A rare general strike in Israel to protest the failure to return hostages held in Gaza led to disruptions around the country on Monday, while U.S. President Joe Biden added to the pressure by saying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t doing enough to reach a deal for a cease-fire and hostage release.

The strike was ignored in some areas, reflecting deep political divisions in Israel over a cease-fire deal after nearly 11 months of fighting.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis had poured into the streets late Sunday in grief and anger after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza. It appeared to be the largest protest since the start of the war. The families and much of the public blamed Netanyahu, saying they could have been returned alive in a deal with Hamas.

But others support Netanyahu’s strategy of maintaining military pressure on Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack into Israel triggered the war. They say it will force the militants to give in to Israeli demands, potentially facilitate rescue operations and ultimately annihilate the group.

Biden spoke to reporters as he arrived at the White House for a Situation Room meeting with advisers involved in negotiating a deal. Asked if Netanyahu was doing enough, Biden responded, “No.”

He insisted that negotiators remain “very close” to a deal, adding, “Hope springs eternal.”

Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out months of negotiations over a cease-fire by issuing new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over two strategic corridors in Gaza. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.

Netanyahu has pledged “total victory” over Hamas and blames it for the failure of the negotiations, which have dragged on for much of this year. Israel said the six hostages found dead in Gaza were killed by Hamas shortly before Israeli forces arrived in the tunnel where they were held. Three were reportedly scheduled to be released in the first phase of a cease-fire proposal discussed in July. The Israeli Health Ministry said autopsies had determined the hostages were shot at close range and died on Thursday or Friday.

Thousands attended the funeral Monday for one of the six, Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old native of Berkeley, California. He was one of the best-known hostages, and his parents had led a high-profile campaign for the captives’ release, meeting with Biden, Pope Francis, and addressing the Democratic National Convention last month.

The general strike, called by Israel’s largest trade union, the Histadrut, ended early after a labor court said it must end by 2:30 p.m. local time, accepting a petition from the government calling it politically motivated.

It was the first such strike since the start of the war, aiming to shut down or disrupt major sectors of the economy, including banking and health care.

Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands after Maryland’s highest court Friday ordered a redo of the hearing that freed him. The court ruled that the earlier proceeding violated the rights of the victim’s family, marking the latest development in a legal saga that gained widespread attention through the hit podcast “Serial.”

The 4-3 ruling upheld an appellate court decision that reinstated Syed’s conviction last year. It comes about 11 months after the court heard arguments in a case that has been fraught with legal twists and divided court rulings since Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.

The justices said that Syed, who was released from prison in 2022, can remain free as the case heads to a new lower court judge to again consider whether his conviction should be tossed.

The court weighed the extent to which victims can participate in hearings where a conviction could be vacated. The majority of judges concluded that, in an effort to remedy what they deemed an injustice to Syed, prosecutors and a lower court “worked an injustice” against Lee’s brother. The court ruled that Young Lee was not treated with “dignity, respect, and sensitivity,” as required under Maryland law, because he wasn’t given reasonable notice of the hearing that freed Syed.

The court said those shortfalls would be corrected leading up to the new hearing.

But the exact next steps remain unclear, in part because Baltimore elected a new top prosecutor in 2022, which could change how that office handles the case. State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said his office is reviewing the ruling and declined to immediately comment further.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michele Hotten argued the issue was moot because the underlying charges no longer exist.

“This case exists as a procedural zombie,” Hotten wrote. “It has been reanimated, despite its expiration. The doctrine of mootness was designed to prevent such judicial necromancy.”

The sprawling case has most recently pitted criminal justice reform efforts against the legal rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic issues, including historic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.

David Sanford, an attorney who represents the victim’s family, said the ruling “acknowledges what Hae Min Lee’s family has argued: Crime victims have a right to be heard in court.”

Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney, said in a statement that the court reached a decision “we could not disagree with more.”

“Wrongful convictions devastate the wrongly accused, their family, and the family of the victim,” Suter said. “Reinstating Adnan’s wrongful conviction does not provide Hae Min Lee’s family with justice or closure, and it takes a tremendous amount of emotional toll on Adnan’s family, who already lost a son and brother for more than two decades.”

Syed, 43, has maintained his innocence and has often expressed concern for Lee’s surviving relatives. The teenage girl was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.

He was released from prison in September 2022 when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction in response to a request from Baltimore prosecutors who said they found flaws in the evidence.

However, in March 2023, the Appellate Court of Maryland, the state’s intermediate appellate court, ordered a redo of the hearing that won Syed his freedom and reinstated his conviction. The court said the victim’s family didn’t receive adequate notice to attend the hearing in person.

Suter, Syed’s lawyer, has argued that the state did meet its obligation by allowing Young Lee to participate in the hearing via video conference.

