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

Palestinians flee northern Gaza after Israel orders 1 million to evacuate as ground attack looms

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians fled in a mass exodus Friday from northern Gaza after Israel’s military told some 1 million people to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged territory ahead of an expected ground invasion in retaliation for the surprise attack by the ruling Hamas militant group.

The U.N. warned that evacuating almost half of crowded Gaza’s population would be calamitous, and it urged Israel to reverse the unprecedented directive. As airstrikes hammered the territory throughout the day, families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions streamed down a main road out of Gaza City.

Hamas’ media office said warplanes struck cars fleeing south, killing more than 70 people. The Israeli military said its troops conducted temporary raids into Gaza to battle militants and hunted for traces of some 150 people abducted in Hamas’s assault on Israel nearly a week ago.

In urging the evacuation, Israel’s military said it planned to target underground Hamas hideouts around Gaza City. But Palestinians and some Egyptian officials fear that Israel ultimately hopes to push Gaza’s people out through the southern border with Egypt.

Hamas told people to ignore the evacuation order, and families in Gaza faced what they saw as a no-win decision to leave or stay, with no safe ground anywhere. Hospital staff said they couldn’t abandon patients.

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Palestinians in Gaza face impossible choice: Stay home under airstrikes, or flee under airstrikes?

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Watching the pulverized alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza empty of people, Naji Jamal was frozen with indecision.

Should he heed the Israeli army’s demand that all Palestinians evacuate and make the risky trip to Gaza’s south, where his only certainty was homelessness? Or should he stay at his multistory building — within what the Israeli army has now designated a target zone — ahead of a likely Israeli ground invasion?

“It’s an existential question, but there is no answer,” Jamal, a 34-year-old health clinic worker, said. “There is no safe haven, there is no place that is not being shelled and besieged, there is no place to go.”

In an unprecedented order to civilians in northern Gaza and Gaza City, the Israeli military gave Jamal — and 1.1 million other Palestinians — 24 hours to make up their minds. It was the sixth day of Israeli bombing prompted by Hamas’ brutal attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and stunned the country.

As the clock ticked on the ultimatum, hundreds of thousands of Israeli army reservists were massing near Gaza’s northern border. Israeli warplanes roared overhead, diving low to hurl bombs at homes and residential high-rises. Aid groups appealed to the international community to stop what they denounced as a possible war crime of forcible population transfer.

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FACT FOCUS: Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts

In the days since Hamas militants stormed into Israel early Oct. 7, a flood of videos and photos purporting to show the conflict have filled social media, making it difficult for onlookers from around the world to sort fact from fiction.

While plenty of real imagery and accounts of the ensuing carnage have emerged, they have been intermingled with users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

Among the fabrications, users have shared false claims that a top Israeli commander had been kidnapped, circulated a doctored White House memo purporting to show President Joe Biden announcing billions in aid for Israel, and pushed old and unrelated videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin with inaccurate English captions.

Here is a closer look at the misinformation spreading online — and the facts. CLAIM: A video shows a BBC News report confirming Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas.

THE FACTS: The widely shared video clip is fabricated, officials with the BBC and Bellingcat, an investigative news website that is cited in the video as the source, confirm.

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Republicans pick Jim Jordan as nominee for House speaker, putting job within the Trump ally’s reach

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans chose firebrand Rep. Jim Jordan as their new nominee for House speaker during internal voting Friday, putting the gavel within reach of the staunch ally of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Electing Jordan, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, to the powerful position second in line to the presidency would move the GOP’s far right into a central seat of U.S. power. A groundswell of high-profile backers including Fox News’ Sean Hannity publicly pressured lawmakers to vote Jordan into the speaker’s office after the stunning ouster of Kevin McCarthy.

Jordan, of Ohio, will now try to unite colleagues from the deeply divided House GOP majority ahead of a public vote on the floor, possibly next week. Republicans split 124-81 in Friday’s private vote, though a second secret ballot nudged his tally higher.

“I think Jordan would do a great job,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said ahead of the vote. “We got to get this back on track.”

Frustrated House Republicans have been fighting bitterly over whom they should elect to replace McCarthy to lead their party after his unprecedented ouster by a handful of hardliners. The stalemate between the factions, now in its second week, has thrown the House into chaos, grinding all other business to a halt. Lawmakers left for the weekend, and are due back Monday.

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US says North Korea delivered 1,000 containers of equipment and munitions to Russia for Ukraine war

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said on Friday that North Korea has delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for its ongoing war in Ukraine.

Speculation about a possible North Korean plan to refill Russia’s munition stores drained in its protracted war with Ukraine flared last month, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin and visit key military sites.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the U.S. believes Kim is seeking sophisticated Russian weapons technologies in return for the munitions to boost North Korea’s military and nuclear program.

The White House released images that it said show the containers were loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship before being moved via train to southwestern Russia. The containers were shipped between Sept. 7 and Oct. 1 between Najin, North Korea, and Dunay, Russia, according to the White House.

“We condemn the DPRK for providing Russian with this military equipment, which will be used to attack Ukrainian cities and kill Ukrainian civilians and further Russia’s illegitimate war,” Kirby said, using the initials for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name. “In return for support, we assess the Pyongyang is seeking military assistance from Russia including fighter aircraft, surface to air missiles, armored vehicles, ballistic missile production equipment, or other materials and other advanced technologies.”

