By OMAR ALBAM and KAREEM CHEHAYEB

KOAYIAH, Syria (AP) — An Israeli strike Tuesday in southwestern Syria killed at least six people as Israeli troops occupying the area clashed with local residents, Syria’s Foreign Ministry and a war monitor reported.

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Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said troops fired back at gunmen who attacked them, before launching a drone attack.

The Syrian ministry said the six killed were civilians.

Syrian state-run news agency SANA said that several people were wounded, including a woman. The report said Israeli tanks in the southwestern village of Koayiah also fired several rounds. Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at seven.

“We also call on the Syrian people to hold on to their land and reject any attempts at displacement or the imposition of a new reality by force, stressing that these attacks will not deter Syrians from defending their rights and their land,” the Foreign Ministry’s statement read, accusing Israel of “flagrant violation of national sovereignty and international laws.”

The observatory and a town resident told The Associated Press that clashes had erupted between Israeli troops and residents after Israeli forces tried to enter the village and were confronted by armed civilians. Residents of the village fled the shelling and took refuge in neighboring villages and olive groves.

Israel seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria after Islamist insurgents toppled President Bashar Assad and seized power in December, with Israeli officials saying they will thwart any threats. Israeli officials have also said that they will not allow the new Syrian military south of Damascus, claiming that they aim to protect the Druze, a minority sect present in both Syria and Israel.

Syria’s new authorities and U.N. officials have said Israel is violating the 1974 agreement that set up the buffer zone along the border and called for its withdrawal.

Elsewhere, the spokesperson of an investigative committee tasked with probing days of clashes and revenge attacks in Syria’s coastal region that killed hundreds of civilians said they had listened to almost 100 testimonies and received dozens of written and recorded civilian and military statements.

“There are areas where the events took place that are dangerous, and some witnesses and residents are afraid to communicate with the committee,” Yasser al-Farhan said at a news conference. He declined to elaborate on the committee’s findings so far.

The clashes erupted after pro-Assad loyalists attacked a security patrol in the coastal city of Lattakia, leading to revenge killings that broadly targeted Assad’s minority Alawite community.

The two-day violence was a major setback in Damascus’ efforts to improve its image and convince Europe and the United States to lift economic sanctions after over a decade of conflict.

SANA also said Tuesday that two internet cables were cut in an act of sabotage, cutting online access across much of the country for 12 hours.

Chehayeb reported from Beirut.

After a twitching pinky finger led to a diagnosis of young-onset Parkinson’s disease, Keith Krehbiel, then 42, stopped at a bookstore on the way home to learn more about the progressive neurological disorder before telling his wife Amy the shocking news.

“I remember sitting in a parking lot and hearing this sad piece by Miles Davis,” he said. “I haven’t been able to listen to it since without feeling what I felt then.”

Twenty-eight years later, as a political science professor emeritus at Stanford, Krehbiel just became the first person in the U.S. to receive adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation (aDBS) therapy as a part of regular care. It had previously been available only on an experimental basis.

The therapy is akin to a pacemaker for the brain, counteracting beta waves and other arrhythmias relating to the immobility, stiffness and trembling associated with Parkinson’s. The device functions in a closed loop within the body, responding in real-time to feedback from the brain while documenting these interactions.

Dr. Helen Bronte-Stewart shows a Medtronic neurostimulator, the device implant that delivers adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation (aDBS) with electrical signals that adapt in response to the Parkinson’s symptom-causing beta waves of the patient’s brain. Stanford Neuroscience Health Center, March 3, 2025, Stanford, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

None of this was possible until Stanford researchers developed it in 2015 by implanting the first-generation sensing neurostimulators. Now, the personalized treatment is poised to touch millions of lives.

Parkinson’s disease diagnoses have doubled since the 1990s, affecting 10 million people around the world, including “Back to the Future” icon Michael J. Fox and science communication advocate Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame.

A study published this month predicts that 25 million people worldwide will be living with the disease by 2050. The U.S., where a million people have the disease, reports 90,000 new diagnoses each year.

