Crown says life with 15-year parole eligibility suitable for former B.C. Lions player

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A video purporting to show dozens of North Korean recruits lining up to collect Russian military fatigues has been released by Ukrainian officials, who say it shows the introduction of troops sent by Pyongyang into the conflict.

The video, published by Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, which operates under the Culture and Information Ministry, allegedly shows North Korean soldiers standing in line to pick up bags, clothes and other apparel from Russian servicemen. The Associated Press couldn’t verify the video independently.

“We received this video from our own sources. We cannot provide additional verification from the sources who provided it to us due to security concerns,” said Ihor Solovey, the head of the center.

“The video clearly shows North Korean citizens being given Russian uniforms under the direction of the Russian military,” he said. “For Ukraine, this video is important because it is the first video evidence that shows North Korea participating in the war on the side of Russia. Now not only with weapons and shells but also with personnel.”

The center claims the footage was shot by a Russian soldier in recent days. It didn’t say how the footage was obtained. The location is unknown.

It comes after the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, claimed in local media that about 11,000 North Korean infantrymen were currently training in eastern Russia. He predicted they would be ready to join fighting by November. At least 2,600 would be sent to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion in August, he was quoted as saying.

“The emergence of any number of new soldiers is a problem because we will simply need new, additional weapons to destroy them all,” Solovey told AP. “The dissemination of this video is important as a signal to the world community that with two countries officially at war against Ukraine, we will need more support to repel this aggression.”

The presence of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, if true, would be further proof of intensified military ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Last summer, they signed a strategic partnership treaty that commits both countries to provide military assistance. North Korean weapons have already been used in the Ukraine war.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s government said a drone targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house Saturday, with no casualties, as fighting with Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Gaza -based Hamas showed no pause after the killing of the Hamas mastermind of last year’s Oct. 7 attack.

Israel’s military said dozens of projectiles were launched from Lebanon a day after Hezbollah announced a new phase in fighting. Netanyahu’s office said the drone targeted his house in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea. Neither he nor his wife were there. It wasn’t clear if the house was hit.

“The proxies of Iran who today tried to assassinate me and my wife made a bitter mistake,” Netanyahu said.

Hezbollah didn’t claim responsibility for the drone attack, but said it carried out several rocket attacks on northern and central Israel. The barrage came as Israel is expected to respond to an attack earlier this month by Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Israel in turn carried out at least 10 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh, a heavily populated area home to Hezbollah’s offices, Lebanese authorities said. Israel’s military said it struck Hezbollah targets.

In Gaza, Israeli forces fired at hospitals in the Palestinian enclave’s battered north, and strikes killed more than 50 people, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there.

“The possibility of war in the region remains a serious concern,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said while visiting Turkey. Group of Seven defense ministers warned against escalation and “all-out war.”

Barrages from Lebanon target northern Israel

The Israel-Hezbollah war has intensified. Hezbollah said Friday it planned to send more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel. The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon early this month.

Israel’s military on Saturday said about 180 projectiles were fired from Lebanon. A 50-year-old man was hit by shrapnel and killed in northern Israel, and four other people were wounded, Israel’s medical services said. In the northern city of Kiryat Ata, one rocket landed. Itzik Billet, commander for the Haifa area, said nine people were slightly injured.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in eastern Baaloul village killed five people, including the mayor of nearby Sohmor village. An Israeli military official confirmed that the IDF struck targets in the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle on a highway north of Beirut, killing two people.

Israel has issued near-daily warnings for people to leave buildings and villages in parts of Lebanon. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people, including around 400,000 children.

Israel also said it killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander in the southern town of Bint Jbeil. The army said Nasser Rashid supervised attacks against Israel.

Israel drops leaflets showing Sinwar’s body

Israel and Hamas have signaled resistance to ending the war in Gaza after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the raid on Israel more than a year ago that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says are dead.

Israel’s military on Saturday dropped leaflets in southern Gaza showing Sinwar dead, blood running down his forehead. “Sinwar destroyed your lives,” it said. “Whoever lays down his weapons and returns the kidnapped people to us, we will allow him to leave and live in peace.”

Hamas has reiterated that the hostages won’t be released until there is a cease-fire and Israeli troops withdraw. Netanyahu says Israel’s military will fight until the hostages are released, and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who don’t distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children.

More strikes pounded Gaza on Saturday, and Palestinian communications company Paltel said they knocked out internet networks in the north.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and forces opened fire at it, causing panic. Israel’s military said it was operating near the hospital and “there was no intentional fire directed at it.”

