyond lowly colonial status to bona fide departments of the French Republic and thereby part of the European Union, France can’t seem to shake the old patronising imperial mindset and attendant superiority complex.
When in December 2024, residents of cyclone-ravaged Mayotte – France’s poorest overseas territory – criticised the ineffective government response to the disaster, Macron charmingly snapped: “If it wasn’t for France, you would be in way deeper s***, 10,000 times more.”
How’s that for some “new colonialism”?
As for the tried-and-true “old” colonialism, France has a particularly appalling track record on that front, as well. Recall the case of Algeria, where some 1.5 million Algerians were killed during the 1954-62 war for independence from French rule.
Although Macron previously acknowledged that French colonisation of the North African country was a “crime against humanity” that was characterised by rampant torture and other brutality, he has consistently refused to offer a formal French apology.
But it’s not just France. Plenty of other European powers who are suddenly against colonialism also possess impressively savage legacies worldwide.
Indeed, from Africa to Asia to the Middle East and beyond, it’s difficult to find so much as a speck of land that has not been affected in some way or other by past centuries of European plunder, enslavement, mass killing, and similar atrocities.
The Spaniards decimated Indigenous populations across the Americas, Britain wreaked imperial havoc wherever it possibly could, and King Leopold II of Belgium presided over the deaths of 10 million or so Congolese starting in 1885, when he established the “Congo Free State” as his own personal property.
In 2022, Belgian King Philippe offered his “deepest regrets” for the abuses that transpired during the colonial era but withheld an official apology. As one article on the occasion of the non-apology noted, life in the Congo Free State was such that “villages that missed rubber collection quotas were notoriously made to provide severed hands instead”.
Over in Ethiopia, meanwhile, British historian Ian Campbell estimates that 19-20 percent of the Ethiopian population of Addis Ababa was wiped out over a mere three days during the Italian military occupation of East Africa in 1937.
The list of European atrocities goes on.
This is not, of course, meant as a suggestion that Trump should therefore have free rein to commit whatever crimes or plunder he pleases. It is simply a friendly reminder that you can’t be selectively opposed to colonialism. (Greenland, by the way, was a full-out colony of Denmark until not so long ago.)
As the killing continues under the guise of a US-brokered ceasefire, Gaza is now, per the Trumpian vision, set to be administered by a so-called “Board of Peace” chaired by – who else? – Trump himself.
Also participating on the board will be Israeli prime minister and genocidaire extraordinaire Benjamin Netanyahu, which no doubt heralds a “new colonialism” of the most sinister variety.
Unfortunately for the world, however, blood-soaked hypocrisy is nothing new.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Good Morning Britain hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley delivered breaking news on Thursday
A Good Morning Britain star announced “very difficult” breaking news on Thursday (January 22). This morning’s instalment of the popular ITV show was fronted by Susanna and Richard, delivering viewers the latest developments from throughout the UK and internationally.
They were accompanied in the studio by Laura Tobin, providing regular weather updates, whilst Ranvir Singh covered the remainder of the day’s headlines.
Emergency services have reported no indications of life at the location – Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell has stated “at least one young girl” is amongst those missing.
“Breaking news overnight, several people, including a child, are missing after a landslide hits a New Zealand campsite,” Richard declared, with Ranvir describing the occurrence as a “dramatic weather event on the other side of the world“, reports Wales Online.
Ranvir continued: “Rescuers and sniffer dogs are desperately digging through the debris at the popular tourist area of Mount Maunganui in the country’s North Island, which has been hit by record-breaking rainfall in recent days.”
During a pre-recorded package, featuring images of the landslides, correspondent Lorna Shaddick stated: “A sunny holiday spot obliterated in seconds. Caravans crushed, tents flattened, and lives upended.”
Australian holidaymaker Sonny Worrall described the moment: “I heard this huge tree crack and all this dirt come off behind me, there was a caravan coming right behind me. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Lorna added: “Eye-witnesses say they did hear some voices from the rubble at first, but the emergency services had to withdraw because of the risk of another landslip. No signs of life have been detected since.”
Superintendent Tim Anderson explained: “Whilst the land’s still moving, they’re in a risky mission to rescue those people, so I can’t be drawn on numbers, but what I can say is that it’s single figures.”
Mount Maunganui is a dormant volcano on the north island, with a holiday park situated beneath it. The region has experienced its wettest day on record, receiving more than two months’ worth of rainfall within twelve hours, resulting in power cuts and hazardous flooding.
Concluding her report, Lorna stated: “Forecasters are calling it a once-in-a-hundred-year event.”
The Emergency Management Minister has subsequently confirmed that two bodies were retrieved from a separate landslide at Welcome Bay in Papamoa, according to the ABC. The Papamoa landslide had previously left two individuals missing and one person seriously injured.
“It’s a fluid and sensitive issue at the moment,” Mr Mitchell told Radio New Zealand when speaking about the Maunganui landslide. “Everyone is working as hard as they can to get the best possible resolution, but it is a very difficult and challenging situation.”
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV1 and ITVX at 6am
Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez says her expertise on national defense and global security in an era of worldwide volatility and deadly terrorist attacks makes her the clear choice in California’s U.S. Senate race.
Throughout her campaign, Sanchez has held up her votes against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as examples of her political courage amid intense pressure to support those measures. In the House of Representatives, Sanchez also fought to allow women in combat and to protect members of the military from sexual assaults. She has also supported efforts to reduce the federal deficit.
Her rival in the November election is fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, the clear front runner, who has served as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney and has received endorsements from the California Democratic Party and Gov. Jerry Brown. Sanchez, however, argues that Harris lacks experience in the cutthroat politics involved in the legislative process, casting doubt on her ability to be effective in Washington.
Here are some of the noteworthy milestones in Sanchez’s political career, including those that landed her in hot water:
1. Voted against the Iraq War and Patriot Act
A U.S. Marine stands watch as others take a moment to rest after taking over two houses in a pre–dawn mission in the Jolan Heights area of Fallouja, Iraq in 2004. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)
(Test)
In 2002, Sanchez was among the 133 House members who voted against the authorization for the use of military force against Iraq.
The resolution passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, however. Among those voting in favor were then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
“People forget how difficult, how hard, and how unpopular that vote really was,” Sanchez said while speaking at a Democratic Foundation of Orange County luncheon in 2015. “I was spit at. I had to have bodyguards when I came back to Orange County.”
President George W. Bush had requested congressional approval, saying it was necessary to pressure Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — by force, if necessary — to destroy his suspected weapons of mass destruction programs.
Sanchez said her experience on the House Armed Services Committee made her question the long-term implications of an invasion, and whether the U.S. might find itself bogged down in a war in the Middle East.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez discussing her position on the Iraq War in 2003 on C-SPAN.
Sanchez said she had been just as skeptical of the Patriot Act, the legislation approved by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which gave law enforcement agencies vastly expanded powers to track terror suspects.
She said the information later made public by former National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowden revealed that federal authorities collected massive amounts of data on phone calls made by law-abiding Americans.
2. Advocate for women in the military
A female marine stands in formation along with her male compatriots on November 10, 2010, at Camp Delaram in Helmand province, Afghanistan. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images)
(Paula Bronstein / Getty Images)
Sanchez, the second ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee and chair of the Women in the Military Caucus, has spent years advocating for the U.S. military to end its policy prohibiting women from combat positions. She introduced legislation in 2011, 2012 and 2014 to do just that, though none of the bills went anywhere.
Sanchez argued that the combat exclusion policy failed to recognize that women had already been serving on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. The policy also hindered the ability of women in the military to advance up the the chain of command, since combat experience is required for certain promotions.
