By SAM MEDNICK, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The number of Palestinians dying in Israeli custody surged to nearly 100 people since the start of the war in Gaza, according to a report published Monday by a human rights group that says systematic violence and denial of medical care at prisons and detention centers contributed to many of the deaths it examined.

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The picture that emerges from the report by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is consistent with findings by The Associated Press, which interviewed more than a dozen people about prison abuses, medical neglect and deaths, analyzed available data, and reviewed reports of autopsies. AP spoke with a former guard and a former nurse at one prison, an Israeli doctor who treated malnourished prisoners brought to his hospital, former detainees and their relatives, and lawyers representing them and rights groups.

The former guard at a military prison notorious for its harsh treatment of Palestinians told the AP detainees were routinely shackled with chains and kicked and hit with batons, and that the facility had been dubbed a “graveyard” because so many prisoners were dying there. He agreed to talk to AP to raise awareness of violence in Israeli prisons and spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.

Of the 98 prisoner deaths PHRI documented since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that ignited the war, 27 occurred in 2023, 50 in 2024 and 21 this year, the most recent on Nov. 2. PHRI says the actual death toll over this timeframe is “likely significantly higher,” noting that Israel has refused to provide information about hundreds of Palestinians detained during the war.

Fewer than 30 Palestinians died in Israeli custody in the 10 years preceding the war, PHRI says. But since the war, the prison population more than doubled to 11,000 as people were rounded up, mainly from Gaza and the West Bank. The number of prisoners dying grew at an even faster rate over that period, PHRI data shows.

PHRI documented deaths by interviewing former detainees and prison medical staff, examining reports prepared by doctors who observed autopsies at the behest of dead prisoners’ families, and confirming dozens of fatalities through freedom of information requests.

“The alarming rate at which people are killed in Israeli custody reveals a system that has lost all moral and professional restraint,” said Naji Abbas, a director at PHRI.

Last year, the head of Israel’s prison system, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, boasted that he had degraded prison conditions to the legal minimum. Under pressure from rights groups, conditions improved slightly.

Israel’s Prison Service said it operates in accordance with the law. It declined to comment on the death count and directed any inquiries to Israel’s army.

The army said it is aware some detainees have died, including people with preexisting illnesses or combat-related injuries. But army spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said the death count in the PHRI report is inflated, while declining to say what the army believes the real number to be.

The army also said allegations of abuse or inadequate conditions are assessed, and that those who violate the army’s code of conduct are punished and sometimes subject to criminal investigations.

Guards told to reduce the number of deaths

Although hesitant at first, the former guard at the Sde Teiman military prison in southern Israel said he eventually participated in beatings of prisoners.

This undated photo from winter 2023 provided by Breaking The Silence, a whistleblower group of former Israeli soldiers, shows blindfolded Palestinian prisoners captured in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces at a detention facility on the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel. (Breaking The Silence via AP)

One morning, early in Israel’s war against Hamas, the guard arrived at work to see a motionless Palestinian lying on his side in the yard, yet no guards rushed to see what had happened to the man, who was dead.

“It was sort of business as usual with the dead guy,” said the guard, who didn’t know the cause of death.

Prisoners’ arms and legs were always in chains, and they were beaten if they moved or spoke, the guard said, adding that nearly all would urinate and defecate on themselves rather than ask to use the bathroom.

The former nurse at Sde Teiman said chains used to restrain many prisoners’ arms and legs caused such severe wounds that some needed their limbs to be amputated. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. During the several weeks she worked there at the start of last year she didn’t see anyone die, but she said the staff at times talked about prisoner deaths. She left the job because she didn’t like the abusive treatment of the prisoners, she said.

The army said prolonged handcuffing is implemented only in exceptional cases when there are “significant security considerations.” Even then, detainees’ medical condition is taken into account, it said. Only a few detainees from Gaza are currently being handled this way, it added.

Guards were told by their commanders — who also participated in the beatings — that they needed to reduce the deaths, according to the Sde Teiman guard, who spent several months there.

Eventually cameras were installed, which helped mitigate the abuse, he said. Twenty-nine prisoners have died at Sde Teiman since the war began, according to PHRI.

Earlier this year, an Israeli soldier was convicted of abusing Palestinians in Sde Teiman and sentenced to seven months in prison, according to the army, which said this shows there is accountability.

But lawyers for prisoners say Israel rarely conducts serious investigations into alleged violence and that this fuels the problem.

In a sign of the public climate, the Israeli military’s top lawyer was recently forced to resign after acknowledging she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of an investigation into allegations of severe sexual abuse against a Palestinian at Sde Teiman. The leak, meant to defend the decision by her office to prosecute guards for the alleged abuses, instead triggered fierce criticism from hard-line Israeli leaders who sympathized with the guards.

Several soldiers were indicted in that case, which is still pending before the military court.

Medical neglect and abuse

It is difficult to pinpoint with certainty the cause of death for most prisoners. Sometimes, at the behest of prisoners’ families, doctors were granted permission by Israel to attend autopsies and provided reports to the families on what they saw.

