Author: CNN

Israel is gearing up for the next stage of its war on Hamas, following the Palestinian militant group’s brutal October 7 attacks that killed 1,400 people.

Following a week of unprecedented airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which have killed more than 2,600 people, Israel is massing troops and military equipment on its border with the Hamas-controlled enclave. It has warned some 1.1 million people in the northern half of the strip to evacuate, according to the United Nations.

As Israel prepares for a ground offensive into Gaza, here’s what you need to know about the 140 square-mile territory – one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth.

What is Gaza? Gaza is a narrow strip of land, only about 25 miles long and seven miles wide – just over twice the size of Washington DC.

To its west lies the Mediterranean Sea, to its north and east is Israel, and Egypt is to its south.

It is one of two Palestinian territories, the other being the larger, Israeli-occupied West Bank, which borders Jordan.

Who lives there? Around 2 million people are crammed into the 140-square-mile territory. The overwhelming majority of people are young, with 50% of the population under the age of 18, according to the World Health Organization.

Nearly all of Gazans – 98-99% – are Muslim, according to the CIA World Factbook, with most of the rest Christians.

More than 1 million of Gaza’s residents are refugees, with eight recognized Palestinian refugee camps, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Hamas has held the territory for years: In 2006, Hamas won a landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections – the last polls to be held in Gaza.

Hamas is an Islamist organization with a military wing that formed in 1987, emerging out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist group that was founded in the late 1920s in Egypt.

The group considers Israel to be an illegitimate state and an occupying power in Gaza. Unlike other Palestinian groups, such as the Palestinian Authority, Hamas refuses to engage with Israel.

The group has claimed responsibility for many attacks on Israel over the years and has been designated as a terrorist organization by countries including the United States, the European Union and Israel. The last war between Hamas and Israel was in 2021, which lasted for 11 days and killed at least 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.

Israel’s enduring blockade: Despite Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, since 2007 it has maintained tight control over the territory through a land, air and sea blockade. For nearly 17 years, Gaza has been almost totally cut off from the rest of the world, with severe restrictions on the movement of goods and people.

The blockade has been fiercely criticized by international bodies including the UN, which said in a 2022 report that restrictions have had a “profound impact” on living conditions in Gaza and have “undermined Gaza’s economy, resulting in high unemployment, food insecurity and aid dependency.”

Israel has said the blockade is vital to protect its citizens from Hamas.

You can read much more about Gaza here, including details about Hamas, the territory’s history, and living conditions in the enclave.

CNN
 — 

Suzanne Somers, the actress who lit up the small screen on “Three’s Company” and one of TV’s most iconic fitness pitchwomen, has died, according to a statement provided to CNN from her longtime publicist R. Couri Hay.

She was 76.

“Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15th. She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for over 23 years,” Hay wrote in a statement shared on behalf of the actress’ family.

The statement said Somers “was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce, and her immediate family.”

“Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th. Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly,” the statement added.

In July, Somers revealed a recurrence of breast cancer.

“Since I have been taking time off from work, many of you have asked for more details about my health. As you know, I had breast cancer two decades ago, and every now and then it pops up again, and I continue to bat it down,” she wrote on Instagram. “This is not new territory for me. I know how to put on my battle gear and I’m a fighter.”

She was first diagnosed with the disease in 2001, she revealed in an interview with Larry King.

Somers’ multifaceted career spanned decades, but she was best known for her role as Chrissy Snow on the hit ABC sitcom “Three’s Company” that ran through the late ’70s and early ‘80s.

She went on to author multiple books, including Bestsellers “Sexy Forever,” “Knockout” and “Ageless.” She also hosted her own talk show and became a wellness entrepreneur, built largely off the success of her famous partnership with ThighMaster, which turned her into something of a fitness icon.

Somers began acting in the early 1960s with a series of uncredited film roles. In 1973, she earned her first on-screen credit as “blonde in a T-Bird” in George Lucas’s Oscar nominated film “American Graffiti.”

Throughout the early ’70s, Somers appeared in various TV shows including “One Day at a Time,” “The Love Boat” and “Starsky and Hutch” before landing her breakout role as Snow.

Starring alongside the late John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt, Somers played the buoyant typing receptionist for five seasons between 1977 and 1981. The sitcom was a huge success and catapulted Somers into stardom.

“Being on the No. 1 show in the country, there was a collective consciousness because about half of everybody watching television on Tuesday nights were watching Three’s company,” she said in 2015 during a CNN interview. “I feel very fortunate that I got in at that moment in time.”

Somers said she worked hard to bring dimension to her bubbly blonde character in a 2012 interview.

“I understood something way back when I was on ‘Three’s Company.’ When I got the part I was flat broke, I was so happy to get the part but I kept thinking, ugh dumb blondes are so irritating, how do I make her likable? I think that I achieved that. It took a while for people to realize I was acting.”

Her time on “Three’s Company” ended in 1981 after Somers had asked producers for a raise to match Ritter’s salary the year prior.

“I did not plan to be this person. I really liked being Chrissy Snow on TV. I didn’t plan to be the unofficial first feminist when I demanded equal pay,” she told Entrepreneur in 2020, adding, “Men were all making 10 to 15 times more than me, including John Ritter, and the network decided to make an example of me so that no other woman would have the audacity to ask for parity. I lost that great job and I was so devastated at the time, but life is about veiled gifts. I was suddenly kicked out on the streets, but I kept reinventing myself, and my husband and I decided we wouldn’t work for anyone ever again.”

