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Oct. 22 (UPI) — House Democrats are launching a probe of allegations that President Donald Trump is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the Justice Department in compensation for investigations conducted against him before he won a second term .

House Judiciary Committee Democrats announced in a statement Tuesday that ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., was launching an investigation into the president’s “shakedown of taxpayers.”

The announcement of the investigation was announced in response to a New York Times report that said Trump is demanding the Justice Department pay him some $230 million in compensation.

Trump submitted at least two administrative complaints, the first in 2023 and the second in 2024, seeking compensation, ABC News also reported.

The first administrative claim seeks damages for purported violations of his rights in connection with the investigation into alleged ties between his 2016 election campaign and Russia.

The second seeks claims over allegations is in connection with the August 2022 FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago residence and subsequent investigation and prosecution on charges that he mishandled classified documents after he left office following the completion of his first term.

Asked about the reports during a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said he wasn’t aware of the amount being sought but stated he should be compensated.

“I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity,” he said.

Trump also acknowledged the unprecedented nature and potential ethical issues, stating “I’m the one who makes the decision.”

“And that decision would have to go cross my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself,” he said.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats chastised Trump, accusing him of “robbing America blind.”

“This is exactly why the Constitution forbids the president from taking any more from the government outside of his official salary,” they said in a statement. “This is Donald Trump First, America Last — the Gangster State at work, billionaires shaking down the people.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., described it as Trump “extorting his own Justice Department” and as “unprecedented, unfathomable corruption.”

“Eye watering conflicts of interests,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement. “More corrupt self enrichment.”

Health officials in the United States are reviewing whether to remove aluminium from some common vaccines, as part of the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on vaccines.

The Department of Health and Human Services has reduced some vaccine access. The agency scaled back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, approved COVID-19 vaccines for fewer people and aimed to remove the preservative thimerosal from US vaccines. Experts told PolitiFact scientific research did not support its removal.

During a September 22 news conference, in which US President Donald Trump told people not to take Tylenol during pregnancy, he also mentioned another objective. “We want no aluminium in the vaccine,” he said. The administration was already in the process of removing aluminium from vaccines, he added.

About two weeks later, on October 8, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, announced a new working group focused on the childhood vaccine schedule. Its discussion topics include vaccine ingredient safety and aluminium adjuvants.

Robert Malone, an ACIP member who has opposed COVID-19 vaccines, told Axios he expected the ACIP would determine there was “a lot of evidence” of “issues” with aluminium in vaccines. The committee would likely vote to re-categorise vaccines containing aluminium adjuvants so that people would have to discuss with their doctor before getting them, Malone told Axios.

That could have far-reaching ramifications. Here’s what to know about aluminium in vaccines.

A: Small amounts of aluminium are sometimes included in vaccines as adjuvants, or substances that boost the body’s immune response to the vaccine to ensure protection from infection.

That boost means people can get fewer vaccine doses in smaller quantities.

Q: When used, how much aluminium is in a vaccine?

A: Vaccines with aluminium adjuvants usually contain less than 1mg aluminium per dose, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

That is a pretty abstract number. To help make it more concrete: a milligram is one-thousandth (1/1,000th) of 1g. One gram is about the weight of a raisin or a stick of gum. Imagine cutting one of those items into 1,000 equal pieces. One of the pieces would be about 1mg.

Here is another way to think about it.

People come in contact with and consume aluminium all of the time. It is one of the most abundant metal elements in the Earth’s crust, according to the US Geological Survey. It is naturally occurring in soil, air and water. Food is the main way people are exposed to aluminium. The average adult eats 7mg to 9mg of aluminium per day, according to the CDC.

A baby in its first six months might receive a total of about 4.4mg of aluminium from recommended vaccines. In the same period of time, a breastfed infant would ingest about 7mg of aluminium from breastmilk, and a formula-fed baby would ingest about 38mg from formula.

Q: How long have vaccines contained aluminium?

A: Aluminium adjuvants have been used in vaccines for more than 70 years, the CDC said.

“Aluminium is one of our oldest adjuvants; it’s been used in vaccines since the 1920s,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine professor and codirector of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

Q: How do we know it’s safe to include small amounts of aluminium in vaccines?

A: Every vaccine’s safety and efficacy are tested in animal studies and human clinical trials before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licenses it for public use. Every vaccine containing adjuvants has been tested, and health agencies continuously monitor their safety, the CDC said.

Over several decades of use, vaccines with aluminium adjuvants have been proven safe, the FDA said.

Vaccines containing aluminium have been “given to billions of people worldwide now”, said Dr Kawsar Talaat, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A growing body of research has also found that aluminium adjuvants do not cause aluminium toxicity or other adverse outcomes.

Q: Do aluminium adjuvants have any risks?

A: Rarely, some people have allergic reactions to aluminium in the same way they might have allergic reactions to other substances, Talaat said.

In 2022, researchers published a retrospective, observational study on more than 325,000 children that found an association between vaccine-related aluminium exposure and persistent asthma. Association is not the same as causation, meaning the study did not prove a link between aluminium in vaccines and asthma.

Experts from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraged more research on the subject because the backwards-looking observational study did not prove causation and also had limitations, including that it excluded many children who developed asthma before they turned two years old.

A 2025 study found no increased risk of asthma associated with childhood exposure to aluminium-absorbed vaccines.

Q: Which vaccines contain aluminium adjuvants?

A: At least 25 vaccines approved for use in the US have aluminium adjuvants, the CDC says. That includes vaccines that protect against HPV, hepatitis A and B and diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (whooping cough).

Q: Which vaccines do not contain aluminium adjuvants?

The CDC’s list of vaccines without adjuvants includes vaccines against COVID-19, Ebola, meningococcal, polio and rabies. Additionally, most seasonal flu shots and the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella do not contain aluminium adjuvants.

Q: Can we remove aluminium from vaccines?

A: Not quickly. If it could be done at all, it would take years to develop, test and license new, aluminium-free vaccines. Many of the vaccines with aluminium adjuvants do not have aluminium-free formulas.

“A vaccine is licensed based on all of its ingredients and the exact manufacturing process,” Talaat said. “If you were to take an ingredient out of a vaccine, you would have to start all over with the clinical trials and the manufacturing, and it is highly possible that some of these vaccines wouldn’t work without the aluminium in there.”

Although other adjuvants exist, they are newer and often more scarce than aluminium, which is abundant.

An immediate ban on aluminium in vaccines would drastically reduce people’s ability to protect themselves and others against numerous diseases.

“I think we’d see outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Talaat said.

Q: Why do people think aluminium in vaccines is causing autism?

A: A 2011 study said vaccines with aluminium adjuvants “may be a significant” contributing factor to the rising number of autism diagnoses in kids, Nature reported.

A year later, a World Health Organization vaccine safety committee called the 2011 study “seriously flawed”. The 2011 study and another by the same authors compared vaccines’ aluminium content and autism rates in several countries, the WHO group said, but that cannot be used to establish a causal relationship.

“We studied aluminium, and have no link between aluminium and autism,” Talaat said.

Egypt’s foreign minister says his country is working with Qatar and Turkiye to convince Hamas to accept United States President Donald Trump’s proposal to end Israel’s nearly two-year war on Gaza, and warned that the conflict would escalate if the Palestinian group refused.

Speaking at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris on Thursday, Badr Abdelatty said it was clear that Hamas had to disarm and that Israel should not be given an excuse to carry on with its assault on Gaza.

