A United Nations fact-finding mission on Iran says it’s found evidence the U.S. committed war crimes in two attacks that killed at least 177 civilians—many of them children. In a report released Thursday, experts commissioned by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council cited U.S. strikes on a school in Minab and a sports complex in Lamerd, writing, “…the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”

The White House responded in a statement, “The UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”

Ships continue to come under fire in the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier today, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it struck a Togo-flagged tanker, and several U.S. media outlets are reporting Iranian drones and missiles struck a U.S.-contracted ship near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. That attack reportedly injured several crew members, including U.S. personnel.

On Thursday, President Trump told Axios he was nearing a decision on whether to “annihilate” Iran. Trump also dismissed surging U.S. gas costs as a small price to pay for his war. Trump was speaking in North Carolina at a rally for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley.

President Donald Trump: “I have to say, you have a little higher, you have a higher — it’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done. Remember that. It’s a little more. Frankly, even if it was a lot more…”

In Yemen, the United Nations warns the number of people displaced by fighting between Houthi militias and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces has soared to 112,000 and is continuing to climb, as both sides trade cross-border strikes. On Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi rejected claims by Saudi Arabia and its allies that his forces had targeted the holy city of Mecca in a drone attack, calling the claim “an ugly lie”. He said his fighters were focused on attacking Saudi military sites and oil infrastructure.

Meanwhile the Trump administration said Thursday it had approved the sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, at a cost of over $24 billion. The transaction would require congressional approval.

A coalition of Palestinian and progressive groups is urging universities, think tanks, elected officials, and others to refuse to hire or collaborate with a group of 20 former Biden officials accused of “promoting, lying about, and covering up the Gaza genocide.” The “Drop the Genocide 20” campaign is targeting several former Biden staffers, including Antony Blinken, who served as secretary of state; Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor; and Lloyd Austin, Biden’s secretary of defense—all of whom were pivotal in backing Israel’s war on Gaza. Others include former White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, former national security advisor John Kirby, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Since his time as secretary of state, Blinken was given a book deal with Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and has often participated in public speaking events, including at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

The campaign is also demanding the Biden staffers be banned from any future political appointments. The coalition includes Just Foreign Policy, Peace Action, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, and About Face, a group representing antiwar veterans. In a statement, it said, “The culture of bipartisan elite immunity is what drives U.S. war crimes and support for war crimes. … This dynamic is a key reason Biden officials knew they could arm, defend, and cover up the genocide in Gaza for 15 months, and simply move back into liberal spaces, nonprofits, and future governments.”

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital region injured at least 19 people on Thursday, including two children. In Odesa, seven people were injured, including two children; while in Zaporizhzhia a Russian first-person-view drone struck a passenger bus, injuring eight commuters. Separately, a Russian jet-powered drone hit a shopping mall, injuring one person and triggering a massive fire. This is Anna, a 32-year-old Zaporizhzhia resident who was out with her husband when the drone struck nearby.

Anna: “We went out for a walk and didn’t hear the jet-powered Shahed drone. It’s hard to hear it now. It’s not like the Shahed drones used to be. … The Russians are starting to threaten us, the ordinary people, in the hope that people will rise up. But that won’t happen. We are strong, we are free, and we will stand firm.”

On Thursday, Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in the city of Yaroslavl north of Moscow. The attack came after President Trump on Sunday told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt attacks on Russian diesel infrastructure, and as U.S. diesel prices hit a record high of nearly $6.40 a gallon.

Earlier today, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a speech to parliament that Moscow is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on Poland and other European countries that support Ukraine. And Slovakia’s ⁠Prime Minister Robert ​Fico said Europe is closer than ever to a large-scale war with Russia.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve new sanctions on Iran and Russia. The legislation passed the Senate last month; it’s named the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, after the late South Carolina Republican Senator who was an outspoken proponent of both arming Ukraine and attacking Iran. The Kremlin said in response that new sanctions would make it harder to reach a peace deal in Ukraine.

The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Schroyer currently serves as an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and has no previous experience with ICE.

In more immigration news, lawyers who spoke to The New York Times say federal agencies — such as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — are rejecting and heavily redacting vital documents and records needed by immigrants to prove they have permission to be in the U.S. and fight their deportation. Federal agencies are also claiming these records do not exist.

The Guardian reports ICE has stopped tracking data on miscarriages in its custody as the agency detains a record number of pregnant women and teenagers. ICE recorded at least 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration but no data has been recorded since October of last year. Women and girls in ICE custody have repeatedly decried medical neglect.

A federal immigration agent charged with shooting a Venezuelan man appeared before a Minnesota judge Thursday following months of evading arrest. ICE officer Christian Castro faces felony assault charges and was initially arrested in Texas, but Trump ally Gov. Greg Abbott refused to extradite Castro to Minnesota.

Castro also faces a separate hearing today, Friday, in federal court for charges that he lied and attempted to cover up the January shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis, who was wounded in the leg. This is Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.

County Attorney Mary Moriarty: “The process of holding Mr. Castro accountable for his firing a weapon through the front door, striking Julio Sosa Solis, endangering the lives of others and lying to law enforcement has begun, despite the best efforts of the Texas governor to ignore both the United States Constitution and crystal clear Supreme Court precedent.”

The Trump administration continues deportations to Haiti with a fourth flight arriving at the international airport in Cap-Haïtien last week. This comes as a new report published by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance says the detention of Haitians has surged by 142% at four immigration jails in Ohio since the end of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, in late July. The group says ICE has accelerated the arrests of Haitians living in Ohio by racial profiling community spaces including near schools and apartment buildings, detaining people at their ICE appointments and placing ankle monitors, and collaborating with state and local police.

Amnesty International is calling for the release of two men deported from the U.S. and sent to Equatorial Guinea who have been detained by local police forces and may face torture. One of them is Ahmed Soliman, a 30-year-old gay asylum seeker from Egypt who was living in Arizona when he was detained by ICE despite being granted protections by a U.S. immigration court. The men were reportedly brutally beaten, and Amnesty believes they were arrested for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees while confined in a decommissioned hotel in the city of Malabo. The deportees have also faced threats from armed forces.

CNN is reporting that more than 300 workers from South Korea who were swept up in a federal immigration raid at a Hyundai electric-vehicle manufacturing plant in Georgia and deported last year have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Last September, nearly 500 federal, state and local agents descended on the plant and arrested hundreds of workers who say they were held in inhumane conditions, not provided interpreters, and shackled and forced to sign documents they did not understand. The plaintiffs said this resulted in “intentional infliction of emotional distress, humiliation … and lasting psychological trauma.”

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered the Trump administration to give at least 30 days’ notice before making any major changes to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Thursday’s emergency ruling came after President Trump said he would withhold funding for renovations to the Kennedy Center — essentially condemning it — unless he’s allowed to inscribe his name on the building. On Wednesday, a New York Times photographer captured images of Trump aboard Air Force One looking at a poster board appearing to show a building reduced to rubble, along with the caption “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”