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Polio vaccine campaign begins early in Gaza as strikes continue
A campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio and prevent the spread of the virus began on Saturday, a day before the large-scale rollout and planned temporary pause in fighting agreed to by Israel and the United Nations World Health Organization.
Children in Gaza began receiving vaccines, the Strip’s Hamas-controlled health ministry announced in a news conference. Associated Press reporters saw roughly ten infants receiving doses of the vaccine in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on Saturday afternoon, local time.
“I was terrified and waiting for the vaccination to arrive and for everyone to receive it,” said Amal Shaheen, whose daughter received a dose.
Abdel Kareem Hana / AP
Israel is expected to pause some of its operations in Gaza on Sunday to allow health workers to roll out their campaign to administer polio vaccines to some 650,000 Palestinian children, the U.N. World Health Organization said earlier this week. The WHO confirmed the larger campaign would begin on Sunday.
“There must be a cease-fire so that the teams can reach everyone targeted by this campaign,” said Dr. Yousef Abu Al-Rish, the deputy health minister, describing scenes of sewage running through crowded tent camps in Gaza.
Abdel Kareem Hana / AP
Officials said the pause would last at least nine hours and is a byproduct of an agreement with WHO, and unrelated to ongoing cease-fire negotiations between Israel, Hamas and regional mediators.
Campaign targets children who missed vaccinations
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste, scientists say. The baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive on Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The boy’s mother, Neveen Abu El Jidyan, told CBS News on Tuesday she has been able to do very little for her son due to the dire conditions in the camp for displaced Palestinians where they’re living.
“We haven’t given him any treatments. We live in a tent and there is no medication,” El Jidyan, 35, told CBS News.
El Jidyan, who has nine other children, was forced to move her family from the north of Gaza to a tent in Deir el-Balah because of the war.
Abdul Rahman had been developing normally and was almost walking, El Jidyan said, when he started throwing up and got a fever.
“I took him to the hospital and they told me there is nothing they can do. They know his condition, but there is no treatment,” she told CBS News. “When the virus hit him, he changed in one night.”
El Jidyan said she believed the unsanitary conditions where her family has been forced to live caused her son’s illness.
“Our living conditions — we don’t have clean water, clean food. We live in a tent and nothing is clean here,” she said.
Polio was eliminated from most parts of the world as part of a decadeslong effort by the WHO and partners to wipe out the disease.
Healthcare workers in Gaza have been warning of the potential for a polio outbreak for months, as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has deepened throughout the war which broke out after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting around 250. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were militants.
Palestinians remain on edge
Hours earlier, Gaza’s Health Ministry said hospitals received 89 dead on Saturday, including 26 who died in an overnight Israeli bombardment, and 205 wounded — one of the highest daily tallies in months.
Meanwhile, parts of the West Bank remained on edge Saturday as Israel’s military continued its large-scale military campaign, the deadliest since the Israel-Hamas war began, and two car bombings by Palestinian militants near Israeli settlements left three soldiers injured.
Two car bombs exploded early Saturday in Gush Etzion, a bloc of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel’s military killed both Palestinian attackers after the bombs exploded in a compound in Karmei Zur and at a gas station, Israel’s military said. Three Israeli soldiers sustained minor injuries.
Palestinian health officials said Israel was holding the bodies of the attackers, naming the men as Muhammad Marqa and Zoodhi Afifeh.
Majdi Mohammed / AP
Hamas did not claim the men as its fighters but called the attack a “heroic operation” and a “new slap to the occupation’s security system” in a statement early Saturday. The Palestinian militant group said earlier this month after a bombing attack in Tel Aviv that it would continue such attacks.
The bombings took place as Israel continued its large-scale raid — which includes destruction of infrastructure, airstrikes and gunbattles — into urban refugee camps in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarem, in the north of the volatile West Bank. About 20 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s incursion started Tuesday, causing alarm among the international community that the war might widen beyond the Gaza Strip.
Israel has described the operation as a strategy to prevent attacks on Israeli civilians, which since the start of the war have increased in the West Bank, including near settlements that the international community largely considers illegal. In return, the Palestinian Health Ministry noted a surge in Palestinian deaths by Israeli forces, with 663 killed in the West Bank in the nearly 11 months since the war began.
In central Gaza, Israeli airstrikes hit a multi-story building housing displaced people in and around Nuseirat, a built-up refugee camp in central Gaza, further south in Khan Younis and northward in Gaza City, officials at hospitals in the three areas said on Saturday morning.
Among the dead were a physician and his family and a child whose right leg had been previously amputated, according to an initial list of casualties from the hospital and footage released on Saturday by civil defense officials who operated under Gaza’s Hamas-run government.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to mediate a cease-fire that would see the remaining hostages released. But the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed “total victory” over Hamas and the militant group has demanded a lasting cease-fire and a full withdrawal from the territory.
