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

Kuwait’s military made the announcement, without providing further details on what had been targeted. Iran said hours later that it launched an attack in the region, but it did not say exactly what was targeted.

Kuwait, a close ally of the U.S., repeatedly came under fire from Iran and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq during the war.

The announcement comes as the Middle East is on the edge. U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed confidence that his administration is making headway in negotiations with Iran to end the war, but the talks remain in flux.

Trump is looking for an agreement that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz — through which about a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas once passed. He is also seeking to get Iran to give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium while the Islamic Republic wants economic sanctions to be lifted and frozen assets to be released to aid its shattered economy. The war has been unpopular in the U.S., and Iran's closure of the strait has sent oil prices skyrocketing, driving up fuel prices around the world.

Israeli strikes kill at least 14 across southern Lebanon ahead of Washington talks

BEIRUT (AP) — The Israeli military early Thursday pounded Lebanon's fourth-largest city, killing at least 14 people across the south of the country in its ongoing military escalation against the Hezbollah group ahead of crucial talks in Washington.

Among those killed in the flurry of strikes were five women and children and a Lebanese soldier. Dozens of others were wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry and the state-run National News Agency.

An Israeli soldier meanwhile was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel, the Israeli military said.

The intensification comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an expansion in the Israeli military's attacks in Lebanon, apparently sparked by Hezbollah's use of fiber-optic exploding drones that have struck Israeli troops in Lebanon and reached some of Israel's northern border towns.

Lebanese and Israeli military officials are set to hold their first security talks on Friday in the U.S. capital. The talks have extended a nominal ceasefire that went into effect April 17, although the attacks have since intensified, while sparing the Lebanese capital Beirut.

US imposes sanctions on Iranian agency trying to control shipping in the Strait of Hormuz

The Trump administration on Wednesday placed additional sanctions on Iran as part of a sprawling economic pressure campaign during the war, this time targeting the country’s newly created agency that is trying to control shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The sanctions were announced late Wednesday after U.S. forces carried out strikes on an Iran military facility after downing Iranian attack drones, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The sanctions move, first reported by The Associated Press, is the latest U.S. effort to use economic leverage on top of military action to push Iran’s leadership into an agreement to end the war and open the waterway where a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas normally passes. President Donald Trump has said a deal is imminent, but talks are ongoing.

Rising energy prices and other costs stemming from Iran’s effective closure of the strait have heaped political pressure on Trump and other Republicans ahead of the midterm congressional elections.

“The Iranian military’s latest attempt to extort global maritime trade is proof that Economic Fury has left the regime desperate for cash,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

US military strikes another alleged drug boat in the eastern Pacific, killing 2

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military on Wednesday struck another vessel suspected of transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two men.

U.S. Southern Command posted video on social media showing a boat resting on the water before being struck by an explosion. The last few seconds of the video show smoke and fire rising from the boat.

A day earlier, U.S. forces had launched a strike on an alleged drug vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing one man and leaving two survivors. Southern Command said it “immediately notified the U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors.”

The Trump administration’s campaign of blowing up alleged drug-trafficking vessels in Latin American waters, including the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, has gone on since early September and killed at least 196 people in total. The military has not provided evidence that any of the vessels were carrying drugs.

The Pentagon watchdog said last week that it will evaluate whether the U.S. military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats. The six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle include a military commander’s intent, target development, analysis, decision, execution and assessment.

Iran war has complicated plans for an international force in Gaza that has yet to materialize

BANGKOK (AP) — The International Stabilization Force for Gaza was announced with great aplomb at the inaugural meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump's Board of Peace in February. The American general tapped to lead the 20,000-strong force said it would ensure “future prosperity and enduring peace” after the devastating Israel-Hamas war.

Three months on, he still has no force to lead as none of the five countries that pledged troops have come through with any significant contributions.

Efforts to shore up the fragile ceasefire have stalled as Hamas has refused to disarm and Israel has seized more territory while continuing to strike what it says are militant targets, often killing civilians.

The Iran war has meanwhile made it more difficult for Arab and Muslim leaders to openly cooperate with the United States and Israel, which many in the region view as aggressors, and the resulting global energy crisis has sapped their resources.

The biggest blow to the planned force came about a week after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, when Indonesia put its commitment of 8,000 troops on indefinite hold. Some 1,000 were to have been sent in April, followed by the remainder in June.

France moves to repeal Code Noir, the slavery law it never abolished

PARIS (AP) — For nearly two centuries after France abolished slavery, the colonial-era law that classified humans as property remained quietly in place. On Thursday, lawmakers will finally move to eliminate it.

