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Newborns and premature babies receiving treatment under limited conditions at Al Helou International Hospital in western Gaza on December 15, 2025. [Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut – Anadolu Agency]
The United Nations has warned that Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from reaching the Gaza Strip, despite harsh winter conditions, highlighting the growing risk of newborns freezing due to the cold.
The warning came from Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, during his daily press briefing on Monday.
Haq explained that the UN and its partners are working to deliver aid to the “most vulnerable” Palestinian families in Gaza.
He said that staff from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warn that “needs continue to outpace the ability of humanitarians to respond, given the ongoing impediments they face.”
Haq added:” Rainstorms and colder temperatures are also exacerbating the situation across the Strip.”
He also noted an increased risk of hypothermia among newborns and confirmed that special aid kits are being distributed to protect against freezing.
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Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
European Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib gives speech as he attends the EU Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels, Belgium on January 27, 2025. [Dursun Aydemir – Anadolu Agency]
EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib on Monday reiterated the necessity of rapid humanitarian aid delivery to the Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reported.
“We need humanitarian aid to flood Gaza, not enter drop by drop, because the needs are immense and winter is coming,” Lahbib told reporters ahead of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
Lahbib recounted her visit to the Rafah crossing two weeks ago, noting that she was denied entry into Gaza despite the fact that hundreds of trucks loaded with essential supplies were waiting.
“The humanitarian workers I met there were frustrated and exhausted by the situation,” she said, calling it “a lot of administrative burden.”
Although a ceasefire took effect 10 October , living conditions in Gaza have not improved, as Israel continues to impose strict restrictions on the entry of aid trucks, violating the humanitarian protocol of the agreement.
Israel has killed nearly 70,700 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 171,100 others in attacks in Gaza since Oct. 2023, which have continued despite the truce.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Supporters of presidential candidate José Antonio Kast of Chile’s Republican Party celebrate with an image of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet following the 2025 presidential election on December 14, 2025, in Santiago, Chile. (Photo by Claudio Santana/Getty Images)
José Antonio Kast has described the dictator who ended democracy for nearly two decades and presided over the persecution of tens of thousands of dissidents as someone who brought “order” to Chile.
José Antonio Kast, a far-right former lawmaker, won over 58% of the vote in Chile’s runoff elections on Sunday over Jeannette Jara, the labor minister under outgoing left-wing President Gabriel Boric, to become the nation’s next president.
The win came despite Kast’s open admiration for General Augusto Pinochet, who ended civilian rule in Chile after taking power through a coup d’etat in 1973, overthrowing its democratically elected socialist leader in a US Central Intelligence Agency-backed plot and implementing a radical program of economic austerity.
Until he was ousted by a democratic referendum in 1990, Pinochet governed Chile as a military dictatorship rife with human rights abuses, resulting in his indictment by a Spanish court in 1996 for crimes against humanity. His regime assassinated or “disappeared” nearly 3,200 people, while tens of thousands were tortured and more forced into exile.
Chile's far-right candidate José Antonio Kast has won the runoff presidential election.
Kast is the son of German immigrants; his father served in the Nazi Wehrmacht. He has repeatedly defended the brutal military dictatorship era of Augusto Pinochet. pic.twitter.com/kOuxRopIM5
Human rights groups have accused Kast and his family—the patriarch of which was a member of the Nazi Party who fled to Chile in 1950—of collaboration with the Pinochet regime’s detention of opponents. The president-elect’s brother was a minister for Pinochet during the dictatorship.
Kast will be the first president of Chile since its return to democracy to have campaigned for and voted “Yes” in the 1988 plebiscite for the dictator to stay in power for another eight years despite his reign of terror.
But rather than distance himself from Pinochet’s legacy, Kast has described himself as his spiritual successor.
In 2017, during his first of three presidential campaigns, Kast told a local newspaper that “if he were alive,” Pinochet “would vote for me.” Kast later described Pinochet as someone who brought “order” to Chile, comments that the Buenos Aires Times wrote in 2021, “railed many who are still scarred by this dark period in the country’s history.”
But Kast’s nostalgia for that period of repression was not enough to hobble him this time around. At a time when the right is making gains across Latin America, Kast’s policy agenda sits at the nexus point between the free market fundamentalism of Argentina’s Javier Milei and the police state ambitions of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.
He has pledged an economic program in the same vein as Pinochet’s and, later, Milei’s “shock therapy,” proposing an unprecedented cut of $21 billion in public spending over his term, paired with a reduction in taxes on the wealthy.
Kast has pledged that these cuts would only affect “waste” and “political” spending, but not impact social programs that benefit Chileans. But economic analysts, including Javiera Toro, Chile’s social development minister, have argued that a cut of that size would inevitably cut into the social safety net, including its popular state pension program and others related to health, housing, and education.
Kast successfully martialed fear of high crime (even though it actually fell under Boric’s tenure) into outrage toward the nation’s undocumented migrants—mainly from Venezuela—whom he has pledged to deport en masse. As in the US, where President Donald Trump is also spearheading a mass deportation operation, immigrants in Chile commit crimes at lower ratesthan those born in the country.
