CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South Africa’s main political rivals are now partners in government after they came together in a last-minute coalition deal that ensured President Cyril Ramaphosa was dramatically reelected with cross-party support, and a struggling country was given a boost.

The agreement was only sealed on the sidelines of a marathon parliamentary session on Friday, allowing Ramaphosa to be reelected hours later for a second term with the help of opposition lawmakers who were once his loudest critics.

The coalition between Ramaphosa’s African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance — South Africa’s only major party with a white leader — means Africa’s most industrialized country can now form a government after a political deadlock that threatened its economic stability.

More than that, it has rejuvenated a nation weighed down by poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime and failing public services. South Africans see a glimmer of hope in the alliance between two parties with very different ideologies that have said they will work together for the good of the people.

It could bring a new unity for a nation still grappling with the legacy of the brutal apartheid system of racial segregation that ended in 1994.

Here’s how the unlikely deal was reached and what it means for South Africa, a prominent voice for the developing world:

Political deadlock: The unprecedented deadlock came after the ANC lost its 30-year parliamentary majority in a May 29 election that laid bare the frustrations of millions of poor Black South Africans still seeking a better life decades after the end of white minority rule. Many deserted the ANC, which liberated the country from apartheid and had been the governing party ever since, leaving it with just 40% of the vote.

While it remained the biggest party, the once-dominant ANC was unable to form a government on its own for the first time or reelect Ramaphosa in Parliament. So began two weeks of frenzied talks with the DA, the second biggest party and a surprise choice for a coalition partner, to find common ground with a deadline looming.

South Africa’s constitution says a new Parliament must convene and vote for a president within 14 days of the election results being declared, and the ANC and DA were in a race against time to broker the country’s most important political deal in three decades.

Breakthrough: The ANC announced Thursday night that an agreement had been reached in principle but talks continued on the finer details. They came unstuck around 2 a.m. on Friday, officials said, and as the new Parliament opened later that day and lawmakers were being sworn in, there was no deal.

The country was gripped as proceedings were broadcast live with no sense whether a president would be elected. The head of the DA’s negotiating team then said the two parties had “found each other” but there was still a painstaking wait for a formal document to be signed as the clock ticked.

It happened during a break in the parliamentary proceedings and DA leader John Steenhuisen announced in a speech to the nation that his party would end its long-held stance of opposition to the ANC by voting for Ramaphosa for president. Ramaphosa was reelected at the end of the 14-hour session, with the votes of DA lawmakers helping him over the line.

The 71-year-old Ramaphosa, who was closely involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, and the 48-year-old Steenhuisen, a teenager when apartheid ended, smiled and shook hands. Ramaphosa called it a “a new era of hope” for South Africa.

Opposition to the coalition: The agreement includes at least two other smaller parties and Ramaphosa has invited all parties represented in Parliament to join a broader coalition under the banner of a government of national unity.

Some have refused, including the new MK Party of former President Jacob Zuma and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters. They are the third and fourth biggest parties, respectively, and will now likely remain in the role of opposition.

Going forward: While the efforts of the ANC and the DA to find broad common ground have been hailed, no one doubts them governing together long term will be complex.

They disagree on many issues, including on nationalization vs. privatization of key sectors of the economy, on funding health care, on labor rights and foreign policy, where the DA has criticized the ANC’s overtly pro-Russia and pro-Palestinian stances.

Analysts say they need to find an effective way to work together quickly, given South Africa’s pressing problems that include some of the world’s highest levels of unemployment, inequality and violent crime. They are a stain on the reputation of a country that puts itself forward as a leader for its continent and the wider developing world.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military announced on Sunday that it would pause fighting throughout daytime hours along a route in southern Gaza to free up a backlog of humanitarian aid deliveries destined for desperate Palestinians enduring a humanitarian crisis sparked by the war, now in its ninth month.

The “tactical pause” announced by the military, which applies to about 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) of road in the Rafah area, falls far short of a complete cease-fire in the beleaguered territory that has been sought by the international community, including Israel’s top ally, the United States. If it holds, the limited halt in fighting could help address some of the overwhelming needs of Palestinians that have surged even more in recent weeks with Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

The army said the pause would begin at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) and remain in effect until 7 p.m. (1600 GMT). It said the pauses would take place every day until further notice.

The pause is aimed at allowing aid trucks to reach the nearby Israel-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point for incoming aid, and travel safely to the Salah a-Din highway, a main north-south road, the military said. The crossing has suffered from a bottleneck since Israeli ground troops moved into Rafah in early May.

COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, said the route would increase the flow of aid to other parts of Gaza, including Khan Younis, Muwasi and central Gaza. Hard-hit northern Gaza, which was an early target in the war, is being served by goods entering from a crossing in the north.

The military said the pause Sunday, which begins as Muslims in Gaza and elsewhere start marking the major Eid Al-Adha holiday, came after discussions with the United Nations and international aid agencies.