She went on to become a popular entertainer in Las Vegas following her exit from the sitcom. In 1987, Somers was named Las Vegas Female Entertainer of the Year alongside Frank Sinatra.

“What was it unfair what happened to me at ABC? Yep. It was unfair, but life isn’t fair and you have to get over things and move forward,” she said.

Somers later starred as Sheriff Hildy Granger in the comedic TV series “She’s the Sheriff” from 1987 to 1989. In the 1990s, Somers appeared in various TV movies and as a guest star on TV shows, including “Full House,” the “Larry Sanders Show” and “The Simpsons.”

In 1991, that scripted TV magic Somers found in “Three’s Company” struck again, as the actress landed the role of Carol Foster Lambert in the family-friendly ABC sitcom “Step by Step.” Somers appeared as Lambert on the show until 1998.

She also hosted her popular namesake morning talk show, “The Suzanne Show,” on Lifetime, where she covered emerging trends in health and wellness.

A focus on health and family

Outside of her acting career, Somers focused her energy in the wellness space. Doubling as a fitness personality in the ’90s, Somers starred in the infomercial for at-home workout device the ThighMaster.

Somers recalled in an interview years later that the concept for the infomercial was inspired by a new pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes she was showing off to her husband at the time.

“I walked out of my dressing room in my underwear and I said to my husband, ‘Like my new shoes?’ And he said, ‘Great legs!’ And I went, ‘Oh my God, that’s the commercial!’ That’s how we started the commercial if you recall,” Somer said, adding they went on to sell “10 million ThighMasters right out of the gate.”

Somers authored more than two dozen wellness books, many of which became New York Times best sellers. In recent years, she partnered on several natural beauty products.

Somers spoke and wrote often about growing older without fear.

“Today I love aging, because I have found a new way to age,” she told Palm Springs Life in 2015. “My weight is what it was in my 20s, and since doing ‘Dancing With the Stars’ this season, my body has changed for the better. Alan says it’s like having a mistress,” Somers joked. “And I am OK with it.”

Married for five decades, Somers and Hamel remained very much and love and the two took great pride in their family.

“Other than that,” she said, “my work in health is my greatest accomplishment.”

New York
CNN
 — 

Two weeks into what could be a four-to-six-week trial, jurors hearing the case against fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried have been inundated with evidence that looks, for now, pretty damning.

While the defense has yet to call its own witnesses, it has stumbled frequently in cross-examining the government’s, several of whose testimony placed Bankman-Fried at the center of a yearslong conspiracy to steal from customers, defraud investors and bend over backwards to cover it all up.

Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He’s been accused of stealing billions of dollars in deposits from customers of his FTX crypto exchange in order to cover losses at his other firm, a crypto trading house called Alameda Research.

The prosecutors brought out their big guns in week two of the trial. Here are the highlights.

By far the most significant witness for the prosecution is a 28-year-old named Caroline Ellison, who was the CEO of Alameda at the time it collapsed and also dated Bankman-Fried on and off for two years.

“In a case like this, you really need a narrator — somebody who can tell the story in a way that the jury can understand,” said Jordan Estes, a former federal prosecutor with the US Attorney’s Office who is now a partner at Kramer Levin. “And the best narrator, in any sort of criminal scheme is the person closest to the defendant … She was the ultimate insider.”

Her testimony, which stretched over three days, was important for a few reasons.

Bottom line: Her testimony offered a narrative of events in which virtually every decision at both Alameda and FTX came down to Bankman-Fried, who founded and was the majority owner of both firms. A common refrain from Ellison, when asked who directed her to carry out various actions, criminal or otherwise, was a variation on the words “Sam did.”

To be clear, Ellison has pleaded guilty and has been cooperating with prosecutors for nearly a year in the hopes of securing a lighter sentence for herself. Like Bankman-Fried, Ellison faces the prospect of 110 years in prison if given a maximum sentence.

Bankman-Fried’s defense team cross-examined Ellison for about six hours on Thursday in a meandering, halting back-and-forth that repeatedly prompted objections from the prosecution. At times, Judge Lewis Kaplan sounded exasperated and interrupted to ask lead defense counsel Mark Cohen to clarify what he meant.

Jurors later heard from a former software developer at Alameda named Christian Drappi, who recounted an all-hands meeting at the firm’s Hong Kong office on November 9, two days before the entire business folded.

Ellison led the meeting, which, unbeknownst to her, was being recorded by a trader who joined Alameda just three days earlier. In responding to an employee’s question, Ellison says the decision to repay loans with customer funds was “Sam’s, I guess.”

The recording is particularly important because of the timing.

Statements like the ones Ellison made in the recording are known as “prior consistent statements of a witness,” Estes said. “They’re very effective, because they show statements that are consistent with the witness’s testimony before they’ve ever been approached by law enforcement.”

In other words, Bankman-Fried’s defense would have a hard time arguing that Ellison had been coerced by prosecutors or fed a false narrative, because the tape has her both admitting wrongdoing and stating that Bankman-Fried made the call before anyone was arrested.

