After nearly three months of an intensified Israeli military campaign in the northern Gaza Strip to quell what Israel has said is a Hamas resurgence, fighting raged unabated Monday, with each side claiming successes against the other’s fighters.

The Israeli military released a statement saying that one soldier had been killed in combat in northern Gaza and that three members of the same brigade had been severely injured in the same clash. The statement provided no additional details.

The military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, said it had destroyed an Israeli vehicle in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, killing and wounding an unspecified number of soldiers. The militant group also said that it had targeted Israeli soldiers in another northern town, Jabalia, killing five.

The Israeli military declined to comment, saying it does not respond to the announcements of “terror organizations.”

For its part, the Israeli military announced that it had killed and arrested “multiple” militants in an overnight operation near Jabalia as they were trying to “flee, deploy deception tactics and conduct ambushes.” It said that action followed a “targeted operation” against a Hamas command center “embedded inside Kamal Adwan Hospital” in the same area over the weekend that led to the arrest of more than 240 militants.

Border arrests remain near five-year low

Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico in December are little changed from a month earlier, a U.S. official said Monday, hovering near the lowest levels since July 2020 and indicating that an anticipated surge ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president hasn’t happened.

There were about 44,000 arrests during December as of Monday morning, suggesting the month will end close to the 46,612 arrests made in November, according to a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the count is preliminary and has not made public.

December will mark the sixth straight month that arrests for illegal crossings were less than the monthly average in 2019, the official said. It also signals that final full month of President Joe Biden’s presidency will be at or near the lowest during his four years in office.

Asked to comment on the latest numbers, the Homeland Security Department released a statement by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, that said “swift and effective implementation” of asylum restrictions in June resulted in another month below the 2019 average.

French husband won’t appeal rape conviction

Dominique Pelicot, the 72-year-old who admitted to drugging his wife for years in France and inviting dozens of other men to join him in raping her, will not appeal his conviction on aggravated rape and other charges, his lawyer said Monday.

But the horrific story, which galvanized women in France and beyond to speak out against spousal violence and rape culture, is far from over. Seventeen of the 50 other men found guilty in the case have appealed, according to a statement released Monday by the prosecutor at the regional court where the appeals will be heard.

A new trial for those men, which could subject Pelicot’s now former wife, Gisèle Pelicot, to a fresh round of indignity and pain, is expected to take place in the last months of 2025 at a courthouse in Nîmes, southern France. The case will be heard by three judges and a nine-person jury. The judges and jury members all vote and a decision is reached by simple majority.

South begins cleanup after severe weather

Cleanup was underway Monday after a strong storm system spawned hail, rain, high winds and tornadoes across the southern U.S. over the weekend, killing at least four people.

As of Monday afternoon, over 30 tornadoes had been confirmed as crews worked through about 50 reports of tornado damage spanning from Texas to South Carolina, said Mark Wiley, an emergency response specialist with the National Weather Service’s Southern Region Headquarters.

The storms came over a busy holiday travel weekend, causing treacherous road conditions along with delays or cancellations at some of the busiest U.S. airports.

The storms first hit Saturday around the Houston area, where the National Weather Service by Monday had confirmed six tornadoes. Two of the twisters were rated EF3, with peak winds of about 140 mph, including one that hit Montgomery County in the Porter and New Caney areas.

Troubled N.Y. prison will get new superintendent

A New York prison where an man was beaten by correctional officers and then died will get a new superintendent, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday after visiting the facility.

Body camera video had been released days earlier showing prison guards pummeling Robert Brooks as he sat handcuffed on a medical examination table at Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9. He was pronounced dead the following morning.

The governor has already moved to terminate 13 correctional officers and a nurse implicated in the attack on the incarcerated man. State Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the officers’ use of force.

The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice are also reviewing the death but declined to comment further, the FBI said in a statement.