Following criticism over the move from ultranationalists in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, who oppose a halt in the war, the military said fighting is not being paused in the rest of southern Gaza and neither is there any change regarding the entry of aid in general.

Aid agencies, including the U.N., did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Scott Anderson, the Gaza affairs director for the U.N. agency for Palestinians, told CNN that he was hopeful the pause would “bring in much-needed aid for the population.”

The pause along the southern route comes as Israel and Hamas are weighing the latest proposal for a cease-fire, a plan that was detailed by President Joe Biden in the administration’s most concentrated diplomatic push for a halt to the fighting and the release of hostages taken by the militant group. While Biden described the proposal as an Israeli one, Israel has not fully embraced it and Hamas has demanded changes that appear unacceptable to Israel.

The fighting continues unabated, and Israel announced the names Sunday of a total of 11 soldiers killed in recent attacks in Gaza, including one who died from wounds sustained in an assault last week. That puts the number of soldiers killed since Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza last year at 308. Hamas killed 1,200 people during its Oct. 7 attack and took 250 hostage, Israeli authorities say. Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war.

Israel’s eight-month military offensive against Hamas, sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack, has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, with the U.N. reporting widespread hunger and hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine. The international community has urged Israel to do more to ease the crunch and has said the ongoing fighting, including in Rafah, has complicated aid deliveries throughout the war.

From May 6 until June 6, the U.N. received an average of 68 trucks of aid a day, according to figures from the U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA. That was down from 168 a day in April and far below the 500 trucks a day that aid groups say are needed.

The flow of aid in southern Gaza declined just as the humanitarian need grew. More than 1 million Palestinians, many of whom had already been displaced, fled Rafah after the invasion, crowding into other parts of southern and central Gaza. Most now languish in ramshackle tent camps, using trenches as latrines, with open sewage in the streets.

COGAT says there are no restrictions on the entry of trucks. It says more than 8,600 trucks of all kinds, both aid and commercial, entered Gaza from all crossings from May 2 to June 13, an average of 201 a day. But much of that aid has piled up at the crossings and not reached its final destination.

A spokesman for COGAT, Shimon Freedman, said it was the U.N.’s fault that its cargos stacked up on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom. He said the agencies have “fundamental logistical problems that they have not fixed,” especially a lack of trucks.

The U.N. denies such allegations. It says the fighting between Israel and Hamas often makes it too dangerous for U.N. trucks inside Gaza to travel to Kerem Shalom, which is right next to Israel’s border.

It also says the pace of deliveries has been slowed because the Israeli military must authorize drivers to travel to the site, a system Israel says was designed for the drivers’ safety. Due to a lack of security, aid trucks in some cases have also been looted by crowds as they moved along Gaza’s roads.

The new arrangement aims to reduce the need for coordinating deliveries by providing an 11-hour uninterrupted window each day for trucks to move in and out of the crossing.

It was not immediately clear whether the army would provide security to protect the aid trucks as they moved along the highway.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentine riot police unleashed water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters who threw sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails outside Congress on Wednesday, escalating tensions before lawmakers were to vote on state overhaul and tax bills proposed by President Javier Milei.

The vote is the most serious test to date of the libertarian leader’s vision of governance and change.

Thousands of demonstrators had converged in downtown Buenos Aires as the Senate opened debate on the key legislation, urging lawmakers to reject Milei’s program of harsh austerity and economic deregulation.

The carnival atmosphere that prevailed around Congress earlier in the day — with protesters blasting trumpets, dancing and buying beer and grilled meat from impromptu street barbecues — quickly turned as crowds jostled and shoved against a column of police armed with shields and batons.

Security forces backed by armored cars with mounted water cannons pushed back protesters hurling flaming bottles and other objects. Despite the wintry weather, hundreds of police blasted water cannons and tear gas at crowds that surged toward cordoned-off streets, and at one point, trampled over a police barricade.

Ensuing scuffles between police and protesters injured at least 20 officers, authorities said. Security forces said they arrested 15 people.

Protesters threw Molotov cocktails at bikes and set ablaze a car belonging to a local radio station. Police used pepper spray to clear a line of demonstrators, sending at least four opposition lawmakers to the hospital, according to the left-wing Peronist party, Unión por la Patria.

Scenes of chaos played out in streets surrounding the central square.

The presidency issued a statement condemning the protesters as “terrorists” who “tried to mount a coup d’état by attacking the normal functioning of the Argentine National Congress.”

“The only thing the old guard knows how to do is put spokes in the wheel,” Milei said Wednesday a conference for a right-wing think tank at the Hilton Hotel in Buenos Aires. “We are going to change Argentina, we are going to make it the most liberal country in the world.”

Violence outside Congress prompted a shouting match inside as opposition senators tried to pass a motion to pause the debate because of the clashes. The motion failed and debate continued.

