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Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including massive forced displacements that amount to ethnic cleansing. A new report released by the New York-based rights group said people have been killed while evacuating under Israeli orders and in Israeli-designated humanitarian zones, where hundreds of thousands are crammed into squalid tent camps. The report said the widespread, deliberate demolition of homes and civilian infrastructure in Gaza -– some of them to carve a new road bisecting the territory and establish a buffer zone along Israel’s border -– was likely to “permanently displace” many Palestinians. “Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing,” Human Rights Watch said. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the report. Israel’s blistering campaign in Gaza has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health officials who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Around 90% of the territory’s population has fled their homes, with many displaced multiple times. The Israeli offensive has also damaged or destroyed around two-thirds of homes and other buildings in Gaza, according to U.N. assessments. Israel says it does not deliberately target civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths, saying the militants hide among civilians and operate in residential areas. On Wednesday, 15 trucks carrying aid were allowed into northern Gaza, where aid groups have warned that a monthlong Israeli offensive could cause a famine. The trucks entered Gaza with aid from the United Arab Emirates, according to the military body handling aid deliveries into the territory, COGAT. It said the aid consisted of food and water as well as hygiene, shelter and medical supplies. U.N. agencies did not immediately confirm the delivery of the aid. Israeli forces have encircled the Gaza Strip’s northernmost areas for the past month, saying Hamas militants have regrouped there. Experts say the Israeli military campaign has caused a new wave of displaced civilians and warn that famine is imminent or may already be happening there. Israel has also been striking deeper inside Lebanon since September as it escalates the war against Hezbollah. The Israel-Hamas war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Lebanon's Hezbollah group began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Since then, more than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 14,200 wounded, the country's Health Ministry reported. In Israel, 76 people have been killed, including 31 soldiers.

 Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama's Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States. They were living in the U.S. when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief. But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested they would scale back the use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. They have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims made by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex. “What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.” Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the biggest displacements worldwide. “My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that they send me back again.” Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the most at stake. Haiti's international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration barred U.S. airlines from landing there for 30 days. “It's creating a lot of anxiety," said Vania André, editor-in-chief for The Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to handle the widespread gang violence already and cannot absorb all those people.” Designations by the Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Others expire later. Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days' notice. TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months. Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump's earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn't doubt the president-elect will try again. “It's possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy" and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.” Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until well into President Joe Biden's term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed them. Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does. Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the U.S. Other designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997. A designation is not a pathway to U.S. permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes. Advocates are pressing the White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by the temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered the country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy the same protection from deportation. “It's a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee. Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly. “He should do it now,” said Elena, who lives in Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”

South Africa's government says it will not help an estimated 4,000 illegal miners inside a closed mine in the country's North West province who have been denied access to basic supplies as part of an official strategy against illegal mining. The miners in the mineshaft in Stilfontein are believed to be suffering from a lack of food, water and other basic necessities after police closed off the entrances used to transport their supplies underground. It is part of the police’s Vala Umgodi, or Close the Hole, operation, which includes cutting off miners’ supplies to force them to return to the surface and be arrested. North West police spokesperson Sabata Mokgwabone said information received from those who recently helped bring three miners to the surface indicated that as many as 4,000 miners may be underground. Police have not provided an official estimate. In the past few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in North West province, with many reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies. Police continue on Thursday to guard areas around the mine to catch all those appearing from underground. Cabinet Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners because they are involved in a criminal act. “We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped. We didn’t send them there," Ntshavheni said. Illegal mining remains common in South Africa's old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits. The illegal miners are often from neighboring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners. Their presence in closed mines have also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape. Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.

