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Eli Sharabi, who was ripped from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 attacks, has returned to Israel after 491 days in captivity. Sharabi’s family watched excitedly as he returned home, but three people were noticeably absent. Sharabi will not be greeted by his wife or daughters because Hamas terrorists murdered them during the 2023 massacre.

Sharabi and his family lived on Kibbutz Be’eri, a border community in southern Israel that was hit particularly hard on Oct. 7, 2023. In January 2024, just months after Hamas’ attacks, Israel confirmed that Sharabi’s brother, Yossi, who was also taken hostage, was killed in captivity.

Kibbutz Be’eri saw 98 men, women and children slaughtered in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and 30 kidnapped. Among them were Sharabi and Ohad Ben-Ami, who was also released on Feb. 8, 2025. The kidnapped and killed accounted for approximately a tenth of the population of Kibbutz Be’eri, which is less than four miles from the Gaza border.

It is unclear whether Sharabi knows what happened to his wife, Lianne, and daughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13. It is also unknown whether Or Levy, who was taken from the Nova festival and released to Israel on Saturday, is aware that his wife was killed on Oct. 7, 2023.

Sharabi is not the first hostage to be released from captivity to a reality without his wife and children. Yarden Bibas, who was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was released from Hamas captivity on Feb. 1, after spending over 480 days as a hostage in Gaza. Yarden’s wife, Shiri, and their two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, remain in Hamas captivity.

The image of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas’ kidnapping went viral as the two red-headed boys were seen clinging to their mother. Kfir, who is now two years old, was just nine months old when he was kidnapped, making him the youngest hostage. Ariel and Kfir are the only children taken on Oct. 7 who remain in Gaza. The condition of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir remains unknown.

‘Sadly, my family hasn’t returned to me yet. They are still there. My light is still there, and as long as they’re there, everything here is dark. Thanks to you, I was brought back – help me bring the light back to my life,’ Yarden said in a statement distributed by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. This is his first statement since being freed.

While in captivity, Bibas was forced to make a hostage film in which he was seen breaking down as Hamas claimed his wife and children had been killed. Hamas often uses these types of videos as part of what the IDF calls ‘psychological terror.’ However, the terror organization included Shiri, Kfir and Ariel on the list of 33 hostages set to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire deal.

Yarden referenced the video in his statement and made a plea directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

‘Prime Minister Netanyahu, I’m now addressing you with my own words, which no one dictated to me: Bring my family back. Bring my friends back. Bring everyone home.’

The release of Sharabi, Levy and Ben-Ami marks the fifth round of hostage releases. While they too were forced to participate in a ceremony with Hamas prior to leaving Gaza, the images of the three men were strikingly different from many of those who had been freed before them. The three of them looked starved and exhausted, with many on social media comparing them to Holocaust victims.

Israeli President Isaace Herzog said that the ’emaciated and pained’ men were a visual representation of a ‘crime against humanity.’ In response to the images of the men, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to take action, saying their condition would ‘not be ignored.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Ruby and Hagit Chen, whose son Itay Chen remains in Hamas captivity, noted the ‘disturbing images’ and demanded Netanyahu begin ‘intensive negotiations’ to bring the remaining hostages, including their son, home.

There are still 76 hostages in Hamas captivity, many of whom are believed to be alive. So far, as part of the current ceasefire deal, Hamas has released 18 hostages. In exchange for the hostages, Israel has released more than 550 Palestinian prisoners.

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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has taken a satirical jab at President Donald Trump’s effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico and annex Greenland. 

A straight-faced Pritzker released a choreographed video on Friday, with fake camera shutter clicks going off in the background, where he asserts that he is renaming Lake Michigan to ‘Lake Illinois,’ poking fun at Trump’s recent executive order where he changed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

‘The world’s finest geographers, experts who study the Earth’s natural environment, have concluded a decades-long council and determined that a great lake deserves to be named after a great state,’ Pritzker said. 

‘So today, I’m issuing a proclamation declaring that hereinafter, Lake Michigan shall be known as Lake Illinois. The proclamation has been forwarded to Google to ensure the world’s maps reflect this momentous change.’

