Latest news with #Mahmoud
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Major city risks becoming the first modern capital to run out of water, NGO warns
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The city of Kabul in Afghanistan is at risk of becoming the first modern capital to run out of water, according to a recent report. Kabul is drying up due to a combination of different factors, including climate change, poor water resource management, rapid urbanization and a swelling population that stands at roughly 5 to 6 million people. Mercy Corps, a humanitarian NGO, published a report in April that found Kabul's water crisis has reached a tipping point, with aquifers draining faster than they can be replenished, as well as issues surrounding water affordability, contamination and infrastructure. In June, one Kabul resident told The Guardian that there isn't any good quality well water available, while last week, another resident told CNN that they didn't know how their family would survive if things got worse. Kabul's water problem isn't new and has been growing steadily worse for decades. The report highlighted that it had been exacerbated by the decline in humanitarian funding for Afghanistan since August 2021 — when the Taliban returned to power as U.S. and allied forces withdrew from the country. "Without large-scale changes to Kabul's water management dynamics, the city faces an unprecedented humanitarian disaster within the coming decade, and likely much sooner," Mercy Corps representatives wrote in the conclusion of the report. Related: 'An existential threat affecting billions': Three-quarters of Earth's land became permanently drier in last 3 decades The new report draws on previous work by the United Nations (U.N.), which has found that Kabul's groundwater is at risk of running out by 2030, with around half of the boreholes in Kabul Province already dry. Currently, each year, extraction exceeds natural replenishment by about 1.5 billion cubic feet (44 million cubic meters), according to the report. Mohammed Mahmoud, a water security expert who was not involved in the report, told Live Science that Kabul is clearly in the midst of a worsening water crisis. "The fact that water extraction now exceeds natural recharge by tens of millions of cubic meters each year, and that up to half of the city's groundwater wells have already dried up, is an indication of a system in collapse," Mahmoud said in an email. Mahmoud is the chief executive officer of the Climate and Water Initiative NGO, and the lead for Middle East climate and water policy at the U.N. University's Institute of Water, Environment, and Health. He described the report's findings as "quite alarming" and noted that he was also concerned by the steep drop in Kabul's water table and the growing number of residents forced to spend a significant share of their income on accessing water. Mercy Corps reported that Kabul's aquifer levels have dropped by around 100 feet (30 m) within the last decade and that some households are spending up to 30% of their income just on water. "This is not just an environmental issue, it is a public health emergency, a livelihood crisis, and a looming trigger for potential large-scale human displacement," Mahmoud said. A global problem Water shortage is a global problem affecting many different regions. Water resources have been stretched in recent decades, with environmental factors like climate change increasing the frequency and severity of droughts, and human factors like population growth increasing water demand. A 2016 study published in the journal Scientific Reports found that between the 1900s and the 2000s, the number of people facing water scarcity increased from 240 million to 3.8 billion, or from 14% to 58% of the global population. Areas at particularly high risk of shortages include North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. "What is happening in Kabul reflects a broader trend we're seeing across water-stressed regions globally, especially in the Middle East and North Africa," Mahmoud said. "Groundwater overuse is rampant in many parts of the region, leading to groundwater recharge rates not keeping up with aquifer extraction. Climate change is also reducing and shifting rainfall patterns, further limiting freshwater generation and groundwater recharge, while increasing the frequency and severity of droughts." The new report highlighted that Kabul is on the brink of becoming the first modern capital to run out of water, but it isn't the first major city to face such an existential water-related threat, and based on current trends, it won't be the last. RELATED STORIES —Mexico City could be just months away from running out of drinking water —The worst droughts in US history —Amazon's 'flying rivers' of vapor are drying up in an unprecedented drought. Here's how to save them. In 2018, Cape Town — the legislative capital of South Africa — nearly ran out of water during a drought, and only narrowly avoided having to turn off the taps thanks to tight water restrictions and a water-saving campaign. The situation was even worse for India's city of Chennai in 2019, when all four of its major reservoirs dried up, severely limiting water supplies and plunging the city into crisis. Mahmoud noted that water shortages have severe socioeconomic impacts, affecting agricultural and food security, increasing living costs and, in extreme cases, causing mass migration and displacement of people. "We need stronger investment in sustainable water management, robust water infrastructure, and better governance to begin to address issues of water shortages," Mahmoud said.
