At least 26 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces opened fire on Sunday near a southern Gaza aid distribution center run by a controversial US-backed foundation, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

“Crowds of citizens headed to receive food aid” from a site in the Rafah area, when Israeli forces opened fire, said a paramedic from the PRCS, the only medical professionals present in the area.

The GHF is a private organization backed by Israel and the United States. It was set up amid Israeli accusations that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza and selling it for profit. Humanitarian organizations say there is no evidence of this, and Israel hasn’t presented any evidence publicly.

United Nations aid agencies have criticized the GHF’s aid mechanism, saying it violates humanitarian principles and raises the risks for Palestinians.

UN aid groups, such as UNRWA, typically check identification and rely on a database of registered families when distributing aid.

But the GHF is not screening Palestinians at aid distribution sites, despite Israeli officials saying that additional security measures were a core reason for the creation of the new program.

Criticism has been mounting against both Israel and the GHF after chaos broke out last week when tens of thousands of starving Palestinians arrived at two new food distribution sites.

According to Palestinian Ministry of Health figures from before Sunday’s incident, 11 people have been killed and dozens injured since the aid distribution sites have opened. The GHF said on Thursday that no one has been killed or injured since the distribution of aid began last week.

The statement added that it has provided more than 4.7 million meals in six days, including delivering 16 truckloads of food on Sunday morning, providing over 887,000 meals.

In a statement issued Sunday, the GHF said it will “continue scaling, with plans to build additional sites across Gaza, including in the northern region, in the weeks ahead.”

Aid was distributed “without incident,” read the statement, with the group adding it was “aware of rumors being actively fomented by Hamas suggesting deaths and injuries today.”

However, a mixed picture appears on the ground with claims of the aid distributed believed to be inaccurate.

The GHF also claims the reports of “deaths, mass injuries and chaos” at its sites are “false.”

“They are untrue and fabricated,” the statement continued.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Growing up in Brazil, neuroscientist Danielle Beckman always dreamed of moving to the US for work. So, in 2017, when Beckman got the opportunity to work at the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis, she jumped on it.

“I was so excited,” she recalled. “Coming to the US was always the dream. It was always the place to be, where there’s the biggest investment in science.”

But months into President Donald Trump’s second term, as his administration wages an unprecedented war on the country’s top universities and research institutions, Beckman no longer sees the US as a welcome home for her or her research, which focuses on how viral infections like Covid-19 affect the brain.

Beckman is part of a growing wave of academics, scientists and researchers leaving the US in what many are warning could be the biggest brain drain the country has seen in decades.

But America’s loss could be the rest of the world’s gain.

As the Trump administration freezes and slashes billions of dollars in research funding, meddles with curricula, and threatens international students’ ability to study in the US, governments, universities and research institutions in Canada, Europe and Asia are racing to attract fleeing talent.

The European Union pledged €500 million ($562 million) over the next three years “to make Europe a magnet for researchers.”

A university in Marseille, France, is wooing persecuted academics under a new program called a “Safe Place for Science.” Canada’s largest health research organization is investing 30 million Canadian dollars ($21.8 million) to attract 100 scientists early in their careers from the US and elsewhere. The Research Council of Norway launched a 100 million kroner ($9.8 million) fund to lure new researchers. The president of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University recently told a crowd at a higher education summit the school is identifying “superstar” US researchers and making them offers as soon as the next day.

The Australian Academy of Science also launched a new talent program to recruit disillusioned US-based scientists and lure Australians back home.

“We know these individuals are highly trained, talented, and have much to offer,” said Anna-Maria Arabia, chief executive of the academy, noting the program has received “encouraging interest” so far.

“It’s vitally important that science can continue without ideological interference,” Arabia said.

The US could lose its scientific edge

The US has long been a powerhouse when it comes to research and development, attracting talent from far afield with its big budgets, high salaries and swanky labs.

Since the 1960s, US government expenditure in research and development (R&D) has more than doubled from $58 billion in 1961 to almost $160 billion in 2024 (in inflation-adjusted dollars), according to federal data. When incorporating R&D funding from the private sector, that number balloons to more than an estimated $900 billion in 2023.

The US’s enormous investment in R&D has led to an outsized influence on the world stage. The US has racked up more than 400 Nobel Prizes, more than double the amount of the next country, the United Kingdom. More than a third of the US’s prizes were won by immigrants.

