Israel’s Genocide Day 388: Ongoing Israeli assault rips through northern Gaza, shuts down Kamal Adwan Hospital
The last functioning hospital in north Gaza is forced out of service as Israeli forces continue to besiege and bomb Jabalia and Beit Lahia. In southern Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to take heavy losses.
Casualties
· 43,020 + killed* and at least 101,110 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
· 763+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 2,672 Lebanese killed and more than 12,468 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
· The Israeli army recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 5,065 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on October 28, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of October 27, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 28, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Israeli forces withdraw from a major hospital in northern Gaza.
By Hiba YazbekReporting from Jerusalem, October 28, 2024
“An Israeli military official said that Israeli forces had left the facility, Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is one of the last functioning hospitals in the area, after detaining nearly 100 people who they said were suspected of being militants. … The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday that Israeli forces had ‘detained or expelled all the medical staff’ at the hospital, and that only one pediatrician remained there. … The Israeli military official added that Israeli troops had dismantled oxygen tanks at the hospital to ensure that they weren’t booby-trapped.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/28/world/israel-gaza-iran-lebanon
The Israeli military said on Monday that its forces had withdrawn from a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip after a three-day raid during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all of the medical workers at the complex were detained and two children died.
An Israeli military official said that Israeli forces had left the facility, Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is one of the last functioning hospitals in the area, after detaining nearly 100 people who they said were suspected of being militants. Israeli forces had stormed the hospital on Friday after firefights in the surrounding area, as the military continued a weekslong offensive in northern Gaza against Hamas fighters.
There were no major gun battles inside the hospital complex once troops entered, according to the Israeli military official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the operation.
The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday that Israeli forces had “detained or expelled all the medical staff” at the hospital, and that only one pediatrician remained there. The statement also called on international organizations to send medical teams to the hospital and urged people with surgical skills in Gaza to come to the hospital to save those who could be saved among the wounded and sick.
The Israeli military official added that Israeli troops had dismantled oxygen tanks at the hospital to ensure that they weren’t booby-trapped. “We haven’t damaged the medical infrastructure, but specific findings that we had there we had to dismantle, and that’s the reason we’ve seen damage,” he said.
Last Thursday, a U.N. World Health Organization team that visited the hospital to deliver supplies reported a chaotic scene, with injured people lying on the floors and medical staff overwhelmed. The next morning, the Gaza health ministry said that Israeli forces had stormed the complex and were “detaining hundreds of patients, medical staff and some displaced people,” and the W.H.O.’s director said it had lost contact with staff at the hospital.
Later on Friday, the health ministry said that the situation at the hospital was “alarmingly deteriorating” as Israeli troops searched it and fired shots, causing panic among the roughly 600 people inside. Two children in the intensive care unit died after generators stopped working during the Israeli military operation, the ministry said.
The Israeli military did not comment on the reports that patients had died. It said in a statement on Monday that the hospital had been provided with medical and other supplies, including fuel and blood, and that 88 patients, caregivers and staff members had been relocated to other hospitals in Gaza in recent weeks.
Israeli forces had previously besieged and raided Kamal Adwan Hospital last December and detained its director. This month, the Gaza health ministry said the hospital was one of three that the Israeli military had ordered to evacuate as its forces launched a new offensive targeting what it said was a Hamas resurgence in northern Gaza.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.
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2) In Western North Carolina, Helene’s Devastation Is Threatening Health Care Access
Dozens of volunteer doctors, nurses and psychologists traveled to the region to treat people whose routines, including medical appointments, were disrupted by the storm.
By Emily Cochrane, Reporting from Swannanoa, N.C., Oct. 28, 2024
Doctors speaking with Tina Abbott in her home in Swannanoa, N.C., earlier this month. Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
Tina Abbott had already been struggling to stay on top of her medical issues. There was the pain from a tear in her arm tissue, the cyst on her spine and the chronic breathing problems that required a portable oxygen tank, which she had refinanced her car to afford.
Then Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, forcing her to cancel an appointment for lab work. When a trio of volunteer doctors arrived at her home days later, Ms. Abbott, 67, was sitting in her dark living room, without reliable cell service or running water.
With the region essentially shut down, she was worried about how she would get oxygen refills and blood tests to monitor the impact of her many medications on her organs.
“If this goes on forever,” she told the volunteer doctors, “it’s going to be a problem.”
Even before the storm sent floodwaters raging through this slice of mountainous Appalachia, the largely rural region had a lot of people in poor health, with medical care often challenging to get. And while North Carolina’s recent expansion of Medicaid has allowed many more residents with limited income to get health coverage, the hurricane’s devastation is hindering that progress, at least for now.
The storm is among the deadliest in the nation’s history. After making landfall in Florida’s Gulf Coast in late September, Helene tore through the Southeast, killing more than 200 people and decimating hundreds of homes and businesses. The devastation is particularly acute in western North Carolina, where floodwaters swept away entire communities and destroyed much of its mountainous infrastructure.
“The health care infrastructure in western North Carolina is already so fragile,” said Kody H. Kinsley, the North Carolina secretary of health and human services. The hurricane, he added, has shone “a bright light on that already fragile system.”
Several hospitals in both North Carolina and Tennessee remain closed, including one in Erwin, Tenn., where dozens of patients and staff members had to be rescued on the day the storm hit.
