Emergency

When Angelenos face a situation that requires calling 911 — such as encountering a person in the throes of a mental health crisis — the first responders are usually firefighters or armed police officers.

But a new report suggests a third option holds promise for the future.

For the past year, Los Angeles has been testing a program that dispatches specially trained civilians who don’t carry guns in response to certain calls for help. The report released earlier this month by the city said the early results are encouraging.

“When deployed to non-violent, non-urgent calls for service, unarmed crisis responders have been shown to minimize the potential for escalation and address critical mental health emergencies in a manner that prioritizes compassion and safety,” the report said.

The use of so-called “unarmed crisis responders,” the report found, not only offers specialized care to people who need help — it also allows “LAPD more time to focus on traditional law enforcement efforts.”

The ongoing pilot program has teams of licensed clinicians, social workers, community workers and therapists who work in pairs, responding to calls around the clock, seven days a week. Over its first year, the program handled more than 6,700 calls, largely to conduct welfare checks and respond to reports of public intoxication and indecent exposure.

While the program’s workload of roughly 40 calls a day is still a fraction of what the LAPD handles, the report says it has already saved police nearly 7,000 hours of patrol time by freeing them up for other tasks. With the city’s police force struggling to fill its ranks, officials say such programs could have a larger role in the future.

The report does not touch on what impact, if any, the teams have had on low-level crimes in the areas they cover, but the hope is that it will ultimately make the city safer.

The outreach workers conduct follow-up visits after certain calls and offer specialized services to people who are willing to accept them, including mental health treatment and drug rehabilitation programs.

The Unarmed Model of Crisis Response, as the program is known, is one of two that city officials are operating. The other, called the CIRCLE program, operates out of the mayor’s office with its own call center and dedicated service areas.

Although some skeptics questioned whether unarmed civilians would too often be overmatched by the subjects they encounter, the recent report found that fewer than 4.1% of calls end up requiring police backup. Those cases typically involved individuals who insisted on having an officer present or who turned out to have weapons, the report said.

The findings come as advocates brace for billions in federal spending expected to be slashed from social safety net programs by the Trump administration. The looming cuts have renewed questions about how L.A.’s program and similar ones across the country will scale up and have more impact.

More than half of the calls that the unarmed responders handle involve some type of disturbance, with reports of a prowler or trespasser as the next most common category. On average, the teams take about 28 minutes to respond to a call, and once there they spend about 25 minutes on scene, according to the city’s recent report.

In one case, an unarmed responder team was dispatched to an apartment where a woman identified in the report as “Liz” had been behaving erratically. The team arrived to find her unit’s door open. The woman invited them inside and they saw evidence suggesting she may have overdosed while her gas stove was left on. After turning off the burners and opening windows to ventilate the apartment, the team contacted firefighters and stayed with the woman until they arrived. They eventually convinced her to go to a hospital to get checked out.

The civilian teams won’t go to calls that involve weapons or violence or a need for urgent medical attention. They also do not handle situations where minors are present or when there are three or more people involved in an incident.

Police department officials have said repeatedly that, despite increased crisis intervention training and new “less-lethal” weapons designed to incapacitate rather than kill, officers are not always equipped to handle mental health calls.

LAPD leaders have said in the past that they support the program, while cautioning that any call has the potential to quickly spiral into violence.

The program, run by the office of the city administrator, was initially rolled out to three police divisions spread across the city — Devonshire, Wilshire and Southeast — but has since expanded to three others: West L.A., Olympic and West Valley.

The unarmed responder program launched in March 2024 amid continued public frustration with the city’s handling of the intertwined issues of homelessness, substance abuse and mental health. Much of the criticism was leveled at the LAPD following a string of shootings and other use-of-force incidents that involved individuals experiencing crises.

So far in 2025, LAPD officers have shot 27 people. At least a third of those incidents involved someone who was experiencing a behavioral crisis, according to a Times analysis of incident reports and interviews with families of the people shot.

Efforts to ease the reliance on armed police for emergency responses have been around for years, with several new programs springing up since 2020, spurred by a nationwide movement to redirect law enforcement funding following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Researchers have tracked more than 100 such programs across the U.S.

Despite showing promise, some city-run initiatives in Los Angeles have struggled to grow. Many similar programs across the country continue to face challenges around how to scale up.

The Los Angeles Fire Department ended its use of psychiatric mobile response teams in vans to calls around the city after officials said it didn’t actually free up first responders or hospital emergency rooms. Another plan to have unarmed Transportation Department workers conduct traffic stops — instead of police — has been dragging on for months.

Even so, proponents of the other ongoing programs are expressing cautious optimism.

“This data proves that care-first approaches work — they keep people safe, cost less, and prevent the expensive liabilities that drain our budget year after year,” City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in a statement.

Hernandez, who represents neighborhoods on the city’s Eastside and co-chairs a council committee on unarmed responses, added, “I’m proud we’re showing that Los Angeles can expand our public safety ecosystem and save lives, save money, and invest in care instead of harm.”

Godfrey Plata, deputy director of the nonprofit group LA Forward, which has advocated for unarmed alternatives to police, said his organization was pleased with the growth of the program and the City Council’s willingness to increase its funding “even in a budget deficit year.”

With the World Cup and the Olympics on the horizon, the city must continue to explore ways to protect both locals and the large number of tourists expected to arrive for those events, Plata said.

“This is a cost-saving measure in addition to a life-saving measure,” Plata said. “It would be really great to have a system built out by then to be able to absorb the shock of our emergency management systems.”

Residents accuse officials of not warning them to evacuate as torrential rain, cloudbursts trigger deadly flooding.

Climate change-induced flash floods have killed at least 337 people in northwestern Pakistan, according to the National Disaster Management Authority, while dozens remain missing after the area was hit by flash floods in recent days.

In Kishtwar district, emergency teams continued rescue efforts on Sunday in the remote village of Chositi. At least 60 were killed and some 150 injured, about 50 of them critically.

Mohammad Suhail, a spokesman for the emergency service, said 54 bodies were found after hours-long efforts in Buner, a mountainous district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where torrential rains and cloudbursts triggered massive flooding on Friday.

Suhail said several villagers remained missing. Search efforts focused on areas where homes were flattened by torrents of water that swept down from the mountains, carrying massive boulders that smashed into houses like explosions.

Cloudbursts also caused devastation in Indian-administered Kashmir. Flash floods were reported in two villages in the Kathua district, killing at least seven people and injuring five others overnight, officials said.

Authorities have warned of more deluges and possible landslides between now and Tuesday, urging local administrations to remain on alert. Higher-than-normal monsoon rains have lashed the country since June 26 and killed more than 600.

Government criticism

Angry residents in Buner accused officials of failing to warn them to evacuate after torrential rain and cloudbursts triggered deadly flooding and landslides. There was no warning broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, a traditional method in remote areas.

Mohammad Iqbal, a schoolteacher in Pir Baba village, told the Associated Press that the lack of a timely warning system caused casualties and forced many to flee their homes at the last moment.

“Survivors escaped with nothing,” he said. “If people had been informed earlier, lives could have been saved and residents could have moved to safer places.”

The government said that while an early warning system was in place, the sudden downpour in Buner was so intense that the deluge struck before residents could be alerted.

Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, told a news conference in Islamabad that Pakistan was experiencing shifting weather patterns because of climate change.

