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Category: Associated Press

  • North Korea fires barrage of missiles toward the sea after dismissing overture from Trump

    North Korea fires barrage of missiles toward the sea after dismissing overture from Trump

    SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched a barrage of ballistic missiles toward the sea on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, a day after the North shrugged off a U.S. decision to scale back military drills with South Korea in an apparent bid to resume diplomacy.

    The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches of about 10 short-range ballistic missiles happened from North Korea’s capital region around 5 p.m. local time on Thursday. The military said the missiles flew about 185 miles each toward North Korea’s eastern waters.

    The military said South Korea has bolstered its surveillance posture and was closely coordinating information on the launches with the U.S. and Japan. South Korea’s presidential national security council issued a statement urging North Korea to halt ballistic missile launches.

    The Japanese prime minister’s office had earlier said that it detected a suspected missile launch.

    President Donald Trump earlier ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, just before they began Monday. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with Kim and South Korea’s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.

    On Wednesday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries confirmed they shortened the 11-day drills by shortening their duration by about half and canceling some field training exercises. The reduction of the exercises raised worries about the allies’ joint defense posture.

    Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed Trump’s overture later Wednesday, saying “the provocative, aggressive nature of the drills won’t change even though their duration and size were reduced.”

    “If the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as the one of so-called good faith, they will not get the desired answer,” she said in a statement.

    She denied Trump’s claim that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation.

    Kim Yo Jong still refrained from the typical North Korean reaction of fiery rhetoric and said personal relations between her brother and Trump are “still excellent.” That signals North Korea would want to wait for Trump to make bigger concessions before returning to talks.

    When asked by reporters Wednesday if he would be meeting with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said that “Yeah, I will be.” He wouldn’t answer a question about whether he is exchanging letters with Kim but said he gets along with him.

    The Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of the main military exercises conducted by the U.S. and South Korea annually to enhance their ability to cope with potential North Korean aggression. Washington and Seoul say their drills are defensive in nature, but North Korea calls them an invasion rehearsal and often reacts with weapons tests.

    Before this month’s drills started, North Korea accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative exercises this summer and vowed to respond with “a new level of a deterrent.” Days before the drills’ start, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in its first such launches since late June.

    Trump’s earlier diplomacy with Kim Jong Un collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over how much sanctions relief North Korea should be given in return for dismantling its main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearization step. Kim has since shunned any talks with the U.S., pushed to modernize weapons arsenals and expanded cooperation with Russia.

    Kim has said he won’t place his nuclear program back on the negotiating table. Experts say Kim has more leverage than when he first held talks with Trump in 2018 and 2019. They say Kim likely hopes to eventually win international recognition as a nuclear state and extensive sanctions relief in exchange for only limited steps toward denuclearization.

  • Somalia faces another hunger crisis and the U.N. food agency head says it has far less funds to help

    Somalia faces another hunger crisis and the U.N. food agency head says it has far less funds to help

    MOGADISHU, Somalia — Six million people in Somalia are facing acute food insecurity while the World Food Program has only a tenth of the resources it had in 2022 when it helped avert famine in the drought- and conflict-stricken East African nation, the head of the U.N. agency told The Associated Press.

    “We can only do the bare minimum,” WFP executive director Carl Skau said Wednesday during a visit to a nutrition center on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu. “We’re only providing these nutrition supplies to the children that are really the worst hit.”

    The reduced funds, because of cuts in international aid by donors and the redirection of resources to other humanitarian crises, meant that the WFP is unable to expand its assistance in Somalia, Skau said.

    Millions of people at risk but far less aid

    The WFP projects that 1.9 million children under age 5 in the country will suffer acute malnutrition this year, including nearly 500,000 who will require urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition. Overall, around 30% of the population faces critical levels of food insecurity, the U.N. has said.

    “We had 10 times more resources than now,” Skau said of the 2022 hunger emergency that was caused by a prolonged drought. “We were able to step in, and we prevented a famine here in Somalia.”

    “We know what’s going on, we have the capacity, we have the experience of dealing with this. We just need the resources now to do it.”

