By MIKE CORDER (Associated Press)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The top United Nations court ordered Israel on Friday to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah — but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire for the enclave. Although Israel is unlikely to comply with the order, it will ratchet up the pressure on the increasingly isolated country.

Criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza has been growing, particularly once it turned its focus to Rafah. This week alone, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for another international court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, along with Hamas officials.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under heavy pressure at home to end the war, which was triggered when Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people, most civilians, and taking some 250 captive. Thousands of Israelis have joined weekly demonstrations calling on the government to reach a deal to bring the hostages home, fearing that time is running out. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

While the ruling by the International Court of Justice is a blow to Israel’s international standing, the court does not have a police force to enforce its orders. In another case on its docket, Russia has so far ignored a 2022 order by the court to halt its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier, Israel signaled it, too, would brush off an ICJ order to stop its operations. “No power on earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza,” Avi Hyman, the government spokesperson, said in a press briefing Thursday.

Immediately after the ruling, Netanyahu announced that he would hold a special ministerial meeting to decide how to respond. Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, derided the decision.

“The fact that the ICJ did not even directly connect the end of the military operation in Rafah to the release of the hostages and to Israel’s right to defend itself against terror is an abject moral failure,” he said.

The court’s president, Nawaf Salam, read out the ruling, as a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside.

Fears the court expressed earlier this year about an operation in Rafah have “materialized,” the ruling said, and Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive” in the city and anything else that might result in conditions that could cause the “physical destruction in whole or in part” of Palestinians there.

Rafah is in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt, and over 1 million people sought refuge there in recent months after fleeing fighting elsewhere, with many of them living in teeming tent camps. Israel has been vowing for months to invade Rafah, saying it was Hamas’ last major stronghold, even as several allies warned an all-out assault would spell disaster.

Israel started issuing evacuation orders about two weeks ago as it began operations on the edge of the city. Since then, the army says an estimated 1 million people have left as forces press deeper inside.

Rafah is also home to a critical crossing for aid, and the U.N. says the flow of aid reaching it has plunged since the incursion began, though commercial trucking has continued to enter Gaza.

The court ordered Israel to keep the Rafah crossing open, saying “the humanitarian situation is now to be characterized as disastrous.”

But it did not call for a full cease-fire throughout Gaza as South Africa, which brought the case, requested at hearings last week.

South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, said the country’s allegation that a genocide is underway is getting “stronger and stronger by the day.”

“We are really pleased that the court has given very serious consideration to the matters that we put before it and has affirmed that an urgent decision is needed from the court to pause this onslaught against innocent Palestinian people,” she told South African state broadcaster SABC, adding that it’s now up to the U.N. Security Council to determine how to protect the Palestinians.

Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the court’s order “underlines the gravity of the situation facing Palestinians in Gaza, who have for months endured the blocking of basic services and humanitarian aid amid continued fighting.”

“The ICJ’s decision opens up the possibility for relief, but only if governments use their leverage, including through arms embargoes and targeted sanctions, to press Israel to urgently enforce the court’s measures,” Jarrah said.

The cease-fire request is part of a case filed late last year, accusing Israel of committing genocide during its Gaza campaign. Israel vehemently denies the allegations. The case will take years to resolve, but South Africa wants interim orders to protect Palestinians while the legal wrangling continues.

The court ruled Friday that Israel must ensure access for any fact-finding or investigative mission sent by the United Nations to investigate the genocide allegations.

At public hearings last week at the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, urged the panel of 15 international judges to order Israel to “totally and unconditionally withdraw” from the Gaza Strip.

The court has already found that Israel’s military operations pose a “real and imminent risk” to the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The operation has obliterated entire neighborhoods, sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homes, and pushed parts of the territory into famine.

“This may well be the last chance for the court to act,” Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, who is part of South Africa’s legal team, told judges last week.

Israel rejects the claims by South Africa, a nation with historic ties to the Palestinian people.

“Israel takes extraordinary measures in order to minimize the harm to civilians in Gaza,” Tamar Kaplan-Tourgeman, a member of Israel’s legal team, told the court last week.

In January, ICJ judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive. In a second order in March, the court said Israel must take measures to improve the humanitarian situation.

