Israel strikes across Gaza as US says it will block another cease-fire resolution at UN
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 18 people overnight and into Sunday, according to medics and witnesses, as the United States said it would veto another draft U.N. cease-fire resolution.
The U.S., Israel's top ally, instead hopes to broker a cease-fire agreement and hostage release between Israel and Hamas, and envisions a wider resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back, calling Hamas' demands “delusional” and rejecting U.S. and international calls for a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” over Hamas and to expand it to Gaza's southernmost town of Rafah, where more than half the enclave's population of 2.3 million Palestinians has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.
The head of the World Health Organization, meanwhile, said Nasser Hospital, the main medical center serving southern Gaza, “is not functional anymore” after Israeli forces raided the facility in the southern city of Khan Younis last week.
An airstrike in Rafah overnight killed six people, including a woman and three children, and another strike killed five men in Khan Younis, the main target of the offensive over the past two months. Associated Press journalists saw the bodies arrive at a hospital in Rafah.
___
Top UN court to hold hearings on legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian-claimed lands
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations' highest court opens historic hearings Monday into the legality of Israel's 57-year occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state, plunging the 15 international judges back into the heart of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Six days of hearings are scheduled at the International Court of Justice, during which an unprecedented number of countries will participate, as Israel continues its devastating assault on Gaza.
Though the case occurs against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war, it focuses instead on Israel's open-ended occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
Palestinian representatives, who speak first on Monday, will argue that the Israeli occupation is illegal because it has violated three key tenets of international law, the Palestinian legal team told reporters Wednesday.
They say that Israel has violated the prohibition on territorial conquest by annexing large swaths of occupied land, has violated the Palestinians' right to self-determination, and has imposed a system of racial discrimination and apartheid.
___
Over 400 detained in Russia as country mourns the death of Alexei Navalny, Putin's fiercest foe
Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent rights group reported.
The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.
The news reverberated across the globe, and hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repressions with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay a tribute to the politician. In over a dozen cities, police detained 401 people by Saturday night, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.
More than 200 arrests were made in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, the group said. Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church — a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church — who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home. He was charged with organizing a rally and placed in a holding cell in a police precinct, but was later hospitalised with a stroke, OVD-Info reported.
Courts in St. Petersburg have ordered 42 of those detained on Friday to serve from one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said late on Saturday. In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-Info. One person was also jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk, the group said.
___
Trump rails against New York fraud ruling as he faces fines that could exceed half-a-billion dollars
WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump railed against the judge who slapped him with a $355 million fine in his New York civil fraud trial and went after the long list of prosecutors with cases against him as he campaigned in Michigan Saturday night while facing penalties that, with interest, could exceed half-a-billion dollars.
Trump was making his pitch in a state that is expected to be critical in November as he pivots toward a likely general election rematch against President Joe Biden. While Biden narrowly beat Trump here in 2020, the president is facing deep skepticism in the state, especially from Arab-American voters angry over his support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas war as the Palestinian death toll has climbed.
Trump, meanwhile, has been working to appeal to the blue-collar and union voters who were critical to his victory in 2016. On Saturday, he again made his pitch to auto workers, railing against electric vehicle mandates that he argues will ultimately lead to lost jobs and touted tariffs he put in place.
“We have to let them know a freight train is coming in November," Trump told more than 2,000 supporters gathered in a freezing plane hangar in Waterford Township, in the suburbs of Detroit.
But Trump was again most focused on his grievances, opening with a 15-minute screed about the criminal and civil cases against him.
___
A year after Jimmy Carter's entered hospice care, advocates hope his endurance drives awareness
ATLANTA (AP) — Since Jimmy Carter entered hospice care at his home in south Georgia one year ago, the former U.S. president has celebrated his 99th birthday, enjoyed tributes to his legacy and lost his wife of 77 years.
Rosalynn Carter, who died in November, about six months after the Carter family disclosed her dementia diagnosis, lived only a few days under hospice supervision, with her frail husband at her bedside.
Experts on end-of-life care say the Carters’ different paths show the range of an oft-misunderstood service. Those advocates commend the Carter family for demonstrating the realities of aging, dementia and death. They express hope that the attention spurs more Americans to seek out services intended to help patients and families in the latter stages of life.
“It’s been massive to have the Carters be so public,” said Angela Novas, chief medical officer for the Hospice Foundation of America, based in Washington. “It has shed hospice in a new light, and it’s raised questions” for people to learn more.
The Carter family released a statement ahead of Sunday, the one-year anniversary of their announcement that the 39th president would forgo future hospital stays and enter end-of-life care at home in Plains.
___
Russia takes control of a city in eastern Ukraine after Ukrainian troops withdraw
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia said its forces took complete control Saturday of a city in eastern Ukraine that was the focus of intense combat for months, a development that Moscow could use to boost morale as the second anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches with the war largely at a stalemate.
