Hamas released three more Israeli hostages on Saturday as part of an exchange for Palestinian prisoners, in a highly theatrical handover in which the men were made to give speeches effectively at gunpoint.

The hostage release is the fifth in a tense series of exchanges that are part of a 42-day cease-fire deal that went into effect last month pausing the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Hamas agreed to incrementally release 33 of the nearly 100 remaining hostages in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Israel and a partial Israeli withdrawal.

Here’s a closer look at the Israelis released on Saturday:

Ohad Ben Ami

“The only important thing is for Ohad to come back,” Raz Ben Ami told The New York Times in August, adding: “It’s still hard for me to imagine our life after this.”

Ella Ben Ami, one of the couple’s three daughters, was a vocal advocate for a cease-fire deal. She was critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to speak in Congress in July, saying he should not travel abroad until there was an agreement to free the hostages. A video posted on social media in August, showed Ms. Ben Ami near the border with Gaza calling her father’s name with a microphone in hand and saying she missed him.

In December, on Mr. Ben Ami’s second birthday in captivity, his family marked the day with a bike ride and a ceremony, according to his brother, Kobi, who told Israeli news media that around 200 people joined them as they rode along a bicycle path created to commemorate 11 cyclists killed on Oct. 7 and hostages, including Mr. Ben Ami. He said the family had not received any signs he was alive since he was captured.

Or Levy

Mr. Levy was 33 when he was taken hostage. His wife, Eynav Levy, died on Oct. 7. Their son, who was just two at the time, was with Ms. Levy’s mother while his parents went to the Nova music festival, an event held just a few miles from the Gaza border that was a key target of the assault.

Mr. Levy texted his mother during the attack, including from a shelter that was stormed by the militants. The Israeli military later informed the family that Ms. Levy’s body was found in the shelter and that Mr. Levy was being held in Gaza.

The couple both worked in tech and lived near Tel Aviv. Mr. Levy’s older brother, Michael Levy, spoke about his younger brother’s dire situation at an event in California in March, one of many trips he made around the world to press for a hostage deal. At the time, he said he had not received indications his brother was dead but was not very optimistic about a deal.

Eli Sharabi

Mr. Sharabi was also abducted from Be’eri. His wife, Lianne and their two daughters, Noiya and Yahel, were killed in the attack.

His brother Yossi was also taken as a hostage to Gaza, where he was killed in an Israeli airstrike, the Israeli military later told his family.

The two brothers and their families were very close, Nira Sharabi, Yossi Sharabi’s wife, said in a video published by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Mr. Sharabi, 52, had lived on the kibbutz from the age of 14. It was also where he met his wife when she arrived from England as a volunteer nearly 20 years ago. At the time of the attack. Mr. Sharabi served as treasurer for the kibbutz and sat on its economic committee.

His brother, Sharon, said in December that news of progress on a cease-fire deal had prompted “new hope among the families of hostages that they might see their loved ones again — and at the same time, tension.”

“We lost four people,” he said. “We don’t intend to fill a fifth coffin.”

President Trump’s executive order freezing most U.S. foreign aid for 90 days has thrown into turmoil programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases, run clinical trials and seek to provide shelter for millions of displaced people across the globe.

The government’s lead agency for delivering humanitarian aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., has been hit the hardest. Mr. Trump has accused the agency of rampant corruption and fraud, without providing evidence.

The Trump administration ordered thousands of the agency’s workers to return to the United States from overseas; put all of the agency’s direct hires, including its roster of Foreign Service officers, on indefinite administrative leave; and shifted oversight of the agency to the State Department.

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced plans to gut the agency’s staff, reducing U.S.A.I.D.’s work force of more than 10,000 to perhaps a few hundred. On Friday, a judge temporarily blocked elements of the Trump administration’s plan to shut down the agency, though the aid freeze remains in effect.

In total, the United States spent nearly $72 billion on foreign assistance in 2023, which includes spending by U.S.A.I.D., the State Department and programs managed by agencies like the Peace Corps.

As a percentage of its economic output, the United States — which has the world’s largest economy — gives much less in foreign aid than other developed countries.

U.S.A.I.D. spent about $38 billion on health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and other programs in fiscal year 2023. That was less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Who are the recipients?

