Greetings from the Dubai airport, where a long layover can also be a destination

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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

While returning to the U.S. a dozen years ago from a reporting assignment in Kabul, I had a long layover at the Dubai International Airport and got to know it well — its ebb and flow from quiet to clamor and back, as passengers from all over the planet arrived and left.

With hours to fill between flights, I roamed for miles around this colossal airport, the busiest international hub in the world. I marveled at the gold shops, wandered past the McDonald’s and Starbucks, browsed the camel’s milk chocolate and Cuban cigars, rested in the Zen Garden. I heard Arabic, Hindi, English, Chinese and French. I spritzed myself with perfume at the duty-free shops and decided to get a pedicure at 2 a.m. The man sitting next to me getting his feet done at that hour was a U.S. Marine. The mix of familiarity and disorientation at the airport made me feel I might be anywhere, everywhere — and nowhere at all.

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William Gibson observed in his novel Pattern Recognition that long-haul flights get us to our destinations so fast that it can take awhile for our souls to catch up with our bodies: “Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage,” he wrote.

I thought of this when I was back in transit at DXB one evening earlier this month, and snapped this photo during a quiet moment. With several hours stretching ahead of me before my next flight, I realized that I enjoy long layovers at the Dubai airport because they give me space — in good company with tens of thousands of others heading from one part of the world to another — to take stock of where I’ve been and where I’m going. It was, for me, a perfect limbo.

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JERUSALEM — An Israeli military official said on Wednesday that the country’s top generals had approved plans to call up tens of thousands of reservists in order to begin a new phase of operations in some of Gaza’s most densely populated areas.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, the official said that the military will be operating in parts of Gaza City where the Israeli military has not yet operated and where Hamas is still active.

Israeli troops are already operating in the Zeitoun and Jabaliya neighborhoods of Gaza City in order to prepare the groundwork for the expanded operation, which is expected to receive approval from the chief of staff in the coming days.

It remains unclear when the operation will begin. The official said 50,000 reservists will be called up in the coming month, nearly doubling the number of active reservists to 120,000.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month that the objective was to secure the release of the remaining hostages and ensure Hamas and other militants can never again threaten Israel.

Hamas-led militants started the war when they attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals. Hamas says it will only free the rest in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.

The planned offensive into Gaza City and the central camps has heightened international condemnation of Israel and fueled fears of another mass displacement among Palestinians.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering in the city and its holds some of the last remnants of critical infrastructure remaining in Gaza.

Mediators and Hamas say they have agreed to cease-fire terms, but Israel’s response remains unclear as members of Netanyahu’s coalition oppose a phased deal that doesn’t “complete the defeat of Hamas.”

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President Trump expanded his criticism of the Smithsonian Institution to include other museums in a long social media post on Tuesday.

“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE,” he wrote.

The post emphasized his ongoing displeasure with the Smithsonian, describing it as “OUT OF CONTROL” and suggesting that museums around the country may face similar scrutiny.

“President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable,” the White House said in a statement to NPR. “He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there.”

In an Aug. 12 letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, White House representatives said they plan to conduct an audit of eight Smithsonian museums “to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

Trump’s post on Truth Social accused the Smithsonian of presenting a narrative of “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the “HOTTEST” Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”

A number of museum and historical associations, including the Organization of American Historians and the American Association for State and Local History have pushed back against what the American Alliance of Museums described as “growing threats of censorship against US museums.”

“This is not just a concern for select institutions,” the AAM said in an Aug. 15 statement . “These pressures can create a chilling effect across the entire museum sector. Freedom of thought and expression are foundational American values, and museums uphold them by creating spaces where people can engage with history, science, art, and culture in ways that are honest, fact-based, and thought-provoking.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about whether governmental review of museums could have a chilling effect on the institutions by threatening their free speech rights and limiting their ability to openly and honestly engage with the public.

Additional reporting by Anastasia Tsioulcas. Jennifer Vanasco edited this story.

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Federal forecasters are warning people to avoid beaches along the East Coast as Hurricane Erin moves north and slams much of the shoreline with dangerous waves and other severe weather.

