A senior Hamas official told AFP on Saturday that the militant group had received no indication from Qatar that it should leave the country, where its political office has been based for years.
It comes as Qatar reportedly said it was withdrawing from its role mediating talks between Israel and Hamas to bring the conflict to an end. They also said the office was “no longer” serving its purpose.
“We have nothing to confirm or deny regarding what was published by an unidentified diplomatic source and we have not received any request to leave Qatar,” the official said from Doha, after a diplomatic source told AFP.
Qatar, with the United Sates and Egypt, has been engaged in months of fruitless negotiations for a truce with hostage and prisoner releases.
The informed source said Qatar had already “notified both sides, Israel and Hamas as well as the US administration” of its decision.
“The Qataris conveyed to the US administration that they would be ready to re-engage in mediation when both sides … demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table”, the source added.
Hamas may have to quit political base in Qatar after US ‘demand’
Gulf state under pressure after militant Islamist group rejects latest hostage release proposal
Middle East crisis – live updates
Hamas may be forced to close its offices in Qatar, after the US told the tiny Gulf state that allowing the militant Islamist group to have a base there is no longer acceptable.
Qatar, a key US partner in the Middle East, has hosted the political office of Hamas for more than a decade and allowed many senior leaders of the organisation to live there.
The request was reported by Reuters late on Friday but has yet to be officially confirmed.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, [Hamas] leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the senior official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Critics of the US request say it will hinder engagement with elements of Hamas potentially more inclined to compromise, and could boost the influence of more hostile states, such as Iran, over the group.
Hamas still holds about 100 hostages seized during its surprise attack into Israel last October. Multiple rounds of negotiations aimed at securing an end to the 13 month-long war in Gaza have failed.
The small but influential Gulf state has been a key intermediary in the talks to broker a ceasefire and is likely to comply with the US request, analysts said. The US official told Reuters that Qatar, which is designated as a major non-Nato ally by Washington, passed on the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago.
Hamas leaders have been preparing for many months to leave Qatar, with Turkey and Iraq suggested as possible alternatives. The group recently opened a political office in Baghdad.
Hamas officials denied Qatar has told the organisation to leave and there has been no reaction from Qatar’s foreign ministry to the reports.
The request to Qatar comes amid a flurry of activity as the administation of the US president, Joe Biden, prepares a final effort to end Israeli assaults in Gaza and Lebanon before handing over power to Donald Trump, who has said he too wants to see an end to the conflict.
However, there is no immediate sign that any breakthrough is possible. In previous rounds of talks, disagreements over whether any ceasefire would be definitive and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza have blocked a deal.
Observers have blamed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the failure to end the conflict, saying Sinwar did not want to stop fighting that was damaging Israel’s international standing and Netanyahu deliberately torpedoed successive potential deals for domestic political reasons.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political leaders since 2012 when the group left Damascus after falling out with the Syrian regime. The US supported the move at the time, believing it would allow a useful channel of communication to Hamas.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, has said repeatedly over the past year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group.
But after last year’s attack from Gaza on southern Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 250 others, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told leaders in Qatar and elsewhere in the region there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas.
On Friday, 14 Republican US senators wrote a letter to the department of state asking Washington to immediately freeze the assets of Hamas officials living in Qatar, extradite several senior Hamas officials living there, and ask authorities to end its hospitality to the group’s senior leadership.
Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, reduced the territory to a wasteland and led to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children, while the Israeli military said it had killed dozens of Hamas militants.
An airstrike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Younis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, Mahmud Bassal, a civil defence spokesperson, told AFP.
A second airstrike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al-Sabah school”, which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al-Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said.
In recent months, the Israeli military has struck several schools that have been turned into shelters where Israel has said Palestinian militants are operating.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said its troops killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation.
Much of northern Gaza has been under siege for weeks. The Israeli military denies systematically trying to force Palestinians from the area to flee to the relative safety of the south of the strip.
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‘Strong likelihood’ of imminent famine in northern Gaza, food experts warn, as Israel continues siege
‘Looming catastrophe’ will ‘dwarf anything we have seen so far’ in Gaza since 7 October 2023, famine review committee says
There is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel claims to be pursuing a military offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the area.
“Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
The warning comes just days ahead of a US deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which the UN said almost a year ago had been made “uninhabitable” by Israeli attacks, or face potential restrictions on US military aid.
The Biden administration has previously demanded that Israel allow in more aid but done little to enforce its requests, even reportedly ignoring its own agencies after they concluded that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza. US law requires that weapons shipments be cut off to countries that prevent the delivery of US-backed aid.
Israel’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported. “If no effective action is taken by stakeholders with influence, the scale of this looming catastrophe is likely to dwarf anything we have seen so far in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023,” the FRC committee said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates there are between 75,000 and 95,000 people still in northern Gaza.
The Famine Review Committee said it could be “assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing” in north Gaza.
“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” the global hunger monitor said.
The US has said it is watching to ensure that its ally’s actions on the ground show it does not have a “policy of starvation” in the north, parts of which Israel has placed under a tight siege as part of what it claims is a military push against Hamas.
However, Palestinians as well as Israeli human rights groups and some Israel Defence Forces soldiers say Israel is putting into practice a blueprint known as the “generals’ plan”, a “surrender or starve” campaign aimed at depopulating northern Gaza.
Israel denies it is carrying out the plan, but earlier this week a military official told reporters it had “no intention” of allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has suggested that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel had been prevented until now only by its people’s refusal to succumb to the intense pressure to flee their homes and by Arab resolve not to accept mass population transfers.