Trump signed Executive Order 14172 on his first day back in office which changed the name of the ocean basin. The order also renamed the highest peak in North America to ‘Mount McKinley,’ reversing the 2015 decision to call it by its centuries-old name Denali.

Google has said it will make Trump’s changes once the Department of the Interior updates the Geographic Names Information System. As of today, Google Maps still refers to it as the Gulf of Mexico.

In the video, Pritzker then switches his attention to Green Bay, a Wisconsin city near Lake Michigan. And just like how Trump vowed to take over Greenland from Denmark, Pritzker pledged to snap up Green Bay from The Badger State.  

‘In addition, the recent announcement that to protect the homeland, the United States will be purchasing Greenland… Illinois will now be annexing Green Bay to protect itself against enemies, foreign and domestic,’ Pritzker said. 

‘I’ve also instructed my team to work diligently to prepare for an important announcement next week regarding the Mississippi River.’

‘God bless America and bear down,’ Pritzker said, a nod to Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers, one of Chicago Bears’ biggest rivals.

The video comes on the heels of a Justice Department lawsuit filed against the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago for allegedly interfering with federal immigration enforcement with its sanctuary polices.

The lawsuit claims that several state and local laws are designed to interfere with the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.

Pritzker and Trump have also clashed over Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, with Pritzker declaring the move unconstitutional. 

Trump’s order, ‘Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,’ asserts that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution does not automatically confer American citizenship to individuals who are born within the United States. 

They also feuded during Trump’s first term in office when Pritzker claimed the state only recovered a quarter of its requested personal protective equipment from the federal government.

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President Donald Trump said he has directed the Secret Service to give him ‘every bit of information’ known about his two attempted assassins last summer during the presidential campaign, according to a report. 

‘I want to find out about the two assassins,’ the president told the New York Post Friday. ‘Why did the one guy have six cellphones, and why did the other guy have [foreign] apps?’

Trump told the Post the Secret Service had been holding back information because of President Biden.   

‘I’m entitled to know. And they held it back long enough,’ he added. ‘No more excuses.’

Trump was shot in the ear July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, while speaking at an outdoor campaign rally by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by the Secret Service after shooting at Trump, killing a rally attendee and injuring two others. 

Two months later, Ryan Routh, 59, allegedly waited for over 12 hours in brush with a rifle on the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach as Trump was golfing Sept. 15. 

A Secret Service agent saw Routh allegedly pointing a rifle through a fence and fired at him. Routh fled and was arrested that day.

He has pleaded not guilty to several counts, including attempted assassination of a presidential candidate and assault on a federal officer, and remains in federal custody. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 8, 2025.

Six cellphones were reportedly found in Routh’s car after his arrest.

Crooks had encrypted messaging accounts on multiple platforms based in Belgium, New Zealand and Germany, according to Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., who was appointed to a congressional task force investigating the assassination attempt.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Fox News’ Stephen Sorace contributed to this report. 

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President Donald Trump has decided to remove security clearances for several Democrats, including former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom are vocal Trump critics. 

Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Biden’s Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and attorneys Andrew Weissmann, Mark Zaid and Norm Eisen.

The move comes a day after Trump stripped his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, of his security clearance and his access to presidential daily briefs. 

‘There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday night.

He added the precedent was set by Biden himself.

‘He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents,’ Trump wrote.

Alexandra Koch contributed to this report. 

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One of the attorneys representing anonymous FBI agents suing the Department of Justice to block the public identification of agents who investigated Jan. 6 is a longtime anti-Trump lawyer who worked with House Democrats on President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. 

Norm Eisen is an attorney, CNN legal analyst and expert at the Brookings Institution public policy think tank who previously served as the U.S.’ ambassador to the Czech Republic and special counsel for ethics and government reform under the Obama administration, when he earned the nicknames ‘Dr. No’ and ‘The Fun Sponge’ for reportedly ensuring the administration abide by ethics rules. 

Eisen appeared in court on Thursday for a hearing before U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb involving a pair of lawsuits filed by two groups of FBI agents who investigated the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol Building as well as former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations and cases against Trump. 