In western North Carolina, some hospitals are still relying on bottled water or mobile water units.
Nancy Lindell, a spokeswoman for Mission Health in North Carolina, said that the hospital in Asheville still lacks potable municipal water, and tanks are pumping in more than 200,000 gallons into the hospital each day.
In a region where it was already difficult to recruit and retain medical staff, some providers are also worried about the consequences of lost revenue, and about supporting staff members who may have suffered personal losses from the storm.
“How do we attract someone to come into the area at this moment?” said Kim Wagenaar, the chief executive of Western North Carolina Community Health Services, which serves 13 counties in the region. She added, “It’s just going to take a long time to really mitigate the effects of this disaster.”
The health disparities in the Appalachian region can be traced in part to the 2008 recession, which dealt an economic blow from which many of the area’s rural communities have not fully recovered. Increased levels of poverty heightened health challenges, including depression and addiction.
“When something like this happens in vulnerable communities,” said Michael Meit, the director of the Center for Rural Health and Research at East Tennessee State University, “it tends to have worse outcomes, and the recovery is harder.”
The aftermath of the storm could create new health problems, such as injuries sustained during cleanup and issues from contaminated water. Health officials have called for storm survivors in flood-damaged homes and people cleaning up debris to take extra precautions. Dust from the mud could exacerbate asthma and breathing issues, for example.
Many residents are also experiencing the psychological stress of grief, loss and trauma, with the death toll at nearly 100 in the state. Even the constant sound of helicopters overhead, many of which are delivering aid, has made people anxious. One doctor described an uptick in anxiety stemming from the financial toll the storm took on many residents, after it snatched away homes, cars and jobs.
Shortly after the storm, Richard Ball, 60, was helping his sister-in-law clear away some of the waterlogged debris inside her home. He suffered two heart attacks earlier this year, he said, adding, “If I get tired, I’ll sit down.”
His sister-in-law, Brenda Ball, had fallen days earlier, and the bruise and cut were still visible above her right eye. But she could not seek treatment with her car buried under a collapsed part of her house.
Dozens of volunteer doctors, nurses and psychologists have driven or flown into the region to treat people still lacking reliable transportation, roads or access to medical care. Their work is meant not only to relieve the strain on local emergency workers and hospitals, volunteers said, but to keep a log of residents’ health problems while regular appointments remain hard to get.
“I’ve been chomping at the bit to get out here,” Pat Tucker, 61, an urgent care doctor from Oxford, Miss., told Ms. Abbott, the 67-year-old with several medical issues, when he knocked on her door in Swannanoa, one of the worst-hit towns. Along with two family medicine doctors from the Asheville area, he gently pressed her about her health problems, made sure that neighbors could help her and promised to see if he could get her an oxygen regulator.
In Swannanoa, which has about 5,500 residents, an athletic trainer, a school nurse and a number of family medicine specialists worked in the parking lot of a church to set up a temporary clinic and filtered through reports of residents who needed medication refills, oxygen, insulin or simply a wellness check.
Pharmacists raced from store to store, calling in prescriptions and determining how best to get them distributed. Some people were going into withdrawal, several providers said, because they could not get the addiction medication they normally took to stave it off, or the substance they were dependent on.
About a month after the storm, the makeshift clinic had seen about 500 patients, not counting home visits. “You just jump in and figure out how,” said Shanda Bradley, 47, an athletic trainer from outside Asheville.
Mr. Kinsley said the work the volunteers were doing could help build faith in medical providers in a deeply independent community.
“True health care access moves at the speed of trust,” he said, adding that “it’s just going to be a long haul.”
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3) Britain Braces for ‘Painful’ Budget Meant to Recharge the Economy
The new Labour Party government said it had inherited a challenging financial position and warned of tax increases and spending cuts when it reveals its budget this week.
By Eshe Nelson, Reporting from London, Oct. 28, 2024
The Labour Party has said it would not raise taxes on working people, but its promises leave it little room to maneuver on the budget. Credit...Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times
As Britain’s Labour Party government prepares to deliver its first budget this week, the message to Britons for the past few months has been a dispiriting warning that they may not like what they hear.
The budget, which will be announced in Parliament on Wednesday, will be “painful,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. The Treasury, the department responsible for laying out the government’s tax and spending plans, has repeated a relentless mantra: “Difficult decisions” are coming.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, faces the difficulty of setting out a fiscal plan that adheres to Labour’s campaign promises, even though those promises offer little room to maneuver.
Ms. Reeves has vowed “no return to austerity,” which many have interpreted as avoiding cuts to public spending while also promising not to raise taxes on working people. The government has said it will stick to strict rules to push down debt levels and increase investment in an effort to make Britain the fastest-growing economy in the Group of 7 nations.
“It’s a very, very challenging situation,” said Isabel Stockton, an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, adding that there was pressure to spend more on benefits and public services.
“She’s kind of boxed in on those parameters,” Dr. Stockton said of Ms. Reeves. “And then she’s additionally boxed herself in with the commitments she’s made on tax.”
The British government is not alone in making unpopular choices after deficits across Europe increased because governments spent heavily to support households and businesses through pandemic lockdowns and an energy crisis. High interest rates have also raised the cost of government debt. This month, France announced a round of severe spending cuts and tax increases to head off a financial crunch.
