People take part in a protest by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), in Falmouth, who are calling for an end to the sewage discharges plaguing the UK’s rivers and seas, May 18, 2024
SURFERS are set to paddle out across Britain’s coasts, rivers and lakes tomorrow in nationwide protests demanding an end to private ownership of the water sector.
Led by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), groups will gather at more than 50 locations for the annual protest.
Protesters in England will also oppose the Water Reform Bill, announced in the King’s Speech on Wednesday, which they say will entrench privatisation in law rather than reverse it.
Ministers have ruled out returning water companies to public ownership. An annual survey by the Consumer Council for Water found that trust in water companies has plunged to a new low, with most concerns centring on sewage mismanagement and soaring bills.
SAS chief executive Giles Bristow said: “The Water Reform Bill is nothing more than a whitewash, locking in a failed system that has seen pollution, shareholder profits and consumer bills soar over three decades.
“Public support for privatised water has all but vanished and while thousands take to the beaches in protest, the government is burying its head in the sand.”
Polling commissioned by SAS found that only 7 per cent of adults in England believe water companies should remain privately owned.
Some 77 per cent supported a change in operating model, with 35 per cent backing full public ownership.
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Palestinian prisoners detained by the Israeli army are taken to the Nasser Hospital for medical treatment after being released by the Israeli forces in Khan Yunis, Gaza on August 20, 2024 [Doaa Albaz/Anadolu Agency]
Human Rights Watch said reports detailing sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention facilities are consistent with findings from previous investigations conducted by the organisation and other rights groups.
The statement was made by deputy Director of Human Rights Watch and its representative to the European Union institutions, Claudio Francavilla in remarks to Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.
Francavilla said information published in a report by Nicholas Kristof regarding sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons corresponds with evidence previously documented by Human Rights Watch and other organisations.
He called for impartial and transparent investigations, fair legal proceedings and unrestricted access for the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent monitors to all Israeli detention facilities.
Francavilla also urged the European Union to take concrete measures to pressure Israeli authorities to halt what he described as ongoing grave human rights violations and ensure accountability.
The comments came after The New York Times published a report alleging that Palestinian men and women detained in Israeli prisons had been subjected to multiple forms of sexual violence.
Israel criticised the report following its publication on Monday.
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Israeli soldiers are seen as Israeli military mobility continues on the Gaza border, in Nahal Oz, Israel on December 13, 2023 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli army secretly seized and deleted parts of the 7 October security camera footage, according to a report published by Israel Hayom yesterday, in the latest revelation to deepen suspicion over the official Israeli account of the events of that day.
The Hebrew-language daily reported that on the evening of 9 October 2023, a classified reserve unit operating under the Israeli army’s Ground Forces Command arrived at Kibbutz Be’eri and asked members of the kibbutz’s rapid-response squad to hand over the device storing all the community’s security camera recordings. The unit commander told the exhausted residents that he needed the material “to bring the hostages home” and promised it would not be shared and would be returned in full.
No written commitment was given. By the following morning, the officer had left Be’eri with the recordings and headed to the Kirya, the Israeli army’s headquarters complex in Tel Aviv.
According to the report, the classified unit — composed of reservists drawn from elite formations including Sayeret Matkal, Shaldag, Shayetet 13 and Duvdevan, and founded around a decade ago by former officer Yoaz Hendel — “operates in the gray zones,” a reference to covert, legally ambiguous missions that fall outside the army’s regular chain of command and conventional rules of engagement.
On the morning of 7 October, the commander of the unit, identified only as “N,” activated the group on his own initiative and dispatched the teams to collect visual material from security cameras, dashcams and GoPro cameras belonging to Palestinian fighters.
Material seized from Kibbutz Be’eri’s command room was subsequently passed to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families’ Management, to the Israeli army Spokesperson’s Unit and to other unspecified bodies inside the Israeli defence establishment, Israel Hayom reported.
From there, the unit lost control of the footage. Two days after the recordings were handed over, one of the kibbutz security squad members watching television recognised the now-iconic footage of an elderly Palestinian man hobbling on crutches into a Gaza border community.
“At that moment I was seething with rage,” he told the paper. “Because I recognised that the material came from the perimeter fence camera at Be’eri — the same camera whose footage had been handed to the officer.” The footage had been broadcast without the kibbutz’s knowledge or consent.
Residents of Kibbutz Be’eri who reviewed the returned material this week told Israel Hayom that the recordings had been “tampered with” and returned with deletions. The paper noted that it was unable to independently verify the claim, but pointed out that residents’ suspicions had been reinforced by a separate investigation by Israeli journalist Gali Ginat for Uvda, the country’s leading investigative current affairs television programme, which uncovered footage from the Dor Alon petrol station near neighbouring Kfar Aza — footage that the Israeli army had previously insisted no longer existed.
“October 7 is defined by a profound crisis of trust,” one Be’eri resident told the paper. “The decisions to delete materials were made ‘under fluorescent lights’ — it’s a conscious decision, not one made in the chaos of combat. These are recordings that belong to the community, of people from the community, and you simply take them and delete them without giving them back.”
Asked why he believed portions of the footage had been deleted, the resident replied: “The day will come when an investigative commission is established here. The fewer witnesses there are, the less damage certain people in the military will sustain. I know it sounds conspiratorial, but the more I think about it, the more that is the conclusion I reach.”
The disclosure is the latest in a series of revelations that have chipped away at Israel’s official narrative of 7 October.
