AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Mediators hold new Gaza cease-fire talks and hope to head off a wider war
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - International mediators held a new round of talks Thursday aimed at halting the Israel-Hamas war and securing the release of scores of hostages, with a potential deal seen as the best hope of heading off an even larger regional conflict.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt met with an Israeli delegation in Qatar as the Palestinian death toll from the more than 10-month-old war climbed past 40,000, according to Gaza health authorities. Hamas, which didn't participate directly, accuses Israel of adding new demands to a previous proposal that had U.S. and international support and to which Hamas had agreed in principle.
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby called the talks an important step and said they´re expected to run into Friday. He said a lot of work remains given the complexity of the agreement and that negotiators were focusing on its implementation.
A cease-fire in Gaza would likely calm tensions across the region. Diplomats hope it would persuade Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah to hold off on retaliating for the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut and of Hamas' top political leader in an explosion in Tehran.
Kirby said that Iran has made preparations and could attack soon with little to no warning and that its rhetoric should be taken seriously.
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As Gaza death toll passes 40,000, corpses are buried in yards, streets, tiered graves
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - Tiers of graves are stacked deep underground in a bloated Gaza cemetery, where Sa´di Baraka spends his days hacking at the earth, making room for more dead.
"Sometimes we make graves on top of graves," he said.
Baraka and his solemn corps of volunteer gravediggers in the Deir al-Balah cemetery start at sunrise, digging new trenches or reopening existing ones. The dead can sometimes come from kilometers (miles) away, stretches of Gaza where burial grounds are destroyed or unreachable.
The cemetery is 70 years old. A quarter of its graves are new.
The death toll in Gaza since the beginning of the 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war has passed 40,000, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The count does not distinguish civilians from militants.
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US colleges revise rules on free speech in hopes of containing anti-war demonstrations
NEW YORK (AP) - As students return to colleges across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza, and some schools are adopting rules to limit the kind of protests that swept campuses last spring.
While the summer break provided a respite in student demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war, it also gave both student protesters and higher education officials a chance to regroup and strategize for the fall semester.
The stakes remain high. At Columbia University, President Minouche Shafik resigned Wednesday after coming under heavy scrutiny for her handling of the demonstrations at the campus in New York City, where the wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments began last spring.
Some of the new rules imposed by universities include banning encampments, limiting the duration of demonstrations, allowing protests only in designated spaces and restricting campus access to those with university identification. Critics say some of the measures will curtail free speech.
The American Association of University Professors issued a statement Wednesday condemning "overly restrictive policies" that could discourage free expression. Many of the new policies require protesters to register well in advance and strictly limit the locations where gatherings can be held, as well as setting new limits on the use of amplified sound and signage.
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Venezuela's opposition faces setback after countries suggest repeat of presidential election
SAO PAULO (AP) - Venezuela´s opposition was dealt a blow Thursday when countries that had been pressuring President Nicolás Maduro to release vote tallies backing his claim to victory in last month´s presidential election began suggesting a repeat of the contest instead.
The proposal from the leftist governments of Brazil and Colombia, both Maduro allies, came less than three weeks after the results of the highly anticipated election came into question when the main opposition coalition revealed it has proof that its candidate defeated the president by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
The opposition categorically rejected any plan to redo the election.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, during a virtual news conference with Argentine media, said that repeating the July 28 presidential election would be "an insult" to the people, and she asked if a second election were held and Maduro still didn´t accept the results, "do we go for a third one?"
In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden expressed support for new elections in comments to reporters that the White House later appeared to back away from.
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Matthew Perry's assistant among 5 people, including 2 doctors, charged in 'Friends' star's death
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Five people including his personal assistant and two doctors have been charged in connection with Matthew Perry's death in what prosecutors called a "broad underground criminal network" dedicated to getting the "Friends" star the powerful surgical anesthetic that killed him.
The doctors preyed on Perry's history of addiction in the final months of his life last year to provide him with ketamine in amounts they knew were dangerous, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said as he announced the charges Thursday.
"They knew what they were doing was wrong," Estrada said. "They knew what they were doing was risking great danger to Mr. Perry. But they did it anyway."
One doctor even wrote in a text message, "I wonder how much this moron will pay" and "Lets find out," according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.
Perry died in October due to a ketamine overdose and prosecutors said he received several injections on the day he died from his live-in personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who found Perry dead later that day and was the first to talk to investigators.
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Harris zeroes in on high food prices as inflation plays a big role in the presidential race
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Kamala Harris is zeroing in on high food prices as her campaign previews an economic policy speech Friday in North Carolina, promising to push for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries as she looks to address one of voters' top concerns.
Harris is putting particular emphasis on rising meat prices, which she says account for a large part of rising bills at checkout.
Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years, but food prices are 21% above where they were three years ago. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has pointed to inflation as a key failing of the Biden administration and its energy policies.
Harris, at the same time, is drawing closer to President Joe Biden's legislative and economic record. The two celebrated their efforts to cut prescription drug prices as she made her first joint speaking appearance, at an event in Maryland, with Biden since she replaced him at the top of the Democratic ticket nearly four weeks ago.
They announced that drug price negotiations will knock hundreds of dollars - in some cases thousands - off the list prices of 10 of Medicare´s most popular and costliest drugs. The program was created through the 2022 health care- and climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act. Harris´ vote Senate vote, as vice president, helped Democrats overcome unanimous GOP opposition to make the bill law.
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Donald Trump says he's 'entitled to personal attacks' on Kamala Harris
BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) - Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he thinks he´s "entitled to personal attacks" on his Democratic rival, saying he's "very angry" at Vice President Kamala Harris because of the criminal charges he faces.
Trump was responding to a question about whether his campaign needs more discipline during a news conference at his New Jersey golf club, where he looked to saddle Harris with the unpopular economic record of President Joe Biden.
"As far as the personal attacks, I´m very angry at her because of what she´s done to the country. I´m very angry at her that she would weaponize the justice system against me and other people, very angry at her. I think I´m entitled to personal attacks," Trump said.
"I don´t have a lot of respect for her intelligence and I think she´ll be a terrible president," he added.
Trump stuck close to his scripted economic message for more than half an hour, reading from a binder in front of him in a news conference at his New Jersey golf club. Later, he veered into familiar stories he enjoys telling at his rallies. A day earlier, he had struggled to make a sustained case for his economic policies during a meandering speech that his campaign had billed as a major policy address.
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Stock market today: Wall Street leaps, and S&P 500 rallies 1.6% as US shoppers drive the economy
NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street rallied to one of its best days of the year Thursday after data showed the U.S. economy is holding up better than expected, with particular credit going to the country´s shoppers.
The S&P 500 jumped 1.6% for its fourth-best day of the year and its sixth straight gain as the U.S. stock market rights itself following a scary few weeks. It´s back to within 2.2% of its all-time high set last month after briefly falling close to 10% below it.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 554 points, or 1.4%, while the Nasdaq composite burst 2.3% higher as Nvidia and other Big Tech stocks recovered more of their stumbles from the last month.
Treasury yields also leaped in the bond market following the encouraging economic report. One said U.S. shoppers increased their spending at retailers last month by much more than economists expected, while another said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits.
A year ago, such reports could have sent the stock market reeling on worries they would push inflation higher. But good news for the economy is once again good news for Wall Street, particularly after a report showed U.S. employers pulled back on their hiring last month by much more than expected.
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Zelenskyy says Ukrainian troops have taken full control of the Russian town of Sudzha
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that his country's troops had taken full control of Sudzha, the largest Russian town to fall to Ukraine's forces since the start of their cross-border incursion more than a week ago.
Although it had a prewar population of only around 5,000 people, Sudzha is the administrative center for the border area of Russia's Kursk region and is larger than any of the other towns or settlements that Ukraine says it has taken since the incursion began on Aug. 6.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was setting up a military command office in Sudzha, which suggests that Ukraine might plan to remain in the Kursk region long-term - or just signal Moscow that it may intend to do so. He didn't elaborate on what functions the office might handle, though he said earlier this week that Ukraine would be distributing humanitarian aid to Sudzha residents.
Russia didn't immediately respond to Zelenskyy's claims, but its defense ministry said earlier Thursday that Russian forces had blocked Ukrainian attempts to take several other communities.
The surprise Ukrainian incursion has reframed the war and caused chaos in the Kursk region, leading to the evacuation of more than 120,000 civilians, according to Russian authorities, and the capture of at least 100 Russian troops, according to Kyiv.
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VP nominee JD Vance to dissolve last vestige of mothballed charity, give its $11K to Appalachia
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance is preparing to dissolve the vestiges of a charitable effort he launched in Ohio after publication of his best-selling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," his campaign said.
Vance formed two like-named nonprofits starting in 2016 to address problems in Ohio and other "Rust Belt" states. They were primarily supposed to focus on boosting job opportunities, improving mental health treatment and combatting the opioid crisis. The original organization folded within five years and Vance put the other on hold when he ran successfully for the Senate in 2022.
He faced criticism during the race over how little the groups accomplished. Despite Vance's stated intentions to identify and produce national solutions to those problems, the nonprofits´ only notable achievement was paying to send an addiction specialist to southern Ohio for a year who had questioned the well-documented role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis. Vance has acknowledged that the groups' efforts fell far short of his aspirations.
One of the groups - a foundation - filed paperwork in April reinstating the corporate status it had allowed to expire in 2022.
Trump campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk told The Associated Press that that filing was required because the foundation still had money left in its bank account and did not signal that Vance intended to resume the foundation´s efforts. She said he plans to close out its accounts and distribute the remaining balance to causes benefiting Appalachia.
