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The Supreme Court offered clear support Tuesday for continued federal regulation of so-called ‘ghost guns’ that can be assembled from kits into a working firearm without a background check or the usual serial numbers.

At issue in oral arguments was whether the devices meet the federal definition of a ‘firearm’ and ‘frame and receiver,’ and whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority to regulate and enforce their sale.

Ghost guns are do-it-yourself functional weapons that are often purchased online, and marketed by some sellers as easy to assemble.

The Justice Department said more than 19,000 hard-to-trace ghost guns were seized by law enforcement in 2021, a more than tenfold increase in just five years.

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That was driven in part by recent technological advances, many containing polymer-based unassembled firearm components.

Final home assembly typically requires the use of some readily available tools, including drilling holes and milling or sanding the unfinished frame or receiver, which enable the installation of parts.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the rising sale of untraceable ‘ghost guns’ had created a ‘public safety crisis’ with an ‘explosion’ of crimes committed using them.

Several justices in the 75-minute argument appeared to back much of the Biden administration’s arguments, suggesting nearly complete parts meet the ordinary definition of a firearm subject to regulation.

‘What is the purpose of selling a receiver without the holes drilled in it?’ said Chief Justice John Roberts, rejecting suggestions the kits were marketed at the weekend gun hobbyist. ‘Drilling a hole or two, I would think, doesn’t give the same sort of reward that you get from working on your car on the weekends. My understanding is that it’s not terribly difficult for someone to do this.’

Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who could be the key deciding vote — raised concerns someone ignorant of the law might inadvertently sell or buy a ghost gun kit.

‘What about the seller, for example, who is truly not aware, truly not aware that they are violating the law and gets criminally charged?’

But Kavanaugh also signaled some backing of the government’s position, telling Prelogar, ‘Your statutory interpretation has force.’

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The 1968 Gun Control Act was revised in 2022 to regulate the growing market for certain ‘buy build shoot’ kits.

The law defines a ‘firearm’ to include ‘any weapon… which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,’ as well as ‘the frame or receiver of any such weapon.’

The administration said it was not seeking to ban the sale or use of these kits, merely requiring them to comply with the same requirements of other commercial firearms dealers. That includes serial numbers on the parts and background checks on the purchasers.

A federal appeals court late last year struck down the updated rules, after a legal challenge from kit sellers and buyers, but the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court.

Gun rights groups say that the rule is ‘unconstitutional and abusive,’ arguing the ghost gun kits consist of ‘non-firearm objects.’

Attorney Peter Patterson said only Congress can change the law over ghost gun regulations and added that 42 of 43 unlicensed manufacturers of the kits would be driven out of business if the rules go fully into effect.

The devices can also be made from 3D printers or from individual parts. That is part of separate legal challenges in the lower courts.

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In oral arguments, the high court wrestled with questions about the ease of assembling a ‘ghost gun’ from a kit, and whether judges should even be involved in the matter.

‘I’m worried about… the Court taking over what Congress may have intended for the agency to do in this situation,’ said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. ‘I think it can’t be assumed that the agency exceeds its authority whenever it interprets a statutory term differently than we would such that all we have to do as a part of this claim here today is just decide what we think a firearm is.’

But others on the court questioned whether a bunch of unassembled parts really made them into a gun.

‘Here’s a blank pad and here’s a pen, all right? Is this a grocery list?’ asked Justice Samuel Alito.  ‘If I show you — I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions. Is that a western omelet?’

Justice Amy Coney Barrett then appeared to blunt Alito’s argument, focusing on do-it-yourself kits.

‘Would your answer change if you ordered it from HelloFresh, and you got a kit, and it was like turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?’ she asked, mentioning the ready-to-cook meal kits delivery service.

Barrett also appeared skeptical of the legal alternatives to the ATF rules, proposed by Patterson, the lawyer representing the gun rights supporters.

‘It seems a little made up,’ she said.

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Prelogar claimed the new rules had led to a dramatic drop in the online sales of the ready-to-assemble weapons.

The ATF’s rule requires unfinished parts of a firearm, like the frame of a handgun or the receiver of a long gun, to be treated like a completed firearm. These parts need to be licensed and must have serial numbers.

The rule also requires manufacturers to run background checks before selling these parts, as they are required to do for whole commercial firearms.