Milei rose to power on the promise he would solve Argentina’s worst economic crisis in two decades, but his political party of relative novices holds a tiny minority of seats in Congress and he has struggled to strike deals with the opposition.

Senators began debating two bills on Wednesday, a tax package that lowers the income tax threshold and a 238-article state reform bill, initially dubbed the “omnibus bill” because of its then more than 600 articles.

This watered-down version still delegates broad legislative powers to the president in energy, pensions and security, and includes measures to incentivize investment, deregulate the economy and trim the deficit.

“They seek to bankrupt our national industry for the benefit of some monopolies,” said Peronist lawmaker Juan Marino.

Certain touchy subjects, such as unions’ provision of health care and the privatization of Argentina’s national oil company, have been scrapped in hopes of reaching a compromise.

“If this law passes, we are going to lose so many of our labor and pension rights,” said 54-year-old primary school teacher Miriam Rajovitcher, adding that already her school budget has been slashed, her wages have been cut and food prices have skyrocketed. “I am so much worse off.”

Launching fireworks and chanting, “Our country is not for sale!” bankers, teachers, truckers and workers from a slew of other trade unions held signs mocking Milei for his self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” agenda and drastic efforts to slash spending across the state. “How can a head of state hate the state?” one banner read.

After weeks of torturous negotiations to win over potential allies, Milei’s two major bills cleared an important hurdle in late April, passing the lower house of Congress. If the Senate passes the bills with modifications, the lower house still has to approve them.

“Today, it’s almost more important for Milei to demonstrate that he can pass laws in Congress than what he passes,” said Lucas Romero, director of Synopsis consultancy.

The package faces stiff resistance from right-wing moderates and the left-leaning Peronist movement loyal to former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which has dominated Argentine politics for two decades.

The Peronist bloc controls 33 out of 72 seats in the Senate while Milei’s party, Freedom Advances, holds just seven. The bill needs 37 votes in the Senate to get a majority.

Analysts say foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund, to which Argentina owes a staggering $44 billion, are closely watching the vote to see whether Milei can build consensus with his opponents to deliver on his ambitions.

WASHINGTON — A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups sued the Biden administration on Wednesday over President Joe Biden’s recent directive that effectively halts asylum claims at the southern border, saying it differs little from a similar move during the Trump administration that was blocked by the courts.

The lawsuit — filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others on behalf of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and RAICES — is the first test of the legality of Biden’s sweeping crackdown on the border, which came after months of internal White House deliberations and is designed in part to deflect political attacks against the president on his handling of immigration.

“By enacting an asylum ban that is legally indistinguishable from the Trump ban we successfully blocked, we were left with no choice but to file this lawsuit,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU.

The order Biden issued last week would limit asylum processing once encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. It went into effect immediately because the latest figures were far higher, at about 4,000 daily.

The restrictions would be in effect until two weeks after the daily encounter numbers are at or below 1,500 per day between ports of entry, under a seven-day average. But it’s far from clear when the numbers would dip that low; the last time was in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The order went into effect June 5, and Biden administration officials have said they expected record levels of deportations.

But advocates argue that suspending asylum for migrants who don’t arrive at a designated port of entry — which the Biden administration is trying to push migrants to do — violates existing federal immigration law, among other concerns.

Biden invoked the same legal authority used by the Trump administration for its asylum ban, which comes under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision allows a president to limit entries for certain migrants if their entry is deemed “detrimental” to the national interest.

Biden has repeatedly criticized Trump’s immigration policies as he campaigns, and his administration argues that his directive is different because it includes several exemptions for humanitarian reasons. For example, victims of human trafficking, unaccompanied minors and those with severe medical emergencies would not be subject to the limits.

“We stand by the legality of what we have done,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on ABC’s “This Week” before the lawsuit was filed, saying he anticipated legal challenges. “We stand by the value proposition.”

Under Biden’s directive, migrants who arrive at the border but do not express a fear of returning to their home countries will be subject to immediate removal from the United States, within a matter of days or even hours. Those migrants could face punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the U.S. or even criminal prosecution.

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit of the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the government would make amends for one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history.

The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last year, ruling that the plaintiff’s grievances about the destruction of the Greenwood district, although legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

“Plaintiffs do not point to any physical injury to property in Greenwood rendering it uninhabitable that could be resolved by way of injunction or other civil remedy,” the court wrote in its decision. “Today we hold that relief is not possible under any set of facts that could be established consistent with plaintiff’s allegations.”

Messages left Wednesday with the survivors’ attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, were not immediately returned.

The city said in a statement that it “respects the court’s decision and affirms the significance of the work the City continues to do in the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities,” adding that it remains committed “to working with residents and providing resources to support” the communities.

The suit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to make recompense for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district by a white mob. In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — the white mob, including some people hastily deputized by authorities, looted and burned the district, which was referred to as Black Wall Street.