And while resettling or permanently reoccupying Gaza is not official Israeli policy, senior Israeli defence officials recently told the Israeli daily Haaretz that with no other alternatives on the table, the government is aiming to annex large parts of the territory.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on hospitals, school and homes sheltering already displaced people in the area, which many have been unable to flee.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign in Gaza, according to local health officials, though experts say the true figure is likely to be much higher. Thousands are believed to remain buried under the rubble and tens of thousands more have been wounded.
It is not possible to verify the death toll independently as Israel does not allow foreign journalists in but according to a UN analysis of verified deaths released on Friday, nearly 70% of the people killed in the war in Gaza have been women and children.
At least 14 civilians were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza late on Friday and early on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. At least nine people were killed when Israeli fighter jets bombed tents housing displaced people in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that women and children were among the dead and that the tents were in the al-Mawasi area, which Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” although it has repeatedly attacked it.
Another five were killed and others wounded when Israeli forces targeted a school housing displaced people in Gaza City. Al Jazeera reported two journalist siblings, Ahmad Abu Sakhil and Zahra Abu Sakhil, were among the dead together with their father, Muhammad.
It also reported that a “densely populated house” was hit in Beit Lahiya with at least one dead and others injured.
The FRC used an internationally recognised standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) in its findings. The IPC defines famine as when at least 20% of people in an area are suffering extreme food shortages, with at least 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or malnutrition and disease.
The IPC is an initiative involving UN agencies, national governments and aid groups that sets the global standard on measuring food crises.
The IPC warned last month that the entire Gaza Strip was at risk of famine, while top UN officials last week described the northern Gaza Strip as “apocalyptic” and said everyone there was “at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.
The amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year, according to UN data, and the UN has repeatedly accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to Gaza’s north.
Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, told the security council last month that the issue in Gaza was not a lack of aid, claiming more than a million tons had been delivered during the past year. He accused Hamas of hijacking the assistance.
Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli allegations that it was stealing aid and says Israel is to blame for shortages. Israel has repeatedly attacked aid convoys and aid workers as well as people waiting to receive food aid.
“The daily average number of trucks entering Gaza in late October was about 58 per day,” Jean-Martin Bauer, the UN World Food Programme’s director of food security and nutrition analysis, said on Friday. “We were getting about 200 a day in September and August, so that’s really a big, big decline.”
Aid agencies have previously said at least 600 trucks a day are needed to avert famine.
Reuters contributed to this report
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Hamas may have to quit political base in Qatar after US ‘demand’
Gulf state under pressure after militant Islamist group rejects latest hostage release proposal
Middle East crisis – live updates
Hamas may be forced to close its offices in Qatar, after the US told the tiny Gulf state that allowing the militant Islamist group to have a base there is no longer acceptable.
Qatar, a key US partner in the Middle East, has hosted the political office of Hamas for more than a decade and allowed many senior leaders of the organisation to live there.
The request was reported by Reuters late on Friday but has yet to be officially confirmed.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, [Hamas] leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the senior official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Critics of the US request say it will hinder engagement with elements of Hamas potentially more inclined to compromise, and could boost the influence of more hostile states, such as Iran, over the group.
Hamas still holds about 100 hostages seized during its surprise attack into Israel last October. Multiple rounds of negotiations aimed at securing an end to the 13 month-long war in Gaza have failed.
The small but influential Gulf state has been a key intermediary in the talks to broker a ceasefire and is likely to comply with the US request, analysts said. The US official told Reuters that Qatar, which is designated as a major non-Nato ally by Washington, passed on the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago.
Hamas leaders have been preparing for many months to leave Qatar, with Turkey and Iraq suggested as possible alternatives. The group recently opened a political office in Baghdad.
Hamas officials denied Qatar has told the organisation to leave and there has been no reaction from Qatar’s foreign ministry to the reports.
The request to Qatar comes amid a flurry of activity as the administation of the US president, Joe Biden, prepares a final effort to end Israeli assaults in Gaza and Lebanon before handing over power to Donald Trump, who has said he too wants to see an end to the conflict.
However, there is no immediate sign that any breakthrough is possible. In previous rounds of talks, disagreements over whether any ceasefire would be definitive and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza have blocked a deal.
Observers have blamed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the failure to end the conflict, saying Sinwar did not want to stop fighting that was damaging Israel’s international standing and Netanyahu deliberately torpedoed successive potential deals for domestic political reasons.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political leaders since 2012 when the group left Damascus after falling out with the Syrian regime. The US supported the move at the time, believing it would allow a useful channel of communication to Hamas.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, has said repeatedly over the past year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group.
But after last year’s attack from Gaza on southern Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 250 others, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told leaders in Qatar and elsewhere in the region there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas.
On Friday, 14 Republican US senators wrote a letter to the department of state asking Washington to immediately freeze the assets of Hamas officials living in Qatar, extradite several senior Hamas officials living there, and ask authorities to end its hospitality to the group’s senior leadership.
Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, reduced the territory to a wasteland and led to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children, while the Israeli military said it had killed dozens of Hamas militants.
An airstrike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Younis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, Mahmud Bassal, a civil defence spokesperson, told AFP.
A second airstrike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al-Sabah school”, which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al-Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said.
In recent months, the Israeli military has struck several schools that have been turned into shelters where Israel has said Palestinian militants are operating.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said its troops killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation.
Much of northern Gaza has been under siege for weeks. The Israeli military denies systematically trying to force Palestinians from the area to flee to the relative safety of the south of the strip.
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‘Strong likelihood’ of imminent famine in northern Gaza, food experts warn, as Israel continues siege
‘Looming catastrophe’ will ‘dwarf anything we have seen so far’ in Gaza since 7 October 2023, famine review committee says
There is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel claims to be pursuing a military offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the area.
“Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
The warning comes just days ahead of a US deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which the UN said almost a year ago had been made “uninhabitable” by Israeli attacks, or face potential restrictions on US military aid.
