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Dear Friend,
Since March 2025 the prison administration and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was aware that Mumia's eyesight deteriorated to 20/200 (legally blind). Mumia was not able to read, including his mail, nor retrieve phone numbers, or proceed with his research and writing to complete his Phd dissertation.
For over seven months no treatment was provided. On September 2, Mumia was treated for complications from cataract surgery a few years ago. However, he remains disabled and at risk of loss of sight in his other eye, damaged by severe diabetic retinopathy. He needs that treatment immediately.
This is an outrageous attack on an innocent prisoner serving a life-without-parole sentence! A long history of Mumia’s 43 years imprisoned (29 of them on death row), have shown that prison authorities, who are required to provide adequate health care, failed to do so, leading Mumia’s supporters to the conclusion that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has actively tried to disable and even kill him. (They tried this in 2015 by failing to diagnose and treat Hepatitis C, sending Mumia into a near-fatal crisis.)
A loud and determined public response is required to win immediate treatment to restore Mumia’s full eyesight.
Please join this effort, do your part, and share this information.
Sincerely,
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
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Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  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 KagarlitskyWe, 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 Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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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) Panic grips Gaza City as Israel’s ground operation gets underway.
By Liam Stack, Abu Bakr Bashir and Aaron Boxerman, September 16, 2025
Palestinians in Gaza City described scenes of panic on Tuesday as Israel launched a new ground operation, sending in troops and tanks while pounding the area with heavy airstrikes.
The city streets were filled with people who could not find anywhere to shelter, witnesses told The New York Times. Others sought safety in buildings that were filled with smoke from nearby Israeli strikes or fires.
Nesreen Joudeh said in a telephone interview that she was sheltering with her husband and four children in an apartment whose heavily cracked walls seemed to be crumbling around them. She said she was afraid they would all soon die.
“With every single strike, pieces of concrete fall on our heads and I scream all the time,” said Ms. Joudeh, 40.
Montaser Bahja, a former schoolteacher, said he was also hiding from the Israeli assault in an apartment near the Mediterranean coast. He said an intense bombardment began overnight, and the strikes were making the ground shake beneath his building.
“We are all terrified,” he said. “Death would be more merciful than what we’re living through.”
By Tuesday, the Israeli military said roughly half a million people remained in Gaza City after 350,000 had heeded evacuation orders and fled, compounding a humanitarian disaster in the territory where most people have been displaced multiple times and hunger is rampant after nearly two years of war.
Gaza’s health officials said ambulance and emergency workers were unable to reach some of the injured people stranded on streets or trapped under rubble from Israeli strikes.
As the ground operation began on Tuesday, the Israeli military told anyone who remained in Gaza City to leave as quickly as possible. But many said they simply could not afford to do so.
“I don’t have anywhere to go in southern Gaza, no house, no tent, no car in which to travel,” said Mr. Bahja. “They’re not fighting Hamas. They’re fighting all of us civilians.”
Israel has said it is targeting Gaza City because it is one of the last remaining strongholds of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that led the 2023 attack on Israel, which set off the war in Gaza.
Ms. Joudeh said her family also could not afford to pay for transportation out of the city, the cost of which reached about $1,000 or more in recent days. They cannot leave on foot, she added, because her husband suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure. One of her sons was also injured while trying to get flour at an aid distribution site, she said.
She said she felt as if her family, and her city, were at the end of their rope.
“They broke us,” she said, referring to Israel. “What else will they do to us?”
Even if her family did survive the offensive, she said she was worried about how to feed them. She had only four pounds of flour and a few canned goods left at home, and feared there may not be an opportunity to get more aid anytime soon.
“If we get surrounded by the army, we will have to survive on this,” she said. But if the army were to advance toward her neighborhood, she said, “That is the end for us.”
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2) Israel’s ground offensive capped months of strikes, warnings and threats.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 16, 2025
Israel began its long-planned ground assault on Gaza City on Tuesday, after months of preparations that intensified in recent weeks.
In the coming days, additional troops are expected to gradually advance into the city, an Israeli military official said in a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, adding that at least 2,000 Hamas militants remained there.
The official, who briefed journalists on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation, estimated that around 40 percent of the city’s residents had already fled the fighting. But hundreds of thousands of Gazans are still sheltering in the city.
The Israeli government signed off on a plan to take over Gaza City in August. At the time, Israeli forces were operating in the outskirts of Gaza City, and ordered the remaining residents to leave.
By the end of August, much of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood had been razed to the ground. Since then, Israeli military strikes have destroyed multiple high-rise buildings in the city that the military said Hamas was using for surveillance and other activities. The group denied the accusations.
Satellite images from Monday showed hundreds of tents remained in central Gaza City near to where recent strikes have destroyed high-rise buildings.
Israel’s air force has attacked more than 850 targets over the past week in Gaza City, the military said in a statement. It is unclear how far troops have advanced into the city.
Three military divisions are participating in the assault, with more expected to join in the coming days, the Israeli military said. To free up manpower for the offensive, Israel has called up about 60,000 reserve soldiers and extended the service for tens of thousands more.
Samuel Granados contributed reporting.
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3) Rubio says that ‘time is running out’ for a Gaza deal.
By Michael Crowley, Michael Crowley traveled to the Middle East with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned on Tuesday that “time is running out” for a negotiated end to the war in Gaza.
He spoke minutes before departing Israel for Qatar, and just as Israel was launching a military assault on the Gazan capital that it says is meant to end Hamas’ hold on the city. It is unclear if Mr. Rubio knew at the time that the full offensive had begun, but Israel has been signaling for weeks that it would start soon.
“We don’t have months anymore, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks,” to reach a deal that would stop the fighting and free hostages held by Hamas, Mr. Rubio told reporters in Israel. “It’s a key moment.”
Mr. Rubio’s Middle East trip came amid a diplomatic storm around the new Israeli offensive, which had already drawn sharp criticism from major European and Arab states while still in the planning stages. On Tuesday, he also had to reckon with Qatar’s reaction to a Sept. 9 Israeli airstrike that had targeted Hamas officials in that country.
He met Tuesday with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who has accused Israel of “sabotaging” the cease-fire and hostage-release negotiations with Hamas in Doha.
An official readout of Mr. Rubio’s meeting from a State Department spokesman made no mention either of Israel’s strike or the Gaza City offensive. Mr. Rubio “reaffirmed the strong bilateral relationship between the United States and Qatar, and thanked Qatar for its efforts to end the war in Gaza and bring all hostages home,” the spokesman, Tommy Pigott, said. “The Secretary reiterated America’s strong support for Qatar’s security and sovereignty, and discussed our shared commitment to a safer, more stable region.”
There was no immediate statement from the Qatari government about the meeting.
Mr. Rubio left Qatar after his brief visit and was headed to Britain, where he was meeting President Trump for his state visit there.
On Monday, Mr. Rubio met in Jerusalem with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The men discussed the imminent Gaza City operation, which analysts say is likely to prolong the war and could endanger the hostages. In remarks to reporters on Monday, Mr. Rubio gave no sign that he had urged Mr. Netanyahu not to proceed with the assault, even though President Trump has repeatedly said he is impatient for a deal to end the fighting quickly.
