Israeli soldiers kill two children in the occupied West Bank: As Hamas, Israel, and Qatar continued truce talks for Gaza, the Israeli military launched a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern part of the West Bank, where Israeli soldiers shot and killed two boys, according to the Palestinian officials. The story is developing, check here for the latest.

Massive fire: The old (and vacant) Rainier Mall in South Seattle caught fire Tuesday evening. One firefighter sustained an injury as responders worked to get the blaze under control by about 9:30 pm, KIRO 7 reports:

It’s been a good run 🙁: District 4 Council candidate and SECB pick Ron Davis conceded to Maritza Rivera after the last ballot count Tuesday, according to his thread on X. Think your vote in local elections doesn’t matter? With 48% turnout in the district, the urbanist only trailed the cop-loving NIMBY by 235 votes in the race to replace Council Member Alex Pedersen.

Koch money: In an attempt to keep Donald Trump from becoming the Republican nominee, Conservative billionaire Charles Koch’s powerful political network, Americans for Prosperity, endorsed long-shot candidate Nikki Haley, which is kind of like trying to stop a freight train with, well, Nikki Haley. Take this with a massive grain of speculative salt, but some say Haley is overtaking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the top anti-Trump contender. Early polls support that notion, butttt if we’re still talking about the primary in terms of Trump and anti-Trump candidates, it’s pretty clear the former President is still juking out the competition from civil court.

The former South Carolina Governor is the first woman of color to go for the GOP nomination. She thinks identity politics are “woke self-loathing,” and she doesn’t believe in the glass ceiling, but she is still campaigning on the idea of putting a “badass woman” in the White House. (All for it, but she’d have to be a badass, rather than just bad, for that to happen.)

Fake woman won't speak at conference: Tech executives at local tech overlords Microsoft and Amazon dropped out of DevTernity after conference organizers admitted to generating a woman using AI to pad their not-so-diverse list of speakers, or that’s how organizer Eduards Sizovs explained on X. He did not apologize. Amazon Web Services executive Kristine Howard was the only human woman on the agenda.

Police kill man near South Hill Mall: A vehicle pursuit in Pierce County ended with Sheriff’s deputies shooting and killing the man after he exited his car at an intersection near the mall. Police said the man, who was declared dead at the scene, was wanted for a violent felony. Police said he was armed. It is unknown if the man fired his gun. Bullets hit a nearby building and multiple civilian vehicles, but it is still unclear who fired those bullets.

They took the money: In June, King County offered Burien $1 million to build 35 pallet shelters for its unhoused population with a deadline of Nov 27. Months of not taking the money later, during which they bickered fiercely over a potential location and passed a ban on sleeping outside, the Council accepted the offer in a last-minute 4-3 vote. They’ve selected a vacant lot for the shelters, but they struck a little compromise first. Unlike most of the country’s shelters with few restrictions, Burien won’t allow registered sex offenders and anyone drunk or high to stay. Even if you don’t like someone or what they’ve done, it doesn’t mean they don’t need somewhere to sleep!

Alex Murdaugh sentenced for financial crimes: The disgraced South Carolina attorney who murdered his wife and son and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering last month earned an additional 27 years in prison Tuesday. Over a decade, Murdaugh pocketed $12 million from vulnerable clients in personal injury cases. The prosecutor called it a practical life-sentence. Very true, but he is already in prison serving life-sentences without parole.

Leaving on a fat plane: For the first time in history, a commercial jet plane crossed the Atlantic without fossil fuels. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) composed of discard plant fats and sugars powered Virgin Atlantic’s plane on a flight from London to New York, emitting 70% less carbon while doing it. It’s really cool, but this isn’t going to be a thing now. The flight was a stunt, and most jet engines aren’t designed to run on SAF, which only make up 0.1% of aviation fuels today.

The black hole at the center of our galaxy spins so fast: Her name is Sagittarius A*, and she drags spacetime in her wake, a new study has found. A team of physicists observed the black hole with a NASA telescope designed to detect X-ray emissions and learned Sagittarius A*  dramatically squished time and space while it spun, a phenomenon scientists call the Lense-Thirring effect. This information is literally nothing to worry about–it’s cool for us and useful for astronomers to know.

Florida students walk out over anti-trans sports policy: Students at Monarch High School north of Fort Lauderdale staged the protest a day after their principal and four other staff were reassigned to non-school sites. They had been under investigation for allegedly allowing a trans student to play on the volleyball team, flouting a 2021 law that banned trans girls from girl’s sports teams. This year, Florida passed some of the most severe anti-trans laws in the country, including the only criminal bathroom ban in the US. (You can read more about that in my series Forced Out.)

King County Council honors water taxi heroes: Like a Captain Sully of the Sound, Dan Krehbiel, with the help of deckhands Cory Bantam and Nick Williams, prevented a barge from smashing into the busy Seattle waterfront earlier this month. When presented with thanks, the men said they were just doing their jobs, presumably before they walked into the sunset.

One eviction, as a treat: Pope Francis may be kicking Cardinal Raymond Burke, a retired American cardinal, out of his Vatican-subsidized apartment and depriving him of his salary because he was using the money to undermine Francis’s goals for the church. Cardinal Burke is sort of the antipope that represents a vocal minority of traditionalist Catholics, who want to live like Vatican II hadn’t happened. 

While Francis dresses modestly (for a man who lives in the Vatican), Burke sometimes wears velvet gloves and a train of watered silk. Francis has made a point of herding LGBTQ catholics back into the flock. Burke has said that the gay agenda is the real culprit behind a global conspiracy of clergy sexual abuse. (Somebody show this guy Spotlight, it’ll blow his mind.) Pope Francis must be in the mood for busting heads. Earlier this month, he relieved critic Bishop Joseph Strickland from his diocese in Tyler, Texas.