The Headlines - Israel Starts Lebanon Ground Invasion, and Hundreds Missing After Helene

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Plus, Jimmy Carter turns 100.   Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:On Today’s Episode:Israel Launches Invasion Into Southern Lebanon, by Victoria Kim and Natan OdenheimerRescuers Push Through Helene Debris to Find People and Restore Power, by Jacey FortinWhat to Watch For in Tuesday’s Vance-Walz Debate, by Shane Goldmacher, Katie Glueck and Michael C. BenderJimmy Carter Approaches the Century Mark, Eclipsing His Presidential Peers, by Rick Rojas and Peter BakerPort Workers Strike on East and Gulf Coasts, by Peter EavisPete Rose, Baseball Star Who Earned Glory and Shame, Dies at 83, by Bruce Weber

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Tuesday, October 1st. Here's what we're covering. At 2 a.m. local time in Israel, the government announced that Israeli forces had crossed the border into Lebanon, the beginning of a ground invasion. A Times reporter near the border saw Israeli troops equipped with night vision goggles traveling in Humvees, along with dozens of tanks and bulldozers. As of this morning, Israeli fighter helicopters have been carrying out strikes and clouds of smoke are rising over villages in southern Lebanon. Israel says it's focused on Hezbollah targets in the border region.

The Iran-backed militant group has been firing rockets from there at Israel for the last year, Israel says it's focused on Hezbollah targets in the border region. The Iran-backed militant group has been firing rockets from there at Israel for the last year, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Israel is saying this is a limited operation, and we understand from officials that we've been talking to that it mostly at the moment involves commando units advancing into the border area, not advancing towards major cities, let alone towards Beirut. Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief for The Times. He says the invasion comes after weeks of intense Israeli airstrikes that have killed top Hezbollah commanders and hundreds of civilians in Lebanon. It remains to be seen whether this invasion will

indeed remain limited. There is always mission creep in these kinds of invasions. We've seen Israel say one thing at the start of ground operations in Gaza before, seeing those operations morph into something bigger than it was previously stated. The current goal, according to the Israeli government, is to make the border area safe enough for roughly 65,000 displaced Israelis who have been forced to leave their homes over the last year due to Hezbollah rocket fire. But quite what counts as safe enough is unclear, and it could be that that concept evolves

over time. And in the meantime, there are hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians on the other side of the border who are now displaced from their homes. And it's unclear when they will be able to return themselves. American officials tell The Times they've been assured by Israel that it does not intend to occupy southern Lebanon in the long term. The Pentagon said that it's sending several thousand additional U.S. forces to the Middle East to help defend Israel, adding to the 40,000 U.S. troops already stationed in the region.

I want to express condolences to all the families, to all the families whose loved ones have died or are missing. Matter of fact, it's almost equally as bad missing not knowing whether or not your brother, sister, husband, wife, son, daughter are alive. In the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, officials say hundreds of people are still missing as rescue teams try and reach remote areas that were devastated by Hurricane Helene. President Biden said as many as 600 people are unaccounted for,

with cell service down, roads destroyed, and no way to check on them. One North Carolina resident said he and his neighbors had used saws and pry bars to free people who were trapped after the storm toppled trees and sent water raging through narrow valleys. In Asheville, the city's infrastructure is so badly damaged that officials are bringing in drinking water on trucks, and more than one and a half million people across six states still don't have power.

Biden, who said he'll travel to see the storm damage tomorrow, warned that the recovery will take a, quote, hell of a long time. In New York City tonight, J.D. Vance and Tim Walz will face off in the one and only vice presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. Unlike the recent presidential debate, the VP candidates will have their mics on the whole time, opening the door for off-the-cuff exchanges or aggressive crosstalk. Times reporter Kellen Browning says he'll be watching for how the dynamic between Walls and Vance will play out in front of voters. Since going on the campaign trail, Tim Walls has

simply not had to respond to tough scrutiny the same way J.D. Vance has. Vance has taken questions from reporters at campaign rallies in front of attendees, and he's spent much more time on television news shows and doing tough, combative interviews. Tim Walz, by contrast, has simply not been taking questions from reporters. He's done a few small television interviews, but it'll be interesting to see on a bigger stage if he is able to stand up to the scrutiny that we anticipate will come from J.D. Vance. One thing I'll be watching for from Tim Walz tonight is how he handles questions relating to immigration and the southern border. Tim Walz has not spoken extensively about border policy on the campaign trail to this point.

