President Joe Biden says Israel would be willing to halt its war on Hamas in Gaza during the upcoming Muslim fasting month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some of the hostages held by the militants.
Negotiators from the U.S., Egypt and Qatar are working on a framework deal under which Hamas would free some of the dozens of hostages it holds, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and a six-week halt in fighting. During the temporary pause, negotiations would continue over the release of the remaining hostages.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said earlier that the army had presented to the War Cabinet its operational plan for a ground offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town along the border with Egypt, where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought safety.
The war has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the situation in Rafah has sparked global concern. Israel’s allies have warned that it must protect civilians in its battle against Hamas.
February’s end is bringing wild weather to much of the United States, with record heat allowing for golf in Wisconsin and outdoor food trucks in Minnesota, along with an increased fire risk across much of the Great Plains. But blinding snow in the Northwest is blowing eastward, and places like Chicago should see temperatures swinging dramatically from balmy to bitter cold again.
“Definitely not the weather we would expect in February. It’s usually super snowy, freezing, you know, ice everywhere. And so we are just trying to take advantage of a very nice week this week,” said Tania Sepulveda, a 30-year-old Chicago therapist who was “working from home” Monday, using her laptop in a grassy spot along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
The sunny weather won’t last that long. A powerful storm started dumping snow that could reach several feet in higher elevations of the West promises a return of winter conditions to the central U.S., where it’s been unseasonably warm. High winds are already blowing, raising the risk of wildfires across the Great Plains.
The National Weather Service warned that travel could be dangerous later Monday across parts of the Oregon Cascades and Northern Rockies, predicting near-blizzard conditions with one to two inches of snow an hour and winds reaching upwards of 65 mph (104 kph).
Gov. Tim Walz signed his first bill of the two-week-old 2024 legislative session on Monday, a correction to last year’s main tax bill that could have cost Minnesota taxpayers around $350 million next year.
The governor signed the bill with little fanfare, just a short statement from his office. Last year’s bill inadvertently used the standard deduction amount from 2019 as the starting point for 2024 state personal income taxes, instead of the proper inflation-adjusted amounts.
The bill signed Monday was framed as a “technical tax corrections bill” and passed both chambers last week with almost unanimous bipartisan support, even though Republicans objected because it didn’t also fix another known error in the 2023 tax bill. That one involves a business deduction for net operating losses that could cost some companies nearly $15 million this year if the effective date isn’t corrected. Democratic leaders have said they’ll fix that later.
The corrections bill wouldn’t have affected tax filers this year, and the correct standard deductions are already baked into the updated budget forecast coming later this week that will give lawmakers the final numbers on how much more money, if any, they’ll be able to spend this session.
Maddie Combs can be reached at madeline.combs@stthomas.edu.