“We have been respected worldwide for decades because we have trained succeeding generations of researchers who are pushing into new territories,” said Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University.

But Trump’s second term has upended the relationship between higher education and the federal government.

Trump’s gutting of federal health and science agencies has led to sweeping job losses and funding cuts, including at the National Institutes of Health, which funds nearly $50 billion in medical research each year at universities, hospitals and scientific institutions.

Between the end of February and the beginning of April, the administration cancelled almost 700 NIH grants totaling $1.8 billion, according to an analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Trump administration has proposed reducing the NIH’s budget in 2026 by 40%.

The National Science Foundation has also slashed nearly $1.4 billion worth of grants. On Wednesday, 16 US states sued the Trump administration over the NSF cuts, which they argue will impede “groundbreaking scientific research” and “(jeopardize) national security, the economy and public health.”

Trump has also targeted elite universities and is in the middle of a legal battle with Harvard University over its refusal to bow to his administration’s directives to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, resulting in billions in frozen federal funding. That battle significantly escalated this month when Trump banned Harvard’s ability to enroll international students – a decision swiftly halted by a federal judge hours after Harvard filed suit.

This week, the White House directed federal agencies to cancel all remaining contracts with Harvard.

“The president is more interested in giving that taxpayer money to trade schools and programs and state schools where they are promoting American values, but most importantly, educating the next generation based on skills that we need in our economy and our society: apprenticeships, electricians, plumbers,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News this week.

“We need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University.”

‘I don’t feel so welcome’

Foreign institutions have already jumped on the chance to welcome Harvard students now caught in legal limbo. On Monday, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said it will accept any Harvard students that wish to transfer, as well as prospective students with a current offer from Harvard.

“I see this as the most significant crisis that universities are facing since World War Two,” Wong said. “We are seeing a complete reset of this collaborative relationship between the federal government and leading research institutions.”

Once the beacon of scientific research, the US has now become an increasingly hostile place to study, teach, and do research. Three quarters of US scientists surveyed by the journal Nature in March said they were considering leaving because of the Trump administration’s policies.

Some have already jumped ship. Yale professors Jason Stanley, Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder, preeminent fascism scholars, announced in March they were leaving for the University of Toronto across the border in Canada because of Trump’s affronts to academic freedom.

Beckman, the Brazilian neuroscientist, said her lab has seen $2.5 million in grant funding cancelled in recent months. On top of these funding woes, Beckman said the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, and shifting attitudes towards foreigners in the US, has also pushed her to look for work elsewhere.

“It’s the first time since I moved here that I don’t feel so welcome anymore,” she said.

As the US research ecosystem responds to shrinking budgets and intrusions on academic freedom, early-career scientists are going to be hardest hit, Wong said. But younger researchers are also more mobile, and institutions around the world are welcoming them with open arms.

“What we are losing is this whole cadre of highly productive, young, energetic, well-trained, knowledgeable, advanced researchers who are primed to take off,” Wong said.

Other countries have long deprioritized investment in scientific research as the US absorbed the R&D needs of the world, Wong said. But that trend is shifting.

R&D spending in China has surged in recent decades, and the country is close to narrowing the gap with the US. China spent more than $780 billion on R&D in 2023, according to OECD data. The European Union is also spending more on R&D. R&D investment in the bloc has increased from about $336 billion in 2007 to $504 billion in 2023, according to the OECD.

For a couple of months, Beckman said she considered stepping away from her Covid-19 research, which has become increasingly politicized under the Trump administration.

But then she started getting interviews at institutions in other countries.

“There is interest in virology everywhere in the world except the US right now.”

The Nigerian journalist has been accepted into Columbia Journalism School for a master’s degree and was on the cusp of applying for her US visa. “I don’t have any backup plan,” the 31-year-old said. “I put all my eggs in one basket – in Columbia… which is quite a risk.” She is due to start her degree in New York in August having already paid a hefty enrolment fee.

Akintade is among thousands of people across the globe who were thrown into limbo on Tuesday when the US State Department instructed its embassies and consulates to pause the scheduling of new student visa interviews as it plans to expand social media vetting for applicants.

