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    Separatists Hijack Train Carrying Over 400 Passengers in Pakistan

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    The authorities were struggling to reach the remote site of the ambush in the country’s southwest, and the passengers’ fate was not immediately known.Separatist militants hijacked a train carrying more than 400 people in an isolated mountainous area of southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday. The fate of the passengers, whom the militants said they were holding hostage, was not immediately clear.The militants, Baloch ethnic fighters, forced the train to stop in the Bolan district of Balochistan Province after opening fire on it, according to railway and police officials. The train was traveling from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. It was to pass through several cities, including Lahore and Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan provincial government, said the authorities were struggling to reach the site of the ambush because of the challenging terrain.Rashid Hussain, a trader in Quetta, said his family had left on the train for Rawalpindi in the morning but had become unreachable after 2 p.m. “I am deeply worried,” he said by telephone. “The government is not providing any updates. Neither roads nor trains are safe in this province.”The seizure of the passenger train highlighted the increasing sophistication of a separatist insurgency in Pakistan’s southwest. The attack was the latest in a series of violent episodes in Balochistan, a province bordering Iran and Afghanistan that is the site of major Chinese-led projects, including a strategic port.A group known as the Baloch Liberation Army, or B.L.A., claimed responsibility for the train hijacking. In a statement, it said its militants had taken hostages, some of whom were security personnel.The government has yet to confirm reports of hostages or any casualties.Last year, the B.L.A. carried out one of Pakistan’s deadliest terrorist attacks, a suicide bombing that killed at least 25 people, including security personnel, at Quetta’s busy railway station.The group also claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing targeting a convoy carrying Chinese citizens near the international airport in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. The separatists accuse the Chinese of stealing the province’s resources.In recent months, separatist groups have escalated high-profile attacks along Balochistan’s three major highways, directly challenging the state’s authority. Last week, an alliance of the groups, including the B.L.A., announced plans to intensify attacks on Pakistani security forces, infrastructure and Chinese interests in the region.“It points to two key trends: the increasing operational capabilities and sophistication of separatist groups and the weakening control of the government in Balochistan,” said Abdul Basit, senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.At the Quetta railway station, families of passengers aboard the train anxiously gathered at the information counter on Tuesday, seeking updates.Many people in the region had begun to prefer rail travel after frequent militant ambushes on the highways in which passengers were killed after being taken off buses. Frequent protests have also caused road blockages.Train services had resumed only in October after a two-month suspension because of militant attacks on railway tracks. More

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      Trump Seeks to Bar Student Loan Relief to Workers Aiding Migrants and Trans Kids

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      President Trump signed an executive order instructing administration officials to alter a student loan forgiveness program for public servants to exclude nonprofit organizations that engage in activities that have what he called a “substantial illegal purpose.”His order to restrict the program appears to target groups supporting undocumented immigrants, diversity initiatives or gender-affirming care for children, among others, as the Trump administration has sought to eliminate federal support for efforts that have drawn right-wing ire.The order, made public on Friday, is the latest of many attempts to overhaul the loan forgiveness program, which has often whipsawed borrowers with rule changes and bureaucratic obstacles.The program, known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, was created by Congress in 2007 and cannot be eliminated without congressional action, but the Education Department has some leeway to determine how it operates. Mr. Trump’s executive order directed the secretaries of education and the Treasury to amend the program to exclude workers for organizations supporting illegal actions, listing several categories of examples, including “aiding or abetting” violations of federal immigration law.The Trump administration has taken a broad view of what it considers to be support of illegal activities. The order cited as examples organizations that support “illegal discrimination,” which the administration has previously said includes diversity and inclusion initiatives.The order appeared to target groups supporting gender-affirming care. It said it would exclude from the loan forgiveness program any organization supporting “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Are the 6 Freed Israeli Hostages?

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      Hamas released six more hostages on Saturday as part of its cease-fire deal with Israel, the last living captives to be freed under the current truce in Gaza.As part of the cease-fire agreement, Hamas committed to releasing at least 33 of the nearly 100 captives remaining in Gaza, a number of whom are believed to be dead, in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Israel and a partial Israeli withdrawal. Both sides are set to negotiate terms to extend the truce, but an agreement appears remote.Two of the captives freed on Saturday had been in Hamas’s hands for about 10 years. Four others were taken during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which prompted the Gaza war.Omer WenkertA poster of Omer Wenkert at the site of the festival in southern Israel where he was abducted.Amir Cohen/ReutersOmer Wenkert, 23, was kidnapped during the Oct. 7 assault as Palestinian militants attacked a music festival, the Tribe of Nova, being held near the Gaza border. Videos and photographs from the time of the attack show him being restrained, stripped to his underwear and surrounded by armed men in the back of a truck as he was taken away to Gaza.He was in touch with his family on the morning of the attack and had said that he was afraid. Relatives later saw video of his abduction. His grandmother, Tsili Wenkert, a Holocaust survivor who said that she had been saved by the Soviet Army, appealed to Russian officials for help in securing her grandson’s release.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Multiple Bus Explosions in Israel Put Country on Terrorism Alert

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      The attempted attacks on Thursday, which injured no one but shut down buses and trains across the country, came amid Israel’s ongoing raids in the West Bank and as its cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza nears its end.Three buses exploded in Tel Aviv area parking lots on Thursday night, raising suspicions of an attempted, coordinated terrorist attack and prompting the Israeli authorities to halt all buses and trains nationwide. There were no injuries reported.After the explosions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that he had instructed the military to carry out “a massive operation” in the West Bank targeting militant hubs and had ordered the police and intelligence forces to step up preventive measures in Israeli cities to thwart any subsequent attempted attacks.The three buses were parked at different depots in Bat Yam, a city south of Tel Aviv, Tzvika Brot, the city’s mayor, said in a statement. Unexploded bombs were also found in parking lots in the nearby city of Holon, the mayor noted.Mr. Brot said he had ordered additional security patrols throughout Bat Yam. “The city will remain on high alert throughout the weekend,” he added. “However, the city’s routine continues as usual. There is no change to school tomorrow or any other activities.”Ofir Karni, director of the Dan bus company, told Israeli news media that the last passenger on one of the buses that exploded had noticed a suspicious bag on a back seat and had alerted the driver. They drove into the depot, got off the bus and it exploded after they exited, he added.The series of explosions in central Israel came on what was already a difficult day for Israelis and for the country’s tenuous truce with Hamas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DOGE Cuts 9/11 Survivors’ Fund, and Republicans Join Democrats in Rebuke

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      After 20 percent of the World Trade Center Health Program staff was terminated last week, Democratic lawmakers were outraged. On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers joined them.In a rare pushback against President Donald J. Trump, a coalition of congressional Republicans from the New York area rebuked the president for cuts to a federal program that administers aid to emergency workers and others suffering from toxins related to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.In a letter to Mr. Trump, seven Republicans urged Mr. Trump “as a native New Yorker who lived in New York City as it recovered from the 9/11 terrorist attacks” to reverse the cuts to the World Trade Center Health Program and rehire staff members who were fired several days ago.They echoed the immediate outcry from Democratic lawmakers and advocates when the cuts were made beginning late last week, as part of Elon Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency, or DOGE, which is cutting spending and eliminating jobs across a wide swath of federal agencies. On Monday, New York’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, issued a letter demanding the cuts be restored.The initial reaction from Republicans was more muted, but by Wednesday, as it became clearer that the blowback to the firings was widespread, the Republican resistance grew more vocal, especially from districts in and around New York City, where the memory of 9/11 still resonates powerfully.“This staff reduction will only make it more difficult for the program to supervise its contracts and to care for its members who are comprised of the brave men and women who ran towards danger and helped in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” the congressional members wrote in the letter.It was largely written by Representative Andrew R. Garbarino, a Republican from Long Island, and co-signed by five other Republican congressional colleagues from New York and Representative Chris Smith from New Jersey. The other congressional co-signers were Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Claudia Tenney, Nicole Malliotakis and Nick Langworthy, all supporters of Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      USAID Climate Programs Fighting Extremism and Unrest Are Closing Down

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      Numerous programs aimed at averting violence, instability and extremism worsened by global warming are ensnared in the effort to dismantle the main American aid agency, U.S.A.I.D.One such project helped communities manage water stations in Niger, a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups where conflicts over scarce water are common. Another helped repair water-treatment plants in the strategic port city of Basra, Iraq, where dry taps had caused violent anti-government protests. The aid group’s oldest program, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, ran a forecasting system that allowed aid workers in places like war-torn South Sudan to prepare for catastrophic floods last year.The fate of these programs remains uncertain. The Trump administration has essentially sought to shutter the agency. A federal court has issued a temporary restraining order. On the ground, much of the work has stopped.“They were buying down future risk,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security and a former U.S. intelligence official. “Invest little today so we don’t have to spend a lot in the future when things metastasize.”The German government this week released a report calling climate change “the greatest security threat of our day and age,” echoing a U.S. intelligence report from 2021, which described climate hazards as “threat multipliers.”Some U.S.A.I.D. funding supported mediation programs to prevent local clashes over land or water. For instance, as the rains become erratic in the Sahel, clashes between farmers and cattle herders become more frequent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I Do Not Want Revenge for My Father’s Death

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      On a warm October night 12 years ago, my father, Yaya Ofer, was murdered by two Palestinian terrorists. They attacked him at home, at night, with axes, landing 41 blows on his body. His killing was planned. My father, who had retired as a colonel in the Israeli Army, had been the central figure in my childhood. As an adult, I loved hiking with him all over this country and meeting people from every background. In one evening all that was gone. The attackers were sentenced to life in prison. Now, as part of the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, one of those men will walk free.I have come to peace with his freedom.Many of the 1,000 prisoners who are being released in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages have the blood of people like my father on their hands, some of it barely dry. Behind every heartwarming video of a hostage embracing family members is a family like mine, being forced to relive our own grief.Knowing that the man who killed my father will walk out of prison stirs complex emotions, but I know it is the right decision to release these prisoners, if that is what it takes to save the hostages who have been held for almost 500 days. I believe nothing could be more sacred than bringing the hostages home — not my grief, which will not end, and not even my father, whose life I cannot restore. Not if we can bring back to life my fellow countrymen who are still held in the tunnels under Gaza.I hope this hostage-prisoner exchange will bring an end to this long and terrible war that has been thrust upon millions of people on both sides who did not choose it. And yet I am terribly worried that when the exchanges are finished, when the troops withdraw, we will discover that Israelis and Palestinians are now farther from peace than at any point in our history.I come from a family of peaceniks. My paternal grandfather, born in Haifa, helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp with the British Army. My maternal grandfather survived the Holocaust in Europe. He emigrated after the war to Israel and pioneered treatment of post-traumatic stress syndrome.After my father’s death I, too, wanted peace, not revenge. So I got involved in the peace-building community, including the Parents Circle-Family Forum — a group of bereaved families, Israelis and Palestinians, who have all lost loved ones, brutally, in this endless conflict. In the friendships I formed, I sought out not just Israelis, but also Palestinians, to understand their loss and mine. It was an antidote to spiraling into a state of depression, fear and hatred. Around the time of my father’s murder, I was helping to organize the annual Jerusalem Season of Culture project, which brings together Jews and Arabs for shared cultural projects including music, art and theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Might the Rebels Govern Syria? Their Ruling History in Idlib Offers Clues

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      The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.Every fall, when farmers across the rolling, red dirt hills of Idlib Province in northern Syria harvest their olive crops, they routinely find at least one representative of the local tax authority stationed at any oil press.The tax collector takes at least 5 percent of the oil, and farmers grouse that there are no exceptions, even in lean harvest years.The collectors work for the civilian government established under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel movement that just spearheaded the swift overthrow of the 54-year Assad dynasty. The Islamist group has administered much of opposition-held Idlib Province since 2017.Measures like the olive oil tax, introduced in 2019, have prompted protests and even occasional armed clashes and arrests.Yet the Syrian Salvation Government, as the Idlib administration was known, persisted. It taxed goods entering its territory and generated revenue by selling fuel and running a telecom company. It also controlled the local economy through licensing regulation programs that looked a lot like a conventional government’s and proved that it was fairly adept at managing those finances to build up its military operations and provide civil services.The portrait of the rebel group detailed in this article was gleaned from interviews with experts, representatives of humanitarian or other organizations working in the territory under its control, local residents and reports by the United Nations or think tanks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Do You Say to a Young Person Who Admires the Unabomber?

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      I published a novel about the Unabomber this year, and during a book tour stop in Seattle, a high school teacher raised his hand and asked me what he could tell his students about Ted Kaczynski, because he was a hero to so many of them. The question stopped me cold, reminding me that Mr. Kaczynski’s influence is deeper and more widespread than most people realize.The same feeling of cold unease returned this week when I read news reports that Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, had posted a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto online. The similarities didn’t end there. The meticulous planning and use of symbolism in the crime reminded me of Mr. Kaczynski, who spent years choosing his targets, designing disguises (even gluing false soles to the bottoms of his shoes) and leaving messages for investigators. The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on the bullet casings found by Mr. Thompson’s body were an eerie echo of the “FC” for Freedom Club that Mr. Kaczynski carved into his bombs. The fact that Mr. Mangione allegedly made his own gun and carried a copy of his own manifesto reinforced the similarities.There is, of course, still much we don’t know about Mr. Mangione: a full picture of who he is, and what factors shaped him and motivated him. But the teacher’s suggestion that the Unabomber was a hero to some of his students pointed to a larger truth. To many young people living in a system of extreme economic disparity, in a world they believe is on the verge of ecological collapse, the Unabomber represents a dark, growing ideological desperation. To them, his ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence can seem justified.But what is lost in this lionization of one of the most notorious terrorists in American history is that for Mr. Kaczynski, the desire to kill came first, and the ideological justifications followed. Lonely rage defined him, and he spent far more time tormenting his neighbors than he did on his grandiose plans to bring down industrial society. He killed dogs for their barking, strung razor wire across dirt bike paths and fantasized about murdering a neighboring toddler. The manifesto and its carefully constructed veneer of Luddite and anarchist philosophies were a con to lure others into his world of despair and hatred.Watching video of Mr. Mangione’s detention, and listening to the words he shouted to the media, I felt a profound sadness. I saw a young man with a promising start in life lost in naïve convictions, and poisoned by his newly formed and corrupt ideology.Violent men have always gained followers, but Mr. Kaczynski’s continued influence is mostly intellectual. He had a showman’s instinct for manipulating the crowd, and intuited that the advance of technology and collapse of the environment would be the two dominant crises of the 21st century. He callously identified the environmental movement as being the most socially acceptable justification for his crimes, even though he privately denigrated environmentalists in his journals, and proudly littered, poached and illegally logged on national forest land around his cabin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More