The Dictatorship
PILOT RESCUED
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A U.S. service member who has been missing since Iran shot down a fighter jet has been rescued, President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post early Sunday.
A frantic U.S. search-and-rescue operation unfolded after the crash of the F-15E Strike Eaglejet on Friday, as Iran also promised a reward for anyone who turned in the “enemy pilot.”
A second crew member was rescued earlier.
Trump wrote that the aviator is injured but “will be just fine,” adding that he took refuge “in the treacherous mountains of Iran.”
Trump added that the rescue involved “dozens of aircraft” and that U.S. had been monitoring his location “24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”
The fighter jet was the first U.S. aircraft to have crashed in Iranian territory since the conflict in late February.
Israel’s military warns the public of another missile barrage coming from Iran, the third-such alert of the day
Another airstrike in southeastern Tehran hits a home, killing at least three people, Iranian state TV reports
Strikes in southern Iran kill 6 people
From Sunday into Monday across Iran, local media and activists reported strikes on Ahvaz, Bandar Lengeh, Karaj and Shiraz as well.
The strikes in Bandar Lengeh and Kong killed at least six people and wounded 17 others, the state-run IRAN newspaper said.
Iranian strikes hit Haifa
Israel’s Magen David Adom and Fire and Rescue services said early Monday that there are two reported sites of Iranian missile hits in the northern city of Haifa.
Video footage provided by Magen David Adom of the affected sites show active fire and bombed cars in what appears to be a residential area.
It is still unclear whether those were direct hits or damage from falling shrapnel from interceptions.
The missile strikes comes a day after another attack from Iran also hit a Haifa residential area, killing two people and injuring others.
Two people were still trapped in the rubble caused by the Sunday attack and their fate is unknown.
Latest reports of live fire in the war
- Israel’s military warned the public Monday morning of another missile barrage coming from Iran, the third-such alert of the day.
- Kuwait again Monday morning said it was firing air defenses over an incoming Iranian missile and drone barrage.
- The United Arab Emirates again said its air defenses also were firing over incoming Iranian fire on Monday morning.
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Israel claimed a wave of airstrikes early Monday targeting Iran, without offering any immediate information about its targets.
Israel claims a wave of airstrikes targeting Iran early Monday without offering information about its targets
Iranian strike in Haifa kills 2 people
Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority said early Monday two people were found dead under rubble due to an Iranian missile strike on a residential building in Israel northern city of Haifa.
The rescue mission, which started Sunday evening, is still ongoing as two other people remain under the rubble.
Their fate is still unknown.
Paramedics said Sunday they rushed to the scene and searched through the rubble to dig out the injured, finding an older man in serious condition.
They added that three other people, including a baby, were slightly injured.
Airstrike on Iranian city of Eslamshar kills at least 13
An airstrike early Monday struck a residential building in a city southwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran, killing at least 13 people, Iranian media reported.
The semiofficial Fars news agency and Nour News reported the strike near Eslamshar.
It wasn’t clear why the building had been struck.
Neither Israel nor the United States claimed the strikes early Monday, but they came after Trump issued a profanity-laced threat to Iran that it must reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
JUST IN: At least 13 killed in an airstrike that hit a building in a city southwest of Tehran, Iranian media report
Airstrikes hit Tehran university linked to weapons work
Airstrikes early Monday morning on Iran’s capital, Tehran, targeted the Sharif University of Technology.
Iranian media reported the strikes and damage to buildings there, as well as a natural gas distribution site next to the campus.
It wasn’t immediately clear what had been targeted on the grounds of the university, which is empty of students as the war has forced all schools in the country into online classes.
However, multiple countries over the years have sanctioned the university for its work with the military, particularly on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is controlled by the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Meanwhile, the Guard and other security forces have been using secondary sites as rally points as their bases have come under repeated attack during the war.
Airstrike in the Irani city of Qom kills at least 5, state-run media reports
The state-run IRAN daily newspaper said in an online message that an airstrike in a residential area of Qom killed at least five people. Qom is a holy Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
It wasn’t unclear what the target of the strike was.
Iran has not provided overall casualty figures from the war in days. It also hasn’t discussed its materiel losses.
Airstrikes hit Iran’s capital
Before dawn Monday, a series of airstrikes hit Iran’s capital, Tehran. Explosions rang out into the night, though it wasn’t immediately clear what had been struck.
The sound of low-flying fighter jets could be heard off and on for hours.
In Israel, authorities sounded one missile alert. In Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, two such alerts went off with air defenses firing, but it wasn’t immediately clear what had been targeted by Iran. Kuwait also said its air defenses worked multiple times overnight to intercept incoming
The sound of a low-flying fighter jet is heard over northern Tehran
The sound was followed by at least three massive explosions.
Crude oil prices jump in early trading after Trump threats
Crude oil prices jumped sharply in early trading Sunday after President Trump issued fresh, heightened threats against Iran and its infrastructure.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, rose more than 2% to $111.25. U.S. crude oil prices were up nearly 3% to $114.54 a barrel.
