Author: ALJAZEERA

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Mohammad Sukkar is safe now – or safer – but even as the team at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah work to help him, his eyes fill with tears as he recounts his experience in al-Shifa Hospital. The 27-year-old man fled south, wounded and stripped of his clothes, after days of siege and then detention by the Israeli army in the Shifa complex, along with dozens of other people. “I had been displaced from al-Shujayea east of Gaza, which was destroyed and I was volunteering at the hospital after being displaced,” Sukkar told Al Jazeera,…

Read More

The Israeli military has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital after a two-week raid, leaving behind scenes of devastation. Hundreds of people returned to al-Shifa Hospital and the surrounding area after the withdrawal early on Monday. They reported finding bodies strewn inside and outside the facility. Mohammed Mahdi, who was among those who returned, described a scene of “total destruction”. He said several buildings had been burned down and that he had counted six bodies in the area, including two in the hospital courtyard. Another resident, Yahia Abu Auf, said army bulldozers had ploughed over a makeshift cemetery inside…

Read More

ChatGPT creator says Voice Engine can replicate a person’s voice based on a 15-second audio sample.OpenAI has unveiled a tool for cloning people’s voices but is holding back on its public release due to concerns about possible misuse in a key election year. Voice Engine can replicate a person’s voice based on a 15-second audio sample, according to an OpenAI blog post demonstrating the tool. But the ChatGPT creator is “taking a cautious and informed approach” to the technology and hopes to start a dialogue on “the responsible deployment of synthetic voices”, the company said in the blog post published…

Read More

Washington, DC – When Heba Mohammad, a 32-year-old organiser in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, first became involved in Democratic campaigning in the mid-2010s, she hoped that shifting public attitudes towards Palestine would soon be reflected in the party at large. Now, she wants to leverage her experience campaigning for presidential candidates like Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 to rally a protest vote during Wisconsin’s Democratic primary on Tuesday. Wisconsin is a pivotal battleground state in the United States, and advocates hope to use the vote to amplify the message that many Democrats will not stand for President Biden’s…

Read More

The global Islamic halal economy is set to reach a market value of $7.7 trillion by 2025, more than double the $3.2 trillion it reached in 2015 and significantly higher than the $5.7 trillion it was valued at less than three years ago in 2021, according to industry experts. A report by the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions revealed last year that the global Islamic funds market has grown by more than 300 percent over the past decade, with nearly $200bn now under management globally. The statistics depict a rise in both demand for halal – or…

Read More

Israel has continued its aerial and ground bombardment of the Gaza Strip, killing dozens more Palestinians, as fighting rages around Gaza City’s main al-Shifa hospital, Palestinian officials and the Israeli military said. Seventy-one people were killed and 112 wounded over the last 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Friday. Two Israeli attacks on the Shujayea suburb in eastern Gaza City killed 17 people, while an Israeli air raid on a house in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip killed eight people, health authorities said. At least 10 policemen tasked with securing aid to the displaced…

Read More

Maryland Governor Wes Moore warns of ‘very long road ahead’ to recover from deadly bridge collapse.United States President Joe Biden’s administration has unveiled $60m in emergency funds to support cleanup and reconstruction efforts in the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster in Baltimore. The Federal Highway Administration said on Thursday it provided the “quick release” funds to rebuild the collapsed bridge within hours of receiving a request from the Maryland Department of Transportation. The swift disbursement of the funds came after Biden earlier this week said he had directed the government to “move heaven and earth” to quickly rebuild the bridge,…

Read More

Countries have called for Israel to obey an International Court of Justice order to allow the unimpeded delivery of aid into Gaza, where famine has set in, as it continues to flout a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the enclave. Judges at the UN’s top court, which is examining South Africa’s charge that Israel is committing genocide, unanimously delivered a legally binding ruling on Thursday that Israel should “take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay … the unhindered provision … of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. South Africa’s…

Read More