Today’s top stories

U.S. forces seized an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump said on social media. U.S. Central Command said the ship refused to comply with U.S. warnings over six hours before U.S. forces fired on and boarded it; Trump said U.S. Marines have custody. The incident is the latest escalation as the ceasefire between the U.S., Israel and Iran nears its end this week.

Even before the seizure, Trump and Iranian officials had been trading accusations of ceasefire violations. Trump wants the Strait of Hormuz reopened to stabilize oil markets and has set a red line on Iran’s nuclear program. The average price for regular gas is hovering near $4 a gallon. NPR’s reporting notes that some supporters remain patient but warns public tolerance could fade if economic pain continues.

Trump said he is sending a team of negotiators to Pakistan for in-person talks to end the war, though Vice President Vance had not departed. Iran has not confirmed talks; its state news agency quoted a senior official saying Iran had “no plans” for another negotiation round, while also saying it was examining new U.S. proposals received in recent days. The U.S. has not disclosed those proposals.

Two months after the Supreme Court ruled most of Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional, the federal government launched an online portal for business owners to request refunds. U.S. Customs estimates it owes about $166 billion. The portal opens only the first phase of payouts; not all goods imported under the illegal tariffs will qualify immediately. Federal guidance says approved refund requests could take 60 to 90 days to be paid.

NPR’s reporting warns the refund process could be chaotic: roughly 330,000 businesses were forced to pay the tariffs. The procedure is intended to mirror common overpayment refunds, but Customs has never attempted to process this many refunds at once.

A gunman killed eight children and wounded two women in northwest Louisiana, the Shreveport Police Department said. Authorities say the incident stemmed from a domestic disturbance. The adult male suspect is dead; he was believed to be the father of seven of the children killed. One of the women shot was his wife and the mother of seven of the children.

Living Better

GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound are designed as long-term treatments for chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity, but many people stop using them. Reasons include framing obesity treatment as temporary, cost, loss of insurance or side effects. Some plan to restart later. Research has not yet clarified health effects of cycling these drugs on and off.

Consumer uptake of GLP-1s is outpacing research. Limited data exist on periodic use, but studies show weight is regained faster after stopping GLP-1s than after behavior-focused diets. Experts warn repeated stops and restarts can reduce lean muscle mass each time, potentially producing a bonier appearance and loose skin. When people stop, fat returns quickly; how much lost muscle rebounds is unclear.

Picture show

In Mattiyarenthal, a village in Tamil Nadu, India, women farmers work chile pepper fields under intense heat. Women perform more than 70% of agricultural tasks locally. The physically demanding work deters many men, yet the seasonal labor provides crucial income that can support households for the year. See photos of overlooked women farmers.

3 things to know before you go

1) Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object, is running out of power. NASA shut down one of its remaining scientific instruments to prolong the spacecraft’s life.

2) Communities in the Midwest are cleaning up after tornadoes and severe storms moved through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

3) A man named Jay says a chance interaction in a county detention center — another inmate asking to pray for him — changed his life nearly a decade ago; he still reflects on that moment.

This newsletter was edited by Treye Green.

Start with patterns, not single readings
Sophie Krupp of Minneapolis began wearing an Oura ring to understand her migraines. Tracking helped her see links between poor sleep, small temperature shifts tied to her hormonal cycle, and even occasional alcohol use — all factors that influenced migraine flares. That kind of pattern recognition is what wearables do best and is a useful starting point for talking with a clinician.

Provide context
Dr. Lucy McBride, a physician in Washington, D.C., advises patients to bring patterns and context rather than weeks of raw data without explanation. “Report patterns, not just single data points,” she says. A week of disrupted sleep after a major life stressor tells a story; one bad night does not. Data without context is just noise — a spike in resting heart rate means something different if you had a cold, were stressed at work, or were training for a race.

