Nour AbuShammala has returned to her partly destroyed apartment in Gaza City. This is her story of multiple displacements, injury and devastation over the last two years
When 26-year-old Nour AbuShammala stepped back into her family’s apartment in Gaza City in October the rooms were gutted, the walls were damaged by bombing, and there was no water or electricity, but it was still home.
Since the outbreak of war in October 2023 she has been forced to flee six times. This is her story of relentless displacement, survival and loss, told using photography and videos provided by AbuShammala and satellite imagery of a ruined Gaza.
At least 15 people, aged between 10 and 87, were killed when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukah celebration in Sydney on Sunday
Holocaust survivors, dedicated volunteers, faith leaders, and heroes who tried to stop the shooting have been named among the 15 victims of the Bondi beach terror attack in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday.
Most were attending a celebration for the first day of Hanukah when the shooting began. It is the worst mass shooting in Australia since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
This page will be updated with more details as they become available
In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and Griefline on 1300 845 745. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Chancellor’s claim to be helping trade met with disbelief in England and Wales amid soaring staff costs, energy bills and other overheads
Emma Harrison has begun to wonder how her business will survive in recent weeks. The managing director of the Three Hills pub in Bartlow, Cambridgeshire, is struggling to see how she will make a profit after examining the impact of her rising tax bill.
“I’m really terrified about this coming year,” Harrison says. “We’re a well-run pub, we’ve won lots of awards, but this is going to be really hard.”
Demands for oversight grow after inquiry calls sector an ‘unregulated free for all’ and families seek stronger safeguards
Ministers are expected to back calls to regulate England’s funeral industry for the first time, after a series of scandals over the handling of remains.
Bereaved families have called for a new investigatory body and rules governing professional qualifications after an official inquiry declared the sector an “unregulated free for all”.
Unless urgent action is taken life will be fundamentally altered for the ancient communities who live on its banks
As a leader of one of the oldest gnostic religions in the world, Sheikh Nidham Kreidi al-Sabahi must use only water taken from a flowing river, even for drinking.
The 68-year-old has a long grey beard hanging over his simple tan robe and a white cap covering his equally long hair, which sheikhs are forbidden from cutting. He says he has never got ill from drinking water from the Tigris River and believes that as long as the water is flowing, it is clean. But the truth is that soon it may not be flowing at all.
A ruby-red, melt-in-the-mouth delight and an ice-cream encased in chocolate and marsala-drenched panettone – both to make ahead of time
While strictly speaking this is a zuccotto – that is, a dome-shaped cake filled with ice-cream and enrobed in chocolate – I take disproportionate pleasure in the fact that it looks very much like a Christmas pudding. Even more delightful is the knowledge that it can be made weeks ahead of time, and whisked out of the freezer and brought to the table as needed. There’s allo a wibbly-wobbly jelly with a soft melt-in-your-mouth set, rather than the more solid, gelatinous variety I so strongly associate with childhood tea parties. Plus, it has sparkling booze in it, which, of course, makes the whole thing feel very grown-up.
It is hoped the institution can help foster new bonds in a fractured nation, but such optimism will be a stretch for some
It was a night at the museum like no other. As the staccato sound of firecrackers and explosions rang out across Martyr’s Square in the heart of Tripoli, for once it was not Libya’s militias battling it out for a larger stake in the country’s oil economy, but a huge firework display celebrating the reopening of one of the finest museums in the Mediterranean.
The National Museum of Libya – housing Africa’s greatest collection of classical antiquities in Tripoli’s historic Red Castle complex – had been closed for nearly 14 years due to the civil war that followed the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall. Its ceremonial reopening came at the climax of a lavish show compressing Libya’s rich history and attended by diplomats and Arab celebrities, with a full-size Italian orchestra, acrobats, dancers, arches of fire and lights projected on to the fort. It did not lack for circus drama or cost, peaking with a billowing Ottoman sailing ship arriving high above the port on wires to be greeted by an angelic-appearing Libyan woman.
