Israel declares Gaza’s largest city a combat zone as death toll surpasses 63,000
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel declared Gaza’s largest city a combat zone and recovered the remains of two hostages on Friday as the army launched the start of a planned offensive that has drawn international condemnation.
As the military announced the resumption of fighting, health officials said the death toll in Gaza has risen to 63,025, with 59 deaths reported by hospitals over the last 24 hours. Aid groups and a church sheltering people said they would stay in Gaza City, refusing to abandon the hungry and displaced.
The shift comes weeks after Israel first announced plans to widen its offensive in the city, where hundreds of thousands are sheltering while enduring famine. In recent days, the military has ramped up strikes on the city's outskirts.
Plumes of smoke and thunderous blasts could be seen and heard across the border in southern Israel on Friday morning.
Israel has called Gaza City a Hamas stronghold, alleging that a network of tunnels remain in use despite several previous large-scale raids on the area throughout nearly 23 months of war.
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Missouri is next to answer Trump's call for redrawn maps that boost GOP in 2026
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo (AP) — Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe said Friday that he is calling Missouri lawmakers into a special session to redraw the state’s U.S. House districts as part of a growing national battle between Republicans and Democrats seeking an edge in next year’s congressional elections.
Kehoe made the announcement just hours after Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain five more seats in the 2026 midterm elections. It marked a win for President Donald Trump, who has been urging Republican-led states to reshape district lines to give the party a better shot at retaining control of the House.
Missouri is the third state to pursue an unusual mid-decade redistricting for partisan advantage. Republican-led Texas took up the task first but was quickly countered by Democratic-led California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking voters to approve a map aimed at giving his party five more seats.
Kehoe scheduled Missouri's special session to begin Sept. 3. He released a proposed new map that targets Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area district by stretching it eastward into rural Republican-leaning areas.
His agenda also includes another Republican priority — a proposed constitutional amendment that would make it harder to approve citizen-initiated ballot measures, such as abortion-rights and marijuana legalization amendments adopted in recent years.
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Court finds Trump's tariffs an illegal use of emergency power, but leaves them in place for now
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump had no legal right to impose sweeping tariffs on almost every country on earth but left in place for now his effort to build a protectionist wall around the American economy.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found Trump overstepped his authority under an emergency powers law, a major legal blow that largely upheld a May decision by a specialized federal trade court in New York.
“It seems unlikely that Congress intended to … grant the President unlimited authority to impose tariffs,” the judges wrote in a 7-4 ruling.
But they did not strike down the tariffs immediately, allowing his administration until mid-October to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The president vowed to do just that. “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
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Boy wounded in Minnesota church shooting asks doctor: ‘Can you say a prayer with me?’
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Moments after rifle blasts reverberated inside a Minneapolis church, Catholic school children wearing plaid jumpers and green polo shirts ducked into pews, some jumping atop friends to protect them from the carnage.
One girl, Lydia Kaiser, was struck shielding her “little buddy” while her father, the school’s gym teacher, helped usher children to safety and reunite them with their parents, according to a family friend organizing fundraising for the family.
A 13-year-old boy named Endre, who was shot twice and rushed into surgery, asked the doctor, “Can you say a prayer with me?” his aunt said in a GoFundMe posting. Endre's aunt said he’s now recovering, and the surgeon told the family that Endre had inspired their medical team.
Despite the horror carried out Wednesday by a shooter whose journal entries detail weeks of preparation and a fixation on harming children, stories of bravery and tragedy have emerged as families share their accounts. At least five children and one adult remained hospitalized Friday after the shooter fired 116 rifle rounds through the church’s stained-glass windows. The attack left two students dead and 20 people wounded, nearly all of them children.
Doctors and first responders in Minneapolis this week called the students and teachers at Annunciation Catholic School heroes for protecting each other and following their active shooter training as the barrage of gunfire erupted during the first Mass of the school year.
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US revokes visas of Palestinian president and other officials ahead of UN General Assembly
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the visas of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and 80 other officials ahead of next month’s annual high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, a step the Palestinian Authority decried as against international law.
A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss visa issues that are normally confidential, disclosed Friday that Abbas and other officials from the Palestinian Authority were among those affected by new visa restrictions. Palestinian representatives assigned to the U.N. mission, however, were granted exceptions.
The move is the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration has taken to target Palestinians with visa restrictions and comes as the Israeli military declared Gaza’s largest city a combat zone. The State Department also suspended a program that had allowed injured Palestinian children from Gaza to come to the U.S. for medical treatment after a social media outcry by some conservatives.
The State Department said in a statement that Rubio also ordered some new visa applications from Palestinian officials, including those tied to the Palestine Liberation Organization, be denied.
“It is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” the statement said.
