Trump widens threat to all of Iran's power plants and bridges as his deadline for a deal approaches
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump expanded his threat against Iran to include all power plants and bridges Monday as his ultimatum to make a deal ticked closer, after Tehran rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war.
“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said. He suggested that his Tuesday 8 p.m. EDT deadline was final, saying he'd already given Iran enough extensions.
The U.S. has told Iran to open the crucial Strait of Hormuz to all shipping traffic or see power plants and bridges wiped out, sparking warnings about possible war crimes.
Israel piled on pressure by attacking a major petrochemical plant and killing the intelligence chief for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Tehran with its rejection conveyed its own, 10-point plant to end the fighting through Pakistan, a key mediator, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said.
Russian attacks kill 4 as Ukraine drones target oil infrastructure
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa killed two women and a toddler, authorities said Monday, while Ukrainian long-range drones targeted Russia’s key Black Sea port for oil exports.
The nighttime attack on Odesa heavily damaged an apartment block, killing the women and a 2-year-old child, officials said. Rescuers working under floodlights pulled four people from the rubble.
Eleven people were hospitalized, including a pregnant woman and two children — the youngest less than a year old, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
Russia has pounded civilian areas of Ukraine since it invaded its neighbor just over four years ago, killing more than 15,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Over the past week, Russia has launched at Ukraine more than 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 powerful glide bombs and more than 40 missiles of various types, according to Zelenskyy.
The South Pars natural gas complex is an energy lifeline for Iran
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — For the second time, Israel has attacked Iran's South Pars natural gas and its associated petrochemical complex - an energy lifeline for Iran that both helps keep the lights on for civilians and provides a key source of export earnings.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that Israel attacked a key petrochemical plant at Asaluyeh, the onshore industrial aspect of the gas field, which lies under the Persian Gulf.
Katz said the “powerful strike” hit what he called "the largest petrochemical facility in Iran ... responsible for about 50% of the country’s petrochemical production.” Combined with an earlier attack, two facilities responsible for 85% of Iran's petrochemical exports have been taken out of service, he said.
Attacks on South Pars are sufficiently provocative to Iran that an earlier Israeli attack on March 18 prompted Iran to target energy infrastructure in other Middle East countries in response, an escalation of the war that sent new shockwaves across the region and beyond.
After the March attack, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Israel would not attack South Pars again, but warned on social media that if Iran continued attacking key energy infrastructure in Qatar, the United States would retaliate and “massively blow up the entirety” of the field.
The Latest: Trump brushes off war crime concerns as he repeats threat to Iran’s infrastructure
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he’s “not at all” concerned about committing possible war crimes as he again threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if Tehran does not meet his Tuesday 8 p.m. ET deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, the president refused to say whether any civilian targets would be off-limits.
Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the conflict.
“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press.
Israel and the United States carried out a wave of attacks on Iran on Monday, killing more than 25 people. Iran responded with missile fire on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors.
Artemis II breaks Apollo 13’s distance record with daring moon flyby that included a solar eclipse
HOUSTON (AP) — After traveling deeper into space than any other humans, the Artemis II astronauts pointed their moonship toward home Monday night, wrapping up a lunar cruise that revealed views of the far side never beheld by eyes until now.
Their flyby of the moon — NASA’s first return since the Apollo era — even included some celestial sightseeing besides yielding rich science. It was a significant step toward landing boot prints near the moon's south pole in just two years.
A total solar eclipse greeted the three Americans and one Canadian as the moon temporarily blocked the sun from their perspective. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn nodded at them from the black void. The landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14 also were visible, poignant reminders of NASA’s first age of exploration more than half a century ago.
In an especially riveting retro throwback, Artemis II shattered the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. NASA’s Orion capsule reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers) from Earth before hanging a U-turn behind the moon, 4,101 miles (6,600 kilometers) farther than Apollo 13.
“It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now. It is just unbelievable,” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen radioed. He challenged “this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”
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Savannah Guthrie returns to 'Today' anchor desk for first time since mother's disappearance
NEW YORK (AP) — Savannah Guthrie was back and almost all business at NBC's “Today” show anchor desk on Monday, marking a return for the first time in more than two months since her mother's disappearance. “Here we go, ready or not," Guthrie said as the show opened. “Let’s do the news.”