Ten years after I first followed the proposed route, I retraced my steps to see what life was like along the world’s most expensive, heavily delayed railway line
Ten years ago, I walked the route of HS2, the 140-mile railway proposed to run from London to Birmingham, to discover what lay in its path. Nothing had actually been constructed of this, supposedly the first phase of a high-speed line going north. The only trace was the furtive ecological consultants mapping newts and bats and the train’s looming presence in the minds of those who lived along the route. For many, it was a Westminster vanity project, symbolising a country run against the interests of the many to line the pockets of the few. People whose homes were under threat of demolitionwere petitioning parliament, campaigning for more tunnels or hoping the project would collapse before their farms, paddocks and ancient woodlands were wiped out.
The line, we were told a decade ago, would be completed by 2026. Like many of the early claims about the longest railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian era, that fact no longer stands. The fast train is running – very – late. The official finish date of 2033 was recently revised upwards. “The best guess is that it will begin with a ‘4’ when you can catch a train,” one well-informed observer told me. There’s similar uncertainty about its cost, but one thing is sure: it is catastrophically over budget. When complete, HS2 will almost certainly be the most expensive railway in the world. Nearly 20 years ago, HS1, the line from the Channel tunnel to St Pancras, was completed on time and on budget for £51m per mile (£87m in today’s prices). It was criticised for being twice as expensive as a high-speed route constructed in France. HS2 may cost almost £1bn per mile.
First new treatments for sexually transmitted disease in decades approved by US Food and Drug Administration as number of cases worldwide surge to 82m
The first new treatments for gonorrhoea in decades could be a “huge turning point” in efforts to combat the rise of superbug strains of the bacteria, researchers have said.
Gonorrhoea is on the rise around the world, with more than 82m infections globally each year and particularly high rates in Africa and countries in the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific region, which reaches from Mongolia and China to New Zealand. Cases in England are at a record high, and rates in Europe were three times higher in 2023 than in 2014.
Our cultural aversion to superficial answers leaves ‘Wie geht’s?’ sounding like a trick question. Perhaps it is time to let our guard down
In the early autumn, over pizza and wine, I had a conversation with a dear friend. He’s Turkish. We were in Ayvalık, a small town on Turkey’s Aegean coast, talking about cultural imprints, when he suddenly paused and looked at me. “You know what?” he said. “Whenever I ask you how you are, you never really answer. You go into a meta space immediately – talking about politics or about bigger things that worry you – but you never say how you actually are.”
I’ve been thinking about his observation ever since, debating in my mind whether it was true – and I’ve recently reached the conclusion that, unfortunately, he was right.
Carolin Würfel is a writer, screenwriter and journalist who lives in Berlin and Istanbul. She is the author of Three Women Dreamed of Socialism
A game of solitaire accompanied by a nasty note, dog food for someone who just lost a puppy … Secret Santa is supposed to be fun, but when it’s not, it can lead to all kinds of trouble
Susanna Beves was a young teacher working at an international school in Germany when she opened a gift that would put her off Secret Santas for ever. The present itself, a solitaire game, “would have been quite nice in the normal circumstances,” she says. But it was accompanied by a note: “It told me that it had been chosen for me because I was single and lonely and likely to remain so, as I had no friends.”
“It was the most awful thing,” Beves, now 57, remembers. When she opened the gift, in a room full of 60 staff members, “I just wanted to cry,” she says. “Everybody was there and everybody was opening their gifts. So I knew that the person who’d written that note was in the room with me.”
The father and son duo allegedly behind the Bondi attack appear to have been inspired by Islamic State, the Australian prime minister says, as police confirmed they were investigating why the pair travelled to the Philippines last month.
The New South Wales police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, on Tuesday alleged Naveed Akram, 24, and his 50-year-old father, Sajid, had recently travelled to the Philippines, which was confirmed by authorities in Manila.
US Southern Command says eight men killed in attacks on boats it said it were ‘engaged in narco-trafficking’
The US military has launched a fresh round of deadly strikes on foreign vessels suspected of trafficking narcotics.
The US Southern Command posted footage of the strikes on social media on Monday, announcing it had hit three vessels in international waters, killing a total of eight men.
US president says he feels ‘so badly’ about Lai’s conviction and has spoken to the Chinese leader about it
Donald Trump has said he wants Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release Jimmy Lai as he voiced sadness over the Hong Kong media mogul’s conviction on national security charges.