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Louise Glück, Nobel-winning poet of terse and candid lyricism, dies at 80

NEW YORK (AP) — Nobel laureate Louise Glück, a poet of unblinking candor and perception who wove classical allusions, philosophical reveries, bittersweet memories and humorous asides into indelible portraits of a fallen and heartrending world, has died at 80.

Glück’s death was confirmed Friday by Jonathan Galassi, her editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She died of cancer at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to her publisher. A former student of Glück’s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham, said that the author had only recently been diagnosed.

“I find it very much like her that she only learned she had cancer a few days before dying from it,” Graham said. “Her whole sensibility — both on and off the page — was cut that close to the spine of time.”

In a career spanning more than 60 years, Glück forged a narrative of trauma, disillusion, stasis and longing, spelled by moments — but only moments — of ecstasy and contentment. In awarding her the literature prize in 2020, the first time an American poet had been honored since T.S. Eliot in 1948, Nobel judges praised “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”

Glück’s poems were often brief, a page or less in length, exemplars of her attachment to “the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence.” Influenced by Shakespeare, Greek mythology and Eliot among others, she questioned and at times dismissed outright the bonds of love and sex, what she called the “premise of union” in her most famous poem, “Mock Orange.” In some ways, life for Glück was like a troubled romance — fated for unhappiness, but meaningful because pain was our natural condition — and preferable to what she assumed would follow.

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AP Exclusive: 911 calls from deadly Lahaina wildfire reveal terror and panic in the rush to escape

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Trapped in their cars, in homes or on the beach as flames, black smoke and embers swirled around them, people in the historic Maui town of Lahaina called 911, the one number that might send help or tell them what to do, where to go.

A man sprayed water on his house as homes around him burned: “I don’t know if we can get out,” he reported. A family huddled in a fireplace, reluctant to leave without their frightened dog, as smoke alarms beeped incessantly. “I cannot get out of my door — there’s flames blowing into the house!” another woman pleaded. “I have a baby.”

The responses from dispatchers, captured in audio recordings provided to The Associated Press through a public records request, reflect how quickly the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century overtook the town — and how challenging it was for overwhelmed officials to keep up with the chaos.

Inundated with calls, and with police and firefighters all occupied, the dispatchers became increasingly powerless to render help, resorting to offering advice like “Leave if you have to leave” and assuring callers that responders were in the area.

The dispatchers often showed compassion, working to soothe residents and telling them to do whatever they needed to do to be safe. As circumstances changed, some callers were told to stay in their cars, others to run for their lives or to head for the ocean. Many were urged to shelter at the Lahaina Civic Center if they could make it.

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French authorities link a school stabbing that killed a teacher to Islamic extremism

ARRAS, France (AP) — A man of Chechen origin who was under surveillance by French security services over suspected Islamic radicalization stabbed a teacher to death at his former high school and wounded three other people Friday in northern France, authorities said.

France raised its threat alert to its highest level, and the attack was being investigated by anti-terrorism prosecutors amid soaring global tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas. It also happened almost three years after another teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a radicalized Chechen near a Paris area school.

The suspected attacker had been under surveillance since the summer on suspicion of Islamic radicalization, French intelligence services told The Associated Press. He was detained Thursday for questioning based on the monitoring of his phone calls in recent days, but investigators found no sign that he was preparing an attack, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

’’There was a race against the clock. But there was no threat, no weapon, no indication. We did our our job seriously,? Darmanin said on TF1 television. French intelligence suggested a link between the war in the Middle East and the suspect’s decision to attack, the minister said.

The suspect, identified by prosecutors as Mohamed M., was reportedly refusing to speak to investigators. Several others also were in custody Friday, national counterterrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said. Police said the suspect’s younger brother was among those held for questioning.

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The Supreme Court avoided disaster when a chunk of marble fell in a courtyard used by the justices

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court avoided a catastrophic accident last year when a piece of marble at least 2 feet long crashed to the ground in an interior courtyard used by the justices and their aides, according to several court employees.

The incident, which the court still fails to acknowledge publicly, took place in the tense spring of 2022, as the court already was dealing with death threats and other security concerns and the justices were putting the final touches on their stunning decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Justice Elena Kagan and her law clerks had been in the courtyard earlier in the day, the employees said.

No one was injured when the marble fell, the employees said. The piece was easily big enough to have seriously injured someone, they said. It was much larger than the basketball-sized chunk that fell near the court’s front entrance in 2005.

The weight of the marble that fell is unknown, but the Georgia marble used in the court’s four interior courtyards weighs about 170 pounds per cubic foot, according to Polycor, which owns the quarry that provided the marble.

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Black student disciplined over hairstyle hopes to ‘start being a kid again’

For more than a month, Darryl George, a Black high school student in Texas, spent each school day sitting by himself in punishment over his hairstyle. This week, he was sent to a separate disciplinary program, where he’s been told he will spend several more weeks away from classmates.

In an interview with The Associated Press, George said he has felt discouraged about missing out on his classes and time with the football team.

“I feel like I’m missing my full experience of being in the classroom,” George said Thursday.

George, 18, was first pulled from the classroom at his Houston-area school in August after school officials said his locs fell below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violated the district’s dress code. His family argues his hairstyle does not break any rules.

By the time George is allowed to return to Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, in November, he will have missed 56 of 67 days of regular classroom instruction to start his junior year. The family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the state failed to enforce a new law outlawing discrimination based on hairstyles.