The last time front-month prices for U.S. crude oil prices were above $115 a barrel was the summer of 2022, in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and during a period of high inflation across the globe.
Trump on social media vowed to hit Iran’s power plants and bridges and said the country would be “living in Hell” if the Strait of Hormuz, crucial for global trade, isn’t opened by Tuesday.
Official with Lebanese Christian party killed in Israeli strike
Pierre Mouawad, an official with the Lebanese Forces party, was killed along with his wife in an Israeli strike Sunday on an apartment building in the village of Ain Saadeh in the mountains east of Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Another woman was killed and three women were wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The Israeli military has made no statement about the strike, and its intended target remains unclear.
The Lebanese Forces party is opposed to Hezbollah and has blamed the Shiite militant group for dragging Lebanon into a new war with Israel.
Israeli strikes in Christian-majority areas have led to sectarian tensions, with local residents fearing that Hezbollah members may be hiding among displaced Shiite civilians taking refuge there.
Doctors Without Borders condemns Israeli strike in Beirut neighborhood
The international aid group, known by its French acronym MSF, said the strike in Beirut’s Jnah neighborhood on Sunday hit “a densely populated residential area … only meters from Rafik Hariri Public Hospital.”
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the strike, which came without a warning, killed five people, including a 15-year-old girl, and 52 wounded, including eight children.
“We are seeing elderly people and adolescents arriving with critical injuries to the head, chest, and abdomen, including shrapnel wounds,” Luna Hammad, MSF medical coordinator working in the hospital, said in a statement. “When strikes hit crowded residential areas without warning, the consequences are severe, both in human casualties and in hospitals’ capacity to respond.”
MSF said that “strikes this close to a hospital spread fear and can stop people from seeking lifesaving care.”
The Israeli military has not named the intended target of the strike, which comes five weeks into the renewed Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon.
Iran says US bombarded its own aircraft, personnel
Iran’s joint military command spokesperson said Sunday that the U.S. had to bombard its own military aircraft and personnel that were struck and downed by Iranian fighters to “prevent embarrassment for President Trump and the hollow image of its military.”
Ebrahim Zolfaghari added that several U.S. military aircraft entered Iranian airspace to carry out a rescue operation for the pilot of a downed U.S. fighter jet, but said Iranian fighters and air defense systems struck the aircraft and forced them to make an emergency landing in an area south of Isfahan.
A regional intelligence official, who was briefed on the covert mission and who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss it, said the U.S. military blew up two transport planes due to a technical malfunction that forced them to bring in additional aircraft to complete the rescue.
Over the weekend, the United States pulled off a daring rescue of two aviators whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, plucking the pilot from behind enemy lines before setting off a complicated extraction of the second service member who hid deep in the mountains as Tehran called for Iranians to help capture him.
Bahrain’s foreign minister urges action on Strait of Hormuz
Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani wrote in a statement Sunday that Iran’s weekslong chokehold on the critical waterway has created an “escalating crisis that threatens global stability, food security, and the foundational principles of international law.”
He urged action by the United Nations Security Council on a Bahrain draft proposal, which has faced crucial opposition from Russia, China and France over several issues, including language authorizing the use of force to open the strait. All three countries wield veto power over any resolution in the 15-member council.
The vote on the heavily revised and watered-down draft was scheduled to take place last week, but has been postponed due to lack of consensus.
Al-Zayani noted that the “window of opportunity is narrowing day by day” and failure by the international community to act “sends a dangerous message that vital arteries of the global economy can be threatened without consequence.”
Iranian negotiators have ‘immunity from death,’ Trump says
The U.S. president made the comments during an off-camera interview with Fox News.
“We’ve given them immunity from death. And we’ve told the people that we’re dealing with, who are the top people,” the president said.
Trump contended that the Iranians had already conceded on having a nuclear weapon.
“They’re not even negotiating that point, it’s so easy,” Trump told Fox News. “That’s already been conceded. Most of the points are conceded.”
Four people were injured in a fire at the UAE’s Khor Fakkan port
The United Arab Emirates’ Sharjah government said that one Nepali and three Pakistani nationals were wounded Sunday in a fire caused by falling debris from an intercepted Iranian projectile at Khor Fakkan port, according to a statement posted on the social platform X.
One individual was severely wounded and had to be hospitalized, while the others suffered mild and moderate injuries, the statement said.
The statement did not specify whether the intercepted projectile was a missile or a drone.
4 missing in Haifa apartment building strike
Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority said Sunday they were searching for four people in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after an Iranian missile strike.
Paramedics said they rushed to the scene and searched through the rubble to dig out the injured, finding an older man in serious condition. They added that three other people were mildly injured, including a baby.
Associated Press video filmed at the scene showed much of the multistory building reduced to rubble.
The rescuers described the damage as resulting from a direct hit, but it was not immediately clear if the building had been struck by a missile or shrapnel from an interception.

Israeli security forces and rescue teams work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, Israel, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, Israel, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli fire kills 1 Palestinian in Gaza City, health officials say
The strike on a group of people also wounded others, according to health officials at the Shifa hospital, where the casualties arrived.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Gaza Strip has seen near-daily Israeli fire and strikes since a fragile ceasefire was reached in October, and more than 700 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.
