By SAMY MAGDY

CAIRO (AP) — Dozens of international charities and humanitarian groups called Tuesday for disbanding a controversial Israeli- and U.S.-backed system to distribute aid in Gaza because of recurring chaos and violence against Palestinians seeking food at its sites.

The call by groups including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International was made as at least seven Palestinians were killed while seeking aid in southern and central Gaza from late Monday to early Tuesday. On Monday, Israeli gunfire left 23 people dead as they tried to get desperately needed food, witnesses and health officials said.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 37 people Tuesday in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. Those deaths came a day after witnesses and health officials said 30 Palestinians were killed in a strike on a seaside cafe in Gaza City.

Next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and other administration officials. Trump has signaled he is ready for Israel and Hamas to wind down the war in Gaza, which is likely to be a focus of their talks. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Speaking to a meeting of his Cabinet on Tuesday, Netanyahu did not elaborate on plans for the visit, except to say he will discuss a trade deal.

Iran, following the 12-day war with Israel, is also expected to be a main topic of discussion. After brokering a ceasefire between those two countries, Trump has indicated that he’s turning his attention to ending the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

That war has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of the dead were women and children.

The bodies of 116 people killed by Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the ministry said Tuesday afternoon.

The Hamas attack in October 2023 that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and resulted in 251 others being taken hostage. Some 50 hostages remain, many of them thought to be dead.

Charities and NGOs call for end to Gaza Humanitarian Fund

More than 165 major international charities and non-governmental organizations called Tuesday for an immediate end to the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which the U.S. and Israel backed to take over aid distribution in Gaza from a network led by the United Nations.

“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the group said in a joint news release.

The call by the charities and NGOs was the latest sign of trouble for the GHF, a secretive U.S.- and Israeli-backed initiative headed by an evangelical leader who is a close ally of Trump.

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The GHF started distributing aid on May 26, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade that pushed Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people to the brink of famine.

In a statement Tuesday, the organization said it has delivered more than 52 million meals over five weeks.

“Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza,” the statement said. “We are ready to collaborate and help them get their aid to people in need.”

Last month, the organization said there has been no violence in or around its distribution centers and that its personnel have not opened fire. It has called for the Israeli military to investigate allegations from Gaza’s Health Ministry that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed at or near the aid distribution program over the past month.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Fund is linchpin of new aid system

The GHF is the linchpin of a new aid system that wrested distribution away from aid groups led by the U.N. The new arrangement limits food distribution to a small number of hubs guarded by armed contractors. Currently four hubs are set up, all close to Israeli military positions. Palestinians are often forced to travel long distances to access the hubs.

Israel demanded an alternative plan because it accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid. The United Nations and aid groups deny there is significant diversion. They reject the new mechanism, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon, violates humanitarian principles and will not be effective.

The Israeli military said it recently took steps to improve organization in the area.

Israel says it only targets combatants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing the group of hiding among civilians because they operate in populated areas.

At least 7 Palestinians killed seeking aid

At least seven Palestinians were killed late Monday and early Tuesday in three separate locations while seeking aid, hospitals said.

Three of the deaths by Israeli fire occurred in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, while four were killed in central Gaza.

More than 65 others were wounded, according to the Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp, and the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, which received the casualties.

The casualties were among thousands of starved Palestinians who gather at night to take aid from passing trucks in the area of the Netzarim route in central Gaza.

In other developments, an 11-year-old girl was killed Tuesday when an Israeli strike hit her family’s tent west of Khan Younis, according to the Kuwait field hospital that received her body.

The U.N. Palestinian aid agency said the Israeli military also struck one of its schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza City on Monday. The strike left no casualties but caused significant damage to the facility, UNRWA said.

2 killed in the occupied West Bank

The Palestinian Health Ministry in the occupied West Bank said Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in the territory, including a 15-year-old, in separate events.