The Biden administration has previously demanded that Israel allow in more aid but done little to enforce its requests, even reportedly ignoring its own agencies after they concluded that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza. US law requires that weapons shipments be cut off to countries that prevent the delivery of US-backed aid.
Israel’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported. “If no effective action is taken by stakeholders with influence, the scale of this looming catastrophe is likely to dwarf anything we have seen so far in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023,” the FRC committee said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates there are between 75,000 and 95,000 people still in northern Gaza.
The Famine Review Committee said it could be “assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing” in north Gaza.
“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” the global hunger monitor said.
The US has said it is watching to ensure that its ally’s actions on the ground show it does not have a “policy of starvation” in the north, parts of which Israel has placed under a tight siege as part of what it claims is a military push against Hamas.
However, Palestinians as well as Israeli human rights groups and some Israel Defence Forces soldiers say Israel is putting into practice a blueprint known as the “generals’ plan”, a “surrender or starve” campaign aimed at depopulating northern Gaza.
Israel denies it is carrying out the plan, but earlier this week a military official told reporters it had “no intention” of allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has suggested that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel had been prevented until now only by its people’s refusal to succumb to the intense pressure to flee their homes and by Arab resolve not to accept mass population transfers.
And while resettling or permanently reoccupying Gaza is not official Israeli policy, senior Israeli defence officials recently told the Israeli daily Haaretz that with no other alternatives on the table, the government is aiming to annex large parts of the territory.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on hospitals, school and homes sheltering already displaced people in the area, which many have been unable to flee.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign in Gaza, according to local health officials, though experts say the true figure is likely to be much higher. Thousands are believed to remain buried under the rubble and tens of thousands more have been wounded.
It is not possible to verify the death toll independently as Israel does not allow foreign journalists in but according to a UN analysis of verified deaths released on Friday, nearly 70% of the people killed in the war in Gaza have been women and children.
At least 14 civilians were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza late on Friday and early on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. At least nine people were killed when Israeli fighter jets bombed tents housing displaced people in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that women and children were among the dead and that the tents were in the al-Mawasi area, which Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” although it has repeatedly attacked it.
Another five were killed and others wounded when Israeli forces targeted a school housing displaced people in Gaza City. Al Jazeera reported two journalist siblings, Ahmad Abu Sakhil and Zahra Abu Sakhil, were among the dead together with their father, Muhammad.
It also reported that a “densely populated house” was hit in Beit Lahiya with at least one dead and others injured.
The FRC used an internationally recognised standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) in its findings. The IPC defines famine as when at least 20% of people in an area are suffering extreme food shortages, with at least 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or malnutrition and disease.
The IPC is an initiative involving UN agencies, national governments and aid groups that sets the global standard on measuring food crises.
The IPC warned last month that the entire Gaza Strip was at risk of famine, while top UN officials last week described the northern Gaza Strip as “apocalyptic” and said everyone there was “at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.
The amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year, according to UN data, and the UN has repeatedly accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to Gaza’s north.
Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, told the security council last month that the issue in Gaza was not a lack of aid, claiming more than a million tons had been delivered during the past year. He accused Hamas of hijacking the assistance.
Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli allegations that it was stealing aid and says Israel is to blame for shortages. Israel has repeatedly attacked aid convoys and aid workers as well as people waiting to receive food aid.
“The daily average number of trucks entering Gaza in late October was about 58 per day,” Jean-Martin Bauer, the UN World Food Programme’s director of food security and nutrition analysis, said on Friday. “We were getting about 200 a day in September and August, so that’s really a big, big decline.”
Aid agencies have previously said at least 600 trucks a day are needed to avert famine.
Reuters contributed to this report
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Donald Trump won his sixth battleground state of the 2024 election early on Saturday, beating Kamala Harris in Nevada.
The AP declared Trump the winner after concluding there were not enough uncounted ballots in the state’s strongest Democratic areas to overcome the former president’s 46,000-vote lead over the Democratic nominee.
Trump clinched a second term early on Wednesday when Wisconsin pushed him past the 270 electoral votes needed to win, so Nevada’s six electoral votes only added to the size of his victory.
He now has 301 electoral votes and has won six of the seven battleground states. Only Arizona remains to be called.
The AP only declares a winner once it can determine that a trailing candidate can’t close the gap and overtake the vote leader.
Trump flips Nevada as Democrat Jacky Rosen holds on to state’s Senate seat
Trump’s win in the state gives him 301 electoral votes, even as Democratic incumbent is re-elected to Senate
- US elections 2024 – live updates
Donald Trump has won his sixth battleground state of the 2024 election, flipping the state for the Republicans early on Saturday, by beating Kamala Harris in Nevada.
Trump won by 51% of the vote to the Democrat’s 47%, the first time the GOP has won the state in the presidential vote since the 2004 election won by George W Bush.
But Democrats took a crumb of comfort from the fact that Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen won re-election in Nevada, which was also called early on Saturday.
The president-elect has 301 electoral college votes so far, well beyond the 270 point he surpassed early on Wednesday to take the White House, over Democratic rival Kamala Harris, and the Republican has now won six of the seven battleground states. On Saturday morning only Arizona remained to be called.
The Associated Press declared Trump the winner in Nevada after concluding there were not enough uncounted ballots in the state’s strongest Democratic areas to overcome the former president’s 46,000-vote lead over the Democratic nominee.
The AP, which also called the Senate seat for the first-term Democrat, only declares a winner once it can determine that a trailing candidate can’t close the gap and overtake the vote leader.
Rosen’s defeat of a Trump-endorsed challenger gave some comfort to her party, although the Democrats have already lost their thin majority in the US Senate, while keeping hope alive that they can take a majority in the House. Her race was tighter than the one for the White House, and she held off Republican challenger Sam Brown with 48% of the votes cast to his 46%.
