A senior White House official urged Kyiv on Thursday to lower conscription age to 18 to replenish the losses of manpower in Donbas, where Russian forces have spurred their advance on several strategic, heavily fortified strongholds.

“The need right now is manpower,” the unnamed official told reporters in Washington. “Mobilisation and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time, as we look at the battlefield today.”

Ukraine’s top brass has not even discussed the issue.

“No meetings to discuss this issue have been held, no suggestions on lowering [the conscription age] have been made,” a source in Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

So far, Kyiv has officially responded with a refusal and a rebuke.

“It doesn’t make sense to see calls for Ukraine to lower the mobilisation age, presumably in order to draft more people, when we can see that previously announced [Western military] equipment is not arriving on time,” Dmitry Litvin, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted on X.

“Because of these delays, Ukraine lacks weapons to equip already mobilised soldiers,” he wrote.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In a town that has been through it all and is clawing its way back, a man named Omidullah is looking to hit paydirt.

The Kabul real estate agent is selling a nine-bedroom, nine-bath, white-and-gold villa in the Afghan capital. On the roof’s gable, glittering Arabic script tempts buyers and brokers with the word “mashallah” — “God has willed it.”

The villa is listed at $450,000, a startling number in a country where more than half of the population relies on humanitarian aid to survive, most Afghans don’t have bank accounts, and mortgages are rare. Yet the offers are coming in.

“It’s a myth that Afghans don’t have money,” Omidullah said. “We have very big businessmen who have big businesses abroad. There are houses here worth millions of dollars.”

In Kabul, a curious thing is happening to fuel the high-end real estate market. Peace, it seems, is driving up property prices.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Workers who clean airplanes, remove trash and help with wheelchairs at Charlotte’s airport, one of the nation’s busiest, went on strike Monday during a busy week of Thanksgiving travel to demand higher wages.

The Service Employees International Union announced the strike in a statement early Monday, saying the workers would demand “an end to poverty wages and respect on the job during the holiday travel season.” The strike was expected to last 24 hours, said union spokesperson Sean Keady.

Employees of ABM and Prospect Airport Services cast ballots Friday to authorize the work stoppage at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, a hub for American Airlines. The two companies contract with American, one of the world’s biggest carriers, to provide services such as cleaning airplane interiors, removing trash and escorting passengers in wheelchairs.

A week before the election, my dad was visiting and talked to me about his gut feeling that former President Donald Trump might win. He was clear about his choice to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. “But what are they doing?” he asked me, exasperated.

“They need to level with people about the economy,” he continued. “I know so many people who can’t afford a place to live any more. People do not want to hear, ‘Well, actually the economy is good.’”

Then suddenly he pivoted away from Harris to liberals more generally, and away from the economy into culture.

“You know, another thing: I’m tired of feeling like I’m going to get jumped on for saying something wrong, for using the wrong words,” my dad confided, becoming uncharacteristically emotional. “I don’t want to say things that will offend anyone. I want to be respectful. But I think Trump is reaching a lot of people like me who didn’t learn a special way to talk at college and feel constantly talked down to by people who have.”

At 71 years old, my dad is still working full time, helping to run a delicatessen at a local farmers’ market. He didn’t go to college. Raised Mennonite and socially conservative, he is nonetheless open-minded and curious. When his cousins came out as gay in the 1980s, he accepted them for who they are.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (KCTV) - An Independence woman, who doctors told would be partially blind for the rest of her life, is regaining her vision due to a relatively new implant approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The Supreme Court rejected Republicans’ request to block Pennsylvania officials from counting provisional ballots by voters whose mail ballots are rejected for technical flaws.

The high court order follows Wednesday’s order permitting a GOP-backed purge of Virginia voter rolls ahead of Election Day. The Virginia order was entered over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees.

In the Pennsylvania case, the state Supreme Court split 4-3 in upholding a lower court ruling that required the counting of provisional ballots submitted by voters who are told their mail ballots can’t be counted. “Provisional ballots exist as a failsafe to preserve access to the right to vote,” the state court said, noting that such ballots can only be counted if no other ballots from a voter are counted.

