(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine.
“I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on his conservative social media platform. “We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects.”
On Ukraine, Trump said he and Putin “agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Egypt plans to “present a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction” of the Gaza Strip that does not require the displacement of Palestinians, the country’s foreign ministry said.
Cairo said it will work with President Donald Trump’s administration “to achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian cause that upholds the rights of the region’s peoples,” the statement posted to X on Tuesday said.
Cairo’s reconstruction proposal will ensure “the Palestinian people remain in their homeland” and will align “with their legitimate and legal rights,” the statement said.
Any solution should “avoid endangering the gains of peace in the region” and address “the root cause of the conflict by ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and implementing the two-state solution as the only path to stability and coexistence among the region’s peoples,” the ministry added.
Egypt’s proposal comes as Arab states scramble to respond to Trump’s proposal for the U.S. to “take over” and “clean out” Gaza, relocating its 2 million people and reconstructing the territory devastated by the war between Israel and Hamas since October 2023.
A source told ABC News on Wednesday that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will meet in Riyadh to discuss how to address Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal. The source said the talks will likely take place later next week before the Arab Summit in Cairo on Feb. 27.
Trump has suggested that regional partners like Jordan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia should rehome displaced Palestinians, whom he said would not be allowed to return to Gaza. Regional leaders have rejected the proposal.
“I don’t have to threaten that, I don’t think. I think we’re above that. I do believe we’re above that,” Trump said Tuesday. The president’s comments came after Abdullah announced in the Oval Office that Jordan would take in 2,000 sick children from Gaza, but didn’t commit to anything beyond that.
Abdullah told Trump during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday that Arab states were putting together their own post-war plan for Gaza. The king will join other Arab leaders at a special summit in Egypt later this month to discuss Cairo’s counterproposal to Trump’s resettlement plan.
The king later said he reiterated to Trump Jordan’s “steadfast position” against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. “This is the unified Arab position,” he said in a post to X.
Saudi Arabia has also pushed back on Trump’s controversial plan, with its foreign ministry saying last week there would be no normalization deal with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“The establishment of the Palestinian state is a firm, unwavering position,” the ministry said in a statement posted on X.
De facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “has affirmed this position in a clear and explicit manner that does not allow for any interpretation under any circumstances,” the statement added.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected Trump’s plan as “absurd.” In a statement, the group said the president’s comments “reflect a profound ignorance about Palestine and the region. Gaza is not a piece of real estate to be bought and sold; it is an inseparable part of our occupied Palestinian land.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw his weight behind Trump’s proposal, describing it as “a totally different vision, a much better one for the state of Israel.”
Netanyahu — who met with Trump at the White House last week — described the plan as “revolutionary, creative — and we’re discussing it. He is very determined to carry it out. It opens up many opportunities for us.”
The prime minister’s security cabinet met for several hours on Tuesday to discuss Trump’s Gaza plan. An Israeli official told ABC News that all members expressed support for what they called Trump’s “revolutionary vision for the future of Gaza.”
Netanyahu and his cabinet also discussed Hamas’ Monday announcement that it would delay the planned release of a group of Israeli hostages. Hamas said the delay was a response to alleged repeated Israeli violations of the ceasefire deal signed in January.
The delay prompted Trump’s threat that “all hell is going to break out” if all remaining Gaza hostages were not released by Saturday at noon. The Israeli official said the country’s security cabinet was in full support of Trump’s remarks.
“If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will be terminated, and the [Israel Defense Forces] will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Trump later told reporters of the deadline, “It’s going to be a big moment. We’ll see what happens. I don’t expect much happening with these people, but we’ll see what happens.”
ABC News’ Ayat Al-Tawy, Morgan Winsor, Sarah Kolinovsky, Will Gretsky, Joe Simonetti and Jordana Miller contributed to this report.
(LONDON and NEW YORK) — Many Palestinian doctors who worked in the Gaza Strip are either dead, have fled the territory or are in prison, U.S. doctors told the United Nations.
Four U.S. medical doctors who have worked in the Gaza Strip for periods throughout the past 15 months spoke about their concerns and the priorities for bringing critical care needed in Gaza during a press conference at the U.N. in New York last week.
Drs. Thaer Ahmad, Ayesha Khan, Feroze Sidhwa and Mahmooda Syed met with the U.N. secretary-general and spoke last week with the press about the future of Gaza.
All four said they agreed they had never seen anything like what they saw during their time working in Gaza.
U.N. officials and nongovernmental organizations have repeatedly warned that the health care system in Gaza has collapsed and is lacking the critical resources needed to meet an overwhelming demand of injured and sick Palestinians.
