Lebanon has declared a day of national mourning, after Israel launched its deadliest wave of bombings since resuming large-scale attacks in early March. The devastating attacks began without warning on Wednesday, striking Beirut, the Beqaa Valley, Mount Lebanon, Sidon and villages across southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 203 people were killed and more than a thousand injured; Civil Defense workers put the death toll even higher, at over 250. The attacks struck commercial areas and apartment high-rises and included Sunni Muslim and Christian neighborhoods in central Beirut that are unaffiliated with Hezbollah. Belgium’s foreign minister, who survived an Israeli strike just a few hundred yards from the Belgian Embassy, wrote on X, “Just before I was commending President Aoun for offering to open official negotiations with Israel towards a ceasefire, Israel launched, with no previous warning, one of the most massive strikes since the beginning of the hostilities … The ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran must include Lebanon!”

The United Nations and world leaders quickly condemned the attacks, which came just hours after the U.S. and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire agreement. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped broker the deal, called on all parties to exercise restraint and respect the ceasefire as agreed upon. Both Sharif and the speaker of the Iranian parliament had said the ceasefire was supposed to include Lebanon, but on Wednesday Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, said Lebanon was not part of the deal.

Vice President JD Vance: “I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.”

President Trump has warned Iran that U.S. forces will remain deployed across the Middle East until a ”REAL AGREEMENT” is reached between the two countries. Trump’s threat came as Iranian media reported Tehran was considering pulling out of the ceasefire deal with Washington amid Israel’s stepped-up assault on Lebanon and conflicting accounts over the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, the White House denied reports that Iran continues to control shipping through the waterway, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt citing an “uptick of traffic.” According to ship-tracking data, just four vessels passed through the waterway on Wednesday with their transponders turned on — that compares to an average of 140 vessels per day before the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli drone strike on Wednesday killed Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Mohammed Wishah as he was traveling along the coastal road that runs west of Gaza City. The attack caused his car to burst into flames. Seven bystanders were reportedly injured. Wishah joins a long list of Al Jazeera journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including Samer Abu Daqqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, Ahmed Al-Louh and Hossam Shabat. Gaza’s Media Office says Wishah’s killing reflects a “systematic targeting and assassination” of Palestinian journalists by Israel. His death brings the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023 to 262. Al Jazeera says it will pursue legal action against those responsible.

At least 326 aid workers were killed in the line of duty across 21 countries in 2025, bringing the three-year death toll to more than 1,000. That’s according to the U.N.’s top aid coordinator Tom Fletcher, who briefed the Security Council Wednesday. More than 560 of those deaths occurred in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, 130 in Sudan, 60 in South Sudan and 25 each in Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned the council that “we are losing our humanity in war.” This is U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher.

Tom Fletcher: “These trends, alongside the collapse in funding for our lifesaving work, are a symptom of a lawless, bellicose, selfish and violent world. Killing humanitarians is part of the broader attack on the U.N. Charter and on international humanitarian law.”

Here in New York, about 500 antiwar demonstrators led by Jewish Voice for Peace gathered Wednesday outside the office of Comptroller Mark Levine, protesting his plans to invest city pension funds in Israeli bonds, which provide resources for Israel’s bombing of Iran, Lebanon and Gaza. Joining the “emergency Passover Seder” was Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist and political prisoner who was jailed by ICE for over 100 days beginning in March of last year.

Mahmoud Khalil: “Levine says it’s profitable to invest in the Israeli bonds. He says that they are solid investments with high returns. It’s not surprising that a war economy is profitable. That’s what Israel’s economy is. It’s a war economy. That’s why there is high yields. But buying these bonds only ensures the injustice and the system of occupation continues.”

President Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House Wednesday amid growing threats to pull the U.S. from the military alliance. After the meeting, Trump lashed out on social media, writing, ”NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports the Trump administration is considering moving U.S. troops out of NATO member countries Spain and Germany as punishment for not supporting the U.S. in its war on Iran.

The Trump administration is once again seeking to eliminate a federal program that helps low-income households pay heating and cooling bills. It’s the sixth time a White House budget proposal under President Trump has proposed eliminating LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Its cancellation would impact at least 6 million low-income households at a time of spiraling energy costs, saving about $4 billion in annual spending. Meanwhile, a new analysis finds deep cuts to federal funding for food assistance in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill led to 2.5 million fewer Americans receiving SNAP benefits in the second half of 2025. This comes as the White House has proposed a record-shattering $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget for the next fiscal year.

Voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District have elected Republican Clay Fuller to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former top ally of Donald Trump who resigned from Congress last year after breaking with the president over Gaza, the spiraling cost of healthcare and the Epstein files. Fuller is a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard who worked as a fellow at the White House during Trump’s first term. His victory over Democrat Shawn Harris preserves the Republican Party’s narrow majority in the House of Representatives. But Fuller won by fewer than 12 percentage points in a district Trump carried by 37 points in the 2024 election — another sign that Republicans are poised for historic losses in November’s midterm elections.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Appeals Judge Chris Taylor was elected to a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court in Tuesday’s election. Her victory over a conservative opponent expands the liberal majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court amid partisan fights over abortion rights, voting rights and labor laws.

In North Carolina, federal prosecutors have charged a former civilian employee at the Fort Bragg Army Base with sharing classified defense information with a journalist. An indictment accuses 40-year-old Courtney Williams of violating the 1917 Espionage Act, as well as multiple nondisclosure agreements, after she spoke with journalist Seth Harp about sexual and race-based harassment at Fort Bragg. Harp published his findings in his book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” and in a Politico magazine article. FBI Director Kash Patel announced Williams’s arrest in a social media post, writing, “This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way.” Seth Harp responded in a statement, “Ironically, while the FBI was monitoring my phone and investigating Courtney on vague and weak charges, the perpetrators of half a dozen murders involving Fort Bragg soldiers involved in the drug trade have gone entirely unsolved. A real police agency would go after real criminals instead of engaging in this sort of penny-ante political theater.” Click here to see our interview with journalist Seth Harp about U.S. Special Forces’ involvement in drug trafficking and murder at Fort Bragg.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi will not appear before the House Oversight Committee for her scheduled April 14 deposition on the Epstein files. The Justice Department says Bondi was subpoenaed in her capacity as attorney general and doesn’t have to testify because she no longer holds that office. Trump removed Bondi from her role last week over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. Last month, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared for a closed-door briefing with the House Oversight Committee, prompting a walkout by Democrats who demanded that Bondi testify under oath. Democratic Congressmember Robert Garcia said in a statement that the congressional subpoena is binding regardless of her firing, saying, “Our bipartisan subpoena is to Pam Bondi, whether she is the Attorney General or not. She must come in to testify immediately, and if she defies the subpoena, we will begin contempt charges.” Republican Congressmember Nancy Mace said, “Pam Bondi was subpoenaed by name, not by title.”

Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will voluntarily meet with the committee next month to answer questions about his connection to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein files show Lutnick remained in contact with him for years even after Lutnick claimed to have cut off ties. Lutnick and his family visited Epstein’s island in 2012, four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Here in New York, about 150 workers at ProPublica held a 24-hour strike Wednesday to demand their first collective bargaining agreement since they organized a union in 2023. Workers are seeking higher salaries, protections against layoffs and an agreement over the use of artificial intelligence. This is Katie Campbell, a documentary filmmaker and journalist at ProPublica.

Katie Campbell: “We’ve heard at the bargaining table that we’re special and that we are not a factory work — we’re not factory workers making widgets. But I think that all workers, regardless of industry, deserve job protections, and we shouldn’t be any different than people who are working in factories or who are nurses or who are teachers. We should be able to have the same kind of job protections that other workers in other industries have.”