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  • Speaker Johnson unveils healthcare plan as divided Republicans scramble for alternative

    Speaker Johnson unveils healthcare plan as divided Republicans scramble for alternative

    WASHINGTON — The Senate failed to get anywhere on the healthcare issue this week. Now it’s the House’s turn to show what it can do.

    Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a Republican alternative late Friday, a last-minute sprint as his party refuses to extend the enhanced tax subsidies for those who buy policies through the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, which are expiring at the end of the year. Those subsidies help lower the cost of coverage.

    Johnson (R., La.) huddled behind closed doors in the morning — as he did days earlier this week — working to assemble the package for consideration as the House focuses the final days of its 2025 work on healthcare.

    “House Republicans are tackling the real drivers of health care costs to provide affordable care,” Johnson said in a statement announcing the package. He said it would be voted on next week.

    Later Friday, though, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said: “House Republicans have introduced toxic legislation that is completely unserious, hurts hardworking America taxpayers, and is not designed to secure bipartisan support. If the bill reaches the House floor, I will strongly oppose it.”

    Time is running out for Congress to act. Democrats engineered the longest federal government shutdown ever this fall in a failed effort to force Republicans to the negotiating table on healthcare. But after promising votes, the Senate failed this week to advance both a Republican healthcare plan and the Democratic-offered bill to extend the tax credits for three years.

    Now, with just days to go, Congress is about to wrap up its work with no consensus solution in sight.

    What Republicans are proposing

    The House Republicans offered a 100-plus-page package that focuses on long-sought GOP proposals to enhance access to employer-sponsored health insurance plans and clamp down on so-called pharmacy benefit managers.

    Republicans propose expanding access to what’s referred to as association health plans, which would allow more small businesses and self-employed individuals to band together and purchase health coverage.

    Proponents say such plans increase the leverage businesses have to negotiate a lower rate. But critics say the plans provide skimpier coverage than what is required under the Affordable Care Act.

    The Republicans’ proposal would also require more data from pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, as a way to help control drug costs. Critics say PBMs have padded their bottom line and made it more difficult for independent pharmacists to survive.

    Additionally, the GOP plan includes mention of cost-sharing reductions for some lower-income people who rely on Obamacare, but those would not take effect until January 2027.

    The emerging package from the House Republicans does not include an extension of an enhanced tax credit for millions of Americans who get insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Put in place during the COVID-19 crisis, that enhanced subsidy expires Dec. 31, leaving most families in the program facing more than double their current out-of-pocket premiums, and in some cases, much more.

    What Trump wants

    President Donald Trump has said he believes Republicans are going to figure out a better plan than Obamacare — something he has promised for years — but offered few details beyond his idea for providing Americans with stipends to help buy insurance.

    “I want to see the billions of dollars go to people, not to the insurance companies,” Trump said late Friday during an event at the White House. “And I want to see the people go out and buy themselves great healthcare.”

    The president did not comment directly on the House’s new plan. He has repeatedly touted his idea of sending money directly to Americans to help offset the costs of healthcare policies, rather than extending the tax credits for those buying policies through Obamacare. It’s unclear how much money Trump envisions. The Senate GOP proposal that failed to advance would have provided payments to new health savings accounts of $1,000 a year for adult enrollees, or $1,500 for those ages 50 to 64.

    It appeared there were no such health savings accounts in the new House GOP plan.

    Political pressure is building for many

    Going Johnson’s route has left vulnerable House Republicans representing key battleground districts in a tough spot.

    Frustrated with the delays, a group of more centrist GOP lawmakers is aligning with Democrats to push their own proposals for continuing the tax credits, for now, so that Americans don’t face rising healthcare costs.

    They are pursuing several paths for passing a temporary ACA subsidy extension, co-sponsoring a handful of bills. They are also signing on to so-called discharge petitions that could force a floor vote if a majority of the House signs on.

    Such petitions are designed to get around the majority’s control and are rarely successful, but this year has proven to be an exception. Lawmakers, for example, were able to use a discharge petition to force a vote on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files held by the Department of Justice.

    One petition, filed by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), had signatures from 12 Republicans and 12 Democrats as of Friday afternoon. It would force a vote on a bill that includes a two-year subsidy extension and contains provisions designed to combat fraud in the ACA marketplace. There are also restrictions for PBMs, among other things.

    Fitzpatrick offering a plan to extend ACA subsidies

    Another petition from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) has 39 signatures and is broadly bipartisan. It’s a simpler proposal that would force a vote on a one-year ACA enhanced subsidy extension and would include new income caps limiting who qualifies for the enhanced credit.

    Both discharge petitions have enough Republicans’ support that they would likely succeed if Jeffries encouraged his caucus to jump on board. So far, he’s not tipping his hand.

    “We’re actively reviewing those two discharge petitions and we’ll have more to say about it early next week,” Jeffries said.

    Meanwhile, Jeffries is pushing Democrats’ own discharge petition, which has 214 signatures and would provide for a clean three-year subsidy extension. No Republicans have signed on to that one.

    And as Republicans made clear in the Senate this week, a three-year extension without changes to the program has no chance of passing their chamber.

