By Issy Ronald, James Frater and John Torigoe, CNN

Portsmouth, UK (CNN) — When a vessel under attack in the Strait of Hormuz calls for help, a black phone in the corner of an office rings. It’s nothing special – just a normal office phone, a relic of the 1990s.

But when a call comes in, the three people on shift at this small office just outside Portsmouth, on Britain’s south coast, suddenly become central to the current conflict in the Middle East.

For it’s home to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO) – a Royal Navy-affiliated body that monitors shipping in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and northern Indian Ocean.

And since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz more than two months ago in response to US-Israeli strikes on the country, the number of emergency calls the UKMTO receives has skyrocketed.

The first moments after that call comes in “can get really stressful,” said Commander Jo Black, UKMTO’s head of operations. “The vessel may be actively under attack. You may hear alarms and sirens in the background. On occasion, we’ve even heard gunfire,” she told CNN.

Merchant vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz have faced all manner of threats as Tehran has sought to impose its control over the crucial waterway, through which a significant proportion of the world’s oil, gas and fertilizer supply flows, in response to the US-Israeli campaign. Some ships have been targeted by Iranian missile fire, others attacked by drones, yet others circled by fast attack craft.

As the war drags into its third month, the nature of the threat from Iran in the strait is changing, Black noted.

“At the start of March, we were very much seeing military action. … More recently it seems to be taking a change towards constabulary action, with vessels being challenged as they approach the Strait of Hormuz, interrogated, asked to verify their claims and, in some unfortunate cases, vessels actually being detained,” she said.

Once a ship reports such an attack, the UKMTO office scrambles into action. Its staff, known as watchkeepers, talk to the vessel’s crew and contact other nearby ships, warning them of the danger as well as asking if they can help, or provide more information. They also contact the shipping companies affected, local coastguards and military forces in the region who also might be able to assist.

It’s manned by a team of just 18 people, who cycle through 12-hour shifts, meaning that there are always three watchkeepers on at any given time, sometimes supported by an analyst too.

“If you call UKMTO, you will get a response,” Black said. “We can’t guarantee that there will be an international community available to respond directly, but we will ensure your information is shared with as wide an audience as possible to try to generate a response.”

The body has recorded 44 incidents since the Iran war began – a mixture of what it classifies as damage to ships, close quarters and near misses. Ten seafarers have died in these incidents, Black said.

Even thousands of miles away, connected to the crisis only by a phone line, it can be stressful for the watchkeepers who are “dealing with a highly emotional situation,” she added, and often establish a rapport with those on board.

Collating information

For all the frenzied response when that phone rings, a “typical day is actually relatively calm,” said Black. Banks of TV screens show different maps of the region and the shipping traffic passing through it. One map zooms in on the strait itself, a red box demarcating the “hazardous area” possibly containing Iranian mines and which vessels are avoiding.

Watchk

By Steve Contorno, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — James Blair has six months to defend Republican power in Congress — but first he needed to send a message to his party.

Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff, spent weeks plotting to crush a group of Republican lawmakers in Indiana who defied the president’s demands for a more favorable congressional map. He personally helped recruit and vet their primary opponents while designing a strategy intended to end their political careers.

The night five of those Republican holdouts fell this month, a triumphant Blair thumped his chest on X with a gif of Russell Crowe in “Gladiator”: “Are you not entertained?”

“Sometimes you can vote your conscience, other times you have to vote with the boss,” Blair told CNN the day after the Indiana primaries, referring to President Donald Trump. “And he gets to decide when that is, because he’s elected party leader. My job is to implement that.”

Called “the Oracle” by colleagues and “ruthless” even by friends, 36-year-old Blair has become one of the most powerful and feared operators in Republican politics. Within the White House, he’s seen as a potential successor to chief of staff Susie Wiles if she ever stepped down. On Capitol Hill, he has kept the party’s fragile majorities in line. Across the country, he has put recalcitrant Republicans on notice, no target too small. The bruising mid-decade redistricting battle that’s reshaping the midterm map? That’s Blair’s brainchild.

Now, this millennial operative will embark on perhaps his most difficult assignment. In the coming weeks, he is expected to step away from his White House role to lead the GOP’s efforts to defend its congressional majorities — a challenging task further complicated by Trump’s sagging approval ratings, an unpopular war, persistent economic anxiety and early signs of fracture in the coalition that carried the president to victory in 2024.

A plan is taking shape. The most intense focus will fall on roughly 30 to 35 House races, according to people steeped in the data. Trump’s advisers privately acknowledge that some of the sporadic voters they activated two years ago to carry the president into the White House may not return, so they are running a large, sophisticated data operation to find new ones.

Fear, Blair said, will be a primary motivator. The pitch: Do you really want Democrats back in power?

The confidence stems in part from polling that shows Democrats are largely unpopular, too, as well as faith in a political operation that Trump advisers insist is more advanced than it was in 2018 and far superior to that of the Democratic Party.

