Tag: no-latest

The United States has brokered a pathway to a deal between Hamas and the Israeli government for the Palestinian militant group to lay down its arms in Gaza in exchange for an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the territory, U.S. officials said Thursday, a potential breakthrough to end nearly three years of conflict there.

The framework was a potential step toward an Israeli pullout from Gaza and the eventual rebuilding of the territory, much of which has been reduced to rubble. But on Friday morning, Israel remained conspicuously silent on the deal, and after years of fighting, there was little trust between the sides.

President Donald Trump portrayed it as “a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” in a post on social media.

He said that the agreement envisioned Hamas disarming in stages, with the Israeli military pulling out of the territory gradually and being replaced by an international stabilization force that would work in partnership with a revamped Palestinian police force to provide security.

As of Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had not commented officially on Trump’s announcement, raising questions about where Israel stands on the latest development.

Hamas said in a statement Friday that Israel’s “commitment to halting the killing and ending its aggression is the fundamental prerequisite and the first step towards implementation” and that a “framework and timetable for what has been agreed upon” must be established.

A U.S. official said Hamas had agreed to the framework through Egyptian mediators. The official suggested that the plan didn’t diverge from what Israel agreed to nearly a year ago as part of a deal to free hostages — but acknowledged the possibility that the Israeli position has changed in the meantime.

“We’re not asking Israel to do anything other than agree to the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we’re very confident they will adhere to it. If they don’t, obviously, President Trump will be very, very disappointed,” a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations. Israel agreed to the plan in September 2025.

But the official acknowledged the challenges: “We’re going to try to do something very, very impossible,” the person said.

The road map leaves major implementation questions unanswered. U.S. officials characterized it as a step-by-step plan to hand power in Gaza to Palestinian authorities that are not Hamas, which launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that was met by an intense Israeli response. The composition of the new Palestinian administration was not fully clear, for instance, nor which countries would contribute to the international forces, or when they would deploy.

“This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks,” Trump wrote.

Israel has long insisted that Hamas disarm first. Hamas had called for Israeli forces to withdraw first. The White House on Thursday did not clarify how that deadlock will be overcome.

On Friday, an Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues, reiterated Israel’s long-standing position. “Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and the full demilitarization of the Strip, as a prerequisite for any process,” the official said.

That would be a rejection of the step-by-step plan envisioned by Nickolay Mladenov, the director general of the Board of Peace, the Trump-backed group that was set up in the aftermath of the 2025 deal to release the remaining hostages that Hamas seized during the October 2023 attack.

Hamas said in its statement that any decision to give up heavy weapons was contingent upon a variety of factors, including “a complete cessation of all forms of aggression” and Israel’s “withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.”

Throughout the week, the Israel Defense Forces have continued to conduct strikes in Gaza, on Friday announcing that the IDF had killed a Hamas supply officer and Hamas supply commander.

The political calendar in Israel may create a challenge in the short term. Netanyahu faces elections in October and is likely to face political pressure not to take actions that look like concessions to Hamas before then. One U.S. official said that the plan may take “200 to 350 days” to implement, saying that the emphasis was more on the concrete steps required to push the deal forward rather than the calendar.

Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey have all served as mediators during the extensive negotiations, with Egypt hosting senior Hamas officials in recent weeks for the final drive toward an agreement, U.S. officials said.

Netanyahu met with Trump on Tuesday while he was in Washington for the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.).

The mediation efforts have taken place against the backdrop of the war in Iran, which historically was Hamas’ biggest backer. Its ability to support the Palestinian group has suffered over three years of escalating attacks by Israel and the U.S. that culminated in the February joint attack on Tehran and its leadership.

The humanitarian situation for the up to 2 million Gazans who remain packed in the Hamas-controlled part of the enclave “remains brutal,” according to the World Food Program. Residents in the territory are surrounded by the Israel Defense Forces, and “families lack water, sanitation and medicine,” the group said.

The question of which side moves first has posed a challenge to disarming Hamas and securing the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Some of the elements in the proposal unveiled Thursday echoed ideas that were floated by the Biden administration but never successfully implemented.

“This potential announcement by Hamas on disarmament could be meaningful,” Ilan Goldenberg, who worked on Gaza issues in the Biden White House, wrote on X. “The million dollar question will be how Israel responds. And I would put good money on Bibi … doing absolutely nothing to reciprocate.”

The Israeli military has cleared more than 60% of Gaza’s territory of Palestinians, and Netanyahu in May said that he had ordered Israeli forces to extend their control to 70% of the land. Gaza’s Palestinian residents are packed into the remainder of the territory, which is under Hamas control.

Hamas has previously stated that the group is open to “freezing or storing” its weaponry, but has said that such a move would only be taken once a clear path to a Palestinian state is established. The group has also said even if it disarms it will never forgo the “right to resist.”

