By Max Saltman, Eyad Kourdi, Kylie Atwood, Brad Lendon, CNN

(CNN) — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that kidnapped American journalist Shelly Kittleson has been released by a pro-Iran militia in Iraq.

Kittleson was received by the Iraqi government, which is processing her travel arrangements, a senior Iraqi government official told CNN. He also stated that the government made extensive efforts to ensure her safety.

Kittleson, who specializes in Middle East reporting, had been taken captive by Kataib Hezbollah, a pro-Iran militia in Iraq, last month.

“The U.S. Department of State extends its appreciation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of War, U.S. personnel across multiple agencies, and the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council and our Iraqi partners, for their assistance in securing her release,” Rubio said in a statement on X.

“We are relieved that this American is now free and are working to support her safe departure from Iraq,” Rubio wrote.

On Tuesday, Kataib Hezbollah security chief Abu Mujahid al-Assaf said in a Telegram post that the group decided to release Kittleson “on the condition that she leave the country immediately.”

According to a source familiar with the matter, the US government had warned Kittleson shortly before her disappearance of a Kataib Hezbollah plot to kidnap or kill her. The warning came while she was already reporting in Iraq.

The abduction sparked an operation from Iraqi security forces to track down those responsible and secure her release.

The US government was tracking the kidnapping and working with the Iraqis to secure her release, a US official said.

The US Embassy in Iraq has repeatedly warned US citizens to leave the country since the conflict with Iran began in late February, cautioning that Iranian-backed militias could attempt to kidnap Americans. “Do not travel to Iraq for any reason. Depart immediately if you are there,” the embassy said in its latest statement over the weekend.

After she was captured, Al-Monitor, a US-based news organization where Kittleson is a contributor, called for her “safe and immediate release.”

“We stand by her vital reporting from the region and call for her swift return to continue her important work,” the statement added.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and the Foley Foundation wrote a joint letter to Rubio, asking him to work on securing Kittleson’s release.

The CPJ urged Iraqi authorities to take “all necessary measures” to free Kittleson.

“The abduction of Shelly Kittleson in broad daylight reflects an alarming breach of journalists’ safety in Iraq that highlights the increased risk of reporting from the Middle East,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah.

This story has been updated with new developments.

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Por Mauricio Torres, CNN en Español

Cuatro de los militares de Estados Unidos que han resultado heridos durante la guerra que el Gobierno de Donald Trump lanzó contra Irán el 28 de febrero son de origen mexicano, de acuerdo con el más reciente reporte del Sistema de Análisis de Bajas de Defensa del Departamento de Defensa estadounidense (DCAS, por sus siglas en inglés).

Otros tres militares estadounidenses lesionados son de ascendencia hispana, dice la información del DCAS actualizada hasta este martes, cuando se cumplen 39 días de que Estados Unidos e Israel comenzaron ataques aéreos en masa contra Irán, país al que consideran una amenaza para su seguridad. Irán rechaza esta ofensiva y ha sostenido una respuesta armada frente a los ataques.

Desde que la guerra comenzó el 28 de febrero, han muerto 13 militares de Estados Unidos —entre ellos un hispano— y 372 han resultado heridos.

El DCAS detalla que, entre los lesionados, 251 son integrantes del Ejército, 63 son de la Marina, 19 son marines y 39 pertenecen a la Fuerza Aérea.

Por origen étnico, el DCAS dice que de 326 se desconoce, 25 están en la categoría “ninguno” y 14 en “otros”. Los siete restantes son los cuatro militares de origen mexicano y los tres de origen hispano.

El Departamento de Defensa declinó dar más información sobre los soldados de ascendencia mexicana heridos, en tanto que el Comando Central, que coordina las operaciones militares de Estados Unidos en Irán, dijo a CNN que no dará a conocer sus identidades ni su estado de salud por privacidad y seguridad.

CNN contactó a la Cancillería de México para pedir comentarios sobre el tema y está en espera de respuesta.

Del lado de Irán, las cifras de personas muertas y heridas son mayores, de acuerdo con diferentes estimaciones.

La Federación Internacional de Sociedades de la Cruz Roja y de la Media Luna Roja estima que, hasta el corte del 6 de abril, más de 1.900 personas habían muerto y más de 20.000 habían resultado heridas en el país por causa de los ataques de Estados Unidos e Israel.

Uno de los muertos fue el líder supremo de Irán, el ayatola Alí Jamenei, quien fue reemplazado por su hijo Mojtaba Jamenei. En la ofensiva de Estados Unidos e Israel, también han muerto otros líderes políticos y militares iraníes.

A raíz de la guerra, Irán ha respondido con ataques contra algunos aliados de Estados Unidos en Medio Oriente y ha bloqueado el estrecho de Ormuz, una zona por la que circula alrededor de una quinta parte del petróleo que se comercia en el mundo. El bloqueo ha provocado un alza de los precios del crudo y sus derivados, lo que a su vez ha impactado en la inflación en numerosos países.

En este contexto, Trump dio un ultimátum a Irán. El mandatario dijo este martes que “toda una civilización morirá esta noche” si Irán no acepta un acuerdo con Estados Unidos y abre el estrecho de Ormuz. El plazo fijado por Trump vence a las 8:00 pm, hora de Miami.

