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President Donald Trump is back in the White House and moving at warp speed to push through his long-awaited agenda with dozens of executive orders, surveying damaged areas in North Carolina and California, and rallying behind his Cabinet nominees to get confirmed.

In his inauguration address on Monday, the new president vowed that things across the country would ‘change starting today, and it will change very quickly.’ And moments later, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich took to social media to tease, ‘Now, comes SHOCK AND AWE.’

Trump signed an avalanche of executive orders and actions in his first eight hours in office, which not only fulfilled major campaign trail promises, but also allowed the returning president to flex his executive muscles as well as settle some longstanding grievances.

The president immediately cracked down on immigration; moved towards a trade war with top allies and adversaries; and reversed many policies implemented by former President Joe Biden, including scrapping much of the previous administration’s federal diversity actions and energy and climate provisions.

He also sparked a major controversy by pardoning or commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 supporters who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to upend congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. Among those whose sentences were commuted included some who violently assaulted police officers on one of America’s darkest days.

Trump also fired some top government officials; made a high-profile, half-trillion dollar tech investment announcement; held unscripted and wide-ranging, informal and impromptu news conferences during his first two days back at the White House; and even renamed the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America.’

The frenetic pace kept up throughout the week, with more executive orders signed and actions taken by Trump and his new administration during the first 100 hours in office.

Amid the fast-paced environment of the first week of the Trump White House, Senate Republicans and the president’s allies are rallying behind his Cabinet nominees and pushing them to get confirmed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Radcliffe were confirmed by the Senate earlier this week, and several other nominees are expected to be confirmed between the weekend and next week.

On Friday, the president took to the skies, flying to hurricane-ravaged western North Carolina and then on to Los Angeles, where horrific wildfires this month have left a wide path of destruction.

‘I think it’s brilliant how they’ve been handling it, to immediately meet the moment with action. It’s exactly what he needs to do and it’s exactly what the people voted for,’ veteran Republican strategist Kristin Davison told Fox News.

‘Americans vote for decisive, fast action, and true leadership. And Trump understands that more than anyone. I think he and his team knew how important it was out of the gate to show that they heard what the people wanted and are answering with leadership,’ she argued.

Longtime Republican consultant Alex Castellanos agreed.

‘He’s flooding the zone. He’s making a case for action. He’s demonstrating action. He is rallying a wave of American support for a massive transformation of government,’ Castellanos, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, told Fox News.

Seasoned Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo didn’t dispute Trump’s frenetic actions.

‘The pace of this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Trump made it abundantly clear he was going to act quickly, he was going to act boldly, and he was going to do exactly what he told voters he would do,’ he said.

But Caiazzo argued that ‘the things he is doing is going to directly negatively impact working families from coast to coast. It’s also a signal he has no respect for the rule of law.’

Asked if Trump’s actions were what Americans voted for this past autumn, Caiazzo replied, ‘Of course not. What Americans voted for was cheaper groceries. What Donald Trump is going to give us is a litany of policies that work to deteriorate our institutions, that work to enrich the wealthy and solidify his standing among the oligarchy in this country.’

There’s another reason for Trump’s fast pace — even though he’s the new president, he’s also a term-limited and lame-duck president. And by Labor Day, much of the political world will start looking ahead to the 2026 midterm elections.

‘This is his second term. He’s got to move quickly,’ Davison emphasized.

Trump’s show of force in the opening days of his second administration is also in contrast to eight years ago, when he first entered the White House.

The president and his team are much more seasoned the second time around, and the supporting cast is intensely loyal to Trump.

‘In the past administration, there would be logjams and bottlenecks because there were people who didn’t agree with him,’ a senior White House source told Fox News. ‘Now we have a whole infrastructure and staff that’s built around him, in support of him. When he says something, it’s getting done. It’s testament to him and the team that he built.’

Credit is also being given to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who, as co-campaign manager of Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, kept the trains on the tracks.

‘What Susie has done is look at the totality of Trump and found the best players and put them in the best positions to support the president. Trump is surrounded by Trump people who’ve all proven themselves over the years not just to be loyal but ultra-competent operators,’ added an adviser, who asked for anonymity to speak more freely.