Eight reports seen by the AP showed a pattern of physical abuse and medical neglect.

In one, a 45-year-old man who died in Kishon detention center, Mohammad Husein Ali, showed multiple signs of physical assault, likely causing brain bleed, according to the report. The potential use of excessive restraints was also noted. His family said he was healthy before he was detained from his home in the West Bank. He died within a week of being imprisoned.

Husein Ali had previously served time in an Israeli prison after being convicted of association with militancy, according to his family. But they said he had no ties with militants when he was arrested last year.

Relatives of Mohammad Husein Ali, 45, who died in the Israeli Kishon detention center, sit in their living room in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. From left are Mohammad’s father Waleed Husein Ali, wife Hadeel, son Bara’, daughter Misk, an unidentified relative, and Mohammad’s mother Sobheya Husein Ali. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

After Husein Ali was taken, his 2-year-old daughter would stare out the window calling for her father, said his wife, Hadeel. “She’d say ‘baba, where’s baba’, but after time she stopped asking,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Malnutrition was a contributing factor in at least one death, according to PHRI, leading to a 17-year-old boy dying from starvation.

In September, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered that more and better food be served to Palestinian inmates. Rights groups say the situation has slightly improved.

The army said detainees receive three meals a day, approved by a dietitian. It said every detainee is examined by a doctor upon arrival and, for those who need it, monitored with regular checkups.

Former prisoner can’t forget what he witnessed

Sariy Khuorieh, an Israeli-Palestinian lawyer from Haifa, said he was detained at the start of the war after Israel accused him of inciting violence through his social media posts. While in Megiddo prison for 10 days, Khuorieh says he saw a man die after repeated beatings.

Khuorieh said the 33-year-old father of four from the West Bank was beaten almost daily. The man, and some of his relatives, had close ties to Hamas, according to a Palestinian security official and someone who knew the family, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for retaliation.

The night before the man died, he screamed in pain for hours while in solitary confinement, said Khuorieh, who choked back tears while recounting what happened. The man had repeatedly called for a doctor, but none came, Khourieh said.

A spokesperson for Israel’s Prison Service wouldn’t comment on the case.

A report written about the man’s autopsy seen by AP said the cause of death was inconclusive but that there were signs of old and new bruising, including broken ribs. The report said it could be assumed that violence contributed to his death.

When the guards opened the man’s cell they kicked and beat him before summoning a physician who tried to revive him and then pronounced him dead, said Khuorieh, who said he was able to see what was happening through the small window in his cell door.

Once the man was pronounced dead, Khuorieh said one of the officer’s laughed and said: there’s “at least one less” to care about.

By SETH BORENSTEIN, ANTON L. DELGADO and MELINA WALLING, Associated Press

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Higher-ranking government ministers took charge of negotiations during Monday’s United Nations climate talks, facing pressure to do more — and do it fast.

The summit, known as COP30, opened its second week with foreign and other ministers stepping in for the lower-level negotiators who handled the first week. They have far more power and leeway to make tough political decisions, and U.N. Climate Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told them to use it.

Brazil Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, right, shakes hands with U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock during a plenary session at the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

“The spirit is there, but the speed is not,” Stiell said. “The pace of change in the real economy has not been matched by the pace of progress in these negotiating rooms. As climate disasters wrecked millions of lives and hammer every economy, pushing up prices for food and other basic needs, we all know what’s at stake.”

Other speakers also urged quicker action.

“The time for promises is over,” Brazil Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said. “Each additional fraction of a degree of global warming represents lives at risk, greater inequality and greater losses for those who contributed least to the problem.”

U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock said recent disasters show how much needs to be done.

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“The climate crisis is unrelenting,” she said. “We saw this when Hurricane Melissa barreled into the Caribbean two weeks ago. We saw it again last week at the Philippines … near back-to-back typhoons.”

“We have seen this movie before and we know how it goes,” Baerbock said. “Let us not wallow. All the solutions are all out there, all over the world.”

Adding to the pressure, late Sunday, the Brazilian presidency of the talks issued a five-page summary on how to proceed on several sticky issues. Those include pressing nations to do more in their new emissions-cutting plans, how to handle trade disputes and barriers involving climate and the need to deliver on last year’s $300 billion annual pledge for climate financial aid to poor nations.

Those difficult issues weren’t part of the original agenda nor the COP30 presidency’s plans, but several countries pushed for them.

Several nations — especially small island nations for whom sea level rise is an existential threat — have asked that the talks address the inadequacy of the emissions-cutting plans submitted by 116 nations so far this year. Collectively, the plans come nowhere close to cutting heat-trapping gases enough to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since the 1800s, which is the goal the world adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That issue may get combined with a call for a plan for phasing out fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas, the chief cause of climate change. That phaseout was agreed to after much debate at U.N. climate talks two years ago, but last year, little happened on the issue. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva earlier this month raised the issue anew.

Scientists and a group of former world leaders known as The Elders, including the Irish and Colombian former presidents, handed out flyers to delegates Monday, urging them to do more.

