TEL AVIV, Israel — Mohammad Bakri, 72, a Palestinian director and actor who sought to share the complexities of Palestinian identity and culture through a variety of works in both Arabic and Hebrew, has died, his family announced.
Mr. Bakri was best known for Jenin, Jenin, a 2003 documentary he directed about an Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank city the previous year during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The film, focusing on the heavy destruction and heartbreak of its Palestinian residents, was banned by Israel.
Mr. Bakri also acted in the 2025 film All That’s Left of You, a drama about a Palestinian family through more than 76 years, alongside his sons, Adam and Saleh Bakri, who are also actors. The film has been shortlisted by the Academy Awards for the best international feature film.
Over the years, he made several films that spanned the spectrum of Palestinian experiences. He also acted in Hebrew, including at Israel’s national theater in Tel Aviv, and appeared in a number of famous Israeli films in the 1980s and 1990s. He studied at Tel Aviv University.
Mr. Bakri, who was born in northern Israel and held Israeli citizenship, dabbled in both film and theater. His best-known one-man show from 1986, The Pessoptimist, based on the writings of the Palestinian author Emile Habiby, focused on the intricacies and emotions of someone who has both Israeli and Palestinian identities.
During the 1980s, Mr. Bakri played characters in mainstream Israeli films that humanized the Palestinian identity, including Beyond the Walls, a seminal film about incarcerated Israelis and Palestinians, said Raya Morag, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who specializes in cinema and trauma.
“He broke stereotypes about how Israelis looked at Palestinians, and allowing someone Palestinian to be regarded as a hero in Israeli society,” she said.
“He was a very brave person, and he was brave by standing to his ideals, choosing not to be conformist in any way, and paying the price in both societies,” Morag said.
Mr. Bakri faced some pushback within Palestinian society for his cooperation with Israelis. After Jenin, Jenin, he was plagued by almost two decades of court cases in Israel, where the film was seen as unbalanced and inciting.
In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a ban on the documentary, saying it defamed Israeli soldiers, and ordered Mr. Bakri to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages to an Israeli military officer for defamation.
Jenin, Jenin was a turning point in Mr. Bakri’s career. In Israel, he became a polarizing figure and he never worked with mainstream Israeli cinema again, Morag said. “He was loyal to himself despite all the pressures from inside and outside,” she added. “He was a firm voice that did not change during the years.”
Local media quoted Mr. Bakri’s family as saying he died Wednesday after suffering from heart and lung problems. A cousin, Rafic, told the Arabic news site Al-Jarmaq that Mr. Bakri was a tenacious advocate for the Palestinians who used his works to express support for his people.
“I am certain that Abu Saleh will remain in the memory of Palestinian people everywhere and all people of the free world,” he said, using Mr. Bakri’s nickname.
VATICAN CITY — In his first Christmas Day message, Pope Leo XIV urged the faithful to shed indifference in the face of those who have lost everything, such as in Gaza; those who are impoverished, such as in Yemen; and the many migrants who cross the Mediterranean Sea and the American continent for a better future.
The first U.S. pontiff addressed about 26,000 people from the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square for the traditional papal Urbi et Orbi address, Latin for “to the city and to the world,” which serves as a summary of the woes facing the world.
Though the crowd had gathered under a steady downpour during the papal Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica, the rain had subsided by the time Leo took a brief tour of the square in the popemobile, then spoke from the loggia.
Leo revived the tradition of offering Christmas greetings in multiple languages abandoned by his predecessor, Pope Francis. He received especially warm cheers when he made his greetings in his native English and in Spanish, the language of his adopted country of Peru, where he served first as a missionary and then as archbishop.
Someone in the crowd shouted out “Viva il papa!” or ”Long live the pope!” before he retreated into the basilica. Leo took off his glasses for a final wave.
Leo surveys the world’s distress
During the traditional address, the pope emphasized that everyone could contribute to peace by acting with humility and responsibility.
“If he would truly enter into the suffering of others and stand in solidarity with the weak and the oppressed, then the world would change,” the pope said.
