The Latest | Hamas officials leave Cairo after talks on a cease-fire proposal
Officials from Hamas have left Cairo after talks with Egyptian officials on a new proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera News satellite channel said Tuesday.
The channel, which has close ties with Egyptian security agencies, said a Hamas delegation will return to Cairo with a written response to the cease-fire proposal, without saying when.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit Israel on his latest trip to the region, which began Monday in Saudi Arabia. He said Israel needs to do more to allow aid to enter Gaza, but that the best way to alleviate the humanitarian crisis is for the two sides to agree to a cease-fire.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. The war has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes, caused vast destruction in several towns and cities, and pushed northern Gaza to the brink of famine.
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What is the International Criminal Court and why it has Israeli officials worried
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Israeli officials sound increasingly concerned that the International Criminal Court could issue arrest warrants for the country’s leaders more than six months into the Israel-Hamas war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has written in general terms about ICC action against Israeli troops and officials, and Israel’s foreign ministry has said it is also tracking reports of pending action.
The ICC was established in 2002 as the permanent court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities – war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.
The Rome Statute creating the ICC was adopted in 1998 and entered into force when it got 60 ratifications on July 1, 2002. The U.N. General Assembly endorsed the ICC, but the court is independent.
Without a police force, the ICC relies on member states to arrest suspects, which has proven to be a major obstacle to prosecutions.
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Protesters take over Columbia University's Hamilton Hall in escalation of anti-war demonstrations
NEW YORK (AP) — Dozens of protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, barricading the entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag out of a window in the latest escalation of demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war that have spread to college campuses nationwide.
Video footage showed protesters on Columbia's Manhattan campus locking arms in front of Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building, one of several that was occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest on the campus. Posts on an Instagram page for protest organizers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment and join them at Hamilton Hall.
“An autonomous group reclaimed Hind’s Hall, previously known as ”Hamilton Hall,” in honor of Hind Rajab, a martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state at the age of six years old,” CU Apartheid Divest posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, early Tuesday.
The student radio station, WKCR-FM, broadcast a play-by-play of the hall’s takeover – which occurred nearly 12 hours after Monday’s 2 p.m. deadline for the protesters to leave an encampment of around 120 tents or face suspension. Representatives for the university did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment early Tuesday but Public Safety said in a statement that members of the university community who can avoid coming to the Morningside campus Tuesday should do so, adding that essential personnel should report to work.
In the X post, protestors said they planned to remain at the hall until the university conceded to the CUAD's three demands: divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.
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Prosecutors at Donald Trump's hush money trial zero in on the details
NEW YORK (AP) — The first week of testimony at Donald Trump's hush money trial was the scene-setter for jurors: Manhattan prosecutors portrayed what they say was an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by burying negative stories. Now prosecutors are working on filling in the details of how they believe Trump and his allies pulled it off.
Court resumes Tuesday with Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts, including one that Cohen used to buy the silence of porn performer Stormy Daniels. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, which he denies.
For his part, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee has been campaigning in his off-hours, but is required to be in court when it is in session, four days a week.
Jurors so far have heard from two other witnesses. Trump’s former longtime executive assistant, Rhona Graff, recounted that she recalled once seeing Daniels at Trump's office suite in Trump Tower and figured the performer was a potential contestant for one of Trump’s “Apprentice”-brand shows. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker laid out how he agreed to serve as the Trump campaign's “eyes and ears” by helping to squelch unflattering rumors and claims about Trump and women.
Through detailed testimony on email exchanges, business transactions and bank accounts, prosecutors are forming the foundation of their argument that Trump is guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments. The prosecution is leading up to crucial testimony from Cohen himself, who went to federal prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
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4 law officers serving warrant are killed, 4 wounded in shootout at North Carolina home, police say
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Four law officers serving a warrant for a felon wanted for possessing a firearm were killed and four other officers were wounded in a shootout Monday at a North Carolina home, police said.
Some of the officers who rushed to the Charlotte neighborhood to rescue the first wave of downed officers were wounded as a second shooter began firing on them after they killed the wanted man, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings said.
“Today we lost some heroes who were out simply trying to keep our community safe,” Jennings said at a news conference.
After a three-hour standoff, the suburban Charlotte home was torn open. Armored vehicles smashed into it, ripping off windows and entire doorways that were left broken. Several armored vehicles were parked across yards, some with tree branches dangling off them.
The U.S. Marshals Task Force was fired on by the wanted suspect as they approached the house and the man was killed in the front yard, Jennings said. His name was not released, but the chief said he was wanted as a felon illegally possessing a weapon.