It’s the latest in a series of moves by the Trump White House targeting higher education, starting with an ongoing fight with Harvard University and then dramatically expanding in scope.

‘A scary time to study in the US’

“It feels like a really scary and unsettling time for international students studying in the US,” said one Canadian student who has also been accepted by Columbia. “A lot of us chose to study in the US for its freedoms but now knowing that innocent social media posts could cost an education feels like censorship.”

“We were looking at a post from us at Pride, and my caption was simply a rainbow flag and then a trans flag. And I was on the phone with her ‘and I was like, do I have to take this down?’ Eventually we decided no, I could leave it up, but I changed the caption, I removed the trans flag. I don’t know how to feel about that,” the student said.

“I do think it’s real proof that it is a fear campaign that is incredibly successful,” she said, adding that she has deferred her place for this year after getting a job offer. “I changed the caption with the anticipation that it could get worse. Today it is one (issue) and tomorrow it will be another one.”

The State Department has required visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and nonimmigrant visa application forms since 2019, a spokesperson said. In addition, it had already called for extra social media vetting of some applicants, largely related to alleged antisemitism. But it’s unclear what kind of post might pose a problem for an application from now on, or how these posts will be scrutinized.

British student Conrad Kunadu said he’d been grappling with an “internal conflict” over his offer to pursue a PhD in Environmental Health at Johns Hopkins University after monitoring the crackdown on US colleges “religiously” for the past few months.

After wondering whether he could manage his anxiety that “something (he) wrote in 2016” could get him deported, Kunadu decided to stay in Britain and study at Oxford University instead. Despite being grateful to have another option, he described his situation as a “lose-lose.”

“I wanted to study in the US not just because, for my interests in health security, it’s where all the talent and resources are, but because it’s the best way to make an impact on these issues at a global scale,” Kunadu said. Like many others, he can’t help but mourn the possible academic research and advances that now may never come to fruition.

Kunadu and another student who requested anonymity both mentioned being anxious about exploring topics in their studies that could be interpreted as dissent and ruffle official feathers.

Kagan described the visa halt as “one of many attacks on higher education and immigrants… two of the Trump administration’s favorite targets,” which in this case overlap. And while the directive is consistent with what the White House was already doing, he sees this as “an unprecedented attack in a non-emergency time.”

When asked whether those who had accepted college offers and were waiting for a visa appointment had any legal avenues available to them, Kagan was not encouraging. “If someone is trying to enter and not yet getting a visa, (that person) usually has nearly no recourse,” he said.

A sense of rejection

In the 2023-34 academic year, more than 1.1 million international students studied at US higher education institutions, according to a report from the the Institute of International Education.

For Nigerian journalist Akintade, who has always dreamed of studying at an Ivy League school, the feeling of rejection by the US is weighing heavily. “This is the message I’m getting: we don’t want you,” she said, with a deep sigh.

Lisa Klaassen, Nimi Princewill and Quinta Thomson contributed to this report

New satellite images show that North Korea has deployed what appear to be balloons alongside its damaged 5,000-ton warship that has been laying on its side and partially submerged since a botched launch last week.

The stricken destroyer was the country’s newest warship and was meant to be a triumph of North Korea’s ambitious naval modernization effort. Instead, a malfunction in the launch mechanism on May 21 caused the stern to slide prematurely into the water, crushing parts of the hull and leaving the bow stranded on the shipway, state media KCNA reported, in a rare admission of bad news.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who witnessed the failed launch in the northeastern city of Chongjin, called it a “criminal act” and ordered the country to swiftly repair the as-yet-unnamed ship before the late-June plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party, calling it a matter of national honor.

Officials have since scrambled to undo the damage and punish those they claim are responsible, detaining four people in recent days, including the shipyard’s chief engineer.

Analysts say it appears balloons are being used in North Korea’s effort to swiftly repair the destroyer.

“It looks like what appear to be balloons have been installed not to refloat the ship, but to prevent the ship from further flooding,” said Rep. Yu Yong-weon, a South Korean National Assembly lawmaker and military analyst.

Retired United States Navy Cpt. Carl Schuster said if the objects are indeed balloons, they could have one of two purposes – either to prevent “low- to mid-level drone reconnaissance,” or to reduce the stress on the part of the ship still stranded on the pier.

