Spanish authorities have found the body of a missing college student from Illinois.

The body of 20-year-old James Jimmy Gracey was found Thursday evening in the water off a Barcelona beach, near where he was last seen outside a nightclub with his friends early Tuesday morning.

He never returned to the room he was renting with friends. Police recovered his phone soon after he went missing. Gracey was a student at the University of Alabama, and was visiting friends in Barcelona for a spring break trip.

Catalan police say that their investigation continues into the cause of death.

Regional Catalan police said Thursday they had found a body in the water at around 6 p.m. local time. Police told The Associated Press that the body was recovered off Barcelonas Somorrostro beach, near where Gracey was last reported seen.

Gracey, who was wearing a white shirt and dark pants and a chain with a gold rhinestone cross, never returned to the room he was renting with friends, according to family members who live in the suburb of Elmhurst, about 19 miles west of Chicago.

Beth Marren OReilly, who is Graceys aunt, said he and his friends arrived in Barcelona on Monday morning to visit a group of University of Alabama friends studying abroad there.

Local authorities notified Graceys parents that they had his phone. Originally, the family thought Gracey may have lost his phone or been pickpocketed, but when they reached out to his friends, they learned that Gracey wasnt with them as of early Tuesday morning.

You keep thinking that ... youre going to wake up from this and its a terrible nightmare, OReilly said. You know, you see people say this all the time. You never thought it could be our family. And here we are.

OReilly described him as a good Catholic boy from the Midwest and an amazing older brother to his four younger siblings. Along with his fraternity commitments, he is in the honors program at Alabama, she said.

Hes such an all-around good kid, OReilly said. And thats why were so worried. Its just, its not like him to not be in contact.

Friends still in the city have begun hanging missing person signs showing Gracey's photo and details of the last time he was seen.

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Barcelona is a popular tourist destination that brings in millions of foreign visitors each year. It is generally safe, especially compared with major U.S. cities, where tourists biggest worry are normally pickpockets.

Barcelonas beaches, located in walking distance of its center, are a main draw especially for young visitors. The area where Gracey went out is a stretch of beach with several restaurants and nightclubs that are frequented by locals and foreigners.

We are keeping Jimmy and his family at the forefront of our thoughts, and our staff are in direct communication with the family to offer every support and assistance possible," the University of Alabama said in a statement on Thursday.

Gracey is a member of the Theta Chi fraternity at the school, and the international organization said he holds two positions within the school's chapter.

Since learning of his disappearance, the International Fraternity has been in regular communication with federal lawmakers, the University of Alabama, and our chapter members, including those who remain in Barcelona searching tirelessly for Jimmy, CEO Michael Mayer said.

Iran intensified its attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf on Thursday, raising the stakes in a war that is sending shock waves through the global economy.

The strikes, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a key Iranian gas field, sent fuel prices soaring and risked drawing Irans Arab neighbors directly into the conflict. Iran's targeting of energy production further stressed global supplies already under pressure because of its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the worlds oil is transported.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, Irans top leaders have been killed in airstrikes and the countrys military capabilities have been severely degraded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday that Iran no longer has the ability to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles.

Still, Iran now led by the son of the supreme leader killed in the wars opening salvo remains capable of missile and drone attacks rattling its Gulf Arab neighbors and a global economy dependent on the energy they produce.

Underscoring the danger to ships in the region, a vessel was set ablaze off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and another damaged off Qatar. Efforts to bypass the Strait of Hormuz were also under pressure: An Iranian drone hit a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea, which the country had been hoping to use as an alternative exit route.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, briefly surged above $119 a barrel, up more than 60% since Israel and the United States started the war. The European benchmark for natural gas prices also rose sharply and has roughly doubled in the past month.

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Energy infrastructure is targeted around the Gulf

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE denounced the Iranian attacks. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called them a dangerous escalation.

But Iran showed no signs of backing down. Saudi Arabia said its SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu was hit. Saudi Arabia had begun pumping large volumes of oil west toward the Red Sea to avoid the Strait of Hormuz.

Qatar, a key source of natural gas for world markets, said extensive damage was caused by Iranian missiles hitting the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility, where production had already been halted after earlier attacks. Damage to the facility could delay Qatar's ability to get supplies to the market even after the war ends.

Two oil refineries in Kuwait and gas operations in Abu Dhabi also were targeted by Iran, local authorities said.

In Israel, more than a half-dozen waves of Iranian attacks targeting large parts of the country sent millions of people to shelters. The strikes caused damage to buildings but no significant casualties were reported.

After the latest Iranian barrage, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said the electricity grid in northern Israel sustained some damage. He said crews had restored electricity to some areas and were working to restore it in others. Israeli media showed images of black smoke rising from an oil refinery in the northern city of Haifa; Cohen said the refinery damage was minor.

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Hegseth says more Iranian leaders could be targeted

The Trump administration has cited various war objectives, including degrading Irans missile capabilities and its nuclear program. Killing senior leaders has also been a priority for the U.S. and Israel.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday implied that more leaders could be targeted, referring specifically to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij force, a powerful internal security unit whose leader was killed by Israel earlier this week.

The last job anyone in the world wants right now, senior leader for the IRGC or Basij, temp jobs, all of them, Hegseth said.

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that U.S. forces continue to attack deeper into Iranian territory, with warplanes hunting Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz and helicopters striking Iranian drones. Caine said the U.S. military has also dropped 5,000-pound bombs on underground weapon-storage facilities.

Irans state TV, quoting a Revolutionary Guard statement, said the countrys air defense system hit an F-35 fighter jet. U.S. Central Command said an F-35 fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing after flying a combat mission over Iran. A spokesman for the command, Capt. Tim Hawkins, said the aircraft landed safely, the pilot was in stable condition and the incident was under investigation.

In a sign of the Iran war's rising price tag, the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in additional funds, a senior administration official said. The department sent the request to the White House, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private information.

Among the Iranian energy facilities hit in recent days was the Bushehr nuclear power plant complex. There were no injuries and the plant suffered no damage, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

Israel said Thursday it struck Iranian targets in the Caspian Sea for the first time. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said the strikes hit dozens of targets, including ships, a shipyard and a command center.

Irans strikes were retaliation for Israeli attack on a critical gas field

Iran stepped up its attacks on Gulf energy facilities after Israel hit South Pars, the Iranian part of the worlds largest gas field, which is located offshore in the Persian Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar.

With some 80% of all power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency, the attack directly threatens the countrys electricity supplies. Natural gas is also used to supply household heating and cooking across the Islamic Republic.

Israels target selection in this war has heavily focused on the institutions, leaders and infrastructure, the New York-based Soufan Center said in a research note. It now seeks to inflict additional pressure on the regime by making the living conditions for civilians intolerable.

Iran condemned the strike on South Pars, with President Masoud Pezeshkian warning of uncontrollable consequences that could engulf the entire world.

In Washington, President Donald Trump said that Israel would not attack South Pars again. But he warned on social media that if Iran continued striking Qatars energy infrastructure, the U.S. would retaliate and massively blow up the entirety of the field.

Asked later about the possibility of U.S. ground troops being deployed to Iran, Trump responded, No. Im not putting troops anywhere.

Death toll climbs in third week of war

More than 1,300 people in Iran have been killed during the war. Israeli strikes against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon have displaced more than 1 million people roughly 20% of the population according to the Lebanese government, which says more than 1,000 people have been killed. Israel says it has killed more than 500 Hezbollah militants.

In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. Four people were also killed in the occupied West Bank overnight by an Iranian missile strike, according to officials.

At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed.

Iran announced the execution of three men detained in Januarys nationwide protests, the first such sentences known to have been carried out, the judiciarys Mizan news agency reported.

The FBI is investigating whether Joe Kent, who resigned his position as a top counterterrorism official this week in protest of the Iran war, improperly shared classified information, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

The investigation precedes Kent's resignation Tuesday from his role as director of the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing FBI inquiry.

But it comes as the Justice Department has undertaken multiple investigations over the last year into political foes of President Donald Trump, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Prosecutors have repeatedly struggled to make charges stick amid rejections from judges or to secure indictments in the first place.

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Additional details about what the investigation, which was first reported by Semafor, is examining were not immediately available.

