AMY GOODMAN: Hurricane Milton comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene battered Florida and other southeastern states, killing at least 230 people. A new analysis by the group World Weather Attribution finds the burning of fossil fuels has made highly destructive storms like Helene more than twice as likely. Florida climate activists have declared Republican Governor Ron DeSantis unfit to lead the state since his policies promote fossil fuels, reject sustainable energy options and ignore or deny the climate crisis.

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DAVID WALLACE-WELLS: Yeah, I think the story is much bigger than Ron DeSantis. I mean, we’re talking about, you know, Donald Trump campaigning in part on Project ’25’s promises to defund FEMA and cut emergency services and disaster response. We are seeing all of this disinformation surrounding Hurricane Helene with people posting on social media about FEMA helicopters shooting down disaster relief, people circulating conspiracy theories about land being seized by the federal government, not to mention, as you highlighted earlier, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s suggestion that the weather itself is man-made and controlled by the government. There’s a kind of grim irony in those who deny that human activity can be driving the climate crisis but who believe that government actors can control the weather to this scale.

Two UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have been wounded by Israeli fire, the mission said on Thursday, as Israel's military ground operations in the country continued.

In a statement, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said two of its members were wounded after a Merkava tank fired towards an observation tower at Unifil headquarters in Naqoura, "directly hitting it and causing them to fall".

"[Israeli] soldiers also fired on UN position (UNP) 1-31 in Labbouneh, hitting the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, and damaging vehicles and a communications system," said the peacekeeping mission.

"An IDF drone was observed flying inside the UN position up to the bunker entrance."

Israeli attacks in Lebanon over the past month, including a bombing campaign and ground invasion, have killed over 1,200 people and displaced one million.

Israel has confiscated land on which the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) is located in Jerusalem, with plans to build 1,440 settlement units on the site.

The announcement comes a day after members of the United Nations Security Council warned Israel against proceeding with a law, promoted by Iloz and others, aimed at curbing Unrwa's ability to operate.

The Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved two bills on Sunday which effectively aim at ending Unrwa's activity and privileges in Israel.

Our analysis shows that not only did the warnings issued by the Israeli military include misleading maps, but they were also issued at short notice – in one instance less than 30 minutes before strikes began – in the middle of the night, via social media, when many people would be asleep, offline or not following media reports.

According to the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHA) one quarter of Lebanese territory has been impacted by evacuation warnings.

Much more information and analysis within the article by Amnesty International

Several county jails along Florida’s coast within the path of Hurricane Milton are choosing not to evacuate hundreds of incarcerated individuals as the storm makes landfall on Wednesday.

A sophisticated analysis by the Costs of War Project tallied up at least $22.76 billion in military aid when combining approved U.S. security assistance to Israel since October 7, 2023; supplemental funding for regional operations; and estimated additional costs of operations, such as strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen. That figure includes $17.9 billion the U.S. government has approved in security assistance for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere since October 2023. This represents far more than any other year since the U.S. began providing military aid to Israel in 1959. In 2022, for example, the U.S. provided Israel with $5.1 billion in military aid.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has just released a documentary on Israeli war crimes, based in part on social media posts from Israeli soldiers themselves. The documentary begins with the Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, as well as footage of the Al-Awda school massacre in July, when Israeli troops killed at least 31 people at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians. The moment the bomb exploded was captured on video by someone recording a youth soccer game in the Al-Awda school courtyard.

The Native vote is critical for many state and federal elections, including in Arizona, Alaska, Montana, Wisconsin, North Dakota, New Mexico and Nevada — just to name a few. The influence of the Native vote has been strategically diluted through gerrymandering, voter laws and few polling locations on sovereign lands.

It also gets impacted by felony disenfranchisement, meaning laws that keep people who have been convicted of felonies from voting. These laws also keep people who are currently incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, or on probation and parole from voting.

Felony disenfranchisement is rooted in racism and was used to keep Black people from voting in the South. It became widespread after the Civil War and Black people began to gain rights in the United States.

The criminal justice system continues to incarcerate Black people and other people of color, despite making up a lower national population, at higher rates than White people. American Indians and Alaska Natives were incarcerated at nearly 40 percent higher than the national average. In Montana, Native people make up to 34 percent of the state prison population according to a report titled, “Over-Incarceration of Native Americans: Roots, Inequities and Solutions.”

After ordering most of northern Gaza to evacuate, Israeli forces fired on Palestinians desperately trying to flee

In a joint statement on Wednesday, a coalition of 18 aid groups warned that the ongoing Israeli assault “will worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in the north” and has already “prevented international and national humanitarian organizations from carrying out already very limited lifesaving aid operations.”

For the past year, Biden and his administration have assured the public it is working to protect Palestinian civilians and, more recently, that it is working on a ceasefire deal. But the U.S.-led diplomacy and rhetorical censures have fallen short of addressing the catastrophic consequences on the ground.

After a year of Israel’s relentless killing, maiming, starving and terrorizing the people of Gaza, expanding violence against Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank, and launching a new war on Lebanon — and soon, perhaps, Iran — U.S. policy remains rock solid.

The Israeli occupation forces have extended their genocidal campaign in Gaza to the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Using drone strikes, troops in armored vehicles and bulldozers, their regular raids since October 7, 2023, have escalated into extensive and deadly attacks. Between August 28 and September 6, Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” a major military invasion, in the northern West Bank. “We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools. They even bulldozed the town soccer field, and a tree in the middle of a road,” Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, told The New York Times.

In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Miranda Cleland, advocacy officer for Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), explains how Israel’s vicious assault in the West Bank is increasingly targeting children. A Palestinian human rights organization based in Ramallah, DCIP is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for complicity in genocide and failure to prevent genocide in Gaza.

The Biden administration has given up on ceasefire talks after first proposing a deal for a 21-day ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel just two weeks ago, CNN reports, citing U.S. officials. The U.S. is “not actively trying to revive the deal,” the outlet wrote.

Two weeks ago, CNN reported that senior U.S. officials have also suspended efforts for ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Officials said the effort isn’t totally canceled but admitted there is no political will for a ceasefire to happen; though officials blamed Hamas and Israel, Israeli officials have been openly sabotaging ceasefire negotiations, while Hamas officials have voiced support for numerous ceasefire proposals.

Though officials are admitting to the suspension of ceasefire talks in private, however, in public, officials are still claiming that the administration is pushing for a ceasefire. Just on Monday, in a statement recognizing the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, attack, President Joe Biden insinuated that talks are ongoing.