--:-- Traci Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Monday, October 13th.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Here's what we're covering. This morning, Hamas released all of the remaining living hostages held in Gaza.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Their release is a crucial part of a ceasefire deal that Israel and Hamas agreed to last week.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In exchange, today, Israel began releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Many were bused to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where they stepped off the bus into a cheering crowd.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Under the deal, Israel's also partially pulled its troops back in Gaza and started allowing more humanitarian aid to flow into the territory.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In the audience, some people are wearing hats that say, Trump, the peace president.
--:-- Traci Mumford: You can follow live coverage of Trump's remarks at nytimes.com.
--:-- Traci Mumford: After 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The Egyptian president's office said the goal was to usher in, quote, a new phase of regional security and stability.
--:-- Traci Mumford: As multiple world leaders gather for the summit, it remains unclear if the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold and become permanent.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's day 13 of the government shutdown and across the country more and more Americans are beginning to feel the impact.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In some Native American communities key medical services like diabetes monitoring have been canceled.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Veterans have seen regional benefits offices close.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: At the same time, many federal workers got what will be their last paychecks on Friday until the government reopens.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And thousands of other government workers have lost their jobs altogether.
--:-- Guest: Well, the longer it goes on, the more significant these job cuts will be.
--:-- Guest: And to be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful.
--:-- Guest: This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we're looking forward to.
--:-- Traci Mumford: On Friday, the White House began following through on its threat to use the shutdown to fire federal workers.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Eliminating more than 4,000 positions across multiple agencies, including the Departments of the Treasury and Health and Human Services.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The process has been somewhat chaotic, though.
--:-- Traci Mumford: On Friday night, the administration mistakenly fired hundreds of scientists at the CDC, some of whom specialized in measles and Ebola outbreaks.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The administration then spent the weekend scrambling to bring some of them back.
--:-- Traci Mumford: At the moment, lawmakers remain deadlocked over any effort to reopen the government.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Republicans need at least some Democratic support to pass their proposed temporary spending bill.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But Democrats say they're holding out for concessions on health care funding.
--:-- Traci Mumford: A red start is what Hang Seng is seeing. Taiwan index is down 2 percent as well.
--:-- Traci Mumford: This morning, stocks across Asia dropped. One of the toughest days on Wall Street in months.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The slide follows a big drop in stocks in the U.S. on Friday.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Those minerals are crucial for making computer chips and batteries, and China dominates production of them.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Its factories process roughly 90 of the global supply.
--:-- Traci Mumford: For example, it's the only place in the world that refines Samarium, a material used in American F fighter jets and a wide range of missiles.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Trump denounced China's move as sinister and hostile and said the U.S. will put a 100 percent tariff on all products from China.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That's on top of existing surcharges that he's imposed of at least 30 percent.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Meanwhile, despite the tensions over trade, there was a little breakthrough in U.S.-China relations this past week in basketball.
--:-- Traci Mumford: For years, the NBA has had a massive fan base in China.
--:-- Traci Mumford: By some estimates, at peak viewership, more people watched the NBA finals in China than in the U.S.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That infuriated Chinese officials who pulled the NBA from Chinese state TV.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The controversy exploded while two NBA teams were in China set to play a preseason game.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: There have been no NBA games in China or its territories since then, until this past Friday.
--:-- Traci Mumford: I mean, is this the most exciting live shot I've ever done?
--:-- Traci Mumford: We're a couple hours away now from tip-off.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The game between the Phoenix Suns and the Brooklyn Nets happened in Macau.
--:-- Traci Mumford: This game is more than about basketball.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And it was the result of years of negotiations by an American casino mogul, Patrick Dumont, who operates a location in Macau, too.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Casino owners there have been under pressure from the Chinese government to diversify beyond gambling or risk losing their license.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: This weekend's games were part of a multi-year plan for more.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In the past, Other sports leagues, including the English Premier League, have had rifts with Beijing over questions of human rights and other controversies.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In those cases the leagues have often made concessions to the Chinese government to resolve things
--:-- Traci Mumford: In the case of the NBA the league insists it made no concessions
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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, if this is about ideological purity on either side, it will never be achieved.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And finally, today on the federal calendar is Columbus Day.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Post offices are closed, a lot of banks are shut.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But across the country, more than a dozen states and cities mark today as Indigenous Peoples Day.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In 2020, statues of Columbus became a flashpoint during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That year, more than 30 were dismantled, either by protesters or officials who took them down.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Five years later, the Times has been looking at where those statues ended up.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Boston's Columbus statue, which was beheaded, ended up being repaired and relocated to a church garden.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Baltimore's was dumped in the harbor by protesters, but the pieces have since been fished out to be used to make a replica.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Other Columbus statues have found new homes at museums or Italian-American social clubs.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Italian-American groups have helped with a lot of the restorations and relocations.
--:-- Traci Mumford: For them, Columbus is a part of their heritage.
--:-- Traci Mumford: 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.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Meanwhile, some cities have decided to put up new statues altogether where Columbus used to be.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Newark, New Jersey put up a monument to Harriet Tubman.
--:-- Traci Mumford: San Antonio, Texas put up a statue of the patron saint of seafarers.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And in New Haven, Connecticut, a bronze statue was unveiled last year that depicts an Italian immigrant family.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
