Their colleagues are dead, but these aid workers refuse to leave Gaza. The Sunday Times

The aid worker starts her day with a small bowl of cereal in a shared flat in Rafah, southern Gaza. Venturing outside each morning she is greeted by a group of young boys who invite her to fly kites with them. It never fails to lift her spirits.

Karyn Beattie, 55, from Zimbabwe, has worked in wars and disasters all over the world. But southern Gaza was “something I’ve never seen before”. She said: “There are people everywhere on the streets, children running around, rubbish piling up.”

The displaced live on the pavement under strips of tarpaulin. Remnants of belongings are still visible among bombed-out houses and piles of rubble. “It’s heartbreaking,” Beattie, who leads Save the Children’s operations in Gaza, said. “It’s utter mayhem…”

David Lammy: Brexit left Britain isolated. Labour wants to change that. The Sunday Times

In the Lebanese capital of Beirut, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, looked up at the charred remains of the grain silos that were blown to smithereens almost four years ago in the biggest non-nuclear blast in history.

The explosion, felt as far away as Turkey, happened after 2,750 tonnes of improperly stored ammonium nitrate caught fire on August 4, 2020. At least 218 people died and more than 300,000 people were made homeless.

The scars of that catastrophe are only just beginning to heal, and Lammy fears Lebanon and the wider region could soon be facing worse…

Hero taxi driver who saved scores from Hamas faces hatred from both sides. The Sunday Times.

At 6.30am on October 7, Yussef Alziadna’s ringtone woke him with a start. Having ferried revellers to the Nova music festival until 1am, the Palestinian taxi driver had been expecting a lie-in.

Instead Amit Hadar, an Israeli whom he had dropped off with his friends hours earlier, was calling, begging for help. Hamas had attacked the festival. Could Alziadna bring his 14-seater van to rescue them?

Alziadna, 53, understood the risks. “I told myself, it doesn’t matter if I am going to die, I have to save as many lives as possible,” he said. “I’m an Israeli, they are Israelis.”

He ran out of his home, in a small village near the Bedouin city of Rahat, and drove into a nightmare. He knew a rocket attack from Gaza was under way, but now bullets were zipping past his head and he had to dodge rocket-propelled grenades fired by Hamas.

Tracker hidden in a skirt uncovers what can happen to our recycled clothes. The Sunday Times.

Used clothing handed to big retailers such as H&M and C&A for recycling is being shipped across the world, where items that cannot be sold are at risk of being burnt and sent to open dumps.

Through electronic tags, sewn into the lining of garments, campaigners tracked a skirt and a top, which were dropped off at the H&M store in Oxford Street, London, to Mali, a 15,000-mile journey.

Donated in November and December, the items were driven to Warwickshire, then to Southampton. They sailed separately to the United Arab Emirates, followed by Senegal, before being taken by road to Mali, in west Africa, where two thirds of the population live in poverty….

‘Kidnappings weren’t great for business’: the Lebanese hotel even wars can’t close. The Sunday Times.

There is nowhere quite like the Palmyra Hotel in Baalbek, northern Lebanon.

Standing opposite some of the largest and best-preserved Roman ruins in the world, everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German emperor, and Albert Einstein to Ella Fitzgerald and the Shah of Iran have stayed there. And, despite everything the war-ravaged country has endured over its 149 years, the Palmyra has never closed for a single day.

Now, with the pandemic fading into memory and Lebanon’s catastrophic economic collapse becoming more of a settled state than a shock new development, demand is booming once again…

Poland holds biggest military parade since Cold War in defiant message to its neighbours. The National.

As a low hum filled the air, children began to squeal with joy. Perched on their father’s shoulders as the hot Polish sun beat down, they pointed down the road and shouted “czołgi!” Tanks!

Soon the hum turned to a roar as the first wave of K2 tanks powered down Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie road on the west bank of the Vistula river in Warsaw. They were preceded by a fly-past of helicopters, drones and fighter jets.

It was its biggest military parade since the Cold War, as the Nato-member country flexed its military muscle in what the government hoped would be both a message to Moscow and to voters ahead of elections in October. About 2,000 soldiers from Poland and other Nato countries marched through the capital accompanied by 200 items of military equipment and 92 aircraft…

Pete Reed volunteered as a medic to save lives in Ukraine. He ended up losing his own. The Sunday Times.

The Finnish volunteer medic gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as we entered Bakhmut. “Welcome to hell,” she said.

The battle for the eastern Ukrainian city has been raging since July and has become one of the deadliest clashes of the war. According to the UK Ministry of Defence, the place holds “limited operational value”. However, if it falls it will open up a path to the strategic cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Bakhmut is almost surrounded. The Russians are to the south, east and north. They have thrown everything at it, turning it into a meatgrinder, with hundreds of men dying daily on either side. It has been without water and electricity since autumn. Its 70,000 inhabitants have fled, died or gone into hiding. Apartment blocks stand like scorched skeletons frozen in the snow, on streets reduced to rubble.