Kent disclosed his departure from the administration in a statement on X in which he cited his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and said he "cannot in good conscience" back the war against Iran.

"Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby," Kent wrote.

Trump later told reporters that he always thought Kent was "weak on security" and if someone in his administration did not believe Iran was a threat, "we don't want those people." Other Trump administration officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe, have since sought to distance themselves from Kent and his assessment.

A phone message was left Wednesday night for Kent, who previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress, with a former campaign manager.

Mary Rose Wilcox and her husband marched and fasted alongside Csar Chavez. They helped him open a radio station in Phoenix and plastered their Mexican restaurant with photos and a mural of the widely admired Latino icon.

So when Wilcox's daughter called this week to inform them of sexual abuse allegations leveled against Chavez, she said it felt like a punch to the gut.

By Wednesday morning, the couple had taken down Chavez's photos from their restaurant walls and made plans to cover the mural.

"We love Csar Chavez. But we cannot honor him and we cannot even love him anymore," said the former Phoenix City Council member.

Many like Wilcox are working to reconcile the legacy of a man who fought tirelessly for the rights of farmworkers with stunning allegations that he sexually abused girls and the co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America union, Dolores Huerta.

Latino leaders and community groups quickly condemned the alleged abuse by Chavez but emphasized that the farmworker movement was never just about a single man. Chavez died in California in 1993 at age 66.

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There were calls to alter memorials honoring the man who in the 1960s helped secure better wages and working conditions for farmworkers and has been long revered by many Democratic leaders in the U.S. The California Museum said it will remove Chavez from the state's Hall of Fame something it's never done before.

Some local and state leaders in both parties urged their communities not to celebrate Chavez's birthday on March 31, and to rename buildings and streets named for him. Celebrations of Chavez in Texas and in his home state of Arizona have been canceled at the request of the Cesar Chavez Foundation.

In California, legislative leaders announced Thursday they are going to rename Csar Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day in light of the allegations.

California was the first state to designate Chavez's birthday as a day to honor the civil rights leader nearly 30 years ago. In 2000, the Legislature passed a bill to make it an official paid day off for state employees and require the state to start teaching students about his legacy and his involvement in the labor movement in California.

Many other California workers are given the day off.

Dolores Huerta stamped her own legacy on the fight for justice

Huerta, who is a labor rights legend in her own right, said in a statement released Wednesday that she stayed silent for 60 years for fear her words could hurt the farmworker movement. She said she did not know Chavez had hurt other women.

Huerta described two sexual encounters with Chavez; one in which she was "manipulated and pressured" and another when she was "forced against my will." She said both led to pregnancies, which she kept secret, and that she arranged for the children to be raised by other families.

She joined Chavez in 1962 to co-found the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers of America. For many, they were akin to Martin Luther King. Jr. and Rosa Parks because of their work advocating for racial equality and civil rights.

Huerta's resolve and dedication to civil rights, women's rights and social justice won wide admiration. Some, including a group of Democrats in Texas, are calling for Huerta's name to replace Chavez's on places that bear his name.

The New York Times first reported Wednesday that it found Chavez groomed and sexually abused young girls who worked in the movement. Huerta, too, revealed to the newspaper that she was a victim of the abuse in her 30s.

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Some knew about Chavez's abusive behavior, biographer says

Chavez is known nationally for his early organizing in the fields, a hunger strike, a grape boycott and eventual victory in getting growers to negotiate with farmworkers for better wages and working conditions.

Streets, schools and parks across the Southwest bear Chavez's name. California became the first state to commemorate his birthday, and in 2014, then-President Barack Obama proclaimed March 31 Csar Chavez Day. President Joe Biden had a bronze bust of Chavez installed in the Oval Office when he moved into the White House.

Biden and Obama have not yet commented on the allegations. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was still processing the news.

Chavez was full of contradictions even as a union leader, said Miriam Pawel, a California journalist who wrote a biography of him. There was abusive behaviors within the union, but people didn't speak out because they believed the union was the best way to protect farmworkers, she said.

"For many, many years, for most of those people, even when they saw things that they found disturbing, they did not wanna talk about it," Pawel said.

Chavez's family and foundation voice support for the victims

Born in Yuma, Arizona, Chavez grew up in a Mexican American family that traveled around California picking lettuce, grapes, cotton and other seasonal crops.

Chavez's family said in a statement that they are devastated by the allegations.

"We wish peace and healing to the survivors and commend their courage to come forward. As a family steeped in the values of equity and justice, we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse," the family said.

The Cesar Chavez Foundation pledged support for the labor leader's victims, saying with the Chavez family's support the organization will figure out its identity going forward.

The United Farm Workers union quickly distanced itself from annual celebrations of its founder, calling the allegations troubling.

Wilcox, the former Phoenix council member, said Chavez helped people understand the value of workers at all levels.

"There's two things: Chavez the man and Chavez the man who we didn't know," she said. "And the one we knew, we knew the good things he did and the things we saw put in place. ... And the one we did not know is like a monster."

Crews began demolishing Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday to make way for a memorial that will pay tribute to the 49 people killed in the attack at the LGBTQ-friendly club nearly a decade ago.

Construction workers began tearing down walls in the long-shuttered venue that were still scarred by bullet holes from the June 12, 2016, attack, when a gunman opened fire during a Latin night celebration, killing dozens and wounding 53 other people before police killed him following a standoff.

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The city of Orlando purchased the Pulse property in 2023 for $2 million and plans to build a $12 million permanent memorial that will open in 2027. Those efforts followed a botched multiyear attempt by a foundation run by the clubs former owner to buy the property.

The plan for the memorial comes at a fraught time for monuments to LGBTQ+ history since President Donald Trump's second term began. The federal government removed a pride flag outside of Stonewall National Monument last year, following a National Park Service memo that prohibits the agency from flying any flags besides the U.S. flag and the flag of the Department of the Interior.

A similar battle played out in Orlando last year, when local officials clashed with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis because workers painted over a rainbow mural on the crosswalk in front of Pulse. The move came after the Florida Department of Transportation issued a memo that prohibited surface art associated with social, political or ideological messages or images and does not serve the purpose of traffic control.

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The Pulse attacker had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

Two crew members of a tugboat were killed and two others were injured in what the Coast Guard described Wednesday as a "confined space incident" aboard a barge moored in southeast Alaska last weekend.

A Coast Guard news release provided limited details about what happened to the four, but said they were in a confined space aboard the freight barge Waynehoe on Sunday when other crew members from their tug, the Chukchi Sea, lost contact with them. The barge was moored about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Ketchikan.

The parents of Sidney Mohorovich, one of the victims, said they were told by Coast Guard officials there was methane gas present in the confined space.

"We don't know why the series of events that led to all the people being in the confined space, if they all like went down as a team or in separate stages," Todd Mohorovich told The Associated Press by phone from his home in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. "I have no information on that, but what I can tell you is that the confined space had high levels of methane gas in it."

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He did not know the source of the gas or why it was present. The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to an email seeking confirmation of the presence of methane gas.

Todd and Eva Mohorovich last spoke to their son Saturday night when he told them about impending bad weather. "He said that the barge was in a spot where they were going to be able to be sheltered from that storm," Todd Mohorovich said.

The crew planned to perform normal deck duties to make sure everything was secured ahead of the storm.

Federal regulations define "confined space" on a vessel as "a compartment of small size and limited access such as a double bottom tank ... or other space which by its small size and confined nature can readily create or aggravate a hazardous exposure." That could include a lack of oxygen.

The tugboat crew called the Coast Guard for help and managed to recover one of the dead crew members from the space and helped the two survivors out before the rescue team arrived.

The barge was then towed to Ketchikan, where the confined space "was able to be safely cleared for the recovery of the second deceased crew member," Coast Guard spokesperson Alexander Ransom told AP in an email.

The causes of death were not released, and the bodies were sent to Anchorage for autopsies.

Sidney Mohorovich, 28, was one month into his new job with Hamilton Marine Construction.

The company didn't return a message seeking comment.

Mohorovich, a large equipment mechanic, was on his first job in Alaska. He lived in Deming, Washington, with his fiancee ahead of their planned June wedding.

He previously was a logger and welder, and before that he learned how to build houses and do electrical work. "He could pretty much figure anything out," his mother said.