    The consequences of the current food shortage, which is also a result of drought, conflict and the displacement of people, are seen at the Feynuus Health Center in Mogadishu’s Kahda district. Dozens of women carrying babies waited beneath a large tree or crowded along the veranda of the corrugated-metal facility seeking help.

    Inside, health workers placed children in a blue weighing sling, screened them for malnutrition, and distributed therapeutic food.

    One desperate mother tells her story

    Halima Mohamed Hassan, a mother of six, had walked nearly 2 miles carrying her malnourished 4-year-old child. She is pregnant, but said she hadn’t eaten for two days. Her last meal was plain rice.

    Health workers treated the child she brought with a special nutrient-dense food, while Hassan said that her other children were also malnourished, but she wasn’t able to bring them to the center.

    “I could not carry all of them,” she said.

    Hassan fled the Lower Shabelle region four months ago after her husband died of malnutrition, she said. Food and water became scarce, and conflict made it increasingly dangerous for the family to stay.

    She and her children walked for four nights before reaching a camp for internally displaced people on Mogadishu’s outskirts.

    Hassan now shares a makeshift shelter with her widowed mother and her mother’s four other children. The two women look for occasional work washing clothes in nearby neighborhoods to feed their household of 12.

    A health center tries its best to help

    The Feynuus center receives between 250 and 350 patients daily, mainly displaced women and children from regions outside Mogadishu, said Abdirahman Barkhad, program director of Youth Link Somalia, which operates the center.

    Barkhad said that about 10 nearby health and nutrition centers had closed because of a reduction in humanitarian funding, increasing pressure on those that remain.

    “We have witnessed children collapsing, because their families do not have enough food,” he said.

    Mohamud Moallim Abdulle, commissioner of the Somali Disaster Management Agency, described the country’s food situation as “extremely alarming.”

    He said that an estimated 1.85 million children are malnourished, while around 6 million people are affected by drought, and 2 million urgently need assistance.

    They don’t know where their next meal is

    Skau said that mothers he met this week in the town of Burhakaba described drought, insecurity, and also rising food prices as the main drivers of the crisis. Some had lost their crops and fled their homes. Others walked for three or four hours to reach health facilities, because aid workers couldn’t reach them.

    “I spoke to women with eight to 10 children,” Skau said. “They don’t know where the next meal is going to come from.”

    Insecurity, with Somalia battling a 20-year-long insurgency by the al-Shabab militant group, also makes humanitarian operations more expensive. WFP must use aircraft in areas where staff and supplies can’t travel safely by road, and some communities are inaccessible, Skau said.

    He said that conflict in the Middle East was adding to the pressure by driving up fuel and food prices, limiting agricultural supplies, and drawing funding toward other emergencies.

    After her child received some food at the center, Hassan began the walk back to the camp they live in. Her five other children were still waiting and hungry, she said, and she would have to return with them one at a time.

  • Meta defends its child safety efforts, but critics say the social media giant falls short

    Meta defends its child safety efforts, but critics say the social media giant falls short

    CHICAGO — Meta insists it has a long history of protecting its youngest customers as it defends itself against a swath of lawsuits alleging its social media empire harms children.

    In the latest such instance, the social media giant is fighting allegations in a California federal court that it contributes to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately and stealthily designing features to get children hooked on its platforms Instagram and Facebook. Four states are seeking billions of dollars in damages as well as fundamental changes to how Meta runs those apps.

    Children’s mental health, and what they do and see on social media, are all issues “Meta takes seriously and tries to act on,” Paul Schmidt, a lawyer for the tech giant, said in opening statements this week.

    Critics say the company’s safety record falls short and that many of its protections simply don’t work.

    They include Marc Berkman, executive director at the Organization for Social Media Safety, who said Meta introduced safeguards promising to protect children in response to public pressure rather than out of concern.

    There’s been a “lack of real institutional willingness to act here,” Berkman said.

    Here’s a look at some of the changes Meta has introduced, along with the work advocates say could still be done.

    Access to users and content-focused protections

    Most of the changes Meta has introduced focus on addressing harassment and offensive content.

