AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Israel reveals signs of Hamas activity at Shifa, but a promised command center remains elusive

JERUSALEM (AP) — Three weeks ago, the Israeli military unveiled a detailed 3D model of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital – showing a series of underground installations that it said was part of an elaborate Hamas command and control center under the territory’s largest health-care center.

Days after taking control of the hospital, the military has yet to unveil this purported center. But it has released videos of weapons allegedly seized inside the hospital, a tunnel running through the complex and videos appearing to show Hamas militants dragging hostages through the hospital’s hallways. Israel says there will be much more to come.

What Israel finds – or fails to find – could play a large part in its efforts to rally international support for its war against Hamas, launched on Oct. 7 in response to a bloody cross-border attack by the Islamic militant group.

Here is a closer look at Israel’s raid on the Shifa Hospital.

Gaza’s hospitals have played a central role in the dueling narratives surrounding the war.

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Israel battles Hamas near another Gaza hospital sheltering thousands

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces pressed their offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza on Monday, battling militants around a hospital where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, and where despite the fighting health officials managed to evacuate some of the wounded.

A medical worker inside the facility and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a shell struck the second floor of the Indonesian Hospital, killing 12 people. Both blamed Israel, which denied shelling the hospital, saying its troops returned fire on militants who targeted them from inside the 3.5-acre (1.4 hectare) compound.

The Israeli offensive came as 28 premature babies evacuated from Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital by the World Health Organization were transported to Egypt on Monday. Three others were transferred to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah in southern Gaza, the Red Crescent said. More than 250 critically ill or wounded patients remain stranded at the Shifa compound, which Israeli forces stormed days ago.

Gaza’s hospitals play a prominent role in the battle of narratives over the war’s brutal toll on Palestinian civilians, thousands of whom have been killed or buried in rubble since the conflict was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. In the wake of the assault, Israeli leaders vowed to eradicate Hamas, destroy its ability to rule Gaza and uproot its militant infrastructure.

Israel says Hamas uses civilians as human shields and that the militants operated a major command hub inside and under Shifa, a claim hospital officials and Hamas deny. Critics say Israel’s siege and relentless bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians.

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Federal appeals court deals a blow to Voting Rights Act, ruling that private plaintiffs can’t sue

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court on Monday ruled that private individuals and groups such as the NAACP do not have the ability to sue under a key section of the federal Voting Rights Act, a decision that contradicts decades of precedent and could further erode protections under the landmark 1965 law.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis found that only the U.S. attorney general can enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

The majority said other federal laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, make it clear when private groups can sue but said similar wording is not found in the voting law.

“When those details are missing, it is not our place to fill in the gaps, except when ‘text and structure’ require it,” U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras wrote for the majority in an opinion joined by Judge Raymond W. Gruender. Stras was nominated by former President Donald Trump and Gruender by former President George W. Bush.

The decision affirmed a lower judge’s decision to dismiss a case brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel after giving U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland five days to join the lawsuit.

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All 9 aboard US Navy plane that overshot runway escape injury, Hawaii official says

HONOLULU (AP) — A U.S. Navy plane overshot a runway and splashed into a bay in Hawaii on Monday, but authorities said all nine people aboard made it safely to shore with no injuries.

Spokesperson Petty Officer Ryan Fisher said the Coast Guard responded but that rescue operations were quickly called off.

“It sounds like all parties involved were rescued,” he said.

The P-8A aircraft overshot the runway at a Marine base on Kaneohe Bay, said U.S. Marine Corps spokesperson Gunnery Sgt. Orlando Perez. He did not have further information.

A photo taken by a witness showed the plane floating just offshore, a scene reminiscent of the 2009 “ Miracle on the Hudson ” when a commercial aircraft piloted by Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger made an emergency landing on the New York river. All 155 people aboard survived.

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Company that created ChatGPT is thrown into turmoil after Microsoft hires its ousted CEO

The company that created ChatGPT was thrown into turmoil Monday after Microsoft hired its ousted CEO and many employees threatened to follow him in a conflict that centered in part on how to build artificial intelligence that’s smarter than humans.

The developments followed a weekend of drama that shocked the AI field and fueled speculation about the future of OpenAI, which named a new chief executive on Friday and then replaced her on Sunday. The newest CEO vowed to investigate the firing of co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, who’s been instrumental in OpenAI’s transformation from a nonprofit research laboratory into a world-renowned commercial startup that inaugurated the era of generative artificial intelligence.

Microsoft, which has been a close partner of the company and invested billions of dollars in it, announced that Altman and OpenAI’s former president, Greg Brockman, would lead its new advanced AI research team. Brockman, also an OpenAI co-founder, quit in protest after Altman was fired.

Hundreds of OpenAI employees, including other top executives, threatened to join them at Microsoft in an open letter addressed to OpenAI’s four-member board that called for the board’s resignation and Altman’s return.

“If the architects and vision and brains behind these products have now left, the company will be a shell of what it once was,” said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. “All of that brain trust going to Microsoft will then mean that these impressive tools will be coming out of Microsoft. It will be hard to see OpenAI continue to thrive as a company.”