Mr. Rubio and Mr. Trump have supported Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence that Hamas is the main obstacle to such a deal, although the Israeli leader’s critics, including some former Biden administration officials, say he has willfully dragged out the conflict.
Speaking alongside Mr. Rubio on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to “defeat” Hamas, and said little about the state of peace negotiations. While reiterating Mr. Trump’s desire for a negotiated cease-fire, Mr. Rubio warned that “we also have to be prepared for the possibility that that’s not going to happen” — a more somber public assessment than most from senior U.S. officials since the war began.
Even before Israel launched its full offensive on Gaza City, which is likely to further alienate Arab states already angry over the death toll in Gaza, Mr. Rubio’s trip to Qatar was a potentially awkward one.
He arrived there just days after the Israeli airstrike that targeted a residential compound in the capital, Doha, where Hamas leaders were meeting, killing several people affiliated with Hamas as well as a member of Qatar’s internal security forces. Hamas insists that the senior leaders targeted by Israel survived; Israel says it is still assessing the outcome.
Mr. Netanyahu’s critics say the attack on Hamas operatives who have been the group’s point of contact for peace negotiations proved that he was sabotaging prospects for a deal.
In addition, Qatar and its Arab neighbors called the strike a shocking violation of sovereignty and an insult to the country’s peacemaking efforts. Qatar has played a vital role as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas.
An oil-and-gas-rich Gulf emirate, Qatar is also an important U.S. partner. It is home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, regularly assists American diplomacy, and has aggressively courted the favor of Mr. Trump. In April, Mr. Trump accepted as a gift from Qatar’s ruler a 747 jetliner worth an estimated $200 million for use as a new Air Force One.
Mr. Rubio has appeared disinclined to choose sides in the furor over Israel’s strike. In a Monday interview with Fox News, Mr. Rubio staked out a neutral position and sought to move past it. “We understand they’re upset about it,” he said of the Qataris. “We understand the Israeli position on it.”
“We want them to know how much we appreciate and respect all the time and work and effort they’ve put in the past to these negotiations, and we hope they’ll re-engage despite everything that’s happened,” he added on Tuesday morning.
Qatar may not be ready to move on, however. A day before Mr. Rubio’s visit, the country hosted an emergency meeting of leaders of Arab and Muslim countries to discuss the Israeli strike.
The Arab leaders stopped short of committing to any tangible action against Israel, but they said each of their states should “review diplomatic and economic relations” with Israel. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said Israel’s actions had jeopardized diplomatic ties with the Arab nations that officially recognize the Jewish state, and the chances of formal relations with the states that do not.
At the news conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu defiantly rejected criticism of the strike, saying that it had sent a clear message to Israel’s enemies that they could not hide from his country’s retribution, even within the borders of nations seeming to offer them “immunity.”
Standing next to Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Rubio pledged America’s “unwavering support” for Israel’s campaign against Hamas, and did not repeat Mr. Trump’s sharp criticism of the Doha strike. Mr. Trump has fumed that he was “very unhappy” about the Israeli attack, saying that it could further complicate his already foundering efforts to broker a cease-fire in Gaza.
Qatar prides itself on its role as a political bridge. It has long allowed Hamas political officials to live in Doha, with U.S. support, and has hosted countless indirect negotiations between them and Israeli officials.
But it has threatened to abandon that role in the wake of Israel’s attack, which was also criticized in many Western capitals, including the governments of France, Britain and Germany.
The strike was a “a humiliating blow” for Qatar, Tamir Hayman, the executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, wrote last week. He added that it had “shaken” the tiny nation’s assumption that its partnership with the United States guaranteed its security.
Mr. Trump says that he was not aware of the Israeli attack until the last moment, and Mr. Netanyahu reiterated on Monday that it was “a wholly independent decision by Israel.”
Speaking to reporters in New Jersey on Sunday, Mr. Trump seemed to warn Israel against a repeat, saying the country must be “very, very careful” toward Qatar, which he called a “great ally” of the United States.
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4) Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a U.N. inquiry says.
By Nick Cumming-Bruce, Reporting from Geneva, Sept. 16, 2025
A United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza said Tuesday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians, the panel’s most sweeping findings yet about the Israeli government’s conduct in the conflict.
In earlier reports, the commission found that Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its war with Hamas militants, but stopped short of declaring it genocide. On Tuesday, it said that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza,” the panel’s leader, Navi Pillay, a South African high court judge and former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.
Israel has repeatedly rejected allegations of genocide from scholars and human rights groups, saying the target of its military campaign is the militant group Hamas. It did so again on Tuesday.
Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, denounced the report in a statement as “fake.”
“In stark contrast to the lies in the report, Hamas is the party that attempted genocide in Israel,” Mr. Marmorstein said.
Since the Israeli military launched a retaliatory assault in response to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has come under international condemnation over the toll the war has taken on civilians.
The report details the deaths of civilians killed during intense Israeli bombing of densely populated areas, the destruction of hospitals and clinics, including Gaza’s main fertility clinic, and the destruction of educational, religious and cultural sites. The consequence, it said, is the erasure of Palestinian identity.
While the U.N. commission that issued the report has no enforcement power, Ms. Pillay said in an interview that its findings would carry weight with the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, as well as with International Criminal Court. The court is weighing a petition by South Africa to declare that Israel is committing genocide.
“This is a significant, independent report, one that will have to be taken seriously by all who read it, not least by those who are advising the prime minister and government of Israel,” said Philippe Sands, a law professor at University College London who specializes in genocide cases and has appeared before many international courts.
Even before the war, Israel often accused the United Nations of being biased against it and of unfairly singling it out for criticism. Relations have deteriorated still further since its military campaign against Hamas began.
The panel that issued the report Tuesday, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, was set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate the root causes of conflict in Gaza and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has focused on the war in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people.
The panel’s 78-page analysis builds off three previous reports about the conflict through the end of July. They covered a range of what the commission found to be war crimes and crimes against humanity. In March, for example, it accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in “genocidal acts” intended to prevent births. Israel says Hamas fighters have based themselves at the hospitals.
The commission has also identified what it said were war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by armed Palestinian groups. One report, released last year, found signs that participants in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel committed sexual violence in multiple locations. It also said that some of the hostages seized that day had been subjected to rape and sexual torture in Gaza.
In issuing its new findings, the panel noted developments in Gaza since the last report was put out.
“Everything that has happened since the 1st of August confirms and strengthens the conclusions to which we have come,” Chris Sidoti, a member of the panel, said in an interview. He was alluding to Israel’s escalation of military strikes on Gaza City, with Israel saying on Tuesday that it had begun a ground invasion there.
In the months since it issued its last report, commission members assessed whether the evidence they gathered met the requirements of the Genocide Convention, Ms. Pillay said. Under the International Court of Justice’s standard, for genocide to be declared, it must be “the only inference that could be reasonably drawn from the acts in question.”
In the report released on Tuesday, the U.N. panel said that was the case in Gaza.
“Israeli authorities were aware,” the commission said, “of the high probability that their military operations, the imposition of a total siege, including the blocking of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the destruction of housing and of health systems and facilities would lead to the physical destruction of Palestinians, in whole or in part, in Gaza.”
