PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As trash and tempers heat up across Philadelphia on Day 8 of a strike by blue-collar city workers Tuesday, some residents and small business owners are hiring pop-up hauling services to clear their blocks of garbage, even as they broadly support the union’s quest for higher pay.
Mayor Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, is standing firm in her offer of raises of about 3% per year over a three-year contract, which comes on top of a 5% raise she gave as an olive branch to all four major city unions after taking office last year.
“I do believe that the mayor has made a gross mistake,” said Jody Sweitzer, who has watched her East Passyunk neighborhood in South Philadelphia gentrify in her 26 years there, leading to higher rents and less diversity. Sweitzer owns a popular downtown bar called Dirty Frank's.
“Forty thousand dollars cannot cut it in Philadelphia, you know," she said, referring to striking workers' pay. "You can barely rent an apartment with that kind of money. So I feel as a resident of Philadelphia that she’s doing injustice to those (workers) who actually live here.”
The strike by District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees involves nearly 10,000 workers, although judges have sided with the city in ordering some critical employees back to work at the city's 911 centers, water department and airport. Judges have also decreed a temporary halt on evictions.
The two sides have met only intermittently since the strike began, but there was hope they would return to the bargaining table on Tuesday. In the summer of 1986, a citywide trash strike went on for three weeks, leaving 45,000 tons of rotting garbage in the streets.
Terrill Haigler, 35, a former sanitation worker who now does private hauling under the handle “Ya Fav Trashman," said stress was on the rise Tuesday along with the 94-degree (34.4-degree Celsius) temperature.
“It's like Gotham City with water ice,” he said, referencing a local treat that is famously mispronounced “wooder ice” by natives.
“We support District Council 33 100%,” Haigler said. “They deserve everything that they’re asking for, but we also have to think about the residents on the other side. There are some people — elderly, mothers who have children — who can’t let the trash sit for five, six, seven and eight days.”
A shop owner on Sweitzer's street hired Haigler to clear the block Tuesday. In turn, he hired two teenagers to help him while he drove a rental truck down the narrow, one-way street that ends at Pat’s King of Steaks.
”Our goal is to hopefully relieve some of that tension by cleaning as many blocks as we can, picking up as much trash as we can for customers, just to give some ease and some peace," Haigler said.
The city has designated about 60 sites as drop-off centers for residential trash, but some are overflowing, while striking workers on hand ask residents not to cross the picket line. Most libraries across the city are also closed, with support workers and security guards off the job.
While Sweitzer hoped the strike would encourage more people to cut down on their trash through composting, city officials said other residents were taking advantage of the situation and discarding mattresses and other bulk items. Offenders in the city's northeast even put out rotten chicken and cooking oil. The chicken tossers were arrested and face $5,000 fines, according to Carlton Williams, director of the city's Office of Clean and Green Initiatives.
“This is not a free pass for illegal dumping around the city of Philadelphia,” Williams said Monday.
Trash is cleaned up at a drop-off site in Philadelphia as thousands of city workers remained on strike Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (WPVI-TV via AP)
Trash is cleaned up at a drop-off site in Philadelphia as thousands of city workers remained on strike Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (WPVI-TV via AP)
Iran and the United States received a draft proposal late Sunday calling for a 45-day ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, two Mideast officials speaking condition of anonymity told The Associated Press.
The proposal comes from Egyptian, Pakistani and Turkish mediators hoping the 45-day window would provide enough time for talks to reach a permanent ceasefire. Iran and the U.S. have not responded to the proposal, which was sent to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, the officials said.
The head of intelligence for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed Monday in an attack targeting him, Iranian state media said. The Israeli military later confirmed the airstrike that killed Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi took place in Iran’s capital Tehran.
Strikes on cities across Iran have killed more people Monday, while in Israel's Haifa victims were found dead in rubble following an attack.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday stepped up his threat to hit Iran's critical infrastructure hard if the country's government doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his Tuesday deadline.
Trump punctuated his threat with profanity in a social media post, saying Tuesday will be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran.”
The war began with joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Feb. 28 and has killed thousands, shaken global markets, cut off key shipping routes and spiked fuel prices. Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets, bringing warnings of possible war crimes from the United Nations and international law experts.
Here is the latest:
Israel’s military said four people were found dead at the site of a missile strike in Haifa.
They had been trapped under rubble and were found after hours of overnight rescue efforts, the mililtary said.
European Council President António Costa said Monday that an “escalation will not achieve a ceasefire and peace,” which was likely a warning aimed at U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Only negotiations will, namely the ongoing efforts led by regional partners,” he added in the statement posted on X.
Costa’s call comes as Trump has threatened to begin bombing power plants and bridges this week if Iran does not open the Strait of Hormuz.
He wrote that “any targeting of civilian infrastructure, namely energy facilities, is illegal and unacceptable.”
“The Iranian civilian population is the main victim of the Iranian regime,” Costa wrote. “It would also be the main victim of a widening of the military campaign.”
The death toll in an airstrike on a Iranian residential building has risen to at least 15 people, authorities said Monday
The strike hit near Eslamshar, a city southwest of Iran’s capital Tehran.
An airstrike hit an information and communication technology building at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology on Monday morning, according to Mohammed Vesal, an economics professor at the university.
Vesal, who spoke to a team from The Associated Press that had traveled to Iran from abroad to report there, said the attack disrupted online learning for the university.
All students have left the campus because of the war.
“All web services of the university are down now because of this violent attack on our infrastructure,” Vesal said. “This is a purely academic institution.”
Sharif University of Technology is considered Iran’s top engineering school.
Multiple countries over the years have sanctioned the university for its work with the military, particularly on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is controlled by the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Israel claimed the killing of the intelligence chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Monday.
