Saudi Arabia has released video showing the damage caused by a projectile it says was fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis. A mosque and several buildings sustained damage, although the Houthis say they were targeting a Saudi military base.
On Tuesday morning, 12-year-old Sundus al-Hamamdeh left her home in the Masafer Yatta village of Khirbet al-Fakhit, and went to school.
It was the third day of the new school year in the occupied West Bank.
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But when the sixth-grade student at al-Fakhit Secondary School returned from her classes, the house she had left behind was gone.
Israeli forces had carried out a large-scale demolition operation in Khirbet al-Fakhit, destroying homes, livestock shelters, water infrastructure, and solar-power installations.
For al-Hamamdeh, her house was more than four walls and a roof. It was her safe space, the place she came back to every day.
For children in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the spectre of demolition is always present.
Much of Masafer Yatta lies in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel has control over planning and construction. Israeli authorities justifies the demolition orders by saying that the structures were built without permits; Palestinians, backed by the United Nations, note that such permits are nearly impossible for them to obtain.
And it’s not just their homes that are under threat, but their schools.
On August 4, Israeli forces surrounded Shaab al-Butum school, according to Bassam Jabr, the director-general of education in Masafer Yatta.
An Israeli military bulldozer then demolished two rooms used by teachers and administrators, and a storage room.
The UN independently documented the demolition of the rooms, saying Israeli authorities had cited the lack of an Israeli-issued building permit.
Things could still get worse; the main school building remains under a demolition order.
Focus of attacks
Established in 2015, the school serves about 60 students from kindergarten through 11th grade. Its remote location makes transferring students to other schools particularly difficult, Jabr said.
Education officials have appealed to Israeli courts, and called on the United Nations and foreign governments to intervene.
But the schools remain under threat. Even as the Israeli military and settlers’ pogroms against Palestinians continue across the West Bank, Masafer Yatta is especially targeted.
The remote communities there have little ability to defend themselves and conditions are harsh. In addition, the Israeli military has designated large parts of the area a military firing zone, another justification for forcing out the Palestinian population.
Masafer Yatta’s schools are a central part of the effort to keep Palestinians here – ensuring that families do not have to travel far for their children to be educated. Palestinians argue that is why the schools have been particularly targeted.
Intisar Omar Abu Sabha, an administrative director at the Masafer Yatta Directorate of Education, says schools in the communities of Zif, ar-Rifaiyah, Umm Qussa, Umm al-Kheir, Jinba, Shaab al-Butum, Khirbet al-Daba, and al-Majaz are among those facing demolition orders.
In addition to the threats to their schools, students and teachers also have to navigate road closures, checkpoints, and the presence of settlers to reach their classrooms.
Abu Sabha said schools have also faced damage and settler incursions or harassment in and around their grounds. She describes a cycle in which children risk losing both their homes and their schools.
“Imagine a student who is at school, then returns home and finds their home demolished … and comes back the next day to find their school demolished,” she said.
Yasmeen Sallaq, a Palestinian lawyer, says the threat to the Masafer Yatta schools directly undermines children’s right to education.
But Sallaq says that Israeli restrictions on movement, military raids, arrests, displacement, and attacks affecting students and education workers make that right increasingly difficult to exercise.
“We face the demolition of schools every day, making the continuation of the educational process almost impossible,” Sallaq said.
It first received a demolition notice in 2016. Years of legal proceedings followed, but an appeal against demolition was dismissed this year, with efforts continuing to obtain an interim injunction.
The uncertainty has already taken a toll. Some girls are experiencing fear and anxiety, while others have transferred to different schools, al-Salameen said.
“The school is not just a place for education,” she said. “This school is the students’ only outlet.”
She fears the school’s demolition could push some girls out of education altogether if alternative schools are too far away or require them to travel along unsafe roads.
At Zif, 10th-grade student Rabiha Yousef Jibril described the school’s importance.
“I am growing up in this school, and my dreams are growing with me day by day,” Jibril said, adding that while students fear its demolition, they insist they will continue to attend.
“Even if they demolish the school, we will continue to study, even under the trees,” she said. “Even if they confiscate the books, we will keep them in our hearts, as well as our minds.”
Reporting from Brisbane, Calif. — Just beyond San Francisco’s city limits lies 640 acres of land that could help solve some of California’s biggest problems.
