Last year was the deadliest for journalists in more than three decades, with the majority killed in the Middle East, according to a report released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024, the most recorded since the CPJ began collecting data three decades ago.

Nearly 70% of those deaths were at the hands of the Israeli military in Gaza and Lebanon, the report said, with 82 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces denied targeting media workers, saying it “takes all operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians including journalists.”

Last year’s death toll exceeded the previous record in 2007, when 113 journalists were killed, almost half of them amid the US-led war in Iraq.

“The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger,” the committee’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.

It accused Israel of being “slow and not transparent” in its inquiries into soldiers’ killings of journalists, of shifting blame to the victims and ignoring its duty to hold its military to account.

After Gaza and Lebanon, the report identified Sudan and Pakistan as the deadliest places for journalists, with six media workers killed in each last year. Mexico, Syria, Myanmar, Iraq and Haiti also had multiple killings of journalists in 2024.

“The number of conflicts globally – whether political, criminal, or military in nature – has doubled in the past five years, and this is reflected in the high number of deaths of journalists in nations such as Sudan, Pakistan, and Myanmar,” the CPJ said, citing data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) monitoring initiative.

Targeted killings on the rise

The CPJ report said at least 24 journalists worldwide had been killed deliberately because of their work over the past year, describing this as “an alarming rise in the number of targeted killings.”

Among them was Ismail Al-Ghoul, a 27-year-old Palestinian journalist, who was killed alongside his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza last July, sparking condemnation from advocacy groups.

In the immediate aftermath of Al-Ghoul’s killing, his employer, Al Jazeera, denied what it called “baseless allegations made by the Israeli occupation forces in an attempt to justify its deliberate killing of our colleague, journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul, and his companion, cameraman Rami Al-Rifi.”

The IDF has rarely provided specific answers about the circumstances that led to the killing of journalists. Instead, the Israeli military has issued vague statements that reiterate their forces do not intentionally target journalists or that the matter is under investigation.

Trapped in the strip alongside their fellow Gaza residents, Palestinian reporters have been the eyes and ears of those suffering under the shadow of war. And with foreign media largely unable to enter, it is their photos, footage and reporting, often gathered at great personal risk, that have shown the world what is happening.

The committee said 10 journalists were deliberately killed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. The 14 other journalists whose deaths it determined were deliberate were from Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan, Myanmar, Mozambique, India, Iraq, and Sudan.

Failures to protect press

The report highlighted the ongoing failures to protect journalists and media workers, especially freelancers, in countries with consistently high rates of killings.

It cited the killing of a veteran journalist, Alejandro Martínez Noguez, who was shot last August in Mexico while under police protection as an example of the “persistent flaws” in the country’s mechanisms meant to protect journalists.

“The death tolls in Mexico, Pakistan, India, and Iraq reinforced the extreme dangers journalists face in these nations, which have experienced repeated killings over multiple decades despite numerous efforts in some of these countries, including at the national level, to address this,” the report said.

Freelancers, it said, were killed at an “unprecedented rate” last year. A total of 43 were killed, more than a third of all media worker deaths, the majority of which were Palestinians in Gaza.

“The typical freelancer frequently works alone, without staffers’ access to protective equipment, security guards, insurance for medical treatment, or benefits that would help surviving family members,” the report said.

It called on governments, international institutions and media organizations to ensure accountability for threats and attacks against journalists and to provide media workers with the necessary support to do their work.

“Every journalist killed is the loss of a truth-teller. Those who chronicle our reality and hold power to account deserve justice. We will not stop seeking it,” the committee said in a post on X.

Daniella Gilboa has wasted no time in putting the joy back into her life after being released from 15 months in captivity in Gaza. She got engaged to her longtime boyfriend and sang at a party when she and other freed hostages left the hospital.

But Orly knows that what she is seeing in these first days after Daniella’s release is just the surface. “There are a lot of things under and I’m sure that we can see them when the days go by.”

It’s the same for Naama Levy and Liri Albag, released alongside Daniella on January 25, their mothers said. They appear physically healthy, and they are home. But they were imprisoned in Gaza for 477 days and free less than three weeks, so much of their recovery is yet to come.

