AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

2 soldiers killed in Lebanon in the first Israeli deaths since June truce with Hezbollah

BEIRUT (AP) — Two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion in southern Lebanon, Israel’s military said Thursday, the first Israeli deaths since a shaky truce between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah began nearly two months ago.

Four other soldiers were seriously wounded, the military said. An Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with the army’s policy, said that “an explosion was detonated” when the soldiers entered a site in the village of Majdal Zoun and that the nature of the explosive was under review.

Israeli media reported the two deaths a day earlier.

The Israeli army launched strikes Wednesday in southern Lebanon in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s violation of the ceasefire and called on residents of the village of Mansouri to flee — the first such warning Israel has issued in Lebanon for weeks.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said one person was killed and 12 wounded in an Israeli strike in the town of Tebnine Wednesday and another eight wounded in overnight strikes on the village of Burj al-Shemali. Artillery shelling also targeted the areas of Mansouri and Majdal Zoun, the state-run National News Agency said.

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After Michigan, Democrats’ next battleground over the party’s future shifts to Wisconsin

NEW GLARUS, Wis. (AP) — Sarah Miller, a software engineer from the liberal stronghold of Madison, has heard all of the chatter about a civil war in the Democratic Party between progressives and moderates. But all she cares about is winning.

That’s why Miller said she is voting in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary for David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive endorsed by two-term Gov. Tony Evers. He faces democratic socialist Francesca Hong in a contest that will be the latest test nationally of how far Democrats are willing to swing to the political left.

Wisconsin’s primary comes a week after progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s U.S. Senate primary, setting up a crucial test for progressives in November in a key battleground state. Also on Tuesday, voters in Minnesota will decide another U.S. Senate contest featuring a centrist and a progressive.

In a year where voters upset with the Democratic Party mainstream have propelled outsider candidates to victory across the country, Crowley is hoping to buck the trend in Wisconsin. He’s banking on the support of Evers, one of the state’s most popular elected officials, to make up ground in the waning days of the chaotic primary.

Crowley said that El-Sayed’s slim margin of victory “does give me a little bit of hope.”

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Dozens of health workers at epicenter of Congo’s Ebola outbreak protest lack of payment

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Dozens of health workers working at the epicenter of Congo’s Ebola outbreak staged protests Thursday to demand payment for their wages, abandoning several health facilities even as aid workers warn that the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of the disease is spreading at an alarming rate.

The health workers are protesting at the governor’s office in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, which accounts for nearly 90% of the Ebola cases in the country. They are the latest group to walk off their jobs since protests over pay issues began weeks ago.

The health workers, including nurses providing critical care to Ebola patients, said they haven’t received wages and bonuses for their work fighting Ebola since the outbreak was declared in mid-May.

“With this way of managing things, Ebola will not end in this province. We ask the authorities to get involved at all levels so that a solution is found quickly,” said Edouige Makosi, one of the protesters.

Officials have in the past blamed logistical issues for the payment delays. Congolese authorities did not immediately respond to an inquiry for comments on Thursday.

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How Abdul El-Sayed went from political oblivion to progressive breakthrough in Michigan Senate race

DETROIT (AP) — Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official who harnessed Democratic frustration with the party establishment, narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s U.S. Senate primary, setting up a crucial test for progressives in a key battleground state.

El-Sayed will face Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman, in November in a race that will help determine control of the Senate. His first challenge will be unifying Democratic factions after a bitter primary that offered divergent visions for a party desperate for a path back to power.

The margin was extraordinarily close. El-Sayed walked off the stage at his Tuesday night election party without declaring victory, and the race was not called until early Wednesday, after nearly all ballots statewide had been counted. At the time The Associated Press declared him the winner, El-Sayed led Stevens by 14,893 votes — just under 1 percentage point — out of more than 1.5 million ballots counted, the most in recent state history.

The political significance of the result, however, extends well beyond the slim margin.

“Abdul’s victory was, in my opinion, the most extraordinary victory that I can think of in modern American politics,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a leader of the progressive movement who was an early supporter of El-Sayed’s candidacy.

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Gianni Infantino gets internal support at crisis meeting to remain as FIFA president

FIFA said Wednesday it had apologized for errors made over Gianni Infantino’s failed plan to sell stakes in the World Cup and that senior staff in attendance at a crisis meeting in Morocco “reaffirmed their full support” for his presidency.

World soccer’s governing body attempted to present a unified front amid the turbulence caused by Infantino’s controversial plans, with calls for him to step down.

In a statement, FIFA said Secretary-General Mattias Grafström and members of the management board in attendance in Rabat had given their support to the embattled president.

Referring to the plans to sell profits in the World Cup through a commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), the statement said “mistakes made were acknowledged” and that the “process should have been handled differently.”

