Full coverage of Israel-Hamas war, Steve Scalise nominated for House speaker, and more of the week's top news

WASHINGTON — Republicans nominated Rep. Steve Scalise on Wednesday to be the next House speaker but now must try to unite their deeply divided majority to elect the conservative in a floor vote after ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the job.

In private balloting at the Capitol, House Republicans narrowly pushed aside Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, in favor of Scalise, the current majority leader, lawmakers said. The Louisiana congressman, who is battling blood cancer, is seen as a hero to some after surviving a mass shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017.

"We have a lot of work to do," Scalise said afterward.

A floor vote of the whole House could come as soon as Wednesday afternoon.

Republicans have been stalemated after McCarthy's historic removal last week and it's unclear whether Jordan, the hardliner backed by the party's presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, will throw his support to Scalise in what is certain to be a close vote of the full House. Democrats are set to oppose the Republican nominee.

"I don't know how the hell you get to 218," said Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, referring to the majority vote typically needed in the 435-member House to become speaker. "It could be a long week."

It's an extraordinary moment of political chaos that has brought the House to a standstill at a time of uncertainty at home and crisis abroad, just 10 months after Republicans swept to power. Aspiring to operate as a team and run government more like a business, the GOP majority has drifted far from that goal with the unprecedented ouster of a speaker.

Americans are watching. One-quarter of Republicans say they approve of the decision by a small group of Republicans to remove McCarthy as speaker. Three in 10 Republicans believe it was a mistake, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The hard-right coalition of lawmakers that ousted McCarthy, R-Calif., has shown what an oversize role a few lawmakers can have in choosing his successor.

"I am not thrilled with either choice right now," said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., who voted to oust McCarthy.

It's unclear whether Scalise can amass the votes that would be needed from almost all Republicans to overcome the Democratic opposition. Usually, the majority needed would be 218 votes, but there are currently two vacant seats, dropping the threshold to 217.

Many Republicans want to prevent the spectacle of a messy House floor fight like the grueling January brawl when McCarthy became speaker.

"People are not comfortable going to the floor with a simple majority and then having C-SPAN and the rest of the world watch as we have this fight," said Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla. "We want to have this family fight behind closed doors."

Behind closed doors, the Republicans voted to set aside a proposed a rules change that would have tried to ensure a majority vote before the nominee was presented for a full floor vote.

Without the rules change, the Republican lawmakers would be expected to agree to a majority-wins process.

Neither Scalise nor Jordan was seen as the heir apparent to McCarthy, who was removed in a push by the far-right flank after the speaker led Congress to approve legislation that averted a government shutdown.

All three men have been here before. In 2018, they were similarly vying for leadership, with McCarthy and Scalise extending the rivalry to this day.

Scalise was in line for the job, but faced a challenge from Jordan, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, who was viewed as a more hard-edged option, after McCarthy's ouster.

Jordan is known for his close alliance with Trump, particularly when the then-president was working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump backed Jordan's bid for the gavel.

Several lawmakers, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who engineered McCarthy's ouster, said they would be willing to support either Scalise or Jordan.

"Long live Speaker Scalise," Gaetz said after the vote.

For now, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who was named as the speaker pro-tempore, is effectively in charge. He has shown little interest in expanding his power beyond the role he was assigned — an interim leader tasked with ensuring the election of the next speaker.

The role was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure the continuity of government. McHenry's name was at the top of a list submitted by McCarthy when he became speaker in January.

Photos: Steve Scalise through the years

These 8 Republicans stood apart to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker

Rep. Ken Buck

Rep. Tim Burchett

Rep. Eli Crane

Rep. Matt Gaetz

Rep. Bob Good

Rep. Nancy Mace

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Dorothy Hoffner, a 104-year-old Chicago woman whose recent skydive could see her certified by Guinness World Records as the oldest person to ever jump from a plane, has died.

Hoffner's close friend, Joe Conant, said she was found dead Monday morning by staff at the Brookdale Lake View senior living community. Conant said Hoffner apparently died in her sleep on Sunday night.

Conant, who is a nurse, said he met Hoffner — whom he called Grandma at her request — several years ago while he was working as a caregiver for another resident at the senior living center. He said she had amazing energy and remained mentally sharp.