The military also said it was looking into the matter after Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, said strikes hit the top floors, wounding several staff members. It later said the military hit an ambulance, wounding four people, including a medic.

Three houses in Jabaliya were struck overnight, killing at least 30 people, more than half women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service. At least 80 were wounded.

Palestinian residents said Israel’s military was forcing hundreds of displaced people to leave Jabaliya and head to Gaza City.

“The occupation evicted us at gunpoint,” said Umm Sayed, a mother of three. “Tanks and heavy armed forces were encircling us.” She said many young men were taken apparently for interrogation, and most were later released.

Israel’s military described it as an evacuation and said it detained militants for questioning.

A U.N. school sheltering displaced people west of Gaza City was hit, killing several people, according to the Hamas-run civil defense first responders.

“What is this? There is a clinic and there are children,” said Bashir Haddad, a displaced person there, according to AP video. A boy collected body parts on a piece of cardboard.

Elsewhere in central Gaza, at least 10 people were killed, including two children, when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Another strike killed 11 people from the same family in the Maghazi refugee camp, the hospital said.

The war has destroyed vast swaths of Gaza, displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, and left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.

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Associated Press writers Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

DETROIT (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris appeared with Lizzo on Saturday in the singer’s hometown of Detroit, marking the beginning of in-person voting and lavishing the city with praise after Republican nominee Donald Trump recently disparaged it.

“All the best things were made in Detroit. Coney Dogs, Faygo and Lizzo,” the singer joked to a rally crowd, pointing to herself after listing off the meat-on-a-stick and soda that the city is famous for.

She said it was time to “put some respect on Detroit’s name” noting that the city had revolutionized the auto and music industries and adding that she’d already cast her ballot for Harris since voting early was “a power move.”

Heaps of praise for the Motor City came after Trump, the former president, insulted it during a recent campaign stop. And Harris continued the theme, saying of her campaign, “Like the people of Detroit, we have grit, we have excellence, we have history.”

Arms wide open as she took the stage, Harris let the crowd see she was wearing under her blazer a “Detroit vs. Everybody” T-shirt that the owner of the business that produces them gave her during a previous stop in the city earlier in the week. She also moved around the stage during her speech with a hand-held mic, not using a teleprompter.

More than 1 million Michigan residents have already voted by mail in the Nov. 5 election, and Harris predicted that Detroit turnout for early voting would be strong.

“Who is the capital of producing records?” Harris asked when imploring the crowd to set new highs for early voting tallies. “We are going to break some records here in Detroit today.”

She slammed Trump as unstable: “Somebody just needs to watch his rallies, if you’re not really sure how to vote.”

“We’re not going to get these 17 days back. On Election Day, we don’t want to have any regrets,” the vice president said.

Lizzo also told the crowd, “Mrs. Commander-in-Chief has a nice ring to it.”

“This is the swing state of all swing states, so every last vote here counts,” the singer said. Then, referencing her song of the same title, Lizzo added, “If you ask me if America is ready for its first woman president, I only have one thing to say: “It’s about damn time!”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement that Harris needed Lizzo “to hide the fact that Michiganders were feeling good under President Trump – real wages were higher, prices were lower, and everyone was better off.”

Talona Johnson, a product manager from Rochester, Michigan, attended Harris rally and said that Harris “and her team are doing the things that are required to make sure that people are informed.”

“I believe she’s telling the truth. She’s trying to help the people,” said Johnson, who said she planned to vote for Harris and saw women’s rights as her top concern.

“I don’t necessarily agree with everything that she’s put out, but she’s better than the alternative,”

In comments to reporters prior to the rally, Harris said she was in Detroit “to thank all the folks for the work they are doing to help organize and register people to vote, and get them out to vote today. She also called Detroit “a great American city” with “a lot of hard-working folks that have grit and ambition and deserve to be respected.”

The vice president was asked about whether the Biden administration’s full-throated support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza might hurt her support in Michigan. Dearborn, near Detroit, is the largest city with an Arab majority in the nation.

“It has never been easy,” Harris said of Middle East policy. “But that doesn’t mean we give up.”

She will get more star power later Saturday when she holds a rally in Atlanta featuring another wildly popular singer, Usher.

Early voting is also underway in Georgia. More than 1.2 million ballots have been cast, either in person or by mail.

Democrats hope an expansive organizing effort will boost Harris against Trump in the campaign’s final weeks.

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Associated Press writers Matt Brown in Detroit and Will Weissert and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed.