Israel strikes Houthi rebels in Yemen’s capital while the WHO chief says he was meters away
JERUSALEM (AP) — A new round of Israeli airstrikes in Yemen on Thursday targeted the Houthi rebel-held capital and multiple ports, while the World Health Organization’s director-general said the bombardment occurred nearby as he prepared to board a flight in Sanaa, with a crew member injured.
“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the social media platform X.
He added that he and U.N. colleagues were safe. “We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave,” he said, without mentioning the source of the bombardment. U.N. spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay later said the injured person was with the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service.
At least three people were later reported killed and dozens injured in the airport strike. The U.N. team members left the airport and were “safe and sound” in Sanaa while the injured crew member was being treated at a hospital, she said.
Tremblay said the damage assessment would be made on Friday morning to see whether WHO chief and the U.N. team can leave Yemen.
___
An uneasy calm settles over Syrian city of Homs after outbreak of sectarian violence
HOMS, Syria (AP) — Syria’s new security forces checked IDs and searched cars in the central city of Homs on Thursday, a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the country’s fragile peace could break down.
A tense calm prevailed after checkpoints were set up throughout the country’s third-largest city, which has a mixed population of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians.
The security forces are controlled by the former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the charge that unseated former President Bashar Assad. On the road from Damascus, security teams at the checkpoints waved cars through perfunctorily, but in Homs they checked IDs and opened the trunk of each car to look for weapons.
Armed men blocked the road leading to the square formerly named for Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, where one foot was all that remained of a statue of him that once stood in the center of the traffic roundabout. The square has been renamed Freedom Square, although some call it “the donkey’s square,” referring to Assad.
Protests erupted there Wednesday among Alawites — the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs — after a video circulated showing an Alawite shrine in Aleppo being vandalized. Government officials later issued a statement saying that the video was old.
___
The US says it pushed retraction of a famine warning for north Gaza. Aid groups express concern
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north Gaza under what it called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” after the U.S. asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The move follows public criticism of the report from the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
The rare public challenge from the Biden administration of the work of the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System, which is meant to reflect the data-driven analysis of unbiased experts, drew accusations from aid and human-rights figures of possible U.S. political interference. A finding of famine would be a rebuke of close U.S. ally Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the Hamas militant group and not against its civilian population.
U.S. ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew earlier this week called the warning by the internationally recognized group inaccurate and “irresponsible.” Lew and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the monitoring group, both said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing circumstances in north Gaza.
The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined comment. FEWS confirmed Thursday it had retracted its famine warning, and said it expected to re-release the report in January with updated data and analysis. The group declined further comment.
“We work day and night with the U.N. and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew said Tuesday.
___
Powerful thunderstorms rumble across Texas, delaying holiday travel
DALLAS (AP) — Some flights were delayed or canceled in Texas on Thursday after a line of thunderstorms started moving across parts of the state in a system the National Weather Service predicted could bring high winds, hail and possible tornadoes.
More than 100 flights were delayed and dozens more canceled at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Thursday. Delays and thunderstorm-related cancellations also were reported at Dallas’ Love Field and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, according to FlightAware, an aviation company that tracks flights across the world.
The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning late Thursday afternoon for parts of Texas northeast of Houston, meaning weather radar indicated there was a tornado in the area. There were no immediate reports of damage.
A tornado watch remained in effect through Thursday night for several counties in southeast Texas, including the Houston area.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated state emergency response resources because of the increased severe weather threat.
___
Trump has pressed for voting changes. GOP majorities in Congress will try to make that happen
ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans plan to move quickly in their effort to overhaul the nation’s voting procedures, seeing an opportunity with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to push through long-sought changes that include voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
They say the measures are needed to restore public confidence in elections, an erosion of trust that Democrats note has been fueled by false claims from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In the new year, Republicans will be under pressure to address Trump’s desires to change how elections are run in the U.S., something he continues to promote despite his win in November.
The main legislation that Republicans expect to push will be versions of the American Confidence in Elections Act and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, said GOP Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chair of the Committee on House Administration, which handles election-related legislation. The proposals are known as the ACE and SAVE acts, respectively.