The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.
Since the Iran war began over a month ago, Gaza militants have sat out the conflict and haven’t claimed any attacks against Israel.
Iran’s head of parliament lashes back at Trump
In a social media post on Sunday, Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf dismissed Trump’s recent threats of targeting Iran’s infrastructure as “reckless.”
“You won’t gain anything through war crimes,” Qalibaf wrote on X. “The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.”
Top Iranian official threatens closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait
A former foreign minister and adviser to the supreme leader warned Sunday that “the resistance front” could target the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Red Sea, through which about 12% of the world’s trade typically passes.
“If the White House thinks of repeating its stupid mistakes, it will quickly realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single signal,” Ali Akbar Velayati said on social media, signaling possible closure of the vital waterway if the U.S. escalates attacks.
Iran leads the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which includes armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where Houthi rebels had in the past cut off transit through Bab el-Mandeb with attacks on vessels.
Iran has effectively stopped cargo traffic through the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict, leading to higher oil and gas prices globally.
Iran floats a new condition for Strait of Hormuz reopening
Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Tabatabaei, a presidential spokesperson, wrote Sunday on the social platform X that the reopening of the vital waterway can only happen if transit revenues are partially earmarked to compensate Iran for war damages.
There has been growing alarm over Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, critical for shipments of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to Europe and Asia. Trump has threatened to attack Iran’s infrastructure if it fails to reopen the strait by Monday.
Oil-producing countries decide on symbolic output increase
Eight countries from the OPEC+ oil cartel say they will increase production again in May to ensure stability on the oil market — a decision overshadowed by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic due to the Iran war.
The countries said in a statement carried Sunday on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries website that production would be increased by 206,000 barrels per day.
That, however, remains largely on paper due to the loss of an estimated 12 million barrels a day from Persian Gulf producers due to the Hormuz closure.
The countries — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman — warned that damage from attacks on oil infrastructure will take “a long time” to repair and return supply to previous levels.
Such attacks, as well as disruption of navigation, undermine efforts to support stable prices “for the benefit of producers, consumers and the global economy,” they said.
Iranian government minister dismisses Trump threat in AP interview
Iran’s culture minister has dismissed President Donald Trump’s latest threats, calling the U.S. leader an “unstable, delusional figure.”
“Iranian society generally does not pay attention to his statements, as it believes he lacks personal, behavioral and verbal balance, and constantly shifts between contradictory positions,” Sayed Reza Salihi-Amiri told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday.
Trump on Sunday said he would strike Iran’s power plants and bridges this Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to marine traffic. In an expletive-laden post, Trump promised the Iranians would be “living in Hell” if the waterway isn’t opened.
“It seems Trump has become a phenomenon that neither Iranians nor Americans are able to fully analyze,” said Salihi-Amiri.
He said the Strait of Hormuz is “open to the world but closed to Iran’s enemies.”
Latest attack from Iran hits Haifa apartment building, Israel’s rescue services say
Paramedics say they rushed to the scene and searched through the rubble to dig out the injured, finding an older man in serious condition. They say three other people were mildly injured, including a baby.
Photos and video showed much of the multistory building reduced to rubble.
The rescuers described the damage as resulting from a direct hit. It was not immediately clear if the building had been struck by an Iranian missile or shrapnel from a missile interception.
2 Black Hawk helicopters were hit during the rescue, but got to safety
The two helicopters were able to navigate to safe airspace, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.
It was not clear where the Black Hawks landed or if their crew members were injured.
Iran’s joint military command has claimed it struck two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.
Kuwait and Qatar report further aerial attacks
The Kuwaiti army said Sunday that Iran had fired a total of nine ballistic missiles, four cruise missiles and 31 drones at Kuwaiti territory over the past 24 hours.
That brings the total number of projectiles that have targeted Kuwait since the war erupted to 740 drones, 336 ballistic missiles and 13 cruise missiles, according to an official statement posted on the social platform X.
Also, the Qatari army reported that it had on Sunday intercepted several drones and two cruise missiles fired by Iran, according to another statement on X.
Muslim civil rights group accuses Trump of mocking Islam
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nationwide advocacy group, assailed Trump for invoking Allah in his Truth Social post threatening Iran.
“President Trump’s deranged mocking of Islam and his threats to attack civilian infrastructure in Iran are reckless, dangerous, and indicative of a mindset that shows indifference to human life and contempt for religious beliefs,” CAIR said in a statement.
Trump, in his post on Easter Sunday, demanded that Iran open the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday, “or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
“The casual use of ‘Praise be to Allah’ in the context of violent threats reflects a disturbing willingness to weaponize religious language while simultaneously denigrating Islam and its followers,” CAIR said.
Iranians say Trump’s threats to strike infrastructure is ‘intent to commit war crime’
Hours after Trump’s expletive-laden post promising Iran will be “living in Hell” over the Strait of Hormuz closure, Tehran’s mission to the U.N. called the open threats to target civilian infrastructure “a direct and public incitement to terrorise civilians and clear evidence of intent to commit war crime.”
