Relatives of Israeli hostages chain themselves outside Netanyahu's office in protest
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
23 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Democratic Detroit lawmaker Joe Tate drops out of US Senate race
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Detroit lawmaker is dropping out of the race to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate, he announced Friday, leaving three Democratic front-runners to compete in the primary. State Rep. Joe Tate, who was the first Black speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he is suspending his campaign to move 'in a different direction of service.' He struggled to compete with the fundraising numbers put up by the three other Democratic candidates, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and public health official Abdul El-Sayed. The race is likely to be one of the most watched in 2026, as Republicans seek to defend their majority in the U.S. Senate. 'The past three months have been wonderful, just to touch base with Michiganders,' Tate said of his campaign. Tate was the fourth Democrat to jump into the race after Democratic U.S. Sen. Gary Peters announced his intention to retire at the end of his term. The other three candidates far outpaced Tate in fundraising, according to recent campaign finance reports. Stevens reported a haul of $2.8 million, McMorrow brought it $2.1 million, and El-Sayed banked about $1.8 million. Stevens' amount includes $1.5 million she transferred from her previous U.S. House campaign. Meanwhile, Tate raised around $193,000 and reported having about $70,000 on hand as of June 30. Tate said he is looking into seeking reelection for his House seat. Tate stepped down as speaker after Republicans gained a majority in the November election. On the Republican side of the ballot, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers is running again after losing to Democrat Elissa Slotkin in the state's 2024 U.S. Senate race by just 19,000 votes. The way was all but cleared for him after GOP U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, who was exploring a run, announced in July that he would not seek the seat. Rogers' main campaign account reported bringing in about $1.2 million as of June 30, according to his Federal Election Commission filing.
Fox News
25 minutes ago
- Fox News
Shannon Bream On 'The Fallout From Texas Redistricting'
Redistricting battles are heating up, with Republican-led states pushing to redraw congressional maps ahead of the next census, while Democrats promise to reciprocate. The back-and-forth is sparking legal questions and reigniting debates over gerrymandering and whether undocumented immigrants should be counted in the census. FOX News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream joins the Rundown to discuss the partisan fight over redistricting and what's at stake for both parties. Bream also weighs in on the investigation into former Special Counsel Jack Smith and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's vow to take control of Gaza. This week marks eighty years since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unprecedented, causing a level of destruction the world had never witnessed before, but they ultimately led to the end of the Second World War. Dr. Rebecca Grant, a national security and military analyst and senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, joins to discuss why President Truman decided to drop the first atomic bombs and the ramifications of those actions. Don't miss the good news with Tonya J. Powers. Plus, commentary from the host of 'The Big Ben Show,' Ben Domenech. Photo Credit: AP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
New York Times
25 minutes ago
- New York Times
The Desperate Struggle to Squeeze Aid Into a Starving Gaza
Despite what Israel says are its efforts to bring more food and other aid into Gaza in recent days, the United Nations and other aid groups say it is falling catastrophically short of what is needed to stop fast-accelerating starvation there. International experts warn that Gaza is fast plunging into famine, with the number of Palestinians dying from hunger-related causes shooting upward over the past month. Gaza reached that point after Israel escalated its prior siege of the territory to block virtually all aid from March to May, aiming to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages still in Gaza. When Israel allowed aid back in, it did so mostly under a contentious new aid delivery system that resulted in the killings of hundreds of Palestinians and kept all but the strongest and luckiest from getting food. Now Israel is pausing the fighting in some parts of Gaza each day to help aid convoys move, approving some imported food for sale in Gaza and allowing aid to be airdropped. But all of it is far too little, far too late, aid officials say. Nothing less than a cease-fire will allow the necessary avalanche of aid to flow safely into Gaza, they say. Israeli leaders' decision instead to greenlight the recapture of Gaza City throws the aid system into further doubt. To have a real impact, aid agencies say Israel needs to allow in the hundreds of thousands of pallets of aid languishing outside Gaza — enough to cover around 100 soccer fields, they say — and help ensure that the aid can be distributed safely. Letting in small numbers of trucks and airdropping supplies is little more than a public relations stunt, aid officials contend. 'It's a joke, it's all just theatrics,' Bushra Khalidi, an aid official working on Oxfam's response in Gaza, said last week. 'We're talking about two million people. It's not 100 trucks or a pausing or a few hours of calm that is going to meet the needs of a population that has been starved for months,' Ms. Khalidi said. 'Starvation has a long-term impact, and it affects growth of children, and it's not something that you can reverse by throwing energy bars from the sky.' Israel says that the level of hunger has been exaggerated and that it is doing its best to lessen it. Israel's military spokesman has said there is no starvation in Gaza. The Israeli agency coordinating aid for Gaza did not respond to a request for comment. Israel has also blamed the United Nations for not bringing in more food, while the organization says that Israel frequently denies or delays its requests to bring in convoys, among other challenges. Many aid workers say airdrops endanger desperate people while feeding only a few, and only those physically able to retrieve it. During previous airdrops, people have been injured by falling aid; others have drowned or crossed into combat zones to retrieve packages that fell there, officials say. When he recently saw a plane drop aid by parachute, Mohammed Abu Taha, 43, who is sheltering in southern Gaza, ran toward it. By the time he arrived, other Palestinians were fighting over the remaining bags of food. 