President Donald Trump was asked several times on Thursday about comments he made last week, when he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘dictator,’ though he oftentimes either ignored the question or could not remember making the statement.
Trump met with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House on Thursday, when the two leaders addressed peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
The president told reporters he has had back-to-back ‘very successful’ calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as with Zelenskyy, with hopes of bringing the war between Ukraine and Russia to an end.
‘I think we’ve made a lot of progress, and I think it’s moving along pretty rapidly,’ Trump said. ‘[Friday], the progress toward peace will continue when President Zelenskyy visits the White House. He’ll be here tomorrow in the early part of the day, and we’ll be signing a historic agreement that will make the United States a major partner in developing Ukraine’s minerals and rare earths, oils and gases.’
The president and Zelenskyy will meet at the White House around 11 a.m. Friday, and Trump said the rare earth minerals agreement will provide the basis for a sustainable future between the two countries.
With Zelenskyy’s visit quickly approaching, reporters asked Trump on Thursday if he had plans to apologize to the Ukrainian president for calling him a dictator.
Earlier this month, Trump blasted Zelenskyy as a ‘dictator without elections’ after the U.S. left Ukraine out of its initial peace talks with Russia.
‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. ‘In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.’
When Trump greeted Starmer at the White House on Thursday, one reporter asked the two leaders about having common ground, with Trump describing Zelenskyy as a dictator and Starmer describing Putin as a dictator.
After dodging the question, another reporter asked Trump if he still believed Zelenskyy was a dictator.
‘Did I say that?’ Trump asked. ‘I can’t believe I said that. Next question.’
After the two leaders met in the Oval Office, they faced reporters once again, and a reporter asked Trump if he would take the opportunity to apologize to Zelenskyy for calling him a dictator while praising Putin, who is a dictator.
Rather than address calling Zelenskyy a dictator, Trump spoke about the upcoming meeting with the Ukrainian president, saying, ‘I think we’re going to have a very good meeting tomorrow. … We’re going to get along really well.’
While Ukraine and Russia were a big topic during Trump and Starmer’s meeting, so were tariffs. One reporter asked Trump if Starmer had persuaded him not to impose tariffs on the U.K.
Trump said Starmer tried hard to convince him not to impose the tariffs.
‘I think there’s a very good chance that, in the case of these two great friendly countries, I think we could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs wouldn’t be necessary,’ Trump said. ‘We’ll see.’
While the U.S. and U.K. started with a rocky relationship in colonial days, it has flourished into one that both leaders agree is special and will remain strong.
In fact, Trump was handed a letter from King Charles through Starmer, inviting the president and first lady for a state visit.
‘It was my privilege and honor to bring a letter with me today from His Majesty the King, not only sending his best wishes but also inviting the president and the first lady to make a state visit to the United Kingdom, an unprecedented second state visit,’ Starmer said, noting this has never happened before. ‘It’s so incredible. It will be historic, and I’m delighted that I can go back to His Majesty the King and tell him that President Trump has accepted the invitation.’
Immediately following Starmer’s announcement, Trump thanked the prime minister and offered a compliment.
‘What a beautiful accent,’ the president said. ‘I would have been president 20 years ago if I had that accent.’
Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Cali., is demanding that Elon Musk and Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Charles Ezell stop sending mass emails to staffers.
In an open letter published Thursday, Padilla said several legislative branch offices and agencies have received mass emails from hr@opm.gov despite not being subject to personnel actions by the executive branch.
‘Neither the White House nor [the Department of Government Efficiency] nor OPM have any authority or legitimate purpose to mass email legislative branch offices and agencies demanding information from employees or to threaten adverse personnel actions,’ Padilla said.
Over the weekend, the OPM sent out mass emails to federal government workers, asking them to summarize what they did over the prior week using five bullet points. They had until 11:59 p.m. on Monday to provide their responses to the inquiry.
Padilla said these emails, received by legislative staffers, wasted ‘time and resources and potentially [mislead] employees into responding and sharing legislative branch information in an unauthorized manner.’
Padilla added that the emails were ‘especially concerning’ since several executive branch agencies have ‘even warned their own employees not to respond to these messages because doing so would risk sensitive information falling into the hands of malign foreign actors.’
