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President Trump's faith in his ability to wring concessions by taking maximalist positions was on full display this week. So were the costs, as he splintered NATO and then undercut his credibility by climbing down from his threats.
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Two years ago this month, the world was gripped by a series of shocking recordings of a 6-year-old girl in Gaza pleading for help as she sat trapped in a car riddled with bullets alongside the bodies of her cousins, aunt and uncle, who had just been killed by Israeli forces as the family attempted to flee the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza City. Emergency responders with the Palestine Red Crescent Society attempted to secure safe passage to rescue the child, an elementary school student named Hind Rajab, but Israeli forces also targeted and destroyed an ambulance as it arrived on the scene, killing medical workers Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, before firing again at the family's car, killing Rajab.
"When you hear her voice, you can't unhear it," says the award-winning Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, whose new Oscar-shortlisted film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, incorporates recordings of Rajab's emergency calls to depict responders' race-against-the-clock attempt to save her — and the ultimate failure of the international community to prevent her violent death. Ben Hania says the film, a hybrid of documentary and drama, is an effort to "honor [Rajab's] voice, but also to tell this incredible story of those heroes trying to save lives in impossible conditions."
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WASHINGTON - Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents, working with Mexican authorities, discovered a 183-foot long subterranean tunnel in Mexicali, Baja California, near the international border.
"I commend the ICE special agents who worked with their counterparts in Mexico to discover this tunnel," said "Shutting down these tunnels is critical to stopping drug trafficking organizations and ensuring that illicit goods do not make their way into the United States."
HSI special agents and Mexican authorities discovered the tunnel inside of a residence near the international border and determined that a drug trafficking organization (DTO) dug the approximate 4-foot by 3-foot tunnel nearly 22 feet beneath the ground.
The tunnel, which has an entrance measuring 12 feet by 10 feet, extends 3 feet north of the international border wall, but has no exit on the U.S. side of the border. The DTO equipped the tunnel with electricity, ventilation, a rail system with a cart, and an electric hoist.
"These types of tunnels enable drug traffickers to conduct illicit activities virtually undetected across the U.S.-Mexico border," said. "Discovering and shutting down these tunnels deals a major blow to drug trafficking organizations because it denies them the ability to smuggle drugs, weapons and people across the border."
This is an ongoing HSI-led investigation with assistance from the El Centro Sector Border Patrol and the government of Mexico.
The HSI San Diego Tunnel Task Force thanks the government of Mexico for its coope
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