A World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Gaza has described harrowing scenes amid efforts to supply hospitals, many decimated or fully destroyed by Israel’s genocidal war, with essential medical and humanitarian supplies.
“When we were in Gaza City two days back to al-Ahli Hospital bringing in the most needed trauma supplies – IV fluids, saline, IV antibiotics, also some lab equipment and food for patients and staff etc – bombardments were all over the place where we were,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, told a media briefing on Wednesday.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“We saw a constant stream of trauma patients, horrific trauma patients, young girls with severe burn wounds, boys gasping,” he added.
“Currently in Gaza, everywhere I go, and I’ve been in Gaza City just a couple of days ago, and here in the south and everywhere, people live between anxiety and hope,” he said, referring to the ongoing talks in Egypt to broker an end to the fighting.
Just 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning and only a third of 176 primary care facilities work, Hanan Balkhy, WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, which oversees Gaza, said.
Speaking at a media briefing, Balkhy said Gaza has been struggling with “dire shortages” of electricity, clean water, medicine, broken equipment and damaged infrastructure in those health facilities still working.
“Some facilities have been hit and rehabilitated and hit once more,” she added.
Balkhy also said that seven in 10 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza were facing acute malnutrition, and one in five babies were being born either underweight or premature.
Meanwhile, James Elder, a UNICEF spokesperson currently in Gaza, has posted a video in which he said the UN children’s agency has been denied access by the Israeli army to northern Gaza to retrieve incubators for newborns on four occasions.
At least eight Palestinians have been killed and 61 others injured in new Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hour reporting period, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
Two bodies have also been recovered from the rubble of the previous Israeli attacks in the same time frame, the ministry added.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed a total of 67,183 Palestinians and injured 169,841 others since October 7, 2023, the statement published on Telegram said.
The US President has threatened to invoke an 1807 law to give the National Guard powers of arrest and policing. Chicago is the latest city where Trump is sending the guard, despite vehement state and city opposition.
President Donald Trump appears poised to put his image on both sides of a commemorative $1 coin issued by the United States Mint – the country’s manufacturer of legal tender coinage that also produces commemorative coins.
On October 3, the White House re-shared an X post from US Treasurer Brandon Beach confirming reports that the Trump administration was seeking to put the president’s image on the front and back of a dollar coin commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
US currency typically does not feature living people – or sitting presidents – but it’s not unprecedented.
“There have been times in the past where commemorative coins have been printed with the faces of living people,” White House National Economic Council chair Kevin Hassett said on CNN’s State of the Union on October 5.
He’s right. Several living people have been featured on US currency in both the recent and distant past, including one president.
Although the concept of a Trump coin runs counter to a longstanding tradition, there are no unscalable legal obstacles to establishing a US coin with Trump’s image on it.
What has the Trump administration proposed?
Beach’s X post showed the coin’s front, featuring Trump’s side profile, and its flip side – an illustration of Trump pumping his fist after a 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. The phrase, “Fight Fight Fight” lines the coin’s perimeter, referencing a Trump rallying cry repeated after the assassination attempt. Trump was not president at the time of the assassination attempt.
Donald Trump Dollar [US Department of the Treasury]
At an October 3 White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I’m not sure if he’s seen it, but I’m sure he’ll love it.”
Would this design be legal?
Multiple pieces of coinage legislation enacted over the past few decades have included specific language banning living people from being portrayed on US-minted coins. In one case – a series of coins launched in 2007 honouring every president – the law’s text goes further to specify that no coin in the series may “bear the image of a living former or current president, or of any deceased former president during the two-year period following the date of the death of that president”.
That barrier on living presidents was specific to that particular presidential coinage series, however – not to the series that would include the proposed Trump coin.
The guidance governing the series the Trump administration is considering comes from legislation authorising a series of coins for the nation’s 250th anniversary, known as the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020.
Trump signed the measure into law in January 2021, during his first presidency, following unanimous passage by both chambers of Congress. It authorises the redesigns of quarters, half dollars and $1 coins in several sequential series, one of which is a 250th anniversary series to be launched in 2026.
The law for the 250th series refers specifically to the reverse of the coin: “No head and shoulders portrait or bust of any person, living or dead, and no portrait of a living person may be included in the design on the reverse of any coin” in the series. But it doesn’t rule out a portrait on the front of the coin.
That may not be a high bar for Trump to jump if he wants to mint a coin with his image on it.
Unless Congress acts, the process from here would involve only administration officials, meaning the president could maintain direct control. Even if the courts were inclined to block the proposal, experts said it’s uncertain whether anyone would be able to cite a direct harm from producing a Trump coin – a requirement for filing a lawsuit.
“It’s unclear who would have standing to sue here,” said Gabriel Mathy, an associate professor of economics at American University in Washington, DC, who has studied coinage issues.
Legal or not, history has not favoured using living people on US currency
Whether or not a Trump coin would be legal, numismatic experts – those who specialise in coins and related items – said there’s a longstanding tradition in the United States of not depicting living people on coins.