The panel also said that Israel’s relentless military strategy pursued in “flagrant” defiance of orders issued by the court and warnings from humanitarian agencies was among the most compelling factors in its conclusion that genocidal intent was “the only reasonable inference” to be drawn.
Last year, the court, allowing the genocide case against Israel to proceed, directed the Israeli government to take action to prevent acts of genocide by its forces in Gaza.
Another compelling factor was Israeli troops’ “extensive and deliberate” targeting of Palestinian children, Mr. Sidoti said. Medical workers testified they had treated many children with direct gunshot wounds to the head and upper body.
The report said that it did not preclude future investigations into whether genocide has been committed by Israel in the West Bank or by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack.
“We’ve been gathering the evidence on the West Bank,” Ms. Pillay said. “That would come next.”
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5) Israel Launches Gaza City Ground Offensive, Officials Say
By Isabel Kershner and Lara Jakes, 3:11 a.m. Sept. 16, 2025
The Israeli military launched a ground incursion into Gaza City early Tuesday, according to three Israeli officials, embarking on a risky operation to take control of a key urban area even as hundreds of thousands of residents remain there.
Two of the officials said the ground invasion was in its early stages. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military and government operations.
The ground operation and intensifying Israeli bombardment risks deepening the humanitarian crisis in a war that has already killed tens of thousands of people.
More than 300,000 people had already fled the city by Monday, according to the Israeli military. On Tuesday, the military urged up to half a million Palestinians remaining in the city to move south as quickly as possible, by vehicle or on foot, describing the city as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Avichay Adraee, the Arabic language spokesman for the Israeli military, said that the military had “begun dismantling Hamas terrorist infrastructure in Gaza City.”
“Gaza is burning,” Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement after a night of heavy bombardment of Gaza City. The Israeli military “is striking with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure,” he added.
This is a developing article. Please check for updates.
Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.
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6) He Fled Putin’s War. The U.S. Deported Him to a Russian Jail.
Antiwar Russians are being sent back as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, despite facing imprisonment and other dangers.
By Paul Sonne and Milana Mazaeva, Reporting from Berlin, Sept. 16, 2025
Artyom Vovchenko at a mixed martial arts tournament in 2023 in Bali, Indonesia.Credit...Bali MMA
Artyom Vovchenko had been conscripted into the Russian military, escaped in opposition to the war in Ukraine and ultimately made it to the United States, a country he hoped would offer him asylum and a new life.
But last month, he found himself on a layover at the airport in Cairo, frantically trying to avoid boarding a flight to Moscow. The United States was deporting him alongside dozens of other Russians after rejecting his pleas.
As the Egyptian authorities boarded the final people onto the deportation flight, Mr. Vovchenko, 26, loitered in the restroom, possibly hoping he could resist, abscond or somehow be forgotten. He had no such luck.
Egyptian guards pulled him out of the bathroom and roughed him up, leaving him with an injury on his forehead. They marched him onto the flight and to the back of the cabin, tying him to a middle seat. The plane soon began gliding toward Moscow. Mr. Vovchenko cried for much of the flight. He knew what would come next.
This episode was recounted by a woman who sat near Mr. Vovchenko on the plane and spoke to The New York Times, as well as by a man on the flight whose account was posted online by a Russian human rights activist.
Mr. Vovchenko’s plight represents a new reality for Russians who are struggling to persuade American judges to allow them to stay in the United States on account of their political or religious views. As President Trump accelerates deportations, some are being sent back to Russia, despite facing imprisonment or worse at home.
This summer, dozens of Russian deportees have been loaded twice onto mass deportation flights, a new phenomenon during the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security said it was saving taxpayer dollars by “efficiently flying illegal aliens to their home country on large fights.”
Mr. Vovchenko abandoned the Russian military in 2022, meaning he faced up to 10 years in prison. The Russian military, which had already accused him in a criminal case of disgracing his country by fleeing, is known for inhumane and life-threatening reprisals against deserters.
While detained in the United States for over a year, he had pleaded with officials to recognize the danger of sending him back to Russia, according to documents obtained by The Times detailing his case. But the nation that he had thought would be sympathetic turned out to be as unforgiving as his own.
“All of his claims were found to be meritless by a judge,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement.
She said Mr. Vovchenko had tried to illegally enter the United States last year, and referred questions about his treatment in the Cairo airport to the Egyptian authorities. The Egyptian government did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Vovchenko’s deportation flight crossed into Russian airspace at the end of August. The woman on the flight, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns in Russia, said she watched as he was taken away by Russian security officers at the airport.
No information about Mr. Vovchenko or his whereabouts has been made public since.
“The laws were stacked against him,” said Kenneth P. Primola, a lawyer who represented Mr. Vovchenko in his failed attempt to secure a U.S. court order protecting him from deportation because of expected harm in Russia.
“I thought sending him back was a death sentence,” Mr. Primola said. “I was kind of taken aback.”
Between Two Fires
Mr. Vovchenko’s journey, which The Times pieced together by interviewing six people familiar with it and reviewing documents, shows the perils of becoming caught between an authoritarian Russia gripped by war and a changing America carrying out an immigration crackdown.
It wasn’t just Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign that led to Mr. Vovchenko’s return to Moscow last month. Stricter border and detention policies that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. introduced also led to the removal, as did a fickle U.S. asylum process, where rulings often vary widely based on the judge.
The Times has withheld much of the information from the documents owing to concerns about Mr. Vovchenko’s security in Russia. His family members did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Mr. Vovchenko isn’t the first Russian opposed to the war to be imprisoned after being deported back to Russia from the United States.
Leonid Melekhin, who volunteered and protested for Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was arrested and charged with justifying terrorism after his deportation to Russia in July. Mr. Melekhin had been placed in detention and denied asylum in the United States.
Ms. McLaughlin, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, called both Mr. Vovchenko and Mr. Melekhin “illegal aliens” whom “even the open border Biden administration” kept in detention and did not release into the United States.
It is unclear how many of the Russians deported from the United States have since found themselves in the cross hairs of the Russian authorities.
Already, some have fled a second time.
Yevgeny Mashinin, a 28-year-old antiwar Russian activist, was deported from the United States in December after a judge rejected his asylum request. Days after he stepped off his deportation flight, the Russian authorities filed misdemeanor charges against him, accusing him of hooliganism and discrediting the military, and detained him for two days. After his release, he made a second escape, to France.
News of Mr. Vovchenko’s arrest, first revealed by Vladimir Osechkin, an exiled Russian activist who published the account of the man on the deportation flight, has prompted calls by Russian opposition figures in the West to protect antiwar Russian asylum seekers or to at least send them to safe countries. Some of those opposition figures have asked Canada to accept deported anti-Kremlin Russians.
Many Russians seeking safety in the United States are facing denials by U.S. judges who leave them unnecessarily in detention and do not acknowledge the danger they face if they are deported to Russia, said Dmitry Valuev, president of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, or RADR, a U.S. organization aiding Russian asylum seekers.