“She’s back in her room,” Ayelet Levy Shachar said of her daughter and her girly pink bedroom complete with soft toys. “Although she does prefer to sleep with her mom at night.”

Naama, Liri and Daniella were all in their teens on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters stormed their outpost at Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the border with Gaza.

They were performing their mandatory military service as unarmed “spotters,” tasked with looking at activity inside Gaza and reporting back to commanders at another base.

Fifteen of their fellow spotters were killed in the surprise militant attack on communities and a music festival that left 1,200 Israelis dead and 250 kidnapped in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The Israeli war on Hamas that followed has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, injured twice as many and leveled much of Gaza.

Daniella, Liri and Naama were captured with four more young women: Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Ori Megidish and Noa Marciano. Ori was rescued weeks after the attack, while Noa was killed in Gaza. Karina was also released on January 25, while Agam was freed five days later.

Video taken by Hamas on October 7 and later released by the women’s families showed the female soldiers being lined up against a wall by men with rifles. Their hands were bound behind them, and they were ordered to sit, many still in their pajamas, their faces and bodies spattered with blood.

On the day of the attack, with no word from Naama, Ayelet had first thought maybe her daughter was just unable to reach her in the chaos. But then she saw a video of Naama being dragged by her hair, her pants covered in blood, and being shoved into a vehicle.

And unknown to her, her daughter saw it too.

“She saw the video, she knew about it, and she did see myself and her father in different interviews,” Ayelet said. “She heard sometimes on the radio her brother speaking, her grandfather speaking. It wasn’t an everyday thing, but sometimes she was exposed to the media, and it did give her a lot of strength and support and helped her throughout those days.

“She waited to catch a glimpse of one of us. She told me even that she was following with the color of my hair during this time,” Ayelet added with a laugh.

Naama was wounded by shrapnel that day. Some she was later able to pick out of her skin; the rest remains in her body, Ayelet said.

Naama and Liri had only arrived at the outpost a couple of days before the attack, but Daniella had already been there nine months, her mom said.

Orly knows Daniella was hit in the leg that day, but much else is still unknown.

“October 7 is the most hard thing for her to speak about, and I don’t ask her about it,” Orly said. “She didn’t tell me yet about what happened that day. I just know that she lost a lot of her good friends … The loss of them is very hard for her, even more than the period of time of the captivity … I assume that in a few days or a few months, she’ll decide to talk about it, and she will tell me about it herself. I don’t want to make any pain for her.”

The mothers have learned a little about the conditions their girls, all now 20 years old, were kept in.

Shira Albag said Liri was held with Agam Berger, and sometimes Naama.

“Liri most of the time was in apartments with civilians,” she said. “It was difficult because they needed to do some things for the people of the house — to clean the house and to cook for them and to sit with the children and try to teach them English or play with them.”

Despite the physical closeness, there was little human kindness. “They didn’t treat them nice,” she said of the captors.

Amit Soussana, a woman freed in November 2023, has credited Liri for saving her life. She said the militants were convinced she was in the Israeli military and tied her up and beat her as they demanded a confession. At one point, other hostages were brought in to pressure her. Instead, Liri spoke to the guard and persuaded the captors that Amit was not a soldier.

“It seems like Liri, but I heard this story from Amit. Liri didn’t tell us yet the story,” Shira said. “I know it was very difficult for her. She saved Amit’s life. But when Liri will be ready, she will tell the story herself.”

Liri, Daniella and Naama were, along with Karina Ariev, the second group of hostages to be released under the first phase of the ceasefire deal. In a highly choreographed handover, they were paraded on a stage, dressed in olive-green military style outfits, and given certificates about their release and “gift bags” including souvenir keychains.

Their release was in marked contrast to the chaotic first handover of the 2025 truce and they seemed healthier than the three pale, emaciated men freed on Saturday.

Daniella watched that last release with her mother and talked about the condition of one of the men — her cousin Eli Sharabi.

“Daniella told me, ‘Mama, just know that if we were released two months ago, I looked like Eli’ because she also lost a lot of weight there,” Orly said. A change happened two or three months ago when Daniella and Karina were separated from other captives. And instead of four of them having to share one plate of food, then it was just two.