Since the monsoon season began in June, Pakistan has already received 50 percent more rainfall than in the same period last year, he added. He warned that more intense weather could follow, with heavy rains forecast to continue this month.

Asfandyar Khan Khattak, director-general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said there was “no forecasting system anywhere in the world” that could predict the exact time and location of a cloudburst.

Idrees Mahsud, a disaster management official, said Pakistan’s early warning system used satellite imagery and meteorological data to send alerts to local authorities. These were shared through the media and community leaders. He said monsoon rains that once only swelled rivers now also triggered urban flooding.

Pakistan suffers regular flash floods and landslides during the monsoon season, which runs from June to September, particularly in the rugged northwest, where villages are often perched on steep slopes and riverbanks.

Experts say climate change is intensifying the frequency and severity of such extreme weather events in South Asia. While Pakistan is estimated to produce less than one percent of planet-warming emissions, it faces heatwaves, heavy rains, glacial outburst floods, and cloudbursts that devastate local communities within hours.

The operation, on paper, appeared to be a typical government crackdown on drug traffickers.

In late 2024, more than two dozen masked officers descended on an alleged narcotics lab on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where they found materials for processing cocaine and automatic weapons.

There was only one problem: The evidence, including the firearms and cocaine, seems to have disappeared from the public record.

That is according to a Honduran prosecutor specialising in cases of state corruption who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, for fear of professional reprisal.

The prosecutor believes there is a strong possibility the police may have kept the weapons and drugs to resell them on the black market.

Experts say questions of corruption and abuse have come to typify Honduras’s “state of exception”, an emergency declaration that has suspended certain constitutional rights while granting greater powers to the military and police.

Such measures are meant to be temporary. The state of exception was first declared in December 2022, in the name of fighting drug traffickers and gangs.

But it has been extended at least 17 times since, often without the explicit approval of Honduras’s Congress.

For human rights observers, the continued renewals have raised alarms over whether the state of exception is being used as a shield for law enforcement excesses.

In May, for instance, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) urged the Honduran government to “put an end” to the state of exception, citing systematic abuses at the hands of security forces.

“The implementation of the state of exception has led to serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and raids without judicial oversight,” the UN office wrote.

It added that Honduras’s National Commission for Human Rights (CONADEH) had arrived at similar conclusions.

Joaquin Mejia — an investigator with the Team for Reflection, Investigation and Communication, a Honduran human rights advocacy group — believes such abuses are a trend under the state of exception.

“The biggest negative effect is what the National Commission for Human Rights registered: that, from December 2022 to December 2024, 798 complaints at the national level over human rights abuses are attributed to state security forces,” Mejia said.

Palestinian residents of Gaza City have come under relentless Israeli bombardment as the military prepares for a major offensive to seize and ethnically cleanse the area, barring emergency workers from reaching people trapped in the residential Zeitoun neighbourhood.

Gaza civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army had been firing at emergency vehicles trying to reach the wounded in Zeitoun on Friday, as Israeli quadcopters dropped leaflets threatening a forced displacement. Residents were told to leave sections of the eastern neighbourhood, where hundreds of homes have recently been destroyed.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel had been deploying “heavy artillery, drones and fighter jets”, with four neighbourhoods of Gaza City “reporting relentless bombardment shaking the ground day and night” as the military advanced its plans.

It was, he said, “a full dismantling of civilian life to ensure that people will never be allowed back into this area”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing to seize Gaza’s largest urban hub and forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to concentration zones, despite a wave of criticism from families of captives held in Gaza and their supporters, the Israeli security establishment, and a multitude of nations and organisations around the world.

As the military closed in on Gaza City, it also continued attacks on other parts of the enclave, killing 44 people, including 16 aid seekers desperately seeking sustenance for their families, according to medical sources who spoke to Al Jazeera.

Attacks included strikes on two hospitals, underscoring daily Palestinian pleas that no place in the besieged and bombarded enclave is safe. One person was killed at al-Shifa in Gaza City, which has been bombed and burned multiple times over the war. And at least two were killed at Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital in an explosion preceded by a swarm of Israeli drones hovering over the hospital.

‘Human remains 46 days under the rubble’

Amid the reports of further Israeli killing, Al Jazeera Arabic reported that a woman in the devastated Tuffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City retrieved the body of her brother and some remains of her father from the rubble of a bombed house.

The woman said that the bodies had been trapped along with 31 others since an air strike that had taken place 46 days earlier – the timeline indicating the attack occurred at the end of June. With no equipment to retrieve them under Israel’s harshly punitive blockade, it had been impossible to find them.

“What we are facing is too much. Too much torture and oppression. Torture, tiredness, and pain,” she said.

Starvation and dehydration as temperatures soar

In parallel, aid seekers continued to be targeted near humanitarian distribution sites run by the GHF, with medical sources reporting 16 were killed on Friday.

The United Nations human rights office said at least 1,760 Palestinians had been killed while seeking aid in Gaza since late May – a jump of several hundred since its last published figures at the beginning of August.

Of the 1,760, 994 were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 766 along the routes of supply convoys. Most of the killings were committed by the Israeli military, the agency said in a statement. United States security contractors have also fired on aid seekers.

Meanwhile, as reports emerged that another child had died of Israeli-induced starvation in the enclave, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA)  said nearly one in five young children in Gaza City were now deemed to be malnourished.

The starvation death toll has now reached 240, including 107 children, according to the Health Ministry.

The UN has said Gaza requires the equivalent of at least 600 trucks of aid entering daily to fight off the effects of man-made starvation caused by months of total Israeli blockade.

The Israeli army entity in charge of managing aid – Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories – claimed that it allowed 310 aid trucks to enter Gaza on Thursday. It said that more than 290 were collected and distributed by the UN and other international organisations.

International and Palestinian groups are reporting only one-sixth of the necessary 600 trucks a day are actually entering the territory where Israeli-backed gangs are engaged in looting.

As people battle extreme hunger, they are also enduring severe dehydration in the current heatwave, with record temperatures surpassing 40C (or 104F), and are resorting to drinking contaminated water.

“It causes stomach cramps for adults and children, without exception,” Hosni Shaheen, whose family was displaced from Khan Younis, told The Associated Press. “You don’t feel safe when your children drink it”.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s capital challenged President Trump’s takeover of its police department in court on Friday, hours after his administration stepped up its crackdown on policing by naming a federal official as the new emergency head of the department, with all the powers of a police chief.

District of Columbia Atty. Gen. Brian Schwalb said in a new lawsuit that Trump is going far beyond his power under the law. Schwalb asked a judge to find that control of the department remains in district hands and sought an emergency restraining order.

“The administration’s unlawful actions are an affront to the dignity and autonomy of the 700,000 Americans who call D.C. home. This is the gravest threat to Home Rule that the District has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” Schwalb said.

The lawsuit comes after Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday night that Drug Enforcement Administration boss Terry Cole will assume “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police.” The Metropolitan Police Department “must receive approval from Commissioner Cole” before issuing any orders, Bondi said. It was unclear where the move left the city’s current police chief, Pamela Smith, who works for the mayor.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back, writing on social media that “there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.”

Justice Department and White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the district’s lawsuit Friday morning.

Chief had agreed to share immigration information

Schwalb had said late Thursday that Bondi’s directive was “unlawful,” arguing it could not be followed by the city’s police force. He wrote in a memo to Smith that “members of MPD must continue to follow your orders and not the orders of any official not appointed by the Mayor,” setting up the legal clash between the heavily Democratic district and the Republican administration.

