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CALIFORNIA: Three people were charged by federal authorities in Los Angeles on Wednesday with stealing $12 million in federal and state homelessness aid to pay for real estate, luxury trips and vintage vehicles.

It was the second such arrest of people on federal fraud charges in Southern California this week, as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to emphasize a crackdown on fraud and waste in government and aid programs. On Tuesday, 12 people were charged with stealing more than $10 million in federal childcare aid.

The three defendants each worked for or ran Southern California-based nonprofit organizations, which often contracted with city, county, state or federal agencies to provide aid or money to find housing and social services for homeless people. Prosecutors allege that the defendants used funds from those contracts to pay personal expenses, accepted bribes, and billed for services that were never provided.

“Make no mistake, HUD and the Trump administration will not tolerate the theft and abuse of taxpayers in this country,” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner said at a news conference.

Turner used the indictments to accuse the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which approved grants to these defendants, of being negligent with taxpayer dollars.

Taxpayer aid spent on video games, nightclubs

Two defendants, Lakiya Malone, 48, and Michael Young, 46, were arrested early Wednesday in Los Angeles. A third defendant charged with wire fraud, Donye Mitchell, 55, is considered a fugitive.

Young is the founder of Home At Last, a nonprofit that took in more than $118 million in public funds since 2019 for its stated mission of providing housing and aid to homeless people.

Federal prosecutors say Young instead created shell companies that he claimed were independent contractors but were, in fact, controlled by him. This alleged self-dealing allowed Young to be paid both at Home At Last and overbill federal and local authorities, prosecutors said. They say Young misused an estimated $7.5 million in taxpayer funds through fake contractors and vendors.

Young used the proceeds to take luxury trips to Tahiti, and used funds to open a nightclub in Inglewood called the Six Seven Five Lounge and other commercial real estate projects, prosecutors allege.

Mitchell is the CEO of Big Blue Umbrella, which was awarded more than $1.2 million from a federally supported nonprofit for housing and mental health care aid. Prosecutors say Mitchell not only misstated his organization’s ability to provide such services, but also used money from the award to pay off his credit card debts, give funds to family members, buy video games and pay legal expenses for an unrelated case.

Malone was charged with accepting more than $180,000 in bribes from another homelessness-aid nonprofit. Malone allegedly not only accepted bribes but also placed people in homeless aid programs who weren’t homeless.

Separately, federal prosecutors announced that a fourth person pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges for stealing at least $2 million in homeless aid. Alexander Soofer, the executive director of Abundant Blessings, admitted to working with Malone to bill federal and state authorities for homelessness aid services when there were no participants in his programs.

Big money, little documentation

Some 72,000 to 75,000 people live in shelters or encampments in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, making it one of the largest homeless populations in the country. It has been a significant issue in Southern California for years, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made it a cornerstone of her 2022 election campaign.

City and county authorities spend roughly $1 billion a year trying to help the homeless population, often using LAHSA to coordinate aid. While significant funds are spent to address the issue, city and county reviews have repeatedly found that the programs lacked appropriate recordkeeping, audit trails and documentation.

Nathan Hochman, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, told reporters that the public should expect more investigations and indictments into the misuse of homeless aid funds. Hochman’s office’s investigation into Soofer and Abundant Blessings led to his indictment earlier this year.

“I can assure this is the beginning of these prosecutions and we are far, far from the end,” he said, adding that his office’s investigation had found that the only “abundant blessings” Soofer provided were to his friends and family.

Some of the Trump administration’s efforts to go after fraud and abuse of government benefit programs have faced criticism and legal challenges. In December, Vice President JD Vance, who chairs the administration’s task force on the subject, amplified a YouTube video of a popular right-wing influencer accusing childcare providers in Minnesota, many of them immigrants from Somalia, of running scams. State authorities visited the centers and found nearly all of them operating normally.

Nonetheless, the administration launched a massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Officials later attempted to freeze federal funds for childcare in five Democratic-led states but were halted by a lawsuit.