"He was loved by so many," Eva Mohorovich said of her son's outgoing personality. "Just an exceptional human being, smarty, witty, funny, loving."

It was in his heart to lend a hand to people in need, and he was unselfish in so many ways, his father said.

"We're just really thankful for who he was," Todd Mohorovich said. "I wouldn't change a thing in the life that we've all shared together, regardless of this the tragedy at this time. If we were to change something, it would lead to other changes that we don't know about."

The two survivors were reported to be in good condition, Ransom said, changing their conditions from stable as the guard advised in an earlier release. The other man killed was identified as Ben Fowler.

The national debt surpassed a record $39 trillion on Wednesday, a milestone that comes just weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

The unprecedented figure highlights competing administration priorities, from passing a massive tax law and boosting defense spending and immigration enforcement to chipping away at the debt itself the latter of which Donald Trump promised to do as both a candidate and as president.

The Government Accountability Office outlines some of the impact of rising government debt on Americans including higher borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lower wages from businesses having less money available to invest, and more expensive goods and services. Advocates for a balanced budget also warn that the long-term trend of borrowing more and paying more in interest will force Americans to face tougher fiscal tradeoffs ahead.

Michael Peterson, chair and CEO of the nonprofit Peter G. Peterson Foundation, created to raise awareness of Americas long-term fiscal challenges, said in a statement that we must recognize this alarming rate of growth and the significant financial burden we are putting on the next generation.

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The trajectory of the rising costs is also a concern. The federal debt has surged under both Republican and Democratic presidents, most recently fueled by wars, large-scale pandemic spending and tax cuts.

The U.S. national debt hit $38 trillion five months ago and $37 trillion two months before that.

At the current growth rate, we will hit a staggering $40 trillion in national debt before this falls elections, Peterson said. Borrowing trillion after trillion at this rapid pace with no plan in place is the definition of unsustainable.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett estimated on Sunday that the war in Iran had cost the U.S. more than $12 billion so far. It is unclear when the war will end.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, pointed to a decline in the federal deficit during Trump's first year back in office.

According to Treasury's Fiscal Data website, total government spending in fiscal year 2025 was $7.01 trillion and total revenue was $5.23 trillion, resulting in a deficit of $1.78 trillion, which is a decrease of $41 billion from the previous fiscal year.

Desai said the decrease in the deficit is attributable to raising individual tax revenue and a government right-sizing push that has reduced federal employment to its lowest level since 1966, and aggressive crackdown on federal welfare fraud. As these and other initiatives continue taking effect, Americas deficit and debt-to-GDP ratios will continue trending in the right direction.

The Pentagon has asked the White House for another $200 billion to carry out the war in Iran, a senior administration official said.

The request comes as U.S. President Donald Trump warned on social media that the U.S. would retaliate and massively blow up the entirety of Iran's gas field if it continues.

The Pentagon sent the request to the White House, according to the senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private information.

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This $200 billion is an extraordinarily high number and comes on top of extra funding the Defense Department already received last year in Trumps big tax cuts bill.

Congress is bracing for a new spending request but it is not clear the White House has transmitted the request for consideration. It is unclear whether the spending request would have support.

Iran intensified its attacks on oil and gas facilities around the Gulf on Thursday in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a key Iranian gas field, dramatically raising the stakes in a war that is sending shock waves through the global economy. Fuel prices soared around the world.

The direct attacks on energy infrastructure mark a major escalation in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. One think-tank said Israels targeting of South Pars, the Iranian part of the worlds largest gas field, aimed to inflict more pressure on the Iranian government by making living conditions for its civilians intolerable. Iran responded by hitting a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea and setting Qatari liquefied natural gas facilities and two Kuwaiti oil refineries ablaze.

RELATED STORY | Global fuel prices spike after Iran hits multiple Gulf oil and gas sites

Brent crude oil, the international standard, spiked to as high as $118 a barrel, up more than 60% since Israel and the United States started the war Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran. The wars latest developments now threaten long-term disruptions to the global energy supply.

In the escalating war in Iran, the State Departments Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs would ordinarily be at the center of the geopolitical fray.

Typically led by a veteran diplomat, the bureaus role would be to coordinate U.S. foreign policy across an 18-country region, much of which has become a chaotic battlefield scarred by drone and missile strikes as the U.S. and Israel remain locked in conflict with Iran.

The Trump administration for a time put Mora Namdar, a lawyer of Iranian descent with limited management experience, in charge before later moving her to a different post. One of her credentials was her contribution to Project 2025, a conservative think tanks blueprint for the second Trump administration. Namdars last Senate-confirmed predecessor was a longtime Middle East expert who had been with the department since 1984 and had served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.

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Now that bureau is also working with far fewer resources. The administrations most recent budget proposed a 40% cut to the bureau, though Congress eventually enacted less dramatic cuts. The administration also eliminated the dedicated Iran office, merging it with the Iraq office.

Staff reductions and management choices hamper emergency response

These kinds of personnel and management choices coupled with President Donald Trump's moves to shrink government and confine decision-making to a tight circle are limiting the ability of the United States to handle a global emergency, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials, many of whom recently left government.

In divisions of the State Department that typically would handle the Iran response, numerous veteran diplomats with decades of collective experience were fired, retired or were reassigned replaced by more junior officials or political appointees. The administration cut more than 80 staffers in Near Eastern Affairs, according to numbers compiled by a State Department employee who was terminated last year based on surveys of colleagues. (The department does not release official figures on Foreign Service officer staffing levels but did not dispute the number.)

The Trump administration has left the assistant secretary position in charge of Near Eastern Affairs vacant, along with key ambassadorships in the Middle East. Four of the five supervisors in the bureau have temporary titles.

The current and former officials, some of whom asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters during an active conflict, paint a portrait of an understaffed government workforce struggling to execute the presidents agenda. Those who remain tell colleagues that their analysis, recommendations and advice go unheeded.

The State Department vigorously disputed those assessments.

As far as we can tell, APs entire report on the evacuations does not include any conversations with people actually involved. Instead, it relies on outside or former official sources that have no idea what they are talking about. We walked AP through specific inaccuracy after specific inaccuracy indeed how the whole premise was wrong," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

More than 3,800 State Dept. employees departed since Trump took office

The State Department saw a departure of more than 3,800 employees since Trump took office through a combination of reductions in force, staffers taking the Fork in the Road deferred resignation plan and ordinary retirements. According to estimates by the American Foreign Service Association, the labor union that represents foreign service officers, senior foreign service ranks were disproportionately represented in the layoffs compared to their share of the overall workforce.

Hes making choices without the larger expertise of the United States government that would flag issues of consequence, said Max Stier, CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that studies federal workforce issues. Sometimes government is slow-moving because there are a lot of different factors that need to be balanced against each other.

RELATED STORY | State Department now urges Americans to leave Middle East countries as war intensifies

For instance, the administration appears to have been caught off guard by what would happen once the U.S. struck Iran something Trump himself acknowledged this week when he expressed surprise that Tehran retaliated with strikes on American allies in the region. Nobody expected that. We were shocked. They fought back, Trump told reporters this week.

Pigott said staffing reductions are not having any negative impact on our ability to respond to this operation, our ability to plan, and our ability to execute in service to Americans. He added that the department rejects the premise that key decisions were made without meaningful input from experienced professionals.

But Iranian retaliation on U.S. allies was predictable, according to former officials, as well as previous wargames and conflict models run by both the U.S. military and private organizations. The National Security Council, which Trump has pared, typically would have presented the president with analysis from experts within the bureaucracy.

Instead, decisions are made by a small group of officials close to the president without the planning or coordination of the larger machinery of government, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the president's national security adviser.

In the Trump Administration, decisions are made by President Trump and senior administration officials and not by no-name bureaucrat leakers who whine to the press about not being consulted about highly classified operations, White House spokesperson Dylan Johnson said.

Advice from career officials often went unheeded

In the time that I was there, there was no policy process to speak of, said Chris Backemeyer, who served in Near Eastern Affairs as a deputy assistant secretary of state before resigning last year. Backemeyer was a major proponent of the Iran deal that Trump abandoned. He recently left government to run for Congress as a Democrat in Nebraska.

They did not want to hear any advice from career people, said Backemeyer.