Leo called for “justice, peace, and stability” in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Israel, and Syria; prayers for “the tormented people of Ukraine”; and “peace and consolation” for victims of wars, injustice, political instability, religious persecution, and terrorism, citing Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Congo.
The pope also urged dialogue to address “numerous challenges” in Latin America, reconciliation in Myanmar, the restoration of “the ancient friendship between Thailand and Cambodia,” and assistance for the suffering of those hit by natural disasters in South Asia and Oceania.
“In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza; with those who are prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people; with those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere, like the many refugees and migrants who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent,” the pontiff said.
He also remembered those who have lost their jobs or are seeking work, especially young people, underpaid workers, and those in prison.
Peace through dialogue
Earlier, Leo led the Christmas Day Mass from the central altar beneath the balustrade of St. Peter’s Basilica, which was adorned with floral garlands and clusters of red poinsettias. White flowers were set at the feet of a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Day.
In his homily, Leo underlined that peace can emerge only through dialogue.
“There will be peace when our monologues are interrupted and, enriched by listening, we fall to our knees before the humanity of the other,” he said.
He remembered the people of Gaza, “exposed for weeks to rain, wind, and cold” and the fragility of “defenseless populations, tried by so many wars,” and of “young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them, and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.”
Thousands of people packed the basilica for the pope’s first Christmas Day Mass, holding aloft their smartphones to capture images of the opening procession.
This Christmas season marks the winding down of the Holy Year celebrations, which will close on Jan. 6, the Catholic Epiphany holiday marking the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
A Powerball ticket purchased outside Little Rock, Ark., won a $1.817 billion jackpot in Wednesday’s Christmas Eve drawing, ending the lottery game’s three-month stretch without a top-prize winner.
The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52, and 59, with the Powerball number being 19. The winning ticket was sold at a Murphy USA store in Cabot, lottery officials in Arkansas said Thursday. No one answered the phone Thursday at the location, which was closed for Christmas. Cabot, a community of roughly 27,000 people, is 26 miles northeast of Little Rock.
Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot higher than previously expected, making it the second-largest in U.S. history and the largest Powerball prize of 2025, according to www.powerball.com. The jackpot had a lump-sum cash payment option of $834.9 million.
“Congratulations to the newest Powerball jackpot winner! This is truly an extraordinary, life-changing prize,” Matt Strawn, Powerball Product Group Chair and Iowa Lottery CEO, was quoted as saying by the website. “We also want to thank all the players who joined in this jackpot streak — every ticket purchased helps support public programs and services across the country.”
Lottery officials said they won’t know who won until at least Monday because winners must contact a claims center, which is closed for the holidays until then, according to Karen Reynolds, a spokesperson for the Arkansas lottery.
The prize followed 46 consecutive drawings in which no one matched all six numbers.
The last drawing with a jackpot winner was Sept. 6, when players in Missouri and Texas won $1.787 billion.
Organizers said it is the second time the Powerball jackpot has been won by a ticket sold in Arkansas. It first happened in 2010.
The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve was in 2011, Powerball said. The company added that the sweepstakes has been won on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013.
Powerball’s odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes growing as they roll over when no one wins. Lottery officials note that the odds are far better for the game’s many smaller prizes.
“With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?” Indianapolis glass artist Chris Winters said Wednesday.
Tickets cost $2, and the game is offered in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Two friends — a rector and his organist at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square — found the inspiration in the run-up to the Christmas celebration in 1868.
The result of their delayed creativity was “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” composed and heard in a Philadelphia church.
It was a song that spread across the world, and put the 19th-century church on the map.
The silent stars
Three years before, in 1865, the church’s vicar visited the Holy Land.
So moved by what he saw on that trip, the Rev. Phillips Brooks put pen to paper.
The result was a poem:
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
In totality, as a piece of music, the song is not exactly upbeat.
The lyrics reflect on the darkness found after midnight. Cries of misery reverberating through dark streets under cover of ink-black skies.