    Instagram users have always been able to block others — and, along with Meta’s oldest crown jewel, Facebook — the app has gradually added features for reporting problematic accounts and inappropriate content.

    In 2016, Instagram users were given the option to delete or filter comments they found offensive, and later added warnings that prompted users to reconsider posting potentially harmful content, as well as options to limit comments and tags on their posts.

    Meta also says it prevents adults from starting private chats with teens if they are not already connected, and has increased checks to make sure users under 13 — the minimum age for holding a Facebook or Instagram account — aren’t online. Schmidt said in his opening remarks that Meta recognizes some users still sign up using incorrect birthdays but that the company takes enforcement of age limits seriously.

    The company says it also posts warnings and resources at the top of Instagram search results related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, and touts its “Teen Accounts,” launched in 2024, as a safe space for teenagers online. It aligns photo and video restrictions for teen accounts with those for a PG-13 movie, unless there’s parental permission otherwise.

    Critics complain these changes amount to little more than corporate posturing.

    A September 2025 report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Béjar and four online safety advocacy nonprofits accused Meta of not taking “real steps” to address youth safety, instead opting for “splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users.”

    “We really found that overall what Meta was marketing under Teen Accounts was very lacking in actual protections,” said Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at Fairplay, which co-authored the report. They evaluated 47 of Meta’s 53 safety features for teens on Instagram and found 60% of them were either not available or didn’t work as advertised, Hinkle said.

    Meta called the report’s findings “misleading” and “dangerously speculative.”

    Scrolling and core design

    Researchers say Meta’s efforts to reduce the risk of children becoming addicted to the scrolling features of social media platforms have been largely unsuccessful.

    Ashley Shea, a Ph.D. candidate specializing in social media and online spaces at Cornell University, points to what academics call “attention-capture deceptive designs” that are not exclusive to Meta’s platforms. They include infinite scrolling, “casino style” pulls to refresh content, push notifications and algorithmic recommendations. Those features “prey on the cognitive vulnerabilities” of young people with developing brains, in particular the need to feel rewarded.

    Meta has taken important steps to address problematic content, cyberbullies, and sexual predators, Shea said, but she has not seen the same level of effort to offset the addictive impact of attention-capture deceptive designs.

    Nudges and time management controls

    “There’s no question that some teens struggle to manage their time with social media,” Schmidt said Tuesday, adding that Meta’s time management tools prove its evolution on the issue. Those tools include parental supervision controls and in-app “nudges” for teen users who repeatedly look at the same type of content or spend too long on Instagram or Facebook late at night.

    Hinkle notes the “entirely voluntary” time management tools are not easy to set up, and amount to “far too little, too late.”

    Béjar, the former Meta employee and whistleblower, agrees. In testimony Wednesday, he said a tool called “Take a Break” is “designed to fail.” Users have to turn the feature on themselves and, he said, very few do.

    Across the board, tech companies exist to maximize revenue, said Berkman, and for almost every social media platform today, that means “maximizing children using their features for as long as they can.”

    Legal challenges focused on “the fact that these are defective products by design because of their features, not the content per se” is something new, Shea added. And beyond the courtroom, mounting pressure on lawmakers could bring more industrywide changes.

    “The momentum only continues to grow,” she said. “Ultimately, these are for-profit companies that respond to economic pressures. And so I think that the more economic pressure they’re confronted with through these litigations, the quicker they will have to adapt.”

  • Women in pink rally in support of Lindsay Clancy, who is on trial for killing 3 children

    Women in pink rally in support of Lindsay Clancy, who is on trial for killing 3 children

    PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, many wearing pink with the words “Believe,” “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay,” gathered Thursday outside the courthouse where she is on trial in the killings of her three children.

    Several of the 300 women, and a few men, said Clancy’s story resonated with them and that they wanted to raise awareness about how the mental health system treats women. Clancy’s lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she was mentally ill.

    The livestreamed trial has sparked massive discussions online and has brought attention to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington says she had that is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. Reddington said she also has bipolar disorder. After strangling her children, Clancy jumped from a second-story window and remains paralyzed from the waist down.

