October 18, 2024 5:03 am
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader and the mastermind of the group’s Oct. 7 2023, attack, is a dramatic turning point in the brutal yearlong war that it touched off. Sinwar’s killing on Thursday decapitates the Palestinian militant group that has already been reeling from months of assassinations up and down its ranks. And it is a potent symbolic achievement for Israel in its battle to destroy Hamas. The killing could set the stage for how the remainder of the war plays out, or even prompt its conclusion — depending on how Israel and Hamas choose to proceed.
October 18, 2024 4:47 pm
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s electrical grid has gone offline after one of the island’s major power plants failed and as a massive blackout swept across the Caribbean island. Cuba’s energy ministry said that the grid had gone down hours after it said the Antonio Guiteras plant had ceased operations, at about 11 a.m. local time. Authorities said at the time it was only offline temporarily. Hours earlier, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero had sought to assuage concerned citizens about the outage that began Thursday evening. Millions of Cubans were left without power, prompting the government Friday to implement emergency measures to slash demand, including suspending classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling non-essential services.
October 18, 2024 5:05 am
This year has seen President Vladimir Putin repeatedly brandish the nuclear sword, reminding everyone that Russia has the world’s largest atomic arsenal in order to deter the West from ramping up support for Ukraine. He ordered his military to hold drills involving battlefield nuclear weapons with ally Belarus. He announced Russia will start producing ground-based intermediate range missiles that were outlawed by a now-defunct U.S.-Soviet treaty in 1987. And last month, he lowered the threshold for using that arsenal by revising the country’s nuclear doctrine. Putin is relying on those thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles that carry them as an enormous doomsday machine to discourage what he sees as threats to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
October 17, 2024 2:08 pm
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military confirms that Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by its forces in Gaza. Troops appeared to have run across him in a battle on Wednesday, only to discover afterwards that a body in the rubble was the man Israel has hunted for more than a year. Authorities conducted DNA tests on a body to determine if it was him. Sinwar was one of the chief architects of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has “settled its account” with Sinwar but “war is not yet ended.” (Photo: AP)
October 16, 2024 9:54 am
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli military says it is looking into whether Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in a military operation in Gaza. In northern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The Israeli military said in a statement Thursday that three militants were killed during operations in Gaza, without elaborating. It said the identities of the three were so far not confirmed, but it was “checking the possibility” that one of the three was Sinwar. Sinwar was one of the chief architects of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
October 17, 2024 5:08 am
In the months since he became Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance has repeatedly deflected questions about whether the Republican presidential nominee lost the 2020 election, saying he was focused on the future. During a rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Vance was more declarative, saying “no” when asked about whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance said: “I think there are serious problems in 2020. So, did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use, OK?” The answer was the most specific Vance has been on the subject, and a departure from the series of evasions he has offered about the election Trump continues to say without evidence was decided fraudulently in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
October 17, 2024 5:13 am
ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void.” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued the order Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention — one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results. He ordered the board to immediately remove the rules and to inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed.
October 17, 2024 5:10 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris engaged in a combative interview with Fox News on Wednesday. She sparred with anchor Bret Baier on immigration and her shifting policy positions while asserting that if elected, she would not represent a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency. Harris’ interview marked her first foray onto the network, which is popular with conservative viewers. She’s looking to broaden her outreach to GOP-leaning voters with less than three weeks until Election Day. Her nearly 30-minute sit-down with Baier repeatedly grew heated, with the two talking over each other. Harris tried repeatedly to pivot the conversation to attacking Trump.
October 17, 2024 5:14 am
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades. An attorney says it is the largest single child sex abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese. Attorneys for 1,353 people who allege that they suffered horrific abuse at the hands of local Catholic priests reached the settlement after months of negotiations with the archdiocese. Attorneys for the plaintiffs say there is justice in accountability. After the announcement of the agreement in principle, Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement, “I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart.”
October 17, 2024 5:04 am
QANA, Lebanon (AP) — Officials say Israeli airstrikes have pounded areas across Lebanon, killing at least 27 people over the past 24 hours, including more than a dozen in a southern town where Israeli bombardments in previous conflicts are seared into local memory. Elsewhere in the south, a city’s mayor was among the dead in a strike Wednesday that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting coordinating relief efforts. Fifteen people were killed late Tuesday in the southern town of Qana, with Israel saying it targeted Jalal Mustafa Hariri, a Hezbollah commander. In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians.
