Palestinians stream into a southern Gaza town as Israel expands its offensive in the center
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into an already crowded town at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, fleeing Israel’s bombardment of the center of the strip, as a senior U.N. official on Friday criticized Israel for continuing to impose “severe restrictions” on access to aid.
The renewed criticism came a week after the U.N. Security Council demanded an immediate increase in humanitarian deliveries to the besieged territory.
Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced some 85% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.
Nearly the entire population is fully dependent on outside humanitarian aid, said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. A quarter of the population is starving because too few trucks enter with food, medicine, fuel and other supplies — sometimes fewer than 100 trucks a day, according to U.N. daily reports.
Drone footage taken Friday showed a vast camp of thousands of tents and makeshift shacks set up on what had been empty land on Rafah’s western outskirts next to U.N. warehouses. People arrived in Rafah in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who did not find space in the already overwhelmed shelters put up tents on roadsides slick with mud from winter rains.
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The Biden administration once again bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.
The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.
“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said.
The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.
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Powerful Pacific swell brings threat of more dangerous surf to California
VENTURA, Calif. (AP) — Bulldozers built giant sand berms Friday to protect beachfront homes in one of California’s coastal cities hit hard this week by extraordinary waves generated by powerful swells from Pacific storms.
Dozens of people watched construction of the emergency barriers in the Pierpont area of the city of Ventura, where a rogue wave on Thursday smacked spectators and vehicles as it overran the beach and flowed into a neighborhood.
“We have had water down the lane once before but never like this,” said Karris Kutivan, a 9-year resident of the scenic shoreline city about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.
“What it has taught me is I want to live by the beach, not on the beach,” Kutivan said.
Eight people were taken to hospitals for treatment of injuries after the Pierpont incident, according to Ventura County authorities, who closed beaches, piers and harbors through Dec. 31.
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British warship arrives in Guyana as tensions heat up in border dispute with Venezuela
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A British warship arrived in Guyana on Friday afternoon amid rising tensions from a border dispute between the former British colony and Venezuela.
The HMS Trent’s visit led Venezuela to begin military exercises a day earlier in the eastern Caribbean near its border with Guyana as the Venezuelan government presses its claim to a huge swath of its smaller neighbor.
Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed concern Friday about the situation and urged the two South American countries to return to dialogue. It said other nations should avoid “military activities” that support either side.
Brazil’s statement called on Guyana and Venezuela to stay true to the Argyle Declaration, an agreement signed earlier this month in which their leaders said they would solve the border dispute through nonviolent means.
The dispute is over Essequibo, a sparsely populated region that is the size of Florida and rich in oil and minerals. Venezuela has long claimed it was cheated out of the territory when Europeans and the U.S. set the border.
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Bollywood celebrates rocking year, riding high on action flicks, unbridled masculinity and misogyny
NEW DELHI (AP) — Bollywood has made a financial comeback this year worthy of one of its traditional singing-on-top-of-the-hills moments.
India’s Hindi language movie industry made an impressive recovery after a pandemic-driven slowdown, audience fatigue with big studio productions and Bollywood megastars, and streaming platforms taking away a large chunk of viewership.
According to consultancy firm Ormax Media, the cumulative box office in 2023 pulled in $1.3 billion, making it one of the best-grossing years of all time.
Indian moviegoers — both the masses and niche film lovers — are back in theaters and the massive commercial success of big-ticket Bollywood films has set at ease fears that Mumbai’s glitzy dream factory was losing its shine.
As one of the largest film producers in the world, India rolls out more than 1,500 movies yearly, its diverse storytelling traditions reflected in its prolific cinematic entertainers.
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Judge allows lawsuit that challenges Idaho’s broad abortion ban to move forward
An Idaho judge on Friday denied a request by the state’s top legal chief to throw out a lawsuit seeking to clarify the exemptions tucked inside the state’s broad abortion ban.
Instead, 4th District Judge Jason Scott narrowed the case to focus only on the circumstances where an abortion would be allowed and whether abortion care in emergency situations applies to Idaho’s state constitutional right to enjoy and defend life and the right to secure safety.
Scott’s decision comes just two weeks after a hearing where Idaho’s Attorney General Raul Labrador’s office attempted to dismiss the case spearheaded by four women and several physicians, who filed the case earlier this year.