‘The fact that these mass emails are also going beyond the scope of the executive branch is yet another sign of how DOGE is operating in an uninformed, poorly executed, and chaotic manner,’ Padilla said.
The Democratic lawmaker ended his letter requesting that DOGE and OPM confirm they have taken steps ‘to ensure that they will cease directly any further mass email communications at legislative branch offices and agencies and their employees.’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday is set to meet with President Donald Trump for the first time since he re-entered the White House to sign what could be a key minerals deal to help end Russia’s war.
Though some details of the agreement have emerged since the meeting was announced this week, the exact terms remain unclear, and European leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, are waiting to see what could come out of this agreement, particularly when it comes to security demands.
Trump on Wednesday told reporters that Zelenskyy could ‘forget about’ any ambitions to join NATO, but the Ukrainian president also said that day that he needs security guarantees, otherwise ‘we won’t have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing.’
‘I want to find a NATO path or something similar,’ Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian leadership has long sought NATO membership, and in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit the alliance agreed Ukraine would eventually become a member of NATO, a defense partnership Zelenskyy has since argued is the best defense against a future Russian invasion.
Trump told reporters that by entering into a minerals deal with Washington, Kyiv will be granted ‘automatic security’ guarantees by the mere presence of American extractors on Ukrainian soil.
‘Nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there,’ Trump said. ‘We’ll be there in that way.’
But it remains unclear if this ‘guarantee’ will be enough to comfort Zelenskyy, and according to former CIA Moscow Station Chief Dan Hoffman, there are too many outstanding factors to determine whether Putin would be deterred, including Kyiv’s rearmament capabilities and whether NATO nations would agree to send in troops to Ukraine.
‘As far as deterring Putin from attacking again [and] as far as Ukraine’s relationship with the United States, especially with this administration, you want the U.S. to have economic skin in the game,’ Hoffman said. ‘That’s how you walk down that path of closer bilateral relationship, and one where it’s certainly in our interest … for [Ukraine] to be an independent, sovereign nation.’
Trump said on Wednesday that European allies, including the U.K. and France, will be watching U.S. negotiations with Ukraine and Russia ‘very closely.’
‘They volunteered to put so-called peacekeepers on the site. And I think that’s a good thing,’ he added.
In response to questions by Fox News Digital over the European Union’s position on a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal, top diplomat for the EU, Kaja Kallas, said the agreement could prove positive for Kyiv so long as it puts Ukraine in a position of strength when it comes to countering Russia at the negotiating table.
‘[The] U.S. also has a very clear self-interest in play, and that hopefully makes U.S. support Ukraine more, because economic ties are making this stronger,’ she said. ‘And then it all works.’
‘Right now, it is a very important message that we send that we are behind Ukraine, to make them strong enough to be able to say no to a bad deal,’ she added.
But it’s not just European allies watching the dealings unfold; Putin is also keeping a close eye on a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal.
Putin’s representatives reportedly proposed a similar deal to the Trump administration while meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, and they said a deal could be brokered to give the U.S. access to minerals in Ukrainian regions now occupied by invading Russian forces, including Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.
The Trump administration has reportedly not ruled out an economic deal with Moscow.
Hoffman said it is in Zelenskyy’s strategic interest to make a deal with Trump, as it would hamper Putin’s strategic goals.
‘[Putin] doesn’t want Ukraine to have commercial relationships with Europe and the United States,’ he said. ‘That was part of why he wanted to topple the central government in Kyiv and then install a puppet regime that was beholden to Russia.
‘The more links Ukraine has to the West … commercial links, diplomatic and strategic military links … it’s not good for Putin,’ Hoffman added.
European leaders are weary of President Donald Trump’s push to secure a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, with the European Union’s top diplomat saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘doesn’t really want peace.’
Trump on Thursday said his administration had been in ‘very good talks with Russia,’ though he did not expand on whether any tangible progress in ending Russia’s war in Ukraine had begun.
Some NATO allies, as well as the U.S.’s decades-old partners, are increasingly frustrated with President Trump’s controversial comments about Ukraine in what has been perceived as a cost of Washington bettering ties with Moscow.
