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Ya Libnan
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Hamas says it is still reviewing a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire
A rescuer walks over rubble to assess damage and look for survivors, in Khan Younis, Gaza, May 23, 2025, in this screengrab taken from video. Palestinian Civil Defence/Handout via REUTERS DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Hamas said Friday it was still reviewing a U.S. proposal for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where 27 people were killed in new Israeli airstrikes, according to hospital officials. The ceasefire plan, which has been approved by Israeli officials, won a cool initial reaction Thursday from the militant group. U.S. negotiators have not publicized the terms of the proposal. But a Hamas official and an Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Thursday that it called for a 60-day pause in fighting, guarantees of serious negotiations leading to a long-term truce and assurances that Israel will not resume hostilities after the release of hostages, as it did in March .In a terse statement issued Friday, Hamas said it is holding consultations with Palestinian factions over the proposal it had received from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff. While changes may have been made to the proposal, the version confirmed earlier called for Israeli forces to pull back to the positions they held before it ended the last ceasefire. Hamas would release 10 living hostages and a number of bodies during the 60-day pause in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including 100 serving long sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks. Each day, hundreds of trucks carrying food and humanitarian aid would be allowed to enter Gaza, where experts say a nearly three-month Israeli blockade — slightly eased in recent days — has pushed the population to the brink of famine . 'Negotiations are ongoing on the current proposal,' Qatar's ambassador to the United Nations, Alya Ahmed Saif Al-Thani said Friday, referring to talks between her country, the United States and Egypt. On Thursday, a top Hamas official, Bassem Naim, said the U.S. proposal 'does not respond to any of our people's demands, foremost among which is stopping the war and famine.' The uncertainty over the new proposal came as hospital officials said that 27 people had been killed Friday in separate airstrikes. A strike that hit a tent in the southern city of Khan Younis killed 13, including eight children, hospital officials said. The Israeli military did not immediately comment. Meanwhile, the bodies of 12 people, including three women, were brought to Shifa Hospital on Friday from the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the bodies of two others were brought to a hospital in Gaza City. Hospital officials also said Friday that at least 72 had been killed in Gaza during the previous day. That figure does not include some hospitals in the north, which are largely cut off due to the fighting. Since the war began, more than 54,000 Gaza residents, mostly women and children , have been killed according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally. The war began with Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which left around 1,200 Gaza residents said their hope for a ceasefire is tempered by repeated disappointment over negotiations that failed to deliver a lasting deal. 'This is the war of starvation, death, siege and long lines for food and toilets,' Mohammed Abed told The Associated Press in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. 'This war is the 2025 nightmare, 2024 nightmare and 2023 nightmare.' Abed said he and his family struggle to find food, waiting three hours to get a small amount of rice and eating only one meal daily.'It's heartbreaking that people are being starved because of politics. Food and water should not be used for political purposes,' he said. Another Gaza resident, Mohammed Mreil, said about the possibility of a truce that: 'We want to live and we want them (Israelis) to live. God did not create us to die.' AP
Ya Libnan
a day ago
- Business
- Ya Libnan
Time for the Democrats to Wake Up Before It's Too Late
By Vlad Green , Op-ED Is the Democratic Party in a coma? It sure feels like it. While the Republican Party storms through policies that could drag the country into economic chaos and international isolation, the Democrats are eerily quiet—as if paralyzed, uncertain, or worse, indifferent. Let's not sugarcoat it: the Republicans have hijacked the national agenda. From rolling out vague yet damaging tariffs to pushing a so-called 'big beautiful bill' that sounds good on TV but will likely benefit the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else, they are reshaping this country. And yet, the Democrats? Silence. No roar. Not even a bark. We all know what would happen if the roles were reversed. If a Democratic president had signed off on sweeping tariffs that raised prices for working families, or pushed legislation enriching billionaires while leaving middle-class Americans to foot the bill, Republicans would be setting the nation on fire—figuratively, and sometimes literally. Fox News would run 24/7 emergency coverage. Congress would be flooded with press conferences. Lawsuits would be filed before sunrise. But when the GOP is in power, Democrats seem to