Tech
What Happens When You Can’t Get a Death Certificate in Gaza
In Gaza, registering a death was once—as in most places around the world—a relatively simple administrative task. A body was brought to a hospital, where medical staff issued the necessary paperwork with the civil authorities. This allowed families to update civil records, settle inheritance matters, access bank accounts, apply for assistance, or secure legal guardianship of children.
But amid heavy Israeli bombardment, detention of untold Palestinians, and repeated mass displacement, this all changed. Since October 2023, the systems that identify bodies, record deaths, and settle accounts have been pushed toward collapse. “It is an unfolding legal crisis,” said Ahmed Masoud, head of the legal department at the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared. “Thousands of cases now sit in a legal gray zone.”
Many of these families suspect that their relatives may have been killed but cannot prove it in a way the law recognizes. Other families have seen their relatives taken by Israeli forces but have not been able to confirm that they are detained, or where they are being held, leaving their fate unknown.
Research suggests the problem is widespread. The Palestine Reporting Lab, WIRED’s reporting partner on this story, worked with the Institute for Social and Economic Progress (ISEP), a Palestinian research group, to examine the impact of Gaza’s missing persons crisis. Based on a survey of 600 people across 53 locations in Gaza, ISEP’s best estimate is that more than 51,000 people may have gone missing at some point since October 2023, with roughly 14,000 to 15,000 still unaccounted for.
According to ISEP, over two fifths—42.9 percent—of households with a missing person say they have struggled to obtain a death certificate. Roughly the same percentage report that the missing person was the family’s main breadwinner. Wives of missing men are often unable to withdraw money from bank accounts or access legal documents, pensions, and other benefits in the husband’s name.
The numbers are overwhelming. Among Gazans reporting a missing household member, 71.4 percent said the disappearance has affected their rights and legal entitlements. Over one in four (28.6 percent) reported difficulties establishing guardianship of a child, while 14.3 percent faced difficulties getting married or divorced. Others encountered financial barriers: A third (33.3 percent) of households said they could not access bank accounts associated with the missing relative, nearly one in five (19.1 percent) reported being unable to access aid reserved for widows or children who have lost at least one parent, and nearly one in 10 (9.5 percent) said they could not access an inheritance. (To estimate the total number of missing people in Gaza, ISEP used quota sampling to survey a representative pool of Gazans in 53 locations across the strip and cross-tabulated the results with existing pre- and postwar data on the Gazan population and household size.)
Samah Al-Shareif, a lawyer at the Gaza-based Women’s Affairs Center, which provides legal support for families, says the group has seen hundreds of cases where a parent couldn’t access aid for themselves or their children because of missing paperwork. She described a woman whose husband had retired before the war. The couple was relying on his pension. But when he disappeared, the woman found herself unable to access his bank account or receive his pension. “The bank has refused to deal with her,” Al-Shareif said, “insisting that she either get a death certificate or present her husband in person.” The woman has been left without income or financial security, despite the husband’s lawful entitlements.
Children whose parents are missing are perhaps even more vulnerable. Nedal Jarada heads Al Amal Institute for Orphans, one of Gaza’s longest-standing social welfare organizations. He says that the group has found itself hobbled by the lack of documentation. Some children believe that their parents have been killed, but their relatives cannot prove it; others simply do not know where a parent is. Jarada calls them “de facto orphans,” a category that has emerged since October 2023.
Tech
The Best LED Skincare Deals I’ve Seen This Mother’s Day Are at Megelin
The red-light therapy market shows no signs of slowing down. According to Fortune Business Insights, the industry is projected to grow from $1.21 billion in 2026 to $1.76 billion by 2034. Riding that wave is Hong Kong-based Megelin, which is currently running its largest Mother’s Day sale yet, offering major discounts on most of its LED devices and select electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) tools.
I’ve been testing the Duo Lux Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask for the past two weeks as part of a six-week trial. While I’m still forming my final verdict, I already have some early thoughts (more on that below). In the meantime, check out the standout deals because some of these discounts might be too good to pass up while they’re live.
This Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask Is $270 Off
The Megelin Duo Lux Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask combines 660-nanometer (nm) and 1,064-nm lasers with a 660-nm LED light for a more intensive treatment. The brand claims it can help smooth wrinkles, soothe inflammation, reduce pigmentation, and minimize redness. After two weeks of testing, I haven’t noticed any visible changes in my skin just yet, though to its credit, I also haven’t experienced any irritation or adverse reactions.
My biggest issue was the initial unboxing experience: The mask had a strong chemical odor that reminded me of formaldehyde. For a device that sits against your face and doesn’t have a mouth opening, that’s not exactly reassuring. Wiping it down and letting it air out significantly reduced the smell, but it definitely made for a less-than-ideal first impression.
That said, the mask itself is extremely comfortable. The soft, flexible silicone contours well to the face, and the dual-strap design keeps it secure without feeling restrictive. Treatments are quick and easy to customize thanks to four different modes, all controlled through an attached remote. And because it’s cordless, you’re free to move around while using it.
