This is a view of rubble of what once was the Meis Al Jabal public secondary school in in the Marjayoun district of southern Lebanon, on Monday. The school had been hit by Israeli air strikes during the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Photo by Wael Hamseh/EPA
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 24 (UPI) — The inhabitants of southern Lebanon continue to live under the shadow of war, enduring near-daily Israeli airstrikes, intensive shelling and persistent drone activity that inflict further casualties and destruction, deepen suffering and shatter what remains of daily life.
A cease-fire accord brokered by the United States and France on Nov. 27 intended to end Israel’s devastating war against the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah militant group has failed to halt hostilities or restore calm to the embattled region.
Interpreting the truce accord as granting it the right to respond to any emerging threat, Israel has continued its attacks without restraint across southern Lebanon and beyond.
The post-truce phase has proven even more difficult and uncertain than the war itself, which began on Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah entered the conflict by opening a front in support of Gaza.
Suspected Hezbollah positions and efforts to prevent the group from regrouping and rearming have not been Israel’s only targets. The strikes now also include private construction equipment businesses, bulldozers, excavators and anything related to rebuilding while showing no restraint toward civilians — whether in vehicles, on motorcycles or even at home.
The most intense strikes occurred Oct. 11, targeting bulldozer and excavator yards in the al-Msayleh area, where more than 300 vehicles worth millions of dollars were destroyed. One Syrian passerby was killed, and seven people, including two women, were wounded.
A week later, a quarry and cement-asphalt factory in the village of Ansar, in the Nabatiyeh district, was hit by another Israeli attack and destroyed. Israel claimed that the targeted facilities were being used by Hezbollah to produce cement for rebuilding infrastructure that had been demolished during the war — an allegation strongly denied by the plant’s managing director.
“We are a 100% civilian institution and have nothing to do with anything else,” Ali Haidar Khalifeh, who is running the targeted cement factory, told UPI. “We are a registered company with around 70 employees and a large-scale production, serving dozens of clients, distributors and suppliers from across all regions of Lebanon.”
Khalifeh, who estimated the losses at more than $15 million, said it was inconceivable to hide “weapons, missiles or military infrastructure” in the plant.
“The enemy [Israel] needs no excuse or reason. … The message is clear: it is forbidden to rebuild,” he said. “It is also meant to frighten businessmen and investors, to keep them away from southern Lebanon.”
Even civilian engineers, who assist in assessing the damage inflicted on houses and villages during the war, have been threatened and targeted.
Tarek Mazaraani was one of them. He, his family and neighbors endured a frightening experience when an Israeli drone flying over several villages in southern Lebanon broadcast a voice message calling his name and warning that he was “dangerous,” telling people to keep away from him.
At first, when his friends started sending him videos of the drone, Mazraani thought it was a joke. He soon realized it was “something serious.”
His three sons, including 8-year-old twins, began to cry, while neighbors in the compound where he was temporarily living in the village of Zawtar al-Sharkiyeh in the Nabatiyeh district rushed to his house to bid farewell before leaving for safer locations. His family packed their belongings and went to relatives in a nearby village, while he quickly headed to Beirut.
“I was surprised. … I am a simple civilian engineer and don’t belong to any party or provoke anyone,” Mazraani told UPI, adding that he felt guilty for his family and neighbors, who had to “live through the tension” and leave their homes.
He asked why Israel had “created all this terror” if its intention was to kill him, adding, “They could have done so without even a warning.”
It could well have been a warning to him and others not to deal with Hezbollah, directly or indirectly. Earlier this year, while unemployed, he briefly worked as part of a team of engineers assessing war damage with “Jihad al-Binaa,” a Hezbollah-affiliated development and reconstruction organization.
Probably, he said, his other “sin” was trying to help displaced people return to their border villages, which had been reduced to rubble during the war, and seek compensation.
Mazraani was forced to leave his border village of Houla, where his house had been badly damaged by intensive Israeli bombardment. He then established the “Gathering of Residents of Southern Border Villages,” composed of displaced people from 45 villages, to draw attention to the plight of some 80,000 inhabitants who remain displaced and without resources.
Israel is making it clear, residents say, that it will not allow reconstruction in southern Lebanon or international funding unless Hezbollah is fully disarmed and the Lebanese government accepts direct negotiations on security arrangements.
Even prefabricated houses, water tanks and small vans are not permitted and are being destroyed. With the olive harvest season beginning, farmers in the border areas must obtain permission from Israeli authorities to harvest and are usually accompanied by the Lebanese Army and U.N. peacekeeping forces.
According to a Lebanese Army source, Israel has been using Hezbollah and its alleged efforts to rebuild military infrastructure as a pretext to block any reconstruction efforts and hinder a return to normalcy.
The source explained that destroying cement plants and bulldozers, threatening engineers and imposing curfews were intended to block the return of inhabitants to their villages and establish a security belt in the area until an agreement with Lebanon could be reached.
“These are also political pressures exerted on the government,” he told UPI.
Referring to recent Israeli war threats, drills on its northern front and intensified drone surveillance over Beirut — specifically targeting the presidential and government palaces — the source explained that “it is a psychological war aimed at dragging the government into accepting direct negotiations [with Israel], while the drones are searching for new targets.”
With the Army successfully advancing in taking control of southern Lebanon, the source confirmed that “there is no Hezbollah presence” along the border or south of the Litani River, as stipulated by the cease-fire agreement.
Regarding growing fears that Israel might be preparing to escalate the war on Lebanon, he said, “It can — as no one is deterring it, and it listens to no one except [U.S. President Donald] Trump.”
Many Lebanese, especially the inhabitants of southern Lebanon believe the war was never truly over, and that the truce accord merely prolonged the conflict to Israel’s advantage.
“The first thing we want is safety and security — to stop the fire so we can go back and rebuild our villages and homes,” said Mazraani, who said he was exhausted by the war, echoing the wish of many others in southern Lebanon.
The ruins of the abandoned village of Tide Mills can still be seen today, nestled between Newhaven and Seaford in East Sussex. It was once a thriving hub home to many families
There is little left of Tide Mills today(Image: Simon Carey/Creative Commons)
A seaside town that was once buzzing with life is now a mere ghost of what it once was after its inhabitants were forced to leave.
Today, Tide Mills in Sussex is little more than crumbled bricks and mortar. In fact, you’d be forgiven for not realising that a town once stood on this spot of tranquil marshland. Yet less than a century ago, this tiny part of the south coast was filled with industry and village life.
As the name implies, the tight-knit community was built around a tidal mill that began operating in 1761. At first, it was a small affair, with local men loading barges with corn and wheat and women darning the flour sacks. They lived in a handful of cottages built around the mill.
Bloody drama befell Tide Mills in 1795 when hungry English troops fighting in the Napoleonic Wars stole 200 sacks of flour from the town, leading to their swift capture and execution.
A decade later, the town was expanded significantly when William Catt purchased the mill. The industrialist was fascinated by exotic fruit and built a massive greenhouse where he grew figs and pineapples, according to the Tide Mills Project
It wasn’t all fun, games and tasty fruit, however. Catt ran the village with an iron fist, building walls around it and setting a tight 10.10 pm curfew when the gates were locked. On one occasion, some villagers arrived back from the pub 10 minutes late, prompting Catt to stop their beer tokens and ban them from leaving the village for a month.
Two major events signalled the beginning of the end of prosperity for Tide Mills. In 1864, the railway network extended to Seaford, making it cheaper and easier for farmers to send their grain to London to be milled. Just over a decade later, a huge storm caused a great deal of damage to the mill, including filling much of its pond with stones from the beach. It never got back up to full capacity.
“The way people lived changed a lot over the life of Tide Mills, especially when the Mill stopped working for good in 1883. The Mill, which provided work for so many men, had stopped and the beating heart of the village fell silent. The Mill buildings were converted and used as warehouses where some of the men continued to work,” the Tide Mills Project writes.
Slowly, community cornerstones such as the school, blacksmith, and carpenters began to disappear from the village. But the people stayed, surviving as best they could.
In the early decades of the 20th century, Tide Mills had a bit of a rebirth. A large radio mast was built there to guide ships, while a seaplane station base opened in 1917, bringing army traffic and soldiers, noise, and two big hangars for the planes on the beach.
However, the end of the settlement loomed ever closer. In 1930, Parliament passed a Housing Act that permitted local authorities to condemn housing as unfit for human habitation.
A lack of work and investment saw Tide Mills fall into disrepair. In 1936, a petition to evict the villagers from Tide Mills was launched in response to concern that the homes there were no longer fit for living. In 1937, a headline in the Daily Mail read ‘The Hamlet of Horror’, and described the squalor in which residents lived. It highlighted a lack of running water, sewage facilities and electricity.
Water was sourced from a single standpipe shared by all six houses, general waste was removed and discarded into the sea, and each house had a small outside building containing an earth closet whose contents had to be emptied and carried to the sea.