“Not featuring current presidents on coins is an important and enduring part of the United States’ history as a republic,” Mathy said. “Going back thousands of years, coins traditionally carried the image of the current monarch. This is still the case in the United Kingdom, where coins are minted with the face of the reigning monarch, as well as in some other monarchies.
“The United States was founded as a republic, and the founders wanted to avoid making the president into a monarch,” Mathy said. Putting a living president on a coin would be “inconsistent with a long tradition of American republicanism”.
Despite the norm, living people have sometimes appeared on US currency.
President Abraham Lincoln, his Treasury Secretary Salmon P Chase and US Army General Winfield Scott were among a small number of living figures to appear on US paper currency.
During the Civil War, Spencer Clark, an official with the federal office responsible for printing paper money, put his own image on a five-cent note. He did it by leveraging a legal loophole: Congress had approved a note featuring an image of William Clark, the explorer from the Lewis & Clark expedition of the Louisiana Territory, but lawmakers neglected to specify William Clark’s first name in the legislation, journalist Blake Stilwell wrote in Military.com.
So Spencer Clark, having the same surname, inserted his own image instead of William Clark’s. Clark also produced a separate note that featured then-US Treasurer Francis E Spinner.
By the Civil War’s end, “Congress had time to pay attention to what the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was up to,” Stilwell wrote.
So in 1866, Congress passed a law saying no portrait or likeness of a living person would appear on “bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal currency of the United States”.
The law doesn’t mention coins, however. Living figures – and even one living president, Calvin Coolidge – have occasionally been featured on coins, including some in recent years.
In 1921, the US released a commemorative coin to mark Alabama’s centennial, featuring side views of William Bibb, the state’s first governor, and Thomas Kilby, its governor during the centennial. “This coin was the first ever created by the Mint to carry a living person’s portrait,” the Mint’s website says.
In 1926, during the nation’s sesquicentennial celebration, Congress authorised the minting of a commemorative coin. The designers settled on a joint portrait of George Washington and Coolidge, who was president during the sesquicentennial.
The coin proved unpopular; of 1 million half dollars that were minted, more than 850,000 were returned to the Mint and melted.
Alabama Centennial Half Dollar [United States Mint]
The other two examples we could find of a living figure minted on coins are more recent.
The Mint created a congressionally authorised coin to commemorate the 1995 Special Olympics World Games. Congress didn’t dictate the design, but the front of the coin featured Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics for people with intellectual disabilities. She died in 2009.
On February 6, 2016, the Mint released a congressionally authorised coin for former President Ronald Reagan and former First Lady Nancy Reagan, tied to the late president’s 105th birthday. Nancy Reagan died one month later, on March 6, 2016.
A country has already minted a coin with Trump’s image on it
In 2025, the West African nation of Liberia produced a $1, one-ounce silver commemorative coin with Trump’s image on the front, crowned by a laurel leaf in gold as if he were a Roman emperor. The motto read, “In Don We Trust.”
Under blazing skies at a tea plantation in India’s northeastern state of Assam, worker Kamini Kurmi wears an umbrella fastened over her head to keep her hands free to pluck delicate leaves from the bushes.
“When it’s really hot, my head spins and my heart begins to beat very fast,” said Kurmi, one of the many women employed for their dextrous fingers, instead of machines that harvest most conventional crops within a matter of days.
Weather extremes are shrivelling harvests on India’s tea plantations, endangering the future of an industry renowned for beverages as refreshing as the state of Assam and the adjoining hill station of Darjeeling in West Bengal state, while reshaping a global trade estimated at more than $10bn a year.
“Shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns are no longer occasional anomalies; they are the new normal,” said Rupanjali Deb Baruah, a scientist at the Tea Research Association.
As changing patterns reduce yields and stall output, rising domestic consumption in India is expected to shrink exports from the world’s second-largest tea producer.
Damaged tea leaves from the Chota Tingrai estate in Tinsukia, Assam. [Sahiba Chawdhary/Reuters]
While output stagnates in other key producers such as Kenya and Sri Lanka, declining Indian exports, which made up 12 percent of global trade last year, could boost prices.
Tea prices at Indian auctions have grown by just 4.8 percent a year for three decades, far behind the 10 percent achieved by staples such as wheat and rice.
The mildly warm, humid conditions crucial for Assam’s tea-growing districts are increasingly being disrupted by lengthy dry spells and sudden, intense rains.
Such weather not only helps pests breed, but also forces estate owners to turn to the rarely used practice of irrigating plantations, said Mritunjay Jalan, the owner of an 82-year-old tea estate in Assam’s Tinsukia district.
Rainfall there has dropped by more than 250mm (10 inches) between 1921 and 2024, while minimum temperatures have risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), the Tea Research Association says.
The monsoon, Assam’s key source of rain, as summer and winter showers have nearly disappeared, brought rainfall this season that was 38 percent below average.