“I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi about it, and I asked to consider his release,” Trump told reporters on Monday, without specifying when he asked Xi.
Opposition claims SIR process being used to disenfranchise minority groups to benefit Narendra Modi’s government
India’s political opposition has warned that democracy is under threat amid a controversial exercise to revise the voter register across the country, which critics say will disenfranchise minority voters and entrench the power of the ruling Narendra Modi government.
An debate erupted in India’s parliament last week over the special intensive revision (SIR) process, which is taking place in nine states and three union territories, in one of the biggest revisions of the country’s electoral roll in decades.
Tension mixed with grief and frustration in Providence on Monday around the Brown University campus, after authorities said they were still searching for a suspect who killed two students.
Nine additional students were injured in Saturday’s shooting on the Ivy League campus in Rhode Island, which is woven into the heart of the city’s East Side neighborhood, a community that to many feels more like a small town than the capital city of the smallest state in the US.
McLeod’s Daughters and Home and Awayactor Rachael Carpani has died, aged 45, her family has announced.
A statement from her parents, shared by her sister on Instagram on Monday, said that the actor had “unexpectedly but peacefully passed away after a long battle with chronic illness in the early hours of Sunday 7th December”. Her exact cause of death was not made public.
Oly and Santi take their newborn on a hellish cruise halfway around the world. But amid the torture there are beautiful moments to treasure in this much-loved Aussie drama
As a teenager, Oly Chalmers-Davis weathered her fair share of motherhood-related horrors. For a start, the high-achieving 16-year-old went into labour in the school toilets, having not even realised she was pregnant. Not long afterwards, she was forced to tell her boyfriend he wasn’t the father – the baby was the product of a fling with another classmate. Then, unable to entertain the prospect of her perfect grades slipping, she decided to juggle studying with looking after a newborn, all the while navigating mastitis, mockery from her classmates (including some inventively mean-spirited memes) and a rocky on-off romance with her child’s dad, Santi.
After five series following Oly (Nathalie Morris) and Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr) as they struggled to adjust to parenthood, hit Australian comedy-drama Bump wrapped things up last December – yet we were left on a cliffhanger. Recently married and with little Jacinda (Ava Cannon) well into primary school, the pair were preparing to welcome another child. Now the show is back for a feature-length festive special, picking up the story eight weeks after the birth of their son.
President accuses corporation of ‘intentionally, maliciously and deceptively’ editing speech in Panorama broadcast
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made to supporters in Washington before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021, requesting up to $10bn in damages.
The US president alleged the broadcaster “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively” edited his 6 January speech before the insurrection, in an episode of Panorama just over a year ago.
Startup valuation, likely to go public at $800bn, will bolster Musk’s wealth to an estimated $677bn, according to Forbes
Elon Musk on Monday became the first person ever worth $600bn, according to Forbes. The news comes on the heels of reports that his SpaceX startup was likely to go public at a valuation of $800bn.
Musk, who was the first to surpass $500bn in net worth in October, owns an estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, which is preparing to go public next year. No other person has hit the $500bn mark.
Manager’s comments on Saturday have left Chelsea baffled and the Italian in danger
If Enzo Maresca was interested in ending speculation that he has a problem with elements of Chelsea’s hierarchy then he would have done so on Monday . Instead the Italian made no attempt to clear up a situation entirely of his own making.
He rebuffed questions about his cryptic response to beating Everton on Saturday and even reacted with exasperation when he was asked if he regretted saying a lack of support from unspecified people had put him through his “worst 48 hours” since joining the club.
Government says arrangement will bring in extra £400m on top of more than £15bn of existing annual trade with Korea
The UK has signed a new trade deal with South Korea designed to increase exports of cars, Scottish salmon and Guinness canned in Britain.
Keir Starmer described the deal, which replaces an existing agreement, as “a huge win for British business and working people”. It follows UK deals with India and the US, and the free trade agreement with the EU clinched this year.
Federal officials charged four suspects who they allege were planning to bomb multiple sites across southern California
Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two US companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.
The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, Bill Essayli, first assistant US attorney, said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.
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