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Iran navy seizes Marshall Islands oil tanker in Gulf of Oman DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s navy seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday amid wider tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, the latest-such capture in a waterway crucial for global energy supplies. The Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet identified the vessel as the Advantage Sweet. Satellite tracking data for the vessel from MarineTraffic.com showed it in the Gulf of Oman, just north of Oman’s capital, Muscat, on Thursday afternoon. It had just come from Kuwait and ...

National

US to open foreign centers in bid to stop migration surge WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration announced on Thursday plans to open migration centers in Guatemala and Colombia for asylum seekers heading to the U.S.-Mexico border — a bid to slow what’s expected to be a surge of migrants as pandemic-era immigration restrictions end. The migration centers are part of an intense effort to try to prevent thousands of people from making the often-dangerous journey to the southern border when the restrictions end May 11. Kansas legislators impose sweeping anti-trans bathroom ...

Debt ceiling: McCarthy wins 1st round, Biden eyes long game

WASHINGTON — Speaker Kevin McCarthy surprised Washington when he showed he could unite the House’s raucous Republican majority to pass a sweeping package to raise the nation’s debt limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for steep spending reductions, an opening bid awaiting President Joe Biden’s response. The next moves are more difficult, and politically uncertain. This week’s stunning turnaround for the battle-hardened Republican speaker is only act one in what is expected to be a long summer battle with Democrats to find agreement to lift the nation’s borrowing capacity ...

Washington, Minnesota become trans refuges, shield abortions

SEATTLE — Washington and Minnesota won’t cooperate with attempts to prosecute out-of-state patients seeking reproductive or gender-affirming procedures and treatment, under new laws signed Thursday by the two states’ Democratic governors. They’re the latest liberal states to enact legal safeguards as Republican legislators across the country are rushing to block or limit transgender and abortion health care. More than a dozen states have effectively banned abortion outright in the year since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. “Freedom of ...

FBI shoots, kills man in Minneapolis standoff

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The FBI said a man was shot and killed after a long standoff Thursday at a north Minneapolis home. Agents were attempting to serve a search warrant at the home when the man barricaded himself inside, the FBI said in a statement. After hours of negotiations, the man came out of the home with a weapon and was shot. It was not immediately clear how many FBI agents fired their weapons. An unarmed woman who was inside the home was injured and taken to a hospital but the extent of her injuries was not known, officials said. No further details were immediately released.

Despite flooding on Mississippi River, Midwest mayors upbeat

DES MOINES, Iowa — The Upper Mississippi River will rise to near record-high levels as it flows through Wisconsin and Iowa, but officials said Thursday they expected to hold back floodwaters with a combination of flood walls, temporary barriers and wetlands, especially if dry weather continues. The Mississippi already has crested in St. Paul, Minnesota, and La Crosse, Wisconsin, but it will be days before it begins falling in some areas to the south. The high water is due to the quick melting of a giant snowpack in northern Minnesota that is slowly moving down the approximately ...