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Rosen, a former Las Vegas-area synagogue president and computer programmer, ran ads touting herself as an independent who doesn’t listen to “party leaders”.
“Thank you, Nevada! I’m honored and grateful to continue serving as your United States Senator,” Rosen posted on the social platform X.
Rosen had been polling ahead of Brown throughout the campaign, though the race tightened as election day approached.
Rosen ran an energetic campaign, focusing on hyper-local issues in a state where more than a third of voters identify as non-partisan and attacking her opponent’s shifting stance on abortion rights.
Rosen was hand-picked to run for Congress and then the Senate – seemingly out of nowhere – by Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate leader from Nevada who helped reshape the state’s politics over his long political career. In 2018 – after serving just two years in Congress – she unseated the Republican senator Dean Heller with a five-point margin.
A former member of the Nevada’s Culinary Workers Union, she maintained the support of the state’s politically powerful unions this time around as well, with the Culinary Union knocking on nearly 1m doors on behalf of her campaign.
In her closing message to voters, Rosen focused on abortion rights, positioning herself as a champion of reproductive freedoms, and pointed to her opponent’s waffling on the issue and refusal to voice support for the ballot measure. Though abortion remains legal in Nevada, a ballot proposal to enshrine the right in the constitution was deeply popular.
Meanwhile Brown, a military veteran and Purple Heart recipient, was slow to gain traction and define his platform in the lead-up to the election. Having moved to Reno from Dallas in 2018, Brown had struggled to shake his reputation as a Nevada newcomer.
In the weeks ahead of election day, several rural Republican officials endorsed Rosen, praising her as a political consensus-builder who had brought a wealth of federal funding and resources to the state.
At a debate last month, she told supporters she was “proud to be one of the most bipartisan, effective and independent senators”.
Most polls showed Rosen ahead of Brown for weeks ahead of the election, and she maintained a three-to-one fundraising and spending advantage over her opponent. But race tightened significantly ahead of election day. Brown was boosted by a Pac linked to the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, which spent $6m on last minute ads appealing to Maga voters: “President Trump and Nevada need Sam Brown in the Senate.”
Brown appeared alongside Trump during the president’s several visits to the state and had closely aligned himself with the former president’s policy platforms.
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US model ‘elated’ that sexual assault suit against agency boss revived in New York
Carré Otis speaks after court reverses decision and rules lawsuit accusing Gérald Marie of rape in Paris can proceed
The American model Carré Otis has said she is “elated” her sexual assault lawsuit against the former modeling agency boss Gérald Marie and New York talent agent Trudi Tapscott was revived by a federal appeals court more than two years after a crushing dismissal.
“Definitely mixed feelings and really elated,” Otis told the Guardian in her first interview since the ruling earlier this week, when asked how she felt about the US second circuit court of appeals reversing a lower court’s decision.
“There has been a sense of responsibility that I have with other survivors – other women and men, girls and boys, that have gone through similar injustices and abuses, of course throughout all industries but in particular my industry,” Otis said, noting that modeling, which remains in effect unregulated, has long been rife with abuses against fashion workers.
“It is so meaningful for me and important for me to be able to move forward in the ways that I can, sort of as a representative and standing in solidarity with other survivors who are outside of the statute of limitations and don’t have this opportunity.”
Otis sued Marie and Tapscott in New York in August 2021, under her legal name, Carré Sutton, alleging that he repeatedly raped her at his Paris apartment when she was 17. The civil claim filed in Manhattan federal court further alleged that Otis was “trafficked by Marie to other wealthy men around Europe”.
Otis is among many women who have accused Marie of sexual assault. Her case is in a civil proceeding and he is not facing criminal prosecution related to her claims.
There had been a criminal investigation in France involving some women’s allegations against Marie. French prosecutors closed the investigation because of the statute of limitations.
Marie’s legal team has previously responded by saying he was “extremely affected by the accusations made against him, which he contests with the utmost firmness” and that he would cooperate with any investigation. After the investigation wrapped, his lawyer said: “The justice system has finally triumphed despite the outrageous media campaign that Gérald Marie has suffered for two years.”
The late John Casablancas, who founded the Elite Model Management talent agency in New York, also is alleged to have repeatedly engaged in abusive and exploitative sexual conduct, such as announcing that he was dating a 16-year-old model.
Shortly after Otis became involved with the now-defunct Elite, she fell into Marie’s orbit, according to court papers. She initially failed to break into assignments in New York, but Tapscott told her not to worry: She could go to one of Elite’s European outposts – and she was dispatched to Paris. She met with Marie in his office and he told her she would succeed – but she had to obey him for that to happen, court papers claim.
Marie allegedly slapped her buttocks, remarking: “On my dime, I don’t want your opinion, Carré. I want your obedience.”
Marie allegedly started providing Otis with cocaine at his home – a residence he also shared with his then girlfriend and later wife, the supermodel Linda Evangelista. Marie purportedly told Otis that the stimulant would help her lose weight and succeed in modeling.
Otis’s suit claimed that Marie’s attacks started after a modeling job one night. Although she then tried to distance herself from Marie, she continued to rely on him for her financial survival in France.
“Every time Evangelista left the apartment, defendant Marie expected plaintiff to let him rape her, which he did repeatedly over the span of months,” her suit claimed.
Otis filed her lawsuit under New York state’s watershed Child Victims Act (CVA). This law permitted survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue their attackers, despite how long ago they were abused. The deadline for suing under this act ended the week Otis filed her suit.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of the late financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s many accusers, sued Britain’s Prince Andrew in New York under the same statute, ultimately accepting a settlement.
The judge overseeing Otis’s case, Mary Kay Vyskocil, sided in August 2022 with Tapscott’s motion to dismiss the case and said the CVA “does not apply to plaintiff’s claims premised on abuse that occurred in Paris, France in 1986”.
