📌’Riviera Gaza,’ Swedish Mass Shooting, More

President Donald Trump said the US would take over war-ravaged Gaza and create a “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump said he envisioned building a resort where international communities could live in harmony. “The US will take over the Gaza Strip … we’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it'll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of,“ Trump told reporters.

The casual proposal, including resettling Palestinians elsewhere, sent diplomatic shockwaves worldwide. China said it opposed the forced transfer of Palestinians, Turkey called the proposal “unacceptable,“ and Saudi Arabia said it would not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.

An official from the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which ruled the Gaza Strip before fighting Israel in a brutal war there, said Trump's statement about taking over the enclave was “ridiculous and absurd.“

It is not clear whether Trump will go ahead with his controversial plan or is simply taking an extreme position as a bargaining strategy. Trump provided no specifics of his plan, unveiled at a joint press conference on Tuesday with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu would not be drawn into discussing the proposal, other than to praise Trump for trying a new approach. He said Trump was “thinking outside the box with fresh ideas“ and was “showing a willingness to puncture conventional thinking.“

Sweden’s worst mass shooting killed at least 11 people, including the gunman, at an adult education center west of Stockholm.

The gunman’s motive, as well as the number of wounded, had not been determined early today as Sweden — where gun violence at schools is rare — reeled from an attack with such bloodshed that police early on said it was difficult to count the dead among the carnage.

The school, Campus Risbergska, offers primary and secondary educational classes for adults age 20 and older, Swedish-language classes for immigrants, vocational training and programs for people with intellectual disabilities. It is on the outskirts of Orebro, about 125 miles west of Stockholm.

The shooting started Tuesday afternoon after many students had gone home following a national exam. Students sheltered in nearby buildings, and other parts of the school were evacuated following the shooting. Authorities were working to identify the deceased, and police said the toll could rise.

There were no warnings beforehand, and police believe the perpetrator acted alone. Police have not said if the man was a student at the school. They haven’t released a possible motive, but authorities said there were no suspected connections to terrorism at this point.

Police raided the suspect’s home after Tuesday’s shooting, but it wasn’t immediately clear what they found. While gun violence at schools is rare in Sweden, people were wounded or killed with other weapons such as knives or axes in several incidents in recent years.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth is giving the metaverse a year to become a hit, according to an internal forum post.

That period will determine whether Reality Labs’ mixed reality efforts are “the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,“ he wrote.

“We are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI-powered wearables. We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR [mixed reality]. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long-term plans to have a chance,“ Bosworth wrote.

The post comes days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s leaked comments in an all-hands meeting in which he predicted an “intense year“ and emphasized the need to stay in the lead with its smart glasses, which have taken the spotlight away from Reality Labs’ Quest headsets.

Bosworth said despite 2024 being the department’s best year, Reality Labs hasn’t “actually made a dent in the world yet.“ The group is smaller in the wake of layoffs and the success of Meta’s Ray-bans and AI efforts, but he said it doesn’t “need big teams to do great work.“

Bosworth ends his post by saying the team doesn’t need “a bunch of new ideas,“ but that most in the group “just need to execute on the work laid out before them to succeed.“

The brain may contain higher and more significant amounts of microplastics than other organs in the body, a study says.

Researchers from the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma State University, Duke University and La Universidad del Valle en Cali in Colombia analyzed brain, liver and kidney samples from 47 cadavers and found brain samples contained about 10 times the amount of microplastics.

The average amount, 4,800 micrograms per gram of microplastics in brain tissue, was found to be equivalent to the amount found in a standard plastic spoon. It is not yet known what specific health risk that much microplastics inside a person's bloodstream could potentially have, the study says.

The study also looked at brain samples from individuals with dementia and found higher levels of microplastics, which it said may have accumulated in blood vessel walls and immune cells.

Dr. Stephanie Widmer, a board-certified medical toxicologist who was not involved in the study, said the researchers “are not saying the finding means that microplastics cause dementia. … It's a finding that's there, and more follow-up research needs to be done to really know what to make of it.“

Polyethylene, the most common type of plastic — which is found in everything from plastic containers to flooring material to medical devices — made up 75% of the microplastics that were found in the brain samples.

The US Senate has confirmed Pam Bondi as attorney general to lead the Justice Department.

President Donald Trump nominated Bondi to refocus the DOJ“ after his first pick, former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, withdrew from consideration in November over a House ethics probe into sex trafficking allegations.

During her confirmation hearing last month, Bondi blasted the “weaponization“ of the Justice Department during the Biden administration and was highly critical of the criminal investigations that “targeted“ Donald Trump.

“If confirmed, I will work to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice — and each of its components. Under my watch, the partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice will end,“ Bondi told lawmakers.

Acting Attorney General James McHenry fired over a dozen Justice Department prosecutors for prosecuting Trump based on evidence collected by the Justice Department and FBI, because they “cannot be trusted to faithfully implement the president's agenda.“

President Donald Trump suggested, if legal, he would accept El Salvador’s offer to imprison American criminals “in a heartbeat.“

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the Trump administration would “have to make a decision“ on whether to pursue El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele's (pictured left with Rubio) offer to accept convicted American criminals and U.S. permanent residents in the Central American country's prisons.

“No one's ever made an offer like that — to outsource, at a fraction of the cost at least some of the most dangerous and violent criminals that we have,“ Rubio said.

Trump said it would be “a great deterrent. “If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat. … We're looking at that right now.“

One legal expert said that deporting American citizens to serve out sentences in foreign prisons would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which bars “cruel and unusual“ punishments. “It's just one more sign of what an incredible friend we have here in President Bukele and in the people of El Salvador,“ Rubio said after they met for more than two-and-a-half hours. “More details will be forthcoming“ about the agreement struck between the US and El Salvador, said Rubio.

Mount Taranaki joins Te Urewera, a vast forest on the North Island, and the Whanganui River as people in New Zealand.

A new law offers extra protection for the 8,261-foot Mount Taranaki — now Taranaki Maunga, its Maori name — and means it has all the rights, powers, duties and responsibilities of a person. It is part of an agreement between New Zealand's government and the indigenous Maori tribes.

The mountain's legal personality has a name, Te Kahui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.“ It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.“ The Maori have long considered the mountain an ancestor.

Four members of the local Maori iwi, or tribes, and four others appointed by the country's conservation minister, will make up a new entity that acts as “the face and voice“ of the mountain, the law rules.

The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain's theft from the Maori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonized and fulfills an agreement of reparation from the country's government to indigenous people for harm perpetrated against the land since.

The legal rights essentially give the tribes more power to uphold the mountain's health and well-being in an era where it has become a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports.