AP News in Brief at 11:09 p.m. EST

Trump wins Iowa’s leadoff caucuses, while Haley and DeSantis grapple for second. Follow live updates

Donald Trump has won Iowa’s leadoff presidential caucuses.

The former president’s victory on Monday night gives him a strong start in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as the contest moves to New Hampshire.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are vying for a second-place finish in Iowa that would give them at least some momentum heading into future races.

Trump wins Iowa caucuses in crucial victory at the outset of contest

What to watch as voters weigh in on the first 2024 GOP contest

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Why AP called Iowa for Trump: Race call explained

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump scored the first victory of the 2024 presidential primary season Monday with a sweeping and broad-based win in the Iowa Republican caucuses. The Associated Press declared the former president the winner based on an analysis of initial returns as well as results of AP VoteCast, a survey of voters who planned to caucus on Monday night. Both showed Trump with an insurmountable lead.

Initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted as of 8:31 pm. ET, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in a tight competition for second place, far behind the former president. These counties included rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to a large number of counties that had yet to report.

In traditional primaries, AP does not declare a winner in any race before the last polls are scheduled to close in the contest. It’s sometimes possible to declare a winner in those races immediately after polls close, before any vote results are released. AP does so only when its VoteCast survey of voters and other evidence, including the history of a state’s elections, details about ballots cast before Election Day and pre-election polling, provide overwhelming evidence of who has won.

The Iowa caucuses are different. There are no “polls” and no fixed time when all the voting ends. Instead, there is an 8 p.m. ET deadline for voters taking part to arrive at their caucus site, at which point deliberations among caucusgoers begin behind closed doors. Some caucus sites might complete their business in a few minutes, while others can take some time to determine the outcome.

For that reason, AP followed its past practice and did not make a “poll close” declaration of the winner on Monday night. Instead, AP reviewed returns from caucus sites across Iowa and declared Trump the winner only after those results, along with VoteCast and other evidence, made it unquestionably clear he had won.

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Arctic freeze continues to blast huge swaths of the US with sub-zero temperatures

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Brutally cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills stayed put across much of the U.S. Monday, promising the coldest temperatures ever for Iowa’s presidential nominating contest, holding up travelers, and testing the mettle of NFL fans in Buffalo for a playoff game that was delayed a day by wind-whipped snow.

About 150 million Americans were under a windchill warning or advisory for dangerous cold and wind, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland, as an Arctic air mass spilled south and eastward across the U.S.

Sunday morning saw temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 6.7 degrees Celsius) to minus 40 F (minus 40 C) in northern and northeast Montana. Saco, Montana, dropped to minus 51 F (minus 26 C). Subzero lows reached as far south as Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and parts of Indiana, Taylor said.

About 110,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power late Monday, the bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started Saturday. Portland General Electric warned that strong winds forecast for Monday and threat of an ice storm Tuesday could delay restoration efforts.

Classes were cancelled Tuesday for students in major cities including Chicago — the nation’s fourth-largest public school district — Denver, Dallas, Fort Worth and Portland.

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North Korea will no longer pursue reconciliation with South because of hostility, Kim Jong Un says

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided countries, state media said Tuesday.

The historic step to discard a decades-long pursuit of unification, which was based on a sense of national homogeneity shared by both Koreas, comes amid heightened tensions where the pace of both Kim’s weapons development and the South’s military exercises with the United States have intensified in a tit-for-tat.

North Korea also abolished the key government agencies that had been tasked with managing relations with South Korea in a decision made during a meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament on Monday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

The Supreme People’s Assembly said the two Koreas are locked in an “acute confrontation” and that it would be a serious mistake for the North to regard the South as a partner in diplomacy.

“The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the (Diamond Mountain) International Tourism Administration, tools which existed for (North-South) dialogue, negotiations and cooperation, are abolished,” the assembly said in a statement.

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Iran strikes targets in northern Iraq and Syria as regional tensions escalate

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Iran said late Monday it had launched strikes against a “spy headquarters and gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” shortly after missiles hit an upscale area near the U.S. consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The security council of the Kurdish regional government said in a statement that four civilians were killed and six injured in the strikes.

Peshraw Dizayi, a prominent local businessman with a portfolio that included real estate and security services companies, was killed in one of the strikes along with members of his family, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by former Iraqi member of parliament Mashan al-Jabouri, who said that one of the missiles had fallen on Dizayi’s “palace, next to my house, which is under construction on the road to the Salah al-Din resort.”

Other regional political figures also confirmed Dizayi’s death.

Soon after, a statement from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on state media said it had struck “terrorist operations” including Islamic State targets in Syria “and destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles.” Another statement claimed that it had hit a headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

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UN agency chiefs say Gaza needs more aid to arrive faster, warning of famine and disease

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Gaza urgently needs more aid or its desperate population will suffer widespread famine and disease, the heads of three major U.N. agencies warned Monday, as authorities in the enclave reported that the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war had surpassed 24,000.

While the U.N. agency chiefs did not directly point a finger at Israel, they said aid delivery is hobbled by the opening of too few border crossings, a slow vetting process for trucks and goods going into Gaza, and continuing fighting throughout the territory — all of which Israel plays a deciding factor in.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has prompted unprecedented destruction in the tiny coastal enclave and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and pushed more than a quarter into starvation, according to the U.N.

It has also stoked regional tensions, with Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen carrying out strikes in support of the Palestinians. A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels hit an American-owned cargo ship on Monday, days after U.S.-led strikes against the group over its attacks on international shipping.

In Gaza, civilians have grown desperate. Footage shared online by Al Jazeera showed hundreds of people rushing toward what appeared to be an aid truck in what the news outlet said was Gaza City. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the video and it wasn’t clear when it was filmed.

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‘Succession’ dominates drama Emmys, ‘The Bear’ claims comedy, and Quinta Brunson makes history

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Succession” won best drama series, “The Bear” won best comedy, and both dominated the acting awards at Monday night’s Emmys, while Quinta Brunson scored an emotional and historic win for “Abbott Elementary.”

“Succession,” the HBO saga of a squabbling wealthy family and maladjusted media empire, won its third best drama series prize for its fourth and final season, along with a best actor in a drama award for Kieran Culkin and best actress in a drama for Sarah Snook.

“The Bear,” the FX dramedy about another contentious family and a struggling restaurant at the center of the life of a talented chef, won best comedy series for its first season. The Emmys also heaped honors on its acting cast, naming Jeremy Allen White as best actor in a comedy, best supporting actress in a comedy for Ayo Edebiri and best supporting actor in a comedy for Ebon-Moss Bachrach. All three were first-time nominees.

“This is a show about family and found family and real family,” Edebiri said from the stage as she accepted the first trophy of the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

Brunson won best actress in a comedy at the Emmy Awards for the show she created, “Abbott Elementary,” becoming the first Black woman to win the award in more than 40 years and the first from a network show to win it in more than a decade.

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Josh Allen, Bills dispatch Steelers 31-17 in playoff game delayed a day by snow. Chiefs up next

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — It made no difference to Josh Allen what day or time the Buffalo Bills faced the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The AFC wild-card playoff game could’ve been played Sunday as scheduled, in the midst of a lake-effect storm that dumped more than 2 feet of snow on the region, and the Bills were going be to ready.

They proved that on Monday, when Allen threw three touchdown passes and scored on a franchise playoff-record 52-yard touchdown run as Buffalo beat Pittsburgh 31-17 in a game that was postponed by 27 1/2 hours.

“People keep saying that’s what we wanted. We had no call in that,” Allen said about the postponement. “We would have played yesterday, would have played Saturday would have played Friday, it wouldn’t have mattered. We would have come out here and played when we were told to play.”

The game turned into a celebration of the elements. Snow blanketed a majority of the seats inside Highmark Stadium when the gates opened and was put to good use by fans, who tossed handfuls into the air like confetti to celebrate.

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Parents want district to improve security more after deadly Iowa school shooting

Several parents in an Iowa town where a deadly school shooting took place earlier this month told school officials on Monday they want more preventative measures and transparency as the school board plans for students’ return.

Their comments came during a Perry school board meeting, the day after the death of Principal Dan Marburger, who was critically injured in the shooting.

Grace Castro criticized the school district’s policies, saying that “lives were lost due to our lack of preventative measures.” She suggested the installation of metal detectors at schools’ entrances and a temporary remote learning option at the same time, and enforcement of a clear-bag policy as “the absolute least you can do.”

Her comments echoed what many other many other parents — including some of the victims’ families — have been saying on the Perry Facebook page since the district first announced its reopening plan last week.

Mark Drahos also asked the board for more preventative measures. But he noted that school officials won’t be able to please everybody. He said he discussed ideas with a school board member, including a single-point entry to buildings, a no-bag policy and additional security such as hall monitors.

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Wave of transgender slayings in Mexico spurs anger and protests by LGBTQ+ community

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Authorities in Mexico said at least three transgender people were killed in the first two weeks of 2024, and rights groups were investigating two additional such cases. The slayings marked a violent start to the year in a country where the LGBTQ+ community is often targeted.

The latest death came on Sunday, when transgender activist and politician Samantha Gómez Fonseca was shot multiple times and slain inside a car in the south of Mexico City, according to local prosecutors.

The killings spurred outrage among members of the LGBTQ+ community who protested in Mexico City’s main throughway on Monday.

Around 100 people marched chanting: “Samantha listen, we’re fighting for you” and carrying signs reading “your hate speech kills.” Another group of protesters earlier in the day spray painted the words “trans lives matter” on the walls of Mexico’s National Palace.

Fonseca, the activist and politician slain on Sunday, originally intended to march alongside other activists to call for greater acceptance of transgender people in society. After her death, the march quickly turned into a call for justice and for more comprehensive laws around hate crimes.

The Associated Press