Under the framework, the group would also disclose the extensive underground tunnel network that runs under much of Gaza so that the tunnels could be destroyed.

The Trump administration has also struggled to stand up a military force that it has said will take over control from Hamas for the management of the territory. The international stabilization force was announced in February, but since then countries that previously committed troops to the force put their commitments on hold indefinitely, including Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania.

The international force would be commanded by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers.

On the call Thursday, the administration did not provide updates on these specific commitments, but one official stated that the U.S. has “commitments for over 5,000 troops now from different countries that are participating and looking to continue to build it.”

In a statement on Friday, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza — which is a technocratic team of Palestinians meant to organize governance of the strip — said that it “welcomes the progress announced yesterday regarding the road map, and the opening of a path toward beginning its implementation.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran was likely behind a coordinated cyberattack on more than 30 municipal water systems in Minnesota this week, according to several U.S. officials.

The FBI is investigating the attack, which comes as a five-month-old military conflict between the United States and Iran threatens to escalate.

Though intelligence agencies have not definitively concluded that Tehran is responsible, the hack follows urgent warnings by federal cybersecurity officials that Iran for months has been targeting internet-exposed devices that control operations at water, wastewater, and energy facilities in the U.S. and, in some cases, causing disruptions.

Intrusions have been noted at several water and energy systems across the country since shortly after the war began on Feb. 28, said Joe Slowik, director of threat research for Dataminr, a real-time commercial intelligence platform.

“It is not a secret that these things have been taking place since the spring,” he said. “There have been disruptions in multiple critical infrastructure sectors. It’s a big deal.”

The New York Times earlier reported that federal and state investigators believe Iran was likely responsible for the Minnesota attacks.

At least one system was briefly offline and another saw its remote sensors disrupted, but the state’s information technology agency notes that there are no active requests for Minnesotans to modify their drinking water usage.

The attacks took place on Sunday and Monday, according to a statement by Minnesota IT Services, the information technology agency.

The agency, as well as the affected municipalities, are working with state and federal authorities to share threat intelligence and remediate the attack.

Nate George, the mayor of Braham, Minn., said in an online statement that his city’s public works department discovered the attack early Monday morning. After learning at least four other Minnesota communities were affected, they determined the plant had been hacked.

“Public works isolated the affected system, restored a backup, and restarted the plant within approximately 90 minutes,” George said of the city’s response, noting that Braham’s residents received water from the city’s water tower while the plant was offline.

In the city of Plymouth, several devices that control the water and sewer systems’ operations were hacked and taken offline but have now been restored, said Michael Thompson, the city’s public works director. The water supply was not affected, he added. But devices known as programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, which operate on the city’s cellular network and track water level, pressure, pump operations, and equipment alarms, were impacted.

Iran has been actively targeting the U.S. with cyberattacks since the war started on Feb. 28, but most have not drawn headlines.

Kurt Gaudette, head of intelligence for Dragos, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting critical infrastructure, noted a pattern with attacks in March and in Minnesota: the targeting of small utilities that use internet-exposed controllers with default passwords. “It’s very low-hanging fruit,” Gaudette said.

He said he has seen such attacks in the past, notably in late 2023, when a PLC at a municipal water pumping station in Aliquippa, Pa., was hacked. The attack, which caused no major disruption, was claimed by a group affiliated with Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and known as CyberAv3ngers.

The Aliquippa station used PLCs made by an Israeli firm, Unitronics, which were targeted by the hacking group across the U.S., Britain, Israel, and Ireland. Israel had just begun its invasion of Gaza in response to the attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas that killed about 1,200.

In general, Iran’s goal with cyberattacks seems to be less outright destruction than to deliver psychological effects to two audiences, said Alex Orleans, head of threat intelligence at Sublime Security, an email security company.

“The first is the American people, to make us freak out and to turn sentiment against the war by making it look like it’s not worth the costs, when in reality our systems are pretty resilient,” Orleans said.

The second is the Iranian regime itself, he said. “They want to show their bosses that they’re contributing to the war effort.’’

Slowik, who tracks foreign cyber threat actors, said that the events in Minnesota and other states, including in the Eastern U.S., are the work of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Cyber Electronic Command.

Iran’s actions “reflect a desire or need to say, ‘Hey, we can hit you too, even if it’s not New York City or Los Angeles,” Slowik said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency issued advisories in April and July noted that the IRGC was exploiting PLCs.

On Thursday, the agency issued a new advisory saying that it is seeing “a significant increase” in cyber threat actors targeting programmable logic controllers in the water and wastewater system sectors. CISA urged they be disconnected from the internet as soon as possible and that default passwords be changed.