In September, the Marines released a study of women in combat skills tests that concluded that women hurt combat capability. The Marines had requested to be exempted from the policy, but the request was denied.
Sanchez also worked on a bill with Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) to provide federal whistleblower protections for people who report sexual assaults in the military. The legislation passed the House unanimously and was later folded into a defense policy bill.
In 2013, a bill proposed by Sanchez to require commanders to include sexual harassment in performance evaluations and to hold them accountable for the climate in their units was adopted into the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act.
3. Voted to shield gun makers from lawsuits
(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
(Test)
In 2005, Sanchez voted in favor of legislation that shielded the gun industry from liability for the criminal or negligent acts of gun owners, with certain exceptions.
The law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, was approved by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush. The bill superseded existing laws in California and other states that allowed victims of gun violence to sue gun makers and dealers.
Sanchez said the measure protects lawful businesses from being hit with frivolous lawsuits, comparing it to allowing a person injured by a drunk driver to sue a car manufacturer.
She also defended her record on gun control, saying she has supported a ban on high-capacity magazines and has backed requiring background checks for people who buy weapons at gun shows. Sanchez said she has consistently received poor grades from the pro-gun National Rifle Assn.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has endorsed Harris in the Senate race, and the group’s president, Dan Gross, referred to the 2005 vote by Sanchez when it was announced.
“While her opponent may feel the gun industry, whose products kill 90 Americans every day, deserves a free pass in the form of special legal protections — Kamala Harris doesn’t,” Gross said in the statement.
Still, the Brady Campaign endorsed Sanchez’s 2006 reelection bid for Congress — just a year after the 2005 vote — as well as her reelection campaigns in 2008 and 2010. The Brady Campaign also gave the Orange County congresswoman a thumbs-up grade on gun issues in 2014.
4. Beat conservative firebrand ‘B-1 Bob’ Dornan
Loretta Sanchez, with her campaign manager John Shallman, arrives in Washington in 1996 for orientation sessions for new members of Congress. (Alex Garcia / Los Angeles Times)
(Test)
In 1996, Sanchez was a little-known financial analyst from Anaheim when she ousted Orange County conservative Rep. Robert “B-1 Bob” Dornan for Congress, beating him by just 984 votes.
Few had given her any chance against the bombastic former Air Force pilot, who earned his nickname after he became a top pitchman for the 1980s-era jet bomber.
Sanchez’s own Democratic Party endorsed another candidate in the primary, and her only political experience before that was a failed bid for Anaheim City Council.
Dornan gained a national following in part for his stands against abortion, gay rights and liberalism and for his fervent support of the military, anti-communism and gun rights. During his successful 1992 reelection campaign he said that “every lesbian spear-chucker in this country is hoping I get defeated.”
President Bill Clinton, labor groups, environmentalists, advocates of abortion rights and gay rights and celebrities all campaigned on Sanchez’s behalf.
The newly elected congresswoman arrived in Washington in 1996 as a Democratic superstar, and as an incarnation of the political ascension of Latinos in Orange County, California and across the U.S.
She survived a bitter fight with Dornan as he attempted to overturn the results. He claimed the election was tainted by illegal ballots cast by noncitizens. Sanchez defeated him a second time him in a rematch in 1998.
5. A Playboy Mansion fundraiser and other political dust ups
Playboy Mansion (Jim Bartsch)
(Test)
In 2000, Sanchez angered Democratic Party leaders and presidential nominee Al Gore by scheduling a fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
Sanchez, co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, was stripped of her speaking role at the convention because of her steadfast refusal to relocate the fundraiser for Hispanic Unity USA, a political action committee that was raising money for a Latino voter registration drive.
In a letter, then party chairman Joe Andrew chastised Sanchez, saying that Democrats and women’s groups found the planned fundraiser at the estate of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner to be “neither appropriate nor reflective of our party’s values.”
Sanchez’s supporters noted that many Democrats, including Gore, had accepted campaign contributions from Playboy executives.
Sanchez ultimately moved the event. She regained a spot on the convention speakers’ list the next day, but refused to accept it.
It wasn’t the last time Sanchez was involved in a political stir:
In 2007, Sanchez quit the Congressional Hispanic Caucus saying that it was, in part, due to caucus chairman Rep. Joe Baca’s demeaning manner toward women and his gossiping that she was a “whore,” which he denied.
At the California Democratic Party convention in May 2015, Sanchez was speaking to party activists when she tapped her hand to her mouth in imitation of a Native American “war cry” when describing the difference between Native Americans and Indian Americans. She was forced to apologize.
For years, Sanchez sent out racy Christmas cards featuring her cat Gretzky. In one, the congresswoman was sitting on a motorcycle wearing a tank top, with Gretzky perched on the handlebars.
Following the deadly terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris, Sanchez said 5% to 20% of Muslims worldwide supported the idea of a caliphate — a strict Islamic state. The congresswoman was criticized by immigrant rights group and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Sanchez said the figures she mentioned have not been repudiated by any credible source.
6. Voted for controversial deficit reduction plan
Sanchez has tried to cultivate an image as a moderate on budget issues, joining a group called the “Blue Dog Coalition” dedicated to fiscal conservatism.
She supported a failed effort to reduce the federal debt that was based on the recommendations of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission, which President Obama appointed in 2010 to address the nation’s debt challenges. The recommendations included spending caps, increasing gas taxes and, among the more controversial proposals, raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits.
Sanchez also was one of 63 members of her party who opposed the 2008 bank bailout.
She did vote for the 2009 economic stimulus package, the auto bailout and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to tighten the regulation of Wall Street and the finance industry.
7. Missed congressional committee meetings
A Times review of Sanchez’s attendance in Congress shows she missed 13 of 18 House Homeland Security Committee meetings from January through early November 2015, tied for the second-worst attendance on the committee. She missed the vast majority of her subcommittee meetings and half of the full meetings in the 2013-14 congressional term.
Sanchez also missed more floor votes in the House — more than one in five — than all but two other members in 2015, according to Congressional Quarterly. That’s a drop from her previous terms in Congress, when she cast votes more than 90% of the time in all but one year.
Sanchez told the Times in December that she doesn’t recall missing many Homeland Security hearings, but added that her responsibilities on the Armed Services committee expanded greatly when the ranking Democrat was away from Congress because of two hip surgeries.
Sanchez said she also spent more time in California, in part because her father has Alzheimer’s and because her elderly mother also needs care.
8. Lacks a signature bill, but delivered for water project
Gov. Jerry Brown holds glasses of reclaimed at the Orange County Water District Groundwater Replenishment System. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
(Test)
Last year, CQ Roll Call classified Sanchez as among the “debate shapers and swing votes” on its list of the “25 Most Influential Women in Congress.”
But the Orange County Democrat has not offered a successful signature bill that members of Congress covet, though her party held power for four years of her 20-year tenure.
Still, Sanchez boasts of delivering federal funding for Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System. The treated water is used to recharge the local groundwater basin and provides enough water for nearly 850,000 residents.
