BEIRUT (AP) — The Israeli military struck several sites in Beirut’s southern suburbs that it said held underground facilities used by Hezbollah for drone production Thursday, on the eve of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

The strikes marked the first time in more than a month that Israel had struck on the outskirts of the capital and the fourth time since a US-brokered ceasefire agreement ended the latest war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in November.

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Israel posted a warning ahead of the strikes on X, formerly known as Twitter, announcing that it would hit eight buildings at four locations.

Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon since the ceasefire, which Lebanon has said are in violation of the agreement. Israeli officials say the strikes are intended to prevent Hezbollah from regrouping after a war that took out much of its senior leadership and arsenal.

The Israeli army said in a statement that Hezbollah was “working to produce thousands of drones under the guidance and financing of Iranian terrorist groups.”

Hezbollah “used drones extensively in its attacks against the State of Israel and is working to expand its drone industry and production in preparation for the next war,” the army statement said.

There was no immediate statement from Hezbollah.

A Hezbollah official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly denied that there were drone production facilities at the targeted locations.

“In the (ceasefire) agreement, there is a mechanism for investigating if there is a complaint,” the official said. “Israel in general, and Netanyahu in particular, wants to continue the war in the region.”

The conflict killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, while the Lebanese government said in April that Israeli strikes had killed another 190 people and wounded 485 wounded since the ceasefire.

There has been increasing pressure on Hezbollah – both domestic and international – to give up its remaining arsenal, but officials with the group have said they will not do so until Israel stops its airstrikes and withdraws from five points it is still occupying along the border in southern Lebanon.

By AMANDA SEITZ and MIKE STOBBE

WASHINGTON (AP) — There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the person who typically signs off on federal vaccine recommendations — was nowhere to be seen.

The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans’ health, is without a clear leader.

“I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t had an aggressive director since — February, March, April, May — fighting for the resources that CDC needs,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as CDC director under the first Trump administration and supported Kennedy’s nomination as the nation’s health secretary.

$9.2 billion-a-year agency without leader as nomination awaits

The leadership vacuum at a foremost federal public health agency has existed for months, after President Donald Trump suddenly withdrew his first pick for CDC director in March. A hearing for his new nominee — the agency’s former acting director Susan Monarez — has not been scheduled because she has not submitted all the paperwork necessary to proceed, according to a spokesman for Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who will oversee the nomination.

HHS did not answer written questions about Monarez’s nomination, her current role at the CDC or her salary. An employee directory lists Monarez, a longtime government employee, as a staffer for the NIH under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

Redfield described Kennedy as “very supportive” of Monarez’s nomination.

Instead, a lawyer and political appointee with no medical experience is “carrying out some of the duties” of director at the agency that for seven decades has been led by someone with a medical degree.

Matthew Buzzelli, who is also the chief of staff at the CDC, is “surrounded by highly qualified medical professionals and advisors to help fulfill these duties as appropriate,” Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement.

Adding to the confusion was an employee-wide email sent last week that thanked “new acting directors who shave stepped up to the plate.” The email, signed by Monarez, listed her as the acting director. It was was sent just days after Kennedy said at a Senate hearing that Monarez had been replaced by Buzzelli.

The lack of a confirmed director will be a problem if a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a rapid uptick in measles cases hits, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

“CDC is a crisis, waiting for a crisis to happen,” said Osterholm. “At this point, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me who was going to pull what trigger in a crisis situation.”

An acting director rarely seen, and stalled decisions

At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, employees say Monarez was rarely heard from between late January – when she was appointed acting director – and late March, when Trump nominated her.

She also has not held any of the “all hands” meetings that were customary under previous CDC chiefs, according to several staffers.

One employee, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and fears being fired if identified said Monarez has been almost invisible since her nomination, adding that her absence has been cited by other leaders as an excuse for delaying action.

The situation already has led to confusion.

In April, a 15-member CDC advisory panel of outside experts met to discuss vaccine policy. The panel makes recommendations to the CDC Director, who routinely signs off on them. But it was unclear during the meeting who would be reviewing the panel’s recommendations, which included the expansion of RSV vaccinations for adults and a new combination shot as another option to protect teens against meningitis.

HHS officials said the recommendations were going to Buzzelli, but then weeks passed with no decision. A month after the meeting ended, the CDC posted on a web site that Kennedy had signed off on recommendations for travelers against chikungunya, a viral disease transmitted to humans by mosquitos. But there continues to be no word about a decision about the other vaccine recommendations.

Controversial COVID-19 vaccine recommendations bypassed CDC panel

The problem was accentuated again last week, when Kennedy rolled out recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine saying they were no longer recommended for healthy children or pregnant women, even though expectant mothers are considered a high-risk group if they contract the virus. Kennedy made the surprise announcement without input from the CDC advisory panel that has historically made recommendations on the nation’s vaccine schedule. The CDC days later posted revised guidance that said healthy kids and pregnant women may get the shots.

Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said CDC staff were consulted on the recommendations, but would not provide staffer’s names or titles. He also did not provide the specific data or research that Kennedy reviewed to reach his conclusion on the new COVID-19 recommendations, just weeks after he said that he did not think “people should be taking medical advice” from him.

“As Secretary Kennedy said, there is a clear lack of data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Nixon said in a statement.