The budget announcement on Wednesday has been imbued with a sense of historic importance. It will be the first one by a Labour government in 14 years and the first delivered by a female chancellor of the Exchequer. But it has also been deemed by analysts as a chance for the Labour Party to set its agenda for the rest of the Parliament and as a make-or-break moment after the government’s turbulent early months, which were rocked by criticism over the acceptance of gifts and the resignation of the prime minister’s chief of staff.
Despite the dour messaging, recent economic news in Britain has been relatively positive. The economy grew faster than expected in the first half of the year, recovering from a recession. Last Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its forecast for Britain’s economic growth this year to 1.1 percent, from 0.7 percent three months ago. Inflation has dropped to 1.7 percent, and investors are betting that the Bank of England will have to ramp up the pace of interest rate cuts, easing the pressure on mortgage holders and businesses.
Still, the government has not swayed from its message that it will have to make tough choices to ensure fiscal stability and restore long-term economic growth.
After a surge in spending during the pandemic and a spike in inflation, government debt levels are high and interest payments have ballooned. Many public services, including prisons, courts and social care, are stretched. In her first few weeks as chancellor, Ms. Reeves declared that she had inherited a “hole in the public finances” amounting to 22 billion pounds, or $28 billion, because of overspending by the previous government.
“It’s welcome that the I.M.F. have upgraded our growth forecast for this year, but I know there is more work to do,” Ms. Reeves said in a statement on Tuesday. “That is why the budget next week will be about fixing the foundations to deliver change.”
Ms. Reeves has said she will increase some taxes this week. If she wants to bolster departmental budgets and keep other election manifesto pledges, she’ll need to raise £25 billion in taxes, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated, noting that it is common for the first budget of new governments to substantially increase taxes.
But the Labour Party has already ruled out increasing income tax; National Insurance, an employment-based tax; and the value-added tax, a type of sales tax, complicating the calculations. The three taxes made up about 60 percent of the government’s revenue last fiscal year. This year, Ms. Reeves is to increase to capital gains tax and inheritance tax instead.
There is also speculation that the government could raise the employer contributions of National Insurance, which funds state benefits, including pensions. But that would breach the government’s vow not to raise taxes on working people, some analysts have said, because companies are likely to pass the cost on to employees by scaling back wage increases.
Some companies are “scratching their heads a little bit,” said Duncan Edwards, the chief executive of BritishAmerican Business, a trans-Atlantic lobby group. “The language has been about delivering a pro-growth program,” he added, but “the action — or at least the telegraphed action — has been to do things which are likely to discourage growth.”
The government needs to show how the budget would increase economic growth and how it fits with other policies, such as the new industrial strategy, to ensure that Britain is more attractive than its European neighbors as a place to invest, Mr. Edwards said.
Still, there are likely to be some welcome announcements in the budget. For example, the Treasury has already announced more money toward affordable housing projects. And in a break with her predecessor, Ms. Reeves also plans to change fiscal rules to give the government more room to borrow for investment for big projects, most likely by changing which measure of debt the government uses when it calculates debt levels over five years’ time. Ms. Reeves has not confirmed what the new measure will be, but she wrote in The Financial Times on Thursday that the changes would mean that expected declines in public sector investment would not go ahead.
Changing that measure “could make quite a big difference” for investment, said Dr. Stockton, the Institute for Fiscal Studies economist. But the bigger issue with the debt rule is that it can be heavily influenced by small changes to economic forecasts far in the future.
“That’s not going to be solved by targeting a different measure; that would be solved by thinking more carefully about the design of the rule itself,” Dr. Stockton said.
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4) Dozens are killed in a strike on a building in northern Gaza, Palestinian agencies say.
By Victoria Kim, Hiba Yazbek and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, October 29, 2024
Displaced Palestinians ordered by Israeli military to evacuate northern Gaza flee during Israeli military assault, October 25, 2024. (photo: © Mahmoud Issa/Quds Net News via Zuma press wire/APA images)
An Israeli strike on a residential building in a northern Gaza town killed dozens of people early Tuesday, the territory’s emergency service said.
The service, the Palestinian Civil Defense, said 55 people were killed in the strike. The territory’s health ministry said there were 93 dead, including 25 children.
A five-story structure where about 150 people were sheltering in the town of Beit Lahia was struck around dawn, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of the strike. Many of the structures still standing in Gaza are heavily overcrowded, with multiple families sheltering in the fewer and fewer buildings that remain.
Israeli forces have waged a renewed offensive in northern Gaza in recent weeks, responding to what they say is a regrouping of Hamas fighters there. They have repeatedly bombarded Beit Lahia. Gaza health officials said that after a strike on a residential building on Oct. 20, 87 people were killed or missing; that toll was disputed by Israel’s military, which said the numbers from Gaza officials did not align with its initial assessment.
On Sunday, the civil defense said that dozens of people had been killed and wounded in Beit Lahia over the weekend in Israeli strikes. Israel’s military said it had carried out a “precise strike” targeting Hamas fighters.
Some of those injured in the latest strike were being taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, according to Wafa. The hospital was stormed by the Israeli military in a three-day raid that ended on Monday, during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all of the medical workers at the complex were detained or expelled. The facility is one of the last functioning hospitals in the area.
The civil defense said its ability to respond to emergencies and carry out rescues has been hampered in the past week by the Israeli offensive.
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said in a statement on Monday that he was “shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction” in northern Gaza and that Israel was turning away efforts to deliver humanitarian supplies, putting lives in danger.