But there’s also everlasting light.
A Christmas miracle
Three years later in 1868, Brooks asked the church’s organist, Lewis Redner, a real estate agent who played the organ for four churches, to set music to those lyrics Brooks penned.
It was to be part of a song that would play during the Christmas holiday in 1868.
And then Brooks waited.
To his congregation, Brooks was an inspiring preacher. In the throes of the American Civil War, he would ride on a wagon to the battlefields around Gettysburg to perform last rites on dying soldiers and offer words of comfort to wounded soldiers — Union and Confederate.
Days turned to weeks, and Brooks was still waiting for the completed song.
But as the holiday approached, the procrastination had reached a fever pitch.
Two days before the Christmas service, on a Friday, Brooks nervously asked about the song.
“Have you ground out the music yet?”
“No,” Redner said.
But he assured Brooks: “I’ll have it by Sunday.”
On Saturday night, Redner wrote in his diary that his brain was in knots over the tune, according to The Inquirer.
Once asleep, he woke with a start.
He wrote that he heard an angel whispering in his ear.
Redner then scribbled down the tune.
And before the Sunday service, he layered on the harmony.
No injuries were reported after a Christmas Eve fire at a rowhouse in Chester spread to neighboring homes, displacing five families, officials said.
Shortly before 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, firefighters responded to the 900 block of West Seventh Street and found heavy fire in a rowhouse. A second alarm was struck about seven minutes later.
Mayor Stefan Roots said three homes sustained heavy fire and water damage. He did not provide any information on what caused the fire.
The American Red Cross responded to the scene and assisted a total of 13 people from five families who were displaced, said spokesperson Alana Mauger.
LOS ANGELES — A powerful winter storm swept across California on Wednesday, with heavy rains and gusty winds bringing mudslides and debris flows that has led to some water rescues and evacuation orders.
Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding and mudslides. Areas scorched by January’s wildfires were under evacuation warnings, and Los Angeles County officials said the previous day that they delivered about 380 evacuation orders to especially vulnerable homes.
San Bernardino County firefighters said they rescued people trapped in their cars when mud and debris rushed down a road leading into Wrightwood, a mountain resort town in the San Gabriel Mountains about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It was not immediately clear how many were rescued.
Firefighters also went door to door to check on residents, and the area was under a shelter-in-place order, officials said. Lytle Creek, also in the San Gabriel Mountains, was under evacuation orders in the afternoon as rains continued to pummel the area.
Debris and mud were seen cascading down a road in Wrightwood in a video posted by county fire officials. Another video showed fast-moving water rushing through the front porch of several homes.
The storm stranded Dillan Brown with his wife and 14-month-old daughter at a rented cabin in Wrightwood with almost no food and only enough diapers for about another day. By the morning, roads leading off the mountain and to a grocery store were blocked by rocks and debris, Brown said.
“I came across [a road] where there was a car sucked away by the water and realized we were trapped here,” he said.
A resident learned of his situation and posted a call for help in a Facebook group, and in less than an hour, neighbors showed up with more than enough supplies to ride out the storm, including bread, vegetables, milk, diapers and wipes.
“I think we’re a little sad and upset that we’re not going to be home with our families,” Brown said, but the “kindness shown is definitely an overwhelming feeling.”
Janice Quick, president of the Wrightwood Chamber of Commerce and a resident of the mountain town for 45 years, said a wildfire in 2024 left much of the terrain without tree coverage and “all this rain is bringing down a lot of debris and a lot of mud from the mountain area.”
Residents around the burn scar zones from the Airport Fire in Orange County were also ordered to evacuate.
Areas along the coast including Malibu were under flood warnings until the evening, and much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area were also under wind and flood advisories.
Heavy rain douses Southern California
The Los Angeles Fire Department rescued a man trapped in a drainage tunnel in northwest LA. No injuries were reported, but the man was being evaluated.
Several roadways including a part of Interstate 5 near the Burbank Airport were closed due to flooding.