Blair will have a massive war chest at his disposal — nearly $400 million between Trump-aligned super PACs — a financial advantage the GOP didn’t have during the president’s first term. Blair declined to say how much is earmarked for the fall, but insisted Republicans would have the necessary resources. He will oversee the coordination of spending across GOP groups, ensuring alignment that has historically been elusive.

Concerns within the GOP are mounting. Voices ranging from MAGA-aligned pollster Richard Baris to billionaire GOP megadonor Ken Griffin are bracing for widespread losses this November. N

* WHAT…Northwest winds 30 to 50 mph with gusts up to 60 mph
expected. Strongest during the overnight hours.

* WHERE…Interstate 5 Corridor, Northern Ventura County Mountains,
and Southern Ventura County Mountains.

* WHEN…Until 9 AM PDT this morning.

* IMPACTS…Damaging winds could blow down trees and power lines.
Widespread power outages are possible. Travel will be difficult,
especially for high profile vehicles.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS…Wind speeds may drop well below warning
levels at times during the daytime hours.
Remain in the lower levels of your home during the windstorm, and
avoid windows. Watch for falling debris and tree limbs. Use caution
if you must drive.

The post High Wind Warning issued May 17 at 2:36AM PDT until May 17 at 9:00AM PDT by NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

* WHAT…Northwest winds 30 to 40 mph with gusts up to 60 mph
expected. Strongest during the overnight hours.

* WHERE…Santa Barbara County Interior Mountains, Santa Barbara
County Southwestern Coast, Santa Ynez Mountains Eastern Range, and
Santa Ynez Mountains Western Range.

* WHEN…Until 9 AM PDT this morning.

* IMPACTS…Damaging winds could blow down trees and power lines.
Widespread power outages are possible. Travel will be difficult,
especially for high profile vehicles.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS…Wind speeds may drop well below warning
levels at times during the daytime hours.
Remain in the lower levels of your home during the windstorm, and
avoid windows. Watch for falling debris and tree limbs. Use caution
if you must drive.

The post High Wind Warning issued May 17 at 2:36AM PDT until May 17 at 9:00AM PDT by NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, CNN

Cuauhtemoc, Mexico (CNN) — It all started when a 9-year-old boy went with his parents to visit relatives in Seminole, Texas, early last year. After he returned home to Mexico, a red rash erupted on his skin. Within weeks, so many of his classmates fell ill that their school shut down.

Unbeknownst to the boy’s parents, measles had started to ricochet around Seminole during their visit.

The town would soon emerge as the epicenter of the biggest US outbreak in more than 30 years, one that would kill three Americans. But when the virus jumped the border to Mexico, a bigger tragedy was about to begin.

At least 40 Mexicans have died of measles complications since the start of 2025, ranging from babies to middle-age farmworkers, according to the Mexican Health Ministry. More than 17,000 infections have been confirmed in that period, four times the number in the United States. Measles is largely preventable with two shots of a common vaccine. But most of those with infections hadn’t gotten it.

Mexico’s ongoing measles outbreak offers a case study of what can happen when a country’s vaccine coverage slips. The disease was first identified in the 9-year-old’s neighborhood, in a secluded Mennonite community of apple, wheat and corn farms in Chihuahua state, south of Texas, authorities said. It spread to agricultural laborers, many of them from Indigenous communities.

By the end of 2025, this Mexican state, roughly the size of Michigan, had confirmed around 4,500 cases – more than in the entire United States.

Pinning down the movement of a microscopic pathogen can be difficult. But Mexican authorities believe that the measles virus probably arrived in the throat or lungs of the third-grader, who was unvaccinated, and then spread wildly.

From Canada to Mexico to Chihuahua

In Chihuahua, officials did genetic tests on more than 100 cases. Each came back with the stamp of the measles virus that popped up in Canada in 2024 and later appeared in Texas: genotype D8 and lineage MVs/Ontario.CAN/47.24. The virus has since traveled through Mexico’s 32 states.

“Everything comes from the outbreak in Chihuahua,” said Dr. Miguel Nakamura, director of epidemiological information at Mexico’s Health Ministry.

In the United States, a series of measles outbreaks starting in Seminole raised concerns about the growing role of vaccine skeptics in the government.

Mexico’s case is somewhat different. The president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is a leftist with a PhD in engineering who prides herself on her scientific background. What unites the neighboring nations’ outbreaks is something else, epidemiologists say: complacency.

Measles was declared eliminated in both countries more than a quarter-century ago – a historic public-health achievement. But Mexico’s once-robust vaccine program has atrophied amid disarray in its government-dominated health system, say epidemiologists.

“This is the paradox,” said Samuel Ponce de León, an epidemiology professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Thanks to the success of vaccines, “you don’t see kids with signs of polio or complications from measles, like deafness or meningitis. We stopped having measles cases, so people began to say, ‘Why should I worry?’”

More contagious than Covid-19

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world, far more so than Covid-19. It’s spread by an infected person coughing, sneezing or even just talking. The virus ca