THE TIPPING POINT: The Middle East and the world await Israel’s response to a two-wave barrage of 180 Iranian ballistic missiles last night that rained down on Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel.

  “Iran made a big mistake tonight — and it will pay for it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to retaliate against our enemies.”

  Israel restrained itself after an Iranian missile attack in April but this may turn out different. The country is on the brink of regional war and the US is urging restraint once again. 

  Iran said the attack was in retaliation for Israeli’s killing of militant leaders from Hamas and Gaza in Tehran and Beirut. 

    As air raid sirens whined in Tel Aviv, the sky was lit with showers of flaming projectiles. There were occasional ground explosions. Israeli air defenses with the help of two American guided missile destroyers appear to have shot down most of the incoming missiles with little damage reported. 

   As the missile attack was under way at least eight people were killed in Tel Aviv when two gunmen opened fire on a light rail train. Authorities described it as a terrorist attack.

IT’S DEBATABLE: In a debate last night that was civilized and focused on issues, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance did a skillful job of lying and dodging while going largely unchallenged by Democrat Tim Walz. 

  Vance claimed that Donald Trump “saved” the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare despite having made multiple attempts to repeal it. He dodged on whether climate change is real and whether Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.

  “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said, dodging the election question. “That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz replied.

  Vance repeatedly referred to Harris as though she has been president the past four years using such phrases as “the administration of Kamala Harris,” “Kamala Harris and her leadership,” “Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record.” 

  But overall, Vance presented himself as more likable than he has been in campaign performances.

  Walz started out haltingly, revealing a bit of discomfort with the forum, but he found his feet and scored some punches. When Vance praised the Trump position that abortion rights should be left up to the states, Walz answered with stories about women who had died or suffered serious health consequences because their states banned or restricted abortion. He said, “The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography?”

  The Minnesota governor also dodged at times. Challenged on his false claim that he had been in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, he didn’t admit it but said, “sometimes I’m a knucklehead.”

  Only once did the discussion become heated with the candidates talking over each other. Host Margaret Brennan said, “Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you, because your mics are cut.”

AFTERMATH: With at least 160 people dead, Hurricane Helene is now the second deadliest hurricane in the history of the US. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 killed at least 1,833 people.

  Climate scientists attribute Helene’s power in part to climate change. In a terrible irony, one of the towns hardest hit was Ashville, North Carolina, home to NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information that “maintains the world’s largest climate data archive.

THE OBIT PAGE: John Amos, the stern father on “Good Times,” the first sitcom featuring a two-parent Black family, and who starred in the groundbreaking 1970s mini-series “Roots” about slavery, has died at age 84. 

  With a chiseled face and the body of an NFL linebacker, Amos in “Roots” played the adult Kunta Kinte, a Gambian Mandinka  snatched into slavery as a teenager. In the late 1970s the series based on the Alex Haley bestseller was the most watched US television show ever.

  Amos had a run from 1974-79 on “Good Times,” a comedy about life in public housing that pulled laughs from serious issues like racial bigotry, drug abuse, and poverty. His outspokenness about disagreements with the scripts and writers eventually got him fired. His character was killed off in a car accident.

  Amos once said in an interview about dealing with the show writers; “They’d go on about their credits. Then he’d ask them, “‘Well, how long have you been Black? That just doesn’t happen in the community. We don’t think that way. We don’t act that way. We don’t let our children do that.’”

THE SPIN RACK: The State of California sued a Catholic hospital in Northern California for denying a pregnant patient a life-saving emergency abortion. The suit charges that Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka violated multiple laws, including the state’s Emergency Services Law, which mandates hospitals to provide care “necessary to relieve or eliminate the emergency medical condition.” The patient was rushed to another hospital 12 miles away and survived.  

BELOW THE FOLD: New York Magazine political writer Olivia Nuzzi has obtained a “no-contact” order against her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza, accusing him of revealing her relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr, hacking into her devices, and waging a months-long harassment and blackmail campaign against her. 

  The 31-year-old Nuzzi was granted the order yesterday in Washington against the 50-year-old Lizza, a byliner for Politico.  Nuzzi in her filing charged that Lizza “explicitly threatened to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career, and reputation — a threat he has since carried out.”

  Nuzzi met RFK Jr while writing a profile about him and developed some kind of relationship with him that involved intimate texting. She’s been suspended by the magazine. There’s an old saying in journalism: “You can sleep with elephants if you want to, but if you do, you can’t cover the circus.”

-30-