Unbiased headline news for Tuesday March 19, 2024 – Gaza’s northern region potentially faces a dire famine situation, with recent data indicating alarming levels of household food insecurity and acute malnutrition.

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale, between 677,000 and 1.1 million individuals, representing half of Gaza’s population, are experiencing catastrophic food insecurity. This troubling scenario risks engulfing the entire besieged enclave, plunging 2.2 million Palestinians into the world’s worst food crisis, as stated in the IPC’s special brief.

In a rare public display of discontent in Cuba, protesters in Santiago voiced their concerns over the lack of food and electricity in daily life, joining demonstrations across the island.

Hundreds of protesters in Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city located on its eastern coast, chanted “power and food” while protesting against repeated power outages, some lasting more than 14 hours a day on the island.

Justice Samuel Alito has indefinitely extended the Supreme Court’s temporary hold on a Texas law that would authorize the detention and imprisonment of migrants who illegally cross the U.S. border.

Alito extended a prior order that paused enforcement of a new Texas immigration law empowering state and local law enforcement to arrest those who illegally cross the southern border into Texas. His action came moments before a prior Supreme Court order halting the arrests was set to expire.

Chief Justice John Roberts rejected an attempt by former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to avoid serving a prison sentence.

Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison in January. He appealed both his conviction and the trial judge’s decision to enforce his sentence as the appeal is further litigated. Navarro has long maintained that he believed he was bound by executive privilege when he refused to comply with the committee’s demands.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a woman in 1993 and demanding a sexual favor in exchange for his help advancing her career in the police department.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Manhattan, offered the first public details of a sexual assault claim brought against the mayor in November. Adams, a Democrat, has vehemently denied the allegations and said he does not remember ever meeting the woman. A sexual assault “absolutely did not happen,” the mayor told reporters last fall.

Fabric and crafts retailer Joann has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as consumers continue to cut back on discretionary spending and some pandemic-era hobbies wane.

In a Monday statement, the Hudson, Ohio-based company said that it expected to emerge from bankruptcy as early as the end of next month. Following this process, Joann will likely become privately-owned by certain lenders and industry parties, the company added — meaning its shares would no longer be publicly traded on stock exchanges.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a United States ban on the ongoing use of chrysotile asbestos — a carcinogen that the agency estimates is linked to more than 40,000 U.S. deaths each year.

The announcement comes as part of President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which is utilizing federal resources to make progress on cancer research and treatment. “While the use of asbestos in the United States has been declining for decades, the use of chrysotile asbestos has continued to this day,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a Monday press call.

Easter is approaching, but the rising price of chocolate may leave a bitter taste for some people leading up to the sweet holiday.
Two popular chocolate brands recently indicated they may raise prices on products again due to the increasing cost of cocoa, which has gone up following torrential rain in major cocoa-growing regions that affected production. Executives from Hershey and Cadbury each pointed to possible additional price hikes in recent earning calls, identifying rising cocoa costs as a main factor behind the increases.

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