insult

JERUSALEM — Vice President JD Vance criticized on Thursday a vote in Israel’s parliament the previous day about the annexation of the occupied West Bank, saying it amounted to an “insult” and went against the Trump administration policies.

Hard-liners in the Israeli parliament had narrowly passed a symbolic preliminary vote in support of annexing the West Bank — an apparent attempt to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Vance was still in the country.

The bill, which required only a simple majority of lawmakers present in the house on Wednesday, passed with a 25-24 vote. But it was unlikely to pass multiple rounds of voting to become law or win a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Netanyahu, who is opposed to it, also has tools to delay or defeat it.

On the tarmac of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport before departing Israel, Vance said that if the Knesset’s vote was a “political stunt, then it is a very stupid political stunt.”

“I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”

Netanyahu is struggling to stave off early elections as cracks between factions in the right-wing parties, some of whom were upset over the ceasefire and the security sacrifices it required of Israel, grow more apparent.

While many members of Netanyahu’s coalition, including the Likud, support annexation, they have backed off those calls since U.S. President Trump said last month that he opposes such a move. The United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. and Israeli ally in the push to peace in Gaza, has said any annexation by Israel would be a “red line.”

The Palestinians seek the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future independent state. Israeli annexation of the West Bank would all but bury hopes for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians — the outcome supported by most of the world.

Gaza’s reconstruction and Palestinians’ return

Vance also unveiled new details about U.S. plans for Gaza, saying he expected reconstruction to begin soon in some “Hamas-free” areas of the territory but warning that rebuilding territory after a devastating two-year war could take years.

“The hope is to rebuild Rafah over the next two to three years and theoretically you could have half a million people live (there),” he said.

The war caused widespread destruction across the coastal Palestinian enclave. The United Nations in July estimated that the war generated some 61 million tons of debris in Gaza. The World Bank, the U.N. and the European Union estimated earlier this year that it would cost about $53 billion to rebuild.

The Israel-Hamas war has killed at least 68,280 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.

Intense U.S. push toward peace

Earlier this week, Vance announced the opening of a civilian military coordination center in southern Israel where some 200 U.S. troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries planning the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza.

The U.S. is seeking support from other allies, especially Gulf Arab nations, to create an international stabilization force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian force.

“We’d like to see Palestinian police forces in Gaza that are not Hamas and that are going to do a good job, but those still have to be trained and equipped,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said ahead of his trip to Israel.

Rubio, who is to meet with Netanyahu later on Thursday, also criticized Israeli far-right lawmakers’ effort to push for the annexation of the West Bank.

Israeli media referred to the nonstop parade of American officials visiting to ensure Israel holds up its side of the fragile ceasefire as “Bibi-sitting.” The term, utilizing Netanyahu’s nickname of Bibi, refers to an old campaign ad when Netanyahu positioned himself as the “Bibi-sitter” whom voters could trust with their kids.

In Gaza, a dire need for medical care

In the first medical evacuation since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday the group has evacuated 41 critical patients and 145 companions out of the Gaza Strip.

In a statement posted to X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on nations to show solidarity and help some 15,000 patients who are still waiting for approval to receive medical care outside Gaza.

His calls were echoed by an official with the U.N. Population Fund who on Wednesday described the “sheer devastation” that he witnessed on his most recent travel to Gaza, saying that there is no such thing as a “normal birth in Gaza now.”

Andrew Saberton, an executive director at UNFPA, told reporters how difficult the agency’s work has become due to the lack of functioning or even standing health care facilities.

“The sheer extent of the devastation looked like the set of a dystopian film. Unfortunately, it is not fiction,” he said.

Court hearing on journalists’ access to Gaza

Separately on Thursday, Israel’s Supreme Court held a hearing into whether to open the Gaza Strip to the international media and gave the state 30 days to present a new position in light of the new situation under the ceasefire.

Israel has blocked reporters from entering Gaza since the war erupted with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

The Foreign Press Association, which represents dozens of international news organizations including The Associated Press, had asked the court to order the government to open the border.

In a statement after Thursday’s decision, the FPA expressed its “disappointment” and called the Israeli government’s position to deny journalists access “unacceptable.”

The court rejected a request from the FPA early in the war, due to objections by the government on security grounds. The group filed a second request for access in September 2024. The government has repeatedly delayed the case.

Palestinian journalists have covered the two-year war for international media. But like all Palestinians, they have been subject to tough restrictions on movement and shortages of food, repeatedly displaced and operated under great danger. Some 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“It is time for Israel to lift the closure and let us do our work alongside our Palestinian colleagues,” said Tania Kraemer, chairperson of the FPA.

Brito and Lee write for the Associated Press. Lee reported from Washington. AP writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Retired politician and billionaire businessman was accused of violating Thailand’s strict laws on insults to Thai royalty.

