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

Hamas releases third group of hostages as part of truce, and says it will seek to extend the deal

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was back on track Sunday as the militants freed 17 more hostages, including 14 Israelis and the first American, in a third exchange under a four-day truce that the U.S. said it hoped would be extended. In turn, Israel released 39 Palestinian prisoners.

Most hostages were handed over directly to Israel, waving to a cheering crowd as they arrived at an air force base. Others left through Egypt. Israel’s army said one was airlifted to a hospital, and the director of Soroka Medical Center said Elma Avraham, 84, was in life-threatening condition as “a result of an extended period of time when an elderly woman was not taken care of as needed.”

The youngest hostage released was Abigail Edan, a 4-year-old girl and dual Israeli-American citizen whose parents were killed in the Hamas attack that started the war on Oct. 7. “What she endured was unthinkable,” Biden said of the first American freed under the truce. He did not know her condition and did not provide updates on other American hostages. Biden said his goal was to extend the cease-fire deal as long as possible.

In all, nine children ages 17 and younger were on the list, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Three more Thai nationals were released. Separately, Hamas said it released a Russian hostage “in response to the efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

The three Thai nationals were undergoing health checks at a medical center in Israel and brought the total number of Thai hostages released to 17, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said. The ministry said it is pursuing efforts for the safe release of 15 remaining Thai hostages. Thais working in Israel are mostly employed as semi-skilled farm laborers, at wages considerably higher than those at they can earn at home.

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Irregular meals, benches as beds. As freed hostages return to Israel, details of captivity emerge

JERUSALEM (AP) — Plastic chairs as beds. Meals of bread and rice. Hours spent waiting for the bathroom. As former hostages return to Israel after seven weeks of Hamas captivity, information about the conditions of their confinement has emerged.

The 58 hostages freed under a cease-fire deal over the past three days have largely stayed out of the public eye, with most still in hospitals.

Nearly two months after Hamas militants dragged them into Gaza during a bloody cross-border attack on Israel that also killed 1,200 people, most freed hostages appear to be in stable physical condition.

Information about the conditions of their captivity has been tightly controlled, but family members of the released hostages have begun to share details about their loved ones’ experiences.

Merav Raviv, whose three relatives were released by Hamas on Friday, said they had been fed irregularly and had eaten mainly rice and bread. She said her cousin and aunt, Keren and Ruth Munder, had each lost around 7 kilograms (15 pounds) in just 50 days.

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Attackers release Israel-linked tanker seized off Yemen in third such assault in Israel-Hamas war

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen came near a U.S. warship after it aided a tanker that had been seized in the Gulf of Aden, the U.S. military said Monday, raising the stakes amid a series of ship attacks linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

A statement from U.S. Central Command said the missiles splashed down in the water some 10 miles (16 kilometers) away from the USS Mason as it aided the tanker Central Park.

“There was no damage or reported injuries from either vessel during this incident,” Central Command said.

The Houthis did not immediately acknowledge the attack.

Central Command also said it apprehended five armed attackers who targeted the Central Park.

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Republicans want to pair border security with aid for Ukraine. Here’s why that makes a deal so tough

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Congress returns to session this week, lawmakers will be trying to forge an agreement on sending a new round of wartime assistance to Ukraine. But to succeed, they will have to find agreement on an issue that has confounded them for decades.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress have made clear that they will not support additional aid for Ukraine unless it is paired with border security measures to help manage the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their demand has injected one of the most contentious issues in American politics into a foreign policy debate that was already difficult.

Time is short for a deal.

A small, bipartisan group in the Senate is taking the lead and working to find a narrow compromise that can overcome a likely filibuster by winning 60 votes. But even if they can reach a modest agreement, there is no guarantee it would pass the House, where Republicans are insisting on wholesale changes to U.S. border and immigration policies.

Republicans hope that Democrats will feel political pressure to accept some of their border proposals after illegal crossings topped a daily average of more than 8,000 earlier this fall. President Joe Biden, who is running for reelection next year, has faced pressure even from fellow Democrats over the migrant flow.

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Dead, wounded or AWOL: The voices of desperate Russian soldiers trying to get out of the Ukraine war

In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.

As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.

“There’s no f—— ‘dying the death of the brave’ here,” one soldier told his brother from the front in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “You just die like a f—— earthworm.”

The prospect of another wave of mobilization lingers, even as Moscow has been trying to lure people into signing contracts with the military. Russia’s annual autumn conscription draft kicked off in October, pulling in some 130,000 fresh young men. Though Moscow says conscripts won’t be sent to Ukraine, after a year of service they automatically become reservists — prime candidates for mobilization.

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3 men of Palestinian descent attending holiday gathering shot, injured near University of Vermont

Three young men of Palestinian descent who were in Burlington for a Thanksgiving holiday gathering were shot and injured — one seriously — near the University of Vermont, police said Sunday. Authorities said the attack may have been a hate crime.

