Israeli strikes cause deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly 2 decades. Heres what we know [Video]
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Israeli strikes cause deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly 2 decades. Heres what we know [Video]

Israel launched an intense barrage of airstrikes across swathes of Lebanon on Monday in what was the deadliest day for the country since at least the 2006 war fought between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.Terror and despair gripped Lebanese residents as Israeli bombs killed more than 500 people, including dozens of children and wounded more than 1,800 others, authorities said, as residents fled their homes desperate to reach safety.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country is changing the balance of power on its northern front as its military said it struck 1,600 Hezbollah assets across Lebanon on Monday and has not ruled out the possibility of a ground invasion.Several countries have warned the strikes increase the risk of a wider regional war and have called for urgent international pressure to de-escalate the situation. Despite the scale and intensity of Mondays strikes, neither side is calling the current escalation a war.Heres what we know.What happened?On Monday, Israel intensified its air campaign on Hezbollah, launching extensive strikes targeting the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon. It marked the deadliest day of Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the 2006 war and hit multiple parts of the country, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the country near Lebanons border with Syria and where the militant group has a strong presence.Women, children and medics were among those killed and wounded, Lebanons health ministry said Monday. It is unclear how many of the casualties were civilians or Hezbollah militants, but many of the locations described by Israel as Hezbollah targets are also residential neighborhoods and villages.Israel said that among the Hezbollah targets were cruise missiles that had a reach of hundreds of kilometers, rockets, and explosive warheads, according to military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who claimed the munitions were stored in civilian homes.Residents began to flee their homes after their phones began pinging with text messages from Israel and calls from unknown numbers urging them to evacuate immediately. A popular Lebanese radio station said it was hacked and its broadcast interrupted by an Israeli evacuation warning. The Israeli military warned civilians to leave areas in which Hezbollah operates, such as those used to store weapons.Residents said they had little time to flee to safety before the bombing started. One resident in the southern city of Tyre on the coast of Lebanon said he heard Israeli warplanes raining bombs near his home from 5 a.m. local time on Monday.Classes in schools and universities were canceled across the country and some flights to and from Beirut were suspended. Many schools were closed to be used as shelters for those seeking refuge.On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired multiple rocket barrages into northern Israel, targeting the Ramat David airbase, Meggido airfield, and the Amos base, all located in the vicinity of the town of Afula in northern Israel.Later Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired rockets at the northern city of Kiryat Shmona. The Israeli military said it intercepted most of the 50 projectiles but that some had damaged buildings in the area. Israeli police said the attack caused several fires but no injuries.Meanwhile, the Israeli cabinet declared a special situation across the country, giving it the power to impose restrictions on civilian life including limits on public gatherings, an Israeli official told CNN.Were civilians targeted?Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but video shows destruction of residential areas and the large death toll reflects the scale and intensity of the strikes.The nearly 500 killed on Monday alone is roughly half the number of Lebanese killed throughout the entire 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.Israeli warplanes were also seen flying over different parts of the country late afternoon, including over Mount Lebanon where Hezbollah does not have a notable presence.Lebanons representative to the United Nations General Assembly said there was a mass exodus of people fleeing. One Lebanese NGO said more than 100,000 people had been displaced.Residents described seeing buildings collapse and towns being emptied, while images and video show roads blocked by heavy traffic in both directions as people try to flee. Reuters video from the southern suburbs of Beirut showed debris from damaged buildings and shards of glass littering the ground.We have nowhere to go, we have nothing, Mohamed Hamayda, a Syrian man displaced from Deir al-Zahrani, told Agence France-Presse news agency.Lebanons Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad said convoys of vehicles evacuating people from areas under fire had been targeted, as had two ambulances, a fire truck and a medical center. Two first responders were killed, he added.The Israeli military said it was trying to mitigate the harm to Lebanese civilians as much as possible, Hagari said. Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of long using civilians as human shields while aiming rockets at Israeli citizens.Why is Israel attacking Lebanon?Hezbollah and Israel have been in conflict for decades but the two have ramped up their cross-border attacks on each other since last October, when Israels war in Gaza began following the Palestinian militant group Hamas deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.Hezbollah is part of a Tehran-led alliance spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq that has attacked Israel and its allies since the war with Hamas began. The group has said it will continue striking Israeli targets as long as the war in Gaza goes on.The increasing escalations have once again brought the region to the edge of an all-out war.Last week, Hezbollah one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the region was left reeling after a deadly twin attack by Israel, when pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members simultaneously exploded across the country. The attack was followed by an Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated southern Beirut, which killed at least 45 people including a top commander and other senior operatives, as well as women and children.The following days saw some of the most intense exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in almost a year of war in Gaza, as the Lebanese militant group fired projectiles deeper into Israeli territory than has previously been seen and Israel fired hundreds of projectiles into southern Lebanon.It came as Israel made a new war objective to return displaced residents to their homes near the northern border after being evacuated due to Hezbollah attacks.On Monday, Netanyahu said Israel was changing the security balance of power in the north, and separately told the security cabinet the countrys aim in Lebanon is to cut Hezbollah from the war with Hamas, an Israeli official told CNN.Though weakened militarily and its secretive lines of communication exposed, Hezbollahs second-in-command has declared a new chapter in the confrontations which he called a battle without limits.Are Lebanon and Israel at war?While the airstrikes, attacks and rhetoric from both Israel and Hezbollah suggest they are in open conflict, neither side is calling the current escalation a war.The head of Israels military Herzi Halevi said it is preparing for the next phases and Netanyahu in a televised speech told the people of Lebanon that his country is not at war with them, but with Hezbollah.Iran has warned Israel of dangerous consequences following the strikes, with Irans president telling CNN on Monday that it risks tipping the region into wider conflict.There is a renewed effort from the international community to de-escalate the situation. Qatar, one of the key mediators in talks between Israel and Hamas, said the region is on the brink of the abyss and France has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to address the strikes.Former US Defense Secretary and ex-CIA chief Leon Panetta told CNN the situation has crossed a threshold and warned that were clearly walking into a much wider war.World leaders will be gathering in New York for the UN General Assembly this week and there are feverish efforts behind the scenes to convince Israel not to escalate further and launch a ground incursion into Lebanon.Though the United States is Israels closest ally and biggest weapons supplier, a senior State Department official said the U.S. and its partners are attempting to find a diplomatic solution.The U.S. believes that neither Israel nor Hezbollah are interested in a full-scale war, but a major concern is that Iran, a key backer of Hezbollah, will get involved, U.S. officials told CNN.