Namdar was later moved to be the head of consular affairs, the part of the department responsible for providing assistance to American citizens overseas and issuing visas to foreign visitors.

When the U.S. made the decision to strike Iran, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee offered embassy staff in Jerusalem the opportunity to evacuate a sign that he knew strikes were coming. But some other embassies in the region did not make similar arrangements leaving nonessential personnel and their families stranded in a war zone.

The department said it has been issuing travel warnings since January and was fully staffed to handle the crisis the moment the strikes were launched.

Evacuation planning was chaotic

Still, little planning appears to have gone into how to evacuate the Americans who were living, working, visiting or studying in many of the countries that became engulfed in the conflict in part because the White House seems to have underestimated the possibility of the strikes expanding into a prolonged multi-country war, as evidenced by Trump's own remarks.

After Iranian attacks on allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the State Department began calling for Americans to leave the region. But numerous former Consular Affairs staffers say such planning should have begun long before U.S. strikes started.

In a statement posted to social media, Namdar only told Americans to evacuate several days into the conflict, when airspace was largely closed and many commercial flights were unavailable.

The messaging that went out to American citizens after the U.S. struck Iran was woefully late and, initially, confusing," said Yael Lempert, who served as U.S. ambassador to Jordan until 2025. Lempert is one of five former ambassadors expected to speak about the department's failures at an event Thursday at the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington.

Other poorly executed evacuations, such the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, have drawn criticism.

But this time they're compounded by the loss of experienced people, officials say. Consular Affairs has lost more than 150 jobs in the Trump administration due to a combination of reductions in force, dismissals of probationary employees and retirements, according to a U.S. official who asked for anonymity though other parts of the department were hit much harder.

The department notes that it has offered assistance to nearly 50,000 Americans impacted by the conflict, with more than 60 flights evacuating citizens from the region. In total, the department says more than 70,000 Americans have been able to return home since the outbreak of hostilities on Feb. 28.

Dispute from the Trump Administration

Piggott on Thursday called the criticism vague and inaccurate, stating there were no reductions in force that "affected our overseas operations that are working in the field to assist Americans."

As we told @AP ahead of time, this story is not based in reality, but they wouldn't be deterred by the facts. We gave them detailed responses, but instead, they relied on vague and inaccurate criticism from unnamed or outside sources. Here is some of what we provided: pic.twitter.com/R1wfUdiyWg

Tommy Pigott (@StateDeputySpox) March 19, 2026Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect Piggott's detailed response to the Associated Press report.

Iran intensified its attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbors' energy sites Thursday, hitting a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea and setting Qatari liquefied natural gas facilities and two Kuwaiti oil refineries ablaze as it struck back following an Israeli attack on its main natural gas field, a major escalation in the Mideast war that has sent global fuel prices soaring.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, spiked to as high as $118 a barrel, up more than 60% since Israel and the United States started the war Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran.

A ship was set ablaze off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and another was damaged off Qatar, underscoring the ever-present danger also facing vessels due to Iran's stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported.

RELATED STORY | As Iran war spreads, a UN shipping agency searches for ways to keep crews safe

Saudi Arabia had begun pumping large volumes of oil west to avoid the strait and ship it from the Red Sea, but the security of that route was called into question after Iran's drone hit the countrys SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu.

Qatar, a key source of natural gas for world markets, said firefighters put out a blaze at a major LNG facility after it was hit by Iranian missiles. Production had already been halted there after earlier attacks but it said the latest wave of missiles caused sizable fires and extensive further damage.

Damage to the facility could delay Qatar in getting its supplies to the market even after the Iran war ends.

A drone attack on Kuwait's Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery sparked a fire but caused no injuries, the state-run KUNA news agency reported. The refinery is one of the biggest in the Middle East, with a petroleum production capacity of 730,000 barrels per day. Shortly after, a drone attack set ablaze the nearby Mina Abdullah refinery, officials said.

Authorities in Abu Dhabi said they were forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field, calling Iranian overnight attacks on the sites a dangerous escalation.

Gulf states condemn Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure

Missile alert sirens sounded in multiple other areas around the Gulf, and Israel warned of incoming Iranian fire multiple times.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all denounced the Iranian attacks, with Saudi Arabias top diplomat saying assaults on the kingdom meant what little trust there was before has completely been shattered.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called the attacks a dangerous escalation by Iran.

But Iran showed no signs of relenting, with Saudi Arabia intercepting six drones in Riyadh and Eastern province before saying that the SAMREF refinery was hit. The Saudi Defense Ministry said damage assessment was underway at SAMREF, a joint venture between the kingdoms oil giant Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil.

In Israel, more than a half dozen waves of Iranian attacks targeting large parts of the country sent millions of people to shelters. The strikes caused damage to buildings but no significant casualties were reported.

RELATED STORY | US strikes Iranian minelayers as it warns Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open

Iran strikes back after Israel hits critical gas field

The Iranian attacks came after Israel hit South Pars, the Iranian part of the world's largest gas field located offshore in the Persian Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar.

With some 80% of all power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the attack directly threatens the country's electricity supplies. Natural gas is also used to supply household heating and cooking across the Islamic Republic.

Hitting the gas field is a clear expansion of the conflict, the New York-based Soufan Center said in a research note.

Israels target selection in this war has heavily focused on the institutions, leaders and infrastructure," the think tank said. "It now seeks to inflict additional pressure on the regime by making the living conditions for civilians intolerable.

Iran condemned the strike on South Pars, with President Masoud Pezeshkian warning of uncontrollable consequences" that "could engulf the entire world.

In Washington, President Donald Trump said that Israel would not attack South Pars again, but warned on social media that if Iran continued striking Qatars energy infrastructure, the U.S. would retaliate and massively blow up the entirety of the field.

I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long term implications that it will have on the future of Iran, Trump said on social media.

Energy infrastructure targeted around Gulf region

Qatar Energy said on X that a missile hit on its massive Ras Laffan LNG facility caused the blaze early Thursday.

A ship was also hit off the country's coast, according to the British militarys United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. It was not clear whether it was deliberately targeted or was struck by falling debris as Qatar fired off missile interceptors at incoming Iranian barrages.

Saudi Arabia also reported downing Iranian drones targeting its natural gas facilities overnight, and authorities in Abu Dhabi shut down the Habshan gas facility and Bab field after interceptions over the sites.

Another ship was set ablaze early Thursday off the UAE coast. It was also unclear whether it was targeted or hit with debris, the UKMTO said. It said the vessel was just off the coast of Khor Fakkan, near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil is normally shipped.

More than 20 vessels have been attacked during the Iran war so far as Tehran has kept a tight grip on shipping traffic through the waterway, which leads from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

Iran insists the waterway is open, just not to the U.S. or its allies, and while some vessels have sailed through, it has only been a trickle.

Paul Thomas Andersons One Battle After Another was crowned best picture at the 98th Academy Awards, handing Hollywoods top honor to a comic, multi-generational American saga of political resistance.

The ceremony Sunday, which also saw Michael B. Jordan win best actor and Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw make Oscar history as the first female director of photography to win the award, was a long-in-coming coronation for Anderson, a San Fernando Valley native who made his first short at age 18 and has been one of Americas most lionized filmmakers for decades. Before Sunday, Anderson had never won an Oscar.

But One Battle After Another, the favorite coming in, won six Oscars, including best director and best adapted screenplay for Anderson, the Oscars' first trophy for best casting and best supporting actor for an absent Sean Penn.

I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world were handing off to them, said Anderson while accepting the screenplay trophy. But also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.

RELATED STORY | 'Sinners' shatters Oscar record with 16 nominations, making history

Ryan Coogler's Jim Crow-set, blues-soaked vampire tale Sinners, which came in with a record 16 nominations, also landed some big and even historic wins. Coogler, the widely loved filmmaker, won the first Oscar in an unblemished career that started out with Jordan in 2013's Fruitvale Station.

Arkapaw was also the first Black person to win for best cinematography. Only the fourth female cinematographer ever nominated, her win was a long-in-coming triumph for women behind the camera.

I really want all the women in room to stand up, said Arkapaw. Because I dont feel like I get here without you guys.

And Jordan, one of Hollywood's most liked leading men, won best actor in one of the night's closest races. The Dolby Theatre rose to its feet in the most thunderous applause of the night.

