When Hurricane Sandy swept up the eastern seaboard in 2012, it left a trail of damage from Florida to Maine. Subways were inundated in New York City. Hurricane-force winds tore across New Jersey. Blizzard conditions walloped Appalachia.

Suppose you're a Palestinian living in Gaza. You can't easily leave. Israel and Egypt control the borders. Your local government is dominated by Hamas. And for the past week, Hamas rockets have flown out of Gaza while Israeli bombs have been falling in.

That is the experience for Jamal al-Sharif and his family.

"For a full week now, we couldn't sleep for more than two or three hours in the 24 hours," says al-Sharif. "Children are screaming, shouting all the time. And the situation is terrifying."

Rep. Val Demings, the Florida Democrat who was on President Biden's short list for a running mate in the 2020 presidential election, is planning a run for the U.S. Senate, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

A national Democrat with knowledge of the party's strategy on Senate races told NPR's Claudia Grisales that Demings "is strongly considering a Senate run."

An announcement would pit Demings, a former Orlando police chief who was first elected to the House in 2016, against incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican.

The chairman of Michigan’s Civil Rights Commission is leaving the post to become Detroit’s interim police chief, the city’s mayor announced Monday.

James White, 53. left the Detroit Police Department in August to take the civil rights post. He was named the department’s interim chief by Mayor Mike Duggan. He will assume the post on June 1, the date Chief James Craig announced last week he will retire.

“I’m humbled,” the Detroit native said during a news conference. “If this city can take a chance on me, I can take a chance on the city.”

A lawsuit that accuses the state of Michigan of failing to regulate and enforce safety regulations on a dam that failed, causing an estimated $200 million in damages and destroying 2,500 structures, may not be resolved soon, an attorney representing nearly 300 clients said Monday.

Attorney Ven Johnson joined affected residents for an update on litigation over the Edenville Dam in Midland County days before the one-year anniversary of its failure. The Edenville dam’s failure caused another dam to fail just two hours later, and damage was widespread.

Business leaders on Monday protested House-passed cuts in funding to the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Wayne State University, saying the research schools are key to the state’s economic competitiveness.

The Republican-controlled House last week approved a higher education plan that would keep overall operations aid at roughly $1.5 billion but revise how it is split among 15 state universities.

When President Biden hosts South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday, the new White House approach to North Korea will likely be top of the agenda.

Biden is the latest United States president forced to contend with a nuclear-armed North Korea that is bombastic and hostile toward the U.S. and its allies in the region.

JERUSALEM — Fighting between Israel and Hamas entered its ninth straight day despite a call by President Joe Biden for a cease-fire.

Israeli warplanes carried out another round of airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza, leveling a six-story building, while militants fired dozens of rockets into Israel.

MUMBAI — India can't catch a break.

On the same day the country confirmed its highest-ever daily death toll from COVID-19, it was also hit by a deadly storm. Cyclone Tauktae barreled into India's west coast overnight packing wind gusts of up to 130 miles per hour — some of the strongest on record — before weakening over land later Tuesday.

Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid nearly $5 million worth of bitcoin to recover its data from cybercriminals who had hijacked the company's computer systems. The shutdown disrupted gas supplies across large parts of the South and East Coast.

The hackers used ransomware, which takes control of a victim's computer and locks them out of their data unless they agree to pay an anonymous hacker, usually in cryptocurrency. Hackers may also threaten to leak a company's sensitive data to the public unless paid to keep quiet.