By WAFAA SHURAFA and LEE KEATH

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The World Food Program says its food stocks in the Gaza Strip have run out under Israel’s nearly 8-week-old blockade, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the territory.

The WFP said in a statement that it delivered the last of its stocks to charity kitchens that it supports around Gaza. It said those kitchens are expected to run out of food in the coming days.

Some 80% of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million relies primarily on charity kitchens for food, because other sources have shut down under Israel’s blockade, according to the U.N. The WFP has been supporting 47 kitchens that distribute 644,000 hot meals a day, WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa told the Associated Press.

It was not immediately clear how many kitchens would still be operating in Gaza if those shut down. But Etefa said the WFP-backed kitchens are the major ones in Gaza.

Israel cut off entry of all food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to Gaza on March 2 and then resumed its bombardment and ground offensives two weeks later, shattering a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. It says the moves aim to pressure Hamas to release hostages it still holds. Rights groups have called the blockade a “starvation tactic” and a potential war crime.

Israel has said Gaza has enough supplies after a surge of aid entered during the ceasefire and accuses Hamas of diverting aid for its purposes. Humanitarian workers deny there is significant diversion, saying the U.N. strictly monitors distribution. They say the aid flow during the ceasefire was barely enough to cover the immense needs from throughout the war when only a trickle of supplies got in.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

With no new goods entering Gaza, many foods have disappeared from markets, including meat, eggs, fruits, dairy products and many vegetables. Prices for what remains have risen dramatically, becoming unaffordable for much of the population. Most families rely heavily on canned goods.

Malnutrition is already surging. The U.N. said it identified 3,700 children suffering from acute malnutrition in March, up 80% from the month before. At the same time, because of diminishing supplies, aid groups were only able to provide nutritional supplements to some 22,000 children in March, down 70% from February. The supplements are a crucial tool for averting malnutrition.

Almost all bakeries shut down weeks ago and the WFP stopped distribution of food basics to families for lack of supplies. With stocks of most ingredients depleted, charity kitchens generally can only serve meals of pasta or rice with little added.

World Central Kitchen — a U.S. charity that is one of the biggest in Gaza that doesn’t rely on the WFP — said Thursday that its kitchens had run out of proteins. Instead, they make stews from canned vegetables. Because fuel is scarce, it dismantles wooden shipping pallets to burn in its stoves, it said. It also runs the only bakery still functioning in Gaza, producing 87,000 loaves of pita a day.

The WFP said 116,000 tons of food is ready to be brought into Gaza if Israel opens the borders, enough to feed 1 million people for four months.

Israel has leveled much of Gaza with its air and ground campaign, vowing to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. It has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

In the Oct. 7 attack, terrorists killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251. They still hold 59 hostages after most were released in ceasefire deals.

Keath reported from Cairo. AP correspondent Julia Frankel in Jersualem contributed to this report.

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By LISA MASCARO, AP Congressional Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — Why not tax the millionaires?

As Congress begins drafting a massive package for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” with trillions of dollars in tax breaks and federal program cuts, it’s a question that won’t seem to go away.

Trump himself has mused he’d “love” to tax wealthier Americans a little bit more, but the Republican president has also repeatedly walked it back. This week, the president dismissed a tax hike as “disruptive” when asked about it at the White House.

But still it swirls.

And it’s setting up a potential showdown between the old guard of the Republican Party, which sees almost any tax hike as contrary to the GOP goal of slashing government, and its rising populist-nationalists, who view a millionaire’s tax as championing working-class voters who helped deliver the White House.

“Bring it, baby,” said former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon on his podcast.

Think of it as Bannon on the one side, versus Newt Gingrich, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and others on the other — a debate that once seemed unfathomable for Republicans who have spent generations working to lower taxes and reduce the scope of the federal government.

“I don’t think we’re raising taxes on anybody,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said this week on Fox News Channel.

Johnson said there have been lots of ideas thrown out but the Republicans are working against the idea of a tax on millionaires. “I’m not in favor of raising the tax rates because our party is the group that stands against that, traditionally,” he said.

This spring and summer, the Republican-led Congress is determined to make progress on the package, which is central to the party’s domestic policy agenda. It revolves around extending many of the GOP tax cuts that Congress approved in 2017, during Trump’s first term, but are expiring later this year.

As it stands, the top individual tax rate is now 37%, on annual incomes above $611,000 for single filers and $767,000 for married couples. If Congress fails to act, that rate is set to revert to what it was before the 2017 tax law, 39.6%, on top filers.

It seems impossible that Republicans in Congress will purposefully wade into the debate. They are striving to keep all the existing tax brackets in place, while adding new tax breaks the president campaigned on during the 2024 election — including no taxes on tips, Social Security income, overtime pay and others. It’s a potentially $5 trillion-plus package.

But the Bannon wing is working to force the issue, saying it’s time to raise that top rate on the wealthier households, at least $1 million and above.