“As we look to the new year with unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law,” Steil said in an interview. “We need to improve Americans’ confidence in elections.”
Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little wiggle room with their narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. Steil said he expects there will be “some reforms and tweaks” to the original proposals and hopes Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them.
___
Americans are exhausted by political news. TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll show they’re tuning out
NEW YORK (AP) — As a Democrat who immersed himself in political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has much in common with many Americans since the election. He’s tuned out.
“People are mentally exhausted,” said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.”
Television ratings — and now a new poll — clearly illustrate the phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Smaller percentages of Americans are limiting their intake of news about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll says. Politics stand out.
Election news on CNN and MSNBC was taking up too much of Sam Gude’s time before the election, said the 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Nebraska. “The last thing I want to watch right now is the interregnum,” said Gude, a Democrat and no fan of President-elect Donald Trump.
___
Aviation experts say Russia’s air defense fire likely caused Azerbaijan plane crash as nation mourns
Aviation experts said Thursday that Russian air defense fire was likely responsible for the Azerbaijani plane crash the day before that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured.
Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons still unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan after flying east across the Caspian Sea.
The plane went down about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from Aktau. Cellphone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before crashing into the ground and exploding in a fireball.
Other footage showed a part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft lying upside down on the grass.
Azerbaijan mourned the crash victims with national flags at half-staff across on Thursday. Traffic stopped at noon, and sirens sounded from ships and trains as it observed a nationwide moment of silence.
___
Ukraine’s military intelligence says North Korean troops are suffering heavy battlefield losses
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — North Korean troops are suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region and facing logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks, Ukraine’s military intelligence said Thursday.
The intelligence agency, known under its acronym GUR, said Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units. It said North Korean troops also faced supply issues and even shortages of drinking water.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that 3,000 North Korean troops have been killed and wounded in the fighting in the Kursk region. It marked the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties several weeks after Kyiv announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost 3-year war.
The casualty disclosure came as the Biden administration was pressing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump takes over in January.
Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region in August, dealing a significant blow to Russia’s prestige and forcing it to deploy some of its troops from eastern Ukraine, where they were pressing a slow-moving offensive.
___
Ex-Sen. Bob Menendez, citing ’emotional toll,’ seeks sentencing delay in wake of wife’s trial
NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez asked a federal judge on Thursday to delay his end-of-January sentencing on bribery charges and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government, saying his family would suffer a “tremendous emotional toll” if the New Jersey Democrat were sentenced during his wife’s trial.
His lawyers told Judge Sidney H. Stein in a letter that Nadine Menendez would face a jury that might find it impossible not to hear about her husband’s sentencing if it occurred on its scheduled date, eight days into her trial.
“Put simply, the current timeline poses an unnecessary and overwhelming risk of poisoning the proceedings against Nadine,” the lawyers wrote.
They recommended moving the sentencing to a date immediately after his wife’s trial, which might not conclude until March.
The 70-year-old Menendez resigned in the weeks after his July conviction on 16 charges, including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud and obstruction of justice. He has challenged the conviction after prosecutors recently revealed that jurors were permitted to see some evidence during deliberations that was supposed to be excluded from the trial.
___
How the stock market defied expectations again this year, by the numbers
NEW YORK (AP) — What a wonderful year 2024 has been for investors.
U.S. stocks ripped higher and carried the S&P 500 to records as the economy kept growing and the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates.
The year featured many familiar winners, such as Big Tech, which got even bigger as their stock prices kept growing. But it wasn’t just Apple, Nvidia and the like. Bitcoin, gold and other investments also drove higher.
Here’s a look at some of the numbers that defined the year. All are as of Dec. 20.
Remember when President Bill Clinton got impeached or when baseball’s Mark McGwire hit his 70th home run against the Montreal Expos? That was the last time the U.S. stock market closed out a second straight year with a leap of at least 20%, something the S&P 500 is on track to do again this year. The index has climbed 24.3% so far this year, not including dividends, following last year’s spurt of 24.2%.
The Associated Press