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Medan, Indonesia – Ade Andrian, operational manager of the Medan branch of the humanitarian organisation Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C), used to visit McDonald’s at least once a month with his family.

“My favourite order was the family meal,” Andrian told Al Jazeera. “Or if I went to the drive-through, I would always order ice cream.”

But since last month, Andrian has heeded calls across Indonesia to boycott the Golden Arches, along with all Israeli products and goods from Israel’s allies.

“I have not been to McDonald’s since we found out that McDonald’s Israel had been providing assistance and discounts to the Israeli military,” he said. “What is happening here?”

Indonesians began boycotting McDonald’s and other businesses in mid-October after McDonald’s Israel announced on social media that it had handed out thousands of free meals to the Israeli military amid its war with Hamas.

The announcement prompted several Indonesian organisations, including Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), the United People Front (FUB) and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), to call for a boycott of McDonald’s and other businesses perceived to be pro-Israel, including Starbucks and Burger King.

The boycott comes despite McDonald’s Indonesia, which is owned by PT Rekso Nasional Food, last week announcing that it had “deployed humanitarian assistance valued at IDR [Indonesian rupiahs] 1,5 billion [$96,000]” to support Palestinians.

While McDonald’s is synonymous with the United States, most of its restaurants worldwide are locally owned, and franchisees in numerous Muslim countries have expressed support for Palestinians and pledged money to support relief efforts in Gaza.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has long been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and does not have an Israeli embassy.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pressed US President Joe Biden to do more to end “atrocities” in Gaza, and the enclave’s Indonesia Hospital was built in 2011 with donations from Indonesians following a funding drive by MER-C.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of Indonesians, including Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi and the former Jakarta governor and presidential hopeful Anies Baswedan, gathered at the National Monument in Jakarta to express solidarity with Palestinians and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Due to security fears, several McDonald’s and Starbucks branches near the monument were closed on the day of the demonstration.

Last week, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Indonesia’s top Muslim clerical body, issued a fatwa making it haram to “support Israeli aggression against Palestine or parties supporting Israel, either directly or indirectly”.

While the extent of public support for the boycotts is unclear, a branch of McDonald’s in Medan that usually does a roaring trade appeared much quieter than usual when visited by Al Jazeera on Tuesday and Thursday.

Staff there told Al Jazeera they had not been experiencing the usual lunchtime and evening rushes and they suspected the boycott calls were to blame.

It is not only McDonald’s that appears to be experiencing a drop off in business.

A Starbucks located at Focal Point Mall in Medan, where staff are usually rushed off their feet, has been almost deserted in recent weeks, an employee told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

“We have noticed that it has been much quieter than usual, although we can’t say for sure why that is,” the employee said. “It could be because of a range of factors like the fact that we don’t have any promotions on at the moment. We don’t know, but no customers have asked us about the boycott yet.”

Starbucks, which operates a similar franchise model as McDonald’s, last month criticised its union for posting “Solidarity with Palestine” on social media above an image of a Hamas bulldozer knocking down a fence during the group’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Starbucks Indonesia did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, McDonald’s Corporation, which is based in the US state of Illinois, said that it was “dismayed by the disinformation and inaccurate reports regarding our position in response to the conflict in the Middle East”.

McDonald’s said it does not fund or support any governments involved in the conflict and any actions by local business partners were made independently without the fast food giant’s consent or approval.

“Our hearts are with all of the communities and families impacted by this crisis,” the company said.

“We abhor violence of any kind and firmly stand against hate speech, and we will always proudly open our doors to everyone. We are doing everything we can to ensure the safety of our people in the region while supporting the communities where we operate.”

McDonald’s Indonesia told Al Jazeera in a statement that it was “unwavering in its commitment to uphold the values of humanity and wants to take an active role in relief efforts in Gaza”.

“We at McDonald’s Indonesia hope for a swift achievement of peace so that there will be no more casualties, especially among children and women, as a result of this conflict,” the company said.

For Indonesians like Andrian, though, spending money on brands associated with Israel remains out of the question.

“We need to ask ourselves who businesses are supporting,” he said. “I support the freedom of Palestine and humanitarian assistance to Palestine.”

Early one morning in the spring of 1969, Jeremy Nobel went downstairs to the living room of his family home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to get ready for school.

There, he found his father sitting on the sofa, looking as white as a sheet and clearly in pain. He instructed Nobel, who was 15 years old at the time, to wake his mother and have her call for help.

The police soon arrived. They slipped an oxygen mask on his father’s face, loaded him onto a stretcher and whisked him off to the local medical centre.

That was the last time Nobel saw his father alive. He died of a heart attack at 47 years old.

After his father’s death, Nobel felt despondent, rudderless. Though he kept up with his school activities and friends, Nobel experienced what he calls spiritual or existential loneliness. He questioned his self-worth and how he could lead a safe and secure life.