‘[The] U.S. is talking to Russia, and you have to establish contacts,’ EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas told Fox News Digital in a sit-down interview. ‘But right now, Russia doesn’t really want peace.
‘[Russia] … wants us to think that they can wait us out and that time is on their side, but it’s not really so,’ she continued. ‘If we increase the pressure, economic pressure on them, but also political pressure, if we support Ukraine so that they would be stronger on the battlefield, then they would also be stronger behind the negotiation table.’
The warning comes as Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are set to secure a minerals deal on Friday in what some hope could eventually help ceasefire discussions.
Trump has championed his ability to re-enter talks with Russia and his successful demands that NATO nations share more of the economic burden in securing Ukraine.
NATO allies did drastically ramp up their defense spending after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the stark reversal of U.S. policy in Ukraine between the Trump and Biden administrations has sent some European nations reeling.
While some allies, like the U.K., are looking to prove to Trump that Washington and London have more shared values than not, other leaders, like the incoming chancellor of Germany, are looking to distance themselves from the U.S., a position Berlin has not taken since the fall of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.
Kallas, in speaking with Fox News Digital, also looked to remind the Trump administration of the important value of the NATO alliance and emphasized the only time Article 5 has been called in the 76 years since the alliance was formed was after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
‘In terms of … international security, we need to work together with the Americans, who have been our allies for a very, very long time,’ she said. ‘And we have been there for America.’
Kallas, who served as the first female prime minister of Estonia, pointed to the sacrifices that NATO troops made in aiding the U.S. fight in the War on Terror.
‘We, as Estonia, lost as many soldiers per capita as the United States,’ she said. ‘We were there for you when you asked for help.
‘That’s why it’s painful to hear messages that, you know, we don’t care about our European allies. It should work both ways,’ Kallas added.
The EU chief diplomat has repeatedly urged the U.S. and European nations not to let Putin succeed in dividing the West over Ukraine.
Ultimately, she argued that the U.S. needs to remain a steadfast partner with Europe in deterring Russian aggression because it is not only Putin that poses an active threat to the collective alliance.
Kallas visited Washington this week to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and lawmakers about vital issues that affect the EU-U.S. security partnership, though her meeting with Rubio was canceled.
The State Department did not confirm why the meeting was canceled without being rescheduled during her stay in Washington, though Kallas said that after positive discussions with Rubio at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, she if confident communication will remain ongoing.
‘There’s a lot to discuss, from Ukraine to the Middle East, also what is happening in Africa, Iran – where we have definitely mutual interest to cooperate – and not to mention China as well,’ Kallas said. ‘There are a lot of topics that we can do [work] together with our transatlantic partners.’
Elon Musk’s status as the world’s wealthiest person is in no danger of changing.
But since mid-December, the tech titan’s net worth has declined by more than $100 billion, or approximately 25%, as a sell-off in shares of Tesla, his electric car maker, has accelerated in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, the stock closed down another 8% to $302.80and is off 25% year to date. The latest drawdown comes as new data showed new Tesla vehicle registrations plummeting in Europe, down 45% year-on-year for January, even as overall sales growth of electric-battery vehicles on the continent climbed. Sales in China also recently came in trending down.
Some reports have suggested European buyers are revolting against Musk’s active role in the Trump administration, which is effectively resetting longstanding European relations.
Investors may also simply be locking in the extraordinary gains of the past year or so: Even with the recent drop-off, the stock is still up 52% over the past 12 months.
On Tuesday, Gary Black, managing partner at The Future Fund investment group, said Tesla shares could fall even further this year given an apparent revision in recent Tesla corporate management guidance about deliveries in 2025.
Musk has assumed an unprecedented — and highly controversial — role in American society with his alliance with President Donald Trump and his ostensible leadership of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. Musk also leads SpaceX; the social media platform X; the xAI artificial intelligence company; and Neuralink, a company that is exploring brain-chip implants.
Yet Tesla investors have grown accustomed to Musk’s multiple responsibilities — and indeed, continue to value Tesla stock highly because they see Musk as a uniquely capable figure.
To that point, some investors say Tesla’s recent stock reversal may not endure in the long term. The company is expected to deploy a robo-taxi service later this year, and continues to roll out new models to adapt to shifting driver preferences. It is also unveiling its full-self-driving technology in China.