The emerging aDBS therapy is a quantum leap from earlier treatments, approved by the FDA in 1997, the same year Krehbiel was diagnosed. In both, currents from a battery-powered neurostimulator in the chest are sent to two electrodes in the brain via wires extending up the neck, behind the ear, and into the head.

Dr. Helen Bronte-Stewart developed adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation (aDBS) as a more responsive and refined treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease – the FDA approved aDBS for the market on Feb. 24, 2025. Photographed at the Stanford Neuroscience Health Center on March, 3, 2025 in Stanford, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

Dr. Helen Bronte-Stewart, the Stanford neurologist whose research contributed to the development of the new therapy said older versions were “basically blind and deaf to the brain’s own rhythms.”

The over quarter-century-long road to aDBS began when Bronte-Stewart was growing up in the U.K., training to be a ballerina. When she chose science, her fascination with movement brought her to lead Stanford’s movement disorders center in 1999.

Her work gravitated toward Parkinson’s because of how kinetically complex and common the disease is — second only to Alzheimer’s in prevalence among degenerative neurological conditions and fastest-growing globally.

In 2011, Medtronic, a medical device company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, sought programming for their new sensing neurostimulator. They had the platform, Stanford had the technology and Bronte-Stewart had the science.

By 2018, projects across the U.S., Canada and Europe catalyzed an international multi-center pivotal trial for market approval of aDBS.

“This was fairly radical,” said Bronte-Stewart, whose team went from applying aDBS for 20 minutes at a time in the lab to sending subjects home with it.

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In 2020, Krehbiel was originally scheduled for the earlier treatment, cDBS but qualified for experimental aDBS after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed his implantation.

Neurosurgeons drilled two holes into his skull while Krehbiel was fully conscious — a “creepy” experience despite the absence of pain. After a night at home with bandages securing the “manhole covers” in his head, he returned to the hospital, went under general anesthesia, woke up while doctors fit electrodes into his brain, and slept again.

Minus a slight headache when he awoke, Krehbiel felt better even before the system was on.

“My tongue felt like it had helium in it — it levitated to the top of my mouth,” he said, of the “tweaking” process that acquainted aDBS to his unique biology.

Krehbiel gradually went from six or seven pills of dopamine agonists a day to one, freed from the “awful” side effects of the drugs commonly prescribed for Parkinson’s.

Krehbiel’s disease continues to progress, in the forms of vocal deterioration, fainting spells and falls, but life is better, he said.

“It’s definitely a game changer but it’s not a cure,” he said.

John Lipp shows the neurostimulator implanted in his chest on Feb. 28, 2025. The slimeline device and battery in one is connected to electrodes surgically positioned in his brain by wires extending down behind his ear and down his neck. He said he cannot feel the presence of the wires. Photographed at Friends of Alameda Animal Shelter, in Alameda, Calif., on Feb. 28, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

Across the Bay, on Alameda island on a recent Friday afternoon, John Lipp, another Stanford research subject, unbuttoned the pink sateen shirt under his blue blazer. Standing in the open doorway to the dog kennels of Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter where he is the CEO, he asked his colleague to cue up a “stripper song” — “You Gotta Have A Gimmick” from the musical “Gypsy.”

He flashed a red line on his chest, where surgeons slid a fresh neurostimulator under his skin in an outpatient procedure in December. Soon, he won’t have to go under the knife to recharge the device.

Lipp learned he had Parkinson’s in 2015. He was 49. A harbinger had been when he was on his way to meet friends and his hand clenched into a fist. “I literally stopped in the middle of the street and talked to myself: ‘Hey, relax.’”

After diagnosis, Lipp ran his first marathon at Disneyland in 2016 but soon had to stop running because of severe muscle cramping.

In 2019, his care team told him about a study in which he could receive cutting-edge treatment while advancing medicine.

He went into surgery ready, panicking only when he realized his head was locked to the operating table. Establishing care afterward was rocky. When he worried about travel plans with his husband, researchers told him he could quit the trial. But, he thought, I’ve come this far.

The aDBS treatment banished Lipp’s cramping and helped him shed most medications. Last November, he completed the 2024 New York City Marathon.

