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Jerusalem/Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – Palestinian militants handed three Israeli hostages over to the Red Cross on Saturday, while buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners rolled out of two Israeli jails in the latest exchange under an ongoing Gaza truce deal. Reporters saw masked Hamas militants parade the hostages onto a stage in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, where they were told to address the crowd before their handover to the Red Cross. Clutching gift bags given by their captors and a certificate to mark the end of their captivity, the three men, flanked by fighters, called for the completion of further hostage exchanges under the ceasefire deal. Source link

Ichiro Suzuki plans to do more than just be inducted into the Hall of Fame this July. He also intends to donate his entire personal collection to the museum in Cooperstown, New York. Former National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum President Jeff Idelson announced the news while sharing a previous discussion with Suzuki on a recent “Refuse to Lose” podcast. “It culminated with him wanting to follow in the footsteps of Hank Aaron and Tom Seaver, two players who pledged their entire collections to Cooperstown,” Idelson said. “Ichiro said, ‘I want to be the third much later in my life.’” Idelson, 60, served as the president of the Hall of Fame from 2008-19. He returned as interim president in 2021 after Tim Mead stepped down. Idelson and Suzuki, 51, have shared a relationship that continued past the latter’s baseball career. Suzuki earned an astounding 99.7% of the vote last month to become the first Japanese-born inductee. He will enter the Hall of Fame alongside CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, Dave Parker and Dick Allen when he is inducted on July 27. Suzuki batted .311 with 3,089 hits, 509 stolen bases and 10 Gold Gloves despite debuting at age 27 in 2001, when he won the American League Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards for the Seattle Mariners. After 11-plus years with Seattle, Suzuki was traded to the New York Yankees in 2012 and played three years with the Miami Marlins from 2015-17 before ending his career with cameos the next two seasons for his original club. Source link

Bangkok – A Japanese boy forced to engage in fraud in Myanmar has said that there were nearly 10 Japanese people other than himself at a criminal group’s base in the country, Thai military sources said Saturday. Thai authorities took the 16-year-old boy into custody in Mae Sot, in northwestern Thailand, this month, and are looking into the details of the situation. According to the Thai military and other sources, the boy traveled from Japan to Thailand last December after applying for a job he found on social media. He was taken to the base of a Chinese crime ring in the eastern Myanmar state of Kayin near the border with Thailand, and was forced to take part in scams targeting Japanese people. The boy sought help earlier this month from his family, who contacted Japanese police. Thai authorities located him following a request from Japan, and he was handed over to the Thai side from Myanmar on Wednesday. Last month, a 17-year-old Japanese high school student was placed under protection in Thailand after he was also forced to engage in scams in Myanmar, after being tricked by a 29-year-old man he came to know through an online game. Sources said that the student and the recently found boy were at different bases, and that the student also said that nearly 10 Japanese people were engaged in fraud at a base. Source link

RIYADH/ABU DHABI/AMMAN/CAIRO – Saudi Arabia is spearheading urgent Arab efforts to develop a plan for Gaza’s future as a counter to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambition for a Middle East Riviera cleared of its Palestinian inhabitants, 10 sources said. Draft ideas will be discussed at a meeting in Riyadh this month of countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Proposals may involve a Gulf-led reconstruction fund and a deal to sideline Hamas, five of the people said. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies were aghast at Trump’s plan to “clean out” Palestinians from Gaza and resettle most of them in Jordan and Egypt, an idea immediately rejected by Cairo and Amman and seen in most of the region as deeply destabilizing. Source link

Okuma, Fukushima Pref. – Workers at Japan’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have started dismantling water storage tanks to free up space for tons of nuclear debris, 14 years after the facility was hit by a devastating tsunami. Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings (Tepco) has been charged with finding a suitable place to store around 880 tons of radioactive material that remains inside the Fukushima plant’s damaged reactors. “Currently, there is no more land available in Fukushima No. 1,” said Naoki Maeshiro, project manager for Tepco, who is overseeing the operation that began Friday. Source link

Washington – Roughly 300,000 years ago, our species first appeared on the African landscape before spreading globally and coming to dominate the planet. All this happened about 4.5 billion years after Earth formed, with innumerable steps occurring in between that made our planet a cradle for intelligent life. An influential scientific thesis — called the “hard steps” theory and first presented in 1983 — has held that this outcome was a long shot and that the emergence of technological-level intelligent life on Earth or elsewhere was highly improbable. But perhaps this result was not so unlikely after all, according to scientists who are now advancing an alternative theory. These scientists propose that Homo sapiens and analogous extraterrestrial life forms may be the probable end result of biological and planetary evolution when a planet has a certain set of attributes that make it habitable, rather than requiring countless lucky breaks. Source link

Vladimir Putin is assembling a heavyweight team with decades of experience in high-stakes negotiations to face off against U.S. President Donald Trump’s representatives for a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. They include Yuri Ushakov, his chief Kremlin foreign-policy adviser who has more than half a century of involvement in diplomacy, and his top spymaster, Sergei Naryshkin, who served with Putin in the Soviet KGB, according to people familiar with situation, who asked not to be identified discussing internal information. Kirill Dmitriev, a financier educated at Stanford and Harvard with ties to the Russian president’s own family, may play a key role as an unofficial back-channel with Trump’s negotiators, people familiar with the preparations said. Source link

WASHINGTON – Nearly half of an elite U.S. epidemiology program known as the “disease detectives” were dismissed by the Trump administration Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter, dealing a blow to public health efforts as fears rise over bird flu. The firings come as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency pushes to downsize the federal government and as newly-confirmed Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vows to overhaul the nation’s health agencies. “I’m so angry,” said a senior epidemiologist in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who supervised some of those affected by the cuts. Source link

Just hours before meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House, United States President Donald Trump announced his intention to impose reciprocal tariffs on American trade partners, including India. Trump has not only singled the country out for imposing some of the highest duties but has reportedly referred to Modi as the “king of tariffs.” The stage was thus set for the bilateral summit on Thursday, which saw both leaders prioritize their national interests while emphasizing amicable relations — even equating the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and “Make India Great Again” (MIGA) agendas. Trump welcomed Modi with a long handshake and warm hug — kindling characterizations of their relationship as a “bromance.” Both men praised each other, acknowledging their bond, developed during Trump’s first term, and expressed hopes for stronger ties moving forward. The American president described Modi as a “terrific man” and as a tougher negotiator than himself. The Indian prime minister, repeatedly addressing his counterpart as a “friend,” praised Trump’s achievements during his initial weeks in office. Source link

Kyiv/Chernobyl, Ukraine – A Russian drone attack badly damaged the confinement structure around the disused Chernobyl nuclear power plant intended to prevent the release of nuclear substances, a senior nuclear industry official said Friday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the International Atomic Energy Agency had earlier reported that radiation levels remained normal at the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986. “The barrier, which was supposed to prevent the spread of radioactive substances, has ceased to function according to its original design,” Oleksandr Tytarchuk, the plant’s chief engineer, told reporters at the stricken plant. Source link