That has helped to shorten the peak output season to just a few months, narrowing the harvesting window, said senior tea planter Prabhat Bezboruah.
Patchy rains bring more frequent pest infestations, leaving tea leaves discoloured, blotched brown, and sometimes riddled with tiny holes.
A worker inspects dried tea leaves inside a tea manufacturing unit at the Chota Tingrai estate. [Sahiba Chawdhary/Reuters]
These measures, in turn, add to costs, which are already rising at 8 to 9 percent a year, driven up by higher wages and prices of fertiliser, said Hemant Bangur, chairman of the leading industry body, the Indian Tea Association.
Planters say government incentives are insufficient to spur replanting, crucial in Assam, where many colonial-era tea bushes yield less and lose resilience to weather as they age beyond the usual productive span of 40 to 50 years.
India’s tea industry has flourished for nearly 200 years, but its share of global trade could fall below the 2024 figure of 12 percent, as the increasing prosperity of a growing population boosts demand at home.
Domestic consumption jumped 23 percent over the past decade to 1.2 million tonnes, far outpacing production growth of 6.3 percent, the Indian Tea Association says.
While exports of quality tea have shrunk in recent years, India’s imports have grown, nearly doubling in 2024 to a record 45,300 tonnes.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M Yaghi for their work in the development of metal-organic frameworks (MOF).
The three scientists, who won the award on Wednesday, come from the universities of Kyoto in Japan, Melbourne in Australia and Berkeley in the United States, respectively.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The three have created “molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow”, read a statement from the Nobel Prize. Such constructions can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or brake down traces of pharmaceuticals in the environment.
“Metal-organic frameworks have enormous potential, bringing previously unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions,” said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
According to Olof Ramström, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, the new form of molecular architecture can be compared to the handbag of fictional Harry Potter character Hermione Granger: small on the outside but very large on the inside.
The chemists, working separately but adding to each other’s breakthroughs, devised ways to make stable metal organic frameworks — which may be compared to the timber framework of a house.
These structures can absorb and contain gases inside these frameworks, with many practical applications today — such as capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or sucking water out of dry desert air.
The first step into what would have been a decades-long journey was in 1989 when Robson tested atoms’ properties in a new way, combining positively charged copper ions with a four-armed molecule. This had a chemical group that was attracted to copper ions at the end of each arm, reads a description in the Nobel Prize’s statement.
When they were combined, they formed a shape similar to a diamond filled with cavities. But the crystal would collapse easily. That is when Kitagawa and Yaghi entered the frame. Working separately between 1992 and 2003, they made a series of discoveries to make the metal frameworks stable. Kitagawa showed that they could be made flexible while Yaghi discovered that they can be modified using rational design.
The 2024 prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory based in London.
The three were awarded for discovering powerful techniques to decode and design novel proteins, the building blocks of life. Their work used advanced technologies, including AI, and can potentially transform how new drugs and other materials are made.
The first Nobel of 2025 was announced Monday. The prize in medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
Tuesday’s physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for their research on the weird world of subatomic quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing.
This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics prize next Monday.
Ethiopia has accused Eritrea’s government of working with an opposition group based in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region to prepare for a military offensive, underscoring concerns of renewed conflict in the region.
Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos made the claim in a letter appealing to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, cited by the AFP news agency and Ethiopian media on Wednesday.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
In the letter, Timothewos claims there is clear “collusion” between Eritrea’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a once-dominant political force in Ethiopia that fought a two-year civil war with Addis Ababa, ending in 2022.
“The collusion between the Eritrean government and the TPLF has become more evident over the past few months,” said the letter, quoted by AFP. “The hardliner faction of the TPLF and the Eritrean government are actively preparing to wage war against Ethiopia.”
In the letter, Addis Ababa also accuses Asmara and the TPLF of “funding, mobilising and directing armed groups” in the northern Amhara region, where the federal army has been facing rebels for several years.
The message speaks to deteriorating relations between neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have a decades-long bloody history.
After Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, a border war erupted between the two Horn of Africa countries from 1998 to 2000, leaving tens of thousands dead.
Relations thawed in 2018 after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power, with the Eritrean army supporting Ethiopian federal forces in the 2020-2022 Tigray War.
Since the conflict ended, relations have again taken a belligerent turn, with Asmara accusing its landlocked neighbour of eyeing the Assab port on the Red Sea in southeastern Eritrea.
Abiy has repeatedly expressed hopes for Ethiopia to regain sea access, lost legally after Eritrea’s independence.
Timothewos, in his letter to Guterres, said Addis Ababa wants “to engage in good faith negotiations with the government of Eritrea” and has a vision of “shared prosperity through integration that preserves the territorial integrity and sovereignty of both states”.
He accused Asmara of trying “to justify its sinister machinations against Ethiopia by claiming that it feels threatened by Ethiopia’s quest to gain access to the sea”.