The Israeli military said it was reviewing the shooting of the teen, saying it appeared to happen when people threw rocks toward soldiers. In the second death, military officials said a “suspicious individual” was seen trying to cross into Israel from the southern West Bank, prompting soldiers to open fire.

Elsewhere, the Shifa hospital in Gaza City suspended services at the dialysis unit amid a shortage of fuel for generators, the Health Ministry announced Tuesday. The unit provides treatment to dozens of kidney failure patients in northern Gaza.

It called for international agencies to press Israel to quickly allow the delivery of fuel to Shifa and other overwhelmed hospitals across Gaza.

“The continued lack of fuel means the inevitable death of all patients and wounded in hospitals,” it said.

Funeral prayers for 7 family members killed in airstrike

Mourners held Muslim funeral prayers Tuesday for seven people from the same family who were killed in an airstrike the previous day in central Gaza.

The strike hit a family house in the central town of Zawaida late Monday, killing two parents, two siblings and three grandchildren, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, which received the casualties.

Associated Press Writer Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

By DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pro-Iran hackers have threatened to release emails supposedly stolen from people connected to President Donald Trump, according to a news report, a move that federal authorities call a “calculated smear campaign.”

The United States has warned of continued Iranian cyberattacks following American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the threats those could pose to services, economic systems and companies.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said late Monday that the threat to expose emails about Trump is “nothing more than digital propaganda” meant to damage Trump and other federal officials.

“A hostile foreign adversary is threatening to illegally exploit purportedly stolen and unverified material in an effort to distract, discredit, and divide,” CISA spokeswoman Marci McCarthy wrote in a social media post, linking to a report from Reuters about the threat. “These criminals will be found, and they will be brought to justice.”

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Reuters reported that it contacted the alleged hackers online. They told the news organization that it held a large cache of emails from Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles, other top advisers and porn actor Stormy Daniels, to whom a hush money payment led to Trump’s criminal conviction.

Federal prosecutors charged three Iranians last year on allegations of hacking into Trump’s presidential campaign. Hackers also targeted the campaign of Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and unsuccessfully tried to leak material supposedly taken from Trump to Democrats and members of the media.

The threat to release more hacked emails was reported the same day that CISA, the FBI and National Security Agency issued a public bulletin warning that hacking groups supportive of Tehran may attack U.S. interests despite a fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

The hackers, authorities warned, could seek to disrupt or disable critical infrastructure systems such as utilities, transportation and economic hubs. They also could target defense contractors or other American companies with ties to Israel, the agencies said.

The bulletin outlined recommendations, including the use of regular software updates and strong password management systems to shore up digital defenses.

Hackers backing Tehran have targeted U.S. banks, defense contractors and energy companies following American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — but so far have not caused widespread disruptions.

By LAURA UNGAR

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — In the time before widespread vaccination, death often came early.

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A rundown of recent Trump administration vaccine policy changes

Devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of children and leaving others with lifelong health problems. These illnesses were the main reason why nearly one in five children in 1900 never made it to their fifth birthday.

Over the next century, vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like polio and measles and drastically reduced the toll of many others. Today, however, some preventable, contagious diseases are making a comeback as vaccine hesitancy pushes immunization rates down. And well-established vaccines are facing suspicion even from public officials, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, running the federal health department.

“This concern, this hesitancy, these questions about vaccines are a consequence of the great success of the vaccines – because they eliminated the diseases,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “If you’re not familiar with the disease, you don’t respect or even fear it. And therefore you don’t value the vaccine.”

Anti-vaccine activists even portray the shots as a threat, focusing on the rare risk of side effects while ignoring the far larger risks posed by the diseases themselves — and years of real-world data that experts say proves the vaccines are safe.

Some Americans know the reality of these preventable diseases all too well. For them, news of measles outbreaks and rising whooping cough cases brings back terrible memories of lives forever changed – and a longing to spare others from similar pain.