    Reddington says Clancy repeatedly sought help: She turned to multiple outpatient providers, tried various drugs they prescribed, called a suicide hotline, went to an emergency room, and even checked herself into a psychiatric hospital.

    Prosecutors say the former labor and delivery nurse planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family. They have also questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt, and witnesses have testified that Clancy wouldn’t always take prescribed medications.

    Thursday’s rally was the first time during the nearly monthlong trial that supporters have come out in such large numbers.

    “Women are being dismissed, neglected and ignored when we speak up,” said April Vincent, a 52-year-old paralegal from Providence, Rhode Island. “We’re scared because nobody takes us seriously.”

    The women stood silently for more than an hour ahead of Thursday’s proceedings, where a chaplain called by the defense testified about visiting Clancy in the hospital after the killings.

    At the sight of Reddington outside the courthouse, the crowd broke into applause.

    Rally organizer Renee Kimball implored the crowd to trust that Reddington “has Lindsay’s fight.”

    Toward the end of their rally, supporters formed a circle, said the Lord’s Prayer, held up their arms and formed hearts with their hands. Some held flags from different countries to show that the support for Clancy was global.

    Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old. Researchers estimate that postpartum psychosis — which is more serious and less common than postpartum depression — afflicts 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery.

    Jeanne Zaborski, a 72-year-old retired nurse from Rockland, Massachusetts, said she hopes the case raises awareness about postpartum health. She and many others at the rally said they had been following the trial almost daily.

    “It’s very sad,” Zaborski said. “I am a mother. I am a grandmother. I have a sister who had problems after birth and it’s just very sad. I hope Lindsay gets the care she needs and deserves and other women will come together like we did today.”

    In court, Sheila Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, testified that when she first visited and prayed for Clancy, she was unconscious. By Jan. 31, 2023, Clancy was conscious and no longer connected to a ventilator, Cavanaugh said, but “her emotional state was very neutral – a flat affect.”

    Cavanaugh said she “vividly remembers” one of the first things Clancy said to her.

    “She said to me, as I held her hand to comfort her, ‘I’m so glad my children are safe,’” Cavanaugh said. “I replied theologically to Lindsay. I said, ‘Lindsay, your children are safe. They’re safe in heaven with God.’”

    “We prayed for them,” said Cavanaugh, who saw Clancy more than 200 times and still visits her at the state mental hospital where she resides.

    Cavanaugh said Clancy “alluded to hearing a voice, and the voice, according to Lindsay, told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe.”

  • U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in Middle East, relieving long-deployed USS Lincoln

    U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in Middle East, relieving long-deployed USS Lincoln

    WASHINGTON — The Asia-based USS George Washington aircraft carrier is now operating in the Middle East, the U.S. military said Thursday, relieving a long-deployed carrier following reports of mental health challenges and supply shortages aboard while it was supporting the Iran war.

    U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said on social media that the carrier arrived in the region Wednesday. It was not clear when the USS Abraham Lincoln would arrive back in the U.S. or whether it would make a port stop along the way, but the journey takes just over a month.

    The Washington arrived as concerns have grown about the Lincoln’s lengthy deployment, which has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 250 days, and about reports of crew stress and poor mental health, as well as supply shortages, including food and hygiene products.

    Several Democratic lawmakers have pressed the Department of Defense for accountability over conditions aboard the Lincoln, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said were “completely misrepresented.”

    Hegseth spoke with the Lincoln’s crew last week, and Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, visited this past weekend. In an editorial published Sunday by The Wall Street Journal, Cooper said the crew “delivered a performance for the ages, and now you are going home.”

    Extended deployments of carriers wear on service members who are away from home for long periods and increase strain on the ship and its equipment. While renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran calmed in recent weeks, the Navy is enforcing a reimposed blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration has offered no clarity on how it intends to wind down the war.

    Hegseth has said the U.S. can maintain the blockade “indefinitely.”

    President Donald Trump this week downplayed reports about conditions on the Lincoln, which left its homeport in San Diego in November and arrived in the Middle East in January. Trump called the nearly nine months at sea that the sailors endured a “good period of time” but added that “over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”

    Trump told reporters Monday that he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer.” Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.” Trump did not name the admiral.

