A United Nations inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a “concerted policy” of destroying the health care system in Gaza during its year-long conflict with Hamas in attacks it said amount to war crimes.

Israel’s actions in the besieged Palestinian enclave “constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination,” the commission said in a statement Thursday.

“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles” in Gaza, according to the report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The Israeli attacks resulted in “fuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment,” it said.

The Israeli foreign ministry called the accusations “outrageous” and said they were “another blatant attempt by the (commission) to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel and obstruct its right to protect its population while covering up the crimes of terrorist organizations.”

“This report shamelessly portrays Israel’s operations in terror-infested health facilities in Gaza as a matter of policy against Gaza’s health system, while entirely dismissing overwhelming evidence that medical facilities in Gaza have been systematically used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for terrorist activities.”

Hamas, it said, uses medical facilities to conceal operatives, store weapons, conduct attacks and hide hostages. Hamas has repeatedly denied that it uses hospitals for military activity.

The UN report also accused Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups of committing war crimes of “torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, rape and sexual violence” for their treatment of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. It also investigated “institutionalized mistreatment” of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

The Israeli foreign ministry rejected “accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees,” saying Israel is “fully committed to international legal standards” on treatment of detainees.

In a statement accompanying the 24-page report, which does not have the force of law, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Israel “must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction” in Gaza.

“Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” she said.

As part of the report, UN experts investigated the killing of 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who made headlines in late January after a recording emerged of her pleading to emergency workers to rescue her and her family after they became trapped in their car due to Israeli shelling.

Despite an ambulance arriving at the scene while the girl was still alive, the presence of Israeli security forces effectively “prevented access,” meaning the bodies of Rajab’s relatives “could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident,” the report said.

The report “determined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army’s 162nd Division” which operated in the area at the time is “responsible for killing the family of seven, shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside.”

The incident was just one of several alleged attacks on health care in Gaza, amid broader wartime conditions.

The report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30.

The commission previously alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, and that Israel’s actions also amounted to crimes against humanity.

Russia has confirmed that Donald Trump sent the Kremlin sample Covid-19 tests in the early days of the pandemic, after revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book raised further questions about the former US president’s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Trump administration “sent us several samples of test kits,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, broadly supporting Woodward’s claim. His intervention comes after Trump denied the claims, telling ABC News they were “false.”

Legendary reporter Woodward wrote in “War” that Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward. “I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”

“No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”

Peskov did not confirm whether or not those tests were specifically for Putin’s own use, as Woodward writes.

The Kremlin’s press secretary said: “At that time, the pandemic was starting, and the situation was very difficult for all countries.

“Of course, initially, all countries tried to exchange aid shipments with each other,” he continued. “At that time, we sent a shipment of ventilators to the United States, and the Americans sent us several samples of test kits, as those were practically unique items. Many countries were doing the same.”

The Kremlin’s response seemingly contradicts Trump’s denial of Woodward’s claims.

“He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump told ABC News of Woodward on Tuesday. In a statement, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump gave Woodward “absolutely no access” for the book. “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true,” he said.

Citing a Trump aide, Woodward also reported that there have been “maybe as many as seven” calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left the White House in 2021. Peskov denied those claims, saying: “That is not true; it did not happen.” Trump also denied those claims to ABC News.

The frantic first weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic led to a diplomatic opening for Putin; the Trump White House was criticized at the time for purchasing medical supplies from Moscow, a move that was described by experts as a propaganda win for the Kremlin.

The Trump administration also spent $200 million sending thousands of ventilators around the world, starting weeks after the former president touted America as the “king of ventilators,” but without any established way to locate them, the Government Accountability Office found in a report. Russia was among the countries to receive those ventilators.

Woodward’s claims once again throw scrutiny on Trump’s relationship with Putin, weeks before the US presidential election.

They were quickly seized on by Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, who said in an interview with Howard Stern: “People were dying by the hundreds. Everybody was scrambling to get these (test) kits … and this guy who was President of the United States is sending them to Russia? To a murderous dictator, for his personal use?”

“You’re getting played,” Harris said of Trump.

Trump has, for his part, continued to speak fondly of his relationship with Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made him a pariah among Western leaders.

“I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again,” Trump said during an interview on X with billionaire Elon Musk. Trump added that getting along well with strongmen world leaders “is a good thing.”

Catherine, Princess of Wales delighted royal-watchers this week with an unexpected appearance alongside her husband, Prince William.

The couple popped up in Southport, a town in the northwest of England, on Thursday, where the community is still grieving after the murders of three young girls this summer.

William and Kate are thought to have spent around 90 minutes with the families of Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, who lost their lives in July when they were attacked while attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

It was also an opportunity for the pair to sit down with some of the emergency services personnel who responded to the scene and hear about their experiences and the mental health support they have received in the months since.

