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

Sirens over Israel warned of barrages of incoming Iranian missiles and in the United Arab Emirates, two people were reported killed and three were wounded by falling shrapnel from a missile interception over Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

Industry experts say Iran is implementing a “de facto ‘toll booth’ regime,” with some ships paying in Chinese yuan to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of all traded oil and natural gas is transported in peacetime.

Meanwhile, a strike group anchored by the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli drew closer to the Mideast with some 2,500 Marines. Also, at least 1,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne have been ordered to the region.

The troop movements don’t guarantee U.S. President Donald Trump will use force to try and compel Iran to open the strait and halt its attacks on Gulf Arab states.

As juries turn against social media for harming kids, Big Tech's invincibility starts to show cracks

For years, parents, teenagers, pediatricians, educators and whistleblowers have pushed the idea that social media is detrimental to young people's mental health and can lead to addiction, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and suicide.

For the first time, juries in two states took their side.

In Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury found both Meta and YouTube liable for harms to children using their services. In New Mexico, a jury determined that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Tech watchdog groups, families and children’s advocates cheered the jury decisions.

“The era of Big Tech invincibility is over,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project. “After years of gaslighting from companies like Google and Meta, new evidence and testimony have pulled back the curtain and validated the harms young people and parents have been telling the world about for years.”

Missed paychecks and airport delays: Pressure mounts on Congress to end the funding shutdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pressure is mounting on Congress to end the funding shutdown that's resulted in travel disruptions, missed paychecks and even warnings of airport closures, but lawmakers have yet to resolve the underlying issue of reining in President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement operations.

Senators are expected to vote Thursday on a Republican proposal that would fund the Transportation Security Administration and much of the Department of Homeland Security, except the enforcement and removal operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But it's expected to fail.

Democrats argue the GOP plan does not go far enough at putting guardrails on ICE, Customs and Border Protection and other federal officers who are engaged in the Trump administration's immigration sweeps, particularly after the deaths of two Americans protesting the actions in Minneapolis.

With Congress set to leave town by week's end for its own spring break recess, calls are intensifying for an end to the 41-day stalemate that's put the livelihoods of TSA officers at risk as they provide airport security without pay.

“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified at a House hearing Wednesday.

Iran war deflects attention from Ukraine as an emboldened Russia starts spring offensive

The Iran war has deflected global attention from Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor Ukraine as Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II enters its fifth year and an emboldened Kremlin undertakes a spring offensive.

The past week showed that neither side is easing up. Russia on Tuesday fired almost 1,000 drones and 34 missiles at Ukraine in one of the war’s biggest bombardments. The following day Ukraine launched almost 400 drones in the largest reported overnight attack on Russian regions and Crimea.

Ukraine’s fate is still Europe’s top foreign policy issue, fueled by fears that Moscow has wider ambitions. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has wound down talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations as the Iran war grips its attention. The administration has warned it could turn its back on the conflict if peace efforts come to nothing.

Only weeks ago, the Russian economy was starting to feel the pinch of sanctions. But Russia is now raking in billions of dollars from a temporary U.S. waiver on oil sanctions against Moscow. The measure taken earlier this month aims to free up Russian oil cargo stranded at sea and ease supply shortages caused by the Middle East conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the U.S. move was “ not the right decision ” because it will further enable Russia's military campaign.

Bus sinks in Bangladesh river, killing at least 18 people

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A bus carrying about 50 people plunged into a major river in central Bangladesh as it was driving onto a ferry, leaving at least 18 people dead, authorities said Thursday.

The bus plunged into the Padma River on Wednesday afternoon in Rajbari district, about 84 kilometers (52 miles) from the capital, Dhaka, said fire official Dewan Sohel Rana.

The bus was traveling to the capital from the southwestern district of Kushtia as people return to work after the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr.

Rana said many of the passengers swam to safety after the accident but others got trapped.

A rescue vessel joined the operation late Wednesday and lifted the bus, he said, and rescuers worked overnight to recover bodies, finding 18 by Thursday morning.

Asian stocks fall and oil climbs again over Iran war de-escalation uncertainties

HONG KONG (AP) — Asian stocks traded lower and oil prices rose back to around $100 per barrel on Thursday as a de-escalation of the Iran war remained uncertain.

