Author: Reporter

Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and began killing and abducting people, sparking a crushing Israeli military operation that’s only recently stopped under a tenuous ceasefire. Convicted felon and U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion on February 4 that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and the U.S. take “ownership” of the land is triggering new tensions over the future of the enclave. While “owning” land is a term that appears to be more applicable to real estate than to territories,...

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are eager to leave miserable tent camps and return to their homes if a long-awaited ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war holds, but many will find there is nothing left and no way to rebuild. Israeli bombardment and ground operations have transformed entire neighborhoods in several cities into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching away in all directions. Major roads have been plowed up. Critical water and electricity infrastructure is in ruins. Most hospitals no longer function. And it is unclear when — or even if — much...

Two years have passed since a devastating earthquake shattered Turkiye’s southern region, but for many of its survivors, like Omer Aydin, the memory and the suffering remain fresh. While struggling with a third winter in the cold inside a shipping container-like temporary housing unit, the single father of three is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis that is affecting the whole country as well as still trying to heal the scars from the disaster. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6, 2023, and a second powerful tremor that came hours later, destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in...

A familiar pattern has emerged since President Donald Trump returned to the White House less than three weeks ago. He makes a brash proposal, his opponents file a lawsuit and a federal judge puts the plan on hold. It has happened with Trump’s attempts to freeze certain federal funding, undermine birthright citizenship and push out government workers. Now the question is whether the court rulings are a mere speed bump or an insurmountable roadblock for the Republican president, who is determined to expand the limits of his power — sometimes by simply ignoring the laws. Although Democrats may be...

President Donald Trump said on February 6 that he wants to root out “anti-Christian bias” in the U.S., announcing that he was forming a task force led by Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the “targeting” of Christians. Speaking at a pair of events in Washington surrounding the the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump said the task force would be directed to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI — terrible — and other agencies.” Trump said Bondi would also work to...

The emergence of X owner Elon Musk as the most influential figure around President Donald Trump has created an extraordinary dynamic, a White House adviser who is using one of the world’s most powerful information platforms to sell the government’s talking points while intimidating its detractors. In recent days, Musk has used X to promote Trump’s positions to his 215 million followers, attack an agency he is trying to shut down as “evil” and claim a Treasury employee who resigned under pressure over payment system access committed a crime. His use of the social media platform he owns has...