AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

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This article was published 24/08/2024 (402 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Israel-Hamas war cease-fire, hostage talks will continue after weekend meetings didn’t resolve gaps

JERUSALEM (AP) — A round of high-level talks in Cairo meant to bring about a cease-fire and hostage deal to at least temporarily end the 10-month Israel-Hamas war in Gaza ended Sunday without a final agreement, a U.S. official said. But talks will continue at lower levels in the coming days in an effort to bridge remaining gaps.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said lower level “working teams” will remain in Cairo to meet with mediators the United States, Qatar, and Egypt in hopes to addressing remaining disagreements. The official called the recent conversations, which began Thursday in Cairo and continued through Sunday, as “constructive” and said all parties were working to “reach a final and implementable agreement.”

The talks included CIA director William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. A Hamas delegation was briefed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators but did not directly take part in negotiations.

The development came after Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded heavy fire early Sunday but backed off from sparking a widely feared all-out war, as both sides signaled their most intense exchange in months was over.

Hezbollah claimed to hit an Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv as part of a barrage of hundreds of rockets and drones, and Israel claimed its dozens of strikes had been preemptive to avert a larger attack. Neither offered evidence.

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Trump would veto legislation establishing a federal abortion ban, Vance says

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance says Donald Trump would not support a national abortion ban if elected president and would veto such legislation if it landed on his desk.

“I can absolutely commit that,” Vance said when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he could commit to Trump not imposing such a ban. “Donald Trump’s view is that we want the individual states and their individual cultures and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict over this issue.”

The Ohio senator also insisted that Trump, the former president who is the Republican nominee this year, would veto such legislation if it were passed by Congress.

“I mean, if you’re not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it,” he said in an interview that aired Sunday.

Vance’s comments come after Democrats spent night after night of their national convention in Chicago last week assailing Trump for his role in appointing the Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion in the United States and paving the way for bans and restrictions across Republican-led states.

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Behind the rhetoric, a presidential campaign is a competition about how to tell the American story

NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination “on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth.” America, Barack Obama thundered, “is ready for a better story.” JD Vance insisted that the Biden administration “is not the end of our story,” and Donald Trump called on fellow Republicans to “write our own thrilling chapter of the American story.”

“This week,” comedian and former Obama administration speechwriter Jon Lovett said Thursday on NBC, “has been about a story.”

In the discourse of American politics, this kind of talk from both sides is unsurprising — fitting, even. Because in the campaign season of 2024, just as in the fabric of American culture at large, the notion of “story” is everywhere.

This year’s political conventions were, like so many of their kind, curated collections of elaborate stories carefully spun to accomplish one goal — getting elected. But lurking behind them was a pitched, high-stakes battle over how to frame the biggest story of all — the one about America that, as Harris put it, should be “the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

The American story — an unlikely one, filled with twists that sometimes feel, as so many enjoy saying, “just like a movie” — sits at the nucleus of American culture for a unique reason.

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Member of British journalist team dies after Russian missile hits hotel in eastern Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A British safety adviser working with a team of journalists was killed after a Russian missile struck a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, Reuters news agency confirmed.

Ryan Evans, 38, was staying at the Hotel Sapphire with colleagues in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region when it was hit by a Russian missile Saturday night.

Two other members of the six-person Reuters crew were hospitalized with injuries.

Local officials said the hotel was struck by an Iskander-M Russian ballistic missile, leaving the reporters with blast injuries, concussions and cuts on the body.

Associated Press reporters at the scene described the hotel as “rubble,” with excavators being used to clear debris hours after the attack.

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French authorities arrest Telegram CEO Pavel Durov at a Paris airport, French media report

NICE, France (AP) — The founder and CEO of the messaging service Telegram was detained at a Paris airport on an arrest warrant alleging his platform has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offenses, French media reported Sunday.

Pavel Durov, a dual citizen of France and Russia, was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday evening after landing in France from Azerbaijan, according to broadcasters LCI and TF1.

Investigators from the National Anti-Fraud Office, attached to the French customs department, notified Durov, 39, that he was being placed in police custody, the broadcasters said.

Durov’s representatives couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

French prosecutors declined to comment on Durov’s arrest when contacted by The Associated Press on Sunday, in line with regulations during an ongoing investigation.

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Protesters against judiciary overhaul plan urge Mexican president to ‘respect democracy’

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Protestors took to the streets across Mexico on Sunday in the latest opposition to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed judicial overhaul and other moves by the governing party that critics say will weaken democratic checks and balances.

Demonstrators rallied in Mexico City as well as in Michoacan, Puebla, Leon, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Veracruz and other states to voice worries about changing the judiciary, particularly making judgeships subject to election. Many protesters are also upset by a proposal to do away with independent regulatory agencies.

In the capital, throngs of people, many of them federal court workers and judges on strike, ended their march outside the Supreme Court building in the heart of the city, waving flags reading “Judicial independence” and “Respect democracy.”