Eisen serves as executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, which filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of the FBI agents who investigated Trump-related cases. State Democracy Defenders Fund is a nonprofit that bills itself as focused on defeating ‘election sabotage’ and ‘autocracy in 2025 — and beyond.’

‘Credible reports indicate the FBI has been directed to systematically terminate all Bureau employees who had any involvement in investigations related to President Trump, and that Trump’s allies in the DOJ are planning to publicly disseminate the names of those employees they plan to terminate,’ State Democracy Defenders Fund wrote in its press release of the emergency order to block the public release of FBI personnel names involved in the Jan. 6 investigation. 

Fox News Digital took a look back on Eisen’s rhetoric and actions across the past few years and found that he has repeatedly been at the forefront of the legal cases against Trump, notably serving as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Trump beginning in 2019. 

House Democrats tapped Eisen — who early in his career specialized in financial fraud litigation and investigations — to help lead the first impeachment against the 45th president, which accused Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to allegedly seeking foreign interference from Ukraine to boost his re-election efforts in 2020. The House adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump, but the Senate ultimately voted to acquit him. 

Eisen revealed following the impeachment effort that he initially drafted 10 articles of impeachment against Trump, not just two, which would have included issues such as ‘hush money’ payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Although the payments were not included in the impeachment articles, they were a focal point of the Manhattan v. Trump trial that found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in May 2024. 

‘This was only the third impeachment trial of a president in American history, so it’s remarkable that we even got those two,’ Eisen said in an NPR interview in 2020. ‘I will tell you that those two articles are a microcosm of all 10 of the impeachment articles that we drafted. They have features of all 10.’ 

Eisen told Fox News Digital, when asked about his history of anti-Trump cases, that he was initially open to working with the first Trump administration, but that the president, ‘turned against the Constitution.’

‘I was initially open to Trump and even advised his first presidential transition,’ Eisen told Fox Digital in an emailed comment on Friday. ‘But he turned against the Constitution and laws.’

‘In his first administration and now, he was and is using the presidency to break the law and to help himself and his cronies like Elon Musk — not the American people,’ he continued. ‘To ensure the integrity of our democracy, I am pushing back through the bipartisan institutions I work with such as State Democracy Defenders Fund, which has strong conservative representation on our board.’ 

Eisen is the co-founder of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which made waves in 2023 and 2024 when it helped to initiate a Colorado court case to remove Trump from the primary ballot in the state, The New York Times reported.  

The lawsuit, which ultimately landed in the Supreme Court, argued that Trump should be deemed ineligible from holding political office under a Civil War-era insurrection clause and that his name should thus be barred from appearing on the 2024 ballot. The group said that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters breached the U.S. Capitol, violated a clause in the 14th Amendment that prevents officers of the United States, members of Congress or state legislatures who ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion’ against the Constitution from holding political office.

Other states made similar legal claims to remove Trump, but each of the nine Supreme Court justices ruled in Trump’s favor in a decision released last March, ending the Colorado case and all others that were similar. 

The State Democracy Defenders Action, which Eisen co-founded, has also been involved with other Trump-involved court cases, including in the Manhattan v. Trump case. The group helped file an amicus brief in February, advocating that presiding Judge Juan Merchan sentence Trump just days ahead of his inauguration. Trump was ultimately sentenced to unconditional discharge, meaning he faces no fines or jail time. 

​​Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan case in May 2024. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office worked to prove that Trump had falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star, Stormy Daniels, ahead of the 2016 election to quiet her claims of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.

Eisen also founded another group, the States United Democracy Center, which filed an amicus brief in 2024 in Fulton County, Georgia, court, advocating that District Attorney Fani Willis’ racketeering case against Trump not be dismissed. 

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in December 2024 that Willis and her office are barred from prosecuting the case. The case worked to prove that Trump had led a ‘criminal racketeering enterprise’ to change the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia. Trump has maintained his innocence in that case, as well as the other federal and state charges brought against him between the 2020 and 2024 election, slamming them as Democrat lawfare. 

Eisen, in his capacity as executive chair and founder of State Democracy Defenders Fund, also sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking Committee Member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. on Monday to speak out against Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the FBI under the second Trump administration. Eisen said he had ethics concerns surrounding Patel’s previous work in Qatar. 