Though the massive storm was roughly 365 miles from Cape Hatteras, N.C., as of 11 a.m. ET, the effects of Erin will be felt onshore starting Wednesday, with strong winds and the potential for flooding in the forecast for North Carolina and Virginia and life-threatening rip currents expected in several states.

“Beachgoers are urged to follow information from lifeguards, local authorities, and beach warning flags,” the National Hurricane Center said in a post on X. “The best advice? Stay out of the water!”

Mandatory evacuations are in place for parts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, which was set to face inclement conditions starting later on Wednesday. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein has declared a state of emergency.

A storm surge warning was in effect from Cape Lookout to Duck. Areas of North Carolina and Virginia were also under tropical storm warnings and watches. Bermuda was facing a tropical storm watch, too.

Forecasters noted that the significant size of Erin, which is hurling tropical storm-force winds as far as 265 miles from its center, means its effects could be felt far away.

Among those effects are swells and rip currents predicted for beaches along the East Coast as well as in Atlantic Canada, the Bahamas and Bermuda. “These rough ocean conditions are expected to cause life-threatening surf and rip currents,” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Rip currents are “powerful, narrow channels of fast-moving water” that can endanger swimmers who try to rush back to shore, according to the National Ocean Service. The agency recommends that swimmers caught in a rip current try to move parallel to the coastline and swim at an angle back to shore.

An NHC map showed a high risk of rip currents on Wednesday for a large stretch of the East Coast, from Florida to Massachusetts.

Forecasters said Erin could strengthen over the next day and should weaken by Friday, though it will likely still be a hurricane into the weekend.

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Turnover among the country’s election officials has continued to increase — now nearly five years after Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 contest led to voting officials facing more pressure and harassment.

Some 2 in 5 of all the local officials who administered the 2020 election left their jobs before the 2024 cycle, according to research out Tuesday from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The trend was especially pronounced in large jurisdictions, where the Trump campaign’s misinformation about voting often focused.

“This is in alignment with the challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that election officials are facing,” said Rachel Orey, who oversees the center’s Elections Project.

For the past two decades turnover in the elections field had been increasing gradually, but the new report, which Orey worked on with UCLA researchers Joshua Ferrer and Daniel Thompson, shows how 2020 amplified the trend.

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Orey first worked with Ferrer and Thompson last year to analyze a novel dataset that included more than 18,000 local election officials across more than 6,000 jurisdictions. Their initial report showed a turnover rate that rose from 28% in 2004 to 39% in 2022.

In 2024, the turnover rate increased to 41%, the highest it’s been in at least the last 25 years.

“Rising turnover is almost like a canary in the coal mine, indicating that something deeper and more structural in the way that we conduct elections needs to be fixed,” said Orey, noting specifically that elections in the U.S. are chronically underfunded.

A recent survey of voting officials conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, for instance, found that 1 in 5 election officials have had a budget request denied, and 4 out of 5 officials are concerned to some degree about recent federal funding cuts targeting election security programs.

In recent years, those funding challenges have been combined with an information war about election officials’ processes — one that looks like it will continue at least through next year’s midterms.

On Monday, President Trump made numerous false claims about elections, and indicated his administration was drafting an executive order that would attempt to ban mail-in voting as well as the machines local election officials use to tabulate ballots.

Legal experts say such actions would be unconstitutional, but even if ultimately halted by the courts, they could still serve to diminish the credibility of the election system and justify future challenges.

“The danger of interference in the midterm elections is real, and this is a dangerous step in this direction,” wrote Rick Hasen, an election expert at UCLA, on Monday in reaction to Trump’s claims.

Still, even with a torrent of false information last year, the 2024 election was widely considered an administrative success: Survey data found almost 9 in 10 voters felt it was run well.

Orey said that should give the public confidence that even as voting officials face new challenges, including unprecedented turnover, they are still able to administer fair elections.

“We have seen election officials step up to the plate,” Orey said. “To create new recruitment pipelines and expand and improve training programs to ensure that new election officials have the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to do their jobs well.”

The researchers found that close to 60% of the people replacing those who left still had experience working in elections in some capacity, and almost 80% had prior experience working in government.

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