3 More Hostages Released In Cease-Fire Deal, Including U.S.-Israeli Dual Citizen

TOPSHOT - Palestinian militant group Hamas fighters escort Israeli-French hostage Ofer Kalderon before handing him over to a Red Cross team in Khan Yunis on February 1, 2025, as part of fourth hostage-prisoner exchange. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)
Hamas fighters escort Israeli-French hostage Ofer Kalderon before handing him over to a Red Cross team in Khan Yunis on February 1, 2025, as part of fourth hostage-prisoner exchange. (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)

OAN Staff Sophia Flores
11:51 AM – Saturday, February 1, 2025

The terrorist group Hamas has released three more hostages as part of its current cease-fire deal with Israel. The hostages that returned home during this release included a U.S. – Israeli dual citizen from North Carolina, a father whose children were captured and released in a 2023 ceasefire-hostage deal, and the father of the youngest hostage.

On Saturday, Yarden Bibas and Ofer Kalderon were released from Hamas’s hands. Two hours later, U.S.-Israeli citizen Keith Siegel was handed over by Hamas.

“Finally, after 484 long, terrifying days and nights, full of immense worry for our father, we can breathe again,” Siegel’s family said in a statement. “Thank you, President Trump, for bringing our father back to us. There are now 79 hostages who are also waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. Our hope rests with you.”

Siegel, who is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7th, 2023 alongside his wife Aviva. She was released as part of a hostage deal that occurred in November 2023.

His release makes him the first American hostage to be released in the new 42-day truce.

Kalderon, a French-Israeli national, was taken from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz along with his daughter and son. His children, Sahar and Erez, were released in the November 2023 hostage swap.

French President Emmanuel Macron took to X to share his relief that Kalderon was home.

“Ofer Kalderon is free! We share the immense relief and joy of his loved ones after 483 days of unimaginable hell,” Macron wrote. “Our thoughts are with Ohad Yahalom, still in the hands of Hamas, and with his family. France is doing everything it can to secure his release without delay.”

Bibas was taken from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz along with his wife Shiri and the couple’s young children, Ariel, 5, and Kfir. Kfir was nine months old at the time he was kidnapped.

The fate of his beloved family is unknown. The terrorist group stated that Shiri and their two red-headed children died. However, the terrorist group is known for creating mental warfare by lying about hostage deaths.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has made it known that they have “grave concerns about their well-being.”

Under the current cease-fire agreement, Hamas was to free all female hostages first, followed by men over the age of 50 and those considered ill. There are 33 total hostages set to be released in the first phase of the fragile ceasefire deal. Not all of those released will be alive.

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The LAFD is Run by Three Lesbians Named ‘Kirsten’

The LA Fire Department went woke. Now LA is on fire.

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The most important thing to know about Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is that she is the first LGBTQ fire chief in the history of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

It’s also the only thing worth knowing about the woman in charge while Los Angeles burned.

Crowley’s status as the first LGBTQ fire chief appears at the top of her bio on the LAFD site. It’s what got her on the Kelly Clarkson show under the headline, “Meet LAFD’s First Female & LGBTQ+ Fire Chief” and made her one of the marshals of the Los Angeles Pride Parade (some of whose attendees no longer have homes after the wave of fires.)

But DEI wasn’t done with the LAFD just yet. Not until two other lesbian Kirstens were also running the LAFD.

Kristina Kepner, the first lesbian Assistant Chief and a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School for Managing Diverse Organizations, was accused of a domestic violence incident involving her girlfriend. Kristine Larson, who has a degree in Sociology, headed ‘Equity on Fire’, an organization complaining that the LAFD was sexist and racist, and was then rewarded with the title of the LAFD’s first lesbian Equity Bureau Chief with a $399,000 salary.

Diversity mandates had led to three lesbians named some version of ‘Kirsten’ running the LAFD.

Meanwhile, Jamie Brown became the LAFD’s first lesbian Training Commander. Her accomplishment was being the only one of the four lesbians running the LAFD who wasn’t named ‘Kirsten’.

