By Sofia Ahmed and Ted Hesson

NEW YORK -Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said on Friday he has started to send buses carrying migrants to New York City in an effort to push responsibility for border crossers to Democratic mayors and U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

The first bus arrived early on Friday at the city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan carrying around 50 migrants from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and Venezuela. Volunteers were helping to steer people who had no relatives in town to city resources.

“Most of them don’t have anybody to help. They don’t know where to go, so we’re taking them to shelters,” said one volunteer at the bus station, Evelin Zapata, from a group called Grannies Respond.

One family of four from Colombia, who ended up at a homeless intake center in the Bronx, were unsure of where they would spend the night. Byron and Leidy, both 28, said they left the country’s capital Bogota because they were having trouble finding work. They did not provide their last name.

“It’s a little easier to enter the country now, before it was very hard to come here with children,” said Leidy, who traveled with her kids Mariana, 7, and Nicolas, 13. She said the family had hoped someone they knew in New York would take them in, but that plan did not work out. “We came here because they said they would help us find a place to sleep to not have to stay in the street,” Leidy said.

Abbott, who is running for a third term as governor in November elections, has already sent more than 6,000 migrants to Washington since April in a broader effort to combat illegal immigration and call out Biden for his more welcoming policies.

Biden came into office in January 2021 pledging to reverse many of the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump, but some efforts have been blocked in court.

Abbott said New York City Mayor Eric Adams could provide services and housing for the new arrivals.

“I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief,” Abbott said in a statement.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, another Republican, has followed Abbott’s lead and bused another 1,000 to Washington.

U.S. border authorities have made record numbers of arrests under Biden although many are repeat crossers. Some migrants who are not able to be expelled quickly to Mexico or their home countries under a COVID-era policy are allowed into the United States, often to pursue asylum claims in U.S. immigration court.

‘POLITICAL PAWNS’

Adams’ office has in recent weeks criticized the busing efforts to Washington, saying some migrants were making their way to New York City and overwhelming its homeless shelter system.

On Friday the mayor’s press secretary Fabien Levy said Abbott was using “human beings as political pawns,” calling it “a disgusting, and an embarrassing stain on the state of Texas.”

Levy said New York would continue to “welcome asylum seekers with open arms, as we always have, but we are asking for resources to help do so,” calling for support from federal officials.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday called the Texas initiative “shameful” and an unnecessary burden on taxpayers in that state.

Costs for the effort amounted to $1.6 million in April and May, a local NBC News affiliate reported in June, more than $1,400 per rider.

Texas officials declined to provide the cost when asked by Reuters.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has also said her city’s shelter system has been strained by migrant arrivals and last month called on the Biden administration to deploy military troops to assist with receiving the migrants, a request that has frustrated White House officials.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had declined a request for D.C. National Guard to help with the transportation and reception of migrants in the city because it would hurt the troops’ readiness.

Bowser suggested on Friday that she would submit a more targeted troop request, reiterating her stance that the federal government should handle what she called a “growing humanitarian crisis.”

“If the federal government’s not going to do it, they need to at least get out of our way and give us the resources that we need,” she told reporters.

Many migrants are arriving after long and difficult journeys through South America.

Venezuelan migrant Jose Gregorio Forero said before traveling more than a day by bus from Texas he had crossed through eight countries. “It’s taken 31 days to get here, on foot and asking for rides,” he said, saying he was glad to be in New York where he thought there would be more job opportunities.

New York City, he said, “is very beautiful. I love it.”

(Reporting by Sofia Ahmed in New York and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Jeff Mason in Washington, Roselle Chen and Dan Fastenberg in New York; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Daniel Wallis)

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA -Palestinian militants in Gaza fired dozens of rockets into Israel on Friday in response to Israeli airstrikes which killed at least 10 people, including a senior commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement.

As darkness fell, Israeli authorities said sirens had been sounded in southern and central areas, while images broadcast by Israeli television stations appeared to show a number of missiles being shot down by air defence systems. In Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic centre, witnesses said they could hear booms but there were no reports of sirens.