In March, the IT systems of a major medical equipment maker, Stryker, were disrupted for two to three weeks by a hacktivist front group known as Handala, which the Justice Department said is operated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

Handala also claimed earlier this year to have hacked the personal email account of FBI Director Kash Patel.

In Denver these days, it’s the brown lawns vs. the green.

As Colorado dries up in a historic drought, scofflaws violating water restrictions have sparked tension throughout the state’s largest metropolitan area, turning residential streets into checkerboards of virtue and vice. The emerald green lawns of cheaters now abut the crispy brown grass of the rule-followers — defiance that’s visible for all to see.

With record hot temperatures following a winter of little snow, the city’s utility had asked that residents cut usage levels by 20% this summer, and mandated that customers only water their lawns twice a week.

Denverites have so far failed to meet the moment — with only about a 5% reduction by mid-July. And there’s little relief in the forecast, with the furnacelike heat dome that descended on the central United States expected to last through the week.

More than 4,000 people have reported their neighbors for cheating on the restrictions this summer, the utility said, leading to one story in the Denver Post with thousands of comments, most along the lines of “Snitches get stitches.”

“Our yard would look so much better if everyone else’s grass was also dead,” said Keifer Hunniford, a tech executive who lives in a quiet neighborhood of mid-century homes on the east side of the city.

Hunniford, 58, has spent the summer averting his eyes from the big burnt patch in the middle of his yard — it’s too depressing. Meanwhile, his neighbors’ sprinklers whirl on and off many days.

At a briefing for the state’s drought task force, Russ Schumacher last week outlined the grim circumstances, and said that the time period from October through June was the hottest and fourth driest on record.

More than 90% of the state remains in a drought condition, according to Schumacher, the state climatologist and director of the Colorado Climate Center. Reservoirs are drying up and the Colorado River, which supplies water to states throughout the Southwest, is at an all-time low at some measuring locations, he said.

The precipitation numbers “continued to go further and further into a deficit,” Schumacher said.

Todd Hartman, a spokesperson for Denver Water, said the utility is “quite a way off from our goal” of a 20% reduction in water use. By this point in the season, he said, they had hoped for customers to have used 12,400 acre-feet less of water than normal. Instead, they’ve used 2,900 acre-feet less, which he described as only a “slight improvement.”

The utility has contacted 3,400 customers to “educate” them on watering restrictions after the more than 4,000 complaints on the new tip line. The first offense results in a warning, the second a $250 fine, and the third a $500 fine, with fines escalating to $1,000 for repeated violations.

So far, they’ve issued three formal citations that could result in fines.

Hartman said while they’ve seen “strong conservation efforts” from schools, parks, and multifamily housing units, single-family homeowners remain the worst offenders. The utility hopes to avoid cutting watering restrictions further to just one day a week, which would have a “devastating impact” on landscapes.

On social media, residents have complained about golf courses that still seem to have pristine greens, and have blamed rapid residential growth and new data centers for straining the water supply. Homeowners associations around the area have added to the confusion by dinging residents for having unsightly lawns, even as the drought has worsened, Schumacher said.

In Superior, a town about 20 miles from Denver that does not have water restrictions, James Shima, 57, an electrical engineer, said he received a warning email and then a certified letter from his homeowners association in June when he held off on watering due to the statewide drought declaration.

He was given 30 days to address the problem or face escalation of the violation process, he said.

“I am now forced to water my lawn two times a day, seven days a week, for two hours during the peak of summer,” he said. His most recent water bill was $300, Shima said.

Rachel Stanton, the president of the Rock Creek homeowners association, responded in an email that the HOA had “moderated expectations for lawn maintenance in light of conservation concerns” beginning in May.

“No one is expected to have a lush green lawn right now, but they are expected to do enough maintenance to keep their lawns alive,” Stanton said. She dismissed Shima’s concerns as “a nonstory in which the ‘HOA as villain’ trope does not apply.”

When Hunniford and his family moved into the neighborhood 12 years ago, it was easy to keep the grass surrounding his two-story mid-century home looking good. Now, it’s almost impossible.

“Over time we’ve got sick of the stupidity on putting water on this green stuff we don’t really use, and we’ve let ours die,” he said.

The grass has withered away to bare dirt in some spots. He considered spray painting the remaining brown spears green with turf paint, but his wife said no.

From his house, Hunniford can look down his street and see some lawns that are dead, some lawns that are green, some that have been replanted with drought-sensitive plants, and his neighbor Pam’s new bright green synthetic turf across the street.

The brown lawn folks believe the green lawn folks are cheating.

“There are the known offenders,” Hunniford said. “One of them was watering this morning, and it’s an off day.”

The brown lawn vs. green lawn debate is one more example of how divided American society has become, he said, and the drought has only added to his malaise and sense of the country in decline. He and his wife, a personal coach, are considering retiring in Mexico.