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Politics

‘Just evil’: Top Republican details Russia’s ‘horrific’ mass abductions of Ukrainian children

More than 200,000 children have been abducted by Russia since the start of its invasion of Ukraine, Chairman Emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said, citing U.S. estimates.

‘If a foreign adversary took 260,000 of our kids, and they were in indoctrination camps, I mean, how would we feel about that?’ McCaul asked Fox News Digital.

The Texas Republican was recently term-limited in his time as chairman of the foreign affairs panel, but he is continuing to work on the world stage, in part by raising awareness about Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine. Among the most egregious is the relocation of thousands of Ukrainian children into Russia, the vast majority of whom have not been returned.

Some parents would be coerced into giving up their children because Russian forces were threatening to bomb their city, McCaul said, while other times ‘they just invade and capture the children.’

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in February 2023 for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, ‘for the war crime of unlawful deportation of [children] and that of unlawful transfer of [children] from occupied areas of Ukraine.’

Lvova-Belova was sanctioned last year by the U.S. over her part in the scheme, which has been widely condemned by western governments.

However, the Kremlin has denied war crime allegations and maintained it is doing humanitarian work facilitating homes for Ukrainian children, NPR reported.

Existing accounts from returned children and elsewhere paint a picture of forced indoctrination within Russia’s borders, however. Some of those children are given military training, according to the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, likely in preparation to fight on Russia’s front lines.

Estimates on how many children have been taken to Russia vary between 20,000 to upwards of 250,000.

Part of McCaul’s work raising awareness about Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian children will include a screening of a documentary titled, ‘Children in the Fire: Ukraine’s War Through the Children’s Eyes’ by filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky, at the Munich Security Conference next month.

He has also worked with the nonprofit Save Ukraine, which is working to return children.

‘In the documentary, the child’s brought into this prison where it looks like adults are being— basically they’re using electrodes to shock them, you know, under their fingernails and their genitals, and it’s just very, very barbaric,’ McCaul said.

He also held a hearing last year on the issue while leading the foreign affairs committee.

McCaul said Russia’s abduction of children is among the most vile of its alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions. He compared it to infamous Nazi physician Josef Mengele’s experiments on Jewish children and adults.

‘It’s just evil. I mean, any civilization that would capture— I mean, it’s one thing if you’re on the battlefield killing the enemy, from their point of view,’ McCaul said. ‘But to capture the children to re-indoctrinate them is sort of reminiscent of, you know, Mengele’s experiments on kids…And I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this in recent society.’

The House passed a resolution last year condemning Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children in a bipartisan 390 to 9 vote.

‘It’s just horrific. I can’t imagine, as a father, my children being, you know, taken away by the Russian Federation and then not knowing where they are or what’s happening to them,’ McCaul said. ‘But this is all part of Putin’s game, is to try to indoctrinate the children in Ukraine to go against their own country and belief system.’

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Business

UnitedHealthcare taps company veteran Tim Noel as new CEO following Brian Thompson killing

UnitedHealthcare on Thursday tapped company veteran Tim Noel as its new CEO following the targeted killing of its former top executive, Brian Thompson, in Manhattan in December.

Noel was the head of Medicare and retirement at UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. It is the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s biggest health-care conglomerate based on revenue and its more than $480 billion market cap.

Noel, who first joined the company in 2007, “brings unparalleled experience to this role with a proven track record and strong commitment to improving how health care works for consumers, physicians, employers, governments and our other partners,” UnitedHealth Group said in a statement.

The company is still reeling from the murder of Thompson, which unleashed a torrent of pent-up anger and resentment toward the insurance industry, renewed calls for reform and reignited a debate over health care in the U.S.

Amid concerns about physical safety, companies across the industry have beefed up security for their executives and removed their photos and much of their personal information from their websites. That includes UnitedHealth Group, which appears to no longer have an executive leadership page.

Luigi Mangione, who was charged in the deadly shooting, is currently being held without bond in Brooklyn, New York. Mangione, 26, faces charges including murder and terrorism, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Noel oversaw a part of UnitedHealthcare’s business that includes Medicare Advantage plans, which have been the source of skyrocketing costs for insurers.