He did not talk at all about his father’s death with his friends. “The loneliness was below the surface,” he said.

Looking back, Nobel sees that day in 1969 as pivotal to who he is today: a primary-care physician, public health practitioner and faculty member at Harvard Medical School. But he wishes he had received guidance at the time to help him cope with the loneliness he felt.

Now, more than 50 years later, he has written a book to do just that for others. Published last month, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection aims to unravel how loneliness can affect physical and mental health — and how it can be addressed.

A national epidemic

The book comes at a time when health experts are raising the alarm on loneliness. In May, the United States Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, released an advisory highlighting loneliness as an “epidemic” and a public health “crisis”.

The advisory defined loneliness as a “distressing experience” arising from “perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections”. It added, however, that loneliness is subjective, happening when there is a discrepancy between “an individual’s preferred and actual experiences”.

Still, the Surgeon General said loneliness is “more widespread than other major health issues in the US”, including diabetes and obesity.

Even before COVID-19, about half of American adults said they were experiencing loneliness, the advisory explained. The situation only got worse during the pandemic, when many people were cut off from friends and family and lost work or loved ones.

Though most people feel lonely sometimes, a chronic sense of isolation can have vast health ramifications, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death.

A Meta-Gallup poll from October indicated that the problem was worldwide. Nearly one in four people, surveyed from across 140 countries, identified as “very” or “fairly lonely”.

“Loneliness is not an illness or a disease. It’s a brain state, it’s a mood, it’s an emotion,” Nobel said.

“The human experience of loneliness can be perhaps best viewed as a biologic signal that there’s something you need, just as thirst is a biologic signal that you need hydration. It’s very good that we’re thirsty, and yet if you become toxically thirsty or dehydrated, you could die from that.”

Nobel has studied loneliness for almost 20 years. He even developed a course on the subject, entitled Loneliness and Public Health, and founded and leads a nonprofit that helps address loneliness through community programming.

His interest in social isolation began in the early 1980s when he was working as a primary care physician in Boston.

As he treated patients of different ages and backgrounds, he started to notice how loneliness can have direct effects on other aspects of their healthcare. They skipped taking their prescribed medications, for instance, or did not schedule follow-up visits.

“Loneliness changes how we behave,” Nobel said. “Our motivation for self-care, taking medications in a timely and appropriate way, partnering with the healthcare delivery system in effective ways — that ability and the motivation to do that becomes weaker as people become lonely.”

While many experts agree that loneliness is a serious health problem, some question calling it an epidemic.

Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, said that “epidemic” implies a significant spike in loneliness. He explained there is not strong enough evidence to support that claim.

“Studies of loneliness are all over the map, and the trends over time are hard to assess,” he said.

“If we call it an epidemic, we signal that it requires extra attention and also that it requires less attention when it ebbs. I think it’s more accurate, and more helpful, to define it as a durable health problem, one that is tied up in modern life and has been for ages.”

Creativity fosters connection

However loneliness is labelled, organisations and individuals are adopting different strategies to tackle it.

The Surgeon General’s report outlines a framework to advance social connections. It includes strengthening community infrastructure like parks and libraries, educating healthcare providers and reducing the potential harms of socialising online.

For Nobel, part of the solution lies in the arts. His interest in that approach was piqued after visiting a 2002 art show. The pictures on display were from children in New York City, depicting what they had experienced during the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Nobel noticed that even if the young artists could not discuss their feelings, they could talk about their art. Studies show that creativity can help foster social connections.

“One of the ways creative arts can be healing is because it allows people to re-explore various things consciously and unconsciously that may be holding them back and causing loneliness,” Nobel said.

After the art show, he felt a renewed passion to explore his creative side, including through poetry. Art allowed him to identify and shape his own story. “I couldn’t have told this story about my dad as few as 10 years ago, but you write it enough, you explore it enough.”

The link between arts and health also intrigued student Diana Shaari, currently a senior at Harvard College.

Shaari experienced loneliness firsthand during her first year of college in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic moved classes online, restricted campus visitors and closed most school buildings.

As a freshman, she knew no one on campus, and it was her first time living away from her parents. It was a solitary experience for Shaari, who describes herself as someone who thrives on social interaction.

“Every day you would wake up by yourself. You wouldn’t run into kids going to and from class. If I wanted to, I could spend an entire week or even more without seeing anyone,” Shaari said. “That all contributed to these overall feelings of loneliness. Also, just being with your own thoughts for too long is never great.”

To counter the social isolation she and her fellow students were facing, Shaari teamed up with Nobel and others to pilot a workshop at Harvard College in 2021 called Colors & Connection.

It was the first in-person event she was able to attend since starting college and her most memorable, she said. The workshop combines art-making and conversations to bring people together. It has since expanded to 31 campuses across the country.

“It was almost therapeutic,” she said. “There are certain universal elements to art and artistic expression that are really key in allowing people to connect and to feel connected with others.”