Getting rubella while pregnant shaped two lives

With a mother’s practiced, guiding hand, 80-year-old Janith Farnham helped steer her 60-year-old daughter’s walker through a Sioux Falls art center. They stopped at a painting of a cow wearing a hat.

Janith pointed to the hat, then to her daughter Jacque’s Minnesota Twins cap. Jacque did the same.

“That’s so funny!” Janith said, leaning in close to say the words in sign language too.

Janith Farnham signs “water” while she and her daughter, Jacque, look at an artwork of a waterfall at the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, S.D., on May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Jacque was born with congenital rubella syndrome, which can cause a host of issues including hearing impairment, eye problems, heart defects and intellectual disabilities. There was no vaccine against rubella back then, and Janith contracted the viral illness very early in the pregnancy, when she had up to a 90% chance of giving birth to a baby with the syndrome.

Janith recalled knowing “things weren’t right” almost immediately. The baby wouldn’t respond to sounds or look at anything but lights. She didn’t like to be held close. Her tiny heart sounded like it purred – evidence of a problem that required surgery at four months old.

Janith did all she could to help Jacque thrive, sending her to the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind and using skills she honed as a special education teacher. She and other parents of children with the syndrome shared insights in a support group.

Meanwhile, the condition kept taking its toll. As a young adult, Jacque developed diabetes, glaucoma and autistic behaviors. Eventually, arthritis set in.

Today, Jacque lives in an adult residential home a short drive from Janith’s place. Above her bed is a net overflowing with stuffed animals. On a headboard shelf are photo books Janith created, filled with memories like birthday parties and trips to Mount Rushmore.

Jacque’s days typically begin with an insulin shot and breakfast before she heads off to a day program. She gets together with her mom four or five days a week. They often hang out at Janith’s townhome, where Jacque has another bedroom decorated with her own artwork and quilts Janith sewed for her. Jacque loves playing with Janith’s dog, watching sports on television and looking up things on her iPad.

Jacque Farnham, left, looks at a book with her mother, Janith, in the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, S.D., on May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Janith marvels at Jacque’s sense of humor, gratefulness, curiosity and affectionate nature despite all she’s endured. Jacque is generous with kisses and often signs “double I love yous” to family, friends and new people she meets.

“When you live through so much pain and so much difficulty and so much challenge, sometimes I think: Well, she doesn’t know any different,” Janith said.

Given what her family has been through, Janith believes younger people are being selfish if they choose not to get their children the MMR shot against measles, mumps and rubella.

“It’s more than frustrating. I mean, I get angry inside,” she said. “I know what can happen, and I just don’t want anybody else to go through this.”

Delaying the measles vaccine can be deadly

More than half a century has passed, but Patricia Tobin still vividly recalls getting home from work, opening the car door and hearing her mother scream. Inside the house, her little sister Karen lay unconscious on the bathroom floor.

It was 1970, and Karen was 6. She’d contracted measles shortly after Easter. While an early vaccine was available, it wasn’t required for school in Miami where they lived. Karen’s doctor discussed immunizing the first grader, but their mother didn’t share his sense of urgency.

“It’s not that she was against it,” Tobin said. “She just thought there was time.”

Then came a measles outbreak. Karen – who Tobin described as a “very endearing, sweet child” who would walk around the house singing – quickly became very sick. The afternoon she collapsed in the bathroom, Tobin, then 19, called the ambulance. Karen never regained consciousness.

“She immediately went into a coma and she died of encephalitis,” said Tobin, who stayed at her bedside in the hospital. “We never did get to speak to her again.”

Today, all states require that children get certain vaccines to attend school. But a growing number of people are making use of exemptions allowed for medical, religious or philosophical reasons. Vanderbilt’s Schaffner said fading memories of measles outbreaks were exacerbated by a fraudulent, retracted study claiming a link between the MMR shot and autism.

The result? Most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

“I’m very upset by how cavalier people are being about the measles,” Tobin said. “I don’t think that they realize how destructive this is.”

Polio changed a life twice

One of Lora Duguay’s earliest memories is lying in a hospital isolation ward with her feverish, paralyzed body packed in ice. She was three years old.

Artist Lora Duguay paints on a stone from her wheelchair at home in Clearwater, Fla., on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

“I could only see my parents through a glass window. They were crying and I was screaming my head off,” said Duguay, 68. “They told my parents I would never walk or move again.”

It was 1959 and Duguay, of Clearwater, Florida, had polio. It mostly preyed on children and was one of the most feared diseases in the U.S., experts say, causing some terrified parents to keep children inside and avoid crowds during epidemics.

Given polio’s visibility, the vaccine against it was widely and enthusiastically welcomed. But the early vaccine that Duguay got was only about 80% to 90% effective. Not enough people were vaccinated or protected yet to stop the virus from spreading.

Duguay initially defied her doctors. After intensive treatment and physical therapy, she walked and even ran – albeit with a limp. She got married, raised a son and worked as a medical transcriptionist.

But in her early 40s, she noticed she couldn’t walk as far as she used to. A doctor confirmed she was in the early stages of post-polio syndrome, a neuromuscular disorder that worsens over time.

One morning, she tried to stand up and couldn’t move her left leg.

Artist Lora Duguay poses for a portrait in her wheelchair with some of her artwork at home in Clearwater, Fla., on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

After two weeks in a rehab facility, she started painting to stay busy. Eventually, she joined arts organizations and began showing and selling her work. Art “gives me a sense of purpose,” she said.

These days, she can’t hold up her arms long enough to create big oil paintings at an easel. So she pulls her wheelchair up to an electric desk to paint on smaller surfaces like stones and petrified wood.

The disease that changed her life twice is no longer a problem in the U.S. So many children get the vaccine — which is far more effective than earlier versions — that it doesn’t just protect individuals but it prevents occasional cases that arrive in the U.S. from spreading further. “ Herd immunity ” keeps everyone safe by preventing outbreaks that can sicken the vulnerable.

After whooping cough struck, ‘she was gone’

Every night, Katie Van Tornhout rubs a plaster cast of a tiny foot, a vestige of the daughter she lost to whooping cough at just 37 days old.

Callie Grace was born on Christmas Eve 2009 after Van Tornhout and her husband tried five years for a baby. She was six weeks early but healthy.

Katie Van Tornhout sits with her son, Cain, at home in Lakeville, Ind., on May 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

“She loved to have her feet rubbed,” said the 40-year-old Lakeville, Indiana mom. “She was this perfect baby.”

When Callie turned a month old, she began to cough, prompting a visit to the doctor, who didn’t suspect anything serious. By the following night, Callie was doing worse. They went back.

In the waiting room, she became blue and limp in Van Tornhout’s arms. The medical team whisked her away and beat lightly on her back. She took a deep breath and giggled.

Though the giggle was reassuring, the Van Tornhouts went to the ER, where Callie’s skin turned blue again. For a while, medical treatment helped. But at one point she started squirming, and medical staff frantically tried to save her.

“Within minutes,” Van Tornhout said, “she was gone.”

Van Tornhout recalled sitting with her husband and their lifeless baby for four hours, “just talking to her, thinking about what could have been.”

Callie’s viewing was held on her original due date – the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called to confirm she had pertussis, or whooping cough. She was too young for the Tdap vaccine against it and was exposed to someone who hadn’t gotten their booster shot.

Katie Van Tornhout looks through photos of her late daughter, Callie, at home in Lakeville, Ind., on May 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Today, next to the cast of Callie’s foot is an urn with her ashes and a glass curio cabinet filled with mementos like baby shoes.

“My kids to this day will still look up and say, ‘Hey Callie, how are you?’” said Van Tornhout, who has four children and a stepson. “She’s part of all of us every day.”