    In a statement Sunday after visiting the Lincoln, Cooper praised the carrier’s leaders for prioritizing mental health and resilience.

    “History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era,” Cooper said.

    The Washington joins the USS George H.W. Bush in the Middle East, leaving Asia without an American carrier strike group at a time when China has shown more signs of aggression.

    The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.

  • Prince Harry and Meghan are returning to the U.K. with their children, British newspaper says

    Prince Harry and Meghan are returning to the U.K. with their children, British newspaper says

    LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have decided to return to the United Kingdom, but they won’t resume their roles as working members of the royal family, British news media reported late Wednesday.

    The couple’s children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, have already enrolled at British schools and will start classes in September, according to the Daily Telegraph, which broke the story. The family plans to live at a private, nonroyal residence outside of London, the newspaper said.

    Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago to earn their living through lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify. Although relations with the rest of the royal family have soured since then, Harry has recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer.

    Charles was informed of the couple’s plans on Sunday and wasn’t told about them during Harry and Meghan’s visit to the U.K. last month.

    Buckingham Palace has a policy of not commenting on speculation about non-working members of the royal family. A representative for Harry and Meghan declined to comment.

    Harry and Meghan have had a stormy relationship with the royal family ever since they decamped to a mansion in the exclusive Southern California enclave of Montecito.

    In a series of interviews and Harry’s memoir Spare, the couple said they left Britain to escape the restrictions of royal life and criticized palace officials for being insensitive to Meghan’s mental health while alleging that at least one member of the royal family had expressed racist views when she was pregnant with their first child. Meghan describes herself as biracial.

    Those tensions were exacerbated by Harry’s long-running legal battle with Britain’s tabloid newspapers, which he alleges illegally hacked his phones and invaded his privacy when he was younger. The prince has lost a series of lawsuits against the media, including one against the publisher of the Daily Mail, which concluded last month.

    The latest trial has left Harry facing a potential bill for millions of pounds after the court ruled he and other plaintiffs in the case were liable for the publisher’s legal fees. Associated Newspapers has filed documents showing that its legal costs amounted to 34.5 million pounds ($47 million).

    Harry has also been embroiled in a legal wrangle with the British government after a government committee refused to authorize police protection for the prince and his family when they are in the U.K. The prince says he and his family need armed police protection because they are at risk simply because they are members of the royal family, regardless of whether or not they are working royals.

    After losing a court battle over the security issue last year, Harry said he hoped to rebuild relations with his family.

    “I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore,” Harry told the BBC. “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”

    A tentative step toward that reconciliation came last month when Harry returned to the U.K. for a series of charity engagements. Meghan and the children joined Harry for part of the visit and they spent time with the king at his Highgrove estate in western England. It was the first time Archie and Lilibet had seen their grandfather since the late Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee in 2022.

    While Harry has recently met with his father, there are no signs of a warming of relations with his brother, Prince William, the heir to the throne.

    Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent, said the surprise announcement would make William “apoplectic.”

    “In the short term, Harry will be able to deepen his rapprochement with his father,” Hunt told Britain’s Press Association. “And his presence back home will make it harder for his brother to duck a reconciliation.”

  • Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of Hind Rajab and Palestinian paramedics

    Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of Hind Rajab and Palestinian paramedics

    JERUSALEM — Israel’s military on Wednesday announced its first criminal investigations into troop conduct in Gaza, focusing on the killings of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family and of 15 Palestinian paramedics.

    The military said it would not probe three other attacks that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders. It said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and made decisions on the five cases.

    Chef José Andrés, founder of U.S.-based World Central Kitchen, condemned the decision on X as “wrong and painful.”

    The investigations involve killings that drew a heavy international outcry. Hind was trapped in a vehicle with her slain relatives, pleading for help by phone before she too was killed in February 2024. After the shooting of the 15 medics in March 2025, troops then bulldozed their bodies into a mass grave.

    Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people, including tens of thousands of women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Rights groups and U.N. commissions have said the campaign amounts to genocide and that Israeli forces have committed a litany of war crimes, including indiscriminate use of force and deliberate killings of civilians.