“Let’s not give any excuse for one party to use Hamas as a pretext for this mad daily killings of civilians. What’s happening is far beyond the seventh of October,” he said, referring to the Palestinian group’s 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,129 people were killed, according to Israeli tallies.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israel’s offensive on Gaza has killed more than 66,000 people, mostly women and children, but experts believe the actual death toll could be up to three times higher.

“It is beyond revenge. This is ethnic cleansing and genocide in motion. So enough is enough,” Abdelatty said.

Earlier this week, the White House unveiled a 20-point document that called for an immediate ceasefire, an exchange of captives held by Hamas for Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel, a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas disarmament and a transitional government led by an international body.

On Tuesday, Trump gave Hamas three to four days to agree to the plan.

Palestinians long for the war to end, but many believe the plan heavily favours Israel, and a Hamas official told The Associated Press news agency that some elements were unacceptable, without elaborating.

In past negotiations, Hamas has insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal from the famine-struck enclave and said it was seeking a permanent ceasefire, with guarantees that displaced families can return to their homes, particularly in the north of Gaza, where Israeli forces are intensifying attacks.

Many ‘holes that need to be filled’

Qatar and Egypt, two key mediators, said Trump’s plan requires more negotiations on certain elements.

Abdelatty said Cairo was coordinating with Qatar and Turkiye to convince Hamas to respond positively to the plan, but he remained very cautious.

“If Hamas refuse, you know, then it would be very difficult. And of course, we will have more escalation. So that’s why we are exerting our intensive efforts in order to make this plan applicable and to get the approval of Hamas,” he said.

Abdelatty said while he was broadly supportive of Trump’s proposal for Gaza, more talks were needed on it.

“There are a lot of holes that need to be filled; we need more discussions on how to implement it, especially on two important issues – governance and security arrangements,” he said. “We are supportive of the Trump plan and the vision to end war and need to move forward.”

When asked whether he feared the Trump plan could lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians, he said Egypt would not accept that.

“Displacement will not happen, it will not happen because displacement means the end of the Palestinian cause,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen under any circumstances.”

Meanwhile, the White House said Trump expects Hamas to accept his Gaza proposal, stressing that the US president could impose consequences if the group does not do so.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began, the US has often pushed Israel-backed proposals unlikely to garner Palestinian support and then blamed Hamas as the primary obstacle to ending the conflict.

“It’s a red line that the president of the United States is going to have to draw, and I’m confident that he will,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News.

For her part, Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, called on Hamas to accept the proposal.

“We urge Hamas to follow the plan, release all remaining hostages and lay down its arms.  The EU calls on those who have influence to bear to pass these messages to Hamas,” a statement read.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin said Russia was willing to support the plan, but only if it leads to a two-state solution.

Jean-Noel Barrot, France’s foreign minister, said Hamas “has lost”.

According to the plan, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to relinquish their weapons will be given amnesty, while those who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.

“Hamas bears a very heavy responsibility for the catastrophe experienced by the Palestinians,” Barrot told the AFP news agency. “It must accept its own surrender.”

Experts say the move echoes past Western attempts to reshape the Middle East without local input.

“With this agreement, it’s clear that what they’re presenting is a formula that they tried to use before in Iraq, and I think they utterly failed,” political analyst Xavier Abu Eid told Al Jazeera.

Abu Eid noted that the involvement of figures such as Tony Blair, who joined the US war in Iraq while serving as British prime minister in 2003, in Trump’s proposal is concerning for many in the region.

“The fact that they’re trying to bring in a group of foreigners led by someone with a very dark history in our region, like Tony Blair, is not something that would make people very enthusiastic,” he said.

Leading activist says three to five people feared killed in police fire, but no official word yet on casualty figures.

A protest in the Indian Himalayan region of Ladakh demanding statehood for the federal territory has turned violent as protesters clashed with police and set fire to a paramilitary vehicle and the office of the country’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Police fired tear gas on Wednesday and charged demonstrators with batons, injuring dozens of them, police said. Some among the injured were in critical condition, residents said.

Authorities banned the assembly of more than five people in Leh district, the capital of the Ladakh region, after the clashes.

No official statement has been released on the number of casualties, but a local activist who has been on hunger strike seeking more power for the region bordering China told Indian media that three to five people are believed to have been killed in police gunfire.

“We have reports that many people have been injured. We don’t know the exact count,” Sonam Wangchuk was quoted as saying by the Indian Express site.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the casualty figures.

Protests erupted after youth groups called for the shutdown of Leh.

The protests are part of a larger movement in the federally governed region that seeks statehood and constitutional provisions from the Indian government for autonomy over land and agricultural decisions.

Ladakh lost its autonomy in 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government carved the region out of India-administered Kashmir. Since then, the majority Muslim-Buddhist territory has been directly governed from New Delhi.

Protesters have called for Ladakh to be given special status that would allow for the creation of elected local bodies to protect its tribal areas.

At its core, the protests are calling for Ladakh to be included under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which provides provisions for tribal areas and allows local communities to have a say in how the regions are administered.

Wangchuk called for restraint as he called off his hunger strike, which he launched two weeks ago. “My message of peaceful path failed today. I appeal to [the] youth to please stop this nonsense. This only damages our cause,” he said.

In a public notice, District Administrator Romil Singh Donk announced a ban on demonstrations, public gatherings and inflammatory speech.

Activists and local politicians in Ladakh have accused Modi’s government of not addressing their concerns. Several rounds of talks between local politicians and representatives from New Delhi in the past few years have not yielded results.

The next round of talks is expected to take place on October 6.

Ladakh, which shares a long border with China, is a strategically important territory for India. Ladakh was the site of deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in 2020 that strained the ties between the two Asian countries. The two Asian giants have recently moved to mend their ties in the wake of Trump’s punishing tariff war.

On the night TJ McGee overdosed from a mixture of drugs and alcohol in his freshman year at UC Berkeley, his friends found him passed out in the hallway by their shared dorm room.

The roommates tried to help, but when McGee stopped breathing, they called 911.

McGee survived and, racked with guilt over what happened that night, committed to confronting his substance-use problem. Then, in the days that followed, McGee received a surprise email from campus officials that ushered in a whole new wave of emotions.

The letter said the administration would be placing McGee on academic probation for violating Berkeley’s residential conduct rules against drug and alcohol possession, use and distribution — possibly jeopardizing his academic career.

“They made me feel as if I was a villain for the choices I made,” said McGee, 20, now a junior. “I felt shameful enough already.”

Today, McGee speaks regularly in support of California State Assembly Bill 602, which would prohibit public colleges and universities from punishing students if they call 911 during an overdose emergency, or if a peer does so on their behalf. It requires schools to offer rehabilitation options and requires students who seek emergency medical assistance to complete a treatment program.

“The bill would protect students just like me from even receiving a letter like that,” and ensures that they are given care instead, McGee said.

The bill recently passed in both houses of the state Legislature; it awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. A spokesperson for Newsom said he typically does not comment on pending legislation.

Despite a recent nationwide plunge in the number of deaths stemming from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and contaminated versions of those drugs, overdose remains the leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Though numbers could be revised as new data from California come in, the CDC provisionally estimates a 21% drop in overdose deaths in the state to 9,660 between March 2024 and March 2025, compared with 12,247 in the previous 12-month period. Opioid-related deaths, in particular from fentanyl, made up the bulk of California’s overdose fatalities in 2023, the most recent year for which statistics are available on the state’s opioid-prevention website.

