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US warns Israel against full-scale war with Hizbollah

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US warns Israel against full-scale war with Hizbollah

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The US directly warned Israel against opening a full-blown war with Hizbollah on Sunday as the Lebanese militant group and Israeli forces engaged in some of their most fierce exchanges of fire since October 7.

In salvos capping a week of spiralling hostilities, Israeli jets mounted some of the heaviest bombing raids in southern Lebanon since the start of the fighting last year, while Hizbollah fired rockets towards the city of Haifa.

The escalating attacks have fuelled fears that the hostilities could tip into a full-scale land war.

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John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson, warned Israel that there were “better ways” to ensure Israeli citizens could return to evacuated homes in the north “than a war, than an escalation, then opening up a second front”.

“We don’t believe that a military conflict, and we’re saying this directly to our Israeli counterparts . . . we don’t believe that escalating this military conflict is in their best interest,” Kirby told ABC’s This Week.

President Joe Biden told reporters his administration was “going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out”.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin called his Israeli counterpart on Saturday to stress “the importance of achieving a diplomatic solution” and highlight his concern about the safety of US citizens in the region, according to the Pentagon.

Israeli security forces at the site of a rocket strike fired from Lebanon, in Kiryat Bialik, northern Israel, on Sunday © Gil Nechushtan/AP

The Israeli military said Hizbollah had launched about 150 projectiles early on Sunday, with rockets aimed deeper into Israel than in previous salvos. While most were intercepted, Kiryat Bialik and Tsur Shalom in Haifa’s suburbs, and other areas in the country’s north, sustained hits.

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Hizbollah said the barrages were in retaliation for “repeated” Israeli attacks, as well as an “initial” response to mass detonations of its communications devices earlier this week that killed 37 people and injured more than 3,000 across Lebanon. Hizbollah has blamed the device explosions on Israel, which has not directly confirmed or denied responsibility.

Despite international calls for Israel to avoid escalating hostilities, Benjamin Netanyahu promised no let up in the military pressure on Hizbollah. “Over the past few days we hit Hizbollah with a series of blows it hadn’t imagined,” the Israeli prime minister said on Sunday. “If Hizbollah didn’t get the message, I promise you, they will.”

In an indication of the increasingly hardline atmosphere in Netanyahu’s government, the diaspora affairs minister Amichai Chikli said Israel should establish buffer zones in Lebanon, claiming it was not a state.

“Lebanon, even though it has a flag and even though it has political institutions, does not meet the definition of a state,” he wrote on X.

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As tensions rise across the region, Israel said it had also shot down a drone fired from the east — which was claimed by militants in Iraq who said they had also targeted Israel with cruise missiles — and launched a raid in the Palestinian city of Ramallah to shut the local Al Jazeera office for 45 days.

Israel has accused the media group of being a mouthpiece for militants. Al Jazeera has rejected the claims and the Foreign Press Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the move. “Restricting foreign reporters and closing news channels signals a shift away from democratic values,” said the association’s board.

Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for Israel’s military, accused Hizbollah of “targeting civilians” in its latest round of strikes, and the military said it would continue to strike to degrade the Lebanese group’s capabilities.

The Israeli military said earlier on Sunday it had hit about 290 targets in Lebanon in the preceding 24 hours, destroying thousands of rocket launcher barrels and other infrastructure belonging to Hizbollah. The Lebanese health ministry said three people had been killed by the strikes.

Hizbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging cross-border fire since the Iran-backed militant group launched rockets at Israel the day after Hamas’s October 7 attack on the Jewish state.

But in the last week, the hostilities have escalated dramatically. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the attack on Hizbollah’s pagers and other communications devices sent shockwaves through Lebanon.

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Then, on Friday, an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Ibrahim Aqil and other senior commanders in Hizbollah’s elite Radwan force, in arguably the most damaging blow Israel has landed against the militant group since it was founded in the 1980s.

Lebanese authorities said on Sunday that the death toll from the strike, which destroyed a residential building in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, had risen to 45, including at least 10 civilians, among them three children.

This week’s escalation came after Israel said it was entering a “new phase” of its almost year-long conflict with Hizbollah, which was until now largely contained to the Israeli-Lebanese border region.

Jeanine Hennis, the UN’s special co-ordinator for Lebanon, warned that the exchanges had brought the region to “the brink of an imminent catastrophe” and called for both sides to de-escalate.

“It cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” she wrote on X.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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