“Tesla’s superior products, new more affordable vehicle, which I believe will be a new form factor and expand Tesla’s total addressable market, and the promise of unsupervised autonomy will sell more Teslas,” Black wrote on X over the weekend.
Electric vehicle maker Lucid Group on Tuesday said CEO Peter Rawlinson is stepping down as the company expects to more than double vehicle production this year to 20,000 units.
Lucid said Marc Winterhoff, currently the company’s chief operating officer, will step in as interim CEO. Rawlinson will serve as a “strategic technical advisor to the chairman of the board, stepping aside from his prior roles,” the company said.
“I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments the Lucid team have achieved together through my tenure of these past twelve years,” Rawlinson said in a statement.
Rawlinson’s departure is unexpected. As one of the company’s largest shareholders, Rawlinson, who also served as chief technology officer, has routinely touted his passion and stake in the automaker.
Lucid’s board has initiated a search to identify a new CEO, the company said.
The CEO change and production target were announced in conjunction with the automaker’s fourth-quarter financial results. For the period ended Dec. 31, the company reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $636.9 million, or a loss of 22 cents per share, on revenue of $234.5 million.
Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected a loss of 25 cents per share on revenue of $214 million.
During the same period last year, Lucid reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $653.8 million, or a loss of 29 cents per share, on revenue of $157.2 million.
The production target for 2025 announced Tuesday is compared with production of 9,029 vehicles and deliveries of 10,241 reported for 2024.
Shares of Lucid were about 10% higher during afterhours trading Tuesday.
As of market close, shares of the company were down about 13% this year amid slower-than-expected adoption of all-electric vehicles and uncertainty about federal support for EVs under the Trump administration. The stock declined by roughly 28% last year.
Paramount Global told its employees this week that it’s ending numerous diversity, equity and inclusion policies, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.
In the memo sent to employees Wednesday, Paramount said it wouldcomply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the practice in the federal government and demanding that agencies investigate private companies over their DEI programs.
Co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins cited the executive order in the memo, as well as the Supreme Court and federal mandates, as the impetus for the media giant’s policy changes.
Among the changes, the company said it “will no longer set or use aspirational numerical goals related to the race, ethnicity, sex or gender of hires.” Paramount also said it ended its policy of collecting such stats for its U.S. job applicants on forms and career pages, except in the markets where it’s legally required to do so.
“To be the best storytellers and to continue to drive success, we must have a highly talented, dedicated and creative workforce that reflects the perspectives and experiences of our many different audiences. Values like inclusivity and collaboration are a part of the Paramount culture and will continue to be,” the co-CEOs wrote in the memo.
They added that they will continue to evaluate their policies and seek talent from all backgrounds.
Paramount has taken part in a number of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. It donated millions to racial justice causes in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd and has touted initiatives such as a supplier diversity program and Content for Change, a campaign to overhaul storytelling about racial equity and mental health. The company has hosted an annual Inclusion Week for years and maintains an Office of Global Inclusion.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion is fundamental to our business,” former CEO Bob Bakish said at Paramount’s 2023 Inclusion Week, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Paramount joins companies like Walmart, Target and Amazon in rolling back their DEI goals and policies in recent months. Others, like Apple and Costco, have publicly defended and committed to their DEI stances, even as the Trump administration has escalated its attacks on the practices.
Media companies have taken a variety of steps to respond to the Trump administration’s policy changes since the president’s inauguration last month.
Earlier this month, Disney changed its DEI programs, which included updating performance factors and rebranding initiatives and employee resource groups, among other things.
Around the same time, public broadcaster PBS — which, as a recipient of federal funding, is more directly affected by Trump’s order than corporations are —said it would shut down its DEI office. CNBC reported that DEI employees would exit the company in order for it tostay in compliance with Trump’s executive order.
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission began investigating Comcast over its DEI efforts. Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day in office, directs federal agencies to identify and probe “most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” in their sectors. Comcast previously said in a statement it would cooperate with the investigation.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published November 2024 and has been updated ahead of the 2025 Academy Awards.
