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As Iran and the United States maintain rival blockades on the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, we look at the more than 20,000 seafarers stranded on commercial ships since the outbreak of the war and unable to move out of the region. These maritime workers are often working-class men from developing countries across the Global South who form the crews on about 1,500 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels currently stuck on the water. Unpaid for several weeks, they lack the visas to disembark in any of the Gulf countries near the ships.
"There is lack of food, there is lack of provisions, there is lack of water," says Mohamed Arrachedi of the International Transport Workers' Federation, joining us from Bilbao, Spain. "The seafarers are just exposed and absolutely vulnerable."
We also speak with Manoj Yadav, general secretary of Forward Seamen's Union of India, who says the mental health of the workers is rapidly deteriorating as many have also lost connection to their families.
"They are trained for serving on board merchant vessels. They are not trained for the war," Yadav says.
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Track the latest polls in the Rhode Island U.S. Senate election.
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Track the latest polls in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District.
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Courts keep taking a skeptical view of the executive branch's overreach.
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Sir Keir Starmer says he takes responsibility as Labour reels from results across England, Scotland and Wales.
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(Second column, 1st story, link)
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Reform UK has made gains at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives in early council election results overnight.
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A recent Supreme Court ruling makes it much harder to argue that a map illegally dilutes Black voting power. Tennessee has since broken up a predominantly Black district.
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The secretary of state held warm meetings with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Pope Leo XIV after the president's repeated criticism of both leaders.
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Forced to fight for political survival because of redistricting, Ken Calvert and Young Kim, both Republicans, are accusing each other of being insufficiently MAGA.
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The finding is a major setback for Democrats in their effort to counter GOP-led redistricting in other states. The measure approved April 21 gave Democrats an edge in four districts.
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As the Trump administration continues to expand the ICE detention system, concerns are growing over abuses inside immigration jails, including use of physical violence, pepper spray and electric shocks against detainees. Earlier this year, more than 70,000 people were being detained by ICE in jails across the country.
Congressmember Adelita Grijalva from Arizona, who visited two ICE jails recently, says detainees who spoke to her described dire conditions, medical neglect and more. "People are losing weight. Water is undrinkable," she says. "There are a lot of really significant abuses happening. There's no rhyme or reason as to what's going on."
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YEAR OF LEO
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio flew to Rome this week after an unexpected spat between President Trump and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, once one of the president's best friends in Europe.
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So far, we have a chunk of the results around the parts of England that have had contests and no results yet from Scotland or Wales.
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The White House ignores the threat of far-right groups.
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Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a new congressional map into law on Thursday that slices up Memphis to scatter Black voters into neighboring districts, a move intended to eliminate the state's last Democratic House seat.
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In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, the Pennsylvania senator wrote that while he was "at odds" with the party's approach to some issues, his values had not changed.
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Labour sources have told the BBC the party's century-long winning run is expected to come to an end.
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In strikingly different ads, Graham Platner argued that "Susan Collins's charade is over" while Senator Collins highlighted the economic benefits she has brought to Maine.
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Do we care when other groups can't elect their favorite candidates?
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Saudi Arabia's refusal of support suggests that President Trump's unpredictable approach to Iran has strained ties with one of his closest allies in the Middle East.
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The escalating attacks raise the threat that the cease-fire could break down.
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Federal judges in Rhode Island ordered an investigation into a lawyer who withheld information about a migrant's international criminal charges. Now, D.H.S. says it can't find the migrant.
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Republicans in the state could hold a 9-0 advantage in the U.S. House with their new map, after the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act last week.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won big in state-level elections this week, with the Hindu nationalist BJP now controlling over 70% of the country. Leading opposition politician and Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee has refused to recognize the results as legitimate, accusing the Modi government of mass disenfranchisement. Ahead of elections, 9 million names were deleted from the rolls under a process called "Special Intensive Revision" (SIR). The process, conducted by India's Election Commission, "vitiates and creates an electoral advantage by pitting Hindu voters against Muslim voters," says political scientist Gilles Verniers. Rather than the advertised purge of deceased and duplicate voters, SIR appears to have primarily affected Muslims and other minorities. Nearly 3 million voters in West Bengal, where more than a quarter of the population is Muslim, were unable to cast their vote.
From New Delhi, journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani says blatant election interference has destroyed Indians' faith in democratic elections. "The general public does not think the elections are free and fair in India," she explains. "So this is a sad day for democracy, for people who believe that not only today, but tomorrow's India should also be democratic."
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We discuss the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft's Trita Parsi. U.S. officials are denying Iranian reports that a U.S. vessel was struck by Iranian missiles amid the two countries' dual blockade of the strait. The warring nations still say they are observing a fragile temporary ceasefire as negotiations continue for a possible longer-term deal. However, says Parsi, "both sides are making maximalist demands," so a diplomatic solution is unlikely. "As long as Trump continues to listen to those forces, the very same forces that also sold him this blockade that has backfired, we're not going to see a diplomatic breakthrough. It requires a far more disciplined and flexible approach to negotiations, and right now we're not seeing that from either side."
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More than 50 countries are gathered this week in Santa Marta, Colombia, in a groundbreaking effort to establish another forum of international cooperation on phasing out fossil fuels and halting the climate crisis. This comes after years of frustration over the United Nations-led COP process, which requires consensus. The initiative was launched in the final hours of the COP30 conference held in Belém, Brazil, last year, as fossil-fuel producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked the formal commitments sought by more ambitious nations.
"This gathering in Santa Marta is about breaking the deadlock, creating a space where mission is not held hostage, and where real pathways to phase out fossil fuels can be discussed openly and honestly," says South African activist Kumi Naidoo, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative.
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 The U.S. Justice Department proposed on Wednesday that Congress take up legislation to curb protections that big tech platforms like Alphabet's Google and Facebook have had for decades, a senior official said, following through on U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to crack down on tech giants.
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