    Israel denies accusations of genocide and war crimes and says it is targeting Hamas after its October 2023 attack on southern Israel. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militant group operates in populated areas in the tiny, overcrowded strip.

    Israeli officials contend its justice system can address any violations by its troops, but rights groups say soldiers are almost never held accountable.

    Wednesday’s statement did not mention many other high-profile killings that Israel has pledged to investigate, such as its strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five journalists in August 2025, including Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organizations.

    The 5-year-old was the last alive in a stranded car

    Hind’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, told the AP by phone that the Israeli investigation into her killing is not enough.

    “An international investigation is required to uncover the truth and hold all those responsible accountable,” she said. “We call for justice, not only for Hind, but for all Gaza children.”

    The military in Wednesday’s statement admitted to firing at the car carrying the 5-year-old, four of her cousins, and her aunt and uncle as they fled an Israeli invasion of Gaza City.

    As gunfire sprayed around them, the girl’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamada, called the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic center, telling them her family had been killed. Seconds later, more gunshots were heard, and Layan’s screaming stopped, according to the Red Crescent recording of the call.

    Palestinian paramedics dispatched an ambulance to rescue Hind and stayed on the line with her until contact was lost. Hind, her five relatives, and two medics from the ambulance were found dead 12 days later.

    The military admitted Wednesday that troops had fired toward that ambulance, killing the two medics.

    Dyab Abou Jahjah, director of the Belgium-based Hind Rajab foundation, told Al-Jazeera he considered the military investigations a “charade meant to whitewash the culprits instead of convicting them.”

    The Palestinian Red Crescent also insists on an international investigation, said Raed al-Nims, a spokesman for the organization in Gaza. “Israeli measures are not enough,” he told the AP.

    A movie docudrama about Hind’s death, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” won international awards and was nominated for an Oscar.

    The 15 medics had been trying to reach casualties

    In the paramedics’ killing, Israeli troops fired on an ambulance driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah, then fired on other emergency vehicles that came looking for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor of the shootings. Fifteen medics and emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Gaza’s Civil Defense were killed.

    Troops then bulldozed over the bodies and vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. U.N. and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later to dig out the bodies.

    The Israeli military initially said it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on troops without headlights or emergency signals. But it backtracked after the footage emerged, showing the teams driving slowly with their emergency lights flashing and logos visible. A deputy commander was directed to step down over the killings.

    “We are not obligated to prove the truth because it is already proven to the whole world,” Eid Azizi, a Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson, told the AP in a phone call. “We shouldn’t have reached this point if they respected and followed the international humanitarian law.”

    Israel will not criminally probe World Central Kitchen strike

    The military said it had decided against a criminal investigation into April 2024 airstrikes that hit a convoy of World Central Kitchen vehicles, killing seven staffers.

    The aid group, which distributes food in Gaza, said at the time it had coordinated with the military over the convoy’s movement. The vehicles, which had the group’s logo on their roofs visible from the air, were left incinerated and mangled.

    Wednesday’s military statement said individuals in the vehicles were mistakenly identified as armed Hamas operatives. But it concluded that the commanders’ decisions “did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.” At the time, two officers were removed from their positions and three others reprimanded.

    World Central Kitchen responded in a statement saying the military’s account of the strike was untrue, “conflates different timelines and events, muddies the story and shifts the blame.” It called for an independent investigation.

    The military also decided not to take criminal action over the killings of four staffers from Doctors Without Borders in two separate instances in November 2023 and February 2024.

    What happens next?

    Military investigators will now take up the probes and present their findings to military prosecutors. The military advocate general can then decide to keep investigating, indict any soldiers involved or decline to charge them.

    Any action will take a long time, if it comes at all, said Tal Steiner, head of the Israeli rights group HaMoked.

    Indictments are very uncommon and convictions even more so, she said, recalling only one soldier who had spent time behind bars since Oct. 7, 2023, for alleged abuse of Palestinian prisoners. That soldier was imprisoned for seven months under a June 2025 plea bargain.

    “It’s very rare that soldiers accused of harming Palestinians even go to court … and even rarer that they get a severe punishment,” Steiner said.