Chinese bribes and ‘Thai prostitutes’

Although Bankman-Fried doesn’t face bribery charges in this trial, Ellison was allowed to testify about an instance when she believes he ordered Alameda to wire “in the ballpark of $100 million” to two crypto wallets in China. She said she believed the funds were a bribe to get Chinese officials to unfreeze two crypto trading accounts worth about $1 billion that Alameda held in China.

She described the payments as a last resort after other tactics to move the funds out of China failed. One of those failed schemes, she said, involved using accounts belonging to “Thai prostitutes” to set up trades that would drain Alameda’s China accounts and transfer value to the sex workers’ accounts, where Alameda could reclaim them.

The biggest question now is whether Bankman-Fried will testify in his own defense.

In a case where the prosecution’s evidence has been strong, said Estes, that’s a Hail Mary that can “absolutely change the dynamic of a trial.”

Whether or not to testify is case-dependent, and there are risks either way. But “if you have not gotten out your side of the story through cross examination, then that may be one of your only avenues to do it.”

Prosecutors had expected to finish presenting their case around October 25, though there’s at least a decent chance they cull their list of witnesses and wrap sooner.

“There’s a common government strategy called ‘thin to win,’” Estes told CNN. “If you’ve got out most of the evidence of the fraud and the exhibits you need, then there’s sort of only danger in adding more.”

CNN
 — 

A number of House Republicans are in talks to block Rep. Jim Jordan’s path to the speakership as the Ohio Republican tries to force a floor vote on Tuesday, according to multiple GOP sources.

One senior Republican House member who is part of the opposition to Jordan told CNN that there he believes there are roughly 40 “no” votes, and that he has personally spoken to 20 members who are willing to go to the floor and block Jordan’s path if the Ohio Republican forces a roll-call vote on Tuesday.

“The approximately 20 I’ve talked to know we must be prepared,” the member said. “We cannot let the small group dictate to the whole group. They want a minority of the majority to dictate and as a red-blooded American I refuse to be a victim.”

‘I’m getting freaking tired of it’: GOP lawmakers publicly air frustration over speaker fight

But another GOP source familiar with the matter said that Jordan has had positive conversations with members and believes by Tuesday evening he will be elected speaker of the House. The House is expected to hold a vote for the next speaker on Tuesday at noon, according to an email from House Minority Whip Katherine Clark obtained by CNN.
The GOP source said that Jordan may decide to go to multiple ballots on the floor if necessary.

Republicans are expected to meet behind closed doors Monday evening.

Republican’s claim about Jim Jordan stuns Jake Tapper

Yet there is still sizable opposition to Jordan. The GOP member says there are some Republicans who are critics of Jordan and not willing to back him – and there are others angry at the hardliners who took out Kevin McCarthy and sunk Majority Leader Steve Scalise and don’t want to reward those moves by electing Jordan, who is their preferred candidate.

“I know of many hard nos. …We can’t reward this behavior,” the GOP lawmaker said. “We can’t let a small group be dictators.”

The Republican conference nominated Jordan as speaker last week after Scalise dropped his bid for the role. Scalise had initially been selected by the conference as its nominee – after he defeated Jordan 113-99 in the conference’s first speaker vote – but more than a dozen Republicans said they would not vote for Scalise, forcing him to withdraw.

Now Jordan is facing the same problem from Republicans angry at McCarthy’s ouster and a small faction of the conference refusing to get behind Scalise after he won the first vote. After Jordan’s nomination, he held a second, secret vote in the conference on whether Republicans would support him on the floor. Fifty-five Republicans voted no.

What’s going on with the House GOP? It starts with this number

To be elected speaker, a nominee must win the majority of the full House, which is currently 217 votes due to two vacancies. That means Jordan or any other Republican nominee can only afford to lose four GOP votes on the floor if every Democrat votes for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Some of Jordan’s allies have pushed for votes on the floor in order to try to call out the holdouts who aren’t behind the Ohio Republican. But Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas railed against his House GOP colleagues who plan on rallying support for Jordan’s speakership through a public pressure campaign, calling it “the dumbest thing you can do.”

“That is the dumbest way to support Jordan,” Crenshaw told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “As someone who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN
 — 

“Saturday Night Live” host Pete Davidson addressed “the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza” in deeply personal remarks during the opening minutes of the long-running sketch show’s new episode.

Davidson’s emotional comments particularly focused on the children who have suffered as a result of the conflict.

Davidson spoke about his personal connection to coping with tragedy and terrorism after his father, Scott Davidson, a New York City firefighter, died in the 9/11 attacks.

Read his full statement below.

This week, we saw the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza. And, I know what you’re thinking, who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson? (laughter)

Well, in a lot of ways, I am a good person to talk about it because when I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack. So, I know something about what that’s like.

I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering – Israeli children and Palestinian children – and it took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. No one in this world deserves to suffer, especially not kids.

After my dad died, my mom tried pretty much everything she could do to cheer me up. I remember one day when I was eight, she got me what she thought was a Disney movie but it was actually the Eddie Murphy stand up special, “Delirious.” We played it in the car on the way home and when she heard the things that Eddie Murphy was saying, she tried to take it away. But then she noticed something, for the first time in a long time I was laughing again.

