fortune ox big win
Michail Antonio had video call with West Ham team before their win over WolvesLiverpool powered seven points clear at the top of the Premier League as the title favourites survived a scare in their 3-1 win against Leicester, while Bruno Fernandes was sent off in Manchester United's dismal 2-0 defeat at lowly Wolves. Erling Haaland missed a penalty as crisis-torn Manchester City failed to end their dismal run with a 1-1 draw against Everton, but it was United's travails and Liverpool's remarkable run that took centre-stage on Thursday. Arne Slot's side were shocked by Jordan Ayew's early strike at Anfield, but the leaders recovered their composure to equalise just before the interval through Cody Gakpo. England midfielder Jones marked his 100th top-flight appearance with the second goal soon after half-time. Mohamed Salah's 19th goal this term wrapped up Liverpool's 11th win in their last 13 games in all competitions. "We created enough, but because we went 1-0 down it was a game," Liverpool manager Slot said. "Then you saw how good we are and Leicester didn't want to come back into the game." Liverpool's comeback lifted them well clear of second-placed Chelsea, who were defeated 2-1 by Fulham earlier in the day. United suffered a third successive loss in all competitions to leave new boss Ruben Amorim with five defeats in his first 10 games. Fernandes was dismissed two minutes into the second half at Molineux for a second bookable offence. United's 10 men cracked in the 58th minute when Matheus Cunha's corner went straight in as goalkeeper Andre Onana flapped under pressure. Hwang Hee-chan compounded Amorim's misery when he tapped in with just seconds left. Losing to fourth-bottom Wolves was another bitter blow for United, who endured a humiliating 3-0 defeat by Bournemouth at Old Trafford last weekend after losing 4-3 in the League Cup at Tottenham. With his team marooned in 14th place -- just eight points above the relegation zone -- Amorim's woes might not be over, with United facing in-form Newcastle on Monday before travelling to Liverpool in their first game of 2025. "It's so tough to win games in this league with 11 men. With 10 men, it's more difficult," Amorim said. Champions Manchester City have just one victory in their last 13 games in all competitions as their Christmas schedule started in disappointing fashion. Bernardo Silva put City in front early on before Iliman Ndiaye salvaged a point for Everton. Seven minutes into the second half, Haaland had the chance to end his longest goal drought at the Etihad but Jordan Pickford denied him. City are languishing in seventh place and sit five points adrift of the top four, with their astonishing decline showing no sign of ending. "Of course we need results and we didn't get it. The team played really good again in all departments and unfortunately could not win," said City boss Pep Guardiola. At Stamford Bridge, Chelsea were stunned by Fulham's late fightback in a dramatic west London derby. It was Chelsea's first home defeat against Fulham since 1979. Cole Palmer put Chelsea ahead after 16 minutes, the England forward drilling home from the edge of the area after weaving through the Fulham defence in dazzling style. But Fulham levelled with eight minutes left when Harry Wilson nodded in from close range. There was worse to come for the Blues when Rodrigo Muniz completed the turnaround in the 95th minute. Nottingham Forest climbed to third place after a 1-0 win against sputtering Tottenham at the City Ground. Forest's fourth successive win was sweet revenge for boss Nuno Espirito Santo, whose former club Tottenham had Djed Spence sent off in the closing moments for a second booking. Tottenham are stuck in 11th as the pressure mounts on boss Ange Postecoglou. Newcastle swatted aside 10-man Aston Villa 3-0, moving up to fifth place after winning three consecutive league games for the first time since 2023. Jarrod Bowen's 59th-minute goal gave West Ham a 1-0 win at bottom of the table Southampton after the visitors saw Guido Rodriguez's red card overturned by VAR. It was a frustrating start for new Saints boss Ivan Juric, who has replaced the sacked Russell Martin. Bournemouth and Crystal Palace shared a goalless draw at the Vitality Stadium. smg/nf
The first sign that something was amiss at UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s investor day was when Brian Thompson didn’t show up to his early morning hair and makeup appointment. At around 6:40 a.m. on Wednesday of last week, Thompson, 50, was shot outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in a killing that gripped the world. On Monday, police arrested a man in connection with the shooting who local officials found in Altoona, Pennsylvania, carrying a gun and a handwritten three-page manifesto decrying the health-care industry’s profit motives. While the police investigation unfolds, the $500 billion health-care company is simultaneously trying to cope with the personal tragedy of losing a top executive and a spiraling PR crisis that risks long-term reputational harm in a country where so many have turned against it. Interviews with people