By Laura Sharman, CNN

(CNN) — As the US-Israel war with Iran enters its fourth week, the Trump administration granted a temporary license for Iran to sell around 140 million barrels of crude oil to calm jittery markets.

President Donald Trump said the US is considering “winding down” its military efforts, although a senior Iranian source told CNN that Tehran doesn’t believe the claim.

In the Middle East, US embassies remain under threat while some Gulf states continue to intercept missiles and drones. Iran unsuccessfully targeted a joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean with ballistic missiles, a source told CNN.

What are the main headlines?

• Sanctions removed: The Trump administration granted a temporary license on Friday night allowing Iran to sell 140 million barrels of oil sitting on tankers – enough to satisfy global demand for roughly a day and a half, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
• Military efforts: Trump said the US is considering “winding down” military efforts in the Middle East in a social media post Friday, though a senior Iranian source told CNN there has been no “reduction in military activity” in the region. Earlier that day, Trump told reporters that he believes the US has “won” its war with Iran. But thousands more US Marines and sailors are heading towards the Middle East.
• Strait of Hormuz: Bahrain has become the first regional country to signal willingness to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, joining EU nations, Japan and Canada, its state media reported Friday. Meanwhile, US officials are furiously trying to avert a potential monthslong closure of the strait, administration and intelligence officials told CNN.

What’s happening on the ground?

• Indian Ocean: Iran launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base, Friday morning local time, according to a US official. The missiles were fired at the facility – a key airfield for the US’ heavy bomber fleet in the Indian Ocean, and around 2,370 miles from Iran’s coast – but neither of them struck the base, the official said.
• In Iraq: Iran claimed it targeted the United States Embassy’s logistics base in Baghdad three times on Friday, according to state broadcaster IRIB. The embassy has faced multiple rocket and drone attacks since the war began.
• UAE warned: Tehran has issued a warning to the United Arab Emirates that it will strike the port city Ras al-Khaimah if Iranian islands in the Gulf continue to come under attack.
• More from the Gulf: Countries including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia continued to intercept missile and drone strikes overnight into Saturday, according to local defense officials.
• Israel and Lebanon: The Israeli military said early Saturday that Iran launched more missiles towards its territory. It also reported striking Hezbollah targets in Beirut overnight.

Zachary Cohen and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.

The-CNN

By Alaa Elassar, CNN

(CNN) — Unpaid Transportation Security Administration workers are struggling to stay afloat – and on the job – amid a partial government shutdown that has frustrated travelers inching through security lines that stretch for hours, with wait times only expected to worsen this weekend.

“I feel bad for everyone except for the people in Washington, DC,” said Carlos Monroe, a traveler whose family waited for more than three hours at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport early Friday but still missed their 6 a.m. flight.

“It’s just not fair,” Monroe said, lamenting from the airport’s food court as his wife sat nearby with her head down. “The big people aren’t paying the price for the little people.”

The situation is poised to deteriorate even further as some TSA officers, who some lawmakers say are being treated as “political pawns,” continue working without pay since the shutdown began in mid-February, while others, pushed to the brink, are walking away from the job altogether.

In airports across the country, security lines are snaking through roped-off corridors and spilling into crowded atriums, while terminals buzz with restless, exasperated passengers clutching boarding passes and checking phones. Visibly strained officers in blue uniforms move travelers along as best they can, many carrying their own quiet anxiety about missed paychecks and an uncertain road ahead.

Officials warn this may only be the beginning. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the current disruptions are “child’s play” compared to what could happen if TSA workers miss another paycheck, a scenario that could push an already strained system closer to collapse. And if the shutdown continues, some airports may be forced to close, other officials have said.

Airports are supposed to be places of motion, a steady current of departures and arrivals, of reunions and escapes. But this week, that rhythm is breaking down – and travelers are left wondering when they’ll make it to the people and places waiting on the other side.

Here’s what to know.

Financial strain on TSA workers causes ripple effect for travelers

For more than a month, TSA officers have been showing up to airports across the country without getting fully paid.

For many, it’s become a familiar and frustrating routine. This marks the third funding lapse in just six months. As lawmakers remain deadlocked over DHS funding, this time over a broader immigration debate, more than 61,000 employees are affected.

Low morale and financial strain are pushing workers to their limits and, increasingly, off the job.

Nearly 10% of TSA workers didn’t show up Thursday, just below the record 10.22% absentee rate set earlier this week. For six straight days, call-out rates have hovered above 9% as employees continue working without pay. At least 366 officers have quit since the shutdown began, according to DHS.

