Release of three Israeli hostages, Trump on the eve of his inauguration, hospitals overwhelmed by the flu, tensions within the NFP… What not to miss this weekend

Hamas frees three Israeli hostages

Despite a delay of almost three hours – which Israel took advantage of to bomb Gaza once again, killing eight people – the first exchange of prisoners took place.

There are three of them. Three Israeli women detained since October 7, 2023 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and finally released this Sunday, January 19. According to the Hostage Families Forum, these are British-Israeli Emily Damari (28 years old) and Romanian-Israeli Doron Steinbrecher (31 years old), captured on kibbutz Kfar Aza, as well as Romi Gonen (24 years old), kidnapped from the Nova music festival.

Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 94 remain hostages in Gaza, but 34 are believed to have died according to the Israeli army. Under the terms of the agreement between Hamas and the Israeli government, in a first phase of six weeks, hostilities were to cease and 33 Israelis be returned to their families. Three reception points to collect them have been set up on Israel’s border with Gaza, according to a military official. In exchange, Israeli authorities said they would release some 1,900 Palestinians within this deadline, 90 of whom were to be released on Sunday.

Since Wednesday January 15, the date of the announcement of an agreement, Israel has not stopped bombing the Palestinian territory, causing more than 100 deaths, while, according to a Palestinian diplomat in Ramallah joined by Humanity, “it was tacitly understood that hostilities would stop”. As a result, Hamas had difficulty getting around and was only able to provide the names of the three Israelis late on Sunday, late in the morning. In this interval of almost three hours, the Israeli army struck Gaza again, killing eight people.

“All hospitals have reached a critical threshold”: caregivers helpless in the face of the flu epidemic

According to the latest weekly bulletin, Wednesday January 15, from Public Health France, the epidemic intensified in cities in France and generated 611 deaths between January 6 and 12. In the university hospitals, professionals are out of breath and point out the underinvestment in public establishments.

This is the straw that breaks a camel already filled with bitterness for the employees of the public hospital. While the beds are saturated and the staff is already under high tension, in almost all establishments in France, the raging flu epidemic is putting a heavy strain on health professionals.

According to the latest surveillance bulletin for acute respiratory infections (ARI) published on January 15 by Public Health France, the viral infection generated a “very high hospital activity » and more than 7% of deaths recorded between January 6 and 12 were caused by this disease, i.e. 611 deaths. And the share of people who died as a result of the flu increases further in Burgundy-Franche-Comté (12.4%), in the Grand-Est (9.4%), Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (9 .2%), Hauts-de-France and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (7.9%).

China, immigration, federal state… Donald Trump’s 5 front lines

The Capitol should have symbolized his political opprobrium. This January 20, he will embody his avenging return. A little more than four years after the assault – which he had encouraged – on the country’s legislative holy of holies, Donald Trump will be sworn in at noon, local time, for a second term which is shaping up very differently from the first.

This time, the billionaire returns to the White House with a majority of votes (49.7% against 48.2% for Kamala Harris), where he owed his first victory only to the electoral college system . He says he has a mandate from the American people, which is highly questionable given his margin of advance (+1.5 points), less than that which Hillary Clinton had against him in 2016 (2.1 points) . Never mind. All the assets are in his hand.

He can rely on the Republican majority in Congress as well as on the Supreme Court, a de facto political body. He has a road map, Project 2025, from the Heritage Foundation, even if he had to, during the electoral campaign, distance himself from this firebrand whose stated objective, according to Kevin Roberts, the president of this ultraconservative think tank, is the“institutionalization of Trumpism”. Namely: bringing into every pore of public policies the precepts of this multifaceted reactionary movement (oligarchy, masculinism, anti-woke) that the billionaire embodies.

After the socialists’ refusal to censor the government, will the New Popular Front implode?

At the end of 2024, Cyrielle Chatelain took advantage of parliamentary holidays to sort at home, until coming across a pile of old newspapers including “some are twenty years old.” “So it’s been at least twenty years since the left has moved. We always have the same debates,” laments the president of the Ecologist and social group in the Assembly.

Should we refuse any deviation from its program to avoid compromises or try to wrest some small victories from liberalism? It is always in these terms that the discussion – one of the most heated at the moment, it is true – continues to take place on the left. This is how the debate arose when it came to censoring or not the government of François Bayrou, the rebels leaning on the first option and the socialists choosing, alone, the second. If they voted for censure, communists and ecologists have announced that they want to continue to negotiate with the executive on budgets.

In Italy, Giorgia Meloni reopens the school war

After emphasizing authority and discipline at school, the reform of school programs places religion and identity at the center of knowledge.

Giorgia Meloni’s conservative counter-revolution is moving forward step by step. After launching the constitutional and judicial reform projects, the president of the Italian Council of Ministers is tackling the investigation. Entrusted to the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara (the League), the ideological alignment of the school system involves the reform of the programs of primary and secondary schools, as in India, Poland or in certain Trumpist states besides -Atlantic. In Italy, the far right makes religion and identity the cardinal values ​​of the new teachings.

The reform, which will come into force from the 2026-2027 school year, introduces the study of the Bible alongside Roman, Greek and Nordic mythological stories, as well as a focus on teaching the history of the peninsula, Europe and “the West”. “We take the best of our tradition for a school capable of building the future,” argues Giuseppe Valditara, a minister known for blaming sexual violence on illegal immigration.