From regulating the price of chicken to levying fees on cigarettes, Hamas is seeking to widen control over Gaza as U.S. plans for its future slowly take shape, Palestinians in Gaza say, adding to rivals’ doubts over whether it will cede authority as promised.
After a ceasefire began last month, Hamas swiftly reestablished its hold over areas from which Israel withdrew, killing dozens of Palestinians it accused of collaborating with Israel, theft or other crimes. Foreign powers demand the group disarm and leave government but have yet to agree who will replace them.
Now, a dozen Palestinians say they are increasingly feeling Hamas control in other ways. Authorities monitor everything coming into areas of Gaza held by Hamas, levying fees on some privately imported goods including fuel as well as cigarettes and fining merchants seen to be overcharging for goods, according to 10 of the Gaza residents, three of them merchants with direct knowledge.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the media office of the Hamas government, said accounts of Hamas taxing cigarettes and fuel were inaccurate, denying the government was raising any taxes.
Hamas quietly reasserts control in Gaza as post-war talks grind on
Ukraine war briefing: Drones hit Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery
Ukraine’s army said on Saturday it struck a Russian oil refinery in the Ryazan region near Moscow, as “part of efforts to reduce the enemy’s ability to launch missile and bomb strikes”. Explosions and a large fire were observed at the site, said the military. Ryazan is located about 200km (125 miles) south-east of Moscow.
Russian officials often do not admit such attacks have succeeded, and the Ryazan governor, Pavel Malkov, adopted the standard line that Ukrainian drones were shot down but debris happened to hit the target. “Falling debris caused a fire on the premises of one enterprise,” Malkov said. A wave of 25 Ukrainian drones attacked the region, Malkov said.
Officials in southern Ukraine said four people were killed by Russian attacks on Saturday. Prosecutors in the Kherson region said “three civilians are known to have been killed” in the village of Myklitskyi and the city of Kherson. The governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Federov, said a Russian attack killed one person.
The US will not lift sanctions on Serbian oil company NIS unless Belgrade terminates the firm’s majority Russian ownership, Serbia’s energy minister said on Saturday, warning that her country faced “difficult” decisions. Washington sanctioned Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS) as part of its crackdown on the Russian energy sector. Analysts say Serbia is on the brink of a winter energy crisis with its lone oil refinery facing a potential shutdown.
Serbia’s energy minister, Dubravka Đedović Handanović, said the US wanted a “complete change of Russian shareholders” to be negotiated by 13 February before lifting sanctions. NIS is 45% owned by Gazprom Neft, which has been targeted by US sanctions. Neft’s parent company, Gazprom, has transferred its own 11.3% stake in NIS to another Russian firm, Intelligence. The Serbian state holds nearly 30% of NIS, with the rest owned by minority shareholders. Handanović suggested the Serbian government was looking at a possible Russian takeover of NIS and would hold a special cabinet meeting about it on Sunday.
Longtime Jersey City hospital shuts doors amid financial peril
Heights University Hospital, which has served Jersey City for over 150 years, closed its doors on Saturday after failing to secure millions in critically needed state funds to keep it operational and pay employees, according to its parent company.
Hudson Regional Health, which owns the hospital, announced via its social media platforms on Saturday that only the hospital’s emergency room would remain open. Hudson Regional Health itself took control of the hospital and two others in Bayonne and Hoboken from Hudson County’s struggling CarePoint Health System in April.
“It was difficult to conceive of an employer that could be more harmful to its employees and its community than CarePoint has been in Hudson County,” read a statement by Health Professionals and Allied Employees, the union representing the hospital's staff. “But Hudson Regional Health has surpassed CarePoint as the worst employer in Hudson County.”
The union’s statement also said its members have been left without future employment and a paycheck for two weeks of work.
U.S. official says the 'table is being set' for possible military action against Venezuela
The world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, will arrive in the northern Caribbean on Sunday as tensions with Venezuela grow, according to a U.S. military official. The carrier will join 15,000 service members, including 2,000 Marines aboard an amphibious assault ship.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told NPR the "table is being set" for possible military action. Administration officials are continuing to hold high-level meetings with members of Congress and foreign leaders amid ongoing military exercises.
It remains unclear, however, if President Trump will use military force against Venezuela. The U.S. has conducted 20 strikes on boats in the region so far, saying they were ferrying drugs trafficked from the country. In August, the U.S. government set a $50 million reward for the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
But officials told NPR that the arrival of the USS Gerald Ford, which was pulled from the Mediterranean Sea, could be just another pressure tactic on Maduro, who has put his own forces on high alert.
On Friday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, "I sort of made up my mind" about whether to launch an attack.
"I can't tell you what it is," he said, "but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in."