He cited the example of Svetlana Orzhevskaya and Igor Orzhevsky, mother-and-son Russian antiwar activists who were detained when they arrived in the United States last year. They were held despite their use of CBP One, a since-abolished app that allowed asylum seekers to schedule appointments to enter the country from Mexico, he said.
The activists argued that they should receive asylum because Russian prosecutors had filed multiple criminal cases against them related to their political views, which guaranteed years in prison if they were to be deported. A judge denied their claim. They remain in U.S. immigration detention in California, where they are appealing, Mr. Valuev said.
“The judges sometimes refuse to see the potential threat,” he said.
A Trapped Soldier
Mr. Vovchenko didn’t enter the Russian military by choice.
After studying at a law academy in Saratov, a city in southwestern Russia, he was conscripted in October 2020, before the full-scale invasion, for a year of military service. He was posted first in Russia and later at a Russian base in Armenia.
During his time as a conscript, his military service was extended by a year without his knowledge or agreement, to October 2022, according to the documents reviewed by The Times. Mr. Vovchenko’s parents lodged a complaint with the military prosecutor protesting this common coercive practice by the Russian Army to no avail. While he was serving this additional year, President Vladimir V. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, which Mr. Vovchenko opposed, according to the documents.
About a month before the forced contract was set to expire, Russian troops were routed on the battlefield, causing a hasty retreat. Mr. Putin signed a decree that called up 300,000 civilians and extended existing military-service contracts, including Mr. Vovchenko’s, until the end of the unspecified mobilization period.
Mr. Vovchenko was trapped.
When he heard that his unit would be sent to Ukraine, Mr. Vovchenko first visited his mother, who was dying of brain cancer, and then escaped, eventually making his way to Indonesia, according to the documents. Days after he left, his mother died.
In Bali, he pursued a longstanding passion for jujitsu, participating in tournaments and calling himself a “peaceful warrior” on Instagram.
In March 2023, Russia and Indonesia signed an extradition treaty. The Russian authorities had filed a criminal case against Mr. Vovchenko for abandoning the military, the documents show, and had been harassing his father, sending letters denouncing Mr. Vovchenko and demanding his return. It isn’t clear whether Moscow filed an extradition request.
Seeking safety, he left Indonesia and traveled through seven countries, including Mexico, continuing to practice jujitsu along the way, according to the documents.
“I thought he was a really good person,” said Heather Woods, a jujitsu athlete who trained with Mr. Vovchenko in Mexico City and was impressed with his skill. “I felt he could have made a career there, or really in any country.”
In July 2024, Mr. Vovchenko approached the port of entry in Calexico, Calif., drove over the border and immediately declared asylum, according to the documents and a Russian man who befriended him in detention in Louisiana.
What he didn’t fully realize, according to his lawyer, Mr. Primola, was that Mr. Biden had drastically restricted the ability to seek asylum at the border with Mexico, except under a few extreme circumstances, in an executive order weeks earlier and a rule the year before.
The U.S. authorities also had begun detaining Russians who crossed the border to declare asylum and holding them indefinitely in detention centers instead of releasing them until the adjudication of their asylum claims, as had often been previous practice. The mass detentions came after eight Tajik asylum seekers, including at least one with a Russian passport, crossed the border and were investigated over potential ties to the Islamic State.
Mr. Vovchenko stepped over the border into a nightmare.
A Rejection
After apprehending Mr. Vovchenko, the U.S. authorities sent him to immigration detention centers in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Mr. Primola, his lawyer, said his client could not secure asylum because of the new border policies but was still able to apply for a “withholding from removal” order. Such a case requires a higher burden of proof of the risk of persecution in the destination country.
Mr. Vovchenko appeared in April at the U.S. immigration court in Oakdale, La., before Judge Jacob D. Bashore, a former military lawyer appointed to the court during President Trump’s first term.
According to TRAC, a research center that collects court data, Judge Bashore denied 89 percent of asylum claims from 2019 to 2024, far above the national denial rate of 58 percent. In the 2024 fiscal year, 85 percent of Russian asylum requests adjudicated by a U.S. court were granted, the center reported.
Mr. Primola said that the judge didn’t believe Mr. Vovchenko or care about his principled opposition to the war, and that he equated military service in Russia with that in America.
“This judge just didn’t think it mattered,” Mr. Primola said, describing his attitude as “Who cares? You got to serve, you got to serve.”
Mr. Vovchenko broke down into tears when his request was denied, his lawyer said.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the case. The court in Louisiana referred a comment request to the Justice Department.
Mr. Vovchenko decided not to appeal because he lacked money for a lawyer and did not want to spend as much as another year locked up, according to the Russian man who befriended him in the Louisiana detention center and other people familiar with the case. So he began trying to persuade the U.S. authorities to deport him to Indonesia, where he still had active residency, the man said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns in Russia. Mr. Vovchenko appealed to the Indonesian consul for help, according to the documents.
But time was running out. Mr. Trump, now back in office, had begun his immigration crackdown, clearing out by the planeload people in detention centers marked for deportation.
Mr. Vovchenko was ordered onto a flight late last month.
The passengers sat in chains as the plane made its way to Egypt. Mr. Vovchenko’s only hope was that Egyptian officials at the Cairo airport would allow him to go somewhere other than Russia.
Mr. Valuev, the RADR president, said that previous deportations of Russians had not been done en masse and that Russians were sometimes able to negotiate a switch in destination with local officials during layovers.
“They can talk to them: ‘Can you give us our passports back? We will fly somewhere else. We don’t want to go to Russia,’” Mr. Valuev said. He noted that two anti-Kremlin Russians who were deported from the United States this month were able to persuade local authorities during their layover in Morocco to allow them to go somewhere else.
That option was not made available to Mr. Vovchenko and other Russians deported through Egypt on the two mass flights this summer.
Mr. Valuev said the flights should not be transporting Russian war dissenters to prison.
“People with criminal cases against them that are politically motivated should not be deported,” Mr. Valuev said. “They should receive some sort of protection.”
Oleg Matsnev and Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
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7) My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel Is Committing Genocide
By Navi Pillay, Sept. 16, 2025
Ms. Pillay is the chair of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
In 1995 President Nelson Mandela of South Africa asked me to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The judicial panel over which I presided convicted three Rwandans of genocide. So I understand the word “genocide,” and it is not one I use lightly. It is the deliberate attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a people. It represents the most serious violation of our shared humanity and the gravest breach of international law.
Today the United Nations commission that I lead is publishing its legal analysis of Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip. Our conclusion is stark: Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This finding is based on investigations and extensive evidence into the period between Oct. 7, 2023, when the war began, and July 31, 2025. It has been corroborated by multiple sources and assessed through the rigorous legal framework of the U.N. Genocide Convention of 1948, to which Israel is a party.
My organization, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, was established by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in 2021. It is overseen by appointed experts who are supported by staff from the U.N. secretariat. The Commission reports its findings to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly.
The scale of destruction is devastating. More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 18,000 children and nearly 10,000 women, according to Gazan health officials. Estimated life expectancy in Gaza has collapsed from 75 years to just over 40 in a single year, one of the steepest declines recorded. Hospitals, schools, churches, mosques and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed. Our analysis found that starvation has been used as a weapon of war and that the medical system has been deliberately destroyed. Maternal health care has been severely undermined. Children have been starved, shot and buried under rubble. According to UNICEF, one child has died every hour in Gaza. These are not the accidents of war. They are acts calculated to bring about the destruction of a people.
