Over US$71 bn needed over next decade to rebuild #Gaza: UN, EU. More than $71 billion will be needed over the next decade for recovery and reconstruction in war-ravaged Gaza, according to an EU-UN assessment published Monday.

In their final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA), the United Nations and the European Union said that more than two years of war in the Palestinian territory “has led to unprecedented loss of life and a catastrophic humanitarian crisis”.

“Recovery and reconstruction needs are estimated at around $71.4 billion,” said the assessment, developed in coordination with the World Bank.

Much of Gaza -- including schools, hospitals and other civic infrastructure -- has been reduced to rubble by a withering Israeli military offensive following the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

The final assessment determined that $26.3 billion would be required in the first 18 months to restore essential services, rebuild critical infrastructure and support economic recovery.

“Physical infrastructure damages are estimated at $35.2 billion, with economic and social losses amounting to $22.7 billion,” a joint statement said.

Gaza is under a fragile ceasefire agreed last October, which followed two years of devastating conflict sparked by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures tallied by AFP. Palestinian militants also abducted 251 hostages.

The retaliatory Israeli military campaign has killed more than 72,000 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry whose figures the UN considers reliable.
‘Immense scale of need’

According to the RDNA, some 371,888 housing units have been destroyed or damaged, more than 50 percent of hospitals in the territory are non-functional and nearly all schools have been destroyed or damaged.

At the same time, 1.9 million people -- nearly Gaza’s entire population -- have been displaced, often multiple times, and more than 60 percent of the population had lost their homes, the assessment found.

Gaza’s economy has contracted by 84 percent, it said.

“The scale and extent of deprivation across living conditions, livelihoods/income, food security, gender equality, and social inclusion, have pushed back human development in the Gaza Strip by 77 years,” the assessment said.

The UN and the EU stressed that “given the immense scale of need, recovery efforts must run in parallel with humanitarian action” in Gaza, ensuring a “transition from emergency relief toward reconstruction at scale”.

They insisted that the recovery and reconstruction needed to be “Palestinian-led”, and incorporate approaches that actively support the transfer of governance to the Palestinian Authority, in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 2803.

That resolution, which was adopted last November, welcomed the creation of US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to support Gaza’s reconstruction.

The UN and the EU also emphasised that “a set of enabling conditions” were needed for the resolution to be implemented effectively on the ground.

They included in particular “a sustained ceasefire and adequate security”, as well as “unimpeded humanitarian access and immediate restoration of essential services,” and “free movement of people, goods, and reconstruction materials, within and between Gaza and the West Bank”.

Without such conditions, they warned, “neither recovery nor reconstruction can succeed”.

#Canadian witness describes chaos during deadly Mexico shooting, “We were waiting to buy something, believe it or not, with our tour guide standing by,” she said. “We heard what we thought were firecrackers and before we knew it, someone said, ‘No, that’s gunfire, run,’ and we saw people coming off the top.”

Lee said the scene quickly became distressing as people tried to escape.

“And then a fellow jumped,” she said. “It was someone trying to get away, and he dropped to the next level, but he fell on his back, and it was ... it just was awful.”

She said the area had been crowded at the time of the shooting.

“There were thousands of people there and there were a lot of gunshots that just kept coming,” Lee said.

Lee and her group of seven from Vancouver fled the area under the direction of their tour guide, adding their driver “broke every record and speeding limit to get to us in, in five minutes where it should have taken them 20 minutes.”

She estimated authorities arrived within 10 to 15 minutes.

Despite the incident, Lee said it has not changed her perception of Mexico as a travel destination.

“This is a fabulous city. We haven’t felt unsafe anywhere, and this, honestly, this could happen anywhere in the world,” Lee added.

People's Artist of Russia, Artistic Director of the Petersburg Concert and Chief Conductor of the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra Sergey Stadler has died on board a plane going from St. Petersburg to Istanbul, which urgently landed in Bucharest, a source in city's culture committee told TASS.

"Sergey Stadler died on board a St. Petersburg- Istanbul plane that landed urgently in Romania," the source said.

Sergey Stadler is a world-renowned musician, an outstanding violinist, conductor, and teacher. City Governor Alexander Beglov expressed his condolences over the death of the artist.

Mother and 6 children killed in explosion and fire at central #Pennsylvania home.

