All Hostages Released From Gaza, and Stocks Drop After Trump’s New Threat

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, October 13th. Here's what we're covering.

0:15This morning, Hamas released all of the remaining living hostages held in Gaza. In Israel, crowds gathered to cheer and wave along a road leading to a military base, where some of the hostages were transferred for initial checks and to be reunited with their families. The 20 hostages had been held since October 7, 2023, and they included Israeli soldiers and people who had been abducted from a music festival. Their release is a crucial part of a ceasefire deal that Israel and Hamas agreed to last week. Hamas is also required to return the remains of roughly two dozen hostages who have died, though it's unclear how quickly that will happen.

0:56In exchange, today, Israel began releasing nearly 2 ,000 Palestinian prisoners. Many were bused to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where they stepped off the bus into a cheering crowd. Under the deal, Israel's also partially pulled its troops back in Gaza and started allowing more humanitarian aid to flow into the territory. Earlier today, President Trump, who helped broker the agreement between Hamas and Israel, landed in Tel Aviv to meet with hostages' families and deliver a speech to the Israeli parliament. In the audience, some people are wearing hats that say, Trump the Peace President. You can follow live coverage of Trump's remarks at nytimes.com.

1:38After he's done speaking, Trump is expected to fly to Egypt for a summit on what will happen next in Gaza and the wider region. The Egyptian president's office said the goal was to usher in, quote, a new phase of regional security and stability. As multiple world leaders gather for the summit, it remains unclear if the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold and become permanent. Two major sticking points in negotiations, whether Hamas will disarm and whether it will agree that it can no longer rule Gaza, are still unresolved.

2:18It's day 13 of the government shutdown, and across the country, more and more Americans are beginning to feel the impact. In some Native American communities, key medical services like diabetes monitoring have been canceled. Veterans have seen regional benefits offices close. And many of the country's fruit and vegetable farmers don't have access to crucial information about what government programs they'll be able to rely on as they plan for next year's crops. At the same time, many federal workers got what will be their last paychecks on Friday until the government reopens. and thousands of other government workers have lost their jobs altogether.

2:58Can you assess how significant these job cuts will be? Well, the longer it goes on, the more significant they're going to be. And to be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we're looking forward to. On Friday, the White House began following through on its threat to use the shutdown to fire federal workers, eliminating more than 4 ,000 positions across multiple agencies. including the Departments of the Treasury and Health and Human Services. The process has been somewhat chaotic, though. On Friday night, the administration mistakenly fired hundreds of scientists at the CDC, some of whom specialized in measles and Ebola outbreaks.

3:38The administration then spent the weekend scrambling to bring some of them back. At the moment, lawmakers remain deadlocked over any effort to reopen the government. Republicans need at least some Democratic support to pass their proposed temporary spending bill. But Democrats say they're holding out for concessions on health care funding.

4:05A red start is what Hang Seng is seeing. Taiwan index is down 2 percent as well. This morning, stocks across Asia dropped. One of the toughest days on Wall Street in months. The slide follows a big drop in stocks in the U.S. on Friday. Investors are on edge after President Trump threatened a massive new wave of tariffs on Chinese goods, sparking fears that the two countries could reignite the trade war that flared up this spring. The new tensions started when China said last week that it was tightening its grip over rare earth metals, requiring companies to get new licenses to ship them out of the country.

4:42Those minerals are crucial for making computer chips and batteries, and China dominates production of them. Its factories process roughly 90 % of the global supply. For example, it's the only place in the world that refines samarium, a material used in American F-35 fighter jets and a wide range of missiles. Trump denounced China's move as sinister and hostile, and said the U.S. will put a 100 % tariff on all products from China. That's on top of existing surcharges that he's imposed of at least 30 percent. He also threatened to call off the in-person talks he's scheduled to have this month with the Chinese president on the sidelines of an economic conference in South Korea.

5:24Meanwhile, despite the tensions over trade, there was a little breakthrough in U.S.-China relations this past week in basketball. For years, the NBA has had a massive fan base in China. By some estimates, at peak viewership, more people watched the NBA finals in China than in the U.S. But that all imploded in 2019, when a manager for an NBA team posted on social media that he supported pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. That infuriated Chinese officials who pulled the NBA from Chinese state TV. The controversy exploded while two NBA teams were in China set to play a preseason game. The players told The Times they saw the outrage build in real time, watching from their hotel rooms as workers ripped down huge ads with their faces on them from a nearby building.

6:16There have been no NBA games in China or its territories since then, until this past Friday. I mean, is this the most exciting live shot I've ever done? We're a couple hours away now from tip-off. The game between the Phoenix Suns and the Brooklyn Nets happened in Macau. This game is more than about basketball. And it was the result of years of negotiations by an American casino mogul, Patrick Dumont, who operates a location in Macau, too. Casino owners there have been under pressure from the Chinese government to diversify beyond gambling or risk losing their license. And so Dumont hatched a plan to bring the NBA back to Chinese audiences and to play at his casino's arena in Macau specifically.

7:00This weekend's games were part of a multi-year plan for more. In the past, other sports leagues, including the English Premier League, have had rifts with Beijing over questions of human rights and other controversies. In those cases, the leagues have often made concessions to the Chinese government to resolve things. In the case of the NBA, the league insists it made no concessions. But in an interview with The Times, the head of the NBA said that the league would have to be flexible in its renewed relationship with Beijing, saying, quote, quote, if this is about ideological purity on either side, it will never be achieved.

7:46And finally, today on the federal calendar is Columbus Day. Post offices are closed, a lot of banks are shut. But across the country, more than a dozen states and cities mark today as Indigenous People's Day. There's been a longtime push not to celebrate Columbus, the Italian navigator who sailed to the Americas in 1492, by people who point to the violent colonization that followed his arrival. In 2020, statues of Columbus became a flashpoint during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.

8:22That year, more than 30 were dismantled, either by protesters or officials who took them down.

8:31Five years later, the Times has been looking at where those statues ended up. Boston's Columbus statue, which was beheaded, ended up being repaired and relocated to a church garden. Baltimore's was dumped in the harbor by protesters, but the pieces have since been fished out to be used to make a replica. Other Columbus statues have found new homes at museums or Italian-American social clubs. Italian-American groups have helped with a lot of the restorations and relocations. For them, Columbus is a part of their heritage. A lot of Columbus statues were originally put up years ago as symbols of Italian pride, at a time when Italian immigrants faced discrimination in the U.S.

9:13Meanwhile, some cities have decided to put up new statues altogether where Columbus used to be. Newark, New Jersey put up a monument to Harriet Tubman. San Antonio, Texas, put up a statue of the patron saint of seafarers. And in New Haven, Connecticut, a bronze statue was unveiled last year that depicts an Italian immigrant family.

9:36Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.