Sounding at times more like progressive Democrats, Bannon’s flank sees a tax hike as a way not only to ensure wealthy Americans pay their fair share but to generate federal revenue. With federal debt at $36 trillion, they say it can help counter annual deficits that cannot be offset by budget cuts alone.

“The current system we have is not sustainable,” Bannon said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday in Washington. “You have to go to an alternative. I think the alternative is budget cuts. And … it has to be tax increases on the wealthy.”

That’s drawing fierce blowback from the traditional tax-cutters, who have gone into overdrive, warning of nothing short of a political shattering of GOP orthodoxy, and the party itself, if Republicans entertain the idea.

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“Madness,” Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, told Fox News’ Larry Kudlow.

Gingrich warns of a George Bush-style political implosion similar to his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge, which contributed to his failed 1992 presidential reelection bid.

“It would be a disaster,” Gingrich said.

Trump appears to be weighing the arguments, sending mixed messages about what he prefers.

“Newt is quite possibly right on this,” the president said in a note Gingrich said he received from the president and reposted Tuesday on social media.

“While I love the idea of a small increase,” Trump said in the note, “the Democrats would probably use it against us, and we would be, like Bush, helpless to do anything about it.”

Trump went on to counsel that if they can do without it, they’re probably better off. “We don’t need to be the ‘READ MY LIPS’ gang who lost an election,” he posted.

Asked about a tax hike on millionaires Wednesday in the Oval Office, Trump was more definitive.

“I think it would be very disruptive,” he said, suggesting wealthy Americans would simply leave the country, rather than pay the higher tax, and end up costing in lost revenues.

Yet in a Time magazine interview posted Friday, Trump said of a millionaires’ tax: “I actually love the concept, but I don’t want it to be used against me politically.”

As Republicans in Congress work behind the scenes crafting the tax bill — and at least $1.5 trillion in government spending cuts to help cover the lost revenues — it seems highly unlikely enough of them would agree to a tax hike.

Most of the congressional Republicans have signed a no-taxes pledge from Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform group, even as others signal some interest.

With Democrats prepared to oppose the package altogether because of its expected steep cuts to federal programs, the Republicans will need to keep all their lawmakers in line if they hope to pass the bill through the House and the Senate with their narrow majorities.

Yet, as Republicans are scrounging for ways to pay for their tax bill, they face potential resistance within their own ranks to reductions in Medicaid, food stamps or other federal programs.

Even an accounting measure preferred by the Senate Republicans, which would count the 2017 tax breaks as current policy rather than a new one requiring an offset, still comes up short for covering the full price tag of the new package, which could swell beyond $5 trillion over 10 years.

Setting the new top rate at about 40% for those earning $1 million or above would bring in some $300 billion in revenue over the decade, analysts have said.

“That Washington would have a better understanding of the complexities of movement in the New York metropolitan area is preposterous.”

The LIRR entrance at Penn Station. (Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Office)

The announcement by the Federal Railroad Administration that Amtrak will take over the rebuilding of Penn Station from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority signals that the Trump Administration has no idea what it is doing. 

The fundamental insanity of the idea that Amtrak take over rebuilding Penn Station is that  Amtrak does not use Penn Station. The station today serves the 4,000-square-mile metropolitan Area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut with its 20 million residents. Reconfiguring of its tracks and platforms could provide through traffic to Grand Central Terminal and ultimately the metropolitan area.

That Washington would have a better understanding of the complexities of movement in the New York metropolitan area is preposterous. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stating that the takeover would make the  station “safe and clean” illustrates his complete lack of comprehension of the Penn Station rebuilding task. It is not about a building; it is about a 21st century rail network critical to the region’s economy.

While it is true that Amtrak “owns” Penn Station, that is only because, with the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad in 1970, the federal government took over almost all the railroads in the Northeast. The demolition of the stately Penn Station and the building of a  new station underground with a sports complex on top of it was commenced by the  Pennsylvania Railroad in 1963, several years before its financial collapse. 

Penn Station, after its reopening 1968, served two functions. The simplest function was as  Amtrak’s New York station when the railroad was founded in 1971. The trains came down from Boston and up from Washington as trains had done since 1910, when the original Pennsylvania Station opened. Amtrak’s through traffic used the same platforms those earlier trains did.

The platforms were severely obstructed in 1968 when Madison Square  Garden was constructed over the station. Support columns came down onto the platforms blocking the flow of passengers getting on and off the trains. Notably, Amtrak today has a new and glamorous station, the adjacent Moynihan Hall over those same existing platforms. Amtrak does not use the existing Penn Station anymore, only the tracks and platforms below. 

The vastly more complicated function is Penn Station’s role as one of the two major commuter rail stations in New York City. Penn Station is now, even without Amtrak, the busiest transit station in the Western Hemisphere. Handling New Jersey Transit trains, Long Island Railroad trains and the 1, 2 and 3 subways lines represents vastly more traffic per hour than Amtrak’s intercity service ever has. This is traffic vital to New York’s productivity. 