Here are the latest developments.
An Israeli strike on a residential building in a northern Gaza town killed dozens of people early Tuesday, the territory’s emergency service said, in the latest attack to cause mass casualties in the area since Israel renewed its offensive against the militant group Hamas in the north.
The Palestinian Civil Defense, the emergency service, said at least 55 people were killed in the strike on a building in the town of Beit Lahia. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 93 people were dead, including 25 children. The Israeli military said in a statement that it was “aware of reports that civilians were harmed” in the town and was looking into the details. The statement said the area had previously been evacuated, calling it “an active combat zone.”
Israeli forces renewed their offensive in northern Gaza this month, saying they were trying to stem a regrouping of Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the war in Gaza.
The strike comes days after another Israeli attack on a residential block in Beit Lahia, which left dozens of people killed or wounded, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense. The Israeli military confirmed the strike on Sunday, saying that the air force had “conducted a precise strike” targeting Hamas fighters, and that it had taken steps to “mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
An overnight Israeli airstrike hit another residential building in the town on Oct. 20, killing dozens of people, Palestinian officials and emergency workers said.
Roughly 400,000 people remain in northern Gaza, according to the United Nations, and many have been trapped in their ruined neighborhoods. The United Nations has warned of catastrophic living conditions and the risk of famine.
Here's what else to know:
· New Hezbollah leader: The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah named Naim Qassem, the group’s longtime deputy, as its new secretary general on Tuesday, replacing Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in Israeli airstrikes south of Beirut last month.
· Israel and UNRWA: Israel’s Parliament passed two laws on Monday that could threaten the work of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, by barring its operations in the country. In doing so, Israel defied calls from the Biden administration, which has warned that the legislation could prompt an even greater humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
· Strikes in Lebanon: More than 50 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the Baalbek district in eastern Lebanon on Monday, and over 100 were wounded, according to Bachir Khodr, the regional governor. It was the deadliest day in the area since last October, he said, which is when Hezbollah began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
· Israel vs. Iran: Israel and Iran, which have traded major military attacks in recent weeks, exchanged threats and denunciations at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday. Iran’s ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, told the Council that “Iran reserves its inherent right to respond at a time of its choosing to this act of aggression.”
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5) Israel’s Parliament Passes Bills Banning Agency That Aids Palestinians
Most of the provisions of the laws, which could threaten UNRWA’s work by barring its operations in the country, will not take effect for three months.
By Aaron Boxerman and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Published Oct. 28, 2024, Updated Oct. 29, 2024
Israeli soldiers next to UNRWA offices in central Gaza in February, photographed during an escorted tour. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Israel’s Parliament passed two laws on Monday that could threaten the work of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, by barring its operations in the country. In doing so, Israel defied calls from the Biden administration, which has warned that the legislation could prompt an even greater humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Most of the laws’ provisions will not take effect for three months, and their full legal ramifications were not immediately clear. The relief agency has played a critical role in coordinating desperately needed humanitarian aid.
Israel has criticized UNRWA for decades, arguing that its work aiding Palestinian refugees and their descendants further perpetuated the longstanding territorial conflict with Israel. The Israeli government has accused a handful of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel last year that triggered the war.
The legislation passed on Monday night had the potential to push the agency’s operations into precarious and uncharted territory.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under pressure from Israel’s allies, including the United States, not to move against the agency, and it was unclear how or whether the law would ultimately be implemented.
However, he has consistently excoriated the agency in the past, and hours after the bills passed, his office released a statement that said: “UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable. Since avoiding a humanitarian crisis is also essential, sustained humanitarian aid must remain available in Gaza now and in the future.”
The statement continued: “In the 90 days before this legislation takes effect — and after — we stand ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security.”
Several governments including Germany and Spain immediately criticized the passage of the bills. In one example, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in a statement he was “gravely concerned,” and he said that the vote threatened the “entire international humanitarian response” in Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s head, said on social media that the move by the Knesset “sets a dangerous precedent.”
“These bills will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell,” Mr. Lazzarini added.
He also said that the move violated Israel’s obligations under international law, an accusation rejected by Israeli lawmakers.
Under the new legislation, UNRWA would be unable to “operate any representative office, provide any service, or conduct any activity, directly or indirectly, in Israel’s sovereign territory.” It also bars any Israeli government agency from having any contact with UNRWA or those operating on its behalf.
Both bills passed with overwhelming majorities: Each secured over 80 votes in Israel’s 120-member Parliament. Lawmakers from at least two centrist parties joined Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition in voting for the measures, reflecting mainstream backing.
Ron Katz, one of the bills’ sponsors and a member of the centrist Yesh Atid party, bluntly equated Hamas and the U.N. agency. “We are saying simply: Israel is breaking away from a terrorist organization, Hamas, which called itself UNRWA,” he said.
For decades, UNRWA has operated schools and clinics in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza, as well as some neighboring Arab states, serving Palestinians displaced in the war surrounding the establishment of Israel decades ago. The laws could compel UNRWA to close its office in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed, a move not recognized by much of the international community.
While the laws’ full consequences are not yet known, UNRWA would struggle to bring in international staff members if Israeli government agencies were barred from giving them employment visas. And it is unclear how the agency would coordinate the movement of its aid workers in Gaza with the Israeli military, even indirectly.
