Oil prices fall as Trump, Iran say Strait of Hormuz is 'fully open'

Iran is banking on the Strait of Hormuz as its main card in any peace negotiations with the United States, but using the waterway as leverage is not without risk for the Islamic republic.

Iran had for decades talked up the threat of blocking the strait, which is a critical chokepoint for global energy supplies.

With the US and Israel launching a surprise war on Iran on February 28 and killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran finally made good on those threats and brought the vital waterway to a standstill.

Since then, the United States has imposed its own blockade, bringing a halt to shipments of Iranian oil that had been spared from the closure. 

The situation has caused economic turmoil worldwide.

European politicians fear spiking inflation, food shortages and flight cancellations as jet fuel runs out.

In much of Asia, home to the biggest buyers of Middle East oil and gas, energy prices have spiked while poorer nations have been outbid for scarce supplies leading to shortages. In Sri Lanka, energy prices have increased 40 percent.

The loss of vital fertiliser supplies, of which the Gulf is a major producer, is also expected to send food prices soaring in the developing world 

- 'Not going to leave' -

While causing global economic pain gives Iran negotiating leverage, it can't escape the blowback entirely, with the US blockade halting oil exports worth tens of millions of dollars each day.

With the two-week ceasefire in the war due to run out this week, renewed conflict over the strait would also rattle a leadership trying to find its feet under new supreme leader, Khamenei's son Mojtaba, who has yet to appear in public.  

"The Strait is under the control of the Islamic republic," said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the veteran of the Revolutionary Guards now serving as Iranian parliament speaker and seen as the chief negotiator in talks with the US.

"When they wanted to send minesweepers to clear mines, we stood our ground, we confronted them. We said these are ceasefire violations," he said in remarks broadcast by Iranian television.

"We are here (in the Strait of Hormuz), we are not going to leave," he added.

- 'Who will blink first' -

The blockade of Hormuz represented a switch in strategy for the Islamic republic, which had long brandished the threat without following through. 

After decades seeking to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon -- an ambition the Islamic republic insists it does not have -- as well as battling pro-Tehran proxies, the West now faces a new and potentially long-lasting problem.

"As long as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was in power, the Islamic Republic at times sent mixed signals about its nuclear program and threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, but stopped short of both," said Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute and author of "Political Succession in the Islamic Republic of Iran".

"With Khamenei gone and the regime in an existential struggle, that restraint no longer holds," he said, adding that "Iran's nuclear doctrine may also be under revision".

But he warned that the US counter-blockade on Iranian shipping in Gulf ports can also hurt the Islamic republic by cutting off its oil revenue at a time of intense economic vulnerability.

"The conflict is now a contest of endurance... Who will blink first?"

In his first major written statement since taking office, Mojtaba Khamenei on March 12 called for the use of "the lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz".

With possible new talks between Iran and the US in the coming days, Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on Monday that "security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free".

"The choice is clear: either a free oil market for all, or the risk of significant costs for everyone."

Analysts at the International Crisis Group think tank said Iran's strategy for Hormuz was to signal it was open to diplomacy "but only on terms that show it has not suffered strategic defeat".

But with the US naval blockade seeking to "override Iranian control instead of negotiating over it" the strait has turned from a "bargaining chip into a flashpoint for potential military escalation". 

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(The Center Square) - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging compliance with nondiscrimination policies for preschools that received public funds. 

The case, St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, challenges a nondiscrimination agreement that Colorado requires schools sign to participate in the state's universal preschool program. 

The nondiscrimination agreement requires that preschool providers cannot enroll or deny families based on sexual orientation, religious affiliation, income, race, disability or gender identity. Since 2022, the preschool program has allowed children 15 hours per week of free education for the year before kindergarten 

The archdiocese of Denver and two of its parishes filed a lawsuit against the state in 2024. The parishes said the nondiscrimination agreement violated their faith to hire LGBT teachers or enroll LGBT families, violating Catholic religious teaching. 

Lawyers for the Catholic parish said the nondiscrimination agreement is not all-encompassing. The lawyers argued that schools are allowed admit students at other schools solely based on on disability status and income level, despite the nondiscrimination agreement forbidding activity. 