With the fragile ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas that is allowing aid to flow at much higher levels than it has in the past few months, and medical evacuations set to increase, the doctors said there needs to be a plan for the immediate needs of Palestinians.
Sidhwa said rebuilding hospitals is a priority.
Only 16 of 36 hospitals in Gaza remain partially functional, the U.N. said in January, before the latest ceasefire agreement to pause fighting was reached. Most of the functioning hospitals aren’t able to treat complex injuries or chronic diseases, the U.N. said.
Israel targeted and raided multiple health facilities in Gaza, most recently the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, in what the Israeli military said were anti-terrorism operations aimed at Hamas.
As a result, much of the infrastructure has been damaged, as shown in an ABC News visual analysis of the state of several hospitals after a year of war.
But it is not just the infrastructure that needs to be replaced, Sidhwa said, but all the machines and equipment, too. “There is extreme need with minimal capacity,” he said.
While this process takes place, the immediate priority should be evacuations, the doctors said. But even those come with many complications, especially for children, who, in the words of spokesperson Tess Ingram of UNICEF, are “disproportionately wearing the scars of the war.”
Many families are worried, for example, that they will not be allowed back inside Gaza, Ahmad said, urging for the evacuated children to be relocated to the West Bank or Jerusalem instead of Egypt or the U.S.
Syed said Israel only allows one adult to accompany each child evacuated from Gaza, while many parents have more children who require their presence.
These bureaucratic hurdles slow down what the doctors say is an urgent race against time.
Khan held up a photograph of a little girl’s foot, which was badly burned. When the patient came in, the doctor said he thought the wounds were fresh, but it turned out they were months old, and she might need an amputation.
Like that girl, many children and adults in Gaza sustained wounds months ago, increasing the chances of infections and long-term disabilities, the doctors said.
A senior U.N. official told the Security Council in October 2024 that Gaza has the largest number of amputee children in modern history.
The doctors also spoke about their personal challenges and the indescribable struggles of their colleagues in Gaza.
The four doctors said they faced many obstacles and now fear retaliation for sharing the details of what they say are violations of international humanitarian law, which Israel denies.
“The white coat does not protect you,” said Ahmad, conveying what he says is a shared belief among many Palestinian doctors.
Ahmad worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where the director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was detained in December by Israel. He has not been heard from since, but Israeli forces have confirmed he is in their custody as a suspected Hamas operative.
Safiya is one of more than 365 health care workers being held in Israeli prison, the head of information for the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi, told ABC News in January. ABC News has reached out to Israel for comment.
“This was the hospital that he built. Those were the departments that he helped develop. And he refused to leave,” Ahmad said of the Kamal Adwan director.
“Then he watched the military raid the hospital, destroy it, getting injured in the process,” he added. “Then he had to walk up to the tank, in his white coat, and shake the hand of the military that killed his son and injured him.”
As the U.N. panel concluded, Secretary-General António Guterres posted on X: “I was deeply moved by the testimonies and impressed by the dedication of 4 American doctors that have worked in Gaza. 2,500 children must be immediately evacuated with the guarantee that they will be able to return to their families and communities.”
The storm moves into the Golden State on Wednesday, with the heaviest rain falling on Thursday and Friday.
Some areas could see as much as 5 to 10 inches of rain while the Sierra Nevada mountain range could see 5 to 8 feet of snow.
A flood watch is in effect from the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles.
The biggest concern for mudslides and landslides will be on the burn scar areas from last month’s devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles. These burn scar spots could see 3 to 5 inches of rain over the next three days.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the city is preparing by clearing catch basins of fire debris; offering residents over 6,500 sandbags; setting up over 7,500 feet of concrete barriers; and having systems in place to capture polluted runoff.
Landslides from burn scars could be a threat in the region for years to come.
Post-wildfire landslides can exert great loads on objects in their paths, strip vegetation, block drainage ways, damage structures and endanger human life, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Additionally, wildfires could destabilize pre-existing, deep-seated landslides over long periods. Flows generated over longer periods could be accompanied by root decay and loss of soil strength, according to the USGS.
ABC News’ Julia Jacobo contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A group of nonprofits suing the Trump administration over its 90-day foreign aid freeze is accusing government officials of “accelerating their terminations of contracts and suspensions of grants of USAID and State Department partners,” according to court documents filed Wednesday.
The aid groups, who filed their suit Tuesday, said many of them “received new purported termination notices, including yesterday and this morning” and suggested that government officials “may be doing so specifically in response to this lawsuit.”
