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Israel’s increasingly isolated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, but no meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump is planned. Meanwhile, a top European Union official says only a small amount of the funds needed to rebuild the war-shattered Gaza Strip has been collected. Here is a look at the latest news from the Middle East. More coverage of the U.N. General Assembly is available here. The Israeli prime minister’s brief stay in New York for his speech at the U.N. General Assembly includes meetings with several world leaders, according to his office — but not Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio or any Arab leaders. Netanyahu’s office said “many world leaders” asked to meet with him but that he was on a “tight schedule” and needed to return to Israel before the start of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which begins at sundown on Friday. Netanyahu will meet with the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama, and Ethiopia, the vice president of Colombia, and the prime ministers of Greece, Slovenia, and Papua New Guinea, according to his office. A top EU official says only 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) has been raised out of the 71 billion euros ($80.8 billion) that the United Nations, the World Bank and the 27-nation European Union estimate are needed to rebuild Gaza. “All of us, we have to scale up our efforts,” said European Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica, speaking on the sidelines of the General Assembly. She called for a unified recovery plan that would bring together Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.-backed Board of Peace, and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. At a meeting of the Gaza board in New York on Wednesday, the group proposed a six-month, $2.45 billion plan to begin reconstruction and governance in Gaza as Trump’s ceasefire plan struggles to stay afloat. A moderate earthquake shook southeast Turkey and parts of Syria on Thursday, sending people rushing out of buildings in panic. There were no immediate reports of any damage. The magnitude 5.4 quake was centered in Sanliurfa province, near the border with Syria, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency. In 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed more than 53,000 people in Turkey and destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and southeastern provinces, including Sanliurfa. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighboring Syria. ___ This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Decades after he was a fixture on American TV screens, the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen is back in a familiar place: the media spotlight. Tens of thousands of Catholic devotees are converging on St. Louis for a formal ceremony of beatification on Thursday, in which the prelate will be designated Blessed Fulton Sheen — one step away from sainthood. The afternoon ceremony is taking place at the Dome at America’s Center after years of delays. The stadium was chosen for the site because there wasn’t a venue large enough in his home Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, to accommodate the anticipated number of attendees. About 48,000 tickets were distributed as of Tuesday, according to organizers with the diocese and the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, which advocates for his sainthood. The event honors a prelate who was once a regular presence in the living rooms of millions of Americans — including that of the future Pope Leo XIV, who says he watched the broadcasts of his fellow Illinois native while growing up in Chicago. Sheen was a pioneering radio priest who quickly adopted the new medium of television in the 1950s, when he began hosting the program, “Life is Worth Living.” Dressed in a cassock, cape and skullcap, he stood at a chalkboard and delivered moral and religious lessons without a narrow Catholic focus. The show competed favorably against entertainers Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra on other networks. In an Emmy acceptance speech, Sheen thanked his writers — Gospel scribes Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He’s been called America’s first televangelist. “Archbishop Sheen was a beacon of faith, hope, and love who shone through radio and television for decades,” Pope Leo said in a June speech to directors of The Pontifical Mission Societies, which Sheen headed in the U.S. for 16 years. “I myself witnessed his evangelization efforts as I was growing up.” Sheen was born in 1895 in the small town of El Paso, Illinois, and raised in Peoria. After becoming a priest and earning a doctorate in philosophy, he had a short pastorate in Peoria before becoming a professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington. He became known both for his academic lectures and his plainspoken addresses from the pulpit and the studio, first on radio and then on TV. He often signed off with the benediction, “God love you.” Sheen appeared in a Time magazine cover article. He guided celebrities and others converting to Catholicism. He met with popes and spoke at the reformist Second Vatican Council. He railed against communism, though he opposed the Vietnam War. Sheen raised funds and traveled the world on behalf of Catholic missions. He served as a bishop in New York state, retiring as an archbishop. After his death at 84, he was buried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York until his niece won a court battle in 2019 to move his body to Peoria’s Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception. It’s there, where Sheen had been a young altar server and was later ordained a priest, that pilgrims now place crucifixes and other items on his marble tomb, giving them status as relics. To qualify for beatification, the Vatican normally requires one miracle attributable to the faithful seeking the candidate’s heavenly prayers. The late Pope Francis approved the beatification, attributing to Sheen the resuscitation of an infant born in 2010 without a pulse and revived only after lengthy efforts by medical workers. The child, the now-teenaged James Fulton Engstrom, is slated to present relics of Sheen at the ceremony, accompanied by his family, who had sought Sheen’s intercession for healing. The beatification was originally scheduled for 2019, but the Vatican delayed the ceremony. The Diocese of Rochester, which Sheen briefly led in the 1960s, requested the delay out of caution, due to legal investigations taking place then into the oversight of priests accused of sexual abuse across New York state. Church officials later concluded that Sheen’s record gave no cause for further delay, and plans for the ceremony resumed. Pope Leo XIV approved the beatification earlier this year. “May the example and the intercession of this holy bishop, known for his evangelizing work through the media, inspire many others likewise to find new ways of spreading the gospel message with joyful enthusiasm,” Leo said Wednesday on the eve of the ceremony. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

