Trump’s Retribution Lands on Latest Target, and U.S. Troops Head to Israel

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, October 10th. Here's what we're covering.

0:17In Gaza and in Israel, people have spent the last day in the streets celebrating news of a deal. There are no words to describe the feeling today. Spontaneous joy, excitement, tears. The agreement between Israel and Hamas calls for all the remaining Israeli hostages to be set free and could pave the way for an end to the conflict after two years of brutal war. It's something that nobody thought was possible and we're going to end up having peace in the Middle East. Who would have thought? President Trump, who helped broker the deal, said he'll head to the Middle East in the next few days to attend a signing of the agreement and to see the hostages returned.

1:01That'll be a day of joy. I'm going to try and make a trip over. We're going to try and get over there. Still, a lot of crucial issues have yet to be resolved. If Hamas carries out its part of the agreement, is this the end of the war? Well, it's the implementation of the first phase. We don't have any intention to renew the war, but parts of the commitments is, for example, the disarmament of Hamas And that will be phase two. We will first have a ceasefire. In an interview on Fox News, Israel's foreign minister said some questions still need to be answered, like whether Hamas will agree to disarm, which the group has refused to do in the past.

1:41The initial agreement doesn't appear to have addressed that, or the issue of who will control Gaza after the war ends. In terms of next steps, the U.S. announced it's sending 200 troops to Israel to help coordinate and monitor how the deal is implemented. That will include specialists in logistics and security who will join other soldiers from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE. U.S. officials said there's no plan to send American troops into Gaza. Meanwhile, aid organizations are also gearing up. The United Nations is preparing to rush in food, medicine, and other aid that's desperately needed in the territory, where many Gazans are facing starvation and where basic services like medical care and clean water have been decimated.

2:28For a behind-the-scenes look at how the deal between Israel and Hamas finally came together and how President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner played a major role in that, listen to today's episode of The Daily with Times investigative reporter Mark Mazzetti.

2:50Last night, Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, was indicted on charges of bank fraud after President Trump demanded that she be prosecuted. It's a striking escalation of a very public, years-long conflict between the two. Donald Trump may have authored the art of the deal, but he perfected the art of the steel. It started in 2018 when James ran for attorney general, vowing to investigate Trump's financial dealings, which have long been under scrutiny. For years, Donald Trump engaged in deceptive business practices and tremendous fraud. After she was elected, she quickly followed through, opening a civil investigation into the Trump organization.

3:32And she followed it up with a sweeping lawsuit that accused Trump of fraudulently overstating his wealth. It's a witch hunt. We have a corrupt attorney general in this state. You see how she does? The scale and the scope of Donald Trump's fraud is staggering. This is a disgrace. And you ought to go after this attorney general. From the first day of his trial, in which he was eventually found liable, Trump vowed to go after her, calling James corrupt. Since returning to office, he's put intense pressure on prosecutors to indict her. And ultimately, federal investigators narrowed in on accusations that she falsified financial records when she purchased one of her homes.

4:14James has called the charges baseless. The indictment is the latest example of how Trump has shattered presidential norms by openly calling for the government to go after his political enemies. Along with James, his list of top targets has included former FBI Director James Comey, who pleaded not guilty this week to charges of lying to Congress. Trump has posted on social media that they are both, quote, guilty as hell and that justice must be served. Notably, the indictments against James and Comey were signed by just one prosecutor, Lindsay Halligan, Trump's former personal lawyer. He appointed her to the position just last month after other prosecutors raised doubts that there was enough evidence to bring the charges.

5:06In Oslo this morning. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness. The Nobel Committee announced that the winner of this year's Peace Prize is Maria Carina Machado, a pro-democracy politician in Venezuela. She's been living in hiding for the last year after trying to rally voters against the country's longtime authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro. The committee cited her, quote, tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.

5:52Under the Maduro regime, authorities in Venezuela have crushed protests and arrested dissidents. The country's been plunged into an economic crisis, and there's been a mass exodus. In the last few years, more than 8 million people have fled the country. In recent months, tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. have escalated, as President Trump has called Maduro's government a narco-terror cartel. And some of Trump's top aides have discussed plans to try and force Maduro out of power.

6:31And finally. So this is the near lagger. We call it a thinner storage facility. A team of Times reporters recently traveled to the world's northernmost settlement on a cluster of islands near the North Pole. It's a research station in Svalbard, Norway. When they let you on the ice, please stay away from the ice edge because the ice is often a bit thinner at the ice edge. The team spent five days talking to researchers stationed there, where the region is warming as much as seven times faster than the rest of the planet. That's because of a kind of feedback loop. When ice melts, it exposes dark seawater.

