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Israel's Rafah move, Panama's 'bizarre' election and Boeing's space test

 
Today's INTERNATIONAL story

Israel warns 100k Gazans to evacuate Rafah

What happened
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday ordered about 100,000 Gazans to immediately evacuate parts of Rafah that will be targeted with "extreme force" against Hamas. The Palestinian civilians were told to move to an Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi. A Hamas delegation left cease-fire negotiations in Egypt on Sunday with no deal in place, raising the chances Israel will launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, despite international warnings.

Who said what
Israel has begun a "limited scope operation to temporarily evacuate residents in the eastern part of Rafah," IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Monday. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned Sunday of a "powerful operation in the very near future in Rafah" following a Hamas rocket attack on the Kerem Shalom border crossing that left three IDF soldiers dead and the crossing closed to humanitarian aid.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "expressed his condolences for the IDF soldiers killed" at Kerem Shalom in a phone call with Gallant, the Pentagon said, but he also "stressed the need for any potential Israeli military operation in Rafah to include a credible plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians and maintain the flow of humanitarian aid."

What next?
"So many people here are displaced and now they have to move again," Nidal Alzaanin, one of the 1.4 million Gazans forced to seek refuge in Rafah, told The Associated Press, "but no one will stay here. It's not safe."

 
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Today's AMERICAS story

Panama presidency won by stand-in for fugitive

What happened
José Raúl Mulino, a last-minute stand-in for barred former President Ricardo Martinelli, won Panama's presidency Sunday. Mulino, 64, was Martinelli's running mate before the former president was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to five years in prison. He has been campaigning for Mulino from inside the Nicaraguan Embassy, where he was granted asylum. Mulino's 35% put him 9 percentage points ahead of his main challengers, all of whom conceded Sunday night.

Who said what
When Martinelli "invited me to be vice president, I never imagined this," Mulino told supporters. It is "a very bizarre situation, unprecedented" not just in Panama "but any other Latin American country that I can think of," Michael Shifter at Inter-American Dialogue told The Associated Press. It's still unclear whether Mulino will be "Martinelli's puppet" or chart his own path, he added.

What next?
With Panama's crippling drought, slowed economic growth and endemic corruption, "this next president will have to be a masochist president," Daniel Zovatto, a global fellow at the Wilson Center, told The New York Times.

 
 
Today's SPACE Story

Boeing and NASA ready first crewed Starliner flight

What happened
Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled to make its first crewed flight from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Monday night, launched atop an Atlas V rocket. The test flight, following years of delay, will carry veteran NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore to the International Space Station. NASA contracted with Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2014 to develop spacecraft to shuttle astronauts to the ISS; SpaceX has completed nine crewed missions since 2020.

Who said what
SpaceX has delivered, but NASA wants two different ISS transport vehicles because "you're just one flight away from some anomaly that you didn't catch," said NASA program manager Steve Stich. "Spaceflight is risky" and "unforgiving of mistakes," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the Journal. "NASA is integrated with Boeing to make sure that this flight is as safe as possible."

What next?
Starliner should reach the ISS in 26 hours and return the astronauts to Earth eight days later, touching down on land in the U.S. Southwest. Assuming the test flight goes well, Boeing will complete at least six crewed missions for NASA, alternating with SpaceX.

 
 

It's not all bad

Chilean businessman Roberto Hagemann has sold a 325,000-acre property to environmentalists following a decade-long campaign to thwart his development plans on what has been called the Yosemite of South America. The landmark transaction will preserve "some of the most ecologically significant territory in South America," The New York Times said. The deal is also a "case study in modern-day conservation," involving a "unique confluence of legal, financial and political resources" plus "a bit of luck."

 
 
Under the radar

The situation in downtown St. Louis is a "classic chicken-and-egg kind of deal," Glenn MacDonald, a professor of economics at St. Louis' Washington University, told The Wall Street Journal. "People don't go there because there's nothing to do. There's nothing to do because people don't go there."

The Missouri city's "central business district had the steepest drop in foot traffic of 66 major North American cities between the start of the pandemic and last summer," said the Journal. Covid-19 closures affected St. Louis greatly because its downtown was "already in bad shape when the pandemic started, and now on top of that, you have remote work," Journal reporter Konrad Putzier said on the outlet's podcast "The Journal." 

Real estate developers are trying to revitalize the city by selling its largest buildings to new developers, something easier said than done. But not everything in downtown St. Louis is doom and gloom. The city's Midtown district, for example, is "getting billions in investments," KTVI-TV St. Louis said.

Amid a push by city officials to begin filling vacant properties, more good news came in April when it was reported that St. Louis' Millennium Hotel was put on the market. The iconic hotel has been closed since 2014, and its potential sale could light a further developmental spark. It is "encouraging to see [developers] are taking action," a spokesperson for the St. Louis Development Corp. said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

 
 
On this day

May 6, 1998

Apple founder Steve Jobs introduced the iMac. The desktop computer was priced at $1,299 and positioned as a first-of-its-kind device for the consumer market. The iMac remains one of the most lucrative Apple products in the company's history, with the original model selling more than 5 million units.

 
 
TODAY’S newspaperS

Six months before the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are tied, with many voters saying they could change their mind, USA Today said on Monday's front page. "Consumers are voting with the wallets" already, The Wall Street Journal says, "and some of the U.S.'s best-known food brands are losing." Inflation is having a political cost, too, the Journal says, pointing to one swing state: "Arizona booms, yet voters are glum." The New York Times has a front-page look at how Latino evangelical Christians are shifting toward Trump in another swing state, Nevada. 

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Taking a sick day

The staff at a hospital in Victoria, Australia, posed as patients to make the facility look busier during a visit from the health minister, an investigation by the state’s health department has found. Some workers at the Colac Area Health Urgent Care Center sat in the waiting room, one rested on a stretcher, and another arrived via ambulance and was triaged. The employees went along with the ruse because they believed it was "expected of them," investigators said, and will not face disciplinary action.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harold Maass, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Abed Rahim Khatib / Anadolu via Getty Images; Walter Hurtado / Bloomberg via Getty Images; Paul Hennessy / Anadolu via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Shutterstock