President Donald Trump has arrived in Israel to meet the families of returning hostages as Hamas released its first captives under a U.S.-mediated ceasefire agreement.
Trump landed at Ben Gurion International Airport at 9.45 am local time, met by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
Speaking to reporters at the back of Air Force One, Trump hailed his own role in the ceasefire agreement, saying that people were “dancing in the streets”, brushing off a question about a crowd in Israel booing Netanyahu on Saturday, October 11.
“Everybody is happy, whether it’s Jews or Muslims or the Arab countries, every country is dancing in the streets,” he said. “It’s a point in time I don’t think you’ll ever see it again. They’ve never seen it in 3,000 years.”
Israel rolled out the red carpet for the U.S. president, who briefly greeted Israeli officials on the tarmac as a military band played before leaving in a large motorcade.
Trump is expected to meet the families of hostages with Netanyahu at the Knesset before addressing the Israeli parliament and leaving early on Monday afternoon.
He is set for a hero’s welcome when he addresses Israel’s parliament. Red “MAGA-Style” hats branded with “TRUMP THE PEACE PRESIDENT” were handed out ahead of his address on Monday, POLITICO reported.
Trump will also be awarded Israel’s highest civilian honour later this year, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said.
Later on Monday, Trump will co-host a peace summit of more than 20 world leaders with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in Sharm el-Sheikh.
The visit comes as Hamas said on Monday that it had handed over all living hostages, in line with a delicate ceasefire agreement made with Israel last week.
Trump heralded the progress towards peace as he made his way to Israel, though concerns remain around vague details and phases yet to be agreed.
He said his so-called Board of Peace to help govern Gaza would be established “very quickly”.
He also spoke to reporters about the prospect of former British prime minister Tony Blair having a role in overseeing a transitional government in Gaza.
“First, I want to find out that Tony would be popular because I just don’t know that,” the US president told reporters on Air Force One.
“I like Tony, I’ve always liked Tony, but I want to find out that he’s an acceptable choice to everybody.”
“The war is over,” Trump told reporters as he flew from Washington to Israel on Sunday. Asked about prospects for the region, he said: “I think it’s going to normalise.”
Death row inmate, Christa Pike has scored a legal victory after a judge reopened her case against being put to death by lethal injection following her botched execution.
The convicted murderer, 50, was due to be the first woman put to death in Tennessee for over 200 years on Sept. 30 but instead became the country’s first death row inmate ever to survive the lethal injection.
In January, her legal team filed a complaint in court challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol, which was later dismissed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in May, according to court documents obtained by The Post.
In an order issued on Thursday, Judge I’Ashea Myles ruled that the case should be reopened in the Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville.
Myles wrote that Pike had established “extreme, unique, exceptional, or extraordinary circumstances” allowing her to seek relief from the court.
The original complaint filed in January called for the court to stop the use of the lethal injection against Pike, arguing that in her case it was unconstitutional.
“Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocol, calling for a single drug (pentobarbital), is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades: secrecy, intentional omission, inattention to detail, and untrained and unlicensed prison personnel attempting to fill medical role,” Pike’s lawyers wrote.
“As the State of Tennessee seeks to execute its first woman in 250 years, and the only woman on Tennessee’s death row ––- Christa Gail Pike –– those problems have come to head.
“The new protocol, as applied to the Plaintiff and her unique medical conditions, is unconstitutional under the United States Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution.”
The attorneys also argued that Pike’s “physical characteristics,” including small veins, made insertion with a needle difficult.
Pike was sentenced to death for the sadistic murder of her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in Jan. 1995, when she was 18.
ussia has continued its invasion against Ukraine for more than four years and is showing no signs of backing down.
At leaat 33 people were k!lled when Russia carried out a bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, authorities said on Thursday, October 8.
The Ukrainian authorities described the latest bombing as a targeted strike on civilians in the key stronghold sought by Moscow.
Another 18 people were wounded in one of the largest single attacks this year, which took place on a street where police said two city buses were operating at the time of the strike.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described it as a bus stop.
Images posted by police showed bodies strewn across a street littered with debris, as well as a charred shell of what appeared to be a bus.
“For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible,” regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram app.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the attack.
Russia denies targeting civilians, though it has regularly pounded Ukrainian cities, towns and other targets during its full-scale invasion that began in February 2022.
A Nigerian man has called out the Lagos State Government over the absence of emergency workers on the Third Mainland Bridge.
The man said he.was driving on the bridge when he spotted a vehicle that had overturned and burst into flames.
He further explained that what shocked him the most was that the burning vehicle was just a stone’s throw away from the Lagos State Emergency unit stationed on the bridge, but not a single official was in sight to handle the situation.
Lamenting the situation in the viral video, the man could be heard saying: “Imagine, Lagos State Emergency — nobody is here.”