  • Israel says it has killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza

    Israel says it has killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza

    JERUSALEM — Israel on Saturday said it killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza after an explosive device detonated and wounded two soldiers in the territory’s south.

    Hamas in a statement did not confirm the death of Raed Saad. It said a civilian vehicle had been struck outside Gaza City and asserted it was a violation of the ceasefire that took effect on Oct. 10.

    Saad served as the Hamas official in charge of manufacturing and previously led the militant group’s operations division. The Israeli statement described him as one of the architects of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, and said that he had been “engaged in rebuilding the terrorist organization” in a violation of the ceasefire.

    The Israeli strike west of Gaza City killed four people, according to an Associated Press journalist who saw their bodies arrive at Shifa Hospital. Another three were wounded, according to Al-Awda hospital.

    Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of truce violations.

    Israeli airstrikes and shootings in Gaza have killed at least 386 Palestinians since the ceasefire took hold, according to Palestinian health officials. Israel has said recent strikes are in retaliation for militant attacks against its soldiers, and that troops have fired on Palestinians who approached the Yellow Line between the Israeli-controlled majority of Gaza and the rest of the territory.

    Israel has demanded that Palestinian militants return the remains of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, from Gaza and called it a condition of moving to the second and more complicated phase of the ceasefire. That lays out a vision for ending Hamas’ rule and seeing the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision.

    The initial Hamas-led 2023 attack on southern Israel killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Almost all hostages or their remains have been returned in ceasefires or other deals.

    Israel’s two-year campaign in Gaza has killed more than 70,650 Palestinians, roughly half of them women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

    Much of Gaza has been destroyed and most of the population of over 2 million has been displaced. Humanitarian aid entry into the territory continues to be below the level set by ceasefire terms, and Palestinians who lost limbs in the war face a shortage of prosthetic limbs and long delays in medical evacuations.

  • VA plans to abruptly eliminate tens of thousands of healthcare jobs

    VA plans to abruptly eliminate tens of thousands of healthcare jobs

    The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to abruptly eliminate as many as 35,000 healthcare positions this month, mostly unfilled jobs including doctors, nurses, and support staff, according to an internal memo, VA staffers, and congressional aides.

    The cuts come after a massive reorganization effort already resulted in the loss of almost 30,000 employees this year.

    Agency leaders have instructed managers across the Veterans Health Administration, the agency’s healthcare arm, to identify thousands of openings that can be canceled. Employees warn that the contraction will add pressure to an already stretched system, contributing to longer wait times for care.

    The decision comes after Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas A. Collins, under political pressure from Congress, backed away from a plan to slash 15% of the agency’s workforce through mass firings. Instead, VA lost almost 30,000 employees this year from buyout offers and attrition.

    The agency hopes that the cuts will reduce the healthcare workforce to as little as 372,000 employees, a 10% reduction from last year, according to a memo shared with regional leaders last month and obtained by the Washington Post. Details of the cuts came into focus in recent days, according to 17 staffers at VA and congressional aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t have permission to share plans.

    VA spokesperson Pete Kasperowicz confirmed the planned cuts for unfilled positions. He said the healthcare system is eliminating about 26,400 of its open jobs, which he described as “mostly COVID-era roles that are no longer necessary.”

    “The vast majority of these positions have not been filled for more than a year, underscoring how they are no longer needed,” he wrote in response to questions. “This move will have no effect on VA operations or the way the department delivers care to Veterans, as we are simply eliminating open and unfilled positions that are no longer needed.”

    The nation’s largest government-run healthcare system has struggled to fill vacancies amid a broader national shortage of healthcare workers and a strained federal workforce. Job applications to the agency have also fallen 57% from last year, according to the agency’s workforce report last month.

    This reorganization comes in advance of an expected announcement next week that Collins plans to also shrink the network of 18 regional offices that administer the nation’s VA hospitals and medical centers, according to four people familiar with the plan. Staff at those regional offices help determine policies and manage staffing. Collins and others have been critical of the agency’s top-heavy administrative offices, arguing that staffing cuts there will free up more resources for healthcare.

    The health system grew by tens of thousands of employees under the Biden administration as more veterans enrolled in VA healthcare after passage of the PACT Act, which expanded benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Then-secretary Denis McDonough urged veterans to be seen by VA doctors rather than request referrals to private practitioners outside the system.

    But the Trump administration has said it wants more veterans to seek treatment outside the government system. Political appointees at VA and their allies have also said they favor a leaner healthcare workforce because they think physicians and other healthcare providers could be more productive, said one former appointee who is close to the Trump team.

    Collins stood down from planned mass firings this year after a bipartisan mix of lawmakers expressed concerns about cuts affecting patient care. The agency said mission-critical positions were exempted from the buyouts and retirement offers.

    Since then, lawmakers have sought greater oversight of the agency’s staffing plans. In the agreement to reopen the government last month, lawmakers allocated $133 billion in discretionary funding for the VA with conditions, including that the agency could not reduce staffing for suicide prevention programs, would provide updates on staffing counts, and would maintain the staff necessary to meet certain thresholds for processing benefits and providing healthcare.

    The House also approved a measure Thursday overturning President Donald Trump’s executive order eliminating union rights at federal agencies, including VA, where the union had said it was harder to protect jobs without collective bargaining.