At full price, it’s a steep investment compared to its competitors. But with the current $270 discount, it becomes a much more compelling option, especially given the added laser therapy component, which isn’t as common at this price point. I’ll continue testing through the full six-week period before sharing my final verdict, but if you’re tempted to take advantage of the sale now, Megelin does offer a 60-day money-back guarantee and a one-year warranty.
Tech
‘Orbs,’ ‘Saucers,’ and ‘Flashes’ on the Moon: Pentagon Drops New UFO Files
Trump first teased the release in February in a Truth Social post. The Pentagon coordinated the release in partnership with the White House, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the Energy Department, NASA, and the FBI. Many of the files in this new drop contain documents that are already publicly available. However, some versions of these known documents in the new files contain more pages, or fewer redactions, than previously released versions.
More than 60 percent of Americans believe that the government is concealing information about UAP, according to YouGov, while 40 percent think UAP are likely alien in origin, according to Gallup. Congress has held hearings into whether there’s been a decades-long program to recover “non-human” technologies, yet evidence remains elusive.
Courtesy of the US Department of Defense
“If it’s just more blobby photos or redacted documents that don’t have any details in them, it’s more of the same,” Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester who studies the search for alien life, says of the new files. “What we need are actual scientific results from the investigations that should have been done if the most extraordinary claims being made are true.”
The document drop follows a week of high-profile discussions of aliens, including Stephen Colbert’s interview with former President Barack Obama, released on Wednesday. Obama cast doubt on government cover-ups about aliens by joking that “some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie with the alien and sent it to his girlfriend.”
Courtesy of the US Department of Defense
Members of the Artemis II crew also second-guessed the idea of a vast government-wide conspiracy to hide the discovery of extraterrestrial life in a discussion with The Daily this week.
“Do you realize that if we found alien life out there, and we came back and reported on it, NASA would never have a budget issue for the rest of eternity?” said Reid Weisman, the commander of Artemis II. “So trust me.”
Victor Glover, the astronaut who piloted the mission, added: “Why would we hide that from you?”
Tech
Nick Bostrom Has a Plan for Humanity’s ‘Big Retirement’
Philosopher Nick Bostrom recently posted a paper, where he postulated that a small chance of AI annihilating all humans might be worth the risk, because advanced AI might relieve humanity of “its universal death sentence.” That upbeat gamble is quite a leap from his previous dark musings on AI, which made him a doomer godfather. His 2014 book Superintelligence was an early examination of AI’s existential risk. One memorable thought experiment: An AI tasked with making paper clips winds up destroying humanity because all those resource-needy people are an impediment to paper clip production. His more recent book, Deep Utopia, reflects a shift in his focus. Bostrom, who leads Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, dwells on the “solved world” that comes if we get AI right.
STEVEN LEVY: Deep Utopia is more optimistic than your previous book. What changed for you?
NICK BOSTROM: I call myself a fretful optimist. I am very excited about the potential for radically improving human life and unlocking possibilities for our civilization. That’s consistent with the real possibility of things going wrong.
You wrote a paper with a striking argument: Since we’re all going to die anyway, the worst that can happen with AI is that we die sooner. But if AI works out, it might extend our lives, maybe indefinitely.
That paper explicitly looks at only one aspect of this. In any given academic paper, you can’t address life, the universe, and the meaning of everything. So let’s just look at this little issue and try to nail that down.
That isn’t a little issue.
I guess I’ve been irked by some of the arguments made by doomers who say that if you build AI, you’re going to kill me and my children and how dare you. Like the recent book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Even more probable is that if nobody builds it, everyone dies! That’s been the experience for the last several 100,000 years.
But in the doomer scenario everybody dies and there’s no more people being born. Big difference.
I have obviously been very concerned with that. But in this paper, I’m looking at a different question, which is, what would be best for the currently existing human population like you and me and our families and the people in Bangladesh? It does seem like our life expectancy would go up if we develop AI, even if it is quite risky.
In Deep Utopia you speculate that AI could create incredible abundance, so much that humanity might have a huge problem with finding purpose. I live in the United States. We’re a very rich country, but our government, ostensibly with support of the people, has policies that deny services to the poor and distribute rewards to the rich. I think that even if AI was able to provide abundance for everyone, we would not supply it to everyone.
You might be right. Deep Utopia takes as its starting point the postulation that everything goes extremely well. If we do a reasonably good job on governance, everybody gets a share. There is quite a deep philosophical question of what a good human life would look like under these ideal circumstances.
The meaning of life is something you hear a lot about in Woody Allen movies and maybe in the philosophers community. I’m worried more about the wherewithal to support oneself and get a stake in this abundance.
The book is not only about meaning. That’s one out of a bunch of different values that it considers. This could be a wonderful emancipation from the drudgery that humans have been subjected to. If you have to give up, say, half of your waking hours as an adult just to make ends meet, doing some work you don’t enjoy and that you don’t believe in, that’s a sad condition. Society is so used to it that we’ve invented all kinds of rationalizations around it. It’s like a partial form of slavery.
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