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

Trump pressures candidates for Senate GOP leader to fill his Cabinet right away

WASHINGTON (AP) — Days before Senate Republicans pick their new leader, President-elect Donald Trump is pressuring the candidates to change the rules and empower him to appoint some nominees without a Senate vote.

Republican Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida are running in a secret ballot election Wednesday to lead the GOP conference and replace longtime GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who is stepping aside from the job after almost two decades. All three have courted Trump’s support in the race, vying to show who is the closest to the president-elect as they campaign to become majority leader.

Trump has not endorsed in the race, but on Sunday he made clear that he expects the new leader to go around regular Senate order, if necessary, to allow him to fill his Cabinet quickly. In a statement on X and Truth Social, Trump said that the next leader “must agree” to allow him to make appointments when the chamber is on recess, bypassing a confirmation vote.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump posted, adding that positions should be filled “IMMEDIATELY!”

The Senate has not allowed presidents to make so-called recess appointments since a 2014 Supreme Court ruling limited the president’s power to do so. Since then, the Senate has held brief “pro-forma” sessions when it is out of town for more than 10 days so that a president cannot take advantage of the absence and start filling posts that have not been confirmed.

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Trump on Day 1: Begin deportation push, pardon Jan. 6 rioters and make his criminal cases vanish

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t be a dictator — “except for Day 1.” According to his own statements, he’s got a lot to do on that first day in the White House.

His list includes starting up the mass deportation of migrants, rolling back Biden administration policies on education, reshaping the federal government by firing potentially thousands of federal employees he believes are secretly working against him, and pardoning people who were arrested for their role in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said of his Day 1 plans.

When he took office in 2017, he had a long list, too, including immediately renegotiating trade deals, deporting migrants and putting in place measures to root out government corruption. Those things didn’t happen all at once.

How many executive orders in the first week? “There will be tens of them. I can assure you of that,” Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News on Sunday.

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Israeli strikes kill dozens in Lebanon and isolated northern Gaza while Netanyahu and Trump speak

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes killed dozens of people including children on Sunday in Lebanon and isolated northern Gaza, as the world watched for signs of how the U.S. election might affect the wars between Israel and Iranian-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he has spoken three times with Donald Trump since Tuesday’s election and they “see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat and all of its components.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday.

The Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed at least 23 people, including seven children, in Aalmat village north of Beirut, far from the areas in the east and south where Hezbollah has a major presence. There was no Israeli evacuation warning. Israel’s military said that it hit a Hezbollah site used to store weapons, and the strike was under review.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel after war broke out in Gaza, in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas. Israel retaliated, and a series of escalations have led to all-out war.

In northern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a home sheltering displaced people in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya killed at least 17 people, including nine women, according to Dr. Fadel Naim, director of Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City.

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Drones strike Moscow as top UK official highlights Russian casualties in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A massive drone strike rattled Moscow and its suburbs overnight into Sunday, injuring several people and temporarily halting traffic at some of Russia’s busiest airports, officials reported. Meanwhile, a huge nighttime wave of Russian drones targeted Ukraine.

This came after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a pact with North Korea Saturday night, obliging the two countries to provide immediate military aid using “all means” if either is attacked. The agreement marks the strongest link between Moscow and Pyongyang since the end of the Cold War.

Earlier this week, Ukraine reported that its troops engaged for the first time with North Korean units. U.S. officials earlier confirmed the deployment of at least 3,000 North Korean troops to Russia, while Kyiv has repeatedly said the number is far higher. This has fueled concerns of a marked escalation in Moscow’s war on Ukraine, and tensions spilling over into the Asia-Pacific.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have kept a tight lid on casualty figures since the start of the full-scale war despite regular reports of Russian forces taking huge losses following “human wave” attacks that aim to exhaust Ukrainian defenses.

However, the chief of the U.K. defense staff, Tony Radakin, told the BBC that Russian forces had suffered their worst month of casualties in October since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He said Moscow’s troops suffered an average of 1,500 dead and wounded per day, bringing their total losses in the war to 700,000.

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A person is dead and 16 are hurt after a shooting at Tuskegee University; 1 arrest made

ATLANTA (AP) — A shooting early Sunday during homecoming weekend at Tuskegee University in Alabama left one person dead and injured 16 others, a dozen of them by gunfire, authorities said. One arrest was announced hours later.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said Jaquez Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, was taken into custody while leaving the scene of the campus shooting and had been found with a handgun with a machine gun conversion device. The agency said in a statement that Myrick faces a federal charge of possession of a machine gun. It did not accuse him of using the gun in the shooting or provide additional details.

The agency did not say whether Myrick was a student at the historically Black university where the shooting erupted as the school’s 100th Homecoming Week was winding down. Authorities said an 18-year-old man who died was not a university student but that some of the injured were students.