familiar with the events show a company under siege. UnitedHealth locked down its Minnesota, New York City and Washington, DC, offices to external visitors and urged workers with safety fears to stay home, according to messages seen by Bloomberg News. A new management structure was put in place to navigate the situation, one message said, without detailing who was running UnitedHealth’s largest division in the wake of Thompson’s death. A private funeral for friends and family was set for Monday, while the company is still working on logistics to safely hold a memorial service, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead of eliciting sympathy from the public, the death of the insurance division’s chief executive officer has spawned a hate machine against the insurance industry that’s only getting louder as the days drag on with little insight into the killer’s motives. The man in custody, Luigi Mangione, 26, was noticed by a McDonald’s employee while he was eating at the restaurant, police said. The manifesto he was carrying speaks to both his “motivation and mindset,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday. It’s a crucial break in a case that dragged on for days in what police say was a targeted and premeditated killing. Bullet casings recovered at the scene bore the words “denied,” “depose,” and “delay,” loosely echoing the book title Delay, Deny, Defend, which describes tactics allegedly used by insurers to deny claims. “Our hope is that today’s apprehension brings some relief to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues, and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy. We thank law enforcement and will continue to work with them on this investigation,” a UnitedHealth spokesperson said in a statement. Inside the company, meetings and presentations were canceled after the shooting. A crisis communications firm was tapped to help. And tributes to Thompson poured in. “The news of Brian's passing has been overwhelming for all of us and we feel his loss profoundly,” said UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said in an email to staff on Wednesday that was seen by Bloomberg News. But outside the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based insurer, a groundswell of anger against the for-profit insurance industry continues to intensify across the U.S. A singer posted a folk song about the shooting on social media. Saturday Night Live even joked about the reaction to the killing over the weekend. Thompson’s death has become a symbol of revenge over denied medical bills and lack of access to necessary care, an issue that some UnitedHealth employees say they’re growing increasingly anxious about. While the company has sent a series of messages extolling Thompson and decrying his killing, some employees say they want to see a more direct response to the vitriol against the company. A company under siege On the morning of the shooting, some executives noticed a frenzy of police cars on one of the hotel’s side streets as they arrived for the investor meeting. They were redirected by the New York Police Department into a different hotel entrance, according to people familiar with the events who asked to speak anonymously as law enforcement continues its investigation. The executives headed into the building and upstairs to the conference area where they sipped coffee, chatted and proceeded to get their hair and makeup done. Executives began to speculate about what happened outside the hotel. A person had collapsed — maybe a heart attack, some suggested. Others thought there had been a shooting. They did not immediately think it was related to the absence of their colleague, known affectionately as “BT,” according to the people. As the minutes ticked closer to the start of the investor meeting, unease grew. It was unusual for Thompson, a 20-year veteran of UnitedHealth who’d climbed the ranks to run its key insurance division, to not show up for an important day like this. Colleagues suspected he’d overslept or was sick in bed, and planned to send someone to his room at a nearby hotel to check on him. They prepped a backup speaker to give Thompson’s presentation if he didn’t arrive on time, the people said. It took a few minutes for the 8 a.m. event to begin, after some 275 people showed up. It’s unclear why they didn’t start on time. But as Witty, the company’s CEO, began his opening remarks, a handful of executives were alerted of a security emergency. They stepped away from the event. They were told Thompson had been killed outside of the hotel that morning. As the investor day presentations continued, the small group of company executives in the know were questioned by police. The executives immediately started trying to reach Thompson’s family. They wanted to tell his wife and kids before the media got a hold of the story. Meanwhile, Witty was told of Thompson’s death on the sidelines of the conference. He was distraught, people familiar with the event said, but had to make quick decisions about the safety of his employees and what to do about the ongoing investor meeting. As all of that was happening, the news got