It was an emotional conversation that saw the princess express the couple’s gratitude to the first responders, before comforting and hugging some of those grappling with the traumatic impact of the incident.

“The Princess of Wales broke off and came back into the building to give a hug to the people who responded because she could see the emotion in them and could see it was difficult for them to relay their feelings and to say how impactful events have been,” Phil Garrigan, chief fire officer for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, explained after the engagement, according to the UK’s PA Media news agency.

“I think that just shows a really caring side and is very, very touching for them.”

It was a big moment for the popular 42-year-old royal – her first public outing since wrapping up her chemotherapy treatment.

But wanting to be there and carrying out the engagement are two very different things. Ultimately, her appearance came down to whether she felt well enough on the day.

King Charles previously visited the area in August and it’s clear that the royal family don’t want the town to feel forgotten as the weeks and months pass.

The Southport engagement was designed to be a low-key event and, in fact, had not been previously announced either to the public or the press. However, it quietly supported the princess’ own words from a month ago when she revealed she had completed her cancer treatment.

In a video message, Kate had thrilled royal fans by saying she was “looking forward to being back at work and undertaking a few more public engagements in the coming months when I can.”

Since then, she’s undertaken private meetings on some of her projects at Windsor Castle and carried out a few private visits. It all signals that her recovery is going well.

While aides would not want to jeopardize her recovery by pushing her to appear before she’s ready, the Princess of Wales’ latest appearance shows that she’s back at work, steadily increasing her workload while she continues to get stronger.

This all means she’s likely to keep her workload lighter and that we’ll continue to see these unexpected pop-ups as she makes daily decisions on engagements on a case-by-case basis. And if all continues well, it could mean she takes on more in the new year and perhaps, even, starts traveling again.

The man wore camouflage gear, a long beard protruding below a mask. His features were hidden, but when New Zealand police saw the video showing three figures walking behind him, one name came instantly to mind.

Fugitive Thomas Callam Phillips has been evading police for three years since disappearing with his children Ember, Maverick and Jayda – now 8, 9 and 11 – into the rugged wilderness of the country’s North Island during a bitter family split in December 2021.

At first Phillips was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges of wasting police resources but, three years on, his charge sheet has grown longer and more serious, with allegations that he robbed a bank in May 2023 with an unnamed female accomplice.

Police have scrambled search teams, helicopters and planes to investigate sporadic sightings but have failed to find them.

Last week’s sighting is believed to be the first of all three children since 2021.

“The guy had a big, long beard, and the kids were all masked up, and they were carrying packs, and they weren’t very keen to talk to them at all,” McOviney said.

Instead, his grandson filmed them on his phone, providing the first proof of life of the missing Phillips children that their mother Cat has seen since they left.

The entire country wants to know where they are, and why it’s taking police so long to find them.

“This is not a big country we’re talking about,” said Lance Burdett, a former detective inspector and lead crisis negotiator for New Zealand Police. “It’s very surprising that they haven’t been found, particularly since the number of sightings are in a very similar area.”

Max Baxter, mayor of the Otorohanga district that includes Marokopa, a rural community home to fewer than 100 people, says authorities believe Phillips is receiving help.

“We absolutely believe that somebody, or some people, are helping them,” said Baxter. “Tom still has a number of supporters out there believing that he is doing the right thing for him and his children.”

A family missing in wild terrain

New Zealand’s North Island is home to the wild, awe-inspiring landscape that formed some of the backdrop to Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies.

Steep hills with sweeping views drop away into deep valleys, dotted with caves covered by a blanket of dense forest. Marokopa is the type of place where it’s easy to get lost – and even easier to hide.

“There’s a reason why people live at Marokopa,” said Baxter. “It’s because they love the isolation. They love the fact that they’re on the rugged west coast, that they can go fishing, they can hang out with like-minded people.”

Phillips was raised in the area and his parents still live there in the family home. In a statement provided to TVNZ last year, his mother denied any knowledge of her son’s whereabouts and said the family would “like nothing more” than for the four to return.

It’s not the first time Phillips has disappeared with Ember, Maverick and Jayda. In September 2021, his car was reported abandoned on a beach, prompting a large police search of land and sea.

For three weeks, a police helicopter and drones scoured the coastline, while rescue teams searched on land, but just as the operation was winding down – with fears the family was lost at sea – they suddenly reappeared.

Phillips reportedly told police he and the children had been camping in bushland. He was later charged with wasting police resources and given a date to appear in court.

But before that day came, he disappeared again with the three children. Some assumed he’d “gone bush” again, and would later emerge – but this time, they haven’t come home.

Three children isolated from society

Ember, Maverick and Jayda were just 5, 7 and 8, when they vanished. For more than two years, their mother kept a low profile, releasing written statements through police, appealing for help to find them.