“That is the area that is most likely to have been damaged, suffered the most severe damage and remains under intense stress while the forward area remains out of the water,” he said.

Nick Childs, senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said North Korea could be in danger of further damaging the ship if it’s using balloons to keep it afloat or raise it.

“It is highly likely that the ship is under quite a lot of stress anyway,” and lifting from above could compound those stresses, he said.

Normal procedure would be to get as much buoyancy as possible in the ship and then raise it from below, Childs said.

According to satellite images shared by Maxar Technologies, more than a dozen white, balloon-like objects have been deployed around the destroyer since May 23.

The images don’t appear to show any flotation bladders supporting the hull or the body of the ship, Schuster said – something the US might use in such a situation. He added that North Korea’s maritime industry might not be advanced enough for such techniques.

North Korean state media had previously reported that the damage was less severe than initially feared, and that there were no holes in the hull, though it was scratched along the side and some seawater had entered the stern. It estimated repairs could take about 10 days – though analysts are skeptical.

The ship’s precarious position also makes the salvage operation unusually complex. “Having it half in and half out of the water is basically the worst possible situation,” said Decker Eveleth, an associate research analyst at CNA, a nonprofit specializing in defense research.

He added that the operation would be simpler if the ship had fully capsized into the water, or if it had fallen over entirely on land. “But as it’s half on land and half on water – if you try to pull the sunken half out, you’re risking twisting and breaking the keel,” Eveleth said, referring to the structural spine running along the ship’s bottom. “And if you do that, the whole ship is junk.”

Childs said North Korea may have to cut the ship into pieces and then try to salvage what it can because righting it from its current position is an extremely complex task.

“Very often the only way you clear the dock … is to dismantle at least part of the ship to make the operation easier, right what you have left and tow it away and make a decision on whether you rebuild it or scrap it,” he said.

The captain of a container ship that crashed into a US tanker off Britain’s east coast pleaded not guilty on Friday in a London court to manslaughter by gross negligence over the death of a crew member in the collision.

Russian national Vladimir Motin, 59, was captain of the Portuguese-flagged Solong that hit the Stena Immaculate tanker, carrying military jet fuel, on March 10.

Motin was charged four days later with causing the death of Filipino national and Solong crew member Mark Pernia, 38, who is missing and presumed dead.

He appeared at the Old Bailey by videolink on Friday and pleaded not guilty to one count of gross negligence manslaughter.

More to come.

British comedian and actor Russell Brand pled not guilty to multiple charges of rape and sexual assault at a court in London on Friday.

In April, 49-year-old Brand was charged with one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, and one count of oral rape, as well as two counts of sexual assault. The charges relate to four separate women.

The alleged assaults took place between 1999 and 2005. He has previously denied all the allegations.

Brand walked into the courtroom at Southwark Crown Court wearing a dark suit and an unbuttoned, pinstripe shirt. He spoke only to confirm his name and enter five not guilty pleas.

A trial date has been scheduled for June 3, 2026.

Detectives started investigating the actor in September 2023 after receiving allegations following a joint investigation led by three British media outlets – The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s “Dispatches.”

According to London’s Metropolitan Police, it is alleged that one woman was raped in 1999 in Bournemouth, southern England; one woman was indecently assaulted in London’s Westminster area in 2001; a woman was orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster in 2004; and a woman was sexually assaulted between 2004 and 2005, also in Westminster.

Brand has appeared in numerous Hollywood films and hosted radio and TV shows in the United Kingdom.

More recently, he has sought to frame himself as a social commentator and promoted conspiracy theories online, particularly on YouTube, where he has amassed almost 6.8 million subscribers.

Inside Vatican City, the home of Pope Leo, lies a vast collection of Indigenous artifacts that some people say shouldn’t be there.

The collection includes thousands dozens of colonial-era objects, including a rare Inuvialuit sealskin kayak from the western Arctic, a pair of embroidered Cree leather gloves, a 200-year-old wampum belt, a baby belt from the Gwich’in people and a beluga tooth necklace.

They are relics of a time of cultural destruction, critics say, taken by the Roman Catholic Church a century ago as trophies of missionaries in far-off lands.

Pope Francis promised to return the artifacts to communities in Canada as part of what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” for abuses against Indigenous people by the Church. But several years on, they remain in the Vatican’s museums and storage vaults.