out. Mobile alerts about Thompson’s death started pinging attendees’ phones. There were gasps. People in the audience started looking around to see if others knew. Around 9 a.m., Witty cut the investor day short. “Some of you may know we’re dealing with a very serious medical situation with one of our team members,” he said. “And as a result, I’m afraid we’re going to have to bring to a close the event today, which I apologize for.” Thompson had been dead for two hours. While conference-goers dispersed in a haze of confusion and grief, UnitedHealth executives and some employees were pulled into a room together at the hotel, the people said. With no information about the shooter’s motive, some feared for their own personal safety. Later that day, the company pulled down bio pages of its top executives and board members, while other employees deleted their profile pages on Linkedin. Tidal wave The vitriol following the shooting sparked a reckoning among some UnitedHealth employees. Much of the public animosity was aimed at the way insurance companies prevent Americans from getting the care their doctors prescribe. Some employees grappled with the idea that their paychecks were padded in part by the practice of denying care. Witty, in a video to staff last week, attempted to address the rage but failed to change the narrative for some workers. “As you've seen, people are writing things we simply don't recognize, are aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful,” he said, urging employees to ignore the media. “There’s no value in engaging. ”One employee said they wanted to see accountability from Witty. The episode made them question whether they could keep working for UnitedHealth both mentally and morally, this person said. It wasn’t enough to extol Thompson as a leader, colleague, friend and family man, according to some workers who declined to speak publicly for fear of retribution. The noise had become too loud to ignore and they wanted to see management address it head on. This growing disconnect between Americans and their insurers is an increasing threat to the industry, said Wendell Potter, a former Cigna communications executive who has written books critical of health insurance. “They have to demonstrate quarter-to-quarter that they’re managing medical expenses because that’s what Wall Street expects,” Potter said. “They’re certainly not managing the expectations of the people that they serve.” In the company’s limited external communications, UnitedHealth said in a statement Thursday: “Our priorities are, first and foremost, supporting Brian’s family; ensuring the safety of our employees; and working with law enforcement to bring the perpetrators to justice.” The constrained response may be intentional. “If they were my client, I would say go radio silent unless they have new news,” said crisis communications specialist Bruce Hennes, who is not working with UnitedHealth. “This is not the time to get into extended arguments and discussions with people on social media. There’s nothing to be gained.” Investors are also reacting to the impact of the outrage on the company, which sent shares down 10% in the days following the shooting. The killing “has cast a dark shadow” over the health-care insurance industry, Jared Holz, a health-care equity strategist at Mizuho Securities, wrote in a note to clients about UnitedHealth’s stock drop. “We believe the majority of the pressure, if not all, is related to the idea that the crime was based on some level of dissatisfaction with the insurance industry, its tendency to deny coverage for patients (in some circumstances) and the emotional toil this can take on patients and families,” Holz said. In some ways, UnitedHealth is in an impossible situation. “I don’t know what they can do other than hope that it does go away,” Potter said. Insurance behemoth UnitedHealth, the country’s largest insurer, is known among those in the industry as a place with sharp elbows: It’s unafraid of high-profile legal battles or tough negotiations with medical providers. On Wall Street, the company gained a reputation for reliably hitting — and usually exceeding — financial targets, even if it meant slashing jobs to do so. The culture at the top was shaped for years by veterans of the defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen, where Chairman and former CEO Stephen Hemsley once worked. A previous CEO, William McGuire, unceremoniously left the company and settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over backdating stock options that regulators alleged enriched him and other executives. In recent years, a series of acquisitions have consolidated UnitedHealth’s position so much that when a cyberattack took out its Change Healthcare subsidiary, doctors offices and hospitals across the country were paralyzed. That market dominance has come under review by the Department of Justice, Bloomberg News has reported. Members of Congress have called for a breakup of the conglomerate. Thompson was one of a handful of executives who sold UnitedHealth shares after the company learned it was under investigation by the DOJ, but before that information