Later that year, Seaford council deemed the village of Tide Mills as unfit for habitation. It issued an eviction order, giving the residents nine months to move out. Everyone at Tide Mills, including Chailey Marine Hospital, was evicted. Those who refused to leave were forcibly evicted in 1940.
Today, it’s a challenge to distinguish the remnants of the buildings among the ruins that still stand. The only house that can be clearly identified is Station House, situated at the northern end of the village near the railway line.
In 1940, Stan Tubb, a war veteran, was permitted to remain for an additional two months due to his specialised knowledge that proved useful to the troops stationed there during WWII.
All buildings in the village and hospital were demolished as they would have obstructed the view of defending soldiers and hindered their ability to fire upon invaders.
Today, the ruins are open for exploration and Tide Mills is a popular walking and cycling route.
‘The big war may be over, but what about the many smaller wars that still await us here?’ Al Jazeera’s Maram Humaid explains the difficult decisions facing Palestinians in Gaza living amid the rubble and navigating on-going violence.
SACRAMENTO — Though raging thousands of miles to the east, the entrenched stalemate in Washington over federal spending and the ensuing government shutdown has thrust California’s expansive healthcare policies into the center of the pitched, partisan debate.
The Trump administration and the Republican leaders in Congress continue to use California, and the benefits the state has extended to eligible immigrants regardless of their legal status, as a cudgel against Democrats trying to extend federal subsidies for taxpayer-funded healthcare coverage.
President Trump claimed recently that Democrats “want to have illegal aliens come into our country and get massive healthcare at the cost to everybody else.” Democrats called Trump’s assertion an absolute lie, accusing Republicans of wanting to slash federal healthcare benefits to Americans in need to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.
“California has led the nation in expanding access to affordable healthcare, but Donald Trump is ripping it away,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
In return for their votes to reopen the government, Democratic leaders in Congress want to reverse Medicaid cuts made in Republicans’ tax and spending bill passed this summer and continue subsidies through the Affordable Care Act, a program long targeted by Republicans. The subsidies, which come in the form of a tax credit, help lower health insurance costs for millions of Americans.
Can immigrants in the country illegally enroll in federal healthcare programs?
No. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program or Medicare, or coverage through the Affordable Care Act, according to KFF, an independent health research organization.
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-South San Francisco) held a virtual town hall last week in which he highlighted the “misinformation” about immigrants and healthcare.
“I just want to be completely clear that federal funding does not pay for health insurance for undocumented immigrants, period,” Mullin said.
Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, said the debate is really over “who can benefit from the federal dollars that are flowing to all states, including California,” to help lower costs for health insurance.
Covered California serves as a marketplace exchange for state residents seeking healthcare insurance under the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, allowing them to select from name-brand insurance providers and choose from a variety of coverage plans. The vast majority of Californians receive federal subsidies to lower their premiums, including many middle-income families who had become eligible when Congress expanded the financial assistance in 2021.
Those expanded subsidies will expire at the end of the year, and Democrats are demanding that they be extended as part of any deal to reopen the government before they vote in favor of what is known as a continuing resolution, or a temporary funding bill to keep the federal government running.
“From the very beginning, undocumented or illegal — whatever terminology you want to use — individuals were never eligible for those tax credits, never eligible for those cost-sharing reductions, and in fact, and not even eligible to come onto a marketplace and buy coverage if they paid the full costs,” Altman said.
California does offer state healthcare coverage for undocumented immigrants
Through Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program, some medical coverage is offered, regardless of immigration status. The majority of that money comes from the state.
H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs at the California Department of Finance, said the cost to provide Medi-Cal to undocumented immigrants in the current fiscal year is just over $12.5 billion.
State money accounts for $11.2 billion and the remaining difference is reimbursed with federal funding because it’s used to cover emergency services, Palmer explained.
“Under current law, hospitals that receive Medicaid are required to provide emergency care, including labor and delivery, to individuals regardless of their citizenship status,” he said. “That goes back to a budget law that was approved by Congress in 1986 and signed by President Ronald Reagan.”
The 1986 law is called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, and allows for emergency healthcare for all persons.
The MCO tax is a federally allowable Medicaid funding mechanism that imposes a tax on health insurance providers that charge fixed monthly payments for services and is based on the number of people enrolled in plans each month. The revenue from the tax can then be used to support Medicaid expenditures with federal matching funds.
Critics say California exploits a so-called loophole: By increasing the MCO tax, and subsequently bringing in more matching federal funds, California can then put more of its own state money toward healthcare for undocumented immigrants.
“We are bringing in all those additional federal dollars and then reallocating other money away so that we can provide about $9.6 billion for Medi-Cal for undocumented and illegal immigrants,” said Assemblymember David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno). “The MCO tax was never supposed to be weaponized in that process.”
White House officials also contend that California could not afford to put resources toward benefits for undocumented immigrants if it had not received the extra federal money — a claim Newsom disputes.
“What the president is saying, he’s lying,” Newsom said at a recent event. “Speaker [Mike] Johnson’s lying. They’re lying to the American people. It’s shameful. … I guess they’re trying to connect their displeasure with what California and many other states do with state resources in this space, and that is a very separate conversation.”
California is not alone in offering such healthcare to immigrants in the country illegally
A “small but growing” number of states offer state-funded coverage to certain groups of low-income people regardless of immigration status, according to KFF.
California became the first state in the nation last year to offer healthcare to all low-income undocumented immigrants, an expansion spearheaded by Newsom.
Newsom has since partially walked back that policy after the costs exceeded expectations. Starting in January, most adult Medi-Cal applications will be blocked — although current enrollees can continue to renew — and some adults will be required to pay monthly premiums. Undocumented minors under age 19, who became eligible for Medi-Cal nearly a decade ago, will not be affected by the changes.
The upcoming changes to the state’s policies and the enrollment freeze will help decrease the overall costs, which are projected to fall to about $10.1 billion during the next fiscal year, according to the California Department of Finance.
While the governor’s shift angered his most progressive allies and renewed speculation that he is tacking to the political middle ahead of his expected run for president in 2028, the Democratic-led Legislature approved the Medi-Cal eligibility changes in June.
Public opinion on the issue may also be changing.
Fifty-eight percent of adults in California were opposed to providing healthcare for undocumented immigrants, according to a poll released in June from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. This was a notable shift, as previous surveys from the institute conducted between 2015 to 2023 showed the majority approved.
Who would lose coverage if the tax credits end and Medicaid cuts aren’t reversed?
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Republicans this summer, ends healthcare subsidies that were extended during the pandemic and makes other cuts to programs. According to the White House, the bill “contains the most important America First healthcare reforms ever enacted.”
“The policies represent a comprehensive effort to address waste, fraud, and abuse to strengthen the healthcare system for the most vulnerable Americans, ensuring that taxpayer dollars are focused on American citizens and do not subsidize healthcare for illegal immigrants,” the White House said in a statement on Oct. 1.
Among other things, the law limits Medicare and other program eligibility to certain groups, including green card holders, effective July 2025. Other lawfully present immigrants, including refugees and asylees, are no longer eligible, according to KFF.
It’s estimated that the eligibility restrictions will result in about 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants becoming uninsured, reduce federal spending by about $131 billion and increase federal revenue by $4.8 billion as of 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
At the same time, a broader group of lawfully present immigrants, including refugees, will lose access to subsidized coverage through the ACA marketplace by January 2027.
Covered California’s Altman estimated that there are about 119,000 immigrants in California who are covered and would lose eligibility for financial assistance.
More broadly, Altman and other healthcare experts predict that healthcare premiums will skyrocket if the ACA tax credits expire.
Many Los Angeles residents will soon be paying significantly more for trash collection after the City Council voted Tuesday to finalize a dramatic fee increase.
The trash program had become heavily subsidized, to the tune of about $500,000 a day, which officials said was no longer viable given the city’s dire financial straits, which left them scrambling to close a nearly $1-billion budget deficit earlier this year.
Having the cost subsidized by the city for so long contributed to that deficit, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.
“It should have been corrected a long time ago,” Szabo said. “If we didn’t get this rate increase, the subsidy would have been more than $200 million this year.”
The city hadn’t raised trash pickup fees in 17 years, and a 2016 state law governing organic waste disposal significantly increased operational costs. Large raises for city sanitation workers and rising equipment costs also bumped up expenditures.
Once the new fees go into effect, probably in mid-November, residents of single-family homes or apartments with four units or less will pay $55.95 a month per unit.
That sum is more than double the $24.33 a month that occupants of triplexes and fourplexes had been paying, and a roughly 50% increase on the $36.32 previously paid by residents of single-family homes and duplexes.
Those customers put their waste in black bins for regular trash, blue bins for recycling and green bins for organic waste, which are emptied by city workers once a week. Larger apartment buildings will be unaffected by the changes, because their waste collection is administered through a separate program.
The fees will increase by an additional $10 over the next four years.
By next year, the increased fees will reflect the actual cost of trash pickup and will be on par with or slightly below what residents pay in nearby cities such as Long Beach, Pasadena, Culver City and Glendale.
