Hezbollah fires scores of rockets at northern Israel as Gaza cease-fire talks hang in the balance
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's Hezbollah fired a massive barrage of rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday to avenge the killing of a top commander, further escalating regional tensions as the fate of an internationally-backed plan for a cease-fire in Gaza hung in the balance.
The retaliatory attack came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region to push a cease-fire proposal with global support that has not been fully embraced by Israel or Hamas. The militant group submitted its first official response late Tuesday, requesting “amendments” to the deal.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed ally of Hamas, has traded fire with Israel nearly every day since the 8-month-long Israel-Hamas war began and says it will only stop if there is a truce in Gaza. That has raised fears of an even more devastating regional conflagration.
Air raid sirens sounded across northern Israel, and the military said that about 160 projectiles were fired from southern Lebanon, making it one of the largest attacks since the fighting began. There were no immediate reports of casualties as some were intercepted while others ignited brush fires.
Hezbollah said it fired missiles and rockets at two military bases in retaliation for the killing of Taleb Sami Abdullah, 55. Known within Hezbollah as Hajj Abu Taleb, he is the most senior commander killed since the fighting began eight months ago. The Israeli strike destroyed a house where Abdullah and three other officials were meeting, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border, late Tuesday.
What's next for Hunter Biden after his conviction on federal gun charges
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Hunter Biden's legal woes are not over after his conviction on three felony firearms charges in a trial that put a spotlight on his drug-fueled past.
Now, President Joe Biden's son faces sentencing, and another criminal trial on tax charges in the middle of his father's reelection campaign.
Jurors found Hunter Biden guilty on Tuesday after just three hours of deliberations over two days in the federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. The case stemmed from a gun Hunter Biden bought in 2018 while, as prosecutors say, he was in the throes of a crack cocaine addiction.
Here's a look at what's next for Hunter Biden:
He was convicted of lying on a mandatory gun purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs, and illegally having the gun for 11 days.
AP sources: 8 people with possible Islamic State ties arrested in US on immigration violations
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight people from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State group have been arrested in the United States in recent days, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles and the individuals, who entered the U.S. through the southern border, are being held on immigration violations, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The nature of their suspected connections to the IS was not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF. They were in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which made the arrests while working with the JTTF, pending proceedings to remove them from the country.
The individuals from Tajikistan entered the country last spring and passed through the U.S. government's screening process without turning up information that would have identified them as potential terrorism-related concerns, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement confirming the immigration-related arrests of “several non-citizens” but did not detail specifics. The agencies noted that the U.S. has been in a “heightened threat environment.”
North Korea's Kim hails Russia ties as Putin reportedly plans a visit
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed the country’s expanding relationship with Russia on Wednesday, as reports suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon visit the country for his third meeting with Kim.
Military, economic and other cooperation between North Korea and Russia have sharply increased since Kim visited Russia last September for a meeting with Putin. The U.S., South Korea and their partners believe North Korea has supplied artillery, missiles and other conventional weapons to Russia to support its war in Ukraine in return for advanced military technologies and economic aid.
Kim has been pushing to boost partnerships with Russia and China in a bid to strength his regional footing and launch a united front against the United States.
During their September meeting at Russia’s main space launch site, Kim invited the Russian president to visit North Korea at “a convenient time,” and Putin accepted.
On Wednesday, Kim sent Putin a message congratulating Russia on its National Day, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
At least 41 die in a fire at a building housing workers in Kuwait
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — At least 41 people died when a fire swept through a building that housed workers in Kuwait early Wednesday, and officials said the blaze appeared to be linked to code violations.
Interior Minister Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousuf Al-Sabah confirmed the toll and ordered the arrest of the building’s owner during a visit to the site, local media reported.
The reports said scores of workers were living in the building in the southern Mangaf district, without giving their nationality.
Kuwait, like other Persian Gulf countries, has a large community of migrant workers who far outnumber the local population. The nation of some 4.2 million people is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of New Jersey but has the world’s sixth-largest known oil reserves.
A fire at an oil refinery in 2022 killed four people.
More than 1.5 million foreign Muslims arrive in Mecca for annual Hajj pilgrimage
MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Muslim pilgrims have been streaming into Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca ahead of the start of the Hajj later this week, as the annual pilgrimage returns to its monumental scale.
Saudi officials say more than 1.5 million foreign pilgrims have arrived in the country by Tuesday, the vast majority by air, from across the world. More are expected, and hundreds of thousands of Saudis and others living in Saudi Arabia will also join them when the pilgrimage officially begins on Friday.
Saudi officials have said they expect the number of pilgrims this year to exceed 2023, when more than 1.8 million people performed Hajj, approaching pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, more than 2.4 million Muslims made the pilgrimage. Saudi authorities control the flow of pilgrims through quotas, allowing each country one pilgrim for every thousand Muslim citizens.