The ICJ rules in disputes between nations. A few kilometers (miles) away, the International Criminal Court files charges against individuals it considers most responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

On Monday, its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, said he has asked ICC judges to approve arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three top Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Israel is not an ICC member, so even if the arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But the threat of arrest could make it difficult for the Israeli leaders to travel abroad.

This story was updated to correct that the International Criminal Court is not a U.N. court.

Associated Press reporter Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, contributed.

Minnesota United at Colorado Rapids

When: 8:30 p.m. CT Saturday
Where: Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
Stream: Apple TV Season Pass
Radio: KSTP-AM 1500 ESPN
Weather: 66 degrees, partly cloudy, 11 mph south wind
Betting line: Colorado minus-105; draw plus-280; MNUFC plus-240

Form: MNUFC (7-2-3, 24 points) is unbeaten in four matches with a 2-1 comeback win over Portland last Saturday. Rapids (6-5-3, 21 points) gave up three goals after the 85th minute in 5-3 loss to first-place Real Salt Lake last weekend.

Look-ahead: MNUFC is 4-1-0 away from St. Paul in 2023. With a win Saturday, United would become third team in MLS history (outside the league’s shootout era) to win five of its opening six road games in a season. The 2010 LA Galaxy and 2022 NY Red Bulls each went 5-0-1and advanced to the MLS Cup Playoffs. Galaxy won the Supporters Shield.

Quote: Analyst Taylor Twellman had big praise on Apple TV about Loons sitting atop West standings at two points per match, while getting little from two of its three Designated Players: “Eric Ramsay is inarguably manager of the year at this point —and he wasn’t even (in Minnesota) for the first month.”

Absences: Emanuel Reynoso (return-to-play protocol and transfer rumors), Micky Tapias (red card suspension) and Hugo Bacharach (knee) are out. Hassani Dotson (hamstring), Moses Nyeman (thigh) and Jordan Adebayo-Smith (ankle) are questionable going into Friday’s training session.

RELATED: Loons bracing for possibility of 10 or more players going on international duty in June

Projected XI: In a 5-2-3 formation, LW Franco Fragapane, CF Tani Oluwaseyi, RW Sang Bin Jeong; CM Robin Lod, CM Wil Trapp; LB Joseph Rosales, CB Devin Padelford, CB Michael Boxall, CB Kervin Arriaga, RB DJ Taylor; GK Dayne St. Clair.

Stat: Rosales is the first Loons player to record a primary or secondary assist in five straight games. “Very happy to be able to contribute to the team,” he said this week through team interpreter Marleine Calderon. “And the only thing that’s left is to score a goal.”

Player to watch: Forward Rafael Navarro has scored 4 goals in each of the previous four games, but has outperformed his expected goals (2.7) in that span. The Brazilian leads Colorado with eight goals this season.

Another player to watch: Goalkeeper Zach Steffen was a hot commodity going from Columbus Crew to Manchester City in 2019 — on the recommendation of then-City Football Group scout Khaled El-Ahmad. But the former U.S. men’s national team player has cooled off. He is in the bottom 30 percentile in MLS in a handful of shot-stopping metrics this season, per fbref.com.

Prediction: MNUFC has been at its best on the road this season, while Colorado collapsed late against RSL last weekend. Colorado is averaging 2.5 goals scored across last four games, but another Minnesota counter attack leads to a smash-and-grab win. Loons, 3-2.

By MARK KENNEDY (AP Entertainment Writer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, an Oscar nominee whose most famous work skewered American food and diets and who notably ate only at McDonald’s for a month to illustrate the dangers of a fast-food diet, has died. He was 53.

Spurlock died Thursday in New York from complications of cancer, according to a statement issued Friday by his family.

“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig Spurlock, who worked with him on several projects, said in the statement. “Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”

Spurlock made a splash in 2004 with his groundbreaking film “Super Size Me,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. The film chronicled the detrimental physical and psychological effects of Spurlock eating only McDonald’s food for 30 days. He gained about 25 pounds, saw a spike in his cholesterol and lost his sex drive.

He returned in 2019 with “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” — a sober look at an industry that processes 9 billion animals a year in America.

