Top U.S. & World Headlines — August 13, 2025

AMY GOODMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL NEWS ANCHOR, TRANSLATED, READS, QUOTES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, AND ANALYZES, The city is part of a plan to forcibly displace nearly 1 million Palestinians and push them into camps further south. Over the past 24 hours, at least eight Palestinians, including three children, have reportedly starved to death due to Israel's months-long blockade on food, including infant formula.

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks over the last day killed at least 123 people and injured nearly 440 others. Among the dead are Palestinians bombed by Israel as they sold water on the streets of Gaza City.

This street, which is full of displaced people from Beit Hanoun and from all over the Gaza Strip, was hit by a missile. There are three martyrs here, women and children, selling water. As you can see, here's the blood, and here's the shrapnel. We are innocent people sitting in our homes, not knowing when this war, this genocide by the Israeli occupation army, will end.

Enough people, enough world. Wake up. We are dying here, day after day, martyrs for no reason."

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have shot and killed another Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. Thirty-five-year-old Tamim Khalil Reda Dawabshah died of his wounds this morning after he was shot by a settler in the town of Douma, south of Nablus. According to a Palestinian rights group, he's at least the 10th Palestinian killed by Israeli settlers since the beginning of the year.

Protests and vigils continue worldwide, demanding accountability and justice following Israel's targeted assassination of Al Jazeera correspondent Nasser Sharif, along with four of his colleagues, and a freelance journalist outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Sunday. Here in New York, hundreds gathered outside The New York Times Tuesday, decrying what advocates say is the Western media's complicity with Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and

the relentless killing of Palestinian journalists. In Texas, protesters mobilized outside the Dallas Morning News headquarters, demanding U.S. reporters speak out against Israel's attacks on the media. Similar actions took place in Los Angeles, outside Fox studios and other U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., where demonstrators rallied outside the offices of NBC, Fox, ITN and The Guardian.

Protesters gathered in Mexico City in solidarity with Gaza journalists. Mexico is the deadliest country in Latin America for media workers. Meanwhile, the Hin Rijab Foundation and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights have filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court against Anas al-Sharif's killers. The United Nations confirmed Tuesday UN officials met with the chair of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation at a U.S.-hosted event on Gaza's crisis.

It was the U.N.'s first direct contact with the foundation, since Israel barred international humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza, turning over control to GHF, a shadowy U.S.- and Israeli-backed organization whose aid distribution sites have been widely condemned as death traps. Over 1,800 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to collect food since GHF took over Gaza's aid operations, with at least 19 aid seekers killed yesterday alone. On Tuesday evening, Israeli peace activists in Tel Aviv condemned Israel's starvation

campaign against Gaza, as they protested outside a hotel where GHF officials were reportedly staying.

We oppose every action that the Gaza humanitarian fund are doing. They must close now. Aid must flow to the 400 points that are existing, with UNRWA and all the other agencies that are ready to do their work, so the food comes to everybody.

Top diplomats from 26 nations, including many U.S. allies, are calling for urgent action to end Israel's siege of Gaza. The foreign ministers of Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and others write in a joint statement that Israel must take immediate, permanent and concrete steps to restore large-scale access for the U.N. and international humanitarian aid groups.

They're also calling for the opening of border crossings into Gaza and an end to lethal force directed against civilians seeking food at U.S. and Israeli-run aid distribution sites. Germany and Hungary did not sign the statement, nor did the Trump administration. Meanwhile, New Zealand's leader has condemned Israel's actions in Gaza as utterly appalling and unacceptable. Prime Minister Christopher Lookson made the comments earlier today, after lawmakers debated

New Zealand's plan to recognize Palestinian statehood.

I think Netanyahu has gone way too far. I think he has lost the plot. And I think that, you know, what we're seeing overnight with the attack on Gaza City is utterly, utterly unacceptable.

In Sudan, at least 40 civilians have been killed in an attack by rapid support forces on a camp sheltering displaced people in Darfur. RSF fighters Monday reportedly stormed the Abu Shuq camp, which has been devastated by famine, opening fire on homes, executing civilians. Others were killed by stray bullets. This comes as cholera is ripping through displacement camps across Darfur, with hundreds of cases reported and at least 80 deaths.

UNICEF says more than 640,000 children under the age of 5 are at risk of contracting the deadly infection. President Trump is holding virtual talks with European officials and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today, ahead of a bilateral meeting Friday in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ahead of today's talks, all EU leaders, with the exception of Hungary's Viktor Orban,

signed a joint statement warning Ukrainian borders should not be redrawn by force. Joining the call was Poland's Prime Minister, Donald Tusk.