Yo, momma, whats up? said Jordan after staggering to the stage.

The Oscar night belonged to Warner Bros., the studio of One Battle After Another and Sinners, which scored a record-tying 11 wins. It was an oddly poignant note of triumph for the fabled studio, which weeks earlier agreed to a sale to Paramount Skydance, David Ellisons rapidly assembled media monolith. The $111 billion deal, which awaits regulatory approval, has Hollywood bracing for more layoffs.

But Sinners and One Battle After Another the much-acclaimed heavyweights of the season were each Hollywood anomalies: big-budget originals born from a personal vision. In a year where anxiety over studio contraction and the rise of artificial intelligence often consumed the industry, both films gave Hollywood fresh hope.

Jessie Buckley won best actress for her performance as Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, making her the first Irish performer to ever win in the category. At an Oscars where no other acting award seemed a sure thing, Buckley cruised into Sundays Oscars at the Dolby Theatre as the overwhelming favorite.

It's Mother's Day in the U.K., said Buckley on the stage. I would like to dedicated this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart.

KPop and Frankenstein win for Netflix

From the start, when host Conan O'Brien sprinted through the year's nominees as Amy Madigan's character in the horror thriller Weapons in a pre-taped bit, Sunday's ceremony was quirky, a little clunky and preoccupied with the shifting place of movies in culture. There was, of all things, a tie for best live-action short film.

As expected, the Netflix sensation KPop Demon Hunters, 2025s most-watched film, won best animated feature, as well as best song for Golden. It was a big win for Netflix but a more qualified victory for the movies producer, Sony Pictures. Though it developed and produced the film, Sony sold KPop Demon Hunters to the streaming giant instead of giving it a theatrical release.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | 'Hamnet' and 'One Battle After Another' take top honors at Golden Globes

On Netflix, KPop Demon Hunters became a cultural phenomenon and the streaming platforms biggest hit. It has more than 325 million views and counting.

This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere, said co-director Maggie Kang.

Another Netflix release, Guillermo del Toros Frankenstein picked up three awards for its lavish craft, for costume design, makeup and hairstyling and for production design.

Amy Madigan won best supporting actress for her performance in the horror thriller Weapons, a win that came 40 years after the 75-year-old actor was first nominated, in 1986, for Twice in a Lifetime. Letting out a giant laugh as she hit the stage, Madigan exclaimed, This is great!

O'Brien presides over a ceremony shadowed by politics

Hosting for the second time, O'Brien began the Dolby Theatre show alluding to chaotic and frightening times. But he argued that the current geopolitical climate made the Oscars all the more resonate as a globally unifying force.

We pay tribute tonight, not just to film, but to the ideals of global artistry, collaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of qualities today optimism, O'Brien said. Were going to celebrate. Not because we think all is well, but because we work, and hope, for better.

Throughout the show, O'Brien hit a number of targets, like Timothe Chalamet who again missed out on winning his first Oscar, this time for Marty Supreme for his diss of opera and ballet. But the ceremony seldom wasn't shadowed by politics, whether in references to changes under U.S. President Donald Trump or the recently launched war in Iran.

Joachim Trier, whose Norwegian family drama Sentimental Value won best international film, quoted James Baldwin in his acceptance speech: All adults are responsible for all children, he said. Lets not vote for politicians that dont take this seriously into account.

Presenter Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night show last year was suspended after comments he made about Charlie Kirk's killing, was among the most blunt.

There are some countries that dont support free speech, said Kimmel. Im not at liberty to say which. Lets just leave it at North Korea and CBS.

Shortly after, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a film about a Russian primary schoolteacher who documents his students' indoctrination to support Russia's war with Ukraine, won best documentary.

'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' is about how you lose your country, co-director said. And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless, small, little acts of complicity.

We all face a moral choice, he added, but, luckily, a nobody is more powerful than you think.

Tributes to Reiner, Redford and others

Elegy also marked the Oscars. Producers expanded the in memoriam segment following a year that featured the deaths of so many Hollywood legends, including Keaton, Robert Duvall and Redford. Barbra Streisand spoke about Redford, her The Way We Were co-star.

Bob had real backbone, said Streisand, who called Redford an intellectual cowboy before singing a few bars of The Way We Were.

Billy Crystal paid tribute to Rob and Michele Reiner, who were killed in their home in December. Crystal, a close friend of Rob Reiner's who memorably starred in 1989's When Harry Met Sally... and 1987's Princess Bride. In his moving remarks, Crystal quoted the latter.

All we can say is: Buddy, how much fun we had storming the castle, said Crystal.

Theatrical bests streaming, again

Yet again, the nights final award again didn't go to a streaming release; Apple's CODA remains the only streaming film to achieve that distinction. Sinners and One Battle After Another were both theatrical releases shot on film.

Apple's top contender this time, the Formula One race drama F1, a movie that it partnered with Warner Bros. to distribute theatrically, won for best sound. The lone blockbuster of the year to go home with a win was Avatar: Fire and Ash, for visual effects.

Some of OBriens best digs came at the expense of the streamers. Netflix chief Ted Sarandos, he joked, was in a theater for the first time. The host also lamented the lack of nominees for Amazon MGM: Why isnt the website I order toilet paper from winning more Oscars?

Im honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards, said OBrien. Next year its going to be a Waymo in a tux.

A broad and erratic patchwork of severe weather rumbled across much of the U.S. on Sunday, dumping heavy snow and making roads impassable in the Upper Midwest while damaging high winds swept across the Plains. Hawaii also continues to be affected by severe flooding.

And portions of the mid-South readied for late-day thunderstorms. Forecasters said the storms will spread eastward and by Monday threaten a large swath of the Eastern U.S., with mid-Atlantic states including Washington, D.C. at greatest risk for high winds and tornadoes.

Successive punches of snow, wind and severe weather are going to impact the eastern half of the United States," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tyler Roys said in an interview. Beyond the threat to lives and property, whether its wind gusts from a squall line, blizzard or snow, or just wind because of the storm, youre looking at several major airports being impacted.

Big snows in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan

Over 20 inches (51 centimeters) of snow had fallen in some portions of southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin as of Sunday afternoon, according to National Weather Service reports, with more snow likely to fall in places like Minneapolis amid blizzard warnings by the weather service.

Warnings of hazardous road conditions were issued across Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, where transportation officials warned of worsening conditions Sunday with low visibility and snow-covered roadways.

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More than 600 flights flying out of and into the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport were canceled Sunday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions. Dozens more through Detroit were also scrapped.

An area from central Wisconsin to Michigan's Upper Peninsula was likely to see over 2 feet (60 centimeters) of snow, with higher isolated totals on the peninsula, Roys said. Lower snow accumulations in places like Chicago and Milwaukee will still likely create trouble for commuters on Monday, he added.

Wisconsin snowplow driver Aaron Haas said it was one of the worst storms he had seen in years. On Sunday around the town of Marshfield, Haas was stacking piles of snow as high as his truck.

You cant see anything when youre on the highways outside of the city, he said.

Jim Allen, 45, who lives on the Upper Peninsula, said his family stocked up on necessities and he was ready to clear snow several times Sunday with the shovel and snowblower.

"Were basically prepared to just kind of hunker down for a few days if we need to, Allen said.

Landslides, rescues, collapsed home on Maui

Rain continued falling on Sunday in Hawaii, where acres of farmland and homes have been flooded, roads have been closed and shelters opened. PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide, reported over 50,000 electric customers in Hawaii without power as of early Sunday.

Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places like Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where rain had been falling from 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) an hour overnight, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a social media post late Saturday that some areas of Maui had received more than 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain in the previous 24 hours.

Were seeing flooding, landslides, sinkholes, debris and downed power lines across the county, he said. Expressing gratitude in the Hawaiian language, the mayor added "mahalo for continuing to look out for one another.

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Footage incorporated into the mayor's video showed washed out or collapsed roads, a car stuck by floodwaters and raging waterways. National Guard and fire department workers have made multiple floodwater rescues, Bissen said.

Tom and Carrie Bashaw said they could do little to prevent part of their home in Maui's Iao Valley from collapsing beneath rising waters. On Friday, the water's force starting overtaking nearby trees.