Mr. Trump’s freeze on U.S. foreign aid does not apply to weapons support for countries like Israel and Egypt, and emergency food assistance is also exempt.

In 2023, the last year for which full data is available, Ukraine, which has been waging a war against Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, received $16.6 billion, the most U.S. assistance of any country or region. The bulk of that went to economic development, followed by humanitarian aid and security.

Israel — which was attacked by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off a 16-month war in Gaza — received the second-highest amount of U.S. assistance: $3.3 billion in 2023, mainly for security.

Ethiopia, Somalia and Nigeria received more than $1 billion each in 2023, mostly for humanitarian aid.

In Latin America, Colombia was the top recipient of U.S. aid, $705 million, in 2023.

How is the money spent?

U.S. foreign aid can be structured as direct financial assistance to countries through nongovernmental organizations; military support; food and medical aid; or technical expertise.

Foreign aid can be a form of soft power, serving a country’s strategic interests, strengthening allies and helping to prevent conflicts.

In the case of U.S.A.I.D., money has gone toward humanitarian aid, development assistance and direct budget support in Ukraine, peace-building in Somalia, disease surveillance in Cambodia, vaccination programs in Nigeria, H.I.V. prevention in Uganda and maternal health assistance in Zambia. The agency has also helped to contain major outbreaks of Ebola.

Contrary to a claim by Mr. Trump, U.S. money has not been used to send condoms to Gaza for use by Hamas, health officials say. In a statement late last month, the International Medical Corps said that it had received more than $68 million from U.S.A.I.D. since October 2023 for its work in the enclave but that “no U.S. government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms.”

Instead, the group said, the money was used to operate two field hospitals, treat and diagnose malnutrition, deliver more than 5,000 babies and perform 11,000 surgeries.

Why was the freeze ordered?

For years, conservative critics have questioned the value of U.S. foreign aid programs. The Trump administration argues that the halt to foreign aid is necessary to examine whether U.S. funds are being wasted.

“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a recent statement. “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

On his Truth Social platform Friday, Mr. Trump wrote, “CLOSE IT DOWN!” He has asserted without evidence that the agency was “run by radical lunatics.”

Mr. Rubio, who previously spoke out in support of the agency, has taken aim at the organization, faulting its employees for “deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest.”

He has insisted, however, that the takeover was “not about getting rid of foreign aid.” He said during a recent Fox News interview, “We have rank insubordination” in the agency, adding that U.S.A.I.D. employees had been “completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”

What have been the effects of the aid freeze?

As organizations across the globe reeled, the Trump administration switched gears. Mr. Rubio announced that “lifesaving humanitarian assistance” could continue but that the reprieve would be “temporary.”

But by then, hundreds of senior officials and workers who help distribute American aid had already been fired or put on leave, and many aid efforts remain paralyzed.

Dozens of clinical trials in South Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. The freeze left people with experimental drugs and medical products in their bodies, cut them off from the researchers monitoring them and spread fear.

In South Africa, for example, the freeze shut down a U.S.A.I.D.-funded study of silicone rings inserted in women to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection.

About 2.4 million anti-malaria bed nets, manufactured to fulfill U.S.-funded orders and bound for countries across sub-Saharan Africa, were stuck in production facilities in Asia. Those contracts are frozen because the U.S.A.I.D. subcontractor that bought them is not allowed to talk to the manufacturer under the terms of the freeze.

In Uganda, a national anti-malaria program suspended spraying insecticide into village homes and halted shipments of bed nets for distribution to pregnant women and young children.

And in Syria, the executive order threatens a U.S. program supporting security forces inside a notorious camp, known as Al Hol, in the Syrian desert that holds tens of thousands of Islamic State members and their families, Syrian and U.S. officials said.

What was the reaction to the Trump order?

U.S.A.I.D. officials have been bracing for a drastic reduction to their ranks since contractors started being let go just days after the Trump administration’s stop-work order. But Democratic lawmakers say the moves to dismantle the agency or merge it with the State Department are illegal.

Two unions representing U.S.A.I.D. employees on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, Mr. Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the agencies they lead. The suit argued that the reduction in personnel and the cancellation of global aid contracts were unconstitutional and violated the separation of powers.

