By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ongoing government shutdown is delaying the announcement of the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for tens of millions of beneficiaries.

Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the 2024 Social Security COLA announcement will now be Oct. 24. It is timed to the September Consumer Price Index, which also has not yet been released.

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The agency adjusts its benefits every year based on inflation. The postponement of the announcement is the most recent example of how the government shutdown, entering its third week and with little progress made toward a resolution, has made it more difficult for people to plan out their finances.

Projections by Senior Citizens League and the AARP anticipate a COLA increase of roughly 2.7%. About 70.6 million people, including retirees, disabled people and children, get Social Security benefits.

Social Security Administration beneficiaries have voiced concerns that next year’s increase will not be enough to counter rising costs.

Sue Conard, a 75-year-old retired nurse from La Crosse, Wisconsin, and SSA recipient, recently traveled to the U.S. Capitol with other retiree members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union to lobby for meaningful progress towards gaining health care protections to end the shutdown, as well as changes to Social Security benefits.

She said she wants lawmakers to change the calculation on how the COLA is determined since the standard CPI gauge, which includes a market basket of consumer goods and services, doesn’t take into account many costs typical for older Americans.

“The issue of how the COLA is determined is flat-out wrong because health care is not factored into the CPI,” said Conard, speaking on the front steps of the Longworth House Office Building.

Some lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make SSA use a different index, called the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E), to calculate the cost-of-living increase that measures price changes based on the spending patterns of older people on things such as health care, food and medicine.

A collection of Democratic lawmakers has proposed legislation to change the CPI calculation for COLA benefits to the CPI-E. Last session, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., proposed a law that would change the COLA calculation, but that never got a hearing in the Senate Finance committee.

AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said the COLA “isn’t just a source of income — it’s a lifeline of independence and dignity, for tens of millions of older Americans.” But even with an adjusted COLA, a majority of Americans still face challenges covering basic expenses, she said.

Vanessa Fields, a 70-year-old former social worker and AFSCME member from Philadelphia, said she pays roughly $1,000 per month for groceries, more than in previous years. The COLA doesn’t keep up with rising costs, she said, “and we’re going to be in bad shape if lawmakers don’t act.”

The agency is expected to begin notifying recipients about their new benefit amount starting in early December. A spokesperson for Social Security who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the COLA said retirement and Supplemental Security Income benefits would be adjusted beginning Jan. 1, 2026, without any delay despite the current government lapse in appropriations.

The delayed COLA announcement comes as the national social insurance plan faces a severe financial shortfall in the coming years and as the agency has seen substantial workforce cuts.

The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released in June said the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. If the trust fund is depleted, the government will be able to pay only 81% of scheduled benefits, the report said.

In addition, the agency laid off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000 earlier this year, putting pressure on the remaining workers to handle claims and answer inquiries from a rising number of recipients.

A wrong-way driver collided with another vehicle in Inver Grove Heights Tuesday night, killing both drivers.

An 80-year-old woman from Cottage Grove entered the northbound lanes of U.S. 52, traveling southbound, according to the Minnesota State Patrol.

A 60-year-old man from Birchwood, Wis., was driving north on northbound U.S. 52. The vehicles collided in the area of 80th Street.

It was a rainy night and road conditions were wet, according to the State Patrol, which plans to release the names of the drivers later Wednesday morning.

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By BECKY BOHRER, CEDAR ATTANASIO and GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — More rain and wind were forecast Wednesday along the Alaskan coast where two tiny villages were decimated by the remnants of Typhoon Halong and officials were scrambling to find shelter for more than 1,500 people driven from their homes.

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The weekend storm brought high winds and surf that battered the low-lying Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the southwestern part of the state, nearly 500 miles from Anchorage. At least one person was killed and two were missing. The Coast Guard plucked two dozen people from their homes after the structures floated out to sea.

Hundreds were staying in school shelters, including one with no working toilets, officials said. The weather system followed a storm that struck parts of western Alaska days earlier.

Across the region, more than 1,500 people were displaced. Dozens were flown to a shelter set up in the National Guard armory in the regional hub city of Bethel, a community of 6,000 people, and officials were considering flying evacuees to longer-term shelter or emergency housing in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

The hardest-hit communities included Kipnuk, population 715, and Kwigillingok, population 380. They are off the state’s main road system and reachable this time of year only by water or by air.

“It’s catastrophic in Kipnuk. Let’s not paint any other picture,” Mark Roberts, incident commander with the state emergency management division, told a news conference Tuesday. “We are doing everything we can to continue to support that community, but it is as bad as you can think.”

In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, Kipnuk, Alaska, experiences coastal flooding, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP)

Heartbreaking moment

Among those awaiting evacuation to Bethel on Tuesday was Brea Paul, of Kipnuk, who said in a text message that she had seen about 20 homes floating away through the moonlight on Saturday night.

“Some houses would blink their phone lights at us like they were asking for help but we couldn’t even do anything,” she wrote.

The following morning, she recorded video of a house submerged nearly to its roofline as it floated past her home.

Paul and her neighbors had a long meeting in the local school gym on Monday night. They sang songs as they tried to figure out what to do next, she said. Paul wasn’t sure where she would go.

“It’s so heartbreaking saying goodbye to our community members not knowing when we’d get to see each other,” she said.

About 30 miles away in Kwigillingok, one woman was found dead and authorities on Monday night called off the search for two men whose home floated away.

The map above locates towns in western Alaska impacted by floodwaters and storm surge from typhoon Halong. (AP Digital Embed)

The school was the only facility in town with full power, but it had no working toilet and 400 people stayed there Monday night. Workers were trying to fix the bathrooms; a situation report from the state emergency operations center on Tuesday noted that portable toilets, or “honey buckets,” were being used.