And so we expect J.D. Vance to talk quite a bit about the southern border and the Biden-Harris administration's approach to the migrant crisis. And my colleagues and I spent several hours watching old debate footage from Tim Walz, and he speaks about the border in humanitarian terms, essentially emphasizing the humanity of the problem and how immigrants are not bringing crime, but actually they're helping the economy. So the question will be, will he continue with that humanitarian tone,

or will he make efforts to be more strict toward the border and match some of Kamala Harris' more recent language on the subject? The debate begins at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can watch live with moment-by-moment analysis from Times reporters on the New York Times app or at nytimes.com. While the race for the White House continues, today marks a major milestone for one former president. It's Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday. Carter entered hospice care last year, and at the time, his family and friends thought he had only days left to live. Now, he's the first president in American history to reach triple digits. People close to Carter say

he's frail and mostly stays in his modest ranch home in Plains, Georgia. But in the last few months, he's become more engaged. He follows the Atlanta Braves, listens to Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers, and checks on the work of the philanthropic center that he and his wife Rosalyn founded. Carter has said in the past that he doesn't particularly care about this big birthday. Instead, he's looking ahead to election day, when he's planning to cast his vote for Kamala Harris. In 1977, I went on strike with the old guys for three months for 80 cents. And it wasn't nice. Fast forward.

Now they're making billions and billions of dollars. Almost 50,000 longshoremen have walked off the job after 11th hour contract negotiations fell apart last night. Longshoremen are the workers who move containers off of ships, sort them and put them on trucks and trains to crisscross the U.S. Ports cannot operate without them. The strike is going to cut off most trade coming into East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, where more than half of container shipments come into the U.S. The sticking points in the failed negotiations have been wages,

benefits, and job security. Longshoremen is one of the few blue-collar jobs that can pay more than $100,000 a year, and the union's worried that new technology will mean that companies cut jobs. One of the things that's upsetting the longshoremen is the greater use of automated technology in the ports. I was at a port in Virginia where there is quite a lot of automated technology in the ports. I was at a port in Virginia where there is quite a lot of automated machinery and you could see the cranes working without humans. That is what they're against.

Peter Evis has been covering the negotiations. He says the port operators argue that they need to modernize the ports and that busier ports will mean more jobs, not less. But the two sides are at an impasse. This strike at the East and Gulf Coast ports could send a chill through the economy. Shutting down the ports could cost the U.S. economy up to $5 billion a day, according to some estimates.

And then the longer the strike is, the more the delays will cause shortages, and that could push up prices and increase freight costs. And some of those freight costs could be passed on to consumers just as they're getting over high inflation over the last few years. And finally... There it is! Rose has a quick stop! That's number 4,192! Pete Rose, one of baseball's greatest and most controversial players, has died at age 83.

Rose, who was literally born on Major League Baseball's opening day in 1941, had more hits than any other player in the history of the sport. He spent most of his career with his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds, and over the course of his career, he played in 17 All-Star games in five different positions. He went on to manage the Reds, but he fell from grace in a spectacularly public way when he was banned from baseball for life in 1989 because of his gambling habit. Rose vehemently denied that he'd ever bet on baseball, despite a pile of evidence, until the early 2000s when he admitted to it. You're now saying for the first time publicly, yes, I bet on baseball. I bet on baseball in 1987 and 1988. Did you bet on your own team? Yes. As part of the fallout from his

gambling, Rose was made ineligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, where he otherwise surely would have been inducted. In an interview just a few months ago, Rose said he was still hoping they would let him in. I always believe in baseball, and I believe somewhere in the future, baseball will give me a second chance. That's all I can go on. Those are the headlines.

Today on The Daily, more on-the-ground details from the damage of Hurricane Helene. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracey Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.