State and regional leaders have endorsed the project. But its fate rests with Brisbane, a city of 4,700 people that annexed the property 55 years ago. And no one, not even the developer, thinks Brisbane’s residents will approve all 4,400 homes.
“Unfortunately, we believe that their ceiling is going to be below that,” said Jonathan Scharfman, the general manager for the developer, Universal Paragon Corp.
The project, Brisbane Baylands, reveals how few incentives local governments have to accept large developments — even as the state is pushing to lower housing costs and funnel growth toward existing cities and nearby mass transit to combat climate change. Brisbane residents are wary of a project that could triple the city’s population. Under California’s tax system, Brisbane also earns more money if it rejects the current plan in favor of potential alternatives with more hotel rooms and space for businesses — but no homes.
The Bay Area’s dire need for housing makes the debate over the Baylands project “particularly painful,” said Ben Metcalf, director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
“It is frustrating that as a state and as a constellation of local jurisdictions we are constantly making decisions that aren’t the best for alleviating poverty, housing affordability, furthering our state’s economy or meeting our climate change goals,” Metcalf said.
For their part, some Brisbane residents feel besieged by pressure from housing activists, business groups, state lawmakers, San Francisco politicians, newspaper editorials and others beyond the city’s boundaries. An old rail yard and garbage dump contaminated the land, and opponents contend they want to protect anyone who might decide to live there even after regulators approve a cleanup. More than that, Brisbane residents say, outsiders don’t understand how much the Baylands project would upend their community.
“We’re a small town,” City Councilman W. Clarke Conway said at a meeting on the project last fall, “and we’re a small town by choice.”
Bill Dettmer, left, speaks with a group of men who regularly meet and discuss local politics and civic issues at Madhouse Coffee in Brisbane, Calif. Dettmer thinks a developer should be allowed to build housing on an old rail yard in the city.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
Brisbane’s main drag is Visitacion Avenue. It slopes upward for five blocks, starting at a city park and continuing through mom-and-pop shops, cafes and restaurants. The rest of Brisbane comprises office parks, a strip mall and mostly single-family homes built throughout the town’s hills.
“This is the land that time forgot,” said Greg Lee, 55, an electrical engineer who has lived in the city for more than two decades.
San Bruno Mountain, which rises a quarter-mile into the sky, is Brisbane’s landmark, and residents have fought to preserve it. In the 1960s, they blocked a developer from leveling the mountaintop and building enough new homes for 70,000 people. In 1980, after years of battling another massive project on the mountain, residents received a last-minute reprieve from the federal government, which declared San Bruno a critical habitat for the endangered callippe silverspot butterfly.
Anti-development fervor has continued. About a decade ago, a city councilman suggested sidestepping a state housing law that requires cities to plan for growth by zoning for homes where nothing would ever get built — the bottom of Brisbane’s lagoon.
Residents’ efforts to protect Brisbane’s small-town feel make large changes hard to accept, said Paul Bouscal, 58, a San Francisco water department employee who has lived in the area since 1982.
The Baylands, he said, plays on fears of Brisbane getting big.
“For our town to grow like that, it would be too much, too fast,” Bouscal said.
It might be easier for residents and elected officials to welcome growth if the city received more tax dollars for doing so. But the opposite is true.
Because of tax limits established in 1978 by Proposition 13, local governments generally receive more revenue from sales and hotel room taxes than property taxes. Proposition 13 limited property tax rates to 1% of a home’s taxable value and restricted how quickly that taxable value could increase after a purchase.
Last year, Brisbane hired a consultant who found that the city would net $1 million a year in tax revenue by approving the Baylands. But if the city instead approved a project with lots more commercial space, a larger hotel and no housing, Brisbane would gain $9 million annually — an amount equivalent to more than half the city’s current day-to-day operating budget.
Developers are always going to face opposition because of residents’ concerns about their communities changing, said Mark Stivers, a longtime state housing policy staffer. But the tax system is another big reason the state has a housing shortage, he said.
“I’d like to think if just the fiscal incentives were reversed, if a city could make as much money off housing as they could retail, we’d be having a very different conversation in California,” Stivers said.