Conditions could worsen with multiple atmospheric rivers during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. The storm in Los Angeles was expected to strengthen into the afternoon before tapering off later in the evening.
James Dangerfield, an 84-year-old resident of Altadena, said his family and neighbor helped place sandbags in his backyard earlier this week. A flash flood warning was issued for the neighborhood, but he wasn’t too worried because his house is on a hill.
He and his wife, Stephanie, planned to remain there and spend Christmas Eve with their two adult daughters and grandchildren.
“We’re just going to stay put, and everybody will have to come to us,” Dangerfield said. “We’re not going to go anywhere.”
Mike Burdick, who takes care of his parents in Altadena near burn scars from the Eaton Fire, ran out to buy more sandbags in the morning when he saw that the pool was overflowing.
“I literally woke up to just downpour,” he said.
The family was prepared to evacuate with a week’s worth of essentials including for their dog and cat. They planned to attend a nearby holiday party in the evening.
“We’re just going to make an appearance and get back safe to our animals,” Burdick said.
Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said.
Much of California under weather warnings
Forecasters said heavy snow and gusts were expected to create “near white-out conditions” in parts of the Sierra Nevada and make travel “nearly impossible” through mountain passes. There was also a “considerable” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center.
The National Weather Service said a winter storm warning would be in effect for the greater Tahoe region until Friday morning.
Power was knocked out to more than 125,000 due to a damaged power pole, according to the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. utility.
The California Highway Patrol was investigating a seemingly weather-related fatal crash south of Sacramento. A driver who was apparently traveling at an unsafe speed lost control on a wet road and crashed into a power pole, Officer Michael Harper said via email.
San Francisco and Los Angeles airports reported some minor morning flight delays.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in six counties to allow state assistance in storm response.
Flash flooding in Northern California has led to water rescues and at least one death, authorities said.
The state deployed emergency resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard was on standby.
Atmospheric rivers transport moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes in long, narrow bands of water vapor that form over an ocean.
Twenty-four hours after two gas explosions ripped through a Bucks County nursing home, the dead and injured had been identified, survivors were accounted for, and the cleanup was underway. But unanswered questions about the blast’s cause mounted.
On Wednesday morning, Peco provided a drastically different account of when its crews responded to reports of a gas odor on Tuesday, saying technicians had actually arrived hours — not minutes — before the blast at Bristol Health & Rehab Center.
Then, the energy company went silent, declining to answer any additional questions as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took over a sprawling investigation that will also involve other federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
Meanwhile, the new operator of the 174-bed nursing home, Saber Healthcare Group, is also coming under scrutiny amid questions about the poorly maintained facility on Tower Road that it took over from another provider just three weeks ago.
It could take months to get answers about what caused, and who is at fault for, the blast that killed two people and left 19 hospitalized, one in critical condition.
Experts and attorneys told The Inquirer the investigation will likely focus heavily on the actions of Peco and the nursing home’s operators.
“If the facility doesn’t maintain the equipment and the gas in their own facility, then they would be responsible,” said Robert Mongeluzzi, an attorney who has represented victims of gas explosions. “If there were reports of the gas leak, and Peco is notified and the facility isn’t cleared … there’s going to be responsibility on both of them.”
Windows and debris at the site of the Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Wednesday.
In a statement, the NTSB said investigators will not be able to fully evaluate the natural gas service line until “a safe path is cleared.” That effort alone could take several days. The agency provided no timeline for its initial findings.
Saber Healthcare Group took over operations at the nursing home on Dec. 1. Prior to that, the facility had been managed by another privately run for-profit healthcare company, the Ohio-based CommuniCare Health Services.
CommuniCare, which had operated the home since 2021, racked up a long list of code violations for unsafe building conditions and substandard healthcare. Just two months ago, state inspectors cited the facility for lacking a fire safety plan, failing to maintain extinguishers, and allowing conditions that would cause poor smoke ventilation.
Federal inspection records also show numerous citations over previous years for substandard healthcare, poor infection control, and mismanaged medical records, earning the facility a one-star rating. CommuniCare incurred more than $418,000 in fines due to violations in 2024, records show.
