Author: Reporter

The Biden administration announced in September that it has awarded more than $1.4 billion to projects that improve railway safety and boost capacity, with much of the money coming from the 2021 infrastructure law. “These projects will make American rail safer, more reliable, and more resilient, delivering tangible benefits to dozens of communities where railroads are located, and strengthening supply chains for the entire country,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. The money is funding 70 projects in 35 states and Washington DC Railroad safety has become a key concern nationwide ever since a train carrying hazardous...

Al Jazeera’s chief correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Wael Dahdouh, was helping broadcast live images of the besieged territory’s night sky when he received the devastating news: His wife, son, and daughter had all been killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 25. Moments later, the Qatari-based satellite channel switched to footage of Dahdouh entering al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza before giving way to grief as he peered over the body of his dead son. “They take revenge on us in our children?” he said, kneeling over his son’s bloodied body, still wearing his protective press vest from that day’s...

More than two weeks after Hamas militants rampaged through a string of sleepy farming towns, many Israelis are furious at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, not just for failing to prevent the attack, but for failing to come to their aid afterward. While the military is launching unrelenting airstrikes in Gaza that have killed thousands of Palestinians, and hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops are massing for a possible ground offensive, government infighting and lack of help for those in need have left traumatized survivors to mourn on their own and volunteers — many of whom spent the past...

Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on October 7 and began killing and abducting people. More than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians — were killed in the Hamas attack, and the Israeli army says about 200 hostages were taken into Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Nearly half Gaza’s population — the vast majority of whom are already refugees — have been displaced. Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, preventing the entrance of food, water...

President Joe Biden on October 25 spoke out against retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. He also said he was redoubling his commitment to working on a two-state solution to end the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict. Biden said the attacks by “extremist settlers” amounted to “pouring gasoline” on the already burning fires in the Middle East since the Hamas attack. “It has to stop. They have to be held accountable. It has to stop now,” Biden said at the start of a news conference...

The new leader of one of the chambers of Congress that will certify the winner of next year’s presidential election helped spearhead the attempt to overturn the last one, raising alarms that Republicans could try to subvert the will of the voters if they remain in power despite safeguards enacted after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Mike Johnson, the Louisiana congressman who was elected speaker of the House of Representatives on October 25 after a three-week standoff among Republicans, took the lead in filing a brief in a lawsuit that sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020...