"Colorado doesn’t disagree it is interfering with the religious exercise of parents and schools," lawyers for the parishes wrote. "Instead, it says it is perfectly fine to exclude Catholic preschools while letting in preschools preferring those with disabilities, limited income, or LGBTQ identity."

Lawyers for Colorado argued that the state's preference for schools that target students with disabilities and from low-income families, does not represent a significant shift from the text of the nondiscrimination agreement. 

"Preschools that prioritize children with disabilities and children from low-income families do not deny equal opportunity based on disability or income level in violation of UPK's statutory equal-opportunity requirements," lawyers for the state wrote. 

Justices on the court will likely hear the case in the fall. The justices will be tasked with determining whether the state explicitly discriminated against Catholic schools while allowing other schools to violate its terms for universal preschool access. 

FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against a US magazine that reported he frequently drinks to excess and is in danger of losing his job.

Patel is seeking $250 million in damages from The Atlantic and the author of the article, Sarah Fitzpatrick, for what the suit described as a "sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece."

"Defendants are of course free to criticize the leadership of the FBI," the complaint filed in a federal district court in Washington says.

"But they crossed the legal line by publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel's reputation and drive him from office," it says.

According to The Atlantic, Patel's job as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the top law enforcement agency, is in jeopardy in part because of what it said were "bouts of excessive drinking" and "unexplained absences."

In his defamation complaint, Patel took issue with the magazine's use of anonymous sources for the story.

"Fitzpatrick could not get a single person to go on the record in defense of these outrageous allegations, instead relying entirely on anonymous sources she knew to be both highly partisan with an ax to grind," the suit says.

"Defendants published the Article with actual malice, despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false."

The Atlantic issued a statement on Monday defending the story.

"We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit," the magazine said.

Since being named FBI director, Patel has been accused of carrying out a purge of agents perceived as being disloyal to President Donald Trump. Among those dismissed have been agents who worked on criminal cases brought against Trump after he left office in 2021.

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Argentine cinema, theater and television legend Luis Brandoni has died at the age of 86, his friend and producer Carlos Rottemberg announced Monday on X.

"Luis Brandoni has died. In 'Beto' we are losing the last leading actor of an unforgettable generation, a driving force for national theater," Rottemberg wrote, calling it a "very sad day for our culture."

Brandoni's body will be taken to the Buenos Aires legislature to lie in state on Monday afternoon.

He was admitted to hospital on April 11 after a fall at home that caused a brain-bleed.

He starred in dozens of films over the course of a prolific career, including "Waiting for the Hearse" (1985) and "The Weasel's Tale" (2019).

He also lit up the stage with hugely successful plays such as "Conversations with My Mother" and "Parque Lezama."

A familiar face for decades on Argentine television, Brandoni starred alongside Robert de Niro in the 2023 Disney+ miniseries "Nada." In the series, he played a curmudgeonly Buenos Aires food critic whose life falls apart after his housekeeper dies, while De Niro played his friend.

Brandoni was active from a young age in the center-left Radical Civic Union (UCR), one of Argentina's oldest political parties.

During Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship, when the party was banned, he briefly went into exile in Mexico.

He served two terms as an MP with the UCR in the 1990s and also served as cultural advisor to former UCR president Raul Alfonsin.

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday there was no evident justification for the United States to attack Cuba, following months of mounting pressure from President Donald Trump on the communist-ruled island.

"Despite all the domestic political problems that this country has with its communist regime, there is no discernible threat emanating from Cuba towards other countries," Merz said.

Cuba has been bracing for a possible attack following repeated warnings from Trump that Cuba is "next" after he toppled Venezuela's leader Nicolas Maduro and went to war against Iran.

Speaking at a news conference beside Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Merz said the US should settle its differences with Cuba "peacefully and through diplomatic means and not needlessly start a new conflict in the world which will only cause more problems".

"The ability to defend oneself does not mean the right to intervene militarily in other states when their political systems do not match what others might have in mind," he said.