But this June, she introduced herself in an emotional video posted to Facebook.

“Hello world,” she said. “My name is Cat … I’m standing here before you today, begging you for your help to bring my babies home.”

The eldest child, Jayda, had just turned 11. “She will be a young woman now, and she needs her mother,” said Cat, who has not publicly revealed her surname. “Ember is asthmatic as am I … she needs medical care that cannot be provided from the land.”

“I can only imagine how Maverick is coping,” she added.

At the time the video was released, police had just offered a reward for 80,000 New Zealand dollars ($48,000) for information leading to finding the children. It flushed out reports of sightings, but no breakthrough.

The children’s older sister, Jubilee Dawson, made a separate appeal in an interview last year, sharing memories of her siblings.

“Jayda is the more outgoing one … she’s definitely the most confident of the three … loves talking to everybody,” Dawson told a Mata Reports documentary. “Maverick is more introverted, I’d say he’s more shy … Ember is the youngest, and more sweet and bubbly.”

Dawson fears the children may now be “traumatized and scared” and worries that they don’t know that their family is looking for them.

“We love them very much, and we are just waiting for them to come home,” she said.

An alleged bank robbery

Authorities are concerned that Phillips is not just hiding the children, but encouraging them to engage in criminal acts.

In May 2023, two masked people held up a branch of the ANZ bank, escaping on a motorbike with cash. New Zealand Police later named Phillips as the suspect, and said he was aided by a female accomplice. Both were said to be armed.

A witness told local media the accomplice was small, “even shorter than me.”

Phillips is now wanted for aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and unlawfully possessing a firearm.

Burdett, the former detective inspector, said if Phillips carried out the bank robbery, it suggests the fugitive father was desperate for cash.

“They have to be surviving on something. You do need money. You can only live so much on the land, and particularly with three young kids,” Burdett said. “They’re going to be growing in three years.”

In November 2023, Phillips and an unnamed child are also alleged to have smashed the window of a shop at 2 a.m., before fleeing on a stolen quad bike. Phillips has also been seen on CCTV, with his face covered, buying supplies in a hardware store.

“We know Tom has been sighted at retail locations across the Waikato region disguised with various masks,” police said in a statement. 

Burdett said police need more resources to search the area and suggested a general call-out might help boost numbers on the ground.

“Let’s get in there and saturate the area. I’m sure if you asked a lot of locals – can you spend one or two days walking across these hills? – a lot of people would do it. Not just locals,” he said.

However, Mayor Baxter suggests venturing into the dense bushland around Marokopa is not a good idea for those unaccustomed to the terrain.

“For an inexperienced person out there, you could find yourself two meters off the track and may not find the track again,” he said. “We’re talking very, very deep bush and rugged countryside.”

Have they been living rough?

Their most recent statement says the “credible” sighting of Phillips and the children on October 3 prompted a three-day search but “nothing further of significance was located.”

“Police continue to urge those in the Marokopa community to remain alert and report any suspicious activity, no matter how minor, to us,” the statement added.

Mayor Baxter said the search had divided opinion in the community between those who believe Phillips should give the children up and others who defend his rights as a father.

Many just want the entire police operation to go away, he said.

Baxter said he finds it hard to believe the children have been living rough for three years in an area frequently pelted by wind and rain, where winter temperatures dip below freezing. That’s why he believes Phillips and the children must be receiving help.

“We all know it, but it just gets very uncomfortable when it’s raining day after day after day,” he said.

“I think there has to be either a shearer’s quarters, another house somewhere, a woolshed where they’ve been holed up for extensive periods of time, and they’ve been given supplies,” he said.

McOviney, whose grandson took the recent footage, posited a similar theory, noting that woolsheds and houses are dotted across the remotely populated area, used by workers tending livestock that graze in the hills.

“I think they’ve got help. I don’t know that for sure, but to keep little kids like that isolated from the family and from everybody else, you’d think they’d need some help, wouldn’t you?”

In her video message, Cat hinted at resistance in the community to the search from people who don’t believe her children need saving.

“Many of you say that the children are fine, that they’re being well looked after. How do you know, have you seen them, or is it just bush talk?” she said.

“What Thomas is doing is not okay…  It is not okay to isolate and control. It is child neglect. It is child endangerment … None of this is okay.”

Criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh,” the Indian government has said, in a blow to campaigners ahead of a long-awaited Supreme Court decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people in India for generations.

In India, it is not considered rape if a man forces sex or sexual acts on his wife, as long as she is over 18, due to an exception in a British colonial-era law.

Most Western and common law jurisdictions have long since rectified this – Britain outlawed marital rape in 1991, for example, and it is illegal in all 50 US states.

