World
Third round of hostage releases begins as part of Hamas' Gaza ceasefire agreement with Israel
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Hamas began a third round of freeing hostages in Gaza Thursday as part of an ongoing ceasefire agreement with Israel.
Hamas handed female Israeli soldier Agam Berger, 20, to the Red Cross at a ceremony in the heavily destroyed urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in northern Gaza. She was later transferred to the Israel Defense Forces.
“The Government of Israel embraces IDF soldier Agam Berger,” read a post on the official X account of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. “Her family has been updated by the responsible authorities that she is with our forces. The Government, together with all of the security officials, will accompany her and her family.”
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Agam Berger, 19 (Courtesy: Bring Them Home Now)
Another ceremony was planned in the southern city of Khan Younis, in front of the destroyed home of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Both were attended by hundreds of people, including masked militants and onlookers.
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Hamas has agreed to handover three Israelis and five Thai captives on Thursday. In exchange, Israel was expected to release 110 Palestinian prisoners.
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Israeli forces monitor activity in the Gaza strip. (IDF)
The truce is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas, whose Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel sparked the fighting. It has held despite a dispute earlier this week over the sequence in which the hostages were released.
In Israel, people cheered, clapped and whistled at a square in Tel Aviv where supporters of the hostages watched Berger’s handover on big screens next to a large clock that’s counted the days the hostages have been in captivity. Some held signs saying: “Agam we’re waiting for you at home.”
Berger was among five young, female soldiers abducted in the Oct. 7 attack. The other four were released on Saturday. The other two Israelis set to be released Thursday are Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Moses, an 80-year-old man.
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There was no official confirmation of the identities of the Thai nationals who will be released.
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The families of the four released hostages reunite with their daughters on January 25, 2025. (IDF Spokesman’ Unit)
A number of foreign workers were taken captive along with dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers during Hamas’ attack. Twenty-three Thais were among more than 100 hostages released during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023. Israel says eight Thais remain in captivity, two of whom are believed to be dead.
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Of the people set to be released from prisons in Israel, 30 are serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis. Zakaria Zubeidi, a prominent former militant leader and theater director who took part in a dramatic jailbreak in 2021 before being rearrested days later, is also among those set to be released.
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Protesters hold placards that say ‘We’re sorry’ with the photos of Israeli hostages Chaim Peri, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper, and Nadav Popplewell who were announced to be dead last week during the demonstration. (Matan Golan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Israel said Yehoud was supposed to have been freed Saturday and delayed the opening of crossings to northern Gaza when she was not.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar, which brokered the ceasefire after a year of tough negotiations, resolved the dispute with an agreement that Yehoud would be released Thursday. Another three hostages, all men, are set to be freed Saturday along with dozens more Palestinian prisoners.
On Monday, Israel began allowing Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, the most heavily destroyed part of the territory, and hundreds of thousands streamed back. Many found only mounds of rubble where their homes had been.
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In the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is set to release a total of 33 Israeli hostages, including women, children, older adults and sick or wounded men, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israel says Hamas has confirmed that eight of the hostages to be released in this phase are dead.
Palestinians have cheered the release of the prisoners, who they widely see as heroes who have sacrificed for the cause of ending Israel’s decades-long occupation of lands they want for a future state.
Israeli forces have meanwhile pulled back from most of Gaza, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to return to what remains of their homes and humanitarian groups to surge assistance.
The deal calls for Israel and Hamas to negotiate a second phase in which Hamas would release the remaining hostages and the ceasefire would continue indefinitely. The war could resume in early March if an agreement is not reached.
Israel says it is still committed to destroying Hamas, even after the militant group reasserted its rule over Gaza within hours of the truce. Hamas says it won’t release the remaining hostages without an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Israel’s ensuing air and ground war after Oct. 7, 2023 has been among the deadliest and most destructive in decades. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed, over half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were militants.
The Israeli military says it killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence, and that it went to great lengths to try to spare civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because its fighters operate in dense residential neighborhoods and put military infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.
The Israeli offensive has transformed entire neighborhoods into mounds of gray rubble, and it’s unclear how or when anything will be rebuilt. Around 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times, with hundreds of thousands of people living in squalid tent camps or shuttered schools.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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World
US declares drug cartels, criminal gangs global terrorist organisations
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The United States has designated eight Latin American criminal and drug-trafficking groups as “global terrorist organisations” amid escalating rhetoric from President Donald Trump.
In a Federal Register notice filed on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, without offering details, that the groups have committed or pose a risk of committing “acts of terrorism that threaten the security of United States nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States”.
Some experts say the open-ended language could be used by Trump to justify expansive presidential powers and policies previously seen as out of bounds, such as military strikes on Mexican territory or stripping migrants of their right to due process.
The eight groups named in Wednesday’s notice are the Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13), Cartel de Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Carteles Unidos, Cartel de Noreste, Cartel del Golfo and La Nueva Familia Michoacana.
While those groups commit acts of violence and exploitation, experts say cartels are motivated by business interests instead of the political or ideological motives typically attributed to terrorist groups.
