U.S. forces fired on and disabled two Iranian oil tankers on Friday after exchanging fire with Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz overnight. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, reported another Iranian missile and drone attack.
The attacks cast more doubt on a tenuous month-old ceasefire that the United States has insisted is still in effect. Washington is awaiting an Iranian response to its latest proposal for a deal to end the war, reopen the strait and roll back Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
The U.S. military said Friday that its forces had disabled two Iranian tankers that were trying to breach an American blockade of Iran's ports. Hours earlier, the military said it thwarted attacks on three Navy ships and struck Iranian military facilities in the strait.
—The Associated Press
Transmissions from astronauts describing unidentified objects in space, infrared video of an apparent orb making 90-degree turns while flying 80 mph above the ocean and accounts of servicemembers detailing unexplained sightings — all are among some 150 records released Friday by the Pentagon.
The Defense Department posted the first batch of what it called “never-before-seen files” involving unidentified anomalous phenomena — a more recently adopted term for what many people still call UFOs, or unidentified flying objects.
“The materials archived here are unresolved cases, meaning the government is unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena,” the Pentagon’s new website states.
—Spectrum News' Christina Santucci
America's employers delivered a surprising 115,000 new jobs last month despite an economic shock from the Iran war.
Hiring beat the 65,000 jobs forecasters had expected, though it decelerated from the 185,000 jobs created in March. The unemployment rate remained at a low 4.3%, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The Iran war has caused the biggest disruption of global oil supplies in history and sent average U.S. gasoline prices surging past $4.50 a gallon this week. But the conflict hasn't done much damage to the American job market so far. And the import taxes — tariffs — that President Donald Trump imposed last year haven't turned out to be as high and as damaging as originally feared.
—The Associated Press
In a strongly worded filing, ABC accuses the Trump administration of trying to chill its constitutionally protected free speech and hinder open political discussion.
The point of contention: The popular show "The View," and whether it's subject to equal time rules.
ABC's filing to the Federal Communications Commission, made public Friday, came in a dispute involving one ABC station in Houston, KTRK-TV. But the wording indicated the network was embarking on a broader battle with the administration. The commission replied, in a statement emailed to The Associated Press, that equal time law "encourages more speech and empowers voters to decide the outcome of elections. The FCC will review Disney's assertion that 'The View' is a 'bona fide news program' and thus exempt from the political equal time rules."
—The Associated Press
The battle for control of the U.S. House is leading many states to redraw their congressional districts to give one party a political advantage over the other. It's a process known as gerrymandering, but it comes with risks.
“If they get too greedy, it could backfire on them," said Thomas Brunell, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "And if it backfires on them, that's what we call on 'dummymander.'"
Brunell coined the phrase “dummymander” in a gerrymander. The political party that controls redistricting spreads voters of the opposing party among many districts, or packs them into a few districts to dilute their overall voting power. Brunell says a dummymander occurs when the party drawing the new district lines spreads its voters too thin to overcome a wave of support for the opposition party.
—Spectrum News' Reena Diamante and David Johnson
• Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats' redrawn U.S. House maps, giving Republicans a win
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• Judge rules Trump administration's cancellation of humanities grants was unconstitutional
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