Establishing genocide requires not only the act but also the intent. Here, too, the evidence is clear. Senior Israeli leaders, including the president, the prime minister and the former defense minister, have dehumanized Palestinians. Yoav Gallant, the defense minister at the time of the Oct. 7 attacks, said, “We are fighting human animals,” while President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that the entire Palestinian nation was responsible. Their words have been matched by deeds: indiscriminate bombardment making Gaza uninhabitable, the blocking of humanitarian aid, sexual and gender-based violence and a siege we concluded was designed to starve the population to death. Together these constitute a pattern that demonstrates genocidal intent.
The commission also found that Palestinians have been killed while seeking food at distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israel and U.S.-backed entity that largely replaced the existing aid network. Hundreds, including children, have been shot while trying to access aid.
Some argue that the term “genocide” is too grave to apply while Israel’s war continues. But the law is explicit: The obligation to prevent genocide arises the moment a serious risk is evident. That threshold was crossed long ago in this war. In January 2024 the International Court of Justice put all states on notice that there was a serious risk that genocide was being committed in Gaza. Since then, the evidence has only deepened, and the killing has multiplied.
What does this mean for the international community? It means its obligations are not optional. Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs. That obligation requires action: halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts, ensuring unimpeded humanitarian assistance, stopping the mass displacement and destruction, and using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing. To do nothing is not neutrality. It is complicity.
I do not write these words as an adversary of Israel. I recognize the suffering of Israelis who lost loved ones in the horrific Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, which killed some 1,200 people, and the pain of the families of the roughly 50 hostages who remain in captivity, including about 20 still believed to be alive. Our commission has documented the crimes by Hamas. But no crime, however grave, justifies genocide. To respond to atrocity with atrocity is to abandon the very values international law was created to protect.
History will judge how the world responds. In Rwanda, the international community did not prevent the genocide, nor did it intervene to stop the killing once the genocide began. Today the international community is again failing to act — this time, in Gaza. The facts are reported daily. The warnings are unequivocal. The law is clear. The stakes, the survival of a people, could not be higher.
The obligation to prevent genocide belongs not only to states but also to the international system as a whole. The U.N. Security Council must not be the graveyard of conscience. Regional organizations, national parliaments, civil society and ordinary citizens all have a role to play in pressing governments to act. The Genocide Convention was born from the ashes of the Holocaust with a solemn vow: “Never again.” That vow is meaningless if it applies only to some and not to others.
I urge every government, every leader and every citizen to ask: What will we say when our children and grandchildren ask what we did while Gaza was burned to the ground? Every act of genocide is a test of the humanity that binds us.
The prevention of genocide is not a matter of discretion of states. It is a legal and moral obligation, and it admits no delay. The law requires action. Our common humanity demands it.
Navi Pillay is the chair of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. She is a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
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8) Netanyahu and an Israel Without Restraint
With the assault on Gaza City, Israel’s prime minister has piled defiance on defiance, as any check from the Trump administration falls away.
By Roger Cohen, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 17, 2025
Palestinians fleeing Gaza City on Tuesday. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Before the war in Gaza began almost two years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was not known as a risk taker. His rhetoric was bold, his deeds less so. Now, however, by sending the Israeli military into Gaza City, he appears to have dispensed with constraints.
The operation, which he says is necessary to defeat Hamas but is certain to increase Israel’s isolation as international anger mounts, has already killed many Palestinians and sent hundreds of thousands into flight southward. It risks the lives of the estimated 20 living Israeli hostages. It renders any cease-fire unimaginable for the moment. It has been questioned even by the military’s chief of staff.
To all this, Mr. Netanyahu’s response seems to be: Bring it on.
This week, he suggested that Israel should become a “super Sparta,” apparently meaning that the ancient Greek city-state that rose through discipline to become a great military power should inspire the country. Speaking at an economic conference hosted by the Finance Ministry, he said Israel might have to confront “isolation” through “autarky,” or economic self-sufficiency.
“He’s lost it,” Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said. “There are no more red lines.”
Vilified by the hostages’ anguished families, confronted by large street protests, fiercely criticized by alienated European allies for the bombardment of Gaza that has taken tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, Mr. Netanyahu only becomes more defiant.
This month he vowed that “there will be no Palestinian state.” Even if preventing one has been the primary focus of his political life, he has become much more explicit of late. The remark amounted to a rebuke to states including France, Britain, Canada and Australia that have said they will recognize a state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly beginning next week.
It would be foolhardy, however, to equate Mr. Netanyahu’s increasingly headstrong braggadocio with imminent downfall.
He has not amassed a total of almost 18 years as prime minister and become the nation’s longest-serving leader without proving himself a shrewd, adaptable and ruthless leader. “Only Bibi!” goes the chant of his hard-core supporters, using his nickname.
To them he is the irreplaceable “King,” the one man with the mettle to face down Israel’s enemies on seven fronts. His decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and undermining of Iran’s nuclear ambitions through a brief war have led to talk in the region of an imperial Israel.
Perhaps his weakest enemy has proved his toughest. He appears to believe that he can force Hamas to surrender or disappear through military might alone, but has been obliged to redefine his approach again and again.
To his opponents, who chant “Anything but Bibi,” Mr. Netanyahu is simply the face of the desecration of Israeli democracy.
At this tense juncture in Israel’s history, Mr. Netanyahu has one clear advantage: the largely uncritical support of President Trump. A world drifting under Mr. Trump’s impulsion in an authoritarian direction had helped birth a Bibi unbound. He is emboldened because, as never before, he is confident that, no matter what, this America will have his back.
“Trump is the only person on earth who can dictate to Bibi what he should do,” Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister and strong critic of Mr. Netanyahu, told me. “He has the power to save thousands of lives.”
It is unclear, however, whether Mr. Trump would ever confront Mr. Netanyahu in this way.
“Netanyahu is a real leader, there are not many leaders of his stature in history,” said Daniella Weiss, a prominent leader of the settler movement that has drawn strength and limitless license to expand its West Bank settlements from the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people.
For all his nationalist and religious support, Mr. Netanyahu is widely loathed. He is suspected by many of putting his own survival before the interests of the nation by prolonging a Gaza war that his critics say should have ended long ago.
Liberal Israel, unbowed despite a rightist tide, perceives him as shredding the fundamental values of the state and the core of Jewish ethics through the prosecution of a relentless military campaign that continues to kill Palestinian civilians in large numbers without setting an attainable objective. Israeli hostages have languished in tunnels for more than 700 days.
“What Netanyahu is doing now in Gaza is outrageously brutal,” Mr. Olmert said. “How can ministers at the highest level say all Gazans are Hamas and then herd them into camps? We are in a fight for the soul of Israel.”
A Channel 12 poll this month showed Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party leading in any election with 24 seats, but indicated that the parties in his far-right government would fall well short of enough seats in the 120-member Knesset to renew the coalition. Still, with elections more than a year away, Mr. Netanyahu’s political options are far from exhausted.