As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

The two survivors of the attack, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are both now over 100 years old, sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.” A third plaintiff, Hughes Van Ellis, died last year at age 102.

The lawsuit was brought under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, arguing that the actions of the white mob continue to affect the city today. It contended that Tulsa’s long history of racial division and tension stemmed from the massacre.

The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that still exist today, the lawsuit argued. It sought a detailed accounting of the property and wealth lost or stolen in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa and the creation of a victims compensation fund, among other things.

In 2019, Oklahoma’s attorney general used the public nuisance law to force opioid drug maker Johnson & Johnson to pay the state $465 million in damages. The Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned that decision two years later.

BEIRUT — Hamas said Tuesday that it gave mediators its reply to the U.S.-backed proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, seeking some “amendments” on the deal. It appeared the reply was short of an outright acceptance that the United States has been pushing for but kept negotiations alive over an elusive halt to the eight-month war.

The foreign ministries of Qatar and Egypt — who have been key mediators alongside the U.S. — confirmed they had received Hamas’ response and said mediators were studying it.

“We’re in receipt of this reply that Hamas delivered to Qatar and to Egypt, and we are evaluating it right now,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha said the response included “amendments that confirm the cease-fire, withdrawal, reconstruction and [prisoner] exchange.” Taha did not elaborate.

But while supporting the broad outlines of the deal, Hamas officials have expressed wariness over whether Israel would implement its terms, particularly provisions for an eventual permanent end to fighting and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for the release of all hostages held by the militants.

Even as the U.S. has said Israel accepted the proposal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given conflicting signals, saying Israel will not stop until its its goal of destroying Hamas is achieved.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been in the region this week trying to push through the deal — his eighth visit since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel ignited Israel’s campaign in Gaza. On Tuesday, he continued pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal, saying the U.N. Security Council’s vote in its favor made it “as clear as it possibly could be” that the world supports the plan.

“Everyone’s vote is in, except for one vote, and that’s Hamas,” Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv after meeting with Israeli officials, hours before Hamas announced its reply. He said Netanyahu had reaffirmed his commitment to the proposal when they met late Monday.

In a joint statement announcing that they had submitted their reply to Qatar and Egypt, Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group said they were ready to “deal positively to arrive at an agreement” and that their priority is to bring a “complete stop” to the war. A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television that the group had “submitted some remarks on the proposal to the mediators,” without elaborating.

The proposal has raised hopes of ending an eight-month conflict in which Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed over 37,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, and driven some 80 percent of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Israeli restrictions and ongoing fighting have hindered efforts to bring humanitarian aid to the isolated coastal enclave, fueling widespread hunger.

Israel launched its campaign, vowing to eliminate Hamas, after the group and other militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. Over 100 hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire last year in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Later Tuesday, Blinken attended a Gaza aid conference in Jordan, where he announced over $400 million in additional aid for Palestinians in Gaza and the wider region, bringing the total U.S. assistance to more than $674 million over the past eight months.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the gathering that the amount of aid flowing to the United Nations in Gaza for distribution has plummeted by two-thirds since Israel launched an offensive in the territory’s southern city of Rafah in early May.

Guterres called for all border crossings to be opened, saying, “the speed and scale of the carnage and killing in Gaza” is beyond anything he has seen since he took the helm of the U.N. in 2017.

In a separate development, the U.N. human rights office said Israeli forces and Palestinian militants may have committed war crimes during the deadly Israeli raid that rescued four hostages over the weekend. At least 274 Palestinians were killed in the operation, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Blinken, who was in Cairo on Monday, was also expected to visit Qatar — where talks would likely focus on the next steps in the push for a deal.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council voted overwhelmingly to approve the proposal, with 14 of the 15 members voting in favor and Russia abstaining. The resolution calls on Israel and Hamas “to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition.”

The proposal, announced by President Joe Biden last month, calls for a three-phased plan that would begin with an initial six-week cease-fire and the release of some hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Israeli forces would withdraw from populated areas and Palestinian civilians would be allowed to return to their homes. Hamas is still holding around 120 hostages, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Phase one also requires the safe distribution of humanitarian assistance “at scale throughout the Gaza Strip,” which Biden said would lead to 600 trucks of aid entering Gaza every day.

At the same time, negotiations would be launched over the second phase, which is to bring “a permanent end to hostilities, in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.”

Phase three would launch “a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of the remains of any deceased hostages still in Gaza to their families.”

The militant group embraced a similar proposal last month that was rejected by Israel.

Biden presented it as an Israeli proposal, but Netanyahu has publicly disputed key aspects of it, saying there were parts left out by Biden. The conflicting signals appear to reflect Netanyahu’s political dilemma. His far-right coalition allies have rejected the proposal and have threatened to bring down his government if he ends the war without destroying Hamas.

