Israel moves deeper into Rafah and fights Hamas militants regrouping in northern Gaza
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The exodus of Palestinians from Gaza’s last refuge accelerated Sunday as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the southern city of Rafah. Israel also pounded the territory’s devastated north, where some Hamas militants have regrouped in areas the military said it had cleared months ago.
Rafah is considered Hamas’ last stronghold. Some 300,000 of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there have fled the city following evacuation orders from Israel, which says it must invade to dismantle Hamas and return scores of hostages taken from Israel in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.
Neighboring Egypt issued its strongest objection yet to the Rafah offensive, saying it intends to formally join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice alleging Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — an accusation Israel rejects. The foreign ministry statement cited “the worsening severity and scope of the Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians.”
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement that he cannot see how a full-scale invasion of Rafah can be reconciled with international humanitarian law.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated opposition to a major military assault on Rafah, and told CBS that Israel would “be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency” without an exit from Gaza and postwar governance plan.
Blinken delivers some of the strongest US public criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, saying Israeli tactics have meant “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” but failed to neutralize Hamas leaders and fighters and could drive a lasting insurgency.
In a pair of TV interviews, Blinken underscored that the United States believes Israeli forces should “get out of Gaza,” but also is waiting to see credible plans from Israel for security and governance in the territory after the war.
Hamas has reemerged in parts of Gaza, Blinken said, and “heavy action” by Israeli forces in the southern city of Rafah risks leaving America’s closest Mideast ally “holding the bag on an enduring insurgency.”
He said the United States has worked with Arab countries and others for weeks on developing “credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding” in Gaza, but “we haven’t seen that come from Israel. … We need to see that, too.”
Blinken also said that as Israel pushes deeper in Rafah in the south, a military operation may “have some initial success” but risks “terrible harm” to the population without solving a problem “that both of us want to solve, which is making sure Hamas cannot again govern Gaza.” More than a million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah in hopes of refuge as Israel’s offensive pushed across Gaza. Israel has said the city also hosts four battalions of Hamas fighters.
Trump trial arrives at a pivotal moment: Star witness Michael Cohen is poised to take the stand
NEW YORK (AP) — The star prosecution witness in Donald Trump’s hush money trial is set to take the stand Monday with testimony that could help shape the outcome of the first criminal case against an American president.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, is by far the Manhattan district attorney’s most important witness in the case and his expected appearance signals that the trial is entering its final stretch. Prosecutors say they may wrap up their presentation of evidence by the end of the week.
Cohen is expected to testify about his role in arranging hush money payments on Trump’s behalf during his first presidential campaign, including to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who told jurors last week that the $130,000 that she received in 2016 was meant to prevent her from going public about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in a hotel suite a decade earlier.
He also matters because the reimbursements he received form the basis of the charges — 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — against Trump. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose.
Defense lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that the fixer-turned-foe is an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says his army is locked in ‘fierce’ border battles amid a Russian assault
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops are locked in intense battles with the advancing Russian army in two border areas, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while the death toll from a Russian apartment building collapse blamed on Ukrainian shelling rose to 15.
Zelenskyy said “fierce battles” are taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to push back a significant Russian ground offensive.
“Defensive battles are ongoing, fierce battles, on a large part of our border area,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Sunday.
The Kremlin’s forces are aiming to exploit Ukrainian weaknesses before a big batch of new military aid for Kyiv from the U.S. and European partners arrives on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months, analysts say. That makes this period a window of opportunity for Moscow and one of the most dangerous for Kyiv in the two-year war, they say.
The new Russian push in the northeastern Kharkiv region, along with the ongoing drive into the eastern Donetsk region, come after months when the about 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line barely budged. In the meantime, both sides have used long-range strikes in what largely became a war of attrition.
Violence is traumatizing Haitian kids. Now the country’s breaking a taboo on mental health services
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Students often throw up or wet themselves when gunfire erupts outside their school in northern Port-au-Prince.
When they do, school director Roseline Ceragui Louis finds there’s only one way to try to calm the children and keep them safe: getting them to lie on the classroom floor while she sings softly.
“You can’t work in that environment,” she said. “It’s catastrophic. They’re traumatized.”
Haiti’s capital is under the onslaught of powerful gangs that control 80% of of the city.
On Feb. 29, gangs launched coordinated attacks targeting key infrastructure. The attacks have left more than 2,500 people dead or wounded in the first three months of the year. Now, in a bid to help save Haiti’s youngest generation, the country is undergoing a wider push to dispel a long-standing taboo on seeking therapy and talking about mental health.
India’s mammoth election is more than halfway done as millions begin voting in fourth round
SAMASTIPUR, India (AP) — Millions of Indians across 96 constituencies began casting their ballots on Monday as the country’s gigantic, six-week-long election edges past its halfway mark. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third straight term with an eye on winning a supermajority in Parliament.