    Thomas Dargon Jr., deputy general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 320,000 VA employees, said the union has not been consulted by the agency about the cuts but has heard about concerns from its members.

    “The VA has been chronically understaffed for years, and employees are obviously going to be facing the brunt of any further job cuts or reorganization that results in employees having to do more work with less,” Dargon said.

    Sharda Fornnarino, a VA nurse in Colorado and local head of her nurses’ union, said her facility continues to lack the necessary staff to keep up with demand, and she urged lawmakers to restore collective bargaining so nurses could advocate for safer working conditions. The measure is unlikely to pass the Republican-held Senate.

    “We’re going to continue to do more with less,” Fornnarino said. “We’re going to continue to be overworked.”

    Meanwhile, at the VA’s regional offices, leadership is determining which roles they would need to cancel, and several healthcare workers said they had been warned their hospitals would be affected. Regional leaders were told to ensure their organizational charts are updated by next week, according to the memo reviewed by the Post.

    In Phoenix, 358 openings will be eliminated, including nurses and doctors, according to a nurse who said the losses will hit as they are already behind in scheduling doctors appointments.

    “They specifically said no department would be spared,” she said.

    In another Mountain West hospital, healthcare workers were told at a town hall last week that no current employees would lose their jobs, though if anyone leaves, they would need to determine whether they could keep those jobs, according to a recording of the meeting.

    The bad news arrived last Friday for employees of the VA San Diego healthcare system, in an exclamation mark-filled email from director Frank Pearson.

    He wrote that he’d been expecting this year to fill 734 job vacancies with new nurses, doctors, and other staff, to help care for the almost 90,000 veterans that the San Diego system regularly serves. But sometime this fall, he wrote, higher-ups decided to “do some housekeeping and cleanup of the books” — informing the San Diego system that it only had the budget to retain 4,429 employees going into fiscal year 2026.

    That meant, Pearson wrote in bold, all-caps, underlined letters, that “322 VACANT POSITIONS need to be eliminated.”

    One of the VA employees who received the email said that, in the mental health section alone, there were 78 open positions as of this month — about half of which will now go away. Currently, the employee noted, veterans in the San Diego area are waiting between 60 and 90 days to access VA mental health services.

    Staff are already strained and exhausted after a difficult year, the employee said, and were counting on reinforcements.

    “We are all doing the work of others to compensate,” she said. “The idea that relief isn’t coming is really, really disappointing.”

  • Affable comedy acting legend Dick Van Dyke turns 100 years old

    Affable comedy acting legend Dick Van Dyke turns 100 years old

    Comedy icon Dick Van Dyke celebrated his 100th birthday on Saturday, hitting the century mark some six decades after he sang and danced with Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and starred in his self-titled sitcom.

    “The funniest thing is, it’s not enough,” Van Dyke said in an interview with ABC News at his Malibu, Calif., home. “A hundred years is not enough. You want to live more, which I plan to.”

    As part of the celebration of Van Dyke’s birthday this weekend, theaters around the country are showing a new documentary about his life, Dick Van Dyke: 100th Celebration.

    Van Dyke became one of the biggest actors of his era with The Dick Van Dyke Show, which ran from 1961-66 on CBS; appeared with Andrews as a chimney sweep with a Cockney accent in the 1964 Disney classic Mary Poppins; and, in his 70s, played a physician-sleuth on Diagnosis: Murder.

    Also a Broadway star, Van Dyke won a Tony Award for Bye Bye Birdie to go with a Grammy and four Primetime Emmys. In 1963, he starred in the film version of Bye Bye Birdie.

    Just last year, he became the oldest winner of a Daytime Emmy, for a guest role on the soap Days of Our Lives.

    In the 1970s, he found sobriety after battling alcoholism and spoke out about it at a time when that was uncommon to do.

    Now that he has hit triple digits, Van Dyke said he’s gotten some perspective on how he used to play older characters.

    “You know, I played old men a lot, and I always played them as angry and cantankerous,” he told ABC News. “It’s not really that way. I don’t know any other 100-year-olds, but I can speak for myself.”

    He recently imparted wisdom about reaching the century mark in his book, 100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life. He credited his wife, 54-year-old makeup artist and producer Arlene Silver, with keeping him young.

    “She gives me energy. She gives me humor, and all kinds of support,” he told ABC News.

    Van Dyke was born in West Plains, Mo., in 1925, and grew up “the class clown” in Danville, Ill., while admiring and imitating the silent film comedians.

    He told ABC News he started acting when he was about 4 or 5 years old in a Christmas pageant. He said he was the baby Jesus.

    “I made some kind of crack, I don’t know what I said, but it broke the congregation up,” he said. ”And I liked the sound of that laughter.”

    And what’s hard about being 100?

    “I miss movement,” he told ABC News. “I’ve got one game leg from I don’t know what.”

    “I still try to dance,” he said with a laugh.

  • 2 U.S. service members, one American civilian killed in ambush in Syria, U.S. Central Command says

    2 U.S. service members, one American civilian killed in ambush in Syria, U.S. Central Command says

    DAMASCUS, Syria — President Donald Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.

    “This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.

    The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”

    The two service members killed were members of the Iowa National Guard, according to a person briefed on the situation who was granted anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly.

