ATHENS, Greece (AP) – One after another, Israel has taken out Iran’s top leaders. First it was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the opening shots of the war. Now Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council who was considered one of the most powerful figures in the country, has also been killed.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iran threatened to target recreational and tourist sites worldwide and insisted it was still building missiles. Its supreme leader issued another defiant statement on Friday, nearly three weeks into U.S.-Israeli strikes that have killed a slew of Tehran’s top leaders and hammered its weapons and energy industries.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian officials are helping five countries in the Middle East and Gulf region counter attacks on their territory by Iranian drones, while the United States and European countries are among others who have requested support, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sought to reaffirm her alliance with President Donald Trump on Thursday after the president this week seemed to complain that Japan was among the nations that did not quickly join his call to help protect the Strait of Hormuz.
On one of the holiest days on the Islamic calendar, Iran fired on Israel and energy sites in neighboring Gulf Arab states, insisting that it can still build missiles and issuing a new threat: to deny safety to its enemies in “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide. Israel meanwhile pounded Tehran with airstrikes as Iranians marked Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – The war in Iran is exposing the world’s reliance on fragile fossil fuel routes, lending urgency to calls for hastening the shift to renewable energy. Fighting has all but halted oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, or LNG.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Voters in Denmark will decide who runs the Scandinavian country for the next four years in a general election next week, a vote that follows a standoff with U.S. President Donald Trump over the future of the kingdom’s semiautonomous territory of Greenland.
NEW YORK (AP) - Another climb for oil prices shook stock markets on Friday, as hopes collapsed for a possible cut to interest rates this year by the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 fell 1.5% to close its fourth straight losing week, its longest such streak in a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 443 points, or 1%, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2%.
NEW YORK (AP) – CBS News said Friday it is shutting down its storied radio news service after nearly 100 years of operation as part of a round of layoffs, blaming a shift in radio station programming strategies and challenging economic times.