Hamas rejected the latest ceasefire proposal on Monday, according to senior officials in the terror organization as reported by multiple news outlets.

“We reject the latest Israeli proposals that the Egyptian side informed us of. The politburo met today and decided this,” Ali Baraka, who is responsible for the Hamas’s foreign relations, told Reuters.

Another Hamas official, Mahmoud Mardawi, told the same to the Quds News Network on Monday.

Earlier on Monday, another Hamas official, whom Reuters didn’t name, told the news agency that “there is no change in the position of the occupation [Israel] and therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” and that “there is no progress yet.”

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and IDF intelligence Unit 504 revealed on Monday that Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Tarik Salame Uda Abu confessed to Gazan terrorists taking over all of the hospitals in Gaza.

“Gaza terror groups use all of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip.... The organization lied and deceived regarding the story of an Israeli rocket hitting a hospital at the start of the war,” he told his interrogators.

The PIJ spokesman was arrested recently during the second takeover of Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, along with 500 other Hamas and PIJ terrorists, plus another 200 whom the IDF killed when they refused to surrender.

The terror spokesman said his role was to fool the global media and foreign countries to turn them against Israel.

Oregon has approved a state law that recriminalises drug possession.

The law rolls back an experimental policy - the most liberal drug measure in the US - that made possession for personal use a ticketed offence with a fine up to $100 (£76).

The new legislation penalises those possessing small amounts of drugs with probation, and up to 180 days in jail.

The governor said the state still aims to provide a path for drug treatment, rather than punishing drug users.

Tina Kotek, the Democratic governor, signed the bill on Monday. It goes into effect on 1 September.

WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - The White House on Tuesday directed NASA to establish a unified standard of time for the moon and other celestial bodies, as the United States aims to set international norms in space amid a growing lunar race among nations and private companies.

The head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), according to a memo seen by Reuters, instructed the space agency to work with other parts of the U.S. government to devise a plan by the end of 2026 for setting what it called a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC).

The differing gravitational force, and potentially other factors, on the moon and on other celestial bodies change how time unfolds relative to how it is perceived on Earth. Among other things, the LTC would provide a time-keeping benchmark for lunar spacecraft and satellites that require extreme precision for their missions.

"The same clock that we have on Earth would move at a different rate on the moon," Kevin Coggins, NASA's space communications and navigation chief, said in an interview.

The IDF spokesperson in Arabic exposed close cooperation between terror groups in concealing information and choosing launch areas far from houses of Hamas leadership, not Gazan citizens.

Avichai Adraee, the IDF spokesperson in Arabic, revealed on Saturday an official Hamas document recovered by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, which openly refers to Gazan casualties as a result of failed rocket launches, hiding this information from their constituency and blaming the deaths on Israel instead.

The revealed documents date back to 2020 and Operation Breaking Dawn (2022), and they were issued by Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades and signed by high-ranking members of the militia. The findings showcase Hamas attempting to persuade members of other militias in the Gaza Strip, namely the al-Quds Brigades belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), to take responsibility for the disastrous outcomes of failed rocket launches (referred to euphemistically as ‘local rockets’). The PIJ responded by requesting to conceal these failed launches and their repercussions to “support the image of the resistance.”

You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky ageing music fans everywhere.
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“Across all genres, lyrics had a tendency to become more simple and more repetitive,” Zangerle summarised.

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said.

Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.

“With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,” Arefi said.

“Now, no one is standing beside them to save them from Taliban punishments. The international community has chosen to remain silent in the face of these violations of women’s rights.”

The test for German citizenship will in future include questions on the Jewish religion and the state of Israel in a move designed to filter out anti-Semites among applicants.

"Anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humanity rule out naturalization," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Der Spiegel weekly in its Thursday, March 28, edition. "Anyone who does not share our values cannot get a German passport," Feaser said in the report first published on the magazine's website.

In the new citizenship test, which applicants must pass to acquire German nationality, candidates could be asked the name of the Jewish place of worship, the founding year of Israel or Germany's particular historical obligation to it, according to Der Spiegel.

The punishments for Holocaust denial and the membership requirements for Jewish sports clubs would also be among the possible questions, according to the magazine.