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

Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone, preliminary report suggests

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and let it pass unchallenged into a desert base in Jordan where it killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens more, officials said Monday.

Details of the Sunday attack emerged as President Joe Biden faced a difficult balancing act, blaming Iran and looking to strike back in a forceful way without causing any further escalation of the Gaza conflict.

As the enemy drone was flying in at a low altitude, a U.S. drone was returning to the small installation known as Tower 22, according to a preliminary report cited by two officials, who were not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity,

As a result, there was no effort to shoot down the enemy drone that hit the outpost. One of the trailers where troops sleep sustained the brunt of the strike, while surrounding trailers got limited damage from the blast and flying debris. While there are no large air defense systems at Tower 22, the base does have counter-drone systems, such as Coyote drone interceptors.

Aside from the soldiers killed, the Pentagon said more than 40 troops were wounded in the attack, most with cuts, bruises, brain injuries and similar wounds. Eight were medically evacuated, including three who were going to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The other five, who suffered “minor traumatic brain injuries,” were expected to return to duty.

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What is Tower 22, the military base that was attacked in Jordan where 3 US troops were killed?

JERUSALEM (AP) — A little-discussed United States military desert outpost in the far reaches of northeastern Jordan has become the focus of international attention after a drone attack killed three American troops and injured at least 34 others there.

The base, known as Tower 22, sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria along a sandy, bulldozed berm marking the DMZ’s southern edge. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.

The area is known as Rukban, a vast arid region that once saw a refugee camp spring up on the Syrian side over the rise of the Islamic State group’s so-called caliphate in 2014.

At its height, over 100,000 people lived there, blocked by Jordan from coming across into the kingdom at the time over concerns about infiltration by the extremist group. Those concerns grew out of a 2016 car bomb attack there that killed seven Jordanian border guards

The camp has dwindled in the time since to some 7,500 people because of a lack of supplies reaching there, according to United Nations estimates.

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Document spells out allegations against 12 UN employees Israel says participated in Hamas attack

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An Israeli document obtained Monday spelled out allegations against a dozen U.N. employees the country says took part in Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault — claiming seven stormed into Israeli territory, including one who participated in a kidnapping and another who helped to steal a soldier’s body.

The allegations against staffers with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees prompted the United States and several other countries to freeze funds vital for the body, which is a lifeline for desperate Palestinians in Gaza. The White House indicated that funding could be restored depending on the agency’s investigation and subsequent actions.

The U.N. condemned “the abhorrent alleged acts” and fired nine of the accused workers, who include teachers and a social worker. Two are reportedly dead, and the last is still being identified.

The accusations come after years of tensions between Israel and the agency known as UNRWA over its work in Gaza, where it employs roughly 13,000 people.

UNRWA is the biggest aid provider in Gaza, where Israel’s war against Hamas has displaced the vast majority of the population within the besieged territory and plunged it into a humanitarian catastrophe. U.N. officials say a quarter of the population is starving.

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Israel military operation destroys a Gaza cemetery. Israel says Hamas used the site to hide a tunnel

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Islamic cemetery in southern Gaza was demolished, graves excised from the earth. A skull with no teeth rested atop the sandy, churned rubble.

The neighborhood of Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, which soldiers showed foreign journalists Saturday, was obliterated, transformed by the military’s search for underground Hamas tunnels. An Associated Press journalist saw a destroyed mosque and — where the cemetery had once been – a 140-meter-(yard)-wide pit that gave way to what the army called a Hamas attack tunnel underneath. The military said Monday that combat engineers had demolished part of the network, releasing a video showing massive explosions in the area.

As Israel moves forward with a ground and air campaign in Gaza that health officials in the besieged enclave say has claimed over 26,000 Palestinian lives, the military’s destruction of holy sites has drawn staunch criticism from Palestinians and rights groups, who say the offensive is also an assault on cultural heritage. Under international law, cemeteries and religious sites receive special protection — and destroying them could be considered a war crime.

Israel says Hamas uses such sites as military cover, removing them of these protections. It says there is no way to accomplish its military goal of defeating Hamas without finding the tunnels, where they say the militants have built command and control centers, transported weapons and hidden some of the 130 hostages it is believed to be holding. They say digging up the tunnels involves unavoidable collateral damage to sacrosanct spaces.

“We’re not naive anymore,” said Israeli Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfus, who led journalists around the site Saturday.