Bring data to help clinical decision-making
Dr. Sarah Benish, a neurologist with M Health Fairview in Minnesota, says wearable data can expand what clinicians see beyond a single office visit. It can help decipher symptoms and guide next steps for testing or treatment. For Krupp, wearable data helped predict migraine flares so she could take medication earlier; understanding hormone links also let her pay closer attention to cyclical changes.

Wearables can flag serious conditions
One of the most valuable functions of wearables is detecting cardiac arrhythmias. Smartwatches can notify users of irregular heart rhythms, which may indicate conditions that raise stroke or other cardiac risks. McBride recounts a patient whose Apple Watch flagged a dangerously low heart rate during sleep; that data led to cardiology referral and a pacemaker, potentially saving his life.

Four practical tips

1) Know how your device works
Whether you use Fitbit, Garmin, Oura, Whoop or Apple Watch, learn how your device measures and reports data. Software updates can change tracking or display. Doctors may not be familiar with every device, so analyzing data together can take time. Benish asks for a little grace as both patient and clinician figure out what the data means.

2) Ask questions
Be active in the conversation. Ask your clinician about trends you don’t understand: “My heart rate variability has been trending lower. Is this a concern?” or “My device shows six hours of sleep but I’m in bed eight — what explains that?” Your questions help clinicians interpret the data in the context of your life.

3) If data causes anxiety, scale back
For some people, detailed metrics are reassuring; for others, constant numbers cause stress that harms health. If wearable data triggers anxiety, consider reducing how much you check it and discuss this with your healthcare provider.

4) Don’t let numbers override your story
Wearables measure many things, but not everything important to health. “The most important health data still lives in your biography — your stress, your relationship with food, alcohol, your family,” McBride says. Wearables over-index on measurable signals while health is also shaped by unmeasured factors. Bring both your numbers and your personal story to appointments.

Bottom line: wearable data can be a powerful tool when paired with context and clinical guidance. Learn your device, notice patterns, ask questions, and share both your metrics and your life story with your doctor.

“I was pulled aside in the lobby of the Hilton hotel by the CEO of Entergy Louisiana, who said, ‘We have a project and need to talk,'” Bourgeois said.

It was a proposal from Meta to build one of the largest-ever AI data centers in the world. Bourgeois jumped on it. Data centers — large warehouses full of servers that power parts of the internet and increasingly artificial intelligence — bring massive capital to communities and can be lifelines in rural areas with declining populations, she said.

Since 2024, demand for AI and the computing power it requires has surged. Technology companies are building data centers across the United States at an unprecedented pace, driven by business needs, consumer usage and government investment. But the strain these facilities place on energy, water, air quality and local aesthetics has ignited fierce opposition in many communities. The issue has become a voting topic ahead of the midterm elections.

“It has become a kitchen table issue, and it has become a very relevant political issue,” said Christabel Randolph, associate director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy. “Tech companies coming to build in their backyard is going to increase their bills,” she said — a concern that ordinary Americans understand as affecting affordability.

With little federal regulation and many states still developing rules, local governments have been the primary decisionmakers on data center projects. “It is very much a Wild West,” said Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council in Virginia. Localities often evaluate data centers the same way they would a Walmart or housing development, and many are the only ones who can turn down projects.

Opposition has moved from social media to packed city commission and town hall meetings, with angry residents citing noise, power demands, pollution, unsustainable water needs, environmental degradation and secrecy in deals. Since Meta began construction on the Louisiana site, residents have complained of brown, foul-smelling water; many now drink only bottled water, WWNO reported.

Voters are punishing elected officials who back projects. In Festus, Mo., four city council members lost their seats over a $6 billion data center. In Independence, Mo., two councilmembers were voted out after supporting a tax break for a large data center. In rural North Carolina, Vietnam War veteran David Batts threatened commissioners who approved a data center near his home — “We will primary you” — and later unseated a four-term incumbent in a Democratic primary.

