Blog

14 more dead, 450 injured as new round of explosions rocks Lebanon: Health officials

September 18, 2024

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on September 17, 2024. (MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images)

(LONDON) — At least 14 more people were killed and 450 injured in Lebanon on Wednesday after a series of new explosions of wireless devices rocked the South, the Bekaa and the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to the Ministry of Health and the Lebanese Red Cross.

More than 30 ambulances are providing treatment and evacuations to wounded people in Lebanon on Wednesday, the Lebanese Red Cross said.

The Lebanese Army command has asked citizens not to gather in places witnessing security incidents to allow medical teams to arrive.

Members of the Lebanese Civil Defense are working to extinguish fires that broke out inside homes, cars and shops in the Bekaa, the South, Mount Lebanon and the southern suburbs due to the explosions, officials said.

All walkie-talkie devices were taken from security services members at the Rafiq Harir International Airport in Beirut after news of the devices exploding.

Pagers explode across Lebanon on Tuesday

At least 12 civilians were killed and at least 2,800 people injured in the explosions that took place Tuesday, according to Lebanese authorities. Around 460 of the injuries were critical and required surgery, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said. Most victims are suffering from eye and facial injuries, while others suffered injuries to hands and fingers, he said.

Israel was behind the deadly explosion of pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday, sources told ABC News on Wednesday.

The Hezbollah militant group said it is conducting a “security and scientific investigation” into the explosion of pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday.

Hezbollah said 11 of its members were killed on Tuesday, though — as is typical in its statements — did not specify how they died.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression, which also targeted civilians and led to the deaths of a number of martyrs and the injury of a large number with various wounds,” Hezbollah said of the pager explosions in a Tuesday statement.

In a Wednesday morning statement, Hezbollah said it would continue operations to “support Gaza,” and vowed a “reckoning” for Israel for the “massacre on Tuesday.”

The dead and injured included people who are not members of Hezbollah. Lebanese officials said that an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy are among the dead.

Israel has not commented on explosions

Israel has not commented on its alleged involvement in the apparent attack, which prompted chaos in the capital Beirut and elsewhere in Hezbollah’s south Lebanon heartland.

Around 100 hospitals received wounded people, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said, with hospitals in Beirut and its southern suburb quickly filling to capacity. Patients were then directed to other hospitals outside the region.

The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those who had one of the pagers and was injured in an explosion Tuesday, according to Iranian state TV. The diplomat said in a phone call that he was “feeling well and fully conscious,” according to Iranian state TV.

“I am proud and honored that my blood has become one with the blood of the honorable Lebanese people, as a result of the horrific terrorist crime that targeted our brotherly Lebanon yesterday. This noble country has stood with dignity and pride since the first day of al-Aqsa Storm,” Amani said Wednesday.

At least 14 people were also injured in targeted attacks on Hezbollah members in Syria, according to the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Fears grow of Israel-Hezbollah escalation

The alleged Israeli operation has again piqued fears of escalation in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict ongoing since Oct. 8, when members of the Iranian-backed group began cross-border attacks in support of Hamas’ war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

Frontier skirmishes, Israeli strikes and Hezbollah rocket and artillery salvoes have been near-constant through 11 months of war in Gaza. Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to launch a new military operation against Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border. Tens of thousands of Israelis have left their homes in border regions due to the fighting.

The Israel Defense Forces said warplanes hit Hezbollah targets in six locations in southern Lebanon overnight into Wednesday. Artillery strikes were also conducted, it added.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is due to make a public address on Thursday afternoon to address the situation. In February, Nasrallah urged members to stop using their cellphones, describing the technology as “a deadly agent.”

Schools across Lebanon will be closed on Wednesday, Lebanese state media reported, citing the country’s Minister of Education. Schools and offices closed include public and private schools, high schools, technical institutes, the Lebanese University and private higher education institutions, Lebanese state media reported.

The Lebanese Council of Ministers collectively condemned “this criminal Israeli aggression, which constitutes a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards.”

