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When an Iranian official this week laid out a list of demands to end the war started by the United States and Israel, he added an item that hadn’t been on Tehran’s list before: recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

The narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) ordinarily passes has emerged as the Islamic Republic’s most potent weapon. And it is now seeking to turn into both a source of potentially billions of dollars in annual revenue and a pressure point on the global economy.

Iran has long threatened to close the strait in case of an attack, but few expected it to follow through – or for it to prove so effective in disrupting global trade flows. The scale of the impact appears to have expanded Tehran’s ambitions, with the new demands suggesting it is seeking to turn that leverage into something more durable.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News it would be a "mistake" if American-made missile interceptors bound for Ukraine were diverted to Gulf countries being attacked by Iran.

Russia took satellite images of a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia three times in the days before Iran attacked the site and wounded American troops, according to a summary of Ukrainian intelligence shared with NBC News by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In an interview in the Gulf nation of Qatar on Saturday, Zelenskyy said he was “100%” confident Russia was sharing such intelligence with Iran to help target U.S. forces across the Middle East.

“I think that it’s in Russia’s interest to help Iranians. And I don’t believe — I know — that they share information,” he said. “Do they help Iranians? Of course. How many percent? One-hundred percent.”

Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, gas prices, grocery bills and mortgage rates have all climbed

The US-Israel war against Iran has sent shockwaves through global markets, leaving many Americans grappling with a growing financial squeeze on everyday living costs.

Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran – prompting retaliatory attacks on US allies in the region and Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime passage – costs have surged across the US. Gas prices, in particular, have spiked sharply, with the national average rising by roughly 30% over the past month. Grocery bills, mortgage rates and fertilizer costs have also climbed.

Now, many Americans are being forced to reassess their finances and cut back drastically on basic necessities such as food, clothing and electricity.

South Carolina senator has reconciled with the man he once called a ‘jackass’ and a ‘bigot’, and is pushing him to expand the war

To sceptics, Donald Trump’s war in Iran is a hubristic blunder that could spiral further out of control and bring catastrophe to the world. To Lindsey Graham, it is a dream come true.

The Republican senator from South Carolina spent decades spoiling for a fight with the regime in Tehran. He claimed that its overthrow would give the US president his own “Berlin Wall moment”. Now he is urging further escalation by invoking the bloody battle of Iwo Jima from the second world war.

For Graham’s critics, his sway over Trump, and his seemingly insatiable appetite for war at any cost, might make him the most dangerous man in Washington.

“Lindsey’s probably the most pro-war Republican out there,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Democrat. “He’s certainly the most visible. We’re talking about a guy who, if he could, would have American troops everywhere on the planet engaged in some sort of a war. He’s a war-hungry dude and he’s got Trump’s ear.”

Hungary’s foreign intelligence services monitored private conversations of the investigative reporter Szabolcs Panyi, he alleged Friday in an interview with POLITICO after being accused of espionage.

Panyi, who has reported for years on Russian influence in Hungary, said he was warned by sources within the government that his conversations with contacts had been intercepted and passed to the Hungarian Information Office, later to be used by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government in an effort to discredit him.

The alleged campaign began in the middle of 2025 and became "more aggressive" after Direkt36, a nonprofit investigative journalism center in Hungary that Panyi writes for, published an article last year about a Hungarian intelligence operative attempting to recruit officials working for the European Commission in Brussels.

Beijing renewed grievances with Washington on Friday over what it described as systemic bias against Chinese scientists, following the reported suicide of a postdoctoral researcher living in the United States.

During the Chinese Foreign Ministry's regular press conference, spokesperson Lin Jian responded to a query about the researcher, who state media said had died one day after being interrogated by U.S. law enforcement.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragedy and have made solemn representations to the United States,” Lin said. He added that Chinese diplomatic missions had been in contact with the family of the deceased and were assisting with follow‑up arrangements.

