Category: World

At the home James MacDonald shares with his wife and their two kids, it’s approaching dinnertime. His five-year-old son, Sye, is helping MacDonald open a can of salmon.

As a citizen of the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council — one of several First Nations known as “salmon people” — MacDonald’s ancestors have been fishing chinook salmon for millennia. 

But that way of life couldn’t feel further away than it does right now.

“My wife and I were down at Costco a couple of weeks ago in Vancouver … and we bought $300 worth of canned sockeye. And, you know, it’s the only way at this point that we can have salmon in our house,” said MacDonald, a member of the federally appointed Yukon salmon sub-committee.

In an effort to preserve dwindling chinook stocks, MacDonald says he hasn’t fished on the Yukon River since he was a young boy. 

“Culture doesn’t come from a can, but when we prepare it with the kids we can still talk to them and tell them about what salmon means to us.” 

CBC Radio’s What on Earth travelled to Yukon this summer to explore how a warming climate has threatened chinook salmon, endangering not just the species but a cultural keystone for these Indigenous communities. There, it found that an unprecedented seven-year moratorium on fishing mandated by Canada’s federal and Alaska’s state governments, combined with other conservation efforts, may be netting some success.

This summer about 24,000 chinook were counted moving up the Yukon River at the border with Alaska. That’s compared to historic lows of 12,000 and 15,000 the last two seasons, says Elizabeth MacDonald, a biologist and fisheries manager for the Council of Yukon First Nations. 

The fishing moratorium has only been in place for five months.

“I don’t want to sound too joyous, because if we were talking about the run like we’re having right now, five years ago, we would have been devastated by the numbers,” said MacDonald, who lives in Whitehorse. “But it is better than the last few years. I’m really grateful for that.” 

When data on the salmon run was first collected in the 1980s, between 100,000 and 200,000 chinook would enter the Yukon River, MacDonald said. Anywhere from a quarter to more than a third were destined to make that crossing into Canada.

Why chinook are struggling

Canada’s North is warming faster than the rest of the country. Temperatures there have risen an average of two to four degrees since 1950, compared to an average of 1.9 C from 1948 to 2021 in Canada as a whole, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Those hotter temperatures have a number of negative impacts on the chinook, MacDonald said.

The migration they make to return to their spawning grounds is the longest salmon run in the world, stretching to around 3,000 kilometres. The journey takes two months, during which time the chinook eat nothing — all while performing what MacDonald calls the fish equivalent of running a marathon uphill.

Definitely, we need cold oceans if we want to have salmon.– Elizabeth MacDonald, fisheries manager

The conditions in the ocean in the months and years before the fish start the trip are critical to how they fare. 

“Out in the ocean, when things warm up, salmon don’t survive as well and you see less of them. And they also tend to be smaller when they do come back,” she said. 

That’s because the warmer waters make their metabolism run faster, leaving lower energy stores for the trip, she said.

“So, definitely, we need cold oceans if we want to have salmon.”

If once the chinook are in the river, hot and dry conditions have created lower water levels, the water there will also be warmer, she said.

“So to go the same distance, you now need more energy or more food, which means you eat through your reserves quicker, which is part of the reason why maybe some of the fish are dying before they make it to spawn.” 

Warmer rivers also mean lower oxygen levels in the water, making it harder for the fish to meet the demands of their swim, she said. 

On top of that, a common and often fatal ocean parasite that infects chinook has grown more prevalent in warmer conditions. 

“The last several years, the infection level has come up quite considerably, and that is likely one of the biggest contributing factors to the salmon that are dying in the river,” MacDonald said.

WATCH | Learn how a parasite is killing chinook salmon:

A parasite is killing chinook salmon. Here’s how

The parasite known as Ichthyophonus hoferi is one of the major threats devastating chinook salmon populations in Yukon, and it’s impacting the lives of those who rely on them. Elizabeth Macdonald explains the parasite’s effect on the salmon population.

It’s not just the climate affecting chinook stocks. 

In the past, some Yukon First Nations have blamed overfishing in Alaska for reducing the number that reach spawning grounds. Mining disasters have spilled contaminants into salmon-bearing streams and the logging industry’s practice of floating log booms along the river has been shown to be detrimental to the fish.

Though not the driving force behind the decline, some First Nations people have played a part in overfishing the chinook by also working as commercial fishers, James MacDonald said.

WATCH | Colleen James on governments working with First Nations on water use:

How some First Nations communities are taking back control

Colleen James, a community co-ordinator and cultural advisor for How We Walk With the Land and Water, says that some in the Canadian government are starting to listen to First Nations communities when it comes to making decisions on land and water use.

The loss of fish camps 

For the First Nations peoples who traditionally rely on the chinook for sustenance, the devastating decline in fish stocks has cut them off from a beloved practice of gathering at riverside fish camps in late summer. 

There, they would catch salmon in nets, then fillet and dry them to store over winter.

“Those were happy times, happy memories,” said MacDonald, recalling his childhood fish camp experiences and the excitement of checking the nets early each morning. “As a boy, I can tell you it was an endless amount of fun … It’s a deep well of sorrow to not be able to share that joy with my family.” 

More recently, some communities have begun to hold fish camps by flying in frozen salmon. That way, young people can learn from elders how to fillet and hang the fish — and to connect to their cultural heritage. 

Bêlit Peters, 22, has never experienced salmon camps like her elders. But a few years ago she had a summer job on the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council’s salmon restoration project at Fox Creek. Then something magical happened, she said. 

Her group came to a pool of water that opened up to the lake, “and there was this huge salmon … the size of my arm. And I was like, what is that? And I remember my boss, Deb Fulmer, she was like, ‘That’s a salmon.’ And we were all so happy because we hadn’t seen one … And I spotted it. It was so bright red in the water.”