The FBI lawsuits followed acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sending a memo to acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll in late January, directing him to fire eight FBI employees who worked on the Jan. 6 investigation, as well as a terror case related to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel. The memo also informed the acting director to identify all current and former FBI personnel who took part in the case. 

The memo’s directive to identify those involved in the case sparked the two FBI lawsuits filed Tuesday, which seek to stop the collection of names and their public release. 

‘The individuals being targeted have served in law enforcement for decades, often putting their lives on the line for the citizens of this country,’ Eisen said in a statement provided in State Democracy Defenders Fund’s press release announcing it filed an emergency order on behalf of the FBI agents. ‘Their rights and privacy must be preserved.’

The judge temporarily barred the Trump DOJ on Thursday from disclosing information on the agents until she hears arguments and determines whether to issue a temporary restraining order. 

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

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With a Grammy win for best new artist, Chappell Roan is at a career high. A few years ago, she was one of the millions of Americans without a job or health insurance.

“I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels, and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists, would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists,” she said at the Grammy awards show in Los Angeles on Feb. 2.

“When I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt. And like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance,” she said in her acceptance speech.

“If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could’ve been provided care by a company I was giving everything to. So, record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection.”

Roan, whose given name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, was released from her record label in 2020. That’s the same year a huge spike in unemployment resulted in an estimated 1.6 million to 3.3 million people losing coverage through their employers, according to the Health and Human Services Department.

At the time, coverage expansions put in place by the Affordable Care Act acted as a safety net for those experiencing coverage disruptions.

That government-backed aid significantly lowered the costs of coverage for people buying health insurance plans on the ACA marketplace. Those customers include anyone who doesn’t have access to a workplace plan, such as self-employed individuals like musicians, as well as students and the unemployed, among others.

Gains in Medicaid and marketplace coverage have contributed to significant declines in the uninsured rate, according to KFF, a nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

“With the Affordable Care Act, there’s a health care safety net for artists who previously had none,” said Larry Levitt, KFF’s executive vice president for health policy. The ACA also guarantees insurance for pre-existing conditions and subsidizes premiums based on income, he said.

Yet, there can still be challenges for artists in getting health insurance if their recording labels don’t provide it, according to Levitt.

“If income is volatile, premiums can fluctuate and be unpredictable because subsidies are based on actual income for the year,” Levitt said. “So an artist who has no income for a period of time can be left with no viable health insurance options.”

“It makes it really hard, especially for starving artists,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner based in Jacksonville, Florida.

Jeff Rabhan, the former chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said in a guest column in The Hollywood Reporter that “Roan’s call for record labels to pay artists a livable wage and provide health care was noble — but also wildly misinformed.”

In the column, published Feb. 5, Rabhan said “if labels are responsible for artists’ wages, health care and overall well-being, where does it end and personal responsibility begin?”

“Should artists have better health-care options? Absolutely,” Rabhan said in the column. “Sounds like a union thing to me. Most independent managers don’t have insurance, either — it’s a flaw in the industry at large, not just on the label side.”

Since those in the music industry are often paid as independent contractors, that makes it more likely they will forgo coverage, according to McClanahan, founder of Life Planning Partners and a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council.

“Unfortunately, many are not part of a union and are on their own in getting health insurance,” she said. “Sadly, many self-employed people don’t understand the Affordable Care Act and how to obtain insurance on their own.”

Even today, there are about 25 million uninsured Americans, KFF research shows.

“Most of the country is involved in [an] employer/employee relationship where the company is responsible for their wages, health care, and some care about your well-being. However, most artists don’t have this luxury and don’t understand they are basically running their own business,” McClanahan said.

“At least give them the tools.”

CNBC’s attempts to reach Roan for comment were not successful, but Roan responded to Rabhan on Instagram by saying she donated $25,000 to support “struggling dropped artists.”

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Advertisers shelled out up to $8 million for a spot during Super Bowl 59. Ad industry executives still consider the price tag worth it, and argue it’s even a bang for their buck.

The NFL’s championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs will air this year on Fox Corp.’s broadcast network, as well as on Fox’s free streamer Tubi. It’ll likely be the biggest audience watching live television at the same time this year.

