HEADLINES – The tragic demise of seven workers from World Central Kitchen, an American charity, in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza marked a devastating setback for the organization that has rapidly grown in less than 15 years.
The killings disrupted the crucial flow of desperately needed food aid to the besieged coastal strip, as international organizations and charities warn of an impending famine. World Central Kitchen, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, had just delivered a cargo ship carrying 400 tons of canned goods from Cyprus to Gaza.
More than 53,000 individuals have fled Haiti’s capital in less than three weeks, with the vast majority escaping the relentless gang violence, according to a United Nations report released on Tuesday.
More than 60% are heading to Haiti’s rural southern region, concerning U.N. officials. “Our humanitarian colleagues emphasized that these departments do not have sufficient infrastructure, and host communities do not have sufficient resources, to cope with the large number of people fleeing Port-au-Prince,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Iran vowed to retaliate against an airstrike widely attributed to Israel that destroyed Iran’s Consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus the previous day, resulting in the deaths of 12 people.
Four Syrian citizens were also killed in the strike, a Syrian official said on Tuesday, without providing any details about them. Hezbollah, a key ally of both Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and Iran, also pledged “punishment and revenge” on Israel.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt was sworn in for a third six-year term on Tuesday after being re-elected in a December vote in which he faced no serious challengers.
El-Sissi took the oath of office before parliament, which convened in the new administrative capital in the desert outside Cairo. El-Sissi won 89.6% of the vote in the December election, with a turnout of 66.8% out of more than 67 million registered voters. He ran against three virtually unknown opponents.
There was a massive surge in anti-Muslim bias incidents in 2023, the highest number of such incidents recorded in 30 years, according to the Council of American-Islamic Relations.
CAIR received a large number of complaints over anti-Muslim incidents last year, with nearly half of them reported in the last three months alone, after the Israel-Gaza war began on Oct. 7th. The rise in anti-Muslim complaints comes as antisemitic hate crimes are also on the rise.
An American teenager and two other people were killed in an avalanche near the Swiss resort of Zermatt, police said on Tuesday.
One person was flown to a hospital with serious injuries. The avalanche occurred at about 2 p.m. Monday in an off-piste area of the Riffelberg, above the resort and below the famed Matterhorn peak. Rescuers recovered three bodies and the injured skier, a 20-year-old Swiss man. One of the victims were a 15-year-old American boy.
Embattled co-working space provider WeWork says it expects to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of May, touting lease-restructuring efforts that it estimates will bring $8 billion in future rental savings.
Cutting back on real estate costs has been a top priority for WeWork since the New York-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November. At the time, WeWork said that rental liabilities accounted for about two-thirds of its operating costs as it tried to renegotiate nearly all of its leases.
As more than 2 million graduating high school students from across the United States finalize their decisions on what college to attend this fall, many are facing jaw-dropping costs, in some cases, as much as $95,000.
A number of private colleges have exceeded the $90,000 threshold for the first time this year as they set their annual costs for tuition, board, meals and other expenses. That means a wealthy family with three children could expect to shell out more than $1 million by the time their youngest child completes a four-year degree