“Even if the DBS is working, the Parkinson’s is progressing, even hour by hour,” Lipp said. Anxiety, insomnia, stress and a gait that’s slightly off remain part of his reality. He can no longer open his eyes in the morning without prying them open manually.

Lipp is retiring this June, in part, to focus on his health and advocate for the Parkinson’s community.

John Lipp, another research subject in the development of adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation (aDBS), says the treatment bought him four more years working as the CEO at Friends of Alameda Animal Shelter (FAAS) in Alameda, Calif. Photographed at the shelter on Feb. 28, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

“One thing I’ve learned about this disease – any disease – is that it doesn’t change your nature. If you’re an optimistic person before your diagnosis, you’re going to be after it,” he said.

Brian Fiske, chief scientist at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which funded some of Bronte-Stewart’s early aDBS research, said no approved treatment exists to slow Parkinson’s. “But we see these advances in symptom management to be just as critical,” he added.

An international registry will follow participating aDBS patients to inform further advancements. The pre-existing treatment is still in use in some patients — its steady signal is still optimal for some, especially if their neural signals are too weak for aDBS responses.

Bronte-Stewart expressed gratitude for supporters of research, and human subjects who spend years in trials with no guarantee of benefit. She wants the new treatment to reach everyone who needs it.

“Only 2% of doctors become neurologists, and yet, neurological diseases are increasing exponentially. So you can immediately see there’s a supply and demand problem,” she said.

If Bronte-Stewart ever finds free time, she dances — keeps it moving.

“This is just the beginning,” she said.

By DAVID KLEPPER and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday downplayed the texting of sensitive plans for a military strike against Yemen’s Houthis this month to a group chat that included a journalist, saying it was “the only glitch in two months” of his administration as Democratic lawmakers heaped criticism on the administration for handling highly sensitive information carelessly.

Trump told NBC News that the lapse “turned out not to be a serious one,” and articulated his continued support for national security adviser Mike Waltz, who mistakenly added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the chain that included 18 senior administration officials discussing planning for the strike.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said in the NBC interview. The president also appeared to point blame on an unnamed Waltz aide for Goldberg being added to the chain. “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

But the use of messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive operation has opened the administration to blistering criticism from Democratic lawmakers who expressed outrage at the White House’s and senior administration officials’ insistence that no classified information was shared. Senior administration officials have struggled to explain why the publicly available app was used to discuss such a delicate matter.

One Democrat calls the mistake ‘an embarrassment’

One official on the Signal chain, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, acknowledged during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday that she was traveling overseas during the exchange. She wouldn’t say whether she was using her personal or government-issued phone because the matter is under review by the White House National Security Council.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, center, is flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel, left, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, as the Senate Intelligence Committee holds its worldwide threats hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Both Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who also was a participant in the Signal exchange and also testified at Tuesday’s intelligence hearing, faced blistering criticism from lawmakers.

“This is an embarrassment,” said Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat. “This is utterly unprofessional. There’s been no apology. There’s been no recognition of the gravity of this error.”

In the run-up to his 2016 election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump urged criminal prosecution of the former secretary of state for communicating about classified information with her aides on a private email server she set up. The matter was investigated, but the FBI ultimately recommended against charges. None were brought.

Clinton was among Democrats this week to criticize Trump administration officials’ use of Signal.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Clinton said in an X post that spotlighted The Atlantic article and included an eyes emoji.

Trump also faced charges for mishandling classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort following his first White House term. Those charges were later dismissed.

Administration says Democrats shouldn’t be outraged

But on Tuesday, top administration officials were insistent the Democratic outrage about the matter was misplaced.

On Capitol Hill, Ratcliffe and Gabbard told lawmakers that no classified information was included in the texts about U.S. attack plans in the message chain.

From left, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Jeffrey Kruse, appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a hearing on worldwide threats, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Democrats pushed back, saying the leaked military plans show a sloppy disregard for security, but Ratcliffe insisted no rules were violated.

“My communications to be clear in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information,” Ratcliffe told lawmakers in the hearing that was supposed to be focused on global security threats.

