Rayqa al-Malalha, 55, looks out her kitchen window at a putrid wastewater pond in the front yard of her Rafah City house in the Gaza strip. Her municipality does not supply clean drinking water, in part because the toxic pool is leaking into the water piping system.

Yet Rayqa's troubles are not unique. Palestinians in Gaza regularly consume contaminated water, even when the liquid they drink has already been treated at a purifying facility. In Gaza 45-percent of the water processed in desalination plants is contaminated, according to the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA).

For nearly all Gazan households there is no alternative. Purchasing expensive tanks of clean water is unaffordable. Ninety-five percent of the strip's 1.8 million residents rely on this polluted water. For those who can pay for clean water, they will spend up to a third of their income, found the water advocacy group E-WASH.

New York City Police Chief Bill Bratton denounced Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) proposal for increased "patrols" against Muslim communities, Capital New York reported.

"I would remind the senator that he lives in the United States of America, and the statements he made today is why he's not gonna become the president of this country," Bratton said during a joint press conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio. "We don't need a president that doesn't respect the values that form the foundation of this country."

The Republican presidential candidate called for the "patrols" shortly after the attacks by members of the Islamic State group in Brussels earlier in the day.

"We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," Cruz said on his Facebook page.

Banks shouldn't compensate customers who are victims of cyber-crime because it "rewards" them for sloppy internet security, Britain's highest-ranking police officer has said.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said banks should refuse to reimburse people who fail to update anti-virus software and tighten their passwords.

His remarks come days after internet security firm Webroot warned traditional computer defenses are "useless" in the face of modern cyber-attacks.

Hogan-Howe compared refunding bank customers who are victims of cyber-crime to rewarding "bad behavior."

"If you are continually rewarded for bad behavior, you will probably continue to do it but, if the obverse is true, you might consider changing behavior," he told the Times.

"The system is not incentivizing you to protect yourself," Hogan-Howe said.

"If someone said to you: 'If you've not updated your software, I will give you half back', you would do it."

Hogan-Howe's comments were criticized as "misjudged" by Richard Lloyd, executive director of consumer group Which?.

"The priority should be for banks to better protect their customers, rather than trying to shift blame on to the victims of fraud," he said.

Police will be able to ban people from public places and events without a judge's approval as part of a raft of anti-organised crime legislation proposed by the state government. A bill unveiled by the state government on Tuesday aims to "cripple" organised crime groups by clamping down on their movements, associations and business dealings.

But critics warn the laws could lead to an overreach of police powers. Under the legislation police will be able to apply to judges for "crime prevention orders" that would stop people involved in serious criminal activity from activities such as using a phone or a computer.


The legislation would introduce "public safety orders" which will give senior police officers the power to ban a person deemed a risk to public safety from a public place or event for 72 hours, a right usually reserved for judges. Breaches of the orders will carry a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.

Deputy Premier and Justice Minister Troy Grant said the changes will make it "quicker and easier" for law enforcement to take action against gangs, including "bikies". "My concern is in relation to the public safety, and not in relation to the sensibility of civil libertarians," Mr Grant said. "[This is a] significant step forward".

Chocolate lovers, brace yourselves. Your favorite sweet treat is at war with a fungus that reproduces by cloning, according to a new study. The fungal disease, which poses a serious threat to cocoa plants, was previously thought to multiply sexually.

It was traditionally believed that the fungus Moniliophthora roreri - which causes frosty rot pot, a disease which has devastated cocoa plantations throughout the Americas - reproduced sexually, because it belongs to a group of fungi that produces mushrooms through sexual means.

However, researchers at Purdue University have determined that the fungus actually generates billions of cocoa pod-destroying spores through cloning - despite having two mating types and seemingly functional mating genes.

Donald Trump had come to a run-down New York City apartment on a fall day in 2003 to tape a scene for his new reality television show, "The Apprentice." Suddenly, one of the contestants cried out in surprise.

The young woman, Omarosa Manigault, had been struck in the head by a piece of plaster dislodged from the ceiling by a microphone boom. She immediately blamed the mishap on another contestant. As Trump watched, every camera in the room shifted to capture the outburst, one of those moments that are the lifeblood of reality television, a former crew member recalled.

Fast-forward to 2016: As a presidential candidate, Trump talks often about turning the cameras. He creates moments of great drama during his rallies by pointing out television cameramen and accusing them of refusing to show the size of his crowds.

"Turn the camera!" he chanted at a Michigan rally last year. The crowd of 9,000 joined him until a roar filled the room and exploded into cheers as the cameraman finally swung his camera to show the crowd. Such scenes have become commonplace.

Trump's 2016 White House run is built in part on drama and controversy, a campaign that former cast and crew members of "The Apprentice" said appeared to draw lessons from reality TV, especially one: how to grab the public's attention and keep it.

Citing risks of "near-term" terrorist attacks, the US has warned Americans against traveling anywhere in Europe and boosted security at home since twin blasts in Brussels left 31 dead and over 250 wounded, including several US citizens.

"Terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants and transportation," the State Department said in a statement.

The Department has urged its citizens to be attentive and cautious when in crowded places or using public transportation, and to be especially vigilant while attending religious holidays, festivals, and similar events that attract large numbers of people.

"We work closely with our allies and will continue to share information with our European partners that will help identify and counter terrorist threats," the department said.

Properties near a battery recycling plant in Vernon, California - just south of downtown Los Angeles - are receiving city resources to clean up lead contamination, which tests showed affects nearly every home in the area surrounding the facility.

Of the 1,008 properties tested for lead by either the California Department of Toxic Substances or Los Angeles County, only five do not require cleanup - meaning over 99 percent of them have been contaminated with the toxic metal.

Authorities plan to eventually test and clean up more than 10,000 properties, which include homes, daycare centers and schools, in a 1.7 mile (2.7 km) radius around a now-closed Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon. The neighborhoods being tested are Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Bell, Commerce, Huntington Park and Maywood.

Photos have emerged of refugee children in a camp in Greece expressing sympathy for the victims of Tuesday's bomb attacks in Brussels.

Three bombs at the city's Zaventem International Airport and Maelbeek metro station have reportedly killed at least 34 people and injured more than 180.

Striking photos show refugee children express messages of sorrow for Brussels on paper, cardboard and their own bodies.


Many people have in turn offered their support to the refugee community in the face of hateful comments as the finger of blame is pointed at them from some Twitteratti.

The tragic shooting deaths of 17-year old Trayvon Martin in 2012 and 18-year old Michael Brown in 2014 reawakened the nation to the epidemic of killings of unarmed blacks by private citizens and law enforcement officers. Sadly, the shooting of unarmed blacks seemingly continues unabated despite the numerous nation wide street protests, town hall meetings, and pledges from politicians and law enforcement agencies to address this systemic problem. According to the Washington Post, "Although black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police in 2015. What is more, the Post's analysis documents that black men were seven times more likely than white men to die by police gunfire while unarmed. Whereas in 2012, Trayvon Martin was literally the poster child for unjustified killings of unarmed blacks, today there are a litany of black victims (Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice to name a few) that can fill that role.

Given the frequency and oftentimes callousness of these killings, black activists as well as black people have begun to refer to them as modern day lynchings. Framing police killings of unarmed blacks as lynchings is decidedly an attempt to draw attention to a phenomenon that might otherwise be overlooked in our soundbite/hashtag driven news cycle. Yet, more fundamentally, labeling police killings of unarmed blacks as lynchings is an effort to imbue them with significance as well as historicize contemporary violence against black Americans. With that being said, some Americans bristle at police being associated with racist lynchers and still some assert that it is disrespectful to the memories of lynch victims to equate what they suffered with contemporary police killings. So, the question becomes, are these commentators right? More broadly, what are the implications of embracing or rejecting police killings of unarmed blacks as lynchings? And why does this discussion matter?

To be sure, police killings of unarmed black men are not lynchings, at least not in a technical sense. Nonetheless, there are deeper truths at stake in referring to the killings of unarmed black men as lynchings. In what follows, I will identify those deeper truths and resonances that black activists and the public are channeling when they invoke the phase modern day lynching to describe police killings of unarmed black people.

During the late nineteenth and early/mid twentieth centuries, approximately 5,000 Americans were lynched. Of the 5,000 or so documented lynchings, 70 percent of lynch victims were black. And so while white Americans, Mexicans Americans, Native Americans, Chinese Americans were all victims of lynchings, black Americans, by far, were the primary targets of lynch mobs.