--:-- Rachel Abrams: From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. It's been nearly two years since Hamas carried out its deadly attacks on Israel on October 7th, and Israel began its bombardment of Gaza. Since then, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has only worsened, and Hamas is still holding hostages. But the images of Palestinian suffering have lately fueled international pressure on Israel to end the war and pushed Western powers to recognize a Palestinian state. This culminated last week at the United Nations, where a group of world leaders formally recognized Palestinian statehood, which deepened Israel's isolation.
--:-- Jess Chung: I'm Jess Chung, one of the producers on our show. And last week, I spent time on the ground at the UN to document this historic moment in which the question of Palestinian statehood was really front and center.
--:-- Jess Chung: Well, over the past two years, the international community has grown increasingly frustrated with Israel's tactics in the war. And what we've seen recently is a push by a number of Western countries like the U.K., France, Australia, and Canada to formally recognize the Palestinian state as a way to put pressure on Israel to end the war.
--:-- Jess Chung: Now, up until this point, over 140 countries had already done this. But what's interesting about this new group of countries is that they're traditionally Israeli allies. That infuriates Israel and the U.S., who say what this is going to do is reward Hamas for its terrorism on October 7th.
--:-- Jess Chung: But regardless, 10 countries were planning to come to the U.N. General Assembly last week to stand up and say for the first time, we recognize the Palestinian state. So it was going to be a huge moment, and I wanted to capture that.
--:-- Jess Chung: Particularly through the eyes of this one guy, Riyadh Mansour. You can stand.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Well, it's a pleasure to meet you.
--:-- Jess Chung: Pleasure to meet you. Ambassador.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Mansour is the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, and he's worked toward this moment for pretty much his entire life.
--:-- Jess Chung: We are in the rose garden here at the United Nations.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Yes. I have beautiful memories here.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: I meet him in the gardens of the UN in midtown Manhattan. This was all before the big meeting was set to take place.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He's dressed in a suit. He's got a small Palestinian flag pinned on his lapel.
--:-- Jess Chung: And how long have you been serving in this role?
--:-- Riyad Mansour: September, 20 years straight.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: 20 years straight.
--:-- Jess Chung: Mansour is in his late 70s, and he's been representing Palestinians here for decades.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: For me, you know, I was working for these things from a long time ago.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: How does it feel to have these countries now on board?
--:-- Riyad Mansour: It feels very great. We hope from the few days to come that the international community is making a turn.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: A turn where now having the state of Palestine a reality. So we are marching in the direction of peace and justice.
--:-- Jess Chung: Thank you so much, and I hope to follow you throughout the week.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Okay, very good. Thank you.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: We'll touch base.
--:-- Jess Chung: Who are you? Because he's been here for so long, Mansour seems to be a kind of fixture in this place.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He scurries around these halls, doing a seemingly endless amount of press gaggles, shaking a seemingly endless amount of hands, meeting a seemingly endless amount of diplomats.
--:-- Jess Chung: But sitting down with him, I realize that the UN has long been a fixture in his life too.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: I was born in Palestine. A child of a Palestinian refugee family.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Mansour spent his childhood in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And we lived in caves and in the valleys before Onurwa came to the picture.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: His family was among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled or fled from their homes amid the wars surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, a period known to Palestinians as the Nakba.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And the U.N. provided food, schools, and medical care to those displaced Palestinian families, including Mansour's.
--:-- Jess Chung: Do you have an early memory about how you understood that Palestinians didn't have a state of your own?
--:-- Riyad Mansour: I don't know exactly what, in those days, the idea of statehood was.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: What was in our mind is we want to return to our towns, to our villages, to our homes.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Like the key for our house in Palestine, from the town where we were expelled from, was hanging inside the house.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: So that's a symbol of returning to it.