Medicare Advantage, a privately run health insurance plan contracted by Medicare, has long been a key source of growth and profits for the insurance industry. But medical costs from Medicare Advantage patients have jumped over the last year as more seniors return to hospitals to undergo procedures they had delayed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare and retirement unit serves one-fifth of Medicare beneficiaries, or nearly 13.7 million patients, according to a fact sheet from the company.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said on an earnings call last week that the profit-driven U.S. healthcare system “needs to function better” and be “less confusing, less complex and less costly.”

Witty said members of the system benefit from high prices, noting that lower prices and improved services can be good for customers and patients but can “threaten revenue streams for organizations that depend on charging more for care.” However, Witty did not address to what extent UnitedHealth Group benefits from that model.

In its first quarterly results since the killing, UnitedHealth Group reported fourth-quarter revenue that missed Wall Street’s expectations due to weakness in its insurance business.

The company’s 2024 revenue rose 8% to $400.3 billion, and it expects revenue to climb again this year to a range of $450 billion to $455 billion.

— CNBC’s Bertha Coombs contributed to this report

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Business

Store closures hit highest level since pandemic — see who’s shutting down the most locations

Store closures in the U.S. last year hit the highest level since the pandemic — and even more locations are expected to shutter this year, as shoppers’ dollars increasingly go to a few industry winners, according to an analysis by Coresight Research.

Major retailers, including Party City and Macy’s, closed 7,325 stores in 2024, according to the retail advisory group’s data. That’s the sharpest jump since retailers in the U.S. shuttered almost 10,000 stores in 2020, the year when the Covid pandemic began.

So far this year, closures continue to climb. Retailers have already announced 1,925 store closures so far in 2025 — and that was only as of Jan. 10. The five retailers that have announced the most closures this year are Party City, Big Lots, Walgreens Boots Alliance, 7-Eleven and Macy’s, respectively.

The retail advisory firm projects that retailers will close about 15,000 stores this year as some legacy brands shrink and file for bankruptcy protection, or liquidating companies shutter locations.

The striking numbers reflect the stark divide between retailers that are gaining market share and those that have lost ground. Amazon, Costco and Walmart have gotten bigger as shoppers seek value and convenience. On the other hand, some smaller chains and specialty retailers have struggled to keep doors open or been forced to downsize.

A spike in bankruptcies contributed to the high number of closures in 2024. According to Coresight’s data, there were 51 retail bankruptcies in 2024, up from 25 in 2023. Some of those, such as Party City, have most of their closures taking place in 2025.

Consumer spending has stayed strong — but a larger share of the dollars has gone to fewer retailers. Holiday sales increased 4% year over year to $994.1 billion for Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, according to the National Retail Federation, the industry’s major trade group. That total excludes auto dealers, gas stations and restaurants.

That’s about in line with pre-pandemic holiday spending, which rose an average of 3.6% from 2010 to 2019.

The number of jobs in the industry also did not appear to fall despite the closures. Employment in the retail trade “changed little” last year, after the industry added about 10,000 jobs per month in 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said earlier this month.

Specialty retailers in particular have struggled: In December, The Container Store filed for bankruptcy protection. Big Lots’ new owner is in the middle of an effort to keep some stores open, after the discount retailer said in December that it would start going-out-of-business sales across all stores. Fabrics and craft retailer Joann filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month for the second time in a year.

But it wasn’t just specialty stores. Last year, the highest number of closures came from Dollar Tree-owned Family Dollar, CVS Health, Conn’s, rue21 and Big Lots, respectively. Conn’s, a home goods and furniture retailer, and rue21, a teen apparel retailer, closed all stores after the parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024.

John Mercer, Coresight’s head of global research, said competitive threats, not a decline in demand, is to blame.

“Demand may be strong among consumers, but where is some of that increased demand going? Where is it being channeled to?” he said.

