Trump officials texted war plans to a group chat in a secure app that included a journalist
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”
Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the highly sensitive information had been shared, 2 1/2 hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach.
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.
It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and at the least are kept secure to protect service members and operational security. The U.S. has conducted airstrikes against the Houthis since the militant group began targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea in November 2023.
Just two hours after Goldberg received the details of the attack on March 15, the U.S. began launching a series of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
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Venezuela-hired lawyers file petition in El Salvador aimed at freeing Venezuelans deported by US
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government filed a legal action Monday in El Salvador aimed at freeing 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States who are being held in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison.
Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans, said they filed the habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber. He said that by extension they requested that it be applied to all Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.
The maneuver essentially compels the government to prove someone’s detention was justified.
The Salvadoran government has been silent about the status of the Venezuelan prisoners since the U.S. government sent them more than a week ago, despite a U.S. federal judge’s verbal order to turn the planes around.
The Trump administration is using an 18th-century wartime law to justify sending the Venezuelans, who it says were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the administration declared an invading force.
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UN to reduce staff in Gaza, blaming Israel for a strike that killed its employee
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The United Nations said Monday it will “reduce its footprint” in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli tank strike hit one of its compounds last week, killing one staffer from Bulgaria and wounding five other employees.
The world body will temporarily remove about a third of its approximately 100 international staffers working in Gaza, U.N. Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric. He pointed to the increased danger after Israel relaunched its military campaign last week with bombardment that has since killed hundreds of Palestinians. Israel has also cut off all food, medicine, aid and other supplies to Gaza's population for the past three weeks.
Dujarric's statement was the U.N's first to point the finger at Israel in the March 19 explosion at the U.N. guesthouse in central Gaza. He said that “based on the information currently available,” the strikes on the site “were caused by an Israeli tank.”
The Israeli military repeated its denial that it was responsible for the strike, which took place a day after Israel shattered Gaza's 2-month-old ceasefire with a surprise bombardment across the Gaza Strip.
Dujarric said the U.N. “has made taken the difficult decision to reduce the Organization’s footprint in Gaza, even as humanitarian needs soar.” He said the U.N. “is not leaving Gaza,” pointing out that it still has about 13,000 national staff in Gaza, mainly working for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
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Trump administration asks Supreme Court to halt judge's order to rehire probationary federal workers
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to halt a ruling ordering the rehiring of thousands of federal workers let go in mass firings aimed at dramatically downsizing the federal government.
The emergency appeal argues that the judge can't force the executive branch to rehire more than 16,000 probationary employees. The California-based judge found the firings didn’t follow federal law, and he ordered reinstatement offers be sent as a lawsuit plays out.
The appeal also calls on the conservative-majority court to rein in the growing number of federal judges who have slowed President Donald Trump's sweeping agenda.
“Only this Court can end the interbranch power grab,” the appeal stated.
The nation's federal court system has become ground zero for pushback to Trump with the Republican-led Congress largely supportive or silent, and judges have ruled against Trump's administration more than three dozen times after finding violations of federal law.
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Body camera footage is released showing scene outside Gene Hackman's home
ALBUQUERQE, N.M. (AP) — Authorities have released body camera footage from outside the home of Gene Hackman, where the actor and wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in late February.
The redacted footage shows deputies talking with the two workers who called authorities to report seeing someone lying on the floor inside the home. With no signs of forced entry or other evidence of suspicious circumstances, the deputies asked about the possibility of a gas leak or carbon monoxide poisoning, and the workers said they didn’t see how that could have been the case.
“Something’s not right,” one of the workers said.
Authorities soon determined there were no leaks that could have been fatal, further fueling a mystery that captured the public’s attention.
It was solved about a week later when medical investigators confirmed that Hackman died of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer’s about a week after hantavirus pulmonary syndrome — a rare, rodent-borne disease — took the life of his wife.
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You're an American in another land? Prepare to talk about the why and how of Trump 2.0
LONDON (AP) — The urgent care doctor cocked an eyebrow at Mari Santos and her American accent.