Islamic Jihad, a militant group with a similar ideology to Hamas, the Islamist movement in charge of Gaza, said it had fired more than 100 rockets on Friday into Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv. Israel’s ambulance service said there were no reports of casualties.

The strikes came a little more than a year after an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, which killed at least 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel and left the blockaded enclave’s economy shattered.

Earlier, local health officials in Gaza said at least 10 people, including a five-year-old child, had been killed and 55 wounded in the Israeli airstrikes, which came after days of escalating tensions following the arrest of a Palestinian militant leader during the week.

An Israeli spokesperson said the strikes had killed Islamic Jihad commander Tayseer al-Jaabari and around 15 “terrorists” but said the military did not have a final casualty total.

“Israel carried out a precise counterterror operation against an immediate threat,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a televised statement in which he pledged to do “whatever it takes to defend our people”.

“Our fight is not with the people of Gaza. Islamic Jihad is an Iranian proxy that wants to destroy the State of Israel and kill innocent Israelis,” he said.

The Israeli military said in a Twitter post that its war planes targeted Islamic Jihad sites in Gaza that “severely affect the organisation’s ability to develop military capabilities.”

An Islamic Jihad official confirmed that al-Jaabari, whom the Israeli military described as the main coordinator between Islamic Jihad and Hamas, had been killed in the strikes, which hit several targets around the densely populated strip.

Smoke rose from a building where al-Jaabari was apparently killed and glass and rubble were strewn across the street amid the sound of ambulances racing to other sites.

As mourners prepared to hold funerals for those killed in the attacks, hundreds, some holding Palestinian flags, marched through the streets of Gaza, while queues formed outside bakeries and supermarkets as people stocked up on food and staples.

The strikes came after Israel arrested Bassam al-Saadi, a senior leader of the Islamic Jihad group, during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin earlier this week.

It subsequently closed off all Gaza crossings and some nearby roads over fears of retaliation from the group, which has a stronghold in Gaza, further restricting Palestinian movement.

Israel’s military said Defence Minister Benny Gantz had approved plans to call up 25,000 reservists following the strikes, signalling that Israel expected an extended confrontation.

‘NO RED LINES’

In an interview on Al Mayadeen television, a pro-Iranian Lebanese channel, Islamic Jihad leader Ziad al-Nakhala vowed retaliation for the strikes.

“There are no red lines in this battle and Tel Aviv will fall under the rockets of resistance, as well as all Israeli cities,” he said.

Hamas’ armed wing issued a statement saying: “The blood of our people and our mujahideen will not go in vain.”

United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, warned that the “dangerous” escalation risked creating the need for more aid at a time when world resources were stretched by other conflicts.

“The launching of rockets must cease immediately, and I call on all sides to avoid further escalation,” he said.

Egypt said it was mediating between Israel and the Palestinians.

Islamic Jihad, one of a cluster of Palestinian militant groups, was founded in Gaza in the 1980s and opposes political dialogue with Israel. Considered close to Iran, it is separate from Hamas but generally cooperates closely with the movement.

The Israeli military spokesperson said authorities expected there would be rocket attacks against the centre of Israel but said Iron Dome anti-missile batteries were operational. He said special measures had been imposed in Israeli areas 80 kilometres around Gaza.

He said plans to allow fuel trucks into Gaza to keep the area’s sole power plant operational had been dropped at the last minute as intelligence picked up movements that indicated attacks on Israeli targets were imminent.

The lack of fuel is set to lead to more power cuts in Gaza, where residents already have just 10 hours of electricity a day, and further hit the economy of a region that depends on foreign aid and still struggles to recover from past wars.

A narrow strip of land where some 2.3 million people live on a patch of 365 square kilometres (140 square miles), Gaza has been a constant point of conflict ever since Hamas took control. Israel has fought five conflicts with Gaza since 2009.

The area has since been under blockade, with Israel and Egypt tightly restricting movement of people and goods in and out.

“We have not yet been able to reconstruct what Israel had destroyed a year ago. People didn’t have the chance to breathe, and here Israel is attacking again without any reason,” said Mansour Mohammad-Ahmed, 43, a farmer from central Gaza.

