First aid trucks enter Gaza as Israel seeks full control of territory

The first trucks carrying humanitarian aid have been allowed into Gaza by Israel – as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces his forces will take full control of the Gaza Strip as part of their latest, expanded offensive against the territory.

Five aid lorries entered via the Kerem Shalom crossing on Monday – ending a near three-month blockade by Israel – after Mr Netanyahu agreed to allow a “limited” amount of aid in the face of a famine from food security experts.

The move, welcomed by the United Nations, came on the same day the prime minister revealed that Israel had plans to “take control of all” of the Gaza Strip following the latest round of airstrikes in Gaza.

“The fighting is intense, and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the strip,” Mr Netanyahu said in a video posted to his Telegram channel. “We will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped.”

Mr Netanyahu added that lifting the blockade on aid entering the territory was for “practical and diplomatic reasons” that centred on pacifying Israel’s international critics. The blockade has been in place since a truce fell apart in March.

The Israeli military said forces engaged in a new campaign dubbed “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” were active across Gaza, seeking to eliminate Hamas’s military and governing capabilities and to bring back the remaining hostages seized in October 2023.

Over the weekend, Israeli forces announced they were launching “extensive” operations in the north of Gaza, towards the Jabaliya refugee camp, and southwards towards the city of Khan Younis.

Palestinians in Khan Younis were ordered to “evacuate immediately” on Monday morning ahead of what Israeli forces described as an “unprecedented attack to destroy” Hamas.

“From this moment, Khan Younis will be considered a dangerous combat zone,” Israel spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on Telegram.

Previous Israeli air and ground offensives have already caused heavy damage to the city. Almost the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza, who are barred from leaving the territory, have been displaced by Israel’s constant attacks. Many have been forced to relocate numerous times as Israel returns for further military operations.

Palestinian health officials said more than 500 people have been killed in attacks in the past eight days.

Nedal Hamdouna a journalist who was force to flee bombing for the eight time over the weekend said the situation was a nightmare.

“While I was evacuating I saw people screaming and crying as they received the news of the killing of their sons in an Israeli airstrike,” he told The Independent. “I passed by the cemetery road where I saw some young men burying their relatives who were killed this morning,” he said.

Israel’s ground and air war has killed more than 53,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

The war erupted after Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities near the border with Gaza on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The Israeli army spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani, said there was “no end date necessarily” for the newly expanded and intensified operation in Gaza, adding that the army had hit over 800 targets in Gaza in “recent days” and that there were five divisions operating there, after tens of thousands of reservists were mobilised.

On Monday, Cogat, the Israeli army unit given the task of delivering aid to the occupied territories, said: “Following the recommendation of professional IDF officials and in accordance with the directive of the political echelon, 5 UN trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including food for babies, were transferred today via the Kerem Shalom Crossing into the Gaza Strip.

“All aid was transferred following a thorough security inspection by personnel from the Ministry of Defense’s Crossing Points Authority.”

Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Colonel Shoshani declined to confirm or deny whether the Israeli military would indefinitely hold areas of Gaza, as suggested by the Israeli premier.

The military spokesperson told reporters the main goal of the new operation was “to target Hamas’ command and control systems, to target their commanders, to target their remaining capabilities.” However, he acknowledged that this means forcing civilians to flee again — without confirming how many people have been asked to move.

Palestinian health officials, meanwhile, said more than 500 people have been killed in attacks in the past eight days as Israel has stepped up its ferocious military campaign.

The health ministry in Gaza said several hospitals had been hit or surrounded. In a message posted to Telegram groups today, the Ministry of Health said Israeli forces fired directly at the intensive care unit at the Indonesian Hospital and bombed the European Gaza Hospital with 14 rockets, “complicating the hospital’s chances of reopening.”

When The Independent asked the Israeli military about these reports, Lt. Colonel Shoshani replied that the army “does not attack hospitals” and that they were “operating according to international law.”

Dr Khaled El-Serr who is head of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said his was the last working medical centre in the south of Gaza after the Israeli military issued new forced evacuation orders.

“The situation in the hospital is disastrous… we are overwhelmed with patients. We’ve had to place injured people in the paediatrics and obstetrics wards because there is no space left in the surgical departments,” he said.

“Some patients are being treated in tents and other unsuitable areas where proper care and monitoring are impossible,” he told The Independent as Israeli drones whined in the background.”