Bondi’s directive came even after Smith had told MPD officers hours earlier to share information with immigration agencies regarding people not in custody, such as someone involved in a traffic stop or checkpoint. The Justice Department said Bondi disagreed with the police chief’s directive because it allowed for continued enforcement of “sanctuary policies,” which generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers.

Bondi said she was rescinding that order as well as other MPD policies limiting inquires into immigration status and preventing arrests based solely on federal immigration warrants. All new directives must now receive approval from Cole, the attorney general said.

The police takeover is the latest move by Trump to test the limits of his legal authorities to carry out his agenda, relying on obscure statutes and a supposed state of emergency to bolster his tough-on-crime message and his plans to speed up the mass deportation of people in the U.S. illegally.

It also marks one of the most sweeping assertions of federal authority over a local government in modern times. While Washington has grappled with spikes in violence and visible homelessness, the city’s homicide rate ranks below those of several other major U.S. cities and the capital is not in the throes of the public safety collapse the administration has portrayed.

Residents are seeing a significant show of force

A population already tense from days of ramp-up has begun seeing more significant shows of force across the city. National Guard troops watched over some of the world’s most renowned landmarks and Humvees took position in front of the busy main train station. Volunteers helped homeless people leave long-standing encampments — to where was often unclear.

Department of Homeland Security police stood outside Nationals Park during a game Thursday between the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies. DEA agents patrolled The Wharf, a popular nightlife area, while Secret Service officers were seen in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

Bowser, walking a tightrope between the Republican White House and the constituency of her largely Democratic city, was out of town Thursday for a family commitment in Martha’s Vineyard but would be back Friday, her office said.

The uptick in visibility of federal forces around the city, including in many high-traffic areas, has been striking to residents going about their lives. Trump has the power to take over federal law enforcement for 30 days before his actions must be reviewed by Congress, though he has said he’ll re-evaluate as that deadline approaches.

Officers set up a checkpoint in one of D.C.’s popular nightlife areas, drawing protests. Troops were stationed outside the Union Station transportation hub as the 800 Guard members who have been activated by Trump started in on missions that include monument security, community safety patrols and beautification efforts, the Pentagon said.

Troops will assist law enforcement in a variety of roles, including traffic control posts and crowd control, National Guard Major Micah Maxwell said. The Guard members have been trained in de-escalation tactics and crowd control equipment, Maxwell said.

National Guard troops are a semi-regular presence in D.C., typically being used during mass public events like the annual July 4 celebration. They have regularly been used in the past for crowd control in and around Metro stations.

Whitehurst, Khalil and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Mayor Muriel Bowser disputes Donald Trump’s emergency narrative, citing crime decline; critics call deployment a political power play.

Some of the 800 National Guard members deployed by US President Donald Trump have started arriving in the nation’s capital, ramping up after the White House ordered federal forces to take over the city’s police department and reduce crime in what the president called – without substantiation – a lawless city.

The influx on Tuesday came the morning after Trump announced he would be activating the guard members and taking over the department. He cited a crime emergency – but referred to the same crime that city officials stress is already falling noticeably.

The president holds the legal right to make such moves – to a point.

The law lets Trump control the police department for a month, but how aggressive the federal presence will be and how it could play out remained open questions as the city’s mayor and police chief went to the Justice Department to meet with the attorney general.

The meeting comes a day after Mayor Muriel Bowser said Trump’s freshly announced plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and call in the National Guard was not a productive step. She calmly laid out the city’s case that crime has been dropping steadily and said Trump’s perceived state of emergency simply doesn’t match the numbers.

She also flatly stated that the capital city’s hands are tied and that her administration has little choice but to comply. “We could contest that,” she said of Trump’s definition of a crime emergency, “but his authority is pretty broad.”

Bowser made a reference to Trump’s “so-called emergency” and concluded: “I’m going to work every day to make sure it’s not a complete disaster.”

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, said Trump has accused Democrats of being “weak on crime”.

“He singled out Democrat-run cities like Oakland – which is outside San Francisco – New York, Baltimore, even Chicago,” she said. “Given the fact they’re run by Democrats … this is causing a little bit of concern.”

Democrats are calling the move “a power grab”.

“Even though they’re saying this is technically legal, it is a hostile takeover given that these powers have actually never been executed in modern history,” Halkett said.

Trump’s bumpy relationship with DC

While Trump invokes his plan by saying that “we’re going to take our capital back”, Bowser and the MPD maintain that violent crime overall in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low after a sharp rise in 2023.

Carjackings, for example, dropped about 50 percent in 2024 and are down again this year. More than half of those arrested, however, are juveniles, and the extent of those punishments is a point of contention for the Trump administration.

“The White House says crime may be down, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem and that violent crime exists at levels that are far too high,” Halkett said.

Bowser, a Democrat, spent much of Trump’s first term in office openly sparring with the Republican president. She fended off his initial plans for a military parade through the streets and stood in public opposition when he called in a multi-agency flood of federal law enforcement to confront anti-police brutality protesters in the summer of 2020.

She later had the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in giant yellow letters on the street about a block from the White House.

In Trump’s second term, backed by Republican control of both houses of Congress, Bowser has walked a public tightrope for months, emphasising common ground with the Trump administration on issues such as the successful effort to bring the National Football League’s (NFL’s) Washington Commanders back to the District of Columbia.

She watched with open concern for the city streets as Trump finally got his military parade this summer. Her decision to dismantle Black Lives Matter Plaza earlier this year served as a neat metaphor for just how much the power dynamics between the two executives had evolved.

Now that fraught relationship enters uncharted territory as Trump has followed through on months of what many DC officials had quietly hoped were empty threats. The new standoff has cast Bowser in a sympathetic light, even among her longtime critics.

“It’s a power play and we’re an easy target,” said Clinique Chapman, CEO of the DC Justice Lab. A frequent critic of Bowser, whom she accuses of “over policing our youth” with the recent expansions of Washington’s youth curfew, Chapman said Trump’s latest move “is not about creating a safer DC; it’s just about power”.

Washington, DC – The news was met with jeers.

United States President Donald Trump on Monday invoked a “crime emergency” in the US capital, allowing his Department of Justice to take control of Washington, DC’s local law enforcement. He simultaneously announced the Pentagon would deploy US National Guard forces to the city of more than 700,000.

Gathered just blocks away, with the White House looming in the background, protesters erupted in a chorus of “boos”.

The Pentagon later said 800 soldiers were activated on Monday, with 100-200 of them supporting law enforcement.

Trump’s latest move, said Keya Chatterjee, the executive director of Free DC, was not just another salvo against the long marginalised rights of the residents of the city, but a “major escalation”.

“This goes beyond the sort of words people have been using, like ‘unprecedented and ‘unusual,’” said Chatterjee, whose group advocates for DC self-determination.

“This is just authoritarianism,” she told Al Jazeera, over the chants from the crowd.

‘Represent ourselves’

The rights of the hundreds of thousands of residents of Washington, DC have been the subject of debate since it was established by Congress in 1790 with land from Maryland and Virginia.

The district continues to fall under the direct auspices of the federal government, having never been granted statehood. However, it maintains a level of local autonomy per the Home Rule Act of 1973, which allows residents to elect some local officials. Congress still reviews all legislation passed by those elected officials and approves the district’s budget.