Jonathan Scharfman, general manager of Universal Paragon Corp., describes the area where his company hopes to build a 4,400-unit housing development.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
Debate over the Baylands has divided the town and dominated Brisbane politics for at least a decade. More than half of Brisbane residents said in a 2015 city-sponsored poll that they were OK with some housing on the Baylands site. But just 3% backed a project of more than 4,000 homes such as the developer is proposing.
Bill Dettmer, 63, spent a recent morning at Madhouse Coffee, one of the city’s main gathering spots, trying to convince skeptical neighbors that the city should support the housing. Dettmer moved to Brisbane 50 years ago and does maintenance work in the city.
“I see a lot of stuff,” Dettmer said. “I see beds in garages. You have to increase the [housing] supply. If you really want to help out people, let them live in dignity. It just seems like a no-brainer.”
Many local opponents cite the land’s history — not hostility to growth — for why they’re against the project. San Francisco used to dump its garbage on the site, and a railroad company repaired its trains there. Longtime residents remember watching tires burn.
Scharfman, the developer’s general manager, said Universal Paragon Corp. will clean up the land and won’t begin building until all environmental agencies responsible say it’s safe. He likened the process to how an old rail yard at San Francisco’s Mission Bay was cleaned up and now has thousands of homes.
Still, some Brisbane residents say they don’t trust regulators will get it right, because what’s known about the toxicity of chemicals can change over time. Even though they won’t live in the Baylands, opponents believe they have a responsibility to shield those who might.
“Why do we have a seat belt law? Why do we have a helmet law? They’re anti-stupidity laws to protect the general population,” said Michele Salmon, 63, who was born and raised in Brisbane.
Salmon said she understood housing problems were real and lamented the lack of space to accommodate a growing population.
“I do feel sorry that the younger generation is not going to get to live the life that we did,” she said. “But it’s a different time.”
“This is a plan, an expectation of how we could grow,” said Leah Zippert, an Assn. of Bay Area Governments spokeswoman. “It is not a mandate to build. It’s not a mandate to do anything.”
The Brisbane City Council plans to make a key decision on the Baylands this summer, including whether it supports any housing on the site. But the council expects to put that proposal on the ballot next year. Brisbane’s residents will be the ones with the last word.
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers passed laws that would ensure insurance companies provide better coverage for smoke-damaged homes and financing for upgrades protecting residences from future fire damage.
The measures were among a slew of bills approved during the 2026 legislative session to deal with the continuing aftermath of the devastating 2025 Los Angeles area fires.
The Eaton and Palisades fires, which destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed 31, were two of the deadliest and most destructive fires in state history. Like with catastrophic fires before them, tragedy spurred action.
Much of the focus on wildfire issues by Gov. Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers in the waning days of the legislative session focused on a proposal to shift liability away from utilities whose equipment ignites wildfires.
However, lawmakers did pass several bills this year to help fire victims navigate burdensome insurance requirements in the aftermath of a disaster and increase prevention efforts. All head to Newsom for his consideration.
Two complementary bills approved Monday ensure homes that survive a wildfire but are contaminated by the onslaught of smoke are properly remediated before residents move back in.
The bills were prompted by the 2025 Eaton fire, which left thousands of homes contaminated with lead, some at levels hundreds of times what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. Homeowners routinely reported that their insurance companies refused or delayed claims, advocated for cleaning methods that experts deemed insufficient and pushed residents to move back before testing showed their homes were safe.
The first bill, AB 1642, would direct the Department of Toxic Substances Control to create scientific standards for what constitutes a safe home and provide guidance on how to properly remediate homes. The second, AB 1795, would require insurers to abide by those standards in the claims process and do so in a timely manner.
The companion laws only take effect if Newsom signs both.
The two bills originally conflicted with one another. The scientific standards bill was supported by many Eaton fire survivors from the get-go. However, the insurance bill — born out of a Department of Insurance task force — was widely criticized by survivors for leaving insurance companies wiggle room to deny claims and placing a burden on homeowners to prove their home was in fact contaminated by a fire.
In an eleventh-hour sprint of “sleepless nights,” “five-hour Zooms” and intervention from the governor’s office, advocates won additional protections for fire survivors in the insurance bill and brought the two into harmony, said Dawn Fanning, managing director at the smoke-damaged home advocacy group Eaton Fire Residents United.
“It took a lot of work to get here, and we’re really happy where we landed,” Fanning said.
After the Eaton fire, “it was the Wild West, trying to scramble to find answers,” she said. “If these laws were in place, so many thousands of people would be back home by now.”