In response, California started requiring campus health centers at most public colleges and universities to make the opioid overdose-reversing nasal spray Narcan available to students in campus residences.

McGee said that while he hadn’t taken any opioids the night of his overdose, he was administered Narcan while incapacitated.

Advocates for AB 602 say more needs to be done to increase the likelihood that college students will seek immediate help during a drug-related emergency.

It’s important for lawmakers and college officials to realize how much fear is involved when an overdose occurs — not just with the person who is overdosing but among peers who seek to help but don’t want to get a friend in trouble, said UC Berkeley student Saanvi Arora. She is the founder and executive director of Youth Power Project, a nonprofit that helps young people who’ve had adverse health experiences use their personal stories to promote policy reforms.

“California has dramatically increased investments in school-based mental health and crisis-intervention resources and access, for example to fentanyl testing strips on college campuses and access to Narcan,” Arora said. “But one big gap that we see … is that there’s still a really low utilization rate among young people and students.”

Fear of academic probation, suspension or expulsion leads some students with substance-use problems to avoid reaching out to residential advisors, instructors or school administrators for help, leaving them feeling so isolated that they see few other options besides turning to the police as a last resort or doing nothing at all, Arora said.

Youth Power Project authored a bill to combat these problems; Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), its chief sponsor, introduced it to the state Legislature this past spring. “During an overdose any hesitation can be deadly,” the lawmaker said in a statement. “AB 602 makes it clear that calling 911 will never cost you your academic future.”

Campus discipline and legal prosecution can be counterproductive if the goal is to prevent overdose deaths, said Evan Schreiber, a licensed clinical social worker and director of substance abuse disorder services at APLA Health, an L.A.-based nonprofit that offers mental-health and substance-use services and backs the bill.

“By removing the fear of consequences, you’re going to encourage more people to get help,” Schreiber said.

Schreiber and Arora said AB 602 extends to places of higher learning some of the protections guaranteed to Californians outside of campuses under the “911 Good Samaritan Law,” which went into effect in 2013 to increase the reporting of fentanyl poisoning and prevent opioid deaths.

That law protects people from arrest and prosecution if they seek medical aid during an overdose-related emergency, as well as individuals who step in to help by calling 911. It doesn’t, however, cover disciplinary actions imposed by colleges and universities.

One difference between the 911 Good Samaritan Law and the version of AB 602 that passed both houses of the Legislature is that the latter does not cover students who call on behalf of an overdosing peer and who are themselves found to have violated campus alcohol and drug policies, said Nate Allbee, a spokesperson for Haney. Allbee noted that Haney hopes to add this protection in the future.

Even though AB 602 doesn’t include all of the protections that supporters wanted, the rule solves what Arora identified as a major problem: UCs, Cal State campuses and community colleges in California are governed by a patchwork of policies and conduct codes regarding substance use that differ from campus to campus, making it difficult for students to know where they stand when they are in crisis.

McGee said he wished he’d learned more about the support services that were available to him at Berkeley before his overdose. But he was already struggling emotionally and living on his own when he entered college in fall 2023.

McGee described growing up in an environment in which substance use was common. He never felt that he could turn to anyone close to him to work through feelings of loneliness and bouts of depression. It was easier to block it all out by partying.

McGee started using harder drugs, missing classes and spending whole days in bed while coming down from his benders. He wouldn’t eat. Friends would ask what’s wrong, but he’d stare at the wall and ignore them. His grade-point average plummeted to 2.3.

Some of the friends who helped McGee on the night of his overdose grew distant for a time, too dismayed over the turmoil he was causing himself and those around him.

McGee knew he needed to keep trying to salvage his academic career and earn back the trust of his peers. All he could think was: “I need to fix my grades. I need to fix myself.”

One day during his recovery, McGee sat his friends down, apologized and explained what he was going through.

Then in his sophomore year, McGee happened to be lobbying lawmakers in Sacramento over campus funding cuts when he overheard a separate group of students from Youth Power Project talking about a bill they authored that would become AB 602.

It was like eavesdropping on a dark chapter in his own life. McGee agreed to present the bill to Haney and share his experience at meetings with legislators and in hearings.

McGee’s disciplinary probation on campus lasts until the end of 2025, but working on the overdose bill has given him a new sense of purpose. A psychology major, McGee eventually took on public policy as a minor.

“I feel like I became a part of this bill and it became such a large source of hope for me,” McGee said. “It would be amazing to see this support and care implemented nationally. This is not just a California issue.”

The T visa, an underutilized lifeline for immigrant survivors of human trafficking, is experiencing a sharp rise in applications, despite increasing processing times and deportation risks.

Also known as T nonimmigrant status, the visa allows people who have experienced severe forms of human trafficking to remain in the country for up to four years if they are helpful to law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of their trafficker. Approved applicants can work in the U.S., are eligible for certain state and federal benefits, and can apply for a green card after three years on the visa (or earlier if the criminal case is closed).

Julie Dahlstrom, founder and director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at Boston University, said increased awareness of the visa and the courts’ expanding definitions of trafficking may have contributed to the increase, along with mounting barriers to other pathways for immigrant relief.

Congress created the T visa in 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, intending to bolster law enforcement agencies’ capabilities to prosecute human trafficking crimes while offering protections to survivors. The same law also established the U visa, which provides legal status for victims who have suffered substantial abuse as a result of serious crimes including trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault. U visa applicants must also be willing to assist law enforcement in their investigation of these crimes.

“Many [applicants] are eligible for the U visa as well, but they’re taking now over 20 years for an individual to get access … so I think that has influenced lawyers and survivors, if they are eligible for the T visa … to go ahead and also file T visa applications,” Dahlstrom said. “Especially under the Trump administration, we’ve seen more barriers to asylum access, special immigrant juvenile status access, so I expect we’ll continue to see that move.”

USCIS updated the T visa rules in August 2024 with a process called called bona fide determination that gave survivors earlier access to benefits while their application is pending approval. It also granted them deferred action, which places individuals on a lower priority for removal proceedings.

Erika Gonzalez, training and technical assistance managing attorney from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, explained that although early access to benefits had existed in the federal statute, it was never implemented because applications were processing fast enough to not need it.

“They have updated the [bona fide determination] process to now have a formal process to engage with, and it does parallel with the sharp increases in filing,” Gonzalez said.

As T visa applications rose, so too did approvals. Last year, the number of approvals broke 3,000 for the first time though it still fell short of the 5,000 cap.

Processing times for T visas have also increased, jumping from a median of 5.9 months in 2014 to 19.9 months this fiscal year.

Denial rates for T visas, meanwhile, have fluctuated.

“We were seeing increased denial rates under the prior Trump administration and then improved rates under Biden,” Dahlstrom said.

Denials can leave T visa applicants vulnerable to deportation. In 2018, USCIS began allowing removal proceedings if an application was rejected with a notice to appear (NTA).

According to a 2022 report co-written by Dahlstrom, which obtained USCIS data through Freedom of Information Act litigation, USCIS issued a total of 236 NTAs to denied T visa applicants from 2019 to 2021. President Biden rescinded this policy with a January 2021 executive order, but last February, USCIS published new guidance once more expanding the circumstances where the agency could issue NTAs.

These policies, alongside escalated coordination between law enforcement and other agencies, have heightened fear among survivors applying for the T visa, Dahlstrom explained.