    Just 0.17% of all military investigations launched during three Gaza operations from 2014 to 2022 led to prosecution, according to an analysis by Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

    The war’s toll keeps growing

    The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and abducted 251 others.

    Israeli strikes have continued in Gaza since a ceasefire deal came into effect in October, killing at least 1,270 people, according to the Health Ministry.

    The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children constitute about half of the dead.

  • Kennedy Center tells court it won’t try to restore Trump’s name to the building before Sept. 8

    Kennedy Center tells court it won’t try to restore Trump’s name to the building before Sept. 8

    WASHINGTON — The Kennedy Center has told a federal court that it would not attempt to return President Donald Trump’s name to the building’s facade before at least Sept. 8 as another legal battle over the performing arts venue’s future takes shape.

    In a status report filed late Tuesday, opponents of the move said members of the Kennedy Center’s Trump-aligned board “seem intent” on defying an earlier court order requiring the Republican president’s name to be removed from the building. The Kennedy Center said it would not move forward with the plans until after Labor Day “at the earliest” to allow time for legal arguments.

    Lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who is an ex officio member of the board, pressed U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper for an earlier ruling, arguing there is “every reason to believe that Defendants will attempt to effectuate some or part of this latest unlawful resolution at the earliest opportunity after September 8.”

    A board meeting this month that was expected to largely focus on options to close the Kennedy Center for renovations instead transformed into another push to attach Trump’s name to the building, part of a broader move by the president and his supporters to leave a physical mark on the nation’s capital.

    The board passed a resolution to name the plaza in front of the building after Trump and add his name to the venue’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” In the filing, Beatty said the board also agreed to add an additional reference to the president if the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million.

    In that event, the facade would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

    The board also voted to back a two-year closure for renovations, while some of the institution’s signature programming, including the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, would take place at off-site locations. The National Symphony Orchestra announced this week it would split its upcoming season between six venues in and around Washington.

    Cooper ruled in May that letters affixed to the building spelling out Trump’s name were added illegally and he ordered their removal, a decision that the administration failed to persuade courts to overturn. Since then, a tarp has covered the area where the letters were once installed, frustrating those who sought to remove the president’s name from the building.

    Kennedy Center makes no commitment to removing tarp

    In the latest filing, the Kennedy Center made no commitment to remove the tarp, saying the covering was in place to facilitate the removal of Trump’s name and is part of a broader system needed for “water testing and structural repairs to the roof overhang.”

    More broadly, Beatty’s lawyers, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, questioned the integrity of the board’s vote this month, echoing concerns Cooper raised when he called a March vote to shutter the building “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.”

    Heading into the August meeting, the Kennedy Center’s management said it would provide the board with three options, including a complete closure or a partial closure that would allow “some continued public access and limited programming in spaces unaffected” by the work. A third option would “consider a highly limited series of phased closures to address only the Center’s most serious infrastructure needs while scheduling and maintaining a full slate of programming.”

    In Tuesday’s filing, the Kennedy Center said a Delta Consulting Group analyst concluded that a partial closure that would play out over four years “would increase the length and cost of construction and lead to substantial safety concerns.”

    The analyst “recommended that the Board proceed with a full closure for two years, which would minimize total cost, minimize the amount of time that programming would be subject to disruptions from construction, and best preserve the Center’s reputation as world-class performing-arts venue,” the Kennedy Center said.

    Eisen and Zelinsky, however, noted that materials were provided to the board just two days before the meeting. They said some documents appeared to have been created before Cooper’s May ruling and referred to the Kennedy Center’s closure that was initially set to take effect on July 6.

    The August vote to close the Kennedy Center, Beatty’s lawyers argued, “exhibits the same flaws as the first vote.”

  • Deadly attacks on aid workers and contractors surge in South Sudan as UN urges protection

    Deadly attacks on aid workers and contractors surge in South Sudan as UN urges protection

    JUBA, South Sudan — At least 36 humanitarian workers and contractors have been killed in South Sudan since January, surpassing the 31 killed in all of 2025, as violence persists in the country that’s one of the most dangerous for aid workers, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator there said Wednesday.