“Unless expressly indicated otherwise, a New York statute does not apply outside the state,” Vysocil added. The judge also said that Otis’s legal claims of fraud, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress were beyond the statute of limitations and had not shown how the US court would have jurisdiction over Marie, who is believed to reside in Spain.
A second circuit appeals panel disagreed.
Otis said that the court’s decision on Monday did not provide closure or healing yet, but was still very positive.
“This is kind of a motion towards wow, we can finally move forward … for me, it’s really the beginning, so it’s more hopeful than closure. It’s a start, where we’d not been able to start,” she said.
Attorney John Clune, who, along with Debra Greenberg and attorneys from the Public Justice advocacy in Washington represent Otis in her case, said the appeals decision meant they had won the right to bring the case. “Now we get to actually move forward,” he said.
Otis urged more legislation like the CVA – and the Adult Survivors Act, used by many women to take civil action, including E Jean Carroll successfully suing Donald Trump, now the president-elect, who was found liable for sexual abusing her in the 1990s.
“Obviously, the Child Victims Act is closed, and the Adult Survivors Act is closed, but these are windows opening state by state,” she said.
“There’s more effort in the works to really continue to push to revive these claims that really should have never expired in the first place.” She hopes that this kind of legislation is taken up by all states to “clear a path forward for more survivors”.
Tapscott and her lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. Marie does not have an attorney listed for his US proceedings.
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Pompeii limits visitors to protect ancient city from overtourism
Tickets to visit ruins buried by Mount Vesuvius, seen by 4 million this summer, to be capped at 20,000 a day
Pompeii is to limit visitor numbers to 20,000 a day and introduce personalised tickets from next week in an effort to cope with overtourism and protect the world heritage site, officials said.
This summer, a record 4 million people visited the remains of the ancient Roman city, which was buried under ash and rock after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
The archaelogical park’s director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said visitors to the main site now exceeded an average of 15,000-20,000 every day, and the new daily cap would prevent the numbers from rising further.
“We are working on a series of projects to lift the human pressure on the site, which could pose risks both for visitors and the heritage [that is] so unique and fragile,” Zuchtriegel said.
Tickets to the park will be personalised from 15 November, to include the full names of visitors. A maximum of 20,000 will be released each day, with specific time slots during summer.
The park’s managers are trying to encourage tourists to visit other ancient sites connected to Pompeii, including Stabiae, Oplontis and Boscoreale., by providing a free shuttle bus under the Greater Pompeii project.
“The measures to manage flows and safety and the personalisation of the visits are part of this strategy,” Zuchtriegel said. “We are aiming for slow, sustainable, pleasant and non-mass tourism and, above all, widespread throughout the territory around the Unesco site, which is full of cultural jewels to discover.”
In April, Venice became the world’s first large tourist city to charge people to enter, as part of a trial aimed at dissuading day trippers and due to return next year. The €5 (£4.15) levy, which applied on 29 peak days and ended in July, was also an emergency response by local authorities to avoid the Unesco heritage site being blacklisted.
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UK momentum on Ukraine has dropped under Labour, Ben Wallace says
Former Tory defence minister says leadership of Sunak era is lacking and bureaucracy is holding up equipment
Momentum on Ukraine has “dropped back” since Labour took office, according to the ex-Tory defence minister and former army officer Sir Ben Wallace.
Responding to recent comments by Kyiv officials that Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since Keir Starmer was elected prime minister, Wallace said that was because “the leadership that Britain showed right from the start has started to drop back into the pack”.
In an interview on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Wallace said that in his experience, officials in the Foreign Office would often tell the defence minister “we don’t want to get ahead of the pack – in other words, we don’t want to have any leadership – we just want to sort of dwell in the middle”.
Starmer has yet to visit Ukraine four months after taking office, and a senior figure in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government voiced frustration on Friday over Britain’s failure to supply Ukraine with additional long-range missiles.
The Kyiv official told the Guardian: “It isn’t happening, Starmer isn’t giving us long-range weapons. The situation is not the same as when Rishi Sunak was prime minister. The relationship has got worse.”
Fears are growing in Ukraine that Donald Trump’s victory could reduce US military aid, and Kyiv is desperate for Starmer to commit to replenishing stocks of the sought-after Storm Shadow system.
Wallace said one reason the Conservative government had supplied Ukraine with weapons systems in the past was to show leadership. “We took a position to lead and the leadership did bring lots and lots of Europeans with us … I definitely have a sense that that momentum has dropped back.”
To drive change in government took perseverance and determination, he suggested. “You have to really do it every single day. You can’t just do a statement and then float around,” he said.
He said companies seeking to export equipment that would help Ukraine had been waiting six months for their export licences to be processed. “That doesn’t sound like a government that wants to help Ukraine, if its bureaucracy in the Foreign Office is holding out some pretty basic technologies that Ukrainians need to make their own weapons systems to defend their nation.”
Earlier this week, Starmer said he strongly believed allies must “step up” support for Ukraine as he met Zelenskyy one on one on the fringes of a political summit in Budapest. He told the Ukrainian president the UK had an “unwavering” commitment to help the country defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
He said: “It’s very important that we see this through. It’s very important that we stand with you.”
Zelenskyy replied: “We’re very thankful. We’re very proud that we have such bilateral relations between our nations.”
Britain and France said in 2023 they would supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, highly accurate long-range cruise missiles developed by an Anglo-French collaboration.
But although the last Storm Shadow strike claimed by the Ukrainian military was on 5 October, targeting Russian command posts, the number of such strikes by Ukraine has dwindled throughout 2024. “You would know if the UK had provided us with new Storm Shadow missiles because we would be using them to hit Russian targets. We are not,” the Kyiv official said on Friday.