I double-checked my body armour, and the spare set wedged between me and the car door…

Stevedores of Odesa's docks know their worth in wartime. The National.

The air raid sirens at the Port of Odesa sound, on average, four to five times a day. When they howl, all work stops.

The stevedores attempting to load ships with grain head to the shelters.

Feeding the world in wartime is an arduous task — and with the risk of attack high, a perilous one.

Andriy Dolmatov, the port's chief foreman, has become used to dodging air strikes, but he is feeling the pressure.

The 49-year-old, who began working in the port at age 19, casts an imposing figure as he sits at his kitchen table, compulsively folding a paper napkin, as he tells The National of his team's efforts to keep the ships moving.

Incoming cargo ships are inspected by military personnel before being allowed passage into the port. Crews are then checked and ships searched thoroughly for a second time.

The fear of a Trojan horse-style attack is on everyone’s mind. The anxiety at work never lets up for Mr Dolmatov but it is a small price to pay for such a vital job…

Escape to Odesa: Ukraine's survivors find refuge in a city defying war. The National.

Every morning Oleksii Olhovska would creep out of the basement in Mariupol, where he was sheltering with his family, to check on their apartment.

He would mark the date on the hanging wall calendar, carefully drawing a cross through the day’s square in a simple act that gave him a sense of purpose. On March 27, 2022, the crosses stopped appearing. He was taken away by the Russians.

Three weeks later Mr Olhovska, 78, died of a heart attack more than 1,500km away from Mariupol in the Russian city of Cheboksary.

His wife, Antonina, escaped Mariupol a week before he was taken. She found out about his death from a woman who shared a hospital room with him.

“He had a shrapnel wound in his leg and didn’t want to leave Mariupol. He was stubborn,” she tells The National.

Ms Olhovska, 75, was less dogged. She feared for her granddaughter Alexandra, 19. Reports of rape and looting were spreading through the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city…

Afghanistan: one year on — starvation, women in hiding and children married off to pay for food. Evening Standard

My dream is the same as every girl,” high school student Samira*, 21, tells me from a blue cushion in her family’s small, darkened living room in Kabul. “All I think of is studying and being successful. To be in a position where I think: ‘Yes, this is what I want with my life.’”

Samira should be in year 12, with university almost within reach. Instead, she is stuck indoors with her cousin Robina, 15, looking at old books, helping to clean the house and praying for things to get better. They hardly venture out for fear of harassment by the Taliban. Indeed, our clandestine interview has all been the work of a male family friend, who made me wait inside a corner shop before hurrying me through a warren of alleys to reach their courtyard.

“I’m sad. It’s obvious I’m sad. We can’t go to school,” says Samira. Robina, who should be in year 11, echoes her sentiment with a little more fire. “I have bad feelings now. I’m afraid. I don’t even go to the local shops. I’m angry!…”

Elderly Ukrainians stitch homemade body armour as frontline supplies run low. The National

“It’s a big responsibility. Even if you are exhausted, you go to work. You sit here and you do this anyway.”

From 7am until 7pm, seven days a week, Nataliya Makodzob sits at her table in the corner of a makeshift factory in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, stitching pieces of body armour together.

Hunched over her sewing machine, her red hair highlighted by the grey walls around her, Nataliya is one of 11 women working every hour to make bulletproof vests for those fighting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The dark walls dampen what little light already penetrates the windows and the rhythmic whirring of the sewing machines echoes the distant machinegun fire heard around the eastern fronts.

"Before this, I was sewing sleeping bags for the soldiers," she says. "As I understand it, flak jackets and body armour are more important now…”

Ukrainian grandmothers make camouflage as volunteers prepare to take the fight to Russia. The National

Five hundred and forty kilometres west of Ukraine’s capital, Irina stands in a community centre thinking about her family.

“My parents are in Kyiv and for five days they sit in their shelter and send me voice notes, and in the background, I can hear bombs,” she tells The National. “I cannot sit here where it’s calm when I know near my house it is war.”

Tucked away in a children’s community centre on one of Lviv’s side streets, she is one of 300 volunteers making camouflage webbing to hide Ukrainian soldiers.

For the women and young men working in the children’s centre, it means tearing strips from old fabric and discarded clothes to help to conceal their loved ones fighting at the front…

'I'm not afraid': the Ukrainian men going back to fight. The National

Standing on platform two of Lviv railway station, freezing and surrounded by hundreds of people trying to flee the Russian invasion, Victoria begins to cry.

“I’m a little bit scared. We have no friends in Poland. We are just going and we hope to find somewhere to stay.”

The journey from Vinnytsia in the centre of Ukraine to Lviv has taken Victoria, her husband and her three children 15 hours so far. The children, aged 17, 15 and 11, have ventured into the ticket hall to warm up as the snow begins to fall on Lviv.