Defense Minister Israel Katz made the announcement.
The Israeli military later confirmed the airstrike that killed Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi took place in Iran’s capital Tehran.
“The Revolutionary Guard are shooting at civilians and we are eliminating the leaders of the terrorists,” Katz said. “Iran’s leaders live with a sense of being targeted. We will continue to hunt them down one by one.”
Katz added Israel had “severely damaged” Iran’s steel and petrochemical industries, as well.
“We will continue to crush the Iranian national infrastructure and lead to the erosion and collapse of the terrorist regime, and its capabilities to promote terror and fire at the state of Israel,” he said.
The head of intelligence for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed Monday in an attack targeting him, Iranian state media said.
Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi died in the attack, which the Guard blamed on the United States and Israel.
It did not elaborate on where Khademi was killed. However, multiple airstrikes targeted residential areas around Iran’s capital, Tehran, early Monday morning.
Khademi took over for Gen. Mohammad Kazemi, who Israel killed in the 12-day war in June.
The Guard’s intelligence organization wields vast powers within Iran and answers only to the country’s supreme leader. It often has been linked to the detention of Western nationals or those with ties abroad. It also has been accused of carrying out extraterritorial killings and attacks targeting opponents of the country’s theocracy.
Iran and the United States have received a draft proposal that calls for a 45-day ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz as a possible way to end the war, two Mideast officials told The Associated Press.
The proposal comes from Egyptian, Pakistani and Turkish mediators working to halt the fighting, according to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
They hope the 45-day window would provide enough time for extensive talks between the countries to reach a permanent ceasefire.
Iran and the U.S. have not responded to the proposal, which was sent late Sunday night to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, the officials said.
It remains unclear whether the sides would agree to such terms. Iran has insisted it will keep fighting until it receives financial reparations and a promise it won’t be attacked again. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iranian bridges and power stations this week.
The news website Axios first reported terms of the proposal.
An Iranian drone attack damaged a telecommunications building in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates on Monday, the state-run WAM news agency reported.
The attack targeted a building of the state-funded du telecom company.
No one was injured, WAM reported, quoting officials in Fujairah.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service says there are no signs North Korea is providing Iran with weapons or other war-related supplies.
The spy agency’s officials told lawmakers Monday that North Korea may be taking a cautious approach to preserve the possibility of dialogue with the Trump administration, according to two lawmakers who attended the closed-door briefing.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal, but the NIS said Pyongyang has not sent an official condolence message over the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s late supreme leader.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent years has embraced the idea of a “new Cold War” and attempted to expand cooperation with countries confronting the U.S., including an economic delegation sent to Iran in April 2024.
South Korea plans to send at least five ships to Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port in the coming weeks to establish new oil transport routes in the Red Sea.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources said Monday the ships will be deployed in phases beginning in mid-April and the number of vessels could increase depending on contracts with Saudi partners.
Officials did not disclose the companies involved but said some domestic refiners may use non-Korean shipping firms.
South Korea also plans to send special envoys to Saudi Arabia, Oman and Algeria to step up diplomatic efforts to secure alternative fuel supplies, ruling party lawmaker Ahn Do-geol said.
The foreign ministry did not immediately reveal when the envoys would be sent.
Iran has executed another man convicted over charges stemming from the nationwide protests that swept Iran in January.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency identified the man hanged as Ali Fahim in a report Monday.
It was unclear when he was executed.
Fahim had been convicted of allegedly storming a military base to seize weapons.
Amnesty International said Fahim and others convicted in the case “were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention, including beatings, floggings, prolonged solitary confinement, and death threats at gunpoint before being convicted in grossly unfair trials that relied on forced ‘confessions’ extracted under torture and lasted only a few hours.”
The Human Rights Activist News Agency had said Fahim and others had entered a Tehran base of the all-volunteer Basij militia, an arm of the Revolutionary Guard, after it had been burned, then had been forced into confessions.
Israel rescue services reported Monday morning several sites were hit by missiles launched from Iran toward multiple cities in the center of Israel.
In Petah Tikva, paramedics provided medical treatment to an injured woman in serious condition with a chest injury from shrapnel and evacuated her to the Beilinson Hospital.
Fire fighters in that city are handling cars on fire and continue searching to ensure there are no people trapped in the rubble.
In Tel Aviv, a man slightly injured by glass shrapnel was evacuated to the Ichilov Hospital.
Footage provided by rescue service Magen David Adom shows damage to residential buildings due to the attack.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military warned the public Monday morning of another missile barrage coming from Iran, the fourth-such alert of the day.
Israel’s Magen David Adom and Fire and Rescue services said early Monday that there are several reported sites of Iranian missile hits in the northern city of Haifa.
In one site, four people were slightly injured, including two children.
The missile attacks hit residential areas and a factory in the city.
The factory was hit by shrapnel from an interception.
It is unclear if all the reported hits were caused by shrapnel from interception or direct hits.
Video footage provided by Magen David Adom of the affected sites show active fire and bombed cars in what appears to be a residential area.
The missile strikes come a day after another attack from Iran also hit a Haifa residential area, killing two people and injuring others.
Two other people remain missing under the rubble caused by Sunday's strike and their fate is still unknown.
In the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi, authorities said a Ghanaian man suffered wounds from shrapnel after the interception of an Iranian missile over the city’s Musaffah neighborhood.
That’s near Al Dhafra Air Base, which hosts U.S. forces and has been repeatedly targeted by Iran in the war.
Women hold Iranian flags during a pro-government gathering in a square in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A picture of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on the side of the road in the outskirts of Tehran, Iran, early Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Rescue workers search for victims at the site of an Israeli airstrike that hit a crowded neighbourhood south of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A commercial plane is preparing to land at Beirut Airport as smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, Israel, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