A lasting cease-fire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza would likely allow Hamas to retain control of the territory and rebuild its military capabilities.

But Netanyahu is also under mounting pressure to accept a deal to bring the hostages back. Thousands of Israelis, including families of the hostages, have demonstrated in favor of the U.S.-backed plan.

The transition from the first to the second phase appears to be a sticking point. Hamas wants assurances that Israel will not resume the war, and Israel wants to ensure that protracted negotiations over the second phase do not prolong the cease-fire indefinitely while leaving hostages in captivity.

Blinken said the proposal would bring an immediate cease-fire and commit the parties to negotiate an enduring one. “The cease-fire that would take place immediately would remain in place, which is manifestly good for for everyone. And then we’ll have to see,” Blinken said.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after North Korean troops violated the land border earlier this week, South Korea’s military said Tuesday, amid soaring animosities between the rivals over the North’s recent trash-carrying balloon launches.

Some North Korean soldiers who were engaged in unspecified work on the northern side of the border briefly crossed the military demarcation line on Sunday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Those North Korean soldiers immediately returned to their territory after South Korea’s military fired warning shots and issued warning broadcasts, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. It said North Korea had not conducted any other suspicious activities.

South Korea’s military has assessed that the North Korean soldiers didn’t appear to have intentionally crossed the border because the site is a wooded area and MDL signs there weren’t clearly visible, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung Joon told reporters.

The Koreas’ mine-strewn land border is the world’s most heavily armed border, with hundreds of thousands of combat troops facing each other. It’s a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

On Sunday, South Korea resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts from its border loudspeakers in response to the North’s recent launches of balloons carrying manure and rubbish across the border. South Korea said North Korea has installed its own border loudspeakers in response but hasn’t turned them on yet.

PHOENIX — Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and Donald Trump attorney, was processed Monday in the criminal case over the effort to overturn Trump’s Arizona election loss to Joe Biden, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said.

The sheriff’s office provided a mug shot but no other details. The office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for Maricopa County said Giuliani posted bond of $10,000 in cash.

A Giuliani spokesperson did not immediately respond to an emailed request for additional information.

Giuliani pleaded not guilty in May to nine felony charges stemming from his alleged role in the fake electors effort. He is among 18 people indicted in the Arizona case, including Trump attorneys John Eastman, Christina Bobb and Jenna Ellis.

Former Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump 2020 Election Day operations director Michael Roman pleaded not guilty Friday in Phoenix to nine felony charges for their alleged roles in the scheme.

The indictment alleges Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat.

Other states where criminal charges have been filed related to the fake electors scheme are Michigan, Nevada and Georgia.

LOS ANGELES — The Rev. James Lawson Jr., an apostle of nonviolent protest who schooled activists to withstand brutal reactions from white authorities as the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, has died, his family said Monday. He was 95.

His family said Lawson died on Sunday after a short illness in Los Angeles, where he spent decades working as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor.

Lawson was a close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”

Lawson met King in 1957, after spending three years in India soaking up knowledge about Mohandas K. Gandhi’s independence movement. King would travel to India himself two years later, but at the time, he had only read about Gandhi in books.

The two Black pastors -- both 28 years old -- quickly bonded over their enthusiasm for the Indian leader’s ideas, and King urged Lawson to put them into action in the American South.

Lawson soon led workshops in church basements in Nashville, Tennessee, that prepared John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, the Freedom Riders and many others to peacefully withstand vicious responses to their challenges of racist laws and policies.

Lawson’s lessons led Nashville to become the first major city in the South to desegregate its downtown, on May 10, 1960, after hundreds of well-organized students staged lunch-counter sit-ins and boycotts of discriminatory businesses.

Lawson’s particular contribution was to introduce Gandhian principles to people more familiar with biblical teachings, showing how direct action could expose the immorality and fragility of racist white power structures.

Gandhi said “that we persons have the power to resist the racism in our own lives and souls,” Lawson told the AP. “We have the power to make choices and to say no to that wrong. That’s also Jesus.”

Years later, in 1968, it was Lawson who organized the sanitation workers strike that fatefully drew King to Memphis. Lawson said he was at first paralyzed and forever saddened by King’s assassination.

“I thought I would not live beyond 40, myself,” Lawson said. “The imminence of death was a part of the discipline we lived with, but no one as much as King.”

Still, Lawson made it his life’s mission to preach the power of nonviolent direct action.

“I’m still anxious and frustrated,” Lawson said as he marked the 50th anniversary of King’s death with a march in Memphis. “The task is unfinished.”

Civil rights activist Diane Nash was a 21-year-old college student when she began attending Lawson’s Nashville workshops, which she called life-changing.

“His passing constitutes a very great loss,” Nash said. “He bears, I think, more responsibility than any other single person for the civil rights movement of Blacks being nonviolent in this country.”