“Here in the Amazon, COP30 must ignite a global effort to protect life in all its forms,” the flyer read. “Countries must unite to deliver road maps to phase out fossil fuels, and to halt and reverse forest loss. This necessitates holding on to the COP30 mission” to keep warming to 1.5 degrees.

“Our very existence is at stake,” Mauritius Foreign Affairs Minister Dhananjay Ramful said. “A decade after the promises of the Paris Agreement, despite our good intentions, we realized that we have not done enough. … Our planet demands action now.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental 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.

This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

By SOPHIA TAREEN, BRIAN WITTE and MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

After a surge in Border Patrol activity in North Carolina’s largest city over the weekend, including dozens of arrests, Gov. Josh Stein said the effort is “stoking fear,” not making Charlotte safer.

The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and downtrending crime rates. Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.

“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling, and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Stein said in a video statement late Sunday. “This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.”

Stein acknowledged that it was a stressful time, but he called on residents to stay peaceful. If people see something wrong, he said they should record it and report it to local law enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, has said it was focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.

Several county jails house immigrant arrestees and honor detainers, which allow jails to hold detainees for immigration officers to pick them up. But Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, does not. Also, the city’s police department does not help with immigration enforcement. DHS alleged that about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored, putting the public at risk.

Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in a similar effort in Chicago, documented some of the more than 80 arrests he said agents had made in social media posts on Sunday. He posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs “criminal illegal aliens,” meaning people living in the U.S. without legal permission who allegedly have criminal records. That included one of a man with an alleged history of drunk driving convictions.

The activity has prompted fear and questions, including where detainees would be held, how long the operation would last and what agents’ tactics — criticized elsewhere as aggressive and racist — would look like in North Carolina.

However, some welcomed the effort, including Mecklenburg County Republican Party Chairman Kyle Kirby, who said in a post Saturday that the county GOP “stands with the rule of law — and with every Charlottean’s safety first.”

Bovino’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered lawsuits over the use of force, including widespread deployment of chemical agents. Democratic leaders in both cities accused agents of inflaming community tensions. Federal agents fatally shot one suburban Chicago man during a traffic stop.

Bovino, head of a Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, and other Trump administration officials have called their tactics appropriate for growing threats on agents.

Tareen and Dale reported from Chicago. Witte reported from Annapolis, Maryland.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is holding steadier on Monday following two weeks of sharp swings, but it’s churning underneath the surface ahead of big-time reports coming later in the week.

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged and remained only a bit below its all-time high set late last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also basically flat, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.

Alphabet was the strongest force pushing upward on the market. It rose 5.2% in the first chance for traders to buy its stock since Berkshire Hathaway said it built a $4.34 billion ownership stake in Google’s parent company. Berkshire Hathaway, run by famed investor Warren Buffett, is notorious for trying to buy only stocks that look like good values while avoiding anything that looks too expensive.

Such discipline has become a much hotter topic on Wall Street recently. Critics have been warning that the U.S. stock market could be primed for a drop because of how high prices have shot since April, leaving them looking too expensive. Critics point in particular to stocks swept up in the AI mania, which have been surging at spectacular speeds for years.

The company at the center of the frenzy, Nvidia, fell another 1.3% Monday, following swings of at least 1.8% in eight of the last 10 days. It’s nevertheless still up nearly 40% for the year so far after it doubled in price in four of the last five years.

That has Wall Street’s spotlight on Wednesday, when Nvidia will report how much profit it made during the summer. AI stocks have surged as much as they have because of expectations that they’ll produce huge growth in profits. If they fail to meet analysts’ expectations, that would undercut one of the big assumptions that’s driven the U.S. stock market to records.

Such high expectations extend beyond tech stocks, even if they are toughest for AI darlings.

Aramark fell 6% after the company, which offers food and facilities management for schools, national parks and convention centers, reported a profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations. It also said it expects an underlying measure of profit to grow between 20% and 25% this upcoming year. While relatively strong, that was less than what analysts had been forecasting.

Another source of potential disappointment for Wall Street is what the Federal Reserve does with interest rates. The expectation had been that the Fed would keep cutting interest rates in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market. Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give the economy and prices for investments a boost.

But questions are rising about whether a third cut for the year will actually come after the Fed’s next meeting in December, something that traders had earlier seen as very likely. The downside of lower interest rates is that they can make inflation worse, and inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target.

Fed officials have pointed to the U.S. government’s shutdown, which delayed the release of updates on the job market and other signals about the economy. With less information and less certainty about how things are going, some Fed officials have suggested it may be better just to wait in December to get more clarity.

Now that the shutdown is over, the government is preparing to release September’s delayed jobs report on Thursday. That could create further swings for the market. Too strong a job market would likely stay the Fed’s hand on rate cuts, while too weak figures would raise worries about the economy.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was at 4.14%, where it was late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1% after the government reported that the Japanese economy contracted at a 1.8% annual pace in the July-September quarter.

South Korea’s Kospi was an outlier and jumped 1.9% as tech-related stocks there did well.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.