The pilgrims included 4,200 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank who arrived in Mecca earlier this month, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were not able to travel to Saudi Arabia for Hajj this year, because of the 8-month war between Israel and Hamas.
“We are praying for Palestine to be free and (for Palestinians) to liberate their land and to be like other nations, to live in peace and not always to have war," said Ibrahim al-Hadhari, an Algerian pilgrim, as he was standing in the Grand Mosque court waiting for evening prayers.
Faking an honest woman: Why Russia, China and Big Tech all use faux females to get clicks
WASHINGTON (AP) — When disinformation researcher Wen-Ping Liu looked into China's efforts to influence Taiwan's recent election using fake social media accounts, something unusual stood out about the most successful profiles.
They were female, or at least that's what they appeared to be. Fake profiles that claimed to be women got more engagement, more eyeballs and more influence than supposedly male accounts.
“Pretending to be a female is the easiest way to get credibility,” said Liu, an investigator with Taiwan's Ministry of Justice.
Whether it’s Chinese or Russian propaganda agencies, online scammers or AI chatbots, it pays to be female — proving that while technology may grow more and more sophisticated, the human brain remains surprisingly easy to hack thanks in part to age-old gender stereotypes that have migrated from the real world to the virtual.
People have long assigned human characteristics like gender to inanimate objects — ships are one example — so it makes sense that human-like traits would make fake social media profiles or chatbots more appealing. However, questions about how these technologies can reflect and reinforce gender stereotypes are getting attention as more voice assistants and AI-enabled chatbots enter the market, further blurring the lines between man (and woman) and machine.
After years of delays, scaled-back plans underway for memorial to Florida nightclub massacre
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Survivors and the families of victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre had hoped by now to have a permanent memorial in place for Wednesday's eighth anniversary of the attack by a lone gunman who killed 49 people at the gay-friendly club in Orlando, Florida.
Instead, new, scaled-back plans are only now getting off the ground following a botched effort to build a multimillion-dollar memorial and museum by a private foundation that disbanded last year.
The city of Orlando purchased the nightclub property last year for $2 million, and it has since outlined more modest plans for a memorial. The original idea for a museum has been jettisoned and, last week, city leaders formed an advisory board to help determine what the memorial will look like.
“We’re very much hoping to find a number of family members to be a part of this committee, as well as survivors,” said Larry Schooler, a facilitator tasked with guiding the memorial effort. City officials said the goal is to have the memorial completed by 2028 at the site near downtown Orlando.
Until last year, efforts to build a memorial had been moving ahead in fits and starts ever since the massacre.
Federal Reserve is likely to scale back plans for rate cuts because of persistent inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials on Wednesday will likely make official what's been clear for many weeks: With inflation sticking at a level above their 2% target, they are downgrading their outlook for interest rate cuts.
In a set of quarterly economic forecasts they will issue after their latest meeting ends, the policymakers are expected to project that they will cut their benchmark rate just once or twice by year's end, rather than the three times they had envisioned in March.
The Fed's rate policies typically have a significant impact on the costs of mortgages, auto loans, credit card rates and other forms of consumer and business borrowing. The downgrade in their outlook for rate cuts would mean that such borrowing costs would likely stay higher for longer, a disappointment for potential homebuyers and others.
Still, the Fed's quarterly projections of future interest rate cuts are by no means fixed in time. The policymakers frequently revise their plans for rate cuts — or hikes — depending on how economic growth and inflation measures evolve over time.
But if borrowing costs remain high in the coming months, they could also have consequences for the presidential race. Though the unemployment rate is a low 4%, hiring is robust and consumers continue to spend, voters have taken a generally sour view of the economy under President Joe Biden. In large part, that's because prices remain much higher than they were before the pandemic struck. High borrowing rates impose a further financial burden.
Thefts of charging cables pose yet another obstacle to appeal of electric vehicles
DETROIT (AP) — Just before 2 a.m. on a chilly April night in Seattle, a Chevrolet Silverado pickup stopped at an electric vehicle charging station on the edge of a shopping center parking lot.
Two men, one with a light strapped to his head, got out. A security camera recorded them pulling out bolt cutters. One man snipped several charging cables; the other loaded them into the truck. In under 2½ minutes, they were gone.
The scene that night has become part of a troubling pattern across the country: Thieves have been targeting EV charging stations, intent on stealing the cables, which contain copper wiring. The price of copper is near a record high on global markets, which means criminals stand to collect rising sums of cash from selling the material.
The stolen cables often disable entire stations, forcing EV owners on the road to search desperately for a working charger. For the owners, the predicament can be exasperating and stressful.
Broken-down chargers have emerged as the latest obstacle for U.S. automakers in their strenuous effort to convert more Americans to EVs despite widespread public anxiety about a scarcity of charging stations. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe EVs take too long to charge or don’t know of any charging stations nearby.
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