A massive explosion tore through the strategic Ali Al-Taher ridge overlooking Nabatiyeh on Thursday night after the Israeli military detonated what it said was a Hezbollah underground complex extending for more than 2 kilometers beneath the heights.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said the blast was felt across Nabatiyeh and surrounding areas. Israel said it had destroyed command centers, weapons stores, living quarters, rockets, missiles, drones and other military infrastructure and had achieved “operational control” of the ridge both above and below ground.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the operation completed the consolidation of Israel’s self-declared security zone inside southern Lebanon.

For residents of Nabatiyeh below, the destruction gave dramatic new urgency to a political argument that has been building for weeks: Who can actually protect the south?

When Lebanese Army vehicles appeared in greater numbers on the streets of Nabatiyeh, residents welcomed the soldiers with flowers and handfuls of rice.

The army had not been absent from the southern Lebanese city, as a security source later stressed. But the enhanced deployment — and its unusual public reception — carried unmistakable political weight.

For decades, Nabatiyeh has been synonymous with the influence of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. Yet the soldiers arrived a day after more than 400 people signed an appeal demanding that the Lebanese state assume responsibility for the city’s security, deploy the army in and around it, and restore decisions of war and peace exclusively to legitimate institutions.

Known as “Nabatiyeh 2,” as the second of such petitions, the appeal may not prove that Hezbollah’s southern heartland is turning decisively against the organization. Its significance lies somewhere subtler; it suggests that some southerners — long-cast as steadfast Hezbollah loyalists — are beginning to question not their hostility toward Israel, but whom they trust to protect them from it.

Bahjat Mirza, a signatory whose family has been rooted in Nabatiyeh for generations, rejected accusations the initiative was politically motivated.

“These appeals are coming from people of the land — people who are not politically inclined in any particular direction,” he told Arab News.

“This appeal is not politically motivated. It is simply a civil appeal by Lebanese citizens to their government to deploy the army and official security forces on the ground. In my opinion, they should have been there since 1948, since 1969, since 1975.”

Dr. Ali Hassan Wehbe, another supporter of the appeal, is a Lebanese dentist, political and social analyst and former parliamentary candidate who ran in the 2022 elections. His dental clinic in Nabatiyeh has been destroyed three times during successive conflicts — in the 2006 war, again in 2024 and most recently in 2026.

He said the campaign was fundamentally about preventing Nabatiyeh from suffering still greater destruction.

“The appeal is, first and foremost, about removing Israel’s pretext and saving Nabatiyeh,” Wehbe told Arab News, stressing that “Israel bears the primary responsibility for this destruction and this barbarity.”

But he rejected suggestions that calling for state security forces amounted to betrayal.

“Has bringing the Lebanese Army and the Lebanese state into Nabatiyeh suddenly become forbidden? Has this become an act of treason against the country?” he said.

“Which is preferable — for the Lebanese Army to enter, or, God forbid, for the Israeli army to enter? Of course, the Lebanese Army should enter. They are our sons.”

The appeal explicitly holds Israel responsible for occupation, killing and destruction. But it also demands accountability from those who controlled security decisions and promised that their weapons could protect southern Lebanon.

Without repeatedly naming Hezbollah, the target of that criticism is clear.

Its most politically charged declaration is that Nabatiyeh must not become “a barricade for any axis” — a challenge to the city’s place in a regional confrontation closely linked to Iran. The appeal also rejects what it describes as the “duality of decision-making” inside Lebanon.

This is not merely a request for more soldiers or better policing. It explicitly demands for the state to become the sole authority responsible for security, and for no armed party outside its institutions to determine when Lebanon goes to war.

“Hezbollah’s position on this is irrelevant,” Mirza said. “Anybody’s position is irrelevant — even if the president of the country disagreed with us. We are asking the Lebanese state to protect its citizens.”

Wehbe put it more starkly.

“We are not a bargaining chip and we are not a negotiating card,” he said. “Nabatiyeh is the artery of the south. It is the heart of Jabal Amel.”

For him, the conclusion is straightforward: “We have no alternative to the state.”

The struggle over Ali Al-Taher

The immediate trigger for the second appeal was the clear and devastating fate of Ali Al-Taher, the strategic heights described as the “gateway to Nabatiyeh.”