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Climate change hits women’s health harder. Activists want leaders to address it at COP28

NEW DELHI (AP) — Manju Devi suffered in pain for two months last year as she worked on a farm near Delhi, unable to break away from duties that sometimes had her standing for hours in the waist-deep water of a rice paddy, lifting heavy loads in intense heat and spraying pesticides and insecticides. When that pain finally became too much to bear, she was rushed to a hospital.

The doctors’ verdict: Devi had suffered a prolapsed uterus and would need a hysterectomy. She hadn’t said a word to her family about her discomfort because of societal taboo over discussing a “women’s illness,” and with two grown children and three grandchildren looking to the 56-year-old widow to help put food on the table, Devi had relied on painkillers to stay in the fields.

“I endured excruciating pain for months, scared to speak about it publicly. It shouldn’t take a surgical procedure to make us realize the cost of increasing heat,” she said, surrounded by women who told of undergoing a similar ordeal.

As the annual U.N.-led climate summit known as COP is set to convene later this month in Dubai, activists are urging policymakers to respond to climate change’s disproportionate impact on women and girls, especially where poverty makes them more vulnerable.

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The lion, the wig and the warrior. Who is Javier Milei, Argentina’s president-elect?

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — His legions of fans call him “the madman” and “the wig” due to his ferocity and unruly mop of hair. He refers to himself as “the lion.” He thinks sex education is a Marxist plot to destroy the family, views his cloned mastiffs as his “children with four paws” and has suggested people should be allowed to sell their own vital organs.

He is Javier Milei, Argentina’s next president.

A few years ago, Milei was a television talking head whom bookers loved because his screeds against government spending and the ruling political class boosted ratings. At the time, and up until mere months ago, hardly any political expert believed he had a real shot at becoming president of South America’s second-largest economy.

But Milei, a 53-year-old economist, has rocked Argentina’s political establishment and inserted himself into what has long been effectively a two-party system by amassing a groundswell of support with his prescriptions of drastic measures to rein in soaring inflation and by pledging to crusade against the creep of socialism in society.

At the heart of his economic plan for Argentina is a proposal to replace the local currency, the peso, with the U.S. dollar. He has repeatedly said the only way to end the scourge of inflation, which has topped 140%, is to prevent politicians from continuing to print money. As such, he plans to extinguish the Central Bank.

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Rosalynn Carter’s tiny hometown mourns a global figure who made many contributions at home

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Linda Campbell decorated the Lions Club Christmas tree in her small hometown just as she would any other Thanksgiving week, but this was no ordinary Monday in late November.

All around Plains, neighbors mourned the death of their matriarch, former U.S. first lady Rosalynn Carter, while worrying about their patriarch, former President Jimmy Carter.

“We’ve prayed for them every day for a long time,” said Campbell, 75, as another lifelong Plains resident, Lee Johnson, lowered the U.S. and Georgia state flags that fly in front of the town’s commercial district.

Rosalynn Carter died at home Sunday after her physical health declined rapidly as she lived with dementia in recent months. She was 96. The former president, who is 99, has been in home hospice care since February.

It was not clear Monday whether Jimmy Carter will be able to attend the public services for his wife next week in Sumter County and Atlanta.

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Court seems inclined to keep restricting Trump’s trial speech. But gag order could be narrowed

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court appeared inclined Monday to reimpose at least some restrictions on Donald Trump’s speech in his landmark election subversion case. But the judges wrestled with how to craft a gag order that doesn’t infringe on the former president’s free speech rights or prevent him from defending himself on the campaign trail.

The three judges on the panel asked skeptical and at times aggressive questions of attorneys on both sides while weighing whether to put back in place an order from a trial judge that barred Trump from inflammatory comments against prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff.

The judges raised a litany of hypothetical scenarios that could arise in the months ahead as they considered how to fashion a balance between an order that protects Trump’s First Amendment rights and the need to protect “the criminal trial process and its integrity and its truth finding function.”

“There’s a balance that has to be undertaken here, and it’s a very difficult balance in this context,” Judge Patricia Millett told Cecil VanDevender, a lawyer with special counsel Jack Smith’s office. “But we have to use a careful scalpel here and not step into really sort of skewing the political arena, don’t we?”

VanDevender replied that he agreed but said he believed that the gag order imposed last month does strike the appropriate balance.

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A$AP Rocky must stand trial on charges he fired gun at former friend, judge rules

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles judge ruled Monday that there is enough evidence for A$AP Rocky to stand trial on charges that he fired a gun at a former friend and collaborator on the streets near a Hollywood hotel in 2021.

Superior Court Judge M.L. Villar made the ruling at at a preliminary hearing, after hearing roughly a day and a half of testimony from two witnesses. Rocky, who gave no visible reaction to the decision, has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

The 35-year-old rapper, fashion mogul and two-time Grammy nominee is in a relationship with Rihanna, with whom he has two young sons.

He could get up to 24 years in prison if convicted on all charges, prosecutors said.

Villar said “the totality of the video and testimony” shows there is sufficient evidence for the defendant to go to trial. She emphasized that preliminary hearings have a much lower evidence standard than a trial.

The Associated Press