“The General Assembly wrote the Election Code with the purpose of enabling citizens to exercise their right to vote, not for the purpose of creating obstacles to voting,” the state court majority said.

A key swing state, Pennsylvania was decided by about 80,000 votes in Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump and by about 44,000 votes in Trump’s 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. The 2024 race between Trump and Kamala Harris is also expected to be close.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Republican congressional candidate was charged with stealing ballots during a test of a voting system in Madison County, Indiana, state police said on Tuesday.

During the test on Oct. 3, which involved four voting machines and 136 candidate ballots marked for testing, officials discovered that two ballots were missing, according to the Indiana State Police.

Voter fraud is rare in the United States, and courts dismissed multiple lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud brought by former President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies who accused Democrats of stealing the 2020 election.Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in a Nov. 5 presidential election.

For four years, Trump has maintained his false claim, supported by a majority of Republicans in Congress, that the 2020 election was stolen. As a result, some states and counties have stepped up precautions.

Surveillance video showed Larry Savage, 51, a precinct committeeman, folding and placing both ballots in his pocket after receiving instructions about the validity of the test ballots, the police said.

CLEVELAND -- The Browns' back-and-forth battle with Cleveland over a planned move into a new suburban stadium has gone to court.

The NFL team said Thursday it has filed a lawsuit in federal court asking for clarification of the "Modell Law," which the city has threatened to use to keep the Browns from leaving after their lease at lakefront Huntington Bank Field expires in 2028.

The team has played its games in downtown Cleveland since the 1940s, and in its current 65,000-seat stadium, which is leased to the team by the city, since 1999.

The section of state law known as the "Modell Law" says any professional sports owner that uses a tax-supported facility for home games and gets funding from the state or a political subdivision can't leave unless it gets permission to play elsewhere or gives six months' notice.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters remain largely divided over whether they prefer Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris to handle key economic issues, although Harris earns slightly better marks on elements such as taxes for the middle class, according to a new poll.

A majority of registered voters in the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research describe the economy as poor. About 7 in 10 say the nation is going in the wrong direction.

But the findings reaffirm that Trump has lost what had been an advantage on the economy, which many voters say is the most important issue this election season above abortion, immigration, crime and foreign affairs.

“Do I trust Trump on the economy? No. I trust that he’ll give tax cuts to his buddies like Elon Musk,” said poll respondent Janice Tosto, a 59-year-old Philadelphia woman and self-described independent.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in September found neither Harris nor Trump had a clear advantage on handling “the economy and jobs.” But this poll asked more specific questions about whether voters trusted Trump or Harris to do a better job handling the cost of housing, jobs and unemployment, taxes on the middle class, the cost of groceries and gas, and tariffs.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s government said a drone targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house Saturday, with no casualties, as fighting with Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Gaza -based Hamas showed no pause after the killing of the Hamas mastermind of last year’s Oct. 7 attack.

Israel’s military said dozens of projectiles were launched from Lebanon a day after Hezbollah announced a new phase in fighting. Netanyahu’s office said the drone targeted his house in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea. Neither he nor his wife were there. It wasn’t clear if the house was hit.

A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells1. She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body.

“I can eat sugar now,” said the woman, who lives in Tianjing, on a call with Nature. It has been more than a year since the transplant, and, she says, “I enjoy eating everything — especially hotpot.” The woman asked to remain anonymous to protect her privacy.

James Shapiro, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says the results of the surgery are stunning. “They’ve completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial amounts of insulin beforehand.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A sight previously thought to be science fiction is very real at a southeast Kansas City shopping center. Instead of a police officer, a security robot has been patrolling sidewalks and shoppers are taking notice.

Since Marshall the robot has been on the job, shoppers say the experiences have completely changed when they come to these stores. The robot can spend 23 hours a day monitoring the parking lot from all angles which gives people a new sense of protection and ease they don’t always have when out.

Marshall took over security at Brywood Centre in April. Before that, Karen White noticed a lot of trouble outside the shopping center.

“Sometimes it’d be concerning for your car like someone could take it or something,” White said.

Knowing now that Marshall is always watching, the risk of crime does not worry her or others as much.

“It made it very better, like you can’t be in the parking lot without seeing the robot,” White continued. “So, I think it scared them off.”