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Fed governor Cook seeks court order blocking her firing by Trump
A lawyer for Lisa Cook on Friday urged a U.S. judge to let the Federal Reserve governor keep her job while she fights President Donald Trump's attempt to fire her in a stunning assault on the central bank's independence.
The case in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. could provide Trump with expansive power over the Fed, which has traditionally been shielded from political pressure as it makes tough, complicated decisions about whether to raise interest rates to fight inflation or lower them to encourage hiring and economic growth.
Trump has sought to fire Cook over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud when she purchased a home and condo in 2021, the year before President Joe Biden appointed her to the Fed's governing board.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the Fed — and its chair, Jerome Powell — for refusing to cut interest rates. The central bank has left its benchmark rate unchanged this year, partly because it is waiting to see whether the big taxes — tariffs — that Trump is slapping on foreign products will push inflation higher. Cook has voted against a cut, along with most board members.
Arguments in the court Friday centered on what constitutes “cause,” which in this case are the unproven accusations of mortgage fraud.
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Gym owner says she reported grooming concerns about coach years before arrest in sex abuse case
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Long before his banishment from gymnastics and arrest after accusations he abused girls he coached, warning signs about Sean Gardner were coming from several directions — his former boss, his gymnasts and their parents.
The former boss says she brought her concerns about Gardner's “grooming” behavior to USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body. The parents and girls described telling coaches of inappropriate behavior at Gardner’s new job, an academy that produced Olympians and is owned by renowned coach Liang “Chow” Qiao.
Yet Qiao not only kept Gardner on the job — he promoted him.
Associated Press interviews with four parents whose daughters trained under Gardner and a letter obtained by the AP from Gardner's former employer to clients at her gym revealed that concerns about the coach were reported to gymnastics authorities as far back as 2018 — four years before he was kicked out of the sport.
One girl told Qiao during a meeting in 2020 that she had been touched inappropriately by Gardner during training but Qiao said any such contact was inadvertent and intended to save athletes from injury, a parent told AP.
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Trump blocks $4.9B in foreign aid Congress OK'd, using maneuver last seen nearly 50 years ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has told House Speaker Mike Johnson that he won't be spending $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
Trump, who sent a letter to Johnson, R-La., on Thursday, is using what’s known as a pocket rescission — when a president submits a request to Congress to not spend approved funds toward the end of the fiscal year, so Congress cannot act on the request in a 45-day timeframe and the money goes unspent as a result. It's the first time in nearly 50 years a president has used one. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.
The letter was posted Friday morning on the X account of the White House Office of Management and Budget. It said the funding would be cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, an early target of Trump's efforts to cut foreign aid.
If the White House standardizes this move, the president could effectively bypass Congress on key spending choices and potentially throw into disarray efforts in the House and the Senate to keep the government funded when the next fiscal year starts in October.
The use of a pocket rescission fits part a broader pattern by the Trump administration to exact greater control over the U.S. government, eroding the power of Congress and agencies such as the Federal Reserve and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others. The administration has already fired federal workers and imposed a historic increase in tariffs without going through Congress, putting the burden on the judicial branch to determine the limits of presidential power.
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Zelenskyy seeks talks with Trump and European leaders on slow progress of peace efforts with Russia
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that Ukrainian officials want to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and European leaders next week to discuss recent developments in efforts to end the three-year war with Russia.
The proposed meetings appeared designed to add momentum to the push for peace, as Zelenskyy expressed frustration with what he called Russia’s lack of constructive engagement in the process while it continues to launch devastating aerial attacks on civilian areas.
Trump has bristled at Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s stalling on an U.S. proposal for direct peace talks with Zelenskyy, and said a week ago he expected to decide on next steps in two weeks if direct talks aren’t scheduled.
Trump complained last month that Putin “ talks nice and then he bombs everybody.” But he has also chided Ukraine for its attacks.
At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday, the United States warned Russia to move toward peace and meet with Ukraine or face possible sanctions. The meeting was called after a major Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight from Wednesday to Thursday that killed at least 23 people
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New Orleans marks 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with solemn memorials, uplifting music
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast with catastrophic storm surge and flooding, New Orleans marked the storm's anniversary Friday with solemn memorials, uplifting music and a parade that honored the dead, the displaced and the determined survivors who endured and rebuilt.
Dignitaries and longtime residents gathered under gray skies at the memorial to Katrina's victims in a New Orleans cemetery where dozens who perished in the storm but were never identified or claimed are interred.
“We do everything to keep the memory of these people alive,” said Orrin Duncan, who worked for the coroner when Katrina hit. He comes to the memorial every year, opening the cemetery gate and making sure the grass is cut.
A Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina inflicted staggering destruction. The storm killed nearly 1,400 people across five states and racked up an estimated $200 billion in damage, flattening homes on the coast and sending ruinous flooding into low-lying neighborhoods.
Two decades later, it remains the costliest U.S. hurricane on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Associated Press