Authorities must also provide detainees access to free and private legal phone calls and allow lawyers to visit unannounced

A federal judge ruled on Friday that officials at Florida’s state-run immigration jail, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, must give attorneys better access to their detained clients.

The order by federal judge Sheri Polster Chappell, from the middle district of Florida, said facility officials must provide access to confidential, private, free and unmonitored outgoing legal telephone calls from people detained in the facility. Polster Chappell also ruled that attorneys are allowed to make unannounced visits to see their clients, bypassing the facility’s pre-scheduling requirement.

The state of Florida opened the detention center in summer 2025 to detain undocumented immigrants caught within the state. Since its opening, the facility has faced severe criticisms of the treatment of detainees.

Escalation represents dangerous spread of war and brings threat of even more damage to the global economy

The US-Israeli war with Iran has expanded with the entry of Houthi forces in Yemen, representing a dangerous spread of the conflict and bringing with it the threat of more damage to the global economy.

Pakistan has said it would host a meeting of Middle Eastern powers on Monday in an effort to find a regional approach to ending the conflict. But the talks, which bring together the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, did not appear to include any of the warring parties, casting further doubt on persistent US claims of diplomatic progress.

Houthi forces, close allies of Iran, said on Saturday they had fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at “sensitive Israeli military sites” and that they would continue military operations until the “aggression” came to an end on all fronts. Israel said it had intercepted one missile originating in Yemen.

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly ripped into some of the most vocal supporters of Donald Trump’s war in Iran, listing the names of people she said pushed him into the conflict.

“Stop with that ‘it’s President Trump’s decision.’ I’m aware, but someone talked him into it, and those people should be held to account,” Kelly said on Friday’s episode of her show. “As this thing goes south, we need to know exactly who talked him into it, and what representations were made to convince the president that this was a good idea. Who? Who, specifically?”

The podcaster is one of a few conservative personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who have publicly opposed Trump’s war. An NBC News poll from earlier this month revealed that 90% of self-identified MAGA-aligned Republican voters support the war, while a majority of voters overall oppose it.

A white Connecticut police officer who fatally shot a Black man in a mental health crisis was fired Friday as public outrage grew over videos showing he began shooting 30 seconds after arriving at the scene, where other officers had spent several minutes de-escalating the situation.

The officer’s firing came a day after the Rev. Al Sharpton and noted civil rights lawyer Ben Crump spoke at the funeral of the man who was killed, Steven Jones.

Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said he fired Officer Joseph Magnano because of what he saw on police body camera footage of the Feb. 27 killing.

The videos, released earlier this month by the state’s inspector general, showed that Jones was was on a city street holding a large knife, but that the first group of police officers who arrived backpedaled to keep their distance from him, spoke to him kindly, and seemed to have gotten him to calm down.

Minnesota public universities can continue to offer in-state tuition and scholarships to some immigrants in the country without legal status, a federal judge ruled on Friday, dismissing a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice last summer that attempted to halt the programs.

The decision follows a series of clashes between the federal government and Minnesota officials over immigration enforcement.

United States District Judge Katherine Menendez said in her decision that the federal government failed to prove that programs offering in-state tuition for immigrants without legal status discriminated against U.S. citizens.

Demonstrators across the country and the globe will protest against Donald Trump on Saturday at over 3,000 planned events.

Millions are expected to gather across the country and around the world on Saturday for a third round of “No Kings” protests against Donald Trump. Organizers predict that it will be the “single largest non-violent day of action” in American history.

Saturday’s “No Kings” marches, of which there are more than 3,200 planned across all 50 states and several continents, come as Trump faces increasing scrutiny over the war with Iran, the rising cost of gas and how his administration has executed its mass deportation agenda.

“Since the last No Kings [protests], we’re seeing higher gas prices and groceries, all while there’s an illegal war in Iran,” Sarah Parker, a national coordinator for the group 50501, told reporters Thursday on a national press call previewing Saturday’s events.