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President Trump says the U.S. military began a blockade of Iranian ports on Monday, drawing threats of retaliation from Iran, after talks between the U.S. and Iran failed to reach an agreement over the weekend.

"Right now we have a blockade," Trump said Monday. "They're doing no business."

In a social media post earlier, he reiterated his threat to Iranian ships that tried to interfere. "Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED," he wrote.
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/13/nx-s1-5783445/iran-war-updates
It was the latest tactic to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — by blockading the strait outright.

Trump says Iran has charged tolls for some ships to pass and laid mines in the strait, amounting to "WORLD EXTORTION." He said Sunday that he had instructed the Navy "to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran."

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Donald Trump is stuck between “a rock and a hard place” after three weeks of war in Iran and “sending a message of weakness” to the world, Leon Panetta, a former US defence secretary and Central Intelligence Agency director, has told the Guardian.

Panetta, who served in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, recalled that national security officials were always keenly aware of Iran’s ability to create an energy crisis by blocking the strait of Hormuz. That very scenario is now unfolding, leaving Trump with no exit strategy beyond wishful thinking.

“He tends to be naive about how things can happen,” Panetta, 87, who supervised the operation to find and kill Osama bin Laden, said by phone. “If he says it and keeps saying it there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.”

Trump’s war began on 28 February with what it hoped would be a knockout blow. A surprise strike by Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US and Israel soon gained air supremacy. But the longer the conflict has raged, the more that initiative appears to be slipping away.

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U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Aguto, who oversaw the command that coordinated, trained and equipped Ukraine’s military, left a tube of classified maps on a train to Poland for more than 24 hours and was concussed from falling after “overindulgence” in alcohol during a dinner in Ukraine, a recently released Pentagon inspector general report found.

The 56-page report, which was published on Friday, found the now-retired two-star general, who led the Wiesbaden, Germany-based Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U), brought the classified maps during a trip from Germany to Ukraine in late March 2024 and assigned control of them to his staff.

“We found insufficient evidence to determine who had control of the classified maps once the travelers boarded the train for the return trip,” the watchdog said in the report, adding that travelers left the maps in the train when they arrived back in Poland on April 4, 2024, and the  U.S. Embassy in Ukraine recovered the unattended documents a day later.

When he got back to Wiesbaden, Aguto was told by his executive officer that the tube was gone. Classified information is typically transported via courier; it was not ordered that time, the report said.

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Israel has killed three Palestinians and wounded five others, including a child, in separate attacks targeting areas in eastern Gaza City and the northern Gaza, according to medical sources.

Sources told Anadolu agency that the bodies of three young men were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza City after a drone strike targeted them on Mushtaha Street in the Shujaiya neighbourhood in the east of the city.

The victims were identified as Mahmoud Saher al-Siqli, 17, Younes Saed Ayad, 17, and Abdullah Taysir Shoumer, 20, the sources said.

In a separate attack, four Palestinians were wounded when an Israeli drone dropped a grenade in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

The wounded were taken to the Palestine Red Crescent Society field hospital in Al-Saraya Square in the city centre.

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Teens in Texas mariachi band released from ICE detention after bipartisan backlas

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

The case has drawn national attention because the brothers had travelled to Washington DC last summer after their high school’s mariachi ensemble, Mariachi Ono, won a state mariachi competition. Their congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, had invited them to the House floor, where she celebrated their accomplishment.

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Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.

The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.

The state law was rushed through the state legislature using an expedited procedure known as “gut and go”. This means the text of one bill can be taken out and substituted for entirely new language or provisions, bypassing standard committee vetting and speeding through the voting process, which is legal in Kansas.

Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, arguing that SB 244 was “poorly drafted legislation”, but her veto was overridden by the state legislature’s Republican supermajority.

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