THE WORST: Hamas militants claimed yesterday that an Israeli mother and her two young children held in Gaza were killed in a bombing attack. Shiri Bibas, 32, her daughter, Ariel 4, and 10 month old son Kfir have been prominent figures in the horror of the October 7^th massacre. A frightened and weeping Shiri Bibas was captured on video clutching her children as they all were taken away.

  Hamas did not say when the family might have been killed. Israeli authorities say the claim is not verified. Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, said the story of Bibas family deaths could be part of Hamas’s “psychological warfare.”

  Hamas late yesterday released another 16 hostages from the Gaza Strip and Israel freed 30 more Palestinian prisoners. Negotiators agreed to extend the peace for another day. 

  The looming issue now is whether Israel can win the freedom of adult male hostages, particularly the older ones. Freedom for members of the military is another question entirely.

  And as the conflict wears on, The United Nations yesterday called for a two-state solution, Israeli and Palestinian, with Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states. 

PASSED INTO HISTORY: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as a controversial shaper of international relations, died at home in Connecticut at age 100.

  A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who spoke with a heavy accent, Kissinger went to Harvard before becoming a member of the Harvard faculty and then moving on into public life. He was a world player like few that exist today. Kissinger was brilliant yet considered at times to be amoral and devious. He ordered the 1969 bombing and of neutral Cambodia without congressional approval, destabilizing the country and leading to a takeover by the murderous Khmer Rouge.

  Kissinger once told the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci: ““Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. This cowboy doesn’t have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone, to show others that he rides into the town and does everything by himself.”

  The owlish and awkward Kissinger was also a social player, dating glamorous women, including the actress Jill St. John.

  Kissinger and Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the secret negotiations that resulted in the 1973 Paris agreement that ended the Vietnam War. His famous “shuttle diplomacy” after the 1973 Middle East war helped stabilize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

  In February of 1972 he made a secret trip to China that opened relations with the US, producing the engaged yet testy diplomacy that exists between the two countries today, including the contested agreement that Taiwan is part of China.

  He was persuasive, powerful, and vengeful. When the NY Times in 1971 published the infamous Pentagon Papers revealing the political and military failures of the Vietnam war, he collaborated with illegal wiretaps of journalists, State Department employees, and even members of his own staff to find the leaker.

  Henry Kissinger said he operated “in a world where power remains the ultimate arbiter.”

NOT PAINLESS: Suicide in the US rose by three percent in 2022 as more than 49,000 people took their own lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC said t’s the highest number ever recorded in this country

  The suicide rate has risen every year since 2000 with dips only in 2019 and 2020. 

  Suicide among 55-64 year-old men jumped 10 percent in 2022. There was a decline for people ages 10-14 and 15-24.

THE UNION LABEL: After winning big new contracts in a strike against the big three automakers, the United Auto workers announced plans to unionize non-union car makers. Their targets include electric car manufacturers Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian as well as 10 foreign-owned automakers: Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda, and Volvo.

IN TRANSITION: Hundreds of students staged a walkout at a Florida school yesterday after their principal and four staff members were removed for allowing a transgender student to play on the girls’ volleyball team. Florida law prohibits transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams.

  The demonstration at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek came after district officials announced that the five employees would be reassigned to non-school sites “pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of improper student participation in sports”.

THE SPIN RACK: Federal authorities have charged an Indian man with an unsuccessful attempt to kill a US citizen who’s been an outspoken advocate of founding a Sikh-majority homeland. The indictment says the plan was linked to the June assassination of a separatist living in Canada, which has become an issue between Washington, Ottawa, and New Delhi. — The co-founder of Students for Trump was arrested and charged with assault last week. Ryan Fournier, 27, is accused of grabbing a woman’s arm and “striking her in the forehead with a firearm,” according to court documents. — Life expectancy in the US was up by 1.1 years in 2022 after dropping during the Covid pandemic. It’s now 77.5 years. — Responding to a question about advertisers leaving Twitter/X because of his endorsement of an antisemitic tweet, Elon Musk said people who try to blackmail him with money can “go fuck yourself.”

BELOW THE FOLD: A Texas mother has been ejected from a school panel advising on sex education after the revelation that she’s been arrested for prostitution and advertises herself nearly naked online. Ashley Ketcherside, 38, brands herself as “true girl next door.” 

  One school board trustee told a reporter, “We had no idea what was going on in her personal life. She was always very friendly and personable.” Exactly. That’s the nature of the business.

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