7:10Dark seawater absorbs more heat, which melts more ice, and so on. The scientists say those conditions in Svalbard give them an early look at how fast and how dramatically the changing climate can change everything. You see on this ice here, there's actually very little snow. It's only in patches and a few centimeters. The scientists are looking at how changing weather patterns affects species living in that environment and how they're desperately trying to adapt to this incredibly fast-paced change. So they're looking at everything from microorganisms to polar bears. My colleague Sarah Hertz was one of the reporters on the trip.

7:55She says that reindeer, for example, used to roam widely across the landscape, using frozen fjords to reach better grazing grounds. Now, with the ice melting, they've started to get cut off and stranded, and they've begun eating seaweed, which one researcher described as survival food. The scientists have also seen how polar bears are having to adapt, which has sometimes brought the bears and humans uncomfortably close together, as the polar bears have moved more inland, even raiding people's cabins in Svalbard. Sarah says there's now even a brochure for people who come to the remote research station about what to do if you come face-to-face with a polar bear.

8:38Stay calm. Do not run, it says. and if the bear charges, quote, be prepared to use any possible deterrence, shovels, ski poles, rocks, blocks of ice, water in a thermos, etc. You can find videos and pictures of life at the Svalbard Research Station at nytimes.com. Those are the headlines. But if you would like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around. It's just up after these credits. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me. Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Katie O 'Brien, and Paula Schumann.

9:23Now, time for the quiz. Every week, we ask you a few questions about stories The Times has been covering. Can you answer them all? First up. Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a As mentioned, the Nobel Peace Prize was announced this morning, and despite President Trump openly campaigning for it for his role mediating international conflicts, he did not win it this year. In total, four American presidents have won it. Your question, how many can you name?

10:01Little hint, the committee only started giving out the prize in the early 1900s, so you can scratch like the first 25 presidents off the list. The answer? Here they are. Teddy Roosevelt won in 1906 for helping end the Russo-Japanese War. Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for promoting world peace after World War I. Jimmy Carter won in 2002 for his decades of work promoting democracy and human rights. And Barack Obama won in 2009 for what the Nobel Prize Committee called his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. He was less than nine months into his first term when he won.

10:45And Obama said when accepting it that he felt his, quote, accomplishments were slight compared to past winners.

10:56Next question. Oh my God. Okay, this is exciting. I'm definitely going to buy some more tickets. A bunch of tickets for a big, big, big event just went on sale this month, even though it doesn't happen until next year. So I won the lottery for the tickets. I'm starting to get a little nervous. People have been scrambling to get seats. Like these ticket prices are crazy. If these are the prices, ladies and gentlemen, we're in trouble. Your question, what event has caused all of this ticket madness?

11:34If you need a hint, the event is set to be held in three countries, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. The answer, the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A lot of fans are not happy because FIFA announced that unlike with past World Cups, It's not capping the resale prices this time for tickets in the U.S. and Canada. Critics say that has encouraged scalpers to go wild and put the games way out of reach for a lot of fans price-wise. For example, a ticket to the final match in the way upper corner of a stadium in New Jersey jumped from about$2 ,000 originally to more than$25 ,000 just a day later on resale. So basically, you're going to have to choose World Cup tickets or midsize sedan.

12:30And last question.

12:36Amazon, which earlier this year got creative control of the James Bond franchise, recently put out new artwork to showcase the films on its streaming service. But, pretty quickly, Bond fans noticed one big thing had been photoshopped out of the promo images for classics like Dr. No, GoldenEye, and Casino Royale. Your question, what was scrubbed out?

13:06I'll give you a little hint here. 007, sir. Just leave the beretta.

13:16The answer? I mean, you can't have James Bond without guns. No. The new images were missing Bond's gun. Fans quickly criticized Amazon for cropping out or digitally removing the weapons. Sometimes I truly think streaming services are out there to ruin franchises. The company didn't say why it made the change, but it then reversed it after the uproar. It seems to be a part of a trend in recent years in which streaming services have edited out guns, nudity, and cigarettes from posters and even from the movies themselves. These kinds of digital tweaks aren't entirely new. For a 20th anniversary release of E.T., Steven Spielberg swapped out federal agents' guns for walkie-talkies.

14:03He later regretted that decision and put the guns back in for the 30th anniversary. He said he realized that movies are supposed to capture, quote, where we were when we made them and what the world was like. That is it for this week's quiz. Our email, as always, is theheadlines at nytimes.com if you want to send us your score. Or challenge a friend, share the quiz with them, see how they do. We'll see if they know what Teddy Roosevelt was up to with the Russo-Japanese War. I'm Tracy Mumford. The Headlines will be back on Monday. Thank you.