“The US already takes a lot of actions against these groups. They surveil them, sanction them, and prosecute their members in court. So this decision will not change much in terms of the tools they have at their disposal,” said Stephanie Brewer, the director of the Mexico programme at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based research group.
“I think it’s of concern that this is coming in the context of rhetoric out of the White House that conflates migration with crime, drugs and, now, terrorism.”
Crackdown on immigration
Many immigrants passing through Mexico and other countries in Latin America are forced to pay fees and “taxes” to criminal groups, which extort migrants and smugglers alike.
Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that fact could be used by the administration to argue that immigrants are providing material and financial support to terrorist organisations.
“You could accuse anyone – from a migrant who pays a smuggler to a Mexican business that is forced to pay a ‘protection fee’ – of offering material or financial support to a terrorist organisation,” he said.
He also notes that one of the most powerful criminal groups in the Americas, Brazil’s First Capital Command, does not appear on the list.
“I do wonder if the throughline here is that a lot of the named groups are involved in immigration routes,” he said.
The White House has frequently used depictions of irregular migration as an “invasion” to promote a hardline approach to immigration.
The Trump administration has previously threatened to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – a law that allows presidents to immediately deport citizens of an “enemy nation” during times of war – to carry out mass deportations in the US.
Earlier this month, Trump also said that the imposition of steep tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China – another promise from his presidential campaign – was necessary to address a “national emergency” of “gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illegal drugs and narcotics of all kinds” coming into the US.
Strikes on Mexico
The terrorist designations have also renewed concerns that the US could carry out military operations on Mexican territory.
“Trump has previously stated that the Mexican government has an ‘intolerable alliance’ with the cartels. Does this mean that the US now believes that the Mexican government is collaborating with terrorism?” asked Brewer.
Following the announcement of the order, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an ally of Trump who has embraced his nativist vision, said in a social media post that the order meant the groups were now “eligible for drone strikes”.
But Brewer and Freeman both say that, while combating criminal groups that cause violence and strife across the Americas is a worthwhile goal, doing so requires more than tough talk and military firepower.
“To go after these groups, you have to go after their finances, their weapons supplies, their corrupt partnerships with government authorities,” said Freeman. “And if you’re picking fights with governments all across Latin America, that would seem to cut against those efforts.”
World
Israelis Gird for Release of Bodies of Captives From Gaza
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Israelis waited anxiously on Wednesday for the expected release of the bodies of four hostages by Hamas the following day as part of the cease-fire deal in Gaza.
Israelis and Palestinians have been gripped by emotional homecomings during the truce, which began in late January. As part of the deal’s first phase, Hamas committed to returning 25 Israelis held hostage in Gaza and the remains of eight others in exchange for 1,500 Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel.
For the past few weeks, Israelis have watched tearful parents and siblings embrace their freed loved ones, many of whom had scarcely been heard from since they were kidnapped by Hamas and its allies during the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel.
Palestinians have greeted released prisoners, some of whom spent decades in Israeli jails for militant attacks. Many others, including women and minors, were detained indefinitely without charges.
The scenes anticipated on Thursday in Israel are likely to be much more somber.
The bodies of the Israeli hostages will be ferried by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Israeli forces. They will then be brought back to Israel for forensic testing to verify their identity and, if possible, establish the cause of death, which could take time.
Hamas has yet to formally announce the names of all the captives whose bodies will be returned. But Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader, said on Tuesday that they would include members of the Bibas family, whose abduction shocked and horrified Israelis and others around the world.
Shiri Bibas, 32, was kidnapped alongside her two redheaded children, one of whom was not yet nine months old. In November 2023, Hamas said all three had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israeli officials have expressed concern for their fate but have not confirmed their deaths.
Ms. Bibas’s husband, Yarden, was abducted separately and taken, wounded, to the Gaza Strip. He was finally freed as part of the cease-fire in early February in a highly choreographed Hamas release ceremony.
Under the terms of the agreement, in exchange for the four bodies, Israel will release Gazan women and minors in Israeli detention facilities, except for those accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks.
World
Brazil’s prosecutor-general files charges against ex-President Bolsonaro over alleged coup plan
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Brazil’s prosecutor-general on Tuesday filed charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup to stay in office after his 2022 election defeat.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet alleges that Bolsonaro and 33 others participated in plan to remain in power despite losing to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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Last November, Federal Police filed a 884-page report with Gonet detailing the scheme. They allege it involved systematically sowing distrust of the electoral system among the populace, drafting a decree to give the plot a veneer of legality, pressuring top military brass to go along with the plan, and inciting a riot in the capital.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives for a luncheon with senators from his support base, at the National Congress building in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
The Supreme Court will analyze the charges and, if accepted, Bolsonaro will stand trial.
The far-right leader denies wrongdoing. “I have no concerns about the accusations, zero,” Bolsonaro told journalists earlier on Tuesday during a visit to the Senate in Brasilia.
“Have you seen the coup decree, by any chance? You haven’t. Neither have I,” he added.
A lawyer for Bolsonaro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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