Similar lawsuits are playing out around the nation, with some of them, like Idaho’s, brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of doctors and pregnant people who were denied access to abortions while facing serious pregnancy complications.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Idaho’s Constitution entitles its residents to certain fundamental rights, but a sweeping abortion ban poses a risk to those rights.
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Russia launches the biggest aerial barrage of the war and kills 30 civilians, Ukraine says
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched 122 missiles and dozens of drones against Ukrainian targets, officials said Friday, killing at least 30 civilians across the country in what an air force official called the biggest aerial barrage of the war.
At least 144 people were wounded and an unknown number were buried under rubble during the roughly 18-hour onslaught, Ukrainian officials said. A maternity hospital, apartment blocks and schools were among the buildings reported damaged across Ukraine.
In the capital, Kyiv, broken glass and mangled metal littered city streets. Air raid and emergency service sirens wailed as plumes of smoke drifted into a bright blue sky.
Kateryna Ivanivna, a 72-year-old Kyiv resident, said she threw herself to the ground when a missile struck.
“There was an explosion, then flames,” she said. “I covered my head and got down in the street. Then I ran into the subway station.”
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Abortion debate creates ‘new era’ for state supreme court races in 2024, with big spending expected
CHICAGO (AP) — The 2024 elections will be dominated by the presidential contest and the battle for control of Congress, but another series of races is shaping up to be just as consequential.
Crucial battles over abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights and other issues will take center stage in next year’s elections for state supreme court seats — 80 of them in 33 states.
The races have emerged as some of the most hotly contested and costliest contests on the ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the consitutional right to an abortion. The decision shifted the abortion debate to states, creating a “new era” in state supreme court elections, said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks spending in judicial races.
“We have seen attention on state supreme court elections like never before and money in these races like never before,” Keith said.
Heated court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2023 handed victories to Democrats and saw tens of millions of dollars in TV ads, offering a preview of 2024. They’re also prompting groups to consider investing in states they would not previously have considered.
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Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen says he unwittingly sent AI-generated fake legal cases to his attorney
NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s onetime personal lawyer and fixer, says he unwittingly passed along to his attorney bogus artificial intelligence-generated legal case citations he got online before they were submitted to a judge.
Cohen made the admission in a court filing unsealed Friday in Manhattan federal court after a judge earlier this month asked a lawyer to explain how court rulings that do not exist were cited in a motion submitted on Cohen’s behalf. Judge Jesse Furman had also asked what role, if any, Cohen played in drafting the motion.
The AI-generated cases were cited as part of written arguments attorney David M. Schwartz made to try to bring an early end to Cohen’s court supervision after he served more than a year behind bars. Cohen had pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax evasion, campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, saying Trump directed him to arrange the payment of hush money to a porn actor and to a former Playboy model to fend off damage to his 2016 presidential bid.
Cohen, who was disbarred five years ago, said in a declaration submitted to the judge on Thursday that he found the citations by doing research through Google Bard and was unaware that the service could generate nonexistent cases. He said he uses the internet for research because he no longer has access to formal legal-research sources.
“As a non-lawyer, I have not kept up with emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like Chat-GPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not,” Cohen said. “Instead, I understood it to be a super-charged search engine and had repeatedly used it in other contexts to (successfully) find accurate information online.”
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Maui’s economy needs tourists. Can they visit without compounding wildfire trauma?
LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — The restaurant where Katie Austin was a server burned in the wildfire that devastated Hawaii’s historic town of Lahaina this summer.
Two months later, as travelers began to trickle back to nearby beach resorts, she went to work at a different eatery. But she soon quit, worn down by constant questions from diners: Was she affected by the fire? Did she know anyone who died?
“You’re at work for eight hours and every 15 minutes you have a new stranger ask you about the most traumatic day of your life,” Austin said. “It was soul-sucking.”
Hawaii’s governor and mayor invited tourists back to the west side of Maui months after the Aug. 8 fire killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings. They wanted the economic boost tourists would bring, particularly heading into the year-end holidays.
But some residents are struggling with the return of an industry requiring workers to be attentive and hospitable even though they are trying to care for themselves after losing their loved ones, friends, homes and community.
The Associated Press
