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

Gaza’s desperate civilians flee or huddle in hopes of safety, as warnings of Israeli offensive mount

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Desperate Palestinians scrambled for escape from northern Gaza on Saturday or huddled by the thousands at a hospital in the target zone in hopes it would be spared, as Israel intensified warnings of an imminent offensive by air, ground and sea following Hamas militants’ deadly rampage in Israel a week ago.

While workers at an Israeli military base continued efforts through the Jewish Sabbath to identify the more than 1,300 people killed in the Oct. 7 assault, Israel dropped leaflets from the air and redoubled warnings on social media for more than 1 million Gaza residents to move south.

The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a concentrated campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.

The U.N. and aid groups say such a rapid exodus along with Israel’s siege of the territory would cause untold human suffering. The World Health Organization said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care.

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis already was mounting Saturday amid a growing shortage of water and medical supplies under a week-old Israeli blockade, which has also forced electrical plants to shut down without fuel.

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Lack of water worsens misery in besieged Gaza as Israeli airstrikes continue

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — As Israel pounds the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, Laila Abu Samhadaneh, 65, is anxious about water.

The besieged Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people don’t have access to clean, running water after Israel cut off water and electricity to the enclave as it intensifies its air attacks in response to a bloody Hamas attack last week.

The chokehold has seen taps run dry across the territory. When water does trickle from pipes, the meager flow lasts no more than 30 minutes each day and is so contaminated with sewage and seawater that it’s undrinkable, residents said.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do tomorrow,” Abu Samhadaneh said from her three-room home in the southern town of Rafah, which turned into a de facto shelter after Israel demanded everyone in Gaza evacuate south. She said she rations just a few liters among dozens of friends and relatives each day. “We’re going crazy.”

The deprivation has plunged Gaza’s population deeper into misery as Israel’s bombardment intensifies one week after Hamas fighters surged across Israel’s separation fence, killing 1,300 Israelis and abducting dozens. Israel’s retaliatory strikes have crushed hundreds of buildings in Gaza and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians.

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Palestinian Americans watch with dread as family members in Gaza struggle to stay alive

NEW YORK (AP) — For the unforeseeable future, Laila El-Haddad has one mission: to get the voices of her fellow Palestinians, along with their pleas for help, out to the rest of the world.

From her home office in Columbia, Maryland, El-Haddad frantically juggled phone calls this week from journalists seeking her expertise on Gaza and Palestinian Americans trying to get the attention of their local elected officials.

In between the calls, the 45-year-old mother and author checked WhatsApp, the global messaging application, for updates from her own family members in Gaza during their brief windows of electricity and internet access. Electricity was since cut off by Israel and internet outages have made it difficult for many to keep in touch.

“I’m just trying to stay sane by doing what I can to help,” El-Haddad said.

For many Palestinian Americans, there’s a sense of helplessness and hopelessness as they struggle to hear from loved ones in Gaza. Amid a fuel and water shortage, no electricity, and now a forced evacuation in the north, administering and sending aid to civilians in Gaza is near impossible.

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In first call with Palestinian president Abbas, Biden discusses support for humanitarian aid to Gaza

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging the leaders to allow humanitarian aid to the region and affirmed his support for efforts to protect civilians.

The weekend calls in Washington came ahead of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement that the U.S. was moving up a second carrier strike group in support of Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken intensified diplomatic outreach across the Middle East and beyond to rally an international response to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from expanding.

The broad U.S. efforts reflect the international concern about the number of civilians at risk and the potential ramifications of a prolonged war as Israel told Gaza residents to move south and Hamas urged people to remain in their homes. The Biden administration has not publicly urged Israel to restrain its response after the Hamas attack a week ago, but has emphasized the country’s commitment to following the rules of war.

Addressing a Human Rights Campaign dinner Saturday in Washington, Biden linked the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to different versions of hate that he said must be stopped.

“A week ago we saw hate manifest another way in the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Biden said, citing the 1,300 lives lost in Israel as well as “children, grandparents alike kidnapped, held hostage by Hamas.”

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A proposed gag order on Trump in his federal election case is putting the judge in a tricky position

WASHINGTON (AP) — A proposed gag order aimed at reining in Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric puts the judge overseeing his federal election interference case in a tricky position: She must balance the need to protect the integrity of the legal proceedings against the First Amendment rights of a presidential candidate to defend himself in public.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear arguments Monday in Washington over whether Trump has gone too far with remarks such as calling prosecutors a “team of thugs” and one possible witness “a gutless pig.”

It is the biggest test yet for Chutkan, underscoring the unprecedented complexities of prosecuting the former Republican president as the judge vows not to let political considerations guide her decisions.

Ending the stream of Trump’s harsh language would make the case easier to manage. But among the difficult questions Chutkan must navigate is how any gag order might be enforced and how one could be fashioned that does not risk provoking Trump’s base and fueling his claims of political persecution as he campaigns to retake the White House in 2024.

“She has to think about the serious risk that it’s not just his words that could trigger violence, but that she could play into the conspiracy theories that Trump’s followers tend to believe in, and that her act of issuing a gag order might trigger a very disturbing response,” said Catherine Ross, a George Washington University law school professor.