BOYS CITY SECTION Angelou 77, Manual Arts 33 Bernstein 78, Roybal 61 Bert Corona 51, Community Charter 50 Birmingham 74, Granada Hills 50 Canoga Park 78, Reseda 32 Carson 49, Gardena 48 Cleveland 56, Chatsworth 55 CNDLC 54, Smidt Tech 48 Eagle Rock 56, Franklin 41 East Valley 59, VAAS 21 El Camino Real 44, Taft 43 Elizabeth 41, Maywood CES 21 Fairfax 50, LACES 35 Foshay 74, Middle College 50 Granada Hills Kennedy 47, Van Nuys 33 Grant 71, Arleta 56 Hawkins 80, Dymally 20 Huntington Park 61, South East 45 LA Hamilton 60, Westchester 57 LA Roosevelt 54, Bell 43 LA Wilson 73, Bravo 67 Lincoln 71, LA Marshall 68 Magnolia Science 37, Valley Oaks CES 27 Marquez 80, Maywood Academy 41 MSAR 50, Lake Balboa College 32 MSCP d. Animo South LA, forfeit Narbonne 63, San Pedro 62 North Hollywood 81, Monroe 30 Palisades 91, LA University 54 RFK Community 69, Contreras 52 Sotomayor 46, Torres 40 South Gate 72, Legacy 50 Sun Valley Magnet 69, Discovery 19 Sylmar 97, San Fernando 77 Verdugo Hills 56, Chavez 26 View Park 82, Port of LA 63 Washington Prep 74, King/Drew 48 West Adams 50, Diego Rivera 36 Wilmington Banning 62, Rancho Dominguez 61
SOUTHERN SECTION Aquinas 56, Ontario Christian 47 Ayala 73, Glendora 70 Azusa 77, Nogales 54 Beverly Hills 68, Compton Centennial 52 Bishop Amat 72, Verbum Dei 57 California 100, Whittier 65 Canyon Springs 54, Lakeside 39 Cathedral 69, Mary Star of the Sea 49 Citrus Hill 58, Paloma Valley 44 Coachella Valley 55, Indio 51 Corona Centennial 70, Riverside King 45 Corona del Mar 76, Los Alamitos 54 Corona Santiago 85, Norco 36 Desert Hot Springs 76, Cathedral City 38 Duarte 67, Garey 53 Eastside 72, Lancaster 41 Eastvale Roosevelt 86, Corona 48 Edgewood 29, La Puente 28 Foothill Tech 68, Thacher 57 Fountain Valley 57, Marina 45 Ganesha 53, Pomona 50 Grace 81, Laguna Blanca 34 Hacienda Heights Wilson 59, Northview 36 Hemet 56, Valley View 53 Hesperia Christian 65, CSDR 59 Hoover 65, Pasadena Marshall 33 Inglewood 90, Culver City 54 Irvine 59, Laguna Beach 48 La Canada 66, Blair 64 La Sierra 48, Rubidoux 46 Leuzinger 71, Hawthorne 29 Long Beach Cabrillo 60, Lakewood 51 Long Beach Wilson 99, Compton 75 Loyola 104, Alemany 70 Lynwood 52, Paramount 49 Mater Dei 81, Orange Lutheran 79 Mayfair 69, Bellflower 53 Millikan 87, Long Beach Jordan 69 Moreno Valley 50, Arlington 44 Norte Vista 80, Jurupa Valley 41 Oak Hills 88, Apple Valley 49 Orange Vista 61, Hillcrest 45 Oxford Academy 62, Whitney 55 Pioneer 59, Artesia 49 Portola 71, St. Margaret’s 50 Quartz Hill 58, Palmdale 47 Ramona 65, Patriot 50 Riverside North 67, Perris 41 Riverside Poly 56, Liberty 48 Rosemead 47, Gabrielino 36 San Bernardino 94, Entrepreneur 43 San Marcos 65, Rio Mesa 41 San Marino 47, Temple City 38 Santa Barbara 83, Oxnard Pacifica 65 Santa Clara 81, Dunn 41 Santa Fe 53, El Rancho 43 Santa Margarita 102, Servite 69 Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 68, Crespi 56 Sierra Canyon 55, Harvard-Westlake 47 Sierra Vista 58, Baldwin Park 37 South Pasadena 64, Monrovia 60 St. Francis 66, Chaminade 56 St. John Bosco 56, JSerra 50 St. Monica 61, St. Anthony 56 Vista del Lago 52, Heritage 48 Walnut 68, Claremont 64 Warren 67, Downey 52 Woodbridge 38, Sage Hill 30
GIRLS CITY SECTION AMIT 34, Valor Academy 20 Arleta 34, Grant 27 Bell 41, LA Roosevelt 12 Bernstein 32, Roybal 14 Birmingham 55, Granada Hills 51 Bravo 25, LA Wilson 24 Carson 47, Gardena 32 Cleveland 60, Chatsworth 42 Eagle Rock 54, Franklin 8 El Camino Real 60, Taft 23 Fairfax 50, LACES 42 Granada Hills Kennedy 56, Van Nuys 22 Harbor Teacher 82, Locke 15 Hawkins 60, Dymally 20 King/Drew 67, Washington Prep 33 LA Jordan 45, Fremont 24 Lakeview Charter 63, Fulton 9 Marquez 48, Maywood Academy 45 MSAR 41, Lake Balboa College 34 San Pedro 42, Narbonne 29 Santee 74, Los Angeles 14 Smidt Tech 26, CNDLC 13 South East 56, Huntington Park 34 South Gate 57, Legacy 29 Torres 36, Sotomayor 31 USC-MAE 61, Downtown Magnets 15 Verdugo Hills 76, Chavez 16 West Adams 41, Diego Rivera 40 Westchester 78, LA Hamilton 42 Wilmington Banning 39, Rancho Dominguez 10
SOUTHERN SECTION Arroyo 49, El Monte 27 Banning 50, Desert Mirage 7 Bonita 44, Diamond Bar 6 Buena Park 69, Segerstrom 43 Capistrano Valley Christian 48, Western 26 Charter Oak 34, Covina 20 Cerritos 67, Glenn 5 Coachella Valley 37, Indio 22 Compton Centennial 58, Beverly Hills 28 Corona 51, Eastvale Roosevelt 49 Corona Centennial 91, Riverside King 30 Corona Santiago 60, Norco 19 Culver City 57, Inglewood 29 Cypress 48, Yorba Linda 45 Downey 64, La Mirada 24 Fillmore 48, Hueneme 9 Glendora 67, Ayala 32 Hacienda Heights Wilson 61, Northview 50 Hesperia 61, Serrano 29 La Canada 79, Blair 11 Lakewood 71, Long Beach Cabrillo 7 La Sierra 47, Rubidoux 22 Lawndale 59, Santa Monica 30 Leuzinger 75, Hawthorne 11 Liberty 46, Citrus Hill 19 Long Beach Jordan 41, Millikan 29 Lynwood 35, Paramount 34 Mission Viejo 32, Northwood 21 Moreno Valley 75, Canyon Springs 22 Norwalk 59, Firebaugh 6 Oak Hills 91, Apple Valley 14 Pasadena Poly 53, Valley Christian 33 Pilibos 52, Burbank Providence 22 Quartz Hill 51, Golden Valley 41 Ramona 73, Patriot 46 Ridgecrest Burroughs 59, Sultana 24 Riverside North 38, Vista del Lago 36 Riverside Poly 54, Paloma Valley 34 Rolling Hills Prep 76, Palos Verdes 72 Rosemead 40, Gabrielino 28 Rowland 54, West Covina 27 Sage Hill 79, St. Margaret’s 41 Sierra Vista 49, Baldwin Park 27 South Pasadena 63, Monrovia 32 Temple City 48, San Marino 35 Tustin 39, Santa Ana 31 Whitney 58, Oxford Academy 28 Whittier 34, California 28 Workman 33, Bassett 7
Frith Street in Soho, where John Logie Baird gave the world’s first public television demonstration in 1926, now houses a famous bar
It may appear as a normal bar, but it’s history will shock you (Image: Howard Kingsnorth via Getty Images)
As you meander down Frith Street in the pulsating heart of Soho, you might easily overlook the gleaming blue plaque at number 22, commemorating a significant historical event that unfolded right here.