Peters is now a youth community co-ordinator with a project called How We Walk with the Land and Water, which aims to create a unified First Nation vision for how regional land and water planning is handled in the Southern Lakes district, which covers the 24,753 square kilometres surrounding Whitehorse, with the B.C. border as its lower boundary. 

She said she used to feel like protecting salmon was something she had to do. 

“Now I feel like it’s more of like a ‘I want to,’ like it’s my duty, kind of like it’s always been my job to do that,” she said.

“I’m hopeful that the salmon are going to come back …. I’m wishing on it.”

WATCH | Bêlit Peters describes her reaction to stories about loss of land and water:

Youth activist wants to rebuild connection to the land and water

Bêlit Peters, a youth community co-ordinator for How We Walk With the Land and Water, says it’s ‘heartbreaking’ that some people feel disconnected from the land and water.

In an email, the Yukon government said it recognizes “the tremendous impact Yukon River salmon decline has had on Yukon First Nation subsistence harvest, culture, food security and traditional practices.

“For years, Yukon First Nations have voluntarily reduced or ceased subsistence salmon fishing to help restore the species and work towards building a territory where salmon can be harvested by future generations.”

While it doesn’t have a formal role in salmon management, the territorial government is “committed to working with partners to conserve and protect wild Pacific salmon for future generations,” the statement said.

An email to CBC from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Ocean said, in part, that it’s working with Yukon First Nations, the territorial government and Yukon First Nation Salmon Stewardship Alliance to develop a plan to rebuild the Yukon River chinook salmon stock.  

It also said the department is working with the U.S. “to highlight concerns regarding continued declines of Pacific salmon and factors contributing to those declines.”

This story is part of our Overheated series, a collaboration between What on Earth, Quirks & Quarks and White Coat, Black Art, that explores how heat is affecting our health, our cities and our ecosystems.

This First Person article is the experience of Yassir El-Tahan, who lives in Bauline, N.L. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

On the morning of Aug. 22, 2015, the sun was shining, with not a hint of wind. I decided to take advantage and head to my favourite pond, just outside St. John’s, for a swim. I usually take my bike, but I was in a hurry that day, so I hopped into my Jeep and took a narrow trail that had been carved out in the woods.

When I was deep into the trail, I saw someone off in the distance walking toward me. It’s not uncommon to see people along that route as quite a few use it for mountain biking and dog walking, but as I approached the man, something told me to stop.

After a brief chat, I learned he was not familiar with the area, so I offered him a ride to the pond where I was headed. He accepted and away we went. It was about a seven-minute off-roading adventure from there to the pond. I don’t remember much of the conversation, only that he said he wanted to get away to “clear his head.”

“Well,” I said when we arrived, “this is one of my happy places, enjoy!” I went for a quick swim, bid farewell, and went on my way.

Two days later, while eating lunch at work and scrolling on my phone, I saw a CBC News story about a missing man Jonathan Hannaford. My jaw dropped when I saw the picture — it was the guy I had dropped off at the pond on Saturday.

I called the police, and shortly afterward they were at my workplace taking a statement. One of the main questions was whether he had anything with him when I picked him up. I couldn’t recall exactly, but I did know that in no way was he equipped to spend a couple of days in the woods.

A sudden realization

It was then that I realized that not only was I the last to see a missing person, I had actually driven him deeper into the woods where he disappeared.

With the information I provided, the police intensified the search. Search and rescue crews were brought in. There were people on ATVs, on foot, in helicopters as well as drones overhead. I joined a Facebook group that Jonathan’s father, Brian, had started to help find his son.

Shortly afterward, Brian offered a reward to help locate his son. He explained that his other son, Christopher, had gone missing during a camping trip in British Columbia four years earlier. It was Jonathan who travelled there to identify his brother’s body, which had been found in a lake. Jonathan had been battling anxiety ever since, said his father, who also mentioned that his son had left a note in his car, which had been ditched on the side of the road.

In an interview with The St. John’s Morning Show, Brian named me as the last person to see Jonathan before he went missing.

I immediately began receiving messages from his family and friends on Facebook and learned more about Jonathan, including that he had uploaded a song to YouTube that he wrote and dedicated to his son. The song’s chorus went: “Son, be strong if I go / Hear this song and you’ll know / I need you to know that I love you.”

Things were not looking good.

In a dark place

Jonathan’s family and friends asked me to take them to the area where I had dropped him off, but I politely declined, telling them I didn’t want to interfere with the search team’s operations. The reality was that I found myself in a bit of a dark place through it all.

With the note Jonathan left in his car, his long history of anxiety and depression following his brother’s death, his recent breakup, the fact he was not equipped to spend a night, let alone several, in the woods — all signs pointed to the worst possible outcome.

I couldn’t help but think that if I had taken my bike as usual, if I hadn’t picked him up, turned him around and driven him deeper into the woods, things might have been different. If I hadn’t intercepted him and he had kept walking straight for another 15 to 20 minutes, he would have found himself on a main road in Airport Heights, completely out of the woods.

But just as something told me to stop and pick Jonathan up that Saturday, something told me a couple of days later that the worst hadn’t happened and he was still alive. Maybe it was my way of coping with the situation, but I had to follow my gut. I drove straight to the spot I met Jonathan and shined my lights down the gravel path as if somehow expecting to see him walking toward me.

I hatched a plan: I’d drive around all night and blast the song he dedicated to his son to try to draw him out.

I went home to make some food. If I was going to be out all night, I needed some fuel. But as I sat and ate, reality kicked in: this was a stupid idea.

Navigating those trails were difficult enough during the day, let alone at night. What if I got a flat tire? It’s happened before on those trails — that would be a very tangly situation. I had to work in the morning as well. So instead, in a Facebook post at 2:45 a.m., I offered to help take those who wanted in to help search for Jonathan the next day when I got off work, and I went to bed.

