Ex-FBI director

over photograph

WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted again, this time over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials say constituted a threat against President Donald Trump.

It’s the second criminal case the Justice Department has brought against the longtime Trump foe. Comey says he assumed the arrangement of shells reading “86 47” was a political message, not a call to violence against Trump, the 47th president. The two-count indictment charges Comey with “knowingly and willfully” making a threat to “take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon” Trump and with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.

UAE prepares

to leave OPEC

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates will leave OPEC effective Friday, stripping the oil cartel of its third-largest producer and further weakening its leverage over global oil supplies and prices.

The UAE in recent years has pushed back against OPEC production quotas it felt were too low. Regional politics are also likely a factor in the decision announced Tuesday. The UAE has had increasingly frosty relations with Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, over political and economic matters in the Mideast, even after both were attacked by fellow OPEC member Iran during the war.

The UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC won’t necessarily have any immediate effects in markets because supplies are being constrained by the war in Iran.

US soldier pleads

not guilty on bet

NEW YORK — A U.S. special forces soldier has pleaded not guilty in federal court in New York to charges that he used classified information about the mission to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to win more than $400,000.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke is accused of using the information on the prediction market Polymarket. He entered the plea on Tuesday after he was charged with the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction. The case comes during heavy scrutiny on prediction markets, which allow people to trade or wager on almost anything.

War taking toll

on Iran economy

CAIRO — U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have crippled thousands of factories in Iran, and the damage is reverberating across the country’s economy.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have lost their jobs, and millions more could face the same fate. Most damaging, Israeli strikes knocked out most production of steel and petrochemicals, causing a surge in prices for metals and plastic and threatening wider sectors.

Things could get worse under the U.S. blockade. Still, Iran’s leaders are betting that an economy built to be self-reliant under decades of sanctions can endure the pain longer than U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Associated Press