“We have worked to improve and fix prior issues, and we will continue that work in the wake of this tragedy,” Saber said in a statement Tuesday.
Attorneys watching the news unfold questioned whether Saber should have evacuated residents sooner on Tuesday. Peco’s own guidelines urge people who smell gas to evacuate the building immediately.
“If you or I smelled gas in our apartment or house, we’d be like, ‘Where is it?’ You have to get everybody out,” said Ian Norris, an attorney at Philadelphia-based McEldrew Purtell who has sued Saber and other nursing home operators accused of negligence. “In a nursing home, you have a higher standard of care. They are dependent residents who are there on the basis that they need help.”
A Saber representative said the company was looking into the evacuation procedures. In its statement Tuesday, the company said “facility personnel reported a gas smell” to Peco. The statement made no mention of an evacuation effort.
The smell was confined to the kitchen area of the nursing home, according to the Saber representative.
A Peco gas technician arrived at the nursing home on Tuesday afternoon. He was working alone in the basement below the kitchen area to address the issue, and as he went to his truck to retrieve more tools, the building erupted, said Larry Anastasi, president of IBEW Local 614, the union that represents Peco workers.
Whether Peco’s gas lines played a role in the blast remains unknown. But the utility company’s aging gas infrastructure will likely come under closer inspection as the probe progresses, according to attorneys with knowledge of investigations following such explosions.
One detail that became clear Wednesday was that Peco’s gas meter was located in the basement of the nursing home — not outside and aboveground as required by a 2011 order from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC).
The PUC, like Peco, declined to comment and referred questions to the NTSB.
Workers set up fencing at Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Wednesday.
While the age and condition of the gas line near the nursing home were not clear, Peco has acknowledged it had 742 miles of substandard gas lines across the state — including cast iron, plastic, and uncoated steel piping — that needed replacing. The lines accounted for 5% of Peco’s gas service but 82% of leaks, according to a report from the PUC.
Peco plans call for all of those lines to be replaced by 2035 and to invest roughly $6 billion to inspect, modernize, and perform maintenance on all of its systems over the next five years.
Richard Kuprewicz, an expert on gas pipeline safety and investigations, said it is too early to tell if Peco or the nursing home acted improperly. He warned against jumping to conclusions the day after the explosions.
“We just don’t have the facts on this,” Kuprewicz said. “The tragedy is they had an explosion from a gas release that they knew was occurring. People will raise questions about this for months.”
In the immediate aftermath Tuesday evening, Peco spokesperson Greg Smore said in a statement that the company’s crews had responded to the nursing home “shortly after 2 p.m.” Tuesday and that while they were on site, the explosion occurred. The blast was reported just before 2:20 p.m. Tuesday, according to Bristol Fire Chief Kevin Dippolito.
But in a revised statement Wednesday morning, the company backtracked, saying its crews actually arrived “a few hours” before the explosion. It would not provide a specific time.
Peco said it shut off natural gas and electric service “to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents.” But, again, it would not say when.
Depending on where the gas leak was, Kuprewicz said, significant amounts of gas could continue to seep out after a shutoff.
“There isn’t one standard answer for all this,” he said. “Even when you shut it off, it doesn’t [always] stop flowing.”
Inquirer staff writers Samantha Melamed and Barbara Laker contributed to this article.
Ramesses Dreuitt Vazquez scooted his wheelchair on a Mount Airy playground, pressing the ground with his sneakers to approach the man credited with saving his life.
Now the 10-year-old Philadelphia boy smiled through his scars, reaching his arm out to greet Wongus, who bent down and hugged him.
Wongus, 26, was nervous to see Ramesses, unsure what to expect. On the night of the Jan. 31 crash, Wongus used his jean jacket to smother flames on Ramesses’ back. He then comforted Ramesses in the back seat of a police cruiser as they raced to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. The child’s clothes had burned away; his sneakers had melted to his feet from the heat.
