Abortion pills the next battleground in a post-Roe America
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the legal and culture wars over abortion would increasingly shift to a new front: the use of abortion pills. Medication abortion — a two-drug combination that can be taken at home and is authorized for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has become more prevalent and now accounts for more than half of recent abortions in the United States. If the federal guarantee of abortion rights disappears, medication abortion would likely become the focus of battles between states that ban abortion and those that continue to allow it.
South and Midwest brace for more storms after tornado strikes
States across the South and Midwest were bracing for more severe weather on Thursday, a day after springtime storms spawned tornadoes, floods and hail across much of the region. Tornadoes touched down Wednesday evening in northern Texas and southern Oklahoma, tearing a roof off a school and causing damage to homes and businesses, officials said. No serious injuries were reported, but roads across parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas were flooded and impassable on Thursday, said Gene Hatch, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Springfield, Missouri.
US intelligence helped Ukraine strike Russian flagship, officials say
The United States provided intelligence that helped Ukrainian forces locate and strike the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet last month, another sign that the administration is easing its self-imposed limitations on how far it will go in helping Ukraine fight Russia, U.S. officials said. The targeting help, which contributed to the eventual sinking of the flagship, the Moskva, is part of a continuing classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence includes sharing anticipated Russian troop movements, gleaned from a recent American assessment of Moscow’s battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said.
3 people killed in ax attack in Israel
Two assailants, at least one of them armed with an ax, attacked passersby in an Israeli town on Thursday night, killing at least three, according to initial reports from eyewitnesses, police and emergency services. Israeli authorities described the assault, in which several other people were wounded, as a terrorist attack. The attack followed a wave of violence by Arab assailants that had already killed 14 people in cities across Israel since late March. The attack Thursday took place in Elad, a predominantly ultra-Orthodox town in central Israel, just after nightfall.
Pope approved secret deal to free abducted nun, Cardinal says
Pope Francis approved spending up to 1 million euros to free a Colombian nun kidnapped in Mali, a cardinal told a Vatican court Thursday, revealing previously undisclosed negotiations to secure her release. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, formerly one of the Vatican’s highest-ranking prelates, said the pope had authorized his efforts, including payments to the militants linked to al-Qaida who in 2017 had kidnapped Sister Gloria Cecilia Narvaez Argoti in a village in Mali. She was released in 2021. Becciu, accused of embezzlement, abuse of office and witness tampering, is on trial with nine other defendants in a corruption trial.
Musk adds investors to help fund Twitter deal
Elon Musk told potential investors that he could double the number of users on Twitter to more than half a billion by 2025, four people briefed on the conversations said. Investors bought in. On Thursday, Musk revealed that he had raised around $7 billion from 18 entities to help fund his blockbuster $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. The investors were a mix of Musk’s Silicon Valley friends — including venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and tech moguls like Larry Ellison — as well as cryptocurrency companies, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, property firms and mutual-fund companies.
OPEC and allies promise a modest oil increase
Just as they have every month since last summer, officials from OPEC and its allies met via teleconference Thursday and decided to continue their program of modest additions to the market. The producers group, which has 23 members including Saudi Arabia and Russia, issued a statement saying it would add 432,000 barrels a day in June. Despite the vow, there is widespread skepticism about how much OPEC+ will add, if anything. Many of its own members are struggling to meet their production quotas. And war, sanctions and releases from strategic reserves are now wielding major influence on the oil markets.
Biden administration to revamp anti-redlining rules
Federal bank regulators want to try again to give a 40-year-old law designed to force banks to do business in poor and minority communities a face-lift, shortly after undoing changes put in place under former President Donald Trump. On Thursday, three federal agencies put forth a plan to change how banks can get credit for doing business with underserved populations under the Community Reinvestment Act, which was passed in 1977. The new proposal would let banks get credit for activities in areas where they did business with people online but didn’t have any brick-and-mortar presence.
Texas governor ready to challenge schooling of migrant children
With the Supreme Court signaling a willingness to reverse decades-old precedents like the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said Thursday that he would seek to overturn a 1982 court decision that obligated public schools to educate all children, including immigrants living in the country illegally. Abbott’s comments opened a new front in his campaign to use his powers as governor to harden Texas against unauthorized migration. And they demonstrated just how expansively some conservatives are thinking when it comes to the kinds of changes the court’s emboldened conservative majority may be willing to allow.
Signs of an animal virus discovered in man who received a pig’s heart
Traces of a virus known to infect pigs were found in a 57-year-old Maryland man who survived for two months with a heart transplanted from a genetically altered pig, according to the surgeon, Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the procedure, the first of its kind. The patient, David Bennett Sr., had been extremely ill before the surgery and had other complications after the transplant. He died March 8. The disclosure highlights one of the most pressing objections to animal-to-human transplants, which is that widespread use of modified animal organs might facilitate the introduction of new pathogens into the human population.
By wire sources
