- An armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups[s] has been taking place chiefly in and around the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. After clearing Hamas militants from its territory, the Israeli military embarked on an extensive aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip followed by a large-scale ground invasion beginning on 27 October. Clashes have also occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and with Hezbollah along the Israel–Lebanon border. The fifth war of the Gaza–Israel conflict since 2008, it is part of the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the most significant military escalation in the region since the Yom Kippur War 50 years earlier.
- La Conner — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Located in western Skagit County, La Conner was once county seat and most populous town in the Skagit Valley. Bounded by farmland, the Swinomish Channel and the Swinomish Indian Reservation, it was an up-to-date town and lively terminus for river steamers bringing timber and lumber down from the upper Skagit, and port for farm commodities grown in the surrounding delta flatlands. Its brief county seat status was lost to Mount Vernon in 1883 and a series of economic misfortunes caused the town to slowly fade and be left in the backwaters for decades. With its sweeping waterfront and business district overseen by “The Hill,” the wooded, residential midtown bluff, it’s a scenic, historic time capsule. The inherent beauty of the environs, the atmospherics, and the cheap rent of the moldering town attracted artists and eccentrics. In 1937, Morris Graves (1910-2001), who was to become a painter of international renown, came to town and brought his artist friends. These bohemians mixed with rough and tumble fishermen, tow boatmen, and farm hands. Resident novelist Tom Robbins says of the town they created: “That this was an intersection of art and fishing and farming is what’s interesting and unusual and singular to this community” (Hood).