I'm Valerie Hopkins. I cover Russia for the New York Times. It's pretty difficult to report from Russia. Often I'm the only New York Times reporter in the country. I keep working in Russia because what happens here matters and our audience deserves to get a broad perspective of the world that they live in. If you want to make sure we can keep doing this work, subscribe to The New York Times. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, April 9th. Here's what we're covering. A day into the ceasefire with Iran, two major issues are testing whether it will hold. The first is the Strait of Hormuz actually open. Iranian state media said yesterday that the waterway is closed. These reports publicly are false. Then the White House offered its own confusing update, denying the Strait is closed, while at the same time calling for it to be reopened. And I will reiterate the President's expectation and demand that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened immediately, quickly, and safely. According to data provided to the Times by a global ship-tracking firm on Wednesday, just four ships had made it through, none of them, or oil or gas tankers. The lack of traffic could reflect that sailors and the companies that ensure their ships are still nervous. Iran laid mines in the waterway, and the country's official broadcaster said vessels must coordinate with the Iranian Navy to safely cross. The ceasefire is also being tested by uncertainty about the situation in Lebanon. Israel hit more than 100 targets there yesterday, where it's been fighting the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah. According to Lebanese officials, more than 200 people were killed, making it the deadliest attack there in the war so far. Iran said those strikes violated the deal. Cease fires are always messy. Vice President J.D. Vance has pushed back, though, denying Lebanon was covered by the agreement. Neither us nor the Israelis said that that was going to be part of the ceasefire. Again, we're working with people to try to get through some of these things, but it's really fundamentally, we're on the right track. We've got a lot more to do. Talks about a more permanent peace deal will be held this weekend in Pakistan. A White House official said Vance is going to lead the U.S. delegation, and that he'll be joined by Trump's special envoy Steve Wittkopf and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Meanwhile, inside Iran... I think the immediate feeling among people that we spoke with was relief. There was a feeling that, okay, at least I know that I'm not going to get killed or my friends or family are not going to get killed in a strike. But then I think pretty quickly underneath that, when you keep talking to people, there's a deep sense of worry. My colleague Yeghen Atorbadi has been talking with Iranians on the ground there by phone and text message about what the ceasefire feels like with the regime still in charge. One major concern is, you know, we've gone through all of this. We've lost major pieces of infrastructure, hospitals, schools, bridges, roads, and yet we're still stuck with this government that a lot of us had protested in January, and which both the Israeli government and the American government had made claims of, you know, wanting drastic changes to Iran's political system. And so Iranians are sort of right now thinking, well, the government is still in place and in some ways has not shown any sign of letting up on repression. We've seen a string of executions in the last couple weeks of people that were arrested in January during the protests. We've seen the arrest of a very prominent human rights lawyer and the promise that those sorts of things will continue. And I think people are very concerned that they're going to be facing a government that may want to sort of show who's really in control in the weeks and months to come. In Washington last fall, great steel company, great man, actually, he said, sir, I'd like to donate the steel for your ballroom. President Trump talked up what he said was a $37 million donation of steel for his massive White House renovation project. Like everything else, including human beings, steel could be high quality and it can be low quality. He wants to make sure it's high quality. At the time, Trump didn't say who had called him up, but the Times has now learned from two people familiar with the plans that the steel is coming from a Luxembourg-based company called Arcelor Middle. Trump's decision to use foreign steel on a White House project is notable given the fact that he has spent years promising to strengthen the American steel industry and it could anger domestic manufacturers and unions. The revelation about the steel has also highlighted the limited transparency around the $400 million ballroom project. Some donors have been allowed to stay anonymous and many are companies that could directly benefit from the administration's policies. In this case, two days after Trump announced the steel donation, the White House issued a long legalistic proclamation with a provision that would benefit the steel company by tweaking tariff rates. When asked about the timing of that announcement, a White House official pushed back on the idea that there was any connection between the donation and the president's proclamation. The official noted that the company has not yet received the tariff exemption and that the provision could benefit other steel companies too. Arcelor Middle declined to comment. Now, two updates on criminal cases that have captured national attention. She was dubbed the Ketamine Queen, Jazeen Sanger who was a drug dealer. In LA yesterday, the woman who sold the ketamine that killed Matthew Perry in 2023 was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors say she was known to her customers as the Ketamine Queen and she's one of five people who have pleaded guilty in the death of the Friends actor. According to court documents, after she saw the news about Perry's death, she tried to hide her involvement telling an associate to quote, delete all our messages. Perry's death put a harsh light on ketamine treatment. It was approved by the FDA more than 50 years ago for one purpose, sedating patients for surgery. But some doctors see it as a promising alternative therapy for depression. That's how the actor started using it. Others, though, have raised concerns about the danger of addiction, especially for people who have a history of substance abuse like Perry did. And in New York, the guilty plea of Rex Hureman represents a measure of accountability in a case that has deeply impacted our communities. The man who became known as the Gilgo Beach Killer pleaded guilty yesterday to murdering eight women. He said he hired the women as escorts before strangling them and dumping their bodies near the ocean on a stretch of Long Island. The first group of bodies was found in 2010, but the investigation was marred by dysfunction and corruption, and it took more than a decade to solve. As part of his plea, he agreed to speak with behavioral analysts at the FBI to answer questions about his motivations, what drove him, etc. The FBI hopes that could help investigators hunt down others with similarly violent tendencies. And finally, the Prime Minister of Greece released a video message yesterday trying to get kids' attention. He tried to show he was really down with the youth, with a quick 6-7 shout-out, before he got to the real point. He said he thinks kids need to spend less time online, and that Greece plans to ban social media for those under the age of 15 starting next year. Greece is just the latest country trying this kind of thing over concerns that the platforms can be bad for kids' development and mental health. Spain, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Denmark are all considering similar bans. And Australia actually put one in place recently, kicking kids under 16 off sites like Instagram and TikTok. That said, it's an open question of how effective this kind of ban really is. Australian teens told the Times they have all kinds of ways for getting around it, like using VPNs or their older siblings' accounts. At the same time, some places have gone even further to get kids off of screens. One village in Ireland has banded together to agree not to give kids smartphones at all. Parents and teachers pushed for it after dealing with kids who couldn't sleep because they were up late looking at their phones, refusing to come to school because they'd been bullied online, or downloading calorie-counting apps. They are three years into the experiment now, and a principal of a local school told the Times that more kids are making plans in person, playing outdoors, and quote, just being kids. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, the Times' investigation into one of the tech world's biggest mysteries, who invented Bitcoin. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or Revere Gator podcasts. I'm Tracey Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz. .
