Author: Bruce Hawsking

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib was at home in San Francisco when the panicked calls started. An Israeli airstrike on Thursday had hit his family’s home in Rafah, in the so-called safe zone of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought refuge from the war.Soon, his phone was flooded with news footage of the home, where he used to go for family barbecues and to play with his grandmother’s ducks. He watched neighbors scramble over its smoking ruins, looking for survivors.Instead, they found at least 31 bodies, he said, including two women in their 70s, several people in their 60s, and nine children between the ages of 3 months and 9 years. More remain missing. He learned the names of the dead from texts and Facebook updates, spread out over hours and days.“It was sickening and na...

Chileans on Sunday rejected a new constitution that would have pulled the country to the right, likely ending a turbulent four-year process to replace their national charter with little to show for it.Nearly 56 percent of voters rejected the proposed text, with all of the votes counted.It is the second time in 16 months that Chile, the South American nation of 19 million, has rebuffed a proposed constitution — the other was written by the left — showing how deeply divided the nation remains over a set of rules and principles to govern it even after four years of debate.That debate began in 2019 after enormous protests prompted a national referendum in which four out of five Chileans voted to scrap their constitution, a heavily amended version of the 1980 text adopted under the bloody milit...