The Russian Defense Ministry's announcement came the same day Ukraine’s military chief said he was withdrawing troops from the city of Avdiivka, where the outnumbered defenders had battled a Russian assault for four months.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told the Kremlin that Russian forces were working to clear final pockets of resistance at the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant, officials said in a statement. Videos on social media Saturday appeared to show soldiers raising the Russian flag over one of the plant’s buildings.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a personal message of congratulating to his troops in the city, state news agency Tass reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Avdiivka’s capture as an “important victory.”
Along with the invasion's upcoming anniversary on Feb. 24, Russia also is preparing for a March presidential election that is all but guaranteed to give Putin another six-year term. The Kremlin has cracked down heavily on dissent during the war, and the death Friday of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny has silenced the voice of Putin's most formidable foe.
___
Fani Willis' testimony evokes long-standing frustrations for Black women leaders
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is used to prosecuting high-profile, challenging cases. But as she parried questions about her own personal conduct from the witness stand against the legal teams for defendants her office has accused of election interference, many Black women recognized a dispiriting scene.
“It absolutely feels familiar. There is no secret that the common sentiment among Black women in positions of power (is that they) must over-perform to be seen as equals to their counterparts," said Jessica T. Ornsby, a family litigation attorney in the Washington, D.C., area.
“Here, Ms. Willis is being scrutinized for things that are not directly related to her job performance, in ways we see other Black women regularly picked apart,” Ornsby said.
Willis testified during an extraordinary hearing that could result in her office being removed from the state’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump. She was questioned Thursday about her relationship with the attorney leading her office’s prosecution, Nathan Wade.
Willis and Wade have acknowledged they had a “ personal relationship ” but have denied any improper conduct.
___
Thai ex-Prime Minister Thaksin gets free on parole, but can he restore his old political luster?
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the Southeast Asian nation’s most controversial politician for more than two decades, was released on parole early Sunday from a Bangkok hospital where he spent six months serving time for corruption-related offenses.
The telecoms billionaire was toppled in a 2006 coup but voluntarily returned from self-exile to Thailand in August last year and reported to prison to begin serving an eight-year sentence. Critics charged that the 74-year-old Thaksin’s early release reeked of a deal that short-circuited justice for political reasons.
Current Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, a leading member of the ruling Thaksin-backed Pheu Thai party, expressed congratulations to his predecessor.
Thaksin was seen wearing a neck brace, a sling on his right arm and a surgical mask inside one of the cars in a convoy that left the Police General Hospital just before sunrise. He was accompanied by his two daughters on his way to his residence in western Bangkok.
"Thaksin is still believed to wield huge influence, and will still maneuver for sure, he will conduct the music behind the scenes,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said. “But Pheu Thai has less power than they used to and we’ll have to see how he does it.”
___
China's coast guard to ramp up patrols near Taiwan's Kinmen archipelago after two fishermen die
BANGKOK (AP) — China is stepping up patrols in the waters off the coast of Taiwan’s Kinmen archipelago, days after two of its fishermen drowned while being chased by the Taiwanese coast guard, which accused the boat of trespassing.
The Chinese coast guard's Fujian division will regularly monitor the waters off the southern coast of the city of Xiamen — a few kilometers from Kinmen — to strengthen maritime law enforcement, said the coast guard's spokesman, Gan Yu, in a statement Sunday.
Fishermen from Taiwan and China regularly sail that stretch of water which has seen a rise in tensions as the number of Chinese vessels — including sand dredgers and fishing boats — have notably increased in the area.
Kinmen residents have complained of both the noise and sound pollution from the vessels, as well as losses to their livelihood in fishing.
The fishermen’s deaths are unusual despite the level of Chinese activity in the waters near Kinmen, which is closer to China than it is to Taiwan’s main island. China claims all of self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory.
___
Solemn monument to Japanese American WWII detainees lists more than 125,000 names
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Samantha Sumiko Pinedo and her grandparents file into a dimly lit enclosure at the Japanese American National Museum and approach a massive book splayed open to reveal columns of names. Pinedo is hoping the list includes her great-grandparents, who were detained in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II.
“For a lot of people, it feels like so long ago because it was World War II. But I grew up with my Bompa (great-grandpa), who was in the internment camps,” Pinedo says.
A docent at the museum in Los Angeles gently flips to the middle of the book — called the Ireichō — and locates Kaneo Sakatani near the center of a page. This was Pinedo’s great-grandfather, and his family can now honor him.
On Feb. 19, 1942, following the attack by Imperial Japan on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry to WWII, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry who were considered potentially dangerous.
From the extreme heat of the Gila River center in Arizona, to the biting winters of Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Japanese Americans were forced into hastily built barracks, with no insulation or privacy, and surrounded by barbed wire. They shared bathrooms and mess halls, and families of up to eight were squeezed into 20-by-25 foot (6-by-7.5 meter) rooms. Armed U.S. soldiers in guard towers ensured nobody tried to flee.
The Associated Press