It sought an injunction to stop the firing and furloughing of employees and the dismantling of the agency. It argued that U.S.A.I.D. cannot be unwound without the previous approval of Congress.

“What we’re seeing is an unlawful seizure of this agency by the Trump administration in a plain violation of basic constitutional principles,” said Robin Thurston, the legal director for Democracy Forward, one of two advocacy organizations that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees. He added that the administration had “generated a global humanitarian crisis.”

On Friday afternoon, after a hearing, Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he would issue a temporary restraining order pausing the administrative leave of 2,200 U.S.A.I.D. employees and a plan to withdraw nearly all the agency’s overseas workers within 30 days.

The thousands of people who work for the U.S. government’s main agency for humanitarian aid and disaster relief have been on the front lines of efforts to fight famine, contain virulent infectious diseases like H.I.V. and Ebola, and rebuild infrastructure in impoverished and war-torn countries.

On Friday evening, just hours before the vast majority of them were set to have been suspended with pay or laid off, a court issued a limited, temporary order against the Trump administration’s moves to shut down the agency.

The order was a temporary reprieve to approximately 2,700 direct hires of the U.S. Agency for International Development who were on administrative leave or set to be placed on leave by midnight Friday. For the past two weeks, they and the contractors who work for the agency had been in the throes of a collective panic as the Trump administration began to lay off staff and signaled it planned to decimate the agency.

But the U.S.A.I.D. work force, and the aid industry that relies in large part on the agency’s funding, is still acutely in limbo. On Saturday, U.S.A.I.D. informed employees affected by the order that employees already on administrative leave would be reinstated until the end Friday, Feb. 14, and that no one else would be suspended with pay during that period, according to a copy of the notice viewed by The New York Times. But those employees could still have to wait for weeks, months, or potentially even longer, for a verdict. The case, which was brought on behalf of unions representing the workers, is expected to go to the Supreme Court, and it is unclear whether the jobs will ever exist again.

The Trump administration’s announcement this week that U.S.A.I.D. would dismiss almost all of its contractors and that most Foreign Service officers and other direct hires would be put on indefinite administrative leave set off a panic around the globe, as Americans posted in missions abroad scrambled to dismantle and reassemble their lives.

The announcement gave Foreign Service officers just 30 days to depart their posts and return to the United States if they wanted the U.S. government to pay for their relocation, forcing nearly the entire diplomatic staff to plan the sort of swift exit that normally only takes place during coups and wars.

Many employees with children had to decide whether to pull them out of school immediately, or leave families behind until the end of the school year. Some with medical conditions, including late-stage and high-risk pregnancies, worried about the dangers traveling and the status of their health care. Several agonized over what to do about pets, because it was not possible to procure the paperwork necessary to enter the United States in just a few weeks.

The reductions at U.S.A.I.D. appear to have been driven largely by Elon Musk, the tech magnate President Trump deputized to make budget cuts across the government, and Pete Marocco, the State Department’s director of foreign aid, whom Mr. Rubio appointed this week to run the day-to-day business of U.S.A.I.D.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has assumed overall authority of U.S.A.I.D., tried to tamp down the fears, encouraging people to apply for waivers to delay travel and arguing that the Trump administration was “not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives.”

But as stop-work orders and reports of massive cuts at the agency rippled across the global aid industry, and scores of nongovernmental organizations and consulting firms that relied on the agency’s funding laid off staff, the agency’s workers braced for its potential end.

One American posted to a U.S.A.I.D. mission in Africa said that he and his wife, a Foreign Service officer, had both been suspended.

“Two weeks ago we were two gainfully employed people with onward assignments, and now we’ve seen the entire industry decimated and we’re returning to the U.S. without jobs,” he said.

He, like many others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, as those still on the agency’s payroll have been instructed not to publicly discuss the changes underway. Employees fear that flouting the order could jeopardize whatever benefits they might still be eligible for, such as pensions and severance pay — though it was unclear if the Trump administration would honor such obligations.

On Thursday, a subset of U.S.A.I.D. employees began receiving notices that they had been deemed “essential,” meaning they would not be suspended or laid off — for now.