Trump has imposed an oil blockade of Cuba, aggravating the impoverished island's worst economic and energy crisis in decades.

Lula called the United States' more longstanding blockade of Cuba a "global disgrace", imposed for "ideological" reasons, and expressed his firm opposition to any US invasion of Cuba.

"I am against the lack of respect for the territorial integrity of nations, I am against any country in the world meddling and exercising political interference," Lula said.

"A lot of dialogue, a lot of diplomacy, a lot of democracy -- that is what we want in order to resolve and solve the world's problems, and not weapons."

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Celebrated British zoologist Desmond Morris, who died Sunday aged 98, shook up the world in 1967 when his book "The Naked Ape" posited that humans are essentially primates still captive to evolutionary impulses.

The idea that homo sapiens -- while cleverer and less hirsute than the average ape -- should be analysed as a belonging to the animal world was not new to anthropologists. 

But it was not mainstream among the general public, in a less secular age when, still for most, man was made in the image of God. The book sold upwards of 20 million copies in at least 23 languages.

His death, confirmed Monday to AFP by his son Jason Morris, followed what he called "a lifetime of exploration, curiosity and creativity". 

"A zoologist, manwatcher, author and artist, he was still writing and painting right up until his death," Jason Morris said in a statement. 

"He was a great man and an even better father and grandfather."

Morris's career was not without controversy. 

Feminists and some other scientists objected to his contention that men and women evolved to do different tasks -- split between hunting and managing the home -- and that the modern world was shaped around that.

Gender differences were hard-wired, Morris argued, but he said urbanisation had entrenched an inappropriate split which favours competitive traits in business -- the modern equivalent to prehistoric hunting grounds.

"Because of the structure of urban life, men have been unfairly favoured over women," he told The Oldie magazine in 2021, marking his 93rd birthday.

- TV fame -

Morris denied he set out to be provocative when he wrote "The Naked Ape" over a four-week rush just after the counter-cultural "Summer of Love" in 1967. 

He said he was simply setting down observations from working as a curator of mammals at London Zoo.

In fact, his early ambition was to change how we view the world but through modern art.

Born in southern England in 1928, Morris watched his father die a slow death from wounds suffered in World War I, an experience that informed his youthful desire to find expression through surrealism after World War II.

After a post-war stint as an army conscript, Morris exhibited some of his works alongside the Spanish master Joan Miro in 1950, and said he only studied zoology to better understand the natural world for his art.

In 1993, he told the Swindon Advertiser newspaper -- founded by his great-grandfather -- that his early fascination with wildlife was honed at a local park.

While he continued to paint and exhibit throughout his long life, Morris found his professional calling in popular science, becoming head of a television and film unit at London Zoo in 1956.

- 'Monkey Matisse' -

His contemporary, David Attenborough, became a friendly rival on a different TV channel, both using the newly emerging medium to bring zoology into the home.

Morris's two passions overlapped in 1957 when he curated an exhibition of chimpanzee paintings and drawings in London.

One three-year-old chimp called Congo produced more than 400 works, and was hailed as "the monkey Matisse" and "the Picasso of the Simian world".

The success of "The Naked Ape" -- which inspired a Eurovision Song Contest entry in 2017 by Italy featuring a dancer in a gorilla suit -- brought global fame.

But a stinging tax bill in Britain saw Morris move in 1968 with his wife to Malta, where he worked on a sequel about city-dwellers called "The Human Zoo".

Five years later, with the addition of their son, the couple moved back to England where Morris took up a fellowship at Oxford University. 

A succession of books and TV series followed. 

In the 2000s, Morris wrote opinion pieces from an anthropological perspective on the contestants in the reality television hit "Big Brother".

Asked by The Guardian newspaper in 2007 if he had any regrets, he lamented not sticking to art.

"I still consider myself a serious artist but a very minor one, and I'm a minor artist because I've been doing too many other things."

In 2019 he moved to Ireland, and acquired a property near Dublin which was transformed into the Dun Laoghaire Institute of the Visual Arts (DIVA), according to a website dedicated to Morris's life.