I don’t understand it. I really don’t. I never will. But sometimes comedy is really the only way forward from tragedy.

My heart is with everyone whose lives have been destroyed this week. But tonight I’m going to do what I’ve always done in the face of tragedy and that’s try to be funny. Remember, I said try. And live from New York, it’s Saturday Night.

“SNL” returned with Davidson as the host after a months-long delay due to the writers’ strike. Davidson was scheduled to host in May before the strike commenced.

CNN
 — 

In Columbus, Ohio, a 59-year-old cardiologist locked himself in his office to cry as he awaited news about his siblings and much of his extended family caught in the continual bombing in Gaza.

“It’s just too much to see, too much to tolerate,” Dr. Aref Abou-Amro said. “Just too much.”

In Austin, Texas, a 47-year-old event production manager has mounted a one-man media campaign to try to find to find his aunt, his cousin and her two daughters, ages 2 and 4.

He did a double take, he said, at an online video showing the women and the girls being taken by militants during the unprecedented Hamas operation that quickly spiraled into the deadliest attack on Israel in 50 years.

“It’s hard to sleep until you are absolutely exhausted,” Dori Roberts said. “But our mission is to keep their story alive… until hopefully we learn they’re free and back home.”

For Israelis and Palestinians alike, the world has been upended in a matter of days. For them, along with anxious loved ones across the United States, a terrifying new reality is starting to set in: A sense of impending doom, loss and uncertainty.

“We’re walking on that very thin line between madness and sanity… It’s been a very hard, emotional journey,” Roberts said.

It’s been seven days since Hamas’ massive assault on Israel, which killed more than 1,300 people and led to the capture of civilian and military hostages now believed to be held in Gaza.

The surprise attack saw waves of heavily armed Hamas fighters rampage through rural Israeli towns, kibbutzim and army bases. More than 100 people were taken hostage by militants.

Israel, in response, ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, including cutting off food, water and fuel, while unleashing its heaviest ever airstrikes on the blockaded enclave.

“This is only the beginning,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Friday night, adding, “We will destroy Hamas.”

The Israel Defense Forces warned more than 1 million residents in northern Gaza to evacuate. It massed troops and military equipment at the border as relentless airstrikes rained down on the territory. Already, more than 400,000 Palestinians had been internally displaced in a week of fighting.

At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Saturday. That toll includes 724 children. A hospital in Gaza had to use ice cream trucks as makeshift morgues because of the growing number of bodies.

Sleepless nights, thousands of miles away

Thousands of miles from the carnage, in Ohio, Abou-Amro described the anguish of watching from afar as the already hard lives of his loved ones – including three sisters and a brother who’s an American citizen – suddenly took a turn for the worse.

Three times, he said, one sister had been warned to move ahead of Israeli shelling — only to be told to move again after going to a place she thought was safe. Now, the sister, his 80-year-old brother and about 400 other people are camped out at a family property in Al-Zawida, a village around 10 miles south of Gaza City. Other relatives are sheltering elsewhere. They are constantly on the move. He described watching the TV news and scrolling web pages.

“We see these images. You cannot imagine how painful these are. And then I sit in my office, just crying, and thinking of these kids and then my kids – just so sad,” said Abou-Amro, an American citizen who left Gaza in 1982 and moved to US in 1991. “We had wars in Gaza … before but nothing like this. We have never seen something like today.”

Abou-Amro and others spoke of sleepless nights that leave their eyes red from exhaustion and worry. They described the despair after each futile attempt to reach loved ones.

“I had some patients to see and my manager came to me… and he said, ‘You look tired. What can I do?’ For me, that support is enough. I find it easier for me to work a bit than to sit and watch the news,” he said.

On Friday he shut the door to his office for a moment to cry.

“I just couldn’t handle it,” he said. “Really, you know, it’s just too much. These people, innocent people living there — they did nothing wrong. They want to live and they want to live like us. They want to be healthy, have a good future, have a good life. They love life and they want to live.”

Communication is rare – and brief

In Chicago, 34-year-old health care data scientist Yahia Abuhashem thinks of nothing but his parents, four siblings, and 12 nephews and nieces back in Gaza.

“It’s been the most difficult week of my entire life and probably theirs too,” said Abuhashem, who moved to the US 15 years ago and earned a PhD in applied economics. “I have not slept. I haven’t been able to work. Every day is harder and more unimaginable than the day before.”

His relatives are now scattered in three different neighborhoods in Gaza.

“My sister went and stayed with my other sister, and between them they have five to six kids,” Abuhashem said. “And then one of my brothers took my dad and my other brother took my mom. My parents are 70 years old.”

It’s hard to keep track of their whereabouts, he said. Communication is spotty. Some days, Abuhashem said, he spends hours trying to make contact and, when he finally reaches them, they only speak for a few seconds to conserve power on their phones.

“You’re just like, ‘Hey, everyone alive? Everyone alive. Okay.’ That’s literally it,” he said. “That’s as good as it gets over there right now – just to be alive. There’s no time to ask whether mom has her medicine or she has batteries for her hearing aid.”

Abuhashem, who recently became a US citizen, said his heart is constantly pounding “like it’s going to explode.”

“I have a five-month-old daughter that I haven’t paid any attention to since Friday night. Every time I see her I break down. I immediately think of all these images of babies in pieces.”