(Reporting by Nidal al Mughrabi, Henriette Chacar, James Mackenzie; Editing by Mark Potter, Frank Jack Daniel and Daniel Wallis)

By Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu

TAIPEI – China announced on Friday it was halting dialogue with the United States in a number of areas, including between theater-level military commanders and on climate change, in a furore over U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

China’s foreign ministry said it was also suspending exchanges with Washington on countering cross-border crime and drug trafficking, all moves Washington called “irresponsible.”

Enraged when Pelosi became the highest-level U.S. visitor in 25 years to the self-governed island that Beijing regards as its territory, China launched military drills in the seas and skies around Taiwan on Thursday. The live-fire drills, the largest ever conducted by China in the Taiwan Strait, are scheduled to continue until noon on Sunday.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Friday it scrambled jets to warn away Chinese aircraft that it said entered the island’s air defence zone, some of which crossed the Taiwan Strait median line, an unofficial buffer separating the two sides.

A total of 68 Chinese military aircraft and 13 navy ships had conducted missions in the strait, the ministry said.

China’s Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said in a statement it conducted air and sea drills to the north, southwest and east of Taiwan on Friday “to test the troops’ joint combat capabilities.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington has repeatedly made clear to Beijing it does not seek a crisis over Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week during a congressional tour of Asia.

“There is no justification for this extreme, disproportionate and escalatory military response,” he told a news conference on the sidelines of ASEAN regional meetings in Cambodia, adding, “Now, they’ve taken dangerous acts to a new level”.

Blinken emphasised that the United States would not take actions to provoke a crisis, but it would continue to support regional allies and conduct standard air and maritime transit through the Taiwan Strait.

“We will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” he said.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Chinese officials had not responded to calls made by senior Pentagon officials this week, but the move was seen as China showing displeasure over the Pelosi trip rather than severing the channel between senior defense officials including U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi told a media briefing after the ASEAN meetings: “I heard that U.S. Secretary of State Blinken held his news conference and spread some misinformation and was not speaking truthfully.”

“We wish to issue a warning to the United States: Do not act rashly, do not create a greater crisis,” Wang said.

Jing Quan, a senior Chinese Embassy official in Washington, echoed that, telling a briefing: “The only way out of this crisis is that the U.S. side must take measures immediately to rectify its mistakes and eliminate the grave impact of Pelosi’s visit.”

He said Washington should “avoid pushing China-U.S. relations down the dangerous track of conflict and confrontation”.

DIPLOMATIC FRONT

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby countered that China’s move to suspend some communication channels was “fundamentally irresponsible”.

“There’s nothing here for the United States to rectify. The Chinese can go a long way to taking the tensions down simply by stopping these provocative military exercises and ending the rhetoric,” Kirby told reporters.

China has not mentioned a suspension of military talks at the senior-most levels, such as with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. While those talks have been infrequent, officials have said they are important to have in the case of an emergency or accident.

Kirby said it was not atypical for China to shut down military talks at times of tension, but that “not all channels” between the two countries’ military leaders had been cut off.

The Pentagon said China was overreacting and that Washington was still open to building crisis communication mechanisms.

“Part of this overreaction has been strictly limiting its defense engagements when any responsible state would recognize that we need them now the most,” Acting Pentagon spokesman Todd Breasseale said.

Beijing separately announced that it would impose sanctions on Pelosi personally and her immediate family in response to her “vicious” and “provocative” actions.

Speaking at a news conference in Japan after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Pelosi said her trip to Asia was “not about changing the status quo in Taiwan or the region.”

‘STAY CALM’

Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Friday the island’s military had dispatched aircraft and ships and deployed land-based missile systems to monitor ships and aircraft that briefly crossed the Taiwan Strait median line.

On Thursday, China fired multiple missiles into waters surrounding Taiwan.

Japan’s defence ministry, which is tracking the exercises, first reported that as many as four of the missiles flew over Taiwan’s capital, which is unprecedented. It also said that five of nine missiles fired toward its territory landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), also a first, prompting a diplomatic protest by Tokyo.

Later, Taiwan’s defence ministry said the missiles were high in the atmosphere and constituted no threat.

