Israeli strikes kill at least 15 in Qana, a Lebanese town with a dark history of civilian deaths
QANA, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli strikes have killed at least 15 people in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, which has long been associated with civilian deaths after Israeli strikes during previous conflicts with Hezbollah. Israel meanwhile struck Beirut's southern suburbs early Wednesday for the first time in nearly a week.
Israel also carried out a wave of airstrikes on the southern city of Nabatiyeh, targeting what it said were Hezbollah militant sites embedded among civilians, without providing evidence.
The strikes killed at least five people and destroyed a municipality building, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. The city’s mayor, Ahmad Kahil, was among the dead, provincial governor Huwaida Turk told The Associated Press.
Earlier this week, Israeli airstrikes destroyed Nabatiyeh's century-old market area.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes in Qana late Tuesday. Lebanon's Civil Defense said 15 bodies had been recovered from the rubble of a building and that rescue efforts were still underway.
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Georgia judge blocks ballot counting rule and says county officials must certify election results
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge has blocked a new rule that requires Georgia Election Day ballots to be counted by hand after the close of voting. The ruling came a day after the same judge ruled that county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law.
The State Election Board last month passed the rule requiring that three poll workers each count the paper ballots — not votes — by hand after the polls close. The county election board in Cobb County, in Atlanta’s suburbs, had filed a lawsuit seeking to have a judge declare that rule and five others recently passed by the state board invalid, saying they exceed the state board’s authority, weren’t adopted in compliance with the law and are unreasonable.
In a ruling late Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote, that the so-called hand count rule “is too much, too late” and blocked its enforcement while he considers the merits of the case.
McBurney on Monday had ruled in a separate case that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” While they are entitled to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”
Georgia law says county election superintendents — generally multimember boards — “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election, or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.
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Unions face a moment of truth in Michigan in this year's presidential race
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris rallies in Michigan’s union halls, standing alongside the state’s most powerful labor leader, while former President Donald Trump fires back from rural steel factories, urging middle-class workers to trust him as the true champion of their interests.
As they compete for blue wall states with deep union roots, the presidential candidates are making their case to workers in starkly different terms. And nowhere is that contrast more significant than in Michigan, where both candidates are vying for workers’ support in a race that could mark a pivotal moment for organized labor.
“The American dream was really born here in Michigan,” United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain told a crowd of several hundred while campaigning for Harris in Grand Rapids. Fain, who described Michigan as “sacred ground” for his union at the early October rally, warned that the dream was on “life support" and that unions like his were key to protecting it for American workers.
Harris, who is planning to meet with union workers again in Michigan on Friday, hopes her message — amplified by supporters such as Fain — will resonate beyond the union families that once formed a rock-solid base for the Democratic Party. Her campaign has grown increasingly concerned about her standing with men in the blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where they are looking to union leaders to help mobilize voters in a political landscape that has shifted in the winds of a rapidly changing economy.
These concerns intensified recently when Harris failed to secure two key union endorsements that in 2020 went to President Joe Biden, who has touted himself as the most labor-friendly president in U.S. history. The International Association of Firefighters and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters both declined to endorse anyone, with the Teamsters citing a lack of majority support for Harris among their million-plus members.
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Zelenskyy to unveil 'victory plan' to Ukrainian lawmakers after presenting it to Western allies
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was set to at least partially unveil a plan to win the war against Russia to his country's Parliament on Wednesday after weeks of dropping hints about the blueprint to lukewarm Western allies, including U.S. President Joe Biden.
The plan — comprising military, political, diplomatic and economic elements — is considered by many as Ukraine’s last resort to strengthen its hand in any future cease-fire negotiations with Russia. Thus far, however, no country has publicly endorsed it or commented on its feasibility.
Zelenskyy is keen to get the “victory plan” in place before a new U.S. president is sworn in next year, though Ukrainian officials say neither presidential candidate will necessarily improve Kyiv’s standing in the war.
Zelenskyy’s presentation to Parliament, announced on Monday by presidential adviser Serhii Leshchenko, comes during a bleak moment in Ukraine. The country’s military is suffering losses along the eastern front as Russian forces inch closer to a strategically significant victory near the crucial logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
At every turn, Kyiv is outnumbered by Moscow: The country is struggling to replenish ranks with an unpopular mobilization drive; its ammunition stocks are limited; and Russia’s superiority in the skies is wreaking havoc for Ukrainian defensive lines.
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First Italian ship with 16 intercepted migrants docks at Albanian port to process asylum request
SHENGJIN, Albania (AP) — An Italian navy ship on Wednesday docked at the Albanian port of Shengjin to bring the first group of 16 migrants intercepted in international waters.
The naval ship Libra left the port of Lampedusa on Monday with 16 men — 10 from Bangladesh and six from Egypt — who were rescued at sea after departing from Libya, a ministry spokesman said.