FIFA said a letter had been sent to FIFA Council and member associations apologizing for errors and committed to “ensure they do not happen again.”

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Ukraine strikes more oil facilities deep inside Russia, Zelenskyy says

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine hit more oil facilities deep inside Russia in nighttime attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, as Kyiv kept up its campaign to undermine Moscow’s wartime economy and embarrass the Kremlin.

The repeated strikes have caused fuel shortages and rattled Russians while heartening Ukrainians who are enduring regular Russian barrages that Kyiv’s weakened air defenses are struggling to counter.

Ukrainian forces hit a refinery in Bashkortostan, more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) behind the front line in eastern Ukraine, as well as a refinery in the Yaroslavl region, almost 700 kilometers (400 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Zelenskyy said on social media.

Also, Ukrainian forces hit two Russian military patrol boats in the Black Sea, according to Zelenskyy, as well as vessels belonging to Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, which Russia uses to evade Western restrictions on its oil exports. He did not provide details about the vessels or the extent of the damage.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday that its air defenses overnight shot down 605 Ukrainian drones over a number of Russian regions, as well as illegally annexed Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.

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Drone with explosives found at German airport, official sees ‘new quality’ of threat

BERLIN (AP) — A drone with explosives was found at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport and the device was defused, authorities said Wednesday, in an incident that the country’s top security official said posed a “new quality of danger.”

Both the runways at the major freight hub were closed and several flights, including one passenger plane, were diverted to other airports after a flying object was sighted nearby shortly before midnight Tuesday. An anti-explosives robot was deployed to check an object near the south runway.

Regional police and prosecutors later said an airport employee discovered a drone near the airport’s south runway with “an unknown explosive device,” and the object was examined by police. They removed its detonator.

That the drone was carrying explosives “is a new quality of danger,” German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters at the airport after interrupting his vacation to travel to the scene.

“Drone sightings, drone threats including in a hybrid context, are something we know from the past,” he added. “That a drone armed with explosives is at an airport is a new threat scenario.”

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Senate panel to vote on holding Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer questions

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate committee is set to vote Thursday on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution over his refusal to answer questions at a hearing last week focused on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the Republican committee chairman, has said that constitutional protection did not apply since Fauci last year received a pardon from President Joe Biden and thus did not have to worry about the threat of prosecution.

But Fauci, in a statement issued before the hearing, said he had good reason to fear the possibility of criminal charges given what he said was Paul’s determination “to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”

The pardon from Biden covered acts from 2014 through the January 2025 day it was issued but does not shield Fauci from state-level prosecutions or from investigations into any testimony that he did give that lawmakers thought was false.

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US suspends avocado inspections in Mexican state of Michoacan due to threat

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The United States announced Wednesday that it had suspended all government operations in the Mexican state of Michoacan because of a “threat to U.S. interests,” including a halt to the inspections of avocados required for their export.

While the U.S. Embassy did not specify the nature of the threat in its security alert, Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla said on social media that the temporary halt to inspections was intended to safeguard workers following recent arrests linked to extortion. The inspections are necessary for avocados to be shipped to the United States and their suspension could disrupt exports.

The western state of Michoacan is the leading exporter of avocados to the U.S. and has a high level of organized crime activity with at least four cartels — designated as terrorist organizations by the Trump administration — operating in the region. Besides trafficking drugs, cartels also make money through extortion, including of the avocado industry.

Michoacan State Security Secretary Antonio Cruz told The Associated Press that one of the arrests mentioned by the governor was of “El Poncho,” the alias of Alfonso Fernández Magallón, leader of a local cartel operating in the avocado-growing region around Los Reyes.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson welcomed the arrest, which came over the weekend. The U.S. government had offered a $5 million reward for Fernández Magallón’s arrest.

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Investigators look at why a plane was allowed to take off as President Trump’s helicopter approached

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s not clear why a plane was allowed to take off as President Donald Trump’s helicopter was approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Tuesday afternoon in an apparent violation of safety procedures put in place after last year’s midair collision near the busy airport.

Both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday they were investigating what happened when a commercial jet took off just as Marine One left the White House for Andrews Air Force Base with the president aboard for the first leg of a West Coast trip.

The FAA decided after 67 people died on Jan. 29, 2025, when an airliner collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter that all takeoffs and landings at the Washington, D.C., airport would be halted anytime a helicopter passes by on a conflicting route. The airspace near the White House and Reagan is heavily congested with military and commercial aircraft.

The airplane that took off Tuesday was climbing above Marine One as the helicopter approached, so the two aircraft were not on a collision course.

The FAA said in a statement that a preliminary investigation showed “there was a momentary loss of separation after which the aircraft continued to move away from one another.”