Israel’s most widely circulated atrocity claims have collapsed under scrutiny. The “40 beheaded babies” story, repeated by Israeli officials and amplified by US President Joe Biden in the immediate aftermath of the attack, was never substantiated and is now widely treated as propaganda.
Allegations of systematic sexual violence by Palestinian fighters, propagated by a now-discredited New York Times investigation, have similarly been undermined: Israeli prosecutors have confirmed that no rape complaints were ever filed in connection with 7 October, the Associated Press has reported that key accounts were untrue, and a UN Commission of Inquiry said it had been “unable to independently verify specific allegations” due to Israel’s obstruction of its investigations. Tel Aviv has separately blocked a UN probe into the alleged sexual violence.
Mounting evidence has also confirmed that the Israeli army itself killed an unknown number of its own citizens on 7 October through its activation of the so-called “Hannibal Directive” — a controversial standing order authorising the use of overwhelming force, including against captured Israelis, to prevent their being taken hostage.
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WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES – MAY 5: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a press briefing at the White House on current issues in Washington DC, United States on May 5, 2026. ( Fatih Aktaş – Anadolu Agency )
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised questions regarding NATO amid the war with Iran, criticizing Spain for denying US aircraft access to its bases during the war, Anadolu reports.
“One of the reasons why I supported NATO was because it gave us basing rights. It allowed us to have bases in Europe that we could use in a contingency like something in the Middle East,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News, aired Wednesday but taped earlier this week.
“So when you have NATO partners denying you the use of those bases – when the primary reason why NATO is good for America is now being denied to us by Spain, as an example – then what’s the purpose of the Alliance? It starts becoming a ‘they’re allies when they want to be’ kind of thing,” he added.
Spain has denied US military aircraft access to its air bases during the Iran conflict, prompting threats from Washington of a trade embargo, troop withdrawals and even suspension from NATO.
Clarifying that there are countries in NATO that are “very helpful” to the US, he said that “others like Spain have been atrocious, just horrifying.”
“What is the purpose of being in an alliance whose benefit to us is these basing rights if, in a time of conflict like the one we’ve had with Iran, they can deny us the use of those bases? So why are we there for? Only to protect them but not to further our national interest? This is a very legitimate question that we need to address,” Rubio said.
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Israeli soldiers use tear gas to Palestinians protesting during the raid in Nablus city of West Bank, Palestine on May 3, 2026. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
Israeli forces and armed Jewish settlers are carrying out increasingly coordinated attacks on Palestinian children across the occupied West Bank, with documented incidents including shootings, stabbings, beatings and the use of pepper spray, the UN’s children’s agency has said.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said: “We’re seeing attacks become increasingly coordinated. Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, children beaten and children pepper-sprayed.”
At least 70 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank since January 2025 — an average of one a week — and a further 850 have been injured, the vast majority by live Israeli ammunition, according to UNICEF figures.
The agency said March 2026 had recorded the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the past 20 years. “All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks,” Elder said.
Recalling a recent visit to the occupied territory, the UNICEF spokesperson described meeting an eight-year-old Palestinian boy who had been beaten with a piece of wood during a settler attack and hospitalised for head injuries. The boy’s mother, he said, “had both her arms broken when she reached across to protect her four-month-old baby, putting therefore her arms between her baby and the attacker’s club.”
Elder also highlighted a sharp increase in attacks targeting Palestinian education, including the killing, injury and detention of students and the demolition of schools by Israeli forces. “Schools, which should be places of safety and stability, are increasingly becoming places of panic,” he said.
The spokesperson described accompanying Palestinian schoolchildren on their journey to class in an effort to help them avoid being attacked. “It’s interesting to watch them walk… They don’t walk in a straight line because they’re constantly looking over their shoulder,” he said. “This is a walk to school. It’s become a walk through fear.”
UNICEF also reported a “sharp rise” in the arrest and detention of Palestinian children by Israeli occupation forces. Some 347 Palestinian children are currently being held in Israeli military detention “for alleged security-related offences” — the highest figure in eight years, Elder said.
“Alarmingly, more than half of these children, 180, are held under administrative detention and without the procedural safeguards, including detention without regular access to legal counsel and the right to challenge detention,” Elder added.
Administrative detention is a system inherited from the British Mandate era that allows the Israeli military to hold Palestinians indefinitely without charge or trial, on the basis of secret evidence.
Turning to the Gaza Strip, Elder said the UN had documented the killing of at least 229 Palestinian children and the injury of 260 more since the October 2025 ceasefire — agreed after nearly two years of Israel’s genocidal assault on the besieged enclave.
Dr Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the World Health Organization’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told the same briefing that some 10,000 children in Gaza are now living with life-changing injuries.
An estimated 43,000 of the 172,000 Palestinians injured in Gaza since October 2023 have sustained such trauma — including injuries to limbs, the spinal cord or the brain — she said. Almost 2,500 people have been injured since the October 2025 ceasefire alone.
“Of the 2,277 people that have had a limb amputated, less than 25 per cent have been fitted with permanent prosthetics,” Van de Weerdt said, blaming a severe shortage of prosthetics inside the Strip.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone …Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says disinhibition and swearing are typical and common symptoms, small Orca speaks bluntly.
People take part in a protest by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), in Falmouth, who are calling for an end to the sewage discharges plaguing the UK’s rivers and seas, May 18, 2024