    U.S. Central Command said three service members were also wounded in an ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed.

    The attack on U.S. troops in Syria was the first with fatalities since the fall of President Bashar Assad a year ago.

    “There will be very serious retaliation,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

    The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said the civilian killed was a U.S. interpreter. Parnell said the attack targeted soldiers involved in the ongoing counterterrorism operations in the region and is under active investigation.

    The shooting took place near historic Palmyra, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which earlier said two members of Syria’s security force and several U.S. service members had been wounded. The casualties were taken by helicopter to the al-Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.

    Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba said a gunman linked to IS opened fire at the gate of a military post. He added that Syrian authorities are looking into whether the gunman was an IS member or only carried its extreme ideology. He denied reports that suggested that the attacker was a security member.

    Later al-Baba clarified that the attacker was a member of the Internal Security force in the desert, adding that he “did not have any command post” within the forces nor was he a bodyguard for the force commander.

    Al-Baba added in an interview with state TV that some 5,000 members have joined Internal Security forces in the desert and they are evaluated on a weekly basis. He added that three days ago, an evaluation was made of the attacker and it turned out that he might have extreme ideology. A decision was expected to be issued regarding him on Sunday but “the attack occurred on a Saturday which is a day off for state institutions.”

    U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X: “Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.”

    The U.S. has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting IS.

    The U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since the fall of the five-decade Assad family rule. Al-Sharaa made a historic visit to Washington last month where he held talks with Trump. It was the first White House visit by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946 and came after the U.S. lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the Assads’ rule.

    Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Bashar Assad in December 2024 and was named the country’s interim leader in January. Al-Sharaa once had ties to al-Qaida and had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

    Last month, Syria joined the international coalition fighting against the IS as Damascus improves its relations with Western countries following the ouster of Assad when insurgents captured his seat of power in Damascus.

    IS was defeated on the battlefield in Syria in 2019 but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in the country. The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.

    U.S. troops, which have maintained a presence in different parts of Syria — including Al-Tanf garrison in the central province of Homs — to train other forces as part of a broad campaign against IS, have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest attacks occurred in 2019 in the northern town of Manbij when a blast killed two U.S. service members and two American civilians as well as others from Syria while conducting a patrol.

  • Belarus frees Nobel Prize laureate Bialiatski, opposition figure Kolesnikova as U.S. lifts sanctions

    Belarus frees Nobel Prize laureate Bialiatski, opposition figure Kolesnikova as U.S. lifts sanctions

    VILNIUS, Lithuania — Belarus freed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, key opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova, and dozens of other prisoners on Saturday, capping two days of talks with Washington aimed at improving ties and getting crippling U.S. sanctions lifted on a key Belarusian agricultural export.

    The U.S. announced earlier Saturday that it was lifting sanctions on Belarus’ potash sector. In exchange, President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 123 prisoners, Belarus’ state news agency, Belta, reported.

    A close ally of Russia, Minsk has faced Western isolation and sanctions for years. Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been repeatedly sanctioned by the West for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Belarus has released hundreds of prisoners since July 2024.

    John Coale, the U.S. special envoy for Belarus who met with Lukashenko in Minsk on Friday and Saturday, described the talks to reporters as “very productive” and said normalizing relations between Washington and Minsk was “our goal,” Belta reported.

    “We’re lifting sanctions, releasing prisoners. We’re constantly talking to each other,” Coale said, adding that the relationship between the U.S. and Belarus was moving from “baby steps to more confident steps” as they increased dialogue, according to the Belarusian news agency.

    Among the 123 prisoners were a U.S. citizen, six citizens of U.S. allied countries, and five Ukrainian citizens, a U.S. official told the Associated Press in an email. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic negotiations, described the release as “a significant milestone in U.S.-Belarus engagement” and “yet another diplomatic victory” for U.S. President Donald Trump.

    The official said Trump’s engagement so far “has led to the release of over 200 political prisoners in Belarus, including six unjustly detained U.S. citizens and over 60 citizens of U.S. Allies and partners.”

    Bialiatski, Kolesnikova among those freed

    Pavel Sapelka, an advocate with the Viasna rights group, confirmed to the AP that Bialiatski and Kolesnikova were among those released.

    Bialiatski, a human rights advocate who founded Viasna, was in jail when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 along with the prominent Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. He was later convicted of smuggling and financing actions that violated public order — charges that were widely denounced as politically motivated — and sentenced to 10 years in 2023.

    Bialiatski told the AP by phone Saturday that his release after 1,613 days behind bars came as a surprise — in the morning, he was still in an overcrowded prison cell.

    “It feels like I jumped out of icy water into a normal, warm room, so I have to adapt. After isolation, I need to get information about what’s going on,” said Bialiatski, who seemed energetic but pale and emaciated in post-release videos and photos.

    He vowed to continue his work, stressing that “more than a thousand political prisoners in Belarus remain behind bars simply because they chose freedom. And, of course, I am their voice.”

    Kolesnikova, meanwhile, was a key figure in the mass protests that rocked Belarus in 2020, and is a close ally of an opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

    Known for her close-cropped hair and trademark gesture of forming a heart with her hands, Kolesnikova became an even greater symbol of resistance when Belarusian authorities tried to deport her in September 2020. Driven to the Ukrainian border, she briefly broke away from security forces at the frontier, tore up her passport and walked back into Belarus.