The pandemic may have exacerbated loneliness, but Nobel said there is a bright side.

Loneliness often comes with shame and stigma, which can prevent people from seeking help. But during the pandemic, loneliness was ubiquitous, Nobel said — allowing people to speak up about it more easily.

“We had a common experience of isolation. We were lonely together,” Nobel said. “That opened the window to talk about loneliness in a very healthy way.”

A five-year-old girl whose body was found encased in concrete in the US 35 years ago has finally been identified, police say – and her mother and a live-in boyfriend have been charged with her murder.

DNA tests and a crucial tip given earlier this year finally gave officers the breakthrough they needed, as they named the young victim – known for decades as Baby Jane Doe – as Kenyatta Odom.

She was killed in her hometown of Albany, Georgia, before her body was dumped 110 miles away outside the city of Waycross, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Jason Seacrist said.

The little girl was discovered among broken furniture and other rubbish left in woods on 21 December 1988, by a man who stumbled upon a TV cabinet filled with concrete.

He called the Ware County Sheriff’s Office, with officers arriving on the same day and starting an investigation that would remain largely stalled for more than three decades.

“Baby Jane Doe is no longer unnamed, is no longer unknown,” Mr Seacrist said.

“The baby that was thrown out into a trash pile has been identified, and we’re working to bring justice to her.”

The girl’s mother, 56-year-old Evelyn Odom, and Ulyster Sanders, her boyfriend at the time, were arrested on Thursday and remained in custody on Monday.

A grand jury indicted both on charges of felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, concealing a death and other counts.

Sheriff Carl James, who was one of the detectives sent to the scene that day, said he “really was not prepared for what we were about to find”.

Officers discovered a box concealed in the concrete with a duffle bag. Inside that bag was a child’s body wrapped in a blanket.

Mr James said the case always held a special interest for him and that, over the decades, investigators followed hundreds of leads and tips, most of them leading nowhere.

Decades passed with authorities unable to match the remains to any missing children and only a copy of The Albany Herald newspaper found nearby giving a clue to the child’s origins.

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In December last year, officers once again made a public appeal for any information, with a reward offer of $5,000 (£4,070) from an anonymous donor.

Then a woman called in January this year with a critical tip.

“She knew that there had been a child who had gone missing and that her mother said that the child had gone to live with her father,” Mr Seacrist said.

“This person never really believed that story.”

That tip helped investigators to finally identify young Kenyatta and bring charges in her death.

He wouldn’t comment on a possible motive or how the girl died, although news outlets reported the indictment said the child died after her feet and legs were submerged in hot water.

District Attorney Greg Edwards said: “We believe that there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that will lead to justice being found for Kenyatta.”

Arakan Army says it seizes military posts in two locations in Rakhine state in western Myanmar as residents in Chin state flee fighting to India.

An ethnic armed group has carried out attacks on border guard outposts in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, and fighting has erupted in Chin state, sending thousands of residents fleeing to neighbouring India.

Myanmar’s military rulers are facing their biggest test since taking power in a 2021 coup due to an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups that started an offensive in late October. The Three Brotherhood Alliance has seized more than 80 military bases and seized large caches of military weapons and ammunition.

One of the allied groups, the Arakan Army, which is fighting for greater autonomy in Rakhine State, seized posts in the Rathedaung and Minbya areas, about 200km (124 miles) apart, AA spokesman Khine Thu Kha said on Monday.

“We have conquered some posts, and fighting is continuing in some other places,” he told local media.

Gunfire broke out before dawn, followed by hours of artillery bombardment, residents said, with the military seen blocking entrances to the area and reinforcing administrative buildings.

Richard Horsey, senior Myanmar adviser for the Crisis Group think tank, said the military has experience fighting in Rakhine state but could struggle as enemy forces probe for weaknesses in multiple areas.

“If combat persists, it will open a significant new front for the regime, which is already overstretched,” he said.

“It will be hard for the regime to focus their efforts across all fronts.”

Civilians flee

Fighting also broke out in Chin State, which borders India, when fighters attacked two military camps, according to an Indian official and two sources with knowledge of the assault.

About 5,000 people from Myanmar crossed into India’s Mizoram state as a result of the fighting, said James Lalrinchhana, the deputy commissioner of a district on the Myanmar border.

There was no immediate comment from Myanmar’s military rulers on the latest fighting.

The alliance, which also includes the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, is part of a coalition of seven armed ethnic organisations that maintain close ties with China and have bases or territories near the country’s borders.

Myanmar officials have sounded the alarm, saying, “If the government does not effectively manage the incidents happening in the border region, the country will be split into various parts.”

Myint Swe, Myanmar’s appointed president, told a national defence and security council meeting this month, “It is necessary to carefully control this issue.”

NewsFeed

The UK’s Home Secretary, Suella Braverman has been sacked over her stance on pro-Palestine marches and criticism of the police for being too lenient with protesters.