Storm Shadow missiles are expensive, at an estimated £800,000 a unit, but are considered effective against static targets and have been used to strike at Russian naval assets in Crimea.
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UK momentum on Ukraine has dropped under Labour, Ben Wallace says
Former Tory defence minister says leadership of Sunak era is lacking and bureaucracy is holding up equipment
Momentum on Ukraine has “dropped back” since Labour took office, according to the ex-Tory defence minister and former army officer Sir Ben Wallace.
Responding to recent comments by Kyiv officials that Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since Keir Starmer was elected prime minister, Wallace said that was because “the leadership that Britain showed right from the start has started to drop back into the pack”.
In an interview on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Wallace said that in his experience, officials in the Foreign Office would often tell the defence minister “we don’t want to get ahead of the pack – in other words, we don’t want to have any leadership – we just want to sort of dwell in the middle”.
Starmer has yet to visit Ukraine four months after taking office, and a senior figure in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government voiced frustration on Friday over Britain’s failure to supply Ukraine with additional long-range missiles.
The Kyiv official told the Guardian: “It isn’t happening, Starmer isn’t giving us long-range weapons. The situation is not the same as when Rishi Sunak was prime minister. The relationship has got worse.”
Fears are growing in Ukraine that Donald Trump’s victory could reduce US military aid, and Kyiv is desperate for Starmer to commit to replenishing stocks of the sought-after Storm Shadow system.
Wallace said one reason the Conservative government had supplied Ukraine with weapons systems in the past was to show leadership. “We took a position to lead and the leadership did bring lots and lots of Europeans with us … I definitely have a sense that that momentum has dropped back.”
To drive change in government took perseverance and determination, he suggested. “You have to really do it every single day. You can’t just do a statement and then float around,” he said.
He said companies seeking to export equipment that would help Ukraine had been waiting six months for their export licences to be processed. “That doesn’t sound like a government that wants to help Ukraine, if its bureaucracy in the Foreign Office is holding out some pretty basic technologies that Ukrainians need to make their own weapons systems to defend their nation.”
Earlier this week, Starmer said he strongly believed allies must “step up” support for Ukraine as he met Zelenskyy one on one on the fringes of a political summit in Budapest. He told the Ukrainian president the UK had an “unwavering” commitment to help the country defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
He said: “It’s very important that we see this through. It’s very important that we stand with you.”
Zelenskyy replied: “We’re very thankful. We’re very proud that we have such bilateral relations between our nations.”
Britain and France said in 2023 they would supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, highly accurate long-range cruise missiles developed by an Anglo-French collaboration.
But although the last Storm Shadow strike claimed by the Ukrainian military was on 5 October, targeting Russian command posts, the number of such strikes by Ukraine has dwindled throughout 2024. “You would know if the UK had provided us with new Storm Shadow missiles because we would be using them to hit Russian targets. We are not,” the Kyiv official said on Friday.
Storm Shadow missiles are expensive, at an estimated £800,000 a unit, but are considered effective against static targets and have been used to strike at Russian naval assets in Crimea.
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Bomb blast at Pakistan train station kills at least 24
Police say army personnel targeted in possible suicide bombing in country’s south-west and many of more than 40 injured in critical condition
At least 24 people have been killed and more than 40 injured in a bomb blast at a railway station in Quetta in south-western Pakistan, police and other officials have said.
The target was “army personnel from the Infantry School”, said the inspector general of police for Balochistan, Mouzzam Jah Ansari.
Many of the injured were in critical condition, he said. Twenty-four people had died in Saturday’s blast so far.
Pakistan is grappling with a surge in strikes by separatist ethnic militants in the south and Islamist militants in its north-west.
“So far 44 injured people have been brought to civil hospital,” Dr Wasim Baig, a hospital spokesman, told Reuters.
The blast appeared to have been a suicide bomb, said the senior superintendent of police operations, Muhammad Baloch. Investigations were under way for more information, he said.
“The blast took place inside the railway station when the Peshawar-bound express was about to leave for its destination,” Baloch said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast at Quetta’s main railway station, which is usually busy early in the day.
In August, at least 73 people were killed in Balochistan province after separatist militants attacked police stations, railway lines and highways.
The assaults in August were the most widespread in years by militants fighting a decades-long insurgency to win secession of the resource-rich south-western province, home to major China-led projects such as a port and a gold and copper mine.
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Jamie Oliver apologises after his children’s book is criticised for ‘stereotyping’ First Nations Australians
Exclusive: Publisher takes responsibility for the failure to consult Indigenous groups, who say the fantasy novel trivialises complex and painful histories
Jamie Oliver says he is “devastated” by the offence he has caused to First Nations people and has issued an apology, after calls by Australia’s peak body for Indigenous education for the British celebrity chef to withdraw his children’s book from sale.
Oliver is in Australia promoting his latest cookbook, Simply Jamie, but it is his decision to join a growing flock of celebrity children’s book authors with a 400-page fantasy novel for primary school-age children that has come under fire.
The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Corporation (Natsiec) has described Oliver’s book Billy and the Epic Escape, which has an Australian subplot, as damaging and disrespectful, and has accused the celebrity of contributing to the “erasure, trivialisation, and stereotyping of First Nations peoples and experiences”.
The book features a young First Nations girl living in foster care in an Indigenous community near Alice Springs who gets stolen by the novel’s villain.
Oliver and his publisher, Penguin Random House UK (PRH UK), have conceded to Guardian Australia that no consultation with any Indigenous organisation, community or individual took place before the book was published.
“I am devastated to hear I have caused offence and wholly apologise for doing so,” Oliver said in a statement to the Guardian.
“I am listening and reflecting and working closely with my publisher on next steps.”
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PRH UK also issued a statement saying it apologised unreservedly.
