By MELANIE LIDMAN, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Nine hours of frantic negotiation with the Israeli military. A last-minute scramble to find trucks in a devastated Gaza Strip, where fuel is in short supply. Six hours of frantic packing, carefully stacking cardboard boxes on open flatbed trucks.

With an Israeli airstrike looming, aid workers carried out a last-minute rescue mission to salvage thousands of priceless artifacts from a Gaza warehouse before the building was flattened.

The warehouse contained artifacts from over 25 years of excavations, including items from a 4th-century Byzantine monastery designated as a World Heritage Site by the U.N. cultural organization UNESCO, and some of the oldest known evidence of Christianity in Gaza. The Israeli military said the building housed Hamas intelligence installations and planned to demolish it as part of their expanded military operation in Gaza City.

“It’s not just about Palestinian heritage or Christian heritage, it’s something important to the world heritage here, protected by UNESCO,” explained Kevin Charbel, the emergency field coordinator for Première Urgence Internationale (PUI), a humanitarian organization which has worked in Gaza since 2009. PUI is a health organization that also works toward the protection of Gaza’s cultural heritage.

Negotiating against the clock

COGAT, Israel’s defense body in charge of humanitarian aid, notified PUI of the demolition plan last Wednesday morning. The warning was triggered by a notification system managed by the international NGOS to let the Israeli military know that a specific area is a sensitive site such as a school, hospital, or warehouses holding humanitarian aid.

Charbel, who is based in Gaza City on a temporary humanitarian rotation, spent nine hours furiously negotiating with the Israeli military for a delay to allow workers to move the artifacts to a safer location. But the challenge was larger than just holding off the military. As Israel expands its operation in Gaza City, other organizations were in disarray, and no one could locate trucks to transport the artifacts at such short notice.

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“Five minutes before I had to accept this was going to be evaporated in front of us, another actor offered us transport,” said Charbel. PUI worked with the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem to move the artifacts to a safer location in Gaza City that is not being disclosed for security reasons.

The French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), a venerated archaeological institution in the region which oversaw the Dead Sea Scrolls excavation in Israel, was responsible for the storage of about 80 square meters (860 sq ft) of archaeological artifacts in the Al-Kawthar high-rise building in Gaza City. PUI was providing security for the site.

Dozens of ancient archaeological sites have been found in Gaza, including temples, monasteries, palaces, churches, mosques and mosaics. Many of them have been lost to urban sprawl and looting. UNESCO is struggling to preserve some of those that remain. Some of the sites date back 6,000 years, when Gaza was a central stop on trade routes between Egypt and the Levant, and the emergence of urban societies began to transform farming villages.

The artifacts rescued this week include ceramic jugs, mosaics, coins, painted plasterwork, human and animal remains, and items excavated from the Saint Hilarion Monastery, one of the oldest known examples of Christian monastic communities in the Middle East, according to UNESCO.

No time for normal preparation

Starting just after sunrise on Thursday, workers rushed to pack five flatbed trucks with as many delicate artifacts as they possibly could in the space of six hours. Artifacts, which had been carefully stored and documented in the warehouse, were hurriedly packed in cardboard boxes, with nearly 2,000-year-old pottery resting on the sandy ground.

Charbel noted that transporting such old artifacts usually requires intense preparation and special provisions to protect delicate objects, something that wasn’t possible in this instance. The Israeli military does not allow the use of closed container trucks, exposing the artifacts to additional dangers. Several items were broken en route and others had to be left behind. Israel destroyed the building on Sunday, claiming Hamas had positioned observation posts and intelligence-gathering infrastructure within it.

Over the past week, Israel has demolished multiple high-rise buildings in Gaza City, part of its dramatic warnings to civilians to evacuate ahead of the ground offensive, which began on Tuesday morning.

As Israel’s ground operation expands, the artifacts are being held in a different location in Gaza City. However, they are outside, exposed to the elements, and remain in grave danger as strikes intensify.

UNESCO said Israel has damaged at least 110 cultural sites across the Gaza Strip, including 13 religious sites, 77 buildings of historical or artistic interest, one museum, and seven archaeological sites, since the beginning of the war in October 2023.

During the archaeological rescue, Charbel said, he and other aid workers also wrestled with deeper questions. Did it make sense to direct so many resources, including desperately needed fuel and trucks, risking the lives of multiple people who worked under constant threat of bombardment, for inanimate historical objects, when the humanitarian situation is so dire? Charbel said he was worried about spending so much time arguing over the archaeological artifacts when they also needed to negotiate with COGAT about life-saving water, food, and medicine.

“But we accepted to do this, because it’s so valuable, this stuff, it’s of such importance to world history and also Palestinian history,” said Charbel. “Destroying early examples of Christian history in Palestine would erase it forever.”

By MATT O’BRIEN, AP Technology Writer

The parents of teenagers who killed themselves after interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots are planning to testify to Congress on Tuesday about the dangers of the technology.