It was four days after President Donald Trump's inauguration, and Santos was a student with a stomach bug in the first weeks of an overseas semester in Glasgow, Scotland. A doctor arrived to see her after a six-hour wait. But before asking what ailed her, he said this: “Interesting time to be an American, I suppose."
Until then, Santos, 20, had not been thinking about Trump — just her 104-degree fever and concern about being sick while abroad. But the president and his triumphant return to the White House, she says, were on her physician's mind, giving the American University student an instant education in geopolitics. The lesson, as she sees it: “There's a kind of chilling in the air.”
“I knew that maybe that Europe is not in general big fan of American politics,” Santos said, “but I didn't expect it to be such like a personal thing.”
The United States and its center of gravity occupy a unique space in the international conversation. People the world over talk about America — its policies, its proclivities, its place in the world. They have for generations. They did it during the Iraq War. They did it during the first Trump administration.
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US holds separate talks with Russians after meeting Ukrainians to discuss a potential ceasefire
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. negotiators worked on a proposed partial ceasefire in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine on Monday, meeting representatives from Russia one day after holding separate talks with a team from Kyiv.
It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week -- with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.
One major sticking point is what targets would be off-limits to strike, even after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with the countries’ leaders, because the parties disagree.
While the White House said “energy and infrastructure” would be covered, the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would also like to see infrastructure like railways and ports protected.
Talks Monday in the Saudi capital of Riyadh were expected to address some of those differences, as well as a potential pause in attacks in the Black Sea to ensure the safety of commercial shipping. Russian state media reported late Monday local time that the talks had ended.
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Firefighters in the Carolinas battle multiple wildfires as New Jersey crews contain a forest blaze
Firefighters in North and South Carolina were battling multiple wind-driven wildfires Monday in rugged terrain that complicated containment efforts, officials said.
Millions of trees knocked down by Hurricane Helene last year combined with long stretches of dry weather this spring are making for a long and active fire season in the Carolinas, North Carolina State University forestry and environmental resources professor Robert Scheller said.
“Helene just dropped tons of fuel on the ground,” Scheller said. “Then these flash droughts allow that fuel to dry out very fast.”
Both South Carolina and North Carolina have issued statewide bans on outdoor burning.
Mandatory evacuations continue for about 165 properties in parts of Polk County in western North Carolina, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) west of Charlotte, according to county spokesperson Kellie Cannon.
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USC star JuJu Watkins carried off floor with injury against Mississippi State in March Madness
LOS ANGELES (AP) — JuJu Watkins was carried off the floor in the first quarter of top-seeded Southern California’s game against Mississippi State in the women's NCAA Tournament on Monday night.
Watkins was driving to the basket when she went down between two Bulldogs defenders with 4:43 remaining. She grabbed her right knee with a pained expression on her face.
The crowd in Galen Center went silent as coach Lindsay Gottlieb and two other USC staffers attended to Watkins, a 6-foot-2 sophomore who averages 24.6 points and is one of the biggest stars in the women's game. She was carried off the court by multiple people and the game went to a media timeout with the Trojans leading 13-2.
The crowd loudly booed Mississippi State on its next possession.
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Do you eat a meal in 20 minutes or less? It might be time to slow down
LONDON (AP) — You can have your cake and eat it too — just do it slowly.
Experts tend to focus on the kinds of foods you can eat to improve your health. But the speed at which you devour your dinner matters just as much. There are risks with eating too fast — think stuck food and the potential to overeat before your brain tells you to stop. (Inhaling your food also risks annoying your slower-paced dining companions or the person who took the time to cook your meal.)
Here are some tips from scientists on how to slow down and take a more mindful approach to consuming your diet.
If you’re the kind of person who can regularly polish off breakfast, lunch or dinner in less than 20-30 minutes, you are eating too fast.
“It takes about 20 minutes for the stomach to communicate to the brain via a whole host of hormonal signals that it’s full,” said Leslie Heinberg, at the Center for Behavioral Health at the Cleveland Clinic. “So when people eat rapidly, they can miss these signals and it’s very easy to eat beyond the point of fullness.”
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