Category World News

According to health officials, at least 15 people have died from starvation in the besieged Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including a six-week-old baby.

Yoursef’s family, according to his uncle, Adham al-Safadi, was unable to locate baby formula for six-week-old.

He told the Reuters news agency, “You can’t find milk anywhere, and if you do find any, it’s $100 for a tub.”

Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, 13, who passed away in a hospital in Khan Younis, was one of the 15 people who died on Tuesday from starvation.

At least 101 people have died from hunger and malnutrition since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in October 2023, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health. 80 of those victims are children. The majority of the deaths occurred recently.

Since Israel stopped all deliveries to the territory in March, Gaza’s food stocks have run out. The US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is largely unrelated to the UN, then partially lifted the blockade in May, allowing a small flow of aid to enter the territory and be distributed by it.

The UN rights office reports that more than 1, 000 Palestinians have died since May while attempting to get aid, mostly close to GHF distribution points.

Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, described the aid distribution program as a “sadistic death trap.”

The ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a “sadistic death trap,” according to the author. According to Lazzarini, who spoke on X on Tuesday, “snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a license to kill.”

Israel accuses Hamas of swindling aid without providing proof of widespread divergence, and it points fingers at UN agencies for omitting food that Israel has allowed in.

The GHF disputed what it called “false and exaggerated statistics” from the UN.

“Horror show”

Lazzarini also warned that doctors and other humanitarian workers in Gaza were becoming drowsy and starving while on duty.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza as a “horror show” with “a level of death and destruction without precedent in recent times.”

Guatemala’s statement to the UN Security Council read, “We are witnessing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles.” The conditions are being removed from that system.

According to Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, malnourished Palestinians were “every moment” arriving at the hospital’s remaining functioning, and warned of ” alarming numbers” of deaths as a result of starvation.

Hospitals are already overburdened by the number of gunshot wound victims. Because of food and medication shortages, the spokesperson for Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Khalil al-Daqran, said, “They can’t provide much more help for hunger-related symptoms.”

According to Deqran, at least 60 000 pregnant women were among the 600 000 people who were battling malnutrition. He claimed that dehydration and anaemia are common among those who are experiencing hunger.

Aid organizations, doctors, and residents claim that baby formula is in a critical shortage while Gaza is plagued by widespread goods shortages caused by Israeli restrictions.

In response to the “synthetic genocide and criminal starvation” in the enclave, Hamas claimed in a statement that it was “time to break the restrictions” and allow for more aid to enter Gaza. Hamas also expressed surprise by the” silence “of Arab and Islamic countries” in the area.

Deadly attacks continue to happen.

At least 81 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Tuesday, according to medical sources, including 31 aid-seekers.

At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 were hurt in Israeli strikes on the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, according to Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense.

According to a source at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, an Israeli attack on a building that housed displaced Palestinians resulted in the deaths of 15 people, including six children.

Israeli airstrikes hit residential areas in the eastern part of the city, particularly the Zeitoun neighborhood, according to Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, who is a reporter from Gaza City. He claimed that a “group of people” was struck.

The attacks come a day after Israeli tanks for the first time since the deadly assault started to invade Deir el-Balah in central Gaza’s southern and eastern regions.

Despite claims by the Israeli army that its assault on Deir el-Balah has come to an end, many Palestinians are unable to return to their homes because they are in the firing line of heavy artillery, according to Mahmoud.

“The area is also surrounded by quadcopters and surveillance drones, creating a sense of fear and intimidation,” Mahmoud said.

On Tuesday, Bassal, the Civil Defense Agency, reported that two people died in Deir el-Balah.

Up until the Israeli offensive this week, the area was thought to be the only area in the tiny Strip that was considered to be largely safe, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In displacement camps, there were about 30 000 people.

Nearly 88 percent of the Gaza Strip’s population is now being forced into an ever-crowding space, according to OCHA, who estimates that the population is now threatening evacuation or living in militarized areas.

Meanwhile, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, accused Israeli troops of allowing them to interview male employees at gunpoint and handcuff them into their homes.

Gaza is now in a more dire malnutrition crisis as a result of Israel’s blockade. As the Strip’s population reaches its highest level, hospitals are overflowing with patients who have been denied access to food. Children are dying from malnutrition.

More than 230, 000 pages of once-classified files relating to Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK)’s murder have been made available by the White House almost six decades after his death in 1968.

After becoming president in January, Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying documents related to the assassinations of King, former President John F Kennedy and former Senator Robert F Kennedy.

The MLK files, in large part, support the long-held myth that the assassin James Earl Ray acted alone and without conclusive proof of a larger conspiracy.

The FBI’s surveillance and harassment of King, including attempts to discredit and intimidate him in the years leading up to his assassination, are well documented in the files released on Monday.

So what do the MLK files offer? What actions did the FBI take against him? Why did Trump just release them now, then?

What are the MLK files?

