There's Good News Tonight: Stumpy's legacy lives on
With the return of the cherry blossoms to DC, we revisit the saga of the beloved, undersized cherry tree affectionately nicknamed Stumpy. NBC News' Hallie Jackson checks in on replanting Stumpy's seedlings so the tree's legacy lives on. NBC News' Hallie Jackson reports
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
2 days ago
- NBC News
A mournful Eid al-Adha in Gaza
Under the damaged dome of al-Albani Mosque in Khan Younis, families stood on broken stone and dust, raising their voices in takbir, the declaration of god's greatness, to mark the first morning of Eid al-Adha on Friday. In Gaza, the holiest of the two major Muslim holidays is traditionally a time for communal worship, the sacrifice of lambs, and shared meals. Families gather around piles of bread baked on the saj and morsels of liver fresh from the slaughter. But this year in Khan Younis, there was no feast. No lambs to sacrifice. No smell of meat cooking, no joyful reunions. The celebration, stripped of its customs, pressed on in grief. 'We don't eat meat, we don't eat liver, we are not happy like other times waiting for the Eid with joy,' Eftarag Abou Sabaa told NBC News' team in Khan Younis. Rather than the ritual sacrifice of a lamb, Abou Sabaa said, 'We sacrifice the blood of martyrs. We sacrifice our sons, our daughters, and our mothers; we sacrifice ourselves in a way that sets us apart from other people.' That morning, crowds moved quietly to the Khan Younis cemetery to visit loved ones lost to the war, and greeted each other by the tombstones of children, parents, and friends. Only the buzz of Israeli drones overhead filled the solemn silence. 'This is not an Eid of joy; it is an Eid of mourning and death,' Ahmed Darwish, displaced from Rafah to west Khan Younis, told NBC News as he stood beside the graves. 'Our children and women are in pieces. Instead of sacrificing animals, we collected body parts this morning.' On Eid, Israeli strikes continued as families wept by the bodies of their loved ones, killed before celebrations could begin. Reda Abdel Rahim Eljara told an NBC News team that Israeli air strikes had already killed her husband and one of her sons. On the first day of Eid al-Adha, she lost two more sons and her daughter-in-law. "Three months ago, on Eid al-Fitr, my son Qais got married," she told NBC News. "Today, on the main Eid, he is martyred with his wife." Umm Ahmad Al-Qatati said her son, Omar, 11, was shot as he left his tent to shower and get ready for a visit to see his father. 'He was so excited for Eid morning, but they sent him to the morgue instead,' she said. "Instead of celebrating Eid, he went to be with his Lord." Those for whom death had not come, trudged forward. At the ruins of al-Albani Mosque, Thaer al-Salmi, 14, continued to pray. "We try to find some joy by praying and wearing a few clothes to feel the Eid spirit," he said. 'I hope this war ends, and that next Eid will be like it was two years ago — a real celebration without war.'
NBC News
4 days ago
- NBC News
Father and daughter found dead on Maine hike were long drawn to mountain, family says
A New York father and daughter whose bodies were found on a mountain in Maine earlier this week had planned the hike while on a work trip. Tim Keiderling, 58, of Ulster Park, was found dead Tuesday in the Tablelands area on Mount Katahdin. The body of his 28-year-old daughter, Esther Keiderling, was discovered Wednesday afternoon about 1,000 feet away, between two trails off the Tablelands, Baxter State Park said. Tim was a father of six and a grandfather of two. He and Esther were very close, Tim's brother, Joe Keiderling, said. They both worked for Rifton Equipment, a New York-based medical supply company. "Tim was utterly unique," the brother said in a statement Thursday. "Many young men and women remember him as an elementary school teacher who could hold them spellbound with wildly imaginative stories and escapades in the woods and fields of the Hudson Valley he called home." In his free time, Tim enjoyed tending and growing fruit, such as strawberries and blueberries, and was a beekeeper. His faith was important to him, his brother said. Tim was a member of the Bruderhof Communities, a Christian community in which people share all their possessions, including money, its website states. "At church gatherings, Tim was a regular contributor, not only as a lay pastor but as a gifted storyteller, bringing life and vitality to familiar Bible stories and making them relevant to the issues of the day," Joe said. "At home, he was the consummate host and loved nothing more than lively conversation and a great laugh." Esther was quiet but "deeply sensitive," Joe said. "She loved reading and writing, with a particular fondness for the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay," her uncle said. She kept a WordPress blog and wrote posts on the platform Substack. On Saturday, she wrote a post on Substack that she and her father were in Maine for a sales trip and had planned a hike, WMTW reported. She said she was "a little nervous" about the hike because of everything she had read about the Abol Trail, according to the news station. Joe Keiderling confirmed to NBC News that the pair had traveled to Maine for work for trainings for therapists on adaptive equipment for kids with disabilities. He said they decided to take a weekend vacation and "climb a mountain that had always attracted them." The park said the pair went missing Sunday after they left Abol Campground to hike the summit. The trail's difficulty is listed as very strenuous on the park's website. Water is limited after the first mile, and the trail is fully exposed after two and a half miles, it says. Authorities launched an extensive search Monday after their vehicle was found parked in a day-use lot. A park official said Thursday that the medical examiner's office will determine how the pair died. There is no evidence of criminal activity, the official said, and investigators are trying to determine why the bodies were found apart.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
Ice makes record number of immigration arrests on single day
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) made a record high number of arrests on Tuesday, detaining more than 2,200 people as Donald Trump's hardline immigration policy continues. NBC News reported that the figure represents the most people ever arrested by Ice in a single day. Hundreds of the people arrested were enrolled in Ice's alternative to detention program, under which migrants who are awaiting legal status are given background checks to determine they are not a safety risk, then tracked by the government using ankle monitors or smartphone apps. The record total comes after senior officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file Ice officers to arrest more people, even without warrants. In May, the White House demanded that Ice arrest 3,000 people a day. Some of the arrests 'appear to be the result of a new Ice tactic', NBC News reported, in which Ice officials arrest migrants who are enrolled in the alternative to detention program when they arrive at pre-scheduled check-in meetings at Ice offices. '[With] mass arresting of people on alternatives to detention or at their Ice check-ins or at immigration court hearings, the dragnet is so wide that there's no possible valid argument that could be made that these individuals are all dangerous,' Atenas Burrola Estrada, an attorney with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, told NBC News. The Guardian reported that on Saturday senior Ice officials urged officers to 'turn the creative knob up to 11' when it comes to enforcement, including by arresting undocumented people whom officials may happen to encounter – here termed 'collaterals' – while serving arrest warrants for others. In a meeting on 21 May, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, ordered Ice leaders to dramatically increase the number of arrests. Miller and Noem told Ice officials to arrest 3,000 people a day – more than a million a year. The scramble to arrest as many people as possible has caused chaos, as citizens have been wrongfully detained and detention centers have become overcrowded. Last week, a fourth grader was detained by Ice officials and separated from his father during a scheduled immigration hearing in Houston, Texas. KTLA5 reported that Martir Garcia Lara, a student at Torrance elementary in south California, attended the hearing with his father on 29 May. His teachers alerted the school's parent-teacher association (PTA), which is lobbying for Lara to be released. 'He's alone and he's not able to return home,' said Jasmin King, the president of the PTA. 'We have not received any information on why they were detained. All we know is that Martir is just a fourth grader who's by himself, without his dad, without a parent, and just in a place that he probably doesn't know, so we can only imagine what he might be feeling.'