LONDON (AP) — A far-right activist who has led protests against migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats has been arrested for allegedly slashing a dinghy in the water. A video posted on social media appears to show Daniel Thomas, 37, taking a knife to an inflatable boat, which was empty of migrants but had a rescue services member aboard, while shouting “You’re in English territory.” Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said Thursday that a 37-year-old man was arrested the previous evening on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life and endangering the safety of a vessel. It said he remained in custody on Thursday. British police do not identify suspects by name until they are charged. Thomas, who goes by the nickname Danny Tommo, is a longtime associate of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson. Patriot Platform, a group Thomas founded, is behind recent protests in which masked, black-clad men tried to stop migrants reaching the U.K. Earlier this month, masked demonstrators blocked the port of Dover, in southeast England, and tried to stop migrants being taken ashore in Portsmouth on the country’s south coast. Successive U.K. governments have struggled to stop people — more than 41,000 last year — making the dangerous journey across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The issue has been depicted as a crisis by politicians including Nigel Farage of the hard-right party Reform UK, and has been used as a rallying point by anti-immigration activists. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s center-left government says stepped-up law enforcement cooperation between Britain and France has helped reduce the number of people making the crossing so far this year by more than 40% compared with 2025. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey has agreed to gradually withdraw forces from a strategic military base in northern Iraq and hand over its control to the Iraqi government, following a meeting between the two countries’ leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Iraq, meanwhile, pledged to remove armed groups that Turkey considers security threats from the region of Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, according to a joint statement issued after the meeting late Wednesday between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. “In light of the progress Iraq has achieved through security measures, Turkish forces will gradually hand over the Bashiqa-Zelikan camp to the Iraqi federal government, in accordance with the agreed-upon mechanism and timeline,” according to the joint statement released by Erdogan and al-Zaidi’s offices. Turkey and Iraq also agreed to “fully extend the authority of the Iraqi state in Sinjar and to end the presence of banned foreign armed elements,” the statement read. The strategically-located Bashiqa base has long been an issue of contention between Turkey and Iraq, with Turkey failing to fully withdraw forces, despite previous discussions for their removal. Turkey established a military presence there in 2015 to support operations against the Islamic State group and help secure the region. Although Turkey maintains several bases in northern Iraq for operations against the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the Bashiqa camp is Turkey’s furthest base from its border. Turkey, for its part, has long been pressing Iraq to curb groups with links to the PKK and other non-state armed groups from operating in Sinjar. The Iraqi government announced earlier this month that the Sinjar Resistance Units, a Yazidi militia affiliated with the PKK, had agreed to disarm and eligible fighters would be integrated into the Iraqi security forces. The group played a significant role in the fight against IS, but was seen by Turkey as a threat because of its PKK affiliation. The agreement came as the U.S. is ending its decades-long military presence in Iraq, with officials saying the hundreds of troops remaining in northern Iraq will be out by a Sept. 30 deadline. Turkey, meanwhile, is engaged in peace efforts with the PKK aimed at ending a decades-long conflict. The group, whose fighters have launched attacks on Turkish targets from bases in northern Iraq, has agreed to disband and lay down arms as part of the effort. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Howard Schneider WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) – The artificial intelligence buildout is on track to require a larger share of US output than the rollout of electricity, railroads, interstate highways or the internet, with an increasingly complicated financial structure that poses potentially systemic risks, according to a new study. What had been paid for out of the cash stockpiled by companies like Amazon.com, Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google has morphed into an expansion that will consume around 3.6% of gross domestic product annually through 2032, or more than $10 trillion, and is using ever more intricate financing arrangements, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a finance and real estate professor at Columbia Business School, wrote in a paper prepared for a Brookings Institution conference this week. That estimate is higher than the 2.2% of annual GDP absorbed by railroads in the late 1800s, which was the next most costly rollout of a general technology, and a bit more than 1% annually each for construction of the US interstate highway system beginning in the 1950s or the telecommunications expansion that started in the mid-1990s. Just as the rail and telecoms expansions led to notable bubbles and busts, Van Nieuwerburgh wrote that the extent of the buildout, the still-untested revenue streams, and the intricate financing structure emerging around AI mean it could be primed for a fall. “This is freaking complicated,” he said in a briefing with reporters of the arrangements emerging between AI firms, major tech hyperscalers, banks, private credit lenders, real estate firms, and a host of other players involved in building what he conservatively estimated at 183 gigawatts worth of new data-center capacity over the next seven years, compared with about 57 gigawatts currently installed. Data center construction and the risks around AI have become a central issue in US political and economic debates, with some localities increasingly reluctant to host the facilities and worried about strains on local resources, and Federal Reserve officials considering whether the construction boom is adding to inflation. Some AI executives have suggested a slower pace of development might be safer. ‘MEANINGFUL DOWNSIDE RISK’ The investment underway already has outstripped what the major players can fund from their own cash flows. The shift to outside financing has increased leverage, redistributed risks across the economy, and made the venture dependent on revenue streams that have yet to be proven, Van Nieuwerburgh noted in the paper, which will be presented on Friday. “This opacity of all these special purpose vehicles is somewhat reminiscent of what happened in the subprime mortgage crisis,” he said in the conversation with journalists, when complex home mortgage financing arrangements went bad at rates that rocked global financial systems and triggered the 2007-2009 recession in the US. “These developments do not imply that financial distress is imminent. Strong growth in AI applications, high utilization, and continued improvements in model capability could support the projected infrastructure and generate stable cash flows,” he wrote. “But the combination of uncertain demand, rapid technological change, execution bottlenecks, and high leverage creates meaningful downside risk if expectations arerevised.” As an example, he wrote that the AI industry will need to be earning about $3.7 trillion in annual revenue by 2032 to achieve the expected return on the investment, and “given current estimates of annual combined revenues of OpenAI and Anthropic of around $100 billion, revenues would need to grow at roughly 80% per year.” (Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Paul Simao) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com