The United States and seven other countries, including Britain, France and Germany, had in recent days urged Israel not to ban UNRWA, arguing that its work was vital, not least for civilians in Gaza. More than 230 of the agency’s staff members have been killed since the start of the war in Gaza over a year ago.
Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III had warned Israel in a letter that “passage of this legislation could have implications under U.S. law.” That missive had threatened a potential weapons cutoff unless Israel took steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“We are deeply concerned by this proposed legislation,” Mr. Miller told reporters on Monday, shortly before the bills were passed. “They really play an irreplaceable role right now in Gaza, where they are on the front lines getting humanitarian assistance to the people who need it.”
“We continue to urge the government of Israel to pause the implementation of this legislation,” Mr. Miller added. “We urge them not to pass it at all. We will consider next steps based on what happens in the days ahead.”
Israel has increasingly worked to block the agency since January, when Israel’s government claimed that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza had participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. It later added what it said were other cases and argued that scores of the agency’s employees belonged to militant groups. Israel offered little evidence to support this allegation.
In August, U.N. investigators cleared 10 UNRWA employees of taking part in the Oct. 7 attacks, but the United Nations said that nine others were fired because of possible involvement. An independent review in April commissioned by the Unitd Nations found that UNRWA had “a more developed approach to neutrality” than other aid groups and other U.N. agencies.
Aid organizations say that Israeli efforts against UNRWA have weakened humanitarian efforts in the enclave, where the war has displaced most of the population, destroyed public sanitation and the health care system, and made food and potable water scarce. A report by experts this month warned again of famine.
Israeli officials have said that they are acting in compliance with international law and remain committed to providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, but that UNRWA should no longer operate in the enclave.
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6) Israel Demolished Hundreds of Buildings in Southern Lebanon, Videos and Satellite Images Show
At least 1,085 buildings have been destroyed or badly damaged since Israel’s invasion targeting the Hezbollah militia, including many in controlled demolitions, a New York Times analysis shows.
By Christiaan Triebert, Riley Mellen and Alexander Cardia, Oct. 30, 2024
Images of Ramyah, a village in southern Lebanon, before and after the Israeli military blew up at least 40 buildings in the past two weeks, according to a Times analysis.Munira Khayyat, via X; Georges Haddad, via X
Satellite imagery and videos show widespread destruction in six villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, revealing 1,085 buildings that have been leveled or badly damaged since its Oct. 1 invasion aimed at crippling the militant group Hezbollah.
Earlier this month, The New York Times, using satellite imagery, verified the destruction of scores of buildings in two other villages.
The images offer only a glimpse at the situation in southern Lebanon. There has been little access to the area since the invasion began and the extent of the damage is unclear.
Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah, which began launching rocket attacks from southern Lebanon in solidarity with Hamas after its Oct 7. attacks on Israel and the country’s ensuing retaliation in Gaza. Both Israel and Lebanon have since traded fire across the border.
Israel says its ground invasion is aimed at returning Israelis to border communities. The country has accused Hezbollah of placing military infrastructure in civilian areas, and said it had issued advance evacuation warnings to civilians in villages where it said Hezbollah had embedded. Many in the region have fled, with some towns entirely depopulated. The United Nations says 1.4 million people have been displaced across the country.
According to The Times’s latest analysis, one village, Mhaibib, appears to have been virtually flattened, with only a handful of buildings still standing. In five other villages and towns, entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble.
Videos posted to social media by the Israeli military and individual soldiers, and verified by The Times, show that at least 200 of the buildings were blown up in controlled demolitions, in which soldiers place and then remotely detonate explosives. Controlled demolitions were seen in five of the six towns: Blida, Kafr Kila, Mhaibib, Ramyah and Aita al Shaab. It couldn’t be determined how other buildings were damaged.
An Israeli military spokesperson did not directly address the destruction in specific villages, saying only that Israel was striking military targets to “counter the continuing threat Hezbollah poses to Israeli homes and families.”
In statements posted to social media, the Israeli military said that troops had found and destroyed Hezbollah tunnels underneath homes and other buildings in Meiss al-Jabal, Kafr Kila and Mhaibib, and under a hill in Aita al Shaab. It wasn’t possible to independently verify whether footage of tunnels was filmed in those towns. The Israeli military has also posted footage of tunnels it says were discovered elsewhere along the Lebanon-Israel border.
Hezbollah has made clear that it is active in the area. In statements on Telegram, the group said that it had targeted Israeli military positions in five of the villages. The group also said it had fought with Israeli forces in one of the villages, Aita al-Shaab.
Some international law experts have raised questions about the widespread nature of the destruction. Tom Dannenbaum, an associate professor of international law at Tufts University, said that nonmilitary structures may be targeted only if they are being used militarily, or if Israel has specific information that they are intended to be used that way. “It is not permitted to target an entire area in which there is a mix of military objectives and civilian objects,” he said.
The most severe destruction has been in the town of Meiss al-Jabal, which had a prewar population of about 8,000. At least 311 buildings were destroyed or badly damaged, The Times found.
In the nearby town of Blida at least 168 buildings were destroyed, with a mosque in an ancient building flattened and its minaret toppled.
In Aita al-Shaab, satellite imagery shows at least 206 buildings were destroyed, virtually flattening the entire eastern part of the village.
