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Israel continued to pound Lebanon with a fierce wave of air strikes overnight, as Israeli forces stepped up their air campaign against Hizbollah, hitting what they said were targets linked to the militant group.

The bombardment lit up Beirut’s skyline on Sunday, as powerful blasts rocked the city throughout the night. Targets included a building near the road to Beirut’s airport, where the strikes set off huge fires. Smoke was still seen rising from the area in the morning. 

The explosions began around midnight, after Israel’s military warned residents to evacuate neighbourhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which Hizbollah dominates, including Haret Hreik and Choueifat. Another powerful blast was heard on Sunday morning.

The more intense bombing followed a day of sporadic air strikes and the constant buzz of reconnaissance drones, both of which have become almost routine for residents of the capital. 

Israel’s military said it had struck weapons storage facilities and other infrastructure linked to Hizbollah in Beirut. It also said Hizbollah launched projectiles across the border, some of which were intercepted.

Hizbollah said it successfully struck a group of Israeli soldiers with a salvo of rockets. It is not possible to verify the battlefield claims on either side. 

Israel has intensified its assault against Hizbollah over the past two weeks as it has shifted its focus from Gaza to the northern front. It has killed Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, launched air strikes across Lebanon and sent troops into Lebanon’s south for the first time in almost two decades.  

More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the conflict, the majority in the past two weeks, according to data from the Lebanese health ministry. More than 1.2mn people have also been displaced from their homes because of the fighting. 

This includes about 375,000 people who fled to Syria in recent days, some of whom made the journey on foot. Israel bombed one of the roads leading up to a major crossing point, saying it was targeting Hizbollah’s supply routes from Syria.

Foreigners have also continued to flee Lebanon, with multiple nations chartering planes to help repatriate their citizens in recent days. 

Israel on Saturday struck a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern city of Tripoli for the first time, targeting a Hamas commander. There were also indications that Israel was widening its offensive to include Hizbollah’s civil infrastructure. 

Lebanese authorities said Israeli bombardment had killed 50 health workers in the past four days, as Israeli fighter jets continued to attack medical facilities, mosques and other buildings it says are used by Hizbollah militants. 

The WHO’s director-general warned that the capacity of Lebanon’s health system — already on the brink after five years of a dire economic crisis — was deteriorating and that the UN agency’s “medical supplies cannot be delivered due to the almost complete closure of Beirut’s airport”.

While Lebanon’s only airport remained open, most airlines have suspended flights in and out of the country because of the heavy bombardment in the nearby southern suburbs. 

Israel has issued multiple evacuation orders in recent days, warning people in towns and villages across the south to move north. It gave similar orders during its war against Hamas in Gaza ahead of big offensives. 

The escalation has pushed the Middle East closer to all-out war. The region is bracing for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to an Iranian missile barrage fired at Israel on Tuesday. 

Tehran said the missile attack was in response to the assassination of Nasrallah and the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Israel also carried out further strikes in Gaza overnight, including bombing a mosque and a school in Deir al-Balah. Palestinian health officials said 26 people had been killed and “dozens” had been injured in the strikes. The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas militants using the sites to direct operations against its forces.

Israel also launched a new offensive in Jabalia in the north of the enclave, with warplanes carrying out a heavy bombardment of the area before it was encircled by ground forces. The military said it had launched the assault because militants had regrouped in the vicinity.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday renewed his calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying weapons shipments to Israel for its campaign in the enclave should be suspended, and warning against further escalation in Lebanon.

“The Lebanese people must not in turn be sacrificed, Lebanon cannot become another Gaza,” he said in an interview with the France Inter radio station.

Netanyahu hit back, branding those supporting an arms embargo a “disgrace”. “Shame on them,” he said. “Israel will win with or without their support. But their shame will continue long after the war is won.”

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene left a devastating and deadly trail across the Southeast, another storm is forecast to reach Florida next week — bringing threats of heavy rain, strong winds and flash flooding to the already-storm battered state.

