Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has compared the Holocaust starvation of Jews to newly released images of two captives in Gaza. However, Netanyahu is also accused of committing war crimes by starving Gaza’s population. Warning: Distressing images are included in this video.
Economicians and policymakers are concerned about the validity of data in the world’s largest economy following President Donald Trump’s firing of a top US statistician last week.
After the release of disappointing employment figures on Friday, Trump’s dismissal of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer sparked concerns about the accuracy of Washington’s economic data, which are trusted by countless businesses and investors in the US and around the world.
The “baseless” ouster, according to the National Association for Business Economics, “could result in long-term harm to the institutions that support American economic stability.”
According to Erica Groshen, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics under former President Barack Obama, “it could open the door to political meddling and certainly will undermine trust in federal statistics that businesses, policymakers, and individuals use to make some of their most crucial decisions,” she told Al Jazeera.
If Trump’s firing of McEntarfer and other presidential appointees is allowed to stand, Groshen said, he might make it a habit to do so for any head of a statistical agency or other organization that distributes “unwelcome news.”
He is likely to be replaced by appointees who place their needs before the mission of their organizations, ethics, or scientific integrity, according to Groshen.
Trump announced on Sunday that he would name a new Bureau of Labor Statistics head in three or four days, citing McEntarfer’s claim that he had been “rigged” without any proof that the most recent job figures had been “rigged” to make him look bad.
A deterioration in trust in US official economic data would have consequences for all countries.
The US continues to be the world’s largest economy by some distance despite the growing influence of emerging economies like China and India.
More than one-quarter of the world’s economy is accounted for by the US’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is estimated to be $30.3 trillion. About two-thirds of China’s GDP is thought to be that amount.
Businesses and investors from London to Dubai and Tokyo are closely following US government data on trade, employment, consumer spending, and GDP, which are regarded as crucial indicators of the direction of the global economy.
Many nations, including democratic states, have been accused of manipulating economic data for political reasons, frequently with bad publicity.
Greece was accused of purposefully falsifying data in a shameful report by the European Commission in 2010.
Argentina was officially criticized by the International Monetary Fund in 2013 for providing allegedly inaccurate information about economic growth and inflation.
According to some research, strong-arm leader-led nations are particularly susceptible to misrepresenting the state of their economies.
Economic openness and democracy, according to a study conducted in 2024, reduced the ability for governments to manipulate statistics, despite the lack of discernible benefits from the freedom of the media or the statistical office’s independence.
According to Luis Martinez, a professor at the University of Chicago, autocratic nations artificially increased their annual GDP growth by about 35% in a paper from 2022 that used satellite imagery of nighttime light as a proxy for economic development.
According to Tomasz Michalski, an associate professor of economics at the HEC Paris business school, “economic data manipulation is pervasive in history, especially in autocracies and dictatorships, to create narratives for the people, typically to embellish standards of living.”
However, “in countries that strive to be democracies or are more developed,” such deliberate behavior is more uncommon.
Critics immediately noted similarities to tactics used by strongman leaders to acquiesce to public support for their policies following Trump’s firing of McEntarfer, a career economist who was appointed in 2024 with overwhelmingly bipartisan support.
On Substack, a subscription-based newsletter platform, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said, “This is one more step on our quick descent into banana republic status.”
Under President Bill Clinton, Lawrence Summers, the US Treasury Secretary, characterized the firing as “the stuff of democracies clinging to authoritarianism.”
Although it was unclear whether Scott Sumner would attempt to directly influence the government’s economic figures, Bentley University professor of economics Scott Sumner said Trump’s decision made the US “look more like a banana republic.”
According to Sumner, “It’s actually difficult to deceive the public, and almost nobody was deceived by the manipulation in Argentina.”
“It’s not yet known whether Trump will attempt to do the same. Any attempt to do so is likely to fail.
The Trump administration’s freeze on hiring federal employees and staff cuts at numerous agencies have been a growing concern for some time about the quality of US economic data.
Some economists expressed concern about the government’s economic statistics after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded two expert committees in March.
Due to “current resources limitations,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced in June that it had stopped collecting price-related data in three US cities: Buffalo, New York, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Provo, Utah.
However, declining response rates to surveys among the general population in recent years had made data collection more challenging, raising questions about accuracy even before Trump’s resumption in January.
89 of the 100 policy experts surveyed in a poll conducted by the Reuters news agency indicated they had at least some reservations about the state of US economic statistics.
According to Michalski, associate professor at HEC Paris, “some data is just unreliable because people stopped responding to surveys or the responses became so biased because of the nonhomogeneous response rates.”
Given that many people don’t use landlines, are unreachable, or give careless answers to investigators, he said, there aren’t often simple ways to improve data collection.
Once politicians become involved, data are always at risk of manipulation, Michalski continued.
According to him, “it is possible to spin a story about inflation or GDP growth even with accurate numbers” by altering the base years or incorporating specific periods into narratives.
“There are undoubtedly incentives to manipulate and fabricate.” There is little to no punishment, really.
We seem to be heading in that direction, Groshen said, even though she doesn’t anticipate that US economic data will become less reliable in the near future.
The BLS will continue to operate as it has before, she said.
One of the deadliest attacks in the capital since the Russian-Chechen wars of the 1990s and 2000s, the trial has begun for 19 defendants who are accused of being involved in the 2024 shooting attack at a Moscow concert hall, which left 149 people dead and over 600 injured.
As they sat in the defendants’ cage on Monday, the suspects who were appearing in court were seated with heavy security kept their heads bowed.