Many glass ceilings were being broken, but there was no one who knew how to fight fires. Unless it was by asking the fire about its preferred pronouns.

Crowley, Kepner, and Brown were all paramedics, not firefighters. Diversity mandates led to paramedics being referred to as ‘firefighters’ and being promoted to fire captains and battalion chiefs and then to the top echelons of the LAFD.

Paramedics who did not understand how to fight fires were running one of the biggest fire departments in the country.

Around this same time, Janisse Quinones was appointed to head the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, with a $750,000 salary that far exceeded her predecessor. The press release made sure to mention that she was the “first female Latina to lead LADWP as CEO.”

Between all the trailblazing lesbian fire chiefs and the first female Latina CEO, the LAFD couldn’t find the manpower to fight the fires on the first day of the firestorm or the water in the hydrants to put them out. Breaking glass ceilings is easy, but putting out fires is hard.

Kristin Crowley was picked to break glass ceilings, not to fight fires.

Even before the worst firestorms in over a decade hit, there were warnings that the DEI LAFD brass had wrecked one of the country’s greatest firefighting services. The I-10 fire in 2023 spun out of control and the LAFD struggled to cope with what should have been an easy problem. In a Keystone Kops moment, Engine 17 got stuck under the overpass and was destroyed.

No one dared to point the finger at Crowley, a Harvard Business School graduate who earns $439,772 and was prone to reciting Kamalaisms like “I am different, but there’s a lot of difference everywhere in the world” and “we all our different, but that’s a strength of ours.”

Being different has become a major asset at the LAFD ever since it went DEI.

Crowley succeeded Chief Ralph Terrazas, hailed as the first Latino chief who replaced Chief Douglas Barry, the first black chief, and in the ordinary way of things, Crowley will be replaced by the first transgender fire chief who will then have to be replaced by someone even more diverse. Assuming that there is still a Los Angeles to pay them/it/them a six-figure salary.

None of this has much to do with fighting fires, but very little in LA government has to do with anything except “breaking barriers” and triumphing over obstacles like basic competence.

After complaints that the first Latino fire chief tolerated sexism, he had to be replaced by a woman. Kirstin Crowley came to work committed to being the best at rooting out sexism.

After her appointment, Fire Chief Crowley vowed to prioritize a “work environment that is free of harassment, discrimination and hazing” and promised to build a new era for the LAFD through “the creation of systemic equity and inclusion across the LAFD.”

Systemic equity and inclusion doesn’t put out fires. Not unless you drop DEI consultants on them. But the LAFD leadership was too busy with DEI to deal with minor matters like fires.

In 2022, the LAFD under Crowley announced its first Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Bureau. It bragged that 70% of the applicants to the department were minorities and 8% were women. Rather than hiring the best, the LAFD was laboriously working to fill diversity quotas.

Mayor Eric Garcetti had promised to bring the number of women up to 5% from 3.5% and now the LAFD is approaching 8%. No one was allowed to ask if this was going to make the LAFD any better at fighting fires now that it was hiring in order to hit a diversity target.

Beyond DEI, every stupid woke idea found a home under Crowley’s regime. After taking over, Crowley debuted the first “electric fire engine” to fight “pollution”, instead it was sidelined by a water leak. The vaccine mandate ousted some firefighters and suspended others. Last year, with a shortage of firefighters, the LAFD began trying to bring some of them back.

Los Angeles and the LAFD fought the Firefighters4Freedom Foundation group, which represented 500 members of the LAFD. Now the LAFD has been reduced to begging for volunteers with firefighting experience. The DEI LAFD seems to be a whole lot more diverse, but also a lot less competent at deploying manpower than the old organization used to be.

While the LAFD might have lost a whole lot white men who knew how to fight fires, it gained a lot of DEI hires who knew how to pursue diversity, inclusion and all the pronoun stuff.

And while LA might have lost a lot of buildings, it gained a lot of lesbian fire chiefs.