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By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Tuesday signed into law a bill banning state judges from delaying divorce proceedings because a spouse is pregnant.

The measure, HB 1908, which passed unanimously in both the state House and Senate, will modify a state measure enacted in the 1970s requiring couples to disclose “whether the wife is pregnant” — a fact that often led judges in the state to prevent a divorce from being finalized.

Missouri state Rep. Cecelie Williams, a Republican who sponsored the bill, told CNN affiliate KOMU the original measure aimed to simplify matters like child support and custody agreements but also put spouses in dangerous situations if they were in abusive relationships.

HB 1908 states “pregnancy status shall not prevent the court from entering a judgment of dissolution of marriage or legal separation.”

Williams, who has publicly shared how she tried to finalize her divorce from an abusive spouse while pregnant about two decades ago, said at the signing ceremony that changing the state measure was a priority for her since the day she decided to run for office.

“I feel incredibly thankful that people listened to my story and understood the effects that this barrier has on women who are trying to escape their abusive relationships,” Williams told CNN earlier on Tuesday.

The Republican governor first learned about how the original measure had impacted Williams’ life when they met last year and said he almost started crying at the time.

“It hit home with me,” said Kehoe, explaining his mother and siblings experienced domestic violence and his father left the family after the governor was born.

Abuse – both verbal and physical – often worsens in pregnancy, according to infant and maternal health nonprofit March of Dimes.

Before HB 1908 was signed into law, Missouri was among a handful of states, including Texas, where divorce proceedings are frequently paused by judges during a spouse’s pregnancy.

Kehoe signed two other bills Tuesday concerning the state’s juvenile criminal system and criminal penalties for child sex trafficking.

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By Andrew Freedman, CNN

(CNN) — Get ready to hear a lot more about El Niño during the next several months — and maybe even longer — as the infamous climate cycle returns again, developing and intensifying in the Pacific Ocean near the equator. If it forms as expected, this El Niño will redraw global weather maps, sparking flooding for some and drought and wildfires for others — all while simultaneously speeding up the pace of global warming.

There are increasing indications that an El Niño is not only imminent — setting in by late summer or early fall — but that it could be a significant one, too.

In fact, this might even qualify as a “Super El Niño,” which would significantly increase impacts felt around the world. Such extremely intense El Niños are rare.

To declare an El Niño, in general, ocean temperatures in a particular region of the tropical Pacific must clear 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. A Super El Niño, in contrast, happens when temperatures are more than 2 degrees C above the average. Some typically reliable computer models, like the European modeling suite, are projecting just such an outcome for this go-around.

The baddest kids in town

El Niño and La Niña, names that translate to “the Boy” and “the Girl”, are recurring climate cycles in the tropical Pacific Ocean that happen every few years and can have profound effects on global weather patterns. In the case of El Niño, the cycle can bring both flooding and drought to different parts of Africa, help pummel the U.S. West Coast with winter storms and lead to more heat extremes globally.

El Niño is characterized by unusually warm waters along the equatorial tropical Pacific Ocean, and a related series of shifts in winds and precipitation patterns in the atmosphere. It is a so-called coupled phenomenon, meaning that to get an El Niño, both the ocean and the atmosphere must be responding to one another in characteristic ways.

The atmosphere tends to react to the warmer waters by shifting areas of heavy precipitation closer to that hot region of the ocean. The trade winds that typically blow from east to west near the equator can slacken and then reverse direction as well. Those shifts are significant enough to affect weather around the world, like a series of dominoes toppling over.

Right now, huge volumes of unusually warm water are spreading under the ocean surface from the Western to the Eastern tropical Pacific, where that water slowly rises to the surface in a clear precursor to El Niño. Periodic areas of wind blowing from the west to the east have helped transport this water, in what are appropriately known as westerly wind bursts.

While El Niño and La Niña, El Niño’s cooler sibling, are fascinating from a meteorological perspective, we care about them because of the ways in which they can affect extreme weather events around the world. In fact, they can cause billions of dollars in damages, and a stronger El Niño would likely make the usual impacts more severe.

Spotting an El Niño in formation and predicting its evolution “gives us an early heads up on changing risks for many weather-related phenomena, including floods, droughts, heatwaves, hurricanes and severe thunderstorms,” said Nat Johnson, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. “These weather and climate impacts modify crop yields, disease spread, coral bleaching, fisheries and many other parts of the earth system that affect our daily lives.”

There’s still a lot of uncertainty around the upcoming El Niño, including a range of forecast outcomes, especially when it comes to intensity, Johnson said. To cloud matters a bit furthe

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KEYT) – A woman had minor injuries after a single-vehicle rollover south of Betteravia Road, east of Santa Maria Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, crews were dispatched to the 2800 block of Betteravia Road just after noon and found a vehicle had traveled about 50 feet down an embankment and into a ditch.

The image below shows the approximate location of the response south of Betteravia Road Tuesday, courtesy of the county fire department.

Four people were inside of the vehicle at the time of the rollover and while three were uninjured and able to exit the vehicle, the fourth person suffered minor injuries and needed the help of first responders to get out of the damaged vehicle detailed the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

The injured woman was transported in an ambulance from the scene to a local hospital for further evaluation added the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

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