By Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — A North Carolina woman has been charged with sharing classified defense information to a journalist following her work as a civilian operational support technician at Fort Bragg, a large US Army base in the state.

Courtney Williams worked in a Special Military Unit from 2010 to 2016 and had top secret clearance with access to a significant amount of classified material, charging documents say.

Federal prosecutors allege that from 2022 to 2025, Williams shared classified information that the journalist used in reporting for an article and book on Fort Bragg.

While court records do not name the journalist, a book “The Fort Bragg Cartel” and magazine article from independent reporter Seth Harp last year, profiles Williams and her allegations of harassment and abuse while employed at Fort Bragg.

With scant details, charging documents allege that information shared by Williams to the reporter included classified information she was not allowed to provide.

CNN is attempting to contact Williams’ attorney.

Harp’s article details the significant sexual and race-based harassment Williams says she saw and, at times, experienced during her work at the North Carolina army base.

According to the Justice Department, on the day the book and article were released, “Williams exchanged several messages with the Journalist” and said she was “concerned about the amount of classified information being disclosed.”

In a conversation with her mother, according to the indictment, Williams said, “I might actually get arrested, and I don’t even get a free copy of the book.”

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By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — President Trump opened Easter Sunday with a florid threat toward Iran, decked in profanities and obscenities.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

There was a lot for journalists to analyze in Trump’s statement: He vowed to inflict suffering, threatened to commit war crimes and mocked Muslims on the holiest day for Christians. But in reporting on the remarks, the news media was confronted with another, more narrow issue: how to address the president’s use of “Fuckin’.”

“Fuckin’” is a colloquial shortening of the present participle of the verb “fuck,” which comes from the Germanic languages — though it’s unclear which language specifically, the lexicographer and linguist Jesse Sheidlower writes in “The F-Word.” His book notes that the English word is related to Dutch, German and Swedish words meaning “to copulate” or “to move back and forth.” In the 14th century, it appeared for the first time in court records about a man named Roger Fuckebythenavele. A subsequent, non-name appearance in the 15th century is obscured by a cipher, Sheidlower writes, suggesting that it was strongly taboo.

The ambiguity around the word’s origins stems at least partly from a centuries-long moral panic over it, says Michael Adams, an English professor at Indiana University Bloomington who has written about swearing. The word was considered so vulgar that it was left out of early dictionaries and was rarely printed, though Adams says people were certainly using it. Originally used in sexual senses, by the late 1800s, it had become an intensifier — as in, “fucking hell” or, later, “abso-fucking-lutely.”

“It’s a word that’s had a private life and not a public one,” Adams says. “And now it has a public one as well.”

Today, the word and its variants are ubiquitous and less taboo than ever. They are deployed for emphasis or humor, as well as to express shock, anger, frustration or even joy, as when Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu turned to the camera and microphone and declared “That’s what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about!” after the performance that won her the gold medal.

Despite such widespread use, major news organizations still refrain from publishing or airing profanity except in rare cases. For primetime rebroadcast, NBC cut out Liu’s audio between “I’m” and “talkin’.”

When is profanity essential to a story? The president of the United States using it publicly to threaten Iran appears to be one such case. But while “Fuckin’” appeared in online articles largely as Trump expressed it, it was at times censored and uncensored on TV.

Most major news organizations avoided putting it in print and digital headlines, opting for broad characterizations such as “curse-filled” or “expletive-laden.” The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal also wrote around the word in their print stories, though The Washington Post included it in full. Still, most outlets used the word plainly in the body of their online stories: Read more

By Daniel Wine, CNN

Welcome to 5 Things PM! In a shocking turn of events, accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty to the murders of eight women. He admitted strangling them and discarding their remains on Long Island in a case that haunted the community for decades.

Here’s what else you might have missed during your busy day.

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Sleeping upside down. Collecting astronaut spit. Toilet troubles. These are just a few of the highlights from the Artemis II mission, which shows life in space is even weirder than we thought. Sign up for the Countdown newsletter.