'People are too desperate,' he said. 'I ran a lot and got nothing at all.' Each airdrop delivers at most two truckloads of aid, and usually less, aid officials said. 'Airdrops are the most ineffective, expensive way of delivering aid possible,' said Bob Kitchen, who oversees emergency response at the International Rescue Committee, a group working in Gaza. With nearly one in three people going without food for days at a time, according to the United Nations, clinics treating malnutrition are at or over capacity. Children are becoming too weak to scavenge through trash for food or even to cry, aid workers say. An international group of experts said in late July that famine thresholds had been reached across much of Gaza. Health officials there say scores of people have died from malnutrition, including dozens of children, though aid workers say that is probably an undercount. Aid workers say that number could potentially climb to the tens or hundreds of thousands without a rapid surge in aid. Weakened by months of extreme deprivation, people have few defenses left to stop illnesses as ordinary as diarrhea from killing them. And those diseases are rampant. The number of people with acute watery diarrhea increased by 150 percent from March to June, and those with bloody diarrhea by 302 percent, health data from aid agencies shows. Those figures, which include only people who can reach medical centers, are most likely an undercount, according to Oxfam. Staving off famine therefore depends not only on food, but also on fuel to run hospitals, cooking gas to make meals and clean water and sanitation to keep waterborne diseases in check — all of which are absent or nearly absent from Gaza, aid workers say. Aid agencies have received 200 to 300 trucks in Gaza each day for the past several days, the Israeli agency coordinating aid said. They mainly carried flour along with prepared meals, infant formula, high-energy biscuits, diapers, vaccines and fuel, the United Nations said. Before the war, Gaza received 500 to 600 trucks a day of aid and goods for sale. The flour provides calories, but will not save those who are severely malnourished after nearly two years of deprivation, aid workers say. Malnourished people need specialized feeding and care. Yet hospitals have few supplies left. David M. Satterfield, who served as special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues in the Biden administration, said the only practical solution was to 'flood the zone' with aid. 'It's not rocket science,' he said. It is too late to reverse developmental and cognitive harm to young children who have been malnourished for months, experts say. 'The damage is already done, and that's going to be a lifelong impact for a lot of people,' said Beckie Ryan, the Gaza response director for CARE. 'What we can do is mitigate that going forward and stop it getting worse. But it does require a huge amount of supplies and aid to be able to come in as soon as possible.' The death toll from the war has passed 60,000, according to Gaza's health ministry. Israel cut off aid to Gaza in retaliation for the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage. Limited aid deliveries later resumed under a United Nations-run system, until March, when Israel imposed another total blockade. In May, Israel largely replaced the U.N. aid system by backing a new operation mainly run by American contractors. Israeli officials said that was the only way to ensure the food would not fall into Hamas's hands. At least 859 Palestinians seeking food from the private sites have been killed since May 27, in most cases by Israeli soldiers, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. Israeli officials have said they fired shots in the air when crowds came too close or endangered their forces. The violence has renewed calls to allow the United Nations to resume managing aid. The New York Times reported that the Israeli military had never found proof that Hamas systematically stole aid from the United Nations — a charge Israel frequently repeated. 'We are struggling to understand why you need to come out with parallel shadow systems, when we had a fully functional aid distribution system in Gaza managed by the U.N. and international agencies,' said Jamil Sawalmeh, who oversees ActionAid's Gaza response. Even with Israeli pauses in fighting, it is dangerous for aid trucks to move around Gaza. While Israel is approving more movement by aid groups, which have to be coordinated in advance, teams still faced delays and other obstacles, the United Nations said. The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said on Wednesday that the number of the U.S.-backed sites could soon quadruple. An Israeli security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military rules, said Israel was increasing the number of trucks entering Gaza, including by withdrawing some forces and working to open a third crossing into the enclave. Even when trucks can move, little makes it to the aid warehouses where humanitarian agencies collect supplies before distributing them. Most of it is taken by the thousands of Palestinians, including some armed gangs, who regularly wait near the trucks' route to grab whatever they can, aid workers say. But doing so can be deadly, with 514 killed since May 27, mostly by Israel's military, according to U.N. figures. On Wednesday, Ehab Fasfous, 52, a resident of the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis, inched toward the trucks' route, aware, he said, that Israeli soldiers could open fire if he ventured too close. He shared a series of videos of the mayhem he saw next: hundreds, perhaps thousands of people closing in on the trucks from every direction. At one point in the videos, which he said he took, a man menaces another person with a knife near a bag of flour. Mr. Fasfous went home empty-handed. 'They've deprived us of so much that now we're behaving like animals,' he said. Only those who can brave such dangers get aid, aid officials say. The people most in need — like pregnant women, older adults or the sick — receive only what aid groups bring them, unless they can pay the astronomical prices of what little food is available in markets, aid workers say. 'We have to find a way for assistance to reach the weakest,' said Antoine Renard, the World Food Program's director for the Palestinian territories, who visited Gaza this week. The price of flour has dropped precipitously in recent days, according to Gaza government statistics, but it remains unaffordable for all but the few who still have resources. Yaser Shaban, 58, spends his salary as a Palestinian civil servant and his savings on flour, canned food and herbs at the market. If he goes to a privately run center or tries to take aid from a truck, 'I have no guarantees I'll bring something back,' he said. 'And if I get killed, what chances does my family have then?' he said. Adam Rasgon and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