The Supreme Court had previously allowed the regulation to remain in effect while the lawsuit continued through the courts, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voting with the three liberal members of the court to form the majority.

The justices have been revisiting the Second Amendment in recent years, after the conservative majority in 2022 made it easier to carry handguns outside the home for protection.

In June, a federal ban on bump stocks, devices that can convert semi-automatic rifles into weapons that can fire hundreds of rounds a minute, was struck down by the high court.

But that same month, the justices upheld a federal ban on firearms possession for people subject to certain domestic violence restraining orders.

The case is Garland v. VanDerStok (23-852). A ruling is expected by summer 2025. 

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Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant canceled a visit with Pentagon officials scheduled for Wednesday, amid a rapid escalation of the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East.

Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters during a briefing Tuesday that the Pentagon was informed Gallant had postponed his trip to Washington, D.C.

‘Minister Gallant was traveling to the U.S. and the secretary welcomed him to the Pentagon to host him here for a bilateral meeting,’ Singh said. ‘

One reporter asked Singh about reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Gallant not to go to Washington, which Singh said she was aware of, but preferred to stay out of Israeli politics.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, she noted, has a ‘great relationship’ with Gallant, and the two have spoken in the neighborhood of 80 times.

‘The remain in constant communication, whether it be an in-person meeting here, or, you know, meetings, phone calls that need to be done remote,’ Singh explained. ‘That relationship still maintains and can be done…at any time, any place in the world…’

When asked if there were tensions between Austin and Gallant, Singh pushed back.

‘I don’t think there’s tension,’ she said. ‘You can have direct conversations with your friends. You’re not always going to agree on everything, but that doesn’t mean that there’s tensions.’

During an exchange with Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst on Sunday, Gallant promised that Israeli forces are considering all options in terms of its response to Iran’s attacks against Israel — even potentially striking Iranian nuclear sites.

The interview came days after Israel invaded Lebanon as part of a mission to eliminate Hezbollah, on the heels of several successful strikes against the terrorist group. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it had killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last weekend — prompting Iran to launch 181 retaliatory missiles in response.

‘At the moment, everything is on the table,’ the Israeli official said. ‘Israel will respond to the unprecedented Iranian attack in the manner of our choosing, and at the time and place of our choosing.’

President Biden told reporters last week that he would not support a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, but said Israel had the right to act ‘proportionately’ to Iran. On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to send $157 million of ‘additional assistance’ to Lebanon, which, she claimed, is ‘facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation.’

Amid the White House’s response to the IDF’s recent strikes, Gallant emphasized that he hopes the United States continues to cooperate with the Israeli military.

‘It is important for us to hold discussions on strategic cooperation between our countries and defense cooperation in light of the threats posed by Iran and its proxies,’ Gallant said. ‘We are powerful when we are aligned, and I want to make sure of it.’

Fox News Digital’s Andrea Margolis, Trey Yingst, Greg Norman, Stephen Sorace and Michael Lee contributed to this report.

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A group that has labeled Vice President Harris a ‘pro-genocide candidate’ has endorsed third-party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the 2024 contest.

The ‘Abandon Harris’ campaign says America, as well as presidential candidates Harris and former President Trump, is supporting an ‘Israeli project of Palestinian annihilation’ and urges Muslim Americans and those who oppose genocide to cast their ballot for the Green Party this year.

‘In October 2023, under the darkening shadow of the U.S.-backed Israeli project of Palestinian annihilation, the Abandon Harris campaign – formerly Abandon Biden – was born. Our movement remains dedicated to ensuring that the American people, especially the Muslim-American community, recognize the responsibility we share in standing up against oppression and using all our power to stop genocide – wherever it may arise,’ the group declared in a press release.

‘We are confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it. Both are determined to see it through. We call on Muslim-Americans and all those who stand firmly against genocide to vote for the Green Party in 2024,’ the press release states.

Stein has expressed her gratitude to the group and its support of her candidacy.

The Abandon Harris campaign says on its website that its ‘current goal is to hold Harris accountable for her continued support of genocide.’

‘It’s painfully obvious that Kamala Harris can only sound articulate and firm when parroting US support for Israel,’ the group wrote in an August post on X. ‘She fumbles through everything else, but when it comes to endorsing the killing of Palestinians, she suddenly finds a pristine level of eloquence,’ the post added.

