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A truck carries humanitarian aid across a temporary pier to deliver aid off the Gaza Strip.
Hard Numbers: Aid struggles to reach Gaza, Trump previews "Unified Reich," Biden takes aim at gas prices, Heatwave in Mexico kills howler monkeys
14: Just 14 aid trucks have reportedly reached Gaza via a US-built floating pier since it became operational last week. US officials hoped the pier would initially facilitate the transfer of up to 90, and eventually 150, aid trucks per day. Meanwhile, as concerns over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza continue to grow, UNRWA has suspended food distributions in Rafah due to a lack of supplies.
30: A 30-second video posted to Donald Trump's Truth Social account imagines a world in which another Trump presidency results in an economic boom driven by a "Unified Reich." Hold up, a WHAT? Trump took down the vid after a backlash about using the German word, which means "realm" or "empire" but which was mostly recently, and infamously, employed by the Nazis to describe their reign over Germany from 1933-1945. This isn't the first time Trump has run into the "using Nazi rhetoric" problem during this campaign. Last December, he warned of immigrants "poisoning the blood of our country." Critics pointed out that this echoed the language of Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf," which Trump later said he had never read.
1 million: On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced it’s releasing one million barrels of gasoline from a Northeast reserve to lower prices at the pump for Americans ahead of the summer driving season – and the November election. Recent polling shows President Joe Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in five of six key swing states.
85: It’s brutally hot in Mexico at the moment. The heat has led dozens of howler monkeys to drop dead from trees in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. At least 85 of the primates — known for their distinctive and loud howls — have been found dead in recent weeks, according to local media.Women and children wait for food distribution from the United Nations World Food Programme in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan, back in 2017.
South Sudan customs dispute taxes a long-suffering population
Even as three-quarters of South Sudan’s people face starvation, a squabble between the government and the UN over import taxes is leaving vital aid trucks stuck at the border.
The background: South Sudan’s trade ministry ordered this week that all goods trucks entering the East African country must pay a $300 tax. The measure was meant to ensure that the government got its share of revenue from imports that are often underbilled or misrepresented. There was supposed to be a carveout for UN aid vehicles, but if so, officials at the Ugandan border didn’t get the memo – at least not yet.
The bigger background: South Sudan is one of the world’s newest countries – and one of its poorest. After coming into existence in 2011 following years of war with the Sudanese government, it fell into its own civil war, which killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The legacy of that conflict – along with frequent natural disasters – persists: Seven million of the country’s 12 million people are facing hunger in the coming months. The harrowing civil war in Sudan, which just entered its second year, has exacerbated things, driving an estimated 500,000 people across the border into South Sudan, straining the country’s resources further.