The next morning, in a response to my post, I learned Jonathan had been found alive.

Suddenly, a happy ending

I couldn’t have been any more relieved. Five days earlier, I had stopped in the woods to pick up a complete stranger. A scenario that could have doubled as the opening sequence of a horror movie eventually had a happy ending.

In a Facebook post, Jonathan thanked everyone who had helped look for him, and said he had anxiety and depression. He detailed his days in the woods, and mentioned me:

“I ran into a very nice guy somewhere close to Windsor Lake. He offered me a ride to a spot he liked to go, which made me feel a little better.… It was nice to be by the water, and that is where I had planned to camp for the last time. I set up camp, boiled some water and picked some berries for supper.”

I messaged him on Facebook, but he didn’t reply.

In the years that followed, I thought about him a lot, and seven years later, I messaged him again, reminded him who I was and asked if he wanted to get together.

We got in my Jeep and went back to that spot in the woods, Jonathan’s first time there since I had brought him there the first time.

I recorded parts of our conversation for an episode of Atlantic Voice.

LISTEN | Hear the full documentary about Yassir El-Tahan and Jonathan Hannaford: 

Jonathan told me he had been struggling with anxiety and addiction, and he didn’t know if he would make it out of the woods alive.

“I was at rock bottom, and you pulled up with a smile on your face,” he told me. “And I felt like maybe this is meant to be, maybe I should just hop in.”

He told me he didn’t know what he would have done or where he would have gone if I hadn’t picked him up, and that chance encounter had helped him feel better.

“I remember sitting in the truck, thinking, ‘Man, like, how did this even happen?'” he said.

“He just, you know, pulled up, he didn’t know me, he just stopped and said hop in.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, like, he don’t even know what’s going on right now.’… I didn’t tell you much. I know you left there not knowing any of the situation at all, but, you know, it really helped when you came.”

After four nights, he walked out of the woods near the St. John’s airport and used a payphone to call his dad. He had no idea there were helicopters and search parties looking for him.

He told me the police bought him a Tim Hortons sandwich and coffee and as the weeks went on, he received hundreds of messages from people he hadn’t heard from in years, and felt the most love he’d ever felt.

“It’s almost like it cured me immediately,” he said. “I felt better already, man. And I really needed it.”

I came away from the experience having learned that you never know what someone else is going through.

Sometimes, taking the time to stop, smile and check in can make all the difference.

Listen to the audio documentary in the player above, or find Atlantic Voice on CBC Listen, Spotify or where you get podcasts.

September is Suicide Prevention Month. If you or someone you know is struggling, here’s where to get help:

This guide from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health outlines how to talk about suicide with someone you’re worried about.

For Harris, a stand-in for the former president — wearing his signature red tie — has helped her visualize the scene ahead of time. Trump, meanwhile, has eschewed a sparring partner in the role of Harris, choosing instead to replicate the informal “policy time” that formed his preparation ahead of June’s debate with President Joe Biden.

That debate ended in disaster for the incumbent president, who ended his reelection bid three weeks later and thrust the presidential race into uncharted waters. Sources close to Trump insist not much had changed in terms of how he will prepare for upcoming debate, despite a switch at the top of the Democratic ticket. One difference: the enlisting of one of the vice president’s ex-rivals, Tulsi Gabbard, the former representative from Hawaii who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 in a crowded field that also included Harris.

The addition of Gabbard is particularly notable given the tense exchanges she had with the vice president during their 2020 race that left Harris rattled.

Whether Trump’s approach with a new, younger candidate will prove as effective remains an open question. Harris’ team, for its part, views her as an underdog given Trump’s lengthy experience in general election debates — this will be his seventh in total, more than any candidate in history.

In the week ahead of the Tuesday face-off, Trump has a relatively light campaign schedule and will shuttle between his Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago resorts, as well as Trump Tower in Manhattan, where advisers said he has built in “policy time” on his schedule

Allies have advised Trump to hammer the same issues of inflation and immigration, with a goal of trying to make Harris the incumbent in this race. Many of those close to Trump believe their best bet on winning in November is linking Harris to some of Biden’s more unpopular areas, particularly the economy and immigration, where polls showed Trump held a clear advantage against Biden among voters and where Harris has now closed the gap.

Trump’s team has been sketching out potential responses on reproductive rights with the expectation Harris will make that a focus during the debate.

The Harris and Trump campaigns remain in discussions about the debate rules, according to sources, in particular whether microphones will be muted when a candidate isn’t speaking. The Harris campaign has been pushing for microphones to remain on for the duration of the debate, while the Trump campaign wants them turned off while the other candidate is speaking, in line with the rules at the CNN-hosted debate in June. The Trump campaign has insisted the matter is settled.

Even before Biden dropped out and Harris emerged as the Democratic standard-bearer, the vice president had begun putting together a debate preparation team ahead of her expected showdown with Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

Her elevation to Democratic nominee added urgency to the preparations, with a new opponent to game out and the stakes exponentially higher.

Over the past month, Harris has engaged in debate prep sessions with a small team of advisers, led by Rohini Kosoglu, a top policy adviser, and Karen Dunn, a longtime Democratic debate specialist. Others involved in preparation sessions include Harris’ White House chief of staff, Lorraine Voles; her campaign chief of staff, Sheila Nix; and Sean Clegg, a veteran strategist.

The preparations have included mock debate sessions, with the role of Trump played by Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton who stood in for Trump during Clinton’s own debate prep in 2016.

One advantage Harris has benefited from is advice from the only two Democrats to have faced off against Trump on a debate stage: Biden and Clinton. Harris maintains a close relationship with both, and each has offered their counsel since she became the nominee.

Still, even some of Harris’s top supporters have cautioned against overconfidence heading into the showdown. In an interview on CNN this week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said underestimating Trump would be a mistake, pointing to debates the Republican won against Biden and Clinton.

“We shouldn’t be thinking that somehow that Kamala Harris has a greater ability to win a debate than Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re going to come in as significant rivals with very, very different points of view. And I think getting those points of view across and making sure that you’re not getting, you know, flummoxed, frankly, by Donald Trump will be an important thing for Kamala Harris.”

Those around Trump tend to stay away from using the word “preparation” when it comes to the debate. Thus far, no one is expected to sit in for Harris, just as no one played Biden ahead of the June debate.

In some sessions, aides have acted as moderators, but more often than not, these conversations serve as briefings with occasional questioning.

Among those helping with the policy review are senior advisers Jason Miller and Vince Haley, as well as Stephen Miller.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who helped ahead of Trump’s debate with Biden, is also expected to play a role in this round of preparation.

While Trump’s team is hoping to mimic the results of the first debate against Biden, some allies of the former president acknowledge that Harris is a much different debater than the sitting president. Allies also have expressed concern over the tone Trump will strike with Harris, noting that the former president’s often aggressive demeanor may play differently with a woman.

Sources say Harris is keenly aware of the approach Trump may take on the stage.

“She’s very aware of who he is and what he’s going to bring,” one source close to the campaign told CNN, adding: “She has a plan, she has a vision, she’s going to put it forward.”

The race itself has also fundamentally changed. In a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, 46% of likely voters viewed Harris favorably versus 43% unfavorably. Trump’s favorability ratings were a dismal 33% to 58%.

Tuesday’s debate stage will be the closest Harris and Trump will have ever come to each other over the course of their overlapping careers. The only time they’ve previously been in the same room was inside the House chamber during Trump’s State of the Union addresses; Trump skipped the inauguration when Harris was sworn in as vice president.

Depending on how the night goes, it could also be their last. Neither has committed to a second debate.

Coming face-to-face is a moment Harris has been thinking about for several weeks as she scales up her campaign effort and considers the attacks her rival may deploy. As Harris allies brace for personal broadsides from Trump, their message to the Democratic candidate: Don’t get roped in.

“Prepare her for Donald Trump to walk in there hot and prepare to attack and get her off balance,” said Donna Brazile, a close Harris ally who also managed Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, citing the debate between Trump and Clinton in 2016.

“This is a candidate and former president who knows how to command a stage. That’s his strength,” Brazile said. “Don’t try to compete with someone who’s a master.”

Instead, allies like Brazile have underscored the need to stay on message.

“In these environments, there has to be an argument, a thesis, a message they want to communicate about Trump, and then they will use the evidence to prove that. This is where her prosecutorial chops come into play,” one former Harris adviser told CNN.

“Part of the challenge in debate prep is to push her on things that will make her uncomfortable so that she won’t have heard those things for the first time onstage,” the former adviser said, adding that the vice president has become more familiar with personal attacks amid GOP criticism in the last three years.

One of the standout moments that allies often point to is her 2020 debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence. Early on in the debate, as Harris rebutted the Trump administration’s assertion that its disastrously slow response to the Covid-19 pandemic was out of a desire to keep Americans calm, Pence tried to cut her off.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” Harris said.

Harris intentionally pared back her travel leading up to the upcoming presidential debate to dedicate time to preparation, sources told CNN. She will travel to Pittsburgh on Thursday to prepare with her team, according to two sources familiar with the planning, and will stay for several nights until the debate Tuesday.

It’s the second time the vice president will visit the city this week after campaigning with Biden on Labor Day. She plans to make community stops while she’s in Pittsburgh and stay on the campaign trail in a critical battleground state, according to one of the sources.

It’s a slightly different approach than Biden took ahead of his sole, disastrous debate in June. He retreated to Camp David in Maryland, without any public appearances in the week or so ahead of the debate.

Harris’s approach more resembles then-President Barack Obama, who in 2012 took his “debate camp” to resorts outside Las Vegas and in Williamsburg, Virginia.

BBC

Evangelisation

Careful path

CNN  — 

Residents of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, are taking stock after nine days of what they say has been the most intense and sustained Israeli military operation in their city since October 7.

Witnesses describe widespread destruction of infrastructure, severed water and electricity supplies, and people rationing food for fear of going outside. It has been the deadliest period in the West Bank since November, according to the UN.

The military withdrew from Jenin and Tulkarem on Friday, according to residents. But an Israeli security source said that “the overall operation in Jenin is not over, it is only a pause.”

Though the war in Gaza has attracted most attention, Israel’s military has persistently and increasingly brought unsparing military tactics to the West Bank.

Israel’s security forces on August 28 launched what they dubbed a “counterterrorism operation” in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, in the northern West Bank. It has come to be known as Operation Summer Camps.

“We will not let terrorism in Judea and Samaria raise its head,” the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said during a visit to Jenin over the weekend, using the biblical names for the West Bank commonly used in Israel.

Residents say Jenin has been left transformed and scarred.

“It felt like Gaza,” 36-year-old Lina Al Amouri said by telephone from Jenin. She and her husband fled several days into the IDF incursion, but went back when they heard rumors that the operation had quieted.

“When we returned yesterday, we saw that all the streets were destroyed,” she said. “Soldiers were everywhere, continuing to bulldoze everything around them, not just the streets.”

“We heard many gunshots, and then we received news that my mother-in-law’s nephew had been shot seven times near the camp. They let him bleed until he died and prevented ambulances from reaching him.”

The IDF has previously said that it often must impede ambulances to check for militants.

Nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah and the UN, whose figures do not distinguish between militants and civilians.

Since the Israeli operation began last Wednesday, 39 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah reported. Among them were at least nine militants, according to public statements from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Eight children have also been killed according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Tawfiq Qandeel, 85-years-old, from eastern Jenin, had gone several days on meagre rations last week, too frightened to leave his house, his son Arafat told CNN.