In the 10 months afterward, Ramesses fought for his life at a Boston hospital. He had 42 surgeries for burn wounds that affected 90% of his body, and had fingers and ears amputated. He was moved to a rehabilitation hospital in South Jersey before being released earlier this month.
He reunited with his rescuer on Tuesday night at an event to mark what would have been the 38th birthday of Ramesses’ father, Steven Dreuitt Jr., who died when the car he was driving caught on fire.
Family and friends gathered on the park’s basketball court to release balloons.
Wongus asked Ramesses how he felt about getting swag from the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies while in the hospital. “I’m really not much of a baseball fan; I’m more of an Eagles fan,” replied Ramesses, wearing a knit Eagles hat.
The boy’s light and casual tone made Wongus smile.
“I’m glad to see him with his family and to see how well he’s doing — seeing him just trying to function as a kid again and scooting around in the wheelchair on the basketball court,“ Wongus said.
The balloon release was organized by Alberta “Amira” Brown, 60, Dreuitt’s mother and Ramesses’ grandmother. During the balloon release, she andRamesses’ mother thanked Wongus for saving him.
“If it wasn’t for this person here, Ramesses would not be here today,” Brown said, as family and friends applauded.
Brown also asked those in attendance to supporther son’s other child, Dominick Goods, an 11th grader at Imhotep Institute Charter High School in East Germantown.
Both grandsons, she said, need the community’s love and support: “I have one that is completely, completely mentally distraught and one is physically distraught.”
Dominick, who is Ramesses’ half brother, lost his father and his 34-year-old mother in the plane crash. Dominique Goods Burke, who was engaged to Dreuitt, was in the car’s passenger’s seat. The Mount Airy couple had picked up Ramesses from his mother’s home in Germantown and then headed to the Roosevelt Mall to run an errand. Goods Burke escaped from the car with severe burns and internal injuries.
Dominick turned 16 two weeks before his mother died in Aprilat Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
“I want each and every one of you to imagine what a 15-year-old kid went through that night, being left home alone and waiting for his parents and his brother to come home, and no one ever did,” Brown said.
“Don’t forget my grandson Dominick. I beg of you,” she said.
Dominick Goods, 16, lost both of his parents in the jet crash in Northeast Philadelphia on Jan. 31. The teen and his family gathered at a Mount Airy playground to celebrate what would have been his father’s 38th birthday. The teen’s grandmother, Alberta “Amira” Brown (right), asked those gathered to support him.
After watching balloons float skyward amid shouts of “Happy birthday, Steven,” Dominick drifted away from the crowd of about 40 people for a few moments alone.
Ramesses, bundled under a fuzzy white blanket, playfully chased after his mother, Jamie Vazquez Viana, in his wheelchair, teasing about rolling over her feet.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” she said.
She declined to talk to a reporter but has shared some details of her son’s recovery on a GoFundMe page.
“Ramesses is my little warrior who fought death and won, but he now faces a lifetime of reconstruction surgeries, intense therapy, and long-term burn care,” Vazquez Viana wrote.
Wongus smiled through tears as he watched Ramesses chat with his 12-year-old cousin, Anthony “AJ” Jenkins, about video games. His cousin, who gave him an Xbox game for his birthday in October, asked if he had been playing it.
Ramesses explained why he had not.“I have to sign in and put in my dad’s email and his number and all that, and I don’t have that,” Ramesses told his cousin.
Jenkins, a seventh graderwho is one of Brown’s seven grandchildren, said he cried during the balloon release, envisioning his uncle watching them.
Family, friends and community members came out for the balloon release to celebrate the life and birthday of Steven Dreuitt Jr., who would’ve turned 38 on Dec. 23. He died in the Jan. 31 plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia.
“I imagined in my mind that my uncle asked God, `Can I just look down there for a minute?,’ and he sat on the clouds and he watched as his balloons came up to him,” Jenkins said.
Later in the evening, at his grandmother’s house, Dominick lit a candle for his father, while Ramesses looked on.