“We’re at an amazing moment in history from a consumer standpoint where consumers are starting to have more and more power,” he told The Associated Press in 2019. “It’s not about return for the shareholders. It’s about return for the consumers.”

Spurlock was a gonzo-like filmmaker who leaned into the bizarre and ridiculous. His stylistic touches included zippy graphics and amusing music, blending a Michael Moore-ish camera-in-your-face style with his own sense of humor and pathos.

“I wanted to be able to lean into the serious moments. I wanted to be able to breathe in the moments of levity. We want to give you permission to laugh in the places where it’s really hard to laugh,” he told the AP.

After he exposed the fast-food and chicken industries, there was an explosion in restaurants stressing freshness, artisanal methods, farm-to-table goodness and ethically sourced ingredients. But nutritionally not much had changed.

“There has been this massive shift and people say to me, ‘So has the food gotten healthier?’ And I say, ‘Well, the marketing sure has,’” he said.

Not all his work dealt with food. Spurlock made documentaries about the boy band One Direction and the geeks and fanboys at Comic-Con. One of his films looked at life behind bars at the Henrico County Jail in Virginia.

In “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” Spurlock tackled questions of product placement, marketing and advertising. With “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” Spurlock goes on a global search to find the al-Qaida leader.

“Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” was to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 but it was shelved at the height of the #MeToo movement when Spurlock came forward to detail his own history of sexual misconduct.

He confessed that he had been accused of rape while in college and had settled a sexual harassment case with a female assistant. He also admitted to cheating on numerous partners. “I am part of the problem,” he wrote.

“For me, there was a moment of kind of realization — as somebody who is a truth-teller and somebody who has made it a point of trying to do what’s right — of recognizing that I could do better in my own life. We should be able to admit we were wrong,” he told the AP.

Spurlock grew up in a small town in West Virginia. His mother was an English teacher who he remembered would correct his work with a red pen.

He is survived by two sons — Laken and Kallen; his mother Phyllis Spurlock; father Ben; brothers Craig and Barry; and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the mothers of his children.

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

By KAREN MATTHEWS (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — A woman who says Sean “Diddy” Combs subjected her to violence and abuse over several years in the 1990s has filed a lawsuit in New York accusing the rapper of sexual assault, battery and gender-motivated violence.

April Lampros, who met Combs in 1994 when she was a college student, described several “terrifying sexual encounters” with him including being forced to take ecstasy and have sex with Combs’ late former girlfriend Kim Porter.

Lampros’ lawsuit, filed Thursday in state court in Manhattan, comes after a series of allegations against the embattled hip-hop mogul. A former model accused Combs of sexually assaulting her at his New York City recording studio in 2003 in a separate lawsuit filed earlier this week.

Lampros, 51, said in the lawsuit that she was a student at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology when she met Combs, who showered her with gifts and promised to help her achieve her dream of a career in fashion.

The relationship turned abusive and coercive, according to the lawsuit.

Lampros said Combs raped her in a Manhattan hotel room in 1995. She passed out and woke up the next morning “nude, sore, and confused,” according to the suit.

On another occasion, Lampros said, Combs forced her to perform oral sex on him in a parking garage in full view of a worker at the garage.

Combs forced Lampros and Porter to have sex with each other in his apartment in 1996 after he had shoved ecstasy pills down their throats, according to the lawsuit.

“Ms. Lampros vocally opposed this idea, but Mr. Combs quickly reminded her that she had no control over the situation as he could make her lose her job,” the lawsuit said.

Porter died of pneumonia in 2018.

A message seeking comment on Lampros’ accusations was sent to an attorney for Combs.

The Associated Press does not typically identify victims of sexual assault by name unless they publicly identify themselves, as Lampros has.

The lawsuits filed by Lampros and the former model come days after CNN aired security video that shows Combs attacking singer Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016. Combs on Sunday released a video admitting he attacked Cassie in the hotel hallway, saying he was “truly sorry” and his actions were “inexcusable.”

A lawsuit filed by Cassie in November alleging beatings and abuse was settled a day after it was filed. It prompted increased scrutiny of Combs, with additional lawsuits filed in the following months, along with a federal criminal sex-trafficking investigation that led to raids of Combs’ mansions in Los Angeles and Miami.