“It’s important to understand that we see Daniella, how she looks like right now, it doesn’t mean anything about what happened there and how she felt there.”

Hamas and its allies still hold a total of 73 people — some believed to be dead — taken from Israel during the October 7 attacks. Three additional hostages, held captive since 2014, are also still in Gaza.

Ayelet took time to thank US President Donald Trump for getting the ceasefire deal done and allowing the release of hostages. The terms of the deal map closely to an agreement then-President Joe Biden unveiled last May but could not complete.

Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister until November, told Israel’s Channel 12 News earlier this month that Hamas had agreed to that deal in July, but Israel did not go along with it.

“Unfortunately, there are fewer hostages still alive now, more time has passed, and we are paying a heavier price,” he said.

Ayelet echoed that sentiment. “They could have been home sooner. They should have been home sooner,” she said.

The drive and passion shown by the families and much of Israel over nearly 500 days to get the hostages freed is ramping up to a new urgency as the truce — and hope for more releases — hangs by a thread.

“We need to see them all home now,” Ayelet said.

Sri Lanka extended power cuts for a third day on Thursday as it scrambled to restore its national grid to full capacity after a monkey triggered a widespread blackout over the weekend that disrupted supply to the island’s 22 million people.

An outage lasting six hours on Sunday was blamed by power minister, Kumara Jayakody, on a monkey that disrupted a grid station in a Colombo suburb. No power cuts were implemented on Wednesday, which was a holiday in Sri Lanka.

The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country. There were no immediate details on whether the monkey survived the incident.

One-hour power cuts will be implemented from 6 p.m. (12:30 GMT), the island’s state-run power monopoly, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), said in a statement.

Sunday’s disruption also affected the island’s only 900 MW coal fired power plant, causing it to operate in safe mode, the CEB said.

“All efforts are being made to restore the grid to full capacity but power cuts will be implemented to manage peak demand hours in the night,” the CEB statement added.

Ninety-minute power cuts were implemented on Monday and Tuesday to manage demand. An investigation into the outage was being conducted by the energy ministry.

Thailand has received 260 human trafficking victims, more than half of them Ethiopians, from Myanmar, its army said on Thursday, in a massive repatriation that comes amid a mounting crackdown on scam centers operating along a porous border.

Criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people and forced them to work in illegal online operations generating billions annually across Southeast Asia, especially along the Thai-Myanmar border, according to the United Nations.

“After screening the group and verifying their nationalities, it was found that there were 20 nationalities,” the Thai army said in a statement, with 138 of them Ethiopians.

Although these illegal operations have been in place for years, Thai authorities renewed efforts last month after Chinese actor Wang Xing was abducted in Thailand, lured on the promise of an acting job.

He was later freed by Thai police who found him in Myanmar.

On Wednesday, a large group of trafficking victims who were sent back from Myanmar’s Myawaddy area were seen crossing the Moei River to Thailand, where they were directed onto Thai military vehicles as soldiers looked on.

The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a Myanmar rebel group based along the Thai border, said it had found around 260 people from unspecified “businesses” when its personnel looked for forced labor in areas under its control.

“We don’t know how they got here,” the outfit’s chief of staff Major Saw San Aung told Reuters. “We are continuing the search of forced labor, and we will send them back.”

Thailand earlier this month cut electricity, fuel and internet supply to parts of Myanmar where the illegal compounds operate, reflecting growing unease in Bangkok over the impact of scam centers on the vital tourism sector.

A humpback whale briefly swallowed a 24-year-old kayaker last Saturday during a father-son excursion out on the icy waters around Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region.

The terrifying moment, captured on camera by the kayaker’s father, showed the whale surfacing in the Strait of Magellan and gulping Adrian Simancas for a few moments before releasing him.

“I thought it swallowed me,” Adrian said in the video.

“When I turned around, I felt on my face like a slimy texture; I saw colors like dark blue, white, something approaching from behind that closed… and sank me,” he said. “At that moment, I thought there was nothing I could do, that I was going to die, I didn’t know what it was.”

But despite the uncertainty, he felt his life vest “pull me up, and then two seconds later I was back on the surface and then started understanding what happened,” he said.