Separate legislation by Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), who is in a hotly contested race for California Insurance Commissioner, seeks to give homeowners more notice and options before being dropped by their insurer, a problem homeowners increasingly face as wildfires have become more frequent and destructive.
Many nonrenewal notices sent by insurance companies include vague reasoning, Allen said during a May hearing on the bill, SB 1301. His legislation would require specific information so property owners can have a chance to mitigate problems and keep their insurance.
Another bill from Allen, who represents the Palisades area that burned in 2025, would create a new loan program to help property owners mitigate fire risks through home hardening, or installing fire-resistant materials on the outside of a structure.
“It can sometimes cost tens of thousands of dollars for homeowners and there’s simply not a lot of financing for this kind of work. There’s not a market for that,” Allen said during an April hearing.
The program is expected to help fund 1,000 projects in its first year and up to 2,400 within five years, according to a bill analysis.
A budget bill approved Tuesday morning also includes $25 million for home hardening grants, rebates or loans to be distributed through a separate program to be created by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. It would cap assistance at $25,000 per homeowner or property.
But other proposals to provide financial incentives for home hardening did not pass, including bills by Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) to exclude home hardening upgrades from property tax reassessment and to require insurance companies to provide two quotes to inquiring homeowners: one for the property as is, and another for if it met full home-hardening certification by the state.
Another bill on Newsom’s desk seeks to get restitution for victims of utility-caused wildfires who in some cases have waited more than a decade, said Assemblymember Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin).
In 2019, the state established a wildfire fund paid by utility companies that reimburses claims stemming from wildfires caused by the companies’ equipment. But the fund was not retroactive, and some people who suffered losses before its creation are still waiting to be paid.
Patterson’s bill requires the California Public Utilities Commission to determine how much is still owed to those victims, including for losses from the deadly Camp fire that was sparked by a PG&E power line and destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018.
“For years, wildfire survivors have been forced to wait for answers while restitution shortfalls remain unresolved,” Patterson said in a statement after the bill passed. “AB 2700 is about doing what is right for wildfire survivors who have waited far too long to be made whole.”
Survivors in Nepal’s Nuwakot district are digging through mud and debris for belongings left behind by flash floods. At least 781 people have been killed and more than 2,500 remain missing after a glacier collapse sent mud and debris through mountain valleys.
This is one of the country’s best-preserved medieval towns.
This town has been frozen in time(Image: Cambridge News)
The UK has no shortage of amazing historical towns and villages. One in particular is famous for looking frozen in time after its primary industry collapsed, leaving the homes preserved as they looked in the 16th century.
Lavenham in Suffolk is one of the most important wool towns, and back in the 15th century, it was one of the wealthiest settlements in England thanks to the booming wool trade. Wealthy merchants built large, opulent homes in the town and used their cash to fund the late-Gothic Church of St Peter and St Paul.
However, in the late 16th century, the wool industry was decimated by cheap foreign imports and heavy taxation.
The formerly wealthy people of Lavenham saw their money disappear overnight, and people could no longer afford to rebuild or modernise their homes.
These same timber-framed Tudor homes have stood in place for centuries, untouched and now are an iconic sight on the town’s high street.
More than 300 of them are listed as historic structures, and hundreds lean at odd angles due to the warping of the timber over the years.
On Instagram, a visitor said: “This 1,000 year old village feels frozen in time!”
One of the must-sees of the village, aside from its history-lined streets, is the spectacular Lavenham Guildhall.
This 16th-century building is now managed and maintained by the National Trust.
Throughout the building there are displays you can read and admire which tell the story of the village through the centuries as well as the people who called it home.
As you wander through the town, keep an eye out for the famous Crooked House, thought to be the inspiration behind the nursery rhyme “There was a crooked man, who lived in a crooked house”.
Keen-eyed tourists might recognise the De Vere House on Water Street, which was used as a shooting location for the Harry Potter franchise.
Now, the house is a luxury accommodation where tourists can spend the night in four-poster beds, admiring the wooden beams that are an emblem of the style of architecture.