Mercer said the retailers that are shuttering stores tend to fall in three categories: They are closing all locations as part of a liquidation, such as Party City; shutting down many of their stores after a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, such as The Container Store; or trimming back their footprint as they adapt to fast-changing consumer preferences, such as drugstores Walgreens and CVS and legacy department store Macy’s.

Macy’s, for example, is in the middle of closing about 150 of its namesake stores across the country by early 2027. The department store operator has been shuttering roughly 50 of those per year, since it made the announcement in early 2024. It is opening a limited number of shops that are smaller, off-mall versions of its namesake stores and new locations of its better-performing brands, Bloomingdale’s and beauty chain Bluemercury.

Some newcomers are chipping away at legacy retailers’ sales, Mercer said. Coresight estimates that Chinese e-commerce companies Shein and Temu pulled in a combined roughly $100 billion in sales last year, with the majority of that coming from outside of the U.S.

For example, more Americans are turning to sites like Temu for party balloons and storage tubs, which may have contributed to the bankruptcy filings of Party City and The Container Store last year, he said.

Even a small percentage drop in sales can be a blow to retailers’ stores, which come with high fixed costs like leases and labor, Mercer said.

Some unique factors have widened the gap between store openings and closures, according to David Silverman, a retail analyst at Fitch Ratings. When a major mall anchor like Macy’s closes, he said that can lead smaller retailers to exit, as well. As some stores in mall or strip shopping centers shutter, they’re also getting replaced by fitness studios, urgent care clinics or apartments instead of another retail store.

He added that population shifts during the Covid pandemic changed retailers’ store traffic patterns and shook up where they may want to be located.

“Most companies are not adding a significant number of square footage and even the ones that until recently were adding a lot, like the dollar stores, are rethinking their footprints,” he said.

Silverman said he expects more stores will continue to close than open in the U.S., as retailers’ growth comes from online sales and as larger companies take a bigger share of the market. Some of those, such as Walmart, add a lot more volume with one store than specialty retailers get from the dozens of locations they close, he added.

Investors will soon get an update on which retailers are outperforming and underperforming. Most major retailers will deliver their holiday-quarter results starting in mid-February.

Some retailers, including Kohl’s and Macy’s, announced their own plans for store closures before they shared full quarterly results. Kohl’s said earlier this month that it will close 27 underperforming stores by April, along with shuttering an e-commerce fulfillment center in San Bernardino, California, in May.

There’s some hopeful news for the retail industry, however: Store openings also accelerated last year in the U.S. to 5,970 — the highest number since Coresight began tracking store openings and closures in 2012. The firm anticipates that will stay about flat in 2025, with an estimated 5,800 stores opening.

Last year, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, 7-Eleven, Mexican convenience store Oxxo and Five Below tallied the most store openings.

So far this year, the top five retailers in terms of announced store openings in the U.S. are Aldi, JD Sports, Burlington Stores, Pandora and Barnes & Noble, respectively.

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Business

Elon Musk and Sam Altman spar over Trump’s Stargate AI investment announcement

A war of words between Elon Musk and Sam Altman escalated on social media Thursday, as two of the most powerful men in tech sparred over their rival artificial intelligence initiatives.

The latest exchange began after OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, was revealed as a key player in Stargate, the AI infrastructure project President Donald Trump announced this week that is coming with a massive investment push.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote in a long post on his social platform, X, about the new venture. It was not immediately clear whom Musk was initially referring to, but he soon followed up, naming SoftBank, Stargate’s main financial backer.

“SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” he said, without elaborating. Neither Musk nor his electronic car company Tesla have publicized any formal links.

Altman responded praising Musk — “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” he wrote on X — but he called his SoftBank claim wrong.

“I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope you’ll mostly put [America] first,” he added, using an American flag emoji.

In remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump weighed in on the dispute but gave no indication that Altman’s or OpenAI’s status on the project were threatened.

Without mentioning Altman by name, Trump mentioned Musk while referring to ‘one of the people he happens to hate.’

‘But I have certain hatreds of people, too,’ he said.

The spat has its roots in a pending lawsuit filed by Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, over control of the company; it was rekindled after Trump’s announcement this week that OpenAI would be part of the $500 billion Stargate initiative designed to make the United States a world leader in AI.

