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For most students, the General Secondary Education Certificate, known as Tawjihi in Palestine, marks the end of school and the start of a new chapter.

It is usually a time of celebration, relief and hope for the future.

In Gaza, nearly three years into Israel's genocide, the milestone has taken on a different meaning. For thousands of Palestinian students, simply surviving long enough to sit the exams and see the results announced became an achievement in itself.

For Saba Rabah, who topped Palestine's scientific stream with an average of 99.9 percent, the result fulfilled a childhood dream.

But the moment she had imagined for years was overshadowed by the absence of her father, who was killed in an Israeli strike on a neighbouring building in al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

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US President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters that the "Board of Peace" will be the one to collect Hamas's weapons as the group begins to disarm, even though the board itself had announced that a Palestinian technocratic body will assume that role.

The details matter because the statements marked the first on-camera opportunity for the president to build confidence in the Board of Peace announcement - an organisation for which he is chairman for life.

"As Hamas disarms as part of this plan, who do you see is taking possession of those weapons that they have? Does that go to the new government?" a reporter asked Trump during his cabinet meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

"It's going to be run by the Board of Peace. This Board of Peace has been amazing. It's led by some amazing people," the president responded.

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Russia launched a mass ballistic missile attack on Kyiv early Saturday, killing at least four people and injuring 15 others as repeated explosions shook the Ukrainian capital.

Among the wounded were two boys aged 13 and 17, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. All 15 injured residents were taken to city hospitals. The casualty figures remained preliminary as emergency crews continued searching damaged buildings.

AFP journalists in Kyiv reported that “more than 10 explosions were heard in a row,” with the force of the blasts triggering car alarms across the city.

Klitschko had urged residents to remain in shelters as ballistic missiles approached the capital.

The attack caused fires and destruction across the Solomianskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, Darnytskyi and Holosiivskyi districts.

In the Solomianskyi district, a strike set fire to a six-story non-residential building. Cars burned in a parking area, while people were trapped inside a damaged five-story residential building and a fire broke out in its courtyard.

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The long legal battle to erase the debts of nearly half a million federal student loan borrowers who say they were defrauded by their colleges is finally coming to an end, after a recent court ruling in a lawsuit that has spanned three presidential administrations.

The class-action suit, originally filed against the first Trump administration seven years ago, centered on a federal rule known as borrower defense. The rule is supposed to allow borrowers to petition the U.S. Education Department to erase their debts if a school has lied to them — about things like their job prospects, their credits' transferability or their likely salary after graduation.

During Trump's first term, thousands of borrowers who claimed they had been ripped off by predatory schools waited years to have their borrower defense claims reviewed. Finally, advocates sued, arguing that, under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the department had deliberately and illegally stopped processing claims and wrongfully denied others without considering the merits of their cases.

The suit has endured long enough to bear the names of three different education secretaries: from Sweet v. DeVos in 2019 to Sweet v. Cardona during the Biden administration, and now Sweet v. McMahon for Trump's second term.

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Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream in the tub is still great, but the brand’s newest chocolate-covered ice-cream bar on a stick?

“It ain’t the same,” Ben Cohen, the company co-founder, told the Guardian. Sure, the chocolate coating is still thick enough, but the ice cream itself is “kinda fluffy”, Cohen said – an insult in the ice-cream world that suggests extra air was added to cut costs.

The criticism is surprising coming from Cohen, who opened his eponymous ice-cream shop in Burlington, Vermont, with childhood friend, Jerry Greenfield, in 1978. But it’s perhaps an apt metaphor of how he feels amid a simhttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/31/ben-jerrys-ice-cream-magnum-boycottmering fight to take back Ben & Jerry’s from a parent company he says has silenced the brand’s trademark activism.

For Cohen, 75, the battle is legal and existential. Ben & Jerry’s social and economic value was protected for decades, he says, by an independent board with final say on the brand’s voice, values and ice-cream quality.

But that independence has all but disappeared, Cohen said. In November 2024, Ben & Jerry’s board sued parent company Unilever, claiming it was blocked from voicing support for Gaza, and accusing Unilever of breaching their agreement. The lawsuit is still making its way through federal court.

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A 28-year-old Australian hiker who lost contact with his family while hiking the Continental Divide Trail between Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks in Wyoming has been found dead, according to authorities.

The man, identified as William Standish, was discovered by rescuers on Wednesday morning in the Wigwams, a series of rocky peaks on the west slope of the Teton mountain range, the Teton county coroner said. Investigators say it was likely he suffered a fatal fall.

Standish had been attempting a thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail between the Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks when he disappeared after contacting his family on 23 July, according to a statement from Teton county rescuers.

Evidence suggests Standish may have fallen from a steep ridgeline that separates Grand Teton and the Jedediah Smith wilderness, officials said.

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British Nepalese expedition leader Nirmal Purja, who was featured in the Netflix documentary “14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible” (2021), is among 10 people initially reported missing following a deadly avalanche Thursday on Broad Peak mountain in Pakistan.

A rescue team confirmed Friday that the remains of American mountain climber Sarah Mallory Geis, as well as those of Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy of Oman and Pur Bahadur Gurung of Nepal, have been found and recovered, reported ABC News.

The Pakistani Army’s communications division told The New York Times early Friday morning that four bodies had been recovered. According to the BBC, the Alpine Club of Pakistan has since said that this initial figure was a “miscommunication” and that two bodies and a body part were found.

The army noted search and rescue operations are ongoing.

Broad Peak is part of the Karakoram mountain range between Pakistan and China and is considered an “eight-thousander” for its apex or more than 8,000 meters. Dozens of people have died trying to reach the reach the world’s 12th-highest summit since it was first scaled in 1957.

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The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved Friday to drop its criminal prosecution of a former Olympian charged with destroying the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, saying the damage was instead the result of a “rushed and botched installation.”

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office blamed the contractor for overspraying and delamination.

In a new court filing, the office indicated it no longer stands behind its case against David Hearn, a three-time Olympic canoeist who pleaded not guilty to felony destruction oMore...f property earlier this month.

“Specifically, the newly released documents reveal that work on installing the lining almost immediately fell behind, due to a combination of very rainy and windy weather, repeated failures of testing on the sealing of the expansion joints, and delays in obtaining sealing product at the worksite,” prosecutors wrote.

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