    The 43-year-old professional flutist was convicted in 2021 on charges including conspiracy to seize power and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

    Others who were freed

    Among the others who were released, according to Viasna, was Viktar Babaryka — an opposition figure who had sought to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, widely seen as rigged, before being convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges he rejected as political.

    Viasna reported that the group’s imprisoned advocates, Valiantsin Stefanovic and Uladzimir Labkovich, and prominent opposition figure Maxim Znak were also freed. But it later said it was clarifying its report about Stefanovic’s release, and Bialiatski told the AP that Stefanovic had not been freed, though he hopes he will be soon.

    Most of those released were sent to Ukraine, Franak Viachorka, Tsikhanouskaya’s senior adviser, told the AP.

    “I think Lukashenko decided to deport people to Ukraine to show that he is in control of the situation,” Viachorka said.

    Eight or nine others, including Bialiatski, were being sent to Lithuania on Saturday, and more prisoners will be taken to the Baltic country in the next few days, Viachorka said.

    Ukrainian authorities confirmed that Belarus had handed over 114 civilians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that five of them are Ukrainian nationals.

    Freed Belarusian nationals “at their request” and “after being given necessary medical treatment” will be taken to Poland and Lithuania, Ukrainian authorities said.

    Lukashenko wants rapprochement with the West

    When U.S. officials last met with Lukashenko in September, Washington said it was easing some of the sanctions on Belarus. Minsk, meanwhile, released more than 50 political prisoners into Lithuania, pushing the number of prisoners it had freed since July 2024 past the 430 mark.

    “The freeing of political prisoners means that Lukashenko understands the pain of Western sanctions and is seeking to ease them,” Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition leader in exile, told the AP on Saturday.

    She added: “But let’s not be naive: Lukashenko hasn’t changed his policies, his crackdown continues and he keeps on supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. That’s why we need to be extremely cautious with any talk of sanctions relief, so that we don’t reinforce Russia’s war machine and encourage continued repressions.”

    Tsikhanouskaya also described European Union sanctions against Belarusian potash fertilizers as far more painful for Minsk that the U.S. ones, saying that while easing U.S. sanctions could lead to the release of political prisoners, European sanctions should be used to push for long-term, systemic changes in Belarus and the end of the war in Ukraine.

    Sanctions have hit key export hard

    Belarus, which previously accounted for about 20% of global potash fertilizer exports, has faced sharply reduced shipments since Western sanctions targeted state producer Belaruskali and cut off transit through Lithuania’s port in Klaipeda, the country’s main export route.

    “Sanctions by the U.S., EU and their allies have significantly weakened Belarus’ potash industry, depriving the country of a key source of foreign exchange earnings and access to key markets,” Anastasiya Luzgina, an analyst at the Belarusian Economic Research Center BEROC, told the AP.

    “Minsk hopes that lifting U.S. sanctions on potash will pave the way for easing more painful European sanctions; at the very least, U.S. actions will allow discussions to begin,” she said.

    The latest round of U.S.-Belarus talks also touched on Venezuela, as well as Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Belta reported.

    Coale told reporters that Lukashenko had given “good advice” on how to address the Russia-Ukraine war, saying that Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin were “longtime friends” with “the necessary level of relationship to discuss such issues.”

    “Naturally, President Putin may accept some advice and not others,” Coale said.

    The U.S. official told the AP that “continued progress in U.S.-Belarus relations” also requires steps to resolve tensions between Belarus and neighboring Lithuania, which is a member of the EU and NATO.

    The Lithuanian government this week declared a national emergency over security risks posed by meteorological balloons sent from Belarus.

    The balloons forced Lithuania to repeatedly shut down its main airport, stranding thousands of people. Earlier this year, Lithuania temporarily closed its border with Belarus, and Belarusian authorities responded by threatening to seize up to 1,200 Lithuanian trucks they said were stuck in Belarus.

    The U.S. official said improving ties between U.S. and Belarus will require “positive action to stop the release of smuggling balloons from Belarus that affect Lithuanian airspace and resolve the impoundment of Lithuanian trucks.”

  • Adolescence lasts into your 30s, and other surprises about the brain

    Adolescence lasts into your 30s, and other surprises about the brain

    The human brain has four distinct turning points where its structure changes, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrating that brain development is not as linear as you might think.

    “It’s easy to fall into this belief that there’s a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ way for a brain to be structured,” said lead study author Alexa Mousley at the University of Cambridge. “And that’s not really the case. What this study is emphasizing is the brain is expected to be doing something different at different ages.”

    In the new study, Mousley and colleagues looked at around 4,000 scans from healthy people ages 0 to 90 and analyzed their brains. They found four major times when the brain underwent developmental changes, around ages 9, 32, 66, and 83, dividing the life span into five distinct phases.

    “It’s yet another very nice example of how the brain and its global interactions change across the life span,” said Seth Grant, a neuroscientist at The University of Edinburgh who wasn’t involved in the new research. “The message is, there is continuous change from birth until old age. It’s not as if you suddenly build a brain and it stays the same and then just drops off at old age. It’s always changing.”