The director general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Monday morning that more than 2 million people, out of a total population of 2.3 million, are currently starving in Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu said it was important for Gaza not to “reach a state of starvation, both from a practical and a diplomatic perspective”, because Israel’s international backers “simply will not support us [and ] we will not be able to complete the mission of victory”.

US president Donald Trump, who is viewed as one of America’s most pro-Israel leaders, said last week on the final day of his Gulf tour that people were starving in Gaza and suggested that the US would have the situation “taken care of”. European allies, including the UK, have also voiced serious concerns about the dire humanitarian situation.

Private US companies, under the security control of Israeli forces, will eventually administer the aid, in a move that has been criticised by humanitarian groups as illegal. Until then, the United Nations will lead “limited” efforts to restore deliveries into Gaza.

Hardline nationalist ministers in Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet who had previously opposed all aid to the strip endorsed the move. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, echoing Mr Netanyahu’s message, suggested it was necessary to ensure the continued war.

“I understand the anger and the stomach aches,” he said on Monday morning. “Until the last of the kidnapped people returns, not even water should be brought in, but the reality is different.”

Israel made its announcement on aid after sources on both sides reported no progress had been made in a new round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas in Qatar.

Israel has also been pounding Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen. Shoshani said the Israeli military deployed 15 aircraft, including fighter jets, to strike seaports and the airport in Yemen.

“They were successfully conducted… and they disabled the ports and reduced the Houthis’ capabilities to transfer their core equipment or anything funding terror into Yemen.”

I spend £8,000 a year on self-love – have I got it all wrong?

How much do I love myself? According to my bank statements, it’s quite a lot (but not as much as a few years ago). I’m working out how much I’ve spent in the last 12 months on self-care to make myself feel better and to self-improve. It’s often an uphill struggle to feel I’m doing the job properly; either I feel I can’t afford the luxury of pampering and healing myself, or I just don’t have the time anymore. Then I forget what self-care really is. Isn’t it about personal growth, boundaries, connection, compassion, self-acceptance, and even helping others? If I did that more, wouldn’t I feel a million dollars?

At times, though, self-care feels as simple as a good night’s sleep. But even that comes at a cost. Magnesium bath salts and supplements cost me £150 a year. Then there were the organic candles (£32 each), the six months on Ozempic (£169 per month), and the psychic (£200). I ditched the weekly massages (that would add on another £4,160 a year), despite at one point feeling like I couldn’t live without them due to the stress I held in my body. I’ve long given up the gym membership, which was £65 a month. It feels impossible to factor it into my life, as a single working mum juggling two young children. I can’t afford a nanny, and my kids are too old to sit in a gym creche.

I’ve swapped lots of this out for free activities, such as power walking the dog and breathing deeply. I’m not sure if this is even self-love, or a basic human function and my responsibility as a pet owner. I am not over-indulgent: no manicures, pedicures, Korean glass facials, spa trips, or wardrobe consultants. It’s pretty basic.

But after totting it all up to include things like the hairdresser (£720), a quick dose of the injectable Profhilo for facial hydration (£250), dynamic reformer pilates (£480), week-long juice cleanses (£600), top-notch vitamins (£240), one-off Botox (£250), an excellent skincare trio with cleanser, day cream and night cream with a serum (£600), electrolyte sachets (£144), teeth whitening (£395), and a few self-help books (£50), among other things, such as Morpheus8 skin rejuvenation follow-up (£1250), and that vegan blue face paint peel (£149) that I swear by – as well as acupuncture (£400) and a meditation app (£49.99) – I’m looking at around £8,000 minimum annually (while holding back considerably).

I’ve always opted for quality over quantity during times of financial restraint, so in an ideal world, the list would be a lot longer. I’d get in that energy healer to clear my flat, see a nutritionist for gut health, buy the next-generation probiotics, and go to a couple of five-star wellness retreats per year. It’s often not until I stop that I realise how mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted I am. Could I even cope on a silent retreat? I might not be ready to unleash the grief of losing my late father yet. Would I have grief counselling? Not really. The truth is that the private gong bath (£28) is keeping a lid on it all.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the US is the largest wellness economy, with Americans spending more than $6,000 (£4,500) per person a year on wellness, compared to $3,342 per person in the UK. But in a climate of wellness overload, where we are inundated with self-care options, has it become a costly activity that keeps us striving for perfection and stuck in a mode of compare and despair?