In Austin, Roberts, the event production manager, said he is solely focused on getting out the story of his 67-year-old aunt, Efrat Katz, his 34-year-old cousin, Doron Katz Asher, and her two daughters, Aviv and Raz. A week ago he received a video posted to social media showing the two women and the girls being taken hostage by militants in the southern Israel kibbutz of Nir Oz.

“She looked so horrified, confused and shocked,” he said of his aunt in the video.

His aunt’s 79-year-old partner and another relative also were taken hostage, Roberts said.

“Those endless thoughts about, ‘Where are they? How are they doing? What are they going through every minute of the day?’ That can really drive you insane,” said Roberts.

“You wake up with nightmares. You always have their face in your mind. Your trying to stay away from the videos popping up on social media.”

Roberts said he was in Israel a couple of months ago for his mother’s funeral and his aunt, his cousin and the two girls, and other relatives surrounded him with support.

“I talk to my family, to my two girls about what’s going, and we’re just understanding the magnitude of this thing. It’s just so overwhelming,” said Roberts, who has been speaking virtually nonstop to media outlets about his family and the other hostages. “Our mission now is to bring them back home.”

In Massachusetts, Jason Greenberg recalled that it was just one week ago that he was in Israel visiting his father, sister and other relatives when he awoke to sirens just north of Tel Aviv.

Later that Saturday morning, there was a flurry of text messages between Greenberg’s aunt, Carmela Dan, and her children.

Dan, 80, her 50-year-old son-in-law and three of her grandchildren – ages 12 to 16 – had taken shelter in their home in Nir Oz just a few miles from the border with Gaza.

“They had gone to their shelter and their safe room and that they heard gunfire, and they heard shouting. And … they smelled smoke,” Greenberg said of the messages.

One last message read: “We hear them. They’re coming.”

The family’s house was set ablaze, Greenberg said. They were taken hostage.

His five family members – four cousins and his aunt – stopped responding to the family’s WhatsApp group at some point. A 22-second video later surfaced of his 12-year-old cousin being abducted by Hamas.

The children’s mother was not with the family at the time, Greenberg said.

With the situation in Israel escalating, Greenberg said, he managed to book a flight to Rome the next morning. He took his 79-year-old father, who is a dual US-Israeli citizen, with him to Massachusetts.

“Despair, horror, helplessness,” Greenberg said of how he felt after learning about the fate of his family members.

“I wish I could say that there was hopefulness or any optimism, but that’s just not the case. From from the outset, I just wasn’t really able to see a silver lining or this ending well for them.”

Tokyo, Japan
CNN
 — 

Japan’s government on Friday asked a court to order the dissolution of the Unification Church branch in Japan following the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022.

The government’s move comes after a months-long probe into the church, formally known in Japan as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The investigation followed claims by the suspected shooter, Tetsuya Yamagami, that he fatally shot Abe because he believed the leader was associated with the church, which Yamagami blamed for bankrupting his family through the excessive donations of his mother, a member.

Earlier in January, Japanese prosecutors indicted Yamagami on murder and firearm charges.

The government’s investigation concluded that the group’s practices – including fund-raising activities that allegedly pressured followers to make exorbitant donations – violated the 1951 Religious Corporations Act.

That law allows Japanese courts to order the dissolution of a religious group if it has committed an act “clearly found to harm public welfare substantially.”

The Tokyo District Court will now make a judgment based on the evidence submitted by the government, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

This is the third time the Japanese government has sought a dissolution order for a religious group accused of violating the act.

It also sought to dissolve the Aum Shinrikyo cult, after some of its members carried out a deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, which left dozens dead and thousands injured, and Myokaku-ji Temple, whose priests defrauded people by charging them for exorcisms. The courts ruled with the government on both orders.

The Unification Church in Japan has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, pledging reform and labeling the news coverage against it as “biased” and “fake.”

On Thursday, it issued a statement, saying it was “very regrettable” that the government was seeking the dissolution order, particularly as it had been “working on reforming the church” since 2009. It added that it would make legal counterarguments against the order in court.

If disbanded, the Unification Church, founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954, would lose its status as a religious corporation in Japan and be deprived of tax benefits. However, it could still operate as a corporate entity.

Experts argue that an order to disband the group completely could take years to process and could even risk pushing the entity’s activities underground.

Police have theory about what motivated Shinzo Abe murder suspect

The Unification Church became known worldwide for mass weddings, in which thousands of couples get married simultaneously, with some brides and grooms meeting their betrothed for the first time on their wedding day.

Public scrutiny of the church in Japan increased after Abe was fatally shot during an election campaign speech last July.

Abe’s alleged assailant told police that his family had been ruined because of the huge donations his mother made to a religious group, which he alleged had close ties to the late former prime minister, according to NHK.

A spokesperson for the Unification Church confirmed to reporters in Tokyo that the suspect’s mother was a member, Reuters reported, but said neither Abe nor the suspected killer were members.

Following Abe’s death local media carried a series of reports claiming various other lawmakers of the country’s ruling party had links to the church, prompting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to order an investigation.

Kishida told reporters Thursday that ruling party lawmakers had cut ties with the religious group, amid concerns that the Unification Church had been trying to wield political influence.