Some Taipei residents, including Mayor Ko Wen-je, criticised the government for not putting out a missile alert, but one security expert said that could have been done to avoid stoking panic and playing into China’s hands.

“It counteracted the effect of the Chinese Communist Party’s psychological warfare,” said Mei Fu-shin, a U.S.-based analyst.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen urged residents not to panic, saying in a Facebook post: “Please rest assured, stay calm and live as normal.”

Bonnie Glaser, a Washington-based Asia security specialist at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said China may be rehearsing for a blockade, “demonstrating it can block Taiwan’s ports and airports and prevent shipping.”

Taiwan has been self-ruled since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s communists took power in Beijing after defeating Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists in a civil war, prompting the KMT-led government to retreat to the island.

Beijing has said its relations with Taiwan are an internal matter, and that it reserves the right to bring Taiwan under Chinese control, by force if necessary.

(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu in Taipei; Elaine Lies and Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Greg Torode in Hong Kong; Ann Wang in Liuqiu Island; Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; Michael Martina, Susan Heavey, Jeff Mason, Doina Chiacu, Idrees Ali and Alexandra Alper in Washington; Writing by Tony Munroe, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Simon Cameron-Moore and Frances Kerry; Editing by Toby Chopra, Frank Jack Daniel, Louise Heavens, Cynthia Osterman, Marguerita Choy and Diane Craft)

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -Revelations that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones may have lied on the stand in a defamation lawsuit by parents of a child slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting made for a dramatic moment in a high-profile trial, but it would be unusual for prosecutors to follow through with perjury charges, lawyers said.

A jury in Austin, Texas, on Friday said Jones should pay $45.2 million in punitive damages – on top of the $4.1 million in compensatory damages it had already awarded to the plaintiffs – for falsely claiming the shooting was a hoax.

During the final day of testimony on Wednesday, a lawyer for the parents made the unusual disclosure that Jones’ lawyer had inadvertently sent him a file containing text messages from Jones’ phone about the Sandy Hook shooting.

The revelation was significant because Jones has maintained that he had searched his phone for such messages and never found any.

The lawyer for the parents, Mark Bankston, in questioning Jones about the texts, asked him if he knew the definition of perjury.

Jones replied that the suggestion he had lied was “ridiculous.”

Travis County Judge Maya Guerra Gamble on Thursday denied Jones’ motion for a mistrial based on the disclosure.

Perjury charges are rare in Texas, even when parties in civil lawsuits are caught giving false testimony, according to criminal defense lawyers who practice in the state.

But prosecutors in liberal Travis County, where Jones’ radio show and right-wing webcast InfoWars is based, could be more inclined to charge Jones because of his incendiary conservative views and his mockery of the legal system during the defamation case, said Lisa Shapiro Strauss, a lawyer in Houston.

“The political motivation may be there to make an example of him,” Strauss said.

Lawyers for Jones and the family that sued him, and the Travis County District Attorney’s office, did not respond to requests for comment.

If Jones were charged it would likely be for aggravated perjury, a felony punishable by two 10 years in prison, because his comments were made in court testimony, lawyers said. Lying under oath outside of court, such as in a deposition or police statement, is a misdemeanor in Texas.

Prosecutors would have to closely review Jones’ testimony about the text messages before deciding whether to bring a perjury charge, according to Benson Varghese, a Fort Worth, Texas-based defense lawyer.

Varghese said that if Jones has claimed only that he could not find the messages, prosecutors could have a difficult time proving that he intentionally lied about their existence.

“The mere fact that the text messages exist does not necessarily mean he found them” and then lied about it, Varghese said.

Gamble, the judge presiding over the defamation case, can refer the matter to local prosecutors, which would likely raise the chances that Jones is charged, lawyers said.

Gamble has repeatedly admonished Jones and his legal team during four years of litigation in the case and has suggested that Jones lied under oath about complying with discovery requests and his company’s financial situation.

Earlier this week, the judge warned Jones against lying on the stand, telling him, “Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true.”

But Gamble has refrained from imposing sanctions on Jones in the defamation case, suggesting his statements may be insufficiently serious to warrant perjury charges, said Nick Bunch, a white-collar defense lawyer in Dallas.

