🌏 More Than 7,000 Palestinians Have Been Killed In Gaza, Iceland Women Hold Mass Strike And More
All the world news you need to know this week.
Hello and welcome to the Almost newsletter, a weekly email to help you stay updated and make sense of important stories happening around the world including:
- 🌏 This Week’s Top Stories
- đź‘© Women To Know
- 🙌 Good News For Your Week
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has published the names of the 7,028 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 7.
The move comes after US president Joe Biden questioned the Palestinian death toll at a press conference on Wednesday Oct. 25.
“I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s a price of waging a war,” Biden said. “But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
US Security Council spokesperson John Kirby also said the following day the death toll could not be taken “at face value” because the “so-called Gaza Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas,” which controls Gaza.
In response, Gaza’s health ministry released a 212-page report on Thursday Oct. 26, listing out the names, sexes, ages and official identification numbers of the 6,747 Palestinians, who have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.
The document noted that the list does not include an additional 281 people who had been killed because they were unable to be identified.
Among the total of 7,028 people, 2,665 were children.
The first 88 names on the list belonged to the same extended family – the Al Astals in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The ministry also said that the actual death toll may be higher as it does not account for those who are still missing, trapped under rubble, people who were buried without being admitted to a hospital or whose deaths were not recorded by hospitals.
More On The Israel–Gaza War
🇵🇸 This Palestinian journalist whose wife and children were all killed by Israeli airstrikes said he won’t stop reporting on Gaza.
🇵🇸 Gaza is in a near-total blackout after intense Israeli retaliatory airstrikes destroyed communications infrastructure.
🇺🇳 The UN has overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for aid to enter.
Also Happening Around The World
🇮🇷 Armita Geravand, the 16-year-old Iranian girl who was allegedly beaten into a coma by “morality” police, has died after being declared brain dead a week earlier.
🇵🇱 People in Poland voted out the right-wing government after eight years.
🇵🇱 Also in Poland, a man pretended to be a mannequin to try to steal from a mall but failed.
🇨🇿 This Czech priest has apologized for smashing “satanic” Halloween pumpkin decorations carved by children two days in a row.
Thousands of Icelandic women stopped working for a day to protest against gender pay gap and gender-based violence on Tuesday, Oct. 24, with Prime Minster KatrĂn JakobsdĂłttir joining them.
JakobsdĂłttir postponed a cabinet meeting her official duties for the day, with the woman employees that make up two-thirds of the cabinet staff following suit, according to officials.
Some schools closed for the day, many medical clinics were only attending to emergencies, and only one bank branch remained open during the walkout, according to local news media.
Under the slogan “Do you call this equality?”, the nationwide walkout marks the seventh women’s strike and the first full-day event in Iceland since 1975, when about 90% of the country’s women workforce refused to work to raise awareness about women’s crucial economic role in society.
The 1975 strike led to the enactment of a new equal pay law the following year.
More Women You Should Know About
🇬🇧 Women in London took part in the world’s first ever “no makeup” beauty pageant to promote inner beauty.
In a step forward for LGBTQ rights, Japan’s top court has ruled that forcing people to be sterilized to change gender is unconstitutional.
Currently, Japan requires people to have their reproductive organs removed before they can legally change their gender.
They must also be diagnosed with gender dysphoria by two doctors, undergo transition surgery, be older than 18, not married and not have any children under 18.
The requirements have been widely criticized by human rights and medical groups.
On Wednesday Oct. 25, Japan’s supreme court unanimously ruled that the sterilization requirement violates the country’s constitution.
The verdict comes after a trans woman brought forward a case when she was unable to change her gender from the biologically assigned male to female in her family registry.
The court ruled that the requirement “restricted her freedom not to harm herself against her will.”
The government must now follow up and amend the law, according to Human Rights Watch.
However, the court did not rule on the requirement for transition surgery, instead sending it back to a lower court for further consideration.
Thanks so much for opening this email. If you think a friend would like this, you can forward it to them! You can also follow Almost on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. We also have a Chinese version.
Let us know your thoughts about this week’s news in the comments or by replying directly to this email ✨