Rina Raphael, journalist and author of 2022’s The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop and the False Promise of Self-Care, tells me that the wellness industry has, over the last decade of its heyday, commodified self-care with products and services promising instant happiness and relief from stress. But that can lead to a cycle of consumerism and potentially a neglect of deeper systemic issues.

“It’s not self-care itself that is the issue, but the way we’re being sold it,” says Raphael. “It’s been more synonymous with ‘treat yourself culture’, often self-soothing activities symbolic of a very aspirational lifestyle.” She says that many types of self-care are “dependent on a purchase”, something which has, she claims, “handed the problem back to the sufferer repackaged”. The problem, she says, is that it places the onus on the individual to fix themselves, with anything from “CBD toilet rolls” to “Sephora face masks”, without addressing the root causes of our problems – the social systems that leave us feeling tired and stressed in the first place.

“It’s about telling people they’re stressed because they didn’t prioritise taking enough bubble baths,” she says, “rather than a lack of childcare resources, paltry communal or government support for parents, dissatisfaction with the medical establishment – be it gaslit or ignored by practitioner or that certain women’s conditions are under-researched or underfunded.” It’s starting to change now, however, with the emergence of a much wiser consumer. “It’s no longer the Goop era,” she says. “People have got really sick of feeling like if you didn’t reach this glorified marketed zen, that it is somehow your fault. So you are seeing them reject this oversimplified interpretation of wellness and they are stopping the self-blame.” Actual progress, she says, only comes from engaging in whatever was responsible for the stress in the first place – “escapism and consumption do not promise real change”. And she believes the era of “polished, girlboss, millennial-pink wellness” is over. “People think it’s clownish.”

Dr Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture, agrees. “Self-care is often framed as a form of empowerment, a way for people to take control over their health and wellbeing by prioritising rest and repair,” she tells me. “But at the same time, current approaches to self-care tend to individualise problems that may be better understood and addressed as collective or social problems.”

She consistently found in her research that people engage in self-care activities at least partly to offset chronic illness, inadequate healthcare, insecure income or housing, long working hours, poor working conditions, as well as to address concerns about environmental contamination and pharmaceutical safety. “One interesting finding was that even when people doubt the effectiveness of their self-care practices, they value the comfort and symbolism those practices provide,” she says. “Self-care is also increasingly framed as a form of self-optimisation, and an individual moral duty so we can become our best selves.”

The challenge of self-care is that there is “no ceiling”: there is always something more we could and should be doing to fulfil our duty of taking care of ourselves. “There is always a new diet or beauty routine to follow, a new supplement to take, or a new practitioner to see,” she says. “And if we fail to become ‘well’ despite our efforts, we simply need to try harder or try something else.”

Clearly, many of us have got self-care wrong. Merely booking into a facial or a massage – and the endless grooming women put themselves through to appear beautiful by patriarchal standards – is not real self-love. It all stacks up towards making us feel better, but it’s a quick fix. A 2022 report showed that 34 per cent of Gen Z regularly practice mindfulness to handle stress and boost mental wellbeing. They also prioritise financial wellness as part of their broader self-care routines. I certainly know first-hand how much better I feel when I help another person and escape my own self-centred thinking.

Many studies have also found a link between being kind and altruistic with increased self-esteem, higher overall life satisfaction and reduced risk of depression. A recent meta-analysis published in 2020 that investigated the health benefits of volunteering for people aged 65 and older reportedly found evidence that the average volunteer has a 57 per cent chance of outliving the average person who does not volunteer.

A large investigation led by Professor Arjen de Wit, a sociologist at VU Amsterdam, covering data from a quarter of a million European participants and published in the European Journal of Ageing in 2022, suggests the benefits from volunteering may be cumulative. “In our study, volunteers have a 1 per cent slower decline in health than non-volunteers from year to year,” he tells me. “This is a small difference, but can add up if you continue volunteering when you age.”

I know that when I practice real self-care, my outsides match my insides and I feel a sense of peace. I can quieten the negative self-talk and parent myself through a hard moment in life. Half the time, it’s an impossible balance. I often reach for a self-care product or a wellness service. Like so many others, I too have defined my self-worth through external validation. It’s easy to spend on candles, massages and collagen powder in the name of self-love, but it takes time to accept oneself. Real self-care is about prioritising internal growth – not ticking something off a to-do list.