A passerby takes a photo of a property from a road covered in sand after Hurricane Milton’s landfall in October 2024 in Manasota Key, Fla. A government watchdog report said Tuesday that FEMA crews broke the law when they skipped some houses with signs supporting U.S. President Donald Trump during hurricane relief efforts. File photo by Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA-EFE
Aug. 25 (UPI) — An internal government watchdog said Tuesday that a Federal Emergency Management Agency crew violated the Hatch Act when it skipped houses with signs supporting President Donald Trump during Hurricane Milton recovery efforts in 2024.
The report comes from the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security. Officials determined that crew skipped 11 homes in Florida with Trump signs.
This “eroded public trust in FEMA’s ability to treat everyone impartially, offer unbiased and consistent assistance and ensure equal access to resources and tools,” the report said.
The Hatch Act, first passed in 1939, limits certain political activities by federal employees to make sure they’re administered in a nonpartisan way.
Trump has called for abolishing FEMA, later trying to downsize it and providing limited aid to states. The Office of the Special Counsel also found in 2025 that the same 2024 actions violated the Hatch Act.
Christopher Logan, FEMA associate administrator, said it no longer takes part in “FEMA-led door-to-door outreach efforts” and that agency staff now provides support “from fixed locations determined by state and local officials,” The Hill reported. Logan also said that after the 2024 case, FEMA gave staff mandatory Hatch Act and ethics training.
Michael Cohen, FEMA’s chief of staff at the time, told The Hill that the report reinforces that the “violations were not systematic and were isolated.” He said FEMA took appropriate action.
The Trump administration has also been accused of making disaster aid related to political leanings. Politico reported in March that it’s three times more difficult for Democrat-led states to obtain disaster aid for residents under the Trump administration.
The administration has also been accused of violating the Hatch Act, including in messaging on government websites.
Ministers have announced where more than 70,000 social and affordable homes will be built in England over the next 10 years as part of an initial allocation of almost £10bn, in a bid to address the housing crisis.
Funding has been granted to Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North East England, and Liverpool. An additional £6bn was previously announced for London.
It is the first part of a wider plan to build 300,000 social and affordable homes across the nation, under the government’s £39bn social housebuilding programme.
Earlier this year, before he became prime minister, Andy Burnham had called for the entire 10-year £39bn affordable housing budget for England to be spent on homes for social rent – which means the cost of the unit is about half that of market rents, and there are strict criteria for who can apply for it.
“I would actually devote all of it to social housing,” Burnham told The Social Housing Podcast in May.
But of the new homes announced on Monday, 60% would be for social rent.
Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook told BBC Breakfast he did not accept Burnham had failed to meet his previous commitment, saying the government had taken a “pragmatic approach” and wants to “get money out the door”.
He said the next tranche of funding would be more focused on council houses – which are usually also classed as homes for social rent.
It is understood ministers decided against giving councils more of the funding announced in the first tranche because they did not believe councils would be in a position to build the required number of social homes.
A fast-growing wildfire in Nevada has grown to 10,000 acres since it began burning just outside Reno on Saturday, forcing thousands to evacuate. Photo courtesy of Nevada Governor’s Office/X
Aug. 23 (UPI) — A fast-growing wildfire in Nevada has grown to 10,000 acres since it began burning just outside Reno on Saturday, officials said.
The Hawk Fire remained uncontained as of Sunday and forced 14,000 homes to be evacuated.
Gov. Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency in Washoe County, which contains Reno, and urged residents to stay vigilant and heed warnings.
“This is an active and rapidly evolving situation, and I urge everyone in the affected areas to remain vigilant and follow the direction of local officials,” he said in a statement on X.
Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve said “structures have already been burned in this fire.”
“Evacuating before the fire arrives also allows our firefighters to focus their efforts on battling the blaze,” the mayor said in a statement on X.
Truckee Meadows Fire Chief Richard Edwards said the fire is being driven by strong winds, ABC News reported.
“The wind-driven fires move very rapidly into our residential areas, creating a lot of challenges for our firefighters to save homes and protect lives,” Edwards added.
Reno’s Northwest Specialty Hospital said it was evacuating patients due to the fire.
“The safety and well-being of our rehabilitation and behavioral health patients and staff remain the highest priority and we are evacuating out of an abundance of caution,” the hospital said in a statement.
“Patients have been safely transported to appropriate locations where their care will continue without interruption ” no patients or staff remain in the building.”
Israeli troops have raided the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, with one villager saying the army turned their house into a barracks. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reports on the lurking military and settler outposts.