Israel launched a war effort last year in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks perpetrated by Hamas terrorists who committed atrocities that included rapes, kidnappings and murders.

‘What Hamas did that day was pure evil – it was brutal and sickening,’ Harris said in a statement marking the one-year anniversary of the attack on Monday. ‘I will do everything in my power to ensure that the threat Hamas poses is eliminated, that it is never again able to govern Gaza, that it fails in its mission to annihilate Israel, and that the people of Gaza are free from the grip of Hamas,’ she declared in the statement.

‘Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7 launched a war in Gaza. I am heartbroken over the scale of death and destruction in Gaza over the past year – tens of thousands of lives lost, children fleeing for safety over and over again, mothers and fathers struggling to obtain food, water, and medicine. It is far past time for a hostage and ceasefire deal to end the suffering of innocent people. And I will always fight for the Palestinian people to be able to realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination,’ Harris said in the statement.

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Shares of backup power generation company Generac Holdings surged more than 7% on Monday as Hurricane Milton rapidly strengthened into a Category 5 storm.

Hurricane Milton is forecast to move north of the Yucatan Peninsula on Monday and Tuesday before crossing the Gulf of Mexico to approach the west coast of Florida by Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Tampa Bay could face a storm surge of between 8 feet and 12 feet, according to forecasters.

Generac hit an intraday high of $174.08, up about 8.7% over Friday’s close. The power generation company also hit a new 52-week high.

Hurricane Milton comes on the heels of Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 220 people and wrought devastation across the Southeast, particularly in North Carolina.

Insurance stocks that have weather catastrophe exposure, meanwhile, are falling on potential insured losses tied to Hurricane Milton. Allstate, Travelers and Chubb saw their shares fall more than 3%, while Progressive and AIG all declined more than 1%.

Universal Insurance, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, plunged more than 15% as the catastrophe-prone carrier with Gulf Coast exposure could see heightened hurricane risks.

The shares of property and casualty insurance underwriters and reinsurers should come under pressure as Milton could result in a sharp reduction to their fourth-quarter earnings, Joshua Shanker, research analyst at Bank of America, told clients in a Monday note.

Forecasters have warned for months of an “extremely active Atlantic hurricane season” this year. This is due to warm sea surface temperatures that serve as a fuel source for hurricanes, according to Colorado State University Tropical Weather and Climate Research.

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Projected park closures and disruptions from Hurricane Milton could cut into Walt Disney’s earnings, according to Goldman Sachs analysts.

The firm estimated Tuesday that the hurricane, projected to make landfall in central Florida as soon as Wednesday, could reduce earnings before interest and taxes for Disney’s Parks and Experiences segment by about $150 million to $200 million in its current 2025 fiscal first quarter. Goldman’s estimate would exceed the effect on Disney from Hurricane Irma in 2017, which reduced earnings by about $100 million after the parks were forced to close for two days and some cruise ships were disrupted, according to the firm.

Goldman Sachs reduced its estimate for Disney’s fiscal 2025 earnings per share from $5.22 to $5.14. It also estimated that Disney’s first-quarter domestic attendance would take a hit from the storm, projecting a decline of 6% instead of an earlier estimate of down 2%. The firm’s estimates for Disney’s recently ended fourth quarter largely remained the same, with an outlook for earnings per share of $1.16 and a Parks and Experiences segment operating income of $3.8 billion.

As of Tuesday morning, the storm was around 545 miles southwest of Tampa moving at 12 mph. With sustained winds of 145 mph, the storm dropped down to a Category 4 hurricane and could hit the Florida coast as a Category 3.

The storm is projected to make landfall around the Tampa area, which hasn’t been hit directly by a hurricane since 1921. The storm is then projected to head toward Orlando, where Disney World is located, as it decreases in intensity.

Disney has not made any announcements about potential closures. Spokespeople for Disney did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the new earnings estimates.

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It is almost impossible to remember life in Israel before Hamas launched its brutal October 7 attacks a year ago, killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250 others. There is little point, because that life is gone for good. And not just because more than 100 hostages are still captive.

The same is true beyond Israel’s borders.