Since last November, Japan’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs has questioned and sought to obtain documents from the Unification Church while also collecting testimonies from around 170 people who say they were pressured into making massive donations known in Japan as “spiritual sales.”

The practice involves asking followers to buy objects like urns and amulets on the grounds that doing so will appease their ancestors and save future generations, according to Sakurai Yoshihid, a religious studies expert at Hokkaido University.

CNN has contacted the Unification Church for an official comment but has not yet heard back.

This is not the first time the Unification Church has been at the center of a controversy.

Naomi Honma, a former Unification Church member, told CNN that between 1991 and 2003, she worked on a legal case called “Give Us Back Our Youth,” a lawsuit that alleged the Unification Church had used deceptive and manipulative techniques to recruit unsuspecting members of the public.

This, they argued, had the potential to violate the freedom of thought and conscience upheld by Article 20 of Japan’s constitution.

After a 14-year trial, multiple plaintiff testimonies and a 999-page report outlining the “mind control” process of the group, the trial had its moment.

The Sapporo District Court made a landmark ruling in favor of 20 former Unification Church members who had sued the group as part of the case. It ordered the Unification Church to pay roughly 29.5 million yen ($200,000) in damages for recruiting and indoctrinating people “while hiding the church’s true identity” and for “coercing some former members into purchasing expensive items and donating large amounts of money.”

In a separate controversy, between 1987 and 2021, the Unification Church in Japan incurred claims for damages over the sale of amulets and urns that totaled around $1 billion, according to the National Lawyers Network against Spiritual Sales – a group established in 1987 specifically to oppose the Unification Church.

Nobutaka Inoue, an expert on contemporary Japanese religion at Kokugakuin University, is critical of the techniques used by the church to recruit and raise funds. However, he also notes that some of its members felt happy and at peace after making donations to the Unification Church.

Some critics of the Unification Church say the government’s actions don’t go far enough as it could still operate as a non-religious group. One option for the government would be to seek a court order stripping the church of its corporate status, too, but experts say that could take up to two years to process.

Sakurai, the religious studies expert, cautioned that if the Unification Church loses its status as a religious corporation, it would no longer be under the control of Japan’s Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, making it harder to regulate its activities.

Sakurai pointed to the case of Aum, noting that after the sarin gas attack the Japanese government revoked recognition of the group as a religious organization but continued to regulate it through a new law passed in 1999 that authorized continued police surveillance of its activities.

But making a new law that would allow the government to continue to watch over the Unification Church’s activities – even if one could be passed – would not work as well, Sakurai warned.

“(Aum) only numbers over 1,200 members or so; however, the Unification Church has penetrated many layers of Japan’s society – some members are housewives, some work in factories, others are teachers, so the police cannot watch all the movements or activities of the Unification Church,” Sakurai said.

Some experts say Japan needs to do more to educate the public about non-traditional religions, which some see as having a rising influence in society.

Kimiaki Nishida, a social psychologist and chairman of the Japan Society for Cult Prevention and Recovery (JSCPR), pointed out that state and religion were separated in Japan following World War II, and the new constitution forbade teaching religious studies at school.

This made religion essentially a taboo topic, Nishida said, and to this day, religious education is not provided at elementary, junior, or high schools in Japan, unlike in most EU member states.

This, according to Toshiyuki Tachikake, a professor at Osaka University specializing in cult countermeasures since 2009, has left students – particularly at university campuses – vulnerable to being pressured into recruitment.

He and other experts say more should be done to educate young Japanese about religion.

“We need religious education in schools. Giving someone a broad understanding of different religions and their teachings allows them to make an informed decision on whether they want to join a certain group if a recruiter ever approached them,” said Tachikake.

CNN
 — 

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conceded his Labour party lost Saturday’s election, as voters punished the government and took the country rightwards nine months after his predecessor Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned.

The rising cost of living dominated campaigning with voters New Zealanders ending six years of Labour Party rule, the latter half of which was dominated by the country’s strict response to the coronavirus pandemic that successfully kept infections low but battered the economy.

With more than 98% of votes counted, the center-right National Party, led by former airline executive Christopher Luxon, had amassed around 40% of ballots, according to New Zealand’s Electoral Commission.

A dejected Hipkins told supporters that Labour did not have enough votes to form a government.

“The result tonight is not one that any of us wanted,” he said, according to RNZ. “I gave it my all to turn the tide of history but alas, it was not enough.”

Luxon said New Zealanders had “voted for change” and that his party would now get to work trying to form a coalition.

“Tonight you have given us the mandate to take New Zealand forward,” he told supporters.

Coalitions are the norm under New Zealand’s mixed-member proportional system, which was introduced in 1996.

The nationalist NZ First party and its leader Winston Peters could potentially become kingmaker in a coalition administration alongside the libertarian, right-wing Act Party.

The only party to win a majority of votes and govern alone in the current political system was Labour in 2020, when Ardern won a landslide second term buoyed by her success at handling the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

But Ardern announced her shock resignation in January, saying she no longer had enough fuel in the tank to contest an election, and passed the reins of her party on to Hipkins.

A progressive global icon, Ardern’s time in power was defined by multiple crises, including the Christchurch terrorist attack, a deadly volcanic explosion, and a global pandemic.

Overseas she became famous for being a leader unafraid to show empathy and compassion at a time when populist demagogues were coming to the fore in many other western democracies.