Now home to Bar Italia, a popular haunt for revellers in London‘s vibrant nightlife scene, this building was once a hub for some of the greatest minds and innovators of the modern era. It was here, at number 22 Frith Street, in a rented attic, that television was born, thanks to the pioneering work of an innovative engineer.
On 2 October 1925, this site etched its name in history as the location of the first-ever television, an invention that would go on to revolutionise the world. The man behind this groundbreaking invention was John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer who had been relentlessly pursuing this project.
The space he leased in Soho served as his laboratory, where he devoted countless hours to experimentation, starting in 1924. He laboured incessantly on this massive, intricate device, notorious for its frequent malfunctions and scattered parts within his chaotic lab.
While his contraption successfully displayed images of a ventriloquist’s dummy named Stooky Bill, Baird needed to test it with a human subject. Enter William Taynton – a humble office boy working downstairs, who was enlisted to participate in the experiment.
The test was repeated successfully using a human subject, marking another milestone in Baird’s revolutionary journey. That pivotal moment heralded the birth of television.
However, it wasn’t until 26th January 1926, precisely a century ago, that he presented the first formal demonstration of his groundbreaking invention to the public.
The historic event unfolded at his laboratory on Frith Street, where he showcased how his system could transmit and receive images to an assembled audience.
The subsequent year saw the world’s first television sets go on sale at Selfridges in London, before Baird transported his revolutionary creation across the Atlantic.
When they were eventually developed and became accessible to ordinary households, TV sets reportedly cost around £60, equivalent to approximately £4,000 in today’s money.
Today, the building operates as Bar Italia, which first welcomed customers in 1949 under the ownership of the Polledri family, who remain proprietors to this day.
The establishment has carved out its own rich history, deeply connected to Soho’s artistic community and serving as the muse for the Pulp track.
Named ‘Bar Italia’, the song pays homage to the café and bar, appearing on their beloved 1995 album Different Class. The lyrics describe the bar as a sanctuary where “all the broken people go… round the corner in Soho”.
One recent customer characterised the venue as offering an “authentic experience” in London. They commented on TripAdvisor: “An oasis of calm to escape the madness of the West End.
“Bar Italia has been welcoming all discerning tribes for seventy years with a history and loyal following to die for. If in doubt, simply refer to the walls to see the joy in pictures and trophies from the famous and not-so-famous who enjoyed a visit.”
“For seventy years, Bar Italia has been a haven for all discerning tribes, boasting a rich history and a loyal following that’s second to none. If you’re ever in doubt, just take a look at the walls adorned with photos and trophies from both famous and not-so-famous patrons who’ve relished their visit.”
From Zaria to Lagos, Yakubu spent three days. Along the way, he hoped, ate, and even stepped aside to relieve himself.
Home had become a stronghold of terrorists who rustled cattle, kidnapped residents, and cut farmers off from their harvests. Even children, Yakubu recalled, openly carried weapons in Funtua, the area where he grew up in Katsina State, northwestern Nigeria.
He fled first to Zaria in neighbouring Kaduna State, where he negotiated with a truck driver transporting cattle to Lagos, in the country’s South West. With ₦3,000, he secured a small space and spent what remained of the ₦5,000 his father gave him on food along the journey. Whenever the need arose, the driver pulled over so he and others could relieve themselves in the bushes.
Yakubu’s journey shows the vulnerability of travellers in Nigeria, including migrants, where sanitation infrastructure fails to meet evolving needs.
In 2020, REACHfound that many people in some parts of northeastern Nigeria were not using latrines because facilities had been destroyed by conflict. In some internally displaced persons’ (IDPs) camps in Borno State, up to 30 per cent of residents practised open defecation. And of the 254 sites assessed across the state between 2021 and 2022, 57 per cent showed evidence of the practice.
By the end of 2024, Nigeria had over three million displaced persons, driven largely by insecurity in the northern region, as well as climate-related displacement linked to flooding and environmental degradation.
Many displaced people move south, travelling along highways without public toilets and settling in urban centres where informal settlements lack basic sanitation. Studies have linked cholera outbreaks in such settings to open defecation.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city and a major destination for migrants, including IDPs, recent cholera outbreaks killed more than 20 people and left many others hospitalised.
The impact of the absence of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) facilities continues to play out daily.
Sixteen-year-old Shamsu arrived in the city from Kurfi Local Government Area of Katsina State. For five years, he has lived in a small shanty along Yaba, a residential community in Lagos Mainland, with other young people who earn a living collecting used plastic bottles.
The shanty offers little protection from either rain or heat. When it rains, water seeps through the torn tarpaulins that serve as walls and roof. And with no toilet, occupants defecate in a small patch of bush a few steps away.
“When I need to defecate, I buy sachets of water for ₦50,” Shamsu said, explaining that he uses the water to clean up afterwards. He came to Lagos in search of economic opportunity.
At the spot where Shamsu and others defecate, HumAngle encountered a man crouched on a highway barrier. His back curved inward, the rest of his body leaning forward as vehicles raced past. The man, known to sell suya in the area, appeared shy in the face of the urgency of the moment and the exposure it demanded. No water for cleaning was visible.
His back curved inward, the rest of his body leaning forward as vehicles raced past. Photo: Damilola Ayeni/HumAngle
Yusuf said he pays ₦200 to use a public toilet in Akogun, some distance away from Makoko, where he lives in an informal settlement with other migrants. He had come to Lagos on the back of a truck after fleeing terrorism in the Makoda area of Kano State.
The cost and distance, however, raise questions about how accessible such facilities are in practice, particularly at night, and what options remain when toilets are out of reach.
In 2019, the federal government launched Clean Nigeria, a national hygiene campaign aimed at ending open defecation across all 774 local government areas by 2025. By the end of the target year, however, nearly 48 million Nigerians were still engaged in the act.
The Federal Ministry of Water Resources’ 2021 Water, Sanitation and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping projected multiple target misses due to slow progress. And in November 2024, the federal government launched a revised Clean Nigeria Campaign (CNC) Strategic Plan, extending the goal to 2030 and proposing measures such as media outreach, fines, and increased access to toilets in schools, homes, and public spaces.
According to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Nigeria would need “a fourfold increase in the current rate of progress,” including the construction of millions of toilets, to achieve the ambitious goal of eradicating open defecation.
Who’s to blame?
The problem, said environmental specialist Adesehinwa Adegbulugbe, cannot be blamed on a single actor.
“Local governments struggle to provide services at the pace of population growth, while national policy and planning frameworks have not fully anticipated such urban influxes,” he said.
Get our in-depth, creative coverage of conflict and development delivered to you every weekend.
Subscribe now to our newsletter!
“Poor urban planning, insufficient investment in decentralised sanitation, weak enforcement of building codes, and fragmented municipal coordination all hinder effective sanitation provision. In other words, even where infrastructure exists, mismanagement or inequitable access often perpetuates open defecation practices.”
HumAngle found that many migrants, like other residents, are willing to use sanitation facilities when available. At Railway, the shanty where Yakubu resides, among other scrap collectors, showed no evidence of open defecation.
Public toilets, Yakubu said, stood a short distance from where he sat, dismantling discarded electric switches and separating metal from plastic.
Built by the local development council, one of the toilet facilities in the area was in use at the time of HumAngle’s visit. Water flowed, users moved in and out, and the surroundings appeared orderly and maintained.