The benefits of a four-day workweek, according to a champion of the trend [Video]
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Productitivity

The benefits of a four-day workweek, according to a champion of the trend [Video]

Companies exploring the option of letting employees work four days a week hope to reduce job burnout and retain talent seeking a better work-life balance, according to the chief executive of an organization that promotes the idea.Video above: Many Americans think they’ll never retireThe trend is gaining traction in Australia and Europe, says Dale Whelehan, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, which coaches companies through the months-long process of shortening their employees’ work hours. Japan launched a campaign in August encouraging employers to trim work schedules to four days.American companies haven’t adopted four-day weeks as broadly, but that could change. Eight percent of full-time employees polled by Gallup in 2022 said they work four days a week, up from 5% in 2020.The Associated Press spoke with Whelehan about the reasons why companies might want to consider the change. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.Q: Why should organizations switch to a four-day workweek?A: The bigger question is, why shouldn’t they? There’s a lot of evidence to suggest we need to do something fundamentally different in the way we work. We have issues of burnout. We have a recruitment and retention crisis in many industries. We have increased stress within our workforce, leading to health issues, issues with work-life balance, work-family conflict. We have people sitting in cars for long periods, contributing to a climate crisis. We have certain parts of the population that are able to work longer hours and therefore be rewarded for that, creating further inequity within our societies. Lastly, we look at the implications that stress actually has on long-term health. We know that it’s linked to issues like cardiovascular disease, to cancer, to diabetes. So stress is something not to be taken lightly, and it’s only rising in our world of work.Q: Why is the 40-hour workweek so common?To understand where we are now, let’s take a step back into pre-industrial times. My granddad was a farmer, worked seven days a week and was required on-site all the time. It was a lot of long hours, but also he had a lot of autonomy.By the time my dad entered the workforce, he was a technician in a mechanical role. And he was expected to produce products on a large scale. As a result he wasn’t given the rewards from farming, but was given a salary. That change from my grandfather’s time to my dad’s brought about the birth of a discipline known as management. And management, led by Frederick Taylor, was looking at the relationship between fatigue and performance. A lot of scientific studies were done to try to understand that relationship, leading to the need for a five-day week as opposed to a six-day week. By the time I entered into the workforce, we no longer had a very physical, laborious workforce. It’s highly cognitive and highly emotional.The fundamental physiological difference is that our brain as a muscle can’t withstand the same level of hours of work as our muscles in our body might be able to. So it’s that mismatch between an outdated work structure of 40 hours, rooted in very physical labor, and what is now a highly cognitive workforce.Q: How can companies increase revenue while employees work fewer hours?A: The reduction of working time brings about productivity gains by people having naturally more time to rest and recover, allowing them to come back into a new week more engaged and well-rested. That’s one way in which you see productivity gains. The second is the fundamental shift that organizations undergo while transitioning to a four-day week.When we work with organizations, we use what’s called a 100-80-100 principle. So 100% pay for 80% time for 100% output. We ask organizations to design their trials in that sort of philosophy: How can you keep your business at the same level or improve while working less? The fundamental change we see is, let’s move away from thinking about productivity as how much time it takes to get something done, versus focusing on what outcomes we know drive businesses forward.Q: How does a four-day workweek support equity?A: Disproportionately high amounts of part-time workers are female. As a result, women typically take a reduction in pay. That’s despite the fact that, based on the evidence that we’ve seen in trials, those part-time workers are producing the same output as their five-day-week counterparts.In four-day week trials, everyone embarks on the journey. So we see men taking on greater levels of responsibilities in household or parenting responsibilities.The alternative situation is women take part-time work, reduce their pay. Men have to work longer hours at a higher salaries and more stressful jobs in order to make up the deficit. … It just creates this vicious cycle.Q: What kinds of work could potentially be dropped to increase productivity?A: Meetings. We are addicted to meetings. It’s just gotten worse and worse since the pandemic. I think a lot of that comes from a culture of indecisiveness. There’s a sense of not wanting to make decisions, and therefore delaying the process or involving many people in the process so that everyone has a responsibility, and thus no one has responsibility. And that is not good when it comes to the greater issue of productivity.