Wednesday briefing: Updates on Gaza’s main hospital

Babies remain in Al-Shifa hospital as Israel closes in

Al-Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital complex, has been cut off from electricity for days. Hospital officials warn that the lives of about three dozen premature babies are at risk now that the incubators needed to keep them alive are without power.

As the fighting moved closer to Al-Shifa last week, many of the more than 60,000 people sheltering in the hospital complex fled, Gaza’s health ministry said. But the babies’ fragile health makes it difficult to move them, complicating Israel’s goal of clearing the civilian complex before its troops try to enter. Israeli and U.S. officials say the hospital houses an underground Hamas command center, a claim Hamas and hospital officials reject.

The Israeli military said late Monday it was working to provide mobile incubators and respirators to help evacuate the babies. The Times was unable to reach Gaza’s hospital director or health ministry to ask about Israel’s offer, the details of which remained unclear.

Here’s the latest.

Convince a watching world: Israel released videos from Gaza’s main children’s hospital that it said showed weapons and explosives found in the medical center and in a basement room where the army said hostages were being held. The claims could not be independently verified, and Gaza’s Health Ministry said the basement rooms shown were used as shelters “for those fleeing airstrikes.”

Global climate efforts are just ‘baby steps’, UN says

Countries are taking only “baby steps” to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, a senior UN official said, summarizing a new report on the pledges made by the world’s governments so far.

If every country did what it promised to combat global warming — a big if — emissions would increase 9 percent between now and 2030, compared to 2010 levels, the report said. The figure was slightly better than last year, but such findings are likely to be at the center of the debate in Dubai this month during the UN’s annual global climate negotiations.

Related: A separate study from researchers in Saudi Arabia found that the country could face an “existential crisis” – a threat to food and water supplies, along with the health of religious pilgrims during the Hajj – if warming continues would occur at the level expected if each country met its climate targets.

Russia pardons a man linked to a murdered journalist

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has pardoned Sergei Khajikurbanov, who was convicted of organizing the murder of a journalist, in exchange for his services in Ukraine, his lawyer said yesterday. It was the latest in a series of such reprieves for high-profile criminals in Russia.

The journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, had become one of the most praised in Russia for her reporting on human rights abuses during the wars in Chechnya in the 1990s. She was shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building in 2006, sending shockwaves through Russia and abroad and highlighting the growing dangers of reporting in the country.

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Asiatic-Pacific

Lost: one tool bag. Where: about 400 kilometers above Earth.

Two astronauts forgot the bag this month after their first spacewalk to perform maintenance on the International Space Station.

It won’t be alone. The European Space Agency said in September that more than 35,000 pieces of debris, including tools such as grease guns and bolts, were floating above our heads. They are tracked so they don’t damage satellites.

When the map itself is the treasure

Thirty years ago Neil Sunderland started collecting cards. He collected more than 130 from the 15th century. Now that multimillion-dollar treasure has been digitized Oculi Mundi (the Eyes of the World), an online archive overseen by his daughter Helen Sunderland-Cohen.

“There is an incredibly wide range of people around the world who are interested in maps because they are such extraordinary objects,” says Sunderland-Cohen. “Some people just like to admire them. And they spark all kinds of imaginative stories, like ‘Treasure Island’ or the map at the beginning of ‘The Lord of the Rings.’”

The maps are artifacts of people’s attempts to determine where they were and where they were going in the time before the advent of GPS and telephones that could tell us exactly where we are. Each card often has its own story. Perhaps it was created by a now famous artist like Albrecht Dürer, represents the first known map of a particular area, or was created using technology that was new at the time.

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That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. – Justin

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