was shared with the public, Bloomberg reported. The company’s stock fell when the DOJ investigation was reported. Thompson sold $15.1 million worth of shares, according to Bloomberg calculations. Growing through so many acquisitions rapidly turned UnitedHealth into a company with around 400,000 employees. Some former employees call it too big to manage effectively, with layers of management slowing down decision making and pressure on divisions to buy services from other parts of the company because UnitedHealth is in so many lines of business that feed off one another. Before the investor day last week was cut short, Witty used some of his time on stage to acknowledge the widespread dissatisfaction with his industry. “You only have to walk into a room with five people to hear four stories of frustration. ‘I couldn't find a doctor, I didn't know where to go. It's too difficult to understand,’” he said in a room full of financial analysts and investors. For now, Witty’s trying to reassure his employees that the narrative hasn’t spiraled out of the company’s control. “We will work through this together. But it's going to be difficult,” he told workers in a video address last week. “Life won't be the same again.” (With assistance from Antonia Mufarech, Gerry Smith, Madison Muller, John Lauerman and Myles Miller.) ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Federal funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider could be on the chopping block under the direction of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a joint op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday, Musk and Ramaswamy laid out their plans to cut federal overspending and to return power to the “people we elect [to] run the government” rather than unelected bureaucrats. Part of this plan involves slashing millions in funding awarded to “progressive groups like Planned Parenthood,” they wrote. “Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone,” they wrote “They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.” “But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood,” they continued. President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Alexis McGill Johnson responded to the op-ed in a press release on Thursday calling the men “ unqualified fanboys and agents of chaos.” “We’ve been here before — we are not new to shutdown and ‘defund’ fights. We fended off a number of these attacks during Trump’s first term — and Planned Parenthood health centers are still there serving millions of patients across the nation,” she said in part. The op-ed was published the same day 82-year-old Catholic President Joe Biden awarded t he Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, who oversaw an estimated nearly 4 million abortions while heading the organization between 2006 and 2018. President-elect Donald Trump announced his selection of Musk and Ramaswamy to lead DOGE on November 12, noting that “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.” “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement,” Trump said. Planned Parenthood’s 2023 annual report reveals that t axpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements hit $699.3 million, and made up 34 percent of Planned Parenthood’s overall revenue. Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding has increased by 43 percent since 2010, according to an analysis by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. The institute noted that Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding is reported by its affiliates, whose information lags behind the national office and covers fiscal years ending in 2022. Planned Parenthood also reported $997.5 million from private contributions, up 44 percent from the previous report. In total, the abortion giant reported nearly $2.1 billion in income and more than $2.5 billion in net assets. The same report shows that Planned Parenthood peformed 392,716 abortions in 2021-2022, a 5-percent increase from the previous year and a 20-percent increase over its past ten reports, according to the institute. Total services were down 17 percent. “In 2021-22, abortions made up 97.1 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy resolution services, while prenatal services, miscarriage care, and adoption referrals accounted for only 1.6 percent (6,316), 0.9 percent (3,604), and 0.4 percent (1,721), respectively,” according to the institute’s analysis. At the same time, American Life League’s STOPP International 2023 Report on Planned Parenthood CEO Compensation shows , using the latest available data, that the total compensation paid to all Planned Parenthood affiliate CEOs increased from $13.3 million in 2015 to $16.8 million in 2020 — a 26.3-percent increase. The average compensation for a Planned Parenthood CEO rose from $237,999 in 2015 to $317,564 in 2020 — a 33.4-percent increase in five years, according to the report. Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton .Navy Establishes Software Modernization & Innovation Organization