retreat into caution, nuance, or political calculations that no one outside the Beltway understands or cares about. Where is the outrage? Where is the strategy? Where are the Democratic governors, mayors, and lawmakers standing up and calling these tariffs what they are—a tax on Americans? Where are the legal challenges, the organized town halls, the economic counterproposals that inspire and educate the public? Where is the vision? Democrats cannot sit back and hope the damage does itself in by 2026 or 2028. By then, it may be too late. Tariffs are already beginning to hurt small businesses and consumers. International allies are confused and frustrated. And most tragically, millions of Americans are losing faith in the political process altogether, convinced that no one—not left or right—really stands up for them. Let me be clear: this is not a call for chaos or violence. It is a call for action . Peaceful, passionate, smart, and strategic action. The Democratic Party still has the tools to resist: investigative power in committees, public messaging platforms, grassroots energy, and a massive national infrastructure. What it lacks right now is urgency—and courage. If the Democrats want to reclaim their role as protectors of the middle class, defenders of democracy, and champions of fairness, they need to act like it— now . No more tiptoeing. No more waiting for the perfect poll or political moment. It's time to wake up, speak up, and stand up. The American people are watching. And they are desperate for leadership that isn't afraid to fight. email:info@
Ya Libnan
a day ago
- Business
- Ya Libnan
Musk's Starbase town in Texas warns residents they may lose right to ‘continue using' their property
HIGHLIGHTS Starbase , Texas, has notified some residents that they might 'lose the right to continue using' their property as they do today, according to a memo obtained by CNBC. The town, home to Elon Musk 's SpaceX , is considering a new zoning ordinance and citywide map. The notice, sent to property owners in a proposed 'Mixed Use District,' would allow for 'residential, office, retail, and small-scale service uses.' Starbase plans to host a public hearing on June 23 about the proposed new zoning and map for the town. The notice was signed by Kent Myers, the city administrator for Starbase who recently accepted the job, according to . Representatives for Starbase and SpaceX did not respond to requests for further information on Thursday. A 'type-C municipal corporation ,' Starbase was officially formed earlier this month after Musk's aerospace and defense contractor prevailed in a local election. It is now run by officials who are SpaceX employees and former employees. As of early this year, the population of Starbase stood at around 500 people, with around 260 directly employed by SpaceX, the Texas Tribune reported. Most other residents of Starbase are relatives of SpaceX employees. The company town includes the launch facility where SpaceX conducts test flights of its massive Starship rocket, and company-owned land covering a 1.6-square-mile area. Starbase is holding its first city commission meeting Thursday, two days after SpaceX conducted its ninth test flight of the massive Starship rocket from the Texas coast facility. The rocket exploded during the test flight, marking a catastrophic loss and a third consecutive setback for the aerospace and defense contractor. Following the incident, Musk, who also leads Tesla , focused on data and lessons to be learned from the explosions. The FAA said there had been 'no reports of public injury or damage to public property' on Wednesday. The Starship system was developed to transport people and equipment around Earth and to the Moon, and Musk envisions the rocket someday being used to colonize Mars. CNBC
Ya Libnan
a day ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
‘We want Israel out yesterday, not tomorrow:' Lebanon's PM urges US to pressure Israel to withdraw troops
Israel's military occupation in parts of southern Lebanon is undermining Beirut's attempts to restore sovereignty over a nation reeling from decades of conflict, the country's prime minister has told CNN. Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said he would like to see the current United States administration put pressure on Israel to withdraw from five locations in southern Lebanon. A US-mediated agreement in November last year paused months of fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group that operates in Lebanon. Israel has significantly weakened Hezbollah over the past year, killing much of its top leadership and severely degrading its power through mass airstrikes. 'Israel's presence is politically counterproductive. It's undermining my government…we want Israel out yesterday, not tomorrow.'Salam The prime minister said Lebanon has been honoring its commitments to the November agreement and that the Lebanese military is 'consolidating control' over the south of the country and its borders. Hezbollah is committed to an agreement that affirms that the Lebanese military is the only authority allowed to bear arms, Salam said Wednesday. However, 'Israel has not honored its commitments,' he added. The 'Israeli presence in Lebanon is a red line for everyone. This is not a red line for Hezbollah alone,' he told CNN's Becky Anderson in Dubai, where he's attending the Arab Media Forum and meeting Emirati leadership. 