“We are seeing in real time the results of including requirements around law enforcement engagement, especially when there’s greater cooperation with ICE and greater concerns about deportation,” Dahlstrom said. “These programs are being politicized and, in some ways, weaponized if you’re denied and you’re placed in proceedings.”

Since February’s policy update, at least one person has self-deported after Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied her stay despite her pending T visa application.

So far in the fiscal year 2025, USCIS has approved 1,035 T-visas and rejected 693, which surpasses the number rejected in each of the last four years.

“It’s too early to tell what we’re going to see, but if we continue to see these numbers, it’s both going to mean a rise in denials and very few cases adjudicated amidst more and more applications being filed, which is really troubling,” Dahlstrom said. “These are statutorily protected programs, but what they can do is really slow them down, make them ineffective just in the way that they’re processing applications.”

Seoul/Mokpo, South Korea – In 2018 when Kim Ji-ung lived in the South Korean capital, Seoul, he felt alone all the time. Single and in his early 30s, the salesman spent most of his day at work or holed up in his apartment.

“I pondered about dying during my morning commute,” Kim told Al Jazeera.

“The most difficult thing was that I had no one to talk to. After work, I would be at home scrolling through TV channels or playing video games,” he said.

Finding it difficult to make connections at work, Kim was feeling increasingly desperate and isolated. Then a close friend of his collapsed at their workplace and died.

“That’s when I really started to ask myself, ‘Will I be next?’” he said.

It was then that Kim made one of the toughest decisions of his life – to pack his bags and move away from Seoul, a city of 9.6 million people that offered him the best chance of a career and a stable salary.

The capital’s population, which peaked at 10.97 million in 1992, has been decreasing steadily in recent decades, sparking alarm among officials. The city’s population of those aged 19 to 39 has been on the decline as well, falling from 3.18 million in 2016 to 2.86 million in 2023.

While Seoul continues to draw people with its promise of high-paying corporate jobs, census figures show the city is failing to retain its young population with nearly as many leaving it as moving to it over the past decade.

‘Hell Joseon’

This trend comes despite South Korea’s capital becoming a technological and cultural powerhouse that is consistently ranked among the world’s most exciting cities by international travellers.

Fortune 500 companies such as LG, Hyundai Motors and SK Group employ thousands of young professionals in their headquarters in the bustling downtown. The ultra-fashionable Gangnam district hosts one of the premier art fairs in the world, Frieze Seoul, and the country’s cosmetics and beauty industry, pop culture and cuisine are popular worldwide.

Seoul’s international allure is also evident in the hip bars, eateries and clubs in the Hongdae and Seongsu neighbourhoods, where foreign tourists flood the streets seven days a week.

But Seoul’s young adults – disillusioned by a housing bubble that has made homes unaffordable and a competitive work culture marked by long hours and low pay – have branded the capital’s work-to-survive lifestyle “Hell Joseon”. The term references the ancient kingdom that was once based where Seoul is today.

“Our society is known for its infamous jobs that force employees to work long hours, cut off the careers of women who give birth and make it hard for men to apply for paternity leave,” said Yoo Hye-jeong of the think tank Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future.

“Seoul’s abnormally high costs for housing and child education translate to difficulty in creating a stable economic foundation for families,” Yoo said, describing an incompatibility between work and having a family life in the capital.

‘Don’t Worry Village’

For Kim, his chance to move away from Seoul came by coincidence when he spotted an online ad for a getaway programme at Don’t Worry Village.

Located in Mokpo, a city tucked away in the southwestern corner of the country with a population of 210,000 and an abundance of abandoned buildings, the village got its start from another deserter from Seoul, Hong Dong-joo.

After receiving his high school education in Seoul’s upmarket Daechi-dong neighbourhood, Hong was destined to enter a top university in the capital and work for a major corporation – a direct route to the upper echelons of South Korean society.

But when he turned 20, he knew that “life in Seoul, working at a high-paying job was not the life I wanted,” the 38-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I didn’t want to spend long hours at the office every day.” And so, when Hong became a mechanical engineering major at a Seoul university, he did the improbable: He moved away from the city.

He came up with the plan to create Don’t Worry Village after setting up a travel agency and meeting hundreds of young adults who shared stories of isolation and struggling with corporate and social life in Seoul and elsewhere.

“The blueprint for our village was to make a hometown that would act as a community – something that so many people in our country lack in their lives,” he said.

“In some ways, I was in the business of providing protection for people in our society who needed it.”

‘National emergency’

Analysts describe the situation for many young people in the country as a “national emergency” that is being largely overlooked.

“In the process of becoming a developed nation really fast, our society forgot to establish a support net for our young population,” said Kim Seong-a, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA),

“The side effects of a society going through extreme industrialisation in a very short amount of time was the gradual disappearing roles of families” in the modern lifestyle and work becoming its primary focus, she said.

Findings from a 2021 Pew Research Center survey support her assessment. Participants from 17 advanced economies were asked: “What makes life meaningful?” The most common answer for people from 14 of the 17 nations – which included Japan, the United States and New Zealand – was family. South Korean respondents, however, chose material wellbeing as their top answer. For them, family came in third place.

Kim, the KIHASA researcher, said South Korean society now prioritises “money over people”.

“We’ve seen significant improvements in the country’s GDP, life expectancy and other areas that can be improved through policy changes,” she said. “But social factors like faith in others, trust in society and generosity towards others have relatively been less developed in our country.”

In surveys of satisfaction with life, South Korea ranked 33 among 38 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), scoring 6.4 on a 10-point scale in 2023. It also has the highest number of suicides among OECD countries with a suicide rate of 24.3 per 100,000 people. Compare that with Lithuania, which came in at a distant second place with 18.5 per 100,000 people.

In the ensuing years, the South Korean suicide rate has only increased, reaching 28.3 per 100,000 people in 2024, a 13-year high.

Young people account for a significant number of the suicides. Of the 14,439 cases of suicide reported last year, 13.4 percent of the cases were people in their 30s.

“In our country, there are many young people who bear all the social risks that they accumulate from failing to get a job, struggling in school and going through family troubles,” Kim Seong-a said.

“They’re by themselves, so there’s a great chance that they can become isolated. They need someone around to talk to or ask for help when they’re going through a setback. This way, they can deal with it or overcome it,” she said.

Official figures, however, show the number of young people living alone in Seoul is on the rise. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, more than a third of the city’s population lives alone with young people accounting for 64 percent of single-person households, up from 51.3 percent a decade ago.

A recent survey of 3,000 single-person households in the city by The Seoul Institute, a leading think tank, found that 62.1 percent of respondents experienced persistent loneliness. Another 13.6 percent were identified as socially isolated, a term that refers to individuals with no support network during times of emotional distress, physical illness or sudden financial problems.

‘Seoul Without Loneliness’

South Korea’s government is well aware of the issues of social isolation and a punishing work culture in Seoul and has moved to address the issue in recent years.

Last year, it launched its “Seoul Without Loneliness” plan, which is investing 451.3 billion won ($322m) over five years in initiatives such as a 24-hour emotional support hotline and community centres called Seoul Maeum Convenience Stores, where people can seek counselling and drop in for free bowls of ramen noodles.

Authorities in Seoul have also promoted special date nights for singles in the city, and the government has introduced numerous stimulus packages for newlyweds and new parents to address South Korea’s declining birthrate, which is currently ranked the lowest in the world.

The government is also looking for solutions outside Seoul’s gates.

