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What’s next for Gaza. And, ICE tactics are reportedly becoming more violent
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Israel released nearly 2,000 prisoners yesterday as part of the initial phase of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. Hamas also freed the last 20 surviving Israeli hostages. Some of the Palestinians who returned to Gaza were journalists, doctors and first responders who were taken from hospitals and off the streets by soldiers. NPR’s Aya Batrawy tells Up First that some of the returned Palestinians showed signs of torture on their bodies and severe malnutrition, and some struggled to walk.
One of the Palestinian prisoners released under the prisoner-hostage swap and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas gestures as he and others disembark from their bus upon arrival at Ramallah Cultural Centre in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, on Oct. 13, 2025, coming from Ofer military prison in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territories. The initial phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal includes the release of 47 Israeli hostages, living and deceased, taken on Oct. 7, 2023, in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,700 Gazans held by Israel since the outbreak of the war.
Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty
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Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty
- 🎧 NPR’s Anas Baba witnessed the people’s return to Gaza and said he saw a mix of joy and survival as many embraced loved ones. But many of them have no homes to return to and have discovered that their families are gone. Israeli troops still occupy Gaza and won’t be withdrawing until Hamas disarms. Batrawy says it is still uncertain whether Hamas will agree to storing or handing over offensive weapons. As Gaza looks to rebuild, President Trump’s peace plan doesn’t address the West Bank or the creation of a Palestinian state, leaving the root of the conflict unresolved.
- 🎧 Trump has returned from a trip to the Middle East and is receiving a lot of credit for the ceasefire deal, says NPR’s Tamara Keith. There have previously been brief ceasefires in the war. The question now is whether this time will be different. Keith emphasizes that this is only the first phase of a multiphase peace plan for Gaza. By making the trip to the Middle East, Trump has invested political capital in the peace being a lasting one. For the agreement to hold, the president cannot just move on; he will have to stay engaged and keep applying pressure, according to Keith.
- ➡️ Here’s a look at the war in Gaza, by the numbers.
Federal immigration officers have been seen in countless videos using increasingly aggressive tactics while detaining immigrants. A majority of Americans say they disapprove of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, according to a recent survey from The New York Times and Siena University.
- 🎧 Ed Yohnka with the ACLU of Illinois tells NPR’s Meg Anderson that officers are dragging people out of vehicles and roughly taking people who are just walking on the street. Yohnka and other observers say federal agents have tear-gassed people and shot them with pepper balls while targeting immigrants, protesters and journalists. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its officers are acting according to law and policy. Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, tells Anderson that immigration officers are not prepared to police an urban environment, and good policing in cities is about getting the public to trust you.
New 2025 testing data indicate that U.S. students in third to eighth grade scored below 2019 performance levels in reading. The data comes from the Spring 2025 MAP Growth Assessment by NWEA, a K-12 testing and research organization. The results show there is a little more room for optimism when it comes to math, where some grades showed improvement. All grades are still behind compared to pre-pandemic scores.
Cost of living
Veterinarian Janet Sosnicki, 36, checks the temperature of Theodore during a drive through veterinarian clinic at the Salem Animal Rescue League in Salem, New Hampshire on May 27, 2020. – Many veterinarian offices have been closed to the public during the pandemic and many have choses to do outside visits to reduce the spread of the covid-19 virus. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP) (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
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Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images
NPR’s series Cost of Living: The Price We Pay is examining what’s driving price increases and how people are coping after years of stubborn inflation.
If you have a pet, odds are you have felt the increased cost of pet care. The Indicator from Planet Money talks with Veterinarian Adam Hechko about why prices are soaring. Here’s what he had to say:
- 🐶 The cost of operating a veterinary practice has increased with things like medication, partly due to tariffs. Hechko says the cost of a box of exam gloves is more than twice what it was a year or so ago.
- 🐶 For many practices, the cost of labor exceeds 50% of overall operating costs, because wages for these careers have to rise over time.