A preliminary assessment showed every home in the village was damaged by the storm, with about three dozen having drifted from their foundations, the emergency management office said.

Power systems flooded in Napakiak, and severe erosion was reported in Toksook Bay. In Nightmute, officials said fuel drums were reported floating in the community, and there was a scent of fuel in the air and a sheen on the water.

The National Guard was activated to help with the emergency response, and crews were trying to take advantage of any breaks in the weather to fly in food, water, generators and communication equipment.

In this photo provided by Alaska National Guard, members of the Alaska National Guard arrive in Kotzebue, Alaska, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, to support operations responding to the damage caused by Typhoon Halong. (Alaska National Guard via AP)

Long road to recovery ahead, officials say

Officials warned of a long road to recovery and a need for continued support for the hardest-hit communities. Most rebuilding supplies would have to be transported in and there is little time left with winter just around the corner.

“Indigenous communities in Alaska are resilient,” said Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “But, you know, when you have an entire community where effectively every house is damaged and many of them will be uninhabitable with winter knocking at the door now, there’s only so much that any individual or any small community can do.”

Thoman said the storm was likely fueled by the warm surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, which has been heating up because of human-caused climate change and making storms more intense.

The remnants of another storm, Typhoon Merbok, caused damage across a massive swath of western Alaska three years ago.

Johnson and Attanasio reported from Seattle.

By MELANIE LIDMAN and SAMY MAGDY, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Wednesday that one of the bodies handed over by Hamas the previous day as part of the ceasefire deal is not that of a hostage who was held in Gaza, adding to tensions over the fragile truce in the two-year war.

Four bodies were handed over by Hamas on Tuesday to ease pressure on the ceasefire, following an earlier four on Monday — hours after the last 20 living hostages were released. In all, Israel has been awaiting the return of the bodies of 28 deceased hostages.

Israel, which released around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Monday, is also handing over bodies of Palestinians under the deal, a step awaited by many families in Gaza whose relatives went missing during the war.

The military said that after the “examinations at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, the fourth body handed over to Israel by Hamas does not match any of the hostages.” There was no immediate word on whose body it was.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded earlier Wednesday that Hamas fulfill the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal — introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump — about the return of the hostages’ bodies.

“We will not compromise on this and will not stop our efforts until we return the last deceased hostage, until the last one,” Netanyahu said.

Jewish revelers dance and hold up the Torah as they celebrate the holiday of Simchat Torah next to the plaza known as hostages square, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Returning all living and dead hostages

The U.S.-proposed ceasefire plan had called for all hostages — living and dead — to be handed over by a deadline that expired on Monday. But under the deal, if that didn’t happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand over all as soon as possible.

This is not the first time Hamas has returned a wrong body to Israel. Earlier this year during a previous ceasefire, the group said it handed over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons. Israelis endured another moment of agony when testing showed that one of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman.

Bibas’ body was returned a day later and positively identified.

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Hamas and the Red Cross have said that recovering the remains of dead hostages was a challenge because of Gaza’s vast destruction, and Hamas has told mediators of the truce that some are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.

Hazem Kassem, a spokesperson for Hamas, said on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday that the group was working to return the bodies of the hostages as agreed in the ceasefire deal. He accused Israel of violating the deal with shootings Tuesday in eastern Gaza City and the territory’s southern city of Rafah.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said Wednesday the military is operating along the deployment lines laid out in the deal and warned that anyone approaching the deployment line will be targeted — as had happened on Tuesday with several militants.

Two hostages whose bodies were released from Gaza were to be buried on Wednesday. The family invited the public to gather along the road in the afternoon to accompany the body of one hostage from a forensics institute to a cemetery north of Tel Aviv.

Separately, forensic experts in Gaza on Wednesday started identifying 45 bodies of Palestinians that Israel handed over through the Red Cross the previous day without identification. Israel is expected to transfer more bodies, though the total number has not been announced.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the bodies were those of people who died in Israeli prisons or bodies taken from Gaza by Israeli troops. During the war, the Israeli military has exhumed bodies as part of its search for the remains of hostages.

Desperately needed aid to Gaza

The entrance of humanitarian aid to Gaza was paused for the past two days due to the prisoner and hostage exchange on Monday and a Jewish holiday Tuesday.

The Egyptian Red Crescent said 400 trucks carrying food, fuel, and medical supplies were bound for the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, while Israel and Hamas argue over the slow return of the bodies of deceased hostages.

The Israeli defense body overseeing humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, notified humanitarian organizations on Tuesday that it would allow into Gaza only half of the 600 daily aid trucks called for under the deal.

It was not immediately clear whether it was following through on the threat. COGAT declined to comment on the number of trucks expected to enter Gaza on Wednesday.

On Monday, Israelis celebrated the return of the last 20 living hostages in Gaza and Palestinians rejoiced at Israel’s release of some 2,000 prisoners and detainees as part of the ceasefire’s first phase.

Families of hostages and their supporters have expressed dismay these past days that so few of the dead hostages were being released. Hamas and the Red Cross have said that recovering the remains of dead hostages was a challenge because of Gaza’s vast destruction, and Hamas told mediators of the truce that some are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.

The first four bodies released were all identified as hostages and of the second group of four bodies, three were identified — Uriel Baruch, Tamir Nimrodi and Eitan Levi.

Baruch was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.

Nimrodi, who had been serving with the Israeli defense body overseeing humanitarian aid in Gaza, was taken by militants from the Erez border crossing. The Hostages Family Forum, a group representing many of the hostages’ families, says Levi was kidnapped while driving a friend to Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas attack.

Magdy reported from Cairo.