3 INFURIATING Reasons to REJECT the New Spending Bill

Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is trying to push through a “continuing resolution” bill right before Christmas. But this CR bill has grown so bloated that it’s practically an omnibus, which Speaker Mike Johnson promised he wouldn’t back. Yet here we are again … Glenn and fellow BlazeTV host‪@lizwheeler‬ review 3 of the worst things included in this bill – but just ONE of them should be enough to make every TRUE conservative in Congress vote AGAINST it. First, it includes a 1-year renewal of the Global Engagement Center, a State Department sub-agency that has become “the nexus of the censorship-industrial complex” against Americans. Then there’s an expansion of the “Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness and Response Act”, which would give the government the power to conduct gain-of-function research in the case of a national emergency. And lastly, it holds hurricane relief hostage. "Does that sound like you’re negotiating with honest people?" Glenn says. Maybe we should just let the government shutdown happen. Turn it off and back on again.

Wisconsin: At Least 3 Dead, Including Juvenile Suspect, 6 Injured In Christian School Shooting

Madison Police Department
(Photo via: Madison Police Department)

OAN Staff Abril Elfi
10:47 AM – Monday, December 16, 2024

UPDATE- 12/16- 11:25 a.m.: Police have made an error, retracting their death toll back down to three people, not five. However, in today’s press conference, Police Chief Shon Barnes initially said that five people have been killed in the incident.

 

 

Police have reported that at least three people have died, including a juvenile suspect, and at least six others were transferred to a hospital after a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin.

Barnes called today a “sad, sad day,” not just for the community, but for the country, after the shooting on Monday.

“Yet another police chief is doing a press conference to speak about violence in our community, specifically in one of the places that’s most sacred to me as someone who loves education and to someone who has children that are in schools,” Barnes said.

He stated that officers discovered multiple gunshot victims after responding to an active shooter call at the school at 10:57 a.m.

The shooter was reportedly a student at the school, according to NBC News.

According to Chief Barnes, at least three people were transported to local area hospitals for treatment after officers and emergency personnel performed life-saving efforts on those discovered injured.

Barnes did not specify how many deaths were students versus staff. The police’s incident website stated that the injuries “range from minor to life-threatening.”

“I’m not going to give any information about who the victims are, whether they’re students, staff or parents, because we need to make sure that we can notify people,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said.

Authorities told CNN that officers are now working to clear the school. They also stated that multiple main roads in the vicinity have been closed and locals have been asked to avoid the area.

According to their website, Abundant Life Christian School is a K-12 school serving approximately 390 students.

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the incident, a White House spokesperson said.

“The President has been briefed on the school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. Senior White House officials are in touch with local counterparts in Madison to provide support as needed,” senior deputy press secretary Emilie Simons said.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI.) responded to reports of the shooting, in which multiple injuries have been reported, in post on X.

“My sincere condolences and prayers for all the victims of the tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School,” Johnson wrote. “I will continue to closely monitor the situation.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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COVID-19 Shots Linked to Higher Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease~Florida Surgeon General Warns Against mRNA COVID Boosters~California Woman Accuses Hospital of Requiring Her Take Three Vaccines

My ears are probably some of the worst part of it. One of the doctors told me I might need to do something like plastic surgery on my ears and reconstruct them because of how my ears have blown up. Obviously, the story is hard to look at… 23-year-old Alexis Lorenze has been sharing her struggles with followers on TikTok. This comes after she was admitted to UCI Medical Center in Orange [County] for a rare and life-threatening blood disorder. For religious reasons, Alexis and her family have long abstained from vaccines. However, she says the hospital informed her that continuing treatment required vaccinations. Alexis says she reluctantly accepted, but says her body had extreme adverse reactions, leaving her battling for her life.

 

The Taliban Are Holding Three Americans Hostage As Old Joe Biden sends them billions.

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-taliban-are-holding-three-americans-hostage; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s forthcoming book,"Muhammad: A Critical Biography, by clicking here.]