He then heard “what sounds like a strong wave hitting behind me and when I turn around, I don’t see Adrian or his pack raft, so I got worried, and around three seconds later I see he’s shot up to the surface and the pack raft after him.”

When asked if both father and son would go back to kayaking, they said in chorus: “of course.”

The Strait of Magellan is a popular tourist destination due to its outdoor activities and flora and fauna. Kayaking with dolphins and humpback whales is one of the activities advertised on the government’s tourism website.

Humpback whales typically feed on krill and small fishes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The NOAA says humpback whales are popular among whale watchers as they are active on the surface and often jump out and slap the water with their pectoral fins or tails.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was involved in a collision with a merchant ship near Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday night, a Navy spokesperson said Thursday.

It’s not clear what caused the collision between the US warship and the Panamanian-flagged vessel Besiktas-M, but the spokesperson said it did not result in any flooding on board the Truman and its nuclear propulsion plants were unaffected.

No injuries were reported on either vessel, though the merchant ship sustained some damage, a Navy official said.

An investigation is ongoing to determine how they collided, but the official noted that the area they were in near the Suez Canal is typically very densely packed with ships.

The Besiktas-M, a 617-foot (188-meter) long bulk carrier, had exited the Suez Canal and was heading to Romania, according to tracking website Marine Traffic.

The Truman, a 1,100-foot-long Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, was heading toward the canal, tracking data indicates.

Marine expert Sal Mercogliano, a professor at Campbell University, said in an X Spaces conversation that the area where the collision occurred, near an anchorage off Egypt’s Port Said, had around 100 ships in it at the time of the incident.

Former US Navy captain Carl Schuster, an instructor at Hawaii Pacific University, said such conditions leave little room for error.

“There is not a lot of room for maneuvering in a restricted seaway and both ships require about one nautical mile to stop,” Schuster said.

Small navigation mistakes, misreading of the other ship’s intentions or delayed decision-making from the crew of either ship could have put them in danger quickly “with very few viable options,” Schuster said.

Last week the Truman was in Souda Bay, Greece, for a “working port visit” after two months of combat operations in the Central Command region, a Navy statement said. During that time, it conducted multiple strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen and launched airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia, the Navy said.

The Truman is one of 11 aircraft carriers in the US Navy fleet.

Accidents involving the huge ships and commercial vessels are rare as the carriers usually travel with a strike group, protected by a screen of destroyers.

But ships entering the Suez Canal must travel in single file, which could make them more vulnerable to a collision, experts said.

The last known time a US carrier collided with a merchant vessel was on July 22, 2004, when a dhow, a sailing vessel common in the Middle East, struck the former USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf, according to maritime outlet USNI News.

Two US Navy destroyers were involved in fatal collisions in 2017. Seven sailors died after the USS Fitzgerald struck a cargo ship off Japan in June that year, and 10 sailors were killed when the USS John S McCain collided with a tanker off Singapore and Malaysia two months later.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone struck the destroyed nuclear power plant at Chernobyl near Ukraine’s border with Belarus on Thursday night.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service later said that the radiation background limits remain within normal limits.

“A Russian attack drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the shelter protecting the world from radiation at the destroyed 4th power unit” at the plant, Zelensky said on X.

The concrete shelter that covers the unit was damaged, Zelensky added and a fire was extinguished. “Radiation levels have not increased and are being constantly monitored. According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant,” Zelensky said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said on X that shortly before 2 a.m. local time its team at the Chernobyl site “heard an explosion coming from the New Safe Confinement, which protects the remains of reactor 4 of the former Chernobyl NPP, causing a fire.”

“They were informed that a UAV [drone] had struck the NSC roof,” the IAEA added.

Unit 4 at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, sending extensive clouds of radioactivity across parts of the Soviet Union and Europe. It was later encased in a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

Altogether, on Thursday night, the Ukrainian military reported that Russia fired 133 drones at Ukraine, 73 of which were shot down and 58 did not reach their targets. The numbers are broadly in line with the recent average of drone attacks. It said drones were shot down in 11 regions, covering much of the country.

Zelensky said in his post that the nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure meant that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is definitely not preparing for negotiations — he is preparing to continue deceiving the world.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.