“The international community and all States have legal obligations to prevent such atrocious acts of war crimes,” the mission said in a post on the social platform X. “They must act now. Tomorrow is too late.”
Iran says Ahvaz Shahid Soleimani airport hit
Iran state-run television IRIB quoted a security official as saying that so far, no casualties were reported in the aftermath of a US-Israeli strike on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, the United Arab Emirates’ Sharjah government said that Khor Fakkan port was targeted and that no casualties were reported so far, according to a post on the social platform X by the government’s media office.
Earlier, UKMTO said that a captain had witnessed multiple splashes from unknown projectiles near his vessel while conducting loading operations at the same port.
Border crossing between Lebanon and Syria awaits threatened Israeli strikes
The main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria was closed Sunday after the Israeli military warned of plans to strike it the night before, alleging that Hezbollah was using it to smuggle military equipment.
Samir Abdelkhaleq from the Lebanese border town of Majdal Anjar said the closure is an economic blow to many.
“These are real losses for people and for business owners,” he said. “Everyone is just waiting for the strike to be over.”
Syrian authorities, who have a hostile relationship with Hezbollah, have denied that the crossing is being used for smuggling. In recent days, Syria announced the discovery and closure of several tunnels they said were being used by Hezbollah for smuggling.
More than 200,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the five weeks since the outbreak of renewed war between Israel and Hezbollah.
US official says CIA launched ‘deception campaign’ to find second crew member
Details about the rescue of a second U.S. crew member in Iran, who was a weapons systems officer, are trickling out hours after Trump’s announcement.
A senior U.S. administration official said Sunday that prior to locating the crew member, the CIA spread word inside Iran that U.S. forces had already found him and were moving him on the ground for exfiltration.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public, said the campaign managed to confuse Iranian officials while the agency conducted its search-and-rescue operations.
Over 1,400 people in Lebanon have been killed in war between Israel and Hezbollah militant group
Among the 1,461 killed are 97 women, 129 children, and 54 paramedics, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
4,430 people have been wounded since the latest fighting began on March 2.
After Hezbollah fired rockets toward northern Israel, the Israeli military launched an intense military operation with daily strikes across the country and a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.
Top satellite imagery provider says US asked it to suspend access to Mideast imagery
The U.S. government has asked top providers of satellite imagery to stop publishing p hotos from parts of the Middle East because of the Iran war, says the company Planet Labs.
Planet Labs and companies like it provide near-daily imagery crucial to reporting on regions where on-the-ground access for journalists is impossible, limited or unsafe. That has made it an especially key tool for reporting on the Iran war, which has impacted nearly all Middle Eastern countries.
In a Saturday email to users, including the AP, Planet Labs said it was complying with the U.S. government’s requests and would indefinitely delay publication of imagery taken after March 9, 2026. It said it would release new imagery on a “case-by-case basis and for urgent, mission-critical requirements or in the public interest.”
The company said the new measures would be in place until the end of the conflict.
Democratic US Sen. Kaine warns Trump administration on war rhetoric
As he expressed “overwhelming relief” at the rescue of the military personnel in a downed U.S fighter jet in Iran, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine called on the president and his top officials to dial down their rhetoric amid the war in the Middle East.
Kaine referenced remarks from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month when the latter declared “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” at a news conference.
“This kind of rhetoric is really dangerous,” Kaine said Sunday in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.
He added: “That really encourages them to mistreat our folks.”
Turkish foreign minister to meet with Syrian and Ukrainian presidents
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan arrived in Damascus Sunday, with Turkish media reporting that he will hold a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
According to state-run Anadolu Agency, topics of discussion will include joint projects for the rebuilding of Syria as well as regional developments, such as the integration of northeast Syria into the central government and the impact of nearby conflicts in Iran and Lebanon.
Fidan’s last visit to Syria was on Dec. 22, 2025, alongside Defense Minister Yasar Guler and National Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalin.
Christians celebrate Easter in wartime Tehran
Armenian Christians celebrated Easter at a church in Iran’s capital on Sunday, striving to maintain a sense of normalcy five weeks into the war.
Families embraced and children exchanged painted eggs at the St. Sarkis Cathedral in central Tehran. Iran’s capital has been targeted by daily airstrikes since the United States and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.
“Whether we like it or not, we have young children who do not understand what’s going on,” said Juanita Arakel, 40, an English language teacher. “They just need to feel normal.”
The Islamic Republic, with a population of around 90 million, is home to some 300,000 Christians, mostly Armenians, and three seats in parliament are reserved for Christians.
“My appeal first is to those who started the war to look up to the sky where love and mutual respect was given to us, whether through the birth of Jesus or his rising from the dead,” said Sepuh Sargsyan, the archbishop of the Armenian Diocese of Tehran.
“Our calls and prayers are that we will be able to end this war.”
Across the Middle East, Christians have departed in large numbers in recent decades, fleeing war, persecution and upheaval, and seeking economic opportunities in the West.
