Can the U.S. force a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas?

On Saturday, Israeli special forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, killing at least 270 Palestinians and injuring hundreds in the process.

The rescue of the hostages was a moment of triumph for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he didn’t have long to bask in it.

Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s unity war cabinet, announced his resignation on Sunday, over Netanyahu’s management of the war in Gaza. After Gantz’s resignation, Netanyahu will be even more reliant on far-right members of his coalition, who have vocally opposed efforts to broker a cease-fire.

The U.S. continues to push a cease-fire proposal outlined last month, and on Monday the U.N. Security council passed a U.S.-drafted resolution supporting that deal.

NPR’s Michele Kelemen and Daniel Estrin help us get a sense of what this weekend’s events might mean for the war and its ending.

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COVID Funding Is Ending For Schools. What Will it Mean for Students?

Billions of dollars in federal COVID funding is set to expire for K-12 schools.

Educators across the country say the extra money helped students catch up, and plenty of students still need that support.

Some schools say losing the the money, received over the last few years, will lead to cancelation of crucial programs, budget cutbacks and possible layoffs.

NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with Wall Street Journal education reporter Matt Barnum about the impact of expiring federal funds on schools across the country.

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‘Double disapprovers’ could decide the election. Here’s what they say

With the presidential election approaching, some voters are wondering how we again ended up with Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the presumptive nominees.

Recent focus groups with swing voters put into words why some people are turning away from the main candidates, and polling gives us an insight into what this could mean in November.

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The state of Hamas on 3 fronts: troops, governance and narrative

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war in Gaza can’t end until Israel has destroyed Hamas.

NPR’s reporting from Israel and Gaza suggests that goal is still a long way off.

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Hollywood flips the script in the new movie ‘Ezra’

‘Ezra’ is a road trip movie, a movie about fathers and sons.

Bobby Cannavale plays the father Max, and he hasn’t quite figured out what his son Ezra’s autism diagnosis means for their life together.

The movie draws on the real experiences of screenwriter Tony Spiridakis. William A. Fitzgerald, who plays Ezra. And associate producer Alex Plank also has autism, and is the founder of wrongplanet.net. Many members of the cast and crew are neurodivergent, or have neurodivergent family members.

Hollywood hasn’t always gotten it right when it comes to portraying neurodivergent people on screen. The new movie ‘Ezra’ is flipping the script.

NPR’s Juana Summers speaks with screenwriter Tony Spiridakis and producer Alex Plank.

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What will life look like for jurors after the Trump trial?

The 12 New Yorkers who served on the jury for former president Donald Trump’s trial, and voted to convict him om 34 counts of falsified business records, have not had their identities disclosed publicly to protect their privacy.

But now the trial is over, and they are likely returning back to normal life. So, will they reveal themselves to the public? And what risks do they encounter in doing so?

In this episode we take a look at what other public figures who have gone up against Trump have faced from his supporters, and what those jurors could stand to gain from sharing their stories.

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Battlefield medicine has come a long way. But that progress could be lost

When the U.S. launched its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, it had been a decade since a full-scale deployment of American troops.

That’s why when the wars started a lot of the medical corps’ experience came from big city emergency rooms.

But a few years into the wars, the military was facing hundreds of casualties each month between Afghanistan and Iraq.

Military surgeons were seeing wounds requiring double amputations, the kind of thing you might never encounter before serving in a war zone.

The military was able to turn that real world experience into breakthroughs in battlefield care. Some of them were simple tweaks like pop up surgical teams that set up close to the battlefield.

Over the course of the war, small innovations like this tripled the survival rate for the most critically injured troops, according to one study

Now that the post 9/11 wars have ended, some veteran military doctors say those gains are at risk.

The Pentagon has tried to cut its healthcare costs by outsourcing medical care to the private sector. And that could hurt battlefield medicine in a future war.

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‘They’re somebody’s history.’ Returning ancient artifacts to their rightful home

The Rosetta Stone, the Kohinoor diamond, sculptures from Greece’s Parthenon known as the Elgin Marbles are all dazzling objects that bear the history of early civilizations.

But these objects were also taken by colonizers, and still remain on display in museum galleries far from their homes.

Over the past several years museums around the world have been reckoning with the looted treasures they have kept and benefited from.

Now one small museum in Nashville, Tennessee is returning ancient objects excavated in Mexico.

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Trump was found guilty on all counts. What comes next?

After a trial that lasted 21 days and a deliberation that took less than ten hours, a Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 criminal felony counts of falsifying business records.

Trump says he will appeal the charges, but there are still implications for him, and his ongoing presidential campaign for the 2024 election.

So what grounds does Trump have to appeal these charges? And how long could it take to play out? Attorney and NYU law proffesor Andrew Weissmann joins Ari Shapiro to map out what the next phase of the Trump trial will look like.

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In a historic verdict, Trump found guilty on 34 felony counts in “hush money” trial

After 10 hours of deliberation, in a historic verdict, a jury of 12 New Yorkers reached a verdict in the criminal hush money trial of former President Donald Trump.

Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts of felony falsification of business records to cover up a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump says this is “a rigged disgraceful trial,” while the Biden campaign said this verdict shows that “no one is above the law,” but that former President Donald Trump still poses a “threat … to our democracy.”

NPR’s Scott Detrow and Juana Summers, along with NPR political correspondents, unpack the guilty verdict and what it means ahead of the election in November.

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