James Morris Lawson Jr., was born on Sept. 22, 1928, the son and grandson of ministers, and grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became ordained himself as a high school senior.

He told The Tennessean that his commitment to nonviolence began in elementary school, when he told his mother that he had slapped a boy who had used a racial slur against him.

“What good did that do, Jimmy?” his mother asked.

That simple question forever changed his life, Lawson said. He became a pacifist, refusing to serve when drafted for the Korean War, and spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group, sponsored his trip to India after he finished a sociology degree.

Gandhi had been assassinated by then, but Lawson met people who had worked with him and explained Gandhi’s concept of “satyagraha,” a relentless pursuit of Truth, which encouraged Indians to peacefully reject British rule. Lawson then saw how the Christian concept of turning the other cheek could be applied in collective actions to challenge morally indefensible laws.

Lawson was a divinity student at Oberlin College in Ohio when King spoke on campus about the Montgomery bus boycott. King told him, “You can’t wait, you need to come on South now,‘” Lawson recalled in an Associated Press interview.

Lawson soon enrolled in theology classes at Vanderbilt University, while leading younger activists through mock protests in which they practiced taking insults without reacting.

The technique swiftly proved its power at lunch counters and movie theaters in Nashville, where on May 10, 1960, businesses agreed to take down the “No Colored” signs that enforced white supremacy.

“It was the first major successful campaign to pull the signs down,” and it created a template for the sit-ins that began spreading across the South, Lawson said.

Lawson was called on to organize what became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sought to organize the spontaneous efforts of tens of thousands of students who began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South.

Angry segregationists got Lawson expelled from Vanderbilt, but he said he never harbored hard feelings about the university, where he returned as a distinguished visiting professor in 2006, and eventually donated a significant portion of his papers.

Lawson earned that theology degree at Boston University and became a Methodist pastor in Memphis, where his wife Dorothy Wood Lawson worked as an NAACP organizer. They moved several years later to Los Angeles, where Lawson led the Holman United Methodist Church and taught at California State University, Northridge and the University of California. They raised three sons, John, Morris and Seth.

Lawson remained active into his 90s, urging younger generations to leverage their power. Eulogizing the late Rep. John Lewis, he recalled how the young man he trained in Nashville grew lonely marches into multitudes, paving the way for major civil rights legislation.

“If we would honor and celebrate John Lewis’ life, let us then re-commit our souls, our hearts, our minds, our bodies and our strength to the continuing journey to dismantle the wrong in our midst,” Lawson said.

BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — A military plane carrying Malawi‘s vice president and nine others went missing Monday and a search is underway, the president’s office said.

The plane carrying 51-year-old Vice President Saulos Chilima left the southern African nation’s capital, Lilongwe, at 9.17 a.m. but failed to land as scheduled around 45 minutes later at Mzuzu International Airport, about 370 kilometers (230 miles) to the north.

Aviation authorities lost contact with the plane when it “went off radar,” according to a statement from Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera’s office. Chakwera ordered a search operation and canceled a trip to the Bahamas, his office said.

“All efforts to make contact with the aircraft since it went off radar have failed thus far,” it said.

Chakwera was informed of the missing plane by Gen. Valentino Phiri, the head of the Malawian armed forces. The president ordered national and local authorities to “conduct an immediate search and rescue operation to locate the whereabouts of the aircraft,” his office said.

Chilima had been facing corruption charges over allegations that he received money in return for influencing the awarding of government contracts, but the charges were surprisingly dropped by prosecutors last month. That led to criticism that Chakwera’s administration was not taking a hard enough stance against graft.

Chilima was arrested in late 2022 and made several court appearances, but the trial had not started. He denied the allegations.

Chilima was a candidate in the 2019 Malawian presidential election and finished third. That vote that was won by incumbent Peter Mutharika but was annulled by Malawi’s Constitutional Court because of irregularities. Chakwera finished second in that election.

Chilima then joined Chakwera’s campaign as his running mate in the historic election rerun in 2020, when Chakwera was elected president. It was the first time in Africa that an election result that was overturned by a court resulted in a defeat for the sitting president.

JERUSALEM — Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s three-man war Cabinet, announced his resignation on Sunday.

The move does not immediately pose a threat to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who still controls a majority coalition in parliament. But the Israeli leader becomes more heavily reliant on his far-right allies.

Gantz said that Netanyahu is making “total victory impossible” and that the government needs to put the return of the hostages seized Oct. 7 by Hamas “above political survival.”

The popular former military chief joined Netanyahu’s government shortly after the Hamas attack in a show of unity. His presence also boosted Israel’s credibility with its international partners. Gantz has good working relations with U.S. officials.

Gantz had previously said he would leave the government by June 8 if Netanyahu did not formulate a new plan for postwar Gaza.