The petition argues that an opportunity existed to place the area under Lebanese Army control before Israel claimed operational control of it. For critics, the episode has produced a simple argument: Territory that was not handed to the Lebanese state ultimately fell under Israeli control.

That argument acquired added force on Thursday when Israel detonated the underground complex beneath the ridge, after weeks of bombardment and ground operations. The blast was powerful enough to register as a magnitude-4.1 seismic event about 13 kilometers west-southwest of Nabatiyeh.

The Israeli military said the network contained a central command complex belonging to Hezbollah’s Badr unit as well as weapons storage rooms and facilities that allowed fighters to remain underground for prolonged periods. Israel said its troops would remain in the area to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its presence there.

Political writer Sateh Noureddine, who comes from the southern town of Arabsalim, said the loss of the heights was not as recent as Israel’s announcement suggested.

“The Ali Al-Taher hills fell some time ago,” he told Arab News. “The information indicated that Hezbollah’s members had evacuated them weeks ago, not now.”

Noureddine said he did not believe a deal had been responsible for the area falling into Israeli hands. He did, however, question the timing of Israel’s announcement.

“What I find strange, and what raises more than one question, is why Israel announced the fall of Ali Al-Taher now,” he said.

“I believe this indicates that Israel will undertake a military operation more significant than Ali Al-Taher, through which Benjamin Netanyahu will seek to make electoral gains in the Oct. 27 election.”

The second appeal is markedly more urgent than the first. Mirza said it was issued after continued Israeli bombardment of Nabatiyeh and its surrounding villages created a growing fear that the city itself was gradually disappearing.

“It became very clear, with Israel’s dominance and the continued bombing of cultural and historical sites in Nabatiyeh and the surrounding villages, that we felt the city was gradually being destroyed,” he said.

For Wehbe, that fear is intensely personal.

“Since I was 10 years old, I have lived through displacement and wars,” he said. “We do not want to keep mourning our children. We do not want to keep living on memories. We want to live in the present and build the future.”

Residents are no longer debating only a theoretical future danger. They have watched destruction reach the approaches to the city and are contemplating what another escalation could mean for their homes, families and livelihoods.

For years, Hezbollah and Iran were associated among their supporters with power, protection and deterrence. Residents are now confronting destroyed villages, lost territory and the possibility of still greater devastation.

That does not necessarily amount to a complete political realignment. But it has shaken some of the assumptions on which Hezbollah’s relationship with its popular base was built.

The political debate was once largely about who represented the south. For some residents, the more urgent question is now whether there will be a south left to represent.

‘Nothing but words and threats’

Ali Al-Amin, editor-in-chief of Janoubia, a news website opposed to Hezbollah, said the party was becoming increasingly defiant as the pressure surrounding it intensified.

“Hezbollah has no options other than to continue attacking the authorities in general, while the circle of protest against the party is expanding in the south amid fears of further Israeli incursions and of the entire south falling under occupation,” he told Arab News.

“Even Hezbollah’s supporters have begun to voice their unease over what the wars in support of Gaza and Iran have produced. Voices are rising even from within Hezbollah’s own constituency because the equation on the ground has become exposed.

“All the evidence has shown that the party says one thing and does another. It has become clear that it possesses nothing but words and threats.”

Al-Amin said Hezbollah’s failure to confront Israeli forces at Ali Al-Taher was particularly damaging because of the importance the organization had previously attached to the area.

“Hezbollah did not resist the Israelis when they advanced toward Ali Al-Taher, even though it had described it as the ‘mother of all battles,’” he said.

He warned that Hezbollah’s response to its growing isolation could eventually transform the purpose of its weapons.

“The danger today is that Hezbollah’s defiance could change the function of its weapons, turning them from weapons intended to resist Israel into weapons used to confront the Lebanese state,” Al-Amin said.

“Hezbollah is trying to find pretexts for not handing over its weapons. But if we observe the trajectory, we find that the party’s argument is weakening and being depleted over time. This is what Israel has done through the escalation of its military operations.

“Today, the testing ground has shifted north of the Litani River, rather than remaining south of it.”

Wehbe, however, framed his challenge to Hezbollah differently. He stressed that many of those behind the appeal had themselves supported or participated in the resistance — Hezbollah’s preferred euphemism — in previous decades.

“My message to Hezbollah’s leadership is this: Deal with this opposition rationally and calmly, because this opposition was itself a stronghold of the resistance,” he said.

He also urged Hezbollah to rein in supporters who had accused the signatories of treason or incited against them.

“Are we no longer allowed to express our pain?” he asked. “Are we no longer allowed to say: Enough displacement?”

Dissent is not new — but its focus may be

Public opposition to Hezbollah and Amal inside Nabatiyeh is not unprecedented.

During Lebanon’s 2019 uprising, protesters in the predominantly Shiite city openly challenged both movements. Those demonstrations broke longstanding taboos and exposed anger over corruption, patronage, economic mismanagement and Lebanon’s sectarian political system.

Some of the people supporting the latest appeal may belong to that established opposition constituency. More than 400 signatures, while notable, cannot be treated as representative of hundreds of thousands of people across southern Lebanon. Nabatiyeh has not suddenly ceased to be a major center of Hezbollah and Amal support.

What may be changing is the nature of the criticism.

In 2019, much of the anger focused on governance and economic failure. “Nabatiyeh 2” strikes much closer to Hezbollah’s foundational claim to legitimacy: that its independent arsenal is necessary because it can defend the south more effectively than the Lebanese state.

The appeal asks whether that claim still holds after the scale of destruction inflicted on southern communities and the loss of territory Hezbollah’s weapons were supposed to protect.

Noureddine argued that the growth of public opposition was evidence that the party’s political structure was beginning to disintegrate.

“Hezbollah is on its way to disappearing — its leadership and political bureau alike,” he said. “It is living through its final phase. The party’s political body has begun to disintegrate, and nothing will remain except scattered cells that carry on its path and may disappear underground.”

“The number of people signing the Nabatiyeh appeal is doubling every day,” he added. “This is an indication of growing opposition to a party that is fading away.”

His assessment is among the most categorical offered by Hezbollah’s critics and remains fiercely disputed by its supporters. There is no evidence that the organization has lost its dominant position within its traditional constituency.

Nevertheless, the willingness to make such arguments openly is itself significant in a region where public criticism of Hezbollah’s security role has historically carried a high political and social cost.

Joelle Abboud, a member of the Lebanese Kataeb Party’s political bureau, said the demand for state sovereignty over southern villages had never belonged to one community or political faction.

“The voices that have recently risen to demand state sovereignty through the army in southern villages reflect what has always been a national demand across all sects,” she told Arab News.

“The emergence of Shiite voices making that demand today is evidence that Hezbollah’s weapons did not deter Israel, and that the war continued to an Iranian rhythm, with Lebanese youth used as fuel for an Iranian project.”

Abboud said the reception given to the army in Nabatiyeh showed that southerners wanted the state to assume the role long claimed by Hezbollah.

“The welcome received by the Lebanese Army in Nabatiyeh is evidence that southerners are eager to see the state become the alternative to militia weapons,” she said.

“Diplomacy is a difficult path, but it is effective in achieving stability. What is required today is the implementation of the Lebanese government’s decisions to confine weapons to the state.”

For now, “Nabatiyeh 2” — with signatories including doctors, engineers, lawyers, bankers, journalists, academics, writers, activists and MP Firas Hamdan — is not proof that southern Lebanon has turned against Hezbollah. It is evidence that a question once difficult to voice publicly is becoming harder to suppress.

After decades in which Hezbollah presented itself as the indispensable defender of the south, some people within its traditional environment are looking toward the Lebanese Army and asking whether only the state can protect them.

Whether this is simply the cry of a frightened city facing another battle, or the beginning of a deeper transformation in Hezbollah’s relationship with the society from which it draws much of its power, remains unanswered.

But after the explosion beneath Ali Al-Taher shook Nabatiyeh on Thursday night, that question is no longer abstract.

It is being asked aloud.

An Israeli air attack on Kfar Reman in southern Lebanon has killed at least 10 people, including an infant, with at least two others missing.

The attack early on Monday on the town in the Nabatieh district comes a day after at least seven people were killed and 20 others were wounded in Israeli air raids on the nearby town of Arab Salim.

The Israeli military also struck a residential area in the town of Deir al-Zahrani in southern Lebanon overnight after it issued a forced evacuation order. The army says it targeted a building near a Hezbollah facility, which it claims was used to launch an explosive drone.

Attacks continued despite a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon in June.

Reporting from Kfar Reman on Monday after overnight strikes, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said “uncertainty and fear” are the prevailing feelings in southern Lebanon. “Among the dead are children, including a two-month-old infant,” she said.

“People just do not know what is next. There’s been a wave of Israeli attacks over the past 48 hours. Civilians are being killed. Residential homes are being destroyed,” she said, adding, “Recovery efforts by civil defence workers are continuing. They’ve been here throughout the night.”

Israeli attacks against villages and towns across southern Lebanon continue despite truce agreements and diplomacy.

An Israeli air strike targeting a motorcycle has killed two people in the Lebanese town of Kfar Reman, the Ministry of Public Health has said, as Israeli forces intensify attacks on southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Friday that the strike hit in Nabatieh near the strategic Ali al-Taher ridge, which the Israeli army said it had captured, though Hezbollah did not confirm losing it.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Friday claimed the military had cleared Hezbollah fighters embedded in tunnels under the strategic ridge, which overlooks a wide area that has become one of the most hotly contested.

Israeli raids and artillery shelling also targeted seven towns in the Tyre and Nabatieh districts, causing no casualties.

NNA said the attacks hit al-Mansouri, Majdal Zoun, Buyout al-Sayyad, Beit Lif and Srebbine in the Tyre district, as well as Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Mayfadoun in Nabatieh.

The attacks come amid continued Israeli escalation against villages and towns across southern Lebanon despite two truce agreements – on June 4 and 26 – mediated by United States President Donald Trump’s administration.

The June 4 ceasefire was contingent on a “complete cessation” of Hezbollah fire and the evacuation of its fighters from the area south of the Litani River.

The June 26 framework agreement did not specifically call for the withdrawal of the Israeli forces and instead tied it to the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Since March 2, when the latest Israeli escalation in its war on Lebanon began, Israeli attacks have killed more than 4,000 people and injured at least 12,000 others, while forcing more than one million people from their homes, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israel has expanded its military presence across swaths of southern Lebanon since launching its new campaign against Hezbollah, which fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for US-Israeli air strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On Friday, Israeli authorities separately released four Lebanese people who had been held in Israeli prisons after being detained in southern Lebanon.

They were transferred to Lebanese authorities via the International Committee of the Red Cross, a day after one Lebanese man was released as part of an agreement between the two countries.

Froun, Lebanon – Hasan Saeid Ramadan, 56, was at home in this southern Lebanese municipality when he heard the explosions.

“It shook the ground like an earthquake, and the mountain collapsed,” he said, pointing at the nearby Qantara mountains.

Israeli forces are present just south of Froun and occupy large areas of southern Lebanon, where they conduct operations, including regular detonations, that they say target the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The ones conducted by Israel along the Qantara mountain range this week led to a visible collapse in at least two places in the mountains. Locals and officials in villages along the edge of Israeli-controlled Lebanese territory, such as Froun, Ghandouriyeh, Bourj Qalaway and Qalaway, told Al Jazeera that the sounds of war – warplanes, drones but, most of all, Israeli demolitions – are constant and often keep them up at night.

While Ramadan was speaking, an explosion echoed in the distance – another apparent Israeli detonation of a home. “Day and night,” he said. “We even see them.”

He added: “It’s become routine.”

Pilot zones

In March, Israel invaded Lebanon for the second time in less than two years. The first invasion in October 2024 was followed by a near-full Israeli withdrawal with soldiers remaining in five locations in southern Lebanon. After the second invasion, however, Israeli officials have said their troops will stay on in southern Lebanon despite promises from United States officials that the Israelis do not have territorial ambitions in Lebanon.

While US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire in April, Israel’s military has continued to attack what it says are Hezbollah targets and infrastructure around southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese state has been locked in US-brokered direct discussions with Israel despite objections from Hezbollah and its allies, who favour indirect discussions with the Israelis to try to end the war and the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon.

Israel and Lebanon agreed a “framework agreement” in June, which launched a “pilot zone” plan. The pilot zones are to act as a test area for the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah and for the Israelis to withdraw. The first pilot zones were the villages of Froun, Srifa and Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh. But locals disputed the inclusion of Froun and Srifa, saying they were never occupied by Israel in the first place.

“[The Israelis] didn’t take a single step here,” Ramadan said.

For its part, Israel is also reportedly critical of the pilot zone scheme, and analysts doubt their willingness to allow it to progress.

“The pilot zones can only really work if you have goodwill of various parties,” Nicholas Blanford, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a book on Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “The trouble is the Israelis have said they are not going to stage any more withdrawals, so it brings the process to a halt.”

And regardless of the efforts from the Lebanese state and the Lebanese army, both Hezbollah and Israel have played a role in undermining the process.

“Hezbollah opposes the scheme outright and argues that Lebanon should rely on Iran to pressure the US into demanding an Israeli withdrawal,” David Wood, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “Israel has paid lip service to the pilot zones scheme but has recently expanded – rather than reduced – its occupation of Lebanese territory.”

Demolitions and destruction

In the villages near the areas Israel controls, many of the homes and local infrastructure lie destroyed. Piles of concrete rubble and dust line many of the roads to the villages. Explosions were heard throughout the day on Thursday, and locals said they are often worse at night and disrupt their sleep.

During the harshest days of the war, these villages were ghost towns. Residents fled north to Sidon or Beirut, where they stayed with family, in displacement centres, or slept rough on the streets, locals said.

Residents began to return to these villages after the announcement of the framework agreement. But what they returned to was not what they had left behind.

Mohammad Ali Nader, the head of the municipality of Ghandouriyeh, said his area was mostly agricultural and farmers grew olives, wheat, chickpeas, corn and tobacco, among many other crops. But now, the area lies overwhelmingly in ruins. Most residents don’t have access to water or electricity.

The clanking sound of cranes and other construction equipment moving rubble or smashing concrete echoed out into the rolling hills behind Nader. He stood on the ruins of a home that had been destroyed by two Israeli rockets.

“Much like all the other houses that were destroyed, this house is no longer habitable,” he said, saying it had once boasted two storeys and a large garden. He added that the electric and water infrastructure in the area was also mostly destroyed. “We used to grow carob here, but where is there carob now?” he asked rhetorically. “Not a carob is left nor olives, tobacco or wheat.”

Nasser Mokdad, an official in the municipality of Froun, said the area was currently not receiving state-provided electricity but added that the Lebanese government was working on returning services, setting September 15 as a target date.

No water, no electricity, no return

Residents in the affected villages said the current period reminds them of the days of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Hasan Bazzi, the head of the municipality of Froun, said the only difference is that during the previous occupation, southerners remained in their Israeli-occupied villages.

This time around, the Israeli demolitions are ensuring that those whose homes are in Israeli-occupied areas will have difficulty returning, even if the troops eventually withdraw.

When the war restarted this year, Ramadan fled his home of 30 years and took refuge in an area near Tyre, a coastal city in southern Lebanon, and then moved farther north to Sidon, about an hour south of Beirut.

When he returned after the truce in the area, his house had been badly damaged. Still, it fared better than the neighbouring houses, which he said belonged to his cousins. He’s now sleeping in his garage with his wife. Their house, like the surrounding area, has no access to water or electricity.

He said the heat at night bothers him and he’s developed a bad heat rash. During the day, he slowly works on fixing the shrapnel-pocketed walls of his home.

Dripping with sweat under the midday sun, he smiled. “My conscience is at ease because I’m by my home,” he said.