Author: Reporter

Senior Hamas officials said on November 21 that an agreement could be reached soon in which the militant group would release hostages and Israel would free Palestinian prisoners. Israel, the United States, and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, have been negotiating for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the entry of more humanitarian aid. Similar predictions of a hostage agreement in recent weeks have proven premature. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced meetings of three key decision-making bodies to discuss “the issue of the release of hostages.” “On...

A recent poll of Americans found that nearly half of those who stopped giving to charity over the past five years said they did so because they thought wealthier people could afford to give more, and should. Others said they simply could not afford to give. The survey of more than 2,100 adults across the United States, released by the Better Business Bureau’s Give.org, adds to research on the shrinking number of households that contribute to charity each year, dropping from 66% in 2000 to 49.6% in 2018. The impact of the decline became even more clear when a...

A generation ago nonprofit organizations regularly lobbied for legislation and served as advocates on issues. But according to a recent survey, charities are now far more reluctant to seek to influence lawmakers and other policymakers. The survey, conducted for Independent Sector, a membership organization of nonprofits and grantmakers, found that less than one-third of nonprofits have actively advocated for policy issues or lobbied on specific legislation over the past five years, down from nearly three-quarters of nonprofits in 2000. And even though nonprofits work on a range of issues that are affected by policy choices, such as funding for...

Advertisers are fleeing social media platform X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with billionaire owner Elon Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. IBM and Comcast said that they stopped advertising on X after a report said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis — a fresh setback as the platform formerly known as Twitter tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars, X’s main source of revenue. The liberal advocacy group Media Matters said in a...

The country’s largest Christian university was fined $37.7 million by the federal government amid accusations that it misled students about the cost of its graduate programs. Grand Canyon University, which has more than 100,000 students, mostly in online programs, faces the largest fine of its kind ever issued by the U.S. Education Department. The university dismissed the allegations as “lies and deceptive statements.” An Education Department investigation found that Grand Canyon lied to more than 7,500 current and former students about the cost of its doctoral programs. As far back as 2017, the university told students its doctoral programs...

Storms, floods, fires and other extreme weather events led to more than 43 million displacements involving children between 2016 and 2021, according to a United Nations report. More than 113 million displacements of children will occur in the next three decades, estimated the UNICEF report released on October 6, which took into account risks from flooding rivers, cyclonic winds and floods that follow a storm. Some children, like 10-year-old Shukri Mohamed Ibrahim, are already on the move. Her family left their home in Somalia after dawn prayers on a Saturday morning five months ago. The worst drought in more...