Still, the new fees will almost certainly engender sticker shock for L.A. residents already contending with skyrocketing insurance premiums, rising rents and eye-popping grocery prices. Rates will be reduced for low-income customers who qualify for the city’s EZ-SAVE or Lifeline programs.
The City Council approved the increase on a 12-2 vote, with Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and Adrin Nazarian dissenting.
“After approving a $2.6-billion Convention Center expansion, the council is asking residents to pay more for basic services like trash collection while delivering less. That doesn’t reflect the priorities of working Angelenos,” Rodriguez said after Tuesday’s vote. “I can’t, in good conscience, support that approach.”
A number of factors catalyzed the city’s financial issues, which exploded into public view during the budget process earlier this year. Los Angeles had taken in weaker than expected tax revenues, paid out more in legal liabilities and adopted large-scale raises for city employees.
When Mayor Karen Bass first presented her budget in the spring, layoffs for more than 1,600 city workers were on the table. She and the City Council were ultimately able to avoid those cuts through a number of cost-saving measures.
The matter was complicated by Proposition 218, a 1996 statewide ballot measure designed to make it harder for local governments to raise taxes and fees. To satisfy the proposition’s requirements, the city had to hold public hearings and give every affected resident the opportunity to weigh in via a notice mailed to their homes before the increase could move forward.
The fee hike legislation still has to be signed by the mayor and formally published by the city clerk. The fee can’t go into effect until 31 days after that, or mid-November at the earliest.
The city budget, however, was calculated under the assumption that the new fees would go into effect Oct. 1. The delay will leave the city on the hook for an extra $500,000 a day.
Because Tuesday’s vote was not unanimous, the ordinance will receive a second reading next week before the council formally approves it and sends it to the mayor — a technicality that will cost the city $3.5 million. The mayor plans to sign it as soon as she receives it, her office said.
The delay to mid-November will cost the city a total of at least $22 million, creating another deficit that will have to be adjusted for down the line.
Still, some residents decried the ballooning fees, with one calling the increase “preposterous.”
“Listen to our cries,” the person, who did not give their name,said in a written public comment. “We can barely keep a roof over our heads — at this time! Los Angeles is falling apart. It is your job to fix it more practically.”
The Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council also opposed the rate hike, arguing that residents are already facing steep cost-of-living increases and that layering more fees on top of that would be “neither fair nor sustainable.”
The last time the city increased trash fees, back in the summer of 2008, City Controller Kenneth Mejia was a few months out of high school, George W. Bush was in the Oval Office and Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” was topping the Billboard charts.
Amid a global economic downturn, the city was facing widespread cuts, and leaders looked — as they often do — to the price tag of city services to try to balance the budget.
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
PORTLAND, Ore. — There is a rhetorical battle raging here in this heavily Democratic city, known for its delicious coffee, plethora of fancy restaurants, bespoke doughnuts and also for its small faction of black-clad activists.
It started Saturday when President Trump suddenly announced that he was sending the National Guard to “war-ravaged” Portland — where a small group of demonstrators have been staging a monthslong protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building south of downtown.
Oregon officials have pushed back forcefully, flooding their own social media with images of colorful cafe tables, sun-drenched farmers markets, rose gardens in full bloom and parks bursting with children, families and frolicking dogs. Officials would prefer the city be known for its Portlandia vibe, and are begging residents to stay peaceful and not give the Trump administration a protest spectacle.
A protester waves to Department of Homeland Security officials as they walk to the gates of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility after inspecting an area outside in Portland, Ore.
(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)
“There is no need or legal justification for military troops,” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has said, over and over again, on her Instagram and in texts to President Trump that have been released publicly. Officials have gone to court seeking an order to stop the deployment, with a hearing set for Friday.
But the president seems resolute. In a Tuesday speech before a gathering of generals and admirals, he sketched out a controversial vision of dispatching troops to Democratic cities “as training grounds for our military” to combat an “invasion from within.” He described Portland as “a nightmare” that “looks like a warzone … like World War II.”
“The Radical Left’s reign of terror in Portland ends now,” a White House press release read, “with President Donald J. Trump mobilizing federal resources to stopAntifa-led hellfire in its tracks.”
Trump’s targeting of Portland comes after he deployed troops to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and threatened to do so elsewhere. The president says he is delivering on campaign pledges to restore public safety, but detractors say he’s attempting to intimidate and provoke Democratic strongholds, while distracting the nation from his various controversies.
As they wait to see whether and when the National Guard will arrive, city residents this week reacted with a mixture of rage, bafflement and sorrow.
A man rests under a public art sculpture in downtown Portland, Ore.
(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)
Many acknowledged that Portland has problems: Homelessness and open drug abuse are endemic, and encampments crowd some sidewalks. The city’s downtown has never recovered from pandemic closures and rioting that took place during George Floyd protests in 2020.
More recently, Intel — one of Oregon’s largest private employers — announced it was laying off 2,400 employees in a county just west of Portland. Like Los Angeles and many other cities, Portland has seen a big drop in tourism this year, a trend that city leaders say is not helped by Trump’s military interventions.
“We need federal help to renew our infrastructure, and build affordable housing, to help clean our rivers and plant trees,” said Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on his social media. “Instead of help, they’re sending armored vehicles and masked men.”
All across the city this week, residents echoed similar themes.
“Nothing is happening here. This is a gorgeous, peaceful city,” said Hannah O’Malley, who was snacking on french fries at a table with a view of the Willamette River outside the Portland Sports Bar and Grill.
Patrons are reflected in the window at Honey Pearl Cafe PDX in downtown Portland.
(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)
The restaurant was just a few blocks from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building where the ongoing demonstration has become the latest focus of the president’s ire against the city.
A small group of people — a number of them women in their 60s and 70s with gray braids and top-of-the-line rain jackets — have been congregating here for months to protest the federal immigration crackdown.
In June, there were several clashes with law enforcement at the site. Police declared a riot one night, and on another night made several arrests outside the facility, including one person accused of choking a police officer. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they had arrested “four criminal illegal aliens” who allegedly conducted laser strikes on a Border Patrol helicopter “in an attempt to temporarily blind the pilot.”
But day in and day out, the protests have been largely peaceful and fairly small and nothing the city’s police force can’t handle, according to city officials and the protesters themselves.
On Monday afternoon, a group of about 40 people including grandmothers, parents and their children, and a man in a chicken costume, held flowers and signs. A few yelled abuse through a metal gate at ICE officers standing in the driveway.
People protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 28 in Portland, Ore.
(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)
“We’re so scary,” joked Kat Barnard, 67, a retired accountant for nonprofits who said she began protesting a few months ago, fitting it in between caring for her grandson. She added that she has found a sense of community while standing against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “I’ve met so many people,” she said. “It’s just beautiful. It makes me happy.”
A few miles away, in the cafe at the city’s famed bookstore, Powell’s Books, a trio of retired friends bemoaned their beloved city’s negative image.
“This is the most peaceful, kind community I’ve ever lived in” said Lynne Avril, 74, who moved to Portland from Phoenix a few years ago. Avril, a retired illustrator who penned the artwork for the young Amelia Bedelia books, said she routinely walks home alone late at night through the city’s darkened streets, and feels perfectly safe doing so.
The president “wants another spectacle,” added Avril’s friend, Signa Schuster, 73, a retired estate manager.
“That’s what we’re afraid of,” answered Avril.
“There’s no problem here,” added Annie Olsen, 72, a retired federal worker. “It’s all performative and stupid.”
Still, the women said, they are keenly aware that their beloved city has a negative reputation nationally. Avril said that when she told friends in Phoenix that she had decided to move to Portland, “People were like: ‘Why would you move here [with] all the violence?’”
Olsen sighed and nodded. “So much misinformation,” she said.
In the front lobby of the famed bookstore, the local bestseller lists provided a window into many residents’ concerns. Two books on authoritarianism and censorship — George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” — were on the shelves. Over in nonfiction, it was the same story, with “How Fascism Works” and “On Tyranny” both making appearances.
The Willamette River runs through downtown Portland, Ore.
(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)
But outside, the sky was blue and bright despite the rain in the forecast and many residents were doing what Portlanders do with an unexpected gift from the weather gods: They were jogging and biking along the Willamette River, and sitting in outdoor cafes sipping their city’s famous coffee and nibbling on buttery pastries.
“Trump is unhinged,” said Shannon O’Connor, 57. She said that Portland has problems for sure — “homelessness, fentanyl, a huge drug problem” — but unrest is not among them.
Sprawled on a sidewalk near a freeway on-ramp, a man calling himself “Rabbit” was panhandling for money accompanied by his two beagle-pit bull mixes, Pooh Bear and Piglet.
Rabbit, 48, said he hadn’t heard of the president’s plan to send in the National Guard, but didn’t think it was necessary. He had come to Portland two years ago “to get away from all the craziness,” he said, and found it to be safe. “I haven’t been threatened yet,” he said, then knocked on wood.
Many residents said they think the president may be confusing what is happening in Portland now with a period in 2020 in which the city was briefly convulsed over Black Live Matter protests.