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At least 27 dead with dozens more missing after boat capsizes in northwest Congo

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — A boat capsized in Congo’s northwest killing at least 27 people, and more than 70 others were missing, a senior government official said Saturday as rescuers searched frantically for survivors.

The locally made boat capsized late Friday in the city of Mbandaka in Equateur Province as it transported more than 100 passengers along the Congo River to the town of Bolomba, according to Taylor Nganzi, deputy provincial governor.

“Already 27 bodies of victims have been removed from the waters (and) transported to the morgue of the general hospital in Mbandaka,” said Nganzi, adding that an investigation to find out the cause of the accident had begun.

The New Civil Society of Congo, a local civil society group, said 49 people died in the accident, which it said occurred after an engine failure. “Everything started to sink,” Jean-Pierre Wangela, president of the group, told reporters.

The contradictory death tolls, which is common in such incidents in Congo, could not immediately be reconciled.

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‘Ring of fire’ eclipse brings cheers and shouts of joy as it moves across the Americas

CANCÚN, México (AP) — First came the darkening skies, then the crescent-shaped shadows on the ground, and finally an eruption of cheers by crowds that gathered Saturday along the narrow path of a rare “ring of fire” eclipse of the sun.

It was a spectacular show for millions of people across the Americas as the moon moved into place and blocked out all but a brilliant circle of the sun’s outer edge.

Hundreds of people filed into the planetarium in the Caribbean resort city of Cancún to watch the eclipse. Some peered through box projectors, while others looked through telescopes and special glasses.

Excited children whistled, as some adults raised their arms toward the sky as if to welcome the eclipse.

Vendors selling plants outside observed the dance between the moon and the sun in a more natural way — with the help of trees as the shifting sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting unique shadows on the sidewalk.

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Louvre Museum and Versailles Palace evacuated after bomb threats with France on alert

PARIS (AP) — The Louvre Museum in Paris and Versailles Palace evacuated visitors and staff Saturday after receiving bomb threats, police said. The French government started deploying 7,000 troops to increase security around the country after a fatal school stabbing by a suspected Islamic extremist.

The evacuations of two of the world’s most-visited tourist sites come amid heightened vigilance around France following Friday’s school attack, and global tensions linked to the war between Israel and Hamas. President Emmanuel Macron’s government is worried about fallout from the war in France.

Alarms rang out through the Louvre when the evacuation was announced, and in the underground shopping center beneath its signature pyramid. Paris police said officers searched the museum after it received written bomb threats. The Louvre communication service said no one was hurt and no bomb was found, so the museum will reopen as usual on Sunday.

The Louvre, home to masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa, welcomes between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors per day and several million annually.

The former royal palace at Versailles also received bomb threats, and the palace and its sprawling gardens were being evacuated while police examine the area, according to national police. A major Paris train station, Gare de Lyon, was being evacuated after the discovery of a possible bottle explosive, police said.

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Evolving crisis fuels anxiety among Venezuelans who want a better economy but see worsening woes

SAN JOAQUIN, Venezuela (AP) — The avocado trees across the road from Jose Hernandez’s tin-roofed home help feed several retirees in the rural community of San Joaquin along a highway two hours southwest of Venezuela’s capital.

He and his neighbors cut the avocados with the owner’s permission and sell them to motorists at a nearby toll booth or on the streets of the nearby city of Valencia, which has not emptied out as much as San Joaquin from migration over the last decade.

They live day by day. Their pension these days amounts to $3.70 a month, only 20 cents more than the cost of a gallon of bottled water. So no sales mean no food.

“Sometimes, we even have to barter avocados for food in other neighborhoods. We want jobs!” Hernandez, 67, exclaimed while sitting on his dusty, cement-floor porch with a neighbor. “He was a carrier, I sold merchandise downtown. Right now, there is no work. All the young people have already left. This neighborhood is desolate!”

The political, social and economic crisis that has come to define their South American homeland has evolved since it began a decade ago as a result of a global drop in the price of oil, Venezuela’s most valuable resource, mismanagement by the self-proclaimed socialist administration and government repression of its opponents.

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Piper Laurie, 3-time Oscar nominee with film credits such as ‘The Hustler’ and ‘Carrie,’ dies at 91

Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who performed in acclaimed roles despite at one point abandoning acting altogether in search of a “more meaningful” life, died early Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie died of old age, her manager, Marion Rosenberg, told The Associated Press via email, adding that she was “a superb talent and a wonderful human being.”

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was quickly given a contract with Universal-International, a new name that she hated and a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, among others.

She went on to receive Academy Award nominations for three distinct films: The 1961 poolroom drama “The Hustler”; the film version of Stephen King’s horror classic “Carrie,” in 1976; and the romantic drama “Children of a Lesser God,” in 1986. She also appeared in several acclaimed roles on television and the stage, including in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” in the 1990s as the villainous Catherine Martell.

Laurie made her debut at 17 in “Louisa,” playing Reagan’s daughter, then appeared opposite Francis the talking mule in “Francis Goes to the Races.” She made several films with Curtis, whom she once dated, including “The Prince Who Was a Thief,” “No Room for the Groom,” “Son of Ali Baba” and “Johnny Dark.”