In fact, Don’t Worry Village was one of the first prototypes for inclusive communities outside Seoul that could potentially develop into youth-centred regions that create homes and jobs for young adults while populating rural regions.

With sponsorship from the Ministry of Interior and Safety, applicants to Don’t Worry Village receive financial assistance to relocate to Mokpo and attend workshops organised by Hong on useful skills required in the local community and networking with fellow residents.

Kim Ji-ung, the former salesman from Seoul, attended one such workshop in 2018 and then eventually moved there. After he did so, he said he was surprised by how easy it was to form social connections.

“Because the city is quite small, it’s likely that you’ll meet other young people through one way or another,” Kim said. “People ask favours to each other, and you make friends here by just saying ‘hi’ to them.”

That was such a stark contrast to Seoul, where people do not have time to greet each other and do not want to become involved in other people’s businesses, he said.

Kim worked various jobs in Mokpo until 2022 when he put his university degree to use and started a one-person interior design company. Hong is his neighbour, and the pair frequently grab lunch together. In addition to doing what he loves, Kim said the biggest change he has experienced is starting to enjoy leisure time.

“On random nights, I’ll just go down to the ferry terminal and get on a midnight boat to Jeju Island,” he said. “I’ll just stay there for the morning, but it’s the small things like this that tell me that I’m having a good time here.”

Looking outside Seoul

Hong’s life, too, has changed dramatically.

Back in his days in Seoul, he did not think too much about getting married. But he soon met the woman who became his wife in Mokpo and is now a father as well.

“In Seoul, the individual has to sacrifice so much of their own lives for their companies, to make a living and for the good of society as a whole,” Hong said. “But in Mokpo, I have control over my time. I’m able to do what I want for work, and money is not that intimidating to me any more.”

Two other residents in Don’t Worry Village, husband and wife Park Myung-ho and Kim Min-jee, also gave up lucrative careers in Seoul for what they described as a more “relaxed life” in Mokpo.

Park, 38, worked for one of South Korea’s biggest arms manufacturers while Kim was an employee at the country’s largest advertising company.

The couple married after meeting in Don’t Worry Village.

“There’s just too much competition in Seoul. It seemed like only people who possessed a lot of capital succeeded in starting a business,” Park said. “As someone who wanted to start my own business, it was more reasonable to look outside of Seoul.”

Park is now the CEO of a local property development company while Kim runs a guesthouse in downtown Mokpo that was developed by her husband’s company.

Kim, 35, also gave birth to a son more than a year ago whom she did not expect to have so soon.

“I always pictured having a child late in my years or being married without kids,” she said.

“Working for a major company meant nearly no time at home and weekends spent in the office. It’s almost impossible to raise kids in Seoul without the help of parents or childcare services, and finding an affordable housing arrangement is even harder,” she said.

‘You’re judged for literally everything’

While Don’t Worry Village has become a prototype for more than 50 youth-centred communities around the country that the government has created in recent years, the reality for young adults moving away from Seoul to live in rural regions has proven to be difficult.

Workplaces, jobs and key infrastructure are still concentrated in Seoul.

And that is why, despite Hong hosting more than 21 workshops for people considering moving to Don’t Worry Village and attracting more than 2,000 visitors, only 20 people have remained there.

The Ministry of Interior and Safety, which helped start the youth villages, said about 10,000 people have participated in workshops at youth-centred communities across the country, but only about 900 ended up moving to them.

For many South Korean youth, starting a second chapter in life outside the country has become increasingly popular.

Brianna Lee is one of the tens of thousands of young adults who apply every year for working holiday visas to live and work abroad for a set time.

“Life in South Korea is just too intensive,” 30-year-old Lee said.

“You’re expected to get a job, get married, buy a house and have an amount of money at a certain age. And you’re judged for literally everything,” she said.

Working as a nurse in Ilsan, a city just north of Seoul, Lee said there is widespread discrimination inside hospitals, where people are critical towards nurses and view them as socially inferior.

“On top of working 11-hour shifts, we would be asked to do tasks that we weren’t required to perform,” she said.

After facing burnout, Lee applied for a working holiday in Canada, where she worked at restaurants and attended classes at an English-language academy for about a year.

Today, she is back home preparing to take a test to become a nurse in the US.

“They pay much better, and people give a lot of respect towards nurses in the US,” Lee said.

“Most importantly, people aren’t nosy,” she said.

“I think people care less about what you do for work and how you choose to live your life there.”

Palestinian football star Suleiman al-Obaid was killed in an Israeli air strike on Wednesday while waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza. Known as the “Pele of Palestinian football,” he is among 321 people in the football industry killed during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

CINCINNATI — What’s the opposite of a splash?

Because that’s how the Dodgers started their trade deadline activity late Wednesday night.

On the eve of MLB’s annual trade deadline (which is Thursday at 3 p.m. PDT), the Dodgers were the tertiary party in a three-team trade with the Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays.

While the biggest piece in the deal — starting pitcher Zack Littell — went from Tampa Bay to Cincinnati, the Dodgers were included in a swap of some lesser-name players.

Minor league catcher Hunter Feduccia, a longtime Dodgers farmhand having a nice season with triple-A Oklahoma City, was sent to Tampa Bay.

In return, the Dodgers received pitching prospect Adam Serwinowski from the Reds, as well as reliever Paul Gervase and catcher Ben Rortvedt from the Rays, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly.

Serwinowski is the most intriguing name the Dodgers acquired. A 21-year-old left-hander who was ranked as the No. 10 prospect in the Reds’ farm system by MLB Pipeline, the former 15th-round draft pick has been a favorite of Dodgers’ evaluators for a while, according to another person with knowledge of the team’s thinking.

While Serwinowski has a 4.84 ERA in high-A this season, the Dodgers are excited by his potential and add him to a farm system that is lacking the depth of impact pitching prospects it usually touts.

Gervase is a 25-year-old reliever who debuted in the majors this year with the Rays, posting a 4.26 ERA in five outings this year.

Rortvedt is a 27-year-old journeyman catcher who will help provide organizational depth in Feduccia’s absence, alongside current triple-A backstops Chris Okey and Chuckie Robinson.

For a team that has been linked to some of the bigger names on this year’s trade market, it was far from the blockbuster many fans have been waiting on.

Granted, the Dodgers are still expected to be active on Thursday.

Their need for a reliever remains, even though they remained idle on Wednesday as other top options, from Jhoan Durán to Ryan Helsley to Tyler Rogers, were dealt elsewhere.

The club is still hoping to add another hitter to their lineup too, with an upgrade in the outfield (especially defensively) seen as a priority, according to a person with knowledge of the club’s thinking.

Whether the Dodgers can land the impact additions they seek, in what has been a seller’s market defined by high acquisition costs to this point, remains to be seen.

But at least they won’t go into deadline day without having made any deals, with Wednesday night’s late-night transaction expected to be the first of several moves they make ahead of Thursday’s trade cutoff.

‘All the kids are hungry. We are hungry.’

This is a day in the life of a Palestinian family in Gaza, living through Israel’s policy of starvation. Video shows the challenges they face as they try to find a meal from a charity kitchen during a widespread famine.

US president says he will visit China only at the invitation of Chinese leader.

United States President Donald Trump has denied seeking a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping while holding out the possibility of visiting China at his counterpart’s invitation.

“The Fake News is reporting that I am SEEKING a ‘Summit’ with President Xi of China. This is not correct, I am not SEEKING anything!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday.