“Penguin Random House UK publishes this work and takes responsibility for the consultation, or what we would call an authenticity read of the work,” the statement said.
“It was our editorial oversight that this did not happen. It should have and the author asked for one and we apologise unreservedly.”
Neither author nor publisher has committed to withdrawing the book from sale, however, a move Natsiec said must happen immediately to rectify the harm caused.
The body’s chief executive, Sharon Davis, said the book perpetuated harmful stereotypes, trivialised complex and painful histories and “ignores the violent oppression of First Nations people, raising serious concerns about the cultural safety of First Nations readers – especially young people”.
In a detailed statement sent to the Guardian, Davis said the book’s depiction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander characters and cultural practices was “irresponsible and damaging, reflecting a profound lack of understanding and respect”.
“We urge Penguin Books and Jamie Oliver to recognise the impact of their content and take swift action to prevent further harm,” Davis said.
“Penguin Books should pull Billy and the Epic Escape from circulation, specifically removing all content involving First Nations characters and cultural references.”
Billy and the Epic Escape, a humorous fantasy adventure novel, is set in England but involves a subplot where a wicked woman with supernatural powers teleports herself to Alice Springs to steal a child from a fictitiously named community called Borolama. She wants an Australian Indigenous child to join her press gang of stolen children who work her land because “First Nations children seem to be more connected with nature”. The adults responsible for Ruby, a young girl who lives in foster care and likes to eat desert bush food, are distracted by the woman’s promise of funding for their community projects. Once abducted, Ruby tells the English children who rescue and repatriate her that she can read people’s minds and communicate with animals and plants because “that’s the indigenous way”. She also tells them she is from Mparntwe (Alice Springs), yet uses words from the Gamilaraay people of New South Wales and Queensland when explaining her life in Australia.
Davis said such errors exposed the author’s “complete disregard for the vast differences among First Nations languages, cultures, and practices”, while the book’s reduction of First Nations beliefs and spirituality to “magic” was “a longstanding stereotype that diminishes our complex and diverse belief systems”.
Prominent First Nations writers have also criticised the book, accusing Oliver of engaging in cultural appropriation, and his publisher, Penguin Random House UK, of making serious errors in judgment.
The award-winning Kooma and Nguri author Cheryl Leavy, who specialises in nonfiction, poetry and children’s literature, told Guardian Australia she was troubled by the book’s themes of child slavery and child stealing, and the appropriation of culture for personal gain.
“It’s fair to expect that authors who wish to delve into any sensitive subject matter adhere to some basic industry standards, such as working with advisers with expertise in that area,” she said.
Dr Anita Heiss, a Wiradyuri author and publisher-at-large at Simon & Schuster’s First Nations imprint, Bundyi Publishing, said Oliver’s book confirmed what she had been advocating for over many years.
“First Nations peoples need to be involved at every stage of the process from acquisitions to editorial, to sales and marketing. Only then will our stories be told with the complete respect they deserve,” she said in a statement.
“There is no space in Australian publishing (or elsewhere) for our stories to be told through a colonial lens, by authors who have little if any connection to the people and place they are writing about.”
Both Heiss and Leavy believe the book should be withdrawn from sale.
The Nukunu children’s book writer Dr Jared Thomas, a research fellow for Indigenous culture and art at the South Australian Museum and the University of South Australia, said the principles of respect, consultation and permission, such as those outlined in Creative Australia’s First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts, were a bulwark against “lazy stereotyping”, and applied equally to fiction and nonfiction, in both adult and children’s literature.
“It is so important to get these representations right, because part of what we’re trying to do is educate kids, and you don’t educate them by selling them stereotypes or misinformation about First Nations people,” he said.
“Sometimes people go into a situation with a good intent, but that good intent goes wrong.
“I don’t want to say [Penguin] should pull it … but they need to consider if they’ve made a serious error of judgment, and if they have, what will be the impact on Aboriginal children, people, communities, and how they can address that.”
Penguin Random House UK said its Australian arm PRH Australia was in no way involved in the content or publication of the book, which was distributed into Australia as part of its global PRH network.
PRH also said Oliver would not be promoting Billy and the Epic Escape during his Australian tour.
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North Korea accused of GPS jamming attacks on South Korean ships and aircraft
Seoul’s military says several vessels and dozens of civilian planes disrupted, a week after Pyongyang fired what it called its most powerful solid-fuel ICBM missile
North Korea staged GPS jamming attacks on Friday and Saturday, Seoul’s military said – an operation that was affecting several ships and dozens of civilian aircraft in South Korea.
The jamming allegations come about a week after the North test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel ICBM missile, its first such launch since being accused of sending soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.
The South fired its own ballistic missile into the sea on Friday in a show of force aimed at showing its resolve to respond to “any North Korean provocations”.
North Korea conducted “GPS jamming provocations” in Haeju and Kaesong on Friday and Saturday, Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement on Saturday, adding that several vessels and dozens of civilian aircraft were experiencing “some operational disruptions” as a result.
The military warned ships and aircraft operating in the Yellow Sea to beware of such attacks.
“We strongly urge North Korea to immediately cease its GPS provocations and warn that it will be held responsible for any subsequent issues arising from this,” the military’s statement said.
Tensions on the peninsula have been at their highest pitch in years, with the North launching a flurry of ballistic missiles in violation of UN sanctions.
It has also been bombarding the South with rubbish-carrying balloons since May, in what it says is retaliation for anti-Pyongyang propaganda missives sent to the North by activists.
North Korea has become one of the most vocal and important backers of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Seoul and the west have long accused Pyongyang of supplying artillery shells and missiles to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
The latest accusations, based on intelligence reports, indicate the North has deployed about 10,000 troops to Russia, suggesting even deeper involvement in the conflict and triggering outcry in Seoul, Kyiv and western capitals.