The National Weather Service said Saturday that a tropical storm, named Milton, has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm is heading toward the west coast of the Florida Peninsula. It is forecast to strengthen rapidly into a hurricane on Sunday night and become a major hurricane as it approaches the Florida coast, according to a 5 p.m. ET update from the NWS.

Forecasters said the storm is expected to bring potentially life-threatening storm conditions, including storm surge and strong winds, starting late Tuesday or Wednesday. Meanwhile, some parts of Florida will be drenched by heavy rainfall as soon as Sunday or Monday.

Parts of South Florida were already experiencing heavy rainfall on Saturday. South Florida was expected to receive up to 7 inches of rain through Thursday. The NWS plans to issue a flood watch for parts of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties starting Sunday morning through Thursday morning.

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday issued a state of emergency for 35 counties, including all of central Florida, in preparation for Milton’s arrival.

The governor’s order activates the Florida National Guard as needed and expedites debris cleanup from Hurricane Helene.

The prospect of another major storm comes as communities across the Southeast continue to uncover the full extent of Helene’s damage. Six states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia — were hit the hardest. Helene’s death toll has surpassed 200.

In Florida, at least 19 people have died as a result of the storm, according to USA Today.
Helene is considered one of the deadliest hurricanes to have hit the continental U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

Donald Trump was joined on stage by billionaire backer Elon Musk for a rally in the Pennsylvania town where he survived an assassination attempt, as the neck-and-neck US election campaign heads into its final month.

Musk, the Tesla founder who has donated to a super Pac associated with the Republican campaign, leapt on to the stage to urge voters to support Trump, repeating the candidate’s claim that the November vote was the “most important election of our lifetime”.

“The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire and we had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs, and another who was fist-pumping after getting shot: ‘Fight, fight, fight’,” said Musk, in his first appearance alongside the former president.

Musk claimed the Democrats were a threat to the American constitution, adding that if Trump did not win it would be the “last election”.

He said the Democrats wanted “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively.”

In an hour and half-long speech, Trump said that his return to Butler, where a shot from a would-be assassin almost killed him, showed that the gunman “did not break our spirit”.

“I return to Butler in the aftermath of tragedy and heartache to deliver a simple message to the people of Pennsylvania and to the people of America — our movement to make America great again stands stronger, prouder, more united, more determined and nearer to victory than ever before,” said Trump.

But since his first appearance in Butler, vice-president Kamala Harris has replaced Biden and the polls have narrowed. Harris leads Trump in the popular vote and the races in the seven swing states are practically a dead heat, according to an FT analysis of FiveThirtyEight polling data. Pennsylvania is the closest of all races, with Harris leading Trump by just an average of 0.6 percentage points.

“Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and, who knows, maybe even tried to kill me,” Trump told the crowd. “But I’ve never stopped fighting for you, and I never will.”

Tens of thousands of supporters, many of whom had been present at the July event, in which a Trump supporter was killed and two others were injured, gathered in Butler from the morning of the rally. They chanted “Fight, fight, fight” — the words proclaimed on stage by Trump in the moments after the shooting.

In front of the firefighter’s uniform belonging to Corey Comperatore, the supporter who was killed that day, Trump deployed his typical rhetoric, making overblown claims about immigration and crime rates, promising to allow fracking, a key industry in Pennsylvania, and repeating false assertions that the 2020 election was stolen. Comperatore’s family, Trump’s running mate JD Vance, and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson also attended the rally.

Trump also deployed his newest attack line against Harris — that she had bungled the response to tropical storm Helene.

Helene was a “Katrina for them”, he said, adding that “they say it’s the worst job ever done in helping people through the ravages of a hurricane” and falsely claiming that the only help the administration was offering those affected was a $750 emergency payment.

The candidates have been criss-crossing the country as the election race reaches its apogee. On Saturday, Harris visited North Carolina for an update on recovery efforts for tropical storm Helene, which has devastated the south-east of the US, leaving at least 223 dead at the latest count.