The city’s superlative as the first Black majority city in the US, and its current status as a Black plurality city, has further added a racial dynamic to what advocates have long decried as the systematic disenfranchisement of its residents.

Civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton called the move the “ultimate affront to justice and civil rights,” in a statement.

“Donald Trump was inspired to take this disgusting, dangerous, and derogatory action solely out of self interest,” Sharpton said in a statement. “Let’s call the inspiration for this assault on a majority Black city for what it is: another bid to distract his angry, frustrated base over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.”

In March, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser agreed to rename the Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, where Monday’s protest was held, amid pressure from Trump and concerns that federal funding could be withheld.

Bowser said Monday that the deployment of the National Guard was “unsettling”, but not without precedent.

“My message to residents is this,” Bowser said. “We know that access to our democracy is tenuous. That is why you have heard me and many Washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood.”

For many gathered on Monday, Trump’s move again underscored how little power they had in directly influencing the policies of the local law enforcement that directly oversees their community.

Amari Jack, a 20-year-old college student, described what he saw as “the first step” in a wider consolidation of power over the city, noting Trump has for years floated the idea of taking more full control of the metropolis surrounding the White House. Such a move would likely require Congress overturning the Home Rule Act.

“I came out today because I was really scared about the potential that DC could lose any autonomy it has,” Jack told Al Jazeera.

“I feel like as DC natives, born and raised, we need to be able to represent ourselves and enrich our communities. We can’t just have a president come in and rule over our home.”

Crime as a pretext?

For his part, in an order declaring the “emergency”, Trump decried what he called the “city government’s failure to maintain public order and safety”, claiming crime rates posed “intolerable risks to the vital Federal functions that take place in the District of Columbia”.

Speaking to reporters from the White House, Trump vowed to “take our capital back”, outlining what he described as “massive enforcement operations targeting known gangs, drug dealers and criminal networks to get them the hell off the street”.

Trump further claimed he was “getting rid of the slums”, and would clear homeless people from the city, without offering further details of his plans.

Among those pushing back on the characterisation was the District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who called the move “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful.”

“There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia,” he said.

While DC crime rates are typically higher than the national average, violent crime rates have dropped significantly in recent years, plummeting 35 percent from 2023 to 2024 and another 26 percent this year compared to the same period last year, according to Metropolitan Police data.

Early this year, the Justice Department announced that violent crime in DC had hit a 30-year low.

Groups like the Center for American Progress have attributed the decline to both local law enforcement strategies, as well as “investments in crime prevention and resources such as housing and education and employment supports”.

Twenty-year-old Radha Tanner, like many gathered, saw Trump as using the pretext of crime to enact a wider political mission, one that paints Democrat-dominated cities like DC as “unsafe and riddled with crime”.

Over 90 percent of DC voters supported Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election. Trump, in turn, won about 6.5 percent of the vote.

Tanner saw Monday’s moves as in line with Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, California to aid in immigration crackdowns and the protests they spurred.

“He’s doing this to make an example out of a city full of Democrats that is vulnerable because we don’t have representation,” Tanner said.

‘Best place for us to resist’

Maurice Carney, 60, saw a similar goal in Trump’s actions, arguing that long-term investment, not a short-term commandeering of local law enforcement or the deployment of the National Guard, would actually show a real commitment to addressing crime.

“When you see this increase in militarisation, whether it’s in DC or on the African continent or anywhere else in the world, you always see an increase in violence, either from resistance or from creating an environment that’s unstable,” said Carney, who works with a DC-based group that advocates for citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Like it or not, DC is seen as the capital of the empire, the capital of the world,” Carney told Al Jazeera. “So if Trump wants to show he’s this ‘law and order’ guy, DC is the best place for him to do that.”

“It’s also the best place for us to resist,” he said, “for us to stand up and let the rest of the world know that even right in the heart of the empire, the people – local residents of DC – resisted.”

Boxers Shigetoshi Kotari and Hiromasa Urakawa died following fights on the same card in Tokyo last week.

Japanese boxing officials will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday as the sport in the country faces intense scrutiny following the deaths of two fighters in separate bouts at the same event.

Super featherweight Shigetoshi Kotari and lightweight Hiromasa Urakawa, both 28, fought on the same card at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall on August 2 and died days later following brain surgery.

The Japan Boxing Commission (JBC), gym owners and other boxing officials are under pressure to act and will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

They are also expected to have talks about safety next month, local media said.

“We are acutely aware of our responsibility as the manager of the sport,” Tsuyoshi Yasukochi, secretary-general of the JBC, told reporters on Sunday.

“We will take whatever measures we can.”

Japanese media highlighted the risks of fighters dehydrating to lose weight rapidly before weigh-ins.

“Dehydration makes the brain more susceptible to bleeding,” the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said.

That is one of the issues the JBC plans to discuss with trainers.

“They want to hear from gym officials who work closely with the athletes about such items as weight loss methods and pre-bout conditioning, which may be causally related (to deaths),” the Nikkan Sports newspaper said.

In one immediate measure, the commission has decided to reduce all Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation title bouts to 10 rounds from 12.

“The offensive power of Japanese boxing today is tremendous,” Yasukochi was quoted by the Asahi Shimbun as telling reporters.

“We have more and more boxers who are able to start exchanges of fierce blows from the first round. Maybe 12 rounds can be dangerous.”

Government says move aims to boost ‘fight against insecurity’ as armed gangs continue to carry out attacks across the country.

Haiti’s government has announced a three-month state of emergency in several parts of the country as it battles surging gang violence.

The measure will cover the West, Centre and Artibonite departments, the latter of which is known as Haiti’s “rice basket” and has experienced an increase in attacks by armed groups in recent months.

In a statement on Saturday, the government said the state of emergency would allow the Haitian authorities to “continue the fight against insecurity and respond to the agricultural and food crisis”.

“Insecurity has negative effect both on the lives of citizens and on the country’s different sectors of activity. Given the scale of this crisis, it is imperative to decree a major mobilisation of the state’s resources and institutional means to address it,” it said.

Haiti has reeled from years of violence as powerful armed groups, often with ties to the country’s political and business leaders, have vied for influence and control of territory.

But the situation worsened dramatically after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, which created a power vacuum.

Nearly 1.3 million people have been displaced across the country, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in June, while the United Nations estimates that 4,864 people were killed from October 2024 to June of this year.

Efforts to stem the deadly gang attacks, including the deployment of a UN-backed, Kenya-led police mission, have so far failed to restore stability.

While much of the focus has been on Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where up to 90 percent of the city is under the control of armed groups, the violence has also been spreading to other parts of the country.

Between October 2024 and the end of June, more than 1,000 Haitians were killed and 620 were kidnapped in the Artibonite and Centre departments, according to the UN’s human rights office.

In late April, dozens of people waded and swam across the Artibonite River, which cuts through the region, in a desperate attempt to flee the gangs.

Meanwhile, the government on Friday appointed Andre Jonas Vladimir Paraison as interim director of Haiti’s National Police, which has been working with Kenyan police officers leading the UN-backed mission to help quell the violence.

“We, the police, will not sleep,” Paraison said during his inauguration ceremony. “We will provide security across every corner of the country.”