He left home on Friday to get food and attend Friday prayers. On his way back, Arafat said, he was gunned down in the street, where he lay for hours as he bled out.

A video posted online Sunday by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows his corpse lying in the nearly unrecognizable moonscape of a street. An Israeli armored personnel carrier trundles down the road – and over the dead man’s leg.

In a statement to CNN, the IDF acknowledged that while disarming improvised explosive devices, security forces shot and killed “an individual approaching their position,” and that the incident was under review.

“As the troops were departing the scene, an IDF vehicle inadvertently struck the deceased’s body,” it also said. The military said that it “deeply regrets any harm caused to civilians.”

The Israeli military has severely restricted access to the city since its operation began, so international media have had to rely on residents, local journalists, and social media video for independent information about the operation.

Journalists this week said that they were fired on by the Israeli military during a raid in Kafr Dan, near Jenin. Mohammed Mansour, a journalist for WAFA, was injured when the car he was driving was struck by gunfire, according to video of the aftermath and his employer.

Armored bulldozers also daily used heavy duty plows to tear up roads. The military says this is necessary to unearth improvised explosive devices planted under the tarmac. But the tactic has caused significant infrastructure damage, leaving many roads impassable.

The UN says that since October, Israeli authorities have “destroyed, demolished, confiscated, or forced the demolition” of 1,478 structures in the West Bank. Jenin’s mayor said that more than 70% of his city’s critical infrastructure has been destroyed.

While deadly ground raids in the West Bank were a regular occurrence before Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack, air strikes – though not entirely unheard of – were extremely rare. When in July 2023 Israel used a drone to launch airstrikes as part of a large operation in Jenin, it made headlines around the world. Not a single Palestinian in the West bank was killed by an air strike in the preceding three years, according to the UN.

Since October, such strikes have become a near-daily occurrence. And their use has dramatically ramped up in recent weeks. The UN says that of all deaths by Israeli air strikes since October, nearly a third came in August alone.

“No place in Palestine is safe, not just Gaza,” Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan said during a visit to Jenin on Thursday – the first time a Palestinian official visited the city since Israel’s operation began. “We witness the occupying enemy repeating the systematic destruction I saw before, targeting both human life and infrastructure.”

Brigadier General Nitzan Nuriel, who ran the counter-terrorism bureau of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office until 2012, and now serves in the reserves, said that Operation Summer Camps was launched to send a message to Israel’s adversaries.

“The message to the other side is, ‘Don’t play with us. Don’t think that if we are very much down in the south and probably we are going to be busy up in the north, we will not be able to take care of what’s going in Judea and Samaria.’”

The Israeli military, Halevi said during his visit to Jenin, will go “city to city, camp to camp, with excellent intelligence, very good operational capabilities, very strong aerial intelligence support, and above all, with very moral and determined soldiers and commanders.”

Duha Turkman, 18 years old, sheltered with her sister at an aunt’s house for a week when the operation began, too scared to go outside because of the Israeli snipers they saw on surrounding rooftops.

“We tried to conserve food as much as we could,” she said. “We were eating very little, had no water, and no electricity.”

Suddenly, on the seventh day, Israeli soldiers burst through their door, she said. A video taken by Turkman shows shrapnel pockmarking the stairwell of the house. They soon fled to an uncle’s house elsewhere in the city.

“When we look at Gaza, we realize that we have been going through this for nine days, and it is already incredibly difficult for us,” she said. “We can only imagine what the people in Gaza are enduring. The situation here mirrors Gaza with airstrikes, bulldozing, and it doesn’t seem like the situation will change anytime soon.”

New York CNN  — 

Former President Donald Trump will not be sentenced in his New York criminal case until after the 2024 election, Judge Juan Merchan announced Friday, explaining that his decision to delay the sentencing is in part to avoid any appearance of affecting the outcome of the presidential race.

Merchan wrote in a new four-page letter that he would sentence Trump on November 26 – if necessary – in response to a request from Trump’s lawyers to push back the sentencing.

Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film star alleging an affair with the former president. But Trump’s sentencing has been on hold for months after Trump’s lawyers pushed to have the conviction tossed because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

Merchan noted the upcoming presidential election in his decision to delay sentencing, saying that part of his reason for doing so was to avoid the appearance that the sentencing was intended to influence the November election.

“Adjourning decision on the motion and sentencing, if such is required, should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and or any candidate for any office,” Merchan wrote.

Trump expressed appreciation for the language Merchan used in delaying his sentencing noting that it will only commence “if necessary.”

“I greatly appreciate the words in the letter today from the judge. He said ‘if necessary,’ being utilized in the decision, because there should be no ‘if necessary.’ This case should rightfully be terminated immediately,” Trump said during remarks to the Fraternal Order of Police in North Carolina. The former president also falsely stated that the sentencing was “postponed” because he “did nothing wrong.”

In addition to pushing back the sentencing until November 26, Merchan wrote that he would decide on Trump’s motion to vacate the verdict because of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision on November 12, which is also after the election. Merchan wrote in his letter that the Supreme Court “rendered a historic and intervening decision” with its immunity ruling.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the decision, saying, “There should be no sentencing in the Manhattan DA’s election interference witch hunt.”

“As mandated by the United States Supreme Court, this case, along with all the other Harris-Biden hoaxes, should be dismissed,” Cheung said.

A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement: “A jury of 12 New Yorkers swiftly and unanimously convicted Donald Trump of 34 felony counts. The Manhattan D.A.’s Office stands ready for sentencing on the new date set by the court.”

The district attorney’s office did not oppose delaying Trump’s sentence, which Merchan cited in his decision Friday.