"She was indefatigable. She just kept going," he said Tuesday. "She was not someone who would take naps in the afternoon, or not show up for any function, dinner or anything else. She was always there, fully present. She kept going, always."

On Oct. 1, Hoffner made a tandem skydive that could land her in the record books as the world's oldest skydiver. She jumped out of a plane from 13,500 feet (4,100 meters) at Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, Illinois, 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

"Age is just a number," Hoffner told a cheering crowd moments after landing. It was not her first time jumping from a plane — that happened when she was a spry 100 years of age.

Conant said he was working through paperwork to ensure that Guinness World Records certifies Hoffner posthumously as the world's oldest skydiver, but he expects that will take some time. The current record was set in May 2022 by 103-year-old Linnéa Ingegärd Larsson of Sweden.

Conant said Hoffner didn't skydive to break a record. He said she had so thoroughly enjoyed her first jump that she just wanted to do it again.

"She had no intention of breaking the record. And she had no interest in any publicity or anything. She wasn't doing it for any other reason than she wanted to go skydiving," he said.

Skydive Chicago and the United States Parachute Association celebrated Hoffner in a joint statement Tuesday.

"We are deeply saddened by Dorothy's passing and feel honored to have been a part of making her world-record skydive a reality.

"Skydiving is an activity that many of us safely tuck away in our bucket lists. But Dorothy reminds us that it's never too late to take the thrill of a lifetime. We are forever grateful that skydiving was a part of her exciting, well-lived life," they said.

Conant said Hoffner worked for more than four decades as a telephone operator with Illinois Bell, which later became AT&T, and retired 43 years ago. The lifelong Chicago resident never married, and Conant said she had no immediate family members.

A memorial service for Hoffner will be held in early November.

"She was a dear friend who was an inspiration," Conant said.

Photos: Notable Deaths in 2023

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CoPilot analyzed used car data from U.S. dealerships to rank the used vehicle models that have come down in price the most since the pandemic's peak.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas as the army prepares for an expected ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu delivered the threat in a nationally televised address late Friday.

Israel has been pounding Gaza with airstrikes since Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented cross-border attack last Saturday, killing over 1,300 people in a brutal rampage. Early Friday, Israel ordered half of Gaza’s population to evacuate their homes.

“This is just the beginning,” Netanyahu said. “We will end this war stronger than ever.”

“We will destroy Hamas,” he added, saying Israel has widespread international support for the operation.

Mass exodus as Palestinians flee

Palestinians fled in a mass exodus from northern Gaza Friday after Israel’s military told some 1 million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory, an unprecedented order ahead of an expected ground invasion against the ruling Hamas militant group.

The U.N. warned that telling almost half the Gaza population to flee en masse would be calamitous, and it urged Israel to reverse the order. Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with blankets and possessions streamed down a main road out of Gaza City, the biggest city, as airstrikes continued to hammer the territory.

Hamas’ media office said warplanes struck cars fleeing south, killing more than 70 people. Israel’s military said that its troops had entered Gaza on temporary raids to battle militants and hunt for traces of some 150 people abducted in Hamas' brutal surprise attack nearly a week ago.

In urging the evacuation, Israel’s military said it planned to target underground Hamas hideouts around Gaza City. Separately, Palestinians and some Egyptian officials fear Israel wants to push Gaza’s people out through the southern border with Egypt.

Hamas told people to ignore the evacuation order, but some Palestinians hesitated to leave out of fear that nowhere was safe in the tiny territory. Gaza is sealed off from food, water and medical supplies and under a virtual total power blackout.

“Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if you’ll make it, if you’re going to live,” said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, as she broke into heaving sobs.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that roughly 1,800 people have been killed in the territory — more than half of them under the age of 18, or women. Hamas’ assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 Israelis, most of whom were civilians, and roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were killed during the fighting, the Israeli government said.

The week-old war has sent tensions soaring across the region. Israel has traded fire in recent days with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, sparking fears of an ever wider conflict, though that frontier is currently calm. Weekly Muslim prayers brought protests across the Middle East.

Israeli raid goes into Gaza

Israel's raid was the first word of troops entering Gaza since Israel launched its round-the-clock bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ attack, in which militant fighters massacred hundreds in southern Israel and snatched some 150 people to Gaza as hostages.