Trump offers details of ‘seriously wounded’ pilot’s rescue
U.S. President Donald Trump said the effort to rescue the second pilot was a rarely attempted type of operation because of the potential dangers.
He said in a social media post on Sunday that the pilot was “seriously wounded and really brave” and rescued from “deep inside the mountains” in Iran.
Trump said the pilot is a “highly respected Colonel” and that Iranian forces were “looking hard, in big numbers” and “getting close” to him.
He also gave details of the rescue of the first pilot, who Trump said was rescued in “broad daylight” after seven hours over Iran.
Trump repeats threat to strike Iran’s infrastructure if Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would strike Iran’s power plants and bridges this Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to marine traffic.
In an expletive-laden post, Trump promised they would be “living in Hell” if the waterway isn’t opened.
JUST IN: Trump promises to strike Iran’s power plants and bridges on Tuesday if Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened.
Iran threatens more forceful attacks if its civilian installations are targeted
Iran’s joint command threatened on Sunday to step up its attacks on oil and other civilian infrastructure facilities if the U.S. and Israel attack Iranian civilian facilities.
Iran’s state-run news agency quoted the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters as saying that it it had attacked a number of oil other infrastructure facilities in Israel and in the Gulf Arab countries after an Israeli airstrike struck Iran’s largest petrochemical complex.
President Donald Trump has threatened to unleash “all Hell” on Iran if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened.
Iran says it has destroyed four US aircraft
Iran’s joint command claimed on Sunday that the aircraft were destroyed during a complex rescue of a crew member whose fighter jet was shot down on Friday.
Iran’s state TV quoted the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters as saying that the aircraft, which included two C-130 military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters, were destroyed in the province of Isfahan, where the rescue took place.
Earlier Sunday, Iran’s state TV aired a video showing what it claimed were parts of U.S. aircraft that they had shot down and a photo of thick black smoke rising into the air.
The claims could not be independently verified.
Israeli strike causes severe damage to three-story building south of central Beirut
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the building in the Jnah neighborhood was filled with residents and was located across the street from the government-run Rafic Hariri University Hospital.
The strike came without warning soon after a previous one in the area that came with advance notice.
There was no immediate word on the number of casualties.
UAE reports attacks with dozens of missiles and drones
The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry said on Sunday that among the 60 projectiles fired at the country were nine ballistic missiles, 50 drones and one cruise missile.
This brings the total number of projectiles that have targeted the UAE during the war to 507 ballistic missiles, 24 cruise missiles, and 2,191 drones.
Iran’s internet blackout becomes the world’s longest
An internet monitoring group said on Sunday that Iran’s internet blackout is now the world’s longest nation-scale internet shutdown on record.
NetBlocks said the internet blackout in Iran has lasted for 37 consecutive days, exceeding all other comparable incidents the group has recorded.
Drone attacks ignite fires, cause serious damage at oil and petrochemical facilities in Kuwait
The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said on Sunday fires ignited at several of the company’s operational facilities as well as to facilities at the Petrochemical Industries Company, causing “significant” damage.
It said firefighters were working to control the fires.
No casualties were reported.
Israel says Iran has launched new missile barrage
The Israeli military said on Sunday that its air defenses are being activated.
The Dictatorship
What ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ gets right, and wrong, about media
This article contains some plot spoilers for “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
An early, pivotal scene in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is so recognizable to anyone who works in media right now that it should come with a warning.
Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, now an esteemed investigative reporter at a New York newspaper, is about to receive a prize during a journalism awards ceremony. But as the category is being announced, she and her colleagues receive text messages declaring that they’ve been fired because the newspaper is shutting down. Gobsmacked, Andy delivers an off-the-cuff acceptance speech in which she makes an impassioned plea to save journalism because it matters more than money or, you know, should.
This sequel frames itself as a journalism movie in a way that its predecessor did not. But it mostly pays lip service to the sense of desperation that pervades the media business.
Her comments go viral, which leads Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), the CEO of media conglomerate Elias-Clark Publications, to ask her to return to Runway magazine, where she will lead the features department and bring some much-needed gravitas to the fashion publication. He wants to boost the mag’s credibility thanks to an error in judgment committed by none other than editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep, still sporting that swoopy silver ’do). And that’s how the key figures from 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada” find themselves back in the same orbit.
As a longtime journalist who has gotten significant career news at extremely inopportune times, the mass firing at an awards ceremony rang, sadly, true. I once learned I had a new boss while covering a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Another time, I got the news that the popular blog I wrote for a major newspaper’s website was being discontinued while I was being checked for head lice. (Fun fact: I had it!)
This industry is brutal and always has been. But it is at its most broken point in modern history, and the film, to its credit, understands this. Not only are crusaders for good, old-fashioned, do-gooder journalism like Andy vulnerable to job cuts, even someone as established as Miranda, the “Prada”-verse’s equivalent of Anna Wintour, fears being pushed out of the profession altogether. This sequel, also written by Aline Brosh McKenna and directed by David Frankel, frames itself as a journalism movie in a way that its predecessor did not. But it mostly pays lip service to the sense of desperation that pervades the media business, rather than depicting it.