    Mousley and her co-authors identified five epochs during which the brain is wired in different ways.

    1. Childhood

    From infancy to 9 years old, the brain is busy. There is a lot of consolidation of neural connections happening, competitive elimination of synapses, and rapid increases in gray and white matter. But interestingly the brain is becoming less efficient during this time — so it takes longer for information to get from one region of the brain to another. The researchers don’t fully understand why this would be the pattern, but they have some theories.

    “We know that in very early life, the brain makes more connections than it needs, and then it prunes them away,” Mousley said. “It’s unclear if that is kind of what’s happening here, but it is potentially what’s happening.”

    Whatever the reason for the brain becoming less efficient during childhood, it is a time when a lot of learning happens — language, motor skills, speech — and there is likely a reason that the brain is structured the way that it is during this period.

    “It could be that this decreasing efficiency is potentially related to this incredible moment of learning,” Mousley said.

    2. Adolescence

    There is a dramatic turning point that the researchers saw occurring around the age of 9 on average — a time when many children begin to enter puberty. The brain switches gears and starts rewiring to become more efficient.

    The adolescence phase the researchers identified lasts for two decades, into the early 30s on average. This is when people are most vulnerable to developing a mental health disorder, but it’s also a critical time for brain development.

    “It is really important to think about adolescence as this protracted window,” said Katie Insel, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies how the brain changes over the course of adolescence. She said that while in our society we may think of 18- or 21-year-olds as adults, this research adds to a growing body of work suggesting that the brain isn’t fully developed or stable until our late 20s or even early 30s.

    “Something that sets us apart as humans from other animals is how slowly we develop,” Mousley said. “A giraffe can stand up very soon after being born, but human babies just take a very long time to learn to walk, to eat.”

    Mousley suggested that this slower development might give humans the opportunity to develop more complex brain connections, and could be related to the things that humans can do that other animals can’t.

    3. Adulthood

    Adulthood is the longest phase — lasting for more than three decades from around 32 years old until around 66 years old.

    “It does seem to be this kind of period of relative stability,” Mousley said. “It’s consistent for a very long period of time.”

    That doesn’t mean that the brain isn’t changing during this period, but the changes are less dramatic than during other phases. This is also a period of stability in terms of intelligence, behavior, and personality.

    “If you just think about what an adult is compared to a teenager, you kind of assume there’s kind of a level of stability there in terms of how people are behaving. And that’s aligning with this three-decade period of consistent brain rewiring from our study,” Mousley said.

    4. Early aging

    Around 66 years old on average, the researchers saw another turning point. This is a time when the brain seems to become more vulnerable to age-related diseases — but the news isn’t all bad for the aging brain.

    “There’s an expected and healthy, typical way for the brain to shift,” Mousley said.

    Insel noted that in addition to some of the negative changes people might associate with aging, like memory loss, there are also positive changes. Older adults tend to be wiser and better at emotional regulation.

    “There are pros and cons to every developmental stage,” Insel said. “I think with every phase of life, there are trade-offs where some types of cognition and behavior are privileged because of how the brain is responding to the environment.”

    5. Late aging

    From 83 onward, the researchers identified a “late aging” phase.

    “What we’re seeing during that late aging phase is something called ‘increasing centrality,’” Mousley said. Particular regions of the brain become more important than others during this time. There is reduced connectivity, but there seems to be a pattern to that change.

    The metaphor Mousley used was that of changing bus routes. If you had a direct bus to work, but one day it stopped running and you had to take two buses, the transfer station would suddenly become very important. She theorized that the brain might be prioritizing important connections if other connections drop off.

    What it means

    The word “development” is often associated with childhood or the teenage years — but what this new research demonstrates is that the brain develops continually throughout our lives.

    “We often ascribe certain brain changes to negative outcomes in adulthood or later life,” Insel said. “But actually there’s certain cognitive features that can be really helpful and useful in aging.” By zooming out and looking at how the brain changes over the course of our lifetimes, Insel hopes that we can have a better understanding of what to expect at these different ages, and why our brains might be more vulnerable to certain disorders in adolescence or older age respectively.

    Yaakov Stern, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, noted that a good next step would be to try to understand exactly how these measures of the brain might be related to cognitive processes — essentially connecting the dots between this research and other work that has looked at the way our brains function throughout our lives.

    He added that many of the things that affect brain development are within our control — such as diet, exercise and social connection.

    “The brain changes with aging. We know that,” Stern said. “What interests me, is there are exposures that seem to be associated with more successful aging.”

  • This holiday season isn’t very merry for consumers, an AP-NORC poll finds

    This holiday season isn’t very merry for consumers, an AP-NORC poll finds

    WASHINGTON — This holiday season isn’t quite so merry for American shoppers as large shares are dipping into savings, scouring for bargains, and feeling like the overall economy is stuck in a rut under President Donald Trump, a new AP-NORC poll finds.

    The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity, and holiday gifts in recent months, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    Roughly half of Americans say it’s harder than usual to afford the things they want to give as holiday gifts, and similar numbers are delaying big purchases or cutting back on nonessential purchases more than they would normally.