Ukraine cannot lose this war, and no one has the right to put pressure on Ukraine when it comes to territorial concessions or other decisions that would smell of capitulation.

President Zelensky once again rejected any ceasefire deal that will require Ukraine trade territory for an end to the war, a concession Trump is pressing for. On Tuesdays, Lenski downplayed reports that Russian forces had advanced six miles deeper into Ukraine's Donetsk region. But Ukraine's military is warning of a Russian troop buildup for a new offensive set to begin in September.

The first U.S. National Guard troops have begun deploying to Washington, D.C., a day after President Trump announced a federal takeover of the D.C. police force. Federal officials say some 800 National Guard troops will be deployed alongside 500 federal law enforcement agents. On Tuesday, The Washington Post revealed the Trump administration is planning a so-called

domestic civil disturbance quick reaction force, composed of hundreds of National Guard troops set to rapidly deploy to other U.S. cities targeted by Trump. The force would be comprised of two groups of 300 soldiers permanently assigned to the force, stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona. The Trump administration Tuesday released its annual human rights reports for every country in the world.

Gone from the documents are entire sections on human rights abuses, including gender-based violence, attacks on LGBTQ+, and women's rights, and discrimination along racial or ethnic lines. Several of the updated reports omit evidence of abuses in countries whose leaders are allied with President Trump. The U.S. report on Israel was slashed by over 80 percent and removes almost all criticism of the Israeli government, with no mention of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by

Israel's blockade of Gaza. A report on Hungary no longer documents extensive government corruption nor a crackdown on LGBTQ plus people, instead concluding, quote, there were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses," unquote. That's the same conclusion in the executive summary of the 2024 report on El Salvador, which has been slashed by three-quarters and no longer cites abuses that many asylum seekers

previously used as their evidence for their cases. By contrast, the 2023 Human Rights Report on El Salvador, written by Biden's State Department, cites arbitrary killings and forced disappearances, torture, life-threatening prison conditions, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, widespread gender-based violence and more.

On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce defended the changes. We weren't going to release something compiled and written by the previous administration. It needed to change, based on the point of view and the vision of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the updated report on South Africa alleges the mistreatment of white Afrikaner farmers, while Brazil's human rights report criticizes the prosecution of Trump ally and former President Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup.

A panel of federal appeals court judges ruled Tuesday teams with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, may access the personal data of millions of U.S. residents held by the Office of Personnel Management and the Departments of Education and the Treasury. The 2-to-1 ruling by Republican-appointed judges on the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals comes over the objections of labor unions which sued to block DOJ's access to the databases, citing federal privacy laws.

DOJ will now have additional information on addresses, employer details and other statistics on tens of millions of people, as well as student debt for more than 40 million borrowers. The White House is planning a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions in order to ensure they align with President Trump's interpretation of U.S. history. That's according to The Wall Street Journal, which obtained a letter from a White House official instructing that Smithsonian exhibits should be, quote, "'accurate, patriotic and enlightening,' ensuring they remain places of learning, wonder and national pride

for generations to come," unquote. This comes after the Smithsonian removed references to Trump's two impeachments during his first term in office. Meanwhile, CNN's reporting the White House moved its official portrait of former President Barack Obama from a prominent position that could be viewed by White House visitors. Portraits of George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, were also moved out of public

view.

A federal judge in New York Tuesday issued a temporary order mandating the Trump administration immediately improve deplorable conditions faced by immigrants in ICE's shadowy detention facility on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. Immigrants have described being held in cells for days or weeks at a time after ICE agents took them into custody at routine immigration appointments or court hearings, often in the same building.

They'd been confined to overcrowded cells, without access to showers, medication or a change of clothes, forced to sleep on the concrete floor, left hungry and without contact to the outside. The order also directs Trump officials to ensure people detained can make free, unmonitored and confidential calls to their lawyers within 24 hours of being taken into custody. And in Los Angeles, a coalition of labor and immigrant rights organizations held a series of boycotts and protests Tuesday against corporations like Walmart, Home Depot and Target, which

activists say are complicit in Trump's mass deportation efforts. Martin Monteca is an organizer with the California Gig Workers Union.

Trump and his administration continue to break the law. They're the ones breaking the law, ignoring the judges' decision, and continue to kidnap people. So we're going to resist, because we are on the right side of history, and we want everyone not to be afraid, not to go into hiding, but to come out in the streets, live your lives, go to work and fight back.

The 24-hour boycott came after intensifying immigration raids at Home Depots and other locations that are known gathering places for day laborers. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, where you can download our news app, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to the Daily Podcast and so much our news app, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to the Daily Podcast and so much

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