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Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi has been injured by Israeli gunfire in northern Gaza, becoming the second Al Jazeera cameraman to be injured in an Israeli attack this week.

A new documentary from Al Jazeera takes a look at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians. We play excerpts from the film Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, now available online, and speak to two of the journalists involved in its production, director Richard Sanders and Gaza-based correspondent Youmna ElSayed. “Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it,” says Sanders about the evidence the team reviewed. “They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal.” ElSayed adds, “They’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned.”

The entire staff of Marjayoun public hospital in south Lebanon were evacuated on Friday morning after an Israeli drone strike killed four paramedics, putting the hospital out of service, Lebanon’s national news agency reported.

The hospital was one of the major medical providers in south Lebanon, particularly as Israel’s intensified aerial campaign which started on 23 September displaced many medical staff from the region.

Israel also carried out a strike on the Islamic health organisation’s center in Khirbet Selem, causing injuries on Friday afternoon, according to Lebanon’s national news agency.

An additional member of the ambulance service was killed and one injured while carrying out rescue services in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which was intensely bombed the night prior, according to Hezbollah-affiliated media.

At least 102 Lebanese paramedics have been killed since the beginning of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah a year prior.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has told Ireland to remove its peacekeepers from an outpost on the border with Lebanon as its invasion of the country continues.

Sources confirmed the request was made to the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) and individual countries contributing troops, including Ireland. Israel has been told the troops will remain in place.

There is one Irish outpost on the Lebanese-Israeli border, which is known as the Blue Line. This outpost, designated post 6-52, is manned by a single Irish platoon who are responsible for observing the border and reporting on incursions.

The area was the scene of intense fighting between the IDF and the militant Lebanese group Hizbullah earlier in the week, during which Israel suffered heavy casualties. Some of the fighting took place less than 2km from the Irish outpost.

The warning to remove peacekeepers from the border raises the prospect of Israel launching a full-scale invasion across the extent of the border. Incursions to date have been more limited in scale.

It is understood the Irish Government has informed Israeli officials that Unifil troop movements are a matter for the UN and its force commander on the ground. Unifil has told Israel it will not be removing the troops.

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According to a senior Teledyne manager, contamination of their clean rooms could stop production for up to 12 months.

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Senior White House figures privately told Israel that the U.S. would support its decision to ramp up military pressure against Hezbollah — even as the Biden administration publicly urged the Israeli government in recent weeks to curtail its strikes, according to American and Israeli officials.

Not everyone in the administration was on board with Israel’s shift, despite support inside the White House, the officials said. The decision to focus on Hezbollah sparked division within the U.S. government, drawing opposition from people inside the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community who believed Israel’s move against the Iran-backed militia could drag American forces into yet another Middle East conflict.

Officials in the intelligence community, in briefings and talks with members of Congress last week, had said they were increasingly worried about the potential for a direct ground confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah. Similar conversations were occurring in the State Department, where officials were concerned about the mounting civilian death toll in Lebanon.

The internal administration division seems to have dissipated somewhat in recent days, with top U.S. officials convening Monday at the White House with President Joe Biden to discuss the situation on the ground. Most agreed that the conflict, while fragile, could offer an opportunity to reduce Iran’s influence in Lebanon and the region.

Still, the White House is walking a fine line, U.S. and Israeli officials said. The Biden administration wants to support Israel’s actions against a U.S.-designated terrorist group that has killed Americans and threatens the region. But it is not comfortable endorsing Israel’s campaign completely — or publicly — because it is worried it will creep too far into Lebanese territory, instigating an all-out war, one of the U.S. officials said.

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Members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, parade in Gaza City after Hamas threatened a renewed escalation over a planned right-wing Israeli march through flashpoint areas of annexed east Jerusalem on Thursday

Argentina’s poverty rate jumped from almost 42% to 53% during the first six months of Javier Milei’ s presidency, the statistics agency reported Thursday, a steep rise reflecting the pain of the country’s most intense austerity program in recent memory.

The government’s finding that Argentina’s half-year poverty rate in 2024 had surged to its highest level since 2003, when the country was reeling from a catastrophic foreign debt default and currency devaluation, marks a setback for the far-right economist. So far, foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund — to which Argentina owes $43 billion — have cheered his controversial fiscal shock therapy that has succeeded in pulling down the country’s monthly inflation from 25.5% last December to 4.2% in recent months.

Argentina’s inflation, now running at more than 230% annually, is among the worst in the world.

Unlike previous populist governments that kept consumer spending high at the cost of a massive budget deficit, Milei dismantled price controls, cut subsidies on energy and transport and devalued the peso by 54% in December after taking office.

The austerity measures and deregulation have marked a brutal contraction in spending power and dragged the economy deep into recession.

A thinning safety net

Of the millions who can’t clear Argentina’s official poverty level of about $950 a month in local currency for a family of four, even more have tumbled into destitution. Thursday’s poverty report showed that Argentina’s extreme poverty rate had shot up to 18.1% during Milei’s first six months as president from 11.9% in the last half of 2023.

A jobs crisis

The runaway inflation — shocking even for Argentines who lived through years of annual inflation averaging above 50% — has forced middle-class Argentines to cut back on spending and drain their savings.

The economy has contracted 3% so far this year. Government surveys reveal that both Argentina’s vast informal jobs market and formal workforce have hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of jobs since Milei took office.

That has put more of Argentina’s once-robust middle class in danger of sliding into poverty.

Sky-high bills

For decades low-paid Argentines have navigated their upside-down economy by padding their meager incomes with government cash transfers and generous subsidies that reduced the cost of utilities, food and transport.

But utilities bills jumped over 200% for many after Milei scrapped the subsidies to trim the deficit.

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