← The Headlines
The Headlines
All Hostages Released From Gaza, and Stocks Drop After Trump’s New Threat
00:09:42
Plus, what happened to beheaded Columbus statues.
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From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, October 13th. Here's what we're covering this morning. Israel says Hamas released all of the remaining living hostages from Gaza. The 20 people who had been held since October 7, 2023 returned to Israeli territory, a crucial part of a ceasefire deal that Israel and Hamas agreed to last week. The hostages were initially transferred to the Red Cross, which brought them into Israel, then handed over to the Israeli military, which took them to an army base for initial checks and to be reunited with their families. Israelis lined the road to the base, waving flags and cheering. Under the deal, Hamas is also required to return the remains of roughly two dozen hostages who have died, though it's unclear how quickly that will happen. In exchange, later today, Israel is expected to release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, and more aid has already begun flowing into the territory. Meanwhile, President Trump, who helped broker the deal between Hamas and Israel, has landed in Tel Aviv to meet with hostages families and deliver a speech to the Israeli parliament. In the audience, some people are wearing hats that say Trump the peace president. Later today, Trump is expected to fly to Egypt for a summit on what will happen next in Gaza and the wider region. The Egyptian president's office said the goal of the summit was to, quote, usher in a new phase of regional security and stability. And the Egyptian government says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will join. The two leaders have rarely met in recent years. As they gather, it remains unclear if the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold and become permanent. Two major sticking points in negotiations whether Hamas will disarm and whether it will agree that it can no longer rule Gaza are still unresolved.
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Foreign.
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It'S day 13 of the government shutdown, and across the country, more and more Americans are beginning to feel the impact. In some Native American communities, key medical services like diabetes monitoring have been canceled. Veterans have seen regional benefits offices close, and many of the country's fruit and vegetable farmers don't have access to crucial information about what government programs they'll be able to rely on as they plan for next year's crop. At the same time, many federal workers got what will be their last paychecks on Friday until the government reopens and thousands of other government workers have lost their jobs altogether. Can you assess how significant these job cuts will be?
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Well, the longer it goes on, the more significant they're going to be. And to be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we're looking forward to.
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On Friday, the White House began following through on its threat to use the shutdown to fire federal workers, eliminating more than 4,000 positions across multiple agencies, including the Departments of the treasury and Health and Human Services. The process has been somewhat chaotic, though. On Friday night, the administration mistakenly fired hundreds of scientists at the cdc, some of whom specialized in measles and Ebola outbreaks. The administration then spent the weekend scrambling to bring some of them back. At the moment, lawmakers remain deadlocked over any effort to reopen the government. Republicans need at least some Democratic support to pass their proposed temporary spending bill, but Democrats say they're holding out for concessions on health care funding. A red start is what Hang Seng is seen Taiwan index is down 2% as well this morning. Stocks across Asia dropped one of the toughest days on Wall street in months. The slide follows a big drop in stocks in the US On Friday. Investors are on edge after President Trump threatened a massive new wave of tariffs on Chinese goods, sparking fears that the two countries could reignite the trade war that flared up this spring. We said, where did that come from? It was just that was out of the blue. Right out of the blue, they came up with this whole import export concept. The new tensions started when China said last week that it was tightening its grip over rare earth metals, requiring companies to get new licenses to ship them out of the country. Those minerals are crucial for making computer chips and batteries, and China dominates production of them. Its factories process roughly 90% of the global supply, for example. It's the only place in the world that refines samarium, a material used in American F35 fighter jets and a wide range of missiles. Trump denounced China's move as sinister and hostile and said the US will put a 100% tariff on all products from China. That's on top of existing surcharges that he's imposed of at least 30%. He also threatened to call off the in person talks he's scheduled to have this month with the Chinese president on the sidelines of an economic conference in South Korea. Meanwhile, despite the tensions over trade, there was a little breakthrough in US China relations this past week in basketball. For years, the NBA has had a massive fan base in China. By some estimates at peak viewership, more people watched the NBA finals in China than in the U.S. but that all imploded in 2019 when a manager for an NBA team posted on social media that he supported pro democracy protests in Hong Kong. That infuriated Chinese officials who pulled the NBA from Chinese state tv. The controversy exploded while two NBA teams were in China set to play a preseason game. The players told the Times they saw the outrage build in real time, watching from their hotel rooms as workers ripped down huge ads with their faces on them from a nearby building. There have been no NBA games in China or its territories since. Since then, until this past Friday. I mean, is this the most exciting live shot I've ever done? We're a couple hours away now from tip off. The game between the Phoenix Suns and the Brooklyn Nets happened in Maau, and it was the result of years of negotiations by an American casino mogul, Patrick Dumont, who operates a location in Maau, too. Casino owners there have been under pressure from the Chinese government to diversify beyond gambling. And so Dumont hatched a plan to bring the NBA back to Chinese audiences and to the arena at his casino in Macau, specifically. In the past, other sports leagues, including the English Premier League, have had rifts with China over questions of human rights and other controversies. In those cases, the leagues have often made concessions to the Chinese government to resolve things. In the case of the NBA, the league insists it made no concessions. But in an interview with the Times, the head of the NBA said that the league would have to be flexible in its renewed relationship with the Chinese government, saying, quote, if this is about ideological purity on either side, it will never be achieved. And finally, today on the federal calendar is Columbus Day. Post offices are closed, a lot of banks are shut. But across the country, more than a dozen states and cities mark today as Indigenous Peoples Day. There's been a long time push not to celebrate Columbus, the Italian navigator who sailed to the Americas in 1492 by people who say he brought genocide and colonization. In 2020, statues of Columbus became a flashpoint during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd. That year, more than 30 were dismantled, either by protesters or officials who took them down. Five years later, the Times has been looking at where those statues ended up. Boston's Columbus statue which was beheaded ended up being repaired and relocated to a church garden. Baltimore's was dumped in the harbor by protesters but the pieces have since been fished out to be used to make a replica. Other Columbus statues have found new homes at museums or Italian American social clubs. Italian American groups have helped with a lot of the restorations and relocations. For them Columbus is a part of their heritage. A lot of Columbus statues were originally put up years ago as symbols of Italian pride at a time when Italian immigrants faced discrimination in the U.S. some cities are still trying to figure out what to do where their Columbus statues used to be. Newark put up a monument to Harriet Tubman. San Antonio, Texas put up a statue of the patron saint of seafarers. And in New Haven, Connecticut last year a bronze statue was unveiled that depicted an Italian immigrant family. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.