But back home her popularity ebbed amid a rising cost of living, housing shortages and economic anxiety. And she faced violent anti-lockdown protests in the capital Wellington, with threats made against her.

Ardern’s successor as Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, inherited these issues which have since been compounded by a sluggish economy, an historically high inflation rate of 6% and an accounts deficit that has concerned ratings agencies.

It’s the first election in New Zealand following the end of strict coronavirus lockdown measures that have been a source of contention for many. The government’s “go hard and go early” approach to the pandemic saw New Zealand impose some of the world’s strictest border rules, separating families and shutting out almost all foreigners for almost two years.

It meant New Zealand suffered far fewer Covid infections and deaths compared to many countries, like the United States or United Kingdom. But many residents felt the government went too hard on its measures.

“They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t,” said Alex Wareham, a bartender from Auckland, who added that because people didn’t “have the human toll to focus on they are thinking our economy was ruined, the country was shut down.”

“It was always going to be a lose-lose for Labour, no matter which way you look at it… but it feels a National government during Covid would have done it the same way,” she said.

Saturday’s election took place the same day Australian voters struck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years that would have recognized First Nations people in the nation’s founding document.

All the main New Zealand parties pledged to improve the economy, provide relief for the cost of living crisis, boost jobs, and improve health and education facilities, as well as housing.

Central to National’s 100-day plan is its promise for myriad tax cuts, including cutting a regional fuel tax. It also is pledging to change the Reserve Bank’s mandate to focus on inflation, remove what it calls red tape for businesses, extend free breast cancer screenings, crack down on crime and give police greater powers to search gang members, and roll back a raft of policies implemented by Labour over the past six years.

Labour’s policies include extending free dental care to under 30s, easing rising food prices by removing the goods and services tax from fruit and vegetables, teaching financial literacy in schools and expanding free early education, and extending financial support to working families.

Hipkins, 44, was first elected to Parliament in 2008 and spearheaded the country’s Covid-19 policies in 2020. Before becoming prime minister, he was minister of education, minister of police, minister for the public service, and leader of the house.

His campaigning was briefly hampered by a positive Covid-19 diagnosis at a critical juncture just two weeks out from the election, which prevented him from being on the road for five days.

Luxon, 53, is a businessman and former CEO of Air New Zealand who became leader of the National Party in 2021. Before becoming leader of the opposition, he was party spokesman for various government departments and a member of several select committees.

Voters get two votes on the ballot: one for a candidate in their local constituency and one for the party. A party needs at least 5% of the vote or a winning constituency candidate to claim a seat in parliament.

To form a government, a party or coalition needs 61 of the 120 seats in New Zealand’s single-house parliament – about 48% of the popular vote.

Official results will be announced by the election commission about three weeks after the vote.

CNN
 — 

Republicans will reclaim the Louisiana governor’s office, CNN projects, with state Attorney General Jeff Landry winning a majority of the vote Saturday in the state’s “jungle primary” and avoiding the need for a November runoff.

Landry hailed the result Saturday night on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, saying, “Thankful beyond belief. I’m ready to get to work for Louisiana!”

His victory comes in a race that represented the GOP’s best chance of winning back a gubernatorial seat this fall after a disappointing 2022 midterms, which saw the party lose a net of two governorships.

Louisiana – much like Kentucky, another deep-red state, where Gov. Andy Beshear is seeking a second term this year – has in recent elections been willing to vote in a Democratic governor.

But Bayou State Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat with some socially conservative positions who was elected in 2015 amid dissatisfaction with outgoing GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal and reelected in 2019, was barred by term limits from running again.

Under Louisiana’s jungle primary system, all contenders ran on the same ballot. The top two finishers, regardless of party, would have advanced to a November runoff if no one had cleared 50% Saturday. But Democratic former state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson, independent attorney Hunter Lundy and a field of Republican rivals, including state Treasurer John Schroder, former Louisiana Association of Business and Industry President Stephen Waguespack and state Senate Majority Leader Sharon Hewitt, were unable to keep Landry from consolidating GOP voters’ support and winning the governor’s race outright.

Landry, a hard-line conservative who has frequently tussled with Edwards in court, had far outpaced his opponents in fundraising. He had $4.5 million in the bank on September 24, the end of the last campaign finance reporting period.

The state Republican establishment largely coalesced around Landry after several other potential high-profile candidates opted against running. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Landry in May, saying in a video that the attorney general has been “fantastic” and wants to “stop crime.”

Despite Edwards’ two victories, Louisiana remains largely dominated by Republicans. The GOP has won the last four presidential races in the state by between 17 and 20 points, and the last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Louisiana’s electoral votes was Bill Clinton in 1996.

Landry, 52, first won political office in 2010, when he was elected to the US House as part of that year’s tea party wave. He lost his south Louisiana seat in a primary two years later, after the state lost a district in reapportionment and Landry was drawn into the same seat as the more senior Rep. Charles Boustany.

He won the attorney general’s office in 2015, ousting two-term incumbent Buddy Caldwell, who had left the Democratic Party and become a Republican just four years earlier.