A military spokesman said that after Israeli ground troops conducted their raids in Gaza on Friday, they then left. The moves did not appear to be the beginning of an expected ground invasion. But the evacuation order was taken as a a further signal of an already expected Israeli ground offensive, though no such decision has been announced. Israel has been massing troops along the Gaza border.

Hamas said Israel’s airstrikes killed 13 of the hostages in the past day. It said the dead included foreigners but did not give their nationalities.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari denied the claim, telling Al-Jazeera Arabic, “We have our own information.”

In Israel, the public remained in shock over the Hamas rampage and frightened by continual rocket fire out of Gaza. The public is overwhelmingly in favor of the military offensive, and Israeli TV stations have set up special broadcasts with slogans like “together we will win” and “strong together.” Their reports focus heavily on the aftermath of the Hamas attack, stories of heroism and national unity, and they make scant mention of the unfolding crisis in Gaza.

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported 16 Palestinians killed Friday in the occupied West Bank, bringing the total of West Bank Palestinians killed since Hamas' rampage to 51. The U.N. says attacks by Israeli settlers have surged there since the Hamas assault.

Gaza pounded relentlessly since Hamas attacks

Weekly Muslim prayers brought protests across the Middle East, and tensions ran high in Jerusalem's Old City. The Islamic endowment that manages a flashpoint holy site in the city, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, said Israeli authorities barred all Palestinian men under the age of 50 from entering.

Israel has bombarded Gaza round-the-clock since Hamas' attack, in which its fighters massacred hundreds in southern Israel and snatched some 150 people to Gaza as hostages.

A military spokesman said that after Israeli ground troops conducted their raids in Gaza on Friday, they then left. The moves did not appear to be the beginning of an expected ground invasion. Israel has been massing troops along the Gaza border since last Saturday’s deadly incursion by Hamas militants.

Hamas said Israel’s airstrikes killed 13 of the hostages in the past day. It said the dead included foreigners but did not give their nationalities.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari denied the claim, telling Al-Jazeera Arabic, “We have our own information.”

Israel said Thursday it would allow no supplies into Gaza until Hamas frees the hostages.

Israel urges mass evacuation of Gaza civilians

The military urged civilians in Gaza’s north to move south — an order that the U.N. said affects 1.1 million people. If carried out, that would mean the territory’s entire population cramming into roughly the southern half of the 40 kilometer (25 mile) long strip.

Israel said it needed to target Hamas’ military infrastructure, much of which is buried deep underground. Another spokesperson, Jonathan Conricus, said the military would take “extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians” and that residents would be allowed to return when the war is over.

Hamas militants operate in civilian areas, where Israel has long accused them of using Palestinians as human shields.

“The camouflage of the terrorists is the civil population,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “Therefore, we need to separate them. So those who want to save their life, please go south.”

But U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it would be impossible to stage such an evacuation without “devastating humanitarian consequences.” He called on Israel to rescind any such orders, saying they could “transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”

Palestinians in Gaza grapple with nowhere to go

Many Palestinians in Gaza still struggled with indecision, not knowing whether to leave or stay.

Gaza City resident Khaled Abu Sultan at first didn’t believe the evacuation order was real, and now isn’t sure whether to evacuate his family to the south. “We don’t know if there are safe areas there,” he said. “We don’t know anything.”

Another family contacted friends and relatives in southern Gaza seeking shelter, but then changed their minds. Many expressed concern they would not be able to return or be gradually displaced to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

More than half of the Palestinians in Gaza are the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, when hundreds of thousands fled or were expelled from what is now Israel. For many, the mass evacuation order dredged up fears of a second expulsion. Already, at least 423,000 people — nearly one in five Gazans — have been forced from their homes by Israeli airstrikes, the U.N. said Thursday.

“Where is the sense of security in Gaza? Is this what Hamas is offering us?” said one resident, Tarek Mraish, standing by an avenue as vehicles flowed by. “What has Hamas done to us? It brought us catastophe,” he said, using the same Arabic word “nakba” used for the 1948 displacement.

The U.N. estimated that tens of thousands had fled homes in the north by Friday night.