Monday’s polling in the fourth round of multi-phase national elections across nine states and one union territory will be pivotal for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as it includes some of its strongholds in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Crucial seats in Maharashtra and Bihar states, where the BJP governs in alliances with regional parties, are also up for grabs in this phase.
In Bihar’s Samastipur city, hundreds of voters lined up at a polling station that opened at 7 a.m. amid tight security arrangements. Voters said they were concerned about rising food prices, lack of employment and economic development in the state.
Most polls predict a win for Modi and his BJP, which is up against a broad opposition alliance led by the Indian National Congress and powerful regional parties.
Pro-Palestinian protests dwindle on campuses as some US college graduations marked by defiant acts
A tiny contingent of Duke University graduates opposed pro-Israel comedian Jerry Seinfeld speaking at their commencement in North Carolina Sunday, with about 30 of the 7,000 students leaving their seats and chanting “free Palestine” amid a mix of boos and cheers.
Some waved the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag. Seinfeld, whose namesake sitcom was one of the most popular in U.S. television history, was there to receive an honorary doctorate from the university.
The stand-up comic turned actor, who stars in the new Netflix movie “Unfrosted,” has publicly supported Israel since it invaded Gaza to dismantle Hamas after the organization attacked the country and killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The ensuing war has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The small student protest Sunday at Duke’s graduation in Durham, North Carolina, was emblematic of campus events across the U.S. Sunday after weeks of student protests resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests at 57 colleges and universities.
Students at campuses across the U.S. responded this spring by setting up encampments and calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it. Students and others on campuses whom law enforcement authorities have identified as outside agitators have taken part in the protests from Columbia University in New York City to UCLA.
Trump suggests Chinese migrants are in the US to build an ‘army.’ The migrants tell another story
NEW YORK (AP) — It was 7 a.m. on a recent Friday when Wang Gang, a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant, jostled for a day job in New York City’s Flushing neighborhood.
When a potential employer pulled up near the street corner, home to a Chinese bakery and pharmacy, Wang and dozens of other men swarmed around the car. They were hoping to be picked for work on a construction site, at a farm, as a mover — anything that would pay.
Wang had no luck, even as he waited for two more hours. It would be another day without a job since he crossed the southern U.S. border illegally in February, seeking better financial prospects than he had in his hometown of Wuhan, China.
The daily struggle of Chinese immigrants in Flushing is a far cry from the picture former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have sought to paint of them as a coordinated group of “military-age” men who have come to the United States to build an “army” and attack America.
Since the start of the year, as the Chinese newcomers have been trying to find their footing in the U.S., Trump has alluded to “fighting-age” or “military-age” Chinese men at least six times and suggested at least twice that they were forming a migrant “army.” It’s a talking point that is being amplified in conservative media and on social platforms.
Illness took away her voice. AI created a replica she carries in her phone
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The voice Alexis “Lexi” Bogan had before last summer was exuberant.
She loved to belt out Taylor Swift and Zach Bryan ballads in the car. She laughed all the time — even while corralling misbehaving preschoolers or debating politics with friends over a backyard fire pit. In high school, she was a soprano in the chorus.
Then that voice was gone.
Doctors in August removed a life-threatening tumor lodged near the back of her brain. When the breathing tube came out a month later, Bogan had trouble swallowing and strained to say “hi” to her parents. Months of rehabilitation aided her recovery, but her speech is still impaired. Friends, strangers and her own family members struggle to understand what she is trying to tell them.
In April, the 21-year-old got her old voice back. Not the real one, but a voice clone generated by artificial intelligence that she can summon from a phone app. Trained on a 15-second time capsule of her teenage voice — sourced from a cooking demonstration video she recorded for a high school project — her synthetic but remarkably real-sounding AI voice can now say almost anything she wants.
A combustible Cannes is set to unfurl with ‘Furiosa,’ ‘Megalopolis’ and a #MeToo reckoning
The Cannes Film Festival rarely passes without cacophony but this year’s edition may be more raucous and uneasy than any edition in recent memory.
When the red carpet is rolled out from the Palais des Festivals on Tuesday, the 77th Cannes will unfurl against a backdrop of war, protest, potential strikes and quickening #MeToo upheaval in France, which for years largely resisted the movement.
Festival workers are threatening to strike. The Israel-Hamas war, acutely felt in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Arab communities, is sure to spark protests. Russia’s war in Ukraine remains on the minds of many. Add in the kinds of anxieties that can be expected to percolate at Cannes — the ever-uncertain future of cinema, the rise of artificial intelligence — and this year’s festival shouldn’t lack for drama.
Being prepared for anything has long been a useful attitude in Cannes. Befitting such tumultuous times, the film lineup is full of intrigue, curiosity and question marks.
The Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, just days before his latest film, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” is to debut in competition in Cannes, was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. The film remains on Cannes’ schedule.