In Kafr Kila, the largest of the six communities that The Times analyzed, with a prewar population of about 10,000, at least 284 buildings were badly damaged or destroyed.
The small village of Mhaibib was also almost entirely destroyed in a controlled demolition, videos show. Satellite imagery shows that at least 76 buildings were destroyed, and only a few structures were still standing. A centuries-old shrine in the village was partly destroyed.
Satellite imagery showed that at least 40 buildings were destroyed in the village of Ramyah. One verified video posted to Instagram by an Israeli soldier, and posted to X by the Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi, shows soldiers counting down before detonating a large section of the village. The soldiers are heard cheering as a large smoke plume rises.
Aric Toler contributed reporting.
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7) Israel Orders Residents of City in Eastern Lebanon to Evacuate
Israel’s military warned civilians to leave Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley via three routes. The city had largely been spared Israeli bombardment until this week.
By Liam Stack and Christina Goldbaum, Oct. 30, 2024
Liam Stack reported from Tel Aviv, and Christina Goldbaum from Beirut.
The aftermath of a strike in the Haret Saida area near Sidon in Lebanon on Wednesday. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Israel’s military warned residents of the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon to evacuate on Wednesday, as it appeared to deepen its campaign against Hezbollah strongholds beyond the country’s south.
Baalbek, which had a population of roughly 80,000 people before Israel stepped up its attacks on the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah this month, is an important urban center in the Bekaa Valley and is famed for its towering Roman ruins. It is also well known as a city where Hezbollah holds sway.
But unlike other places where the group enjoys support, the city of Baalbek has largely been spared Israeli bombardment. In a signal that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah may be widening, Baalbek was one of two urban areas to be targeted by Israel in recent days after largely escaping the brunt of the war.
The warnings came amid renewed diplomatic efforts to reach a truce, according to three officials briefed on the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
No agreement has been reached, but Israel is pushing for an arrangement in which Hezbollah would be given several weeks to withdraw its forces from the Israel-Lebanon border, allowing Lebanon’s official army — which had been sidelined by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon over the past two decades — to fill the void, according to two of the officials.
Israel also wants to be guaranteed the right to invade Lebanon if Hezbollah does not withdraw fast enough, the two officials said.
In a statement posted online on Wednesday, Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, posted a map showing Baalbek and two neighboring towns, Ain Bourday and Douris, as part of a danger zone marked in red, with three evacuation routes authorized by the Israeli military.
“The I.D.F. will act forcefully against Hezbollah interests within your city and villages and does not intend to harm you,” Mr. Adraee said. “For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move outside the city and villages.”
The evacuation warning comes two days after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 60 people in the Bekaa district, which includes the city and its rural hinterland, Lebanese officials said. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 58 others were injured in the attacks.
The farmland and villages around the city of Baalbek have been hit by airstrikes numerous times in recent weeks, leaving many of the small towns largely deserted. Ibrahim Bayan, a deputy to the mayor in Baalbek, said earlier this month that about two-thirds of the residents in the city itself had left their homes out of fear.
As people in Baalbek received the evacuation warnings by text message late Wednesday morning, a sense of alarm seized the streets of the city, Mr. Bayan said.
“People are panicking,” Mr. Bayan said. “They are running around and bumping into each other, like chickens with their heads cut off. They have no idea what to do, where to go.”
Within minutes, the roads filled with residents who threw their valuables into plastic bags, locked their houses and pulled metal grates over their shop doors, he said. As people crammed into cars, they shouted to each other to determine the safest way to leave the city.
Others opted to remain in the city, unsure where they would go or how they would get there.
Baalbek is in one of Lebanon’s most underdeveloped regions and many residents do not have the means to flee, some said.
“Gas stations are closed, but even if they were open, people don’t have money to fill up their cars’ tanks,” said Mahmoud Zikra, a resident of Baalbek who remained in his home. “There are no vans or taxis — even if they were available no one can afford to hire them.”
The warning from Israel’s military included a village in Baalbek’s southern suburbs that connects the city to the region’s main highway, cutting off a standard route for residents trying to leave the valley.
Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, gave his first televised speech on Wednesday afternoon, a day after he was named to the position. He replaced Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s longtime leader, whom Israel assassinated last month.
In the speech, which was delivered as the group fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel, Mr. Qassem effusively praised his predecessor, and said Hezbollah “will continue to implement the war strategy he developed.”
Fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah continued elsewhere in Lebanon. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 sites across the country in the previous 24 hours, including a rocket launch site used in a deadly strike on the Israeli town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha on Tuesday. It also said it had killed a large number of Hezbollah fighters in what it called “limited, localized, targeted raids.”
Mr. Adraee said one of the fighters killed by Israeli forces was Mustafa Ahmed Shehadi, whom he called a prominent commander in the group’s elite Radwan Force. Hezbollah did not comment on the claim.
Mr. Shehadi was killed in a strike on Nabatieh, a large southern town, Mr. Adraee said. On Wednesday, the military also issued evacuation warnings for eight small towns in the district surrounding Nabatieh, urging their residents to move north of the Awali River.
On Tuesday night, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in the coastal city of Sidon in southern Lebanon, according to a report by the country’s national news agency. It said the strike injured at least 36 others. Until recently, attacks on Sidon, one of Lebanon’s largest cities, and the areas around it, had been rare.