It added that “the government immediately began making all necessary contacts with the countries concerned and the United Nations to place it before its responsibilities regarding this continuing crime.”

World reacts to pager attacks

The United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon condemned the attack on Lebanon, calling it an “extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context,” in a statement released by the U.N. Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary General.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a press conference in Egypt on Wednesday that the U.S. “did not know about and was not involved” in Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon and Syria — but said that officials were still gathering information and did not directly blame Israel.

“Broadly speaking, we’ve been very clear, and we remain very clear about the importance of all parties avoiding any steps that could further escalate the conflict that we’re trying to resolve in Gaza,” Blinken said. Its spread to other fronts, he added, is “clearly not in the interest of anyone involved.”

A cease-fire deal in Gaza, Blinken added, would “materially improve the prospects of defusing the situation” on the Israeli-Lebanese border and allow thousands of people living near the area on both sides of the divide to return home.

The U.S. and the European Union have both designated the Hezbollah militant group a foreign terrorist organization.

ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Shannon K. Kingston, Ghazi Balkiz, Morgan Winsor, Anne Flaherty, Nasser Atta, Joe Simonetti, Jordana Miller and Helena Skinner contributed to this report.

Business

Fed cuts interest rates a half point in landmark policy shift

September 18, 2024

Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate a half of a percentage point on Wednesday in a landmark decision that dials back its years-long fight against inflation and delivers relief for borrowers saddled with high costs.

The central bank’s first rate cut since 2020 came after a recent stretch of data had established the key conditions for a rate cut: falling inflation and slowing job gains.

In theory, lower interest rates help stimulate economic activity and boost employment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 200 points in the immediate aftermath of the announcement on Wednesday afternoon.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also climbed following the news.

“The time has come for policy to adjust,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last month at an annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The direction of travel is clear.”

Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, though it remains slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2%.

Meanwhile, the job market has cooled. A weaker-than-expected jobs report in each of the last two months has stoked concern among some economists.

“We will do everything we can to support a strong labor market as we make further progress toward price stability,” Powell said last month.

Prior to the decision, the chances of a rate cut were are all but certain, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.

Market observers, however, were divided over whether the Fed will impose its typical cut of a quarter of a percentage point, or opt for a larger half-point cut. The tool estimated the probability of a half-point cut at 65% and the odds of a quarter-point cut at 35%.

A half-point cut risked overstimulating the economy and rekindling elevated inflation, while a quarter-point cut threatened to delay the type of economic jumpstart that may be required to avert a recession, Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, told ABC News in a statement.

“Rarely have market expectations been so torn” on the eve of a rate decision, Shah added.

Borrowers should not expect immediate relief, Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at NerdWallet, told ABC News in a statement prior to the decision.

“This initial rate cut will have little immediate impact,” Renter said. “I anticipate many consumers and business owners will take the beginning of this change in monetary policy as a sign of hope.”

The rate cut on Wednesday would goes into effect less than 50 days before the November election.

The decision deviates from the policy approach taken by the Fed prior to many recent presidential elections, a Reuters analysis found. Policy rates were left unchanged for six to 12 months before the 2020, 2016, 2012 and 2000 U.S. presidential elections, according to Reuters.

To be sure, the Fed says it bases its decisions on economic conditions and operates as an independent government body.

When asked about the 2024 election at a press conference in Washington, D.C., in December, Powell said, “We don’t think about politics.”

Entertainment

Brendan Fraser, Peter Dinklage, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei break bad in trailer to caper comedy ‘Brothers’

September 18, 2024

For a streaming movie about two bickering burglars, the upcoming Prime Video movie Brothers boasts some A-list names.

Game of Thrones Emmy winner Peter Dinklage joins Oscar nominees Josh Brolin and Glenn Close, and Oscar winners Brendan Fraser and Marisa Tomei, in the caper comedy that centers on a cache of emeralds with a large side of family dysfunction.

Oh, and there’s also an amorous orangutan named Samuel.

The trailer opens with the diminutive Dinklage getting tossed into a bathtub and held underwater by Fraser, who asks where the stones are.

