Day: February 20, 2025

Attack follows Ukrainian leader’s claim Trump is in a Russian ‘disinformation bubble’. Plus, first Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb uncovered since 1922

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate is set to confirm Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick for FBI director, on Thursday, which would put a Trump loyalist atop the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency at a time of growing upheaval. Patel would take charge as Trump-backed officials seek to put their stamp on the FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, challenging decades-old traditions of independence and reorienting its mission toward Trump’s core priorities. At least 75 career Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, who normally keep their roles from administration to administration, have either resigned, been fired or stripped of their posts in the first month of the Trump administration.

Hamas said it was handing over the remains of the wife and two children Yarden Bibas, who was released on February 1, as well as the body of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 years old when he was abducted on October 7, 2023. The bodies have yet to be identified.