“Right now, we’re protesting the reforms, but it’s not just the reforms,” said lawyer Mauricio Espinosa. “It’s all of these attacks against the judicial branch and other autonomous bodies. What it does is end up strengthening the executive, the next president.”

Following big electoral victories in June by the president’s Morena party and its allies, the government has pushed for sweeping changes to Mexico’s judicial system, long at odds with López Obrador, a populist who has openly attacked judges and ignored court orders.

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The suspect in the Germany attack was motivated by Islamic State group ideology, prosecutors say

SOLINGEN, Germany (AP) — A Syrian man on Sunday was ordered held on suspicion of murder and membership in a terrorist organization in connection with the Solingen knife attack that left three dead and eight wounded at a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary.

A judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe ordered 26-year-old Issa Al H. held pending further investigation and a possible indictment after federal prosecutors said that he shared the radical ideology of the Islamic State extremist group — and was acting on those beliefs when he stabbed his victims repeatedly from behind in the head and upper body.

The ruling came after the suspect turned himself in, saying that he was responsible for the attack, police said. He is also suspected of attempted murder and serious bodily injury, prosecutors said. His last name wasn’t released in line with German privacy rules.

The suspect, wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, was taken Sunday from the police station in Solingen for the initial court appearance.

He “shares the ideology of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State” and on the basis of his “radical Islamic convictions” decided “to kill the largest possible number of those he considers unbelievers” at the festival, the Office of the Federal Prosecutor said in a statement.

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‘We were expendable’: Downwinders from world’s 1st atomic test are on a mission to tell their story

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — It was the summer of 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of people as waves of destructive energy obliterated two cites. It was a decisive move that helped bring about the end of World War II, but survivors and the generations that followed were left to grapple with sickness from radiation exposure.

At the time, U.S. President Harry Truman called it “the greatest scientific gamble in history,” saying the rain of ruin from the air would usher in a new concept of force and power. What he didn’t mention was that the federal government had already tested this new force on U.S. soil.

Just weeks earlier in southern New Mexico, the early morning sky erupted with an incredible flash of light. Windows rattled hundreds of miles away and a trail of fallout stretched to the East Coast.

Ash from the Trinity Test rained down for days. Children played in it, thinking it was snow. It covered fresh laundry that was hanging out to dry. It contaminated crops, singed livestock and found its way into cisterns used for drinking water.

The story of New Mexico’s downwinders — the survivors of the world’s first atomic blast and those who helped mine the uranium needed for the nation’s arsenal — is little known. But that’s changing as the documentary “First We Bombed New Mexico” racks up awards from film festivals across the United States.

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Hurricane Hone sweeps past Hawaii, dumping enough rain to ease wildfire fears

HONOLULU (AP) — Hurricane Hone passed just south of Hawaii on Sunday, dumping so much rain that the National Weather Service called off its red flag warnings that strong winds could lead to wildfires on the drier sides of the islands.

Meanwhile, the eastern Pacific saw a new threat emerge as Tropical Storm Hector formed, packing top sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph). There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect as Hector churned far out at sea, the National Hurricane Center said.

Hone (pronounced hoe-NEH) had top winds of 85 mph (140 kph) Sunday morning as it swirled slowly past the Big Island, centered about 45 miles (72 kilometers) off its southernmost point, according to Jon Jelsema, a senior forecaster at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. He said tropical storm force winds were blowing across the island’s southeast-facing slopes, carrying up to a foot (30 centimeters) or more of rain.

Floods closed Highway 11 between Kona and Hilo, and a higher-altitude alternative, the Cane Road, was closed by flooding as well, isolating properties like the Aikane Plantation Coffee Co. outside Pahala, where owner Phil Becker said his 10-inch (25-centimeter) rain gauge overflowed in the deluge.

“We’ve got quite a lot of flood damage, the gulches are running full speed ahead and they’re overflowing the bridges, so we’re trapped down here, we can’t get in or out,” Becker said Sunday.

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Lake Mary, Florida, rallies to beat Taiwan 2-1 in 8 innings to win Little League World Series title

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — Lathan Norton was sick and didn’t play on Saturday at the Little League World Series. But on Sunday he scored the winning run in the championship.

Lathan raced home from second base on an overthrow at first as Lake Mary, Florida, rallied to beat Taiwan 2-1 in eight innings and claim the title.

“It was the greatest feeling ever,” said Lathan, who had a fever of 102 on Saturday but recovered before the championship. “I still haven’t had time to let it all sink in, but it feels like the most amazing thing ever.”

Taiwan clung to a 1-0 lead from the first inning until Florida’s last at-bat. The Southeast region representatives outhit Taiwan and had a runner on third in three separate innings, but couldn’t get a run across.

Then, in the bottom of the sixth, Florida got runners on first and second and DeMarcos Mieses, who struck out in his previous two at-bats, delivered. Hitting the gap in shallow left, he gave Chase Anderson enough time to sprint home and tie the game.