Israel, its enemies and allies are all harbingers and painful witnesses to a remaking of the region’s diplomatic and political architecture on a scale that could rival the upheavals of the Arab-Israeli conflict a half-century ago.

The post-October 7 changes are both inevitable and, in their current chaotic form at least, preventable. The civilian cost is mounting when diplomacy might have saved lives.

A year ago it seemed the political architecture of the region was on the cusp of significant change. Propelled by US incentives, Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed closer than ever to a historic normalization of relations. Diplomacy and the deft skills needed to stitch such a complex deal together were in the ascendency.

But the prospect of approaching peace and prosperity evaporated as Hamas surged through the Gaza border fences at sunrise that Saturday morning. Butchery was afoot.

Irrespective of whether Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was calculating he could torpedo normalization and push the Palestinian cause ahead of regional priorities for peace and economic integration, in the short term he succeeded.

I can remember, with gut-churning clarity, the smell of rotting human flesh as we entered Kfar Aza, about 800 yards from the Gaza Strip. It was October 10, and Major General Itai Veruv of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was leading the first international press access to see the devastation of Hamas’ attacks.

He stood at the gates, quoting General Eisenhower when he reached the Nazi death camps in World War Two: “The first thing he said was bring the press here to see.”

Over the past year Israel has struggled to keep the world focused on those nation-changing events of that bloody weekend.

For the first time, many Israelis realized their state was no longer the safe haven for Jews they had always believed it to be. The idea that whatever prejudice and persecution they may face around the world, in Israel they had sanctuary, was destroyed.

What emerged that first week as a scramble to seal the Gaza border and chase down remaining Hamas cells inside Israel soon manifested as a red mist of revenge and retribution against the attackers, and anyone near them.

Israelis’ feelings of vulnerability haven’t gone, while national rage has been refined into a steely logic of regional deterrence, manifested by Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has interwoven his own political survival, in part to escape accusations he failed to stop Hamas’ attacks, with bombastic new tactics shredding the old rule book and its red lines that previously prevented regional escalation.

It is being called “escalation for de-escalation,” but as October 7, 2024, arrives, de-escalation, and any form of day after plan from Netanyahu, are absent.

The Jewish state’s relations with US President Joe Biden’s White House, its most important ally, are at their lowest ebb in a generation. Nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, many by US bombs and bullets in Israel’s hands, authorities in Gaza say. IDF killings and arrests of Palestinians, some of them US citizens, in the occupied West Bank are unsustainable for many of Israel’s European allies whom after a year of waiting are beginning to curb arms supplies.

But the pressures on Israel to rein in its survival instincts at a time when it is riven with deep political, religious, and maybe existential divisions are having little obvious traction.

Israel’s wiliest nearby adversary and Iranian mega-proxy Hezbollah – a blight on Lebanese post-civil war democracy – which began escalating cross-border rocket attacks the day after October 7, has undergone a lightening defenestration over the past few weeks. Its leader Hassan Nasrallah and many of his top commanders have been assassinated in Israeli air strikes, its forces partially crippled, ahead of Israel’s launch of its third ground war in Lebanon in the past half-century.

Hamas’ October 7 attacks, if not coordinated in detail with Iran, certainly had its blessing. The theocracy has been the Palestinian terror group’s biggest backer for decades, funneling money, military material and know-how. Iran vows to destroy Israel and chase its biggest ally the United States out of the region.

It uses pro-Palestinian messaging to enflame passions on the ‘Arab street’ in the region, most of whom are Sunni like the Palestinians, and most of whose leaders consider Iran, a Shia theocracy, at best untrustworthy, at worst an adversary. In this way Iran holds off regional rivals.

The past year has revealed the extent of its plans and co-opting of Shia communities to build up pro-Iranian militias. Yemen’s minority Houthis are no longer only anti-Saudi stooges for the Shia clerics in Tehran, but have turned their Iranian-supplied ballistic missiles and drones on Tel Aviv.

Iran has also, aided and fronted by the Houthis, begun blocking Red Sea commercial shipping – more than a thousand miles from Israel – on the pretext of supporting the Gazans.

Tehran’s Shia proxies in Iraq have also answered its calls and begun escalating drone attacks on Israel.

It is a multi-fronted war, escalating faster than would have ever seemed possible a year ago.