He scrapped a planned news conference Saturday night after four Israeli hostages were dramatically rescued from Gaza earlier in the day in Israel’s largest such operation since the eight-month war began. At least 274 Palestinians, including children, were killed in the assault, Gaza health officials said.

NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi was sworn in Sunday for a rare third consecutive term as India’s prime minister, relying on his coalition partners after his party failed to win a parliamentary majority in a surprise outcome.

Modi and his Cabinet ministers took the oath of office, administered by President Droupadi Murmu, at India’s presidential palace Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

The 73-year-old popular but polarizing leader is only the second Indian prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to retain power for a third five-year term.

His Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which won by landslides in 2014 and 2019, failed to secure a majority to govern on its own in the latest national election. However, Modi’s National Democratic Alliance coalition won enough seats to form a government, with him at the helm.

This is the first time the BJP under Modi has needed support from its regional allies to form a government after a decade of commanding the majority in Parliament.

Final election results released Wednesday showed Modi’s BJP won 240 seats, well below the 272 needed for a majority. Together, the parties in the NDA coalition secured 293 seats in the 543-member lower house of Parliament.

Modi’s coalition government now largely depends on two key regional allies — the Telugu Desam Party in southern Andhra Pradesh state and Janata Dal (United) in eastern Bihar state — to stay in power.

Meanwhile, Modi’s political challenger, the INDIA alliance led by the resurgent Congress party, put up a stronger-than-expected fight, doubling its strength from the last election to win 232 seats.

An avowed Hindu nationalist, the prime minister is considered a champion of the country’s Hindu majority, who make up 80% of India’s 1.4 billion population. His supporters credit him with rapid economic growth and improving India’s global standing since coming to power.

But critics say he’s also undermined India’s democracy and its status as a secular nation with attacks by Hindu nationalists against the country’s minorities, particularly Muslims, and a shrinking space for dissent and free media. His political opponents have questioned his government’s economic record, pointing to high unemployment and growing inequality despite strong growth.

Several South Asian leaders attended the swearing-in ceremony Sunday, including Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu.

Tensions between India and Maldives have grown since Muizzu was elected last year. He has since taken a pro-China stance and removed Indian troops stationed on one of Maldives’ islets.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — At least 274 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded in the Israeli raid that rescued four hostages held by Hamas, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday. The military said its forces came under heavy fire during the complex daytime operation deep inside the territory.

The killing of so many Palestinians, including women and children, in an operation that Israelis celebrated as a stunning success because all four hostages were rescued alive, showed the heavy cost of such operations, on top of the already soaring toll of the eight-month-long war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Scores of hostages are believed to be held in densely populated areas or inside Hamas’ labyrinth of tunnels, making such operations extremely complex and risky. A similar raid in February rescued two hostages while leaving 74 Palestinians dead.

The complex raid deep into Nuseirat, a built-up refugee camp in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, was the largest rescue operation since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other militants stormed across the border, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage.

Israel launched a massive offensive in response that has killed over 36,700 Palestinians, according to the ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its counts.

It said nearly 700 people were wounded in Saturday’s raid. The ministry did not say how many of the casualties were women and children, but Associated Press reporters saw several being treated at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah in the aftermath of the raid.

Israelis celebrated the return of Noa Argamani, 26; Almog Meir Jan, 22; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 41, after Israeli forces raided two locations at once while under fire.

Argamani had been one of the most widely recognized hostages after being taken, like the three others, from a music festival. The video of her abduction showed her seated between two men on a motorcycle as she screamed, “Don’t kill me!”

Her mother, Liora, who has brain cancer, had released a video pleading to see her daughter. Israel’s Channel 13 said Argamani was moved to the hospital where her mother is treated.

In Gaza, medics described scenes of horror and chaos as wounded people poured into nearby hospitals that were already struggling to treat the wounded from days of heavy Israeli strikes in the area.

“We had the gamut of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to eviscerations to trauma, to TBIs (traumatic brain injuries), fractures, and obviously, big burns,” said Karin Huster of Doctors Without Borders, an international charity working in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the facilities that received dead and wounded.

“Kids completely grey or white from the shock, burnt, screaming for their parents. Many of them are not screaming because they are in shock.”

The Israeli military said it had attacked “threats to our forces in the area,” and that a special forces officer was killed in the rescue operation.

Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters Saturday that the hostages were being held in two apartments, about 200 meters (219 yards) away from each other, in the heart of the Nuseirat camp. He said the forces had trained repeatedly on a model of the apartment buildings.

Hagari said the forces moved in simultaneously in broad daylight on both apartments, believing this ensured the best element of surprise. But he said the rescuers came under heavy fire as they moved out, including from gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades from within the neighborhood.

He said the military responded with heavy force, including from aircraft, to extract the rescuers and freed hostages.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz lashed out at critics of the operation in a post on X, saying “only Israel’s enemies complained about the casualties of Hamas terrorists and their accomplices.”