Late Wednesday and into Thursday, Musk continued to hammer Altman, repeatedly citing posts during Trump’s 2016 presidential run in which Altman appeared to denounce Trump.

By 8:30 p.m., Altman posted that he’d recently had a change of heart about the president: “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him (i wish i had done more of my own thinking” he said in part. “i’m not going to agree with him on everything, but i think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!”

On Thursday morning, Altman posted, responding to Musk: “just one more mean tweet and then maybe you’ll love yourself…”

The tit-for-tat between Musk and Altman is a sign of both the struggle within the tech community to curry favor with Trump and how the AI race is driving the push for tech dominance. If putting out new, consumer-friendly devices was once the way for a tech company to gain power, the struggle to create the most advanced form of AI has almost completely taken over.

The situation also points to the tension of Musk’s role as both a top Trump adviser and one of the world’s most powerful — and combative — business moguls. Musk has his own interest in AI through the X, which debuted Grok, its rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in November.

The simmering Altman-Musk feud goes back years, well before Musk’s emergence in the U.S. political scene and even before the recent explosion of artificial intelligence technology. Companies have rushed to invest in AI infrastructure and development, so much so that it has accounted for a significant part of recent U.S. economic growth. A Goldman Sachs paper published in June, well before the announcement of the Stargate project, projected that AI capital expenditure could top $1 trillion.

OpenAI had generally been considered the leader in AI development, though it faces major competition from other startups, as well as most major tech giants that are believed to have closed the gap. That competition has made securing investments and partnerships all the more important in large part because of the sizable hardware and energy needs required to hone the models at the core of advanced AI.

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World News

Taiwan plans to cull up to 120,000 green iguanas due to their negative impact on agriculture

Taiwan plans to cull up to 120,000 green iguanas, with supporters urging humane methods to bring down the animal’s population, which is wreaking havoc on the island’s agricultural sector.

Around 200,000 of the reptiles are believed to be in the island’s southern and central areas, which are heavily dependent on farming, according Chiu Kuo-hao of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency.

Specially recruited hunting teams killed about 70,000 iguanas last year, with bounties of up to $15 each. Local governments have asked the public to help identify iguana nests and they recommend fishing spears as the most humane means of killing the animals.

“A lot of people bought them as cute little pets, not realizing how big and long-lived they would become, so they set them free in the wild, where they’ve really taken to the Taiwanese environment,” said Lee Chi-ya of the agricultural department in the southern county of Pingtung. “That’s allowed them to reproduce at a considerable rate, necessitating us to cull them and restore the balance of nature.”

Green iguanas have no natural predators in Taiwan and have moved into areas that can be difficult to access, mostly forests and the edges of towns.

Males can grow to 2 feet (6.6 feet) long, weigh 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and live up to 20 years, while females can lay up to 80 eggs at a time.

Mainly native to Central America and the Caribbean, they are not aggressive despite possessing sharp tails and jaws and razor-like teeth. The reptiles subsist on a diet of mostly fruit, leaves and plants, with the occasional small animal thrown in.

Though popular as pets, they are difficult to keep healthy in captivity and many die within a year.

Hsu Wei-chieh, secretary general of the Reptile Conservation Association of Taiwan, said his group wants to teach farmers how to stay safe, protect their property and treat the iguanas in a humane manner.

“We’re here to help see that this project is carried out smoothly,” said Hsu.

Tsai Po-wen, a vegetable farmer in Pingtung, said the training was paying off.

“We used to attack them, but it wasn’t any use. Now we’re learning more effective, safer methods,” Tsai said.

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World News

Ireland finally appoints new prime minister after chaos in parliament

Micheál Martin became Ireland’s taoiseach (prime minister) for the second time in his political career on Thursday, a day later than planned.

The Irish parliament descended into uproar on Wednesday, its first day back in session after weeks of political horse-trading and coalition-building, following the country’s general election in November.

Wednesday’s order of business was scheduled to start with the vote to elect a new taoiseach but this formality was delayed repeatedly. It was then ultimately abandoned for the day, as opposition parties took to their feet in loud protest over the granting of extended speaking rights to independent parliamentarians who support the incoming government.