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Research shows that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness, mechanical ventilation and death, when they contract COVID-19 infections. During the height of the pandemic, deaths of women during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth soared to their highest level in 50 years. Vaccinations also have been recommended for pregnant women because it passes immunity to newborns who are too young for vaccines and also vulnerable to infections. Nixon did not address a written question about recommendations for pregnant women.

Kennedy’s decision to bypass the the advisory panel and announce new COVID-19 recommendations on his own prompted a key CDC official who works with the committee – Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos – to announce her resignation last Friday.

“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” she wrote in an email seen by an Associated Press reporter.

Signs are mounting that the CDC has been “sidelined” from key decision-making under Kennedy’s watch, said Dr. Anand Parekh, the chief medical adviser for The Bipartisan Policy Center.

“It’s difficult to ascertain how we will reverse the chronic disease epidemic or be prepared for myriad public health emergencies without a strong CDC and visible, empowered director,” Parekh said. “It’s also worth noting that every community in the country is served by a local or state public health department that depends on the scientific expertise of the CDC and the leadership of the CDC director.”

By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%.

Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world’s best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation’s borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education.

Trump’s latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His order applies only to Harvard, but it poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform.

It’s rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump’s gatekeeping powers.

“Columbia’s exposure to this ‘stroke of pen’ risk is uniquely high,” the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter.

Ivy League schools draw heavily on international students

People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia’s 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%.

Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body.

America’s universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers.

It was part of a “gold rush” in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities.

“Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university,” said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University.

The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren’t eligible for financial aid, and at some schools they pay two or three times the tuition rate charged to U.S. students. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said.

But the expansion wasn’t equal across all types of colleges — public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don’t face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their numbers of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by the rising costs and student debt loads.

Supporters say foreign students benefit colleges — and the wider US economy

Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation’s tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard’s government and design schools, along with five of Columbia’s schools.

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The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings.

“That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, ‘If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,’” he said.

Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%.

“We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Trump said at a news conference.

The university called Trump’s latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights.”

In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of “a painstaking, decades-long project” to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school’s mission and reputation, it said.

“In our interconnected global economy,” the school said, “a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.”

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By LEANNE ITALIE, AP Lifestyles Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Strawberry, Blueberry, JoJo and Mazzy were about 6 weeks old when animal rescuers coaxed them out of long metal pipes in the parking lot of a storage unit company. Meatball was a single kitten living in a cold garage with a group of semi-feral adult cats.

Spaghetti, Macaroni and Rigatoni, meanwhile, were just 2 weeks old when the good folks of LIC Feral Feeders, a cat rescue in Queens, took them in and bottle-fed them until they were strong enough to survive.

Consider these cuties the face of kitten season 2025.

Kitten season, typically landing during warmer months, is the time of year when most cats give birth. That produces a surge of kittens, often fragile neonates. Shelters get overwhelmed, especially when it comes to the 24-hour care and feeding of extremely young kittens.

That, as a result, triggers a need for more foster homes because many of the 4,000 or so shelters in the U.S. don’t have the time or resources for around-the-clock care, said Hannah Shaw, an animal welfare advocate known as the Kitten Lady with more than a million followers on Instagram.

“We see about 1.5 million kittens entering shelters every year. And most of them will come into shelters during May and June,” she said. “Shelters need all hands on deck to help out through fostering.”

Familiarity with fostering animals is high, Shaw said. The act of doing it is a different story. There’s a false perception, she said, that the expense of fostering animals falls on the people who step up to do it. These days, many shelters and rescues cover the food, supplies and medical costs of fostering.

“A lot of people don’t foster because they think it’s going to be this huge cost, but fostering actually only costs you time and love,” she said.

Lisa Restine, a Hill’s Pet Nutrition veterinarian, said people looking to adopt kittens should take pairs since cats often bond early in life. And how many cats is too many cats per household?

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“This is nothing serious or medical but my general rule of thumb is the number of adults in the house, like a 2-to-1 ratio, because you can carry one cat in each hand, so if there are two adults you can have four cats and still be sane,” she said.

Square footage to avoid territory disputes is a good rule of thumb when planning for cats, Restine said. Two cats per 800 square feet then 200 square feet more for each addition should help, she said.

Littermates, like Macaroni and Rigatoni, are much more likely to bond, Restine said. Kittens not biologically related but raised together often bond as well — like Meatball and Spaghetti. But adopters hoping to bond an adult cat with a new kitten arrival may be disappointed.

“Once they’re over that 3- or 4-month mark, it’s hard to get that true bonding,” Restine said.

Typically, kittens stay in their foster homes from a few weeks to a few months. While statistics are not kept on the number of kitten fosters that “fail” — when foster families decided to keep their charges — some shelters report rates as high as 90%. That’s a win, despite use of the word “fail,” advocates note.

Shaw sees another barrier holding people back from fostering: the notion that it requires special training or skills. That’s why she has dedicated her life to educating the public, offering videos, books and research on how it works at her site kittenlady.org.

Companies are coming on board, too. Hill’s, a pet food company, runs the Hill’s Food, Shelter & Love program. It has provided more than $300 million in food support to over 1,000 animal shelters that support fostering in North America.

“About a quarter of a million kittens, unfortunately, don’t survive in our shelters every year,” Shaw said. “The shelter’s going to be there to mentor and support you. So I think a lot of the fear that people have about fostering, they might find that actually it is something you totally can do. It’s just scary because you haven’t done it yet.”