“We had a lot of trouble then,” said a woman who asked to be referred to only as “Sue” for fear of being doxed. “Nothing like that now.” A lifelong Portlander, she is retired and among those who have been demonstrating at the ICE facility south of downtown.
She and other residents said they have noticed that clips of the riots and other violence from 2020 have recently been recirculating on social media and even some cable news shows.
“Either he is mistaken or it is part of his propaganda,” she said of the president’s portrayal of Portland, adding that it makes her “very sad. I’ve never protested until this go-around. But we have to do something.”
As afternoon turned to evening Tuesday, the blue skies over the city gave way to clouds and drizzle. The parks and outdoor cafes emptied out.
As night fell, the retired women and children who had been protesting outside the ICE facility went home, and more and more younger people began to take their places.
By 10 p.m., law enforcement was massed on the roof of the ICE building in tactical gear. Black-clad protesters — watched over by local television reporters and some independent media — played cat and mouse with the officers, stepping toward the building only to be repelled by rounds of pepper balls.
A 39-year-old man, who asked to be called “Mushu” and who had only his eyes visible amid his black garb, stood on the corner across the street, gesturing to the independent media livestreaming the protests. “They are showing that hell that is Portland,” he said, his voice dripping with irony.
About the same time, Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with the Post Millennial, posted on X that she had been “assaulted by an Antifa agitator.” She also tweeted that “the suspect escaped into the Antifa safe house.”
A few minutes later, a group of officers burst out of a van and appeared to detain one of the protesters. Then the officers dispersed, and the standoff resumed.
Around the corner, a couple with gray hair sporting sleek rain jackets walked their little dog along the street. If they were concerned about the made-for-video drama that was playing out a few yards away, they didn’t show it. They just continued to walk their dog.
On Wednesday morning, the president weighed in again, writing on Truth Social, “Conditions continue to deteriorate into lawless mayhem.”
THIS is the horrifying moment a maniac brandishes an axe as he chases a man down the street in broad daylight.
Horrified neighbours can be heard yelling out at the two men as the terrifying confrontation unfolds.
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Terrifying footage shows the man swinging an axe as another man fleesCredit: CrimeLdn/X
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The footage was filmed in Smethwick, West MidlandsCredit: CrimeLdn/X
The footage was filmed in Bearwood, in the southern part of Smethwick, West Midlands.
A bald man wearing a dark gilet jacket and grey t-shirt wields the axe above his head as he confronts another man who tries to defend himself by holding his hand out and walking backwards.
Raised voices can be heard but it is unclear where they are coming from.
The dark-haired man wearing a grey tracksuit, who tries to defend himself, has his right arm stretched out in front of him as the bald man steps forward to take a swing at him with the axe.
As the man in the tracksuit steps backwards he stumbles and falls to the ground as the bald man steps forward and once again raises the axe above his head.
The bald man then stands towering over the other man who is sitting on the pavement with his arm stretched out.
Voices shout out as the bald man appears ready to attack.
Fortunately, the attacker then pauses as he appears to see sense and lowers his axe and walks away.
As he starts to walk away he then turns around pointing to the other man who is getting up off the floor and words are exchanged.
Luckily, there is no bloodshed and neither man appears to be injured.
Horrifying moment boy punched, kicked in head and STABBED by yobs as vicious brawl erupts near train station
A caption on the video says: “Man ain’t playing with the axe” while the footage was uploaded to the social media site X, formerly Twitter, on September 20.
Officers from West Midlands Police have launched an investigation into the horrifying incident and are attempting to “establish the full circumstances.”
A 39-year-old man has since been arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon, section 18 wounding and possession of a bladed article.
He has now been bailed while detectives probe the incident further.
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The man stands over his victim with the axe raisedCredit: CrimeLdn/X
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It looks as if he is about to hit his victim with the weaponCredit: CrimeLdn/X
West Midlands Police said: “We were called to Selsey Road, Bearwood just before 8.25am on Saturday (20 Sep) after reports of a man with an axe.
“A 39-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon, section 18 wounding and possession of a bladed article.
“He has been bailed pending further enquiries.
“We are still working to establish the full circumstances. Anyone with any information is asked to call 101 quoting 20/382697/25.”
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He apparently sees sense and walks away without using the axe on his floored victimCredit: CrimeLdn/X
Israel has bombed and destroyed the tallest residential building in Gaza, the Al-Ghafri high-rise, as it launched a massive wave of strikes on Gaza City on Monday evening, forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to continue to flee the city.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, says Israel is using unconventional weapons to forcibly evict Palestinians from Gaza City, the largest urban centre in the enclave.
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Israeli media source Channel 12 reported that “exceptionally intense air strikes” were concentrated in the city’s north and west, while the Palestinian Civil Defence said at least 50 multistorey buildings had been levelled in recent weeks as Israeli forces intensified attacks to seize the city.
Other neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. In Zeitoun, more than 1,500 homes and buildings have been destroyed since early August, leaving entire blocks with nothing left standing.
For the third day in a row, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has posted videos of the attacks. “The terror tower… crashes into the sea off Gaza. Sinking the centres of terror and incitement,” he wrote on X. Katz offered no evidence for his claim that the residential tower was being used by Hamas.
Israel has repeatedly attacked residential areas, schools and hospitals during its 23 months of genocidal war.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that 51 Palestinians, including six-year-old twins, were killed in Gaza City in the past 24 hours.
Three journalists were also killed in separate Israeli strikes: reporter Mohammed al-Kouifi in the Nassr neighbourhood, photographer and broadcast engineer Ayman Haniyeh, and journalist Iman al-Zamili. These killings take the number of journalists and media workers killed in Israel’s war on Gaza to nearly 280. Media watchdogs say this war is the deadliest conflict for journalists.
Since October 2023, Israel has killed at least 64,905 Palestinians and wounded 164,926, with thousands more still buried under rubble.
‘Striking every area’
Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan in August to seize Gaza City, which has led to relentless bombardment, forcing residents south towards al-Mawasi.
Many Palestinians say they do not believe they will ever be allowed to return, and fear the journey itself.
“For more than three days, they have been hitting every school and emptying Shati camp [near north Gaza’s coast], striking every area. You cannot even move,” one resident told Al Jazeera.
“That is why I decided to leave with my family – my daughters and my wife – and head to Khan Younis. I don’t even have a tent. I only took a few things; I couldn’t take anything from my home.”
Being pushed into al-Mawasi, the area Israel has designated a “safe zone”, offers no safety as Israel continues to attack the site. The Health Ministry has also said the area lacks the “basic necessities of life, including water, food [and] health services”, and warned of “dangerous” disease outbreaks.
It added that displaced people are subjected to “direct targeting and killing both inside the camps and when attempting to leave them”, in violation of international law.
Israel continues to block aid
Israeli forces shot dead at least five Palestinians waiting for food assistance near al-Mawasi, according to the Nasser Medical Complex.
Meanwhile, the famine is deepening in the Strip. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared a famine in northern Gaza on August 22.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that out of the 17 humanitarian missions coordinated with Israel on Sunday, only four were permitted. A mission to deliver water tanks to the north was also denied entry.
Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that Israel must be held accountable.
“This is a genocide that could have never happened without the support and involvement of a number of actors,” she said, pointing to Israel’s allies and private sector partners.
Albanese urged governments to “put an end to Israeli impunity” and demand adherence to international law.
State Department move comes as Israel’s war and induced-famine in Gaza reach new extremes, with 61,827 killed so far.
The United States has announced that it is halting all visitor visas for people from Gaza pending a “a full and thorough” review, a day after social media posts about Palestinian refugees sparked furious reactions from right-wingers.
The Department of State’s move on Saturday came a day after far-right activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer posted on X that Palestinians “who claim to be refugees from Gaza” entered the US via San Francisco and Houston this month.
“How is allowing for Islamic immigrants to come into the US America First policy?” she said on X in a later post, going on to report further Palestinian arrivals in Missouri and claiming that “several US Senators and members of Congress” had texted her to express their fury.
Republican lawmakers speaking publicly about the matter included Chip Roy of Texas, who said he would inquire about the matter, and Randy Fine of Florida, who described the alleged arrivals as a “national security risk”.
By Saturday, the State Department announced it was stopping visas for “individuals from Gaza” while it conducted “a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days”. It did not provide a figure.
All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days.
The US issued 640 visas to holders of the Palestinian Authority travel document in May, according to the Reuters news agency. B1/B2 visitor visas permit Palestinians to seek medical treatment in the US.
Loomer greeted Saturday’s State Department announcement with glee.
“It’s amazing how fast we can get results from the Trump administration,” she said on Saturday, though she later posted that more needed to be done to “highlight the crisis of the invasion happening in our country”.
While I appreciate the State Department and @marcorubio issuing this statement, I want to press even harder to highlight the crisis of the invasion happening in our country.
The visas and arrivals of GAZANS to US airports isn’t new. This has been drastically increasing in speed… https://t.co/mI5APTairz
The decision to cut visas comes as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza, where at least 61,827 people have been killed in the past 22 months, with the United Nations warning that “widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease” are driving a rise in famine-related deaths.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing to seize Gaza City as part of a takeover of the Strip, forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to concentration zones.
