Israeli forces killed at least 19 people after launching fresh attacks on Lebanon’s ancient city of Baalbek. The strikes on the UNESCO World Heritage city came just hours after tens of thousands of people fled the area after Israel issued forced evacuation orders.

Despite the mounting death toll, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati says he hopes a ceasefire deal will be announced in the coming days as U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein arrives in Jerusalem today for more talks.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s new chief, Naim Qassem, said the group is prepared to keep fighting Israel but that it was open to a ceasefire deal. Qassem, who replaces assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, also addressed Israel’s war on Gaza.

Naim Qassem: “The people of Gaza have a right over us, and everyone must support them. They have a human right, an Arab right, an Islamic right, a religious right and a national right. We should not be asking why we supported them. Rather, others should be asked, 'Why didn't you support the people of Gaza?’”

Human Rights Watch is calling on countries to suspend arms sales to Israel, accusing it of committing war crimes by attacking medical workers and healthcare facilities in Lebanon. As of last week, Israel killed over 160 health and rescue workers across Lebanon and damaged over 150 ambulances and 55 hospitals.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, says its forces are continuing to come under attack.

Andrea Tenenti: “Since the 1st of October, UNIFIL has recorded over 30 incidents resulting in damage to U.N. property or premises or injury to peacekeepers. About 20 of those, we could attribute to IDF fire or actions, with seven being clearly deliberate.”

Israeli forces in northern Gaza have carried out more attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring health workers and destroying already scarce medical supplies, water tanks, as well as a nearby water desalination station. In southern Gaza, loved ones grieved four relatives who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, including a child. This is a neighbor of the victims.

Ramez al-Qassas: “Exactly three days ago, the Israeli army declared this area a safe zone and classified it as a humanitarian zone. … We don’t know where to go. We stay in the safe area or return to the sea, or where to go? So we found that the safest place to take refuge is the sky.”

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers have carried out more raids, including on the Nur Shams refugee camp, where at least three Palestinians were killed.

The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports of Israel using U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that killed and maimed civilians in the Gaza Strip, but it has failed to comply with its own policies requiring swift investigations of such claims. That’s according to The Washington Post, which reports some of the cases presented to the State Department likely amount to violations of U.S. and international law. State Department policy requires officials to complete an investigation and recommend action within two months of launching an inquiry. Despite that requirement, none of the hundreds of reports has generated an active response, and most cases remain open. Many claims are awaiting a response from the Israeli government, which the State Department consults to verify each case’s circumstances.

On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller defended the delays, calling it “incredibly difficult” to determine whether U.S. weapons were being used by Israel to commit war crimes. Miller also criticized Israel for failing to facilitate food and other humanitarian aid delivery to Palestinians in Gaza.

Matthew Miller: “The situation still remains not at a level that we find acceptable. And that’s not just about the level of aid that is making it to Gaza, but also the distribution inside Gaza. And we continue to see breakdowns in communication between Israeli forces and U.N. agencies.”

Despite the admission, the U.S. has not taken any action against Israel for blocking the distribution of aid.

Elon Musk is appearing at a court hearing in Philadelphia today after District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk and his pro-Trump super PAC over his $1 million daily voter giveaway, which Krasner called an “illegal lottery scheme.” DA Krasner has called for additional court security after Krasner was subjected to antisemitic harassment, threats and doxxing on the social media site X, which is owned by Musk.

This comes as Wired reports workers who were hired by Musk’s America PAC as canvassers were deceived by the contracting firm that hired them. The workers report being flown out to Michigan, driven in the back of a seatless U-Haul, and threatened they would have to cover their own motel bills unless they met their quotas. One contractor told Wired they had no idea they had been hired to help Donald Trump until after they signed a nondisclosure agreement.