Last year, Kast visited the sprawling prison complex where Bukele has used emergency powers to detain tens of thousands of people as part of his sweeping war on gangs, often in punishing conditions where they’ve faced torture. Amnesty Internationaldescribed it as a “state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty.” Kast said he’d like to implement a similar policy in Chile.
Kast immediately raised fears for the future of Chile’s democracy in his victory speech, vowing to form an “emergency government” when he takes power in 2026. However, he will not command a majority in Chile’s legislature, which may make the delivery of his agenda more challenging.
🇨🇱 Far-right José Antonio Kast has defeated Communist Party candidate Jeannette Jara, who ran as part of the Unidad por Chile coalition, in Sunday’s presidential runoff with about 58% of the vote, ushering in Chile’s most right-wing leadership since the end of the Pinochet era.… https://t.co/dqDUrmsWUApic.twitter.com/9scqWwl7IO
Jenny Pribble, professor of political science and global studies at the University of Richmond, toldAl Jazeera: “It remains to be seen if Kast could or would pursue such an approach, but if Chile follows the Salvadoran model, it would constitute significant democratic backsliding.”
The right to trial by jury dates back to at least the 12th century. The government’s proposals to limit it in England and Wales, many argue, run counter to the UK’s core democratic principles. And as others have pointed out, scrapping jury trials for some crimes is unlikely to solve the massive backlog in the crown courts.
Our research suggests that there is another reason why it is a bad idea to scrap jury trials. They can play a vital role in reducing racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.
The proposals laid out by justice secretary David Lammy would have a disproportionately negative impact on people of colour – both defendants and victims – for whom jury trials give a glimmer of hope in a criminal justice system where “ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities) appear to be over-represented”.
Government datarepeatedly shows black, Asian and minority ethnic defendants are less likely to plead guilty than white defendants, and more likely to take their cases to trial. Lammy’s own 2017 review of racial inequality in the justice system suggests this is driven by a perception that the plea-bargaining process is unfair to defendants of colour, and that only a jury of peers will give them a fair trial.
Once black defendants choose a jury trial, research shows they are “more likely … to obtain acquittals or reductions in charges as a result”, compared to black defendants who plead guilty without opting for a trial.
A jury of 12 people brings a broader array of diverse perspectives and opinions which enhance the quality of discussions in deliberations, particularly in cases involving an ethnic minority defendant. Defendants should have their fate decided by people who might better understand their experiences, backgrounds and motivations.
Lammy’s 2017 review emphasised the importance of juries in making the criminal justice system more legitimate, particularly for people of colour: “Juries deliberate as a group through open discussion. This both deters and exposes prejudice or unintended bias: judgements must be justified to others.”
Sentencing is also disproportionate for defendants of colour when compared to white defendants, following both jury trials and plea agreements. Research has found that explicit or implicit judicial biases – whether judges stereotype the defendant, how they interpret sentencing recommendations from prosecutors and defence counsel, or how they apply aggravating and mitigating factors – may all contribute to these disparities.
The UK’s Contempt of Court Act limits this type of research with live juries. But there is enough evidence from other jurisdictions to suggest that retaining juries, and ensuring those juries are diverse, is essential for protecting the fair trial rights of people of colour generally, and black people in particular.
Justice for victims
Jury trials are also essential for black victims and their families. Since 2022, we have worked with the family and friends of Dea-John Reid, a 14-year-old black boy who was racially abused and chased through the streets of Birmingham by a group of white boys and men who fatally stabbed him in broad daylight.
In their 2022 trial, the perpetrators were acquitted of racially aggravated murder, with only the principal offender found guilty of manslaughter by a jury of one Asian and 11 white members. Dea-John’s family felt that the lack of diversity on the jury, which did not have a single black member, could have meant they were less likely to see Dea-John as a worthy victim. Research shows that black men and boys are stereotyped as suspects – even when they are victims of crime.
Since 2022, we have worked with the family’s campaign, which supports retaining jury trials, but wants them to be more ethnically diverse, particularly in cases involving black victims. Our research has documented the campaign and is addressing critical gaps in UK research on jury diversity.
Diversity in the judiciary
Lammy’s proposals for reform include expanding the use of bench trials. This means that more cases would be heard by a single judge alone.
The judiciary in England and Wales is neither sufficiently diverse nor representative of the population. While black, Asian or minority ethnic people make up around 22% of the population, as of 2025, they make up only 11% of all court judges.
Lammy’s proposal also goes against what the public wants. In 2024, we surveyed 1,000 members of the public, 75% of whom stated explicitly that they believed the UK should have jury trials.
While most of our respondents believed that jury trials were fair (51%) and trustworthy (60%), they also felt strongly that more diverse juries were fairer (61%). Around half of people (51%) believed juries should look like the communities they serve. We found that for people of colour, taking part in jury service was viewed as even more important than for white respondents.
