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

Iran launched new missile attacks against U.S.-allied nations in the Middle East, including Qatar, a key mediator in the war. It also damaged a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait — something crucial in the small, desert nation.

The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed, and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran as they battle for control of the strait. Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds of others, with new casualties reported in Friday’s strikes.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.

Speaking in a primetime address to the American public, Trump insisted the war was going well.

A former prime minister who led Israel out of Lebanon fears mistakes are being repeated

JERUSALEM (AP) — It was just before sunrise when the last columns of Israeli tanks crossed from Lebanon back into Israel and then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who ordered the withdrawal, said the homecoming of Israeli troops sent “shivers down his spine.”

That was May 24, 2000, the day Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon.

By then, many Israelis had grown to view the invasion — initially aimed at ousting Palestinian militants — as a strategic failure, akin to the U.S. military quagmire in Vietnam.

Now, 26 years later, Israel is again occupying much of southern Lebanon, and while polling shows that a majority of Israelis currently support an extended military presence in Lebanon, some, including Barak, who remember the pitfalls of the last occupation, are afraid that Israel is falling into the same trap.

“Our very presence will become the only goal,” Barak said in a recent interview, recounting what he said he thought of the occupation in 1985, when he was a general in the Israeli military, and Israel was shifting from active fighting to long-term deployment in Lebanon.

Maine shooting and officer's background raise new questions about ICE's rapid hiring

WASHINGTON (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been rapidly expanding its workforce, hiring thousands of new officers as part of the Trump administration's attempt to ramp up immigration arrests and deportations.

The supersizing of ICE -- fueled by an infusion of billions of dollars granted by Congress — has raised concerns about the agency's hiring practices and whether officers being brought on are receiving proper vetting. Those concerns have been rejected by the Department of Homeland Security.

Relatives of the ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week told The Associated Press he struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets.

The precise circumstances surrounding the officer's hiring were not immediately clear. But the revelations about the man, David Brouillette, shine a new spotlight on ICE's hiring spree and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Here is a look at the agency's hiring and training practices:

Lawmakers demand answers after 'bombshell' report of ICE officer shooting in Maine

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic members of Congress demanded answers about Homeland Security's vetting and training of immigration enforcement agents after it was disclosed Thursday that the ICE officer involved in a deadly shooting this week in Maine had a history of mental health issues and violent behavior.

The Associated Press reported that David Brouillette, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine, is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood, according to several of his close relatives.

The AP reached out to congressional leaders and several key lawmakers of both parties for response.

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said Brouillette’s history of violence and mental health issues, as well as the death in Maine, “directly call into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits.”

“This senseless tragedy must be investigated and the officer responsible should be taken off our streets and face justice for his actions,” Thompson said in a statement to the AP.

To air or not to air? Nation's TV networks struggle to find the right balance for Trump speech

As President Donald Trump threatened sanctions for those who didn’t cover his address live Thursday night, the nation’s broadcast and cable news operations wrestled with the thorniest of questions: To air or not to air?

Networks and their news operations, broadcast and cable alike, spent the hours leading up to Trump’s address debating how to cover it — and struggling to balance delivering the news with handing over their airwaves to potential falsehoods about the 2020 elections.

In the end, a patchwork quilt of coverage was largely united by one common strategy: real-time fact-checking as much as was possible even while the president was still speaking.

The dilemma took place against a backdrop of deep tension between the media and a president working to exert control over it by whatever means he can. Even in his speech itself, Trump excoriated networks that chose not to carry it live, saying that “NBC and ABC fake news” avoided it because they “don't like the topic.” He also threatened them with consequences, using the presidential pulpit to suggest they should be sanctioned for their editorial decisions.

"They and others in the media are part of a plot," Trump said, offering no evidence for his assertion. There is also no evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections.

Why American elections are so complicated — and secure

In a speech to the nation Thursday evening, President Donald Trump said Americans deserve secure elections, and he claimed to be using federal authority to prevent them from being “stolen.”

In fact, one of the strongest security features of U.S. elections is the fact that they aren’t conducted at the federal level. America votes in more than 10,000 different election jurisdictions, each with different rules set by state and sometimes local governments.