Jenkins said he again pictured his uncle’s spirit. This time, clasping both his sons’ hands to help them light it.
Ramesses Dreuitt Vazquez, 10, watches his older brother, Dominick Goods, 16, light a candle to remember their father, Steven Dreuitt Jr., who died in the Jan. 31 plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia. The brothers celebrated what would have been their father’s 38th birthday on Dec. 23.
Jenkins said he is awed by his cousins’ physical and emotional strength. Ramesses “keeps pushing hard” to get stronger, even though his father is gone. Dominick had clung to hope that his mother would survive and was devastated, the cousin said.
“It’s been really hard for him. I couldn’t be in that place. I’d be stuck. I couldn’t be strong enough,” Jenkins said. “They inspire me to be a better person. I want to show my uncle and his two sons that I am working hard for them.”
Before heading over to the playground on Tuesday evening, Dominick gave Ramesses an early Christmas gift.
Ramesses’ eyes grew wide as his mother helped him unfurl tissue paper to reveal a coveted pair of 2025 Air Jordan 8 “Bugs Bunny” Nike sneakers.
“You like them. I can see it on your face,” his mother said.
“I’m gonna hide them,” Ramesses replied. He didn’t want anyone to take them from him.
Bari Weiss explained her decision to hold a 60 Minutes segment earlier this week in an email to CBS News staff Wednesday, saying she is working to win back the trust of American viewers.
“Right now, the majority of Americans say they do not trust the press. It isn’t because they’re crazy,” she began. “To win back their trust, we have to work hard. Sometimes that means doing more legwork. Sometimes it means telling unexpected stories. Sometimes it means training our attention on topics that have been overlooked or misconstrued. And sometimes it means holding a piece about an important subject to make sure it is comprehensive and fair.”
The new CBS News editor in chief continued: “In our upside-down moment, this may seem radical. Such editorial decisions can cause a firestorm, particularly on a slow news week. And the standards for fairness we are holding ourselves to, particularly on contentious subjects, will surely feel controversial to those used to doing things one way. But to fulfill our mission, it’s necessary.”
The postponed segment was set to cover the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison and had been heavily promoted by CBS before its scheduled Sunday air date.
On Sunday, the correspondent for the segment, Sharyn Alfonsi, wrote to colleagues that Weiss had “spiked” the story. While she did not share the explicit reason, she suggested that Weiss was dissatisfied that the Trump administration did not participate in the story.
“If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi wrote Sunday. “If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast.”
In a Monday morning meeting, Weiss told colleagues she “held that story because it wasn’t ready,” according to a person who attended the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic comments. “We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera.”
CBS News did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but in a previous statement a spokeswoman said, “The 60 Minutes report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast.”
Weiss joined CBS News as editor in chief in October after newly formed parent company Paramount Skydance bought her website, the Free Press, for $150 million. Paramount Skydance is run by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle cofounder and Trump ally Larry Ellison.
Critics have echoed Alfonsi’s concerns. “This is what government censorship looks like,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.) wrote in a social media post. “Trump approved the Paramount-Skydance merger. A few months later, CBS’s new editor-in-chief kills a deeply reported story critical of Trump.”
To get its deal approved by the Trump administration, Paramount Skydance made concessions, including appointing an ombudsman with Republican Party ties to police bias in news, and it vowed to eliminate diversity initiatives, a focus of the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr.
Weiss’ defenders have blasted the show’s staff as insubordinate and misdirected. “Every one of those producers at 60 Minutes engaged in this revolt, fire them. Clean house,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said in a video posted on X.
Tanya Simon, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, told staff in a private meeting Monday that she stood by the segment, which was approved by the network’s standards department and lawyers, according to a partial transcript of the meeting obtained by the Washington Post.
“In the end, our editor-in-chief had a different vision for how the piece should be, and it came late in the process, and we were not in a position to address the notes,” Simon said. “We pushed back, we defended our story, but she wanted changes, and I ultimately had to comply.”