This moment aches for a great movie about the importance of the press. “The Devil Wears Prada 2” not only isn’t that movie, it winds up reinforcing many misguided perceptions of journalism as some elite profession that caters to the well-heeled.

To be clear, I did not walk into “The Devil Wears Prada 2” expecting to see “The Post.” (Although, in a way, isn’t that what I got?) As a work of popular entertainment, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” has three main responsibilities: to look great, to show off beautiful clothes and to give Stanley Tucci the chance to put exactly the right amount of sauce on every spicy comment he utters. The whole point of a sequel is to serve the audience the same decadent meal they enjoyed the first time.
But in 2026 you can’t make a movie about a media outlet without acknowledging that the media landscape is an active minefield. You also can’t make a second “Devil Wears Prada” that isn’t frothy and aggressively fabulous. Those two contrasting objectives ultimately knock each other out.
This film tries to give Andy the same level of integrity that she possessed in the 2006 movie, which ends with her interviewing for a gig at a traditional newspaper. To be fair, when she gets Ravitz’s job offer in the followup, she is torn about accepting it. But she likes the idea of getting to write some hard-hitting pieces and of hiring some recently unemployed friends. She also knows how hard it is to find a journalism job, let alone one that pays her more than she was already making.
We know that Andy is not wealthy based on her apartment, where brown water routinely spurts out of the faucet; as before, Tucci’s Nigel helps her out by loaning her outfits from Runway’s ample in-house closet. But not long after rejoining Runway, Andy moves into a much nicer building that’s been renovated by a man who soon becomes her boyfriend (and somehow manages to be even more boring than her boyfriend from the first film). Andy looks phenomenal — no surprise for a movie primarily about fashion. But it is hard to square the notion that Andy’s industry is in dire straits since her straits look pretty darn prosperous.

There is one montage of Andy doing the work of journalism, which mostly consists of her looking gorgeous in meetings or while typing on her laptop. In another scene, she frantically makes work-related phone calls. But the major set pieces take place at cushy events where tons of bold-faced names — Jenna Bush Hager! Law Roach! Karl-Anthony Towns, for some reason! — gather to clink champagne glasses. As fun as it is to watch those pans through the glossy party scene, they reinforce the idea that everyone who works in media spends their time rubbing shoulders with other elites. “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is not the first piece of pop culture to do this. But at this particular moment, when so many reporters and editors are getting laid off and struggling to make ends meet, it looks particularly unsavory and inaccurate.
It’s also hard to square all of the above with the fact that Runway is losing money, so much so that it may be sold to a vapid Jeff Bezos-like figure, played by Justin Theroux. During one “sobering” meeting in which Nigel says fewer staffers are being sent to Milan for Fashion Week, he adds that those who are going can no longer take private cars and, instead, will have to Uber. In this economy, no audience will empathize with how hard it is to be a writer, or to do any job for that matter, if Ubering is your version of slumming it. (The team, including Miranda, also has to fly coach. Folks, there is no way Miranda Priestly would ever fly coach. Someone would be left behind, or their job outright eliminated, before that woman sat in anything approaching economy class.)
I did not walk into this movie expecting a nuanced portrait of the journalism industry. But if you’re going to spotlight a topic, you have to reckon with it, preferably in a way that does the subject justice.
In the first film, Andy’s friends give her a hard time when she gets caught up in her new job, accusing her of abandoning her principles. In the sequel, selling out is basically a requirement for anyone who plans to keep working in media. That discrepancy would have been really interesting to explore, but this continuation is too committed to hitting the same beats as its forerunner and landing on some version of a happy ending to go there. As in the first film, the sequel ultimately asserts that money and connections are more crucial to career survival than anything else. Which is a fascinating place to land after an opening in which a bunch of underpaid journalists get laid off and the guy who sold the paper walks away with millions.
What “The Devil Wears Prada 2” doesn’t dare to say is that the media’s reliance on the wealthiest one-percenters to keep outlets afloat is part of the reason so many people like Andy and her friends are losing their jobs: Too many of those cash-flush guys don’t care about the art or craft of journalism. (The movie does underscore that too many of those guys are actual guys.) Perhaps even more notably, it doesn’t point out that the seeds for the current media hellscape were being planted back in 2006, the year that the first movie premiered and that Twitter debuted. Rewatch the original and count the number of times anyone talks about the digital edition of Runway or even says the word internet. You’ll come up blank.
Again, I did not walk into this movie expecting a nuanced portrait of the journalism industry. But if you’re going to spotlight a topic, you have to reckon with it, preferably in a way that does the subject justice. “The Devil Wears Prada 2” takes the problems it raises and then does what Miranda did with her jackets and purses early in the first film: tosses them aside as someone else’s problem.
Jen Chaney is a freelance TV and film critic whose work has been published in The New York Times, TV Guide and other outlets.