Midway through the documentary “No Other Land,” journalist and activist Basel Adra recounts a2009visit to his village by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In a navy suit and crisp tie, surrounded by security detail and photographers, Blair walked through the village for seven minutes, Adra says in avoice-over.
He visits the local school, Adra says. He passes by Adra’s family’s home. He nodsalong to something someone says off camera, the footage shows. He shakes a hand. He smiles.
Months later, after Blair returns to the UK, Israel cancels the demolition ordersheld for the school and home in the street he visited, Adra says. In the mere handful of minutes, Blair accomplished what villagers had been trying to do for years.
“This,” Adra says, “is a story about power.”
“No Other Land” tells of the continued demolition of Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages in the Hebron mountains of the West Bank where Adra and his family still live. But as we see the demolition — the local playground torn down, his family moving their beds and other belongings into a cave, his brother shot and killed by soldiers, attacks by Jewish settlers — Adra and the rest of the filmmakers also show us a community trying to survive.
Adra’s filming begins in 2019 and stretches until 2023, chronicling the Israeli government’s attempt to evict the villagers by force, having claimed the land for a military training facility and firing range in 1981. (During the lengthy legal battle, before the Israeli supreme court ruled in favor of demolishing homes in the villages in 2022, Israeli prosecutors argued that Palestinian residents only began squatting in the area when it was declared a firing range, after previously using the land as seasonal pasture. Residents countered, saying the IDF had blown up Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta decades earlier, in 1966).
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What motivated you to pick up the camera in the first place? Was making a documentary always the goal?
Basel Adra: No, it wasn’t. It was documenting. To document the things around me was the goal, and it always felt important to catch the incidents that’s happening around us as evidence of the reality of what’s happening. And then, after years, the guys joined, and we decided together that we want to make a movie.
Yuval Abraham: I came here as a journalist, so documenting was part of the job. It’s something that I believe in. I came into journalism out of realizing that there is so much that is not being told in the land that we live in that needs to be told. But for me, the act of documenting, whether it’s by writing or by filming, always has a purpose or an audience in mind, most of the time. Whereas for Basel, it’s also that, but as he said, it’s also the way to survive when you’re being attacked, or when your community is.
You started filming this in 2019 and you wrapped it up before the events of October 2023. Do you think the film has changed or taken on new meaning because of what’s happened since then?
Abraham: Of course, the movie meets the audience at the moment where the audience is. Now, Palestine and Israel are on the news 24/7 for the past year. To me, the film is showing the reality on the ground before October, and it’s showing essentially the decades-long occupation of Palestinians. And I think one of the reasons why we made the movie is, for me, is because — October 7 is an atrocity — but the world was not paying attention, almost at all, to the violent life that Palestinians are living under for decades before October.
This adds so much urgency for me to the film right now. It’s clear that, to anybody who watches our film and looks at the reality of the farmers in Masafer Yatta, living under Israeli military control is not something sustainable and it’s not something just. It’s not something that can continue. Me and Basel were born in the ‘90s. If we would have reached a political solution then, imagine how many more people would be alive today? And it’s unfortunate that people are now talking about the need for political change only after, in a way, human beings are paying with their blood.
I know with the recent escalation, you had to cut your time in the US short. How did it feel to go from touring this documentary all over the world, getting awards, etc., to zooming back home to Palestine and Israel?
Adra: It’s different. It’s not easy to go to the festivals and succeed, and journalists talk about it, the audience wants to see it, and it’s been sold out in many festivals. But coming back to the reality here, it’s sad to see that the situation is going, changing to be worse than it was even before.
Abraham: It’s a question that we always ask ourselves: What can we do to cause change? To end the occupation, to reach a political movement? Now, I think after really a year, it’s hard not to talk about Gaza, honestly, because you see every single day, literally, houses filled with families being bombed and little children obliterated or burnt alive. And now in the north of the Gaza Strip, there is an ethnic cleansing. It’s one of the biggest atrocities of our age and time, and the atrocities of October 7 cannot justify what has been going on every single day since.
What kind of footage do people need to see for the United States to change its foreign policy in a way which would be constructive for the people who are living here, in a way which will push us towards some kind of political solution?