State legislatures are responding to constituent pushback with a range of bills from eliminating tax incentives to moratoriums. Opposition often cuts across party lines. Maine’s Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a pause on most data center construction — the strongest state-level action so far. Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed for regulations to prevent ratepayer impacts; the Florida Legislature passed a bill to limit data centers’ water and energy use and regulate location.

Despite resistance, the economic lure remains strong. Data center developments bring construction jobs and property tax revenue. Bourgeois said Meta’s Richland Parish project in Louisiana amounts to $1.3 billion in construction wages and nearly $1 billion in tax revenue over five years. To secure these investments, states offer lucrative tax incentives: North Carolina exempts data centers from sales tax on electricity; Georgia provides sales tax breaks on computing equipment. Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, noted data centers are attractive to rural areas because they require few employees and don’t strain housing or schools; they can generate more property tax value than the county’s residents combined.

Some communities have embraced data centers. In Port Washington, Wis., leaders wrote special zoning codes to facilitate construction. Oklahoma officials say planned data centers will boost local school funding and help struggling towns.

Virginia is ground zero: it has by far the most data centers. The state Senate proposed eliminating the sales tax exemption for data centers, a break that has cost the state roughly $1.9 billion. The change has bipartisan support but is contentious. Keith Martin, interim president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, warned such rollbacks could damage Virginia’s competitiveness and reliability as a partner for industry.

The Sierra Club estimates nearly 1,300 data centers are built or in the pipeline in Virginia, totaling about 390 million square feet. Roughly 12,000 data centers operate worldwide, with about half in the U.S., according to Cloudscene.

On the national level, President Trump has both supported data center development and acknowledged community concerns. In July, he issued an executive order to accelerate federal permitting of data center infrastructure. In March, he announced a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” urging AI companies to build or procure the energy needed for their data centers and to protect consumers from price hikes; he also released a “National AI Legislative Framework” with suggested Congressional action. Policy analysts say these moves acknowledge affordability concerns but lack enforcement. “The enforcement mechanisms are so weak,” said Ronnie Kinoshita of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “The plan is not regulation. It’s not an executive order. It’s a nonbinding list of recommendations to Congress and contains no directives for the executive branch.”

Still, the administration’s interest underscores that the debate has grown from local to national and will be relevant in the midterm elections. “It is becoming harder and harder for our elected officials to turn a blind eye,” Bolthouse said.

METHODOLOGY: Data center locations were sourced from Data Center Map (snapshot as of March 19, 2026). A Python script spatially matched each site to 2025 congressional districts using Census TIGER/Line shapefiles. Boundaries reflect the 119th Congress and may not capture changes ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Counts include operational and planned facilities. Party affiliation was sourced from House.gov; for vacant seats, the most recent officeholder’s party was used.

At issue are millions of documents and electronic messages created or received by the White House: whether they remain presidential property subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA), or belong to the president personally. Columbia historian Matthew Connelly argues the administration’s approach amounts to trying to make the presidency “answerable to no one, not even the court of history,” and that it threatens the public’s right to hold leaders accountable.

The dispute traces to Watergate. In July 1974 the Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes to a special prosecutor; Nixon soon resigned. Congress placed Nixon’s materials in the custody of the National Archives and, in 1978, passed the PRA to apply that custodial principle to future presidents. President Jimmy Carter said the law would help ensure government “is not above the law.”

Administrations of both parties largely followed the PRA until this month, when the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo concluding the PRA is unconstitutional. T. Elliot Gaiser, head of OLC, wrote that the PRA “unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II,” and that it imposes “a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose.”

Supporters of expansive executive power welcomed the view. Gene Hamilton, former deputy White House counsel and head of America First Legal (AFL), called congressional regulation of presidential paperwork “insane” from a constitutional perspective. AFL published a white paper in 2023 asserting a president has sole authority over presidential records — months after Trump was indicted over alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. That criminal case was dropped after Trump won reelection.