Hezbollah said its forces had battled Israeli troops in recent days near the border town of Kfar Kila and the mountain town of Khiam, which is well known in Lebanon as the former site of a prison camp run by allies of Israel during its two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon.
The camp was turned into a museum by the Lebanese government after Israel withdrew in 2000, although it was later destroyed by an Israeli airstrike during the 2006 war in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s claims could not be independently verified. The national news agency reported that Israeli soldiers near Khiam were “attempting to infiltrate the town under heavy fire” on Wednesday and that Israel’s air force had conducted multiple raids on the area.
Jacob Roubai , Hwaida Saad, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.
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8) Three Mile Island, Notorious in Nuclear Power’s Past, May Herald Its Future
The Pennsylvania plant, site of the worst U.S. nuclear energy accident, is at the forefront of efforts to expand nuclear capacity to meet rising electricity demand.
By Rebecca F. Elliott, Photographs by George Etheredge for The New York Times, Reporting from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., Oct. 30, 2024
The concrete cooling towers that rise from a sliver of land south of Pennsylvania’s capital became symbols nearly a half-century ago of the risks of nuclear energy.
Now, a plan to restart one of the two reactors at Three Mile Island is at the leading edge of efforts to greatly expand the country’s reliance on atomic fission to meet the growing power demands of homes, businesses and data centers.
Refurbishing this aging plant — a fenced-off maze of pipes, valves, pumps and turbines in the middle of the Susquehanna River — depends on the financial backing of Microsoft. The technology giant has agreed to buy all of the electricity the plant generates, most likely starting in 2028, for 20 years.
Three Mile Island’s proposed revival reflects how vastly the perspectives on nuclear power in the United States have shifted since a cooling failure led to the partial meltdown of one of the island’s reactors in 1979.
Once the target of fierce opposition, nuclear power plants are now coveted for generating large amounts of electricity around the clock without releasing the emissions that contribute to climate change.
What’s less clear is whether expanding U.S. nuclear capacity will pencil out economically.
Resuscitating the Three Mile Island reactor that didn’t suffer a partial meltdown amounts to an early test of whether an industry known for blowing timelines and budgets can deliver on its promises.
Joseph Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation Energy, which bought the reactor in 1999, is confident that he is laying the groundwork not just to bring Three Mile Island back to life but also to add further to the company’s nuclear power fleet, the largest in the country.
“Twelve months from now, Constellation will have started on the path towards building new reactors,” Mr. Dominguez said in a recent interview.
No reactor set to close permanently has been brought back online in the United States, and only three new ones have been completed in the past quarter-century. The last two, built in Georgia, arrived seven years late and cost around $35 billion, more than twice as much as planned. Others have fared even worse: Utilities spent roughly $9 billion on two nuclear reactors in South Carolina before abandoning the project in 2017.
If Constellation and others succeed in scaling up nuclear power — currently around 19 percent of the U.S. electricity mix — the result would largely be due to the financial backing of some of the world’s most valuable companies. These plants would also be eligible for federal tax credits.
Microsoft is effectively paying Constellation to bring Three Mile Island back online, while Google and Amazon recently struck deals with start-ups developing smaller reactors that they hope will power up in the 2030s.
All three tech giants pledged to decarbonize their operations, but their data centers are consuming huge amounts of energy, making those goals more difficult to meet.
If this proves to be another false start for the nuclear industry, it will mean all the money in the world wasn’t enough to overcome the technological and regulatory hurdles to expanding the use of fission, in which atoms are split to create heat and make steam that is used to generate electricity.
“It’s an industry with a really substantial burden of proof based on all of the disappointments — all of the very expensive disappointments,” said Peter A. Bradford, who served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in March 1979.
It was then that America began to fall out of love with nuclear power.
Ken Bryan was on the island, working the night shift, when the telephone rang. It was just after 4 a.m., and alarms were sounding in Unit 2, the newer of the island’s two reactors. The warnings came so quickly — hundreds of them — that the control-room printer couldn’t keep up.
It later became clear that a valve designed to regulate pressure in the reactor had become stuck in an open position, allowing cooling water to escape as steam. The core overheated, and the plant released radioactive material.
“The reactor’s supposed to get hot, but not that hot,” Mr. Bryan, 80, said in an interview.
Some six miles away, Patricia Longenecker was asleep on the farm she shared with her husband and two young children. Hours later, she heard the news come over the radio, and soon it was just about all her neighbors could talk about.
“There isn’t a person in this room this evening who hasn’t asked the question, ‘How much radiation has my family received?’” she would testify that spring, during a state hearing at her children’s elementary school. “How is it going to affect our health?”
Studies ultimately found that the radiation had a “negligible” effect on people’s physical health and the environment, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Public backlash was swift, however — and grew after the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. Facing steep construction costs and heightened public opposition, dozens of planned reactor projects were canceled.
Three Mile Island’s undamaged reactor, down for refueling during the accident, remained offline for six years. It resumed operations in 1985 over the objections of residents and activists, providing power for nearly 34 years before shutting down in 2019 as utilities opted for cheaper electricity from natural gas plants.
By early 2023, Constellation was exploring whether to fuel it up again as long-flat U.S. electricity demand was poised to rise.
In addition, the dangers posed by climate change have become more visible in the wildfires scorching the West and the hurricanes buffeting the Southeast.
Nuclear power had also grown more popular, with 56 percent of U.S. adults favoring new plants, up from 43 percent in 2016, according to Pew Research Center surveys.