Paraison previously served as head of security of Haiti’s National Palace and was on duty as a police officer when Moise was killed at his private residence in July 2021.

He replaced Normil Rameau, whose tenure of just more than a year was marked by tensions with a faction of the Transitional Presidential Council, notably Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime.

Rameau had repeatedly warned about the police force’s severe underfunding.

The change comes as Laurent Saint-Cyr, a wealthy businessman, also took over this week as president of the Transitional Presidential Council, which is charged with holding elections by February 2026.

Five jockeys missed their rides on day three of Glorious Goodwood after their plane was forced to make an emergency landing.

The flight, from Bagby Airfield in north Yorkshire, suffered what was thought to be an engine problem.

But jockeys Rowan Scott, Callum Rodriguez, PJ McDonald, Tom Eaves and Jack Garritty were all fine.

Scott was booked on two rides at Goodwood, including Magellan Cloud for John and Sean Quinn in the first race.

Scott’s agent Niall Hannity said: “They set off from Bagby and something went wrong with the plane so they started to get a bit panicky, as you can imagine.

“The pilot, who has 25 years experience, said nothing like it had ever happened to him but they were able to get turned round and land back at Bagby, which must have been frightening.

British Airways flight BA1410 from London Heathrow to Belfast declared a mid-air emergency and was forced to divert to Manchester Airport

A British Airways service bound for Belfast had to make an unexpected detour when the pilots issued an emergency alert.

The BA1410 flight took off from London Heathrow at 08:05 BST on July 26, but around half an hour into the journey, the crew triggered a 7700 emergency code, as reported by AirLive.

The aircraft then entered a holding pattern before being directed to Manchester Airport due to what was believed to be a potential depressurisation problem.

Emergency services were on standby as the Airbus A319, with a capacity of up to 130 passengers, touched down.

Sources indicate that the diversion resulted from a technical glitch in a sensor device, with passengers forced to disembark for thorough inspections by British Airways technicians.

An alternative plane was subsequently arranged, allowing travellers to resume their trips after approximately a three-hour delay.

Matthew Hall, the managing director of airport transfers app hoppa, has previously noted that compensation entitlements typically hinge on whether the disruption stems from airline faults, such as mechanical defects or staff shortages.

Hall remarked, “Since leaving the EU, UK flights are still covered by a similar law that protects passenger’s rights when faced with travel delays.”, reports Belfast Live.

This protection extends to departures from UK airports, arrivals at UK airports on EU or UK carriers, departures from EAA airports, or arrivals in the EU on UK airlines.

“If your flight is a non-UK flight that is part of a connection to a UK flight, then you can still claim if you are delayed for more than three hours, you booked the flights as a single booking, and the delay is the airlines fault,” Hall elaborates.

By law, cancellations with less than 14 days notice entitle you to compensation, depending on the length of the flight route. “With short-haul flights (<1,500km, i.e. Manchester to Dublin) you could be entitled to £220 if arriving at your final destination more than two hours after originally planned, reduced to £110 if arriving within two hours of schedule and announced with more than seven days’ notice,” Hall explains.

This increases to £350 for medium-haul flights (1,500-3,500km i.e. Leeds Bradford to Tenerife South) if you arrive at your final destination more than three hours after originally planned, according to Hall.

“Although, this can be reduced to £175 if arriving within three hours of schedule and announced with more than seven days’ notice,” Hall adds.

WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations on Thursday declared a “state of emergency” for antidiscrimination policies, personal freedoms and Black economic advancement in response to President Trump’s upending of civil rights precedents and the federal agencies traditionally tasked with enforcing them.

The National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report accuses the federal government of being “increasingly determined to sacrifice its founding principles” and “threatening to impose a uniform education system and a homogenous workforce that sidelines anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow, exclusionary mold,” according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press.

“If left unchecked,” the authors write, “they risk reversing decades of progress that have made America more dynamic, competitive, and just.”

Report critiques racism entering ‘mainstream’ of American politics

The report, to be released Thursday at the group’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio, criticizes the administration for downsizing federal agencies and programs that enforce civil rights policies. The authors aimed to highlight what they saw as a multiyear, coordinated effort by conservative legal activists, lawmakers and media personalities to undermine civil rights policy and create a political landscape that would enable a hard-right agenda on a range of social and economic policy.

“It is not random. It is a well-funded, well-organized, well-orchestrated movement of many, many years,” said Marc Morial, president of the Urban League. “For a long time, people saw white supremacist politics and white nationalism as on the fringe of American politics. It has now become the mainstream of the American right, whose central foundation is within the Republican Party.”

The report directly critiques Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint for conservative governance coordinated by the Heritage Foundation think tank. Project 2025 advised approaches to federal worker layoffs, immigration enforcement and the congressional and legislative branches similar to the Trump administration’s current strategy.

The Urban League report condemns major corporations, universities and top law firms for reversing diversity, equity and inclusion policies. It also criticizes social media companies like Meta and X for purported “censorship” of Black activists and creatives and content moderation policies that allegedly enabled “extremists” to spread “radicalizing” views.

Debates over civil rights enter the center of the political fray

The Trump administration has said many policies implemented by both Democratic and Republican administrations are discriminatory and unconstitutional, arguing that acknowledgments of race and federal and corporate policies that seek to address disparities between different demographics are themselves discriminatory. Trump has signed executive orders banning “illegal discrimination” and promoting “merit based opportunity.”

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said civil rights groups that oppose the administration “aren’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the president is focused on uniting our country.”

The report, meanwhile, calls for the creation of a “new resistance” to counter the administration’s agenda. Morial urged other organizations to rally to that cause.

The Urban League and other civil rights groups have repeatedly sued the Trump administration since January. Liberal legal groups and Democratic lawmakers similarly sued over parts of the administration’s agenda.

Veteran civil rights activists, Black civic leaders, former federal officials, Illinois Atty. Gen. Kwame Raoul and seven members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, contributed to the text.

Raoul said that civil rights allies have felt “on the defense” in recent years but that now “it’s time to act affirmatively.” For instance, if rollbacks of DEI policies result in discrimination against women or people of color, legal action could follow, he warned.

“It all depends on how they do it. We’re going to be watching,” he said. “And just because the Trump administration doesn’t believe in disparate impact anymore doesn’t mean the rest of the universe must believe that.”

The report criticizes the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the Education Department, and denounces changes to programs meant to support communities of color at the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development, among others. The transformation of the Justice Department’s civil rights division was singled out as “an existential threat to civil rights enforcement.”

The Justice Department pointed to its published civil rights policy and a social media post from its civil rights arm that reads the division “has returned to enforcing the law as written: fairly, equally, and without political agenda.”

Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford, a contributor to the report, said Trump “betrayed the American people” in enacting plans he said were similar to Project 2025.

Lawmakers reflect on the long fight for civil rights

Another contributor, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said civil rights advocates and their Democratic allies must do more to communicate with and educate people.

“When you have an administration that’s willing to take civil rights gains and call it reverse racism, then there’s a lot of work to be done to unpack that for folks,” the New York Democrat said. “I think once people understand their connection to civil rights gains, then we will be in a position to build that momentum.”

The Urban League originally planned to focus its report on the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for the law’s 60th anniversary but pivoted after Trump returned to office to focus on “unpacking the threats to our democracy” and steps civil rights advocates are taking to pull the country back from “the brink of a dangerous tilt towards authoritarianism.”

