Trump orders US military to 'shoot and kill' Iranian small boats

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. military to “shoot and kill” small Iranian boats that deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz, he said Thursday, a day after Iran again displayed its ability to thwart traffic through the channel.

US stocks fall on shaky Wall Street as Brent oil touches $107

NEW YORK (AP) - U.S. stocks pulled back from their record heights on a shaky Wall Street. The S&P 500 fell 0.4% Thursday to halt its weekslong rally. The Dow Jones lost 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.9%. Stocks also took a hit after the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly jumped above $107.

US soldier charged with using intel to win $400K Polymarket bet on Maduro raid

WASHINGTON (AP) – A U.S. special forces soldier involved in the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the mission to win more than $400,000 in an online betting market, federal officials announced Thursday.

In Baltic skies, NATO and Russian pilots size each other up warily

ŠIAULIAI AIR BASE, Lithuania (AP) – When NATO’s call came, the French fighter pilots scrambled with practiced urgency, already suited up to shorten their response times. They dashed in vans to hangars where their prepped and armed Rafale jets awaited, clambered into the cockpits and fired up the engines, which puffed and screamed.

Meta slashes 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, as Microsoft offers buyouts

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

Countries gather in Colombia for summit aimed at breaking fossil fuel reliance

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) – Against a backdrop of rising global tensions and energy market instability, governments from around 50 countries will gather Friday in Colombia’s Caribbean city of Santa Marta for a summit aimed at accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels.

Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool gets a blue coating

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is having the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool coated in a swimming pool surface hued in “American flag blue,” covering up a decades-old granite surface that he said was “leaking like a sieve” and would take years to replace.

Editorials from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and others

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

Lebanon and Israel to resume rare direct talks in Washington to extend Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire

BEIRUT (AP) – Lebanon and Israel were set to begin a second session of direct talks in Washington on Thursday to discuss the possibility of extending a truce between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group and plans for future negotiations between the two neighbors with a long history of hostile relations.