“I’m enjoying my peace in Lagos,” said Yakubu, who was a carpenter back home. “If not because of my parents, I won’t travel home at all.”
Yakubu points to a public toilet a short distance away. Photo: Damilola Ayeni/HumAngle
In Gengere, another informal settlement largely occupied by northern migrants and traders working in Lagos’s Mile 12 Market, residents said they use available public toilets, including at night. HumAngle observed one of the facilities. We also did not find evidence of open defecation in the community.
Even Shamsu said he dislikes the routine of crouching and defecating in the open, even though Makoko, a large slum near his shanty, boasts of a few public toilets.
“If there’s a decent toilet, I’ll use it,” he said.
When it rains, water seeps through the torn tarpaulins that serve as walls and roof. Photo: Damilola Ayeni/HumAngle
The Lagos State Government has acknowledged deficits in toilet access, particularly in public spaces and informal settlements. In March 2025, it announced plans to build 350 additional public toilets across the state in partnership with WaterAid and private operators. Earlier in November 2024, the state government had approved the construction of 100 public toilets as part of efforts to curb open defecation in the state.
Even as Lagos moves to expand public toilet access, sanitation pressures linked to rapid urban growth extend beyond the state.
The populations are growing at a rate that housing, employment, sanitation services, and enforcement are yet to catch up with. In Ado, the Ekiti State capital in South West Nigeria, the road leading to Mary Immaculate Grammar School smells like an overflowing latrine. Residents blame open defecation.
“Different people come to dump waste or defecate here,” said Taye Adelaju, a resident.
Meanwhile, public toilets in the area charge only a token fee for use.
Taye said only strict sanitation enforcement can prevent the area from becoming a public health hazard.
Adesehinwa said that it’s critical to view open defecation as a systems failure, and not just a behavioural or cultural issue. “This framing,” he said, “enables multi-sectoral interventions, mobilises public and private investment, and promotes accountability across institutions rather than targeting individuals.”
As insecurity pushes more Nigerians onto the road and into unplanned settlements, urban centres like Lagos either expand sanitation systems or allow open defecation and the diseases it fuels to become a permanent feature of their growing population.
*Only first names have been used to protect the identities of some of the sources.
This is the second of a ‘Down South’ series exploring migration from areas of Northern Nigeria to Lagos. Read the first here.
Furious locals are fighting to stop Stella McCartney from building a £5million mansion
AN ECOLOGIST has insisted otters must be given a 650ft protection zone if work on Stella McCartney’s £5m Highland mansion is given the green light.
McCartney, 54, and her husband, Alasdhair Willis, hope to build a secluded mansion at Commando Rock in Glenuig on the Moidart peninsula.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
Alasdhair Willis and his wife Stella McCartneyCredit: GettyOtters are a protected speciesCredit: Getty
Dozens of objections have been lodged with Highland Council over the application in her husband’s name.
An otter survey requested by the couple has been submitted to officials and it confirms the presence of holts near the site.
Dr Leon Durbin, an otter expert, has said an exclusion zone must be enforced to prevent harm being done to animals.
An objection letter to Highland Council said: “As an experienced otter ecologist I am going to argue that the nature of the works here requires a 200m exclusion.
“The reason that a 200m exclusion zone around natal holts is usually recommended by NatureScot is that these natal resting sites tend to be well away from human activity, especially noisy, vibrational activity.
“In my opinion, noise and vibration from ground works, site traffic, voices etc at 100m would likely cause disturbance to breeding otters, even with the proviso of vegetative cover and sloping topography.”
He added: “As an ecologist who has chalked up many hundreds of hours of radio-tracking and direct observations of otters in freshwater and marine environments, including radio-tracking a female before and after breeding, I would urgently recommend a 200m exclusion zone in this case.
“If there is any doubt, the legislation compels us to add a good margin as a precautionary principle.”
Otters are a protected species and it is an offence to damage a holt.
A licence will be needed from official body NatureScot before any work commences.
Mr Willis had earlier confirmed the otter report had been completed.
He added: “The ecologist went through all the appropriate measures, setting up cameras and monitoring activity.
“We’re not denying there is wildlife activity.
“But we’ve come back with a clear mitigation plan to minimise any environmental impact, not just for otters but all wildlife.”
Ms McCartney has strong connections to Scotland after spending childhood holidays at High Park Farm on Mull of Kintyre, a hideaway that became the inspiration for the 1977 hit that her father wrote with Denny Laine for Wings.
She married at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute in 2003.
Highland Council said their planning committee hope to consider the project in the near future.
Aiming to restore prominent attorney Daniel T. Broderick III’s reputation, prosecutors called family housekeepers to testify Friday that his ex-wife, Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick, provoked and threatened him, but he always remained unruffled.
Responding to repeated claims that Daniel Broderick had a mean temper and scared his four children, allegations advanced during the last two weeks of defense testimony at Betty Broderick’s double-murder trial, housekeepers said Friday he was a kind and loving father.
As testimony in the trial neared a close, the housekeepers–among the final prosecution witnesses–said it was Betty Broderick who vandalized the family home and threatened to commit serious violence, once prompting a call to police after claiming she had a gun in her car.
Betty Broderick, 43, who faces two counts of first-degree murder in the Nov. 5, 1989, shooting deaths of her ex-husband and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, listened impassively to the testimony.
She showed emotion only when her father, Frank Bisceglia of Eastchester, N.Y., made his first appearance at the trial, smiling delightedly at him when he walked into the courtroom Friday afternoon.
After the day’s testimony concluded, he told reporters he had no comment.
If convicted, Betty Broderick could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. San Diego Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan said Friday that the case is likely to go to the jury next week.
Daniel Broderick, who was 44, was a medical malpractice lawyer and former president of the San Diego County Bar Assn. Linda Kolkena Broderick, who was 28, was his office assistant.
After 16 years of marriage, Daniel and Betty Broderick separated in 1985. During their bitter divorce, which was not final until 1989, she accused her husband of using his legal influence to cheat her out of her fair share of his seven-figure annual income.
Testifying last week in her own defense, Betty Broderick admitted firing the shots that killed her ex-husband and his second wife.
Her defense attorney, Jack Earley, contends that she did not have the premeditation the law requires for first-degree murder because she intended only to talk to him and to kill herself when she stole into his house at dawn.
During the defense case, which concluded Friday morning, witnesses claimed that, when he was mad, Daniel Broderick broke things, kicked the family dogs, screamed at his four children and intimidated them. Betty Broderick said he hit her and subjected her to emotional abuse.
But the two housekeepers who, in turn, ran Daniel Broderick’s home from 1985 through 1987–where the four children were living because his ex-wife had given them to him–said he tried to eat dinner with the children every night, took an active interest in their homework and often played basketball with his two boys, the younger two of the four children.
Both said they never saw him react violently toward the four children. Or even, said Marta C. Shaver, Daniel Broderick’s housekeeper in 1985 and 1986, toward his ex-wife.
In the fall of 1985, Betty Broderick threw a homemade cake around her ex-husband’s bedroom, leaving the room “totally destroyed,” Shaver said. But, she said, Daniel Broderick “remained calm” and announced that he reluctantly would have to enforce a court order requiring his ex-wife to stay off his property.
Robin Tuua, the housekeeper during 1986 and 1987, said that Betty Broderick drove to her ex-husband’s house to drop off one of the boys and one of the two whispered to her, “Mommy has a butcher knife under the seat. Be careful.”
Then, Tuua said, Betty Broderick “told me she had a gun in her glove box. At this point, there was not a shadow of a doubt that this woman would use it on me. I called the police,” who took a report.