The Crocus City Hall concert venue was targeted by an ISIL (ISIS) affiliate because four gunmen shot people waiting for a rock band performance and then set the building on fire on March 22, 2024. The attack was blamed on ISIL’s Afghan affiliate, also known as ISKP (ISIS-K).
Ukraine was implicated in the attack, according to President Putin, Vladimir Putin, and other Russian officials, without providing any supporting evidence, Kyiv has vehemently refuted.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top criminal investigation body, came to the conclusion in June that the attack had been “planned and carried out in the interests of the current leadership of Ukraine in order to destabilize the political situation in our country.” The four suspected gunmen tried to flee to Ukraine afterward, according to the report.
The four, who were all Tajik nationals, were taken into custody shortly after the attack and later showed signs of being beaten.
Six additional suspects were charged in absentia and put on Russia’s wanted list, according to the committee’s report from earlier this year, allegedly for recruiting and organizing the four’s training. The trial’s other defendants were charged with aiding them.
In a move to put an end to Putin’s separatist southern republic, around 40 rebels from Chechnya stormed the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow in 2002 and hostage 800 people.
The United Nations has warned that all children of Gaza under the age of five are at risk of life-threatening malnourishment, amid growing reports of starvation-related deaths as Israel continues to block aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip.
The UN’s World Food Programme said children in this age bracket – around 320, 000 in number – have been affected by the collapse of nutrition services and are lacking access to safe water, breast milk substitutes and therapeutic feeding.
Paediatrician Seema Jilani told Al Jazeera that malnutrition “affects their entire body”, putting children at risk of multi-organ failure. She also said that starvation in Gaza is traumatic for children and that “developmental milestones will be missed”.
Hospitals in Gaza on Monday recorded six new deaths from famine and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including one child, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The total number of people who died from hunger-related causes since the start of the war now stands at 181, including 94 children.
The ministry also sounded the alarm over a “serious escalation” in cases of acute soft paralysis among children as a result of “infections and acute malnutrition”.
In a statement, it said it has so far recorded three deaths from Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition that causes sudden numbness and muscle weakness in most of the body.
Gaza’s government said Israel was deliberately blocking more than 22, 000 humanitarian aid trucks from entering the territory as part of a systematic campaign of “starvation, siege and chaos”.  , The Palestinian territory has been under total Israeli blockade since March 2, shortly before Israel ended a two-month ceasefire and resumed attacks.
Mosab al-Dibs, 14, has been at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for about two months after suffering a severe head injury when an Israeli air raid struck his family’s tent in May.
The boy is largely paralysed and severely malnourished because the facility no longer has supplies to feed him. “Mosab now suffers from severe malnutrition”, his mother, Shahinaz al-Dibs, said. “He suffers convulsions as a result of a hit that affected his brain. Even his nerves are stiff”.
The situation in Gaza was nothing short of catastrophic.
At a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza, Samah Matar said her sons – six-year-old Yousef and four-year-old Amir – have cerebral palsy and need a special diet.
Youssef weighed 14kg (31lb) before the war. Now, he weighs 9kg (20lb). Amir, who weighed 9kg (20lb), is now less than 6kg (13lb). “Before the war, their health was excellent”, she said. “Now, there is no baby formula or diapers, and I can hardly find flour for them. Sugar, the main ingredient in their meals, is unavailable”.
Ahmad Alhendawi, Middle East director of Save the Children International, told Al Jazeera that the situation in Gaza was “nothing short of catastrophic”.
“This is about almost four months of this blockade, of starvation that has built over weeks and months, and to come back from that point of extreme malnutrition and starvation requires a sustained supply of food and medical equipment and also food supplements for children in need”, he said.
The organisation said more than four in 10 (43 percent) pregnant and breastfeeding women seeking treatment at its clinics in Gaza in July were malnourished.
The rate was almost three times higher than in March, when Israel reimposed a total siege on Gaza. Infant formula has not been allowed to enter the Strip.
When Itamar Ben-Gvir led a Jewish prayer at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex, right-wing Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir sparked outrage from all over the Middle East. His actions violated a 1967 pact that only Muslims may pray at the site.
India defeated England for 367 in the final Test by six runs in under an hour, inspiring Mohammed Siraj, who took the series’ final four wickets in less than an hour.
On Monday, Siraj defeated Jamie Smith and Jamie Overton before bowling Gus Atkinson to add five wickets to the team’s five at the London Oval.
Chris Woakes walked out of the game with a sling to protect his dislocated shoulder after Prasidh Krishna had defeated Josh Tongue for nothing.
England had hoped for a brief hope when Atkinson hit Siraj for six, but Siraj cleverly shielded the Woakes from the strike. In the end, India won their final Test win.
You don’t get to see many games like this, said India captain Shubman Gill, who scored 60 or 70 runs for the win with seven wickets in hand. A little luck for us as we move past this line.
England eventually went on to lose their final seven wickets for 66 runs, a collapse brought on by Harry Brook’s reckless dismissal after his outstanding century.
Before bad light and rain the fourth day early, India suddenly had a gimmick of hope, and they seized full advantage by eliminating Jacob Bethell and Joe Root (105).
England’s second-highest test run chase, which was by far the biggest for any team on this ground, was 35 runs in total, even though they had already completed it.
One of the most dramatic resolutions to a Test match duly played out was the Oval, which fluctuated enormously over the course of seven weeks and in an atmosphere of unrelenting tension.
Siraj crossed the boundary after dropping Brook on Sunday, an error that appeared to have been likely to cost his team the game, making it fitting that he would be the main man.
Woakes ran bravely in awe of the pain and didn’t have a ball as the not-out batsman.
“I didn’t anticipate him batting with one hand and coming out like that.” After his team completed a lap of honor, Gill thanked him.