Our best punctuation mark is dying out; we need to learn how to use it

Forget black rhinos and the Amazon rainforest: there’s something arguably just as precious joining the endangered species list, only this time, it’s a grammatical rather than biological extinction event on the horizon. I’m talking about the poor, misunderstood semicolon.

Yes, that most elegant of punctuation marks – sitting elusively somewhere between an en-dash and a colon – is officially under threat. Its usage in English books has been slashed almost in half in the last 25 years, according to new research by language-learning software Babbel and reported by The Guardian. It appears once in every 390 words today, compared with every 205 in 2000.

In a separate piece of research commissioned off the back of these stark findings, Lisa McLendon, author of The Perfect English Grammar Workbook, found that more than half of British students didn’t know or understand how to use a semicolon. In a survey sent to the London Student Network’s 500,000 members, 67 per cent of respondents admitted to never or rarely using one, while a mere 11 per cent claimed to be frequent users. If anything, I’d wager that the latter, self-reported percentage is overly generous – perhaps massaged by students who were willing it, rather than believing it, to be true.

Part of the problem has always been, as identified by this latest research, the sheer number of people who simply don’t know what to do with this confounding piece of punctuation. Fear not, I’m not here to chide the stupidity of “illiterate Britain” and start bashing those who don’t know their “there” from their “they’re” with my specially made grammar-snob paddle. I will, however, firmly point the finger at an English school syllabus that, for a long time, framed teaching children about the founding rules and principles of their native language as a fun, optional extra.

I’m as much a victim of this as anyone, having been educated in the Nineties and Noughties. I turned up at university with very little idea of what semicolons were for – a fact that in no way stopped me from shoehorning them in wherever I thought they might add an extra sprinkle of academic pizzazz. Consequently, most of my essays were returned covered with red circles highlighting all the incorrect usages (which constituted pretty much all of them).

The most common misuse – the one I fell prey to all those years ago – is putting a semicolon in place of a comma. It’s not merely a pause; it’s a tool to separate two independent clauses that are somehow linked. If in doubt, you should be able to take a semicolon away and replace it with a full stop to make two coherent sentences. If you can’t, it’s not the right punctuation for the situation. Here endeth the grammar lesson.

Even for those who do feel confident deploying it correctly, the semicolon seems to have become increasingly unfashionable over the last century. Various respected writers, including Kurt Vonnegut, Edgar Allan Poe, Gertrude Stein and Cormac McCarthy, have publicly denounced my favourite punctuation mark as “showy”, “unnecessary”, “idiocy”, and a way of showing people “you’ve been to college” (this last bit of absolute savagery thrown by Vonnegut in 2005). All of this has only added to the unfair misrepresentation of the semicolon as somehow “pretentious” – the punctuation equivalent of having “opinions” about wine lists and insisting on not owning a TV as a badge of moral superiority.

Its decline surely has even more to do with the rise of the smartphone and, subsequently, emojis. Back in the first wave of mobiles and texting, messages were short and to the point – at 10p a go, you better believe we were fastidious when it came to maximising word count – which resulted in a staccato, telegram-like style of communication. No one had enough space to be joining clauses together, for goodness’ sake, and yet there was still an unexpected place for the semicolon to thrive in this brave new world.

Where character counts were constrained, emoticons helped to convey meaning. Punctuation marks could be combined to create rudimentary expressions, such as a colon and a closing parenthesis to indicate a smiley face (“no worries!!!”) or a colon and an “o” to represent a surprised face (“definitely some worries!!!”). Swap in a semicolon, and you had yourself a winky face, a crucial component of Noughties flirting via text. It may not have been the function originally envisaged by Italian scholar and printer Aldus Pius Manutius the Elder – whose work contains the first recorded use of a semicolon in 1494 – but at least our girl seemed to have got her mojo back.

The development of emojis put paid to that. Actual faces conveying a much broader spectrum of emotional states swept in and made their forerunners obsolete. At the same time, they seemed to replace punctuation in messages altogether. Though character counts no longer mattered in a world of unlimited texts and free-to-use WhatsApps, even full stops became passé. Why use a boring dot to end a sentence when you could shrug, scream, or roll your eyes?