The Mar-a-Lago searches and document controversies help explain the administration’s stance, historians say. Timothy Naftali, former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, describes the attack on the PRA as retroactive vindication for removing public property to a private resort. The American Historical Association, worried about possible destruction of records, sued the administration and asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to block officials from discarding presidential materials. The group and the watchdog American Oversight also challenged whether training the White House says it will provide actually applies to the president and vice president themselves.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump is “committed to preserving records from his historic Administration” and will implement a rigorous retention program and staff training. Historians and their lawyers remain skeptical that such promises protect the highest officials or that they replace the statutory protections the PRA provides.

Legal opponents note precedent: the Supreme Court upheld an earlier records-related law during the Nixon era, and they say the OLC memo disregards that settled law. Dan Jacobson, counsel for the historians, says the executive branch is effectively asserting the power to declare the Court wrong and ignore a law on that basis. Christopher Fonzone, a former Justice Department official, called the new OLC position “a bolt of lightning” unmatched by prior executive-branch or judicial opinions.

Historians warn of practical consequences. Records have led scholars to revise understandings of crises such as the Cuban missile standoff in 1962; if presidents can withhold or destroy materials at will, many episodes may remain obscured. Naftali framed the dispute as a question of accountability: if leaders can erase the record of their actions, how can they be held responsible?

Both sides are preparing to argue in court, with hearings expected early next month. The outcome will shape not just the fate of documents from this administration, but the rules governing presidential records for generations.

Virginia is holding a contentious referendum on whether to let the General Assembly adopt a new congressional map mid-decade. The proposed map would give Democrats an advantage in all but one of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats and could net them four seats. Democrats swept the 2025 statewide races, but Virginia remains competitive, and the referendum has appeared closely contested even as the pro-redistricting side has vastly outspent opponents.

Voters and analysts say campaign tactics have muddled the issue. Opposing groups have used contradictory mail, newspaper-style publications, recycled footage and similar-sounding committee names. That has left some Virginians unsure what a yes or no vote actually means.

Both sides have used high-profile images and videos. Former President Barack Obama has appeared in new ads urging a yes vote, while an anti-redistricting spot used a 2017 video of Obama criticizing gerrymandering. The campaigns have also repurposed past comments from Gov. Spanberger, who in 2019 said “gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy,” even though she now supports a mid-decade redistricting to advantage Democrats.

The names of the referendum committees have added to confusion: Virginians for Fair Elections is the group backing the yes vote, while Virginians for Fair Maps is the organized no campaign. TV ads and mailers sometimes suggest the opposite or present ambiguous endorsements. The pro-yes campaign ran a billboard in Page County featuring an image of Donald Trump and the line, “President Trump says, ‘Take over the voting,'” urging people to vote yes — a tactic designed to tie the issue to national messaging.

“Any confusion was created by defying court orders, misleading ballot language and the hypocrisy of politicians,” said Finn Lee, campaign manager for Virginians for Fair Maps, in an email defending his group’s ads as “educating voters.”

Communications consultant and Virginia Tech professor J. Andrew Kuypers warned that the jumble of messaging can cause decision fatigue and suppress turnout, benefitting the better-funded side. Still, early voting totals compiled by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project show turnout so far roughly comparable to last year’s statewide election when Spanberger was on the ballot.

Dark money and nonprofit spending are central to the dispute. Much of the campaign cash comes through 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups that do not have to disclose donors. Virginians for Fair Elections has reported more than $64 million in contributions, primarily from organizations that do not disclose donors, according to VPAP data. Major funders include the Fairness Project, a 501(c)(4), and House Majority Forward, a nonprofit tied to House Democratic leadership.

On the other side, Virginians for Fair Maps has received about $19 million from its own affiliated 501(c)(4). Another group, Justice for Democracy PAC, mailed material that juxtaposed images of the Ku Klux Klan with the text “They want to silence your voice.” That PAC has taken nearly $10 million from Per Aspera Policy Incorporated, a 501(c)(4) whose spending surged during the redistricting campaign, prompting questions about its donors.