During a two-day visit this week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there was not a hint of American criticism, even after Israel’s recent attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar, an important American ally. Mr. Rubio said the United States was not counting on a deal with Hamas, “a terrorist group, a barbaric group, whose stated mission is the destruction of the Jewish state.”
Mr. Trump appears to want the war in Gaza ended at once, with all the hostages, living or dead, released and Hamas defeated, whatever precisely that means. Whether Mr. Trump seeks a two-state peace, the position of most past American governments over decades, is unclear, but most of his pronouncements suggest not.
Because the president’s statements on the war are unpredictable and marked by impatience, but always rooted in unswerving support for Israel, Mr. Netanyahu is left with much room for maneuver.
Two months ago, Mr. Netanyahu seemed to be seriously contemplating a possible deal with Hamas that would have seen 10 living Israeli hostages released in exchange for a large number of Palestinian prisoners and a 60-day cease-fire during which an end to the war would have been negotiated.
Then he went to Washington, met Mr. Trump, changed his mind, and began planning the assault on Gaza City with its accompanying prolongation of the war and intensification of Palestinian agony in Gaza.
It looked like a choice driven by his survival instincts. The end of the war holds many dangers for Mr. Netanyahu. They include the breakup of his coalition as rightist ministers object; a commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 debacle; a full accounting of Israel’s actions during the war; and an end to protection from his own legal travails.
An Israel at war, an Israel in what he presents as manifest existential danger, suits Mr. Netanyahu better. It plays to his tactical strengths. In the end, at least in the view of the hostages’ families and their many outraged supporters, his own survival trumps that of the hostages.
“My Matan is being sacrificed on Netanyahu’s altar,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, a hostage, said on Tuesday.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister of national security, made clear on social media this week that he strongly approved of Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to move into Gaza City. “The decisive moment has come,” he wrote, adding two emojis, one of fire and one a red X apparently signifying the obliteration of Hamas or Gaza, or both.
As for Mr. Netanyahu, he insisted this week that, “Life is more important than the law.”
He has clearly staked his all on forging a triumphant legacy that will outweigh his responsibility, on Oct. 7, 2023, for the greatest defeat in Israel’s history. His chosen course has proved to be long and divisive, punctuated by Israeli military ascendancy in the region, but devastating to the Palestinian people and lacerating to his own country.
Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Tel Aviv, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.
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9) Israel Pounds Gaza City as Fears Mount for Those Inside
With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in the city, the Israeli military said it was opening another temporary evacuation route. The U.N. warned that food supplies in northern Gaza would soon run out.
By Cassandra Vinograd, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Gabby Sobelman and Liam Stack, Sept. 17, 2025
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reported from Haifa, Israel, Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel, and Liam Stack from Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military said it would open another evacuation route on Wednesday for people fleeing Gaza City as international alarm grew over the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still sheltering there amid Israel’s heavily bombardment and widening ground assault.
Before the expanded offensive was announced on Tuesday, the military ordered people in Gaza City to go to what it described as a humanitarian zone in the south. The Israeli military said that more than 350,000 people had fled the northern city as of Tuesday evening, cramming onto the enclave’s coastal road, but roughly half a million were believed to still be there.
On Wednesday, the military announced the opening of another “temporary route” heading south along Salah al-Din Road. In an Arabic-language statement posted on social media, it said the route would be open for 48 hours, starting at noon local time on Wednesday.
The start of the long-planned ground offensive drew fierce condemnation from allies of Israel and aid agencies, who said it would worsen an already dire humanitarian situation and derail any diplomatic resolution to the nearly two-year war.
Israel’s government has said seizing Gaza City is necessary to prevent Hamas from regrouping and planning future attacks like the assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the war.
Heavy airstrikes continued to pound Gaza, with Israel’s military saying on Wednesday morning that more than 150 strikes had been launched over the previous 48 hours.
Salah al-Din Road, which runs roughly north to south through the enclave, links Gaza City to the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, a journey that can take up to seven hours by foot. Israel’s military designated it an evacuation corridor earlier in the war, but a report from Human Rights Watch last year found that it was “rarely, if ever, safe” and had come under Israeli fire.
The assault on Gaza City was announced on the same day that a U.N. commission investigating the war said Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.
Since the war began, tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed and most people have been displaced multiple times. Hunger is rampant in the enclave, and last month, a U.N.-backed panel of food experts found famine in Gaza City, in a report that Israel has criticized.
In a report on Wednesday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said no food aid had entered northern Gaza since Friday, when it said Israel’s military had closed an important border crossing, Zikim.
Aid groups, the report said, had “grave concerns over fuel and food stock depletion in a matter of days as there are now no direct aid entry points into northern Gaza and resupply from south to north is increasingly challenging due to mounting road congestion and insecurity.”
That account differed from the one offered by COGAT, the Israeli military agency that manages aid to Gaza. In a statement posted online, it said 230 aid trucks had entered Gaza through the border crossings of Kerem Shalom, in the south, and Zikim, in the north, on Tuesday.
COGAT declined to explain the discrepancy between its account and that provided by the United Nations, but said in a statement that “the entry of trucks through the Zikim crossing will be facilitated subject to operational considerations.”
It also declined to provide detailed information about how many trucks reached Gaza City on Tuesday.
The U.N. report echoed the concerns in a joint statement issued on Wednesday by the leaders of 20 leading aid organizations, who demanded “urgent intervention” in Gaza.
The aid officials said that “the inhumanity of the situation in Gaza is unconscionable” and listed a catalog of human suffering: death, maiming, famine, widespread destruction, “children so traumatized by daily airstrikes that they cannot sleep” and others who “want to die to join their parents in heaven.”
The lengthy statement was signed by leaders of organizations including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam International and Save the Children. It said that their efforts to provide aid had been “obstructed every step of the way,” accusations that Israel has consistently rejected.
With Israel’s evacuation orders for Gaza City, they warned, “we are on the precipice of an even deadlier period in Gaza’s story if action is not taken.”
Nearly 100 people have been killed and nearly 400 wounded over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, said Wednesday afternoon. It added that emergency workers had been unable to reach a number of people trapped under the rubble.
Arab nations joined the calls for action, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar condemning the ground offensive on Wednesday. Qatar said the Gaza City operation was a “flagrant violation of international law” that would “undermine the prospects for peace in the region.” The country has acted as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, and it was the site of an Israeli strike on Hamas officials last week.
Amid mounting outrage over the ground assault, the European Commission proposed on Wednesday to suspend favorable trade terms and impose sanctions on some Israeli ministers, measures aimed at signaling demands for an end to the war.
“The horrific events taking place in Gaza on a daily basis must stop,” the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a statement. “There needs to be an immediate cease-fire, unrestrained access for all humanitarian aid, and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.”
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, criticized the commission’s move as “morally and politically distorted.” He said in a statement that Israel hoped the measures would not be adopted, and would “continue to fight.”
Abu Bakr Bashir and Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting.
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10) Israel’s Assault on Gaza City Stifles Hope of Diplomatic Resolution to War
A negotiated settlement to end the fighting remains distant, in part because of the maximalist positions of Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and of Hamas.