Facing heated questions from Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, Gabbard said there’s a difference between “inadvertent” releases of information and intentional leaks. “There was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard said.

Warner, though, said the lapse in security could have cost lives.

“If this information had gotten out, American lives could have been lost. If the Houthis had this information they could reposition their defensive systems,” Warner said.

In response to questions from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Gabbard and Ratcliffe said they would participate in an audit looking into administration officials’ use of Signal. Wyden said the matter must be investigated.

“I’m of the view that there ought to be resignations,” Wyden said.

FBI Director Kash Patel, appearing with Ratcliffe and Gabbard at the hearing, said he was only recently briefed on the Signal chat matter and doesn’t have an update on whether the FBI has opened an investigation into it. Warner asked for an update by the end of the day.

The White House in a statement Tuesday called the uproar a “coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his first comments on the matter on Monday, attacked the journalist who received the messages, Goldberg, as “deceitful” and a “discredited so-called journalist” while alluding to previous critical reporting of Trump from the publication.

“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said in an exchange with reporters on Monday.

Examining the security of Signal

Signal is an app that can be used for direct messaging and group chats as well as phone and video calls. It uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calling services that prevents any third party from viewing conversation content or listening in on calls.

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In other words, messages and calls sent on Signal are scrambled; only the sender and recipient at each end will have the key to decipher them.

Signal’s encryption protocol is open source, meaning that it’s freely available for anyone to inspect, use or modify. The encryption protocol is also used by another popular chat service, social media company Meta’s WhatsApp platform.

Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings. But in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration.

The official, who requested anonymity to speak about methods used to share sensitive information, said Signal was most commonly used to notify someone that they should check for a classified message sent through other means.

The use of Signal became more prevalent during the last year of the Biden administration after federal law enforcement officials warned that China and Iran were hacking the White House as well as officials in the first Trump administration, according to the official.

Sen. Angus King, a Maine Independent, questioned Ratcliffe and Gabbard over their assertion that no classified information was included in the chat.

“It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified,” he said.

AP writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed reporting.

The enforcement comes after a City Limits investigation found some marshals were not posting notices of eviction online, as a 2024 state law requires—or were posting them just days before tenants could be removed from their homes.

A marshal’s eviction notice, seen in 2010. Photo by Marc Fader for City Limits.

The Department of Investigation (DOI) will enforce a state law that requires city marshals to post notices of eviction online in addition to serving tenants in person, according to a memo from DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber. The memo, released in late February, says marshals must post notices online within 24 hours of serving them in person, and threatens discipline for noncompliance.

The enforcement comes after a November City Limits investigation found that some marshals were not posting notices of eviction online, or posting them just days before tenants could be removed from their homes. Posting online was required by a state law that took effect at the end of June 2024, but official guidance for marshals wasn’t released until Feb 27, 2025.

“Last year we passed legislation requiring the New York City Marshals to file a notice of eviction by both physical posting and electronic filing to ensure that tenants and their lawyers clearly understood when eviction proceedings were occurring and the timeline for legal response. Unfortunately, as City Limits found in their reporting, there has been inconsistent compliance with this law.” said New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

New York City’s marshals serve eviction notices and carry out evictions in the city in addition to other responsibilities, like booting cars and collecting debts from civil court proceedings. Marshals carried out 16,813 evictions last year and 3,919 so far this year, on track for the most since the end of a pandemic-era moratorium on evictions in the state.

The DOI’s Marshals Bureau oversees city marshals, with the ability to investigate and discipline those who don’t follow state law and the handbook that regulates their actions. Marshals were already required to serve eviction notices in person and by mail prior to the 2024 law mandating the online postings.

When a tenant is served a notice, a 14-day waiting period kicks in, after which they can be evicted at any time.

The increased transparency online posting affords was welcomed by housing advocates like Craig Hughes, who said the rules will help tenants clarify the first possible eviction date. This gives them time to apply for city assistance, transition to new housing, or get reasonable accommodations before entering the shelter system.