--:-- Jess Chung: In the 1950s, Mansour's father immigrated to the U.S. He took a job as a steelworker in Youngstown, Ohio.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Mansour was around 17 years old when he followed his father here.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He went on to study at Youngstown State.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And I was influenced by the thoughts of the moment.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Throughout college, he was politically active, marching for civil rights, against the war in Vietnam, and seeing those movements create real change around him.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He started speaking out against Israel's occupation in the West Bank, in Gaza, trying to raise awareness of Palestinian rights.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: It wasn't easy. It was not popular.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: But I was young.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And then, in 1974, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was invited to speak at the UN for the first time, where he made an appeal to the international community for a Palestinian state.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: I was a student, so I brought three buses.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Mansour organized three buses of people to drive from Ohio to New York for the event.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: I was lucky to have a chance to give up the peace of the Palestinian community.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And I was among the lucky ones to go to the United Nations to shake hands with Chairman Arafat after he gave his famous speech.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: So that was the first time that I entered the UN.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Palestinians were talking about statehood and what it would mean.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Is this what we want? Is it one state, two states?
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And a decade later, Mansour would take a job at the UN and keep pushing for the same goal.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: And that journey took a long time, the 80s, the 90s, then the Oslo agreement.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: For years, Mansour worked through cycles of Palestinian intifadas and militancy, Israeli retaliation and expanding settlements new wars new ceasefires new peace agreements like the Oslo Accords which were seen as the closest the international community came to resolving the conflict.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: But in the end, they didn't achieve what they set out to.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: You see, we went through cycles.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Hopes, then they go down.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: The same thing after October 7.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: When Hamas, in a surprise attack, killed 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 others.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Pictures emerged of the destroyed kibbutzim.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Videos of hostages being carried away on the backs of motorcycles, and trucks driven by militants.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Stories of people shot in their homes and trapped in burning buildings.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: All of it shocked the world.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: There were sympathies in the first few days with the families of the victims as a result of October 7.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: But after Israel launched the war against Hamas in Gaza, as that war entered its second year, with more than 60,000 Palestinians dead and the humanitarian situation worsening.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: People around the world also saw those pictures and heard those stories, including Mansour, who described what he was seeing in Gaza to the United Nations Security Council this spring.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: The images of mothers embracing their motionless bodies, caressing their hair, talking to them, apologizing to them.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: This is the moment.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: That's why I declare that France recognizes the state of Palestine today.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: I stand before you today, beneath the emblem of the United Nations, to confirm the historic decision of the British government to recognize the state of Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Portugal formally recognized the state of Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: A two-state solution.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Australia recognized the state of Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Canada recognizes the state of Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Belgium announces the recognition of the state of Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And that is why Ireland last year, with Spain, Norway and Slovenia, recognised the state of Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The systematic decimation of Gaza.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The use of food as a weapon of war.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Children dying of starvation while food rots at the border.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The killing of tens of thousands of civilians.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Tens of thousands of civilians.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: More than 65,000 people killed in Gaza.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Most of them women and children.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Horrifically, more than 20,000 of them children.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And hundreds of our own humanitarians.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Aid workers.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Aid workers killed.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Journalists.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Journalists killed.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Doctors targeted and killed.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: We have reached a point where what has been credibly described as a genocide is being carried out in front of the eyes of the world.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and that two states is the only path to security and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Israel denies many of these allegations and strongly refutes the accusation of genocide.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The Israeli delegation didn't come to the meeting.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Their seats stayed empty.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Today felt so great.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: I think that my tears were coming down on my face.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: But Mansour was moved to tears.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: It's a historic day.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: We are climbing a very tall mountain, and we are approaching the top of the mountain.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Throughout the week while I was following Mansour, I kept asking him why this moment felt so important.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: After all, over 140 countries had already recognized Palestine.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: So isn't this week largely a symbolic gesture?
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He kept holding up this analogy, apartheid in South Africa.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He said much of the world also condemned apartheid for decades.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: But it was Western countries putting pressure on South Africa that helped end apartheid.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: So Mansour says he sees this moment as a turning point for statehood.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: But this moment has also been controversial.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: What do you say to those who see this recognition as rewarding Hamas for its terrorism?