Syed appealed his conviction’s reinstatement, and the Lee family also appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court, arguing crime victims should be given a larger role in the process.

It’s a showdown between the world’s richest man and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice.

The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, has threatened to suspend social media giant X nationwide if its billionaire owner Elon Musk doesn’t swiftly comply with one of his orders. Musk has responded with insults, including calling de Moraes a “tyrant” and “a dictator.”

It is the latest chapter in the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Many in Brazil are waiting and watching to see if either man will blink.
What is the basis for de Moraes’ threat?

Earlier this month, X removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. On Wednesday night at 8:07 p.m. local time (7:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), de Moraes gave the platform 24 hours to appoint a new representative, or face a shutdown until his order is met.

De Moraes’ order is based on Brazilian law requiring foreign companies to have legal representation to operate in the country, according to the Supreme Court’s press office. This ensures someone can be notified of legal decisions and is qualified to take any requisite action.

X’s refusal to appoint a legal representative would be particularly problematic ahead of Brazil’s October municipal elections, with a churn of fake news expected, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro. Takedown orders are common during campaigns, and not having someone to receive legal notices would make timely compliance impossible.

De Moraes would first notify the nation’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, who would then instruct operators — including Musk’s own Starlink internet service provider — to suspend users’ access to X. That includes preventing the resolution of X’s website — the term for conversion of a domain name to an IP address — and blocking access to the IP address of X’s servers from inside Brazilian territory, according to Belli.

Given that operators are aware of the widely publicized standoff and their obligation to comply with an order from de Moraes, plus the fact doing so isn’t complicated, X could be offline in Brazil as early as 12 hours after receiving their instructions, Belli said.

Since X is widely accessed via mobile phones, de Moraes is also likely to notify major app stores to stop offering X in Brazil, said Affonso Souza. Another possible — but highly controversial — step would be prohibiting access with virtual private networks ( VPNs) and imposing fines on those who use them to access X, he added.

A 2022 court hearing that freed Adnan Syed from prison violated the legal rights of the victim’s family and must be redone, Maryland’s Supreme Court ruled Friday, marking the latest development in the ongoing legal saga that gained global attention years ago through the hit podcast “Serial.”

The 4-3 ruling means Syed’s murder conviction remains reinstated for the foreseeable future. It comes about 11 months after the court heard arguments last October in a case that has been fraught with legal twists and divided court rulings since Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.

Syed has been free since October 2022, and while the Supreme Court's ruling reinstates his convictions, the justices did not order any changes to his release.

The court concluded that in an effort to remedy what was perceived to be an injustice to Syed, prosecutors and a lower court “worked an injustice” against Lee’s brother, Young Lee. The court ruled that Lee was not treated with “dignity, respect, and sensitivity,” because he was not given reasonable notice of the hearing that resulted in Syed being freed.

The court ruled that the remedy was “to reinstate Mr. Syed’s convictions and to remand the case to the circuit court for further proceedings.”

The court also said Lee would be afforded reasonable notice of the new hearing, “sufficient to provide Mr. Lee with a reasonable opportunity to attend such a hearing in person,” and for him or his counsel to be heard.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michele Hotten wrote that “this case exists as a procedural zombie.”

“It has been reanimated, despite its expiration,” Hotten wrote. “The doctrine of mootness was designed to prevent such judicial necromancy.”

The latest issue in the case pitted recent criminal justice reform efforts against the legal rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic issues, including historic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.

The panel of seven judges weighed the extent to which crime victims have a right to participate in hearings where a conviction could be vacated. To that end, the court considered whether to uphold a lower appellate court ruling in 2023 in favor of the Lee family. It reinstated Syed’s murder conviction a year after a judge granted a request from Baltimore prosecutors to vacate it because of flawed evidence.

Syed, 43, has maintained his innocence and has often expressed concern for Lee’s surviving relatives. The teenage girl was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.

Syed was released from prison in September 2022, when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction after city prosecutors found flaws in the evidence.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday kept on hold the latest multibillion-dollar plan from the Biden administration that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.

The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”

The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.

Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.

Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.

Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.

But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.

The Justice Department had suggested the Supreme Court could take up the legal fight over the new plan now, as it did with the earlier debt forgiveness plan. But the justices declined to do so.

“This is a recipe for chaos across the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group.

“No court has decided on the merits here, but despite all of that borrowers are left in this limbo state where their rights don’t exist for them,” Pierce said.

Eight million people were already enrolled in the SAVE program when it was paused by the lower court, and more than 10 million more people are looking for ways to afford monthly payments, he said.

