Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:
1. LONG STANDOFF IN PHILLY ENDS
A gunman who opened fire on police as they were serving a drug warrant in Philadelphia, wounding six officers and triggering an hourslong standoff, is in police custody.
Assamese Rabha tribal women perform traditional fishing dance during the Independence Day celebrations in Gauhati, India, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended his government's controversial measure to strip the disputed Kashmir region of its statehood and special constitutional provisions in an Independence Day speech Thursday, as about 4 million Kashmiris stayed indoors for the 11th day of an unprecedented security lockdown and communications blackout. (AP PhotoAnupam Nath)
2. US SEEKS SEIZURE OF IRANIAN TANKER IN GIBRALTAR
A newspaper says that the U.S. Department of Justice has moved to halt the release of Iranian tanker held in the British overseas territory over an oil shipment to Syria.
3. MANY IN INDIA APPROVE MODI'S MOVE
The prime minister's unprecedented clampdown on Kashmir — India's only Muslim-majority state — to near-totalitarian levels is backed by his Hindu nationalist supporters and also some in the opposition camp.
4. WHERE 'TRUMPGRET' IS REAL
Not all are feeling the prosperity in New Hampshire, and when the tumult of his presidency is thrown in, the state's flinty voters may not be receptive to his appeals.
5. EPSTEIN'S CARIBBEAN ISLANDS A CURIOSITY AFTER HIS DEATH
Tourists and locals alike are powering up boats to take a closer look at a place nicknamed "Pedophile Island" that lies just off the southeast coast of St. Thomas.
6. 23 INJURED IN RUSSIAN PLANE'S EMERGENCY LANDING
The Ural Airlines A321 carrying 226 passengers lands in a field outside of one of Moscow's airports after colliding with a flock of birds.
7. CHINA UPS ANTE IN TRADE WAR
Beijing warns to retaliate if Washington goes ahead with planned Sept. 1 tariff hikes on additional Chinese imports.
8. DEMOCRATIC FIELD NARROWS
John Hickenlooper, a moderate and former Colorado governor, will drop out of the presidential primary, AP learns.
9. CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS US WEST RIVER DESPITE WET WINTER
A wet winter likely will fend off mandated water shortages for states in the U.S. West that rely on the Colorado River but won't erase the impact of climate change.
10. WHAT'S COMING TO TIFFANY'S
The upscale chain launches its first comprehensive jewelry collection for men in October, tapping into a trend popularized by the likes of Jay-Z and John Mayer.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Widening protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, intensified in September by the return of United Nations sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A new threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the U.S. “will come to their rescue" has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.
Demonstrations have reached over 170 locations in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Sunday. The death toll had reached at least 15 killed, it added, with more than 580 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.
The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.
Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
