Tensions flare near Strait of Hormuz

as ship is seized and another is sunk

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Tensions are escalating again near the Strait of Hormuz after a ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward Iran and another was attacked and sank near the coast of Oman.

The incidents reported on Thursday came as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim to the waterway. Another Iranian official says Tehran has a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S. The British military says the ship seized near the UAE was moving toward Iranian territorial waters. The seizure comes as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Former Oklahoma death row inmate

freed from jail as he awaits retrial

An Oklahoma man who has narrowly avoided execution three separate times could walk free from a county jail after a judge agreed to grant him bond while awaiting retrial.

Judge Natalie Mai on Thursday set bond for Richard Glossip in the amount of $500,000. Glossip must wear an electronic monitoring device and will not be allowed to travel outside Oklahoma. He also must not contact any witnesses in the case, or consume any drugs or alcohol. The decision paves the way for the 63-year-old Glossip to be freed for the first time in nearly 30 years. Glossip has long maintained his innocence in the 1997 murder-for-hire killing of his former boss.

Emails show FBI Director Kash Patel’s

Hawaii trip included ‘VIP snorkel’

WASHINGTON — Government emails obtained by The Associated Press show that FBI Director Kash Patel went on a “VIP snorkel” session last summer at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

The FBI didn’t publicize the excursion or Patel’s return to Hawaii after official visits to Australia and New Zealand.

With few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona. The battleship is now a military cemetery reachable only by boat. It has stood as one of the nation’s most hallowed sites since Japan bombed and sank the ship in 1941.

A Navy spokesperson confirms the outing but says the service wasn’t able to track down who initiated it.

with Castro’s grandson in Havana

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban and U.S. officials say that CIA Director John Ratcliffe has met with Cuban officials including Raul Castro’s grandson during a high-level visit to the island. Ratcliffe met with Raul Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services, and discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security issues. A CIA official confirmed the meetings to the AP. Ratcliffe was there “to personally deliver President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.”

Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI

make their final case in trial

OAKLAND, Calif. — Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI made their final arguments Thursday in the landmark trial whose outcome could shape the future of artificial intelligence.

Musk, the world’s richest man, was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that launched in 2015 and went on to create ChatGPT. After Musk invested $38 million in its first years, his lawsuit filed in 2024 accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his top deputy of shifting into a moneymaking mode behind his back.

Texas executes 600th prisoner

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A man who experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys had said was intellectually disabled became the 600th person executed in Texas since 1982. He was put to death Thursday evening for the killing of a 77-year-old retired college professor.

Edward Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay over his disabilities claims. The execution capped a series of last-minute legal efforts by Busby’s attorneys seeking to spare his life.

Busby was condemned for the suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a retired professor from Texas Christian University. Prosecutors said she was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and left to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped heavily around her face, covering her mouth and nose. The execution was the 600th in Texas since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982.

The Associated Press