Indigenous leaders are now urging Pope Leo to finish what Francis started and give the artifacts back.

“When things were taken that weren’t somebody else’s to take, it’s time to return them,” said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

Calls to repatriate the artifacts began gaining steam in 2022, when a group of First Nations, Inuit and Métis delegates visited Rome for long-awaited talks with Pope Francis about historical abuses at Canada’s church-run residential schools.

While there, the delegates were given a tour of some of the Vatican’s collection and were astonished to see treasured relics stored thousands of miles away from the communities who once used them.

“It was quite an emotional experience to see all of these artifacts – whether they be Métis, First Nations of Inuit artifacts – so far away,” said Victoria Pruden, President of the Métis National Council, which represents the Métis Indigenous people of northwestern Canada.

Following that visit – and Francis’s subsequent trip to Canada, where he apologized for the Church’s role in residential schools – the late pontiff pledged to return the relics.

An expo of Indigenous objects

How the artifacts came to be in the pope’s possession requires a trip back to the era of Pope Pius XI, who led the Catholic Church from 1922.

Pius was known for promoting the work of missionaries, and in 1923 sent a call out to orders worldwide to gather evidence of the church’s vast reach.

“He said: Send in everything related to Indigenous life. Send in sacred belongings. Send in language materials. Send in Indigenous people, if you can manage it,” said Gloria Bell, an assistant professor of art history at McGill University.

“There were thousands of belongings stolen from Indigenous communities to please the greed of Pope Pius XI,” said Bell, who documented the exhibition in her book “Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome.”

The church’s collection of Indigenous artifacts was compiled at a time when the cultural identity of Canada’s Indigenous people was being erased.

The Canadian government had made it compulsory for Indigenous children to attend residential schools – boarding schools largely run by the Catholic Church designed by law to “kill the Indian in the child” and assimilate them into White Christian society.

In these schools, Indigenous children were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture and were harshly punished for doing so. Thousands of children died from abuse or neglect, with mass graves still being found decades after the last residential school closed in 1998.

Even as this injustice unfolded, their cultural belongings and artifacts were being displayed in the 1925 Vatican Mission Exposition, a 13-month long exhibit promoting the Church’s influence around the world, which drew millions of visitors.

The Vatican has claimed the artifacts were gifts to the Pope. But Bell says that’s a “false narrative” which doesn’t consider the context in which the objects were acquired.

“This acquisition period was a really assimilative period in Canadian colonial history,” Bell said.

The artifacts were never returned. A century later, many of the cultural objects and artwork remain at the Vatican, either in storage or on display at the Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum.

A papal apology

Laurie McDonald, an elder from Enoch Cree Nation who grew up on an Indigenous reserve in Maskêkosihk, Alberta in the 1950s and 1960s, knows what it’s like to have your culture taken from you.

“We were forbidden as a nation to use our cultural regalia, our cultural tools, or our medicines, and if we were caught, we were reported to the Indian agent,” said McDonald, referring to the Canadian government official responsible for assimilation policy.

McDonald was just 11 years old when he was forcibly taken from the home he shared with his grandmother and sent to Ermineskin Indian Residential School, one of Canada’s largest residential schools. Two weeks in, he tried to escape, but became caught on a barbed wire fence and a staff member ripped him off, leaving scars.

In 2022, McDonald returned to the site of his former school to witness Pope Francis’s historic apology on behalf of the Catholic Church.

“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said, looking out over the land of four First Nations. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.”

Pope Francis’s apology on behalf of the Catholic Church was deeply meaningful for many Indigenous peoples in Canada. But reconciliation is a long process, and Indigenous leaders say they hope Leo will continue what Francis started – first and foremost, by returning the artifacts.

McDonald said the objects represent stories and legacies which should have been passed down generations.

“Those may have been simple stuff to you, but to us, they were very, very important,” he said.

‘Thou shall not steal’

During his visit to Canada in 2022, Francis said local Catholic communities were committed to promoting Indigenous culture, customs, language and education processes “in the spirit of” The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, according to CBC.

Article 12 of UNDRIP says Indigenous peoples have the right to use and control their ceremonial objects, and states shall endeavor to return them.

