Iran is warning the United States and its allies against launching a major attack, saying it has information that a new assault is being prepared. Speaking on state media Sunday, Iran’s military central command vowed that any new strike would bring retaliation against U.S. bases. The warning follows a government-organized rally Friday in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians pledged to defend their country. This is Iran’s security chief.

Mohsen Rezaei: “We’ve announced to the U.S. that one of our conditions is the release of our frozen funds. Secondly, they must announce an end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon. Furthermore, they must not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and not collaborate with opponents of our revolution, and must halt any form of aggression against Iranian territory, even with drones, must not continue their aggressions and must lift the naval blockade.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that more U.S. service members have died in the war with Iran than the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged. Five U.S. officials told the paper at least 22 troops have been killed, four more than the number that appears in the Pentagon’s public casualty database, while a sixth official put the toll at 23 since February 28th, when the Trump administration and Israel launched the war against Iran.

In Yemen, Iran-backed Houthi fighters launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh Saturday. Residents reported at least one explosion and later saw a large plume of black smoke near the airport, while the Houthis claimed, without offering evidence, that they had set off major fires at Aramco facilities in Yanbu along the Red Sea coast. It was the Houthis’ first attack on the Saudi capital since the escalation opened a new front in the Iran war.

President Trump announced Friday he would ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. The ban took effect on Saturday morning, when reporters from all three outlets were turned away and had their credentials deactivated or confiscated. Trump clarified that the ban could be lifted if the outlets published more favorable coverage of him and his administration. This morning, CNN, MS NOW and Politico issued a joint statement reading, “we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes. Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

President Trump says the triumphal arch he’s planning to build near Arlington ​National Cemetery will double as a military complex. In a social media post Sunday morning, Trump wrote that he plans to convert the monument “into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.” Veterans have sued to block the arch. Critics have assailed it as “gaudy” and an “ugly monstrosity,” while aviation experts warn its height — and potential use as a drone platform — would endanger flights around Ronald Reagan Washington ⁠National Airport.

Virginia Democratic Congressmember Don Beyer, whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery, wrote, “Trump clearly expects to lose a lawsuit and therefore wants to set up a pretext to argue that the arch is tied to national security.”

In Washington, D.C., hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Kennedy Center on Friday night to oppose President Trump’s takeover of the performing arts venue — and his threats to close and demolish it. Activists linked hands, forming a human chain around the building. Joining them was Washington, D.C., City Councilmember Robert White.

Robert White: “Well, look, this is a national memorial, the Kennedy Center, but it is in D.C., and it is a jewel here in D.C. And what it represents for the arts, for protest, for democracy in action is something that we know too well, and there’s no way we’re going to let this monument go without a fight.”

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed at least three Palestinians on Saturday. One strike near Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed Basir al-Bursh, the son of Munir al-Bursh, who is the director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry. This is Munir al-Bursh speaking at his son’s funeral.

Munir al-Bursh: “I was with him in the tent, and he said, 'Dad, they will target us, you and me together.' I said, 'That is fine. We will go to heaven together.' He said, 'Dad, they will target me, and I don't want us both to get martyred.’ I said, 'So be it. We will go to heaven.' He went outside the tent, and they struck him. He was martyred. May God have mercy on him.”

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a suspected Palestinian gunman shot dead an ​Israeli man, while Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian motorist who the military said was attempting to run them over.

In Israel, President Isaac Herzog said Saturday he will clear the criminal record of Elor Azaria, overriding objections from the military. Azaria is a former soldier convicted of killing a wounded Palestinian attacker who posed no threat back in 2016. In July, Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote to Herzog urging him to grant Azaria’s request. The Israel Defense Forces opposed the move. A senior aide to military chief Eyal Zamir said Azaria has shown no remorse and has not accepted responsibility, a decade after his conviction.

Palestinian artists in Gaza have painted a mural depicting the U.S. rapper Macklemore draped in a Palestinian flag, with the caption “Thank you for using your voice for Palestine.” The tribute was painted on a giant slab of concrete surrounded by rubble in the ruins of Gaza City. It was commissioned after Macklemore was fired from British pop star Ed Sheeran’s ​U.S. tour over his on-stage remarks condemning Israel’s assault in Gaza and calling for a “Free Palestine.” Sheeran and the tour promoter dropped Macklemore under pressure from Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and Boston’s Gillette Stadium, who rallied other stadium owners to threaten to cancel Sheeran’s tour if Macklemore remained a part of it. On Saturday, Ed Sheeran opened a concert in Philadelphia with an apology to fans over his handling of the affair, and for the first time, he publicly addressed Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Ed Sheeran: “What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate. My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, of children’s lives. And the systemic injustice we’re seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked.”