That structure makes the nation's elections extraordinarily complicated — and also safe from widespread fraud. And when misconduct does happen — rarely — security protocols frequently catch it.

America's highly decentralized system of voting exists because the nation’s Founding Fathers gave authority over elections to the states, rather than the federal government. While Congress has the power to regulate elections — and has used that authority to pass such laws as the Voting Rights Act — the Constitution makes clear that states have primary authority to set the “times, places and manner” for elections.

There also is no national election agency that administers the presidential contest, something that's different from many other countries. And when it comes to doing the day-to-day work of running an election, the responsibility falls to officials at the local level — usually a clerk or election supervisor — with help from staff and volunteers.

Andy Burnham, a mayor from England's north, is poised to become Britain's next prime minister

LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham got to the top through a mix of patience and risk-taking.

A decade ago, Burnham abandoned a 20-year climb up the Labour Party ladder in London to head north and run for mayor of Greater Manchester. A month ago, he returned to Parliament by winning a risky special election. On Monday, he will become Britain’s 59th prime minister.

The sudden downfall of Prime Minister Keir Starmer after just two years in office has swept the 56-year-old Burnham into office — unelected and largely untested. He will enter No. 10 Downing St. carrying the heavy weight of expectation, and big questions about how he will shoulder it.

“A whole range of people across the Labour movement and in the country have projected onto Andy Burnham their hopes and their fantasies about how the country should be run and what Labour should stand for and what Andy Burnham stands for,” said Joshi Herrmann, founder of Manchester news site The Mill, who has covered Burnham for years.

“He has got lots of people’s hopes up.”

China's Xi calls for more global efforts to guide AI, chides US for its curbs on tech sharing

SHANGHAI (AP) — Development and governance of artificial intelligence should be a global effort, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday, while reiterating China’s objections to what he called the “overstretching” of national security concerns.

Speaking at a conference in Shanghai, Xi said AI should not be dominated by any single nation. American-led restrictions have blocked China from accessing some of the world's most advanced technologies, spurring China's efforts to build its own know-how and intensifying the rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The development of artificial intelligence should not be a solo performance by any single country but rather a symphony of global cooperation,” Xi said at the opening of China's annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Others attending included the leaders of Kazakhstan, Cambodia and Thailand and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

“We should together oppose the practice of overstretching the concept of national security in the field of artificial intelligence, and of placing one’s own security above that of other countries,” he said, repeating a longstanding Chinese complaint.

China will expand AI cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS countries, Xi said. He promised to provide access for 30 countries to a Chinese-developed AI meteorological tool that provides early warning systems.

Texas flash floods leave at least 2 dead in region devastated a year ago

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Catastrophic flash floods in Texas have killed two people and forced hundreds of rescues in areas still reeling from devastating floods a year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.

Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Abbott said.

The governor said the hardest-hit areas are expecting more rain into Friday and are not out of danger yet, with some rivers expected to reach historic levels.

After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a large wave on Thursday barreled down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic.

Much like last year, the floods came in the middle of the night. But this time some residents in the Texas Hill Country said they received more warnings.

Blanche meets with Epstein accusers after demand from Republican senator crucial to confirmation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met Thursday with accusers of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following the demand by a Republican senator whose support is crucial to advancing his nomination to lead the Justice Department.

Blanche spent about an hour at Justice Department headquarters in Washington with the group of Epstein accusers, who have criticized the Trump administration's handling of the disgraced financier's investigation and a trove of files related to his sex trafficking case.

After the meeting, Blanche told reporters that he encouraged the accusers to come to the FBI with any information that could help investigators build cases against additional figures tied to Epstein.

But Blanche acknowledged he couldn't assure them additional prosecutions could be brought. The Justice Department has repeatedly said it will investigate further if new information surfaces, but the government doesn’t currently have evidence to support prosecutions against others in Epstein's orbit.

“It wasn’t all cordial,” Blanche said of Thursday’s meeting. “Because there’s something that they want that I don’t think I can give them, which is some form of justice. And I want to be able to give justice in the form of prosecutions, and maybe we can do a prosecution at some point,” Blanche said.