'Israel's argument is as follows… they need to be in these five points in order to have a better monitoring of the situation in southern Lebanon… but we are not in World War One…we are in the age of satellite imagery, of drones with cameras. They have balloons monitoring the region, let alone a network of spies operating on the ground,' Salam said. 'Israel's presence is politically counterproductive. It's undermining my government…we want Israel out yesterday, not tomorrow.' Despite agreeing to withdraw from Lebanese territory as part of the US-mediated agreement, Israel has said that the Lebanese army has yet to take control of a region with Hezbollah presence. Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said in March that the Israeli military would remain in these five points 'indefinitely, to protect the residents of the north – regardless of any future negotiations.' Along with the United States, France and the United Nations are monitoring the ceasefire. 'I'm sure they can testify that Lebanon has been honoring its commitments while Israel has not honored its commitments,' Salam said on the mediating countries. Salam, who rose to prominence after presiding over the International Court of Justice during South Africa's genocide case against Israel, was designated Lebanon's prime minister in January in a surprise move that was seen as a blow to Hezbollah and its allies. Widely seen as a reformist, the prime minister declared specific priorities for his mandate, including ending institutional corruption and regaining sovereignty over his country by disarming Hezbollah and Palestinian factions. 'The goal… is that the state should have exclusive monopoly over arms, over all its territory,' he said in the interview. (CNN)
Ya Libnan
a day ago
- Business
- Ya Libnan
A disillusioned Musk, bids farewell, as he distances himself from Trump. Will spend more time on his companies
By Tyler Pager Maggie Haberman Theodore Schleifer Jonathan Swan and Ryan Mac Elon Musk took a swipe at President Trump's signature domestic policy legislation, saying it would add to the national deficit. He complained to administration officials about a lucrative deal that went to a rival company to build an artificial-intelligence data center in the Middle East. And he has yet to make good on a $100 million pledge to Trump's political operation. Mr. Musk, who once called himself the president's 'first buddy,' is now operating with some distance from Mr. Trump as he says he is ending his government work to spend more time on his companies. Mr. Musk remains on good terms with Mr. Trump, according to White House officials. But he has also made it clear that he is disillusioned with Washington and frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he upended the federal bureaucracy, raising questions about the strength of the alliance between the president and the world's richest man. Mr. Musk was the biggest known political spender in the 2024 election, and he told Mr. Trump's advisers this year that he would give $100 million to groups controlled by the president's team before the 2026 midterms. As of this week, the money hasn't come in yet, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes dynamic. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. In a post on X, his social media site, on Wednesday night, he officially confirmed for the first time that his stint as a government employee was coming to an end and thanked Mr. Trump 'for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.' 'The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,' he added, referring to his Department of Government Efficiency team. The billionaire's imprint is still firmly felt in official Washington through that effort, an initiative to drastically cut spending that has deployed staff across the government. But Mr. Musk has said in recent days that he spent too much time focused on politics and has lamented the reputational damage he and his companies have suffered because of his work in the Trump administration. 'I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,' Mr. Musk said in an interview this week with Ars Technica, a tech news outlet. He added: 'It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I've reduced that significantly in recent weeks.' He also took a swipe at Mr. Trump's allies in Congress, telling CBS News that he was 'disappointed' by the domestic policy bill that the president championed and the House passed last week. 'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' he said. When asked by reporters about Mr. Musk's criticisms on Wednesday, Mr. Trump declined to respond directly. He defended the bill while acknowledging that he did not love every aspect of it, and he lauded Republicans' efforts to move it forward. He did not once utter Mr. Musk's name. However, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, shot back at Mr. Musk on social media without naming him. Mr. Miller asserted that the bill would reduce the deficit — despite multiple independent analyses saying otherwise — and noted that the cuts made by Mr. Musk's team were unrelated to the spending bill. Ahead of Mr. Trump's trip to the Middle East this month, Mr. Musk objected to a deal in the works between a rival A.I. company and the United Arab Emirates to build a massive data center in Abu Dhabi, according to a White House official. Mr. Musk complained to David Sacks, the president's A.I. adviser, and other White House officials about the