The MLK files are a treasure trove of documents that relate to King’s assassination in 1968 and the FBI’s ongoing surveillance of him throughout the 1950s and 1960s. After the FBI compiled the documents and gave them to the National Archives and Records Administration, the records were placed under a court-imposed seal in 1977.

The files include internal memos, wiretap transcripts, informant reports and correspondence from then-FBI Director J Edgar Hoover and senior officials, reflecting how the FBI viewed King as a political threat due to his civil rights activism.

The FBI’s covert attempt to discredit and intimidate King, which included bugging his hotels, breaking into his inner circle, and even writing him an unidentified letter urging him to commit suicide in 1964, is a major focus.

King’s ties to former Communist Party member Stanley Levison were used by the FBI to support illegal surveillance and attempts to undermine his reputation, and the FBI also falsely identified him as a communist sympathiser.

These operations were part of the FBI’s wider COINTELPRO programme, which targeted activists and dissenters across the country.

Did any new information emerge from the files?

The newly released MLK files do not reveal any dramatic new evidence about his assassination or secret plots.

The FBI conducted extensive surveillance, and Ray was convicted as the lone shooter, which was widely known in the files.

The FBI may have considered additional suspects after Ray, but the communications also suggest otherwise. Ray confessed to killing King in 1969 but later recanted and claimed he was framed.

Ray had been on the run for almost two months prior to his arrest. Before being extradited to the US, where he was found guilty and given a 99-year prison sentence, he fled to Canada, Portugal, and the UK. He died in April 1998 from complications related to kidney and liver disease.

The FBI continued to monitor King and conduct extensive surveillance and disinformation campaigns under Hoover’s direction in the documents. These methods, including anonymous threats and wiretaps, have been widely known for decades, especially since the church committee’s findings in the US Senate in the 1970s.

The new files appear to confirm this history while adding more granular details. They provide additional internal memos and internal records that support earlier accounts of the bureau’s efforts to discredit King and keep his activities in perspective.

Notably, the release does not include any fresh information about the King assassination that might have been related to Ray.

But King scholars would like to see the information the FBI was discussing and circulating as part of its investigation, Ryan Jones, director of history, interpretation and curatorial services at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee told The Associated Press news agency.

According to Jones, “That’s critical given the fact that the American public at the time wasn’t aware that the FBI that was overseeing a smear campaign while he was alive,” They merely ignored the same bureau that was receiving assassination threats against King.

What is the civil rights movement?

In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement fought for decades to put an end to racial segregation and prejudice against African Americans, primarily in the US.

Following World War II, Black Americans demanded equal treatment under the law and full access to the political, social, and economic rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, which was the root of centuries of resistance to slavery and racial injustice.

Led by figures such as Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, King and countless grassroots activists, the movement employed strategies ranging from peaceful protests and legal challenges to civil disobedience and mass mobilisation.

Landmark events like the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, the Alabama bus boycott in Alabama, the March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, all of which were under the control of the public. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were among the major legislative victories resulting from these efforts.

What did the FBI do during this operation?

The FBI’s counterintelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, a covert initiative launched by the FBI under Hoover, dominated the FBI’s operation against King.

Initiated in 1956, COINTELPRO targeted various organisations, but its focus on King and the broader civil rights movement intensified in the early 1960s, particularly as King’s prominence grew.

King was identified as a threat to national security by the FBI, who had a suspicion of communist influence in the civil rights movement, despite never having any proof of such a claim.

Through surveillance and psychological strategies, King’s activities are outlined in declassified documents as part of a coordinated effort to monitor his behavior, undercut his leadership, and tarnish his reputation in the public. Wiretaps were placed on King’s home and office phones, and hidden microphones were installed in hotel rooms where he stayed.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized these efforts in 1963, but they frequently turned on themselves to get slanderous information about King’s private life, particularly his extramarital affairs.

The FBI urged King to commit suicide to avoid public outcry in 1964 by sending an anonymous letter to him along with an audiotape it allegedly obtained from a contaminated hotel room to conceal his affairs.

The FBI’s operation against King, which continued until his assassination in 1968, reflected Hoover’s animosity and the agency’s broader paranoia about civil rights activism disrupting the status quo.

In a statement from the King family, it was stated that “he was relentlessly targeted by a deeply disturbing, predatory, and disinformation and surveillance campaign.“

Why was Trump’s release date?

The Trump administration released the MLK files despite opposition from his family and the political group he once led.

Attorney General Pamela Bondi stated in a statement that “the American people deserve answers decades after one of our country’s greatest leaders was killed.”

According to Trump’s request for the files to be made public, it was “in the national interest” to release the information. “Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth”, it said.

To mark the release of the files, Bondi hosted Alveda King, a conservative commentator and MLK’s niece, at the Department of Justice. Alveda expressed gratitude to Trump for “keeping their promise of transparency in the release of these documents on King’s assassination.”