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Transport for NSW threatens to deregister Sydney driver's car over numberplate
A Lebanese-Australian has been forced to hand in a set of number plates after Transport for NSW said they 'may give rise to controversy or public disagreement'. Mahmoud, who lives in Greenacre in Sydney 's south-west, was told by Transport for NSW last month that it would deregister his 'FU2IDF' number plates if he didn't turn them in. Mahmoud registered the plates in 2024 as 'my silent protest' in response to the Gaza War between Hamas and its allies and Israel. The war is the deadliest for Palestinians in the unresolved Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflicts dating back to the 20th century. 'My wife is Palestinian. Her family has had people killed since the start of the occupation in 1948. They've been displaced, they can't go home. So this is raw for us,' he told the publication Deepcut. Mahmoud received a letter from Transport for NSW on June 30 telling him to return his plates within 18 days or risk losing his registration. 'Transport for NSW has policies that prevent particular number plate content being displayed,' the letter read. 'This is related, but not limited to, content that has a religious theme, is discriminatory, is political, promotes violence, has a sexual reference, promotes drug taking/drinking or may be deemed to give rise to controversy or public disagreement. Mahmoud shows off the letter he was sent by Transport for NSW on June 30 'Transport for NSW has determined that these number plates may give rise to controversy or public disagreement and must be returned.' Mahmoud claimed his free speech rights were being taken away as he protests the war in the Middle East and Israel's treatment of Palestinians. 'I thought this was a free country where people can express themselves and their opinions,' he said. 'Some people find my number plate offensive, but the murder of tens of thousands of women and children isn't offensive to them.' Mahmoud even told a story of how a NSW police officer pulled him over before asking about the number plates. 'He was adamant that he wanted me to disclose what the plates meant. Once I disclosed what it meant, he actually shook my hand,' Mahmoud said. Mahmoud will turn the plates in, but has no plans to stop speaking out about the situation in Gaza. His other vehicle - a Toyota LandCruiser - has information about the Israel-Palestine war printed on the back. 'People see my car and give me the thumbs-up all the time. I want to spread that awareness so people understand the reality of what's been going on in Palestine for decades.'
New York Post
14-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
The left is a cult — and parents can fight it, with Supreme Court's blessing
Photo by John McDonnell/For The Washington Post via Getty Images In a landmark ruling last month, the Supreme Court slapped down a public-school district's mandatory lessons on sexual topics for young children — and gave parents the power to push back against leftist indoctrination in school. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, parents in Montgomery County, Md., argued that mandatory teaching of LGBT-themed books violated their families' religious beliefs. They didn't seek to remove the books — only the right to opt their children out of lessons that used them. The court backed them. Advertisement The district's instruction promoted the idea that gender is fluid and interchangeable, a notion that runs against the teachings of every major monotheistic religion: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Its LGBT teachings are part of a secular belief system that deliberately aims to supplant those traditional faiths with a new one. Leftism today increasingly functions not merely as a political ideology but as a full-fledged secular religion, complete with its own moral code, dogmas, rituals and rules of excommunication. Advertisement Like traditional religion, it offers a comprehensive worldview, one centered not on God or transcendent truth but on the sacredness of personal autonomy, identity and self-expression. Its doctrines — absolute tolerance, sexual liberation and equity over equality — are treated as unquestionable axioms, enforced with the fervor of religious orthodoxy. Public rituals like pronoun declarations, land acknowledgments and DEI trainings serve as liturgical acts of belonging and penance. Advertisement Sacred symbols like the pride flag or protest slogans function as talismans of moral clarity, and dissent from the liberal consensus results in a kind of modern heresy trial: cancellation, professional ruin or public shaming. The leftist 'priesthood' comprises media elites, academics and HR professionals, who act as interpreters and enforcers of the faith. Even its eschatology is religious in tone, offering visions of a utopian future once all bigotry is eradicated. By giving its adherents meaning, identity and moral purpose, leftism fulfills the role organized religion once did. Advertisement And the progressive religion isn't just a belief system — it's a doomsday cult. Consider any discussion of climate change. Suddenly, leftists become apocalyptic preachers warning of imminent destruction: rising seas, burning forests, uninhabitable cities — all brought on by sinful human consumption. The