- 🐶 People are willing to spend more money on pet care. Hechko says this noticeable shift in the culture of pet ownership relates to pandemic lockdowns. Some people’s only social interactions or source of companionship during that time were their pets. Hechko believes that’s why more people are willing to pay more for the best care to keep their pet healthy.
Listen to what else Hechko has to say about the cost of pet care, or read the transcript from the interview. This week, the series will cover the rising cost of health care. Stay up-to-date on the latest stories here.
How are higher prices changing the way you live? Fill out this form to share your story with NPR.
Picture show
Spaghetti Cumbia posa para un retrato en Vasquez Rocks, en el norte del condado de Los Ángeles, el 26 de marzo de 2022.
Ivan Kashinsky
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Ivan Kashinsky
Cumbia Across Latin America is a visual report covering the people, places and cultures that keep this music genre alive in six countries.
The members of the band Spaghetti Cumbia grew up listening to Latin music in their Los Angeles homes, including cumbia. Living in LA, the group became heavily influenced by classic rock, punk rock and hip-hop. They created their own style by mixing cumbia with their influences and adding a Spaghetti Western sound. The band members credit their love for music for saving them from connecting with the wrong crowd in the ’90s, when gang violence was at its peak on the city’s east side, which was a popular destination for immigrants. Spaghetti Cumbia said there was no time to spend on the streets between rehearsals and studio sessions. Learn more about how Los Angeles helped shape cumbia music and see pictures from the band’s gigs. You can also read the article in Spanish.
3 things to know before you go
Marc Maron attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Apple TV+ New Series “Stick” at AMC Century City 15 on May 29 in Los Angeles, California.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/FilmMagic
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Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/FilmMagic
- Former President Barack Obama was the final guest on actor and comedian Marc Maron’s bi-weekly podcast, which ended yesterday on episode 1,686. Obama provided insight into the current state of politics and reflected on WTF with Marc Maron‘s legacy.
- The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded yesterday to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt for their research on how cycles of technological innovation drive economic growth and lead to creative destruction.
- After graduating from high school in 1971, Silvana Clark enrolled at a community college after receiving guidance from her drama teacher, George Meshke, who had taken a job there. Facing financial difficulties for the next semester, she informed Meshke, who then helped her secure a scholarship. Toward the end of the school year, Clark discovered her unsung hero was actually the one responsible for paying her fees, an act she says she will never forget.
This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.
The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies.
ShinyHunters, a hacking group, had claimed responsibility for the attack on Instructure, the Salt Lake City-based company that provides Canvas to about half of all colleges and universities in North America.
The hackers said they had accessed the data of more than 275 million users at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, including private conversations between students and teachers as well as personal identifying information such as names and email addresses. Canvas was shut down for hours after the cyberattack on Thursday.
The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end. Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cybercriminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the company said.
Instructure did not say what it had given the hackers in exchange for the return of the data. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the deal.
Canvas has more than 30 million active users around the world, according to Instructure. The platform is used by teachers and students for coursework management and communications. Instructure said the data compromised in the hack included usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages.
ShinyHunters on Thursday claimed the attack in a message that appeared on students’ Canvas pages and was obtained by The New York Times. The group warned that it would leak an unspecified amount of data on May 12 if it did not receive a response from Instructure. In its May 3 ransom note, the group had threatened to leak “several billions of private messages among students and teachers.”
Not much is known about ShinyHunters, which is believed to have been formed around 2020. Its goal appears to be to obtain personal records and sell them. One of its high-profile attacks was against Ticketmaster in 2024, when the hackers said they had stolen the user information of more than 500 million customers.
Instructure said it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on Apr. 29, and again on May 7. The company said it took Canvas offline to investigate the breach, and also informed the F.B.I., the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other international law enforcement partners.
Instructure did not immediately respond to questions about whether any law enforcement agencies were involved in its dealings with the hackers. The F.B.I. advises against paying ransom to hackers, saying it does not guarantee data security and encourages attackers to target more victims.