The Biden regime's State Department has now publicly confirmed what it must have known for nearly three years, if not longer: Taliban jihadis are holding three Americans hostage. What have relentlessly anti-American Biden regime apparatchiks done in response? True to form, they’ve sent billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to the Taliban.

The Washington Examiner reported Saturday that a Biden regime Foggy Bottom wonk “confirmed on July 11 that three U.S. citizens, George Glezmann, Mahmood Habibi, and Ryan Corbett, are currently being held in Taliban custody. Taliban representatives repeatedly claimed they only held two Americans in detention.” Why are they holding any at all, and why are the comrades in the State Department and the Oval Office sending them money instead of applying pressure upon the Taliban?

Of course, the Biden regime has long since made clear which side it is on, with $10 billion to Iran and $100 million to Gaza, which means to Hamas, since there isn’t any entity in Gaza that has the power or will to keep the money away from Hamas. The Taliban have been in on the gravy train as well. Just The News reported in early June that “a recently released federal watchdog report shows that the U.S. government has sent at least $11 million to the Taliban since the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops.”

That was a wildly low estimate, as it left out the key excuse that the Biden regime uses to send our money over to Kabul: humanitarian aid. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) wrote in its May 2024 report, “U.S. Funds Benefitting the Taliban-Controlled Government: Implementing Partners Paid at Least $10.9 Million and Were Pressured to Divert Assistance,” that since the Taliban returned to power, “the U.S. government has continued to be the largest international donor supporting the Afghan people,” and that the Biden “has provided more than $2.8 billion in humanitarian and development assistance to help the people of Afghanistan.”

Antony Blinken and his henchmen would likely insist that this $2.8 billion was not sent to the Taliban, but to other groups that are operating in the country. But this is just as unrealistic and disingenuous as claiming that money sent to Gaza won’t go to Hamas. The aid money that has been sent to Afghanistan is ending up in the hands of the Taliban despite all the denials and claims to the contrary.

“Now,” said The Foreign Desk in an Aug. 2022 report, “humanitarian aid to the Afghan people is lining the pockets of the Taliban at the expense of innocent Afghans and American taxpayers alike.” Nothing has changed since then; if anything, the Taliban have consolidated their power even more than they had by mid-2022. Just as The News notes, “Judicial Watch released an investigation recently showing that the Taliban has created fake NGOs to siphon away tax dollars.”

Your tax dollars are even going to fund education in Afghanistan, even after the Taliban have barred girls from going to school. Judicial Watch reports that the Biden regime “has continued to fund Afghanistan’s education sector through six programs that cost $185.2 million even though the Taliban has issued decrees drastically limiting access to education for girls and women as well as restricting women’s ability to work and other basic freedoms.”

In fiscal year 2023 alone, “the U.S. sent Taliban-ruled Afghanistan over $566 million in humanitarian assistance. Most of it was for emergency food, but a chunk was classified as going to general humanitarian and health.” And all this business is about how the money is for food or “general humanitarian” needs is a steaming pile of nonsense, anyway.

Money is fungible. If you give the Taliban $566 million for food and medicine, they’ll have $566 million freed up for jihad violence and the oppression of women. Why this simple fact of basic economics continues to elude the great minds of the Biden regime remains a mystery and a matter of no curiosity at all for our nation’s “journalists.”

Ominously, “more than $15 million went to a cause that is labeled ‘redacted’ in the government records.” That’s right: we sent the Taliban $15 million for a secret purpose, and you can be assured that it’s not to cover the costs of printing millions of copies of the Bill of Rights. Congressional opposition, such as it is, should be demanding that the regime disclose what that money is going for and whether or not it is being spent in the best interests of the United States.

It’s a reasonable line of inquiry. After all, it seems as if the Biden regime never misses an opportunity to aid America’s enemies, even the Taliban, as they hold Americans hostage. There used to be a word for that. Started with a T. But everyone has forgotten that word.