"He sees it as his gift to Ireland for welcoming him in his final years," the site said.

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(The Center Square) – The Trump administration began refunding portions of the $166 billion in unlawful tariffs to U.S. importers on Monday, after a February Supreme Court ruling that struck down the import taxes.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection launched the first phase of a refund portal that went live on Monday, called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE. It works within the existing Automated Commercial Environment to streamline refund requests under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The system was designed to consolidate refunds of IEEPA duties, including interest, rather than processing refunds on an entry-by-entry basis. CBP plans to continue developing subsequent phases of the system to ensure it complies with court orders to return the money collected under Trump's first tariff plan, which was underpinned by the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Brandon Lord, CBP’s executive director of trade programs, told a Court of International Trade judge the first phase will cover about two-thirds of refunds. The judge has requested regular updates.

As of March 26, more than 26,000 importers, representing 78% of tariff payments, had registered with CBP for electronic refunds. Lord estimated the first phase could process about $120 billion.

The Liberty Justice Center, the Texas-based nonprofit that helped win the IEEPA Supreme Court case, is urging small businesses to use its free Tariff Equity Refund Resource for America, or TERRA system.

"Our only goal is to help businesses recover every dollar they are owed, not to take a percentage of it," said Sara Albrecht, chairman of the Liberty Justice Center. "At a time when others are looking to profit off confusion, we are making this process clear, accessible and free."

Albrecht noted that some companies charge high fees or buy tariff refund claims from businesses seeking refunds. LJC's TERRA provides free guidance on eligibility, timelines, requirements and working with brokers and shipping carriers.

"Our mission is straightforward," Albrecht said. "We fought to stop unlawful tariffs, and now we're making sure small businesses actually see that money returned."

In April 2025, Trump imposed the highest tariffs in nearly a century. The Supreme Court ruled in February that he overstepped by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for global tariffs. Hours later, Trump enacted a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days. The Liberty Justice Center, representing small businesses, and several Democrat-led states are challenging this new tariff in court.

Trump has defended the tariffs, saying the revenue could fund military spending and other goals, including refund checks for some Americans. However, experts question whether tariffs will generate enough to cover these plans.

As the midterms approach, Trump's tariffs remain unpopular. Research shows U.S. consumers and businesses bear most of these import tax costs.

(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to decide whether a public school violated parents’ rights by encouraging a student to transition to a new gender. 

Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, focuses on parents in Massachusetts who said the school district their children attend attempted to socially transition their middle-school-aged daughter after explicitly being told not to do so. Lawyers for the parents said the school allowed their daughter to use bathrooms where boys undressed and a new name. 

“School officials actively concealed their activities by using B.F.’s real name and pronouns when communicating with [their parents] but using her male name and nonbinary pronouns at school,” lawyers for the parents wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court. 

The Parental Rights Foundation, in a brief to the court, urged the justices to consider the case under strict scrutiny and give parents the ability to make decisions about how their children should be raised. 

“The right of parents to direct and control the upbringing of their children is a fundamental, unalienable right,” the Parental Rights Foundation wrote. “[The] government must demonstrate that its policy advances interests of the highest order and is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests.”

Lawyers for the school argued administrators and teachers in the Massachusetts system followed the wishes of the child to adopt a new name and pronouns. 

“The Parents are challenging how Baird Middle School chooses to maintain what it considers a desirable and fruitful pedagogical environment,” lawyers wrote in reference to a lower court’s opinion. 

The case follows Mirabelli v. Bonta, a 6-3 decision, where the justices said California’s policy allowing schools to socially transition students violated the First and 14th Amendments.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissenting opinion on Mirabelli, called for the court to hear Foote v. Ludlow School Committee instead of granting California parents’ relief Mirabelli v. Bonta. 

“By granting certiorari on one (or more) of those cases, the Court could ensure that the issues raised by such policies receive the careful, disciplined consideration they merit, rather than the inevitably truncated review the Court affords emergency applications,” Kagan wrote.

Instead, the majority of justices on the court appeared to overrule Kagan and denied hearing the Massachusetts case without explanation. 