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Virginia to resume its purge of 1,600 voters from the state’s voter rolls just days ahead of the election. The emergency order comes as Virginia officials appeal a decision by a federal judge who ruled Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act. Youngkin claims he is stopping non-U.S. citizens from voting, but it’s statistically extremely rare for noncitizens to cast ballots.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to remove his name from ballots in the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin. The former presidential candidate backed Trump after abandoning his own campaign. RFK Jr. told supporters on a call this week that Donald Trump had promised him “control” of the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. But Trump’s campaign said confirming those claims would be “premature” despite Trump announcing at his Madison Square Garden rally last weekend he would let RFK Jr. “go wild on health” if he is reelected. Kennedy is a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.

In related news, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said a Trump victory would allow Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, telling supporters on Monday, “We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state.”

Event attendee: “No Obamacare?”

Speaker Mike Johnson: “No Obamacare. Yeah, the ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we’ve got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

In other campaign news, Kamala Harris called out comments made by Trump at a Green Bay, Wisconsin, rally on Wednesday.

Donald Trump: “I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’ve got to protect them. I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things.”

Harris responded on social media, “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.”

An investigation by ProPublica finds at least two people in Texas died after they were denied reproductive healthcare due to Texas’s abortion ban, which bars doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus, even when a pregnancy is nonviable and the life of a pregnant person is at risk. In one case, 28-year-old Josseli Barnica was admitted to a Houston hospital as she began to suffer a miscarriage, 17 weeks into her pregnancy. For 40 hours, doctors denied her a simple and urgently needed medical procedure to empty her uterus, which would have prevented the infection that ultimately killed her. Barnica died three days after her miscarriage.

A California judge has sentenced the man who in 2022 broke into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer to life in prison. This comes on top of David DePape’s federal sentencing earlier this year to 30 years in prison. DePape admitted that if then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been present at the time of his attack, he planned to hold her hostage and “break her kneecaps.”

In Mexico, two journalists were killed in a 24-hour period this week. On Wednesday, entertainment reporter Patricia Ramírez González, known as Paty Bunbury, was found dead inside a restaurant she owned in the city of Colima. One day earlier, Mauricio Cruz Solís was shot dead moments after he interviewed the mayor of Uruapan in Michoacán state. The deaths mark the first two journalist murders since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office at the start of this month. Mourners gathered for Cruz Solís’s funeral Wednesday.

Carlos López: “This is a situation that must not be repeated. Several journalists here in Uruapan, in Michoacán and Mexico have been violently deprived of life. We don’t have guarantees for carrying out our work professionally.”

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to condemn the United States’ embargo on Cuba for the 32nd consecutive year. On Wednesday, 187 countries voted in favor of lifting the decades-old sanctions; only the U.S. and Israel voted against the nonbinding resolution. This is Cuba’s ambassador to the U.N., Soberón Guzmán.

Ernesto Soberón Guzmán: “The U.S. once again has used lies and manipulation to justify the blockade against Cuba. As it also does every year, its isolation grows and its loss of credibility on the international stage as a result of this criminal policy. What they’re doing seems to have no limits. They hold the Cuban government responsible for the suffocation caused by the blockade imposed on our country.”

Following Wednesday’s vote, Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei fired his foreign minister, replacing her with Argentina’s ambassador to Washington. Milei’s office said after the reshuffle that Argentina was “categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship.”

In Brazil, a trial got underway Wednesday for two former military police officers accused of assassinating Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver in a drive-by shooting in March of 2018. Ronnie Lessa and Élcio Queiroz confessed to the murders in signed plea bargains; they still face prison sentences of up to 84 years each. Councilmember Franco was a vocal Black LGBTQ rights advocate and a human rights activist who challenged police brutality in one of the world’s most notorious police forces. Ahead of the trial, protesters rallied outside the courthouse to demand accountability for Franco’s murder and for victims of unsolved crimes in Brazil’s marginalized communities. Marielle Franco’s mother, Marinete da Silva, joined the protests.

Marinete da Silva: “Don’t normalize. Don’t trivialize life, neither my daughter’s nor any of these children who were also taken. I’m here with other mothers. I’m here with other people who are going through the same pain, and we’re going to be together.”