When we lost the mango and monkey pod, we started throwing stuff in bags and packing up, Tom Bashaw told HawaiiNewsNow. They returned Saturday morning and the whole backside of the house was gone, he said.

Maui resident and real estate broker Jesse Wald, who recorded video of a coastal road's collapse Saturday, said other parts of road were flooded out by mud and sediment.

In the 20 years Ive been here Ive never seen this much rain," Wald said. Im from Wisconsin and we get thunderstorms, you know pretty often in the summer, so it felt like a Wisconsin thunderstorm but times 10."

Power outages remain, some from earlier high winds

More than 210,000 utility customers in six Great Lakes states were without electricity as of Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Some originated on Friday when gusts in the region reached 85 mph (137 km).

In Nebraska, about 30 National Guard members were deployed to help combat multiple wildfires across a broad swath of range and grassland, the state's Emergency Management Agency said.

As of Saturday, three of the largest wildfires had damaged well over 900 square miles (2,331 square kilometers), the agency said. One fire-related fatality was reported on Friday, and in a news release Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen urged residents to follow locally-issued evacuation orders, adding that winds were "supposed to be extraordinary on Sunday.

The weather service issued a high-wind warning Sunday for most of Nebraska, with wind gusts of up to 60 mph (97 kph) possible amid falling snow. Roys said high winds would affect a region stretching from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Great Lakes, and from Denver eastward to the Appalachian Mountains.

Forecasters warn about line of storms, tornadoes

The National Weather Service warned that a line of severe storms with damaging winds would cross much of the Eastern U.S. by late Monday. It was to begin Sunday afternoon and cross the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

The storm threat was expected to enter the Appalachians early Monday, then move toward the East Coast, where severe thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds and several tornadoes were expected during the day Monday, the weather service said.

A stretch from parts of South Carolina to Maryland appeared most likely to experience the greatest damaging winds Monday afternoon, the weather service said. That could include Raleigh, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia and the nation's capital. The weather service said an increased albeit much lower risk stretched north to New York and south to Florida, with thunderstorms possible in New England.

Hollywood will convene Sunday night for a nail-biter Academy Awards thats steering toward a coronation for either Paul Thomas Anderson or Ryan Coogler. Most would call that a win-win.

Andersons One Battle After Another is the favorite heading into the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. But Cooglers Sinners comes in the lead nominee with a record 16 nominations. Both filmmakers are poised to leave with their first Oscar.

RELATED STORY | 'Sinners' shatters Oscar record with 16 nominations, making history

But little else is assured at an Academy Awards where Michael B. Jordan or Timothe Chalamet (despite the ballet diss heard 'round the world) could win their first Academy Award in a too-close-to-call best actor race.

How to watch and stream the Oscars and red carpet

The telecast will air live on ABC and stream on Hulu beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern. (YouTube will be the new home of the Oscars beginning in 2029.) The official red carpet preshow begins on ABC and Hulu at 6:30 p.m. EDT, while E! will kick off its red-carpet broadcast at 4 p.m.

What to expect from the 2026 Oscars

Conan OBrien is returning as host for the second year in a row. Despite the war in Iran and expanding geopolitical turmoil, OBrien has pledged an entertaining show in the mold of hosts like Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. Lets have fun with it, is my attitude, OBrien told reporters earlier in the week.

Still, the already high security will be even greater this year at an Oscars, taking place two weeks after the United States and President Donald Trump launched the war with Iran.

Of course, every year we monitor whats going on in the world, Raj Kapoor, executive producer of the show, said earlier in the week. We have the support of the FBI and the LAPD, and its a close collaboration.

Two of the five best song nominees will be performed: I Lied to You, from Sinners, with Miles Caton, Raphael Saadiq and others; and Golden from KPop Demon Hunters.

Theatrical looks to best streaming, again

KPop Demon Hunters, a Sony Pictures production that was sold to Netflix, was the most-watched movie of 2025. (It has 325 million views and counting, making it Netflix's most-streamed movie ever.) But it seems all but certain that the nights final award wont go to a streaming release; Apple's CODA remains the only streaming film to achieve that. Instead best picture is likely to go to an anomaly in todays movie industry: big-budget original films from a personal vision.

Sinners and One Battle After Another were both theatrical releases shot on film. And both came from Warner Bros., the legacy studio thats agreed to merge with David Ellisons new media colossus, Paramount Skydance. The $111 billion deal, which awaits regulatory approval, has rattled an industry already reconciling itself to the acquisitions of MGM (by Amazon) and 20th Century Fox (by The Walt Disney Co.).

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | 'Hamnet' and 'One Battle After Another' take top honors at Golden Globes

Elegy may mark Sundays Oscars. The in memoriam segment is expected to include, among many others, remembrances of Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall. OBrien, who had hosted a party attended by Rob and Michele Reiner the night before their deaths, has promised a very powerful tribute.

New this year is a best casting category. Another innovation is a requirement that Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members watch all nominees before voting. On the academys streaming platform even Oscar voting is streamed voters had to check a box attesting to having watched each nominee before voting in a category.

Few sure things in the acting categories

Whether those changes will have any effect on some of the nights closest races remains to be seen. Coming into the show, best actor is one of the most hard-to-call categories. Chalamet had been seen as the front-runner for his performance in Marty Supreme. But a swaggering meta campaign, that drew headlines, of all things, a perceived slight of ballet and opera, may have helped put Jordan into the lead. (In Chalamet's favor, the uproar only started as voting was ending.)

While Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) is widely expecting to win best actress, a first for Irish performers, the supporting categories are highly competitive. Amy Madigan (Weapons) is the slight favorite in best supporting actress, but Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) and Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners) are in the mix, too.

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Despite almost no campaigning, Penn is viewed as the best supporting actor favorite. That award, could easily also go to Stellan Skarsgrd (Sentimental Value) or Delroy Lindo (Sinners).

Though the Oscars often feel largely removed from their times, a crop of nominees that explicitly grapple with the current political moment will be center stage. That includes not just One Battle After Another, which opens with a raid on an immigration detention facility, but movies like Kleber Mendona Filhos Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent and Jafar Panahis Iranian revenge drama It Was Just an Accident.

The war in Iran has particular meaning to Panahi, whose film is nominated for best international feature and for best screenplay. The esteemed Iranian filmmaker and last year's Palme d'Or winner has made films clandestinely in his native Iran despite repeated imprisonment, travel ban and even home arrest. While promoting the film, Panahi was sentenced to a year in prison. At least one of his cowriter nominees, Mehdi Mahmoudian, was unable to leave Iran to attend Sundays awards.

Twenty three years ago, the Academy Awards were also held amid war in the Middle East. The 2003 Oscars took place just three days before the Iraq War began. Many in Hollywood protested the war. Chicago won best picture.

Israeli soldiers fired on a car carrying a family in the northern West Bank, killing four people including two children, the Palestinian Authoritys Health Ministry said.

The official Palestinian news agency said the family was shot late Saturday after going out to buy new clothes for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this week. Israel said it was investigating the shooting.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said that Ali and Waed Odeh, and two of their four children, were shot in the head. The Odehs two surviving children had shrapnel wounds that were examined by first responders once they were granted access, the group said, accusing Israel of delaying ambulances dispatched to the scene.

RELATED STORY | Israel sends tanks into West Bank for first time in decades, says fleeing Palestinians can't return

Israels military and police said in a joint statement Sunday that forces opened fire after a car accelerated toward them in Tammun. They said the forces were pursuing suspects accused of terrorist activity and that the shooting was under investigation.

The members of the Odeh family were the latest casualties in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers and soldiers had previously shot and killed at least eight Palestinians since the start of the Iran war.

Since Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Israeli authorities have restricted movement across the West Bank, intermittently closing hundreds of gates and checkpoints on roads used by residents, ambulances and commercial traffic. The barriers have tightened movement and made emergency response significantly more difficult, the Red Crescent told The Associated Press last week.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Gaza's border crossing to Egypt reopens but few Palestinians can cross

Israeli rights group Yesh Din said on Wednesday that it had documented 109 incidents of settler violence in the occupied West Bank in dozens of Palestinian communities since the start of the war.

The toll is lower than at this point in 2025 a record year for violence that began with Israel invading northern West Bank cities that the military said were militant strongholds. Israeli forces still maintain a presence there.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded 18 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2026, including eight by Israeli settlers. Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank.

Representatives from Beijing and Washington began their economic and trade talks in Paris on Sunday, paving the way for U.S. President Donald Trumps state visit to Beijing to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in about two weeks.

The delegations, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, convened in the French capital in the morning, China's official news agency Xinhua reported. The White House has said that Trump will travel to China from March 31 to April 2, though Beijing has not officially confirmed it.

Bessent said on Thursday that his team will continue to deliver results that put America's farmers, workers and businesses first. The U.S. Treasury Department said Bessent will meet He on Sunday and Monday.

Chinas commerce ministry said Friday the two sides are set to discuss trade and economic issues of mutual concern.

RELATED STORY | Trump holds wide-ranging call with Xi, touching on Iran, Taiwan and trade

Trumps visit to China will be the first for a U.S. president since he went in his first term in 2017. It will come five months after the two leaders met in the South Korean city of Busan and agreed to a one-year truce in a trade war that temporarily saw tit-for-tat tariffs soar to triple digits before the two sides climbed down.

Still, trade remains a source of tensions. The commerce ministry on Friday hit back against the Trump administrations new trade investigation into 16 trading partners, including China. The investigation which came after a Supreme Court ruling struck down Trumps sweeping global tariffs that were imposed last year could pave the way for new tariffs.

Another issue that could be discussed is the Iran war, especially when global anxiety is soaring over oil prices and supplies. Trump said Saturday that he hopes China, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and others will send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and safe.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Trump asks allies to deploy warships as Iran vows to block oil flow

Before Sunday's talks, Gary Ng, a senior economist at French bank Natixis and a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, said the Paris meeting is likely the most important bilateral one before the Xi-Trump summit.

The key issue is "whether China and the U.S. can agree on what is agreed and manage disagreement. Iran is a new factor, but Beijing is more concerned about the flip-flopping of U.S. policies, he said.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it would be a big year for China-U.S. relations. While he did not confirm the state visit, Wang said that the agenda of high-level exchange is already on the table.

Bessent and He have led trade negotiations between the countries since last year, having met in Geneva, London, Stockholm, Madrid and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Hundreds of thousands of people were left without power Saturday after high winds raked eastward from the Great Lakes region, leaving trees down and substantial property damage in their wake. Further west, at least one person died in a massive wind-driven wildfire in Nebraska.

Nearly 450,000 customers were still affected by midafternoon in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.

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A 66 mph gust at Pittsburgh International Airport on Friday was deemed its fourth-strongest on record that was not caused by a thunderstorm, according to the National Weather Service. Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport saw winds hit 85 mph Friday afternoon.

Winds took down a gas station canopy in New Franklin, Ohio, and an auto parts store sign in Baldwin, Pennsylvania. Trees and tree limbs fell into or onto homes and cars from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. The roof of a school building in the Chicago suburb of Niles, Illinois, was severely damaged by wind.

High winds fueled multiple wildfires across a broad swath of Nebraskas range and grassland, causing one death in Arthur County, officials said. The victim was not immediately identified and the sheriffs office did not disclose other details about the death.

What state officials have dubbed the Morrill County fire has burned at least 735 square miles across four counties since Thursday. At least 12 structures have been destroyed, according to the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency.

Chelle Ladely of Sidney said her home is currently safe, lying about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of the nearest fire. But she worries for other friends and family in the area.

Smoke is filling the air and at night, I can see the burn of the fires on the horizon, Ladely said. My father is a crop agronomist, and his company as well as other local farmers are all gathering their water trucks to help aid with the fires, and truckloads of bottled water and food is being supplied by our good patrons for our volunteer firemen trying to extinguish the blazes.

Several other wildfires being pushed by winds of up to 65 mph burned another 225 square miles for a total of nearly 938 square miles by midday Saturday. The strong winds have kept firefighters from containing any of the fires, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said. Gov. Jim Pillen on Saturday toured areas burned by the Morrill County fire.

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In Chicago, thousands of revelers turned out to see the city's namesake river dyed bright green and a downtown parade celebrating the St. Patrick's holiday, despite the threat of snow and stiff winds that drove the feels-like temperature to well below freezing.

Dangerous winds are but one piece of a wild weather mosaic that includes heavy rains in Hawaii, triple-digit heat ahead in Phoenix and the return of winter cold to the Midwest and Northeast. Chicago was expected to approach the single digits Fahrenheit by Tuesday, with Minneapolis seeing lows around zero.

Several Minnesota cities have already declared snow emergencies starting Sunday, when what could be the seasons largest snowfall is expected to hit. Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula are also in the crosshairs.

AccuWeather is describing conditions as a potent triple-threat March megastorm from Sunday into Monday.

Its definitely a very active weather weekend, thats for sure, AccuWeather senior meteorologist John Feerick said. Its a highly amplified pattern, which means you get a lot of extremes. Also, not just the Lower 48, but Hawaiis getting hit hard right now with some very heavy rain.

Feerick said people along the Wisconsin-Iowa border might see some ice as travel conditions become dangerous in large parts of the Upper Midwest.

Math nerds and dessert enthusiasts unite to celebrate Pi Day every March 14, the date that represents the first three digits of the mathematical constant pi.

Representing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, pi is approximately equal to 3.14159 but its digits go on forever. In school, you might have used it to calculate the area of a circle or the volume of a cylinder. But the applications of pi are endless and part of every corner of our world.

The holiday was created in 1988 by Larry Shaw, a physicist at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco.

He had a very open and expansive view of the world and saw an opportunity with this number, mathematical concept, to invite people into the joy of mathematical learning, said Sam Sharkland, program director of public programs at the museum, who worked with Shaw before he died in 2017.

While it began as a small staff celebration featuring pie, it soon turned into a grand procession where hundreds of visitors marched around the pi shrine, each carrying a digit. Attendees often show up early to claim their favorite digit for the parade. One woman who has the symbol tattooed on her neck comes every year and marches near the front with a pi flag, Sharkland said.

RELATED STORY | 10 fascinating things to know about pi on Pi Day

The celebration begins at 1:59 p.m., signifying the next three digits of pi.

Here are a few ways pi is being used on the cutting edge of science.

Pi in outer space

In Artur Davoyan's field of mechanical and aerospace engineering, pi is so fundamental that it would be hard to pinpoint one use case for it, he said.

Pi is part of literally every single formula that you would use to do any calculation, like for spacecraft motion, for materials and how they work, or propulsion systems, said Davoyan, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Anything that is round or has cyclical or repeating properties such as radio waves involves pi. Even squares or irregular blobs can be broken down into a series of progressively smaller circles and calculated using pi, Davoyan said.

Davoyan's research looks at how to create new propulsion systems to send spacecrafts more quickly to the far reaches of the solar system to gather and send back information to Earth. He pointed to NASAs Voyager 1 and 2, which launched in 1977 but didn't reach interstellar space until 2012 and 2018.

To send a signal to those space probes, NASA must calculate Earth's exact position in orbit around the sun and design antennas for communication using pi. Then scientists use pi once more when receiving and breaking down complex signals that are being beamed back to Earth.

Say aliens send something to us, something that we dont know how to deal with, Davoyan said. So the very first thing that you would do, you would try to split it into simple functions... and turns out that when you do this operation, you will naturally have pis in it.

Tiny droplets of pi

Pi also comes up frequently when studying small amounts of fluids.

Dino Di Carlo, chair of the bioengineering department at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, conducts research that involves creating little particles out of polymers that act as tiny test tubes for cells. This is used as an important tool to examine cells closely and learn about their functions and what's inside them.

The pi constant is used in calculating how to form those droplets, surface tension calculations that define how droplets can break up, and how researchers can control the size of those volumes, Di Carlo said.

Di Carlo is using this technique to find antibodies small proteins that fight diseases in your body that could block signals put out by cancer cells.

Pi is also an important part of calculations when looking at how liquids flow through tubes and barriers. One example is when the fluid sample slowly flows sideways in a take-home COVID-19 test.

Di Carlo used these properties to devise a new test for Lyme disease that can be completed in 20 minutes, rather than days or weeks like previously.