“I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended. Otherwise, no interest! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Trump’s comments come after the Reuters news agency reported last week that aides to the two leaders have discussed a possible summit during a trip to Asia by the US president later this year.

The report, which cited unnamed people familiar with the plans, said Trump and Xi could possibly meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place in South Korea from October 30 to November 1.

Trump and Xi last met face-to-face in 2019 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

The US and China are currently engaged in negotiations aimed at lowering trade tensions that have spiked since Trump rolled out his on-again, off-again tariffs on Chinese exports.

On Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met in Stockholm, Sweden, to kick off two days of talks focused on reaching a trade deal before the end of a 90-day tariff truce that ends on August 12.

Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week that the administration was in “a very good place with China now” and the August deadline could be extended in a “90-day increment”.

The latest talks in Istanbul were followed by more prisoner exchanges, but yielded no breakthrough in ending the war.

Russian forces are pushing to create “buffer zones” along the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, as fighting rages on in the wake of a third round of peace talks that again failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire, in a fourth year of war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments during a briefing on Thursday, signalling that Russia had no intention of de-escalating its war on Ukraine following a brief meeting Wednesday between delegations in Istanbul that lasted just 40 minutes.

Negotiators in the Turkish city discussed further prisoner swaps, but remained far apart on a ceasefire and a proposed face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sought by the latter.

At a news conference in Istanbul following the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said an exchange of prisoners had been carried out on the Ukraine-Belarus border, with about 250 people returned to each side.

More than 1,000 Ukrainians returned

Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying in a post on social media that Wednesday’s prisoner swap – the ninth stage of an exchange process agreed to by the parties in Istanbul – meant that more than 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners had been returned under the agreement.

“For a thousand families, this means the joy of embracing their loved ones again,” Zelenskyy said, adding that many of the prisoners had been in captivity for more than three years.

“It is important that the exchanges are ongoing and our people are coming home,” he said.

“We will continue doing everything possible to ensure that every one of our people returns from captivity.”

Drone and missile attacks

Following the brief meeting in Istanbul, Russia and Ukraine continued their air attacks against each other, with Russian drones and missiles targeting Ukrainian territory overnight and casualties reported in Russia.

Russia launched 103 attack drones and four missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing three people in the Kharkiv region, Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Thursday. More than 10 others were wounded in Cherkasy, including a 9-year-old child, he added.

He noted that, just a day earlier, Ukraine’s delegation in Istanbul had reiterated its “proposal for an immediate and full ceasefire”.

“In response, Russian drones struck residential buildings and the Pryvoz market in Odesa, apartment blocks in Cherkasy, energy infrastructure in the Kharkiv region, a university gym in Zaporizhzhia,” he said.

“We will make every effort to ensure that diplomacy works,” he added. “But it is Russia that must end this war.”

Yesterday, at the meeting in Istanbul, the proposal for an immediate and full ceasefire was reiterated to the Russian side. In response, Russian drones struck residential buildings and the Pryvoz market in Odesa, apartment blocks in Cherkasy, energy infrastructure in the Kharkiv… pic.twitter.com/Ax9Q0xEM6z

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 24, 2025

In Russia, emergency officials in the Krasnodar region on the Black Sea said debris from a falling drone struck and killed a woman in the Adler district near the resort city of Sochi, while a second woman was seriously injured, the Reuters news agency reported.

Banana Islands, Sierra Leone – As the sun dips below the horizon, Emmanuel Pratt tugs a worn cord and the outboard engine sputters to life. His wooden canoe, painted in white and faded blue, cuts through the darkening waters. Fruit bats screech overhead.

Pratt, 35, is a seasoned sea cucumber diver from the Banana Islands – an archipelago home to about 500 people in Sierra Leone. For 15 years, he has made a living scouring the ocean floor for these creatures that resemble warty, oversized sea slugs. They hide in the silt by day and emerge at night to inch across the ocean floor, gobbling up decomposing matter.

Also on the canoe, 25-year-old Omolade Jones – sweating in a half-zipped-up wetsuit – perches on the edge of the boat and gazes out at the dark water.

After 10 minutes, the younger diver gestures at Pratt to cut the engine and readies himself to dive. Jones blows on his mask, grabs an underwater torch and wraps a breathing hose around his waist.

The seabed surrounding the small, jungle-coated archipelago used to teem with sea cucumbers. Nowadays, they are scarce and scattered.  Freediving is no longer an option. Pratt and Jones have to dive deeper, for longer, to find their catch.

They have turned to “hookah diving” – a makeshift system where air is pumped from a diesel-powered generator on the boat down through a plastic hose. It is a risky and fragile lifeline. The engines are often old and the air is easily contaminated by diesel fumes. And experts say it is much more dangerous than scuba or free diving.

As the diesel engine that powers his air supply rattles in the boat, Jones quietly slips over the edge into the black water. The yellow hose trails behind him as he swims away from the canoe. Minutes later, his torch lights up a column of water above the seabed.

Pratt sits in the canoe, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes fixed on the spot where Jones’s light is. “The cucumbers are running out,” he says glumly.

While they used to haul in dozens of buckets of sea cucumbers a night, now they struggle to find a handful. Pratt says the divers rarely make more than $40 on a dive – barely enough to cover the costs of fuel or to hire some of the diving equipment.

Not long after Jones exits the boat, he flashes his torch to signal that he is ready to swim back in. When he reaches the canoe, he hoists himself up on the side with his forearms. In one hand, he holds the torch, in the other, a small, brown sea cucumber.

Pratt takes his turn and disappears into the dark water. He surfaces a while later with a sea cucumber. But the divers are unimpressed. After a couple of hours at sea, they head back to the mooring with a meagre catch of just three specimens.

Overhead, the almost-full moon casts a white sheen over the water and dimly illuminates the way home.

Leaders expected to hold talks on bilateral trade days before US tariffs on Philippine goods set to take effect.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr will meet United States President Donald Trump this week, hoping Manila’s status as a key Asian ally will secure a more favourable trade deal.

Marcos will be the first Southeast Asian leader to meet Trump during the US leader’s second term.

Trump has already struck trade deals with two of Manila’s regional partners, Vietnam and Indonesia, driving tough bargains in negotiations even with close allies that Washington wants to keep onside in its strategic rivalry with China.

“I expect our discussions to focus on security and defence, of course, but also on trade,” Marcos said in a speech before leaving Manila and arriving in Washington on Sunday, with hopes to reach a deal before August 1, when Trump says he will impose 20 percent tariffs on goods from the Philippines.

“We will see how much progress we can make when it comes to the negotiations with the United States concerning the changes that we would like to institute to alleviate the effects of a very severe tariff schedule on the Philippines,” Marcos said.

The US had a deficit of nearly $5bn with the Philippines last year on bilateral goods trade of $23.5bn.

Trump this month raised the threatened “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from the Philippines to 20 percent from 17 percent threatened in April.

Although US allies in Asia such as Japan and South Korea have yet to strike trade deals with Trump, Gregory Poling, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Marcos might be able to do better than Vietnam, with its agreement of a 20 percent baseline tariff on its goods, and Indonesia at 19 percent.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement of a deal with the Philippines at a lower rate than those two,” Poling told the Reuters news agency.

Marcos visited the Pentagon on Monday morning for talks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and will see Secretary of State Marco Rubio later in the day, before meeting Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

He will also meet US business leaders investing in the Philippines.

Philippine officials say Marcos’s focus will be on economic cooperation and Manila’s concerns about Trump’s tariffs.