The groups asked a federal judge to either issue a temporary restraining order to prevent further terminations, or schedule an emergency hearing on Wednesday to address the matter.
Defendants in the suit include President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Acting USAID Administrator Peter Marocco, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, the State Department, USAID, and OMB.
The plaintiffs claim that Trump’s aid freeze amounts to an “unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power that has created chaos” around the globe, according to the suit.
The lawsuit alleges that the foreign aid freeze is unlawful, exceeds Trump’s authority as president, and is causing havoc.
“One cannot overstate the impact of that unlawful course of conduct: on businesses large and small forced to shut down their programs and let employees go; on hungry children across the globe who will go without; on populations around the world facing deadly disease; and on our constitutional order,” the lawsuit says.
Photo by Roberto Pfeil/picture alliance via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Semaglutide, a medication widely used for diabetes and weight loss, may offer another unexpected benefit — it could help people drink less alcohol.
A study published in JAMA Psychiatry enrolled 48 adults between ages 21 and 65 who had been diagnosed with alcohol use disorder but were not actively seeking treatment.
Half received semaglutide, a type of GLP-1 receptor agonist, while the other half received no treatment. Over the nine-week trial, participants taking semaglutide started at a dose of 0.25 mg per week, which gradually increased to 1.0 mg in the final week — a much lower dose than what’s typically prescribed for weight loss.
”We found the largest effects for outcomes related to drinking quantity or heavy drinking…[semaglutide] appeared to reduce drinking quantity,” said Christian Hendershot, PhD, the study’s lead author and director of clinical research at the USC Institute for Addiction Science, in an interview with ABC News.
In a controlled lab setting, participants taking semaglutide drank less alcohol. However, outside the lab, their overall drinking days and daily alcohol intake did not change significantly. They did, however, report fewer binge-drinking episodes and reduced alcohol cravings.
Hendershot emphasized that the participants were not actively trying to cut back on drinking or become abstinent, making the drug’s impact particularly interesting.
”The reason why semaglutide may have an effect on addictive behaviors and cravings and may play a role in treating alcohol use disorder is still not entirely clear,” said Dr. Stephanie Widmer, an emergency medicine physician and addiction medicine expert. ”More research needs to be done in order to really get a firm grasp on what the pathophysiology is behind this,” she added.
One possible explanation is that GLP-1 receptor agonists increase feelings of fullness, which could make alcohol less appealing, Hendershot said.
Previous animal studies suggest these medications may also affect the brain’s reward system, reducing the desire for substances like alcohol and nicotine. However, it remains unclear if the same effect holds true in humans.
Interestingly, the medication also appeared to reduce cigarette use in a small group of participants who smoked, hinting at broader effects on addictive behaviors.
”Preclinical studies indicate that GLP-1 receptor agonists reduce not just alcohol intake, but also nicotine self-administration and nicotine-related reward,” Hendershot noted. However, no FDA-approved medications currently exist to treat both alcohol and nicotine dependence.
Another unexpected benefit was that those treated with semaglutide lost 5% of their body weight over the course of the study. While this result is consistent with previous research, Hendershot noted the need to evaluate potential side effects, particularly in individuals with lower BMIs.
The study did have several important limitations. It was small, lasted only nine weeks, and was conducted in a controlled setting that may not fully reflect real-world drinking behaviors.
Additionally, because participants were not actively trying to reduce their alcohol consumption, their motivation—or lack of it—could have influenced the results, Henderson implied.
Still, the findings suggest semaglutide could play a role in reshaping addiction treatment. According to the National Institutes of Health, only three medications are currently FDA-approved to treat alcohol dependence, and many individuals with the condition never receive any treatment.
In 2023, more than 2 million people had alcohol use disorder, yet only about 8% received treatment.
”If semaglutide proves to be a better option than the three FDA-approved drugs that are currently in use, this would be a huge breakthrough for many,” Widmer said.
Dr. Christopher Wachuku is an internal medicine preliminary intern at Lankenau Medical Center and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Emily Curiel/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(TOPEKA, Kan.) — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has vetoed Senate Bill 63, which would have restricted gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
“Right now, the legislature should be focused on ways to help Kansans cope with rising prices,” Kelly said in a statement emailed late Tuesday. “That is the most important issue for Kansans. That is where my focus is.”
The bill would bar health care providers from administering gender-affirming medical care – including puberty suppressants and hormone therapies – for someone under the age of 18, only for the purposes of gender transitioning. The ban would also apply to gender-affirming surgeries.
“Infringing on parental rights is not appropriate, nor is it a Kansas value,” said Kelly in her veto message. “As I’ve said before, it is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind. This legislation will also drive families, businesses, and health care workers out of our state, stifling our economy and exacerbating our workforce shortage issue.”