Those of us who want to see a future where this oppression ends have to call for a change. And so can our film do that? I don’t think it can do that. It’s very hard to speak about the power now of documentary and footage, when there is so much footage. You can now Google. I mean, just open Twitter and open Facebook, you see so much endless footage of violence and nothing is changing.It’s a complicated position that we are in, so I don’t know what can change.
So, you don’t necessarily feel hope that things can change, because there’s footage everywhere?
Abraham: This is why we made a documentary, because there is a difference between just posting a random instance of violence to watching our film, which tells a very strong human story of a community for four years, trying to survive on their land. We hope that watching a film will have some kind of impact that these videos that we post on social media does not have.
At the end of the day, we’re not powerful people, and if the people who have power are not using their power to change the reality, then things are not going to change. We can make a million documentaries about it, but they’re not going to change their reality.
When was the moment where you decided, ‘I’m done waiting on other journalists; I’m going to tell my own story?’
Adra: Well, this is like back in the beginning, of documenting what’s going on. What I saw, like the missions happening, the attacks are happening here in Masafer Yatta. But it’s not a story, even, it’s a routine in our lives. So there I started using social media, writing articles and filming what is happening.
Abraham: There are times in history when policy becomes invisible to the people because it happens so much. It’s just routine. It’s part of the routine oppression. I think of South Africa, for example. There were times when it was just considered normal, under the apartheid regime, to have certain people who cannot vote for the main government. It was just normal. You didn’t need to report about it. And this is what’s really happening here in Masafer Yatta. Yesterday, houses were demolished. Was it reported anywhere? It’s not going to be reported, because this is the day-to-day life, the routine life, under the military occupation.
One of the challenges we face as journalists or even as activists, is how to take a policy that is a routine, that the people are not able to see, and to make them see it. And this is one reason to make the film, to make this policy a story that will be so strong that will show the human aspects of it in such a powerful way that people will be interested to see it.
I’ve heard some places have been hesitant to maybe distribute the documentary theatrically. Is that something that you have run into?
Adra: Yeah, we still don’t have a distributor in the US, we think it’s because of the subject, they’re not taking it. We wish this will change in the future, because we really want the movie to be shown around the US, and we want millions of people to see it.
What are you hoping the impact will be?
Adra: We want political change for the situation here.
Abraham: Change is possible, especially if there is willingness from the US leaders to allow us to reach the point of change. The United States is very much complicit in what we are seeing in our movie. For a better future for Palestinians and for Israelis, we need change in US foreign policy, and we hope that the film will contribute to that.
Like that moment with Blair, for example.
Abraham: It just gives you an example of people’s lives here are getting ruined, and for people in power who are sitting in Washington, DC or in New York or in London, to change that is a matter of lifting their finger to exert pressure on Israel to stop.
Of course, in the long term, we hope that the film — and not only our film, activism and work that we are doing on the ground and abroad — will lead to an end to this occupation, and to a political solution that is based on Palestinians having freedom, and Palestinians and Israelis both having political and individual rights. And the way to do that is the US changing their foreign policy. That is one of the main things that need to change, and if our film can contribute to that, even just a little bit, then I’m very, very happy that we made it.
An Israeli security official says four bodies have been transferred to the Red Cross by Hamas.
Israel is now expected to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in the coming hours in exchange.
Footage taken in the early hours of Thursday local time showed a group of Palestinian prisoners disembarking from a Red Cross vehicle in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to the cheers of a jubilant crowd, but it is unclear how many have been released.
This is the final release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners under Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal Hamas and Israel agreed last month.
Officially, that truce ends on Saturday. It is unclear whether talks on extending the ceasefire have begun.
Israel has not said publicly whether it has identified the bodies handed over by Hamas.
Earlier, Israel said it would send a team of experts from the National Center for Forensic Medicine to the Kerem Shalom border crossing “to assist in identifying the deceased hostages.”
A previous release caused uproar when one of the bodies handed over by Hamas – that was supposed to be that of the hostage Shiri Bibas – was found instead to be that of an unidentified Gazan woman. Hamas later blamed a mix-up and returned Bibas’ body.