US army veteran who received Purple Heart deported by ICE to Mexico
This week several dozen Venezuelan nationals were transferred from a U.S. immigration detention center in south Texas and boarded a deportation flight to their home country.
Among them was 39-year-old Jose Barco, a decorated American soldier who deployed twice to Iraq, saw horrific combat and received a Purple Heart after an explosion tossed him through the air and left him with a traumatic brain injury.
He was just four years old when his family left Venezuela, a country his father fled to after he was being released as a political prisoner in Cuba. Jose Barco's fellow inmates in Texas, most of them much younger, simply call him "Cuba."
How an American veteran, a father of a 15-year-old daughter, found himself inside this sprawling detention center outside Corpus Christi, Texas, waiting for a flight to a country he barely knows is a tortured tale of battlefield trauma, bureaucratic bumbling and eventually, a serious crime.
Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’s had ‘warnings for my safety’ after posts by Trump
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Republican ally who previously fiercely defended Donald Trump and his Maga movement, said on Saturday she had been contacted by private security firms “with warnings for my safety” after Trump announced on Friday he was withdrawing his support for and endorsement of the Georgia representative.
In a post on X, Greene said that “a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”, without referring to Trump by name, adding it was “the man I supported and helped get elected”.
Greene said that “aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type rhetoric being directed at me right now. This time by the President of the United States.”
Greene did not specify any threats against her that had been received by security firms, but said that “as a woman I take threats from men seriously. I now have a small understanding of the fear and pressure the women, who are victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal, must feel.”
Alice Wong, ‘luminary’ writer and disability rights activist, dies aged 51
Alice Wong, a writer and disability rights activist who was born with muscular dystrophy and whose independence and writing inspired others, has died. She was 51.
Wong died Friday at a hospital in San Francisco due to an infection, said Sandy Ho, a close friend who has been in touch with Wong’s family.
Ho called her friend a “luminary of the disability justice movement” who wanted to see a world where people with disabilities, especially those of marginalized demographics who were people of color, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants, could live freely and have full autonomy over their lives and decisions.
The daughter of Hong Kong immigrants, Wong writes about her own story – about growing up with a neuromuscular disease, coming into herself and her activism – and about how US policies and systems fail disabled people, queer people, immigrants and people of color. She used a powered wheelchair and an assistive breathing device and described herself as a “disabled cyborg”.
In her 2022 memoir, Year of the Tiger, Wong tells of the discrimination and bullying she faced growing up in Indiana, which sparked her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism.
Wong founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014, initially as an oral history project designed to collect the stories of disabled people. She has shared these histories in two books, Disability Visibility and Disability Intimacy.
Trump muddles his populist message, worrying supporters
President Trump’s supporters are worried he is muddling his populist message as Republicans seek to keep the party base together going into the midterm election year.
This week, Trump faced an uproar from his most faithful MAGA supporters when he defended the H-1B visas and inviting foreign students to come study in the U.S. Conservative critics including and perhaps most prominently, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused the president of contradicting his America First message.
Meanwhile, the president has continued to tout expensive White House renovations, including his long anticipated ballroom addition in place of the East Wing, as he seeks to tackle the issue of affordability.
Some worry that the moves will depress the president’s base, who have long viewed him as an economic populist fighting for the working class.
The backlash was fiercest after Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a vocal Trump ally, pressed him over his stances on H-1B visas and his calls for 600,000 Chinese students to study at U.S. higher education institutions. The president argued H-1B visas are necessary because the U.S. needs “certain” talents to carry out specific jobs. On his calls for the 600,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S., Trump argued the move was needed to keep U.S. colleges in business.
“Where is my president?” Trump supporter Kylie Kremer, who played a role in organizing the rally prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, posted on X with a clip of the interview.
Conservative commentator Natalie Winters, who co-hosts Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, also reposted a clip of the interview in which Trump defends his calls for Chinese students to study in the U.S., calling the remarks “insulting to MAGA’s intelligence.”
4 officers shot in Kansas; suspect killed, authorities say
Four law enforcement officers were shot and wounded after they responded to a domestic violence incident at about 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 15 in Kansas, authorities said.
Three Osage County sheriff’s officers and a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper were wounded at a residence just north of 113th and Topeka Boulevard, said Melissa Underwood, communications director for the KBI.
Another man was taken to a hospital, where his condition was considered stable, said Tony Mattivi, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
The shooting scene is about eight miles south of Topeka.
The names, ages and genders of the six people shot weren’t immediately being released.
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- Israeli crowd applauds soldiers accused of raping Palestinian prisoner
- ‘Massive enemy attack’: Russia pounds Ukraine’s Kyiv, killing six
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