Campaign mailers that mimic newspapers have also proliferated. The Virginia Independent — a glossy, free, election-related publication tied to American Independent Media, a 501(c)(4) — has printed recipes, health articles and pieces favorable to the pro-redistricting side. Critics, including The Federalist, called the mailers “campaign mailers masquerading as ‘newspapers.'” Editor Joe Conason defended the publication, saying the site has published since 2021 and that stories are fact-checked and reviewed by counsel to avoid violating nonprofit rules, while acknowledging the outlet has a perspective.

A major source of frustration is the ballot question itself. It asks: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

Republicans and some voters say the wording is slanted. “Promising to ‘restore fairness’ is not neutral framing,” Virginia House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore said in a statement. Voter Casey Czajkowski of Goochland County called the question misleading: “This is going to lead people to vote yes, 100%, just by reading the question.”

Campaign operatives on both sides have seized on past statements by national and state figures to bolster their cases. Virginians for Fair Maps’ ads have reused Obama’s older remarks against gerrymandering to argue against the mid-decade change, while the pro-yes side has highlighted national Republicans’ recent encouragement of redrawing maps to benefit their party in other states to frame the vote as a defensive move.

Amid the competing messages, some voters say they feel manipulated. Buerlein’s experience at her polling place — where a display suggested the governor opposed the referendum — is one example of the confusion voters report across the state. With large sums of undisclosed money behind both campaigns and mixed messaging in mail, on television and in the ballot language itself, many Virginians say they are unclear about what a yes or no vote will actually do.

The scans were part of Framerate: Desert Pulse, an art-and-data project commissioned by the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and created with London-based ScanLAB Projects. The installation pairs detailed 3D scans of Tucson-area desert plots — saguaros, prickly pear, ocotillo, cholla and more — with immersive video projections and a booming soundtrack by Pascal Wyse that uses found desert materials, including saguaro spines. Giant outdoor screens loop the imagery among living plants, and a separate room surrounds visitors with screens on walls, floor and ceiling.

ScanLAB technicians fired millions of laser pulses into garden beds every day for a year. Those lasers reflected off every surface to build perfect 3D models, producing billions of data points the team calls “digital dust.” Repeated scans captured minute, day-to-day changes: cacti swelling as they absorbed water, arms reaching skyward, sand shifted by humans and animals, pebbles moving, branches waggling, cholla pads clinging, weeds sprouting and then dying. The project also recorded human impacts on the landscape — a housing development creeping to the desert’s edge, a dairy farm, a Target parking lot and a landfill — images the artists say invite reflection on sustainability.

The work is at once celebration and warning, said Matthew Shaw, ScanLAB co-founder. “You see that it’s deteriorating, but it’s still giving life to everything around it,” Laura Spalding Best, the garden’s senior director of exhibits, said of the saguaro footage. Team members described the day the cactus fell as both exciting and sorrowful.

Beyond its artistic aims, the dataset offers scientists a rare, dense record of growth and change that would be hard to gather by visiting a site daily. Kim McCue, the garden’s vice president and chief research officer, said the scans already revealed behaviors researchers hadn’t expected: agaves repeatedly folding and unfolding their rosettes over days, for example. That raises questions about adaptive purposes — might the leaf movements protect against heat? — that the garden’s scientists can now investigate.

The lidar captures not only shape but subtler signals, too. Shaw noted that laser reflections can indicate moisture under a cactus’s skin, a feature that might help explain why some saguaros collapse. After the saguaro fell, the scanners continued to monitor the carcass for six months as it nourished wildlife and gradually returned to the desert floor, creating a detailed decomposition timeline that could inform efforts to protect other giants.

Parsing the enormous trove of data will take years, but the possibilities are wide. Garden researchers can quantify growth rates, phenology (timing of blooms), microtopography changes and how animals use particular structures. That information could guide conservation decisions, such as which areas need protection or how plants respond to extreme heat and drought.