The King family said in its statement that it had hoped to get an opportunity to review the files as a family before their public release.

King’s children described their father’s case as a “captivating public curiosity for decades,” but they also stressed that “these files must be viewed in their full historical context.

We ask those who sign up for the release of these files to show respect for our family’s ongoing grief, according to the statement.

Trump, have any other files been made public?

Trump declassified thousands of documents relating to the murders of former president John F. Kennedy (JFK) and his younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, before making the MLK files public, citing transparency as a result.

In March, the National Archives released tens of thousands of pages concerning JFK’s 1963 assassination, including previously redacted FBI and CIA records. The intelligence efforts of US surveillance efforts during the Cold War and the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald were provided in more detail in these documents.

The Trump administration then released more than 70, 000 pages relating to Senator Kennedy’s 1968 assassination, which were released from April to June. These records included FBI field reports, informant files and internal memos.

While many praised the most recent release, other leaders criticized Trump for making the president’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files a political distraction.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has called for Barack Obama’s arrest, refuting unproven assertions that the Democratic administration had purposefully misled the public about the 2016 election.

Trump accused Obama, a long-standing adversary, of helming a criminal conspiracy at Tuesday’s Oval Office meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

According to Trump, “Barack Hussein Obama was the gang’s leader,” the media reported.

“  He’s guilty. Treason was committed here. Every word you can think of was used to describe this. They attempted to sabotage the election. They attempted to obstruct the election. Nobody has ever imagined what they did, even in other nations.

President Trump has a history of spreading election-related lies, including by denouncing his own defeat in the 2020 election.

However, he has attempted to resolve problems with his victory in the 2016 presidential election, which has sparked concerns about Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the outcome.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) discovered that Russia had attempted to influence the outcomes of Trump’s second term in the wane in 2016. Obama reacted to the allegations by removing Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions on the nation.

Later, details about the Russian influence campaign were revealed in a 2017 intelligence community assessment.

However, a special counsel’s report found that there wasn’t enough evidence to refute the claim that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in 2019. However, it once more bolstered the government’s claim that Russia “infected the election in a comprehensive and systematic manner.”

Trump, however, has referred to these inquiries as politicized attacks meant to undermine his authority.

Trump cited recent assertions made by his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who claimed the Obama administration had committed wrongdoing in his appearance on Tuesday.

Trump remarked, “They caught President Obama absolutely cold.” There should be very harsh consequences for those who attempted to rig the election after being caught.

Obama attacks are re-enforced by Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump’s most recent comments regarding what he refers to as the “Russia hoax” come just days after Gabbard released a press release on the subject on July 18.

Gabbard’s office claims in the statement that “President Obama and his national security cabinet members produced and politicized intelligence” to create the framework for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.

After that release, Gabbard made a number of social media posts, some of which suggested she had requested that Obama be charged with bringing criminal charges against him. She described the 2016 election scrutiny as a “treasonous conspiracy.”

According to Gabbard, “Their goal was to usurp President Trump and sabotage the American people’s will.”

Every person connected to this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent permitted, she continued. We’re submitting all of our paperwork to the DOJ for a criminal referral.

However, Gabbard’s report’s veracity has been questioned a lot. She appears to be interpreting different conclusions, according to critics.

Gabbard has cited internal government documents from the 2016 election cycle that show that Russia did not use cyberattacks to change the vote count overall.

However, the intelligence report from 2017 did not make any claims about Russian election hacking attempts. Instead, it highlighted ways Russia used disinformation to influence public opinion.

Online smuggling, the distribution of hacked data, and targeted messaging about election-related individuals and groups were part of Russia’s campaign.

Other investigations into the matter, including a separate Department of Justice inspector general report and a Senate investigation led by Republicans, all demonstrated that Russia had attempted to influence the 2016 election.

Gabbard’s statements face backlash.

However, Gabbard’s claim that the Democratic Party’s scrutiny of the 2016 election was unlawful has sparked controversy.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia even questioned Gabbard’s decision to continue serving as director of national intelligence.

He wrote on social media that it is regrettable that DNI Gabbard, who promised to depoliticize the intelligence community, is once more using her position to amplify the president’s election conspiracy theories.

Gabbard’s claims were described in a statement released by Obama himself through his office as “bizarre.”

Nothing in the document released last week undermines the widely accepted notion that Russia aided in the 2016 presidential election without successfully manipulating votes, it said.

Some critics have suggested that Trump may be attempting to distract from his current political woes by handling files involving Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, in response to the years-old controversy surrounding Russian election interference.

Despite this, President Trump has refrained from contradicting Gabbard’s claims, even reposting a video that was created by artificial intelligence (AI) on Monday that showed Obama being handcuffed in the Oval Office while the YMCA was playing.

Trump said on Tuesday, “This is like proof that Obama was seditious and that he was trying to lead a coup.” Obama “headed it up,” he said.