Firefighters responding to a report of an explosion and fire at a home in Lamar Township in Clinton County near Mill Hall on Sunday morning said seven people were trapped, but they couldn’t search the house engulfed in flames, Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement.

All seven died. Police identified them as Sarah Stoltzfus, 34, four sons, ages 11, 10, five and three, and two daughters, ages eight and six.

An obituary posted online by a local funeral home identified Stoltzfus as a member of the Old Order Amish Church community. She is survived by her husband, David Stoltzfus, it said.

A police report issued earlier gave the spelling of her last name as Stolzfus.

The cause is under investigation. A propane leak inside the home may have caused the explosion and fire, police said, noting that exterior propane tanks did not explode and were not contributing factors for the explosion and fire.

Neighbour Christina Duck told WNEP-TV she was eating breakfast when it began.

“And I heard a boom and I could feel it and I got up and looked out the window and I could see the flames through the windows and I come running outside and within a minute the whole house was completely engulfed,” Duck said. The family moved in a couple of months ago, Duck said, noting that she often saw the children outside playing.

By the time firefighters got there, “there was no saving that house, it went up so fast,” she said.

WNEP-TV showed video of what it said was members of the Amish community arriving at the scene to clean up and pay respects.

The Amish prioritize their deep Christian faith and family life, eschewing many modern conveniences. They wear traditional clothing and use horses and buggies for much of their transportation. They often speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.

North Korea again tests cluster munitions in a launch observed by Kim and his daughter.

#SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday it test-launched ballistic missiles with cluster bomb warheads in the second such test this month, likely underscoring its push to expand its capabilities to penetrate U.S. and South Korean defenses.

The report by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency appeared to refer to the multiple ballistic missile launches South Korea, Japan and the U.S. detected Sunday off North Korea’s east coast.

Kim oversaw the launches of five upgraded surface-to-surface Hwasong-11 Ra ballistic missiles with cluster bomb warheads and fragmentation mine warheads, KCNA said.

The missiles struck an island target and Kim expressed satisfaction over the launches, saying “It is of weighty significance in military actions to boost the high-density striking capability,” according to KCNA.

In the earlier launch this month, North Korea tested Hwasong-11 Ka surface—to-surface ballistic missiles with cluster bomb warheads that it said “can reduce to ashes any target covering an area of 6.5-7 hectares (16 to 17.2 acres).”

North Korea has tested cluster bomb warheads before. But observers say the Iran war may have prompted North Korea to display it has cluster munitions and accelerate efforts to develop better ones.

The destructiveness of cluster munitions has been highlighted in the ongoing war, with Israel accusing Iran of using such weapons to challenge the country’s stretched air defenses. The warheads burst open at high altitudes, scattering dozens of smaller bomblets across a wide area that are difficult to intercept.

More than 120 countries have signed an international treaty banning the use of cluster munitions, but North Korea, Iran, Israel and the United States are not among them.

North Korea has been pushing to expand its nuclear arsenal and acquire an array of high-tech weapons since Kim’s nuclear diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019. Among them are multi-warhead nuclear missiles, hypersonic weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, whose possessions would sharply increase prospects for North Korea defeating U.S. and South Korean missile defenses.

Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim, and the North Korean leader has recently left open the door for dialogue with Trump but urged Washington to drop demands for the North’s nuclear disarmament as a precondition for talks.

Trump is to travels to Beijing for a rescheduled summit with Xi Jinping in May. Some observers North Korea’s recent testing activities were likely meant to increase its leverage in future dealings with the U.S., as the Trump-Xi meeting could provide a diplomatic opening with Pyongyang.

Hyung-jin Kim And Kim Tong-hyung, The Associated Press

The baguette faces an uncertain future. How France is rethinking its iconic loaves. French president Emmanuel Macron hailed the baguette as “250 grams of magic and perfection in our daily lives” on social media, accompanied by an iconic vintage black-and-white Willy Ronis photo of a jubilant little French boy captured mid-run with a long baguette tucked under his tiny arm.

But the #UNESCO victory, which saw the artisanal know-how of French breadmaking and the culture of the baguette inscribed in its intangible cultural heritage list, appears to have done little to reverse the ongoing decline of bread consumption in France, generating headlines like, “Will bread disappear from French tables?” in French food media.

Historically, the French ate an average of 25 ounces of bread per person, per day in the years following World War II. According to the Federation of Bakery Entrepreneurs, by 2015 that number plummeted to 4 ounces. Today, that figure has dropped again to 3.5 ounces, equal to a little less than half a baguette a day.