Asked again in 2023 about repatriating the Indigenous artifacts, Francis told reporters aboard his plane, “This is going on, with Canada, at least we were in agreement to do so.” He invoked the seventh commandment – “thou shall not steal” – in expressing his support for restitution.

In recent years, museums around the world have increasingly returned items in their collections that were stolen or potentially acquired unethically to their countries of origin.

Last year, new regulations came into effect in the US requiring museums and federal agencies to consult or obtain informed consent from descendants, tribes or Native Hawaiian Organizations before displaying human remains or cultural items.

In 2022, Pope Francis returned three fragments of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece in a move he described as a “gesture of friendship,” according to the BBC.

However, a 2024 investigation by Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail found that the Vatican had not returned a single Indigenous-made item to Canada in recent years, except for a 200-year-old wampum belt which was loaned to a museum in Montreal for just 51 days in 2023.

Pruden, of the Métis National Council, said Francis “really moved things forward by embracing (UNDRIP).” She and other Indigenous leaders hope to soon see the artifacts returned.

“What a beautiful homecoming it would be to welcome these gifts that were made by our grandmothers and our grandfathers,” Pruden said, calling the objects “very important historical pieces that have a story to tell.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney discussed the return of the artifacts in a meeting with Canadian Catholic Cardinals in Rome this month ahead of Leo’s first mass, Jaime Battiste, a member of parliament who was also at the meeting, told the Canadian Press.

Woodhouse Nepinak said it’s “an uncomfortable and tough issue, but it has to be done.”

“You want to right the wrongs of the past. That’s what we want to do for our survivors, for their families, for the history of what happened here and to make sure that the story never dies out.”

A South African mother and two accomplices were sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday for trafficking her then-6-year-old daughter, in a case that gained nationwide attention since the child went missing last year.

Kelly Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno Van Rhyn were convicted of kidnapping and trafficking the girl, Joshlin Smith, after she disappeared from a small town in the Western Cape.

In a trial that shocked the country, a witness said Kelly Smith told her that she had sold her daughter to a sangoma, or traditional healer, for 20,000 rand ($1,100) and that the girl was desired for her “eyes and skin.”

Joshlin Smith has still not been found despite an extensive police search.

Announcing their sentences on Thursday, high court judge Nathan Erasmus said the fact Kelly Smith, Appollis and Van Rhyn were drug users was no excuse.

“There is nothing that I can find that is redeeming and deserving of a lesser sentence than the harshest I can impose,” Erasmus said.

For kidnapping the three were given 10-year jail terms.

Keith Siegel has been free for nearly four months, but he is still pained by vivid images of his 484 days as a Hamas hostage and of those still held in Gaza’s tunnels.

Siegel isn’t just talking about the physical and psychological abuse he was subjected to by his captors or the suffocating conditions and malnutrition he faced in tunnels deep underground. He’s also terrified that Israel’s intensifying bombardment and ground offensive will kill the remaining living hostages – or drive Hamas to execute them.

Hamas and other militant groups kidnapped 251 people from Israel during the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

As Israel marks 600 days since the war began, Siegel and dozens of former hostages and relatives are renewing their call for a deal that will end the conflict and secure the release of all 58 still held captive, living and dead. Protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and gathered in Hostage Square and in front of the US embassy to put pressure on the Israeli government to make a deal with Hamas and return the remaining hostages.

For Omer Shem Tov, among the last of the hostages to be released before the ceasefire collapsed in March, there is an ever-present feeling of guilt. Every time he eats, he thinks about the hostages not eating. Every time he showers, he knows those still captive in Gaza cannot.

“I can feel it here,” he says, pointing at his throat. “I feel like I’m being choked.”

Like many other released hostages, Siegel and Shem Tov have dedicated much of their newfound freedom to advocating for the release of those left behind.

Most of the Israeli public wants to see a ceasefire deal to bring the remaining hostages home, according to numerous polls, but as those who survived captivity, the freed hostages are the movement’s most powerful voices. They see their advocacy as a near-sacred obligation to those still in Gaza.

“The hostages’ lives are now more critical than eliminating Hamas,” said Shem Tov.

Meanwhile, Siegel has raised awareness about the horrific conditions of captivity he endured and the dangers the remaining hostages face.