Across the street, Pamela Keith, 61, a retired Department of Veterans Affairs counselor, has ripped up her sod and installed $13,000 in synthetic turf, a project that she embraced as a way to preserve the legacy of her mother, Eleanor, who died in 2006 and was an avid gardener.

Her roses and tulips are long gone, and Keith didn’t even plant any annuals this year as the drought worsened. But she’s managed to save the vegetable garden, including tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, and her mother’s collard greens that still come back every year.

“We’ve got to keep up with the neighborhood name: Park Forest,” she said, adding that she does worry about her neighbors’ automatic sprinklers frequently running.

On the days they are allowed to water, she and her husband, Sean, try to beat the other outside “because it’s so enjoyable.”

But Keith is harboring a secret. For weeks now, she’s been watering her back lawn over the restriction limit, hoping to keep a little grass alive until July 25, when she threw a celebration in honor of her husband, who recently returned after two years on the road as a travel nurse. There was R&B music, and barbecue, and a big-screen TV playing summer movies. She called it “An Evening Under the Stars.”

She’ll cut back, she said, now that the party’s over.

NEW YORK — First D.C., then Manhattan.

The satirical art group responsible for about a dozen public pieces mocking President Donald Trump in the nation’s capital over the past 20 months has now landed in New York.

The anonymous artists who call themselves the Secret Handshake left their mark in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday morning, placing a 10-foot-tall trophy, spray-painted gold and emblazoned with a #1 on its side, in Foley Square.

A large plaque below the “Iran War Participation Trophy” reads: “We hereby award President Donald J. Trump this participation trophy for his enthusiastic involvement in the Iran War. While some concern themselves with military strategy, diplomacy, or measurable outcomes, President Trump demonstrated the courage to participate regardless of the final score.”

The war in Iran, which began Feb. 28, has resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. service members and wounded more than 600.

Walking to catch the subway, Maren Stange, 79, stopped and chuckled as she bent to read the rest of the trophy inscription: “President Trump joins the ranks of children everywhere who received recognition for simply showing up.”

Stange, who said she had never heard of the Secret Handshake, wasn’t sure the statue would change anything. “It’s funny and it’s smart,” she said. “But what’s it going to do?”

The installation, which was first displayed in Washington this month, invites anyone to contribute their own participation trophies to the project.

Arranged around the plinth were more than three dozen mock trophies and awards. One seemed to mock Trump’s electoral history: “Lost Arizona,” read a baby blue Honorable Mention ribbon, dangling from the neck of a tennis trophy.

A trophy of a martial arts figure, leg raised in a kick, bore the printed message “Most Swollen Cankles” attached to its white base. One small gold chess award was labeled “Smallest Hands Award.”

“It’s just kind of trolling Donald Trump,” said DJ Hairston, 37, an attorney headed to the nearby criminal court. “It’s definitely funny. Because that’s what this is — this is a participation war. It’s all stupid. It’s all a farce. And this is what Donald Trump wants. He wants a big gold trophy in the middle of Manhattan.”

Michael Chrzynowski, 46, and his mother, Candace Goudey, 69, stopped to examine the trophy and the trophy spawn.

“It’s cathartic. They’re mocking him,” Goudey said. “And then you turn around and read, ‘The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government,’” a message engraved in stone across the street, above the entranceway of the New York County Supreme Court building.

It felt, she said, like that sense of justice was lacking from the Trump administration.

“These untalented ‘artists’ should stick to their ugly ‘art’ and refrain from weighing in on foreign policy — which they clearly know nothing about, given the fact that the United States Military achieved all of its objectives during Operation Epic Fury,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in an email when the trophy first appeared in Washington on July 13.

The Secret Handshake, whose members have declined in phone interviews with the Washington Post to provide any identifying information, has previously placed installations at locations across D.C.

Earlier works by the group include a statue of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands, a mock tribute to Trump from the world’s authoritarian leaders, and a reproduction of the desk of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) with a pile of fake excrement on it that ridiculed the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who sought to overturn the 2020 election.

Many of the previous installations were at prominent spots on the National Mall, including directly in view of the Capitol’s west side. Those received a National Park Service permit for temporary display.

In Foley Square, some lawyers with briefcases, heading to one of the courthouses nearby, did a double take when they spotted the trophy, then kept walking.

“That’s a first,” said a New York court officer, who declined to give his name. “Who put that there? The Secret Handshake? I’ve never heard of them.” He shook his head and began walking to work. “Listen, he’s no worse than any other president, I tell you that much.”

A man in a red T-shirt bearing the message “Peace of Mind” squinted at the trophy, read the plaque, raised his hands and flipped the bird — two of them — which he said was directed at the president.

Welcome to New York.