Attempts to resolve the dispute continued into Thursday morning when the government acknowledged that there was “ambiguity” in speaking rights and an agreement was reached that government-supporting independents cannot for now retain extended speaking rights from the opposition benches.

The 64-year-old Martin, leader of the Fianna Fáil party, was finally elected taoiseach before 2 p.m. in Dublin, saying it was “a profound honor to be nominated to serve as head of the government in a free, democratic and diverse republic.”

Martin stressed the importance of Ireland’s relationships with Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom, noting that his nation’s “kinship” with the US went back to before the formation of the Irish state and endures “because we have continued to renew bonds of respect and cooperation.”

“The Ireland-America relationship is one that benefits us both and will emerge strongly no matter what,” Martin told the packed chamber of parliament.

Although Ireland’s November election bucked the 2024 trend that saw so many countries reject incumbent governments, no political party had a resounding win.

The country’s center-right Fianna Fáil party won the most seats on November 29 but did not secure enough for a parliamentary majority. It returned to its most recent coalition partnership with the country’s other centrist party, Fine Gael, and spent recent weeks in pursuit of further political backing.

Last week it was announced that the two parties had secured the support of a group of regional independent lawmakers and was ready to form a government.

Martin becomes Irish taoiseach for the second time.

He first assumed the office when Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil entered their coalition government in 2020, joining forces against a surge in support for Sinn Féin, Ireland’s nationalist party.

That groundbreaking partnership between Ireland’s long-time vying parties saw party leaders Leo Varadkar and Martin swap the roles of prime minister and deputy every two years until Varadkar unexpectedly stepped down last year. He was replaced by Simon Harris, who became Ireland’s youngest ever leader.

Harris, the outgoing taoiseach, assumed the role of deputy prime minister Thursday, and will expect to step back into the role of Ireland’s leader again in 2027.

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World News

With Gaza quiet, Israel is turning its focus on the West Bank. Here’s why

The Israeli military has intensified operations across the occupied West Bank, targeting Palestinian militant cells, imposing roadblocks and cutting communities off from the outside world.

The sudden expansion of Israeli security operations in the West Bank has killed at least 10 people and follows the start of the delicate ceasefire process in Gaza, by which Israeli hostages are released in stages and will also see the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.

The move also comes as the Israeli right, and many in the settler movement, feel emboldened by the words of some officials in the Trump administration who have suggested Israel has the right to annex much or all of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians.

What’s happening in the West Bank

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has spoken of a new dynamic in the West Bank, saying the military will adopt tactics learned in the Gaza offensive in its efforts to eradicate militant groups and, in his words, “ensure that terrorism does not return.”

The Jenin refugee camp in the north of the West Bank, a sprawling area of narrow alleys that has long been a bastion of militant factions, is front and center of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) latest campaign.

Katz said Tuesday that Operation “Iron Wall” would “eliminate terrorists and terror infrastructure in the camp, ensuring that terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over – the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.”

The latest IDF operations have involved building more roadblocks across the West Bank. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said Thursday there are now nearly 900 military checkpoints, including more than 173 iron gates installed since October 2023.

Al-Roub said the IDF operation was “one of the biggest and most intense” yet launched: “We are talking over 20,000 people have been displaced. Many have been arrested.”

Palestinian television reported Thursday that the IDF had established roadblocks near Ramallah and sealed off one village in the area. Additionally, it said military checkpoints in the Nablus area had been reinforced, leaving thousands of people stranded amid lengthy waits.

People were also unable to leave Jericho, where military checkpoints had been closed. Palestinian journalists reported Thursday that tear gas had been used against people waiting at a Jericho checkpoint.

One woman had died of a heart attack at a checkpoint near Hebron after the IDF prevented her from being transferred to hospital, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported Wednesday.

“Most of the movement from the south and north of the West Bank is paralyzed while illegal Israeli settlers move freely and continue to attack Palestinian cars on the roads,” he said.