Tuua did not indicate whether Betty Broderick actually had a gun in her car. According to earlier testimony, Betty Broderick did not own a gun until two years later, when she bought one in March, 1989.
A marriage and family counseling expert–who testified Thursday that Betty Broderick had been the victim of physical, sexual and psychological abuse during the marriage–said Friday that she was given to exaggeration.
The final defense witness, Daniel J. Sonkin, wrapped up his testimony Friday before the housekeepers took the stand by saying Betty Broderick was suffering from “a lot of anger, a lot of hostility, a lot of hurt” attributable to her ex-husband.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells, the prosecutor in the case, asked Sonkin why a woman who purportedly had been battered by her husband would seek to confront him–especially after separation. She also wondered why, if he really had engaged in a pattern of abusing her, he didn’t simply punch her out when she did try to confront him.
“He used the courts” instead, to manipulate their divorce and to manipulate her, Sonkin said. But he told Wells, “I’m not disagreeing with you that it was inappropriate for her to go over there” on various occasions.
Wells, who sparred repeatedly with Sonkin on Thursday, showed signs of irritation on Friday with his testimony, her voice rising and her speech rapid. She also cut off his answers, and he cut off hers, prompting the court reporter to tell them that only one person at a time could speak.
After 14 days of testimony, the opposing lawyers also showed signs of stress with each other–and even the judge appeared cross.
During Shaver’s testimony about the smeared cake, Earley objected, saying she was being far too dramatic.
“If the witness wants to be in the movies . . . ,” Earley said before Wells cut him off with her own objection. Then Whelan leaned forward, pointed a finger at Earley and said loudly: “Knock that off.”
Testimony in the case is due to resume Tuesday. No court session is scheduled for Monday, a state holiday.
As he laid in a hospital bed last April, grateful just to be alive, Alijah Arenas dreamed of this moment. He thought of it in the weeks and months after his Tesla Cybertruck hit a tree and burst into flames in Reseda, leaving him hospitalized for six days. And he thought of it over a long summer and fall spent rehabbing the injured knee that failed him in his first week back to practice at USC.
Nine difficult months spent waiting for the day to finally arrive had culminated Wednesday night with Arenas roaring into the lane, with just one defender standing between him and the hoop. The five-star freshman had committed to USC with every intention of bolting for the NBA after one season, only for the setbacks of the past year to put his likely lottery status in doubt.
But here, as he lifted towards the hoop early in his college debut, Arenas spun around that lone defender in mid-air and softly laid in a finger roll, reminding everyone in attendance of the talent they’d waited so eagerly to see.
But what unfolded from that moment on Wednesday night probably wasn’t how Arenas had envisioned it, as Northwestern spoiled his debut, dealing USC a 74-68 defeat.
It was Arenas’ backup in the backcourt who would drag the Trojans back from the brink against Northwestern after the Wildcats had led nearly the entire game. Just a week earlier, Jordan Marsh had dropped 17 in the second half of USC’s win over Maryland. On Wednesday, he was even better, piling up 19 after halftime.
But there was little he or USC’s five-star freshman could do in the final minutes as Northwestern fended off every push from the desperate Trojans, thanks largely to the efforts of senior forward Nick Martinelli, who had 22 points.
Arenas had eight points in his debut, shooting three of 15 from the perimeter in a performance that left him obviously gassed throughout. He played 29 minutes, nonetheless, at one point leaving to have his knee evaluated by trainers on the bench.
With losses in three of their last five coming into Wednesday, USC (14-5 overall, 3-5 in Big Ten) had hoped that Arenas’ arrival would act as a salve at the start of its Big Ten slate, injecting five-star talent into a lineup ravaged by injuries. But there were only so many problems that talent could paper over for the Trojans, even if Northwestern had come into Wednesday night on the heels of a five-game losing streak.
Arenas’ debut didn’t suddenly correct the Trojans’ free-throw woes. After hitting just five of 14 from the stripe in a loss to Purdue on Saturday, USC responded by shooting 26 of 43 on Wednesday night, with Northwestern content to foul them pretty much whenever the Trojans drove inside.
Once again, no one, Arenas included, could get going from three-point range for USC either, as the Trojans followed up a three of 20 showing from deep against Purdue loss by hitting their first two three-pointers … only to miss their next 11.
They spent most of the second half without their leading scorer, too, after Chad Baker-Mazara fouled out with more than nine minutes remaining.
Still, USC hung on tight through the second half, never letting Northwestern’s lead grow to more than eight. Marsh drove the lane with a chance to cut Northwestern’s lead to a single possession in the final 15 seconds. But his lay-in flew wildly out of his hands.
The loss spoiled a debut that had been perhaps the most anticipated at USC in at least half a decade, since Evan Mobley graced the Galen Center court in 2021. But while Mobley led the Trojans on an Elite Eight run, his lone season at USC was played front of empty arenas because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Arenas, meanwhile, was just the sort of blue-chip prospect that Eric Musselman and his staff had hoped to build around.
The path to that point would prove far more harrowing than anyone expected. But what felt like a light at the end of the tunnel Wednesday night didn’t feel nearly as hopeful by the final buzzer.
Our guide turns out the lights and suddenly there is nothing. Just total darkness, the sound of gentle dripping and a creeping feeling of unease. The switch is flicked back on and the shadowy world that lies deep beneath the Karst returns. I’m in Vilenica, thought to be the first cave in the world ever opened to tourists, with records of visitors dating back to 1633. It’s a magical sight: a grand antechamber sculpted through erosion, filled with soaring stalagmites and plunging stalactites streaked in shades of red, terracotta and orange by iron oxide, and dotted with shimmering crystals.
Vilenica is just one of a network of thousands of caves located in the Karst region of western Slovenia and eastern Italy, which is known for its porous, soluble limestone rock. Above ground, this creates a distinctive landscape, filled with rocks bearing lined striations and pockmarked by hollows known as dolines, where the limestone has collapsed underneath. But below ground is where it’s really special, with enormous caves, sinkholes and subterranean rivers. Later in the day, I visit the region’s other main visitor cave, Škocjan, where I’m amazed to see an underground river thunder through a chamber almost 150 metres high. It’s an almost surreal sensory experience, with the rush of the rapids echoing around the walls.
As my guide drives me through the Karst region, I watch the undulating hills of a comparatively untouched stretch of countryside go by, dotted with a patchwork of bilingual villages connecting eastern Italy and western Slovenia along a border that shifted several times over the 20th century. Increasingly, the area is viewing itself as one region spanning two countries, and is hoping to combat the overtourism plaguing Italy and Slovenia’s better-known destinations by attracting people in search of a slower, more authentic and local experience. To showcase its shared history, nature and culture, the region has established a new EU-funded cross-border geopark, known as GeoKarst, and is hoping to secure Unesco designation.
Typical Karst region countryside around the Škocjan cave. Photograph: robertharding/Alamy
Winding around the region’s hills, I reach its highlight – Štanjel, a medieval village that wouldn’t look out of place in Provence, but without the crowds. Wandering around its cobbled streets feels like stepping back a millennium, or in some cases longer, given the village has prehistoric and Roman origins. The flint-grey buildings are made of sturdy local Karst stone, which has stayed more or less intact for hundreds of years. At sunset, I sit with a glass of crisp local vitovska wine in Bistro Grad, a prettily decorated restaurant garlanded with dried flowers, and take in sweeping views of the gilded valley beneath.