By Adam Goldman, Sept. 17, 2025
Palestinian families fleeing Gaza City, on Tuesday, as Israel launches a major offensive in the area. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
As Israeli troops launched a ground assault aimed at taking control of Gaza City, experts said the operation showed that diplomatic efforts to end the war appear severely diminished, if not moribund.
What is clear after nearly two years of intense fighting that has left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins is that neither side intends to back down from its longstanding objectives.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said from the outset of the war that he had two priorities: to bring home the hostages captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attacks and to destroy Hamas.
But the goal of eradicating Hamas has been a challenge for Mr. Netanyahu to define. Even if Israel vanquishes the group, its ideology will most likely survive the war. And the objective itself raises questions. Once Israel declares success, who will govern Gaza? Mr. Netanyahu has suggested unspecified “Arab forces,” but his additional requirements, like keeping the Palestinian Authority out of power in Gaza, make the idea a nonstarter in Arab countries.
For their part, leaders of Hamas have long sought to eliminate the state of Israel and had hoped the 2023 attacks would force the world to reckon with Palestinian statehood. As well as killing about 1,200 people, the group and its allies also took about 250 hostages as leverage against a ground war with Israel. Hamas had calculated that to free those captives, the Israeli military must pull out of Gaza — an outcome that would leave the group fundamentally intact and claiming victory. That thinking, of course, has not worked out in the ways Hamas would have hoped. Whatever leverage Hamas had with the hostages appears gone, and the war has badly damaged Hamas’s fighting capabilities.
The intransigence on both sides is a steep barrier for any negotiations toward a cease-fire or a peace deal. Neither Hamas nor Mr. Netanyahu has shown interest in giving up political power or influence in exchange for peace. For Mr. Netanyahu, that means ensuring his government does not fall. Hamas has not demonstrated a willingness to surrender its weapons or to loosen its grip on Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike on Sept. 9 that targeted Hamas officials in Qatar, which has served as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas, undermined existing diplomatic efforts. Officials from Qatar and other Arab countries denounced the strike as an insult to Qatar’s efforts to negotiate peace.
“We have two stubborn enemies,” said Prof. Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza who was displaced during the war and now lives in Cairo. “Israel is trying to eliminate Hamas and Hamas is trying to survive. They have completely divergent goals.”
“Diplomacy is dead,” Mr. Abusada added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled a similarly dim conclusion on Tuesday, saying that “time is running out” for any prospects of ending the war. He spoke just before leaving Israel for Qatar and as Israeli forces began their assault on Gaza City, which Israel sees as a major Hamas stronghold. It was unclear whether he knew at the time that the offensive had begun.
While in Israel, Mr. Rubio acknowledged that any chance of diplomacy to halt the war soon was unlikely. It was a sobering assessment that captured the reality of the moment: Mediation efforts by the Trump administration, Qatar and Egypt have so far failed.
Neither side in the war has shown any signs of backing down despite steep costs for both.
Hamas’s leadership and its remaining fighters have refused to relent in the face of enormous destruction in Gaza and the deaths of more than 60,000 Palestinians, a total that comes from Gazan health officials, who don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israel has endured military casualties, internal anger over the government’s refusal to stop the war to free the remaining hostages, harm to its image around the world and accusations of genocide, which it has denied.
Still, Mr. Netanyahu and his political allies persist in Gaza, even over some objections from the country’s military establishment. In some ways, the Israeli government appeared to be doubling down.
“Gaza is burning,” its defense minister, Israel Katz, wrote Tuesday on social media. He said that the Israeli military intended both to defeat Hamas and to force the group to return the remaining Israeli hostages, adding, “We will not relent or turn back — until the mission is completed.”
Those two goals have always been at odds.
Israeli military operations targeting Hamas militants run the risk of inadvertently killing Israeli hostages or prompting Hamas to kill them as Israeli forces close in. Israel believes about 20 living hostages are still in Gaza.
Conversely, Hamas has demanded a cease-fire in exchange for agreeing to return hostages. That would give the organization time to regroup and strengthen itself, thus undermining Israel’s goal to destroy it.
“If you destroy Hamas, how will you get your hostages back?” said Shira Efron, an expert in Israeli and Middle Eastern affairs at RAND Corporation, which studies security matters and other issues.
Mr. Katz has said that the war will not stop until “Hamas’s defeat is clear and absolute.” Experts have questioned what that means. Israeli tank shells and missiles cannot eradicate Hamas’s deep ties to the land, nor obliterate its members’ beliefs. Though the United States and its allies crippled Al Qaeda’s leadership and operations, for example, the organization still exists in a weakened form, attracting followers and fomenting violence.
Killing Hamas’s current leader in Gaza, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, would probably not end the fighting in the enclave. It is unlikely Hamas would expose all its fighters in a direct confrontation with superior Israeli forces. Such evasion has been a familiar Hamas tactic in the war — one that ensures the group still has enough personnel and firepower to fight another day and to remain politically relevant. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it estimated that at least 2,000 Hamas militants remained in Gaza City.
Yet diplomacy has paid off in previous conflicts between the two sides. Israel and Hamas agreed to cease-fires after intense fighting in 2014 and 2021. Since the war started, they have hashed out two pauses in hostilities that included the release of scores of hostages.
“The partial deals made us all think that we could bridge both sides toward the implementation of a more durable agreement,” Ms. Efron said.
In recent weeks, an intensive diplomatic push unfolded. Mediators met in Doha, the Qatari capital, to hammer out a deal. President Trump said on Sept. 7 that the Israelis had accepted a set of terms, including a possible proposal to exchange all remaining hostages for Palestinian prisoners and end the war. He called on Hamas to do the same.
Hamas acknowledged it had received “some ideas from the American side” and was ready to begin talks.
But two days later, the Israeli airstrike on Hamas officials in Qatar killed the son of a leading figure involved in the planning of the Oct. 7 attacks. Four others associated with the militant group were also killed. Qatari officials have said they hosted the Hamas officials at the request of the United States.
Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, accused Israel of “sabotaging” the cease-fire and hostage-release negotiations.
As a possible offramp for both sides, Ms. Efron pointed to a French-Saudi proposal supporting a two-state solution that would recognize Palestine. It calls for an immediate cease-fire, the release of all the hostages and disarmament of Hamas and its exclusion from any government.
The French-Saudi plan, however, seems to have little hope of becoming reality. The Trump administration has dismissed it and opposed a resolution to endorse the proposal that passed the United Nations General Assembly on Friday. Hamas and Israel have also each rejected the broad outlines as an unacceptable victory for the other side.
Ms. Efron said any progress toward a cease-fire or truce requires flexibility.
“There is a way out,” she said, “but not one with these two maximalist approaches.”
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11) Climate Change’s Toll in Europe This Summer: Thousands of Extra Deaths
Three times as many people in cities and towns died from severe heat as would have done in a world without human-caused warming, scientists said.
By Raymond Zhong, Reporting from London, Sept. 17, 2025
A tourist outside the Acropolis in Athens in July. Credit...Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Severe heat this summer killed three times as many people in European cities as would have died had humans not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels, scientists said Wednesday.