rhetoric is absolutist: Salvation can only be achieved through strict adherence to new commandments — no meat, no plastic, no air travel and total obedience to technocratic elites. Like all cults, dissent is forbidden and skepticism is blasphemy. Climate anxiety drives the young to speak about the future with a mix of fatalism and fanaticism. It's not science but a deeply moral narrative of sin and penance driving this hysteria, dressed in the language of reason but pulsing with religious fervor. Advertisement The Montgomery County parents fought for the freedom to protect their children from the gender-ideology components of this progressive belief system, but that's just one facet of this new secular faith. They were right: The public-school system has become a vehicle for all kinds of indoctrination, preaching a broad secular orthodoxy that runs counter to the beliefs of families of faith. The LGBT content at issue in Mahmoud is just one chapter in that gospel. In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that Montgomery County school board 'requires teachers to instruct young children using storybooks that explicitly contradict their parents' religious views, and it encourages the teachers to correct the children . . . when they express a degree of religious confusion.' Advertisement That same dynamic is at play across the curriculum, as public schools push all forms of progressivism on impressionable kids. It's time to fight back against the whole of the leftist religion, not just its more outrageous tenets — by confronting the cult's fire-and-brimstone, end-of-days theology too. That means demanding that science education in our schools must be grounded in reason, not fear. Public schools have no business sermonizing to children about the apocalypse. Leave that to the actual religions. Advertisement Armed with the Mahmoud ruling, public-school parents now have a legal foundation to resist when schools impose teachings that violate their most deeply held beliefs. They don't have to accept every lesson as mandatory — they can demand opt-outs, request transparency and challenge curriculum choices that cross the line from education into ideology. Parents can start by asserting their right to review lesson plans, attending school-board meetings and organizing locally to resist a broader secular agenda dressed up as neutral instruction. Advertisement The Supreme Court made it clear: The state can't force kids to absorb beliefs that conflict with their family's faith. Now it's up to parents to make their schools abide by that principle. Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars.
Qatar Tribune
12-07-2025
- Health
- Qatar Tribune
87 killed in Israel raids at aid site, children dying of malnutrition
Agencies At least 87 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Israeli attacks across Gaza, with dozens of children dying from malnutrition during Israel's punishing months-long blockade. Among the victims on Saturday, 14 were killed in Gaza City, four of them in an Israeli strike on a residence on Jaffa Street in the Tuffah area, which injured 10 others. At least 30 aid seekers were killed by Israeli army fire north of Rafah, southern Gaza, near the one operating GHF site, which rights groups and the United Nations have slammed as 'human slaughterhouses' and 'death traps'. According to Al Jazeera Mubasher, Israeli forces fired directly at Palestinians in front of the aid distribution centre in the al-Shakoush area of Rafah. Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli army opened fire indiscriminately on a large crowd during one of the attacks. 'Many desperate families in the north have been making dangerous journeys all the way to the south to reach the only operating distribution centre in Rafah,' he said. 'Many of the bodies are still on the ground,' Mahmoud said, adding that those who were wounded in the attack have been transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Amid relentless daily carnage rained upon starving aid seekers and the ongoing Israeli blockade, Gaza's Government Media Office said 67 children have now died due to malnutrition, and 650,000 children under the age of five are at 'real and immediate risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks'. 'Over the past three days, we have recorded dozens of deaths due to shortages of food and essential medical supplies, in an extremely cruel humanitarian situation,' the statement read. 'This shocking reality reflects the scale of the unprecedented humanitarian tragedy in Gaza,' the statement added. Israel is engineering a 'cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill' in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday, as the world body reported that since May, when GHF began its operations, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid. 'Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,' UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said. Mass displacement As the Israeli military announced on Saturday that its forces attacked Gaza 250 times in the last 48 hours, Israeli officials have continued to push a plan to forcibly displace and eventually expel Palestinians. Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a plan to build a so-called 'humanitarian city' which will house 2.1 million Palestinians on the rubble of parts of the city of Rafah, which has been razed to the ground. But Palestinians in Gaza have rejected the plan and reiterated that they would not leave the enclave. Rights groups, international organisations and several nations have slammed it as laying the ground for 'ethnic cleansing', the forcible removal of a population from its homeland. Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the majority of Israelis are 'really appalled' by Katz's plan, which would be 'illegal and immoral'. 'Anybody who will participate in this disgusting project will be involved in war crimes,' Elder said. The message underlying the plan, he said, is that 'there can't be two people between the river and the sea, and those who deserve to have a state are only the Jewish people.' As Israel announces its intention to force the population of Gaza into Rafah, Middle East professor at the University of Turin, Lorenzo Kamel, told Al Jazeera that the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and their concentration in restricted areas is nothing new. In 1948, 77 years ago to this day, 70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the village of Lydda during what became known as the 'march of death'.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Real Reason the Supreme Court Defines Anti-LGBTQ+ Beliefs as Religious
After Mahmoud v. Taylor, the latest in a string of court cases offering substantial protections for certain people's free exercise of religion, many questions remain. Among them is this one: What can religious beliefs be about? In Mahmoud, a multireligious coalition of families, with a named claimant who is Muslim, won the right to exempt their children from public school materials that include LGBTQ+ content. The group argued, and the majority of the Supreme Court agreed, that five storybooks advanced moral lessons that posed a 'very real threat of undermining' the parents' sincere religious beliefs and thus interfered with their right to 'direct the religious upbringing of their children.' Opponents, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent, have argued that the decision gives license to religious believers to contest any material they find objectionable. Conservatives claim that the slope is not so slippery, that it won't be a free-for-all. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court and quoting the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder, explained that for students to opt out, the material must be presented in a way that is 'hostile' to their religious beliefs and imposes a 'pressure to conform.' Lawyer and author Asma Uddin asserted that the ruling is a 'narrow holding' that addresses 'a specific kind of burden, not every discomfort or value clash.' Which beliefs count, then? It is no coincidence that the sentiments in this case are about sex and gender. For many Americans, including judges, it is obvious that such a (conservative) belief would be religious. This leads us to two types of counterexamples: Can more-progressive beliefs about sex and gender be recognizably religious? And can conservative or right-wing beliefs about other topics, such as race, also be religious? Some progressive or liberal believers have won free exercise cases in recent years. In Indiana, a multireligious group of women, not unlike the parents in Mahmoud, contested the state's abortion ban. They successfully argued that the ban burdened their consciences and violated their religious freedom. Becket, the legal organization that represented the parents in Mahmoud, argued against these women, alleging that their beliefs were not religious but in fact political. The Indiana women won, as the state court found that the abortion ban did violate their religious consciences and burden their religious exercise. Nevertheless, that Becket (whose slogan is 'Religious Liberty for All') was on either side of these two cases, siding with religious freedom claimants in one and against them in the other, shows how progressive religious beliefs often face more scrutiny. The religiosity of anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs, conversely, is taken for granted. Alito quoted one school board member who, amid the conflict that led to the Mahmoud case, compared these parents to 'white supremacists' or 'xenophobes.' The justice doesn't provide enough text for us to determine whether the member was actually equating these beliefs to white supremacy or xenophobia (although why shouldn't they?). Alito seems to include this statement as evidence of animus by some board members to these parents—and also to signal that he might understand that racism and anti-LGBTQ+ positions are qualitatively different. In doing so, he raises the question of how such beliefs would be handled. It recalls his dissent in Obergefell, 10 years ago, lamenting that the legalization of same-sex marriage would 'be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.' Religious freedom has become a way not to assent, but from which 'new orthodoxies' will students be exempt? Under Mahmoud, there is no clear reason why parents would be unable to opt out of students' exposure to any viewpoint with which they disagree, even if the normative implications are 'subtle.' Likewise, there is no reason to assume that anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs are religious but racist beliefs or that pro-LGBTQ+ beliefs are not. This is a blinkered and shallow understanding of religion that crumbles under historical or sociological scrutiny. Another key point of disagreement between the majority and the dissent is whether these books 'merely expose' students to the existence of LGBTQ+ people or actively promote a certain moral stance. What neither fully acknowledges, though, is that complete neutrality, in which no values are learned, is neither possible nor desirable. There can be more of a facade of neutrality if a scrutinized text merely presents society as a multicultural melting pot than if it offers an explicit view of the state's position on morality. Sotomayor takes the pluralistic, melting-pot approach to neutrality, writing that public schools 'offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.' Those differences, as she sees it, quoting the 1987 court, make public schools 'at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny.' While this approach is laudable, its problem is that some parents' 'faiths and backgrounds' seek to annihilate some others. Many conservative religious people, especially white evangelicals, believe that they face persecution and discrimination through inclusion. However, LGBTQ+ people's existence, including children's, is actually under attack. As is public education generally. Alito argues that Uncle Bobby's Wedding, one of the five books considered in the case, 'presents a specific, if subtle, message about marriage. It asserts that two people can get married, regardless of whether they are of the same or the opposite sex, so long as they 'love each other.' ' As Sotomayor says, if we can opt out of even 'subtle' messages, chaos will reign and student learning will suffer as book after book is carted off due to individual complaints. It matters, as Justice Clarence Thomas notes in his concurrence (for different reasons), that the case is about classroom books, not sex education. Children's literature is generally not a subtle genre. Didacticism often subsumes narrative, with popular titles including Hands Are Not for Hitting and Everyone Poops. Although these may seem to be less controversial statements than one conveying that everyone should be able to marry someone they love, Sotomayor is right; allowing all sorts of exemptions will make teaching much more difficult because schools and children's books are full of lessons that parents might object to, for whatever reason. But this case was not about just any reason. It was about sex and gender, which brings us back to this question: Why, in the court's view, are conservative approaches to sex and gender so obviously religious? And what else is religion about? Even with a Muslim claimant, this assumption seems to reflect the Christian right's decades of mobilizing around sex and gender issues. At the end of this Supreme Court term, the intersections of religion, schools, and parents are tangled and confusing. The justices nearly allowed for the creation of the nation's first explicitly religious public charter school. Parents can opt out of public school instruction that interferes with their child's religious upbringing. At the same time, parents cannot opt into gender-affirming care for their own children. Other observers have pointed out the seeming contradictions between Skrmetti and Mahmoud: Parents can shield their children from books about gay people, but they can't make medical decisions for them. What, exactly, is the scope of 'parental rights' now? And how do parental rights relate to religious freedom in the right to 'direct' children's religious upbringing? Let's conclude with two thought experiments. First, what might it look like to contest Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care, the same one the court upheld in Skrmetti, with a religious freedom argument citing Mahmoud? Could a religious parent in Tennessee not argue that the state's ban on gender-affirming care interferes with their child's religious upbringing? If they believe, sincerely and religiously, that trans expression is sacred or that God has made their child trans, then banning their gender-affirming health care undoubtedly poses 'a very real threat of undermining' their religious beliefs. Such a case's chances of success would depend, at least in part, on whether courts could recognize those beliefs as authentically religious. Second, instead of progressive religious views about gender, what about other conservative religious views? What would happen if, for example, the parents in Mahmoud took issue with the fact that Uncle Bobby's Wedding appears to portray an interracial wedding? Or imagine a slightly different book, with a white Uncle Bobby marrying a Black woman, or a Muslim Uncle Bobby marrying a Jewish woman. Would the case's outcome be different? Conservative beliefs about sex and gender are legible as religious largely because of the Christian right's decades of organizing and the prominence of its campaigns against the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people. Its particularities have been taken as generic 'religion.' If judges fail to recognize the religiosity of other beliefs about sex and gender—or of conservative beliefs about other topics—it is the result of these campaigns, not because these judges understand American religions as they are actually lived, practiced, and believed.