The impact has been more severe in certain airports. More than a third of screeners at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were absent earlier thi

By Isabel Rosales, Jason Morris, CNN

(CNN) — Since 1959, when Fidel Castro seized power, Cubans on the island have endured navigating a system defined by scarcity, surveillance and state control. Today, that system is under a level of strain not seen perhaps since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when the island lost its primary economic lifeline.

Now, as Havana calls on Cuban exiles to invest in the island, many in the United States are rejecting the offer outright, viewing it as a desperate move by a government under mounting pressure.

Earlier this week, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba’s deputy prime minister and minister for foreign trade and investment who is also a great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro, said in a televised appearance that Cuban exiles are welcome to invest in the island.

It is not a new message. Havana has extended similar invitations to the diaspora for years, but those overtures have yielded few real-world results.

Among many in the Cuban diaspora in the US that CNN spoke with, the latest push is being met with skepticism. It’s viewed less as a substantive policy shift and more as a predictable move by a government struggling to maintain control.

The capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro by the US has effectively severed Cuba’s most critical oil pipeline, cutting off tens of thousands of barrels per day that once powered the island’s electricity grid and transportation systems, further worsening a decades-long energy crisis that has left Cubans grappling with chronic blackouts.

At the same time, Washington has escalated an aggressive pressure campaign by restricting fuel shipments, warning off foreign suppliers and creating what amounts to a de facto oil blockade that has choked off imports.

Together, the moment underscores a stark reality that the Cuban regime has rarely been more exposed to decisions made in Washington.

In Florida, exiles reject Havana’s invitation

Throngs of exiles have left their homeland over many decades in protest of Cuba’s communist-run government, and many hold a “deep patriotic conscience about why we left,” said Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, secretary general of the Assembly of Cuban Resistance, or ARC, a US-based Cuban opposition group focused on ending communist rule on the island.

“You will find that the overwhelming majority of Cuban entrepreneurs or business people are not going to go back and invest with a regime that hasn’t changed fundamentally,” he said.

Gutiérrez-Boronat said that since there is no “independent economy” in Cuba, and that everything is controlled by the state, it could be a “very dangerous place to invest in.”

“It’s a country that has no independent judiciary, and is a country where, over and over again, investors have seen that they have an issue with the state. They have no recourse to anyone else to appeal,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said.

Jorge Astorquiza, a Cuban-American chemist by trade and the co-owner of a Florida food production company founded in the 1970s, sees Havana’s latest outreach to entrepreneurs like him as a sign of desperation.

“They’re like a fish out of water, flopping around on the land in its death throes,” said Astorquiza, whose company Flayco Products in Tampa also exports its products.

“It knows it’s dying. It knows its days are numbered.”

Astorquiza told CNN his first reaction was to laugh at what he called the “absurdity” of the offer. To him, the moment echoes Perestroika, the economic restructuring effort led by Mikhail Gorbachev that was intended to stabilize the Soviet Union but ultimately accelerated its collapse in 1991.

“After forcing me to have to leave my own country, how can you ask me to go back there to gift you the fruits of my labor outside of where my business thrived?” he said, “That’s insane and I don’t support an i

By Oren Liebermann, CNN

(CNN) — Israeli police attacked a group of journalists outside the Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday evening, including a CNN producer who suffered a fractured wrist in the violent incident.

Police officers also damaged photographic equipment and confiscated memory cards from journalists who were outside the Lion’s Gate of the Old City covering Ramadan prayers.

On Tuesday, Muslim worshippers, barred from praying at the Al-Aqsa mosque because of wartime restrictions, gathered outside the walls of the Old City to perform the Tarawih prayers of Ramadan. But police prevented them from praying and pushed them away. The worshippers relocated to a street inside the nearby Wadi Al Joz neighborhood.

Police then relocated the worshippers one more time to a spot near the Old City walls when, moments later, officers threw stun grenades at the group. Two journalists were detained at the scene as officers assaulted them and damaged their equipment. Several other journalists at the scene who were documenting the unfolding incident, including CNN’s senior producer Abeer Salman, attempted to intervene but were pushed away.

After the two journalists were released, Salman and other journalists went to check on their colleagues. Police ordered the journalists back. Footage shows the group acquiescing to the police instructions when an officer in plain clothes – possibly indicating a special police unit – grabbed Salman’s hand, twisting it and causing a fracture in the wrist.

