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President Trump on Tuesday granted clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug market and a cult hero in the cryptocurrency and libertarian world.In doing so, Trump fulfilled a promise he made several times during the campaign, soliciting political contributions from the cryptocurrency industry, which spent more than $100 million to influence the outcome of the election. A Bitcoin pioneer, Mr. Ulbricht, 40, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015, after being found guilty of charges that included distributing narcotics over the Internet.“I just called Ross William Ulbright's mother to let her know,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Mr. Ulbricht's name and referring to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New Yo...

Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi announced Tuesday that he would resign in early March, citing in part the failure of the army under his command to protect Israelis from Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.The heavy toll from the attacks – 1,200 dead in Israel and another 250 taken hostage in Gaza – had long come with expectations in Israel that at least some of the country's leaders would eventually step down. Only a few officials have done so, and General Halevi is the highest-ranking military leader to resign so far.“My responsibility for the terrible failure accompanies me every day, every hour and every will for the rest of my life,” he said in a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, announcing the h...

President Trump moved quickly to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization on Monday, a move that public health experts say will undermine the nation's position as a global health leader and make it harder to fight the next pandemic.In an executive order issued about eight hours after he was sworn in, Trump cited a number of reasons for the withdrawal, including the WHO's "mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic" and "failure to urgently adopt reforms necessary." .” He said the agency demands “unfairly burdensome payments” from the United States and complained that China pays less.The move was not unexpected. Trump has been railing against the WHO since 2020, when he attacked the agency for its approach to the coronavirus pandemic and threatened to withhold U.S. funding....

After his expulsion, Mr Rudakubana was enrolled at Acorns School in Lancashire, which caters for children with special needs, and Presfield High School and Specialist College. But it has struggled to integrate, the safeguarding agency said, a situation that worsened after the pandemic began in 2020 and school closures. Despite professionals' efforts to engage with him, he "continued to face challenges related to his emotional and behavioral well-being, social interactions and education," the agency said, and his presence was limited."Feeling and senselessness"On July 22, Mr Rudakubana booked a taxi to take him to Range High School, according to a local police official. But his father ran out and begged the driver not to take him, and eventually Mr Rudakubana returned home. CCTV footage sho...

President Trump signed an executive order Monday to delay enforcement of the federal TikTok ban for 75 days, though the law took effect Sunday and it's unclear whether such a move would prevail over it.The order, one of Trump's first acts after taking office, instructs the attorney general to take no action to enforce the law so that his administration will have "the opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action to follow ". The order is retroactive to Sunday.As he signed the order, Trump told reporters that "the United States should have the right to get half of TikTok" if a deal is reached for the app, without going into detail. He said he thought TikTok could be worth a trillion dollars.The order could immediately face legal challenges, including over whether a president has...

Gazans realized the extent of the devastation in their old neighborhoods and Israelis awaited news on three newly released hostages as a day-long ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continued Monday.With the war's 15-month lull, Palestinians returned to the parts of the Gaza Strip from which they fled, picking their way through vast areas of rubble and trying to salvage what they could – a sofa, a mattress, a chair or a crate – from the rubble of their old homes.“People can barely recognize the destroyed places where they lived,” said Montaser Bahja, an English teacher, a day after visiting his old neighborhood in the northern city of Jabaliya.In a video shared with The New York Times, Mr. Bahja, 50, can be seen running through the streets with his son Alhassan, 21, and trying to reconcile ...

Three years ago, when Bob and Sandy Curtis moved into an upscale continuing care retirement community in Port Washington, NY, they thought they had found the best possible solution for senior care.In exchange for a steep entry fee — about $840,000, financed by the sale of the Long Island home they've owned for nearly 50 years — they would be taken care of for the rest of their lives at Harborside. They selected a contract from several options that set a stable monthly fee at about $6,000 for both of them and that would reimburse half of the entry fee to their estate after their deaths.“This was the final chapter,” Mr. Curtis, 88, said. “That was the deal I made.”CCRCs, or community living plans, provide increasing levels of care on a single campus, from independent and assisted living to n...

After winning the election and taking office in the White House, many presidents end up breaking a campaign promise at some point. Donald J. Trump won't even wait that long. He will break an important campaign promise when he takes the oath of office.As he sought to return to power in the fall, Trump repeatedly made a sensational, if implausible, promise with profound geopolitical consequences: He would broker an end to the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. And not just in 24 hours: he would have done it before being sworn in as president.“Before I even get to the Oval Office, right after I win the presidency, I will solve the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump promised at a June rally. “I will resolve this issue before I even become president,” he said during his televised debate w...

TikTok came back to life in the United States on Sunday after President-elect Donald J. Trump said he would issue an executive order to block a federal ban on the app.The abrupt change came just hours after major app stores removed the popular social media site and it stopped working for U.S. users as a federal law took effect Sunday. The company said in a post on X that "in consultation with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service."Trump said in a Sunday morning post on Truth Social that he "will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect, so we can make a deal to protect our national security."The ban stems from a 2024 law that requires app stores and cloud computing providers to stop distributing...

Israel and Hamas reached agreement on an initial six-week truce, in part postponing their most difficult disputes to a nebulous second phase – which neither side is sure of reaching.According to the agreement, 16 days into the ceasefire, Israeli and Hamas officials should begin negotiating the next steps: an end to the war, the release of the remaining living hostages from Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territory.Israeli leaders have long insisted that they will not end the war until Hamas is destroyed. That seemed far from reality on Sunday, when Hamas militants, some brandishing rifles, spread across parts of Gaza in pickup trucks, in a show of authority to both Palestinians and Israelis.Both Israel and Hamas have retained some of their bargaining chips. At the end of the...