The United Nations and other international organizations are bracing for four more years of Donald Trump, who famously tweeted before becoming president the first time that the 193-member U.N. was “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.” In his first term, Trump suspended funding for the U.N. health and family planning agencies, withdrew from its cultural organization and top human rights body, and jacked up tariffs on China and even longtime U.S. allies by flaunting the World Trade Organization’s rulebook. The United States is the biggest single donor to the United Nations, paying 22% of its regular budget. Trump’s take this time on the world body began taking shape this week with his choice of Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House member, called last month for a “complete reassessment” of U.S. funding for the United Nations and urged a halt to support for its agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA. President Joe Biden paused the funding after UNRWA fired several staffers in Gaza suspected of taking part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas. Here’s a look at what Trump 2.0 could mean for global organizations: ‘A theater’ for a conservative agenda Speculation about Trump’s future policies has already become a parlor game among wags in Washington and beyond, and reading the signals on issues important to the U.N. isn’t always easy. For example, Trump once called climate change a hoax and has supported the fossil fuel industry but has sidled up to the environmentally minded Elon Musk. His first administration funded breakneck efforts to find a COVID-19 vaccine, but he has allied with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “The funny thing is that Trump does not really have a fixed view of the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group think tank. Gowan expects that Trump won’t view the world body “as a place to transact serious political business but will instead exploit it as a theater to pursue a conservative global social agenda.” There are clues from his first term. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate accord and is likely to do it again after President Joe Biden rejoined. Trump also had the U.S. leave the cultural and educational agency UNESCO and the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, claiming they were biased against Israel. Biden went back to both before recently opting not to seek a second consecutive term on the council. Trump cut funding for the U.N. population agency for reproductive health services, claiming it was funding abortions. UNFPA says it doesn’t take a position on abortion rights, and the U.S. rejoined. He had no interest in multilateralism — countries working together to address global challenges — in his first term. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it “the cornerstone” of the United Nations.

  Salman Khan's team has denied any involvement with The Great Indian Kapil Show on OTT platform Netflix following a legal trouble against the show for presumably disrespecting Nobel laureate  Rabindranath Tagore's legacy.   Kapil Sharma's Netflix show, The Great Indian Kapil Show, has found itself in legal trouble over allegations of disrespecting Rabindranath Tagore’s legacy, reports Indian media. Reports have emerged suggesting Salman Khan's production house SKTV had been served a legal notice as well for its alleged association with the show. Dismissing speculation, Salman Khan's team has issued a statement denying any kind of involvement with Kapil Sharma's show. The statement reads, "Certain sections of the media are reporting that Salman Khan / SKTV have also received the notice, which is incorrect as we are not associated with The Great Indian Kapil Show on Netflix." The notice claims that The Great Indian Kapil Show disrespected Rabindranath Tagore's legacy and risks offending cultural and religious sentiments.

The major battle in Baku is over how much rich nations will help poor countries to decarbonize their energy systems, cope with future harms of climate change and pay for damage from warming's extreme weather. The old goal of $100 billion a year in aid is expiring and Baku's main focus is coming up with a new, bigger figure. A special independent group of experts commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued its own estimate of costs and finances on Thursday, calling for a tripling of the old commitment. “Advanced economies need to demonstrate a credible commitment” to helping poor nations, the report said. A coalition of poor nations at the Baku talks are asking for $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance. The independent experts' report said about $1 trillion a year is needed by developing nations from all outside sources, not just government grants. The report detailed how expensive decarbonizing the world's economy would be, how much it would cost and where the money could come from. Overall climate adaption spending for all countries is projected to reach $2.4 trillion a year. "The transition to clean, low-carbon energy, building resilience to the impacts of climate change, coping with loss and damage, protecting nature and biodiversity, and ensuring a just transition, require a rapid step-up in investment in all countries,'' said the report.   For the third straight year, efforts to fight climate change haven't lowered projections for how hot the world is likely to get — and recent developments in China and the United States are likely to slightly worsen the outlook, according to an analysis Thursday. The analysis comes as countries come together for the 29th edition of the United Nations climate talks, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, where nations are trying to set new targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task. But Earth remains on a path to be 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists and analysts who study government policies and translate that into projections of warming. If emissions are still rising and temperature projections are no longer dropping, people should wonder if the United Nations climate negotiations known as COP are doing any good, said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare. “There’s an awful lot going on that’s positive here, but on the big picture of actually getting stuff done to reduce emissions ... to me it feels broken,” Hare said. Climate action is stifled by the biggest emitters The world has already warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That's near the 1.5-degree (2.7 F) limit that countries agreed to at 2015 climate talks in Paris. Climate scientists say the atmospheric warming, mainly from human burning of fossil fuels, is causing ever more extreme and damaging weather including droughts, flooding and dangerous heat. Climate Action Tracker does projections under several different scenarios, and in some cases, those are going up slightly. One projected track based on what countries promise to do by 2030 is up to 2.6 degrees Celsius, a tenth of a degree warmer than before. And even the analysts' most optimistic scenario, which assumes that countries all deliver on their promises and targets, is at 1.9 Celsius, also up a tenth of a degree from last year, said study lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga of Climate Analytics, one of the main groups behind the tracker. “This is driven highly by China,” Gonzales-Zuniga said. Even though China's fast-rising emissions are starting to plateau, they are peaking higher than anticipated, she said. Another upcoming factor not yet in the calculations is the U.S. elections. A Trump administration that rolls back the climate policies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and carries out the conservative blueprint Project 2025, would add 0.04 degree Celsius (0.07 Fahrenheit) to warming projections, Gonzales-Zuniga said. That's not much, but it could be more if other nations use it as an excuse to do less, she said. And a reduction in American financial aid could also reverberate even more in future temperature outlooks. “For the U.S. it is going backwards,” said Hare. At least China has more of an optimistic future with a potential giant plunge in future emissions, he said. “We should already be seeing (global) emissions going down" and they are not, Hare said. “In the face of all of the climate disasters we’ve observed, whether it’s the massive floods in Nepal that killed hundreds of people or whether it’s the floods in Valencia, Spain, that just killed hundreds of people. The political system, politicians are not reacting. And I think that’s something that people everywhere should be worried about.”  

Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama's Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States. They were living in the U.S. when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief. But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested they would scale back the use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. They have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims made by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex. “What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.” Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the biggest displacements worldwide. “My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that they send me back again.” Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the most at stake. Haiti's international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration barred U.S. airlines from landing there for 30 days. “It's creating a lot of anxiety," said Vania André, editor-in-chief for The Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to handle the widespread gang violence already and cannot absorb all those people.” Designations by the Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Others expire later. Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days' notice. TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months. Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump's earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn't doubt the president-elect will try again. “It's possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy" and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.” Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until well into President Joe Biden's term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed them. Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does. Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the U.S. Other designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997. A designation is not a pathway to U.S. permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes. Advocates are pressing the White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by the temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered the country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy the same protection from deportation. “It's a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee. Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly. “He should do it now,” said Elena, who lives in Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”

Sri Lankans are voting in a parliamentary election Thursday that is key for the country's new, Marxist-leaning president to consolidate his party's power and follow through on promises of economic recovery. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidential election on Sept. 21 in a victory that marked a rejection of the traditional political parties, which have governed the island nation since its independence from British rule in 1948. However, Dissanayake’s failure to secure more than 50% of the vote has fueled concerns over his party’s outlook in Thursday's election. His National People’s Power party must increase its votes significantly — from the 42% it won in the presidential election — if it is to acquire a minimum of 113 seats to take control of the 225-member Parliament. The biggest challenge for the NPP — which was founded in 2019 and is a relative newcomer on Sri Lanka’s political scene — is that many of its candidates are new faces in politics running against well-established politicians from the traditional parties. Of the 225 parliament seats, 196 are up for grabs under Sri Lanka's proportional representative electoral system, which allocates seats in each district among the parties according to the proportion of the votes they get. The remaining 29 seats — called the national list seats — are allocated to parties and independent groups according to the proportion of the total votes they receive countrywide. There are 8,821 candidates vying for the 196 seats for elected members of Parliament. Read: Train hits and kills 2 wild elephants in Sri Lanka as 2 of its fuel-carrying tankers derail Sajith Premadasa, who came in second in the presidential election and his Samagi Jana Balawegaya, or United People's Power party, is NPP's main competition. Dissanayake, while campaigning for his party’s candidates, has called on voters to help elect them to Parliament so he won’t need to rely on a coalition to enact the reforms he promised. Election results are expected on Friday. The election comes at a decisive time for Sri Lankans, as the island nation is struggling to emerge from its worst economic crisis, having declared bankruptcy after defaulting on its external debt in 2022. The country is now in the middle of a bailout program with the International Monetary Fund and debt restructuring with international creditors nearly complete. Dissanayake had said during the presidential campaign that he planned to propose significant changes to the targets set in the IMF deal, which his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe signed, saying it placed too much burden on the people. However, he has since changed his stance and says Sri Lanka will go along with the agreement. Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which along with 2019 terrorism attacks devastated its important tourism industry. The pandemic also disrupted the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad. Read more: Sri Lanka closes schools as floods hammer the capital The government also slashed taxes in 2019, depleting the treasury just as the virus hit. Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, leaving Sri Lanka unable to pay for imports or defend its currency, the rupee. Sri Lanka’s economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. Parliament then elected Wickremesinghe to replace him. The economy was stabilized, inflation dropped, the local currency strengthened and foreign reserves increased under Wickremesinghe. Nonetheless, he lost the election as public dissatisfaction grew over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses, as part of the government’s efforts to meet the IMF conditions. Dissanayake’s promise to punish members of previous governments accused of corruption and to recover allegedly stolen assets has also raised much hope among the people.