In a police statement issued to Israeli reporters on Tuesday and shared with CNN, the police accused journalists at the scene of refusing to follow orders, claiming they were “part of the disturbances.” The police statement went on to claim that “only after they were detained by police did they identify themselves as journalists and were subsequently released.”

The Union of Journalists in Israel ripped the police statement as “factually incorrect.” The union called for the police commissioner to immediately suspend the officers involved and launch an internal investigation.

“Police officers attacked several journalists without provocation, including foreign press,” the group said. “The officers damaged professional equipment, confiscated memory cards documenting their illicit actions, and inflicted a bone fracture on a CNN producer.”

Nir Gontarz, a member of the union who deals with violence against journalists, said police intentionally targeted the journalists, fully aware they were at the scene.

“Sometimes journalists are accidentally hit, including by police officers, while doing their job. In this incident, it was not a mistake. The police marked the journalists as targets, and attacked them,” Gontarz said. “It wasn’t a by product, it wasn’t coincidental, it was an intentional attack on journalists.”

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) also condemned the “unprovoked assault” on journalists. “The FPA calls on the Israel Police to immediately take action against the officers involved in this unprovoked assault and to act in the future to safeguard press freedoms, rather than trample upon them,” the organization said. (CNN Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond is a board member of the FPA.)

“None of this is acceptable,” the FPA said.

CNN has sought comment about the incident from police but has not received a response.

Following the attack on journalists, CNN issued the following statement: “On Tuesday evening, a CNN producer was among a group of journalists covering Muslim worshippers praying outside the Old City of Jerusalem during Ramadan. Police officers at the scene violently dispersed the crowd, which included m

By Eleni Giokos, CNN

(CNN) — Oil and liquefied natural gas tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz carry around 20% of the world’s supply. But for countries on the Persian Gulf, the waterway is more than just an energy route – it’s a lifeline for more than 100 million people.

Now, as the United States and Israel’s war with Iran chokes this vital stretch of water, it’s also straining food supply into the region.

Thriving in this harsh climate takes effort. With summer temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) and little cultivatable land, much of the Gulf Arab states’ drinking water comes from the sea via desalination plants. Most of their food, however, must come from abroad.

Saudi Arabia imports more than 80% of its food, the United Arab Emirates around 90%, and Qatar about 98%. In Iraq, too, the bulk of food imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, despite the country’s access to two major rivers.

In total, the majority of the food shipments to the region pass through the strait, a passage that is now all but blocked due to attacks on commercial ships in the area.

With the waterway effectively closed, food shippers are scrambling to find alternative routes – routes that are costlier and logistically strained, and that cannot fully replace lost flow, raising the prospect of higher prices and reduced choice for consumers.

Even Iran depends on the Strait of Hormuz for much of its trade.

The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that supply chains may really be on the brink of the most severe disruption since Covid-19 and the start of the full-scale Ukraine war in 2022.

Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the WFP, says shipping costs have risen sharply.

Retailers say that, while there’s no imminent hunger crisis in the Gulf region, the conflict has upended sea freight.

Kibsons International, a UAE-based fresh food and vegetable retailer, imports 50,000 tons of food per year sourcing food from countries like South Africa and Australia and says the focus now is on rerouting shipments.

“At the moment, the supply chain is extremely challenging,” said Daniel Cabral, procurement director at Kibsons.

According to UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a British military-run monitoring agency, almost two dozen vessels have been attacked in the region since the start of the war on February 28, including a cargo vessel off the coast of Oman. Shipping companies are therefore unwilling to take the risk of moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Another issue is the number of vessels already at sea. Kibsons has “tons” of food – mostly fresh – in containers on ships currently waiting outside the strait, Cabral told CNN, with no confirmed arrival dates or even ports. “There is a lot of uncertainty,” he said.

Then there’s the cost of insurance.

The price of doing business

Buried in the fine print of shipping contracts are “wartime clauses” that have now kicked in, Cabral said. These clauses protect ships from entering dangerous territories and give them the right to choose a dropoff port for shipments.

One of Kibsons’ containers, originally destined for Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, is now in Mundra, India. Another was rerouted to Colombo, Sri Lanka. But simply reaching land is far from the end of the conundrum.

“The shipping line has said, ‘what would you like to now do with it? Would you like to sell it within India?’ Or, you know, ‘what is your plan with it?’ And that puts us in a very difficult position,” C