Van Tornhout now advocates for childhood immunization through the nonprofit Vaccinate Your Family. She also shares her story with people she meets, like a pregnant customer who came into the restaurant her family ran saying she didn’t want to immunize her baby. She later returned with her vaccinated four-month-old.

“It’s up to us as adults to protect our children – like, that’s what a parent’s job is,” Van Tornhout said. “I watched my daughter die from something that was preventable … You don’t want to walk in my shoes.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By REBECCA BOONE and GENE JOHNSON

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Bryan Kohberger has agreed to plead guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty, an attorney for one victim’s family said.

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Shanon Gray, an attorney representing the family of Kaylee Goncalves, confirmed Monday that prosecutors informed the families of the deal by email and letter earlier in the day, and that his clients were upset about it.

“We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho,” Goncalves’ family wrote in a Facebook post. “They have failed us. Please give us some time. This was very unexpected.”

They spoke with the prosecution on Friday about the idea of a plea deal and they explained they were firmly against it, the family wrote in another post. By Sunday, they received an email that “sent us scrambling,” and met with the prosecution again on Monday to explain their views about pushing for the death penalty.

“Unfortunately all of our efforts did not matter. We DID OUR BEST! We fought harder then anyone could EVER imagine,” the family wrote.

A change of plea hearing was set for Wednesday, but the family has asked prosecutors to delay it to give them more time to travel to Boise, Gray said. Kohberger’s trial was set for August in Boise, where it was moved following pretrial publicity in rural northern Idaho.

Kohberger, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, early on Nov. 13, 2022. Autopsies showed the four were all likely asleep when they were attacked, some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times.

At the time, Kohberger was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, about 9 miles west of the University of Idaho. He was arrested in Pennsylvania, where his parents lived, weeks later. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.

No motive has emerged for the killings, nor is it clear why the attacker spared two roommates who were in the home. Authorities have said cellphone data and surveillance video shows that Kohberger visited the victims’ neighborhood at least a dozen times before the killings.

The murders shocked the small farming community of about 25,000 people, which hadn’t had a homicide in about five years, and prompted a massive hunt for the perpetrator. That included an elaborate effort to track down a white sedan that was seen on surveillance cameras repeatedly driving by the rental home, to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect through the use of genetic genealogy and to pinpoint his movements the night of the killings through cellphone data.

In a court filing, Kohberger’s lawyers said he was on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.

In the letter to families, obtained by ABC News, prosecutors said Kohberger’s lawyers approached them seeking to reach a plea deal. The defense team had previously made unsuccessful efforts to have the death penalty stricken as a possible punishment, including arguing that Kohberger’s autism diagnosis made him less culpable.

The prosecutors said they met with available family members last week before deciding to make Kohberger an offer.

“This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family,” the letter said. “This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction, appeals. Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interest of justice.”

In a Facebook post, the Goncalves family wrote that Kaylee’s 18-year-old sister, Aubrie, had been unable to attend the meeting with prosecutors. But she shared her concerns in a written statement.

“Bryan Kohberger facing a life in prison means he would still get to speak, form relationships, and engage with the world,” Aubrie Goncalves wrote. “Meanwhile, our loved ones have been silenced forever. That reality stings more deeply when it feels like the system is protecting his future more than honoring the victims’ pasts.”

In Idaho, judges may reject plea agreements, though such moves are rare. If a judge rejects a plea agreement, the defendant is allowed to withdraw the guilty plea.

Earlier Monday, a Pennsylvania judge had ordered that three people whose testimony was requested by defense attorneys would have to travel to Idaho to appear at Kohberger’s trial.

The defense subpoenas were granted regarding a boxing trainer who knew Kohberger as a teenager, a childhood acquaintance of Kohberger’s and a third man whose significance was not explained.

A gag order has largely kept attorneys, investigators and others from speaking publicly about the investigation or trial.

Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press reporter Mark Scolforo contributed from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.