The Gophers football program has added a second receiver commitment in two days via the NCAA transfer portal. Nebraska transfer Malachi Coleman pledged to Minnesota on Tuesday and will have three years of eligibility at the U. “Let’s rock,” he posted on social media. Coleman was a top 70 recruit in the nation out of Lincoln (Neb.) East in the class of 2023, but didn’t play much in 2024. Listed at 6-foot-4 and 190 pounds, Coleman played in only one game in 2024, using his redshirt season. As a true freshman in 2023, Coleman had eight receptions for 139 yards and one touchdown. In 2023, he received an average grade out 58.0 by Pro Football Focus and was primarily a split receiver for 332 out of 335 total offensive snaps. Coleman follows two other wideouts to Minnesota: Logan Loya (UCLA) on Monday and Jaovn Tracy (Miami of Ohio) on Dec. 15.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Clarke Reed, a Mississippi businessman who developed the Republican Party in his home state and across the South starting in the 1960s, died Sunday at his home in Greenville, Mississippi. He was 96. Reed was chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party from 1966 to 1976, beginning at a time when Democrats still dominated in the region. During the 1976 Republican National Convention, delegates were closely divided between President Gerald Ford and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. Reed united the Mississippi delegation behind Ford — a move that created a decadeslong feud with William D. “Billy” Mounger, another wealthy businessman who was prominent in the Mississippi Republican Party. Reed recalled in a 2016 interview with The Associated Press that delegates faced considerable pressure. Movie stars visited Mississippi’s 30 delegates to push for Reagan, and Betty Ford called on behalf of her husband. Reagan met twice with the Mississippi delegation — once with his proposed running mate, Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker — and once without, according Haley Barbour, who was executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party in 1976 and served as the state’s governor from 2004 to 2012. “Everybody was coming to see us,” Reed said. “These poor people had never seen this before, the average delegate.” Mississippi delegates were showing the stress at a meeting away from the convention floor in Kansas City, Reed said. “I looked out, and about half of them were crying,” he said. Reed initially supported Reagan, but said he moved into the Ford camp because he thought Reagan made “a hell of a mistake” by choosing a more liberal northeastern running mate in a gambit to win support of the unpledged Pennsylvania delegation. “In my opinion, Reagan was the best president of my lifetime. I didn’t know that then,” Reed said in 2016. “And had he been elected with Schweiker, he might’ve gotten a bullet one inch over and Schweiker would’ve been president.” Ford won the party nomination during the convention, then lost the general election to Jimmy Carter, the Democratic former governor of Georgia. Reed was born in Alliance, Ohio, in 1928, and his family moved to Caruthersville, Missouri, when he was about six months old. He earned a business degree from the University of Missouri in 1950. He and Barthell Joseph, a friend he had met at a high school boarding school, founded an agriculture equipment business called Reed-Joseph International, which used technology to scare birds away from farms and airports. Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi said Monday that Reed was “a mentor, supporter and advisor to me for over 56 years.” Wicker said he was 21 when Reed put him on the Republican Platform Committee in 1972. “There is no more significant figure in the development of the modern day Mississippi Republican Party than Clarke Reed,” Wicker wrote on social media. “Our state has lost a giant.”Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant company aims to employ more techinicans to "boost production" of its "Fitbit in your skull." The billionaire has previously stated Neuralink's technology would help people with neurological disorders and eventually allow humans to send messages or play games using only their thoughts. The company, which received Food and Drug Administration clearance in May 2023 to launch human trials, has so far only implanted the device in two patients. The coin-sized chip is a brain-computer interface (BCI) and is implanted under the skull where 64 neural threads are attached to the motor cortex. The device then decodes the desired movement of the person's brain and translates it into computer commands. One patient had issues with wires in the implant coming loose weeks after the surgery earlier this year. This hasn't stopped the tech mogul, who has labelled the tech as like having a "Fitbit in your skull", as the company is on a hiring spree. The roles will help "boost production" and "will be instrumental in ramping production to accelerate progress towards our goal of restoring autonomy to those with unmet medical needs", according to the company's website. The technicians would be based in Texas and paid £17.50 an hour to produce brain implants and accessories and required to work "extended hours and weekends, as