Back then rocket sirens in central Israel were not part of daily life. Today parents inside their home shelters in Tel Aviv scan cell phones for messages from their children, serving on the front lines as they too once did.

Each generation here is trained to fight in the defense of the nation; where the country divide is over how long to keep that fight going before switching to diplomacy. The reality is, the longer the escalation goes on, the less control the country and its prime minister will have over the outcome.

Potential regional partners like Saudi Arabia are now demanding a steeper and steeper diplomatic off-ramp for Netanyahu.

The normalization between Israel and the most powerful Gulf state that seemed so close before October 7, is for now out of reach, Netanyahu unwilling and too toxic to be a partner in the deal.

It was a deal that would have given Biden a legacy to be proud of; for Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, the legitimacy and security he craves; and Netanyahu, an inoculation against a millennia of animus.

Saudi Arabia’s price now is an “irreversible path” to a Palestinian state, which is an anathema to Netanyahu, his extreme nationalist right-wing cabinet, and in the wake of October 7, even further beyond the pale for much of the rest of the country too.

Days before the anniversary, a veteran sage of UAE diplomacy, Anwar Gargash, foreshadowed the influential Gulf state’s direction of travel, saying “the era of militia with sectarian and regional dimensions has cost the Arabs dearly.”

An end to Iran’s proxy powerplays and a path to a Palestinian state. The question is how to get there from here, particularly as the butcher’s cleaver is ascendant over the diplomat.

For now, in the absence of successful peace talks, uncertainty is the new certainty.

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Anti-Kremlin Russian activist Ildar Dadin has been killed while fighting for Ukraine in Kharkiv, according to his friend and Russian independent media.

Dadin was once jailed in Russia for repeatedly protesting the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a series of peaceful street demonstrations. He was the first person to be convicted under a 2014 law that cracked down on public assembly and protests in Russia, according to Amnesty International.

He served two and a half years in prison and the article under which he was tried became known as “Dadin’s law.”

Dadin’s friend and former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomarev, who is living in exile, said Monday he was killed fighting in the Kharkiv region over the weekend.

“He had a keen sense of justice, so when he saw that there was an injustice – a war, an invasion, people were dying – he had to correct that injustice,” Ponomarev added.

The Freedom of Russia Legion confirmed Dadin was one of their soldiers but declined to comment on his condition and status on Monday due to ongoing combat operations.

Several independent Russian media outlets also reported Dadin’s death on Sunday.

More strikes on Ukraine overnight

Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine overnight, with Ukrainian authorities reporting four people killed and at least 25 injured in attacks on the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Sumy regions.

Ukraine said it shot down 32 Russian drones and two missiles overnight and on Monday morning.

Ukraine also repelled a drone and missile attack on its capital on Monday. It marked the fourth Russian attack on Kyiv since the start of October, according to the head of the city’s military administration Serhiy Popko.

Meanwhile, the General Staff of Ukraine reported that it successfully struck an offshore oil terminal in Russian-occupied Crimea, near the city of Feodosia.

The Russia-appointed head of the Feodosia city administration, Igor Tkachenko, confirmed on Telegram that there was a fire at the oil terminal, which is the largest in Crimea. A state of emergency was declared in Feodosia due to the fire.

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A British doctor on Monday pleaded guilty to an audacious but unsuccessful plot to kill his mother’s partner with a fake Covid-19 vaccine, which involved him forging medical documents and dressing in disguise to inject his victim with poison.

Thomas Kwan, 53, passed himself off as a nurse and even took his own mother’s blood pressure before administering poison to her partner, Patrick O’Hara, in Newcastle, northern England.

O’Hara survived but suffered from necrotising faciitis, a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacterial infection, after receiving the jab, prosecutors said.

Kwan, a family doctor in Sunderland, pleaded guilty to attempted murder on Monday, shortly after his trial began at Newcastle Crown Court last week, court staff said.

He had previously admitted a charge of administering a noxious substance.

Prosecutor Peter Makepeace had told jurors on the first day of the trial, on Thursday: “Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction.”

He said Kwan was concerned about his mother’s will, which provided that her house would be inherited by O’Hara if he was still alive when his mother died.

“Mr Kwan used his encyclopedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons to carry out his plan,” Makepeace said.