--:-- Riyad Mansour: I asked Mansoor what he thought about the fact that some people view all this formal recognition as a reward to Hamas for the atrocities on October 7th.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Mansoor told me he thinks that's the wrong way to look at it.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Not only us, but almost all the countries do not agree with that assessment.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Nobody would believe that France, UK, Canada, Australia are rewarding Hamas.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: That doesn't make sense.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: All of them, they were doing it as an investment in peace and harmony.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: Mansour said Palestinian statehood is not a prize for attacking Israel.
--:-- Riyad Mansour: He told me it's about the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to have a state of their own.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And that was made clear as the following days unfolded.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: After the break, my colleague Mark Landler on what this recognition means without the support of Israel and the United States.
--:-- Mark Landler: Mark, you have covered this story for decades, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the fight for Palestinian statehood.
--:-- Mark Landler: Yes, I have.
--:-- Mark Landler: Which is why we turning to you to help us understand what happened not just last week at the U but also earlier this week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House where he stood next to President Trump as President Trump presented this new plan to end the war
--:-- Mark Landler: I want to start with the UN where the overwhelming support for Palestinian statehood infuriated Netanyahu.
--:-- Mark Landler: Can you walk us through what happened that day?
--:-- Mark Landler: The Assembly will hear an address by His Excellency Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: Ladies and gentlemen.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: He took the dais and railed against these moves towards recognition.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: This week, the leaders of France, Britain, Australia, Canada, and other countries unconditionally recognized a Palestinian state.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: They did so after the horrors committed by Hamas on October 7th.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: Netanyahu's argument, in short, is that recognizing Palestinian statehood is a reward for Hamas.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: You know what message the leaders who recognized the Palestinian state this week sent to the Palestinians?
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: It's a very clear message.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: Murdering Jews pays off.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: That what the West is basically saying to Hamas is, you can inflict terror on Israeli citizens, and in our desire for peace, we're going to be willing to give you this very symbolic concession.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: The Palestinians, they don't believe in this solution.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: They never have.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: They don't want a state next to Israel.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel.
--:-- Mark Landler: Netanyahu's argument is what we should really be doing is supporting Israel in its effort to crush Hamas, to remove Hamas from the equation altogether, and to back Israel to the hilt, fighting for the return of the hostages and supporting its military campaign in Gaza, rather than heading down what he views as this cul-de-sac of recognizing a Palestinian state.
--:-- Mark Landler: So I watched Netanyahu's speech, and I was really struck by how many representatives from other countries literally walked out of the hall as he took the stage.
--:-- Mark Landler: And yet, despite that, he still had this defiant tone as he talked, which I think really underscored the fact that Israel, even as it's become more and more isolated on the world stage, Netanyahu has continued to dig his heels in.
--:-- Mark Landler: And that was very evident during his speech at the UN.
--:-- Mark Landler: Yes, I think that's right.
--:-- Mark Landler: And I think he did it for one critical reason.
--:-- Mark Landler: For all those countries that oppose Israel and are critical of Israel, he knows he has one country that is steadfastly behind Israel, and that's the United States and particularly President Donald Trump.
--:-- Mark Landler: He came out against recognition of a Palestinian state.
--:-- Mark Landler: He echoed Netanyahu's argument that this would be a reward for terrorism, a reward for Hamas.
--:-- Mark Landler: And he did so even as there is some polling that suggests that the American public is far more divided on this issue.
--:-- Mark Landler: After two years of harrowing images of war from Gaza, more Americans are beginning to question unstinting support for the state of Israel, but not the president himself.
--:-- Mark Landler: But as long as Trump continues to support Netanyahu, continues to stand behind him in his military campaign in Gaza, I think Netanyahu feels that he has the latitude and the license to be as aggressive as he needs to be.
--:-- Mark Landler: Obviously, the U.S. is Israel's strongest ally.
--:-- Mark Landler: But on the question of Palestinian statehood, which, of course, is what Netanyahu is so angry about, why does the U.S.'s position matter so much?
--:-- Mark Landler: Well, the U.S. is so important because it still holds a veto in the United Nations Security Council.
--:-- Mark Landler: So as long as the U.S. is totally behind Israel, there is a limit to what the Palestinians can accomplish.
--:-- Mark Landler: I think it's also widely understood that without U.S. buy-in, the whole notion of a two-state solution really falls apart.
--:-- Mark Landler: The U.S. has always been viewed as the central player in the question of a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
--:-- Mark Landler: That hasn't changed in the last few years, even as these countries have moved toward recognizing Palestine.
--:-- Mark Landler: So while it's a very positive step for the Palestinians, without the U.S. joining in, it still has its limits.
--:-- Mark Landler: This is a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.
--:-- Mark Landler: And so you saw that critical American role on display just this past Monday, when President Trump welcomed Prime Minister Netanyahu back to the White House.
--:-- Mark Landler: So today is a historic day for peace, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and I have just concluded an important meeting on many vital issues, including...
--:-- Mark Landler: They came out and faced the TV cameras and presented a plan for Gaza, a Trump plan to end the war in Gaza.
--:-- Mark Landler: This proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages immediately, but in no case more than 72 hours.
--:-- Mark Landler: It called on Hamas to give up their weapons, return the hostages immediately.
--:-- Mark Landler: They would have no future role in the governance of Gaza.
--:-- Mark Landler: Israel would remain a very strong military presence around the enclave.
--:-- Mark Landler: So really very much a pro-Israel plan for Gaza.
--:-- Mark Landler: With terms that we should note, Hamas has consistently said it would never accept.
--:-- Mark Landler: Absolutely, that Hamas has ruled out unilaterally.
--:-- Mark Landler: I should say, though, that our reporting shows many Gazans want Hamas to accept this deal, although a lot of people think it's a real long shot that Hamas ever would.
--:-- Mark Landler: And did this plan say anything explicitly about statehood?
--:-- Mark Landler: Well, it acknowledged that statehood was an aspiration of the Palestinian people.
--:-- Mark Landler: And it suggested that one could envision the creation of a Palestinian state, subject to a number of conditions, including a reform of the Palestinian Authority.
--:-- Mark Landler: I think while we're waiting for signatures and waiting for approvals from a lot of different countries that are involved in this, we probably shouldn't take questions.
--:-- Mark Landler: But it left the timeline and the roadmap for all of this completely unclear.
--:-- Mark Landler: Thank you very much.
--:-- Mark Landler: Thank you.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And interestingly, the plan got, in the immediate aftermath, some pretty widespread support among Arab countries, but also among European countries, the very countries who, a week earlier had formally recognized a Palestinian state.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: What do we make of that?
--:-- Mark Landler: The fact that all these European countries had come out in support of a Palestinian state and now are supporting a plan that seems to heavily favor Israel?
--:-- Mark Landler: I think really what this shows you is the desire among European countries and Arab countries for the U to remain engaged in the process.
--:-- Mark Landler: I think the mere fact that they saw President Trump stepping forward with a plan with his name on it, willing to be heavily engaged and visibly engaged for them was a huge positive.
--:-- Mark Landler: I think they feel that they can work out the details, many of which they may not particularly like as the process unfolds.
--:-- Mark Landler: But what's vital is for Trump to be involved.
--:-- Mark Landler: So the image of him standing next to Netanyahu, saying he wants to play this role, that was worthy of their support.
--:-- Mark Landler: And that's why I think he got the kind of show of support that he did.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Then immediately after his meeting with President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu, speaking to a domestic audience, said in Hebrew, Don't worry, this is never going to happen.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: It sort of feels like Netanyahu is kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth, right?
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Because on the one hand, he gets up at this press conference and he unveils this plan that gives a cursory nod to the possibility of statehood if like 15 unlikely things happen first.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And then in Hebrew, he's basically saying, over my dead body.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And whatever he wants to do, thus far, he's basically had the backing of the United States, even as there's been this growing list of countries that say they support Palestinian statehood.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And so I wonder, where does all of this leave the prospect of a Palestinian state in your mind?
--:-- Mark Landler: Well, you're right to say that Netanyahu was talking out of both sides of his mouth.
--:-- Mark Landler: And one could say, in fact, he's been doing that for many years on this topic.