“It’s very unlikely that it turns into a criminal prosecution,” Bunch said.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, N.Y., and David Bario in Hopewell, N.M.Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)

By Pavel Polityuk

KYIV – Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Friday of shelling Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant as fighting raged again in the crucial border region of the Donbas and three more ships left ports carrying previously blockaded Ukrainian grain.

Shells hit a high-voltage power line at the Zaporizhzhia plant, prompting operators to disconnect a reactor despite no radioactive leak being detected. The plant was captured by Russian forces in early March in the opening stage of the war but it is still run by its Ukrainian technicians.

Earlier this week, the United Nations nuclear watchdog appealed for access to the plant, which Washington says Russia is using as a battlefield shield.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom blamed Russia for the damage at the power station.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow was responsible and accused it of committing “an open, brazen crime, an act of terror”, calling for sanctions on the entire Russian nuclear industry.

Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant, saying a leak of radiation had been avoided only by luck.

It said that as a result, the generating capacity of one unit had been reduced and power supply to another had been cut. In addition, the nearby city of Enerhodar had power and water supplies problems, a ministry statement said.

Energoatom said the plant, about 200 km (160 miles) northwest of the Russian-held port of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine, was still operational and no radioactive discharges had been detected.

Further east, both sides claimed small advances while Russian artillery bombarded towns and villages across a wide area in a now-familiar tactic.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, was subjected to renewed shelling early on Friday, the mayor said. “All of Kharkiv heard the sounds,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terehov said on Telegram. “The rescue teams are on site.”

Details of any casualties or damage were not immediately available.

The southern city of Mykolaiv was shelled on Friday night and one person was killed, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram. Twenty-two people were injured. Twenty-one private homes and five residential apartment buildings suffered damage, the mayor said.

GRAIN SHIPMENTS

In other developments, three grain ships left Ukrainian ports on Friday and the first inbound cargo vessel since the Russian invasion was due in Ukraine to load, marking further steps in the Kyiv government’s efforts to resuscitate its economy after five months of war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meanwhile met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who is cultivating a role as a mediator in the war, in the Russian city of Sochi.

Turkey helped negotiate the agreement that on Monday saw the first grain ship leave a Ukrainian port for foreign markets since the invasion.

On Friday, two grain ships set off from Chornomorsk and one from Odesa carrying a total of about 58,000 tonnes of corn, the Turkish defence ministry said.

The Turkish bulk carrier Osprey S, flying the flagof Liberia, was expected to arrive in Chornomorsk on Friday to load up with grain, the Odesa regional administration said.

Russia and Ukraine normally produce about one third of the world’s wheat, and the United Nations had warned that the halt in grain shipments through the Russian-dominated Black Sea could lead to famine in other countries, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

BATTLE FOR STRONGHOLD

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in what Putin termed a “special military operation”, the conflict has settled into a war of attrition fought largely in the east and south of Ukraine.

Moscow is trying to gain control of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, comprised of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea to the south in 2014.

Russia’s TASS news agency on Friday cited separatist forces as saying they and Russian troops had taken full control of Pisky in Donetsk region, a fortified village held by Ukrainian troops and close to Donetsk city, which is in the hands of Russian-backed separatist forces.

Ukraine has turned the village into a stronghold, seeing it as a buffer against Russian-backed forces holding Donetsk city about 10 km to the southeast.

TASS also said fighting was taking place in the city of Bakhmut, north of Donetsk and Russia’s next main target.

But the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces in a statement on Friday contradicted the claims made by TASS.

“With its offensive stance, the occupiers tried to take over more advantageous positions and improve their tactical positions in the area of Bakhmut, Zaitsevo and Vershyny. They were unsuccessful and retreated,” it said.

The statement added that Russia “tried unsuccessfully to advance toward” other towns, including Pisky.

Reuters could not verify either side’s assertions about battlefield developments.

The next weapons package to Ukraine from the United States was expected to be $1 billion, one of the largest so far, three sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. If signed in its current form, it will include munitions for long-range weapons and armoured medical transport vehicles, the sources said. The package is expected to be announced as early as Monday.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Nick Macfie, Angus MacSwan and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool)