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Ukraine’s prime minister announced his resignation Tuesday in the first formal step of what is expected to be a significant reshuffle of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, which could also see the country’s ambassador to Washington replaced.

“I am tendering my resignation from the post of the Prime Minister of Ukraine,” Denys Shmyhal wrote in a letter posted on his Telegram page.

Zelenskyy said Monday that he has offered Shmyhal’s job to 39-year-old Yuliia Svyrydenko, who is currently deputy prime minister and the country’s first female economy minister.

Svyrydenko played a key role in negotiating a U.S.–Ukraine mineral agreement. She has frequently represented Ukraine in high-level talks with Western partners, focusing on defense cooperation, economic recovery and reconstruction.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the reshuffle will play out in coming days, as the Ukrainian parliament must schedule a vote on Zelenskyy’s proposed changes amid the all-out war launched by Russia on Feb. 24, 2022.

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As New Orleans’s bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese finalizes a plan to settle 633 clergy abuse claims filed against it, the church’s investors are arguing in US bankruptcy court that about half of those survivors could have their claims thrown out.

Church officials said on Wednesday they would not necessarily seek that, though the eligibility of claims will be determined by a court-appointed examiner. If the investors’ arguments prevail, it could have major effects on whether the US’s second-oldest Catholic archdiocese settles its expensive, five-year-old bankruptcy case – or if victims of abuse by its clergy will pursue their claims individually in civil court.

Meanwhile, documents filed in court on Tuesday outlined how the church has agreed to pay at least $180m into a settlement trust, with the total growing to between $210m and $235m if a number of affordable apartment complexes owned by a church affiliate can be sold.

After the eligible claimants are determined, they will get to vote to approve or reject the settlement by 29 October.

If two-thirds of the voting claimants do not approve the settlement, Judge Meredith Grabill has said she will have no choice but to throw the church out of bankruptcy.

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Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a staunch vaccine supporter, said he was “heartbroken” after hearing parents recount how their once-healthy children were injured or killed by vaccines.

The parents’ testimony, delivered during Tuesday’s U.S. Senate hearing, “Voices of the Vaccine Injured,” did little to sway Blumenthal from his belief that vaccines are “safe and effective” — but the gut-wrenching stories did lead the senator to suggest he may be willing to look into the issue of whether pharmaceutical companies should be held liable for injuries caused by their products.

“Maybe we ought to look at this system,” said Blumenthal, referring to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which established a government compensation program for people injured by vaccines while granting legal immunity to vaccine makers.

Since 1986, the only recourse parents have had if their child was injured is to file a claim through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) — a bureaucratic labyrinth that rejects nearly half of all claims.

Blumenthal, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which held the hearing, said the parents’ testimony “makes me want to do something.”

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United Nations Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese is calling for concrete action on what she described as Israel's "genocidal" occupation of Gaza.

Albanese was speaking to delegates from 30 countries at a conference in Colombia on the Israel-Hamas war and ways that nations can try to stop Israel’s military More...offensive in the territory.

Many of the participating nations have descMore...ribed the violence as genocide against the Palestinians. Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic “blood libel.”

"Each state must immediately review and suspend all ties with the State of Israel, military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic relations, imports and exports," Albanese said on Tuesday, "and make sure that their private sectors, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities and other good and service providers in the supply chain do the same."

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Israel has carried out powerful air strikes near Syria’s presidential palace and on the military headquarters in the heart of Damascus, a major escalation in its bombardment of the neighbouring country.

At least three people were killed and 34 others were wounded in the attacks on Damascus on Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

While targeting Damascus, the Israeli military continued to pound areas in southern Syria, including Suwayda, where a new ceasefire deal has been struck after four days of clashes between Druze armed groups, Bedouin tribes and government forces, which left hundreds dead.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Israeli attacks on Damascus and Suwayda were “part of a systematic Israeli policy to ignite tension and chaos and undermine security in Syria”, calling on the international community to take “urgent action” against Israeli aggression.

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Tsunami advisory issued in parts of Alaska after 7.3-magnitude earthquake

Noaa initially issued a tsunami warning in the state’s southern coast, which it later downgraded to an advisory.

A stretch of Alaska’s southern coast was under a tsunami advisory on Wednesday after a strong earthquake was felt throughout the region.
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The US Geological Survey described the earthquake as a magnitude 7.3. After the quake, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a tsunami warning, which it later downgraded to an advisory.

The US Tsunami Center said the advisory was in effect from about 40 miles (64.4km) south-west of Homer to Unimak Pass, a distance of about 700 miles (1,126.5km). The area is sparsely populated – among the larger communities in the area is Kodiak, which is home to 5,200 people.

Meanwhile, officials in the Pacific north-west were evaluating whether there was any threat to coastlines there.

The first waves were projected to hit the village of Sand Point, a community of about 580 people on Popof Island, in the Aleutian chain. The first waves were projected to land there, but the state’s emergency management division said an hour after the quake that it had received no reports of damage.

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Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, was fired Wednesday from her job as a prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The reason for her firing was not immediately clear. She did not immediately respond to phone calls and an email seeking comment

Comey, who had worked in the U.S. attorney’s office for nearly a decade, prosecuted both Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have faced a firestorm of criticism over their decision not to release additional files related to Epstein, the disgraced financier whom the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office charged with running a child prostitution ring. He died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

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A federal judge paused enforcement of a harsh anti-immigration law in April, citing the likelihood that a pending legal challenge would succeed — but Florida Highway Patrol officers continued to enforce the law and arrested at least 27 people in the weeks that followed, HuffPost has learned.

Senate Bill 4-C, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law in February, made it a state crime for people to enter Florida without legal status. In response to a lawsuit challenging the legality of the law, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams granted a temporary restraining order on April 4, blocking law enforcement from making arrests pursuant to SB-4C. She later converted the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, pausing enforcement while litigation is ongoing.

Less than two weeks after the temporary restraining order went into effect, a state trooper arrested U.S.-born citizen Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez and charged him with illegally entering the state as an “unauthorized alien.” He was detained at the local jail even after his mother produced his birth certificate and Social Security card at a court hearing. Lopez-Gomez was released the following day, but his arrest drew attention to the state’s non-compliance with Williams’ order.

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