Steve Witkoff, a special US envoy to the Middle East, visited Gaza’s controversial US aid aid streaming site on Friday. This is one of three places where hundreds of Palestinians have died in recent weeks as they attempted to reach rare food supplies.

An Israeli source told CNN on Friday morning that Witkov had arrived at the aid site in the southern city of Rafa, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

The GHF was created to replace the role of UN aid in Gaza and has been widely criticized for failing to improve conditions as the starcion crisis deepens. Hundreds of people have been killed near GHF sites while more than 1,000 Palestinians are trying to get food to Israeli forces. The GHF disputes this.

White House press chief Caroline Leavitt said Thursday that U.S. ambassador Witkov and Israeli Mike Huckabee will “securing plans to inspect current distribution sites, deliver more food and hear in person about this dire situation in the local area to meet with local Gazanians.”

Witkoff and Huckabee “will execute immediately after the president visits to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution to the region,” she said, adding that the White House will provide “after the plan is approved and agreed by the US President.”

Friday’s visit marks Witkov’s second trip to Gaza. Shortly after Trump took office in January, Witkoff visited the enclave and became the first such US official in over a decade.

A Hamas official has accused Witkov’s trip of being nothing more than a photo opportunity.

“Witkov, Gaza is not an animal farm that requires a gradual personal visit to take personal photos in front of a death trap supervised by American companies,” Gaza’s former Palestinian health minister Bassem Naim said in a statement shared with CNN. “The Gaza people are not a be-food group, they are free, proud and noble people. They only want freedom, independence and return to their homeland.”

The GHF was established in May after Israel accused the United Nations of reaching Hamas. However, internal US government reviews found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

An analysis conducted by the United States Organization for International Development (USAID) examined 156 cases of waste, fraud and abuse reported by partner organizations between October 2023 and May 2025, according to a presentation seen by CNN.

San Salvador, El Salvador
AP
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El Salvador President Naibe Bukere approved the constitutional changes in the country’s legislative assembly on Thursday.

New Ideas Party MP Ana Figueroa had proposed changes to five articles in the Constitution. The proposal also included elimination of the second round of elections, in which two top voters in the first round, faced off.

The new ideas of the Legislative Assembly and their allies quickly approved the proposal with the vast majority they hold. The vote was passed by 57 people, with three opposed.

Bukkel won last year’s reelection by far, despite constitutional bans. A Supreme Court judge selected by his party has ruled in 2021 that he will be re-elected to be re-elected to a five-year term.

Observers worry that Bukele has plans to consolidate power when, at least in 2021, a newly elected assembly with a strong governing party majority votes to eliminate magistrates in the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Room. These justices were considered the last checks of popular presidents.

Since then, Bukel has only become more popular. The Biden administration’s first expression of concern replaced a quiet acceptance as Bukele announced his run for reelection. With President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, Bukere quickly offered Trump’s help by having a new, powerful alliance and taking over 200 other exiles from other countries to newly built prisons for gang members.

Figueroa claimed Thursday that federal lawmakers and mayors could already seek re-election multiple times.

“They all had the potential to be re-elected through the popular vote. The only exception to this day was the presidency,” Figueroa said.

She also proposed that Bukere’s current term, which is scheduled to end on June 1, 2029, would instead end on June 1, 2027, with the presidential and parliamentary elections being placed on the same schedule. Also, Bukere can seek re-election in the long term two years ago.

Marcela Viratoro of the Nationalist Republican Union (arena), one of the three votes on the proposal, told her fellow lawmakers, “The democracy in El Salvador has passed away!”

“You don’t understand what indefinite reelection brings. It brings about accumulation of power and weakens democracy… There’s corruption and clientism as nepotism stops and stops democracy and political participation,” she said.

“Power has returned to the only place it really belongs…back to the Salvadoran people,” said Sussy Kalejas, vice president of the parliament.

Bukel did not immediately comment.

Once dubbed “the coolest dictator in the world”, Bukel is extremely popular, mainly due to his strong fight against the country’s powerful street gang.

Voters are willing to overlook his administration like other administrations before negotiating with gangs before suspending their constitutional rights and seeking an emergency that allows authorities to arrest tens of thousands of people and jail.

Security and politically his success influenced local copycats who were trying to replicate his style.

Most recently, Bukel’s government has faced international criticism for the arrest of a well-known lawyer who was an outspoken critic of his administration. One of the nation’s most prominent human rights groups, announced in July, that it had shifted operations from El Salvador for the safety of its people, accusing the government of being a “wave of oppression.”

