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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* No one has yet taken responsibility for the blasts: “More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in southern Iran on Wednesday after explosions struck a memorial event for a senior Iranian general killed in a 2020 U.S. drone strike, ramping up tensions in a region already on edge. The first of two blasts hit around 2,300 feet from the tomb of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in the Kerman Martyrs Cemetery, the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported. It added that the second explosion was around 2,000 feet away.”
* Bomb threats: “At least six state capitol complexes across the U.S. were forced to evacuate Wednesday morning due to bomb threats, officials said.”
* Prisoner swap: “Ukraine and Russia exchanged nearly 500 prisoners of war Wednesday — including Ukrainian service members taken prisoner during fighting at the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol and Snake Island in the Black Sea — a sign that talks between Kyiv and Moscow continue, even as the two sides appear frozen in peace negotiations.”
* The three-judge panel featured one Bush appointee and two Trump appointees: “Emergency room doctors in Texas are not required to perform emergency abortions despite federal guidance that requires hospitals to offer stabilizing care, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a ruling that sided with the State of Texas, which had sued the Biden administration, arguing that the federal guidance issued in 2022 was an overstep that would ‘force abortions.’”
* A deal with Qatar: “The United States has reached a deal to extend its military presence at a base in Qatar for another 10 years, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. The base in question is the Al Udeid Air Base, which is located in the desert southwest of Doha and hosts the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East, the source said, asking to not be identified.”
* Team Trump’s latest indictments: “A former adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was indicted Tuesday for failing to register as a foreign agent. Barry Bennett, who worked as an unpaid adviser to the Trump 2016 campaign, and his associate Douglas Watts were charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA.”
* Vaccines make a difference: “At least 200 million people worldwide have struggled with long COVID: a slew of symptoms that can persist for months or even years after an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. But research suggests that that number would likely be much higher if not for vaccines.”
* A breakthrough worth celebrating: “For the first time in the United States, turbines are sending electricity to the grid from the sites of two large offshore wind farms. The joint owners of the Vineyard Wind project, Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, announced Wednesday the first electricity from one turbine at what will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles (24 kilometers) off the coast of Massachusetts.”
See you tomorrow.