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  • Israel Attacks Rafah, as It Questions Hamas Cease-Fire Terms

    TEL AVIV—Israel began hitting targets in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, after Hamas said it had accepted a proposal to pause the fighting that Israel said fell short of what it could accept.

    Israel’s military said on Monday night that it was “conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah” hours after Israel warned tens of thousands of Palestinians to evacuate parts of the city ahead of an offensive.

    The new proposal, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, incorporated Hamas’s own demands, including a cessation of military operations and a withdrawal of Israeli forces before an exchange of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

    Israel said Monday it was sending a delegation to the mediators to try to reach a deal, even though the “Hamas proposal is far from Israel’s necessary requirements.” Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, said “there are serious gaps” in the proposal that Hamas transmitted and that it didn’t “match the discussion that was had up until now.” 

    The Israeli war cabinet said it decided to continue “the operation in Rafah in order to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to advance the release of our hostages and the other goals of the war,” according to the prime minister’s office.

    The U.S. and Israel have called Hamas the obstacle to a deal for much of the past two weeks. The Hamas move, which set off celebrations in Gaza and in Arab capitals, appeared to be designed to pressure Israel to accept a deal, Egyptian officials said.

    Any deal that includes a permanent end to the war is likely to be rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly said Israel won’t accept those terms.  

    After Hamas’s announcement, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari reiterated the evacuation plans and said that Israel struck 50 militant targets in the Rafah region on Monday. Videos on social media showed flares, sirens and smoke from airstrikes in the city.

    Talks toward a deal had faltered Sunday in Cairo. Israel blamed Hamas and Monday morning warned some Rafah residents via text messages, phone calls, fliers and media broadcasts in Arabic to move to a designated area farther north ahead of an anticipated offensive to rout the militant group in the southern Gazan city.

    Officials familiar with the Cairo talks said the main holdup over the weekend was disagreement over whether there should be a permanent end to the fighting, as demanded by Hamas, or just the temporary pause offered by Israel to recover hostages held in Gaza.

    More than one million Palestinians are currently sheltering in Rafah, the only city in Gaza that hasn’t been subject to a full-on Israeli ground invasion. Most of them have been displaced from their homes in other parts of the enclave during the seven-month war.

    More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian authorities, who don’t specify how many were combatants.

    The Israeli military said Monday’s evacuation notice would affect an estimated 100,000 people in Rafah. It didn’t give a deadline for when the affected neighborhoods had to be evacuated or indicate when a broader offensive might start.

    Israel says it needs to break up four remaining Hamas battalions located in Rafah to achieve its goal of destroying the group’s ability to attack Israel. The U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist organization, but the Biden administration has also warned Israel that an offensive in Rafah risks endangering more Palestinian lives amid growing international concern over the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the enclave.

    President Biden, before departing his home in Wilmington, Del., spoke Monday morning with Netanyahu about a potential invasion of Rafah, White House officials said. The White House said Biden updated the Israeli leader on U.S. efforts to agree to a cease-fire and “reiterated his clear position on Rafah.”

    The U.S. has repeatedly called on Israel to avoid an operation in the city unless it has a credible plan to limit the loss of Palestinian civilian life, and last week said it hadn’t yet received those reassurances.


     See more here: Israel Attacks Rafah, as It Questions Hamas Cease-Fire Terms - WSJ

  • Mobile's Board of Zoning Adjustment approves special exception for temporary Amtrak platform

    MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -Amtrak is one step closer to bringing passenger rail service back to Mobile after the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustment approved Amtrak’s request for a special exception for a temporary platform.

    The board unanimously approved Amtrak’s request which would allow the construction of a 1,400 square foot temporary platform on Water Street near Cooper Riverside Park which is close to where the original stop was before Hurricane Katrina disrupted the service back in 2005. The platform would include 3 ADA parking spaces directly adjacent to it as well as station identification signage and solar powered lighting. Amtrak says the project also includes a layover track for the train to park in order to clear the main line for CSX trains.

    CSX will also be responsible for building the track and bidding out the contract for the platform. Currently Mobile is the only stop on the route between Mobile and New Orleans without a platform and while the vote was a step in the right direction Amtrak says there’s still a few more hurdles left before service can start up again.

    “The funding agreement needs to be put in place, the lease agreement needs to be put in place, CSX needs to let the contract for the construction work to take place, higher the contractor then do the actual work so I’m not yet ready to put a timeline in place but soon,” said Ray Lang, Vice President of State Service Line at Amtrak.

    Amtrak says they plan to come back to Mobile in a few weeks to try and work out the lease agreement and the funding agreement.


    Read the rest of the story here: Mobile's Board of Zoning Adjustment approves special exception for temporary Amtrak platform (fox10tv.com)

  • Nurses remain in high demand in latest job postings report

    Online job postings for registered nurses continue to dominate online job postings in Alabama, according to the latest report from the Alabama Department of Labor.

    Collected and analyzed by the ADL’s Labor Market Information Division, data on online job postings throughout the month of March show that there were 4,184 postings for nurse positions, followed by retail salespersons at 3,312, and retail supervisors at 2,603.

    Like much of the country, Alabama has struggled with staffing shortages at medical facilities, particularly with nurses.

    As of March, Alabama has an average of 9.73 nurses for every 1,000 residents, and as of 2022, had just shy of 50,000 registered nurses in the state. As of last October, it was estimated that Alabama had a nursing shortage of around 7,200.

    The news comes as Alabama lawmakers have passed legislation from Gov. Kay Ivey establishing the School of Health Sciences meant to offer students a specialized academy for careers in health care.

    The Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences will be a tuition-free public high school. The school will be located in Demopolis but would take in students from around the state. The proposal is aimed at trying to address a shortage of healthcare workers in the state.

    A survey conducted last year by the Alabama Board of Nursing, however, suggests that Alabama’s nursing shortage could increase dramatically in the near future, with 38,727 Alabama nurses indicating that they intend on leaving the profession within the next five years.

    While the ABN projected that around 25,000 new graduates would apply for nurse licenses in Alabama during that same five-year window, the close to 39,000 existing nurses who said they were likely to leave the profession would still increase the nurse shortfall from 7,200 to as high as 14,000.

    Today, the median salary for nurses in Alabama is $56,570, the second-lowest median pay in the nation, ahead of only South Dakota. In Hawaii, for instance, the state with the highest median salary, nurses make $102,450.

    A total of 84,247 jobs were posted online in March, an increase of 1.4% over February. The employer with the most online ads was Walmart with 1,441 postings, followed by Huntsville Hospital with 1,066, UAB Medicine with 934, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham with 793.

    Alabama’s unemployment rate was a low 3% in March and its labor force participation rate was 57.4%, among the lowest in the nation.

    While state lawmakers have moved a number of bills this session designed to improve the state’s labor participation rate, Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington noted that the number of Alabamians entering the workforce has improved over the last several months, if not moderately.

    “The number of prime age people that are holding down jobs continues to increase,” Washington said in a statement. 

    “That number is very close to a full 80 percent of prime age individuals working. We remain hopeful that this trend will continue throughout the year, especially as the state works to raise its overall labor force participation rate.”


    READ MORE: Nurses remain in high demand in latest job postings report - Alabama Daily News (aldailynews.com)

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