Abu Dhabi project involving OpenAI, an organization he founded with Sam Altman, with whom he has since had a falling out, according to the official. He also expressed concerns about fairness more broadly for other A.I. companies, and sought to have his own company, xAI, be included in the deal, though it ultimately was not. The Wall Street Journal first reported Mr. Musk's pushback. The OpenAI deal followed a plan secured between the Trump administration and the United Arab Emirates to build an A.I. campus in Abu Dhabi. Mr. Musk joined the president on his trip through the Middle East, but Mr. Trump hardly mentioned his name publicly. And foreign officials in the Gulf seemed more interested in seeking out Mr. Trump's special envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, than they were in Mr. Musk. On May 14, as a crowd of Mr. Trump's wealthy supporters milled inside Qatar's Lusail Palace before a dinner with the emir, Mr. Musk waited along with everyone else in the receiving line to shake Mr. Trump's hand. The billionaire's role on the sidelines is a drastic shift from his dominance early in the new administration. In February, Mr. Musk leaped onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a chain saw and remarked 'how easy' it was to 'save billions of dollars sometimes in, in an hour.' 'Yeah, like, it's wild,' he said. Mr. Musk's DOGE team has repeatedly inflated its cost-saving efforts , at times posting erroneous claims about ending federal contracts that they have later deleted. This week, Mr. Musk told The Washington Post that it was an 'uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C.' The cuts he wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected and his lack of interest in learning more about the bureaucracy he considered toxic impeded his efforts, particularly on Capitol Hill, according to people familiar with his efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. For the first 90 days of the administration, some White House aides felt the administration was essentially held captive by Mr. Musk and his willingness to use X to target people he didn't like. Mr. Musk had a direct pipeline to Mr. Trump and encouraged measures that some cabinet officials opposed, like forcing federal workers to send a weekly email listing their top five accomplishments or risk termination. (That requirement was lifted for civilian employees at the Defense Department this week.) Mr. Musk kept Mr. Trump enthralled, until some of the headlines about DOGE's work — and complaints from lawmakers and cabinet officials — became hard to tune out. A rupture for the president, according to people with knowledge of his thinking, came when he learned from a New York Times report that Mr. Musk was about to receive a sensitive briefing on China at the Pentagon. Mr. Trump, who had repeatedly fended off questions about Mr. Musk's potential conflicts of interest, was displeased, the people said. Mr. Musk's own disillusionment with national politics can be traced back to two recent events, according to people close to him: his frustrations with the president's tariff regime and the roughly $25 million he spent backing a candidate who ended up losing a judicial bid in Wisconsin. I When it comes to his efforts to upend the bureaucracy, Mr. Musk insisted last month that it is possible to meet his goal of slashing $1 trillion of federal spending, 'but it's a long road to go, and, you know, it's really difficult.' 'It's sort of, how much pain is, you know, are the cabinet and is Congress willing to take?' he told reporters at the White House. 'Because it can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.' He said it remained to be seen whether there was 'sufficient political will in Congress and elsewhere to actually do that.' Still, several of Mr. Musk's most prominent deputies appear to be ensconced in their new government roles. Steve Davis , a loyal executive who has worked for Mr. Musk across many of his businesses, including at X, remains a regular presence at the General Services Administration, according to two people who have interacted with him recently. Antonio Gracias, the billionaire investor, has transitioned from leading the DOGE team at the Social Security Administration to a role combing through federal databases to try to identify instances of foreign nationals voting illegally, according to people familiar with the effort. Last month, Mr. Musk told Tesla investors and analysts that he would cut his time on government matters to 'a day or two per week,' and since then, he has made a concerted effort to show that he is re-engaged at his companies. 'Back to spending 24/7 at work,' Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, posted on X on Saturday. 'I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla.' On Tuesday, SpaceX held a test flight of Starship , the rocket that Mr. Musk hopes will someday take humans to Mars. The vehicle had a successful launch, but sprang a leak halfway through its journey and eventually exploded. On X Mr. Musk called the launch a 'big improvement,' but postponed a planned talk he was set to give on 'SpaceX's plan to make life multiplanetary.' He made it clear, however, that he was in attendance at the launch and focused on SpaceX. He reposted interviews with influencers and news organizations as well as a video of himself sitting in a control center while wearing a shirt that said 'Occupy Mars.' the New York Times