“The scale and buzz factor still delivers a punch,” said Amy Leifer, DirecTV’s chief advertising sales officer. “Where else can you get 100 million viewers at once, right? Especially in this fragmented landscape … there’s virtually few places you can go to get that type of scale.”

Last year more than 123 million people tuned into the Super Bowl. The 2024 game racked up estimated ad revenue of about $550 million for in-game placements, according to GroupM, WPP’s media investment group.

While advertisers have been spending more on digital, social media and streaming platforms, traditional TV is still considered the most “effective” form of advertising, meaning it has the biggest impact and results for brands due to the large audiences watching at once.

The ad market for traditional TV programming has slowed down as the cable bundle bleeds customers. Still, media companies with rights to live sports — as well as news and other live programming like awards shows — are able to nab a bigger chunk of ad dollars than peers without sports.

While it appears the ad market is stabilizing after a slowdown, networks and streamers with sports are sure to fare better than those without this year.

Sports have taken over the conversation at the advertising industry’s Upfronts presentations each spring, when media companies make their pitch to advertisers. Fox sold most of the ad inventory for this year’s Super Bowl during its Upfront last spring, CNBC previously reported.

The Super Bowl remains about three times as effective as the average primetime programming for advertisers, according to EDO, an advertising data company. The NFL’s big game last year was 224% more effective than average primetime programming, the data firm said.

EDO likened the audience and engagement that comes with a Super Bowl game to an advertiser buying hundreds of spots on primetime. Based on last year’s Super Bowl audience, EDO equated one ad during the big game to roughly 450 spots during primetime programming in terms of viewer engagement.

“It’s a fair and rational price based on our data, which is that this has been one of the most consistent performers over time,” said Kevin Krim, CEO of EDO. “And there’s room for the price to go up based on our data. But the important thing is, it matters a ton how a brand executes on their creative idea.”

For instance, when brands launch a new product during a Super Bowl commercial, consumers continue to engage with the brand via online searches or app visits even after the Super Bowl ad first aired, said Krim. He noted three recent brand launches during Super Bowl commercials — automaker Kia launching the EV6 in 2022, and Reese’s unveiling its Big Caramel Cup and Popeye’s promoting its new wings in 2024 — which led to a lift in engagement for each brand when the ads aired thereafter.

Even localized ads that are sold at a lower cost than national ads and only shown in certain markets experience a Super Bowl lift. Zeam, a hyperlocal streaming platform, aired a spot starring actor John Stamos in select markets last year.

The app had “millions of downloads” following the commercial, said Jack Perry, CEO of Zeam Media.

“It was good enough for us, and it’s not cheap for us to buy those available spots. There’s a very limited number of local spots during the game,” said Perry.

Zeam will run another commercial with Stamos this year.

The placement of a commercial during the game, sometimes as specific as what time during a certain quarter the ad is shown, can make a difference, too, according to Andre Banks, founder and CEO of NewWorld, an ad data firm.

“If a brand wants to drive high-impact results, they must align their spots with when their target audience is most engaged, not the spot that receives higher viewership,” said Banks.

He noted a portion of the Super Bowl audience each year tunes in specifically for the Halftime show, which this year features rapper Kendrick Lamar, and then turns their attentions away once the moment passes.

Banks also noted that social media plays a big role during the Super Bowl, with viewers turning to varying tech platforms during the game. Social media should be key for advertisers during the Super Bowl, too, he said.

“With so many viewers scrolling on social channels during the game, there’s also a massive opportunity for brands to optimize for second-screen engagement,” Banks added.

Ad spending on tech and social media platforms far eclipses traditional TV. GroupM estimates that ad revenue for “pure-play digital,” which excludes digital extensions of media companies like streaming, will grow 10% to $813.3 billion globally in 2025. By comparison, TV ad spend is expected to grow nearly 2% to $169.1 billion. Media companies have even recently come together to launch an ad platform with the aim of taking back share from tech players.

Some say brands’ focus on spending big on the Super Bowl and the idea that traditional TV is the most effective form of advertising may lie in the past.