It was not immediately known if Myrick had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Twelve people were wounded by gunfire, and four others sustained injuries not related to the gunshots, the state agency said. Several were being treated at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika and Baptist South Hospital in Montgomery, the university said in a statement. Their conditions were not immediately released.

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Fire crews on both US coasts battle wildfires; 1 death in New York-New Jersey fire

POMPTON LAKES, N.J. (AP) — Fire crews on both coasts of the United States continued battling wildfires on Sunday, including a blaze in New York and New Jersey that killed a parks employee and another in Southern California that destroyed more than 130 structures and damaged dozens more.

Firefighters continued making progress against a wildfire northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County that broke out Wednesday and quickly exploded in size due to dry, warm and gusty Santa Ana winds.

The Mountain Fire prompted thousands of residents to flee their homes and was 26% contained as of Sunday, up from 21% the previous day. The fire’s size remains around 32 square miles (about 83 square kilometers). The cause is under investigation.

“The fire continues to creep and smolder in steep rugged terrain. Threats remain to critical infrastructure, highways, and communities,” according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire.

Meanwhile, New York State Police said they were investigating the death of Dariel Vasquez, an 18-year-old state parks employee who died when a tree fell on him Saturday afternoon as he battled a major brush fire in Sterling Forest, located in New York state’s Greenwood Lake near the New Jersey line.

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Amsterdam police detain pro-Palestinian protesters at banned demonstration

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Police detained dozens of people Sunday for taking part in a demonstration in central Amsterdam that had been outlawed following violence targeting fans of an Israeli soccer club.

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema banned all demonstrations over the weekend in the aftermath of the grim scenes of youths on scooters and on foot attacking Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters on Thursday and Friday in what was widely condemned as a violent outburst of antisemitism in the Dutch capital.

Late Sunday afternoon, the municipality, together with Amsterdam police and public prosecutor’s office, extended the ban on demonstrations until Thursday morning.

In France, Paris police said Sunday that 4,000 officers and 1,600 stadium staff will be deployed for a France-Israel soccer match on Thursday to ensure security in and around the stadium and on public transportation.

Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands said that 2,000 Israelis were brought home on special flights from Amsterdam over the past few days.

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Haiti replaces its prime minister, marking more turmoil in its democratic transition process

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A transitionary council created to reestablish democratic order in Haiti signed a decree Sunday firing interim Prime Minister Garry Conille and replacing him with Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, a businessman who was previously considered for the job.

The decree, set to be published on Monday, was provided to The Associated Press by a government source. It marks even more turmoil in an already rocky democratic transition process for Haiti, which hasn’t held democratic elections in years in a large part due to the soaring levels of gang violence plaguing the Caribbean nation.

Fils-Aimé is the former president of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry and in 2015 ran an unsuccessful campaign for Senate. The businessman studied at Boston University and was previously considered for the position as a private sector candidate for the post before Conille took the seat.

Conille, a longtime civil servant who has worked with the United Nations, served as prime minister for only six months.

The AP on Sunday couldn’t reach Conille or a spokesperson for him.

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6.8 magnitude earthquake shakes Cuba after hurricanes and blackouts

HAVANA (AP) — An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 shook eastern Cuba on Sunday, after weeks of hurricanes and blackouts that have left many on the island reeling.

The epicenter of the quake was located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Bartolome Maso, Cuba, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Rumbling was felt across the eastern stretch of Cuba, including in bigger cities like Santiago de Cuba, as well as Holguin and. Guantanamo. Local media in Jamaica also reported that the island felt the tremors.

There were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries in Cuba.

Residents in Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city, were left shaken on Sunday. Yolanda Tabío, 76, said that people in the city flocked to the streets and were still nervously sitting in their doorways. She said that she felt at least two aftershocks following the quake, but that among friends and family she hadn’t heard of any damages.

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24 more monkeys that escaped from a South Carolina lab are recovered unharmed

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — More than half of the monkeys bred for medical research that escaped from a compound in South Carolina last week have now been recovered unharmed, officials said Sunday.

Twenty-four monkeys were captured on Sunday, a day after another of the 43 escaped monkeys was recovered.

A “sizeable group” remains active along the compound’s fence line and bedded down in the trees for the night, police in Yemassee, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Savannah, Georgia, said in a statement. Veterinarians have been examining the animals and initial reports indicate they are all in good health, police said.

The Rhesus macaques made a break for it Wednesday after an employee at the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee didn’t fully lock a door as she fed and checked on them, officials said.

Since their escape, the monkeys have explored the outer fence of the Alpha Genesis compound, cooing at the monkeys inside. The primates continued to interact with their companions inside the facility Saturday, which police have said was a positive sign.

The Associated Press