This is the third time Kelly has vetoed similar transgender youth care bills, but the bill may now have the support to pass.
The bill passed the state legislature with flying colors – passing the House 83-35 and the Senate 32-8.
In 2023, the attempt to override a past trans care ban veto lost in the House 82-43.
State Republicans quickly denounced Kelly’s veto.
“The governor’s devotion to extreme left-wing ideology knows no bounds, vetoing a bipartisan bill that prevents the mutilation of minors,” said State Sen. Ty Masterson in an online statement. “The Senate stands firmly on the side of protecting Kansas children and will swiftly override her veto before the ink from her pen is dry.”
Top national medical associations such as the American Medical Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and American Academy of Pediatrics and more than 20 others argue that gender-affirming care is safe, effective, beneficial, and medically necessary for transgender populations.
Kelly joins governors past and present in Ohio and Arkansas in vetoing bills that targeted gender-affirming youth care. However, both of their vetoes were overridden.
Across the country, trans youth care restrictions have faced legal hurdles in their enforcement.
The battle and debate has most recently made its way to the national stage, with the Supreme Court considering U.S. v. Skrmetti, which will decide if Tennessee’s law banning some gender-affirming care for transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
(WASHINGTON) — A 25-year-old associate of Elon Musk and former Treasury Department employee was “mistakenly” given the ability to make changes to a sensitive federal payment system, officials with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service disclosed in a series of court filings late Tuesday.
Treasury Department officials said the “error” was quickly corrected, and a forensic investigation into the actions of Marko Elez — who resigned from his position last week after The Wall Street Journal unearthed a series of racist social media posts — remains ongoing.
“To the best of our knowledge, Mr. Elez never knew of the fact that he briefly had read/write permissions for the [Secure Payment System] database, and never took any action to exercise the ‘write’ privileges in order to modify anything within the SPS database — indeed, he never logged in during the time that he had read/write privileges, other than during the virtual walk-through — and forensic analysis is currently underway to confirm this,” wrote Joseph Gioeli III, a deputy commissioner at Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
The high-profile mistake at BFS — which effectively serves as the federal government’s checkbook by disbursing more than $5 trillion annually — comes as a federal judge in New York is weighing whether to continue to block individuals associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice initially insisted that Elez was strictly given “read-only” access to sensitive records, but the affidavits submitted by BFS employees on Tuesday noted that the 25-year-old was inadvertently given the ability to “read/write” the sensitive system that agencies use to send “large dollar amount transactions” to the Treasury Department.
According to Gioeli, Treasury Department officials also provided Elez with copies of the “source code” for multiple payment systems that he could edit in a digital “sandbox.”
“Mr. Elez could review and make changes locally to copies of the source code in the cordoned-off code repository; however, he did not have the authority or capability to publish any code changes to the production system or underlying test environments,” the filing said.
Elez resigned from his role on Feb. 6, and Gioielli claimed that the 25-year-old former SpaceX and X employee was the “only individual on the Treasury DOGE Team” who was given direct access to payment systems or source code. A “preliminary review” of his digital activity suggests that Elez stayed within the permitted bounds of his role when accessing the payment systems.
“While forensic analysis is still ongoing, Bureau personnel have conducted preliminary reviews of logs of his activity both on his laptop and within the systems and at this time have found no indication of any unauthorized use, of any use outside the scope that was directed by Treasury leadership, or that Mr. Elez used his BFS laptop to share any BFS payment systems data outside the U.S. Government,” the filing said.
The filings also provided new insights into DOGE’s ongoing mission with the Treasury Department, including to identify fraud, better understand how the payments are fulfilled and to enforce Trump’s day-one executive order that significantly cut foreign aid.
According to Thomas Krause — a tech CEO and DOGE volunteer who is leading the cost-cutting effort at the Treasury Department — DOGE is engaged in 4-to-6-week assessment of the Treasury Department’s payment systems. He was placed at Treasury not only to identify potential fraud but also understand how to use the Department’s payment systems to potentially cut funding to other parts of the government, the filing said.
“BFS is well positioned to help agencies and the federal government holistically understand and take stock of the problems [Government Accountability Office] has reported on,” Krause wrote.
(NEW YORK) — Consumer prices rose 3% in January compared to a year ago, ticking up from the previous month and posing an obstacle for Trump administration tariff policies that many economists expect to raise some prices, government data on Wednesday showed. The inflation reading came in higher than economists had predicted.