Last week Italy formally opened two centers in Albania where it plans to process thousands of asylum-seekers outside its borders.
The centers will only house adult men, while vulnerable people such as women, children, the elderly and those who are ill or victims of torture will be accommodated in Italy. Families will not be separated.
Italian Ambassador to Albania Fabrizio Bucci said Friday the two centers were ready to process migrants after the opening was delayed for months to consolidate the crumbling soil at one center, in Gjader where they will be accommodated.
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At least 90 people killed and 50 injured after a gasoline tanker explodes in Nigeria, police say
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — More than 90 people have been killed and 50 others injured after a gasoline tanker overturned in Nigeria and sparked an explosion as dozens of people rushed to the vehicle to scoop up the fuel, police said Wednesday.
The explosion occurred past midnight in Jigawa state after the tanker driver lost control of the vehicle while traveling on a highway close to a university, police spokesperson Lawan Adam said.
“The residents were scooping up fuel from the overturned tanker when the explosion occurred, sparking a massive inferno that killed 94 people on the spot,” Adam said.
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In the heartland of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, the old ways have changed and violence rages
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel.
Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.
Then, they’ll go after everyone on that person's contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats.
“You can’t go five minutes out of the city, ... not even in daylight,” said Ismael Bojórquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. “Why? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone.”
And it’s not just your own chats: If a person is traveling in a car with others, one bad contact or chat can get the whole group kidnapped.
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Many schools are still closed weeks after Hurricane Helene. Teachers worry about long-term impact
Tens of thousands of students in the Southeast are dealing with school disruptions after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc so severe — on homes, campuses and municipal power and water systems — that some districts have no idea when they will reopen.
While virtual learning helped during the COVID-19 school closures, that has not been an option for this crisis because internet and cellphone service has remained spotty since the storm struck in late September. In hard-hit western North Carolina, some districts warn students will miss up to a month of school, and others say they can't yet determine a timeline for returning to classrooms.
“I feel like a month is a lot, but it’s not something that can’t be overcome,” said Marissa Coleman, who has sent her four children to stay with grandparents in Texas because their home in North Carolina's Buncombe County has no running water. “But if we get further into Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s like, how are they actually going to make this up?”
In mountainous Buncombe County, Helene swept away homes, cut power and destroyed crucial parts of the water system for Asheville, a city of about 94,000 people. The storm decimated remote towns and killed at least 246 people throughout the Appalachians, where massive cleanup efforts have been complicated by washed-out bridges and roads. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005.
The Buncombe County School system, which serves over 22,000 students, told families Tuesday on the district's Facebook page no decision has been made "with regards to start date or length of day" because of a need to repair buildings, restore phone and security systems and redraw bus routes.
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What's behind the widening gender wage gap?
NEW YORK (AP) — Just how much of a setback was the COVID-19 pandemic for U.S. working women?
Although women who lost or left their jobs at the height of the crisis have largely returned to the workforce, a recent finding points to the price many paid for stepping back: In 2023, the gender wage gap between men and women working full-time widened year-over-year for the first time in 20 years, according to an annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Economists trying to make sense of the data say it captures a complicated moment during the disjointed post-pandemic labor market recovery when many women finally returned to work full-time, especially in hard-hit low-wage industries where they are overrepresented like hospitality, social work and caretaking.
The news is not all bad: Wages rose for all workers last year, but faster for men. And while the gender wage gap rose, it’s on par with what it was in 2019 before the pandemic hit.
In 2023, women working full time earned 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, down from a historic high of 84 cents in 2022. The Census Bureau called it the first statistically significant widening of the ratio since 2003.
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A full-scale replica of Anne Frank's hidden annex is heading to New York for an exhibition
AMSTERDAM (AP) — The annex where the young Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is heading to New York.
A full-scale replica of the rooms that form the heart of the Anne Frank House museum on one of Amsterdam's historic canals is being built in the Netherlands and will be shipped across the Atlantic for a show titled “ Anne Frank The Exhibition ” at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
“For the first time in history, the Anne Frank House will present what I would call a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam. To immerse visitors in a full-scale, meticulous recreation of the secret annex. Those rooms where Anne Frank, her parents, her sister, four other Jews, spent more than two years hiding to evade Nazi capture,” Anne Frank House director Ronald Leopold told The Associated Press in an interview detailing the upcoming exhibition.
In July 1942, Anne Frank, then aged 13, her parents Otto and Edith, and her 16-year-old sister Margo went into hiding in the annex. They were joined a week later by the van Pels family — Hermann, Auguste and their 15-year-old son, Peter. Four months later, Fritz Pfeffer moved into the hiding place, also seeking to evade capture by the Netherlands' Nazi German occupiers.
They stayed in the annex of rooms until they were discovered in 1944 and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Anne and her sister Margot were then moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in February 1945. Anne was 15.
The Associated Press