The bill, expected to be adopted by the National Assembly, will repeal Code Noir, or Black Code, the 1685 decree King Louis XIV signed to govern slaves across France’s colonies.

The law turned human beings into chattel, allowing them to be worked, beaten, sold, raped and killed — and France never formally did away with it.

That realization has left many aghast.

“That shocks me,” said Muriel Jean-Baptiste, a Paris-born nurse whose parents are from Martinique, a French overseas department in the Caribbean.

AP Exclusive: Trump administration tells prosecutors to stand down on Venezuela leader, sources say

MIAMI (AP) — The Trump administration has quietly instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid pursuing criminal investigations into Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a longtime target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials, in the latest sign of warming relations between the White House and the oil-rich nation.

It’s unclear whether prosecutors had implicated Rodríguez in any crimes or whether investigators were moving toward an indictment. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

But DEA records obtained by The Associated Press earlier this year show she consistently surfaced on the radar of federal law enforcement dating to at least 2018, though she has never been criminally charged in the U.S. like several other senior Venezuelan officials.

The directive to pause scrutiny into Rodríguez was meant to avoid upsetting the administration’s efforts to stabilize Venezuela after the capture of her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, among other reasons, the official said. It was not clear whether the White House, which deferred comment to the Justice Department, was involved in the decision.

“Everybody has been told to stand down,” one of the former officials said.

Official in Kenya says 16 students killed in an overnight fire at a girls’ school

GILGIL, Kenya (AP) — At least 16 students died in an overnight fire that started in the dormitories of a girls’ boarding school in Kenya, a government official said, in the latest such incident to rock the East African nation.

Education Minister Julius Ogamba said Thursday that 79 others were injured at the Utumishi Girls School, which has more than 800 students in the Gilgil area of central Kenya.

The cause has not yet been established. Ogamba said authorities would investigate whether the school’s fire safety manual had been adhered to.

Police said they were leading the rescue and emergency response efforts at the school, which is located about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Nairobi.

The government-owned secondary school is managed and sponsored by the Kenya Police Service. Many of the students are daughters of police officers.

Think it's hot now? The next five years will smash records, UN says

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the next five years, the Earth is overwhelmingly likely to surge again and again past the international climate threshold set as safe and shatter its hottest-year record along the way, according to new United Nations climate projections.

The World Meteorological Organization also forecasts an overheating Arctic that warms nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.66 degrees Celsius) between now and 2030 and a dangerous drought with potential wildfires for the Amazon, a crucial part of Earth's natural defenses to lessen human-caused climate change. A hotter globe from the burning of coal, oil and gas means more extreme weather including floods, droughts and heat waves, scientists said.

The projections by the U.N. climate agency and the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office said there's a 75% chance that the average global temperature between 2026 and 2030 will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. That threshold is the agreed-upon limit of warming — averaged over 20 years — set in 2015 by the Paris climate agreement.

A U.N. science report a few years later detailed how exceeding that 1.5 mark means more likely death, danger and species loss. Even though it's only a few tenths of a degree, some of the planet's ecosystems, such as coral and glaciers, can't handle the strain.

There’s a 91% chance that at least one of the next five years will shoot past the 1.5 degree threshold and an 86% chance that one of those years will smash the record for Earth’s hottest year set in 2024, the WMO report said. The WMO projects each year between now and 2030 to be between 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and 1.9 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s.

Inside an African hotel where asylum seekers deported by the US are imprisoned

MALABO, Equatorial Guinea (AP) — At first glance, the hotel looks like any other on this tropical island off the Central African coast, with its palm tree-lined driveway, marble-floored foyer and portrait of the oil-rich country’s president hanging behind a mahogany reception desk.

Yet the eerily empty Bamy Hotel is not a refuge for adventure-seeking tourists or international business travelers these days. Since late last year, only a small number of people have been staying there, and they aren't on vacation. They are being held against their will.

Under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the Trump administration, Equatorial Guinea's all-powerful president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has turned this hotel owned by his family into a prison for asylum seekers deported from the United States.

The hotel is just a way station, though. Of the at least 32 people imprisoned there since November — all of whom had previously been granted protection from U.S. judges, their lawyers said — 25 have been forced to go back to home countries across Africa where their lives might be in danger. The rest face pressure from authorities to leave.

“Government people would come all the time and say: Where is your passport? You need to go back to your own country,” said a 26-year-old man from an East African country imprisoned at the hotel. Out of fear of retaliation, he spoke on condition of anonymity, as did two other deportees interviewed by The Associated Press.