needed." Meanwhile techinicans in California would be paid between £22 and £35 an hour to manufacture the R1 surgical robot, which is designed to fully automate Neuralink's brain-computer interface. Musk's company filed construction plans for a £12.7 million 112,000-square-foot facility outside Austin in July this year, according to public records. On Wednesday, it had recieved approval to launch its first crinical trial in Canada for the brain chimp start-up to help paralysed people use digital devices by thinking. Neuralink posted on its website: "We've received approval from Health Canada to begin recruitment for our first clinical trial in Canada! The CAN-PRIME Study – an investigational medical device trial for our fully-implantable, wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) – aims to evaluate the safety of our implant and surgical robot and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for enabling people with quadriplegia to control external devices with their thoughts. "This study involves placing a small, cosmetically invisible implant in a part of the brain that plans movements. The device is designed to interpret a person’s neural activity, so they can operate a computer or smartphone by simply intending to move – no wires or physical movement are required. "This research may help us find safer, more effective ways to implant and use our BCI to potentially restore and enhance computer control and other capabilities. If you have limited or no ability to use both hands due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), you may qualify for the CAN-PRIME Study."
Hezbollah says it carried out a 'defensive warning strike' on an Israeli military position, according to Reuters. The Israeli military said the Hezbollah strike is consisted of two missiles. The fire was into a disputed border zone held by IDF. Trump demands the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, warning of severe consequences if not freed before his Jan. 20 inauguration. His ultimatum follows reports of a U.S.-Israeli citizen’s death and a hostage video calling for his intervention. The crisis began with Hamas’s October 2023 attack, which killed 1,200 people and displaced millions in Gaza. WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump has issued a stark ultimatum to Hamas, demanding the immediate release of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. Trump, who will take office on Jan. 20, 2025, warned that failure to release the hostages before his inauguration would result in "HELL TO PAY." "Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East," Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. "Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!" While Trump did not explicitly state whether he would involve U.S. military forces in Israel’s campaign against Hamas, his language has left the door open to speculation. Allies of the president-elect suggested that Trump hopes for a resolution before he assumes office, potentially avoiding further escalation. Israeli President Isaac Herzog praised Trump’s remarks, responding on X (formerly Twitter): "Thank you and bless you Mr. President-elect @realDonaldTrump. We all pray for the moment we see our sisters and brothers back home!" Hamas has released a propaganda video of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, who has been held captive for 422 days. The White House denounced the video of Alexander, calling it "a cruel reminder of Hamas’s terror." The disturbing footage shows the 20-year-old covering his face and crying. Alexander, who is a dual American-Israeli citizen, was serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when he was abducted by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 attacks. LiveNOW's Andy Mac spoke about the hostage video and other headlines with Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on Trump’s statements. The hostage situation began during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel. Militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took approximately 250 hostages into Gaza. Israeli officials estimate that about 100 hostages are still in captivity, with two-thirds believed to be alive. Trump’s ultimatum followed reports of the death of Omer Neutra, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen whose body remains in Gaza, and a hostage video of Israeli soldier Edan Alexander filmed under apparent duress. In the video, Alexander called on Trump to work toward securing the hostages' freedom. The Biden administration has attempted to broker talks between Israel and Hamas alongside a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. However, U.S. officials have expressed frustration, citing Hamas’s unwillingness to negotiate and indifference towards Gaza’s civilian casualties. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has devastated Gaza, killing at least 44,429 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and displacing 90% of its population of 2.3 million people. With Trump’s inauguration drawing closer, his forceful rhetoric marks a potential turning point in U.S. involvement in the region.