    “These are not just statistics,” Ramanathan Balakrishnan said in a statement marking World Humanitarian Day, adding: “Every killing must be investigated, and those responsible held accountable. The continued loss of humanitarian personnel, overwhelmingly South Sudanese nationals, is unacceptable.”

    More than 450 incidents of violence against humanitarian workers and assets were reported between January and July, more than double the number recorded during the same period last year, according to the U.N. Mission in South Sudan.

    Renewed fighting between government forces and opposition fighters has forced aid organizations to relocate from some areas, further restricting access to vulnerable communities in a country of about 12 million people that has struggled with both conflict and the effects of climate change since independence from Sudan in 2011.

    Humanitarian organizations are calling on the South Sudan government and all parties to the 2018 peace agreement meant to end civil war to protect aid workers, investigate attacks and ensure safe and unhindered access to people in need.

    Around 10 million people are expected to need humanitarian assistance this year, including more than 7.5 million facing high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the U.N.

    Last week, the U.N. refugee agency and World Food Program warned that more than 650,000 refugees and asylum seekers in South Sudan risk losing access to lifesaving food, nutrition and other assistance because of severe funding shortages.

  • Congo’s Ebola outbreak reaches 5,000 cases as it outpaces response efforts at unprecedented speed

    Congo’s Ebola outbreak reaches 5,000 cases as it outpaces response efforts at unprecedented speed

    BUNIA, Congo — The Ebola outbreak in Congo has reached 5,000 cases, government data showed Wednesday, as responders warn it is spreading at an unprecedented speed, outpacing efforts to slow it in one of the country’s remotest regions.

    Data from Congo’s Ministry of Health showed the outbreak had so far recorded 5,021 cases, including 2,378 deaths as of Sunday, as it rages in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable fueled by insecurity, displacement and intense population movements.

    The outbreak has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other outbreak in history. The World Health Organization estimates it will likely surpass the outbreak of 2014 to 2016 across West Africa, which was the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

    Starting from the first detected case, the current outbreak has spread about three times faster than the deadliest on record.

    The outbreak “has spread rapidly and the risk of further national and international spread remains high,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday at a meeting convened by the agency.

    “We must be frank: the epidemic is far from being under control,” he said.

    Thérèse Anyiya, a nurse working in Ituri’s capital Bunia, said she is exhausted by the work demands and poor working conditions. Some health workers have gone on strike after not being paid.

    “If the managers don’t take things seriously, we too will end up withdrawing. The way this epidemic is being managed is exhausting,” Anyiya told The Associated Press.

    A key challenge has been the lack of approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus, which is responsible for the current outbreak. Most new cases are being reported outside of the people being monitored, showing it has spread quickly and left surveillance teams racing to catch up.

    Lack of information in Ituri causes attacks on health workers

    Ituri, the province that has been hit the worst by the outbreak, has become a primary location for violence that has limited the response as health workers are targeted.

    Residents on Monday attacked a health team in the territory of Aru after a suspected case was reported there. A mob set fire to an ambulance and damaged two other vehicles, according to Michael Wani, president of the Union of Cultural Associations for the Development of Ituri.

    Dr. Martin Cwinyay, who is involved in the Ituri response efforts, explained it is “essential to bring the response closer to the people, particularly in rural, mining and displacement areas.”

    Trish Newport, an emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said not all the people in the impacted areas have the essential information they need.

    “The community needs to be aware about the outbreak. They need to be involved in the response. They need to know what the signs and symptoms are and what to do if they get sick,” Newport said.

    Limited care is resulting in more deaths

    Experts believe the virus began spreading from the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February, months before authorities declared the outbreak on May 15.

    Responders racing to catch up are also battling several other challenges including threats by rebel groups, anger from communities that have been traumatized for years and bad roads into the affected territories.

    Although the 2014-2016 outbreak is considered the deadliest among the virus types that causes Ebola disease, government data shows this Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people as care and support are not getting to patients quickly enough, while many are not reporting symptoms or doing so late.

    The situation also varies across the six affected provinces. While the case fatality rate is so far 47.4%, it is far worse in some places where response efforts are more challenging, such as in North Kivu province where the fatality rate is 70%.