As an engineer and scientist, (pi) is just a part of life, Di Carlo said. Maybe Ive taken it for granted.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. destroyed military sites on an island vital to Irans oil network and warned that its oil infrastructure could be next if Iran continues to interfere with the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said U.S. forces on Friday obliterated targets on Irans Kharg Island, which is home to the primary terminal that handles the countrys oil exports. The speaker of the Iranian parliament had warned that such strikes would provoke a new level of retaliation.

Meanwhile, an American official said 2,500 more Marines and an amphibious assault ship are being sent to the Middle East nearly two weeks into the war with the Islamic Republic.

RELATED STORY | Trump says war in Iran is 'won,' but administration expects fighting to continue for weeks

Iran has continued to launch widespread missile and drone attacks on Israel and neighboring Gulf states, and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the worlds traded oil passes, even as U.S. and Israeli warplanes pummel military and other targets across Iran.

The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon deepened, with nearly 800 people killed and 850,000 displaced as Israel launched waves of strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants and warned there would be no let up.

Marines and assault ship will add to US forces

Elements from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli have been ordered to the Middle East, according to the U.S. official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.

Marine Expeditionary Units are able to conduct amphibious landings, but they also specialize in bolstering security at embassies, evacuating civilians, and providing disaster relief. The deployment does not necessarily indicate that a ground operation is imminent or will take place.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the new Marine deployment.

The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, as well as the Tripoli and other amphibious assault ships carrying the Marines, are based in Japan and have been in the Pacific Ocean for several days, according to images released by the military. The Tripoli was spotted by commercial satellites sailing alone near Taiwan, putting it more than a week away from the waters off Iran.

Earlier in the week, the Navy had 12 ships, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and eight destroyers, operating in the Arabian Sea. Should the Tripoli join this flotilla, it would be the second-largest ship behind the Lincoln in the region.

RELATED STORY | Oil market sees its worst disruption ever as Iran war threatens supply

While the total number of U.S. service members on the ground in the Middle East is not clear, Al-Udeid Air Base alone, one of the largest in the region, typically houses some 8,000 U.S. troops in Qatar.

US strikes Persian Gulf island after Iranian warning

The U.S. strikes on Irans Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf targeted military sites but left its oil infrastructure alone for now, Trump said in a social media post.

But he warned that if Iran or anyone else interferes with the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, he will reconsider his decision not to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure.

Iranian parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned on Thursday in a social media post that attacks on the islands on Irans southern maritime frontier would cause Iran to abandon all restraint, underscoring how central they are to the countrys economy and security.

On Saturday, Irans joint military command reiterated its threat that it will attack the U.S.-linked oil and energy facilities in the region if the Islamic Republic's oil infrastructure is hit.

Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesperson for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, warned they will target all oil, economic, and energy infrastructures belonging to oil companies across the region that have American shares or cooperate with America.

The joint military command also threatened to attack cities in the United Arab Emirates, saying the U.S. used ports, docks and hideouts within UAE cities to launch strikes on the islands, without providing evidence. It called on people to evacuate those areas where it said U.S. forces were sheltering

Irans semiofficial Fars news agency Saturday said the U.S. strikes caused no damage to oil infrastructure on the island.

It reported at least 15 explosions followed the strikes, which it said targeted an air defense facility, a naval base, the airport control tower and an offshore oil companys helicopter hangar.

Missile strikes inside US Embassy compound in Baghdad

A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, two Iraqi security officials said.

Associated Press footage showed a column of smoke rising Saturday morning over the embassy compound.

The sprawling embassy complex, one of the largest U.S. diplomatic facilities in the world, has been repeatedly targeted by rockets and drones fired by Iran-aligned militias.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. On Friday, the embassy renewed its Level 4 security alert for Iraq, warning that Iran and Iran-aligned militia groups have previously carried out attacks against U.S. citizens, interests and infrastructure, and may continue to target them.

Roughly 2,500 Marines and at least one amphibious assault ship are headed for the Middle East, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said elements from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli have been ordered to the Middle East. The move marks a major addition of troops to the region.

Iran has continued to launch widespread missile and drone attacks on Israel and neighboring Gulf states, and has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's traded oil passes, even as U.S. and Israeli warplanes pummel military and other targets across Iran.

The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon deepened, with nearly 800 people killed and 850,000 displaced as Israel launched waves of strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants and warned there would be no let up.

With growing global concerns about a possible energy crisis, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, hovered around $100 per barrel. Brent prices are about 40% higher than when Israel and the United States launched the war on Feb. 28.

In an interview with Fox News, U.S. President Donald Trump said the war would end when I feel it in my bones.

Explosion rocks area of mass demonstration

An explosion in Tehran rocked the Ferdowsi Square area midday, where thousands had gathered for an annual Quds Day rally in which they chanted death to Israel and death to America.

Israel had issued a warning on a Farsi-language X account for people to clear the area shortly before the blast. But few Iranians would have seen it, as authorities have almost completely shut down the internet since the start of the war. Footage from the scene showed people chanting God is greatest, as smoke rose in the area.

The Israeli military later posted a second message in Farsi, noting the head of Irans judiciary was at the rally and criticizing Iran for blocking many from seeing their warning.

The hard-liner who leads Irans judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, had been giving an interview on state television at the demonstration when the strike happened. His bodyguards encircled him, as he raised his fist and said Iran under this rain and missiles will never withdraw.

US says 15,000 targets struck in Iran since the start of the war

Israel had earlier announced another wave of strikes in Iran targeting infrastructure, and said its air force had hit more than 200 targets in the last 24 hours, including missile launchers, defense systems and weapons production sites.

In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that over 15,000 enemy targets have been struck, which is more than 1,000 a day since the war began.

He also sought to address concerns about the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, telling reporters: We have been dealing with it and dont need to worry about it.

Irans Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday vowed to continue the attacks and keep the strait closed in his first public statement since succeeding his father, who was killed in the opening day of the war. Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking over leadership and released a written statement.

Hegseth said Khamenei is wounded and likely disfigured, without providing evidence or elaborating. Israel suspects Khamenei was wounded at the start of the war.

All six crew of US refueling plane confirmed dead after crash

The U.S. military confirmed on Friday that all six crew members of an American KC-135 refueling plane were killed when it crashed in Iraq, bringing the U.S. death toll to at least 13 service members.

U.S. Central Command said the crash wasnt related to friendly or hostile fire, and that two aircraft were involved, including one that landed safely.

The KC-135 is the fourth publicly acknowledged aircraft to crash as part of the U.S. militarys operations against Iran. Last week, three American fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire.

New Iranian attacks across the region

Iran continued its daily attacks on oil and other infrastructure across the Gulf. In Oman, two people were killed when two drones crashed in the Sohar region, the Oman News Agency reported.

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Oscar Austin shot down an Iranian ballistic missile over Turkey on Friday, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity in order to discuss ongoing military operations. It was the third such interception over the NATO member in the last two weeks.

Residents in the southern Turkish city of Adana reported hearing a loud explosion and sirens sounding at Incirlik Air Base, which is used by U.S. forces.

In the latest sign of unease from some close U.S. allies, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for a convincing plan on how to end the war. He spoke alongside the prime ministers of Norway and Canada at military exercises in Norway.

Fighting escalates between Israel and Hezbollah

At least eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon's southern coastal city of Sidon, Lebanons Health Ministry said Friday. Nine others were wounded, the ministry added. The toll could rise as rescuers search the rubble.

The ministry said 773 people including more than 100 children and 62 women have been killed since fighting erupted between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants 10 days ago. More than 1,900 people have been wounded, it said.

Some 850,000 have been internally displaced in Lebanon, according to United Nations Secretary-General Antnio Guterres, who launched a $325 million humanitarian appeal during a surprise visit to the country.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam urged Israel to halt strikes on his country and criticized Hezbollah for firing rockets at Israeli targets.

There is no justification in holding an entire nation hostage, he said.

Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said strikes so far were just the beginning and warned that Lebanons government will pay an increasing price for the damage to Lebanese national infrastructure used by Hezbollah.

Salam pushed back on the criticism, saying the Lebanese army had dismantled more than 500 Hezbollah military positions and weapons depots.

The Israeli military said its strikes have killed more than 350 Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, including what it called key commanders.

Iranian authorities say that more than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran, and Israel has reported 12 deaths.