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Matthew Raine, the father of 16-year-old Adam Raine of California, and Megan Garcia, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III of Florida, are set to speak to a Senate hearing on the harms posed by AI chatbots.

Raine’s family sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman last month alleging that ChatGPT coached the boy in planning to take his own life in April. Garcia sued another AI company, Character Technologies, for wrongful death last year, arguing that before his suicide, Sewell had become increasingly isolated from his real life as he engaged in highly sexualized conversations with the chatbot.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

Hours before the Senate hearing, OpenAI pledged to roll out new safeguards for teens, including efforts to detect whether ChatGPT users are under 18 and controls that enable parents to set “blackout hours” when a teen can’t use ChatGPT. Child advocacy groups criticized the announcement as not enough.

“This is a fairly common tactic — it’s one that Meta uses all the time — which is to make a big, splashy announcement right on the eve of a hearing which promises to be damaging to the company,” said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a group advocating for children’s online safety.

“What they should be doing is not targeting ChatGPT to minors until they can prove that it’s safe for them,” Golin said. “We shouldn’t allow companies, just because they have tremendous resources, to perform uncontrolled experiments on kids when the implications for their development can be so vast and far-reaching.”

The Federal Trade Commission said last week it had launched an inquiry into several companies about the potential harms to children and teenagers who use their AI chatbots as companions.

The agency sent letters to Character, Meta and OpenAI, as well as to Google, Snap and xAI.

A school bus driver who showed up drunk at Park High School in Cottage Grove last winter has been sentenced to 45 days of home electronic monitoring and three years’ probation.

Joshua Nathaniel Lueth, 37, of Hastings, pleaded guilty to gross misdemeanor DWI and was sentenced Friday in Washington County District Court.

Joshua Nathaniel Lueth (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

A plea agreement he reached with the Cottage Grove city attorney also includes a stayed 319-day jail term and dismissal of two other charges in the case: a second gross misdemeanor DWI and misdemeanor obstructing legal process.

Lueth was working for Hastings-based Big River Bus Co. at the time of the Feb. 26 incident. He held a Class B commercial driver’s license with a passenger endorsement, but not the required school bus endorsement because he failed a background check, according to the state Department of Public Safety.

Just over two months earlier, Lueth picked up a charge in western Wisconsin for driving drunk with a passenger under the age of 16. The Pepin County case was settled in June, with Lueth getting a 12-day jail sentence and his license revoked for 14 months.

Tom Severson, Big River’s chief operating officer, said in March that Lueth was fired following his arrest in Cottage Grove. He had been hired on Dec. 3 after passing a pre-employment background check and drug and alcohol screening, according to Severson.

After completing training, Lueth presented a valid temporary license with passenger and school bus endorsements to Big River staff, Severson said, adding that the company has since reviewed its administrative process.

The criminal complaint gives the following details:

Shortly after 3 p.m., Cottage Grove police received a report of a possible drunken driver in front of the school. The caller, a school employee, said she was trying to stop the school bus driver from leaving the property.

When police arrived at the school, an officer asked Lueth if he had driven the bus to the school. Lueth responded to the officer that he “has a job” and to leave him alone because he “has the last half of his route to complete.”

The officer noticed there were two students on board the bus, ages 15 and 16. The 15-year-old uses a wheelchair, the complaint said. School staff said Leuth was having trouble earlier using the lift that helped the student using the wheelchair into the bus and had leaned on the lift to maintain his balance.

Officers saw that Lueth was speaking slowly and slurring his words, that his eyes were red and glassy, and that he was having trouble maintaining his balance. Lueth said that he hadn’t taken any prescribed medication or controlled substances, or consumed alcohol.

Lueth was arrested, and while at the police station tried to spit at an officer. A blood sample taken two hours after his arrest showed his BAC was 0.289 percent. The legal limit to drive in Minnesota is .08, however, it is zero when driving a bus.

Video obtained by investigators showed that during the drive to the high school, Lueth crossed the center lane several times on U.S. 61. Upon arriving at the school, he pulled into a non-bus lane and had to make a U-turn against the flow of traffic.

Shortly after he arrived at the school, a staff member took the bus keys away from him.

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By DEE-ANN DURBIN, AP Business Writer

Costco is recalling bottles of store brand Prosecco because they could shatter without warning.

In a notice on the company’s website Tuesday, Costco said the recall affects Kirkland Signature Prosecco Valdobbiadene purchased between April 25 and August 26. The affected bottles were sold in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Costco said unopened bottles can shatter even when they’re not being handled or in use. The company said customers should wrap any unopened bottles in paper towels and place them in a plastic bag before disposing of them to avoid any risk from shattered glass.

Costco didn’t respond Tuesday when The Associated Press asked if there were any reported injuries due to the issue. The company also didn’t say how many affected bottles were sold or how the company discovered the problem.

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The Associated Press also left a message seeking comment with Ethica Wines, the Miami-based company that imported the affected wines from Italy.

Costco is sending letters to impacted customers. The company said customers will be given a full refund if they bring those letters to their nearest store.