--:-- Mark Landler: If you go back in time, there was a moment when Netanyahu claimed he supported a two-state solution, as did a lot of mainstream Israeli leaders.
--:-- Mark Landler: Though it must be said that if you look at Netanyahu's actions over the years, he's really consistently undermined the prospect for a Palestinian state, whether it is expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank or colluding with Hamas in the governance of Gaza, which had the effect of splitting the Palestinian movement in two.
--:-- Mark Landler: His actions have never been geared toward allowing or encouraging the creation of a Palestinian state.
--:-- Mark Landler: Now, in some senses, he's being clearer.
--:-- Mark Landler: He's saying quite publicly that at the moment he thinks a Palestinian state is a dire threat to Israel's security, but he's not willing to completely defy an American president, especially Donald Trump, when he includes this kind of fairly wishy-washy language in his plan for Gaza.
--:-- Mark Landler: So I think from Netanyahu's point of view, he sees this as something he's simply going to have to live with.
--:-- Mark Landler: And perhaps he's also confident that Hamas will never accept it anyway.
--:-- Mark Landler: So he won't be forced to live with anything that's in this plan anyway.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Mark, our colleague Jess earlier spoke to Riyadh Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And he sounded so optimistic about the real possibility of a Palestinian state.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And I wonder, just listening to everything that you've outlined, do you think that that optimism is misplaced?
--:-- Mark Landler: Well, Riyadh Mansour is looking at this from his particular vantage point as a diplomat who has spent years, if not decades, lobbying countries to recognize a Palestinian state.
--:-- Mark Landler: And in that, he and they have been remarkably successful.
--:-- Mark Landler: You now have 150-some countries that recognize a Palestinian state, and they include some of the most important and powerful countries in the world.
--:-- Mark Landler: So from that point of view, the Palestinians have been remarkably successful.
--:-- Mark Landler: But in the nuts and bolts sense of building a state, I think it's a much different story.
--:-- Mark Landler: You have in Gaza a state of war and an enclave that's largely in ruins, where Gaza health officials put the death toll at more than 65,000.
--:-- Mark Landler: In the West Bank, you have a territory that's been carved up by the Israelis into an ever-expanding set of Jewish settlements.
--:-- Mark Landler: You have a Palestinian authority whose control and credibility is in question.
--:-- Mark Landler: So from the point of view of a viable and functioning state, I think the Palestinians are further away from that than they've been for a very long time.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Mark, thank you so much.
--:-- Mark Landler: Thanks, Rachel.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: We'll be right back.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Here's what else you need to know today.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: A man rammed a car into a crowd and stabbed people outside of a synagogue in Manchester, England on Thursday.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Two people were killed and three others were seriously injured in what police called an act of terrorism.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: It happened on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Police said officer shot and killed the suspect only minutes after he began his assault.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: It is a serious incident, I have to say.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, told people to avoid the area where the attack had happened.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: But at the same time, I can give some reassurance immediately to people that the immediate danger appears to be over, and Greater Manchester police have dealt with it very quickly.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The attacker was identified by Britain's counterterrorism police as a British citizen of Syrian descent.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Police said investigators were still working to understand the motive behind the attack.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And on Friday, officials said that one of the victims had been accidentally shot and killed by an officer who responded to the scene.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: And the Food and Drug Administration approved a generic version of the abortion pill Mifepristone, making it more easily available at a time when abortion opponents are pressuring the Trump administration to restrict access to abortion pills.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: The approval, issued earlier this week, means that three American companies can now produce mifepristone to terminate a pregnancy.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Today's episode was reported by Jessica Chung and Lindsay Garrison.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Produced by Lindsay Garrison, Jessica Chung, Mooch Zadie, Diana Wynn, and Claire Tannisgetter.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: It was edited by Maria Byrne with help from Paige Cowett.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Fact-checked by Susan Lee.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Music by Pat McCusker and Dan Powell.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Engineered by Chris Wood.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: Special thanks to Yara Bayoumi, David Helfinger, David Sanger, and Aaron Boxerman.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: That's it for The Daily.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: I'm Rachel Abrams.
--:-- Rachel Abrams: See you on Monday.