The decision to push back the sentencing until after the November 5 election marks yet another delay that’s been a fixture in all of Trump’s criminal cases since he was indicted four times – in New York, Florida, Washington, DC and Georgia – in 2023. The Florida classified documents case was dismissed by the judge in July – though the special counsel is appealing that decision – while the other two January 6-related cases are in limbo and won’t move forward before the election.

The only indictment that went to trial this year was the New York hush money case that ended in the May guilty verdict. Now the sentencing in that trial – with the question looming about whether a jail sentence will be imposed – won’t occur until after the election, if it happens at all.

Merchan acknowledged the historic nature of Trump’s hush money trial in his decision to push back the former president’s sentencing until after the election.

“This matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this Nation’s history, and this Court has presided over it since its inception – from arraignment to jury verdict and a plentitude of motions and other matters in-between. Were this Court to decide, after careful consideration of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump, that this case should proceed, it will be faced with one of the most critical and difficult decisions a trial court judge faces – the sentencing of a defendant found guilty of crimes by a unanimous jury of his peers,” Merchan wrote.

“The members of this jury served diligently on this case, and their verdict must be respected and addressed in a manner that is not diluted by the enormity of the upcoming presidential election,” he continued. “Likewise, if one is necessary, the Defendant has the right to a sentencing hearing that respects and protects his constitutional rights.”

This is the second time that Merchan has pushed back sentencing in the case. Merchan delayed his initial July sentencing by two months after Trump’s lawyers asked Merchan to vacate the guilty verdict in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

Last week, Trump sought to move the state case into federal court, citing the Supreme Court’s decision this summer on presidential immunity, but a federal judge quickly denied the request day slater without considering further arguments from Trump or the Manhattan District Attorney. Trump’s lawyers are appealing that ruling.

After filing that federal petition, Trump’s legal team also asked Merchan to let that litigation play out in federal court and refrain from issuing a decision over presidential immunity. Merchan noted the attempts to move the case to federal court in his letter Friday.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that the indictment should be dismissed or at least his conviction should be vacated because the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity means that certain evidence from the trial, such as the testimony of former White House aide Hope Hicks and tweets Trump sent while in office, should not have come before the jury.

Prosecutors have responded the conviction should stand and that the evidence presented at trial was “overwhelming.”

Merchan had said he would rule on the immunity question on September 16. He had planned to sentence Trump, if necessary, two days later.

But Trump’s lawyers asked Merchan to push that date back until after the election, arguing in part that they wouldn’t have enough time to appeal the judge’s decision. Prosecutors wrote in response that they would defer to Merchan on the scheduling.

The delay means that Trump’s criminal conviction – which dominated both Trump’s time and the news cycle during the spring – won’t return to the forefront of the presidential campaign during the final weeks of the race. It also could mean that the election will not interfere with any sentence that Merchan might impose.

Trump could be sentenced to as much as four years of prison time, but Merchan is not required to sentence Trump to prison, and he could choose to impose a lesser sentence, such as probation, home confinement, community service or a fine.

This story has been updated with additional detail.

CNN’s Paula Reid, Aaron Pellish, Alejandra Jaramillo and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.

Khirbet Karkur, Israel CNN  — 

In southern Israel’s Negev desert, residents of the Bedouin village of Khirbet Karkur live in tents and metal-clad makeshift homes. Not far from the border with Gaza, they hear the sounds of the war unfolding next door.

There are some 300,000 Arab Bedouins living in the Negev. As Muslim-Arab citizens of Israel, many are still struggling to find their place in Israeli society 75 years after the Jewish state was established, despite many of them serving in the military.

The war with Hamas has only deepened that sense of uncertainty. Bedouins living near the Gaza border feel they have been doubly victimized: first by being within striking distance of Hamas rockets with minimal protection, and second by state marginalization that has only grown worse since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

The village of Khirbet Karkur is not recognized by the Israeli state. Residents live a semi-nomadic life, in an open desert area and in dwellings that aren’t connected to the Israeli electricity grid or water supply. Like many other unrecognized villages, it has no schools or hospitals, and residents say that women have been forced to give birth in cars on the way to hospital because ambulances struggle to reach the town.

And unlike millions of other Israelis during the war, they don’t have air raid sirens or access to bomb shelters to hide from Hamas’ rockets. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system often skips interceptions above their village, residents say, as it ignores projectiles that aren’t expected to fall in population centers. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN it is “not possible to provide details on the aerial defense array policy due to considerations of information security.”

Villagers say the rest of the country had all but forgotten them – until last week, when a swarm of journalists travelled along dirt roads to the dusty village to mark the release of 52-year-old Farhan Al-Qadi from Hamas captivity. Khirbet Karkur is his hometown.

Al-Qadi was abducted along with 250 others by Hamas-led militants on October 7. He was taken from Kibbutz Magen, where he was working as a security guard, and was rescued last week from a tunnel in Gaza by Israeli security forces, the Israeli military said.

Speaking to reporters the day after his rescue, Al-Qadi said he wishes “that the war ends for all Palestinian and Israeli families.”

Israeli officials have said that Al-Qadi’s kidnapping and release shows that all its citizens – Jews and Muslims alike – are equally vulnerable to terrorism, adding that the state is committed to securing the freedom of every citizen.

Israel’s Bedouin community is considered a subset of the country’s Arab population, which makes up about 20% of the total population in the country of 10 million.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Al-Qadi the day he was released, and according to a transcript supplied by the Prime Minister’s Office, said: “I want you to know that we do not forget anyone, just as we did not forget you. We are committed to returning everyone, without exception.”

In November, the prime minister visited the IDF’s so-called Bedouin battalion in the Negev, a unit mostly made up of Muslim Bedouin soldiers, saying that “Jewish and Bedouin commanders are standing shoulder-to-shoulder,” and that “our partnership is the future of us all against these savages.”

But some Bedouin leaders and residents of Al-Qadi’s village say the state is celebrating his rescue without taking proper action to address the community’s decades-long needs.

