Hamas on Wednesday released the remains of what it said were four Israeli hostages, the last in a group of eight former captives and 25 living ones who were slated for repatriation in the first phase of a fragile cease-fire deal between Israel and the militant group. Hamas’s military wing said the remains belonged to … Read more
An obscure but influential program that gave detailed public health information to about half of the world’s nations will fold as a result of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid. With funding from the United States Agency for International Development, the Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of information in many countries … Read more
The Haitian artist and writer known as Frankétienne, who published the first novel written entirely in Haitian Creole and who, as the nation’s foremost literary lion, refracted its chaos and disorder through art, died on Thursday at his home in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital. He was 88. The Haitian Culture Ministry announced the death. The … Read more
Hamas and Israel to move forward with another swap What may be the last hostage exchange of this phase of the cease-fire was set to go forward late last night. Israel and Hamas have agreed to exchange the remains of four Israelis for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Israel said, and mediators guaranteed that Hamas would … Read more
new video loaded: Thousands of Israelis Mourn Shiri Bibas and Her Sons transcript Back transcript Thousands of Israelis Mourn Shiri Bibas and Her Sons Israelis paid their respects at a funeral for Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, who were taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 and killed in captivity. … Read more
President Trump’s intense interest in Ukraine’s minerals seemed to come from out of the blue. He dispatched his Treasury secretary to Kyiv this month to negotiate with Ukraine’s leader, then began ratcheting up the pressure publicly in what appeared to critics like a Mafia don’s extortion scheme. “I want security of the rare earth,” he … Read more
Earlier this week, two top Vatican officials made a secret visit to see Pope Francis in the hospital. At first, the Vatican said it had no information about the meeting but then confirmed it, explaining the two prelates had come to secure the pope’s signature to move forward on assembling cardinals to approve new saints. … Read more
The people of Israel embraced them on their final journey, turning out in multitudes along the funeral route for a family that had become emblematic of the country’s trauma after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, were kidnapped during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, taken … Read more
Maryna Tymchenko walked to the U.S. embassy on Wednesday morning and held up a homemade cardboard sign over her head: “Reagan would have hated it,” the sign read, alluding to the former president who famously called the Soviet Union “an evil empire.” She said she felt whiplash from the past two weeks as the United … Read more
An Australian couple’s dream trip to Venice turned into a nightmare when flight attendants asked them to stay seated next to a dead body for the final four hours of a 14-hour flight from Melbourne, Australia, to Doha, Qatar. What happened? When a passenger collapsed during a flight, flight attendants tried to save her but … Read more