    It’s a sobering assessment for the Republican president, who returned to the White House in large part by promising to lower prices, only to find that inflation remains a threat to his popularity just as it did for Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. The poll’s findings look very similar to an AP-NORC poll from December 2022, when Biden was president and the country was grappling with higher rates of inflation. Trump’s series of tariffs have added to inflationary pressures and generated anxiety about the stability of the U.S. economy, keeping prices at levels that many Americans find frustrating.

    The president has insisted there is “no” inflation and the U.S. economy is booming, as he expressed frustration that the public feels differently.

    “When will people understand what is happening?” Trump said Thursday on Truth Social. “When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?”

    Most U.S. adults, 68%, continue to say the country’s economy is “poor,” which is unchanged from December 2024, before Trump returned to the presidency.

    Americans are feeling strained as they continue to see high prices

    White House officials plan to send Trump barnstorming across the country in hopes of bucking up people’s faith in the economy before next year’s midterm elections. But the president this week in Pennsylvania defended the price increases tied to his tariffs by suggesting that Americans should buy fewer dolls and pencils for children. His message is a jarring contrast with what respondents expressed in the poll, even among people who backed him in the 2024 election.

    Sergio Ruiz, 44, of Tucson, Ariz., said he is using more buy now, pay later programs to spread out over time the expense of gifts for his children. He doesn’t put a huge emphasis on politics, but he voted for Trump last year and would like to see lower interest rates to help boost his real estate business. He believes that more Americans having higher incomes would help to manage any affordability issues.

    “Prices are up. What can you do? You need to make more money,” Ruiz said.

    The poll found that when they do shop, about half of Americans are finding the lowest price more than they would normally. About 4 in 10 are dipping into their savings more than at other times.

    Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they’re cutting back on expenses or looking for low prices, but many Republicans are budgeting more than usual as well. About 4 in 10 Republicans are looking for low prices more than they usually would, while a similar share are shopping for nonessential items less than usual.

    Views are largely similar to when Biden was president

    People felt similarly dismal about holiday shopping and the economy when Biden was president in 2022. Inflation had spiked to a four-decade high that summer. Three years later, inflation has eased substantially, but it’s still running at 3%, a full percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target as the job market appears to have entered a deep freeze.

    The survey indicates that it’s the level of prices — and not just the rate of inflation — that is the point of pain for many families. Roughly 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 87%, say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months, while about two-thirds say they’ve experienced higher prices than usual for electricity and holiday gifts. About half say they’ve seen higher than normal prices for gas recently.

    The findings on groceries and holiday gifts are only slightly lower than in the 2022 poll, despite the slowdown from an inflation rate that hit a four-decade peak in the middle of that year.

    Consumer spending has stayed resilient despite the negative sentiments about the economy, yet Trump’s tariffs have caused changes for shoppers such as Andrew Russell.

    The 33-year-old adjunct professor in Arlington Heights, Ill., said he used to shop for unique gifts from around the globe and buy online. But with the tariffs, he got his gifts locally and “this year, I only bought things that I can pick up in person,” he said.

    Russell, who voted Democratic in last year’s election, said he worries about the economy for next year. He thinks the investment in artificial intelligence has become a bubble that could burst, taking down the stock market.

    Little optimism about an economic rebound in 2026

    Few people expect the situation to meaningfully improve next year — a sign that Trump has done little to instill much confidence from his mix of tariffs, income tax cuts, and foreign trips to attract investments. Trump has maintained that the benefits from his policies will begin to snowball in 2026.

    About 4 in 10 U.S. adults expect next year will be economically worse for the country. Roughly 3 in 10 say conditions won’t change much. Only about 2 in 10 think things will get better, with Republicans being more optimistic.

    The belief that things will get better has slipped from last year, when about 4 in 10 said that 2025 would be better than 2024.

    Millicent Simpson, 56, of Cleveland, said she expects the economy to be worse for people like her who rely on Medicaid for healthcare and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Simpson voted Democratic last year and blames Trump for the greater economic pressures that she faces going into the winter.

    “He’s making it rough for us,” she said. “He’s messing with the government assistance for everybody, young and old.”

    The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

  • A guide to good manners at the retail counter this holiday season

    A guide to good manners at the retail counter this holiday season

    As shoppers flood stores across the country during the year’s biggest shopping season, retail workers are bracing for what many describe as the most demanding — and often demoralizing — stretch of the job.

    “It magnifies everything,” said Nick Leighton, host of the podcast Were You Raised by Wolves?, which he cohosts with comedian Leah Bonnema. Together, they dissect etiquette and the subtleties of social behavior.

    “People are stressed, they’re busy, they’re frazzled,” he said. “When that happens, we tend to forget other people exist.”

    Whether it’s gridlocked parking lots or shelves picked clean, the holiday retail environment can become a pressure cooker where manners evaporate quickly.

    November and December have long driven retail sales, prompting companies to hire large numbers of seasonal workers to manage the surge. These workers often absorb the brunt of shoppers’ frustration. Some customers treat employees as extensions of a corporation rather than as people.

    This year, there might be even fewer employees to handle crowds of holiday shoppers. Companies say they could cut back on seasonal workers because of economic uncertainty, while at the same time, shoppers are expected to spend more than they did last year.