U.S. futures were down 0.5%.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 was trading 0.3% lower at 53,603.65. South Korea’s Kospi lost 3.2% to 5,460.46.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.9% to 24,856.43, while the Shanghai Composite index was down 1.1% to 3,889.08.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down 0.1%, while Taiwan’s Taiex was trading 0.3% lower.

US appeals court sides with Trump administration on detaining immigrants without bond

The U.S. can continue to detain immigrants without bond, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday, handing a victory to the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.

The opinion from a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis overturned a lower court ruling that required that a native of Mexico arrested for lacking legal documents be given a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

It’s the second appeals court to rule in favor of the administration on this issue. The 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled last month that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country was consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.

Both appeals court opinions counter recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.

In November, a district court decision in California granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.

Louisiana's crawfish industry feels the pinch of limits on foreign workers

CROWLEY, La. (AP) — Spring is peak season in Louisiana for crawfish, the hard-shelled star of outdoor parties. But a shortage of foreign workers is dampening the mood.

Deep in Louisiana's bayous, where crawfish production is a $300 million industry that is a key ingredient for backyard boils and buttery etouffees served in New Orleans' French Quarter, operators are fuming over labor struggles and pointing fingers at President Donald Trump's administration over what they say has been a failure to authorize enough guest foreign workers.

The shortages add to a list of industries in the U.S. that rely on seasonal foreign labor, including landscaping and construction, whose struggle to fill jobs has been exacerbated during the Trump administration's wider clampdown on legal avenues for immigration. In Louisiana, the need for crawfish workers has strained an industry that is a symbol of state pride and frustrated Republican officeholders, many of whom broadly support Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda but say their pleas for more legal laborers have gone unanswered.

“People have built businesses around these workers and this year we can’t get them,” said Alan Lawson, who runs a crawfish production facility in the rural town of Crowley. “This industry would not exist without it because the American people don’t want to do the jobs we’re offering.”

Large-scale crawfish producers use guest workers, many from Mexico and Central America, to shell and freeze the freshwater catch that is often pulled from swampy rice fields. They are hired on H-2B visas for nonfarming jobs and are allowed to stay in the U.S. for less than a year after businesses first offer the jobs to Americans.

'This is our fight': Suburbanites embrace anti-Trump resistance ahead of No Kings protests

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (AP) — A few years ago, Allison Posner was barely involved in politics.

Now the 42-year-old mother of two from Maplewood, New Jersey, hands out food and diapers to immigrant families outside a nearby detention facility. She waves signs on a highway overpass in between school pickups and orthodontist appointments. And this weekend, she'll lead a “No Kings” protest march across this affluent town alongside her husband, her children and thousands of others who are convinced that President Donald Trump represents a direct threat to American democracy.

“The people in the suburbs are definitely radicalizing,” said Posner, a freelance actor.

A growing faction of concerned citizens living in suburban communities across the United States — places once known for political moderation or even conservatism — are increasingly positioned on the front lines of the anti-Trump resistance. More than a year into the Republican president's second term, the so-called “soccer moms” are becoming bona fide activists taking to their well-manicured streets to fight Trump and his allies.

The leftward lurch could cost Republicans control of Congress for the president's final two years in office. It could also reshape the Democratic Party by elevating a fresh crop of fiery progressive candidates emboldened to push back against the Trump administration more aggressively than the establishment may prefer.

California set to rename César Chavez Day following sexual abuse allegations

SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — California lawmakers will vote Thursday to rename César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day in an effort to reconcile the Latino labor icon’s legacy with explosive sexual abuse allegations before the state holiday March 31.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to quickly sign the bill.

The change comes after allegations became public last week that Chavez had sexually abused girls and women during his days building a major farmworker labor rights movement in the 1960s in California's agricultural heartland. Among those who accused him was Dolores Huerta, who co-led the movement that eventually became the United Farm Workers.

The state's effort to rename the holiday is part of a wave of other moves to alter memorials honoring the man who in the 1960s helped secure better wages and working conditions for farmworkers and had been admired by many Democratic leaders. The swift and sweeping effort to erase Chavez's name from public life was previously unthinkable, as his status had only grown more iconic since his death in 1993.

California was the first state to designate Chavez’s birthday, March 31, as a holiday to honor the civil rights leader nearly 30 years ago. The Legislature then in 2000 passed a bill to make it an official paid day off for state employees and require that students learn about his legacy and his role in the labor movement in California.