New storms in Spain caused school closures and train cancellations on Wednesday, two weeks after flash floods in Valencia and other parts of the country killed more than 220 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Coastal areas of Valencia were placed under the highest alert on Wednesday evening. Forecasters said up to 180 millimeters (7 inches) of rain could fall there within five hours. Cleanup efforts in parts of Valencia hardest hit by the Oct. 29 storm were still continuing, and there were concerns over what more rain could bring to streets still covered with mud and debris. In southern Malaga province, streets were flooded, while 3,000 people near the Guadalhorce river were moved from their homes as a preventive measure. Schools across the province were closed, along with many stores. Train service was canceled between Malaga and Madrid, and between Barcelona and Valencia. Valencia's regional government also restricted the use of private vehicles until Thursday in areas hit by the October storm, when tsunami-like floods caused severe car pile-ups. There were no reports of deaths due to the new storms. Spanish weather forecaster AEMET put Malaga on red alert, saying up to 70 millimeters (roughly 3 inches) of rain had accumulated in an hour. Parts of Tarragona province in the east also faced heavy rain and remained under red alert. The forecast in Malaga delayed the start of the Billie Jean King Cup tennis finals between Spain and Poland, which was set for Wednesday. The storm system affecting Spain is caused by warm air that collides with stagnant cold air and forms powerful rain clouds. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.

A federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks has revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics, the FBI said Wednesday. Hackers affiliated with Beijing have compromised the networks of “multiple” telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of “a limited number of individuals," according to a joint statement issued by the FBI and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The FBI did not identify any of the individuals targeted by the hackers but said most of them “are primarily involved in government or political activity." The hackers also sought to copy “certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” the FBI said, suggesting the hackers may have been trying to compromise programs like those subject to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which grants American spy agencies sweeping powers to surveil the communications of individuals suspected of being agents of a foreign power.” The warning comes after several high-profile hacking incidents that U.S. authorities have linked to China, part of what they say is an effort to steal technological and government information while also targeting vital infrastructure like the electrical grid. In September, the FBI announced that it had disrupted a vast Chinese hacking operation known as Flax Typhoon that involved the installation of malicious software on more than 200,000 consumer devices, including cameras, video recorders and home and office routers. The devices were then used to create a massive network of infected computers, or botnet, that could then be used to carry out other cyber crimes. Last month, officials said hackers linked to China targeted the phones of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, along with people associated with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Authorities did not disclose how or if the operations announced Wednesday are connected to the earlier campaigns. In their statement Wednesday, the FBI and CISA said officials are working with the telecommunication industry and hacking victims to shore up defenses against continuing attempts at cyberespionage. “We expect our understanding of these compromises to grow as the investigation continues,” the agencies wrote. China has rejected accusations from U.S. officials that it engages in cyberespionage directed against Americans. A message left with China's embassy in Washington was not immediately returned Wednesday.