Michael Woloz, a spokesperson for the Marshals Association of New York City, a professional group for marshals that also lobbies on their behalf in Albany, told City Limits, “We were not consulted [on the original legislation]. However, we would be eager to work with our lawmakers on any future legislation.”

The original law did not specify when exactly online notice had to be served. City Limits found that out of a sample of 537 eviction notices served in September 2024, 29 were posted online after 14 days—the minimum window before an eviction can be executed—while 37 were never posted at all.

Lawyers for tenants said that failures to post online denied tenants their due process rights and crucial time they could use to prepare a legal defense. Marshals said that they were not consulted on the new rules and needed time to update data systems and procedures in order to comply.

In response, DOI convened stakeholders to make new rules and amended the Marshals Handbook. “We sought to ensure both prompt notice to tenants and that the time-frames imposed were reasonable and realistic,” Spokesperson Diane Struzzi told City Limits.

DOI worked with the state court system, city marshals, and the Legal Aid Society to craft the new guidance, a process the agency said took eight months.

“After a notice of eviction has been served upon a tenant, marshals must file such notice electronically in the New York State Court Electronic Filing (NYSCEF) system,” wrote DOI commissioner Jocelyn Strauber in the Feb. 27 memo outlining the rules. “Absent extraordinary circumstances, this electronic filing shall be completed no later than twenty-four hours following service of a notice of eviction.” 

The Marshals Association’s Woloz quibbled with that guidance slightly: “We believe that ‘next business day’ would be appropriate.”

Hoylman-Sigal has already introduced an amendment to the 2024 law that would enshrine the new rules. “I’m pleased that DOI has already updated the Marshall Handbook to include this requirement. My legislation (S.3043) will make that requirement permanent and give a strong legal foundation to DOI’s interpretation of the law,” Hoylman-Sigal told City Limits.

Payton Fisher, a lawyer with Mobilization for Justice, echoed the importance of a legislative remedy, since the current legislation expires in 2026: “the statue has a use-it-or-lose-it quality because of the sunset provision. I think it has a better chance of remaining on the books if we can show that it has been effective.”

The memo also lays out potential disciplinary action for marshals who don’t comply. “Disciplinary action[s] taken against marshals are made on a case-by-case basis and turn on the specific circumstances of each case,” said DOI’s Struzzi. The agency disciplined 11 marshals for errors during evictions from 2019 through mid-2024, as City Limits reported last year.

The rules also strengthen requirements for in-person service for congruence with last year’s law. Marshals are required to attempt in-person service but can leave the notice with an adult resident or post it on the door, and follow up by certified mail. “DOI advises marshals that whenever possible, notices of eviction shall be physically posted on the door of the subject residence, even in circumstances when personal service has been achieved,” wrote Strauber.

But the law won’t fix all the hitches of the eviction system, according to Hughes, a social worker with Bronx Legal Services. Lawyers, tenants, and advocates still rely on marshal’s offices to figure out when an eviction is actually scheduled after the 14-day minimum waiting period is up. And there isn’t consistency in how marshals respond.

Some offices, like Marshal Robert Renzulli’s, have apparently attempted to simplify the process, providing a form response to inquiries about eviction dates that includes the following: “Parties should make decisions in anticipation that execution of the Warrant of Eviction will occur on that ‘Earliest Eviction Date.’”

The move may help reduce how often lawyers and advocates need to call marshal’s offices to find the earliest eviction date, and help marshal’s office staff triage inquiries. But some marshals aren’t able to execute evictions near the first possible date. Sometimes, they’re pushed back or moved up—cases where knowing exactly when an eviction is happening, not just the first possible date, could prove crucial.

In a city that is churning out 40 evictions a day so far in 2025, some advocates say there’s still more to be done to give tenants every chance.

“People should be able to know what to expect when an eviction notice is issued and discretion that allows a marshal to withhold critical information is not helpful discretion,” said Hughes. “We’re talking about making people homeless here. Given that that is the stakes of it, it doesn’t seem at all inappropriate to demand that there is 100 percent transparency.”

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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The post City Marshals Must Post Eviction Notices Online Within 24 Hours, New Rules Say appeared first on City Limits.