The Dictatorship
‘We are already cooked’: Republicans brace for a midterm reckoning
Gas prices are at a four-year high. Annual inflation has jumped to a nearly three-year peak. Americans are souring on congressional Republicans, President Donald Trump’s handling of inflation and the war in Iran. And his approval rating is at the lowest point of his second term in several polls.
The message from the White House: Things are still better than they were under Joe Biden.
It is not, on its face, the stuff of a winning campaign message — a backward-looking defense at a moment when voters are asking forward-looking questions about their grocery bills, gas tanks and a war with no clear end.
And privately, even some of Trump’s aides acknowledge it.
“The vibe right now is we know we are already cooked in the midterms,” a White House official told MS NOW, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The numbers help explain the gloom. For the first time since 2010, voters say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy, 52% to 48%, according to a recent Fox News poll. Economists have largely scaled back their forecasts for the remainder of the year. Energy analysts are warning that oil prices could surge even higher. And Moody’s recession model now puts the odds of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months at nearly a coin flip.
Six months out from the November election, Democrats are favored to take the House and are increasingly rosy about their prospects for the Senate despite a difficult map.
“As of this moment, of course you have to be very concerned,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., told MS NOW. “If you aren’t concerned, you’d be kind of foolish. … We are either going to win the majority by a little, lose the majority by a little, or lose it by a lot.”
Even so, more than a dozen GOP strategists, lawmakers and White House officials who spoke with MS NOW, said they remain cautiously optimistic that Republicans have enough time to at least stave off a blue wave.
But that optimism is contingent on several unpredictable factors — chiefly, whether the war in Iran comes to a speedy conclusion, and how long its economic aftershocks linger.
White House officials and their allies cautioned against writing the party’s obituary just yet. If 2024 proved anything, they argued, it is that the political environment can change dramatically in a matter of weeks, that news cycles move quickly and that voters have short memories. Internal polling circulating in the White House is not as dire as the public polling, according to one White House official. “Certainly there’s still a lot of work to be done, and that’s not a secret to anyone,” the official said. “But there’s still a lot of time left.”
Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., one of the few sitting GOP lawmakers openly critical of Trump, expects Republicans to hold the Senate, and told MS NOW that House Republicans can hang on to their razor-thin majority.
“If we’re disciplined, we keep control of the Congress,” Tillis said. “If we’ve lost, on Wednesday morning, don’t blame the Democrats. Republicans, go to the nearest mirror and look in the mirror. That’s why we’ll lose. If we play team ball, if we set aside our petty differences and recognize Republicans getting elected are the most important thing — no purity test, get them elected — then they’re not playing team ball, and they’re part of the problem.”
The plan, according to two White House officials, is a familiar one: pivot to kitchen-table issues and flood battleground states with Trump and Cabinet surrogates in the coming months. Republicans, these officials insisted, have a record to run on, including a cut in taxes via the One Big Beautiful Bill efforts to reduce drug prices and beefed-up border security.
But conspicuously absent from the game plan outlined by White House officials: any expectation of message discipline from Trump himself.
What matters, the White House official told MS NOW, is “doing what we need to do out on the campaign trail — the events, the fundraising, the retail politics of actually showing up in districts.”
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican party and he is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress to continue delivering wins for the American people,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement to MS NOW. Trump, she added, would continue to draw “a sharp contrast” between his agenda and that of congressional Democrats, whom she said allowed “millions of illegal aliens to flow through the border, unanimously opposed the Working Families Tax Cuts, and are soft-on-crime.”
But there is bubbling frustration among Republican strategists working House and Senate races that the president and his team have been slow to focus on any of it. Trump has been consumed by the war in Iran and by the construction of a $400 million White House ballroom that has become an unlikely political liability — a gilded symbol, his critics argue, of a president more focused on monuments to himself than on voters squeezed by more everyday concerns.
Some of the major fights Trump has picked of late have only made life harder for Republican incumbents. One House Republican up for re-election in a swing district pointed to the president’s inflammatory Easter morning social media posts, his attacks on the pope and his habit of naming things after himself — episodes which, the lawmaker said, only serve to “fire up the people that want to put a check on his power, instead of taking his energy and focusing on stuff that makes their lives better at home.”
“I still think there’s a lot of members that don’t understand what we’re up against — and that includes leadership,” the House Republican said, granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. “It’s hard to tell if they truly believe the rhetoric that we’re gonna hold the House, or if they’re just saying that to make us feel like we can take some risks and take some really [bad] votes, and they’re just trying to get us to walk the plank for another piece of legislation that they feel they need.”
Several Republican strategists who spoke with MS NOW pointed to missed opportunities to tout the president’s record, and said that the window to alter the trajectory of the election is narrowing.
“If we can somehow — on a grand scale — tout our wins, get our message out and find some clearly stated wins with Iran and foreign policy, we’ll be on better footing,” said T.W. Arrighi, a Republican strategist and former spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.” But I want to spend the summer doing that, with prices ticking down. I don’t want to be spending just two months of the fall doing it.”
