AFP Video

Jabalia (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinians gather at Gaza’s Jabalia camp after it was struck for a second time in two days, as rescuers claw through rubble to extract blood-stained casualties. Hamas gunmen stormed across the border from Gaza on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 230 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has killed at least 8,796 people, mainly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Stockholm (AFP) – Nearly half the world’s countries are seeing a drop in their levels of democracy, according to a report published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). The organisation has been collecting data on democractic performance since 1975 and the recent six-year downward trend “is the longest democratic recession” witnessed in that time, says Michael Runey, the report’s co-author.

Zacatecoluca (El Salvador) (AFP) – Standing knee-deep in water, residents in Zacatecoluca, El Salvador, assess the damage caused by Tropical Storm Pilar, which has brought heavy rains and severe flooding to parts of Central America. “We are not going to harvest anything” says Carlos Alberto Climaco, a local farmer whose crops have been decimated. Authorities in El Salvador have reported three deaths as a result of Pilar.

Bletchley Park (United Kingdom) (AFP) – UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly says “we need a real diversity of voices” when discussing the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Speaking at the first global AI safety summit, being hosted at Bletchley Park, where British codebreakers cracked Nazi Germany’s “Enigma” code, Cleverly says he’s “proud” that the event “has a number of voices from the developing world.”

Montevideo (AFP) – Compared to its Latin American neighbors, Uruguay is a prosperous country with high income and low poverty rates. But in the capital, Montevideo, a rapid increase in homelessness is denting this image. Uruguay’s Ministry of Social Development attributes the rise to increase drug use and the country’s prison system, with its high rates of incarceration and inmate release.

Cuenca (Ecuador) (AFP) – Inmates at Ecuador’s Turi prison are seen standing on the facility’s rooftop and inside a guard post as they protest. According to the country’s prison administration body, they are demanding a mass transfer and have threatened to hold guards to pressurize authorities. Violence has risen in Ecuador’s prison system, with gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels using them as centres of operation as the country has become a hub for cocaine exports to Europe and the United States.

China calls for an immediate ceasefire in fighting happening in northern Myanmar, after the conflict-stricken country’s military said it had lost control of a strategic northern town on the Chinese border following clashes with ethnic armed groups. “Persist in resolving differences through peaceful means” urges Wang Wenbin, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

Police arrest Afghans living in Pakistan while hundreds of thousands face detention and deportation, as a government deadline for them to leave sparked a mass exodus.

Port-au-Prince (AFP) – UN human rights expert William O’Neill gives a press conference during his second visit to Haiti. The country’s future, says O’Neill, “is threatened by the dramatic situation faced by its youth.” Haiti is mired in deep crisis, with armed gangs in control of much of the country, and its economy and public health system in tatters.

Bletchley Park (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Representatives from across the globe arrive at Bletchley Park, north of London, for the world’s first major summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety. Political and tech leaders are attending the conference to discuss possible responses to the evolving technology, which focuses on growing fears about the implications of so-called frontier AI. The UK government kicked off the two-day event by publishing the “Bletchley Declaration” signed by 28 countries and the European Union.