They say he will stress that Manila must become economically stronger if it is to serve as a truly robust US partner in the Asia Pacific.

Philippine Assistant Foreign Secretary Raquel Solano said last week that trade officials have been working with US counterparts seeking to seal a “mutually acceptable and mutually beneficial” deal for both countries.

China tensions

Trump and Marcos will also discuss defence and security, and Solano said the Philippine president would be looking to further strengthen the longstanding defence alliance.

Philippine media quoted Manila’s ambassador to Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, as saying on Sunday that the visit would see a reaffirmation of the seven-decade-old mutual defence treaty and “discussions on how we can continue to cooperate with the United States, our major ally”.

With the Philippines facing intense pressure from China in the contested South China Sea, Marcos has pivoted closer to the US, expanding access to Philippine military bases amid China’s threats towards Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing.

The US and the Philippines hold dozens of annual exercises, which have included training with the US Typhon missile system, and more recently, with the NMESIS antiship missile system, angering China.

Manila and the US have closely aligned their views on China, Poling said, and it was notable that Rubio and Hegseth made sure their Philippine counterparts were the first Southeast Asian officials they met.

Poling said Trump also seemed to have a certain warmth towards Marcos, based on their phone call after Trump’s re-election.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food from aid sites run by the notorious US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. As Israel starves Palestinians, the Arabic hashtag ‘Gaza is dying of hunger’ is trending, with thousands trying to raise awareness of their plight.

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food in the Gaza Strip over the past few weeks, according to new figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, spurring renewed condemnation of a contentious United States and Israeli-backed aid scheme.

The Health Ministry said on Saturday that at least 743 Palestinians were killed and more than 4,891 others were injured while seeking assistance at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution sites.

The GHF, which began operating in the bombarded Palestinian enclave in late May, has drawn widespread criticism amid multiple reports that its contractors as well as Israeli forces have opened fire on aid seekers.

“The tragedy is that this is again a conservative reading of casualties who were at these distribution points, waiting for food parcels,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said of the ministry’s latest figures.

Reporting from Gaza City, Mahmoud said the attacks on aid seekers come as Palestinian families are desperate to feed their families amid dire shortages caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

“People are going hungry. People are rationing supplies. A lot of families are not eating. Mothers here skip meals in order to provide for their children,” he said.

Earlier this week, a report by The Associated Press news agency quoted American contractors who said live ammunition and stun grenades have been fired at Palestinian civilians seeking aid at GHF distribution points.

Two unnamed US contractors told AP that heavily armed staff members appeared to be doing whatever they wanted.

The GHF denied the news agency’s reporting as “categorically false” and said it takes “the safety and security of [its] sites extremely seriously”.

The administration of US President Donald Trump also has stood by the GHF, with a State Department spokesperson telling reporters on Wednesday that the group is the “one entity that has gotten food and aid into the Gaza Strip”.

In late June, the Trump administration pledged $30m in direct funding for the organisation.

On Saturday, the GHF said two US workers at one of its sites in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis were injured when grenades were thrown at them at the end of food distribution. “The injured Americans are receiving medical treatment and are in stable condition,” the group said.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack.

Leading humanitarian and human rights groups have demanded the immediate closure of the GHF, which they accused of “forcing two million people into overcrowded, militarized zones where they face daily gunfire and mass casualties”.

Amnesty International has described the group’s operations as an “inhumane and deadly militarized scheme”.

“All the evidence gathered, including testimonies which Amnesty International is receiving from victims and witnesses, suggest that the GHF was designed so as to placate international concerns while constituting another tool of Israel’s genocide,” Amnesty said.

Still, faced with dire shortages of food, water and other humanitarian supplies under Israel’s blockade, many Palestinians in Gaza say they have no choice but to seek assistance from the group, despite the risks.

“I was forced to go to the aid distribution centre simply because my kids had not eaten for three days in a row,” Majid Abu Laban, a Palestinian man who was wounded in an attack at a GHF site, told Al Jazeera.

“We try to fool our children by all means, but they are starving,” Abu Laban said.

“So I decided to risk my life and head to [an aid distribution point] at Netzarim,” he said, referring to an Israeli military-established corridor south of Gaza City.

“I took the road at midnight hoping to get some food. As crowds rushed in, Israeli forces fired artillery shells at us. In the chaos, everyone was just trying to survive.”

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump is attempting a high-risk manoeuvre in bombing Iran and then quickly seeking to de-escalate tensions, analysts told Al Jazeera.

But it remains to be seen whether Washington can navigate a clean exit from the deadly imbroglio, which has the potential to erupt into a large-scale regional confrontation.

Even if Trump avoids a wider war, analysts say troubling questions remain over how worthwhile the US military intervention was.

Early on Sunday, the US joined Israel in its military campaign against Iran, sending B-2 stealth aircraft to drop bombs on three of the country’s nuclear sites.

Trump has framed the military action as part of Washington’s long-term goal of preventing Tehran from building a nuclear weapon. But the bombing provoked a retaliatory strike, with Iran launching missiles at the US’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Monday.

Since then, Trump has announced a ceasefire between all parties and claimed he was able to “stop the war”. He credited the bombing with bringing “everyone together”.

But media outlets have questioned whether Trump was successful in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, as he has claimed. And Trump has denounced both Iran and Israel for early violations of the ceasefire.

“As soon as we made the deal, [Israel] came out and dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” Trump told reporters in an unvarnished moment on the White House lawn on Tuesday.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”

Behind the rhetoric

Despite the rocky first hours after the ceasefire announcement, Israeli and Iranian leaders appear to have fallen in line with Trump’s messaging about peace.

Following a call from the US president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that his country would refrain from further attacks. Israel had “achieved all of the war’s goals”, his office said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meanwhile, hailed his country’s “heroic resistance”. He said Iran would respect the truce and seek to protect its interests through diplomacy.

But experts warn that the talk of peace and diplomacy might conceal greater challenges ahead.

Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a think tank, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s harsh words for the latest attack reveal his increasingly public frustrations with Israel, a longtime US ally.

They might also indicate that extracting the US from Israel’s war with Iran might be more difficult than it seems.

“I think it’s crucial to understand Israel does not want an end to the fighting, and I think Trump is starting to recognise how deeply America and Israel’s interests in all of this diverge,” Parsi told Al Jazeera.

Israeli officials have repeatedly signalled that their military operations against Iran are aimed at prompting wider regime change, a goal Trump appeared to endorse last week but has since disavowed.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, issued a statement to the media confirming that Israel had “concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over”.

That viewpoint may diverge from Trump’s, according to Parsi. Nevertheless, Parsi believes Trump has shown more willingness to tell Israel “no” than many of his presidential predecessors.

“But Trump has not been able to sustain that ‘no’ in an effective way,” Parsi added, pointing to the US president’s interventions in Israel’s war on Gaza.

“He pressured the Israelis into the ceasefire in Gaza, but then he relented and let Netanyahu get out of the ceasefire and never go to phase two of that agreement. If he wants to deal with Iran, he’s going to have to make sure he does not repeat that mistake.”

Still, Parsi noted that Trump has shown “a remarkable nimbleness” in his ability to commit – then withdraw – US military forces from foreign conflicts. Earlier this year, for instance, Trump entered into 45 days of air strikes against the Yemen-based Houthi armed group, but by May, he had unveiled a ceasefire.