Leaving Slovenia, we venture over to the Karst’s Italian side, where it is flanked by Trieste, a vibrant university city that blends Italian culture with Viennese art nouveau architecture courtesy of its lengthy stint as the Austro-Hungarian empire’s sole port. Locals say the cultural blend has given it a uniquely open-minded and tolerant spirit. My guide, Beatriz Barovina, tells me that unlike elsewhere in Italy, you can eat, sip an espresso or drink a glass of wine alone without being judged for not having a big Italian family around you. She says there is still a strong attachment to Austria, especially among older generations, who cling to the refrain: “It was better under Austria.”
The hilltop village of Štanjel. Photograph: Natalia Schuchardt/Alamy
Locals tell me that as well as the buzzy cafe culture, they love Trieste for its easy access to nature. Heading out of the city centre for 15 minutes, we reach the 3-mile Via Napoleonica route, which offers panoramic views of Trieste’s bay, and connects the small towns of Opicina and Prosecco, birthplace of the eponymous sparkling wine.
It’s easy to eat well in the Karst region because most produce is sourced from local farmers. One unique experience is a visit to a local osmice, family-run farms and vineyards. At Cantina Parovel, the family serve homemade cheese, wine, prosciutto, honey and olive oil on picnic tables shaded by pines. The Parovel family is proud to boast its distinctively Karst pedigree to me: three generations of the family were born in the same village, yet their grandparents were born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the parents in Italy, and the children in Slovenia.
Their osmice is located at the end of a spectacular 4-mile hike through the Rosandra valley, if you start in the village of Mihele and partly follow stage 36 of the Alpe Adria Trail, cutting through a landscape of wild cherry trees and roe deer. If you’re lucky you might even stumble upon one of the improvised “wine caves” – hollows in which people leave local wines and cheeses on an honesty-bar basis for hungry and thirsty travellers – with carved wooden seating overlooking the valley below.
It’s a uniquely Karst experience, and one that reflects the region’s two most distinctive features: its striking landscape and welcoming, communitarian spirit.
Rights groups condemn trial of three activists accused of ‘inciting subversion of state power.’
A landmark trial of three activists who organised vigils marking China’s Tiananmen Square massacre has opened in Hong Kong.
Chow Hang-tung, Albert Ho and Lee Cheuk-yan, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, are charged with “inciting subversion of state power” in the case before the Chinese territory’s High Court.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
As they entered the courtroom on Thursday, Lee waved at his supporters, who waved back and said “good morning” to him.
Ho sat calmly, and Chow thanked her supporters for enduring the winds during the night and bowed to them.
Minutes later, Lee and Chow pleaded not guilty, while Ho entered a guilty plea.
About 70 people queued in the cold on Thursday morning for the public gallery, while dozens of police were deployed around the court.
Hong Kong used to host yearly candlelight vigils to mark Beijing’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, but those events have been banned since 2020.
That year, Beijing imposed a national security law on the former British colony in the wake of huge, sometimes violent pro-democracy protests.
Rights groups and some foreign governments have criticised cases brought against prominent pro-democracy figures under the law as a weaponisation of the rule of law to silence dissent.
“This case is not about national security – it is about rewriting history and punishing those who refuse to forget the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director, Asia.
Angeli Datt, research and advocacy coordinator at the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, condemned the trial as a “sham”.
“If Hong Kong authorities actually follow the law, their only recourse is to drop all charges and immediately release the three organisers,” Datt said in a statement.
Beijing has said the security law restored stability to the city following the 2019 protests, which sent hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets.
Three government-vetted judges will preside over the trial, which is expected to last 75 days. Videos related to the alliance’s years of work will be part of the prosecution’s evidence.
The three-judge panel earlier dismissed an application by Chow to throw out the case.
“The court will not allow the trial to become, as [Chow] said, a tool for political suppression,” the judges wrote in a preliminary ruling.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was founded in May 1989 to support protesters holding democracy and anticorruption rallies in Beijing.
The following month, China’s government sent tanks and soldiers to crush the movement on and around Tiananmen Square, a decision it has since heavily censored domestically.
The Alliance spent the next three decades calling on Beijing to accept responsibility, free dissidents, and embrace democratic reform.
Its candlelight vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park every June 4 routinely drew thousands.
The trial of Chow, Lee and Ho follows last month’s conviction of media tycoon Jimmy Lai, which drew international condemnation.
Lai was found guilty of conspiring to commit foreign collusion.
The city’s chief justice responded to the criticisms of Lai’s conviction on Monday, saying the judges deal “only with the law and the evidence, not with any underlying matters of politics”.
Ras Ein al-Auja, occupied West Bank – When the music stops, Naif Ghawanmeh, 45, takes a seat in front of the fire. The night is chilly, and for the first time in weeks, everything is still for a moment – the Israeli settlers’ celebrations have finished for the day.
But the village of Ras Ein al-Auja, situated in the eastern West Bank’s Jericho governorate, has been all but wiped out.
The village was one of the last Palestinian herding communities in this part of the Jordan Valley, but now, the herders’ sheep have gone – most of them stolen or poisoned by settlers or sold off by villagers under pressure. Their water has been cut off – the Ras Ein spring declared off-limits by the neighbouring settlers for the past year.
And for the past two weeks, most of the community’s homes have been dismantled. Many of the families forced out have burned their furniture before they have left, not wanting to leave it for the invading settlers to use.
“By God, it’s a difficult feeling,” Ghawanmeh says. He is at a loss for words, fidgeting by the fire and at times rubbing his face in misery and exhaustion. ”Everyone left. Not one of them [remains]. They all left.”
Since the start of this year, about 450 of the 650 Palestinian inhabitants of Ras Ein al-Auja have fled their homes – for many the only place they have ever lived – because of violence by Israeli settlers.
Other than the 14 Ghawanmeh families, including a large number of children, who say they have nowhere else to go, the rest are packing up and leaving in the coming days.
This rapid displacement of hundreds of people marks the largest expulsion from a single Bedouin community as a result of Israeli settler violence in modern times – a feat that has elicited taunting celebrations by the encroaching settlers and left lives in ruins for Bedouin families now deprived of shelter, livelihoods and community.
Palestinians dismantle their homes as settler violence forces them out of Ras Ein al-Auja [Courtesy of Looking the Occupation in the Eye]
No land, no sheep, no water, no safety
Until the New Year, the people of Ras Ein al-Auja had held out on their lands despite an onslaught of physical attacks, thefts, threats, movement restrictions and destruction of property by settlers – a state of being that is now all too common for rural Palestinian communities across the West Bank.
Settlers have been enabled by rapid growth in the number of settlement outposts springing up across the West Bank. Settlements and these outposts are illegal under international law. They are also built without the legal permission of Israeli authorities but in practice are largely tolerated and offered protection by Israeli forces, especially in recent years under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
International law stipulates that occupying powers like Israel must not move their own civilian populations into occupied territories, such as the West Bank, where about 700,000 settlers now reside.
In December, another 19 settler outposts built without government approval were retroactively approved by Israel’s government as official settlements. In all, the number of settlements and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50 percent since 2022 – from 141 to 210 now.
This recent explosion of settler outposts has given way to a more recent yet even more dangerous phenomenon: shepherding outposts.
Each of these outposts mimics the Bedouins’ way of life but with settlers’ own grazing flocks. They are typically run by a single armed Israeli settler supported by several armed teenagers often funnelled in by government-funded programmes intended to support “at-risk” troubled youth.
Using animal grazing as a means to overrun Palestinian shepherds and seize their lands, such settlers had managed by April 2024 to take over about 14 percent of the West Bank, according to the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot. That figure has increased since then by at least tens of thousands of dunums (1 dunum equals 0.1 hectares and a quarter of an acre), according to Kerem Navot’s founder, Dror Etkes.
