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

Iranian state TV reported the warning a day after the United States struck two Iranian oil tankers, casting doubt on the month-old ceasefire that the U.S. has insisted is still in effect. The U.S. military said the tankers were trying to breach its blockade of Iran’s ports.

Meanwhile Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s regional headquarters, said it arrested dozens of people it alleged had links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Washington awaits Iran's response to its latest proposal for a deal to end the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and roll back Tehran’s disputed nuclear program. And Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow's proposal to take enriched uranium from Iran to help negotiate a settlement remains on the table.

Bahrain said it had arrested 41 people it said are part of a group affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. The interior ministry said investigations confirmed they were in contact with the Guard and collected funds “with the aim of sending them to Iran” to support its "terrorist operations.”

Israeli drone strikes near Beirut kill 4 and southern airstrikes kill at least 13

BEIRUT (AP) — Three Israeli drone strikes on vehicles just south of Beirut on Saturday killed four people while a series of airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed at least 13, including a man and his 12-year-old daughter, state media and the Health Ministry said.

The three drone strikes south of Beirut marked another escalation since a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on April 17. Both Israel and Hezbollah have continued their daily attacks despite the truce.

On Wednesday night, Israel’s air force carried out an airstrike on a southern suburb in which Israel said it killed a senior Hezbollah military official. It was the first strike near the capital since the ceasefire was reached.

Two of the strikes on Saturday took place on the highway linking Beirut with the southern port city of Sidon in which several people were wounded, while the third happened on a road leading to Lebanon’s Chouf region killing three, the state-run National News Agency said.

An Associated Press journalist at the scene saw a dead body on the highway in the town of Saadiyat.

WHO head seeks to reassure residents of Spanish island where hantavirus-stricken ship is headed

TENERIFE, Spain (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization sought Saturday to reassure residents of the Spanish island where passengers of a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship are expected to be evacuated, issuing them a direct message that the virus was “not another COVID.”

The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, with more than 140 passengers and crew on board, is headed to Spain's Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, and is expected to arrive at the island of Tenerife early Sunday.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived Saturday at the island, where he, Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska planned to coordinate the disembarkation of passengers and some crew.

“I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest. The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment,” Tedros said in a statement to the people of Tenerife.

“But I need you to hear me clearly: This is not another COVID. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now,” Tedros added.

Experts wonder 'Where is the CDC?' as a hantavirus outbreak unfolds on a cruise ship

NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.

“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Tennessee redistricting plan splits Memphis neighbors and reshapes midterms as other states follow

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — For 21 years, Steve Fowler and Sam Wilson have performed together in a band on Memphis’ renowned Beale Street. And for the past decade, the men have been neighbors on a quiet, leafy avenue.

But as of Thursday, they will no longer cast the same ballot despite living across the street from each other.

That’s because Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the congressional district of Memphis, which has long enjoyed its own Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat. Now, the city is split into three Republican-leaning districts, its majority-Black population sliced up and bound to mostly white, rural and conservative communities along lines that branch away from Fowler and Wilson’s East Memphis neighborhood.

A line runs down the middle of the street, placing Fowler in the 8th Congressional District, which runs hundreds of miles to central Tennessee across a dozen counties. Wilson is zoned for the 9th District, which extends across most of the state’s southern border before curving up to encompass the largely white and affluent Nashville suburbs.

“I think it’s horrible,” said Fowler, who is white. “This isn’t just going to be bad for Black folks in Memphis, but poor whites in these new districts also aren’t going to get services. How are any of these congressmen going to serve all these different counties?”

President of Parks and Rec? Trump asserts authority over public spaces in DC

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge weighing the future of an expansive Washington park insisted this week she had no intention of becoming Amy Poehler, the actress who spent seven seasons memorably playing the head of a local parks and recreation department.

But President Donald Trump might be interested in the role.

Shortly after the United States and Iran exchanged fire on Thursday, Trump made a quick jaunt to the National Mall to review the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that he ordered repainted a color he describes as “American flag blue.”

The project has been on his mind lately. During an hour-plus speech Monday to small-business owners, Trump spent about nine minutes talking about the paint job, detailing the granite floor and boasting that he whittled the renovation's cost to $1.9 million from what he said was an initial $350 million estimate.

Trump's next project might be East Potomac Park, home to an affordable, accessible public golf course with views of the Washington Monument.

Rejecting church and state separation is on the wish list for Trump's religious liberty commission

One member calls for a Presidential Medal of Freedom for a baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Another calls for court interventions by the Department of Justice on behalf of Amish parents fighting New York vaccine requirements and Catholic nuns challenging that state’s requirement that they accommodate hospice patients’ gender identities.

And the chair of the Religious Liberty Commission is calling for a federal hotline with this automated recording: “There is no separation of church and state.”

These are just some of the recommendations that members of the advisory panel formed by President Donald Trump last year want to see included in the commission’s final report.

That report is still in the works, but commissioners had an opportunity to describe their wish lists during their most recent meeting in April. There was little dissent as the commissioners, most drawn from Trump’s base of conservative Christian supporters, covered the items they want in the report.

Person dies after being hit by Frontier Airlines plane that was taking off at Denver airport

A person who jumped a fence and was on a runway at Denver International Airport was struck and killed by a Frontier Airlines plane during takeoff, airport authorities said. The collision sparked an engine fire and forced passengers to evacuate.

The plane, on route from Denver to Los Angeles International Airport, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff at DEN at approximately 11:19 p.m. on Friday,” according to a post on the airport’s official X account.

A spokesperson for the airport said the person, who jumped a perimeter fence, has died. They said the unidentified person was hit two minutes after entering the airport. The person is not believed to be an airport employee.

“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot tells the control tower according to the site ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”

The pilot tells the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board and that an “individual was walking across the runway.”

Bobby Cox, manager of Braves' teams that ruled National League and won 1995 World Series, dies at 84

ATLANTA (AP) — Bobby Cox, the folksy manager of the Atlanta Braves whose teams ruled the National League during the 1990s and gave the city its first major title as well as World Series trips that fell short, died Saturday. He was 84.

Cox died in Marietta, Georgia, according to the Atlanta Braves. He had a stroke in 2019 and heart issues that complicated his recovery.

“Bobby was the best manager to ever wear a Braves uniform. He led our team to 14 straight division titles, five National League pennants, and the unforgettable World Series title in 1995. His Braves managerial legacy will never be matched,” the Braves said in a statement.

Cox took over a last-place team in June 1990 and led the Braves to a worst-to-first finish in 1991, losing the World Series to the Minnesota Twins in seven games. That was the start of what was to become a record 14 consecutive division titles, a feat no professional team in any sport had accomplished.

He managed the Braves for 25 years and led Atlanta to its first World Series title in 1995, retired after the 2010 season and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.

Moscow marks Victory Day with a scaled down Red Square parade under tight security

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday voiced confidence in a victory in Ukraine as he oversaw a military parade on Red Square commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II — a show that didn't include heavy weapons for the first time in nearly two decades.

Security was tight in Moscow as Putin and several foreign leaders attended the parade, which was scaled down even as a U.S.-brokered three-day ceasefire eased concerns about possible Ukrainian attempts to disrupt the festivities.

Putin, in power for more than a quarter-century, has used Victory Day, Russia’s most important secular holiday, to showcase the country’s military might and rally support for his military action in Ukraine, now in its fifth year.

Speaking at the parade, Putin hailed Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, declaring that they “face an aggressive force that is armed and supported by the entire bloc of NATO," and are fighting for a “just cause.”

“Victory has always been and will be ours,” Putin said, as columns of troops lined up on Red Square.