Going forward, I can only see a world in which our precious semicolon gets even further ostracised. After all, almost one in five (18.5 per cent) of 13- to 18-year-olds are already using generative AI to write stories, according to research by the National Literacy Trust. AI regurgitates ideas and style based on the material it’s been fed – so if writing by humans has fewer semicolons, it stands to reason that writing by AI will follow suit. It feels like a vicious cycle: people will read them less and therefore use them less, and so on and so on, until the semicolon inevitably becomes as rare a sighting in the wild as the Sumatran orangutan.

On one level, I understand. The semicolon is not essential. Unlike the workaday comma or full stop, it’s fundamentally replaceable – just throw in a dash instead and see how the world goes on turning. But why would you want to replace such a chic little grammatical tool, one that allows us to seamlessly connect ideas without having to forcibly break them up or slow down the pace of a paragraph? When used thoughtfully, sparingly, it lends a timeless touch of class to any piece of prose. The semicolon’s appeal lies in its very lack of necessity; some of the most beautiful things in life aren’t, strictly speaking, “necessary”.

Here’s a thought: how about we embrace and relearn how to use this beguiling, grammatical gift, rather than wasting precious characters needlessly trying to write it out of existence. Period.

‘Hero’ died helping firefighters at Bicester fire, say family

A “amazing man” died while helping fire crews tackle a huge blaze at a former RAF base in Bicester, his family have said as they paid tribute to the father.

Dave Chester, 57, was working at Bicester Motion when the blaze broke out, claiming his life and two firefighters – Jennie Logan and Martyn Sadler – on Thursday night.

Two further firefighters suffered serious injuries and are in hospital, Oxfordshire County Council said previously.

In a statement released by Thames Valley Police, Mr Chester’s family said: “Dave was the most amazing man we will ever know, we love and miss him so much. He was a loving and caring father, husband, son and brother. He was Bicester born and bred and known by almost everyone. Once you met Dave, you never forgot him or his quirky sense of humour.

“You won’t find anyone who worked harder than he did, he built an incredible business from the ground up alongside the help of his family and friends.”

They added: “Bicester Motion has been a huge part of our lives, with many amazing memories and friends made along the way. Dave was always known as the man you went to when you needed any sort of help.

“This is exactly what happened on Thursday evening, he saw firefighters needing assistance and helped without hesitation. He was not a victim but a hero, he died the way he lived – helping others and putting them ahead of himself.

“Although he is no longer with us he will always be in our hearts and his legacy will continue.”

A golden plaque has been installed at the entrance to the site, with a tribute reading: “Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service. Bicester Motion. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those affected by the sad loss of two firefighters and the member of the public. Love from the Bicester community.”

Ms Logan, aged 30, and Mr Sadler, 38, were among the ten fire crews that rushed to the fire as neighbours reported multiple explosions and clouds of dense black smoke at 6.39pm.

A close friend of Ms Logan, and a fellow firefighter, posted on social media: “Life is cruel but now everyone can be proud of the hero that I saw, that I heard, that I hugged.”

Mr Sadler’s cousin David described the death of his family member as a “devastating loss”. “Thank you to everyone for the overwhelming number of messages following the devastating loss of my cousin, colleague, role model and hero Martyn Sadler at the fire in Bicester last night,” he wrote on social media.

The Bicester Rugby Union Football Club, with which both Ms Logan and Mr Sadler were involved, said the presence of both firefighters would be “massively missed”.

A fundraising site in memory of those who lost their lives has been set up by Bicester resident Daniel Chartrand, and the GoFundMe page has already raised nearly £2,000 of its £4,500 target.

Fire investigators and Thames Valley Police are working to establish the cause of the blaze, the force added.

Assistant Chief Constable Tim Metcalfe, said: “Our inquiries are ongoing but this is a complex investigation which may take some time.”

Couple awarded damages after footballs kicked into garden of £2m home

A couple who own an idyllic £2m country home have successfully sued the county council after footballs were repeatedly kicked into the garden of their property.

St Anns, an impressive sprawl in Winchester, Hampshire, became a “no go area” after a primary school built a football pitch next door, the High Court was told.

Homeowners Mohamed and Marie-Anne Bakhty said the sports pitch had “taken over” their life, with 170 footballs kicked into their garden in less than a year.

The couple was awarded £1,000 after the High Court ruled Westgate All Through Primary School’s decision to build the pitch and stray balls landing in the garden amounted to a public nuisance.

Mr Bakhaty, a 77-year-old property developer, claimed he was forced to stop using his garden as a place of rest after the school “deliberately” built the pitch to “upset” the couple.