    “Yelling at a worker isn’t doing anything,” Leighton noted. “Everyone else is busy, too. … Your shopping isn’t more important than the next person’s.”

    Here are some expert suggestions on how customers can be kinder, more polite, and more empathetic toward the people helping to execute all those holiday lists.

    Manners apply everywhere

    People who behave courteously generally do so everywhere, while those who are rude in stores often have similar issues in their personal lives, etiquette consultants say.

    “We do not pay retail workers to be a therapist, a social worker, or a punching bag. It’s not appropriate, and it’s not fair,” said Jodi R.R. Smith, president of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting in Massachusetts. Long before she advised companies on etiquette, Smith worked several holiday seasons at a Hallmark store.

    Plan your shopping trip and leave time

    Smith advises shoppers to plan ahead — knowing who is on their list, which stores they need to visit and when they will go. “Set yourself up for success,” she said. “Bring water or a snack. Do not go hungry.”

    Timing matters as well. “Ask yourself, ‘When is the best time to go?’” she said. “Weekends are busier, lines are longer, and parking is tighter. If possible, go on a Wednesday morning when the store opens.”

    Establish a little rapport

    Smith suggests making friendly eye contact with workers, offering a greeting, and using humor to diffuse tense moments. If someone in line becomes irritable, she said, a gentle joke about needing a nap can reset the mood.

    “We don’t have control over others’ behavior, but we certainly do over ours,” she said.

    Shoppers can help reduce frustration by asking questions — and recognizing that workers may not have all the answers, said Elizabeth Medeiros, 59, who spent more than 35 years in retail in New York and the Boston area.

    Some companies are acting preemptively. Delta Air Lines is encouraging kindness between customers and employees with a “Centennial Cheer” program. It says it will recognize “100,000 acts of kindness” with Holiday Medallion cards, which can be redeemed for gifts.

    Manage expectations

    Customers often assume store employees can control everything from inventory and discounts to restocking speed and even the behavior of other shoppers, she said.

    They can’t.

    “Customers are focused, especially during the holidays,” said Medeiros, a former district sales manager and longtime store manager. “They’re checking off lists and looking for deals, and anything that interferes with that throws them off.”

    Holiday work is already tough for staff under the best of circumstances, she noted. “Everyone is often stretched thin. Breaks get skipped, shifts get extended unexpectedly, and six-day workweeks become common.”

    As Smith puts it: “Clerks are not the CEO. Don’t expect someone making hourly wages in December to change a store policy you don’t like.”

    Training workers to defuse tension

    Adam Lukoskie, executive director of the National Retail Federation Foundation, emphasized that most customer interactions remain positive.

    “In the news you might see a couple of incidents, but most experiences are OK,” he said. “We work hard to provide a high-quality environment.”

    The industry has invested in new training programs to prepare workers for tense encounters, Lukoskie said.

    The foundation’s RISE Up skills-training courses now reach more than 80,000 people annually. “It gives associates the tools to provide customer service and to understand that an angry customer is usually mad at the problem, not at them,” he said.

    Above all, he said, shoppers should reframe how they view the person behind the counter.

    “Act as if the person helping you is your daughter or son, or your mother or father. Not just someone there to do a task for you.”

  • Joel Embiid scores season-high 39 points to lead Sixers to 115-105 win against Pacers

    Joel Embiid scores season-high 39 points to lead Sixers to 115-105 win against Pacers

    PHILADELPHIA — Joel Embiid scored a season-high 39 points, Paul George had 23 and the 76ers beat the Indiana Pacers 115-105 on Friday night.

    VJ Edgecombe added 22 points for the 76ers, who played without Tyrese Maxey — the NBA’s third-leading scorer (31.5 points per game) sat out with an illness.

    Pascal Siakam had 20 points for the defending Eastern Conference champion Pacers, who dropped to 6-19.

    Siakham’s jumper with 8:24 remaining gave Indiana a 100-95 lead, but the Pacers missed nine consecutive shots — including three 3-pointers — after that as the 76ers went on a 13-2 run. The spurt was capped with Embiid’s offensive rebound and follow basket. The 2023 MVP was fouled on the play and made the free throw to push Philadelphia’s lead to 108-102.

    Embiid, the seven-time All-Star who has been beset with injuries the last 1 1/2 seasons, came in averaging 18.2 points while playing in just nine of Philadelphia’s 23 contests due to left and right knee issues. However, he looked more like himself on Friday, hitting a step-back 3-pointer at the first-half buzzer to give him 14 points inn the second quarter.

    Philadelphia improved to 6-4 with Embiid in the lineup.

    The 76ers had four days off since losing 112-108 at home to LeBron James and the Lakers on Sunday night, giving Embiid plenty of time for rest and recovery. He was upgraded after being probable on the pregame injury report.

    George, who was drafted by Indiana and played there from 2010–2017, also looked more like the nine-time All-Star that he is by finishing with a season high in points following offseason knee surgery.

    Philadelphia was 33 for 43 on free throws while Indiana was 16 for 19. Indiana’s frustration with the disparity in attempts was apparent in the final minutes, as head coach Rick Carlisle received a technical foul with just over three minutes left and Siakham was assessed with one with 1:41 remaining.