The fresh data extends a bout of resurgent inflation that stretches back to last year. Two weeks ago, the Federal Reserve opted to hold interest rates steady in part out of concern regarding the stubborn price increases.
Egg prices, a closely watched symbol of rising costs, soared 53% in January compared to a year ago. An avian flu has decimated the egg supply, lifting prices higher.
Beef prices climbed 5% and bacon prices jumped 6% in January compared to a year ago, data showed. By contrast, prices dropped over that same period for bread, rice and tomatoes.
Core inflation — a measure that strips out volatile food and energy prices — increased 3.3% over the year ending in December, ticking lower than the previous month, the data showed. That gauge also sped up from the previous month.
Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak in June 2022, but price increases remain a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate.
Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, he has announced a series of tariffs, which economists say could push prices higher. Tariffs on steel and aluminum announced by Trump this week could raise prices for a set of products that includes refrigerators, beer and automobiles, experts previously told ABC News.
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday morning, Trump appeared to fault former President Joe Biden for the uptick in inflation, writing: “BIDEN INFLATION UP!”
Biden served during more than half of the month of January, leaving office on Jan. 20. Trump, however, said during the presidential campaign earlier this year that he would bring down prices “starting on day one.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank since its victory in the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestinians hope that one day both territories will become part of a nation-state they can call their own.
But that dream seems further away than ever following Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in response — which has left the strip destroyed.
The far-right factions in Israel are now advocating for the annexation of the West Bank once and for all.
“We left only with our lives, with our safety,” Palestinian Sana Al Zubeidi told ABC News, after being forced to flee her home with her family amid some of the most intense IDF raids there in decades. “We didn’t take anything with us because it was at that moment and we were leaving and that airplanes in the skies were shooting at us.”
Just days ago, the Al Zubeidi family, comprised of a grandfather, grandmother, and 10 grandchildren, was forced to flee their town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Jenin is known as a militant stronghold, a place that has witnessed little to no peace.
Streams of people are fleeing the Jenin refugee camp where they have lived since their displacement in Israel’s founding in 1948. According to the local mayor, 16,000 people have left since the IDF launched “operation iron wall” weeks ago, with the aim to root out terrorism in the West Bank.
Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz stated, “The Jenin refugee camp will not return to its previous condition. After the operation is complete, IDF forces will remain in the camp to ensure that terrorism does not return.” There have been many battles in Jenin, and the families are determined to return to their homes one day.
Meanwhile, many displaced families have sought refuge in Burqin Village. The faces of slain Palestinian fighters throughout the years are visible here. In Israel, they are labeled as terrorists; here, they are viewed as resistance fighters and revered as “martyrs.”
Even Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the attacks on Oct. 7, was displayed prominently in the town square. The IDF claims that “Operation Iron Wall” is different, stating that they are targeting the core of terrorism in the West Bank.
Bulldozers are tearing up the streets, while airstrikes and controlled demolitions are destroying many houses, resulting in a devastating scene.
Roads have been destroyed, restricting movement and cutting off communities from one another across the northern West Bank. Palestinians are routinely stopped and searched.
At least 40,000 Palestinians are impacted by forced displacement due to ongoing Israeli Forces operation in the north.
This war is disrupting almost every aspect of daily life, and there seems to be no end in sight. Jamal Al-Zubaidi has lost two sons in the fighting, another son is injured, and a fourth is in jail.
“I want to tell you something very clear: We are part of the resistance to an illegitimate occupation,” Jamal Al-Zubaidi said. “The military occupation is the biggest terror. The only terrorists are the occupation and the Israeli Army that kill us, that displaced us, that took our land in 1948, that is preventing us from achieving our rights and our self-determination.”
In a statement to ABC News, the IDF reported that they had thwarted 2,000 attempted terrorist attacks since Oct. 7. They described the West Bank as having a “complex security reality” where they are dealing daily with terrorism and violent disturbances.
The statement goes on to assert that the IDF “follows international law” and claims that “terrorist operatives” have exploited civilian infrastructure.
As the raids expand, tragedy unfolds — mourners gather at the funeral of a 2-year-old child, Laila Al-Khatib, who was reportedly killed by gunfire during an Israeli raid on Jenin, according to Palestinian officials.
Security footage from Tulkarm captures the moment the IDF shot 10-year-old Sadam Hussein Rajab on Jan. 28. He was left in critical condition and died just over a week later.
The IDF has confirmed that they know both incidents and have initiated investigations. Israel asserts that this is just the beginning.
“You pay a heavy price for freedom,” Jamal Al-Zubaidi said. “And nothing comes without a price. And we are going to, and we are willing to, pay the price for our rights.”