For many veteran civil rights activists, the administration’s changes are condemnable but not surprising. Some lawmakers see it as a duty to continue the long struggle for civil rights.

“I think it’s all part of the same struggle,” said Rep. Shomari Figures, an Alabama Democrat who contributed to the report and whose father was successfully brought a wrongful-death suit against a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. “At the end of the day, that struggle boils down to: Can I be treated like everybody else in this country?”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

July 14 (UPI) — A New Jersey state of emergency went into effect Monday night as heavy rains drenched the Eastern United States, causing flash flooding, including in New York City.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement the state of emergency went into effect at 8 p.m. EDT “due to flash flooding and severe thunderstorms across the state.”

“I urge New Jerseyans to exercise caution, follow all safety protocols and remain off the roads unless absolutely necessary.”

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for Newark Liberty International Airport due to the weather.

Mayor Jonathan Busch of Metuchen, located in Middlesex County, said on social media that the borough was “experiencing significant flooding.” Local police had closed multiple roads and were transporting stranded motorists to the local high school, he said.

In New Providence, local officials were warning residents to stay home, even though the rain had stopped.

“Historic rainfall, please stay in and off the roads,” Mayor Al Morgan said on Facebook.

In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was reporting on X that multiple subway lines were suspended due to flooding. Videos circulating online showed water flowing like a river through subway stations and into occupied cars.

New York City Emergency Management said flash flood warnings were in effect for all five boroughs. It said New York City was being lashed with heavy rains and up to 2 or more inches of rain may fall “quickly.”

“Flooding can be deadly and often strikes with little or no warning,” it said.

“If you live in a basement apartment or low-lying area, be ready to move to high ground. Keep your Go Bag near the door and clear exit paths.”

Ten people, including six children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike while waiting to fill water containers in central Gaza on Sunday, emergency service officials say.

Their bodies were sent to Nuseirat’s al-Awda Hospital, which also treated 16 injured people, seven of them children, according to a doctor there.

Eyewitnesses said a drone fired a missile at a crowd of people queuing with empty jerry cans next to a water tanker in the heart of the al-Nuseirat refugee camp.

The Israeli military has been asked to comment.

Unverified footage shared online after the strike showed bloodied children and lifeless bodies, with screams of panic and desperation.

Residents rushed to the scene and transported the wounded using private vehicles and donkey carts.

The strike came as Israeli aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip have escalated.

A spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said 19 other Palestinians had been killed on Sunday, in three separate strikes on residential buildings in central Gaza and Gaza City.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 57,882 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced multiple times.

More than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed. The healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

This week, for the first time in 130 days, 75,000 litres of fuel was allowed into Gaza – “far from enough to meet the daily needs of the population and vital civilian aid operations”, the United Nations said.

Nine UN agencies warned on Saturday that Gaza’s fuel shortage had reached “critical levels”, and if fuel ran out, it would affect hospitals, water systems, sanitation networks and bakeries.

“Hospitals are already going dark, maternity, neonatal and intensive care units are failing, and ambulances can no longer move,” the UN said.

In the aftermath of the devastating floods that swept through the Texas Hill Country in Texas in the United States, a tight-knit community is mourning the loss of at least 110 lives to flash flooding – including 27 at Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp situated along the Guadalupe River.

Camp Mystic bore the brunt of the floodwaters, but the region is home to several popular sleepaway camps and youth facilities serving families from across Texas, including Hill Country Youth Ranch. Tony Gallucci, who has lived in the area for more than 40 years, works there.

“We’re gonna have some clearing [of debris like fallen trees] to do, we’ve got a log jam and that kind of stuff,” Gallucci said. “We do have one road [in their facilities] that buckled; it’ll have to be repaired.”

The ranch sits uphill from the river, unlike Camp Mystic, where 2.4 metres (8ft) of water filled cabins with sleeping campers in the early morning hours of July 4, and the Guadalupe River rose more than six metres (20ft) in two hours. Among the dead is camp director Dick Eastland, who perished trying to save the girls from the rushing floodwaters.

Flash flooding is a recurring threat in this part of Texas. The Hill Country, including Kerr County where the camp is located, has thin soil and limestone bedrock that limits rain from soaking into the ground, funnelling it quickly into rivers and creeks. Storms fuelled by gulf moisture and clashing air masses often drop several inches of rain in a short span, overwhelming the terrain.

That was the case last week, as deep tropical moisture in the wake of Tropical Storm Barry, which had just struck southern Mexico, fuelled intense rainfall. The Guadalupe River has flooded catastrophically in the past, with notable incidents in 1978, 1987 and in 2002, raising longstanding concerns about the vulnerability of riverside camps. Because this risk is well known, the latest tragedy has renewed scrutiny over what went wrong – and whether it could have been prevented.

A policy problem

Earlier this year, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut 600 positions at the National Weather Service (NWS) – the agency tasked with forecasting storms and issuing warnings. As a result, many local offices lack the staff needed to adequately inform the public. In Houston, 30 percent of NWS positions remain vacant.

“Accurate weather forecasting helps avoid fatal disasters. There are consequences to Trump’s brainless attacks on public workers, like meteorologists.” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said in a post on X.

However, both the San Antonio and San Angelo NWS field offices, which oversee forecasting for the region that includes Kerr County, were adequately staffed at the time of the flash floods, and the office actually had more staff than usual, with five people on duty instead of the typical two.

Murphy’s office did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The NWS issued a flash flood watch at 12:41am Central Time (05:41 GMT), warning that “excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations. Creeks and streams may rise out of their banks”.  As conditions worsened, a flash flood warning was issued at 1:14 am, and a flash flood emergency was declared after 5:30am local time.

Still, Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, told The New York Times that the San Angelo office remains understaffed overall, missing a forecaster, a meteorologist-in-charge, and a senior hydrologist. Fahy did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The recent job cuts by DOGE could hinder the ability of NWS offices nationwide to predict and respond to future severe weather events. There are additional reductions to the NWS included in the tax bill signed into law by President Donald Trump last week.

The legislation rescinds funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees the NWS. Those changes were drafted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

“Only a shameless and soulless partisan hack would tie the One, Big, Beautiful Bill to the Texas floods. The funds rescinded had nothing to do with weather forecasting, but were instead used for ‘heat awareness’ campaigns, ‘Green Collar jobs,’ creating a climate resilience plan based on an Indian tribe’s ‘traditional knowledge’ of weather, building a new visitor’s center at an aquarium, and ‘citizen science’ around fishing. None of the rescinded funding was obligated for any existing operations or forecasting activity,” Macarena Martinez, communications director for Senator Cruz, said in a statement.

The bill actually includes funding for additional “Weather Observing Systems” but only specifies those to be set up at airports. The legislation also maintains current funding levels for the NWS.

“After getting a 41 percent increase in its budget in the last decade, NOAA now spends roughly $3bn annually on weather forecasting, research, and related infrastructure. Even the Biden administration had proposed to cancel millions in future radar research, in part because much of the project has already been completed and would explain why, after nearly three years, the funds remained unspent. There’s simply more productive ways to be faithful stewards of public money and improve weather forecasts than continuing to overfund every possible NOAA account,” Martinez added.

The Biden administration proposed cuts to NOAA in March 2024. The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 proposal would cut funding for climate research, which would cut the development of new weather forecasting technologies that would, contrary to Cruz’s claims, impact weather forecasts.