As attorney general, Landry has clashed with Edwards over several issues, including a court battle that followed the governor’s efforts to require state contracts to protect LGBT employees from discrimination. He joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election by throwing out Electoral College votes in several swing states.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN
 — 

Former residents of a low-income, majority-Black housing development in St. Louis, Missouri, are seeking restitution from the US Army over a Cold War-era testing program they say made them ill.

Ben Phillips was five years old when he moved with his family into the Pruitt-Igoe housing development, a predominately-Black and low-income housing complex located northwest of downtown.

Phillips, now 73, told CNN he had fond memories of his decade spent growing up in the high rise.

“There were two separate developments. Igoe for Whites and Pruitt was for Blacks,” he said, adding despite the segregation “it was a very wonderful, tranquil area, a brand-new high rise.”

But Phillips said he also recalls chemical mist being sprayed from vehicles and from rooftops of several buildings in the housing development.

At the time, he said residents thought the mist was just a pesticide.

“The majority of it was done at night. So, you know, you’re at home, it’s a summer evening, you got your windows opened up on the seventh floor because you don’t have air conditioning. And it’s spewing this stuff off the roofs.”

As he got older, Phillips’ perception of what he inhaled as a child changed.

Throughout the nuclear arms race of the 1950s and 60s, the US military feared an enemy attack using biological warfare, according to online government records.

To prepare, according to the National Institutes of Health, the US Army conducted experiments in 33 locations and cities across the country, including St. Louis, to test how an aerosol biological agent might spread in different environments.

Government records show the Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide in these dispersion tests, an inorganic compound composed of zinc, cadmium, and sulfur that glows bright yellow under ultraviolet light.

At the time, the NIH said the compound was thought to be harmless to humans, animals and plants. Today, the Army still maintains the substance used was non-toxic.

In a statement to CNN, Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett said five examinations of the Army’s use of zinc cadmium sulfide in their aerosol dispersion tests have all shown the mist was non-toxic.

“None of the reports contained evidence of a radioactive component to the zinc cadmium sulfide dispersion tests,” Lovett said in the statement.

But for Phillips, the military’s assurances were not enough.

In the decades since the testing, Phillips said many family and friends who were exposed to the mist have developed unexplained illnesses, including various forms of cancer.

“I just feel that there was a cover-up,” he said.

In 2013, Phillips filed a lawsuit seeking restitution for those impacted in the Army’s dispersion program. A federal judge later dismissed the suit on the grounds that the Army and its contractors were indemnified by the government.

Phillips told CNN the judge’s ruling felt like “the door was just shut, slammed in our face” for former residents who saw the lawsuit as a means to obtain justice.

In response, Phillips and several other former residents formed the non-profit organization, Pruitt-Igoe Historical Accounting, Compensation, and Truth Seeking (PHACTS).

He said the organization is fighting to add former Pruitt-Igoe residents to a list of neighborhoods being considered for compensation by the federal government because of separate radiological testing in St. Louis.

“The people of St. Louis have borne the burden of [the Manhattan Project] — and now it’s time for their government to make it right,” Sen. Josh Hawley said in a press release announcing the legislation in July.

“The federal government needs to pay the medical bills for any St. Louis resident who has contracted cancer or an autoimmune virus or a genetic disorder because of exposure to radioactive contamination,” Hawley added.

Lisa Martino-Taylor, a recently retired sociology professor at Southern Illinois University, has studied the Army’s program for decades.

After filing multiple requests under the Freedom of Information Act, Martino-Taylor said she spent years looking at declassified documents about the dispersion program and detailed her findings in a book called, “Behind the Fog.”

Her research uncovered army maps that place Pruitt-Igoe within the army’s testing area.

She told CNN she believes the stories told by former residents of Pruitt-Igoe that the mist they inhaled made them sick.

“They were developing this stuff as a weapon, and they knew it could harm people,” she said.

The NIH recommends further testing to determine the toxicity of zinc cadmium sulfide but classifies cadmium sulfide as a hazardous substance that may cause cancer and damage to internal organs as a result of prolonged or repeated exposure.

According to the NIH, chronic exposure to zinc sulfide can cause anemia, lethargy, a decrease in good cholesterol, damage to the pancreatic and reproductive systems. It can also cause ataxia, an illness where people lose control of muscles in their arms and legs, according to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Phillips said his family has experienced similar side effects.

“I had a little sister who was having convulsions when she was about a year and a half old. It went on for about two and a half years, and then stopped,” he said.

Phillips told CNN he believes his sister’s illness is connected to the testing because the convulsions ended once the family moved away from Pruitt-Igoe.

Other residents from Pruitt-Igoe told their stories to filmmaker Damien Smith for his documentary, “Target St. Louis: Volume 1.”

Smith told CNN he heard some of the most shocking claims about Pruitt-Igoe from his grandmother, who lived in St. Louis.

“I started doing some more research about it and it infuriated me that they can test on a population that they deemed to be basically sub-human,” he said. “Definitely stripped them of any constitutional rights.”

Smith told CNN after talking with former residents for his documentary, the most common illness they cited was cancer. Pruitt-Igoe was demolished in 1972 and the site has since remained vacant.

For Phillips, restitution is not just about giving money to individuals. He said it’s also about making sure Americans are educated and aware of the harms of the past.

“This happens so often to marginalized communities – African American communities – because they’re easier to prey upon because, at least back then, they hardly had a voice,” he said.