If the four bodies are identified as belonging to the hostages, the release would mean that Hamas and its allies now hold 59 captives according to Israeli figures. Of those, more than half are thought to be dead by the Israeli government. One, Hadar Goldin, has been held, dead, since before October 7, 2023.
Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said earlier on Wednesday that the remains of Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi and Shlomo Mantzur would be handed over.
The Israeli military has previously said that Mantzur, who at 85 was the oldest hostage taken on October 7, 2023, was killed during the Hamas-led attack and his body was held in Gaza. It had not confirmed the deaths of the others.
The latest transfer was held in private after the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said an agreement had been reached for the four to be returned “in an agreed-upon procedure and without Hamas ceremonies.”
The handover had been in doubt since Saturday, when Israel failed to release more than 600 Palestinians prisoners and detainees in protest at what it said were “humiliating ceremonies” conducted by Hamas during previous releases.
Earlier Saturday, Hamas had released six Israeli hostages from Gaza in two public ceremonies and one private transfer, in what was the final return of living hostages in the first phase of a ceasefire deal that began last month.
Among the Palestinians due for release is Nael Barghouti, the longest-serving Palestinian political prisoner. Nael has been in and out of prison since he was first arrested in 1978 and accused of engaging in attacks against the Israeli military.
He was released in a 2011 Israel-Hamas deal, which saw 1,100 Palestinians exchanged for one Israeli soldier held by Hamas for five years, Gilad Shalit. Nael was re-arrested by Israeli forces in 2014 for “Hamas membership,” according to Israeli media, and has since been serving a life sentence.
The society said 151 prisoners serving life sentences and long sentences were due to be released to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jerusalem or sent into exile. Among them is Bilal Abu Ghanem, who is serving concurrent life sentences for the murder of three Israelis on a Jerusalem bus in 2015.
The legal team representing Mexico in a lawsuit against eight firearms manufacturers in the United States is preparing to argue part of their case before the US Supreme Court on March 4, according to Pablo Arrocha, legal consultant for the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“This case is going through a stage where questions of admissibility will still be reviewed, not of substance,” Arrocha clarified on Tuesday at the International Forum on Arms Trafficking and Diversion in Latin America organized by the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE).
The Mexican government sued several US arms manufacturers in 2021, accusing them of providing weapons that ultimately reach drug cartels operating in the country and demanding compensation for economic and social damages resulting from armed violence.
Mexico, which has only one gun store, has claimed in the past that between 70% and 90% of all guns recovered from Mexican crime scenes come from the US. A 2024 report from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that 72% of international gun trafficking cases originating in the US featured Mexico as the target country.
In October 2024, the US Supreme Court granted a request by Smith & Wesson and other companies to review a federal appeals court ruling that revived the case after a lower court judge dismissed it, citing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This is a law that generally bars civil liability for firearms manufacturers and distributors for the use of their products by criminal third parties.
In court filings, the manufacturers have challenged Mexico’s allegations that they were aiding and abetting the illegal sale of their weapons in violation of US federal law. They have pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that shielded Twitter from a lawsuit alleging it aided and abetted terrorism by hosting tweets from the terrorist group ISIS.
“In its zeal to attack the firearms industry, Mexico seeks to raze bedrock principles of American law that safeguard the whole economy,” the manufacturers wrote in a November 2024 brief.
A second lawsuit, filed by Mexico in October 2022 in an Arizona court against five stores that sell guns, is in the evidence-gathering stage, according to Arrocha. Mexico accuses them of negligence, public nuisance and unjust enrichment.
According to the ATF, the Arizona to Mexico gun trafficking pipeline is second only to the illicit firearms trade between Texas and Mexico.
The legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that both lawsuits are moving forward and that there are scenarios for any type of outcome.
“This is the beginning, and this is the tip of the spear of something that can allow for much broader litigation strategies in the future,” he said at the forum.
The case comes to the Supreme Court at a moment of diplomatic tension between Mexico and the US. Last week, the US officially designated six Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups, an act that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum characterized as potentially endangering Mexican sovereignty.
At the same press conference, Sheinbaum declared that she would seek reforms to prosecute “any national or foreigner involved in the illicit manufacture, distribution, disposal, transfer and internment of weapons into [Mexico’s] national territory.”