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Florida Democrats hope abortion, marijuana questions will draw young voters despite low enthusiasm
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Jordan Vassallo is lukewarm about casting her first presidential ballot for President Joe Biden in November. But when the 18-year-old senior at Jupiter High School in Florida thinks about the things she cares about, she says her vote for the Democratic incumbent is an “obvious choice.”
Vassallo will be voting for a constitutional ballot amendment that would prevent the state of Florida from prohibiting abortion before a fetus can survive on its own — essentially the standard that existed nationally before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional protections to abortion and left the matter for states to decide.
Passage of the amendment would wipe away Florida's six-week abortion law, which Vassallo says makes no sense.
“Most people don't know they are pregnant at six weeks,” she said.
Biden, despite her reticence, will get her vote as well.
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Abducted retired Catholic bishop who mediated between cartels in Mexico is located, hospitalized
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A retired Roman Catholic bishop who was famous for trying to mediate between drug cartels in Mexico was located and taken to a hospital after apparently being briefly kidnapped, the Mexican Council of Bishops said Monday.
The church leadership in Mexico said in a statement earlier that Msgr. Salvador Rangel, a bishop emeritus, disappeared on Saturday and called on his captors to release him.
But the council later said he “has been located and is in the hospital,” without specifying how he had been found or released, or providing the extent of his injuries.
Uriel Carmona, the chief prosecutor of Morelos state, where the bishop disappeared, said “preliminary indications are that it may have been an ‘express’ kidnapping.”
In Mexico, regular kidnappings are often lengthy affairs involving long negotiations over ransom demands. “Express” kidnappings, on the other hand, are quick abductions usually carried out by low-level criminals were ransom demands are lower, precisely so the money can be handed over more quickly.
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The Taliban are working to woo tourists to Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) —
Around 30 men are crammed into a Kabul classroom, part of the debut student cohort at a Taliban-run institute training tourism and hospitality professionals.
It’s a motley crew. One student is a model. Another is 17 and has no job history.
The students vary in age, education level and professional experience. They're all men — Afghan women are banned from studying beyond sixth grade — and they don't know anything about tourism or hospitality. But they are all eager to promote a different side of Afghanistan. And the Taliban are happy to help.
Afghanistan’s rulers are pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls. The economy is struggling, infrastructure is poor, and poverty is rife.
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A massive Powerball win draws attention to a little-known immigrant culture in the US
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized check for $1.3 billion above his head.
The 46-year-old immigrant's luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month — a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes, which he and his wife will split with a friend — has changed his life. It also raised awareness about Iu Mien people, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the U.S. following the Vietnam War.
“I am born in Laos, but I am not Laotian,” Saephan told a news conference Monday at Oregon Lottery headquarters, where his identity as one of the jackpot's winners was revealed. “I am Iu Mien.”
During the Vietnam War, the CIA and U.S. military recruited Iu Mien in neighboring Laos, many of them subsistence farmers, to engage in guerrilla warfare and to provide intelligence and surveillance to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail that the North Vietnamese used to send troops and weapons through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam.
After the conflict as well as the Laotian civil war, when the U.S.-backed government of Laos fell in 1975, they fled by the thousands to avoid reprisals from the new Communist government, escaping by foot through the jungle and then across the Mekong River into Thailand, according to a history posted on the website of Iu Mien Community Services in Sacramento, California. More than 70% of the Iu Mien population in Laos left and many wound up in refugee camps in Thailand.
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U.S. and Mexico drop bid to host 2027 World Cup, Brazil and joint German-Dutch-Belgian bids remain
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Soccer Federation and its Mexican counterpart dropped their joint bid to host the 2027 Women's World Cup on Monday and said they will focus on trying to host the 2031 tournament.
The decision left a proposal from Brazil and a joint Germany-Netherlands-Belgium plan competing to be picked for 2027 by the FIFA congress that meets May 17 in Bangkok.
The USSF said the 2031 bid will call for FIFA to invest equally in the men's and women's World Cups.
FIFA said last year it planned to spend $896 million in combined prize money to teams and payments to clubs for releasing players for the 2026 men's World Cup in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. FIFA devoted $110 million in prize money for last year's Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand from a $152 million fund that included payments to clubs.
“Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking — and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe,” USSF President Cindy Parlow Cone said in a statement. “I’m proud of our commitment to provide equitable experiences for the players, fans and all our stakeholders. Shifting our bid will enable us to host a record-breaking Women’s World Cup in 2031 that will help to grow and raise the level of the women’s game both here at home as well as across the globe."
The Associated Press