“The trade-off is: Are you concerned about the dangers of nuclear power, or are you more concerned about the dangers of climate change?” said Patrick McDonnell, who previously led Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection. “Climate change is the biggest issue we face.”
Last fall, an energy technology company, Holtec International, said it was formally seeking federal permission to restart the Palisades nuclear plant on the edge of Lake Michigan near Kalamazoo, Mich. Palisades had shut down just a year earlier.
Within months, Microsoft and Constellation were in talks to revive the Three Mile Island reactor. Microsoft had committed to being “carbon negative” by 2030, but its emissions climbed 29 percent between its 2020 and 2023 fiscal years — and its energy needs are only rising.
Goldman Sachs projects that U.S. power demand will grow more than 2 percent a year on average through the end of the decade, with data centers consuming around 8 percent of the country’s electricity by 2030, up from roughly 3 percent now.
The day Constellation announced in September that it would spend around $1.6 billion to restart Three Mile Island — a plant big enough to power more than 700,000 homes and employ upward of 700 people — the company’s stock rose 22 percent.
Mr. Bryan, now living in South Carolina, read about Constellation’s plans on a Facebook group for Three Mile Island retirees. “That’s wonderful,” he thought.
For Ms. Longenecker, who still lives on the same farm, the news was more difficult. “We thought this was behind us,” said the 81-year-old, who worries history will repeat at Three Mile Island.
Constellation and Microsoft haven’t disclosed the financial terms of their deal, but the investment bank Jefferies estimated that Microsoft may have agreed to pay $110 to $115 per megawatt-hour, or nearly double the market rate for wholesale electricity.
“In their wildest dreams, Joe never thought that he could get the offtake agreement he got from Microsoft,” said Jigar Shah, director of the Energy Department’s loan programs office, referring to Mr. Dominguez, Constellation’s chief executive.
From across the Susquehanna River, Three Mile Island looks much as it did when it was operating, only there’s no water vapor billowing from the cooling towers.
Inside, the turbine building is cool and largely empty, the quiet interrupted by the low rumble of an air compressor and the chatter of valves. When the plant is running, it can be around 80 degrees inside and so loud it’s necessary to shout.
Constellation anticipates that the reactor vessel won’t require any repairs, and the steam generators — costly equipment that help produce electricity — were replaced about 15 years ago. The company had them inspected in May and said it found no corrosion.
The main power transformers that connect the plant to the grid will need to be replaced at a cost of around $100 million. The plant is also getting a new name: the Crane Clean Energy Center.
“We know how to run this reactor, so as long as the equipment is in good shape, the level of complexity here is — I would describe it as significantly lower than building a new reactor,” Mr. Dominguez said.
Unexpected hurdles could arise, and meaningfully expanding nuclear capacity would require not only reviving shuttered reactors but also building new ones.
Just one reactor besides Palisades and Three Mile Island is considered to be in good enough shape for revival: NextEra Energy’s Duane Arnold plant near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which shut down in 2020.
The company is “very interested” in restarting it, NextEra’s chief executive, John W. Ketchum, said recently. Still, he noted that “new resources need to be built to meet new demand.”
To make it more economically feasible to build reactors, companies will need to manufacture many of them rather than one-off models, the Energy Department has said. Adding new reactors to existing nuclear sites would further reduce costs and other hurdles.
Mr. Dominguez said Constellation was exploring with clients what such an undertaking would entail, including who would shoulder certain risks.
“We’ll pick a technology that we think is being successfully deployed by others and where we have a chance to effectively buy the next, call it the next six, units from a company that’s already built the first six,” Mr. Dominguez said.
Some investors remain wary.
“We’re going to need new nuclear,” said Bobby Edemeka, a portfolio manager at investment manager Jennison Associates, which holds around $300 million in Constellation stock. But, he added, “I personally won’t be investing in those companies that are building new nuclear until the industry has proven that it’s possible to get these done on time and on budget.”
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9) Big Fire Breaks Out at Nuclear Submarine Plant in Britain
The authorities said there was no nuclear risk. Two people with smoke inhalation received treatment at a hospital.
By Claire Moses, Reporting from London, Oct. 30, 2024
The entrance to the BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, England. Credit...Tom Skipp/Bloomberg
A large fire broke out at a nuclear submarine plant in northwestern England early Wednesday morning. Two people were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, according to a spokesman for BAE Systems, the company that owns the plant, but the police said that there was no nuclear risk.
The fire started after midnight local time at the plant, in Barrow-in-Furness, England, which produces vessels for the Royal Navy. As of 7:30 a.m., emergency workers were still at the site, the police said, and firefighters were likely to be working for much of the rest of the day.
The police advised residents in the area to keep the windows and doors in their homes shut. They also recommended people driving in the area to close their “windows, air vents and sunroof, and turn off fans. Turn off fans and air conditioning if you have them.”
Neither BAE Systems nor the local authorities provided a cause for the blaze. The company said that it was working with emergency services at the site and that all its workers had been accounted for. The two employees taken to the hospital had been released by 9 a.m. local time, according to a BAE Systems spokesman.
BAE Systems employs about 100,000 people across 40 countries and works with many other nations, including the United States. In December, the Biden administration awarded the company a federal grant from a program aimed at shoring up American manufacturing of semiconductors.
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