But across the world, about 40 countries do not have legislation that addresses the issue of marital rape – and among those that do, the penalties for non-consensual sex within marriage are “significantly lower” than other rape cases, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2021 State of World Population review.

Campaigners in India have long fought against the clause, with the country’s top court currently hearing petitions seeking to amend it, after the Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict on the issue in 2022.

In its formal opposition to those petitions, the government’s Ministry of Home Affairs argued a man should face “penal consequences” for forcing himself on his wife. But punishing it as rape would “severely impact the conjugal relationship” and “have a far-reaching effect on the institution of marriage.”

Classifying marital rape as a crime, “can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh and therefore, disproportionate,” the government said.

The government’s written affidavit is its clearest position yet on the issue of marital rape in India.

Advocates for criminalization said the government’s arguments were not surprising, but it represents a “step back” for women already living in a deeply patriarchal society where sexual violence is rampant.

“It speaks to India’s acceptance of sexual violence in our culture,” said Ntasha Bhardwaj, a criminal justice and gender scholar. “We’ve normalized that sexual violence is a part of being a woman in our country.”

In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government overhauled the country’s 164-year-old penal code with new criminal laws, but the exemption for marital rape stayed on the books.

India has struggled for years to tackle high rates of violence against women, with a number of high-profile rape cases sparking nationwide anger and drawing international headlines.

The government’s formal opposition to the marital rape criminalization campaign comes two months after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in the West Bengal city of Kolkata sparked mass outrage and protests in the country, with hundreds of thousands of doctors striking to demand better protection for health workers.

‘Consent is consent’

In its argument against criminalization, the Indian government said that a woman’s consent is protected in marriage, but there is “a continuing expectation, by either of the spouse, to have reasonable sexual access from the other.”

It added that, “though these expectations do not entitle the husband to coerce or force his wife into sex… the consequences of such violations within marriage differ from those outside of it.”

The government also claimed existing laws on sexual and domestic violence were sufficient to “protect consent within marriage.”

Mariam Dhawale, General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association – one of the petitioners fighting for criminalization – said consent inside and outside of marriage are “not two different things.”

“Consent is consent,” she said. “In our country, a woman is not thought of as an independent human being, as an independent citizen of the country. She is like, sort of an appendage to the husband. She’s subordinate, she’s not a separate identity as such.”

Dhawale said marital rape is a big part of the violence reported by women who seek help from her organization, but they often avoid coming out in the open with their allegations.

“Because they know that nobody will believe them, and it’s not considered as a crime,” she said.

Shifting that belief will take more than changing a law, but it’s the “first step,” said Bharadwaj.

“It’s a cultural revolution underneath,” she said. “Until and unless you make a big statement that this is not okay, the culture will never shift, because by not having that law, the culture is accepting of that violence.”

Other laws not ‘sufficient’

Women alleging rape in India have some avenues of potential legal action against their husbands, but advocates for criminalization say the current laws don’t go far enough.

Women can seek a restraining order under civil law or charges under Section 354 of India’s Penal Code, which covers sexual assault short of rape, and Section 498A, which is intended to punish cruelty toward women specifically in the context of dowry, and India’s Domestic Violence Act.

But the laws are open to interpretation and women face hurdles even when even trying to file initial police complaints, according to recent studies.

In May, a judge in Madhya Pradesh dismissed a woman’s complaint that her husband committed “unnatural sex” by citing the country’s marital rape exemption and saying in his judgement that in such instances, “consent of the wife becomes immaterial.”

AIDWA’s Dhawale said women often remain trapped in abusive households with no recourse or way out, especially if she is financially reliant on her husband.

“We don’t have any kind of safe places, shelter homes, institutions. So she has to remain in the four walls of that place. She cannot complain, because if she complains, she has no place to go… nobody will stand by her, unless and until it’s recognized as a crime.”

‘Serious disturbances in the institution of marriage’

India’s Supreme Court increased marital consent from the age of 15 to 18 in a landmark judgement in 2017.

“The Supreme Court debunked that argument,” she said.

Now, recognizing marital rape, Kothari said, “is a crucial way in which women’s equality within the marriage is going to really be bolstered.”

Similarly, Dhawale said “the sanctity of marriage, or the harmony within the home is actually getting disturbed by the man who is committing the violence, not by the woman who is asking for justice.”

A major concern of the government and of men’s rights groups is that a marital rape law will lead to women falsely accusing their husbands of rape.

Kothari said that already, it’s extremely hard for women to report sexual violence, even when the laws support them.

“All the claims of domestic violence being misused, it’s largely untrue, because it takes an immense amount of effort for women to come out and report it,” she said.

“It’s not like floodgates are going to be opened with hundreds of marital rape cases [being reported]. It’s still going to be very difficult.”