Even though the segment never aired in the United States, it was briefly made available in Canada. In that version, Alfonsi said the Department of Homeland Security had declined an interview request and referred questions to the government of El Salvador, which she said didn’t reply. It also included clips of President Donald Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Weiss’ Wednesday email to staff was cosigned by CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, as well as two of Weiss’s recently appointed deputies: Charles Forelle, the managing editor, and Adam Rubenstein, the deputy editor.
“No amount of outrage — whether from activist organizations or the White House — will derail us,” the email concluded. “We are not out to score points with one side of the political spectrum or to win followers on social media. We are out to inform the American public and to get the story right. Restoring the integrity of the news is a difficult task. We can’t think of a more important one. Merry Christmas — and thank you, especially, to everyone who is working over this holiday.”
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura won Honduras’ presidential election, the country’s electoral authorities said Wednesday afternoon, ending a weeks-long count that has whittled away at the credibility of the Central American nation’s fragile electoral system.
The election continued Latin America’s swing to the right, coming just a week after Chile chose the far-right politician José Antonio Kast as its next president.
Asfura, of the conservative National Party received 40.27% of the vote in the Nov. 30, edging out four-time candidate Salvador Nasralla of the conservative Liberal Party, who finished with 39.39% of the vote.
Asfura, the former mayor of Honduras’ capital Tegucigalpa, won in his second bid for the presidency, after he and Nasralla were neck-and-neck during a weeks-long vote count that fueled international concern.
On Tuesday night a number of electoral officials and candidates were already fighting and contesting the results of the election. Meanwhile, followers in Asfura’s campaign headquarters erupted into cheers.
“Honduras: I am prepared to govern,” wrote Asfura in a post on X shortly after the results were released. “I will not let you down.”
The results were a rebuke of the current leftist leader, and her governing democratic socialist Liberty and Re-foundation Party, known as LIBRE, whose candidate finished in a distant third place with 19.19% of the vote.
Asfura ran as a pragmatic politician, pointing to his popular infrastructure projects in the capital. Trump endorsed the 67-year-old conservative just days before the vote, saying he was the only Honduran candidate the U.S. administration would work with.
Nasralla has maintained that the election was fraudulent and called for a recount of all the votes just hours before the official results were announced.
On Tuesday night, he addressed Trump in a post on X, writing: “Mr. President, your endorsed candidate in Honduras is complicit in silencing the votes of our citizens. If he is truly worthy of your backing, if his hands are clean, if he has nothing to fear, then why doesn’t he allow for every vote to be counted?”
He and others opponents of Asfura have maintained that Trump’s last-minute endorsement was an act of electoral interference that ultimately swung the results of the vote.
The unexpectedly tumultuous election was also marred by a sluggish vote count, which fueled even more accusations.
The Central American nation was stuck in limbo for more than three weeks as vote counting by electoral authorities lagged, and at one point was paralyzed after a special count of final vote tallies was called, fueling warnings by international leaders.
Ahead of the announcement, Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Rambin on Monday made an “urgent call” to Honduran authorities to wrap up a special count of the final votes before a deadline of Dec. 30. The Trump administration warned that any attempts to obstruct or delay the electoral count would be met with “consequences.”
For the incumbent, progressive President Xiomara Castro, the election marked a political reckoning. She was elected in 2021 on a promise to reduce violence and root out corruption.
She was among a group of progressive leaders in Latin American who were elected on a hopeful message of change in around five years ago but are now being cast out after failing to deliver on their vision. Castro said last week that she would accept the results of the elections even after she claimed that Trump’s actions in the election amounted to an “electoral coup.”
But Eric Olson, an independent international observer during the Honduran election with the Seattle International Foundation, and other observers said that the rejection of Castro and her party was so definitive that they had little room to contest the results.
“Very few people, even within LIBRE, believe they won the election. What they will say is there’s been fraud, that there has been intervention by Donald Trump, that we we should tear up the elections and vote again,” Olson said. “But they’re not saying ‘we won the elections.’ It’s pretty clear they did not.”