Jacqueline Alemany is co-anchor of “The Weekend” and a Washington correspondent for MS NOW.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
The best response to the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling: proportional representation
The day after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. CallaisLouisiana Gov. Jeff Landry issued an executive order purporting to halt the state’s House primaries so that the elections would be conducted in redrawn districts. Already, legislatures in several southern states have begun planning to dismantle districts that have protected voters of color from racial voting discrimination for generations.
Democratic-controlled state legislatures face a question: protect voters of color and their incumbent representatives, or maximize partisan advantage with more counter-strike gerrymanders of their own?

There’s actually a clear option for voting rights policy that would guard against racial discrimination while preserving the hard-won gains of the Voting Rights Act: proportional representation.
By amending the Uniform Congressional District ActCongress could neutralize the gerrymandering arms race and restore equality of opportunity to our democratic process. We suggest amending the law to make three fundamental changes to how members of the House of Representatives are elected.
By amending the Uniform Congressional District Act, Congress could neutralize the gerrymandering arms race and restore equality of opportunity to our democratic process.
First, states with more than one seat should elect members of Congress using multi-seat districts. Second, states should use some form of list ballot structure, where voters choose either a single candidate (as happens now) or a “party list” vote (like the straight-ticket voting used in six states). Third, states should allocate seats to party lists using a fair allocation formula to ensure that votes have equal weight in determining representation.
This type of system minimizes the state’s role in selecting winners and losers. While any method of registering voter preferences requires some state administration, the current system of single-seat districts allows the government — not the voters — to determine the primary basis of representation.
Additionally, this approach would achieve better representation for voters of color. It would preserve the protections provided by the Section 2 framework of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), with additional benefits. Under a single-seat “first past the post” system, the state is forced to arbitrate competing claims for representation among various racial groups. By contrast, our proposal shifts this power to the citizens, allowing voters to identify and organize their own electoral communities.

Under a list system, candidates running for office can choose to run together on a list, and seats are allocated to lists. This allows voters to pool their voting strength, such that every vote counts toward representation: Even if one’s top candidate fails to earn enough votes to be elected on their own, a vote still counts toward the list and the election of candidates from the voter’s preferred group of candidates. Moreover, the list system ensures minority representation. In a three-seat election, any list receiving 25% of voter support is guaranteed a seat.
List systems allow voters to exercise greater agency than does our single-seat, winner-take-all system. By grouping themselves on the basis of the identity that they find salient, voters determine which groups are entitled to representation. Voters of color are free to determine which aspects of their identity matter most to them. Under the Section 2 framework, voters of color are not entitled to representation as political minorities or based on their other identities even though the framework incentivizes a politics of racial-group identity.
Electing representatives throughout the United States via multi-seat list systems, the type used in the majority of other democraciesincluding Brazil, Norway and South Africa, would also improve substantive representation. List systems facilitate the emergence of different types of coalitions, which can make for more fluid and dynamic politics. Elections are more competitivecoalitions continually shift to attract more voters and party systems are more responsive. Because list systems allow efsmaller groups to gain representation, minority coalitions that do not run on ethnic appeals are likely to emerge, moving U.S. politics away from ethno-nationalist trends. The same mechanisms that facilitate the emergence and survival of racial minority coalitions also allow for small parties running on non-ethnic appeals to gain representation, which can temper racial polarization.
List systems facilitate the emergence of different types of coalitions, which can make for more fluid and dynamic politics. Elections are more competitive, coalitions continually shift to attract more voters and party systems are more responsive.
In the wake of the high court’s Callais decision, both parties may be tempted, tit-for-tat style, to use the redistricting process as a tool for partisan retaliation. This path of mutually assured destruction would further erode voting rights and the foundations of our democracy.
As two of us warned more than a decade agothe Callais decision was predictable. Civil rights activists might be tempted to double down on the VRA’s race-based anti-discrimination approach by relying on state voting rights acts to do what the federal Voting Rights Act once did. This would be a mistake.
Opponents of state voting rights acts would find it remarkably easy to use the Callais precedent to strike down bills that are mini-replicas of the federal VRA. The core objection of the Supreme Court’s conservatives to the Section 2 framework is that it requires the government to use race to allocate political power — a practice Chief Justice John Roberts famously dismissed years ago as the “sordid business” of “divvying us up by race.”
Reform must protect voters of color and ensure better representation for all Americans — goals that proportional representation is uniquely positioned to achieve. While amending the Uniform Congressional District Act remains the ultimate objective, progress does not have to begin in Congress.
Reformers should champion proportional representation at the local and state levels. With state legislatures reconsidering their electoral lawsthis is a perfect opportunity to consider proportional reforms. Local governments with the capacity to innovate should also serve as laboratories for electoral democracy. Voting rights reformers are not left powerless by the Callais ruling. There is an obvious next step. We don’t have to live with political or racial inequality.
Michael Latner is director of research on democratic reform at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and a professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Guy-Uriel E. Charles is the Charles J. Ogletree Jr. professor of law at Harvard Law School, where he also directs the Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice.
Luis Fuentes-Rohwer is the Class of 1950 Herman B Wells Endowed Professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
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