France’s most devastating wildfire in decades remains active despite being brought under control, officials announced, as firefighting efforts continue with hundreds of personnel.
The massive blaze in Aude has scorched more than 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) – an area larger than Paris – killing one person, injuring another 13 and destroying numerous homes.
Approximately 2,000 firefighters remain deployed to combat the flames, which were declared under control on Thursday night.
“The fire will not be declared extinguished for several days,” said Christian Pouget, Aude’s prefect. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”
Officials have restricted access to the devastated forests until at least Sunday due to hazardous conditions, including fallen power lines and other dangers.
Pouget confirmed that roughly 2,000 evacuees still await clearance to return home, with hundreds sheltering in school gymnasiums and community centres throughout the region.
This wildfire is the largest in France’s Mediterranean region in at least 50 years, according to government monitoring agencies. The southern area is particularly susceptible to such fires.
At its peak, the blaze consumed about 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) per hour, Narbonne authorities reported. Shifting strong winds over two days made the fire’s behaviour unpredictable.
A 65-year-old woman who refused evacuation orders was found dead in her burned home, while 13 others were injured, including 11 firefighters.
Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, visiting the affected area on Wednesday, called the wildfire a “catastrophe on an unprecedented scale”.
“What is happening today is linked to global warming and linked to drought,” Bayrou said.
Environment Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher wrote in a post on X that this was France’s largest fire since 1949. The country has experienced approximately 9,000 wildfires this summer, primarily near the Mediterranean coast.
Aude has seen increasing burn areas in recent years, exacerbated by reduced rainfall and vineyard removals that previously helped slow fire progression.
In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, the hardest-hit village, thick smoke continued rising on Thursday from pine-covered hills overlooking vineyards where dry grass still burned.
With Europe facing new August heatwaves, many regions remain on wildfire alert. Portugal extended emergency measures on Thursday due to heightened fire risks.
Near Spain’s Tarifa, fire crews secured areas around tourist accommodation after controlling a major blaze that destroyed hundreds of hectares.
Climate experts indicate that global warming is driving longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves worldwide, creating more favourable conditions for forest fires.
In the early hours of Sunday, July 27, as most of Yola South slept, a violent flood tore through the communities of Sabon Pegi, Yolde Pate, and Shagari, submerging homes and shaking lives in the darkness. Panic spread as terrified families scrambled to higher ground with parents clutching their children and whatever belongings they could salvage. While some residents found safety in the highlands, others were trapped in their homes because the water levels were too high.
One of the trapped residents was Hope Bitrus.
Hope, a resident of Sabon Pegi in Yola South, Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, said, like everyone in the community, the flood took her family by surprise, as it came while they were asleep around 3 a.m.
“We heard someone knocking on the door. It was our neighbour who came to inform us that the whole street was getting flooded,” she told HumAngle.
Just then, her whole verandah became flooded, and the water level rose so high that it poured into their rooms through the open window.
“And at that point, we knew the best thing to do was to get out. My husband and I were able to get our smaller children out of the house, but their eldest sister, who was in the other room, was trapped,” she said.
Hope and her husband struggled with the door, but it didn’t open.
“There was no way we could leave without our daughter, so we screamed from outside the door and told her to climb through the window, but then, the water was pouring inside her room through the window.”
The girl started to panic, crying, and her parents got even more confused.
“We added more pressure on the door and managed to open it, and then she was able to get out,” she recalled.
By the time the girl got out, the water level had gone higher. All three of them had to climb the wall for support and then get to the roof for safety.
“I watched my items flooding away. I think the things that didn’t move were the couch and other heavy items, but clothes, utensils, food items, and other things were washed away before our eyes,” Hope said.
No place like home
Like Hope Bitrus, many residents of the affected communities lost their properties and valuables in the flood. When HumAngle spoke to some of them on the day of the incident, their basic concern was food and shelter.
To address these immediate concerns, the Adamawa State government turned a public secondary school in Yola South into a temporary displacement camp. Security forces were deployed to guard the area and regulate movement among the displaced.
A signpost leading to the Aliyu Musdafa College in Yola-South Adamawa State which became a temporary camp for displaced persons. Photo: Saduwo Banyawa/HumAngle
HumAngle learned that a public announcement was made, urging all those affected by the flood to come to the school for formal registration.
According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), a total of 5560 persons were displaced; about 927 households were affected, with 524 households displaced, and 25 people dead. At least 11 people are still missing.
“When the announcement was made, even those who were not affected by the flooding trooped into the school to obtain meal tickets and registration cards, so by the time most of us who were affected got there, basic relief items had finished,” Rukaiyah Hamid Jalo, one of the affected residents from Yola Bypass, told HumAngle.
Hope explained that during the three days they spent in the makeshift camp, she and her family had to spread a wrapper on the bare floor for the children to sleep because the camp had insufficient supplies like mats and blankets.
“Before we got the news that the camp was opened and that people were asked to come and register, it was already Monday, so by the time we reached, relief materials like mats, buckets, and soaps were already shared by the Red Cross, so we didn’t get any,” she said.
Like many others, Chafari Wisdom, another affected resident, told HumAngle that her family couldn’t access basic supplies in the camp due to severe shortages. She added that the classrooms were overcrowded and lacked mats to lie on, leaving her desperate to return home, even though her home was ruined.
“One morning, my sister and I left the camp to go and check our home because we wanted to leave there as soon as possible but when we got home, we noticed that even though the water level had gone down, the place was yet to dry up so we had no choice but to go back to the camp because there was no place we can stay,” Chafari said.
When HumAngle visited the temporary camp, the crowd was largely made up of women sitting in groups. Some of them explained that their husbands had stayed behind to guard what was left of their destroyed homes to prevent vandalism and theft.
Healthcare workers from the primary healthcare centres in Yola South, the International Community of the Red Cross (ICRC), Nigerian Air Force emergency clinic, and others were deployed to provide medical assistance to the people. Complicated cases were said to be referred to the State Specialist Hospital.
In the school kitchen, members of the ICRC had taken over to cook meals for the displaced.
Despite getting a roof over their heads, Hope said there was nowhere she wanted to be other than home because life in the camp was difficult.
A school clinic at the Aliyu Musdafa College, Yola-South which was used as a temporary clinic for the displaced who took shelter in the school. Photo: Saduwo Banyawa/HumAngle.
HumAngle gathered that the displaced people receive two meals a day provided by the ICRC. Civil society organisations and some individuals have also visited the camp to distribute cooked meals and snacks. However, some of the displaced people said the crowd was so much that the food hardly went round.
Chafari mentioned that she had to leave the camp one time and head back to her house to see if she could get something for her children when the food rations didn’t reach them.
“I couldn’t get anything. The entire storeroom was flooded,” she said.
A woman who pleaded anonymity told HumAngle that she felt abandoned by the government because most of the healthcare and feeding support they received in the camp was from non-profit organisations, particularly the Red Cross.
“We were overcrowded. We barely had any food. At one point, we just wanted to go back home even though it was yet to dry up,” she said.
HumAngle tried to reach the Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency (ADSEMA) for a comment on matters like the shortage of food and basic supplies, but all efforts proved abortive.
On July 30th, the Agency’s executive secretary, Celine Laori, disclosed during a gathering where HumAngle was present that the camp was officially closing based on directives from the Adamawa State Governor. Displaced persons received cash tokens, relief materials like blankets, mats, rice, and noodles.
Even though residents like Hope and Chafari wanted to get back home due to a lack of access to food and relief materials, others were not ready. HumAngle observed that some houses, particularly at the end of Shagari Phase 2, were yet to dry up, but since the camp has been closed barely 3 days into operation, residents were left with no choice
Back to the ruins
On the streets of Yola By-pass and Sabon Pegi, drenched carpets, mattresses, and furniture were littered across the streets to dry. Collapsed fences and broken walls showed dismantled roofs and ruined homes. Women and children swept and mopped while some men collected blocks and zincs.
Chafari’s entire furniture is covered in mud, with many items gone. She noted that apart from the financial cost of the incident, she is also grappling with the mental toll.
“Among the dead bodies recovered from the flood were my neighbour’s children. Two of them were washed away, and right now, their father is yet to be found. We don’t know whether he’s dead or alive,” she said.
Rukaiyah is back home with her children, but she says she doesn’t know where to begin. Even though the token she received at the camp doesn’t make up a fraction of what she had lost, she expressed gratitude for it.
Enoch Jared, a resident of Sabon Pegi, said he didn’t go to the camp because his family had already managed to wash one of the rooms after the floods and so they stayed there instead. He also needed to be at home to watch over what was left of his house since the floods destroyed the fence.
“It’s been days since the incident occurred, and no one from the government has come down to even greet or check up on us in our community. Only those who made it to the camp got aid,” he said.
After losing his animals, properties, and a portion of his home, Enoch said right now, he’s focused on fixing his fence and ensuring his family members get food on their table.
