According to the UN, Israeli troops have opened fire on three UN peacekeepers’ positions in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military requested the UNIFIL force to leave bases close to the border earlier this week, but the UNIFIL force declined.
Can a global agreement put an end to the vaccine inequity that caused the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa?
Five years after the virus’s discovery, a quarter of the world’s population is still unvaccinated for COVID-19.
Because of the lack of control over vaccine stocks, African nations were among the last to receive life-saving medicines during the pandemic.
This “vaccine apartheid” fuels distrust in expensive Western-made vaccines.
To safeguard the continent from disease, Senegal and other African countries will produce more of their own vaccines.
Global South nations might benefit from a pandemic treaty being negotiated at the World Health Organization in order to better prepare for outbreaks.
The female captain of a navy ship that sank at the weekend has been the subject of abuse from the country’s defense minister. When the Manawanui went down off Samoa while conducting a reef survey mission, 75 crew and passengers needed to be saved.
In the first months of this war, life seemed almost paralysed. At the time, we were not used to it.
We could barely get by, with so little food, no internet, electricity, chargers or fuel. We were cut off from the world as the attacks persisted all over us.
After about two months of the war, I decided to do something normal, ordinary, necessary. I took my eight-year-old daughter for a haircut.
At her home, Najla the hairdresser warmly welcomed us. She gave us a few moments to feel as though we had just stepped out of this war, even though the sounds were audible everywhere.
Do you encounter customers when the war breaks out? I asked her.
“Of course”, she laughed, explaining that she’d had more work during the war than at any other time.
I was shocked by her response. What kinds of services could women have requested.
“Everything”, she answered. “From facials and eyebrow cleaning, haircuts, body hair removal, hair dye, highlights, some of them makeup, and so on”.
Najla looked at me in shock as she cut my daughter’s hair.
“What’s wrong with you? Does a woman’s personality change during a war?” she asked.
For a moment, I felt joy at the thought of these elegant, well-groomed women of Gaza who cared about their appearance, just as any other woman anywhere else might.
Then I began to feel bitterness and sadness over how the war had treated them badly, how it had tried to erase their lustre, and how much responsibility and burdens they imposed.
Throughout this war, I have continued to visit Najla. She has emailed me several different client stories, some humorous and others painful.
When I inquire about what these women wear and how their weddings are prepared, she replies, “Every day we have one or more brides who come dressed up for their wedding day.”
Most war-time brides are satisfied with bridal makeup and a simple hairstyle, she explains. Some people insist on buying a white dress after searching for one desperately, while others settle for a plain outfit with embroidery. She claims that the wedding is quick and then the groom visits his tent or home with the bride and her family.
She tells me about a bride whose entire family was killed in a bombing while her cousin’s entire family was also killed.
She says that because their families were martyred, the cousin decided to wed his cousin to comfort each other.
I think about how marriages elsewhere begin with joy and celebration, while in Gaza they start with loss and loneliness.
That bride had refused to wear a white dress, despite Najla’s attempts to persuade her.
“The stories are many”, the hairdresser explains, as she sweeps the floor. “I saw many women and heard many sad stories”.
I take the longest route back when I come back from a trip to Najla. The people’s lives that don’t often make it into news reports need to be absorbed, as she has shared. I consider how to tell these tales, but it’s difficult when there are so many to tell about the destruction.
Should I write the tale of the young woman who lost her entire family and walking ability or the young girls who were bombed and who lost their legs in the process?
The Swedish Academy reports that South Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in literature for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
She began her career in 1993 with the publication of several poems in the magazine Literature and Society, her prose debut coming in 1995 with the short story collection, Love of Yeosu.
The Nobel committee noted that Han Kang confronts historical traumas and obscure set of regulations in each of her works, which highlights the fragility of human life.
She “has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” according to her poetic and experimental prose.
Her major international breakthrough came with the novel, The Vegetarian. An unsettling novel about a woman who decides to stop eating meat has devastating effects that is broken down into three parts.
According to the committee, her work has “double exposure of pain, a relationship between mental and physical torment, and strong connections to Eastern thinking.”
The 2023 prize went to Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse, who was honoured for “his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable”.
The literature prize has long been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its laureates. The last woman to win was Annie Ernaux of France, in 2022.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1m) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The winners will receive a medal on December 10 in addition to the cash prize.
Rafael Nadal, a famous tennis player from Spain, has made the announcement that he will retire from the game at the age of 38 following the Davis Cup finals in San Diego next month.
“I am retiring from professional tennis. The reality is that it has been some difficult years, these last two especially”, Nadal, who won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, said in a video posted on social media on Thursday.
“I am very excited that my last tournament will be the Davis Cup representing my country”, the 38-year-old, who won a record 14 French Open titles, added in the emotional message.
“One of my first joys was the 2004 Sevilla final,” says the circle’s closing.
From November 19 through November 24 will the Davis Cup knockout match occur.
Nadal missed the 2023 French Open and was beaten in the first round by German Alexander Zverev this year due to injuries. His 23-year career has been hampered by injuries.
The ‘ King of Clay ‘ won his last Roland Garros title in 2022 and left Paris on a jaw-dropping 112-4 win-loss record.
Nadal played only 23 matches in the last two seasons.
Two years after Roger Federer, he will hang up his racket, leaving Serbia’s 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic as the only member of the “Big Three” still active.
Nadal thanked his family and his team for a stellar career. His uncle Toni, who dominated his most of his courtwork, was also in the Nadal’s shoes.
He said, “I think I have also been able to overcome a lot of situations that have been challenging in my sporting career.”
To his fans, Nadal said: “I can’t thank you enough for what you have made me feel. Every single experience has been a fulfillment of a dream.
“I leave with the absolute peace of mind having given my best”, he added.
One last dance
After the Final 8 of Malaga in November, Rafael Nadal will retire. #DavisCup pic. twitter.com/75FdqOBWDc