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Poor flood infrastructure

Texas has increased funding for flood-related infrastructure projects in recent years, but those efforts have largely been reactionary rather than preventive.

“The loss of life is tragic. While we can’t predict every storm, we do everything we can to prepare. Texas is strong and takes every disaster seriously,” Coalter Baker, head of the Gulf Coast Protection District (GCPD), a state-funded agency responsible for coastal resiliency planning, told Al Jazeera.

The Texas Gulf Coast has experienced some of the most devastating flooding events in US history. After Hurricane Harvey – a storm in August 2017 so intense that the NWS had to add new colours to its rainfall maps – the state created the Texas Infrastructure Fund. Since the fund’s launch, it has allocated roughly $669m in funding, though only one project was located in Kerr County.

“After Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, we invested in flood prevention that still protects us today. Hurricane Ike in 2008 led to the Coastal Texas Project – the largest US Army Corps of Engineers effort ever – to defend our coast and communities. And after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, we created a first-of-its-kind flood infrastructure fund to reduce future risk. We’ll keep working – federal, state, and local – to protect lives, homes, and our economy,” said Baker, who previously served in the Trump administration and worked in the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations alongside Governor Greg Abbott.

But in this part of Texas – more than 480 kilometres (300 miles) inland – flood infrastructure improvements haven’t materialised.  According to a new Houston Chronicle investigation, Kerr County, where the affected camp is located, requested state funding three times to improve its flash flood warning system. The state rejected its requests.

Instead, the state deferred the responsibility to the county. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told The New York Times taxpayers would oppose providing local funding because of the cost.

In April, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority (UGRA), a state-funded government agency, granted a more than $72,000 contract to develop a flood warning system despite concerns being raised almost a decade ago. The UGRA did not respond to our request for comment.

This comes as the Texas state house failed to pass a bill this year that would have improved the state’s emergency communication infrastructure. Among those who voted against the bill was Representative Wes Virdell, who represents Kerr County. Virdell did not respond to our request for comment.

Following the recent floods, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said the state will now pay to install a flash flood warning system, despite the state previously denying such requests.

“That’s going to be one of the issues that we begin to address in less than two weeks in the state legislature. We’re going to address every aspect of this storm to make sure that we’re going to have in place the systems that are needed to prevent deadly flooding events like this in the future.” Governor Greg Abbott said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Abbott’s office did not reply to Al Jazeera’s request for further details.

When asked about the current system, Judge Kelly told reporters at a Friday news conference, “We do not have a warning system.”

“This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States, and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”

Kelly did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Texas did not release its first statewide flood plan until last year.

A Coronation Street star was due to appear at London Film and Comic-Con this weekend, but pulled out due to a family emergency

Coronation Street star Craig Charles concerned fans after he pulled out of his scheduled appearance at London Film and Comic-Con this weekend. The 60-year-old actor is best known for playing Lloyd Mullaney for a decade on the long-running soap, but was due to appear at the event for his Red Dwarf character, Dave Lister.

The star was due to appear alongside Red Dwarf co-stars Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn and Hattie Hayridge. Taking to their Facebook page, London Film and Comic-Con wrote: “We contacted Craig at 9am to be told that due to a family emergency, he would not be in until 11am. At 11.30am we spent 20 minutes knocking on his hotel room door where there was no answer.

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“His Red Dwarf colleagues were able to contact him at 12.30, where he confirmed he was ill and unable to attend. These are the facts.

“The Group shot will go ahead with Danny, Robert and Hattie, and ticket holders will receive an automatic £60 refund to allow for the change of lineup. If anybody does not want the group shot, any unused tickets will automatically be refunded after the show.”

Not long after the post was shared, Craig took to his X/Twitter to apologise to fans, writing: “I’d just like to say sorry to showmasters and the fans at comicon. I made it to the hotel but woke up at 3 this morning with stomach pains.

“I then proceeded to be violently ill for hours. Not a pretty sight. I tried to see if it would wear off but at 10 am I called it off and came back to Manchester.

“I’m feeling slightly better now, and I’m drinking lots of water and electrolytes. Again sorry for the cancellation and I look forward to next time.”

Fans rushed to the comment section to share their support, with one fan posting: “Hope you feel better.

“You don’t have anything to apologise for trust me someone that just got food poisoning two days ago I know exactly what you mean by coming down with something very quickly.”

Another concerned fans posted: “Take care of yourself. I’ve been watching you as Dave Lister since I was a child, Red Dwarf was and is still my favorite show.

“Lister inspired my love for curry and good tunes. It may be sad, but you were the closest thing I had to a father figure. Love from America, my guy.”

One commented: “As long as you’re on the mend that’s the main thing.” Red Dwarf is a sci-fi comedy that aired between 1988 and 1999, which follows technician Dave Lister, who awakens after being suspended animation for three million years to find that he is the last living human and that he’s alone on the mining spacecraft.

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Syria’s Civil Defence teams are battling wildfires sweeping through northeastern Syria, with the coastal region of Latakia among the worst hit. Emergency workers expressed concerns that unexploded ordnance from the war might be contributing to the rapid spread of the flames.

June 30 (UPI) — Argentina’s lower house of Congress will debate a bill Tuesday that would declare a two-year national health emergency in pediatric care. The measure aims to stabilize children’s medical services nationwide, with a focus on Garrahan Hospital, the country’s main pediatric facility.

The proposal seeks to ensure timely, equitable and high-quality access to pediatric care. It also calls for an immediate increase in funding for children’s hospitals and medical residency programs, with salaries updated to reflect their real value as of November 2023.

The debate comes amid a growing strain on Argentina’s public health system, marked by budget cuts, wage disputes and a wave of resignations from key hospitals.

Argentina’s public health system faces a worsening financial outlook. With no 2025 budget approved by Congress, the government extended the 2024 plan with modifications.

Health spending has dropped nearly 29% in real terms — adjusted for inflation — compared to the previous year, following a roughly 30% cut in 2023 — further straining the delivery of services and medical supplies.

The Health Ministry’s budget rose only 6% to $4.31 billion in 2025 from $4.06 billion in 2024. Its share of total government spending fell to 4.5% from 5.6%, despite annual inflation that reached 117.8% in 2024 and is projected at 28.6% for 2025, according to BBVA Research.

Alongside budget pressures, a growing shortage of healthcare workers is adding to the strain.

Argentina has 40.5 doctors per 10,000 residents — above the regional average — but their distribution is uneven, and poor working conditions are pushing professionals out of the public health system.

Delayed wages and heavy workloads are adding to the strain. Health unions warn that in many provinces, salaries have fallen below the basic cost of living, forcing staff to take on multiple jobs. About 70% of healthcare workers divide their time between public hospitals and the private sector to make ends meet, according to DataGremial.

The report also notes that several provinces and the federal government have struggled this year to fill medical residency slots — an unprecedented development blamed on low stipends and a lack of incentives to train in the public sector.

Meanwhile, demand for care remains high — and continues to rise during economic crises — as more Argentines rely exclusively on the public healthcare system. About 36% of the population, or roughly 16 million people, depend entirely on state-run coverage, according to the Health Ministry.

Garrahan Hospital has become a symbol of the country’s deepening healthcare crisis.

Since May, its staff — including doctors, residents, nurses and technicians — have staged rolling strikes and protests to demand emergency pay increases, citing what they describe as severe underfunding of the institution.