The new analysis was based on historical mortality trends, not actual death records, which are not yet widely available. The researchers looked at 854 European cities and towns, where they estimated that a total of 24,400 people died as a result of this summer’s heat.
The findings reflect a worrying pattern: Rising temperatures are increasing the risks to human health more quickly than communities and societies can adapt.
Nearly all heat-related deaths are preventable, said Malcolm Mistry, an assistant professor of climate and geospatial modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who contributed to the analysis. And governments in Europe, the fastest-warming continent, have taken steps to protect their citizens.
So the fact that so many people still die each summer “shows that we are not able to keep pace with global warming,” Dr. Mistry said.
Summer after stifling summer, extreme heat is transforming Europe. Wildfires are worsening. Cities are rethinking the way they’re built. Companies are struggling to keep workers safe.
In 2022, during what was at that point the continent’s hottest summer on record, more than 61,000 people died from the heat, scientists have estimated. More than half of those people wouldn’t have died if not for global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and other human activities, researchers concluded.
The scientists behind the new analysis, which hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, said their aim was to provide “early estimates” of this summer’s heat fatalities. They examined European cities and towns with more than 50,000 residents and adequately long records of local deaths. In total, these areas account for 30 percent of Europe’s population.
The researchers first used climate models to estimate that these areas would have been 4 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2.2 degrees Celsius, cooler on average from June through August in a hypothetical world that hadn’t been altered by planet-warming emissions.
Then, by extrapolating from past mortality rates, the researchers estimated that only around 8,000 people in these cities would have died from heat in those months in that alternate, cooler world, instead of the 24,400 people who likely did so in the real world.
Rome, Athens and Bucharest, Romania, were the European capitals with the highest number of heat-related deaths after adjusting for city population, the researchers found. But when it comes to the share of deaths that can be attributed to climate change, the highest ranked capitals were Stockholm, Madrid and Bratislava, Slovakia.
Sweden’s capital might seem like an unlikely holder of the top spot. “Before, we had very few, if any heat-related deaths in Northern Europe,” said Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who worked on the new analysis.
From that low base, however, global warming is now starting to lift summer temperatures in northern countries into the range where they can harm human health, Dr. Konstantinoudis said. Far fewer people still die of heat there than in Southern Europe, but when they do, it is much more squarely the result of climate change, he said.
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12) U.S. Government to Invest $75 Million in Ukraine’s Minerals
The investment will ease fears in Kyiv that Washington is pulling back from Ukraine’s war effort. It also underscores the mercantile nature of the U.S.-Ukrainian alliance under President Trump.
By Constant Méheut, Sept. 17, 2025
Constant Méheut has reported extensively on the U.S.-Ukrainian minerals deal, from the tense negotiations behind it to its implementation.
A uranium mine in Pervozvanivka, Ukraine. The investment announcement could help attract badly needed capital to sustain the country’s war economy. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
The U.S. government on Wednesday pledged $75 million to kick-start a landmark deal to invest in Ukraine’s vast mineral reserves, a commitment that will ease fears in Kyiv that the Trump administration is walking away from the war-torn country.
When an agreement this spring granted the United States a stake in Ukraine’s critical minerals, Kyiv cast it as a way to lock in American support through business ties. President Trump had made clear he would no longer give U.S. money to Ukraine for the war effort, leaving Kyiv scrambling to retain whatever American engagement it could.
Many observers doubted that the deal could draw U.S. investment while the fighting raged. But the new American pledge and a matching commitment by the Ukrainian government will bring a fund created under the agreement to $150 million.
“By deploying this initial capital, we aim to catalyze private-sector investments in Ukraine through the fund’s investments, to rebuild critical infrastructure, unlock nature resources and generate economic prosperity for the United States and Ukraine,” Conor Coleman, head of investments at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, or D.F.C., the government agency behind the investments, said in a statement.
The flow of U.S. government money into Ukraine’s minerals, hydrocarbons and related infrastructure could help reassure private investors and attract badly needed capital to sustain the country’s war economy.
It also shows the new mercantile nature of the U.S.-Ukrainian alliance under Mr. Trump. While the Biden administration spent tens of billions of dollars to aid Kyiv, Washington now focuses on opportunities to profit through investments and sales. It provides weapons to Ukraine only through purchases facilitated by a NATO-backed procurement system that uses European funds.
Aware of the U.S. president’s business-oriented mind-set, Kyiv hopes to give Mr. Trump a stake in Ukraine’s future through the mineral investment, especially as he has grown frustrated with his diplomatic efforts to end the war and hinted at possibly stepping back.
The U.S. investment “is a sign of trust and long-term commitment of our partners,” Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, said in a statement. “American investments can be a guarantee of security both for Ukraine and for American business in Ukraine.”
Signed in the spring after months of tense negotiations, the deal gives the United States special access to investment projects in natural resources in Ukraine, which hold a potential value of trillions of dollars. Under the agreement, a company seeking to develop a mineral site and needing investors must first present its project to the fund created by the deal.
While the fund is jointly owned by the United States and Ukraine, Washington retains some control over it. The D.F.C. was appointed to lead its board this month.
The $150 million investment announced on Wednesday will provide the fund’s initial capital, but most of its future contributions are expected to come from Kyiv. Under the deal, half of the revenues the Ukrainian government earns from extracting minerals and selling licenses will flow into the fund.
Profits will then be reinvested in Ukraine’s economy, with the United States also claiming a portion. Mr. Trump has portrayed the arrangement as repayment for past U.S. aid.
In an effort to push the deal forward, Kyiv has pitched Washington projects to exploit deposits of lithium, graphite and titanium, three minerals the United States has identified as critical for its economy and national security. The Kyiv School of Economics says Ukraine holds the largest titanium reserves in Europe and a third of Europe’s reserves of lithium, which is used to produce electric batteries.
Ukraine officially opened bidding for its first project on Friday, at the Dobra lithium field, one of the largest in Ukraine. TechMet, an energy investment firm partly owned by the U.S. government, has announced that it will make a bid. But the bidding could face a legal challenge, as Critical Metals Corporation, an American company, claims to hold the rights to mine the site.
In recent days, a D.F.C. delegation scouted other sites in central Ukraine that could become pilot projects., including a mining and processing plant and a deposit owned by Velta Holding, a titanium producer. Titanium is critical for producing aircraft and medical implants.
Industry analysts say the path to extracting Ukraine’s minerals is filled with challenges, including complex licensing procedures and outdated geological surveys that cloud the true value of Ukrainian subsoil.
Perhaps the greatest challenge is Russia’s continued advance on the battlefield.
In July, its troops seized a valuable lithium deposit in the eastern Donetsk region. Moscow’s forces, which already control vast mineral resources through their occupation of roughly a fifth of Ukraine, are also getting closer to deposits of titanium and uranium in eastern Ukraine.
Potential investors may also be unnerved by recent Russian airstrikes on or near Western assets, including an American factory in western Ukraine. Ukrainian officials and analysts have viewed the strikes as a warning from Moscow that the West’s assets may not be safe in Ukraine, and that the bloc should back off from investing in a country that Russia has long seen as its economic backyard.
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