When it comes to perceptions of fairness and trust in the courts, we found important racial differences. Our research found that people of colour trust judges and the courts at lower rates than white people. People of colour in our survey were also more likely than white people to believe that judges treat them more unfairly compared to white people. And most of our respondents believed that more diversity in the judiciary is needed.
If Lammy remains committed to reducing inequality in the criminal justice system for people of colour, rather than reducing jury trials, he should be increasing them, and the diversity on them, to ensure justice for all.
UK Labour Party Foreign Secretary David Lammy repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
… by giving nearly half of his $500 billion fortune to the children of the world.
“Let’s make the world’s richest man the richest man in town!” urges a new campaign launched Friday by the economic advocacy group Tax Justice Network, borrowing a memorable line from the classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The group’s global petition emphasizes that SpaceX owner Elon Musk is already the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $508.4 billion—more than double the assets of the planet’s next-richest person, Google co-founder Larry Page.
Tax Justice Network’s (TJN) petition invites Musk to give 44% of his wealth—$223.6 billion—to the children of the world. That amount of money would allow the purchase of a $90 gift card for all 2.4 billion of the planet’s children under the age of 18, and could stop more than 100 million children from going hungry this holiday season.
And Musk would still be the richest person alive, emphasized the group.
Let’s make the world’s richest man feel like the richest man in town this Christmas! Sign our Christmas card inviting Elon Musk to gift 44% of his wealth to the children of the world to create 2 billion smiles and still be the world’s richest man alive! #WealthTax #TaxTheSuperRichc.org/jnnZhmp6J4
The campaign quotes Harry Bailey’s famous line declaring his brother George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, “the richest man in town” in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” after George’s neighbors donate money to save him from financial ruin.
“We’re obviously poking a little fun here but the point is to show how extreme the concentration of wealth has become,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive at TJN. “Depending on where you are in the world, if you earn the average wage, you’d need to work anywhere from 20 times to a thousand times longer than humans have existed to earn as much wealth as Elon Musk has collected.”
The petition notes that TJN and the world’s children “would also settle for a 2% wealth tax on the superrich,” which would allow countries around the world to raise $2 trillion per year if it was applied to the richest 0.5% of people on the planet.
“That’s enough public money to meet most countries’ climate finance needs, and leave billions to spare for local public services,” the group said.
The group pointed to a recent G20report declaring a global “inequality emergency” and last week’s World Inequality Report, which found that fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires—just 0.001% of the world’s population—own three times more wealth than the entire bottom 50% of humanity.
“Within almost every region, the top 1% alone hold more wealth than the bottom 90% combined,” noted TJN.
The petition emphasizes the difference between collected wealth—the kind enjoyed by Musk and other superrich people—and earned wealth. The vast majority of people earn money for what they do, notes TJN. Musk and other billionaires “get paid for what [they] own, so dividends for owning stocks and rent money for owning real estate.”
Billionaires including Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle executive Larry Ellison famously take salaries of just $1, but the money that’s made them part of the world’s superrich is their collected wealth, emphasized TJN.
“Earned wealth cannot create billionaires,” said TJN. “Only collected wealth grows fast enough to do so. It’s impossible to earn a billion dollars.”
A ProPublicareport in 2021 detailed how billionaires like Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid a collective “true tax rate” of just 3.4% while the median American household made $70,000 and paid a tax rate of 14%.
“This special tax treatment has helped the superrich quadruple their wealth since the 1980s to extreme levels,” said TJN. “Studies directly link this rise in extreme wealth to lower economic productivity, to more households going into debt and to people living shorter lives.”
Musk in the past has pledged to use his extreme wealth to help people around the world—only to renege on his promises. In 2022, he challenged then-World Food Program chief David Beasley to prove, as Beasley had stated, that a small fraction of Musk’s wealth could help address world hunger. He pledged to donate $6 billion by selling his Tesla stock if the WFP could prove the contribution would “solve world hunger.”
The WFP responded with a report detailing how $6 billion could feed 42 million at-risk people and prevent them from going hungry for a year. But Musk didn’t follow through with his pledge, instead donating $5.7 billion of his Tesla shares to his own foundation.
This year, Musk spearheaded a push to slash government spending on foreign aid, with the US Agency for International Development a key target. The cuts have already proven deadly for children in impoverished nations.
Cobham on Monday pointed to research showing that the skyrocketing wealth of the richest 1% of Americans over the past 40 years has not led “to more investments, and instead resulted in dissaving among non-rich households.”
“We now have plenty of evidence showing that extreme wealth shrinks economies, makes people poorer, and threatens democracy,” said Cobham. “The best way to protect people, economies, and planet from the harms of extreme wealth is to end the special tax treatment that collected wealth gets over earned wealth. We must tax extreme wealth more effectively to protect the earner way of life we all rely on. Whether you’re a wealth collector or a wealth earner, we all have an equal responsibility to pitch in our fair share.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