Of the 250 hostages abducted on Oct. 7, about half were released in a weeklong cease-fire in November. About 120 hostages remain, with 43 pronounced dead. Survivors include about 15 women, two children under 5 and two men in their 80s.

Saturday’s operation brought the total number of rescued hostages to seven, including one who was freed shortly after the October attack. Israeli troops have recovered the bodies of at least 16 others, according to the government.

The latest rescue lifted some spirits in Israel as divisions deepened over the best way to bring hostages home. Many Israelis urge Netanyahu to embrace a cease-fire deal U.S. President Joe Biden announced last month, but far-right allies threaten to collapse his government if he does.

Netanyahu, whose support has fallen, rushed to the hospital to greet the freed hostages and his office released a stream of photos and videos of him meeting the families. But thousands of Israelis again gathered Saturday evening for the latest anti-government demonstration and calls for a cease-fire agreement.

It was unclear what effect the rescue might have on apparently stalled cease-fire efforts.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will return to the Middle East next week, seeking a breakthrough.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea announced Sunday it would resume anti-North Korean propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts in border areas in retaliation to the North sending over 1000 balloons filled with trash and manure over the last couple of weeks.

The move is certain to anger Pyongyang and potentially prompt it to take retaliatory military steps, and adds to tensions between the war-divided rivals amid a diplomatic stalemate over the North’s nuclear ambitions.

Following an emergency security meeting led by South Korean national security director Chang Ho-jin on Sunday, officials decided to install and begin the loudspeaker broadcasts, Seoul’s presidential office said in a statement.

Chang and other South Korean security officials berated Pyongyang for attempting to cause “anxiety and disruption” in South Korea and stressed that North Korea would be “solely responsible” for any future escalation of tensions between the Koreas.

The North said its campaign came after South Korean activists sent over balloons filled with anti-North Korean leaflets, as well as USB sticks filled with popular South Korean songs and dramas which Pyongyang is extremely sensitive to as it fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents and eventually weaken leader Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, analysts say.

With the loudspeakers, South Korea may blare anti-Pyongyang broadcasts, K-pop songs and outside news across the rivals’ heavily armed border.

In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting South Korea to return fire, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported.

Last week, as tensions spiked over the trash-carrying balloons, South Korea also suspended a 2018 tension-easing agreement with North Korea, allowing it to resume propaganda campaigns and possibly restart live-fire military exercises in border areas.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik in a meeting with top military commanders called for thorough preparation against the possibility that the North responds to the loudspeaker broadcasts with direct military action, the South Korean Defense Ministry said in a statement. However, the ministry didn’t immediately confirm whether the loudspeaker broadcasts had started as of Sunday afternoon.

North Korea continued to fly hundreds of balloons into South Korea over the weekend, a third such campaign since late May, the South’s military said.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the North launching around 330 balloons toward the South since Saturday night and about 80 were found in South Korean territory as of Sunday morning. The military said winds were blowing eastward on Saturday night, which possibly caused many balloons to float away from South Korean territory.

The South’s military said the balloons that did land dropped trash, including plastic and paper waste, but no hazardous substances were discovered.

The military, which has mobilized chemical rapid response and explosive clearance units to retrieve the North Korean balloons and materials, alerted the public to beware of falling objects and not to touch balloons found on the ground but report them to police or military authorities.

In North Korea’s previous two rounds of balloon activities, South Korean authorities discovered about 1,000 balloons that were tied to vinyl bags containing manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth, waste batteries and waste paper. Some were popped and scattered on roads, residential areas and schools. No highly dangerous materials were found and no major damage has been reported.

The North’s vice defense minister, Kim Kang Il, later said his country would stop the balloon campaign but threatened to resume it if South Korean activists sent leaflets again.

In defiance of the warning, a South Korean civilian group led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, said it launched 10 balloons from a border town on Thursday carrying 200,000 anti-North Korean leaflets, USB sticks with K-pop songs and K-dramas, and $1 U.S. bills. South Korean media reported another activist group also flew balloons with 200,000 propaganda leaflets toward North Korea on Friday.

Kim in recent years has waged an intensifying campaign to eliminate South Korean cultural and language influences. In January, Kim declared the North would abandon its longstanding goal of a peaceful unification with the South and rewrite its constitution to cement the South as a permanent enemy. Experts say Kim’s efforts to reinforce the North’s separate identity may be aimed at strengthening the Kim family’s dynastic rule.

North Korea’s balloon campaign is also possibly meant to cause a divide in South Korea over its conservative government’s hard-line approach to North Korea.

Liberal lawmakers, some civic groups and front-line residents in South Korea have called on the government to urge leafleting activists to stop flying balloons to avoid unnecessary clashes with North Korea. But government officials haven’t made such an appeal in line with last year’s constitutional court ruling that struck down a law criminalizing an anti-North Korea leafletting as a violation of free speech.