2⃣ Making gains

Democrats lost by 12 percentage points in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old US House district in Georgia. They still had one of their best election nights in recent memory. CNN’s Aaron Blake explains why.

3⃣ ‘Roll up your sleeves’

Although AI coding tools have stoked fears that the technology will replace software engineers, jobs in the field are growing. As companies pump out more software, there’s increasing demand for workers.

4⃣ Brutal kitchen culture

Chef Eric Ripert reveals how his intensity and temper in the kitchen once crossed a line. Watch his intimate conversation with chef José Andrés on “The 1 on 1” with CNN All Access.

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About 40% of Americans say their daily lives are disrupted by their bowel health. A Harvard doctor boiled this basic bodily function down to the three Ps.

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Por Chris Isidore y Matt Egan, CNN

Los futuros del petróleo se están desplomando, pero aun así podrían pasar semanas o meses antes de que los precios de la gasolina bajen de forma drástica.

La noticia de un alto el fuego de dos semanas en la guerra contra Irán y una posible reapertura del vital estrecho de Ormuz para los petroleros hizo que los precios del crudo se desplomaran entre la tarde del martes y la madrugada de este miércoles. Pero incluso si la guerra termina —lo cual está por verse—, la enorme disrupción en los mercados mundiales de petróleo aún no ha terminado.

El precio promedio de un galón de gasolina se ha disparado a US$ 4,16 desde el inicio de la guerra, según AAA, un aumento de US$ 1,18. Incluso una disminución relativamente pequeña hasta US$4 el galón podría tardar una o dos semanas, de acuerdo con el servicio de seguimiento de precios de gasolina GasBuddy.

Y bajar de US$ 3 el galón, como estaban los precios de la gasolina antes de que comenzara la guerra el 27 de febrero, podría tardar meses, dijeron analistas a CNN.

“Hay una vieja expresión: los precios de la gasolina suben como un cohete y bajan como una pluma”, dijo Tom Kloza, un analista independiente de petróleo y asesor de la importante compañía petrolera Gulf Oil.

Dentro de las 48 horas posteriores al anuncio del acuerdo de alto el fuego, los precios minoristas deberían comenzar a bajar poco a poco unos centavos cada día a medida que caen los precios mayoristas, afirmó Gas Buddy.

Pero deshacer todas las subidas de precios desde finales de febrero depende de que el petróleo vuelva a fluir por el estrecho de Ormuz, una vía marítima clave por la que normalmente transita el 20 % del petróleo mundial.

“Habrá mucha reticencia y cautela a la hora de pasar por el estrecho porque parece que Irán aún va a estar patrullándolo”, dijo Matt Smith de la firma de analítica comercial Kpler. “Llevará tiempo restaurar la confianza”.

Los medios iraníes informaron el miércoles que Irán había vuelto a cerrar el estrecho tras ataques israelíes contra Hezbollah en el Líbano, lo que incrementa la incertidumbre sobre el estatus del estrecho.

Pero incluso si el estrecho se reabre por completo, llevará tiempo restablecer la producción de las naciones exportadoras de petróleo en el golfo Pérsico. La infraestructura petrolera sufrió daños generalizados durante las últimas seis semanas en países como Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Kuwait, Iraq, Omán y Arabia Saudita, el mayor exportador de petróleo del mundo.

Esos estados del Golfo también redujeron o detuvieron por completo la producción durante los combates, ya que se quedaron sin espacio de almacenamiento.

Se estima que 7,5 millones de barriles por día de producción de crudo de Arabia Saudita, Kuwait, Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Qatar y Bahrein se cerraron colectivamente en marzo, según la Administración de Información Energética de Estados Unidos.

“El mercado ha estado ansioso por recibir buenas noticias, pero queda por ver si el estrecho de Ormuz se abre por completo”, dijo a CNN Bob McNally, fundador y presidente de Rapidan Energy Group. “Ese es el meollo del asunto y hasta ahora Washington y Teherán parecen estar hablando sin entenderse sobre eso”.

Y exportar petróleo desde la región pronto podría volverse más caro, con Estados Unidos e Irán planteando la posibilidad de co

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