Moreover, that traffic is about to get even more complicated. The 1910 Penn Sation had only two tracks coming into it from under the Hudson River. Those tracks then divided up into 21 tracks and platforms to serve passengers. Today’s Penn Station has no room for any more than those existing 21 tracks and platforms.

Hurricane Sandy did serious damage to the two tracks under the river, threatening their failure. The 2011 Gateway project is underway, bringing two new tracks under the Hudson River into the station and, with their division, doubling the number of tracks needed to double the hourly service. The real rebuilding of Penn Station will be underground, creating tracks and platforms. All the new service from Gateway into the station will be for New York’s metropolitan area commuter needs. While Amtrak will use those new tracks under the river, its New York station stop will continue to be Moynihan Hall.

The Gateway project is the key to both Amtrak’s future in the Northeast Corridor and to Penn Station’s role supporting the metropolitan area’s economy. Despite its critical importance, Gateway was stopped by President Trump in his first term. President Biden restarted the work.

The administration that nearly killed New York train service in its first term is not the team to rebuild Penn Station today.

Charles Lauster is an architect in New York City.

The post Opinion: Penn Station is Being Derailed by Washington appeared first on City Limits.

Korean-born, Austria-based flute player Jasmine Choi shares her range in performances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this week. As she plays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 and her own arrangement of “Zigeunerweisen” by late 19th-century Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate, Choi’s airy tone, poignant emotion and virtuosic breath work make for an impressive concert.

The SPCO also performs two works by Sergei Prokofiev — Sonata for Two Violins, performed by principal violin Kyu-Young Kim and SPCO musician Eunice Kim, and the foreboding Sonata No. 7, “Stalingrad.”

Jasmine Choi will perform with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at the Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul on Saturday, April 26, 2025, and at Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis on Sunday, April 27, 2025. (Studio SW / St. Paul Chamber Orchestra)

Eunice Kim opens the Andante cantabile movement of Prokofiev’s sonata with clarity, and is joined by Kyu-Young Kim playing a dissonant harmony. The opening movement has a sense of elasticity, with the music yawning and stretching and then contracting. In the Allegro movement, the two musicians play short, fierce notes, at times almost grinding away at their instruments, with intermittent pizzicato and a sense of swarming disarray and confusion.

The music grows softer in the third movement, called Commodo (quasi allegretto), and then turns a bit brighter for the last Allegro con brio, with rafter-climbing high notes performed by Eunice Kim.

The rest of the orchestra comes on stage for Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7, originally written for piano. The SPCO commissioned the composer to arrange the “Stalingrad” Sonata and Prokofiev’s First Violin Sonata, which concertmaster Steven Copes will perform with the orchestra May 2 and 3.

Prutsman takes advantage of a wide range of instruments to boost the heavy toil of Prokofiev’s music. Two timpani drums and other percussion make a sense of crashing bombs and gunshots, while the brass section also adds to the war-like mood of the piece. In the mournful Andante caloroso movement, tubular bells create a haunting feeling of waiting. The work’s third movement is fast and triumphant, with all of the instruments banding together in a flurry of sound.

After intermission, Choi plays her arrangement of Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 with the orchestra. A musician with a rather sprightly presence herself, she plays with a lighthearted sound, dancing through trills. In the second movement, Andante ma non troppo, Choi almost hovers in the hair in long suspensions, later climbing the scale with short staccato notes. Choi has an almost unbelievable lung capacity, using circular breathing to carry long phrases, even as she returns to her almost bird-like gracefulness in the last movement.

Choi’s Pablo de Sarasate arrangement makes for a fun close to the evening. Composed originally for violin, Choi finds the fiddle voice of her instrument in the Hungarian folk-inspired music. (De Sarasate called the piece “Gypsy Airs,” though the musical traditions he borrows from aren’t related to the Romani people.)

De Sarasate’s score employs a range of violin techniques that aren’t possible on a flute— double stops, for instance, and pizzicato. And yet Choi’s playing has plenty of gusto, plus haunting harmonics. Choi taps into a deep feeling in the work, expressing an aching emotion with her flute.

And sometimes the piece flies like the wind at breakneck speed. Choi’s breath is on overdrive: At times she almost spits into the mouthpiece. It’s a fast and furious finale to a great concert.

If you go

Who: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

What: Jasmine Choi Plays Mozart’s Second Flute Concerto

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Saturday: The Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul. Sunday: Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2128 Fourth Street S., Mpls.

Accessibility: Ordway: Elevators access all floors of Concert Hall, accessibility seating for all mobility devices (request when buying tickets); service animals welcome (inform ticket representative); listening units and large print available upon request. One single-occupancy, accessible restroom in the Music Theater lobby. Ordway.org/visit/accessibility. Ted Mann Concert Hall: Access via south side power door entrance. Elevator and adapted restrooms available.

Capsule: Guest flutist Jasmine Choi plays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pablo de Sarasate, while the SPCO also take on two Prokofiev works in an evening full of adaptations.

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