“This is your formal notification that you are expected to keep working, effective immediately, and until notified otherwise,” the emailed notification said, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.

It was not immediately clear how many employees had been deemed essential. On Thursday afternoon, senior U.S.A.I.D. leaders were told that the Trump administration planned to reduce the agency’s staff to about 290, according to three people informed directly about the details of the call. By Friday morning, however, senior agency officials were being told that the number of retained employees was 611, according to two people familiar with the internal guidance.

Some speculated that the number of people retained might climb slightly higher, as bureau and regional leaders fought to preserve as many positions as possible to continue the agency’s lifesaving work.

Either way, the cuts to a work force of more than 10,000 promised to be drastic.

“What is happening is devastating, it’s hard to put it into words, but it’s devastating,” said Maria Carrasco, who had worked for the aid agency or projects abroad it had funded for the last 25 years, she said, before being terminated with other contractors last week. “We are people who put our sweat and tears in to these organizations, because we believe in the ultimate goal of helping people. And now it’s been erased.”

The moves against the U.S.A.I.D. work force began in earnest on Jan. 28, four days after the stop-work orders were issued.

Samantha Cooper, a contractor whose employment was terminated, had been working in maternal and child health and nutrition at the aid agency, and was set to begin a new job this past Monday in the Office of H.I.V./AIDS. Within days, she went from being excited about an upcoming career milestone to straining to make ends meet.

“I’m having to file for unemployment, which doesn’t even cover rent; food stamps, which — that’s fine, it at least gets me groceries,” she said in a telephone interview. Her medical coverage ran out on Friday last week.

Ms. Cooper, who is based in Tulsa, Okla., said she felt luckier than most.

“I have co-workers that are going through I.V.F., and they’ve lost all their benefits; people going through cancer treatments and with parents on hospice — and they were the breadwinners,” she said. “I feel privileged to say this is only what I’m struggling with. I know there are so many others having to deal with that, and it is literally going to break them.”

That was the fear for one Foreign Service officer in Asia who discovered this week that an immediate family member needed to be evacuated for a life-threatening health condition, only to be told by superiors that amid the dissolution of U.S.A.I.D., there was no funding available for emergency medical travel. Their only option, the officer was told, would be to immediately return to the United States, where they have nowhere to live, and leave their belongings and pets behind.

Another Foreign Service officer working at a mission in Africa wrestled with how to break the news to her two young children.

She also worried that she and her spouse, who also works in development, would have to live off the savings they had hoped to put toward a house if they both soon found themselves out of work.

“It just feels like the entire sector is sinking, and so how am I going to find a job?” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others, for fear of retaliation. “All I know is development, all I know is public health — I’ve dedicated my life to this. What other skills do I have?”

The decimation of U.S.A.I.D. has set off a domino effect, as contractors, nongovernmental organizations and consulting firms that rely on funding from the agency for their projects also are forced to make cuts. At least 10,000 American jobs in the sector have already disappeared, according to InterAction, which represents a number of organizations specializing in foreign aid.

“It’s the evisceration of the sector,” Tom Hart, the president and chief executive officer of InterAction, said.

Employees of nongovernmental organizations and companies that rely on U.S.A.I.D. funding said they had effectively been blocked from accessing any funding through the agency’s accounting system, and in some cases, had months of expenses with no guarantee that the federal government would reimburse them.

Resonance, a development consulting firm that employed about 150 people around the world, is an example of a small company taking a big hit. The firm did about 75 percent of its business with U.S.A.I.D. before the contraction. It has bills going back to November that the agency has yet to cover, Steve Schmida, its co-founder, said in an interview.

“We’re being forced to carry a huge amount of cost with no clarity if and when we will get paid or reimbursed,” Mr. Schmida said, adding that he had to lay off almost 90 percent of his U.S.-based staff. He is going without pay for three months to help free up funds to keep his business afloat, he said.

But as news of the drastic staff reductions took hold, he was losing hope that the government would ever cover the funding his firm had been promised.

“It’s just been a catastrophe,” he said of the U.S.A.I.D. cuts, adding: “I think it’s dawning on everyone that this is over.”

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Bangkok and Chris Cameron from Washington.