AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

Brent crude oil, the international standard, spiked to $114 a barrel as global fears of an energy crisis rose, up more than 57% 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.

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 country’s 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.”

Joe Kent's resignation over Iran war reignites antisemitism fears and debate over Israeli influence

It was no surprise when Joe Kent showed up on Tucker Carlson’s podcast a day after quitting his counterterrorism job in President Donald Trump’s administration. Here was a top official who resigned to protest the war with Iran turning to right-wing media’s leading critic of the conflict.

“The Israelis drove the decision to take this action,” Kent said in Wednesday's interview.

But before long, the conversation moved in a different direction as Kent nodded to conspiracy theories that pro-Israel forces were behind the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

“I’m saying there are unanswered questions,” Kent said.

The conversation encapsulated two schisms within the Republican Party and the right-wing media system, both of which have reached high into the national security establishment of the Trump administration.

Many work to reconcile César Chavez's labor rights activist legacy with sexual abuse allegations

PHOENIX (AP) — Mary Rose Wilcox and her husband marched and fasted alongside César 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 that were 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 plan to cover the mural.

“We love César 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.

César Chavez and Dolores Huerta led a movement that won better wages and conditions for farmworkers

Dolores Huerta and the late César Chavez are both labor rights icons credited with leading a movement that pushed growers to negotiate for better wages and working conditions for farmworkers.

Their legacies are getting new attention after allegations emerged that Chavez, who died in 1993, sexually abused Huerta and other women and girls. Several celebrations honoring Chavez planned around the country for later this month have been canceled.

Chavez and Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, which became the United Farm Workers of America a few years later when it merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

The rise of the movement is one of the most important events in U.S. history and is the most important event in U.S. Latino history, said Paul Ortiz, a Cornell University labor history professor. United Farm Workers made the most important sustained changes in the working conditions of agricultural workers in the nation's history, he said.

Agricultural workers "from Hawaii to Florida to New York to Southern California had tried to organize to improve their wages and working conditions, literally for centuries, going back to slavery times,” Ortiz said. “And almost every effort failed, some catastrophically.”

Oil and natural gas prices soar as Iran attacks Gulf energy facilities. Brent crude nears $114

BANGKOK (AP) — Global oil and natural gas prices soared Thursday after Iran attacked a key natural gas facility in Qatar that can supply one-fifth of the worlds gas as well as two oil refineries in Kuwait.

The attacks added to fears the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic may be longer and more extensive than feared, with lasting damage to oil and gas production.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose to $116.38 per barrel, up from under $73 per barrel on the eve of the war.

The European TTF benchmark for natural gas prices traded 24% higher on Thursday.

The Iranian attack hit the Ras Laffan terminal for shipping out liquefied natural gas in Qatar. Qatar normally supplies some 20% of the world’s consumption of LNG, which can be carried by ship. The facility shut down after a drone attack. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most tanker traffic also left the gas with nowhere to go.

EU scrambles to contain energy costs from war in Middle East

BRUSSELS (AP) — Leaders from across the European Union are meeting Thursday to grapple with rising oil and gas prices caused by the war raging across key energy producers and shipping lanes in the Middle East.

Many of those leaders have deflected entreaties by U.S. President Donald Trump to send military assets to secure the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the global flow of oil, gas and fertilizer. Rising energy prices because of the war and fears in Europe of a new refugee crisis have pushed leaders to make the Middle East a priority at the summit.

“We are very worried about the energy crisis,” said Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever ahead of the European Council summit of 27 leaders of European Union nations. He said that energy prices were too high before the war, but that the conflict “created another spike."

“If that becomes structural, we’re in deep trouble," he said. "At a European level, some measures can be taken to address the problem of the high energy prices.”

The European Commission has told leaders it has a mix of financial instruments that member nations could deploy to lower energy prices, which will be up for discussion. No single policy will likely work to blunt the economic shocks from the war across the bloc's myriad markets from Romania to Ireland.

Japan's Prime Minister Takaichi meets with Trump as he seeks help securing the Strait of Hormuz

WASHINGTON (AP) — The meeting that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will have at the White House on Thursday originally seemed like a prime opportunity to have President Donald Trump's ear before he embarked on a trip to China.

But now, the war in Iran and Trump’s unsuccessful call for Japan and other nations to help protect the Strait of Hormuz means the China trip has been delayed and Takaichi may be likely to get an earful.

Trump has repeatedly complained on camera and online that U.S. allies, including Japan, have rejected his request to help safeguard the critical waterway for oil and gas transport.

“In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!” Trump exclaimed on Truth Social after his initial call for help was rebuffed.

The prime minister acknowledged before she left Japan that she expects her meeting with Trump will be “very difficult.” She and her ministers have denied that Washington officially requested Japanese warships for the U.S.-Israeli operation.

European Union summit will focus on Iran war and a loan to Ukraine blocked by Hungary

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders are holding a summit in Brussels on Thursday for talks on the Iran war, energy prices, migration and an enormous loan for war-ravaged Ukraine being held up by Hungary.

Many of those leaders have deflected entreaties by U.S. President Donald Trump to send military assets to secure the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the global flow of oil, gas and fertilizer. Rising energy prices because of the war and fears in Europe of a new refugee crisis have pushed leaders to make the Middle East one of the top priorities at the summit.

The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, has floated the idea of a “toolbox” of measures to lower energy prices for leaders to discuss because no single policy will work across the myriad markets in the 27-nation bloc to blunt economic shocks from the war, according to a senior European diplomat who wasn't authorized to be publicly named so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The summit will also focus on a long-brewing standoff between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and most other EU nations.

The last EU summit was held in December at a Belgian castle, where the leaders including Orbán agreed to a 90 billion-euro ($104 billion) loan for Ukraine for help overcoming a budget shortfall in the country as it grapples with a grinding war with Russia.

California community ties all-time March temperature record in the US

NORTH SHORE, Calif. (AP) — A tiny desert community in Southern California reached 108 degrees on Wednesday, tying the highest March temperature ever recorded in the U.S.

It came amid a record-breaking winter heat wave in the Southwest that will stretch into the weekend and could produce even higher temperatures.

The record — first reached by Rio Grande City, Texas in 1954 and now shared by North Shore, California — could be broken in a number of cities and towns by week's end. The aptly named Thermal, California, was forecast to hit 110 degrees on Friday.

Triple-digit temperatures also came earlier than ever before in Phoenix when the Arizona capital hit 101 degrees Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. The previous record was set almost 40 years ago, on March 26, 1988, the only other time Phoenix temperatures have climbed into the hundreds during the month of March, according to the NWS.

Bryan Lewis, a meteorologist with the NWS, said this has been one of the most significant March heatwaves in recorded history.

State Department cut jobs with deep expertise in Middle East as Iran crisis escalates

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the escalating war in Iran, the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs would ordinarily be at the center of the geopolitical fray.

Typically led by a veteran diplomat, the bureau’s 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 tank’s blueprint for the second Trump administration. Namdar’s 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.

Now that bureau is also working with far fewer resources. The administration’s 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.

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.