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Craig Newmark, the founder of online classified-ads site Craigslist, thinks the U.S. has a cybersecurity problem.
The entrepreneur turned philanthropist has pledged to donate $100 million to help safeguard the country from potential future cyberattacks, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Newmark will allocate $50 million to protect infrastructure, like power grids, from cyberattacks, including from foreign nations. The other half of his donation will be put toward educating the general public about how to safeguard their personal information, according to the report.
Newmark, 71, retired from the company he founded in 2018.
“The country is under attack,” Newmark told the Wall Street Journal. He said that cybersecurity experts who are working to protect the country from attack “need people to champion them.”
Today, many households make use of connected appliances or smart devices that can make them vulnerable to being hacked by criminals. At the corporate level, cyberattacks have become increasingly common.
“In the current cyberwar, the fight is on our own shores, and we all need to play an active role for the protection of our country and ourselves,” Newmark writes on his website.
In June, a hacking group took down CDK Global’s software platform, crippling auto dealerships across the U.S. CDK said that hackers demanded a ransom in order to restore its systems. In February, hackers infiltrated payments manager Change Healthcare, paralyzing segments of the U.S. Health care system. They are but two examples of the tremendous repercussions a cyberattack can have on an industry.
As part of his latest commitment, Newmark, who has pledged to give away nearly all of his wealth to charity, is making donations to a project out of the University of Chicago’s public policy school that trains cybersecurity volunteers to strengthen local infrastructure. Child internet-safety group Common Sense Media, is another beneficiary, according to the WSJ report.
The large majority of the $100 million pledge has not yet been allocated, and organizations can apply for donations through Newmark’s philanthropic organization, Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
On the foundation’s website, Newmark says he likes to donate to organizations that he believes in and lets them spend the money as they see fit. “Okay, what I do is find people who are really good at their jobs, and who can tolerate my sense of humor. I provide them with resources, and then get outta their way,” he states.
In addition to cybersecurity, other causes Newmark champions include support for military families and veterans, safeguarding trustworthy journalism and pigeon rescue.
PHIL LEO/Getty Images
Borrowers saddled with higher interest rates on everything from mortgages to credit cards received some welcome news on Wednesday when the Federal Reserve announced a half a percentage point cut to the federal funds rate. That brings the range down to 4.75% to 5.00%, a major reduction from the elevated position the range was frozen at for more than a year.
While it will take some time for that reduction to reverberate, it will inevitably make borrowing cheaper in the weeks and months to come. And with other cuts possible for when the Fed meets again in November and December, borrowing could become even more affordable by the end of the year.
That doesn’t mean, however, that borrowers stuck with high-interest-rate debt should wait for relief. There’s a strong argument to be made that these borrowers should take action now instead. Below, we’ll break down why.
Learn how the right debt relief service can help you here now.
Why borrowers shouldn’t wait for rate cuts to fix their debt
While waiting for rate cuts to echo throughout the economy may be tempting, particularly if you’re suffering from high-rate debt, that could be a mistake. Here’s why:
Rates may not fall dramatically
Credit card interest rates have surged in recent years, averaging over 20% right now. But those rates won’t fall as rapidly as they’ve grown. That’s because credit card rates are determined by a series of complex factors, only one of which is the federal funds rate. And even if credit card rates came down by the same half a percentage point that the federal funds rate did, that’s likely to make very little difference in what you have to pay each month, especially if you’re making minimum payments. So if you’re waiting for the Fed to help reduce what you have to pay on your credit card you could be waiting a very long time.
Start exploring your credit card debt relief options here instead.
Your debt will accrue in the interim
Even if you could rely on multiple rate cuts to come, your existing debt will continue to accrue interest and, possibly, penalties and fees if you’re already struggling to pay what you’ve borrowed. And if you can’t make adequate payments right now, it’ll become even more difficult to do so when dealing with a higher debt total (with compounded interest).
Take a multi-pronged approach
There are multiple debt relief options available right now. From debt consolidation loans to debt management programs to credit card debt forgiveness and even bankruptcy in extreme circumstances, there’s likely a path forward for you now. But that doesn’t mean that you still can’t try to position yourself to take advantage of lower rates. Since rate cuts have broad effects, you may be able to consolidate your debt with a debt consolidation loan now, for example, and then refinance it when rates drop later this year or in 2025. Just don’t sit idle, as debt, no matter the form, can quickly become debilitating if not properly addressed.
Speak with a debt relief servicer now who can help.
The bottom line
It’s never a good idea to let your debt accumulate, even if you’re confident that rate cuts on the horizon could help. Rate cuts, instead, will offer gradual relief, not the significant help you may need. Plus, your debt, fees and penalties will compound in the interim. Instead, consider taking a multi-pronged approach by researching a series of debt relief options that can help you now. And keep rate cuts in mind for the future when you may be able to capitalize by refinancing instead.