“That plan was to disguise himself as a community nurse, attend Mr O’Hara’s address, the home he shared with the defendant’s mother, and inject him with a dangerous poison under the pretext of administering a Covid booster injection.”

Kwan checked into a hotel under a false name, used false number plates on his car and disguised himself with a wig to carry out the plan, Makepeace added.

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It was 6:29 a.m. when the blasting music stopped without warning. The brief silence that followed was pierced by the screams of a woman somewhere in the crowd in this remote site in the Negev Desert.

The woman and hundreds of others were reliving in real time the moment terrorists stormed the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel, marking the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks in which Hamas and other militant groups killed 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 others, taking them back into Gaza.

The brutality of the attack on the festival shocked the world. As revelers danced and partied in the desert, scores of Hamas terrorists stormed the site, blocked off escape routes, and embarked on a killing spree. They ambushed groups trying to hide and murdered people as they tried to escape. They shot victims at point blank range in their cars and fired machine guns and anti-tank weapons indiscriminately at those who tried to flee on foot.

Over the past year, the site of the massacre – a remote location just a few miles from the Gaza perimeter – has been turned into a memorial.

Instead of the vast open space, there are now hundreds of near identical cenotaphs, each featuring the name and a picture of a victim.

The one commemorating Amit Itzhak David shows a young man with a big smile. To mark the anniversary of his death, his family huddled around the memorial on Monday, hugging each other and David’s picture.

The 23-year-old was killed here last year, shortly after returning from a trip to South America, where he had been celebrating the end of his compulsory military service.

Nor far away, Anat Magnezi, the mother of Amit Magnezi, was kneeling on the floor next to his photograph, sobbing. A music lover and a former junior wrestler, Amit too was murdered at the site.

The Nova Music Festival massacre was by far the deadliest of the October 7 attacks, accounting for nearly a third of the victims. There were so many dead and kidnapped that it took Israeli authorities months to determine how many people had been killed there.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday that 347 people, most of them young, died at the site and some 40 others were kidnapped.

Gabriel Barel’s mother, three brothers, and a best friend from the army all turned up in matching tops featuring his photograph. Barel’s brother Yeoda said the family initially believed he might have survived the attack and been taken to Gaza.

But a few weeks later their hopes were crushed when Barel’s body was found. After shooting Barel dead, his attackers had set his car on fire. His remains were so badly burnt it took many weeks for him to be identified.

Witnesses to the massacre say other victims were raped and subjected to sexual violence by Hamas. Hamas has denied the accusations, but the evidence of sexual violence comes from different sources — survivors who witnessed the events, first responders, medical and forensic experts. The United Nations and the International Criminal Court have offered evidence that Hamas attackers committed sexual crimes.

War rages on

Monday marked the first anniversary of the Hamas terror attacks, and a year since Israel began its war against the militant group in Gaza.

More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then. The war has sparked a major humanitarian disaster, displacing nearly all of the strip’s 2.2 million residents.

As people gathered across Israel, the reminders that the war in Gaza is still raging kept coming. Throughout the morning, loud booms of outgoing fire reverberated throughout southern Israel as the IDF hit targets in the Gaza strip.

Israel has said its goal in Gaza is to eliminate Hamas and bring back the remaining hostages, but neither has been achieved. Indeed, as the anniversary events got under way, several rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, injuring two people.

While increasingly rare, rocket launches such as these show that even after a year of intense war, militants in Gaza are still able to strike Israel.

During a memorial service in kibbutz Nir Oz, the smoke trail of the rockets fired from Gaza was clearly visible in the sky. The agricultural commune of 400 people was another site targeted during the October 7 attacks; one in four of its residents were murdered or kidnapped.

Yehud was a volunteer medic at Nir Oz and when he realized the kibbutz was under attack and there were wounded, he rushed out to provide help. He was killed, but his remains were not found and identified until June. Yehud’s pregnant wife Sigal and three children survived the massacre. His fourth child was born just nine days later.

Yehud’s sister Arbel was kidnapped and taken to Gaza with her boyfriend Ariel Cunio, alongside Cunio’s brother David, David’s wife Sharon Alony Cunio, and their three-year-old twin daughters.

Alony Cunio and the two girls were released during a ceasefire deal agreed in November, but the rest of the group remains in captivity.