(The Center Square) – Mothers and the coroner’s office of a Louisiana parish have identified the eight children ages 3-11 killed early Sunday.

The office of Dr. Todd Thoma, the Caddo Parish coroner, said the shooting was just before 6 a.m. in the 300 block of West 79th Street. Lawmen are still investigating and autopsies have been requested for each of the victims.

Identified by the mothers, the children killed were Jayla Elkins, 3; Shayla Elkins, 5; Kayla Pugh, 6; Layla Pugh, 7; Markaydon Pugh, 10; Sariahh Snow, 11; Khedarrion Snow, 6; and Braylon Snow, 5.

Shreveport and Caddo Parish have 15 homicides to date in the calendar year.

According to police, Shamar Elkins is the suspect who hijacked a car, led a chase into Bossier City, and was eventually shot and killed.

Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith on Sunday said a motive was yet to be determined. He asked for patience from the community.

“I cannot begin to imagine how such an event could occur,” he said.

“What began as a domestic dispute has ended in irreversible harm,” said Caddo Parish District Attorney John Andrew Prime. “This reality underscores a truth we must continue to confront: Domestic violence is not a private matter. It is a community issue with far-reaching consequences, often affecting the most vulnerable among us – our children.”

Shreveport City Council is expected to share information later Monday on a planned community prayer vigil.

“Today, we grieve,” Prime said. “In the days ahead, we must stand together in resolve to honor these lives by continuing the work of prevention, protection and support.”

Pope Leo XIV condemned exploitation and corruption by the rich and powerful on Monday during a visit to Angola's diamond-rich northeast, returning to a theme of his 11-day tour of Africa.

The American pope, on the eighth day of his trip to four African nations, visited Saurimo, some 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of the capital, Luanda.

Under tropical heat and heavy security, Leo drove through the city of around 200,000 people along a route lined by hundreds of singing and cheering locals dressed in colourful outfits and waving white scarves.

Saurimo is the capital of the historically marginalised Lunda Sul province and close to Angola's largest diamond mine, Catoca, which extracts around 75 percent of the country's diamonds.

The Portuguese-speaking country is one of Africa's top producers of crude oil and diamonds, yet around a third of its people live below the World Bank poverty line.

"We can see today how the hope of many people is frustrated by violence, exploited by the powerful and defrauded by the rich," the pope said in Portuguese at a giant open-air Mass.

"Consequently, when injustice corrupts hearts, the bread of all becomes the possession of a few."

Authorities estimated that about 40,000 people attended the mass with another 20,000 taking part from surrounding areas.

The pope also criticised tyranny and exploitation in the first two legs of his marathon Africa journey, in Algeria and Cameroon, showing a tougher tone from a previously more reserved style.

- Meeting the elderly -

Soon after landing in Saurimo earlier Monday, the pope was welcomed at a home for around 60 elderly people who are either abandoned by their families or victims of violence.

"Your presence in this home is a blessing from God," 72-year-old Antonio Joaquin told him.

Despite its mineral wealth, Lunda Sul province bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers extreme poverty, with mining also blamed for environmental damage and displacing communities.

On the first day of his Angola stopover on Saturday, the pope spoke out against the harm caused by the rampant exploitation of the continent's natural resources.

"How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are caused by this logic of exploitation," he said in an address to government officials including President Joao Lourenco.

Back in Luanda on Monday, the pope will meet clergy to discuss challenges facing the church in Angola, including a lack of resources and the growing influence of evangelicism.

After John Paul II in 1992 and Benedict XVI in 2009, Leo is the third pope to visit this country, which was badly battered in a 27-year civil war that erupted after independence from Portugal in 1975.

At a Mass Sunday attended by 100,000 people, the 70-year-old pontiff called for Angola to overcome divisions of the past and create a future where "the scourge of corruption will be healed by a new culture of justice and sharing".

Some 44 percent of the population, about 15 million Angolans, identify as Catholic, according to a 2024 census in this southern African country. 

On Tuesday, the pope is due to travel to Equatorial Guinea to wrap up an 18,000‑km journey across Africa over 11 days.

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