Police are searching for the shooting suspect after the attack, which occurred at about 6:25 p.m. Saturday near the UVM campus, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said.

Two of the men are in stable condition and the other suffered “much more serious injuries,” Murad said Sunday. The three, all age 20, were visiting the home of one of the victim’s relatives and were walking when they were confronted by a white man with a handgun.

“Without speaking, he discharged at least four rounds from the pistol and is believed to have fled,” Murad said in a news release. “All three victims were struck, two in their torsos and one in the lower extremities.”

Murad said all three men are of Palestinian descent and expressed deepest sympathies for the men and their families. Two are U.S. citizens and one is a legal resident. Two of the men were wearing the black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves.

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Schools in Portland, Oregon, reach tentative deal with teachers union after nearly month-long strike

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s largest school district said late Sunday it had reached a tentative agreement with its teachers union and roughly 45,000 students would be back in school Monday after more than three weeks without classes.

The agreement must still be voted on by teachers who have been on the picket line since Nov. 1 over issues of pay, class sizes and planning time. It must also be approved by the school board, but the union agreed that classes could resume while those votes go forward. Portland Public Schools students missed 11 days of school before the district began its weeklong Thanksgiving break.

“We are relieved to have our students returning to school and know that being out of school for the last three weeks — missing classmates, teachers and learning — has been hard for everyone,” Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero said in a statement.

The teachers’ union said the tentative deal was a big win for teachers and students alike in areas of classroom size, teachers salaries, health and safety and mental health supports for children still struggling from the pandemic. Students will make up missed school days by cutting a week off winter break and adding days in the new year.

“This contract is a watershed moment for Portland students, families, and educators” said Portland Teachers Association President Angela Bonilla. “Educators have secured improvements on all our key issues. … Educators walked picket lines alongside families, students, and allies – and because of that, our schools are getting the added investment they need.”

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Christopher Luxon sworn in as New Zealand prime minister, says priority is to improve economy

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Christopher Luxon was sworn in as New Zealand’s prime minister on Monday and said his top priority was to improve the economy.

The 53-year-old former businessman leads a conservative coalition after his National Party struck a deal Friday with two smaller parties following a general election last month.

After the swearing-in ceremony, which was presided over by Governor-General Cindy Kiro, Luxon told reporters the job was an “awesome responsibility.”

He said he would hold his first Cabinet meeting Tuesday and look to quickly finalize a 100-day plan. He said he also planned a visit to Australia before Christmas Day.

Luxon said he needed to get a Treasury briefing on the state of the government’s finances.

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Court document claims Meta knowingly designed its platforms to hook kids, reports say

SAN FRANCISO (AP) — Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew — but never disclosed — that it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint described in reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The complaint, originally made public in redacted form, was the opening salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.

According to the reports, Meta said in a statement that the complaint misrepresents its work over the past decade to make the online experience safe for teens and said it doesn’t design its products to be addictive to younger users. Meta didn’t immediately provide a comment on the unredacted complaint following a request from The Associated Press.

Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging that the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology such as impulsive behavior, susceptibility to peer pressure and the underestimation of risks, according to the reports. Others acknowledged that Facebook and Instagram were also popular with children under age 13, who, per company policy, were not allowed to use the service.

One Facebook safety executive alluded to the possibility that cracking down on younger users might hurt the company’s business in a 2019 email, according to the Journal report. But a year later the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the usage of underage users for business reasons, it didn’t show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify younger kids and remove them from its platforms.

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Artist Zeng Fanzhi depicts ‘zero-COVID’ after a lifetime of service to the Chinese state

SHENZHEN, China (AP) — In one painting, a child sits, mouth wide open, as a worker in white medical garb extends a long cotton swab toward her tonsils. In another, a masked officer and medical workers stand guard in front of an apartment cordoned off with ropes and seals reading “CLOSED,” as residents look on with frustration and despair.

These are some of the portraits that Zeng Fanzhi, 85, has painted to commemorate three years of China’s strict “zero-COVID” controls, which sparked nationwide protests a year ago. But Zeng, a retired architect living in Shenzhen, is not a harsh critic of the measures, under which millions of people were tested, locked in apartments, or carried off to quarantine centers.

Zeng has spent much of his life in service to the Chinese state, designing monuments in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and coal plants for the Ministry of Coal. He’s a member of Shenzhen’s state-sponsored artist’s association and his paintings feature on stamps and win prizes.

The artist has a different perspective from the young protesters — one shaped by early years in China living through war and revolution, and later years witnessing decades of prosperity and growth. To Zeng, China’s adherence to “zero-COVID” controls was necessary, and its people’s adherence to it heroic.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping “says that artistic creation must be from ‘The People’s Standpoint,’” Zeng says, explaining his focus on ordinary people. “This means art should reflect the reality of people’s lives. The subjects of my paintings are aligned with this direction.”