“We are seeing disturbing patterns of unlawful use of force in the West Bank that is unnecessary, indiscriminate and disproportionate. This echoes the tactics Israeli forces have employed in Gaza,” said Angelita Caredda, Middle East and North Africa regional director for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The IDF said Thursday that the checkpoints were “a tool we use in the fight against terror, enabling civilian movement while providing a layer of screening to prevent terrorists from escaping.”

How does the ceasefire affect the situation in the West Bank?

The operation began two days after the first stage of the Gaza ceasefire began and demonstrates a shift in the Israeli government’s focus.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tuesday: “We have begun to change the security concept in Judea and Samaria [the Biblical term many Israelis use to describe the West Bank] and in the campaign to eradicate terrorism in the region.”

He also claimed the cabinet had decided that security in the West Bank had become an official war goal for Israel. The Prime Minister’s Office did not confirm the move.

The truce in Gaza has allowed Israeli security forces to concentrate on the West Bank, where groups aligned with Hamas have become more active. There is a risk, however, that intensive Israeli military action across the West Bank will put the Gaza ceasefire under strain.

Katz has frequently alleged that Iran is behind the surge in militant activity in the West Bank and is supplying weapons to the groups.

“We will not allow Judea and Samaria to become like Gaza or southern Lebanon… We will act to cut off Iran’s tentacles in the refugee camps in the West Bank and ensure the security of the communities and residents.”

Israeli officials have said that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been unable to confront and subdue militant groups. An operation in December by the Palestinian security forces against militants in Jenin yielded little progress. The militant factions include the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Qassem Brigades, who together fight under the banner of the Jenin Battalion.

Israel’s Channel 11 quoted a senior military source Thursday as saying, “The PA did what they could. We recognized the need to act against the terrorists’ capabilities, we are no longer waiting for their intentions. Our goal is to neutralize the Jenin battalion.”

How the Trump administration affects dynamics

To some right-wing Israelis, the advent of the Trump administration – along with success in degrading Hamas and Hezbollah – provides a unique opportunity to extend Israeli superiority in the region.

During his first term, Trump abandoned the long-held US stance that settlements are illegal; Biden restored it. Several of Trump’s nominees have suggested Israel has the right to annex the West Bank.

More than 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 war. Jewish settlements there are considered illegal under international law.

Elise Stefanik, who is slated to become the new US ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday she agreed with the view that Israel has “a biblical right” to annex the West Bank. Mike Huckabee, who is expected to become US ambassador to Israel, has said in the past that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian.”

On Monday, the day he took office, Trump rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Anti-Palestinian violence by extremist settlers has become a near-daily occurrence in the West Bank. In 2024, the UN documented 1,420 incidents of settler violence resulting in casualties and/or property damage in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Some of those responsible were arrested, but the Israeli Defense Ministry last week decided to release Jewish settlers held under what’s known as administrative detention “in light of the expected release of terrorists to the territories of Judea and Samaria,” under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Katz said the decision to release the settlers would “send a clear message of strengthening and encouraging settlement, which stands at the forefront of the struggle against Palestinian terror and growing security challenges.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct Mike Huckabee’s previous comments about Palestinians.

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World News

Amanda Knox slander conviction upheld by Italy’s high court

Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against Lumumba. She later wrote a handwritten note questioning her false accusation.

Lumumba was arrested after Knox’s accusation and spent two weeks in jail until police released him due to lack of forensic evidence. He blames the arrest on his losing his club Le Chic, which closed shortly after.

In a long legal saga, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of Kercher’s murder after her body was found at the student apartment she shared with Knox in Puglia. The two were acquitted, then reconvicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015.

However, the slander conviction remained. Knox petitioned the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2023 that her rights were violated during the 2007 interrogation that led to her false accusation against Lumumba.

In June 2024, a court in Florence upheld the slander conviction, which led to Thursday’s high court hearing.

Knox, who attended the June 2024 hearing but who did not attend Thursday’s high court session, posted a lengthy thread on X outlining her side of the story, including how the police “were never held accountable for the crimes they committed against me behind closed doors.”

She also wrote, “I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, and on Friday, as I process what happens, whether I am finally acquitted or whether Italy will continue to blame me for the abuses of the Perugia police. Stay tuned.”

