METULA, Israel (AP) — Ilan Rosenfeld walks through the burnt-out shell of his former business, stepping over crackling pieces of clay plates that used to line his cafe and past metal scraps of Hezbollah rockets littering the rubble.
It’s all that’s left for him in this small, war-ravaged town — the northernmost in Israel, surrounded on three sides by Lebanon.
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U.N vehicles drive past buildings destroyed by Israel's air and ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, as seen from Israel's northernmost town of Metula, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Avi Nadiv, deputy mayor, next to a home that's under renovation in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, pressed up against the Lebanon border, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Ilan Rosenfeld holds a piece of a rocket fired by Hezbollah in his burnt-out business in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Ilan Rosenfeld walks through the burnt-out shell of his business in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israel's military armored personnel carriers sit in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, on the Lebanon border, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
“Everything I had, everything I saved, everything I built – it’s all burned,” he said as he scanned the damage of the business he'd run for 40 years in Metula, which has long been at the crosshairs of flare-ups along the volatile border. “Every day I wake up, and all I have left are tears.”
Rosenfeld was among tens of thousands of people forced from their homes when war broke out between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in October 2023, following Hamas' attack in southern Israel.
One year into a shaky ceasefire on this heavily fortified border, Israel’s government says most of those displaced have returned to their homes in the north, where they struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives. Others are reluctant to come back, as Israel has stepped up attacks in Lebanon. Communities like Metula that were in the center of the conflict remain little more than ghost towns, most still half empty, with many people skeptical of their government's promise to keep them safe.
The Israeli strikes into southern Lebanon continue, with several a week. Hezbollah has refused to completely disarm until Israel fully withdraws.
“The security situation is starting to deteriorate again,” Rosenfeld said, looking at the bomb shelters on a list recently distributed by the local government. “And where am I in all this? I can barely survive the day-to-day.”
Metula residents were among the 64,000 forced to evacuate and relocate to hotels and temporary homes farther south when Hezbollah began firing rockets over the border into Israel in fall 2023. Months of fighting escalated into a full-fledged war. In September 2024, Israel killed 12 and wounded over 3,000 in a coordinated pager attack and killed Hezbollah's leader in a strike. A month later, the ceasefire deal was reached.
Today, residents have trickled back to the sprawling apple orchards and mountains as Israel’s government encourages them to go home. Officials say about 55,000 people have returned.
In Metula, just over half of the 1,700 residents are back. Yet the streets remain largely empty.
Many hoped to rebuild their lives, but they returned to find 60% of the town’s homes damaged from rocket fire, according to the local government. Others were infested and destroyed by rats. The economy — largely based on tourism and agriculture — has been devastated.
With many people, especially young families, reluctant to return, some business owners have turned to workers from Thailand to fill labor shortages.
“Most of the people who worked with us before the war didn’t come back,” said Jacob Katz, who runs a produce business. “We’ve lost a lot … and we can’t read the future.”
Rosenfeld's modest cafe and farm were perched on a hill overlooking the border fence. Tourists would come to eat, camp in buses converted to rooms and enjoy the view. But now, the towns on the Lebanese side of the border have been reduced to rubble by Israel's attacks.
Without a home, Rosenfeld sleeps in a small shelter next to the scraps that remain of his business. He has little more than a tent, a refrigerator and a few chairs. Just a stone’s throw away sit a military watch tower and two armored vehicles.
Israel’s government says it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in border recovery efforts, that it plans to invest more in economic revival, and that residents can apply for support funds.
But Rosenfeld said that despite his requests for government assistance, he hasn’t received any aid.
He’s among residents and business leaders who say they feel forgotten. Most say they need more resources to rebuild.
“The Israeli government needs to do much more for us,” Metula deputy mayor Avi Nadiv said. “The residents who live on Israel’s northern border, we are Israel’s human shield.”
A spokesman for Zeev Elkin, a Cabinet minister overseeing reconstruction in the north, said the local government has not used funds allocated to reconstruction “due to narrow political and oppositional considerations.”
As Hezbollah refuses to disarm, Israel has accused Lebanon’s government of not doing enough to neutralize the militant group. The Lebanese army says it has boosted its presence over the border area to strengthen the ceasefire.
Israel continues to bombard what it says are Hezbollah sites. Much of southern Lebanon has been left in ruins.
The strikes are among a number of offensives Israel has launched – including those in Gaza, the West Bank and Syria – in what it calls an effort to crack down on militant groups.
The Lebanon strikes have killed at least 127 civilians, including children, since the ceasefire took hold, according to a November U.N. report. U.N. special rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz said the strikes amount to “war crimes.” Israel has maintained that it has the right to continue strikes to protect itself from Hezbollah rearming and accuses the group of using civilians as human shields.
Last week, Israel struck the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital of Beirut, killing Hezbollah’s top military commander. The group, still weakened by last year’s fighting, has not responded.
In Metula, signs of the tensions are everywhere. The local government's list of public shelters reads: “Metula is prepared for an emergency.”
Explosions and gunfire periodically echo from military drills while farmer Levav Weinberg plays with his 10-, 8- and 6-year-old children. Weinberg, a military reservist, said his kids are too scared to ride their bikes on the street.