Sheng Li, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a legal group funded by conservative donors, applauded the order. “There was no basis to lift the injunction because the Department of Education’s newest loan-cancellation program is just as unlawful as the one the Court struck down a year ago,” he said in a statement.

A federal appeals court revived Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times on Wednesday, citing errors by a lower court judge, particularly his decision to dismiss the lawsuit while a jury was deliberating.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan wrote that Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s decision in February 2022 to dismiss the lawsuit mid-deliberations improperly intruded on the jury’s work.

It also found that the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction and an erroneous response to a question from the jury tainted the jury’s decision to rule against Palin. It declined, however, to grant Palin’s request to force Rakoff off the case on grounds he was biased against her. The 2nd Circuit said she had offered no proof.

The libel lawsuit by Palin, a onetime Republican vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, centered on the newspaper’s 2017 editorial falsely linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting, which Palin asserted damaged her reputation and career.

The Times acknowledged its editorial was inaccurate but said it quickly corrected errors it called an “honest mistake” that were never meant to harm Palin.

Shane Vogt, a lawyer for Palin, said in an email that Palin was “very happy with today’s decision, which is a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general.”

“The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury that is ‘provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law,’” Vogt added, quoting in part from the 2nd Circuit ruling.

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, said the decision was disappointing. “We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial,” he said in an email.

The 2nd Circuit, in a ruling written by Judge John M. Walker Jr., reversed the jury verdict, along with Rakoff’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit while jurors were deliberating.

Despite his ruling, Rakoff let jurors finish deliberating and render their verdict, which went against Palin.

The appeals court noted that Rakoff’s ruling made credibility determinations, weighed evidence, and ignored facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly find supported Palin’s case.

It also described how “push notifications” that reached the cellphones of jurors “came as an unfortunate surprise to the district judge.” The 2nd Circuit said it was not enough that the judge’s law clerk was assured by jurors that Rakoff’s ruling had not affected their deliberations.

“Given a judge’s special position of influence with a jury, we think a jury’s verdict reached with the knowledge of the judge’s already-announced disposition of the case will rarely be untainted, no matter what the jurors say upon subsequent inquiry,” the appeals court said.

A Hong Kong court convicted two former editors of a shuttered news outlet on Thursday, in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of media freedoms in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam were arrested in December 2021. They pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications. Their trial was Hong Kong’s first involving the media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Stand News was one of the city’s last media outlets that openly criticized the government amid a crackdown on dissent that followed massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.

It was shut down just months after the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai is fighting collusion charges under a sweeping national security law enacted in 2020.

Chung and Lam were charged under a colonial-era sedition law used increasingly to crush dissidents. They face up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $640) for a first offense.

Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Ltd., the outlet’s holding company, was convicted on the same charge. It had no representatives during the trial, which began in October 2022.

Judge Kwok Wai-kin said in his written judgement that Stand News’ became a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during the 2019 protests.

He said a conviction is deemed proportional “when speech, in the relevant context, is deemed to have caused potential damage to national security and intends to seriously undermine the authority of the Chinese central government or the Hong Kong government, and that it must be stopped.”

The case was centered on 17 articles. Prosecutors said some promoted “illegal ideologies,” or smeared the security law and law enforcement officers. Judge Kwok ruled that 11 carried seditious intent, including commentaries written by activist Nathan Law and esteemed journalists Allan Au and Chan Pui-man. Chan is also Chung’s wife.

The judge found that the other six did not carry seditious intent, including in interviews with pro-democracy ex-lawmakers Law and Ted Hui, who are among overseas-based activists targeted by Hong Kong police bounties.

Chung appeared calm after the verdict while Lam did not appear in court due to health reasons. They were given bail pending sentencing on Sept. 26.

Defense lawyer Audrey Eu read out a mitigation statement from Lam, who said Stand News reporters sought to run a news outlet with fully independent editorial standards. “The only way for journalists to defend press freedom is reporting,” Eu quoted Lam as saying.

Eu did not read out Chung’s mitigation letter in court. But local media outlets quoted his letter, in which he wrote that many Hong Kongers who are not journalists have held to their beliefs, and some have lost their own freedom because they care about everyone’s freedom in the community.

“Accurately recording and reporting their stories and thoughts is an inescapable responsibility of journalists,” he wrote in that letter. After the verdict, former Stand News journalist Ronson Chan said nobody had told reporters that they might be arrested if they did any interviews or write anything.

The delivery of the verdict was delayed several times for various reasons, including awaiting the appeal outcome of another landmark sedition case. Dozens of residents and reporters lined up to secure a seat for the hearing, which began an hour late.

Resident Kevin Ng, who was among the first in the line, said he used to be a reader of Stand News and has been following the trial. Ng, 28, said he read less news after its shutdown, feeling the city has lost some critical voices.