After running through a series of news headlines, Guthrie said that “we are so glad that you started our week with us and it's good to be home.” Her co-host, Craig Melvin said that “it's good to have you back at home.”
She greeted longtime co-worker Al Roker with “Good morning, Sunshine,” when he noted that it was good to see her on the set. At the end of the first 25-minute portion of the show, she offered Melvin a high-five.
Emotions got the better of her before the last half hour, when she joined her colleagues in front of fans gathered at the show's Rockefeller Center studio. She fought back tears when one fan was seen with a “Welcome home Savannah” shirt, and clutched colleague Jenna Bush Hager's arm and thanked people for their support.
Guthrie, one of morning television's most recognizable faces, has been a “Today” host since 2012. She has acknowledged that she's a changed person and that it's hard to go forward not knowing what happened to Nancy Guthrie, who authorities believe was taken against her will from her Arizona home.
US stocks drift higher ahead of Trump's deadline to bomb Iranian power plants
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks drifted higher in hesitant trading on Monday, ahead of a deadline that President Donald Trump has set to bomb Iranian power plants.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, coming off its first winning week in the last six. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 165 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%.
Oil prices likewise rose after seesawing through the day amid uncertainty about what will happen in the war with Iran and how long it will slow the global flow of oil and natural gas. Iran on Monday rejected the latest ceasefire proposal and instead said it wants a permanent end to the war.
“We won’t merely accept a ceasefire,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press. “We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again.”
Fighting continued in the war, meanwhile, including an Israeli attack on an Iranian petrochemical plant. And in the background was the clock ticking toward a deadline, one that Trump has moved multiple times, where he has threatened to attack Iranian power plants if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world’s oil typically sails through the strait during peacetime.
Steve Bannon wins Supreme Court order likely to lead to dismissal of contempt of Congress conviction
WASHINGTON (AP) — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, on Monday won a Supreme Court order that is expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction for refusing to testify to Congress.
Prodded by the Trump administration, the justices threw out an appellate ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice.”
The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022. A federal appeals court in Washington had upheld the conviction.
The justices also issued a similar order in the case of former Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who was pardoned by Trump last year.
A mountain hideout and aircraft under fire: US carries out daring rescue of service member in Iran
The United States pulled off a daring rescue of two aviators whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, plucking the pilot from behind enemy lines before setting off a complicated extraction of the second service member who hid deep in the mountains as Tehran called for Iranians to help capture him.
The CIA looked to throw off Iran’s government before the crew member was found, launching a deception campaign to spread word inside the Islamic Republic that the U.S. had already located him.
Even as President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials described an almost cinematic mission, rescuers faced major obstacles, including two Black Hawk helicopters coming under fire and problems with two transport planes that forced the U.S. military to blow them up.
“This is the first time in military memory that two U.S. Pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in Enemy Territory,” Trump wrote early Sunday on his Truth Social platform. “WE WILL NEVER LEAVE AN AMERICAN WARFIGHTER BEHIND!”
In a pair of social media posts, Trump said the operation over the weekend required the U.S. to remain completely silent to avoid jeopardizing the effort, even as the president and top members of his administration continuously monitored the airman’s location.
A 12-hour drive through Iran offers glimpses of destruction, defiance and daily life
ZANJAN, Iran (AP) — A black banner hangs over the border crossing and portraits of Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stare down, promising vengeance against the United States and Israel.
But on the 12-hour drive south to the capital, Tehran, daily life continued, with only occasional signs of the ongoing war, including a Shiite religious center that officials say was damaged by a recent airstrike.
Associated Press reporters made the journey on Saturday after crossing into Iran from Turkey. They gained a glimpse of the country at the center of a regional war that has jolted the world economy and shows no sign of ending five weeks after Khamenei was killed in the opening U.S. and Israeli salvo.
The Associated Press has been granted permission by the Iranian government to send an additional team into the country for a brief reporting trip. AP already operates in Iran. The visiting team must be accompanied by a media assistant from a government-affiliated company. AP retains full editorial control of its content.
The first major sign of the war's destruction came in the northwestern city of Zanjan, about six hours' drive from the border.

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