The strikes have led to the suspension of outpatient services, with care limited to emergencies and hospitalizations during walkouts, as negotiations with authorities remain stalled.

Staff shortages are beginning to take a toll. According to hospital unions, nearly 200 professionals have resigned from Garrahan in 2025. In recent weeks alone, at least 20 resident doctors left the hospital, saying their full-time wages — about $830 a month — were not enough to cover the cost of living in Buenos Aires.

President Javier Milei recently sparked backlash by falsely claiming that “70% of Garrahan’s staff is administrative” and blaming the hospital’s crisis on overstaffing. Hospital workers pushed back with official data showing that only 10% of employees hold administrative roles, while nearly 70% work in direct patient care, including doctors, nurses and technicians.

They also challenged Milei’s claim that the government had increased Garrahan’s budget by 240%. While acknowledging a nominal increase, hospital staff said inflation and stagnant wages had erased any real gains.

Amid the escalating crisis, a political response has taken shape in Congress, led by lawmakers from several opposition parties and backed by provincial health ministers.

To advance, the bill must still be reviewed by the Budget Committee, which is chaired by the ruling party. Opposition lawmakers say they plan to force debate during a special session July 2, accusing the government bloc of blocking the proposal.

The US agency harshly criticised Boeing’s safety culture as well as ineffective oversight by the FAA.

Boeing failed to provide adequate training, guidance and oversight to prevent a midair cabin panel blowout of a new 737 MAX 9 flight in January 2024, which spun the planemaker into a major crisis, the United States National Transportation Safety Board has said.

The board on Tuesday harshly criticised Boeing’s safety culture and its failure to install four key bolts in a new Alaska Airlines MAX 9 during production, as well as the ineffective oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a board meeting that the incident was entirely avoidable because the planemaker should have addressed the unauthorised production that was identified in numerous Boeing internal audits, reports and other forums for at least 10 years.

“The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA,” Homendy said. “It’s nothing short of a miracle that no one died or sustained serious physical injuries.”

Boeing’s on-the-job training was lacking, the NTSB said, adding that the planemaker is working on a design enhancement that will ensure the door plug cannot be closed until it is firmly secured.

The accident prompted the US Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation and declare that Boeing was not in compliance with a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. CEO Dave Calhoun announced he would step down within a few months of the midair panel blowout.

Homendy praised new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, but said, “He has his work cut out for him, a lot of challenges to address, and that’s going to take time.”

Boeing said it regretted the accident and was continuing to work on strengthening safety and quality across its operations.

The FAA said on Tuesday that it has “fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing since the Alaska Airlines door-plug accident and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues”.

Damaged reputation

The incident badly damaged Boeing’s reputation and led to a grounding of the MAX 9 for two weeks as well as a production cap of 38 planes per month by the FAA, which still remains in place.

“While Boeing is making progress, we will not lift the 737 monthly production cap until we are confident the company can maintain safety and quality while making more aircraft,” the FAA added.

Boeing created no paperwork for the removal of the 737 MAX 9 door plug – a piece of metal shaped like a door covering an unused emergency exit – or its re-installation during production, and still does not know which employees were involved, the NTSB said on Tuesday.

Then-FAA administrator Michael Whitaker said in June 2024 that the agency was “too hands off” in Boeing oversight and has boosted the number of inspectors at Boeing and the MAX fuselage manufacturer’s, Spirit AeroSystems, factories.

Boeing agreed last July to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after two fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. But it last month struck a deal with the US Justice Department to avoid a guilty plea.

The Justice Department has asked a judge to approve the deal, which will allow Boeing to avoid pleading guilty or facing oversight by an outside monitor.

Earlier this month, Boeing’s problems resurfaced when an Air India flight crashed soon after takeoff from the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, killing all but one on board. The aircraft being flown was a nearly 12-year-old Dreamliner. Investigations behind that crash are currently under way.

A TV STAR who is also a wrestler was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

The media personality has also been forced to pull out of matches as he sought medical advice.

5

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Luke Hawx, 43, – also known as Oren Hawxhurst – is an actor and professional wrestler that has appeared on several huge projects.

He appeared in films such as The Fate of the Furious and Logan with Hugh Jackman, Richard E. Grant, and Sir Patrick Stewart.

The star has also appeared in the Starz TV series Heelz, and Young Rock, where he played the legendary WWE Superstar, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

However, he’s had to pull out of future shows for the WildKat wrestling promotion as he was rushed to hospital with a serious stomach illness.

The star posted a long essay onto his Instagram account which accompanied a selfie from his hospital bed.

He wrote: “Yesterday, I took my 1st (hopefully last) ambulance ride for the 1st time in 44years.

“That being said, this isn’t a pitty post but I have some unfortunate news that I would have preferred to be private about, but, as a performer I have to be transparent to my fans who are expecting to see me at several upcoming events Im scheduled for.

“For a few weeks now I was having some stomach issues that was causing me pain & discomfort.

“I thought it was due to me excessively eating some foods I don’t normally eat. So, I cleaned up my diet and thought it was business as usual.

“As days went on, I just tolerated the pain and went on about my normal life of training hard,Weights in the morning, Conditioning in the afternoon etc.”

However, the star admitted that the pain became too much to bear and some of the other symptoms started getting worse.

He continued: “On Thursday night of this week I felt pretty rough physically, like I had a virus.

“I spent the night with terrible hot/cold flashes, sweating profusely, head pounding, and some vomiting.

“I toughed it out all night, and by Friday morning, I felt much better. So I decided to rest most of the day and rehydrate,etc.

We went to the ER. After some test, ER informed me that it was very good that I came in and didn’t wait longer.

Luke HawxInstagram

“Saturday morning, I woke up with some discomfort but decided to crush a workout the gym.

“As the day went on, my wife asked to go to the Dr because she wasn’t comfortable with how I was feeling and how long I was feeling that way for.

“I obviously argued against it and told her I was fine and it would go away eventually. She asked me to call one of my Dr friends to get their opinion, so I did that.”

He added:”My friend said he suggested I go get looked at asap, so I knew that was probably best and safest even though I wanted to continue to tough it out.

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“We went to the ER. After some test, ER informed me that it was very good that I came in and didn’t wait longer.

“Then they informed me that I needed to go into Surgery and I wouldn’t be going home. I was honestly heartbroken to hear this news.”

“I quickly called to my surgeon, who is a good friend of mine and he jumped on it right away. A few hours later, I was in Surgery. Surgery was successful and I am now recovering.”

Dwayne Johnson’s fortune explained

The wrester-turned movie star is worth a whole lot of money.

Dwayne Johnson‘s net worth has increased substantially since he began his acting career in 2001.

At the time, he had a net worth of $2M (around £3M today).

Now 21 years later, his net worth has increased to an estimated $800M (£626M).

Dwayne’s initial wealth came from competing in wrestling tournaments, with him earning $1million in 1999 (around £1.5M today).

However, his bank balance is now boosted by his acting career, TV appearances, merchandise, and his newly founded tequila company.

He launched his spirit brand, Teremana tequila, in 2020 and oversaw the development of the product while it was made in Mexico.

“It took 113 distillations to get to this point,” he said in his May 2021 interview on The Today Show. “Everything is handcrafted, handmade. Copper pot stills, brick ovens.”

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