In a 2023 consumer survey released by the National Confederation of French Bakeries and Pastry Shops (CNBPF), more than a third (36 per cent) of the 1,000 respondents also said they had reduced their bread consumption over the last five years.

Industry experts say it’s a trend driven by changing eating habits, along with a new generation of “neobakers,” some of whom are opting to take baguettes off their shelves entirely, and the growing popularity of the baguette’s American rival, processed sliced white bread.

“One of the threats is the fact that young people are losing the habit of buying a baguette every day,” says Dominique Anract, president of the CNBPF.

Daily baguette runs to the local bakery — an errand that Anract says used to be as automatic and ritualistic as brushing teeth — have become less frequent.

But this is especially true of younger generations, who are cooking less and eating out more.

“In the past, even students cooked for themselves. There was no snacking, no ‘world food,’ no burgers, kebabs or sushi. But more and more young people are turning towards fast food,” he says.
A boulangerie with no baguettes?

Traditionally, baguettes are eaten as open-faced tartines at breakfast, slathered with butter and jam, or chocolate hazelnut spread. At lunch, they’re stuffed with ham, tuna, chicken or cheese for a take-out baguette sandwich. And at dinner, they’re the indispensable accompaniment to a traditional saucy French meal like a blanquette de veau (veal stew) or beef bourguignon, in which hunks of bread are used to mop up any remaining sauce on the plate — a gesture that has its own verb, called “saucer.”

“We see that these young people are very happy to have the traditional baguette on weekends when they visit their parents, so it is appreciated. But life has become more modern and there are different options for eating out without bread,” Anract says.

In recent years, there’s been another noteworthy shift that is changing France’s relationship to bread: the rise of “neoboulangeries” or neo-bakeries. This new generation is baking with ancient grains and organic flour, selling aromatic, long-fermented sourdough loaves and making fewer baguettes — if any at all.

Seize Heures Trente Pâtisserie-Boulangerie in Rennes is one of several bakeries across France that have made headlines for having the audacity not to sell baguettes.

When pastry chef and owner Marion Juhel expanded her pastry shop into a bakery two years ago, she made the deliberate decision not to offer baguettes. For Juhel, it’s an energy-intensive product with little nutritional value, and has a short shelf life which leads to one of her biggest pet peeves: excessive food waste.

Instead, large sourdough breads and whole grain loaves made with local, organic flour are sold by weight. Along with staying fresher for longer, the breads, which weigh up to 7 pounds, feed more households, are better for digestion thanks to longer fermentation times that break down gluten, and just taste better, she added.

But for some, the idea of a baguette-free French bakery was hard to swallow. Juhel recalls one man who flew into a rage when he was told they didn’t make any. She had to ask him to leave.

“There was a real need to educate customers so that they understood our approach,” Juhel told CNN. “It’s true that French people expect a bakery to have baguettes. And the fact that we proclaimed to be a bakery and didn’t have them was inconceivable to them.”

The #Iranian armed forces delivered strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles against US warships in response to the seizure of a vessel belonging to the Islamic Republic, Tasnim news agency reported citing a spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Iranian Armed Forces.

According to the spokesman, the vessel seized by the US military was en route from China to the Gulf of Oman. US forces launched fire against the vessel in violation of the ceasefire and disabled its navigation system. In response, Iran attacked US ships with drones.

The spokesman stressed that the country’s military intended to continue responding to "piracy" policy and attacks on behalf of the US side.

An US delegation will arrive in Pakistan on Monday to participate in negotiations with Iran, US President Donald Trump announced.

"My representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan - they will be there tomorrow evening, for negotiations," he wrote on the Truth Social network.

According to the New York Post, #US Special Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will represent the US in the new round of negotiations with Iran in #Islamabad, while US Vice President JD Vance will not attend.

#Russian air defense systems downed 46 Ukrainian #drones over Russian regions in eight hours, the Russian #Defense Ministry reported.

"On April 18, between 8:00 a.m. #Moscow time (5:00 a.m. GMT) and 4:00 p.m. Moscow time (1:00 p.m. GMT), on-duty air defense capabilities intercepted and destroyed 46 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles over the territories of Samara, Bryansk, Belgorod, Vologda, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan Regions, and the waters of the Black Sea," the report said.

I don’t regret gifting Nobel prize to Trump: Venezuela’s Machado