There is precedent for turning ScanLAB’s art-driven data into scientific insight: work by the studio helped produce a peer-reviewed paper on coastal erosion in England, providing information useful for protecting infrastructure. Framerate: Desert Pulse similarly bridges art and science, giving the public an emotional entry point while producing a rigorous record for researchers.

The project’s creators and the garden hope the public-facing installation will spark curiosity about the desert’s complex life and about human impacts on it, even as scientists and technicians begin the long task of turning “digital dust” into conservation knowledge.

“My inglés no es muy malo,” López said in Spanish. “After they gave me instructions and taught me how to use the computer program, I froze. I felt sick.”

Florida long offered written tests in Spanish, but this February the state began requiring written and oral driving exams only in English, with no translators. The change, adopted by Republican leaders, came amid heightened rhetoric about immigration and followed a fatal crash less than a year earlier in which a commercial truck driver making an illegal U-turn killed three people on the Florida Turnpike. Gov. Ron DeSantis called the move “a good reform.”

Supporters say English-only testing promotes safety. “If you don’t know what road signs are saying, you’re more likely to get into a car accident that puts all of us in peril,” said state Rep. Berny Jacques (R-Seminole), who supports the requirement and noted Florida voters made English the state’s official language in 1988. Jacques, who was born in Haiti, said the rule will encourage immigrants to assimilate.

Critics argue the policy unfairly targets Hispanic and other minority communities and that there’s no evidence limited English proficiency makes drivers more hazardous. Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition warned the rule could push people to drive without licenses in a state with poor public transportation. “We’re going to create a class of people that are going to be criminalized for something as simple as picking up a prescription,” she said. She added the policy could particularly harm Puerto Ricans in Orlando and other non-English speakers across Florida.

The policy makes Florida one of only a few states with English-only driving tests — and the largest, by far, in terms of diversity. Roughly one in three Floridians speaks a language other than English at home.

Miami-Dade County, majority Hispanic and home to many Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers, has been particularly affected. The rule went fully into effect in April. Debate over language has long shaped Miami politics: after the Mariel boatlift in 1980, the county once limited taxpayer-funded programs in languages other than English, a measure later repealed in the early 1990s. Manny Díaz, a Cuban-American leader who helped repeal that ordinance and later served as Miami’s mayor, said he was disappointed by the state’s new requirement. “My first thought was, ‘My God, I thought we were done with this,’” Díaz said, calling the change unnecessary and harmful to a multilingual county.

At Speedway Driving School in Hialeah, which serves recent Latin American immigrants, instructors have redesigned lessons to help Spanish speakers navigate the English-only exam. Johannes González, who teaches at the school, says he can’t make students fluent in short classes. Instead he teaches mostly in Spanish while drilling key English words and test formats. He shows PowerPoint slides with sample questions and emphasizes words that share Latin roots with Spanish — for example, velocity and velocidad, pedestrian and peatón.

“Maximum highway speed, right? Seventy miles an hour. Te lo pongo en inglés, es más o menos igual. Maximum,” González told students in a mix of English and Spanish.

Classes have lengthened because more people fail the exam on their first try, so the school now charges a flat fee that allows students to attend as many sessions as needed. González says students over 50 struggle more with the format; Yuri Rodríguez, the school’s owner, said enrollments have dropped because many are afraid they won’t pass.

On a recent Saturday, eight students squeezed into a classroom decorated with road signs. Their backgrounds varied: one had moved from Colombia two weeks earlier; another, Yaima Fuentes Pérez, 41, arrived from Cuba just over a year ago and secured a green card after the English-only rule took effect. A former journalist, Fuentes said she needed a license to attend accounting classes and wished the test were available in Spanish. “I understand I live in the United States and English is the dominant language — but I also understand there are many Latinos who live in this country, especially in Florida,” she said in Spanish.

After weeks of study, Fuentes missed only one answer on the written test. López, however, failed again and returned to the classroom to continue memorizing keywords and practicing the test format, hopeful he can pass the next time.

