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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, a deadly plane crash near Washington, and Uganda reporting an Ebola outbreak.
Massive Crowd in Khan Younis
Chaos during the release of hostages in Gaza on Thursday sparked a series of disputes that threatened to disrupt the ongoing Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, a deadly plane crash near Washington, and Uganda reporting an Ebola outbreak.
Massive Crowd in Khan Younis
Chaos during the release of hostages in Gaza on Thursday sparked a series of disputes that threatened to disrupt the ongoing Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal.
Hamas militants were slated to release eight captives on Thursday in exchange for 110 Palestinian prisoners, including 32 serving life sentences for deadly attacks on Israelis. The group released its first hostage, 20-year-old Israeli soldier Agam Berger, in front of a small crowd in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. The following seven were freed later that day before a crowd of thousands in front of the destroyed home of assassinated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Hamas called the massive crowd a “message of determination,” saying it showcased how Palestinians are determined to remain on their land. Far-right Israeli lawmakers and U.S. President Donald Trump have suggested relocating all of Gaza’s residents, temporarily or longer term, to other countries to make way for reconstruction or Israeli settlements.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the rowdy display illustrated Hamas’s desire to humiliate the hostages even as they were freed. “This is additional proof of the inconceivable brutality of the Hamas terrorist organization,” Netanyahu said. He delayed the return of the scheduled Palestinian prisoners for several hours to ensure the “safe exit of our hostages in the next rounds,” calling on international mediators to intervene.
“Releasing hostages in this way creates an enormous trauma on top of everything that has already happened,” former International Committee of the Red Cross Director-General Yves Daccord told the New York Times, adding that such a handover was “absolutely psychological torture.”
The hostages released on Thursday included Gadi Moses, 80; Watchara Sriaoun, 33; Pongsak Thaenna, 36; Sathian Suwannakham, 35; Bannawat Saethao, 27; Surasak Rumnao, 32; and Arbel Yehoud, 29. Yehoud was at the center of another hostage release crisis over the weekend, when Hamas allegedly changed the order of freed captives to push back Yehoud’s release. Netanyahu initially threatened to stall northern Gaza’s reopening until Yehoud was returned, but he decided to lift the closure on Monday after Hamas promised to release her later that week.
During the first six-week phase of the cease-fire deal, Hamas is expected to release 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are confirmed dead, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas has claimed that it has treated the captives well while in its custody. However, Pramila Patten, the United Nations special envoy for sexual violence in conflict, said in March 2024 that there is “clear and convincing information” suggesting that some of the hostages have suffered “conflict-related sexual violence” while in captivity. At least one former hostage has since said she was sexually abused while held in Gaza.
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What We’re Following
Mass casualty collision. A commercial plane carrying 64 people collided midair with a U.S. Army helicopter carrying three service members above the Potomac River near Washington late Wednesday. Search and rescue operations treated the incident as a mass casualty event, and on Thursday, U.S. officials said they believe that there were no survivors. “We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” John Donnelly, the head of the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, said on Thursday.
The cause of the collision is still being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board. The PSA Airlines passenger jet flying from Wichita, Kansas, was close to landing at Reagan National Airport, also known as DCA, at the time of the incident, while the U.S. Army Sikorsky Black Hawk was in the middle of a training flight. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there was nothing unusual about their flight paths.
DCA is considered one of the most dangerous landings in the country, largely due to the congested and highly controlled airspace surrounding the nation’s capital. Just days after taking office, Trump eliminated the membership of a key aviation safety committee as well as fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard, citing a need to end diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring.
Trump reiterated that talking point on Thursday, blaming—without evidence—such hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration under Democratic administrations for being partly responsible for the crash.
Ebola outbreak. The Ugandan Health Ministry confirmed on Thursday that an outbreak of the Ebola virus has been documented in the capital city of Kampala. At least one person, a nurse at the Mulago National Referral Hospital, has died from the disease so far. Contact tracing has identified dozens of potential exposures, including 30 health workers and patients at Mulago.
Ebola spreads via contact with bodily fluids or contaminated materials. This is the East African country’s ninth outbreak since Ebola was first recorded in Uganda in 2000, during which the disease killed hundreds of people. Ebola’s last outbreak in Uganda between late 2022 and early 2023 killed 55 people.
The Ebola virus took on greater global urgency in 2014, when more than 11,000 people died over a two-year period—the disease’s highest death toll to date. Since then, a slew of other viral diseases related to Ebola have spread across the continent. Last September, Rwanda announced an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg disease, which killed 15 people and spread to Tanzania, where it has since killed several people.
Senate confirmation hearings. Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard faced harsh questioning on Thursday during her three-hour Senate confirmation hearing to become Trump’s director of national intelligence. Senators grilled Gabbard about her views on Russia and Syria as well as her past defense of U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked classified information about the National Security Agency’s surveillance program.
Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, also faced a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. Patel promised to protect the FBI agents who worked on cases against Trump. Patel’s vow to remain unbiased despite his past statements downplaying the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol followed acting U.S. Attorney General James McHenry firing more than a dozen Justice Department officials on Monday who worked on these same cases.
Another of Trump’s picks, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced a Senate health committee hearing on Thursday after undergoing his own rigorous questioning to try to become secretary of health and human services. Kennedy doubled down on several conspiracy theories, including falsely saying that the COVID-19 vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and defending inaccurate and racist remarks that he made previously about the immune systems of Black people and other minority groups.
Odds and Ends
New Zealand granted Mount Taranaki (now known as Taranaki Maunga) personhood on Thursday to recognize that the Indigenous Maori people consider the mountain an ancestor. The legal ruling acknowledges the peak’s history with colonization, protects the land as a “living and indivisible whole,” restores its traditional uses, and allows for conservation work to continue. New Zealand has previously granted personhood to the Whanganui River and Te Urewera forest. These natural landmarks, however, do not have to file taxes.