Weinberg, 44, and his family returned in July, skeptical of the government’s promise that everything was returning to normal but eager to keep their business alive.
Metula’s government continues to encourage people to come back, telling residents the region is safe and the economy will bounce back.
“Today we feel the winds of, let’s call it, the winds of war – but it doesn’t deter us,” Nadiv said. “Coming back to Metula – there’s nothing to be afraid of. ... The army is here. The houses are fortified. Metula is prepared for anything.”
Weinberg isn’t so sure. In recent weeks, he and his wife have considered leaving once again.
“The army cannot protect me and my family,” Weinberg said. “You sacrifice your family to live in Metula these days. It’s not a perfect life, it’s not that easy, and at some point your kids pay the price.”
U.N vehicles drive past buildings destroyed by Israel's air and ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, as seen from Israel's northernmost town of Metula, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Avi Nadiv, deputy mayor, next to a home that's under renovation in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, pressed up against the Lebanon border, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Ilan Rosenfeld holds a piece of a rocket fired by Hezbollah in his burnt-out business in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Ilan Rosenfeld walks through the burnt-out shell of his business in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israel's military armored personnel carriers sit in Israel's northernmost town of Metula, on the Lebanon border, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
Here's the latest:
The department said Monday that the revocations, a 150% increase over 2024, have targeted foreign nationals “charged or convicted with crimes” ranging from assault and theft to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It did not offer a breakdown of those who had been actually convicted of crimes or had only been charged with offenses.
It comes as the Trump administration has stepped up efforts to deport or otherwise remove foreigners it believes are a threat to the United States or U.S. citizens.
“The Trump administration will continue to put America first and protect our nation from foreign nationals who pose a risk to public safety or national security,” the department said, adding that it had stood up a “Continuous Vetting Center” to look at all visa holders and evaluate them for potential non-compliance with U.S. laws.
The department last offered an update on visa revocations in early December when it said more than 85,000 visas had been pulled.
The former Justice Department special counsel who investigated Trump and secured two grand jury indictments has opened a law practice with former colleagues.
The firm is called Heaphy, Smith, Harbach & Windom LLP.
Besides Smith, it includes David Harbach and Thomas Windom, two former federal prosecutors who also served on the special counsel team investigating Trump, as well as Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney and chief investigative counsel to a special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The firm says it will represent individuals, businesses, universities, municipalities and state agencies.
Another Republican is speaking out against the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska says that if the DOJ believes an investigation into Powell is warrants based on project cost overruns, which she says are not unusual, then Congress needs to investigate the DOJ.
“The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer,” Murkowski wrote on X.
She also notes that she spoke with Powell on Monday morning, adding “it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion.”
London’s murder rate fell in 2025 to its lowest level in decades, officials said Monday. Mayor Sadiq Khan said the figures disprove claims spread by President Trump and others on the political right that crime is out of control in Britain’s capital.
Police recorded 97 homicides in London in 2025, down from 109 in 2024 and the fewest since 2014. The Metropolitan Police force says the rate by population is the lowest since comparable records began in 1997, at 1.1 homicides for every 100,000 people.
That compares to 1.6 per 100,000 in Paris, 2.8 in New York and 3.2 in Berlin, the force said.
“There are some politicians and commentators who’ve been spamming social media with an endless stream of distortions and untruths, painting an image of a dystopian London,” Khan told The Associated Press. “And nothing could be further from the truth.”
▶ Read more about crime in London
The Democratic Party regained the partisanship edge when independents were asked whether they lean more toward the Democratic or Republican Party in a new Gallup poll.
Nearly half, 47%, of U.S. adults now identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 42% are Republicans or lean Republican.
This is an indication of how Americans are feeling about their political affiliations, and it may not be reflected in voters’ actual registration.
Independents appear to be driven by their unhappiness with the party in power. That’s a dynamic that could be good for Democrats for now, but it doesn’t promise lasting loyalty. Attitudes toward the party haven’t gotten warmer, suggesting the Democrats’ gains are probably more related to independents’ sour views of President Trump.
That comes a day after President Trump threatened the Caribbean island in the wake of the U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Díaz-Canel posted a flurry of brief statements on X after Trump suggested Cuba “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not say what kind of deal.
Díaz-Canel wrote that for “relations between the U.S. and Cuba to progress, they must be based on international law rather than hostility, threats, and economic coercion.”
The island’s communist government has said U.S. sanctions cost the country more than $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025.
Díaz-Canel added: “We have always been willing to hold a serious and responsible dialogue with the various US governments, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of International Law, and mutual benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence.”
Cuba’s president stressed on X that “there are no talks with the U.S. government, except for technical contacts in the area of migration.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults said the Federal Reserve Board should be independent of political control, according to Marquette/SSRS polling from September, while roughly 2 in 10 said the president should have more influence over setting interest rates and monetary policy. There was bipartisan consensus that the Fed should remain independent. About 9 in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of Republicans said the Fed should not be subjected to political control.
That poll found about 3 in 10 Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in The Federal Reserve Board. Nearly half — 45% — had some confidence, and roughly one-quarter had “very little” confidence or “none at all.”
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
