suffering

SCARY Movie star and bodybuilder Jayne Trcka has died at 62.

The athlete, who portrayed Miss Mann in the original Scary Movie film, passed away on December 12 in San Diego, California.

“There was trauma to the body, but we wouldn’t be able to indicate cause of death at this time,” a San Diego Medical Examiner spokesperson exclusively revealed to The U.S. Sun about the star’s sudden passing.

TMZ was first to report the news and noted that Jayne’s son wasn’t privy to any medical conditions or illnesses the actress had that could’ve caused her death.

Scary Movie, which premiered in 2000, was Jayne’s first acting role.

She was notable in the bodybuilding world after competing in many shows in the 1980s.

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Jayne later starred on The Drew Carey Show and Whose Line is it Anyway?

She also appeared in a string of fitness magazines, such as Flex, MuscleMag International, and Women’s Physique World.

The TV star most recently worked as a realtor, according to a San Diego real estate agency’s website.

Scary Movie was the first parody film in the franchise, starring Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Regina Hall, and Carmen Electra.

Four sequel films were released in 2001, 2003, 2026, and 2013.

The franchise’s sixth installment is scheduled for release in June, with many of its original cast members reprising their roles.

Damon Wayans Jr., Kim Wayans, and Saturday Night Live alum Heidi Gardner have also signed on for the film, which Paramount Pictures will release in theaters worldwide, Deadline revealed in November.

ACTRESS Melanie Watson died on Friday in Colorado Springs.

Best known for her role on the 80s TV show “Diff’rent Strokes”, she passed away aged 57.

The Diff’rent Strokes actress had been in hospital where she quickly deteriorated, TMZ reported.

Robert Watson, Melanie’s brother told the outlet that she died on December 26.

He said his sister had been suffering bleeding, and that doctors did their best to help her.

Watson was born in Dana Point, California, with a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, which causes bones to fracture easily.

The disease can also cause a curved spine, difficulty breathing, muscle weakness, and other issues.

The actress’ brother told TMZ that she was lucky to have lived as long as she did with her condition.

Robert said he would always think of Melanie.

She played Arnold’s pal Kathy Gordon on the 1980s TV show Diff’rent Strokes, appearing in four episodes of the hit show.

Her character used a wheelchair, just as the child star did in real life.

In 1982, she appeared in an episode called Kathy, named after her character.

In the episode, Kathy argued with Gary Coleman’s character, Arnold, after he tried to convince her to walk without using crutches.

Watson retired from showbiz after her run on hit show Diff’rent Strokes ended.

Later, she was married to Roger Bernhardt, for four years between 1994 and 1996.

Known professionally as Melanie Bernhardt, the child star was the founder and executive director of Train Rite, an organisation that trains shelter dogs to help disabled people.

In 2020, the the actress began a run for the Colorado State Senate, but pulled out of the race as “unforeseeable health conditions” derailed her campaign.

In 2024, she had expressed hopes of running for political office again.

Watson spoke about her TV stardom in a 2020 interview with IndieWire, describing herself as “a pill” to work with.

She said: “I was always playing with my yo-yo and listening to my Walkman.”

Talking about representing disabled people like her on screen, Watson said: “I didn’t realise what a gift it was to be the first one out there.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed in the business.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appeals for immediate truce as fighting intensifies in Darfur and Kordofan regions.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan’s brutal civil war, which the UN says has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Guterres’s appeal, made late on Friday, follows a peace initiative presented by Sudan’s Prime Minister Kamil Idris to the UN Security Council on Monday, which called for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to disarm.

The plan was rejected by the RSF as “wishful thinking”.

The war erupted in April 2023 when a power struggle broke out between the Sudanese army and the RSF paramilitary group. Since then, the conflict has displaced 9.6 million people internally and forced 4.3 million to flee to neighbouring countries, while 30.4 million Sudanese now need humanitarian assistance, according to UN figures.

UN Assistant Secretary-General Mohamed Khaled Khiari told the UNSC this week that fears of intensified fighting during the dry season had been confirmed.

“Each passing day brings staggering levels of violence and destruction,” he said. “Civilians are enduring immense, unimaginable suffering, with no end in sight.”

