Unbiased headline news for Saturday June 29, 2024 – The Biden administration has proposed new wording for parts of the ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas after negotiations reached an impasse.

The revised agreement follows Hamas’s suggested changes to the original three-part plan, including a timeline for a lasting ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, which Israel rejected. The new wording reportedly focuses on conditions for the second phase of the deal, aimed at achieving a “sustainable calm” in Gaza.

No candidate won a simple majority in a four-way race for Iran’s presidency, leading to a run-off election on Friday.

Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and “ultraconservative” candidate Saeed Jalili will be the only names on the ballot. Pezeshkian secured 42.5% of the votes to Jalili’s 38.6% in an election that saw only 40% of the nation’s 60 million eligible voters participate last Friday.

As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen travels to Cairo on Saturday to deliver financial aid at the EU-Egypt Investment Conference, Amnesty International urges the EU to push for human rights reforms in Egypt.

The EU will sign a short-term macro-financial assistance package worth $1.06 billion to strengthen the resilience of the Egyptian economy. This is part of a larger $7.91 billion EU package to support the Strategic and Comprehensive partnership with Egypt.

An attacker with a crossbow wounded a Serbian police officer guarding the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade on Saturday, according to Serbia’s Interior Ministry. The officer responded by fatally shooting the assailant.

Both Serbian and Israeli officials indicated initial signs pointed to terrorism as a motive. Interior Minister Ivica Dacic stated that the attacker shot a bolt at the officer, hitting him in the neck. The officer then “used a weapon in self-defense to shoot the attacker, who died from his injuries.”

Following court rulings last week that blocked key parts of a student loan policy, the Biden administration plans to place about 3 million student loan borrowers into a monthslong payment pause.

The pause will resemble the pandemic-era student loan moratorium, where borrowers do not need to make payments and interest will not accrue. The SAVE Plan is considered the most affordable option for borrowers and represents President Joe Biden’s primary surviving student debt reform effort.


A North Carolina mother has been arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter after allegedly leaving her 8-year-old daughter in a hot car while at work, resulting in the girl’s death, police said.

Officers responded Wednesday evening to reports of a critically ill child inside a vehicle in Charlotte, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The child was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead early Thursday, as stated in the arrest warrant affidavit.

Four people were killed and nine others injured after a vehicle crashed into a Long Island nail salon on Friday, authorities said.

Steven Schwally, 64, was driving a Chevy Traverse southbound at high speed through a parking lot in Deer Park when he crossed a roadway and entered another parking lot, Suffolk County Police reported Saturday. Schwally then crashed through the front window of Hawaii Nail & Spa.

A man was fishing in Florida when a shark bit him, severely injuring his arm, officials said.

The man, in his 40s, was on a boat at the time of the attack, which occurred around 11 a.m. Friday at West Rock near the port of Fernandina, north of Jacksonville near the Florida-Georgia border, Nassau County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Alicia Tarancon said. A responding deputy boarded the man’s boat and applied a tourniquet to his right arm to slow the bleeding.

A former lab manager at Northeastern University has been convicted of staging a hoax explosion on the Boston campus and then lying about it to a federal agent.

Jason Duhaime, 46, from San Antonio, Texas, was convicted on three counts Friday by a federal jury. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each offense. Two attorneys representing Duhaime withdrew from the case in January, court documents show.

By