His 66-year-old wife Ms Bakhaty, once a keen gardener, said the “continuous, horrendous noise” of the pitch had caused her distress.

Judge Philip Glen ruled that while stray balls might be annoying, the “frequent projection” of them onto someone else’s property breached common law.

In 2021, a grassy playground was transformed into an all-weather play area with five-a-side football pitch after money was raised for the project.

It was surrounded by a green wired fence and built roughly two metres from the boundary of the couple’s home.

But by October 2022, Mr and Mrs Bakhaty issued a civil claim against Hampshire county council alleging a common law nuisance.

When Judge Glen visited the home, he found 20 footballs lining the flowerbeds of the garden, according to court documents.

He ordered the council to pay the couple £1,000 in damages for the period in which there was “excessive use” of the play area.

However, he said it would not be appropriate to grant an injunction, which is what the couple had initially requested.

He said in his judgment: “There can also in my judgment be no objection to the use by the school of the area presently fenced off behind the all-weather play area for structured activities such as natural history lessons.

“Indeed, if a net was erected to prevent balls, and other objects, from crossing the boundary fence, I cannot necessarily see that there could be any real objection to opening this area up altogether.”

He also said: “I do not consider that the defendant ‘threatens and intends’ to continue the nuisance that I have found existed, albeit that they would have liked in other circumstances to have done so.”

Egypt says seven, including two Brits, confirmed dead in tourist boat tragedy

Seven people, including five foreign tourists, have been officially declared dead by Egyptian authorities after a tragic boat accident in the Red Sea.

The tourists – two British, two Polish, and one German – along with two Egyptians, were aboard the Sea Story when it capsized near Sataya Reef in November last year. The boat, carrying 31 tourists and 13 crew on a diving excursion, sank rapidly after being hit by high waves.

While four bodies were recovered shortly after the incident, the remaining seven individuals had been missing until this official declaration, published in a government decree on Sunday.

Brits Jenny Cawson, 36, and her husband Tariq Sinada, 49, were believed to be among seven people still unaccounted for.

Ms Cawson’s mother Pamela told the BBC at the time that she recognised the name of the boat in the news as the couple had been in touch when they arrived in the Red Sea.

She said: “Your heart sinks. You ask yourself, have I misread the news? Let’s look again.”

The family said they approached local sources in Egypt in an attempt to locate their loved ones.

“One of the local sources was kind enough to try and look for them in local hospitals,” Ms Cawson’s mother said in December.

Officials said the boat had passed its last safety inspection eight months earlier with no technical issues reported.

Owned by an Egyptian national, the vessel was 34 meters long and had received a one-year safety certificate from the Maritime Safety Authority. The incident was blamed on high waves during rough weather conditions.

The Sea Story was the second boat to sink in the area last year. A vessel suffered severe damage from strong waves in June, though no casualties were reported. Earlier this year, a viewing submarine sank off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada, killing six Russian tourists.

The Red Sea, renowned for its coral reefs and marine life, is a major hub for Egypt’s tourism industry, which plays a critical role in the country’s economy.

Teacher banned over intimate relationship with pupil that started after sports day

An art teacher has been banned from the profession for kissing a student after sports day and having sex with them at their parents’ home regularly.

Helen Flinders, 55, had a five-month relationship with a student while teaching at St Joseph’s Catholic College in Swindon, Wiltshire.

A Teacher Regulation Agency (TRA) misconduct panel found she had “seriously breached the teacher-pupil boundary” and that her behaviour represented a “complete abuse of her position of trust”.

Flinders began teaching at the school in 1994, before beginning a sexual relationship with a student, referred to as Student A, in June or July 2000.

In a witness statement given to the TRA, Ms Flinders admitted to the accusations and said: “During July 2000, I went for a drink with Pupil A after sports day. We then went to another teacher’s house. I asked Pupil A for a kiss goodbye. He kissed me and it was consensual.

“A consensual sexual relationship began during the summer break of 2000. I met up with Pupil A approximately three or four times during the summer break of 2000 at his parents’ house… My sexual relationship with Pupil A lasted around 5 and a half months from July to December 2000.”

Pupil A stated in his witness statement that Ms Flinders regularly had sex with him at his parents’ house over the summer break of 2000.

He stated: “The first time Helen Flinders and I had sex was in my parents’ house. She came over, and had asked what I wanted to do, and whether I wanted to take our relationship to the next level. It therefore progressed into a consensual sexual relationship.