The conflict has shifted in recent weeks to Sudan’s central Kordofan region, where the RSF captured the strategic Heglig oilfield on December 8. The seizure prompted South Sudanese forces to cross into Sudan to protect the infrastructure, which Khiari warned reflects “the increasingly complex nature of the conflict and its expanding regional dimensions”.

The RSF has also launched a final push to consolidate full control over North Darfur state, attacking towns in the Dar Zaghawa region near the Chad border since December 24. The offensive threatens to close the last escape corridor for civilians fleeing the country to Chad.

The violence spilled across Sudan’s borders on Friday when a drone attack killed two Chadian soldiers at a military camp in the border town of Tine.

A Chadian military intelligence officer told Reuters news agency the drone came from Sudan, though it remained unclear whether it was launched by the army or the RSF. Chad has placed its air force on high alert and warned it would “exercise our right to retaliate” if the strike is confirmed as deliberate.

Despite the intensifying conflict, the UN achieved a rare breakthrough, saying on Friday that it conducted its first assessment mission to el-Fasher since the city fell to the RSF.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Denise Brown said the mission followed “months of intense fighting, siege, and widespread violations against civilians and humanitarian workers,” adding that “hundreds of thousands of civilians have had to flee el-Fasher and surrounding areas”.

Earlier this month, Yale University released a report documenting systematic mass killings by the RSF in el-Fasher, with satellite imagery showing evidence of burning and the burial of human remains on a mass scale.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned last week that the fighting was “horrifying” and “atrocious”, telling a news conference that “one day the story of what’s actually happened there is going to be known, and everyone involved is going to look bad”.

Rubio said he wanted the war to end before the New Year, but there is no strong indication that progress has been made.

Prime Minister Idris’s peace plan proposed an immediate UN-monitored ceasefire and complete RSF withdrawal from the roughly 40 percent of Sudan it controls. But an adviser to RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo dismissed the proposal as “closer to fantasy than to politics”.

Upon returning to Port Sudan on Friday, Idris laid down a red line, saying the government would reject international peacekeeping forces because Sudan had been “burned” by them in the past.

Pope Leo has decried conditions ‍for Palestinians in ‍Gaza in his first Christmas sermon as pontiff, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Leo, the first American ⁠pope, said on Thursday that the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God ​had “pitched his fragile tent” among the people of the world.

“How, then, ‍can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” he asked.

Leo, celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the ‍world’s cardinals to ⁠succeed the late Pope Francis, has a quieter, more diplomatic style than his predecessor and usually refrains from making political references in his sermons.

But the new pope has also lamented the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza several times recently and told journalists last month that the only solution in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine must include a Palestinian state.

Israel ​and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October ‌after two years of intense bombardment and military operations in Gaza, but humanitarian agencies say there is still too little aid getting into the largely destroyed Strip, where nearly the entire population is homeless after being displaced by Israeli attacks.

In Thursday’s service with thousands in ‌St Peter’s Basilica, Leo also lamented conditions for the homeless across the globe and the destruction caused by the wars ‌roiling the world.

“Fragile is the flesh of defenceless ⁠populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds,” said the pope.

“Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the ‌front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths,” he ‍added.

In a later appeal during the “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message and blessing given by the pope at Christmas and Easter, Leo called for an end to all global wars, lamenting conflicts, ‌political, social or military, in Ukraine, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar, and Thailand and Cambodia, among others.

‘The wounds are deep’

Ahead of the pope’s mass, in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the Christian community began celebrating its first festive Christmas in more than two years, as the Palestinian city and biblical birthplace of Jesus emerges from the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Throughout the war, a sombre tone had marked Christmases in Bethlehem. But celebrations returned on Wednesday with parades and music. Hundreds of worshippers also gathered for mass at the Church of the Nativity on Wednesday night.

With pews filled long before midnight, many stood or sat on the floor for the traditional mass to usher in Christmas Day.

At 11:15 pm (21:15 GMT), organ music rang out as a procession of dozens of clergymen entered, followed by Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who blessed the crowd with signs of the cross.