Waleed Alhwashla, a Bedouin member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said that while Netanyahu and his coalition portray Israeli Arabs as equal to Jewish citizens, the reality on the ground is starkly different.

“Netanyahu lies to the families of the hostages, to the world, he lies at negotiations, to (US President Joe) Biden and to America,” Alhwashla told CNN. “He cannot change the reality inside (Israel), where there are violations of freedom, human rights, the rights of the Arab minority,” he said.

‘Displacement and segregation’

The semi-nomadic Bedouin group is predominantly tribal, with family trees that extend into Gaza and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Many identify distinctly as Bedouin Israelis, while others see themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Unlike most Jewish Israelis, Bedouins are not required to serve in the Israeli military, though some choose to do so anyway, often in specialized units operating in the Negev desert.

Bedouins who join the military receive support from the state to complete high school studies, Hebrew courses and driving lessons. Some also join up to protect the land they live in, Israeli media reported, especially after October 7.

Most Bedouins live in the 4,700-square-mile Negev, which before Israel’s founding in 1948 was home to some 92,000 Bedouins. Only 11,000 remained after the Arab-Israeli war that followed.

Today, over 300,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live in the Negev, including more than 80,000 who reside in unrecognized Bedouin villages, according to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Many of those settlements predate Israel’s founding.

These villages are often situated next to waste dumps, with little access to water and electricity, said Fayez Sohaiban, a relative of Al-Qadi and former mayor of the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat.

“This is a humanitarian issue,” Sohaiban told CNN, adding that all Bedouin families in the Negev suffer the same challenges. “They don’t have schools, they don’t have water, they don’t have power.”

“People are suffocating,” he said.

Residents of unrecognized villages regularly face demolition orders for their buildings due to lack of building permits, they say.

Demolitions have occurred on a “weekly” basis this year, according to the rights group Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF). In the first half of 2024 alone, 2,007 Bedouin structures were demolished by the state despite a temporary halt in the early months of the war, the group said, up from 1,767 demolitions during the same period of the previous year.

Bedouin residents and leaders say their plight has worsened since the war started.

Alhwashla, the lawmaker, told CNN that the government has “erased” the village of Wadi Al-Khalil during the war, adding that there are “thousands of other orders for demolition” currently in place.

In May, Amnesty International said that Israel had demolished 47 homes in the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Khalil “without proper consultation or compensation,” adding that Israeli authorities have over the years “employed numerous pretexts to push for the displacement and segregation of the Bedouin community in the Negev,”  from expanding highways and industrial zones, to establishing forests for the Jewish National Fund and the designation of military zones. A report by the NCF said in the case of Wadi al-Khalil, the demolition was justified by the Israeli state as necessary for the extension of Highway 6, “a project not yet scheduled for construction nor budgeted by the state, despite the humanitarian crisis it caused.”

Bedouin-Israeli communities are also among the poorest in the country, with close to 80% of Bedouin children living below the poverty line, NCF said, citing data from Israel’s National Insurance Institute.

Their plight has worsened significantly since a far-right government came to power in 2022, residents told CNN. In August of last year, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attended the demolition of an unrecognized village near Tel Arad in the Negev, Israeli media reported. The minister called the demolition “sacred work,” and said the residents should “understand that we govern here, that there are landlords in this country.”

Some villagers are afraid to criticize the government, citing fear of retribution by the authorities, which they say has increased since October 7. Villagers say authorities closely monitor their social media for any signs of support for Palestinians in Gaza, or criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war.

United Nations officials have repeatedly called on Israel to stop demolishing homes and property belonging to the Bedouin community.

CNN has reached out to Israel’s Land Authority for comment.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 22 Bedouins were killed, seven of them by rocket fire that fell onto unrecognized villages, according to Alhwashla. A total of eight Bedouins were kidnapped, according to the Hostage Families Forum. Three have been freed, one is believed to be dead in Gaza, one was killed by IDF fire while attempting to flee, and three remain in Hamas captivity, according to the forum.

In April, when Israel and Iran traded direct fire for the first time, a 7-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev was severely wounded by shrapnel from an intercepted missile, according to Israeli officials.

Last week, residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages filed a petition with the High Court of Justice “demanding that the state provide protective measures against rocket and missile fire,” according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a partner to the petitioners.

“Approximately 85,000 residents of these unrecognized villages lack any means of protection against rocket, missile, or drone attacks,” the association said, adding that residents have since October 7 been forced to rely on “makeshift protective measures, such as sheltering under bridges, digging trenches, or finding narrow crevices in the ground.”

“These villages are without sirens, Iron Dome coverage, or any formal state-regulated protection, due to their unrecognized status,” the association said, citing the petition.

The IDF told CNN that “the Home Front Command maintains regular contact with the heads of local authority, the Ministry of Social Equality, and the Bedouin Administration to ensure optimal protection whenever possible,” adding that since the beginning of the war, “the Home Front Command has been working to deploy protective measures in the Bedouin dispersal areas.”

Still, Bedouin communities feel that such efforts have done little to alleviate their longstanding hardships.

Despite their Israeli citizenship, they feel underrepresented, neglected and that their plight has even worsened as the war grinds on.

When members of the international community visit villages of the Negev, they are shocked to see citizens of Israel living this way, Sohaiban told CNN.

“We hold the Israeli passport and Israeli ID card. We live in this country and respect the law, so we must be treated the same way Jews are treated,” he said.

Beijing CNN  — 

Xi Jinping had a clear aim as he hosted delegates from more than 50 African countries for a major summit in Beijing this week: proving beyond doubt that China is the continent’s premier foreign partner.