A court in Thailand has dismissed a high-profile case against the country’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra over allegations he violated the country’s strict laws on royal insults, the Reuters news agency reports.

Thaksin’s lawyer told Reuters that the court dropped the case on Friday and cleared his client of violating Thailand’s lese-majeste laws that criminalise almost all criticism of the country’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

The court has yet to publicly announce its decision.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.

I didn’t think my level of loathing for the Max sequel to HBO’s “Sex and the City” could get any higher, and just like that, along came Season 3.

You see what I did there? Like every single person who has written about “And Just Like That…,” I have used the title in a naked and half-assed attempt to be clever.

Which honestly could also be the title of the series.

We’re midway through the third — and one can only hope final — season, and I am hoarse from screaming at watching these beloved characters behave as if they had done some sort of “Freaky Friday” switch with 13-year-olds.

Which is actually an insult to most 13-year-olds.

In the course of the barely-recognizable-as-human events that make up this latest episode, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) prolonged her inexplicable bout of homelessness by acting shocked — shocked! — that Seema (Sarita Choudhury), having found her a dream house, would expect her to make a bid over asking price; Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) dealt with the grief over her father’s death by whining about the amazing send-off orchestrated by his friend Lucille (Jenifer Lewis) despite it including a performance by … Jenifer Lewis; and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) continued to behave as if it were perfectly normal for her husband Harry (Evan Handler) to keep his prostate cancer diagnosis secret from everyone including their children, who would no doubt handle it better than Charlotte.

All of which paled in comparison to the latest installment in the emotional horror show that is the second-time-around courtship of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Aidan (John Corbett), which has been under threat since it was revealed in Season 2 that Aidan’s 15-year-old son Wyatt (Logan Souza) has some issues, including a recent ADHD diagnosis. Events lead Aidan to impulsively announce that he and Carrie will have to put their relationship on hold until Wyatt turns 20 (when, as everyone knows, parental responsibilities officially end).

Aidan puts his relationship with Carrie on hold because of issues related to his teenage son, Wyatt (Logan Souza).

(Craig Blankenhorn / Max)

Not surprisingly, this plan does not work out, and in this episode, Aidan celebrates the fact that Wyatt is attending a week-long wilderness camp (um, what?) by showing up at Carrie’s apartment, where he immediately breaks a window by throwing a pebble at it. You know, like he used to in the old days before Carrie had a jillion-dollar apartment with 19th century windows that, as she says, “survived the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Draft Riots of ‘63” (memo to Carrie — New York saw no action in the Mexican War).

After going to obsessive lengths to replace the glass, Aidan then confesses that he and his ex Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt) had to force Wyatt onto the plane (how they managed to be at the gate as unticketed passengers to do this remains a mystery), an event so upsetting that Aidan and Kathy were forced to comfort each other with sex.

For one brief and shining moment, I waited for Carrie to call time of death on one of the unhealthiest relationships this particular universe has seen (and that’s saying something). Instead, and impossibly, she said she understood.

Apparently love means ignoring every sign God could think to send you. Not only did Aidan have sex with his ex, he forced his unmedicated, unsupervised 15-year-old with ADHD onto a plane headed to the Grand Tetons. (Whether the poor kid made it to camp or is currently having a meltdown in the Jackson Hole airport is never mentioned.)

But then Carrie, and the series, has continued to treat Wyatt’s condition, and his father’s obvious irritated denial of its realities, as simply a logistical obstacle in her fairy tale love story. This would barely make sense if Carrie were still in her 30s, and it makes absolutely none for a woman of her age.

I begrudge no one the desire to reboot a groundbreaking series, and two years ago, the prospect of seeing these iconic 30-somethings as mid-to-late 50-somethings was certainly appealing to one who shares their mature demographic. If only Michael Patrick King, the force behind “And Just Like That…,” allowed any of them to have matured. I don’t mean physically — stars Parker, Nixon, Davis and Kim Cattrall (briefly glimpsed at the end of Season 2) — are fit and lovely and obviously older. I mean emotionally, spiritually and psychologically.

“And Just Like That…” has had two and a half seasons to make these women seem like actual people who might exist, if not in real life, then at least the “Sex and the City” universe (remember the opening credits, when Carrie gets splashed by a bus? Hyperrealism compared to the eat-off-the-sidewalks vision of “And Just Like That…’s” New York.)

Instead, the series seems determined to prove that age is just a number by forcing its leads, now including Choudhury and Parker, to act as if 50 is the new (and very stupid) 30.

I get that Miranda is coming to grips with her newly discovered queerness, but surely a successful, Harvard-educated lawyer who has survived a divorce and raised a teenage son would have a bit more confidence and self-awareness in love, real estate and basic guest etiquette — after moving in briefly with Carrie, she eats the last yogurt!

Charlotte has always been an original Disney princess, all wide eyes and faith in the restorative nature of small animals and florals, but at 55, her high-strung reaction to her husband’s prostate cancer (caught early, easily treatable) is helpful to no one. And don’t get me about her little foot-stamping approach to motherhood or how she speaks about her dog.

Aidan’s shocking confession did little to derail Carrie or their relationship.

(Craig Blankenhorn / Max)

As for Carrie, well, it’s one thing to be a relentlessly hopeful romantic addicted to tulle, stilettos and problematic men in your 30s, but Carrie’s pushing 60 now, so when she agreed, with no demur, to Aidan’s absurd five-year plan, I wondered if she had simply gone mad.

Watching as she subsequently rattled around her huge, empty (if incredibly luxe) apartment wearing a see-through, Ophelia-like dress stuffed with roses or traipsed through Central Park wearing a hat the size of a hot-air balloon only exacerbated my fears. Dressing like Marie Antoinette to attend a luncheon at Tiffany’s isn’t sassy fashion sense — it’s a cry for help.

She most certainly needs help. The reunion with Aidan seemed too good to be true, and thus it is proving to be. Even a 30-something Carrie would have known that being in a relationship with a father means being in a relationship with his children. But the notion that she must be kept separate from Wyatt is not just unsustainable — it’s insulting.

What, she’s never experienced, met or even read about children with ADHD or post-divorce trauma? Or is she such a delicate flower that she can’t handle being around a teenager with anger management issues? She lives in New York, for heaven’s sake, the city that invented anger management issues.

Frankly, Aidan’s behavior is far more concerning than Wyatt’s, a flag so big and red that Carrie could make a stunning sheath dress out of it.

Which she appears to be doing, instead of, you know, acting like the grown-ass rich widow she is and calling Aidan out on his bull.

“And Just Like That…” purports to celebrate the mid-life do-over, just as it purports to show that women in their 50s are just as vibrant, complicated and fun as women in their 30s. Both are admirable goals, neither of which the series achieves. Even with its title — ”And Just Like That…” — this series seems determined to erase everything that might have made the older versions of these characters interesting and resonant.

Like the ability to buy a house or say the word “cancer” or get out of an unhealthy romantic relationship before it spits right in your eye.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s friendship and political alliance with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who fueled Trump’s campaign with record amounts of cash before working at the White House by his side until last week, appears to be over, with both men leveling searing criticism against one another in a sharp public feud.

Musk had been criticizing the Trump administration over its signature legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” for its projected impact on the national debt throughout last week. But his calls to “kill the bill” on Wednesday prompted Trump, speaking to media from the Oval Office, to respond in kind.

“Elon and I had a great relationship, I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said Thursday. “And he hasn’t said bad things about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon.”

Musk, responding on his social media platform, X, took credit for Trump’s election victory. The billionaire entrepreneur, whose companies also include SpaceX and Tesla, contributed over $280 million to Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 presidential campaign.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”

The exchange broke open a feud that had been simmering for weeks out of public view. In private, Musk had relayed concerns over the bill to the president, while expressing disagreement with several other policies, including the establishment of an artificial intelligence campus in the Middle East and Trump’s announcement of global tariffs.

“I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion,” Musk said in a more muted tone last week, speaking in an interview with CBS.

“You know, there are things that I don’t entirely agree with. But it’s difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention,” he added. “So then, I’m a little stuck in a bind, where I’m like, well, I don’t wanna, you know, speak up against the administration, but I also don’t wanna take responsibility for everything this administration’s doing.”

In the Oval Office, Trump said he believed that Musk had turned on him after he rejected Musk’s recommendation for the head of NASA, a position that could benefit SpaceX, Musk’s spaceship company. He also said that Musk opposed provisions of Trump’s megabill that would phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.

“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. Better than you people. He knew everything about it — he had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that’s billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said.

“People leave my administration and they love us, and at some point, they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile,” Trump added. “I don’t know what it is.”

But Musk denied he had been shown the bill, responding on X that he wouldn’t mind if the EV provisions remain in the text so long as others, which he said would balloon annual deficits, are cut.

“This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” Musk wrote. “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an assessment on Wednesday estimating that the “big, beautiful bill,” which has passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate, would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, and result in 10.9 million Americans losing health insurance coverage over the same period.

At the beginning of the administration, Trump put Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a White House program that intended on cutting federal spending and reducing the deficit. Musk’s tenure in the role, designated as a special government employee, ended last week.

On X, Musk posted a collection of past remarks from Trump warning against growing deficits and congressional actions increasing the debt ceiling, adding, “where is this guy today?”

“Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill,” Musk added. “Slim and beautiful is the way.”