The cause
Since the flooding occurred, there has been intense debate among locals and on social media about its cause. Some alleged that a Chinese mining company operating in Bole, a community in Yola South, blocked a natural water channel due to its mining activities. As a result, when heavy rainfall occurred, the water had no passage and was forced to flow back into residential areas. Others claimed that a dam in the Bole area had broken, thus triggering the flood.
HumAngle visited the Bole community and the mining site, which is used for extracting fluoride. While the dam itself remains intact, HumAngle observed that a waterway was constructed by the mining company to reduce excess water from the dam when it reaches high levels. The diverted water from the dam flows through the company’s man-made water channel and then empties itself into the Yola River.
A water channel to reduce water flow from the dam on the mining site at Bole, Yola-south Adamawa state. Photo: Saduwo Banyawa/HumAngle.
A stakeholder in the Bole community and also a staff member of the Mining Company, Aliyu Umaru, said allegations that the mining activities blocked a water channel or that a dam broke are untrue.
According to him, the company constructed the dam to serve as a water source for washing extracted materials during the mining exercise.
“We have a license here, and the government is aware, so it is our responsibility to protect the community and not do anything to harm it,” Aliyu said.
The Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, and his team visited the mining site in Bole on July 30th for an assessment. The visit was said to be prompted by concerns raised by locals who attribute the flooding to the mining incidents. After conducting the assessment, the Governor clarified that neither the dam nor the mining activities were responsible for the flood. He stated that the unauthorised construction of buildings on waterways and drainage channels impeded the natural flow of water, thus resulting in the flood.
NASHVILLE — The private lives of public figures have increasingly become part of the national scene. Usually, they are caught in the spotlight; they do not turn it on themselves.
Not so in Nashville. Here, Mayor Bill Boner, 45, who is divorcing his third wife, is involved in a most public romance with his fiancee, Traci Peel, a 34-year-old country singer who sports a 2.2-carat engagement ring. Details of their sex life are discussed on radio talk shows, in local newspapers. And the most volatile revelations came from the couple themselves.
Last month the Nashville Banner reported that Peel and Boner, during a telephone interview, giggled and joked about their sexual prowess, saying they had been caught by the reporter “at a bad time.” At one point, Peel said Boner remained amorous as long as seven hours.
“That’s pretty good for a 46-year-old man,” Peel said.
“Forty-five,” Boner corrected, talking on an extension.
Later, Peel said she was just joking.
But that was only the beginning of the uproar here. Nationally, the tabloids, both print and television, have had a ball. The Nashville Scene, a local weekly newspaper, ran a contest to complete this sentence: “You are so Nashville if . . . “
The winner, from Maralee Self: “Your mayor is married and engaged at the same time.”
An oft-repeated joke here, which betrays some disgust with Boner, takes a feminine voice: “If he’d made love to me for seven minutes, it’d seem like seven hours, too.”
Peel complained Tuesday in a surprise telephone call to a radio talk show that the media are making Boner “look like an idiot.” In an interview with The Times, the mayor, looking like a harried man, refused to discuss the matter.
“I don’t want to get into my personal life, other than I can just tell you that we’re doing the job here and working every day,” he said. Boner said he will not seek reelection next year, but rejected calls for his resignation. “Barring some unseen event, no,” he said.
However, as the situation wears on, a lot of people around here are beginning to resent the publicity, even as they revel in the jokes. The shift comes as the bloom fades from Nashville’s economic boom.
“Nashville is really on its butt,” said Bruce Dobie, editor of the Scene. So, while on one level, “The whole thing is really a hoot,” he said, on another level, “people are really getting bitter about it. They feel he is making us look like ‘Hee Haw,’ ” the television show depicting hicks and bumpkins.
Economists say that Nashville seemed headed for super-stardom in the mid-1980s but that overbuilding created a glut of properties, a huge factor in the city’s economic slowdown. Now bankruptcies are up and housing starts are down.
In such a soured economic climate, there is little tolerance for a mayor from whom rejuvenation seems to take on a new meaning.
Boner said he met Peel in May at a golf tournament. He announced in July that he and Peel were engaged, even though he is still married to his third wife, Betty. Boner’s aides say the mayor and his wife had agreed to separate in January, but at the time his engagement was announced, the estranged Boners were living under the same roof with their 4-year-old son.
Peel, a former backup country singer and now an aspiring soloist, sings in Nashville nightclubs and is occasionally joined by Boner, who pulls out a harmonica and accompanies her. She said she and Boner plan to marry in Hawaii once the divorce is final. She sent pineapples to reporters to announce the impending nuptials.
Until the extensive discussion of his sex life in the public print, Boner appeared politically secure in Nashville. He ran for mayor in 1987 while sitting as a U.S. congressman representing Tennessee’s 5th district. He was elected mayor with 53% of the vote. His resignation from Congress ended a House Ethics Committee investigation into a $50,000 salary paid to his wife, Betty, by a defense contractor.
Boner is now routinely pilloried on issues ranging from the city’s need to improve its school system to where it should locate a landfill.
Richard Jackson, general counsel for Meharry Medical College and a recent unsuccessful candidate for the state Senate, said: “The Boner situation is why some people feel Nashville is not moving the way it should. People have to find some reason to explain why we didn’t become the next Atlanta.”
Boner argued that he inherited an extraordinary set of challenges when he assumed office in 1987. “People were living through the economic good times, and a lot of outside investors came in and invested,” he said, adding that the city was “not prepared for this sudden on-rush” of building.
The mayor sounded an optimistic note. “We think we’ve about bottomed out,” he said.
But within days of the story about his sex life, bumper stickers appeared here proclaiming: “Seven Hours for Traci. Three Years for Metro,” referring to Boner’s years as mayor of the 500,000-person metropolis.
Boner’s supporters who had contributed $526,000 to his reelection campaign have begun asking for refunds because the mayor decided not to run again.
And, in an impassioned call for him to resign, Ruth Ann Leach wrote in her column for the Nashville Banner that Boner has become “a national dirty joke.” She recounted wisecracks she encountered during a trip to Dallas, saying that Boner jokes had replaced Dolly Parton jokes.
July 22 (UPI) — The Trump administration has said it will deport Haitian nationals with permanent resident status in the United States who are accused of supporting or collaborating with gangs the White House has labeled foreign terrorist organizations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement in a statement Monday, saying the actions of these Haitian individuals and their presence in the United States have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Neither the identities of the Haitian nationals to be deported nor the number to be expelled from the country were made public, though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday announced the arrest of Haitian national Pierre Reginald Boulos. The Miami Herald reported that Boulos, 69, is an American-born entrepreneur, physician and influential political powerbroker in Haiti.
ICE said Boulos was arrested Thursday for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act for contributing to the destabilization of Haiti.
“Specifically, officials determined that he engaged in a campaign of violence and gang support that contributed to Haiti’s destabilization,” ICE said in the statement.
“Additionally, in his application to become a lawful permanent resident, he failed to disclose his involvement in the formation of a political party in Haiti, Mouvement pour la Transformation et la Valorisation d’Haiti, and that he was referred for prosecution by the Haitian government’s unit for the Fight Against Corruption for misusing loans, supporting an additional ground of removability based on this fraud.”
Rubio’s statement, which was made public following the announcement of Boulos’ arrest, says they have determined some Haitians with permanent resident status have supported or worked with Haitian gang leaders connected to Viv Ansanm, an organization that the State Department declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization in May, calling it “a primary source of instability and violence in Haiti.”
“The United States will not allow individuals to enjoy the benefits of legal status in our country while they are facilitating the actions of violent organizations or supporting criminal terrorist organizations,” Rubio said Monday.
The announcement comes as the Trump administration seeks to conduct mass deportations. As part of its efforts to fulfill the Trump administration’s goal, the State Department has used the Immigration and Nationality Act to impose visa restrictions on foreign nationals and deport others.
Hugam, Indian-administered Kashmir – Nasir Amin Bhat, 17, was barely ankle-deep in the water when his school friend and neighbour Adil Ahmad shouted from the riverbank on a breezy summer evening in May.
“Turn back! There’s something in the water.”
Across the Lidder, a tributary of the Jhelum River, in Hugam village of Indian-administered Kashmir’s Anantnag district, a Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) plunged into the glacial waters and started paddling furiously against the current with all four limbs.
“I had no idea what it was,” Bhat, a high school student, told Al Jazeera, “but I grabbed my smartphone and turned on the camera.”
The grainy, nine-second video shows the creature with a fur coat – classified as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List – gliding out of the water and jumping onto the riverbank.
After a few clumsy steps, the semiaquatic animal, which can reach elevations of 3,660 metres (12,000 feet) in the Himalayas during the summer, disappears behind a thick grove of bushes, bringing the video to an uneventful end.
Eurasian otters used to thrive along the banks of the Lidder River, but rampant construction forced the semiaquatic animal to retreat [Jehangir Ali/Al Jazeera]
Long believed to have gone extinct, Eurasian otters seem to be showing signs of resurgence in Kashmir, with three individuals spotted by Indian wildlife officers in two places since 2023.