In his homily, Pizzaballa urged peace, hope and rebirth, saying the Nativity story still held relevance in the turbulence of modern times.

He also spoke of his visit to Gaza over the weekend, where he said “suffering is still present” despite the ceasefire. In the Strip, hundreds of thousands of people face a bleak winter in makeshift tents.

“The wounds are deep, yet I have to say, here too, there too, their proclamation of Christmas resounds,” Pizzaballa said. “When I met them, I was struck by their strength and desire to start over.”

In Bethlehem, hundreds also took part in the parade down the narrow Star Street on Wednesday, while a dense crowd massed in the square. As darkness fell, multi-coloured lights shone over Manger Square and a towering Christmas tree glittered next to the Church of the Nativity.

The basilica dates back to the fourth century and was built on top of a grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born more than 2,000 years ago.

Bethlehem residents hoped the return of Christmas festivities would breathe life back into the city.

A new wave of Israeli policies is changing the reality and boundaries on the ground in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli government has approved the formalisation of 19 so-called settlement outposts as independent settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is the third wave of such formalisations this year by the government, which considers settlement expansion and annexation a top priority. During an earlier ceremony of formalisation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We are advancing de facto sovereignty on the ground to prevent any possibility of establishing an Arab state in [the West Bank].”

Settlement outposts, which are illegal under international law, are set up by a small group of settlers without prior government authorisation. This does not mean that the settlers, who are often more ideological and violent, do not enjoy government protection. Israeli human rights organisations say that settlers in these so-called outposts enjoy protection, electricity and other services from the Israeli army. The formalisation opens the door to additional government funds, infrastructure and expansion.

Many of the settlement outposts formalised in this latest decision are concentrated in the northeastern part of the West Bank, an area that traditionally has had very little settlement activity. They also include the formalisation of two outposts evacuated in 2005 by the government of Israeli then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

While these government decisions may seem bureaucratic, they are in fact strategic in nature. They support the more ideological and often more violent settlers entrenching their presence and taking over yet more Palestinian land, and becoming more brazen in their attacks against Palestinians, which are unprecedented in scope and effect.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem estimates that settler attacks against Palestinians have forcibly displaced 44 communities across the West Bank in the past two years. These arson attacks, vandalism, physical assault and deadly shootings are done under the protection of Israeli soldiers. During these settler attacks, 34 Palestinians were killed, including three children. None of the perpetrators has been brought to justice. In fact, policing of these groups has dropped under the direction of Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler himself.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently sounded the alarm about Israel’s record-breaking expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the unprecedented levels of state-backed settler violence. In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Guterres reminded states that all settlements are illegal under international law. He also warned that they erode Palestinian rights recognised under this law, including to a state of their own.

In September, United States President Donald Trump said he “will not allow” Israel to annex the West Bank, without offering details of what actions he would take to prevent such a move.

But Israel is undeterred. The government continues to pursue its agenda of land grab, territorial expansion and annexation by a myriad of measures that fragment, dispossess and isolate Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and continues its genocidal violence in Gaza.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank for nearly a year. The Israeli army continues to occupy Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin refugee camps and ban residents from returning. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have demolished and damaged 1,460 buildings in those camps, according to a preliminary UN estimate. This huge, destructive campaign has changed the geography of the camps and plunged more families into economic and social despair.

This is the state hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank find themselves in because of Israeli restrictions, home demolitions and land grabs. The Israeli army has set up close to 1,000 gates across the West Bank, turning communities into open-air prisons. This has a direct and devastating effect on the social fabric, economy and vitality of these communities, which live on land that is grabbed from under them to execute the expansion of illegal settlements, roads and so-called buffer zones around them.

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Israeli practices and policies over the past two years have cost the Palestinian people 69 years of development. The organisation recently reported that the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk to 2010 levels. This is visible most starkly in Gaza, but it is palpable in the West Bank as well.

The results of these policies and this reality are Palestinians leaving their homes and Israel expanding. During the summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a local news station he was on a “historic and spiritual mission”, in reference to the vision of the Greater Israel that he said he was “very” attached to.