“I don’t necessarily think when someone says it’s still the most effective, that’s what it is. I think what people are saying is it’s the only place left where there is a really large, captive broadcast audience watching something,” said Shoshana Winter, CEO of Converge, a performance marketing agency. “When it comes to this particular thing, we are holding on hard and fast.”

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Two tourists have died from suspected pesticide poisoning after their hostel in Sri Lanka was fumigated for bedbugs, Britain’s PA Media news agency has reported.

Ebony McIntosh, a 24-year-old digital marketing and social media manager from the English city of Derby, and 26-year-old Nadine Raguse from Germany were both staying in the Miracle Colombo City hostel in the Sri Lankan capital, PA reported Sri Lanka Police as saying on Thursday.

They both fell ill after a room at the hostel was fumigated to treat bedbugs, Sri Lanka Police spokesman Buddhika Manatunga told PA, and McIntosh was hospitalized on Saturday.

Officers are investigating whether the two women were poisoned by pesticides, the Manatunga said.

He added that an autopsy to determine McIntosh’s cause of death will take place after her family arrives in Sri Lanka on Monday.

Manatunga said the hostel, which is currently closed, will remain shut until then, according to PA.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) told PA: “We are supporting the family of a British woman who died in Sri Lanka, and are in contact with the local authorities.”

McIntosh’s family have launched a GoFundMe page to raise money for their travel to Sri Lanka.

“We are absolutely heartbroken to share that our beautiful baby girl and big sister Ebony has passed away unexpectedly on the Saturday 1st February 2025, thousands of miles away from home,” McIntosh’s family wrote on the page.

“Words cannot begin to express how broken we are, it’s been like a nightmare since we found out on Sunday morning, we have prayed and prayed that this can’t be true. It couldn’t possibly happen to our lovely Ebs,” they continued.

The family wrote that McIntosh flew from London to Sri Lanka on Tuesday, January 28, to “follow her dreams of travelling all over South Asia,” and that she was “full of excitement,” having spent months planning.

They added that McIntosh and “several others” were rushed to hospital on Saturday after suffering from vomiting and nausea, and that McIntosh also had difficulty breathing.

The family said she died within a few hours of arriving at the hospital.

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The UK government on Friday announced plans to dismantle the remains of London’s Grenfell Tower, almost eight years after the deadliest fire in Britain since World War II swept through the high-rise apartment building, killing 72 people.

Some of those who lost loved ones in the fire that broke out in the early morning hours of June 14, 2017, have criticized the decision because they wanted to preserve the building’s charred skeleton as a monument to those who died.

But the government said that redeveloping the site would help the community heal by removing the remains of the 24-story building, which looms over the North Kensington neighborhood in west London, providing a constant reminder of the tragedy.

“Grenfell Tower will be carefully taken down to the ground,″ the government said in a statement.

A public inquiry into the disaster concluded that decades of failures by government, regulators and industry turned the building into a “death trap.”

The investigation found no “single cause” of the tragedy, but said a combination of dishonest companies, weak regulation and complacent government authorities resulted in the building being remodeled with combustible exterior cladding that that allowed a small refrigerator fire to spread rapidly, trapping dozens of residents in their homes.

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Ukraine has launched new attacks in Russia’s southern Kursk region as US President Donald Trump pushes for ceasefire talks.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor, said that Ukrainian forces launched a new series of assaults in the Kursk region on Thursday, advancing up to five kilometres (three miles) behind Russian lines southeast of Sudzha.

While it is not clear whether the attacks are aimed at seizing more territory or reinforcing Ukraine’s defensive positions, ISW analyst Angelica Evans said advances of such scale were impressive.

Kyiv surprised even its allies with its attack on Russian territory and keeps fighting in Kursk even as it faces extremely difficult situations elsewhere along the frontline.

Russia claimed on Friday that it has now taken over Toretsk, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine that has been one of the epicenters of the fight for the past six months. Ukraine has not commented on the claim, but if confirmed, the fall of Toretsk would be another strategic win for Moscow as it would bring Russian troops closer to important Ukrainian defensive positions.

At the same time, Russian troops have been inching towards Pokrovsk, a logistic hub in eastern Ukraine that has been in Russia’s sight since the summer, and Kupiansk in the north.