Overnight, both sides launched strikes: Ukrainian drones targeted Russian assets in Black Sea ports, while Russia struck several regions across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence unit said it hit two Russian landing ships and destroyed a radar station in Sevastopol Bay. The agency said the vessels, each valued at about $150m, were successfully struck and radar equipment was destroyed.

In Russia, Ukrainian drones attacked the port of Tuapse, killing at least one person, wounding another and damaging transport infrastructure, regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev said. The strike was the second on the port in three days, coming hours after a blaze from a previous attack had been extinguished.

Russia’s Defence Ministry reported that air defences destroyed 112 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Ukraine reported a series of Russian attacks on its territory in the same period, including strikes in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Sumy and Zaporizhia regions. Drones struck a car in Putyvl in Sumy region, injuring three women, and hit two homes in Kyiv’s Brovary district, damaging them and injuring one person, Ukrainian officials said.

“My night, the enemy is again attacking the Kyiv region with drones. Under the sights are peaceful people, homes,” Kyiv regional military administration head Mykola Kalashnyk said.

Russian attacks also damaged railway infrastructure in Kharkiv, according to Interfax-Ukraine. Ukrainian officials said that in the past 24 hours fighting in Kherson killed one person and injured seven, while four people were wounded in Zaporizhia.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion more than four years ago, Moscow’s forces have hit civilian areas almost daily, sometimes with large assaults. The United Nations estimates more than 15,000 Ukrainian civilians have died in the strikes.

There have been several rounds of US-brokered negotiations in recent months, but they have not yielded an agreement to halt the fighting. The diplomatic process was further stalled after the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Iran. Even before that, talks made little progress because of disagreements over territory: Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along current front lines, while Russia demands control of the whole of Donetsk region, including areas still held by Ukraine — a demand Kyiv calls unacceptable.

U.S. Customs is launching the first phase of payouts, so not all imports covered by the court’s decision will immediately qualify. Federal guidance says that once refund requests are approved, it could take 60 to 90 days to return money to the importer. The launch is the first tangible step after the high court’s ruling two months ago; the court did not specify a refund process, and officials initially warned the task could be unwieldy.

“Small businesses organized, spoke out, and won a major victory,” said Main Street Alliance. “Now, the federal government must follow through with a refund process that truly works for Main Street.”

Customs estimates it owes $166 billion in tariff refunds. Agency filings indicate the initial phase will address the majority of affected imports. A Customs official told a judge that most eligible importers signed up for electronic payments — a requirement for the first phase — and that this group is owed about $127 billion.

Economists and legal experts say shoppers will probably not see refunds directly. Tariff costs are often embedded across supply chains — manufacturers, suppliers, importers and retailers can each absorb portions of the cost — and with tariffs imposed amid historic inflation, many companies say they shouldered much of the burden to avoid alarming customers.

Retailers face particular uncertainty because refunds will go to whoever paid the customs bill. Many store owners paid tariff surcharges indirectly via higher wholesale prices. “I plan to have conversations with a number of manufacturers and hope that they will do the right thing and share some of the tariff refund money with us,” says Joe Kimray, owner of B & W Hardware in North Carolina. “I don’t expect to get a direct refund check from anyone, but it could be even as simple as offering discounts on the wholesale cost of future product purchases.”

Shoppers seeking reimbursement have filed class-action suits against companies including Costco and FedEx. FedEx has pledged to pass any refunds it receives through to customers. Costco’s CEO told investors the company would return value to shoppers through lower prices and transparency about its plans.

Customs’ initial phase focuses on tariff payments that haven’t been finalized because they’re still under federal review; import duties are typically paid at the border and resolved in a customs review that can take nearly a year. The government is rolling out a new system called CAPE to process refunds and will later handle older, finalized payments.

When asked about the scale of the first-phase workload, a CBP spokesperson said CAPE was developed “to efficiently process refunds” and directed importers and brokers to updated tariff-refund guidance.

NPR’s Scott Horsley contributed to this report.