Risk of a ‘quagmire’

For its part, Iran has been seen as eager to find an off-ramp to exit the conflict. Several analysts told Al Jazeera that Tehran would likely take pains to avoid any actions that could draw the US back into the fight.

The US and Iran had been in talks to scale back Tehran’s nuclear programme. But Israel’s initial surprise attack on June 13 had derailed the negotiations.

Negar Mortazavi, a non-resident fellow at the nonprofit Center for International Policy, said that Iran still remains open to returning to the negotiating table.

The country has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon and has instead framed its efforts as aimed at developing civilian energy infrastructure.

“Iran wants to have a civilian nuclear programme,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera. “And I think, if Trump accepts that, then there’s a very strong path and possibility for a deal.”

Trump, however, has been vague about what he may accept. He described the US attack on Sunday as the destruction of “all Nuclear facilities & capability” in Iran, in a series of statements that did not appear to distinguish between nuclear enrichment for civilian energy purposes or for weapons.

His statements were also at odds with a classified report leaked to US media, indicating that Iran’s nuclear programme was damaged but not obliterated – and could be rebuilt in a matter of months.

“IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES,” Trump wrote in one of the messages on Tuesday.

Still, Mortazavi believes Iran will likely have no choice but to return to negotiations, even if Trump again takes a maximalist position and opposes all uranium enrichment.

“They might be able to meet somewhere half way,” Mortazavi said of the US and Iran. She added that one possible compromise would be to have a “consortium” of regional countries that would monitor a civilian nuclear programme.

“The alternative, which is military conflict and war, is just going to be devastating for a lot more civilians”, she explained, “and could potentially turn into a quagmire like Iraq or Afghanistan”.

Sina Azodi, an assistant professor of Middle East politics at George Washington University, pointed out that Trump’s ceasefire announcement on Monday could hold clues about his approach to any renewed negotiations.

Trump started his statement by writing, “CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE!” Then, he ended the missive with, “God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!”

Azodi said that the message – which appeared to put Iran in the same standing as Israel – was unprecedented from a US president since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He noted that Trump appeared to be setting a “conciliatory” tone.

That sentiment was also reflected on the economic front. On Tuesday, Trump said that China could continue to buy oil from Iran, despite US sanctions that would otherwise limit such trade.

That, too, was interpreted by many analysts as a goodwill offering to officials in Tehran, as Trump seeks a resolution to the conflict.

“Trump wants to be the one who used military force, showed strength, and then quickly brought an end to the conflict,” Azodi told Al Jazeera.

“He certainly does not want a broader conflict in the region, because then there’s a possibility that he would have to resort to more military intervention.”

Any further military involvement, analysts say, could inflame tensions within Trump’s base, as many of his “America First” followers oppose overseas military action.

Some have speculated that Trump’s strike-and-exit approach allowed him to split the difference, satisfying the war hawks in the Republican Party while mollifying those who disagree with foreign intervention.

“But it’s impossible to know what comes next, given his style,” Azodi said. “One day, he’s on a good side. One day, he’s belligerent and angry.”

Long-term success?

Whether Trump will continue his calls for peace after Sunday’s attack remains unclear.

The US president has been on the defensive, as journalists continue to question the effectiveness of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities like Fordow.

“That place is under rock. That place is demolished,” Trump told journalists on Tuesday.

He called on news outlets to apologise for casting doubt on the success of the mission. “It’s all fake news,” he said. “Those pilots hit their targets. Those targets were obliterated.”

Azodi noted that the US strikes appear to be less successful than the Trump administration has claimed. Evidence has surfaced that Iran relocated much of its uranium stockpile in the lead-up to the attack.

What is clear, Azodi said, is that the US violated international law in striking a facility under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

That could lead Iran to make good on its threat to withdraw from the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), freeing it from international obligations that would limit any weapons development.

“In the short term, yes, Trump can come and brag about [the US strikes] on Truth Social, saying that he ‘obliterated’ the Iranian nuclear programme,” Azodi said.

“But in the long term, you can’t bomb the knowledge. Iran’s fissile material appears to have survived. And now Iranians have a lot of motive for withdrawing from the NPT.”

That, he warned, would mean that “it would be impossible to monitor their nuclear programme”.

As Israel attacks Iran, its genocide in Gaza has shown no signs of easing.

At least 70 Palestinians were killed in a single day this week at a food distribution site run by a controversial group in Khan Younis that is backed by Israel and the United States.

All other aid channels are blocked – including medical supplies.

So, what’s the impact of this latest Israeli strategy?

Presenter: Nick Clark

Guests: 

Amjad Shawa – Director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network in Gaza

Christopher Lockyear – Secretary-general at Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF)

Mads Gilbert – Medical doctor with extensive experience in Gaza

The experts at International Living have included one town on France’s Cote d’Azur on their list of the top eight best European towns for “adventurous expats”.

If you are considering a move to the EU to either save money or escape the city crowds, this little-known spot in France might be your best bet.

International Living has published its Hidden Places Initiative report which reveals eight of Europe’s best towns for adventurous expats, including one on the French Riviera. “Everybody talks about places like Barcelona, Lisbon and Florence. But the best overseas destinations aren’t always the ones you’ve heard of,” says Jennifer Stevens, executive editor at International Living. Enter Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Villefranche-sur-Mer is a stunning town located between Nice and Monaco on France’s Cote d’Azur. The town offers expats a quieter perspective on the glitzy French Riviera and International Living calls it “a mash-up of wildly elegant, flower-flowing villas and earthy, burnt-pastel homes stacked haphazardly along the Mediterranean”.

That said, Villefranche-sur-Mer still maintains the iconic Riviera glamour of its neighbours like Nice. In fact, part of the James Bond classic Never Say Never Gain was filmed nearby.

READ MORE: ‘I ditched London to live in underrated UK seaside town just one hour away’

The hilly landscape allows for heightened views of the bay below, while stairs take residents up to the steeper parts of the town, including its historic centre. Describing Villefranche, International Living says: “It’s as if Positano and Florence, Italy, did an 1800s collaboration with a palette of muted orange, yellow, and deep turquoise.”

Two of the biggest draws of the town are its horseshoe-shaped bay and its impressive architecture – including a smattering of pastel-coloured French villas and cafes and medieval alleyways. But those picture-perfect villas and apartment buildings don’t come cheap.

According to International Living: “A couple can expect to spend at least £2,233 a month, with rent starting around £2,527”. Thus, Villefranche is not for every budget, but it is ideal for expats with a love of French art and culture.

As confirmed by International Living “music is a big deal in town, as is art”. Villefranche residents enjoy open-air cinemas throughout the summer and impressive art shows at the town’s Citadel. Other favourite events including classic car races, the Naval Flower Battle, jazz concerts, and open-air plays performed in the historic centre.

If you want to improve your French while living in town, you can also take lessons at the Institut de Français. The school offers courses ranging from two weeks to one month and also organises excursions and homestays.

Given the higher cost of living compared to other European destinations, Villefranche-sur-Mer is best-suited for digital nomads and retirees craving serenity, cultural enrichment and a touch of glam.

Full list of International Living’s Hidden Places destinations

• Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
• Toulon, France
• Litochoro, Greece
• Kavala, Greece
• Ioannina, Greece
• Esposende, Portugal
• Rayong, Thailand
• Guimarães, Portugal
• San Pancho, Mexico
• Cádiz, Spain
• Palermo, Italy
• Amed, Bali
• Ascoli Piceno, Italy
• Isla Holbox, Mexico