Hospitals struggle with patients

Gaza’s Health Ministry said it was impossible to evacuate the many wounded from hospitals, which are already struggling with high numbers of dead and injured. “We cannot evacuate hospitals and leave the wounded and sick to die,” spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said.

Farsakh, of the Palestinian Red Crescent, said some medics were refusing to abandon patients and were instead calling colleagues to say goodbye.

“We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals,” she said.

Al Awda Hospital was struggling to evacuate dozens of patients and staff after the military contacted it and told it do so by Friday night, said the aid group Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, which supports the facility. The military extended the deadline to Saturday morning, it said.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, also said it would not evacuate its schools, where hundreds of thousands have taken shelter. But it relocated its headquarters to southern Gaza, according to spokesperson Juliette Touma.

“The scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling. Gaza is fast becoming a hellhole and is on the brink of collapse,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general.

Israel says responsibility in Gaza lies with Hamas

Pressed by reporters on whether the army would protect hospitals, U.N. shelters and other civilian locations, Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, warned, “It’s a war zone.”

Hagari added: “If Hamas prevents residents from evacuating, the responsibility lies with them.” The U.N. had said the evacuation order it received gave Palestinians 24 hours to move, but the military told the AP there was no formal deadline.

Clive Baldwin a senior legal adviser at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said “ordering a million people in Gaza to evacuate, when there’s no safe place to go, is not an effective warning."

“The roads are rubble, fuel is scarce, and the main hospital is in the evacuation zone,” he said. "World leaders should speak up now before it is too late.”

Egypt has been alarmed by the potential of tens of thousands of Palestinians flooding out of Gaza into its Sinai Peninsula. It has moved thousands of security forces toward the border to prevent a breach, a senior Egyptian security official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. At the same time, it is trying to negotiate entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Egypt’s Rafah crossing, the only entry not controlled by Israel, has been closed because of airstrikes.

The evacuation order was taken as a further signal of an already expected Israeli ground offensive, though no such decision has been announced.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to “crush” Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. His government is under intense public pressure to topple the group rather than merely bottle it up in Gaza as it has for years.

A visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, along with shipments of weapons, offered a powerful green light for Israel to drive ahead with its retaliation. Defense Secretary Austin, who met with Israeli leaders Friday, reiterated the United States’ ironclad support for Israel, saying military assistance would flow in “at the speed of war.”

Still, a ground offensive in densely populated and impoverished Gaza would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.

Israeli shelling along Lebanon border kills 1 journalist, wounds 6

An Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon on Friday, killing a Reuters videographer and injuring six other journalists.

An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw the body of Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and the six who were wounded, some of whom were rushed to hospitals in ambulances. Images from the scene showed a charred car.

“We are deeply saddened to tell you that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” the Reuters news agency said in a statement. The agency added that Abdallah was part of a Reuters crew in southern Lebanon that was providing a live signal.

Reuters said that two of its journalists, Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, were wounded in the shelling in the border area.

Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV, said two of its employees, Elie Brakhya and reporter Carmen Joukhadar, also were among the wounded.

France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, said two of its journalists also were among the wounded, but the agency did not release their names.

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati in a statement condemned Israel's shelling that struck the journalists “during its aggression on southern Lebanon.”

Photos: Scenes from the Israel-Hamas war

CAÑON CITY, Colo. — The owner of a Colorado funeral home where 115 decaying bodies were found after neighbors reported nauseating smells tried to conceal the improper storage of corpses and claimed he was doing animal taxidermy at the facility, according to a suspension letter sent to him by state regulators.

The Return to Nature Funeral Home facility in the small town of Penrose had been unregistered with the state for 10 months on Wednesday when owner Jon Hallford spoke by phone with a state regulator.

A day earlier, an “abhorrent smell” from the facility was reported, launched an investigation

Hallford acknowledged that he had a “problem” at the property, though the Colorado Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration document obtained by The Associated Press didn't explain what Hallford meant with his taxidermy claim or how he tried to conceal improper storage of human remains.

Text messages and phone calls were not answered at the funeral home, which had no working voice mail. As of Friday, when authorities announced what they called a “disturbing discovery" in Penrose, a town of about 3,000 people in the mountains west of Colorado Springs, neither Hallford nor anyone else has been arrested or charged.

