The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli airstrikes killed at least 95 people and wounded 172 others on Monday, as Israel’s army said it was carrying out what it called “limited and targeted raids” into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, however, denied that Israeli forces had begun an invasion. The conflicting accounts came as Hezbollah fighters fired salvos of rockets into Israel, including an attack on the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence service outside Tel Aviv. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati says his nation is now facing “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” and called on the United Nations to step up aid to 1 million Lebanese people displaced by Israel’s assault. In Washington, President Biden said Monday he wanted a ceasefire in Lebanon; however, the Pentagon contradicted Biden’s remark just hours later. A readout of a call between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant shows the two war leaders “agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border.” After headlines, we’ll go to Beirut for the latest.

Syrian media is reporting an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital Damascus killed three civilians and wounded nine others. It was reportedly the third such attack in recent days. The Syrian Arab News Agency said its presenter Safaa Ahmad was among those killed in Israel’s latest air raid.

In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike on a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp late Monday killed more than a dozen people. Witnesses say at least seven of the dead were children.

Umm Hassan al-Durra: “They targeted 14 sleeping people, young, adults and children. What can I tell you? They were not doing anything. They were sleeping.”

On Monday, Israeli authorities released Palestinian surgeon Dr. Khaled Alser from prison, months after he was abducted by Israeli forces during a raid on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital in March. Dr. Alser is among dozens of doctors, nurses and paramedics held by Israel who, according to Human Rights Watch, have faced widespread torture and abuse in Israeli custody.

Half the population of Haiti is now experiencing acute hunger, according to the World Food Programme. Roughly 5.5 million Haitians are struggling to feed themselves and their families, and thousands of mostly displaced Haitians are suffering from “catastrophic hunger.” This comes as the U.N. Security Council on Monday authorized another year of intervention by an international security force in Haiti amid soaring gang violence. This is WFP Haiti Director Wanja Kaaria.

Wanja Kaaria: “Without food security, we will go into continuously being in that cycle of crisis, poverty, and the cycle will continue. And I don’t see food security being given the same importance as, let’s say, security sector.”

Here in the United States, the death toll from Hurricane Helene has climbed to at least 133 people, with hundreds more still unaccounted for. A White House homeland security adviser told reporters Monday the death toll could climb as high as 600. Rescue workers are racing to access communities completely cut off by floodwaters and landslides. On Monday, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper toured areas around the mountain city of Asheville, which endured its worst flooding in at least a century.

Gov. Roy Cooper: “The devastation was beyond belief. And even when you prepare for something like this, this is something that’s never happened before in western North Carolina.”

On Monday, Donald Trump made the baseless claim that Governor Cooper and President Biden were not helping Republican areas. Trump also falsely claimed Biden did not reach out to Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp to offer hurricane relief. Kemp called out Trump’s lie, saying he had spoken to President Biden, and praised the federal government’s response in Georgia.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, at least 22 people have been confirmed dead after Hurricane John ravaged coastal communities in southwestern Mexico last week.

In a major win for abortion rights, a judge in Georgia struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban Monday, ruling it unconstitutional and ordering authorities to return to laws that were in place before 2022’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Abortions are now legal in Georgia until around 22 weeks of pregnancy, though Monday’s ruling will likely be challenged and is expected to land before Georgia’s Supreme Court for a final decision.

The Biden administration has further tightened restrictions on the right to apply for asylum, ordering authorities to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border if the number of immigrant apprehensions exceeds a daily average of 1,500. The new asylum ban, which takes effect today, is an expansion of a policy enacted in June that sealed off the southern border when the number of asylum seekers exceeded a daily average of 2,500. As part of the tougher policy, Biden officials are also now counting all migrant children arriving at the border toward the daily average. The ACLU said in response, “This restrictive rule is not just immoral but illegal.”

Some 45,000 dock workers across the eastern U.S. and Gulf Coast walked off the job this morning in the first strike of its kind in almost 50 years. The International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents workers at 36 ports from Maine to Texas, is demanding higher wages and guarantees that jobs won’t be automated. This is Daniel Amaly, a worker who joined picket lines this morning at Port Elizabeth outside of New York City.

Daniel Amaly: “The ILA is fighting for respect, appreciation and fairness in a world in which corporations are dead set on replacing hard-working people with automation. Employers push automation under the guise of safety, but it is really about cutting labor costs to increase their already exceptionally high profits.”

On Sunday, President Biden told reporters he will not invoke the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, which would allow the president to break the strike by ordering an 80-day cooling-off period. We’ll have more on the port strike later in the broadcast.

Hundreds of tenants in Kansas City, Missouri, have launched a rent strike to protest the state of disrepair of their apartment buildings and demanding protections from corporate landlords. The Tenant Union Federation says renters in North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, South Carolina, Kentucky, Montana and Illinois may soon start withholding their rents in what could become a coordinated, nationwide movement. Rent strikers are also demanding the U.S. government take action, including imposing a federal rent cap. Democracy Now! spoke with one of the striking Kansas City tenants.

Hell Woods: “What’s happening down here to us in Quality Hill Towers isn’t unique. It isn’t special. It isn’t one-off. This is happening to people all across the country. It’s happening to people everywhere in federally backed buildings. If anything, we’re the first of a tenant reckoning. There’s people organizing all across the country, tenant unions organizing all across the country, to get what we need and get what we deserve.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe today in his first public remarks since he was released from a London prison in June after pleading guilty to a U.S. charge of obtaining and disclosing national security material.

Julian Assange: “I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence with no effective remedy. Justice for me is now precluded, as the U.S. government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a Freedom of Information Act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request. I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today, after years of incarceration, because I pled guilty to journalism.”

Tomorrow, European lawmakers will vote on a resolution focused on the political and “chilling” nature of Assange’s imprisonment. A draft resolution from the European body also called on the U.S. to investigate the war crimes and human rights abuses revealed by WikiLeaks.