“During the summer, my parents worked during the day and were out of the house, so they were not aware that our relationship had progressed to a sexual relationship.”

The relationship ended in December 2000, and Ms Flinders later moved to teach at Churchfields School in Swindon.

In 2011, Pupil A was asked by someone he was dating whether the rumours of his relationship with Mr Flinders were true, to which he said yes.

Churchfields School was notified and she was suspended and later resigned.

Police began an investigation but did not refer the case to the TRA until 2022, when Ms Flinders admitted to the allegations.

After the TRA panel found the accusations against Ms Flinders proven, Duncan Tilley, the panel chairman, said: “The panel noted that whilst the term “safeguarding” was not widely used back in 2000, there was still a clear expectation for teachers to keep children safe and protect their well-being.

“The panel considered that Miss Flinders’ conduct fell significantly short of the standards of behaviour expected of the profession at the time, given the serious nature of her conduct which the panel considered to be a complete abuse of her position of trust to commence a sexual relationship with one of her pupils.

“The panel also noted that despite Pupil A and Miss Flinders stating that the sexual relationship was consensual, the panel considered the potential harmful impact that this relationship could have had on Pupil A’s life.”

Sarah Buxcey, the decision maker, said on behalf of the Secretary of State: “Miss Helen Flinders is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or 18 children’s home in England.

“Furthermore, in view of the seriousness of the allegations found proved against her, I have decided that Miss Helen Flinders shall not be entitled to apply for restoration of her eligibility to teach.”

Ms Flinders, who faces no police action, has a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days.

Colombian model killed days after Mexican TikToker shot on livestream

A Colombian model and influencer has reportedly been killed just days after a Mexican TikTok influencer was fatally shot during a livestream.

On May 15, Maria Jose Estupiñan, a 22-year-old university student living in Colombia’s northern city of Cúcuta, was reportedly shot several times at her residence by a man pretending to be a delivery person.

In security footage that has been widely shared across social media, a man can be seen running away after allegedly shooting Estupiñan, who can be heard screaming in pain.

Estupiñan, who was a student at Francisco de Paula Santander University, died shortly after from her injuries.

“She was a young, enterprising woman with a whole life ahead of her, but those dreams are cut short like the dreams of many women in this country,” said Magda Victoria Acosta, president of the National Gender Commission of the Colombian Judiciary, at a recent news conference, per CNN.

Acosta added that Estupiñan’s death came just as she was expecting to receive 30 million pesos from her ex-partner as part of a domestic violence complaint she filed against him in 2018.

Authorities have said they are investigating Estupiñan’s murder, though it’s unclear if they’re pursuing it as a suspected femicide, which is the killing of a woman or girl, particularly by a man on account of her gender.

“It could be an alleged femicide, since she filed several complaints for domestic violence in previous years, but that is a matter of investigation,” said Colonel Leonardo Capacho, commander of District One of the Cúcuta Metropolitan Police, according to local news outlet Noticias Caraco.

Estupiñan’s tragic death came just two days after the fatal shooting of Mexican influencer Valeria Márquez, 23, on May 13.

Márquez was livestreaming to her followers from her beauty salon in Jalisco, Mexico, when two men arrived on a motorcycle. One of the men entered the store and asked if she was Valeria, before delivering a small parcel.

“He’s a little piglet!” Márquez reportedly exclaimed as she unwrapped the stuffed animal in front of her viewers before she was shot. Officials have said that the two men swiftly fled the scene.

When police arrived, she was “still sitting in the chair where she was surprised with that doll, the little pig, right there in her arms,” Denis Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office, told The New York Times.

According to Rodriguez, the two men had come into the salon earlier that day and claimed they were trying to deliver a gift to Márquez.

They “most likely didn’t personally know her, as they had to ask for her by name,” Rodríguez told The Times.

“They didn’t have a personal relationship,” he said. “He was simply her executioner.”

Márquez’s murder is also being investigated as a possible femicide.

Several Latin American countries, including Mexico, have the highest rate of femicide in the world, despite the region having laws aimed at preventing and ending violence against women.

According to a 2023 study, at least 11 women are victims of femicide every day in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The national domestic abuse helpline offers support for women on 0808 2000 247, or you can visit the Refuge website. There is a dedicated men’s advice line on 0808 8010 327.

Those in the US can call the domestic violence hotline on 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.