Rewinding, Dinklage explains, “Some families have a long line of dentists and lawyers. We had a long line of felons.”

He says that since childhood, he and his “big ugly twin brother,” played by Brolin, were always stealing stuff. “I had the plans, he had the hands,” the actor narrates.

While Brolin’s character has gone straight, Dinklage proposes one last score — for the stones.

Complicating matters is the return of their mother, played by Close. “You were gone 30 years!” Brolin says, with Close responding, “I can apologize only so much.”

“You haven’t apologized at all,” Brolin replies.

Evidently, however, she’s needed so the trio can get their hands on the $4 million haul.

There’s a ton of physical comedy and R-rated wordplay from director Max Barbakow — and Brolin’s character is apparently molested by the ape, requiring the embarrassed thief to slather hand sanitizer all over himself afterward.

The movie hits Prime Video Oct. 17.

Politics

Trump blames Democrats for heated environment despite his own inflammatory rhetoric

September 18, 2024

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

(WASHINGTON) — When former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in July, he made an initial pitch for unity. It didn’t last long.

And he’s taken a decidedly different tack after a second apparent assassination attempt Sunday at his Florida golf club.

Less than 24 hours later, Trump laid blame for the political violence on Democrats, telling Fox News Digital the rhetoric of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was “causing me to be shot at” while also asserting they are “destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

Harris, he posted on social media, “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”

He also claimed, without evidence, that the suspects in both cases were “radical left” despite their motives not having been publicly determined. (Investigators are currently examining Florida suspect Ryan Wesley Routh’s frustration with Trump’s position on Ukraine, sources told ABC News. In the Pennsylvania rally shooting, the suspected gunman, Thomas Mathew Crooks, was a registered Republican but had also made a small donation to a progressive group in 2021.)

Regardless, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, doubled down on the “blame Democrats” strategy at a campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday.

“I think that it’s time to say to the Democrats, to the media, to everybody that has been attacking this man and trying to censor this man for going on 10 years, cut it out or you’re going to get somebody killed,” Vance said.

Susan Benesch, founding director of the Dangerous Speech Project, said Trump’s statements are “impossible not to put it in the context of his relentless use of violent rhetoric.”

“So, he’s a pot calling the kettle black,” Benesch said. “At the same time, that doesn’t mean that it is false when he says his political opponents are describing him as a threat to democracy.”

Harris and Biden condemned Sunday’s incident and shared their relief that Trump was safe. Biden called Trump and they had a “nice” conversation, the former president told ABC News. Harris said she also checked in with Trump and “told him what I have said publicly, I said there is no place for political violence in our country.”

“We can and should have healthy debates and discussion and disagreements, but not resort to violence to resolve those issues,” Harris said.

Still, Trump’s campaign has shared a list of over 50 quotes from Democrats they suggested lead to the second assassination attempt. Most of them include language from Biden, Harris and other party leaders that cast Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

The statements were often made when the lawmakers were discussing Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, what unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, or Trump’s pledges to take political retribution if elected in November.

Republican leaders are also pointing to a 2023 comment from Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in which he said Trump was “destructive to democracy” and should be “eliminated” — which Goldman apologized for, saying while he believed Trump should be defeated in the election he “certainly wish no harm to him and do not condone political violence.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked on Tuesday if President Biden would stop calling Trump a “threat to democracy” given recent developments. Jean-Pierre suggested he would not, saying he had a responsibility to “be honest with the American people” about the possible dangers posed by the former president.

Others have also noted a contrast between Democrats’ criticism of Trump and Trump’s more inflammatory — and sometimes patently false — statements on everything from election integrity to immigration to his targeting of perceived political enemies.

In one more extreme example, Trump appeared to defend the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” telling ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl “the people were very angry.” Though Trump has adamantly denied claims from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that she heard Trump say “hang” repeatedly while watching the attack unfold on television, and she did not provide further evidence for the assertion.

“He has used rhetoric to attack the peaceful transition of power. He has used rhetoric to attack his opposition. No president has ever done that before. It’s not normal and it’s not democratic,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University.

“So, when Democrats point that out, those are true facts, right?” she told ABC News.

Benesch, whose independent research team working on rhetoric that inspires violence, agreed there “is no question that the bounds of mainstream American political discourse shifted” since Trump entered politics.

“I think it is really important to recognize that he and his supporters are not the only ones who now speak in ways that normalize or even encourage violence, but he and his supporters have been doing it and are doing it much more than anybody else on the American political scene,” Benesch said.

Former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of “The View,” wrote on X that everyone has “a duty to take the temperature down” but that it was “simply dishonest for Trump [and] his allies to say his opponents shouldn’t use the very language he regularly uses: fascist, enemy within, vermin, traitors, you won’t have a country.”

The Trump campaign, in response to experts who say his own history of inflammatory rhetoric plays a large role in what’s become a heightened threat environment, told ABC News: “Only one candidate in this election has been shot at twice, and it’s not Kamala Harris.”

“The violence is coming from the political left and it’s the responsibility of Kamala Harris, as the Democrat Party nominee, to condemn the false inflammatory lie that President Trump is an alleged threat to democracy,” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “He is not, and she knows it.”

Benesch said the solution to deescalate the current atmosphere would be for leaders or influencers to convincingly condemn their own party’s language. But she expressed little confidence that would happen before the election.

“Unfortunately, nobody has a political incentive to denounce such rhetoric on their own side or in their own group, but that’s what it’s going to take,” she said. “Or such severe violence that it frightens leaders and influencers into demanding that their own supporters tone it down.”

National

2 wanted, one wearing pink shower cap, in stolen New York City subway crash

September 18, 2024

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — A search is underway in New York City for two suspects, including one dressed all in pink, who allegedly crashed an empty subway train after brazenly walking into a station and stealing it, authorities said.

The theft of the train in the nation’s largest subway system unfolded amid the deployment of additional police officers to the subway system to combat a surge in crime. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul even deployed National Guard troops as part of a five-point plan to protect subway riders.

According to a New York Police Department incident report, the thieves, a man and a woman, stole the empty train just after midnight on Thursday at the Briarwood subway station in the borough of Queens, according to police.

“These two individuals entered an unoccupied train and operated it, causing a collision and damage to the train,” according to the NYPD incident report.

No injuries were reported and the suspects fled the area on foot, according to police.

No arrests have been announced as of Wednesday morning, police said.

The duo was caught on surveillance cameras walking through the empty train at Briarwood station before taking it on a short joy ride, police said.

One of the alleged thieves was described as a woman with a medium build and medium complexion, according to police.

“She was last seen wearing a pink shower cap, a pink sleeveless shirt, pink shorts, and carrying a pink handbag,” according to the incident report.

Her accomplice was described by police as a man with a slim build and light complexion, He was dressed in a blue tank top, red shorts and carrying a black backpack.

It was at least the second theft of a New York City subway train in less than eight months.

On Dec. 30, 2023, a group stole empty trains parked in a restricted area near the Forest Hills-71st Avenue subway station in Queens. Authorities said the group entered the operators’ compartments of two lead train cars before driving them northbound.

Amidst a 45% year-over-year spike in New York City transit crime in January, mostly due to grand larcenies, Hochul deployed 1,000 state workers, including 250 state police troopers and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police members, to assist the NYPD in enhanced baggage checks at heavily trafficked areas of the subway system.

Hochul also directed the New York National Guard to make 750 members, who are currently part of the Joint Task Force Empire Shield, available to help check subway riders’ bags for weapons.

According to the most recent NYPD crime statistics, transit crime as of Sunday is now down 5.4% from this time in 2023.

World news

9 more dead, 300 injured as new round of explosions rock Lebanon: Health officials

September 18, 2024

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on September 17, 2024. (MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images)

(LONDON) — At least nine more people were dead and 300 injured in Lebanon on Wednesday after a series of new explosions rocked the South, the Bekaa and the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to the Ministry of Health and the Lebanese Red Cross.