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After intercepting the Madleen, a civilian ship carrying humanitarian aid with a number of high-profile passengers on board, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the activists will soon be on their way home. The boat, which was headed for the Gaza Strip and launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was carrying Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and France’s representative to the European Parliament, Rima Hassan, among others. On Monday, Israels Foreign Ministry posted on X: [The vessel] carrying Greta Thunberg and the other so-called celebrities is continuing its journey toward an Israeli port. Upon arrival, arrangements will be made for their return to their respective home countries.” Greta Thunberg [Photo: Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images] Israel plans to bring the detained activists to Ashdod port and then through a quick deportation process via Ben-Gurion Airport, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The intercepted ship’s passengers and crew were detained, and then taken to Israel. Israel’s Defense Ministry said any aid on the ship would be sent to Gaza, however, it would not allow anyone to break its naval blockade of Gaza, aimed at preventing Hamas from importing arms, according to CBS News. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), which organized the boat’s effort, said the Israeli military had unlawfully boarded and “attacked” the U.K.-flagged civilian ship on its way to deliver aid to Gaza, surrounding it with quadcopters, jamming communications, and playing disturbing sounds over the radio, reported CNN. Questions and concern about the whereabouts of the ship’s passengers escalated after Thunberg released a video widely shared on social media, including the The Independent’s TikTok account, in which Thunberg says: “If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel. I urge all my friends, family, and comrades to put pressure on the Swedish government to release me and the others as soon as possible.” The attempt to deliver aid to Gaza comes after more than 600 days of war and Israel’s 11-week blockade of all aid, which by many accounts is forcing about 2.1 million people into a hunger crisis. People in Gaza are starving,” the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said recently. “This demands the urgent opening of all crossings and allowing unimpeded access for humanitarian organizations to deliver aid at scale, through multiple routes.”
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E-Commerce
Frontline workers, those non-desk workers who do some of the most demanding jobs, don’t always feel connected to the company they work for. In fact, many say their team has an entirely distinct culture of its own and that communication with their company leaves a lot to be desired.According to a new global survey of 7,550 workers from Workvivo by Zoom, while frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce, many say they don’t get the recognition they deserve. Frontline workers know how essential their duties are. In fact, 49% say they feel their impact is greater than that of their office colleagues. They just don’t feel recognized for it. Likewise, 40% say their company doesn’t care about them as a person. A separate corporate culture Overall, according to the new findings, frontline workers feel largely disconnected to in-office culture. A staggering 87% said that their company’s culture doesn’t apply to frontline workers. Half of frontline workers feel that their team has its own specific culture that doesn’t mirror that of the company’s overall vibe. And a huge chunk of frontline workers feel so disconnected from their company they don’t even know who runs it. Nearly half (46%) said they don’t know who their CEO is. One glaring reason why frontline workers feel so disconnected from in-office culture seems to be a lack of communication. According to the report, 38% say they have feedback for higher-ups, but no way of communicating it. Forty-two percent say that the leaders at their company aren’t good at reaching out to their team. Forty-eight percent say their company’s communication feels irrelevant to frontline workers. Connecting with frontline staff Another recent report by Staffbase similarly found a communication disconnect among frontline workers. The research found only 9% of non-desk workers were very satisfied with internal communication. And it seems to be an issue that leads to overall workplace unhappiness and drives turnover. Sixty-three percent of employees who are considering leaving their position say poor internal communication is a factor. Meanwhile, most frontline workers aren’t checked out. In fact, they want more communication. The latest report found that 69% of frontline workers want to better understand their company’s decisions. Essentially, those on the frontlines want clear communication, to feel connected, and to be heard by the company they represent. Our research shows that frontline employees feel disconnected not because they care less, but because they are engaged less, said Gideon Pridor, CMO & chief storyteller at Workvivo, by Zoom in a press release. To close this critical gap, organizations need to recognize frontline contributions in real time, communicate in ways that are relevant and accessible, and provide clear and visible paths for growth.
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E-Commerce
For those whove been in the situation where we unlock our phone and start futzing around on our home screen, only to find ourselves looking up at the clock an hour later with a sense of shame and regret, fear not: science has your back, according to research published and presented at the human-computer interaction conference CHI. Researchers at the University of Washington, Columbia University, and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan followed 17 U.S. Android users for seven days. They captured a screenshot every five seconds, then paired those 34,000-plus images with real-time intention surveys, daily regret ratings, and follow-up interviews. An AI model automatically labeled each screenshot and categorized them into seven activity types, including direct messaging, search, or browsing an algorithmic feed. This data allowed researchers to map user reactions and their levels of regret for each type of phone activity. There are all of these products that people say they value and choose to use every day, and yet they also talk about how frustrated they feel by some of their own usage habits, says Alexis Hiniker, an academic at the University of Washington and one of the coauthors of the paper. Theyll talk about deleting things or trying to quitwe were trying to dig into what’s going on there. The findings suggested were a pretty regretful bunch. Inside social apps, viewing algorithm-recommended posts and reading comment threads topped the regret rankings, even beating subscription-feed browsing. In contrast, direct communication and active search were the activities users regretted the least. Time played a role too. Longer sessions, and those that drifted from initial intentions (often from send a message to just scrolling), pushed regret scores higher, though still lower than sessions that began as pure browsing. Habit-driven social media checking was pretty regrettable for a lot of people, says Hiniker. They didnt necessarily mind if they were using social media to do something totally unproductive, just to help them relax or just enjoy themselves. But they felt a lot better when that was an intentional choice and they chose to go there for some entertainment, as opposed to not really thinking about what theyre doing and just picking up their phone out of habit. The findings reflect poorly on big tech companies, which have made fortunes by shifting people from purposeful engagement with one another to mindless scrolling, pushing users toward algorithmically dictated feedsthe type most disliked by users. But Hiniker believes theres hope for platforms that take a different path. We desperately need social platforms that really are trying to support people in engaging with others, rather than extracting as much of their attention as possible and directing them to this recommended and sponsored content that they never chose to follow, she says.
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E-Commerce
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