The outposts serve as a launching pad for attacks, controls on Palestinian movement and army-coordinated arrests, which have unfolded in places like Ras Ein al-Auja.
Routinely, settlers steal and poison the livestock that Palestinian shepherds, who largely inhabit these remote areas, rely on for their livelihoods. On top of this, settlers are preventing Palestinian shepherds who still have flocks from accessing the grazing lands they’ve always used. Settlers have built fences and engage in intimidation and violence, forcing Palestinians to buy expensive animal fodder to sustain their flocks instead.
Settlers also target the basic resources that Bedouin Palestinians rely on for themselves. Like most other Palestinian communities in the West Bank’s Area C, which Israel fully controls, the people of Ras Ein al-Auja are denied access to electricity by Israeli authorities. The Israeli Civil Administration, which controls zoning and planning in Area C, rarely grants permits for Palestinians to build infrastructure, including connecting to the grid or installing solar energy systems. The solar panels the villagers have put up have frequently been destroyed by settlers.
In addition, these Palestinian shepherding communities, often located in dry regions, are now denied sufficient access to water, including from the lush springs found in Ras Ein al-Auja which once made this village one of the most prosperous of the shepherding communities.
“They prevented us from getting water,” Ghawanmeh says. “They prevented us from bringing the sheep to the water and getting water from the spring.”
A Palestinian home is dismantled except for the floor in Ras Ein al-Auja, nearly all of whose inhabitants have been forced out by violent Israeli settlers [Courtesy of Looking the Occupation in the Eye]
Near-total impunity
Israeli settlers have also been emboldened by a wide-scale armament programme spearheaded at the start of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the near-total impunity they enjoy when they carry out attacks. While court rulings in favour of Palestinians and against settlers have occurred, they are rare.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1,800 settler attacks – about five per day – were documented in 2025, resulting in casualties or property damage in about 280 communities across the West Bank, and besting the previous year’s record of settler attacks by more than 350. A total of 240 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 55 children, were killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025.
These unprecedented levels of settler and soldier violence alongside the wholesale deprivation of basic resources that rural Palestinians need to survive have led to the erasure of dozens of rural Palestinian communities.
In January and February 2025, the Israeli military forcibly displaced about 40,000 people from refugee camps in Tulkarem and Jenin, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, settler violence has forced out 44 Palestinian communities in the West Bank consisting of 2,701 people, nearly half of whom are minors. Thirteen more communities comprising 452 people have been partially transferred. These people end up wherever they can find a place to stay, resulting in fractured communities and families.
Such figures of displacement have not been seen in the West Bank in decades.
Palestinians take their houses apart before fleeing the village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the eastern West Bank [Courtesy of Looking the Occupation in the Eye]
‘Two years of psychological pressure’
For 27 months, Ras Ein al-Auja has been subjected to all of these types of attacks and restrictions. In the past year, multiple Israeli shepherding outposts have sprung up at different corners of the village, which extends for 20,000 dunums (20sq km or 7.7sq miles), and have come increasingly closer to Palestinian homes.
“Two years of psychological pressure at night,” remarks an exhausted Ghawanmeh, who explains the haphazard shifts the men of his village have been taking to keep watch. “If you sleep, the settlers will burn your house.”
Under the pressure of settler attacks, poisonings and thefts, the number of sheep belonging to the community has dwindled from 24,000 to fewer than 3,000. Settler attacks and invasions have become so constant that nine solidarity activists – some progressives from Israel and others from other countries – were required to keep an around-the-clock protective presence.
Without anywhere else to go – and knowing from both settler threats and accounts from displaced relatives elsewhere that settlers would likely follow them anyway – the people of Ras Ein al-Auja had hung on by a thread.
That is, until the latest settler outpost.
Following a pattern seen in other now-displaced Bedouin communities like nearby Mu’arrajat, some of whose inhabitants fled to Ras Ein al-Auja, settlers began erecting outposts directly next to people’s homes at the beginning of the year – right in the middle of the community.
“Life has completely stopped ever since,” Ghawanmeh says. Families have barricaded themselves inside their houses, terrified of the settlers who now routinely graze their flocks just outside Palestinian homes.
Then, the spate of attacks this month compelled far more families to flee and take their remaining sheep with them. Almost three-quarters of the community has now gone. These families are now scattered across the West Bank although most are now in the cramped towns and cities of Area A, which makes up 18 percent of the West Bank and is administered by the Palestinian Authority.
As a result, these communities’ centuries-old traditions as Bedouins are coming to an end.
“There’s a saying among the Bedouins: ‘Upbringing outweighs origins,’” Ghawanmeh says. “It means you were raised here, you eat from the land, you drink from the land, you sleep on the land. You are from it, and it is from you.”
“To leave your house and leave your village”, he adds, “it is very, very, very difficult. But we are forced to.”
The children who remain have been left rudderless and afraid at night as they look at empty, scarred patches of land where once their friends and family lived. “Children are scared, scared that the settlers, the [settler security guards], will come,” Ghawanmeh says.
Al Jazeera requested comment from the Israeli military about the accusations made in this article and to ask for details about what action is being taken to prevent settler attacks on Palestinian communities, including Ras Ein al-Auja. We received no response.
Residents of Ras Ein al-Auja prepare to leave as Israeli settler attacks have intensified on their community, property and livestock this year [Courtesy of Looking the Occupation in the Eye]
‘Even if you sing for me until tomorrow, I won’t be happy’
As the swell of violence and land thefts gives way to a steady exodus of the last remaining villagers, a couple of musicians come to provide some relief from another day of traumatic separation and displacement.
“I hope they’ll feel seen, and I hope they’ll feel happy for at least a few moments and that they can feel like children, even if it’s just for a few minutes,” says Kai Jack, a Norwegian solidarity activist and professional contrabass player.
About a dozen children huddle in plastic chairs in a tin shack that once served as the meeting place for the community’s many families to hear this rare performance. As they listen to a handful of Palestinian folk songs, the children, at first timid, relax and begin to clap and sing to staples like Wein a Ramallah (Where? To Ramallah).
For the first time in weeks, the children even manage to crack a few smiles.
And then, Jack and the accompanying violinist, Amalia Kelter Zeitlin, settle into playing the Palestinian lullaby Yamma Mawil al-Hawa (Mother, What’s with the Wind?). The children’s mothers, looking on from the sidelines, begin to softly sing along:
“My life will continue through sacrifice – for freedom.”
As the song ends, the mothers join the children in rounds of applause. “Beautiful?” Jack asks.
“Very,” replies one of the mothers who explains how she helps her child fall to sleep with this very song. “And it has been so long since they were able to [sleep well].”
As the performance ends and the children crowd around Jack’s enormous bass, a few of the remaining Ghawanmeh brothers retreat outside, their minds unable to rest as they contemplate their inevitable expulsion.
“These songs are for the children,” Naif Ghawanmeh says. “We are tired inside. Very tired.”
One of his small nephews, Ahmed, just 2 years old, begins to sing the chorus of Wein a Ramallah. For one brief moment, the atmosphere is almost festive. But while he is happy the children are relaxing, Ghawanmeh shrugs it off himself.
“By God, look at me,” he says over the fire, which is burning whatever supplies they didn’t want to leave for the settlers to take. “Even if you sing for me until tomorrow, I won’t be happy. You see, I’m tired inside. For two years, I’ve been suffering from oppression, hardship and problems day and night from the settlers.