President Donald Trump’s envoy to Steve Witcoff in the Middle East has arrived at aid distribution site in Rafa, southern Gaza.

Yesterday, the White House announced a trip to Gaza by U.S. ambassador Witkov and Israeli Mike Huckabee.

Witkoff and Huckabee “will tell the president immediately after their visit and execute to approve the final plan for food and aid distribution to the community,” she said, adding that the White House will be “after that plan has been approved, agreed and agreed.”

This will be Witkov’s second trip to Gaza. Shortly after Trump took office, Witkoff visited the enclave and became the first US official to do it for over a decade.

Witkov met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem yesterday and accused Hamas of “malicious” negotiations a week after the US pulled back from Gaza’s ceasefire talks.

Kramatorsk
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If the war kills many people over the years, the names of the dead can bleed onto faceless lists.

But each loss still burns black holes in the world they left behind. And there are fewer than Tymur Hryhorenko.

Most of the bald facts of his death are horribly inconspicuous after three years of Russian artillery fire. He was the only death at 4:40am on the site in a Russian airstrike that hit a top floor apartment in the frontline town of Kramatrataak on July 22nd.

However, one of the most recent children who died in Russia’s war with Ukraine, Timur (10), lost his father in the war two years ago, demanding that he visit Kramatorsk’s grandmother. He was only nine hours away from the relative safety of Kiev, after boarding the train with his mother Nastia.

A video posted by Donetsk Emergency Services shows Tymur’s limp, bloody body. His mother had left him with her grandmother that night, but rushed to the scene.

“Like a breath of new hope,” she said, “One of the soldiers came out and said he had a pulse and they were reviving him. And while they pumped his chest, I prayed to God to give him life. But no miracles happened.”

She said she couldn’t go to the apartment to see his body and felt the worst had happened when her sister rang an hour ago. She called immediately, but was soon back. “She said, ‘They took Mama away, and they’re looking for Tymur under the roof rub.” From that moment on, I felt like I was in a dream. ”

Nastia sat alone on the bench outside her sister’s apartment, in Kreima Talk’s apartment, losing and wet. Taimur was her only child. And his father, Ebhen, died in May 2023, fighting against Russians other than Lyman, despite her separation. She shares a video of Tymur and Evhen playing in bed. Evenen throws his son in and while his father’s skills seem carefree, he becomes extremely careful. Almost a year ago, she remarried, but her second husband died six months later from a heart attack.

She accuses her of not being in her mother’s spare room with her son Taimur when the bomb strikes. “At that moment, I was not home,” she cried. “I don’t know why, how, how the power took me out of it. But I should have been with him, and I blame myself very much for that.”

Timur had insisted that they would go and see his grandmother. However, Nastia insisted that she would leave by train to Kiev the next day. “He said he wanted to stay. I said, ‘No, we’ll go, we’ll definitely go.’ ”

The scene of his death is typical of the eastern town where Ukrainian troops live among locals, with Russian bombs rejecting discrimination and suffering every night. An elderly woman grooming plants in the courtyard tweets how the town’s army is targeted. Another neighbor clears up the broken glass from the stairs, still stained with Timur’s blood. On the roof, the child’s plastic toy is trapped under the felt with a roof facing upwards. Three generations of Nastia’s family live in her mother’s apartment, and at the time of her grandchild’s visit, the children’s toys were stacked in plastic bags.

She remembers their final moments together, the evening before he died. “We got hooked. Giving him a massage when he was a child showed how he was giving him a massage.

She shows a video of a growing boy enjoying a McDonald’s milkshake in “friend” hoodie. Taimur reads a poem about his birthday and family values. It is his small virtue, even at his age, that Nastia clings to the heart most.

“He loved all the animals and children,” she said. “In the Kiev house he is waiting for two pet mice. He loved them like crazy. He called me and said, “Mom, have you cleaned the cage? Did you feed them? Do they have water?”

His teacher praised him for standing up when a girl in his class was chosen. “He’s very considerate,” she said. “A very cheerful boy, very much.”

In June, UNICEF reported that more than 2,700 children were killed or injured in the war in Ukraine.

Timur is located on the outskirts of town, on a hill of fresh tombs, on which he is a chalk stone covered in flowers. The cemetery has a new hole, just dug, and accepting the town’s losses is never finished. The skyline occasionally rattles with blasts, birds scattered and gets in the way of air raid sirens.