Another resident of Vinnytsia is 31-year-old Ivan Glushko. Wrapped in a fur coat and seeking warmth in the ticket hall, Mr Glushko is more focused on the east of the country. Rather than join the exodus, he is returning, now volunteering to sign up to fight…

‘Living in a cave is no life’: Pakistani villagers trapped by Taliban and poverty. The Guardian

“Don’t talk to me about the government. They don’t help.”

Ninety-year-old Shah Mast is angry. He has been living in the cave he calls home for seven years, ever since an offensive by the Pakistan army against the Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed his home. “I swear to God, no one has helped us. No charity or anything,” he says.

In 2014, the Pakistani army began an offensive against insurgents in the Tirah valley close to Afghanistan, after negotiations with the militants broke down. What followed was a violent campaign to root out the fighters, whose main objective is to overthrow the Pakistani government…

Afghan children cling to lorries to be smuggled into Pakistan. The National

Farid glances around furtively, trying to outsmart the Pakistani border guards. It’s a dangerous game of cat and mouse for the 11-year-old Afghan boy from Arzanah.

The Torkham border crossing in northern Pakistan lies along the famous Khyber Pass and is the direct link between Islamabad and Kabul. It is a major trade hub and the busiest crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan…

Lebanon: Explosion of 'secret tanker' storing fuel adds to country's woes. Middle East Eye

Ismail Hasan collapsed against the wall of the morgue after learning that two of his sons were killed by a fuel tanker blast in the early hours of Sunday morning. The doctors and army soldiers at the Government Hospital of Tripoli in Lebanon could do little to comfort him as the afternoon sun beat down on the small building beside the hospital.

At least 28 people were killed and 79 injured when a tank containing 60,000 litres of gasoline exploded in the northern Lebanese region of Akkar just before 2am on Sunday morning.

‘I Want All of Them Dead’: Remembrance and Retribution on the Streets of Beirut. Vice World News

“She’s not a martyr, she’s a victim. She was living her life normally and she didn’t want to die.”

Annie Vartivarian stands alone in front of her daughter’s grave as the already-unbearable Lebanese sun bears down on her. Old men who tend the graves at the Armenian Cemetery in Beirut have taken refuge in the shade and lazily chat among themselves. Water droplets glisten on the petals of the white roses which surround the headstone… 

They Went to a Protest Against Inequality, Then They Got Charged as Terrorists. Vice World News

For two weeks, Wafika Hachem sat on the pavement outside the military court in Beirut. To pass some of the time, she talked with another mother of one of the men detained inside, picking purple Bougainvillea leaves from the low hanging bushes nearby, while around them protesters demanded the release of more than two dozen young men rounded up by security forces. 

But mostly, Hachem sat alone, nervously wringing her hands, waiting in the hot sun for news of her son, Ali…

Domestic Violence, Migrant Workers and the Covid Crisis in Lebanon. LevantX

As the sun rose on Saturday 12th April and the Beirut streets began to fill with people, a gruesome discovery was made outside a bank. The dismembered and decomposing remains of a Bangladeshi woman had been haphazardly shoved into a black duffle bag and dumped onto the streets of Beirut.

Violent crimes of this nature are rare in Lebanon and shocking images of the bag were quickly shared on social media and broadcast on local TV and radio. The Internal Security Forces (“ISF”) cordoned off the area and searched for more remains…

Foreign Embassies Have Failed Their Citizens in Lebanon. LevantX

Ester Wamgui sits on a dirt-stained mattress lying on the street outside the Kenyan Consulate of Beirut. She cradles her son Jame in her arms while she seeks shelter from the August sun in the shade of a nearby building. Her daughter Judy sits next to her drawing on a scrap of paper with a yellow highlighter.

“There has been no food or water from the Kenyan Consulate. Only from well-wishers,” she says. These “well-wishers” are local Lebanese NGOs and passers-by. They have been delivering food, water, and sanitary products to Ester and the fifty other women that sit outside the Consulate as often as they can, but the supplies are running out…

It's Been Six Months Since the Beirut Blast. These Families Still Want Answers. Vice World News

Annie Vartivarian is standing alone holding a picture of her daughter, Gaia Fodoulian. Slightly apart from the other mourners gathered outside the gates to the port of Beirut, Vativarian tells VICE World News how she was at home with her daughter the day she died. 

“We heard the explosion and we both ran in different directions,” she recalls. “She ran towards the sitting room and I ran towards the kitchen. When I turned, I saw her on the floor.”

Gaia had taken the full force of the blast, and after being turned away from four hospitals, she died later from a brain haemorrhage…

Lebanese Women Descend on Home of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Middle East Eye

Mariam Kesserwan, left, is angry with the current political establishment in Lebanon. Earlier this week, along with her friend Lara Moukahal, she led a group of women from across Beirut in a peaceful protest close to the home of Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament.

The women aimed to get close to the home of Berri before reading out a statement condemning him and the current political class.

“We decided to come to do a fierce attack in the statement, describing his unprofessionalism, his incapability in managing the country, about him being corrupt and about him actually looting this country,” said Kesserwan…