The chance sightings have excited environmentalists and wildlife conservationists while raising hopes of a better future for the Himalayan region’s fragile freshwater ecosystems, which have been battered by climate change in recent years.
‘Habitat has improved’
Indian wildlife biologist Nisarg Prakash believes the sighting of otters in Kashmir was an indicator of high-quality aquatic habitats.
“The reappearance of otters might mean that poaching has come down or the habitat has improved, and maybe both in some cases,” Prakash, whose work focuses on otters in southern parts of India, told Al Jazeera.
Protected under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, otters were once widely distributed across north India, including the Himalayan foothills, the Gangetic plains and parts of the northeast.
A peer-reviewed study by IUCN in November last year noted that the Eurasian otter, known among Kashmiri locals as “voddur”, was found in water bodies of Lidder and Jehlum valleys, including Wular Lake, one of Asia’s largest freshwater lakes.
Hugam village in Anantnag district, Indian-administered Kashmir [Jehangir Ali/Al Jazeera]
However, over the years, their population became “patchy and fragmented due to habitat loss, pollution and human disturbances”, says Khursheed Ahmad, a senior wildlife scientist at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST-K).
Ahmad said that, due to habitat alterations from human activities and the encroachment of their ideal habitats along riverbanks and other water bodies, Eurasian otters retreated and became confined to areas that were least accessible to humans.
“Although they were not extinct, sightings and occurrences had become extremely rare and they were never documented,” said Ahmad, who heads the Division of Wildlife Sciences at SKUAST-K.
Less than two years ago, a research team led by Ahmad accidentally stumbled on otters during a study on musk deer in Gurez, a valley of lush meadows and towering peaks split into two by the Kishanganga River along the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the Himalayas.
Past midnight on August 6, 2023, two individual otters were captured in a riverine habitat at an altitude of 2,600 metres (8,530 feet) in the valley near the 330MW Kishanganga Hydro Electric Project built by India following a prolonged legal battle with Pakistan at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
After that sighting, the research team focused on documenting the presence of otters on the Indian side of Kashmir.
“Unfortunately, due to heavy disturbance from fishing and other local and paramilitary activities, no further presence was documented,” the IUCN study notes.
Ahmed said Bhat’s video is only the second photographic evidence of otters in Kashmir.
‘Too terrified to go there’
But in the large farming village of Hugam, comprising some 300 families, residents are both excited and worried.
At the crack of dawn, Muneera Bano, a homemaker, wakes to the flutter of crows cawing furiously on the willow trees lining the tributary’s banks outside her home in Hugam, located some 58km (36 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar.
Bano has stopped washing clothes and utensils on the riverbank after the otter was discovered, something she had done for years.
“There are underwater caves [in the tributary], and it is hiding in one of them. When it comes out in the morning, crows see it and they start screaming. I am too terrified to go there,” she said.
Bhat, the teenager who filmed the video, said he often used to bathe in the tributary’s glacial waters and sometimes also caught fish. “Now I can’t even think about going there,” he said.
Nasir Amin Bhat captured the Eurasian otter on his mobile phone on May 28, 2025, when he was about to take a bath in the Lidder [Jehangir Ali/Al Jazeera]
The grainy video led to rumours about the presence of crocodiles in the tributary, prompting Indian wildlife officials to set up a camera trap, which confirmed that it was a Eurasian otter – also seen in Bhat’s video – and not a crocodile.
Some wildlife officials even bathed in the river in the presence of village elders to demonstrate that the water was completely safe.
Although otters do not pose any threat to humans, they can turn unpredictable, especially when close to humans. But scientists say these animals can grow accustomed to the presence of humans.
Wildlife biologist Prakash said rather than being scared or fearful, curiosity about otters can make them a sight to be enjoyed while watching them fish or swim.
“Otters are largely active around dawn, dusk and after dark, though they can sometimes be seen during daytime as well. Eurasian otters largely prey on fish, eels, and sometimes, waterfowl,” he said.
Kashmiri farmer Wasim Ahmad remembers a summer day in the early 1990s when he was on the way back from school situated along the banks of Doodhganga, a major tributary of the Jhelum River.
As Ahmad, now in his 40s, turned the corner, he saw a large procession of people walking jubilantly. One man was holding a dead otter while another was walking a dog on a leash.
Bagh-e-Mehtab in Srinagar is home to a community of poachers who, in the past, made a living by selling skins of animals such as cats, otters, and other animals. With stricter animal welfare laws in force in India now, the community has given up the old profession.
“Our elders warned us that otters skinned the children and ate them raw,” said Ahmad, who was in ninth grade then. “But as I grew up, I didn’t come across even one person who was harmed by otters. It was basically a tactic to keep the children away from the river.”
Ahmad, the wildlife scientist, said the reappearance of otters in Kashmir was a positive sign.
“Now we should see to it that the new habitat is protected from uncontrolled pollution, garbage accumulation, increased carbon emissions and habitat degradation. Addressing these challenges is crucial for their conservation and wellbeing,” he told Al Jazeera.
Move comes after Trump administration labeled Haiti’s Viv Ansanm gang a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’.
The administration of President Donald Trump has said it will deport Haitians living in the United States as legal permanent residents if they are deemed to have “supported and collaborated” with a Haitian gang.
The announcement on Monday is the latest move against Haitians living in the US amid the president’s mass deportation drive, and comes as the Trump administration has sought to end two other legal statuses for Haitians.
The update also comes as rights groups are questioning how the Trump administration determines connections to organisations it deems “terrorist organisations”.
In a statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not reveal how many people were being targeted or any names, saying only that “certain individuals with US lawful permanent resident status have supported and collaborated with Haitian gang leaders connected to Viv Ansanm”.
Following the determination, the Department of Homeland Security can pursue the deportation of the lawful permanent residents, also known as green-card holders, Rubio added.
As the Trump administration has sought to ramp up deportations, the State Department has been invoking broad powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act to attempt to deport people living in the US on various visas, including as permanent legal residents or students.
Under the law, the state secretary can expel anyone whose presence in the US is deemed to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
The administration has sought to deport four people under the law for their pro-Palestine advocacy, which the State Department repeatedly equated, without evidence, to anti-Semitism and support for the “terrorist”-designated group Hamas.
All four people are challenging their deportations and arrests in immigration and federal courts.
In the statement regarding Haitians on Monday, Rubio said the US “will not allow individuals to enjoy the benefits of legal status in our country while they are facilitating the actions of violent organisations or supporting criminal terrorist organisations”.
In May, the State Department labelled the Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif gangs “foreign terrorist organisations”, calling them a “direct threat to US national security interests in our region”.
That followed the February designation of eight Latin American criminal groups as “terrorist organisations”, including the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua.
The administration has used alleged affiliation with the gang to justify swiftly deporting Venezuelans living in the US without documentation under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act.
Critics have said the removal flouted due process, with court documents indicating that some of the affected men were targeted for nothing more than tattoos or clothing said to be associated with the group.
Haitians singled out
The Haitian community living in the US has been prominently targeted by Trump, first during his campaign, when he falsely accused Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of “eating” pets.
Since taking office, the administration has sought to end several legal statuses for Haitians, including a special humanitarian parole programme under former President Joe Biden, under which more than 200,000 Haitians legally entered the US.
In May, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the special status.
The Trump administration has also sought to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians, a legal status granted to those already living in the US whose home countries are deemed unsafe to return to.
In late June, despite the violent crime crisis gripping Haiti, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem declared that the Caribbean nation no longer met the conditions for TPS.
However, earlier this month, a federal judge blocked the administration from prematurely halting the programme before its currently scheduled end in February 2026.
WESLACO, Texas — These days, Juanita says a prayer every time she steps off the driveway of her modest rural home.
The 41-year-old mother, who crossed into the United States from Mexico more than two decades ago and married an American carpenter, fears federal agents may be on the hunt for her.
As she was about to leave for the pharmacy late last month, her husband called with a frantic warning: Immigration enforcement officers were swarming the store’s parking lot. Juanita, who is prediabetic, skipped filling medications that treat her nutrient deficiencies. She also couldn’t risk being detained because she has to care for her 17-year-old daughter, who has Down syndrome.
“If I am caught, who’s going to help my daughter?” Juanita asks in Spanish, through an interpreter. Some people quoted in this story insisted that the Associated Press publish only their first names because of concerns over their immigration status.
As the Trump administration intensifies deportation activity around the country, some immigrants — including many who have lived in Texas’s southern tip for decades — are unwilling to leave their homes, even for necessary medical care.
Tucked behind the freeway strip malls, roadside taquerias and vast citrus groves that span this 160-mile stretch of the Rio Grande Valley are people like Juanita, who need critical medical care in one of the nation’s poorest and unhealthiest regions. For generations, Mexican families have harmoniously settled — some legally, some not — in this predominately Latino community where immigration status was once hardly top of mind.