The Chinese leader made his case with ceremony on Thursday when, flanked by dozens of African leaders and the UN secretary general in the Great Hall of the People, he vowed to elevate ties between China and the continent to an “all-weather community with a shared future” – a status that Beijing reserves for its staunchest diplomatic allies.

He also made a raft of promises to the continent, to be fulfilled over the next three years: more than $50 billion in financial support; the creation of one million jobs; tens of millions in food and military aid – while vowing to “deepen cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment.”

Leaders including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Kenya’s William Ruto and Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu assembled in the Chinese capital this week for the three-day forum that Beijing hailed as its largest diplomatic gathering in years.

Xi’s bid to African governments comes as China appears to be reining in its previously free-flowing funding for Africa’s development – amid its own economic slowdown and criticism its lending there had helped to saddle countries with unsustainable debt.

Now, other powers like the United States are ramping up their own efforts to boost ties with the resource-rich continent, as they seek to counter China’s political influence and secure access to critical resources key to powering the green energy transition.

The three-yearly forum on China-Africa cooperation, which wrapped Friday, was a key opportunity for Xi and his officials to telegraph their commitment to the continent, whose backing has only grown in importance for Beijing in the face of its mounting friction with the West.

Here are the main takeaways from Xi’s pitch to the continent this week.

Xi and Chinese officials appeared keen to show that Chinese investment, including in African infrastructure, was not over – even as data show Chinese lending for Africa’s development and big-ticket infrastructure has fallen substantially in recent years.

The Chinese leader announced a commitment to back 30 infrastructure connectivity projects across unspecified countries and ambitions for “a network of land-sea links.” He said China would launch 30 clean energy projects, seen as part of a push from Beijing to make Africa’s market a destination for its green tech like solar panels and electric vehicles that now face tariffs in the US and Europe.

Deals cut in a procession of bilateral meetings this week also included infrastructure. China, Zambia and Tanzania inked a memorandum of understanding to “revitalize” the existing Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority line on Wednesday, and Nigeria and China referenced developing the West African country’s “transportation, ports and free trade zones,” in a joint statement.

However, such projects and China’s overall pledge of roughly $50 billion in financial support for the continent, while heftier than that of the last forum in 2021, was still less robust than those of the previous decade, observers said.

“It is not insignificant, but if you look at the details, it is not as striking as it used to be,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, noting that this amount would be spread across many countries and a number of areas of cooperation from health to green technology.

“It also means the funding for hard infrastructure will be reduced across the board. There might be a few major projects, but the more funding they take, the less there will be for other things,” she said.

African country leaders had arrived in China seeking seeking investment, trade, and support industrializing their raw commodity sectors to create jobs. They are expected to be closely watching for follow-through on Beijing’s wide-ranging promises in the coming years, with analysts saying fulfillment of past commitments have been difficult to track.

This year’s gathering also played out under the shadow of a debt crisis across a number of African countries, which have struggled under heavy foreign debt, including from Chinese loans, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic – and raised questions about China’s role in fueling the issue.

Analysts have largely debunked earlier “debt trap” claims that Beijing was purposefully seeking to indebt countries in order to gain leverage over their assets, as it lent toward the construction of highways, rail lines and power plants across Africa under Xi’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.

African leaders have also pushed back on the premise while in Beijing, with South Africa’s Ramaphosa rejecting the “notion that when China (invests), it is with an intention of, in the end, ensuring that those countries end up in a debt trap or in a debt crisis” in comments to reporters.

China is also not seen by observers to be the main cause of African debt distress in most cases, with debt to its lenders making up a comparatively small portion of the continent’s overall public debt.

But the influx of Chinese loans increased the debt burden, and while Beijing has defended its lending practices and its efforts to ease debt repayment, observers suggest it has moved too slowly or been inflexible in cases helping countries that are heavily indebted to it get relief.

These realities – along with China’s own economic slowdown – are seen to have reduced its appetite for such lending. Even before the pandemic, Chinese lenders had already been slashing funding for the big-scale infrastructure projects and touting a transition to so-called “small yet beautiful” investments, with smaller budgets and environmental or social impact.

Xi highlighted such projects while laying out Beijing’s plan for supporting the region in the coming years, but did not address the debt shouldered by countries in his public remarks.

Instead, the Chinese leader reached back into history to paint the West as the driver of challenges both for China and for Africa – part of what observers say is Beijing’s effort to portray the continent as firmly on its side when it comes to its broader geopolitical rivalry with the US.

China, Africa and other developing nations have for decades “been endeavoring to redress the historical injustices” of Western modernization, Xi told visiting delegations, in an apparent allusion to colonialism and exploitative practices in centuries past.

Now, Xi predicted, China would, along with African countries, “set off a wave of modernization in the Global South.”

Analysts say Beijing sees the continent’s backing as crucial to Xi’s aim of positioning China as a champion of the Global South – and an alternative global leader to the US.

Playing up that backing was also a likely motivation behind China’s elevation of diplomatic ties with attending African countries to a “strategic” level and its designation of the “all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for the new era,” observers say.

The US and its Group of Seven (G7) allies have launched their own effort to fund infrastructure in developing countries, with US officials saying African countries should have “choices” when it comes to their partnerships.

Noting that “more countries” were increasing attention on ties with African nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday said Beijing “welcomes” such support for the continent – as long as it’s not done with a “condescending approach.”

Visiting leaders at the summit also rebuffed the idea of competition defining the relationship. Speaking on the summit’s sidelines, Senegal’s Foreign Minister Yassine Fall said that there would always be global competition, but noted that “Africans today are saying that China is on our side.”

African country leaders, however, are unlikely to be willing to choose between Washington and Beijing.

“Overall (at the forum), the African side created the impression that China remains pivotal,” said Paul Nantulya, a senior China specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington.

“But this does not mean that they will ditch the US and others. They clearly do not want to isolate themselves from opportunities and multiple engagements and partnerships,” he said.