The National Quarantine Center is located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
Sixteen of the 18 passengers transferred to the U.S. from a cruise ship where there was an outbreak of hantavirus arrived in Omaha, Neb., on Monday for evaluation after disembarking the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
Of the 15 U.S. citizens and one dual U.S.-British citizen who arrived in Nebraska, all but one are currently being housed in the National Quarantine Unit. That patient tested positive for the virus and was being housed in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, officials said at a Monday news conference. The 15 people in the quarantine unit will continue to be monitored for signs of the illness.
Passengers carry their belongings in plastic bags after being evacuated from the MV Hondius after docking in the Granadilla Port on Sunday in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
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Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Nebraska may seem an unlikely location to process these individuals, but it is home to the National Quarantine Unit — the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. — and the separate Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. They are highly specialized facilities located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and widely considered among the best in the world.
The $1 million, five-room biocontainment unit was dedicated in 2005. It was a joint project with Nebraska Health and Human Services and the UNMC. It is set up to safely provide medical care for patients with highly hazardous and infectious diseases and was used in 2014 to treat two doctors infected with Ebola. The National Quarantine Unit was completed in late 2019. It cost nearly $20 million, according to the Associated Press. Both facilities were used during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community. We are proud to support this national effort.”
Two additional U.S. passengers on the cruise ship — a couple, with one showing symptoms of hantavirus — were transferred for monitoring to Emory University Hospital, where another advanced biocontainment facility is located.
When the biocontainment unit was first dedicated more than 20 years ago, the biggest concerns were anthrax attacks and severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, Dr. Phil Smith, who spearheaded the efforts at Nebraska Medical Center to create the biocontainment unit, told the AP in 2020. Smith died last year.
A hallway leading to rooms at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
The quarantine unit features 20 negative-pressure rooms designed to keep potentially harmful particles from escaping by maintaining lower air pressure inside than outside the rooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide patients with attached bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi, according to the medical center.
“We have protocols in the quarantine unit that provide for safe care of these of these persons, including just all the activities of daily living so that they can … have a comfortable stay but also have it in an area that’s protected and limits spread of the pathogen,” Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of the National Quarantine Unit, said at a Friday news conference.
The biocontainment unit, by contrast, is a patient-care space where people are able to receive medical treatment, Dr. Angela Hewlett, medical director of the biocontainment unit, told reporters Monday.
She emphasized that the facility — which has a 10-bed capacity — operates independently from the quarantine unit and has its own dedicated air-handling system. “We don’t share [it] with any of the rest of the facility,” she said, noting that the unit uses rooftop HEPA filtration and is designed “very differently” from what most people typically imagine in a hospital setting.
One of the rooms in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, speaking at Monday’s news conference, welcomed the recently arrived patients, who are among nearly 150 people from 23 different countries who were aboard the MV Hondius when the illness most commonly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents broke out. As of Monday, the World Health Organization has reported at least nine cases of hantavirus, including three deaths.
“We’re glad that you’re here,” Pillen said. “We’re going to ensure that you have the best world-class care possible.”
Pillen also sought to reassure Nebraskans that the facilities are safe and secure: “We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time,” he said. “No one poses a risk to public health, just walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha.”
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship has been identified as the Andes strain of the illness, one that can be spread, though rarely, from person-to-person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause severe respiratory disease, with early flu-like symptoms.
“The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged, close contact with someone who is already symptomatic,” according to Adm. Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at Monday’s news conference. “Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.”
“The risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” he said.
The full quarantine period for hantavirus is 42 days, Christine said, but he added that the patients would be allowed to go home if they remained asymptomatic.
“Right now, the passengers that are all in the assessment phase — they’re going to be here for at least a few days while we do assessments and the coordination on what happens next,” he said, adding that they had the option to remain in the quarantine facility for the full period, for “the safest and most effective option for them.”
new video loaded: Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
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Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
Eighteen passengers who were aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship with a deadly hantavirus outbreak, landed in Omaha on a U.S. government medical flight. The passengers were being monitored at medical facilities in Nebraska and Georgia.
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We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time. No one who poses a risk to public health is walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha or beyond.
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