Lumumba, who did attend Thursday’s hearing, told reporters upon entering the court that Knox “never apologized to me.”

Speaking outside court after the verdict, Lumumba said he was “very satisfied” with the ruling, according to the news agency Reuters. “Amanda did wrong, this sentence must accompany her for the rest of her life. I had a good feeling about this since the afternoon. I hail Italian justice with great honor,” he said.

During the June hearing, Knox told the two-judge, six-jury panel that she was sorry she did not try to retract the accusation against Lumumba sooner, but insisted she was “a young person in an existential crisis” when she accused him. “I did not know who the assassin was,” she told the court.

Knox does not face any additional jail time.

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World News

Palestinian journalist reunited with child after harrowing months in Israeli jail

The female Palestinian inmates were made to kneel in a line on a cold evening last Sunday on the grounds of Israel’s Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.

“This is not a victory for you. We have destroyed and killed in Gaza, in Yemen, in Syria, in Iran. We killed (your) leadership,” one, Rula Hassanein, recalled hearing in a 90-second Israeli propaganda video they were forced to watch on a large screen ahead of their release.

The women were part of a group of 90 Palestinian prisoners released in a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. Around nine hours earlier, Hamas had freed three Israeli hostages in Gaza after 15 months of captivity.

Hassanein remembers the video vividly. The prisoners, she said, were made to watch it on loop for hours as Palestinians gathered outside to receive them.

Israeli authorities charged her with incitement on social media, she said.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), court documents accused Hassanein of incitement over posts in 2022 and 2023, including reposts on X and Facebook “in which she commented on the Israel-Gaza war, that included her frustration over the suffering of Palestinians.”

In another post, Hassanein also “commented on events in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including the shooting of two Israelis in the northern town of Huwara in August 2023 and the killing of an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem in October 2022,” the CPJ said in May.

Hassanein described her time in prison as filled with abuse and humiliation. She said she was strip searched and verbally abused by Israeli guards, calling the treatment “torture.”

“They would hold us by the head, even slip off large parts of our headscarves, pushing us down to our knees and dragging us while we are bound at our hands and feet with heavy metal irons,” she said.

“Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities,” it added.

Hamas is expected to release a total of 33 hostages from Gaza during the 42-day truce. Those released so far have not spoken publicly about their experience in captivity.

As of this month, Israel holds at least 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, according to the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society – though that number does not include an unknown number of Palestinians taken captive in Gaza. The figure of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel includes 3,376 people held under the controversial system of administrative detention, meaning they can remain in prison indefinitely with no public charges against them nor trial. It includes 95 children and 22 women.

A July report by the United Nations stated that detention conditions for Palestinians in Israeli custody “worsened dramatically” after October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, prompting an Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 and injured over 100,000 people, according to the health ministry there.

“The Israeli authorities further restricted access to food, water, sanitation and electricity, medical treatment, media and information, family visits and consultation with legal representatives,” the report said. “According to the OHCHR monitoring, there have been regular, at times daily, raids of prison cells, removal of personal items, and limited access to personal hygiene items, including menstrual hygiene.”

‘My daughter forgot what I looked like’

Hassanein described dire conditions in the Israeli prison, where inmates were given little food and were regularly subjected to physical and verbal abuse.

Access to menstrual pads was sometimes at the mercy of male prison guards, she said.

She recalled a woman from Gaza who wasn’t provided a menstrual pad. “We could see blood all over her clothes and she was mocked (by Israeli guards)… it was horrifying.”

Before her arrest, Hassanein had given birth to premature twins. One died hours after her caesarean section. The surviving child, Elia, appeared to have forgotten her mother while Hassanein was in prison.

A video of the mother and child’s reunion on Sunday went viral on social media.

Hassanein said she would often dream of her daughter in prison, but was dismayed when Elia didn’t recognize her initially. “Of course, my daughter forgot what I looked like,” she said.

“I saw her and I hugged her, but she was afraid,” she added. “I am trying, with my husband, to re-enter Elia’s life in a gradual manner, so as not to subject her to an emotional shock.”

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