Photos this week: January 23-30, 2025
Friends of Arbel Yehoud, a 29-year-old German-Israeli hostage, react as they watch a broadcast of her being released by Palestinian militants on Thursday, January 30. Yehoud was among eight hostages released in Gaza on Thursday. The chaotic scenes surrounding the release of seven of those hostages brought condemnation from Israeli leaders and a temporary delay in the release of Palestinian prisoners, who were ultimately freed later in the day as part of a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. Ariel Schalit/AP
Madison Keys kisses her trophy after winning the Australian Open tennis tournament on Saturday, January 25. Keys, a 29-year-old American, stunned two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka to win her first-ever grand slam title. Vincent Thian/AP
Shoes that were taken from prisoners many years ago are displayed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland, on Thursday, January 23. It has now been 80 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp complex where more than 1.1 million people were murdered. Oded Balilty/AP
People cross barriers near an area where dozens of people were killed in a crowd crush in Prayagraj, India, on Wednesday, January 29. The tragedy happened as tens of millions of Hindu devotees went to bathe in a river on one of the most sacred days of Maha Kumbh Mela, or the festival of the Sacred Pitcher. Atul Loke/The New York Times/Redux
Detained migrants sit on a US Air Force plane as they await takeoff in Tucson, Arizona, on Thursday, January 23. The Trump administration has moved with lightning speed to roll out the president's immigration agenda, effectively closing off the US southern border to asylum seekers, severely limiting who's eligible to enter the United States and laying the groundwork to swiftly deport migrants already in the country. Senior Airman Devlin Bishop/DoD/Handout/Reuters
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US President Donald Trump's nominee for health and human services secretary, testifies before the Senate Finance Committee during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, January 29. Kennedy tried to downplay his anti-vaccine rhetoric and other controversial stances regarding public health, and he rebuked statements that he is a vaccine skeptic despite an extensive, recorded history of his linking vaccines to autism in children.Syrian civil defense workers known as the White Helmets collect human remains found in two separate basements in Sbeneh, Syria, on Tuesday, January 28. They said the charred remains belong to at least 26 victims of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Since Assad fled the country on December 8 following the collapse of his regime, Syrians are starting to uncover mass graves across the country. Omar Albam/AP
Women embrace in the reception area at The Skating Club of Boston on Thursday, January 30. Several members of the figure skating community were aboard the jet that collided with a US Army helicopter near Washington, DC, on Wednesday. The Skating Club of Boston named six victims, including Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, the 1994 world champions in pairs. Robert F. Bukaty/AP
Hindu holy men take a dip in the Triveni Sangam, the confluence of three holy rivers, during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India, on Wednesday, January 29. Deepak Sharma/AP
A Palestinian man waves Thursday, January 30, as he arrives in Khan Younis, Gaza, after being released from Israel as part of its ceasefire deal with Hamas. Israel released 110 detainees on Thursday after eight hostages were released from captivity in Gaza. Jehad Alshrafi/AP
Ashley Warbington, holding a sign that says 'keep families together,' is carried out of a House committee meeting by state troopers in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday, January 29. At least three woman were ejected from the meeting on immigration, according to the Associated Press. George Walker IV/AP
A woman takes photos outside the Maraya concert hall in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, January 27. Maraya, the world's largest mirrored building, was designed by Florian Boje. Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images
An antique wooden ice sailing yacht, built during the 1800s, is sailed on the frozen Hudson River near Athens, New York, on Saturday, January 25. The yacht is maintained and sailed by members of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club. Mike Segar/Reuters
Liri Albag, an Israeli soldier who was seized from her army base in southern Israel during Hamas' attack on Israel in October 7, 2023, makes a heart gesture at the window of a helicopter as she and other released hostages are transported to a medical complex in Petah Tikva, Israel, on Saturday, January 25. Rami Shlush/Reuters
From left, Herbert Lin, Juan Manuel Santos, Robert Socolow and Suzet McKinney reveal an updated Doomsday Clock at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, January 28. The clock was set at 89 seconds to midnight — the closest the world has ever been to that marker, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which established the clock in 1947 as a symbolic attempt to gauge how close humanity is to destroying the world.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
27 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Supreme Court makes it easier to claim ‘reverse discrimination' in employment, in a case from Ohio
WASHINGTON — A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn't get a job and then was demoted because she is straight. The justices' decision affects lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia where, until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court that federal civil rights law draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups. 'By establishing the same protections for every 'individual' — without regard to that individual's membership in a minority or majority group — Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,' Jackson wrote. The court ruled in an appeal from Marlean Ames, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years. Though he joined Jackson's opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a separate opinion that some of the country's 'largest and most prestigious employers have overtly discriminated against those they deem members of so-called majority groups.' Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, cited a brief filed by America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, to assert that 'American employers have long been 'obsessed' with 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' initiatives and affirmative action plans.' Two years ago, the court's conservative majority outlawed consideration of race in university admissions. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has ordered an end to DEI policies in the federal government and has sought to end government support for DEI programs elsewhere. Some of the new administration's anti-DEI initiatives have been temporarily blocked in federal court. Jackson's opinion makes no mention of DEI. Instead, she focused on Ames' contention that she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace. A trial court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ames. The 6th circuit is among the courts that had required an additional requirement for people like Ames, showing 'background circumstances' that might include that LGBTQ people made the decisions affecting Ames or statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group. The appeals court noted that Ames didn't provide any such circumstances. But Jackson wrote that 'this additional 'background circumstances' requirement is not consistent with Title VII's text or our case law construing the statute.'
Washington Post
27 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Top US universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability
WASHINGTON — Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His order applies only to Harvard, but it poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University , where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump's gatekeeping powers. 'Columbia's exposure to this 'stroke of pen' risk is uniquely high,' the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter. People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia's 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%. Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body. America's universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers. It was part of a 'gold rush' in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities. 'Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university,' said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University. The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren't eligible for financial aid, and at some schools they pay two or three times the tuition rate charged to U.S. students. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said. But the expansion wasn't equal across all types of colleges — public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don't face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their numbers of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by the rising costs and student debt loads. Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation's tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. 'That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, 'If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'' he said. Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said at a news conference. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard 'yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights.' In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of 'a painstaking, decades-long project' to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said. 'In our interconnected global economy,' the school said, 'a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.' ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
USA Today
29 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump explains why Egypt was not part of travel ban after citing Boulder attack
Trump explains why Egypt was not part of travel ban after citing Boulder attack 'Egypt has been a country that we deal with very closely. They have things under control,' Trump said of the nation's exemption from his travel ban. Show Caption Hide Caption Travelers react to the latest travel ban from President Trump "Pros and cons." Travelers in Los Angeles responded to the news of President Donald Trump's travel ban impacting nearly 20 countries. WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he did not include Egypt in a travel ban, which he tied to a terror attack allegedly carried out by an Egyptian national, because the United States works closely with the Arab nation. "Egypt has been a country that we deal with very closely. They have things under control. The countries that we have don't have things under control," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on June 5. In introducing the partial or complete ban on travel from citizens of 19 nations on June 4, Trump cited the Boulder, Colorado, attack that took place at an event raising awareness about Israeli hostages. The suspect in the case, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, is an Egyptian man who entered the U.S. on a tourist visit that he overstayed after applying for asylum, federal officials say. More: Trump's travel ban is his fourth attempt. See how list compares to 2017 Yet, the travel ban that Trump unveiled days later did not include Egypt, raising questions about the timing and purpose of the ban, which the president's critics say unfairly targets African and Muslim-majority nations. Trump requested that the State Department and other national security officials put together a list of countries for potential visa restrictions in an executive order just after taking office. But nothing came of it for months, until the Boulder attack, which he blamed on the previous administration. "We want to keep bad people out of our country. The Biden administration allowed some horrendous people," Trump said in the Oval Office, as he touted his deportation policies. Egypt has acted as a central mediator alongside the United States and Qatar in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, helping to establish a ceasefire and secure the release of prisoners and hostages. The United States had conducted joint training exercises with Egypt since 1980 and considers the Arab nation that has been ruled by Abdel Fattah El-Sisi since 2014 a regional partner. The Egyptian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