“Dolev’s sister is still in Gaza. She’s one of the four or five civilian women still there alive. The most important thing now is to bring her and the rest of them back,” he said.

Lifshitz grew up in the kibbutz and while he left at 16, he still has deep links there. His grandparents Oded and Yocheved were kidnapped from their homes in the kibbutz during the attack.

Yocheved Lifshitz, who was 85 when kidnapped, spent more than two weeks in captivity. She was released alongside her neighbor and friend Nurit Cooper, 79, but both her and Cooper’s husbands were kept in Gaza.

Nurit Cooper and her family were told in June that Amiram Cooper, her 84-year-old husband and one of the founders of the kibbutz, was no longer alive. His body is still in Gaza.

Last October, Moshe’s grandmother Adina Moshe watched Hamas fighters storm her home and murder her husband David before kidnapping her and taking her to Gaza. She was released as part of a ceasefire deal in November last year.

Sitting by David’s grave during the memorial ceremony on Monday, Adina was sobbing, her body slumped as if crushed by the horrors of the past year. Her daughter Maya Shoshani Moshe hurried to her side, trying to comfort her before bursting into tears herself.

Moshe has previously spoken publicly about her ordeal in Gaza and has in the past made an emotional plea directly to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring the remaining hostages back.

“Again, I am asking you, Mr. Netanyahu, everything is in your hands, you’re the one who can do it, and I’m extremely scared, that if you continue along this path…there won’t be any more hostages to release,” she said in February after Netanyahu rejected the terms of a ceasefire and hostage deal put forward by Hamas.

She expressed the views of many Israelis who are furious with Netanyahu. Mass protests against the prime minister and his government have once again become a common occurrence across the country and the anger burst into the public view on several occasions during the memorial events on Monday.

Early in the day, family members of the hostages marched to Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, blasting a siren for two minutes outside his front door.

Netanyahu did not make an appearance at the event, or any other gatherings aside from a small ceremony in Jerusalem.

When hundreds of people gathered in Tel Aviv on Monday evening to commemorate the victims of the attacks, politics was meant to be off limits. But it soon became clear that for many of the family members who were speaking at the event, politics is too intertwined with the fate of their loved ones.

Jonathan Shimriz, the brother of Alon Shimriz who was taken hostage and later killed in Gaza during a failed rescue operation, called for a state inquiry into the handling of the hostage crisis.

“There is no personal example, no vision, no leadership, no accountability,” he told the crowd.

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The mayor of a crime-ridden city in Mexico has been killed less than a week after taking office, the latest in a string of violent attacks targeting politicians in the country.

The killing of Alejandro Arcos, who took office as the mayor of Chilpancingo on October 1, comes just days after the city government’s secretary Francisco Tapia was shot to death, and has renewed concerns over security in a country that recently held its biggest and most violent general election in history.

On Monday, Mexico’s newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum called Arcos’ killing “unfortunate” and said that her security cabinet would on Tuesday explain “with more details” the actions being taken to address the nation’s security problems.

“We will roll out the general strategy. We will work in some states with more presence, intelligence, and investigation in collaboration with the governors,” Sheinbaum said during her daily press conference.

Chilpancingo is the capital of Guerrero, a state with a reputation for violent crime which is also home to the tourist hot spot Acapulco.

The state governor Evelyn Salgado has condemned the killing and vowed to hold to account those responsible. “His loss is mourned by the entire Guerrero society and fills us with indignation,” Salgado wrote on X.

However, the violence facing Mexican politicians stretches far beyond Guerrero, as was demonstrated by the historic June 2 election that took Sheinbaum to power.

With 20,000 electoral positions up for grabs, the scale of bloodshed committed by those attempting to influence the vote was unprecedented.

During campaign season, at least 34 political candidates were assassinated by criminal organizations. And the violence did not stop there. Just hours after Sheinbaum’s election, the woman mayor of a town in western Mexico was shot dead.

According to a report by Integralia Consultants, criminal organizations in Mexico center politically motivated attacks at the municipal level because mayors can offer them impunity due to their links with law enforcement and the local economy.

It says that criminal gangs often finance campaigns during election season, intimidating candidates and violently intervening to compel politicians to cooperate with them.

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