South Korea, a major arms exporter, has a longstanding policy of not providing weapons to countries in conflict.
But President Yoon Suk Yeol said this week that Seoul is now not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons directly to Ukraine, given Pyongyang’s military support of Moscow.
On Friday, Seoul’s presidential office said cyber-attacks by pro-Russian hacking groups against South Korea have increased following North Korea’s troop dispatch for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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Astronauts tight-lipped about reason for hospital visit after 235 days in space
Nasa ‘still piecing things together’ two weeks after return from ISS but crew members cite medical privacy
Three Nasa astronauts who were taken to a Florida hospital after returning to Earth from the International Space Station two weeks ago told reporters on Friday that they were all in good health following the medical ordeal – and that the agency was “still piecing things together” about what happened.
Michael Barrett, pilot of the crew that splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on 25 October after seven months in orbit, gave few further details at a press conference in Houston, citing medical privacy laws that he said prevented him from discussing the episode in detail.
“Space flight is still something we don’t fully understand. We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes – this was one of those times,” he said.
“We’re still piecing things together. I’m a medical doctor, space medicine is my passion, and how we adapt, how we experience human space flight, is something that we all take very seriously. In the fullness of time, we will allow this to come out.”
Barrett was joined at Nasa headquarters by crewmates Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps. A fourth member, the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, was not present.
All four were diverted to the Ascension Sacred Heart hospital in Pensacola, in what Nasa said was “an abundance of caution”, soon after their landing in a SpaceX capsule following 235 days in space.
One of the crew, who has not been identified, was “briefly detained” at the hospital but was released “in good health” to continue what it called post-flight reconditioning, the US space agency said at the time.
On Friday, during their first public appearance since the end of the mission, the three Americans spoke about their first days back on Earth.
“The big things you expect, being disoriented, being dizzy. But the little things, like just sitting in a hard chair, my backside has not really sat in a hard thing for 235 days … It’s rather uncomfortable, right? I did not expect that, right?” Dominick, the mission’s commander, said.
“I remember like the third or fourth day after we got back, we were sitting outside on our patio, with my family eating dinner, and I just wanted to be a part of the family and be there with the activities, but I couldn’t sit on that hard chair any more. I just laid a towel down on the ground.”
The mission had been expected to end in August, but the astronauts were directed to stay on the International Space Station (ISS) for two extra months in part because of technical issues surrounding the ill-fated maiden crewed voyage of Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule.
Starliner’s astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, are still onboard the ISS, five months after what was planned to be a week-long mission. They will not come home until at least February.
The return of Barrett and his crewmates, meanwhile, was postponed by about a further two weeks because of weather, including Hurricane Milton’s rampage across the Gulf of Mexico in early October.
“You’re like, are we going home tomorrow? You call your wife, like, hey, we’re coming home tomorrow, and then we’re not, and then we’re coming home, no, next week. Maybe,” Dominick said.
“That part was entertaining to deal with, but it was definitely great to spend bonus time in space.”
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Texas woman sets record for donating more than 2,000 liters of breastmilk
Alyse Ogletree has helped nourished hundreds of thousands of babies as a means of giving to charity
Alyse Ogletree would love it if she could donate immense amounts of money to all sorts of worthy causes, but as a mother raising three young children, that’s not something realistic. So the 36-year-old from Flower Mound, Texas, has found another way to fulfill her philanthropic instinct: giving away a record amount of breastmilk that officials estimate has been enough to nourish hundreds of thousands of premature babies.
“I have a big heart, [but] at the end of the day, I’m not made of money and I can’t give away money to good causes over and over because I have a family to support for,” Ogletree said in an interview recently published on Guinness World Records’ website. But “donating milk was a way I could give back”.
Ogletree spoke to the Guinness organization – whose database of 40,000 world records has long been a source of fascination – about how in July 2023 she set the mark for largest individual donation of breastmilk by an individual: 2,645.58 litres.
It was her second time clinching the achievement. She also captured the Guinness mark in 2014 by donating 1,569.79 litres.
Ogletree began carving out her unique place in the record books by combining her desire to assist others with her realization that she was producing an unusually large amount of milk after her first son, Kyle, now 14, was born in 2010.
A nurse at the hospital where Kyle was born told her that she could donate the extra amount to mothers who wanted to feed breastmilk to their babies but were struggling. Ogletree told Guinness: “I ended up donating everything I had saved up to that point.”
She decided she would do the same not only after the births of her two other sons – Kage, 12, and Kory, seven – but also upon acting as a surrogate mother.
“I think I was just as excited about donating again as I was to be growing my family,” Ogletree told Guinness.
Ogletree, an executive manager at a commercial truck manufacturer, said she first sought recognition from Guinness when she saw a news article about another mother having set the mark at the time – then calculating in her head that she could surpass it within three months.
She explained that she has never been diagnosed with any condition that would explain the level at which she produces breastmilk, saying she believes a focus on hydration as well as a healthy diet have helped.
Remarkably, only donations to Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas have counted toward her total. But she said she has also donated an additional 2,000 litres to another milk bank – Tiny Treasures – as well as close friends in need.
She said Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas told her that every litre of breastmilk donated can feed 11 premature babies. If that is accurate, “I’ve helped over 350,000 babies” with the amount donated to that specific group alone, she reportedly told Guinness.
Ogletree said that she wanted to use the spotlight the Guinness record afforded her to highlight how women may be in a position to aid mothers and their babies without realizing it.
A statement from the executive director of Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas, Shaina Stanks, said her institution was left “astounded and inspired” by how Ogletree had delivered “an incomprehensible amount of surplus breastmilk to fragile infants”.
“Her life-saving efforts are an undeniable testament to her extraordinary generosity and compassion,” Stanks’ statement added.
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