Gaza mediators and others warn Israel of disaster if it launches a ground invasion on crowded Rafah
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s neighbors and key mediators warned Saturday of disaster and repercussions if its military launches a ground invasion in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where Israel says remaining Hamas strongholds are located — along with over half the besieged territory’s population. Israeli airstrikes killed at least 44 Palestinians — including more than a dozen children — in Rafah, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people ahead of an invasion. He gave no details or timeline. The announcement set off panic. More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are packed into Rafah, which borders Egypt.
‘They are shooting at us.’ A fleeing Gaza family is killed along with the medics sent to find them
JERUSALEM (AP) — The sound of gunfire crackled over the phone as the teenage girl hid in the car and spoke. An Israeli tank was near the vehicle as she and her family were trying to heed Israel’s call to evacuate their home in Gaza. Something had gone horribly wrong. Everyone in the vehicle was dead, the teen said. Everyone but her and her 5-year-old female cousin, Hind. “They are shooting at us,” 15-year-old Layan told the Palestinian Red Crescent. “The tank is next to me.” And then there was a burst of gunfire. She screamed and fell silent. That began a desperate rescue attempt by medics with the Palestinian Red Crescent, one of many during the war in Gaza and one that ended Saturday with the discovery of their ambulance, blackened and destroyed.
Trump says he warned NATO ally: Spend more on defense or Russia can ‘do whatever the hell they want’
NEW YORK (AP) — Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Saturday that, as president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent” as he ramped up his attacks on foreign aid and longstanding international alliances. Speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina, Trump recounted a story he has told before about an unidentified NATO member who confronted him over his threat not to defend members who fail to meet the trans-Atlantic alliance’s defense spending targets. But this time, Trump went further, saying had told the member that he would, in fact, “encourage” Russia to do as it wishes in that case.
First lady questions whether special counsel referenced son’s death to score political points
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — First lady Jill Biden said in an email to campaign donors on Saturday she didn’t know what the special counsel was trying to achieve when he suggested President Joe Biden could not remember his son’s death. ”We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points,” she wrote. “If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years — you measure it in grief.” It was an emphatic defense of her husband in a note to supporters as Biden’s team worked to alleviate Democratic concerns over the alarms raised by a special counsel about Biden’s age and memory, in a report determining that Biden would not be charged with any criminal activity for possessing classified documents after he left office.
Taylor Swift reaches LAX in journey from Tokyo to Super Bowl, online sleuths say. Will she make it?
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Will she make it in time? Intrepid flight trackers online seem to think so. On social media, fans of Taylor Swift and aviation journalists believe they’ve identified Swift’s private jet, labeled “The Football Era.” It arrived from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to Los Angeles’ LAX airport just after 3:30 p.m. local time. Her transportation plans onward to Las Vegas, where her boyfriend, NFL star tight end Travis Kelce, will play in Sunday’s Super Bowl, have yet to be revealed. Representatives for Swift and VistaJet, the world’s only global private aviation company, did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.
An Israeli drone strike in Lebanon kills 2 in one of the deepest hits inside the country in weeks
BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli drone struck a car near Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon on Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding two others, security officials said. The strike came as tensions across the Middle East grow with the Israel-Hamas war, a drone attack last month that killed three U.S. troops in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border, and attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on vessels passing through the Red Sea. The drone strike near the coastal town of Jadra took place about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Israeli border, making it one of the farthest inside Lebanon since violence erupted along the Lebanon-Israel border on Oct.
Russian drone strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s 2nd largest city, kills 7
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, killed seven people overnight, including three children, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Syniehubov reported Saturday. Three others sustained injuries, according to the officials. He said at least 10 drones were launched at Kharkiv, eight of which were shot down. Civilian infrastructure in the Nemyshlyan district of the city was hit, causing a massive fire that burned down 15 private houses, he said. Syniehubov said that an oil depot was hit, causing the fuel to leak out, which prompted the fire. In a Facebook post, Serhii Bolvinov, head of the investigative department of the National Police, cited a local resident as seeing “a true hell: first the fuel flowed, then everything caught fire.” Bolvinov said a family of five — including children aged 7, 4 and nine months — burned alive, trapped in their house as the fire raged.
Haley challenges Trump on her home turf in South Carolina as the Republican primary looms
CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — With two weeks to go before the South Carolina Republican primary, Nikki Haley is challenging Donald Trump on her home turf while the former president is turning to his familiar playbook of personal attacks as he tries to quash his last major rival for the nomination. Trump, turning his campaign focus to the southern state days after an easy victory in Nevada, revved up a huge crowd of supporters at a Saturday afternoon rally in Conway, near Myrtle Beach, by touting his time in office, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election he lost was rigged, maligning a news media he sees as biased against him and lobbing attacks on Haley, her husband and President Joe Biden.
Southwest winter storm moves into New Mexico; up to foot of snow possible in northeast mountains
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A series of slow-moving winter storms that wreaked havoc in Southern California and left 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow in northern Arizona made its way Saturday into New Mexico, where a stretch of U.S. highway south of the Colorado line was closed and as much as a foot (30 cm) of snow was possible in some mountain areas. A winter storm warning remained in effect for parts of north-central and northeast New Mexico until 5 a.m. Sunday. That included the Sante Fe area, where up to 14 inches (36 cm) of snow was possible in the mountains to the east and up to a half-foot (15 cm) in the upper elevations to the west, forecasters said.
Hungary’s president resigns over a pardon to a man convicted in a child sexual abuse case
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s conservative president resigned Saturday amid public outcry over a pardon she granted to a man convicted as an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case, a decision that unleashed an unprecedented political scandal for the long-serving nationalist government. Katalin Novák, 46, announced in a televised message that she would step down from the presidency, an office she has held since 2022. Her decision came after more than a week of public outrage after it was revealed that she issued a presidential pardon in April 2023 to a man convicted of hiding a string of child sexual abuses in a state-run children’s home.
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