Some in Ukraine, including some troops fighting in Kursk and elsewhere, are questioning Kyiv spending precious resources in Russia when it is struggling to defend its own territory.

The answer likely comes down to the expectation that Trump might start pressuring Ukraine to agree to talks with Russia soon.

“There’s nothing inherently valuable about the actual land that the Ukrainians are holding in Kursk. It’s fields and settlements, they’re not threatening Kursk city or making a run on Moscow,” Evans said.

“But when we’re thinking about peace negotiation, holding Russian territory could be a critical asset for the Ukrainians when they’re thinking about bargaining for their own territory back or for other things that they might want from the Russians in future peace negotiation,” she added.

Ukraine’s military and political leaders have repeatedly said that the Kursk operation was aimed at preventing a new Russian offensive in northern Ukraine and forcing Moscow to redeploy some of its troops from elsewhere in Ukraine.

The incursion was Ukraine’s biggest strategic gain since the liberation of Kherson in November 2022 and it gave the country a major morale boost.

But this week, as Trump continued his calls for negotiations to end the war, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear Kyiv sees Kursk as a potential bargaining chip.

Speaking on Wednesday, he called the incursion “a very important operation.”

”You will see later, when we reach a diplomatic settlement to end the war, what conditions the Russians will face with regard to the Kursk direction,” he said in his nightly address to the nation.

Trump has made it clear he wants talks between Russia and Ukraine to start “as quickly as possible.” He said that his administration is in direct contact with both Russia and Ukraine.

“We made a lot of progress on Russia, Ukraine,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. We’re going to stop that ridiculous war,” Trump said on Monday.

Rare strategic gain for Ukraine

It’s been six months since Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into the Kursk region and while Russia has managed to reclaim more than half of the territory initially ceased by Kyiv, this came at a huge cost to Moscow.

The Ukrainian General Staff said Thursday that Russia lost 40,000 troops over the six months of fighting in Kursk – 16,100 of whom were killed.

“Ukrainian forces captured 909 Russian military personnel, significantly replenishing the exchange fund. This allowed hundreds of Ukrainian defenders who were in Russian prisons to return home,” the General Staff added.

The incursion marked the first time foreign troops took control of Russia’s territory since World War II – a huge embarrassment for the Russian President Vladimir Putin who has largely framed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as means to “defend” the country.

The Ukrainian military has estimated that Russia deployed some 78,000 troops into Kursk, several times as many as Ukraine has. “These Russian forces, which include elements of elite units, are tied up and really distracted in Kursk. [Otherwise] they would more than likely be fighting on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine where they could do a lot of damage,” Evans said.

Yet despite the numerical advantage, the Russian military struggled to push the Ukrainians out of its territory and so Moscow eventually called in foreign reinforcements, deploying some 12,000 North Korean soldiers into the Kursk region.

By doing so, Putin became the first Russian leader ever to have to rely of foreign troops to liberate Russian soil, according to Evans.

She said that the strategic impact of the gains made by the Ukrainian troops deployed into Kursk were “significantly greater than these forces could have achieved defending within Ukraine.”

“The military activity isn’t going to collapse the Russian state, but the pressures that they’re putting on the Russians are things that could,” she added, saying that discontent is growing within Russia over the fact that Ukraine has been able to hold onto Russian territory for six months. “That is something that really hurts Putin’s credibility within Russia, and this vision that he’s created for himself as a defender and stabilizer.”

Speaking to the acting governor of Kursk region Alexander Khinshtein on Wednesday, Putin admitted the situation in Kursk was “very difficult.”

Yet the North Korean troops did little to help Russia regain its territory, with Russia using them mostly as foot soldiers who carry out brutal mass ground assaults that lead to huge casualties.

Ukrainian officials and Western intelligence said around 4,000 of those North Korean troops have been killed or injured. The South Korean intelligence service said earlier this week that the North Korean troops deployed to Kursk have not engaged in combat since mid-January, according to local media, confirming earlier reports by the Ukrainian military.

Evans said that Russia is struggling to repel Ukrainian forces because of Kyiv’s superior use of technology, mostly drones and electronic warfare interference technology.

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