Speaking from his daughter’s home in northern Israel, Siegel looked healthier than when he was released in February. He has regained some of the weight he lost in captivity, color has returned to his face and he has been spending time with his family and out in nature. But his mind is never far from the tunnels of Gaza and thoughts of Matan Angrest, a 22-year-old Israeli soldier, and Omri Miran, a 48-year-old father-of-two, with whom he was held.

“I think about them every day. Many times a day. And I worry about them – and I miss them,” Siegel said.

Siegel and Miran were held together for nearly five months, until July 2024, passing the time by talking about their shared taste in music and their love for their families. Miran has two daughters – Alma and Ronni, now aged 2 and 4 –  whose names easily rolled off Siegel’s tongue.

“It was very difficult for Omri to think about his daughters growing up without their dad and how hard it was for him to think about him missing their growing-up, their development milestones,” Siegel said.

Miran called out directly to Siegel in a hostage video released by Hamas last month. Siegel said his fellow former captive looked like “a different person… in a negative way.”

Siegel hesitates to describe his relationship with Angrest as one of a father and his son, but it’s clear they built a special bond during the 67 days they were locked in a very small room, sharing a single bed. Angrest helped Siegel improve his Arabic, talked about his love of the Maccabi Haifa soccer team and day-dreamt about sharing a meal together at his parents’ home and seeing a match once they’re free.

Siegel said he, Angrest and Miran used to pray that the Israeli military would rescue them in a daring operation. But that all changed in August when Hamas executed six hostages as Israeli troops closed in on their location. Siegel learned about it in captivity and his dreams quickly turned into nightmares.

“I was afraid that the IDF might try to rescue me and that I might be killed by the captors,” Siegel recalled. “It’s something that worries me in regards to the hostages that are still there.”

He added that he believes Israel’s expanding military operations now increase the threats to the hostages’ lives, even as the Israeli military has pledged to take precautions to avoid harming the remaining captives.

“Hostages were killed from the war,” Siegel said. “I think this can be avoided by getting all of the hostages back. That’s the solution, to get them back – to reach an agreement that will bring them back.”

Shem Tov echoed his fears. The scariest moments in captivity, he said, were when Israeli bombs fell around him, weapons he knew were powerful enough where “your life can be taken in every moment.”

“I was scared of dying from my own people, from my own brothers,” said Shem Tov.

Siegel and Shem Tov have met with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called on both to prioritize reaching a deal to free the hostages. While the Israeli prime minister has made clear he believes defeating Hamas is more important than freeing the hostages, many hostage advocates are placing their hopes in Trump’s hands.

“I am home because of his efforts,” Siegel said. “I believe that he wants to do this and it’s important to him. He has told us that. I ask him to do whatever he can and to do it as soon as possible to get an agreement secured and to get them all back.”

Shem Tov also believed he was freed because of Trump’s efforts. During their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in March, Shem Tov said Trump told him “that I have a good future ahead of me.”

Shem Tov lost most than 50 pounds in captivity, he said. His food dwindled from just two pitas and some cheese daily at the beginning to a single biscuit.

However, he said his treatment at the hands of Hamas improved after Trump’s election, including receiving more food.

Hamas also “stopped cursing me, stopped spitting on me,” he said.

He frequently talked politics with his captors and said they wanted Kamala Harris to win the US election.

“As soon as Donald Trump was elected, they understood that he wants to bring the hostages back home,” Shem Tov said.

A judge has stepped down from the criminal proceedings regarding the death of Argentine football legend Diego Armando Maradona.

An Argentine court had removed the judge, Julieta Makintach, after one of the defendants in the Maradona trial requested her disqualification due to a possible lack of impartiality and for allegedly authorizing the filming of a documentary during court hearings.

Makintach accepted the court’s disqualification.

In a previous hearing, she had stated that her brother is a partner at the production company mentioned in the case, but it had nothing to do with a potential documentary about Maradona.

Maradona, world-famous for scoring the goal that won Argentina the 1986 World Cup, died of heart failure in November 2020. Argentine prosecutors have accused eight medical staff of “simple homicide” in the footballer’s death.

The trial for seven of the eight defendants began in March, with the eighth due to be tried by jury after the initial proceedings finish. The charges carry a possible sentence of eight to 25 years in prison.

This is a developing story and will be updated.