A ‘very dangerous situation’
White House officials have directed federal agents to leave no location unchecked, including hospitals and churches, in their drive to remove 1 million immigrants by year’s end. Those agents are even combing through the federal government’s largest medical record databases to search for immigrants who may be in the United States illegally.
Deportations and tougher restrictions will come with consequences, says Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restrictive immigration policies.
“We shouldn’t have let it get out of hand the way we did,” Krikorian says of the previous administration’s immigration policies. “Some businesses are going to have difficulties. Some communities are going to face difficulties.”
Federal agents’ raids began reaching deeper into everyday life across the Rio Grande Valley in June, just as the area’s 1.4 million residents began their summer ritual of enduring the suffocating heat.
This working-class stretch of Texas solidly backed Trump in the 2024 election, despite campaign promises to ruthlessly pursue mass deportations. People here, who once moved regularly from the U.S. to Mexico to visit relatives or get cheap dental care, say they didn’t realize his deportation campaign would focus on their neighbors.
But in recent weeks, restaurant workers have been escorted out mid-shift and farmers have suddenly lost field workers. Schoolchildren talk openly about friends who lost a parent in raids. More than a dozen were arrested last month at local flea markets, according to local news reports and Border Patrol officials.
Immigrants are staying shut inside their mobiles homes and shacks that make up the “colonias,” zoning-free neighborhoods that sometimes don’t have access to running water or electricity, says Sandra de la Cruz-Yarrison, who runs the Holy Family Services, Inc. clinic in Weslaco, Texas.
“People are not going to risk it,” de la Cruz-Yarrison says. “People are being stripped from their families.”
Yet people here are among the most medically needy in the country.
As much as a third of the population doesn’t have health insurance to cover those ailments. And a quarter of people live in poverty, more than double the national average.
Now, many in this region are on a path to develop worse health outcomes as they skip doctor appointments out of fear, says Dr. Stanley Fisch, a pediatrician who helped open Driscoll Children’s Hospital in the region last year.
“We’ve always had, unfortunately, people who have gone with untreated diabetes for a long time and now it’s compounded with these other issues at the moment,” Fisch says. “This is a very dangerous situation for people. The population is suffering accordingly.”
Trepidations about going to clinics are spreading
Elvia was the unlucky — and unsuspecting — patient who sat down for the finger prick the clinic offers everyone during its monthly educational meeting for community members. As blood oozed out of her finger, the monitor registered a 194 glucose level, indicating she is prediabetic.
She balked at the idea of writing down her address for regular care at Holy Family Services’ clinic. Nor did she want to enroll in Medicaid, the federal and state funded program that provides health care coverage to the poorest Americans. Although she is a legal resident, some people living in her house do not have legal status.
Fewer people have come to Holy Family Services’ clinic with coverage in recent months, says billing coordinator Elizabeth Reta. Over decades, the clinic’s midwifery staff has helped birth thousands of babies in bathtubs or on cozy beds in birthing houses situated throughout the campus. But now, Reta says, some parents are too scared to sign those children up for health insurance because they do not want to share too much information with the government.
“Even people I personally know that used to have Medicaid for their children that were born here — that are legally here, but the parents are not — they stopped requesting Medicaid,” Reta says.
Their worry is well-founded.
An Associated Press investigation last week revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have gained access to personal health data — including addresses — of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollees. The disclosure will allow ICE officials to receive “identity and location information of aliens,” documents obtained by the AP say.
In Texas, the governor started requiring emergency room staff to ask patients about their legal status, a move that doctors have argued will dissuade immigrants from seeking needed care. State officials have said the data will show how much money is spent on care for immigrants who may not be here legally. Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat any patients who come to the doors.
Visits to Holy Family Services’ mobile clinic have stopped altogether since Trump took office. The van, which once offered checkups at the doorsteps in the colonias, now sits running on idle. Its constant hum is heard throughout the clinic’s campus, to keep medical supplies fresh in the 100-degree temperatures.
“These were hard-hit communities that really needed the services,” de la Cruz-Yarrison says. “People were just not coming after the administration changed.”
A mother almost loses a son. A daughter is too scared to visit the doctor
Immigrants were less likely to seek medical care during Trump’s first term, multiple studies concluded. A 2023 study of well-child visits in Boston, Minneapolis and Little Rock, Arkansas, noted a 5% drop for children who were born to immigrant mothers after Trump was elected in 2016. The study also noted declines in visits when news about Trump’s plans to tighten immigration rules broke throughout his first term.
“It’s a really high-anxiety environment where they’re afraid to talk to the pediatrician, go to school or bring their kids to child care,” says Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, a Boston University researcher who oversaw the study.
A delayed trip to the doctor almost cost 82-year-old Maria Isabel de Perez her son this spring. He refused to seek help for his intense and constant stomach pains for weeks, instead popping Tylenol daily so he could still labor in the farm fields of Arkansas, she says. He put off going to the hospital as rumors swirled that immigration enforcement officials were outside of the hospital.
“He waited and waited because he felt the pain but was too scared to go to the hospital,” she explains in Spanish through an interpreter. “He couldn’t go until the appendix exploded.”
Her son is still recovering after surgery and has not been able to return to work, she says.
Perez is a permanent resident who has lived in the United States for 40 years. But all of her children were born in Mexico, and, because she is a green card holder, she cannot sponsor them for citizenship.
Maria, meanwhile, only leaves her house to volunteer at a local food bank. She’s skipped work on nearby farms. And after last month’s arrests, she won’t sell clothes for money at the flea market anymore.
So she stuffs cardboard boxes with loaves of bread, potatoes, peppers and beans that will be handed out to the hungry. Before the raids began, about 130 people would drive up to collect a box of food from Maria. But on this sweltering June day, only 68 people show up for food.
She brings home a box weekly to her children, ages 16, 11 and 4, who are spending the summer shut inside. Her 16-year-old daughter has skipped the checkup she needs to refill her depression medication. The teenager, who checks in on friends whose parents have been arrested in immigration raids through a text group chat, insists she is “doing OK.”
Maria left Mexico years ago because dangerous gangs rule her hometown, she explains. She’s married now to an American truck driver.
“We’re not bad people,” Maria says from her dining room table, where her 4-year-old son happily eats a lime green popsicle. “We just want to have a better future for our children.”
Juanita, the prediabetic mother who hasn’t filled her prescriptions out of fear, was not sure when she would brave the pharmacy again. But with a cross hanging around her neck, the devout Catholic says she will say three invocations before she does.
Explains her 15-year-old son, Jose: “We always pray before we leave.”
About 50 residents had to be evacuated as the fires ripped through the countryside. Madrid Security and Emergency Agency described the blazes as of “maximum concern”
The blaze broke out on Thursday(Image: AP)
An out-of-control wildfire broke out near Madrid on Thursday, sending a massive plume of smoke over the Spanish capital and forcing people out of their homes.
About 50 residents had to be evacuated as the fires ripped through the countryside. Madrid Security and Emergency Agency described the blazes as of “maximum concern” as extreme levels of forest fires are reported throughout the region, and 40mph winds threaten to push them further and faster.
The blaze began in the town of Méntrida, located in the Castile-La Mancha region about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Madrid. Local authorities advised residents to remain indoors and keep their windows closed due to poor air quality.
By late evening, officials reported that the fire had scorched around 3,000 hectares (approximately 7,400 acres). Firefighters on the ground and in the air were working to contain the flames, which ignited around 3 p.m.
Residents had to be evacuated (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Strong winds carried the smoke over Madrid, turning the skies orange and filling the air with haze throughout the afternoon. Much of Spain remains under heat and wildfire alerts, with temperatures in Madrid reaching 37°C (100°F) on Thursday.
Europe is warming faster than any other continent, with average temperatures rising at twice the global rate since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Experts warn that climate change is intensifying the frequency and severity of heatwaves and droughts, increasing the risk of wildfires across the region.
This summer so far has been a particularly bad one for wildfires across Europe, with many countries in the south of the Continent becoming tinder-box dry after months of intense heat.
“Extreme heat is no longer a rare event — it has become the new normal,” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres via Twitter from Seville, Spain, earlier this summer. Echoing his oft-repeated plea for dramatic measures to curb climate change, Guterres proclaimed: “The planet is getting hotter & more dangerous — no country is immune.”
The extreme heat poses a significant threat to life. In 2023, a record-breaking heatwave in Europe claimed 61,000 lives. According to William Spencer, climate and first aid product manager at the British Red Cross, “Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and getting worse because of climate change.
“Sadly, we have seen cases already this year of the tragic impact high temperatures can have on human life. High temperatures make it harder for the body to cool itself and we all need to take care to manage the health risks of heat. If you are travelling to a country experiencing extreme heat, there are several steps you can take to keep yourself and others safe.”
As mercury levels soar, the newly launched early warning system, Forecaster.health, is set to be a game-changer. This pioneering pan-European platform offers real-time predictions on the mortality risks associated with temperature changes, tailored for various demographics.
Holidaymakers worried about the scorching weather can now assess their personal health risks before jetting off. Before you pack your bags for that much-needed getaway, be sure to check the weather forecast to stay ahead of any potential heat hazards.
