The Times of Israel is liveblogging Friday’s events as they happen.
Israelis among the injured in Lisbon streetcar derailment
Israelis are among those injured in a streetcar derailment in Portugal’s capital on Wednesday, AP reports.
The crash killed 16 people and injured 21 others, emergency services said. At least half the victims were foreigners.
Investigators are still sifting through the wreckage in downtown Lisbon, trying to determine why the popular tourist attraction derailed during the busy summer season.
Portugal’s attorney-general’s office says eight victims have been identified so far: five Portuguese, two South Koreans and a Swiss person. There is “a high possibility,” based on recovered documents and other evidence, that the victims also include two Canadians, one American, one German and one Ukrainian, according to the head of the national investigative police, Luís Neves. Three remain to be identified.
Among the injured are Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos Almeida, has said.
US imposes sanctions on Palestinians who asked for Israel war crimes probe
The United States has imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel over allegations of genocide in Gaza, according to a notice posted to the US Treasury Department’s website.
The three groups — Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Ramallah-based Al-Haq — were listed under what the Treasury Department says are International Criminal Court-related designations.
The groups asked the ICC in November 2023 to investigate Israeli air strikes on densely populated civilian areas of Gaza, the siege of the territory and displacement of the population. A year later, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed sanctions on ICC judges as well as its chief prosecutor over the Israeli arrest warrants and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
Trump to rename Department of Defense the ‘Department of War,’ official says
US President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defense the “Department of War,” a White House official says.
The order would authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department, and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” “Department of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence, public communications, according to a White House fact sheet.
The move, which would put Trump’s stamp on the government’s biggest organization and likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars, would instruct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to make the renaming permanent.
Since taking office in January, Trump has set out to rename a range of places and institutions, including the Gulf of Mexico, and to restore the original names of military bases that were changed after racial justice protests.
Department name changes are rare, and require congressional approval, but Trump’s fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party’s congressional leaders have shown little appetite for opposing any of Trump’s initiatives.
The US Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, Navy and Air Force in the wake of World War II. The name was chosen in part to signal that in the nuclear age, the US was focused on preventing wars, according to historians.
Hegseth has said that changing the name is “not just about words — it’s about the warrior ethos.”