Officials declined to describe the scene inside the Return to Nature Funeral Home facility. A multi-agency effort recover and identify the remains was underway.

The funeral home performed “green” burials without embalming chemicals or metal caskets. Local residents said they smelled foul odors around the building for months but thought little of it, assuming a dead animal or septic system was to blame

Funeral home officials were cooperating as investigators sought to determine any criminal wrongdoing, Fremont County Sheriff Allen Cooper said at a news conference.

“Without providing too much detail to avoid further victimizing these families there, the funeral home where the bodies were improperly stored was horrific,” Cooper said.

Some identifications would require taking fingerprints, finding medical or dental records and DNA, Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller said.

“This could take several months. As we identify each decedent, families will be notified as soon as absolutely possible,” Keller said.

Other Colorado county coroners had agreed to help while the FBI and state police and emergency management officials worked at the scene. Meanwhile, Fremont County declared an official disaster to possibly make state funds available for the effort, Keller said.

Family members who have used the funeral home were asked to contact investigators.

The bodies were inside a 2,500-square foot (230-square meter) building with the appearance and dimensions of a standard one-story home.

Authorities declined to say if the building was equipped to properly story bodies. They also wouldn’t disclose in what state the bodies were found or how they were stored. Under Colorado law, green burials are legal but state code requires that any body not buried within 24 hours must be properly refrigerated.

Deputies were called in Tuesday night in reference to a suspicious incident officials haven’t yet described. Fremont County Sheriff’s Office investigators returned the next day with a search warrant and found the remains.

There was no health risk to the public, officials said, at the building with trash bags near the entrance and law enforcement vehicles parked in front. Yellow police tape cordoned off the area and a putrid odor was in the air.

A hearse was parked at the back of the building, in a parking lot overgrown with weeds. Nearby was a post office and a few homes on wide, grassy lots, some with parked semi-trucks.

The license for the facility expired in November of last year, according to a cease and desist order issued Thursday by Colorado state regulators. When reached by regulators, owner Jon Hallford acknowledged that he has a “problem” at the Penrose property and claimed he practiced taxidermy there.

Joyce Pavetti, 73, could see the funeral home from the stoop of her house and said she caught whiffs of a putrid smell in the last few weeks.

“We just assumed it was a dead animal,” she said. On Wednesday night, Pavetti said she could see lights from law enforcement swarming around the building and knew something was going on.

The building had been occupied by different businesses over the years, said Pavetti, who once took yoga classes there. She hasn’t seen anyone in the area recently and noticed the hearse behind the building only in recent months, she said.

Neighbor Ron Alexander thought the smell was coming from a septic tank, adding that Wednesday night’s blur of law enforcement lights “looked like the 4th of July.”

The father of a 25-year-old U.S. Navy serviceman who died last summer said Return to Nature handled his son’s body between the time of its arrival back in Colorado and an Aug. 25 funeral service at Pikes Peak National Cemetery east of Colorado Springs.

“I mean, there’s obviously questions after hearing that there is something going on but there’s not any information that I can go off of to really make any kind of judgement on it,” said Paul Saito Kahler, of Fountain, Colorado.

The Return to Nature Funeral Home provided burial of non-embalmed bodies in biodegradable caskets, shrouds or “nothing at all,” according to its website. The company also provided cremation services. Messages left for the Colorado Springs-based company were not returned.

The company charges $1,895 for a “natural burial.” That doesn’t include the cost of a casket and cemetery space, according to the website.

Return to Nature was established six years ago in Colorado Springs, according to public records.

Fremont County property records show that the funeral home building and lot are owned by Hallfordhomes, LLC, a business with a Colorado Springs address that the Colorado Secretary of State declared delinquent on Oct. 1 for failing to file a routine reporting form that was due at the end of July.

The LLC changed addresses around Colorado Springs three times since its establishment in 2016 with a post office box. Hallfordhomes still owes about $5,000 in 2022 property taxes on its building in Penrose, according to Fremont County records.

Return to Nature Funeral Home was licensed in Colorado Springs in 2017. There were no disciplinary actions against the company listed on a state license database. There was not a separate license for the Penrose facility and it wasn’t known if one was needed. Messages left with licensing authorities were not immediately returned.