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President Biden has said he’d shut the US-Mexico border if given the ability. What does that mean?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has made some strong claims over the past few days about shutting down the U.S.-Mexico border as he tries to salvage a border deal in Congress that would also unlock money for Ukraine.

The deal had been in the works for months and seemed to be nearing completion in the Senate before it began to fall apart, largely because Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump doesn’t want it to happen.

“A bipartisan bill would be good for America and help fix our broken immigration system and allow speedy access for those who deserve to be here, and Congress needs to get it done,” Biden said over the weekend. “It’ll also give me as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.”

A look at what Biden meant, and the political and policy considerations at play:

Biden wants continued funding for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion. Senate Republicans had initially said they would not consider more money for Kyiv unless it was combined with a deal to manage the border.

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5 suspects arrested in California desert killings in dispute over marijuana, sheriff’s officials say

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The six men found dead at a remote dirt crossroads in the Southern California desert last week were likely shot to death in a dispute over marijuana, sheriff’s officials said Monday as they announced the arrests of five men suspected in the violence.

Authorities discovered the bodies Tuesday in the Mojave Desert outside El Mirage after someone called 911 and said in Spanish that he had been shot, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Warrick said during a news conference.

All the victims were likely shot to death, and four of the bodies had been partially burned together, Warrick said. A fifth victim was found inside a Chevy Trailblazer, and the sixth was discovered nearby the following day, he said.

“It looks like illicit marijuana was the driving force behind these murders,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus said, adding that the area is known for illegal marijuana growing operations.

The scene showed a “level of violence” reminiscent of a drug cartel, but investigators couldn’t immediately confirm that cartels were involved, officials said.

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Nikki Haley’s dilemma in South Carolina: winning over voters who like her, but love Trump

CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — For South Carolina’s conservatives, deciding whether Nikki Haley ’s record warrants a promotion to the Oval Office seems less about her experience and abilities and more about the man standing in her way: Donald Trump.

“Ms. Haley did some fine things as governor — but Donald Trump is the man!” declared Doug Roberts, a retired electrician who came to a recent Haley rally wearing a Trump T-shirt. “Donald Trump is just not a regular man.”

Haley, Trump’s last major Republican rival, faces a make-or-break stretch ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary that could be Trump’s last obstacle to a third consecutive Republican nomination. While Haley has talked about her comfort running in her home state, interviews with almost two dozen South Carolina Republicans since the New Hampshire primary suggest Haley is struggling to win over conservatives who backed her twice for governor but haven’t soured on Trump for president.

Debra Weiss, a 66-year-old from heavily Republican Myrtle Beach, demonstrates Haley’s difficult path. Sitting among the 1,500 or so who heard Haley on Sunday at Coastal Carolina University, Weiss lauded the candidate as a “true conservative” and dismissed Trump’s quips that Haley is a Democratic stand-in. Weiss criticized Trump’s rhetoric generally but said she is not concerned Trump could become a convicted felon.

Most critically for Haley, though, Weiss remains undecided.

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Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

ANGOLA, La. (AP) — A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.

They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.

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When a white supremacist threatened an Iraqi DEI coordinator in Maine, he fled the state

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator of public schools in South Portland, Maine, has resigned and left the state, saying he fears for his family’s safety after receiving a threatening letter from a white supremacist.

The attack on Mohammed Albehadli, who came to the U.S. a decade ago from Iraq after it became too dangerous, comes at a time when many Republicans are opposed to DEI initiatives that include recruiting and retaining faculty and students of color.

Albehadli said he knows from experience in Iraq how threats can escalate: “You hear something first. And the next thing, an action follows.”

He decided not to wait to find out what the action might be.

The Dec. 29 letter, released to The Associated Press under a freedom of information request, contains racist epithets and indicates the New England White Network told Albehadli that he should “go back to the Middle East where you belong.”

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US to receive gold medals in wake of figure skater Valieva’s Olympic DQ

International Olympic officials have told counterparts in the United States that theirf figure skating team will receive gold medals now that Russian skater Kamila Valieva has been disqualified for doping at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee received word Monday night that the IOC would award the gold to the U.S. for the team competition, which was thrown into turmoil after Valieva’s positive test from six weeks earlier was revealed.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of an email sent from the IOC to the USOPC saying it “is now in position to award the medals in accordance with the ranking, which has to be established by the International Skating Union.”

The USOPC confirmed that CEO Sarah Hirshland had received the news that the Americans were declared the winners.

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