Crime crisis declared in Caribbean nation

The government of Trinidad and Tobago, facing an alarming rise in violence, including retaliatory gang killings, on Monday declared a state of emergency. The measure empowers the military to make arrests and allows authorities to enter suspects’ homes without warrants and deny them bail.

The state of emergency in the Caribbean country, the first for crime in more than a decade, was announced by the acting attorney general, Stuart Young, at a news conference in Port of Spain, the capital. It comes as the government has been increasingly criticized for failing to stop a wave of gang-related killings. The government reported 623 homicides so far this year in a country of 1.4 million. Last year, the murder rate was just below Haiti’s.

National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, who also attended the news conference, said the killings had become an epidemic and public health concern. The police responded to 33 double, eight triple, four quadruple and one quintuple homicides this year, he added.

Anchor drag marks found near cables

Finnish investigators probing the damage to a Baltic Sea power cable and several data cables said they found an anchor drag mark on the seabed, apparently from a Russia-linked vessel that has already been seized.

The discovery heightened concerns about suspected sabotage by Russia’s “shadow fleet” of fuel tankers — aging vessels with obscure ownership acquired to evade Western sanctions amid the war in Ukraine and operating without Western-regulated insurance.

The Estlink-2 power cable, which transmits energy from Finland to Estonia across the Baltic Sea, went down on Dec. 25 after a rupture. It had little impact on services but followed damage to two data cables and the Nord Stream gas pipelines, both of which have been termed sabotage.

$100M deal secures 1 acre for Grand Teton

Wyoming has agreed to a $100 million deal to turn over a prized parcel of land within the boundaries of Grand Teton National Park, allowing the federal government to protect the plot from the threat of development.

The so-called Kelly parcel had been a subject of negotiations for years, as conservationists hoped to permanently secure the land, which sits in a migration corridor for pronghorn and elk and has a sweeping view of the Teton Range. Wyoming had at one point made plans to sell the 1-square-mile property in an auction, potentially to a luxury home developer.

As part of the agreement finalized Monday, the nonprofit Grand Teton National Park Foundation was able to raise about one-third of the $100 million needed for the deal, officials said, while the remainder came from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Okla. officer cleared for injuring man, 71

Oklahoma’s attorney general has dismissed an assault charge against a police officer who slammed a 71-year-old man to the ground, fracturing his neck, during an argument over a traffic ticket in October.

The attorney general, Gentner Drummond, said in a statement Friday that he had dropped the aggravated assault and battery charge against the officer, Sgt. Joseph Gibson of the Oklahoma City Police Department. The charge was filed Dec. 5, after the department released footage showing Gibson throwing a motorist, Lich Vu, to the ground.

“As Attorney General, I will not permit Oklahoma police officers to face criminal prosecution for conduct adhering to their training,” Drummond said in his statement. “While the outcome of this incident is unquestionably devastating for Mr. Vu and his family, I do not believe the officer exhibited criminal intent.”

Manhattan congestion pricing plan advances

A federal judge found Monday that New York had largely taken the necessary steps to enact a plan to toll drivers entering the heart of Manhattan, but ordered federal transportation officials to review and further explain some aspects of the program.

Following the long-anticipated ruling in a lawsuit filed by the state of New Jersey, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which will oversee the program, known as congestion pricing, said in a statement that it would go ahead with implementing it Sunday.

But Randy Mastro, a lawyer representing New Jersey, said that the MTA could not proceed, insisting that the ruling actually blocked the plan.

World population will top 8 billion on Jan. 1

The world population increased by more than 71 million people in 2024 and will be 8.09 billion people on New Year’s Day, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Monday.

The 0.9% increase in 2024 was a slight slowdown from 2023, when the world population grew by 75 million people. In January 2025, 4.2 births and 2.0 deaths were expected worldwide every second, according to the estimates.

The United States grew by 2.6 million people in 2024, and the U.S. population on New Year’s Day will be 341 million people.

— News service reports