The U.S. military attacked a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea on Saturday, killing four people. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was transporting drugs. Since September of last year, the U.S. has killed at least 231 people in 69 boat strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean, targeting so-called narcoterrorists. Human rights advocates have condemned the attacks as illegal extrajudicial killings at sea.

In Cuba, the power grid collapsed again, leaving millions without power for the sixth time since President Trump cut off fuel shipments to the island in January. Since then, just one tanker of fuel has been delivered by a Russian tanker in March. The blackouts have taken a heavy toll on Cubans, restricting transportation, shortening workdays, grounding flights and endangering public health. This is Valentin Parra, a resident of Havana.

Valentin Parra: “It’s very bad for everyone, because everyone gets desperate in a house without water and without light. It’s a phenomenon that isn’t seen anywhere else in the world, only here. And when people don’t have water — look, I myself was without water for 15 days, without water or light for 15 days.”

The U.S. military scrambled to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East amid the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran last spring but called off a mission to board the vessel at the last minute, after discovering that an intelligence assessment had relied on false information from an AI chatbot. That’s according to CNN, which reports the AI agent misidentified components aboard the Chinese ship as part of a nuclear weapons program.

In more AI news, The Wall Street Journal reports that independent security researchers were able to use Anthropic’s Claude software to gain access to an OpenAI employee’s ChatGPT account, giving them a way to read and suggest changes to OpenAI’s private cache of software. The hacking operation came two weeks after a swarm of AI agents broke out of containment at OpenAI and launched cyberattacks at the company Hugging Face.

In Austin, Texas, an ICE agent shot a man in the torso on Sunday, sending him to the hospital, where was in “serious but stable condition.” The injured man was identified by his attorney as 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan national. He was reportedly shot while delivering food for DoorDash. Protests soon erupted, with demonstrators chanting “Abolish ICE.” Federal immigration agents have shot more than 20 people since President Trump returned to office. Six of them died, including three U.S. citizens. In nearly all of the shootings, agents fired at people inside vehicles.

A federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration’s policy of rapidly deporting immigrants to third countries to which they have no connection. Friday’s ruling by a three-judge panel on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals sets up a likely challenge at the Supreme Court. Since President Trump returned to office, his administration has sent ​more than 25,000 immigrants to at least 29 third countries. Trina Realmuto, a lawyer ​for the plaintiffs at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said, “This decision confirms that due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and ⁠torture cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings.”

In Texas, the Trump administration has started building the border wall through the Big Bend region. The work is a key step in the administration’s $46 billion plan to fortify the border with walls, barriers, roads and surveillance technology. Clara Benson, one of the founders of the No Big Bend Wall Coalition, said, “We will continue to fight for this land no matter what the outcome is. We will continue fighting to the end. You talk to people in west Texas and they say even if they put it up, we’ll fight for them to take it down. So this fight is not over.”

Several civil rights groups are suing the Trump administration to block it from sending armed federal agents to polling places ahead of the midterm elections. The lawsuit by the NAACP and others cites a case in Lee County, Florida, where officers set up an immigration checkpoint on a main road leading to a polling place. The precinct serves mostly Black and Latino voters. Janai Nelson, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, said, “Using federal law enforcement as a scare tactic to target and intimidate Black communities is illegal and antithetical to the promise of a multiracial democracy that was enshrined in the Voting Rights Act. Neither Black, Latino, Asian, or any other voters nor any other communities should ever again face the threats of terror and intimidation at the ballot box that defined the Jim Crow era.”

In Russia, Ukraine carried out what Moscow’s mayor called its largest-ever drone attack on the capital as Russian voters went to the polls Sunday. At least three people were killed, and a major oil refinery in the Moscow region was damaged. It was Ukraine’s first use of a ballistic missile in the war. In Russia’s parliamentary election, only parties backing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war appeared on the ballot. Yabloko, the last publicly antiwar party still operating inside Russia, was barred from running. Putin’s main political rivals and critics are either imprisoned inside Russia, forced into exile abroad or dead. Meanwhile, Russian strikes overnight killed at least six people and wounded 38 across Ukraine.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party has taken first place in a state election for the second time this month. On Sunday, the AfD won more than 38% of the vote in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, beating second-place finishers the Social Democrats by three percentage points. The ruling party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union, won less than the 5% needed for representation in parliament, the party’s worst result since 1949. Elsewhere, Merz’s party finished in second place in a state election in Berlin, with Germany’s Left Party winning the largest share at more than 25%. It was the strongest showing by the anti-capitalist party to date. This is Left Party candidate Elif Eralp, the front-runner to become Berlin’s next mayor, speaking after Sunday’s election.

Elif Eralp: “Berlin’s shared vision won today, our shared vision of an affordable Berlin for all people, regardless of where they are from, regardless of what they believe, regardless of who they love and regardless of what they earn.”