Iran, Israel playing down recent air strike

JERUSALEM — Israel and Iran on Friday both played down an apparent Israeli airstrike near a major air base and nuclear site in central Iran, signaling the two bitter enemies are ready to prevent their latest eruption of violence from escalating into a full-blown regional war.

But the indecisive outcome of weeks of tensions — which included an alleged Israeli strike that killed two Iranian generals, an unprecedented Iranian missile barrage on Israel and the apparent Israeli strike early Friday in the heart of Iran — did little to resolve the deeper grievances between the foes and left the door open to further fighting.

“It appears we’re closer than ever to a broad regional war, despite the fact that the international community will most likely make a great effort to de-escalate tensions,” wrote Amos Harel, the military-affairs commentator for the Israeli daily Haaretz.

Israel has long considered Iran to be its greatest enemy — citing the Islamic Republic’s calls for Israel’s destruction, its controversial nuclear program and its support for hostile proxies across the Middle East.

JUNEAU, Alaska — The Biden administration said Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.

The decision — part of a yearslong fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state — finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Democratic administration prepared to approve the contentious Willow oil project.

The approval of Willow drew fury from environmentalists, who said the large oil project violated President Joe Biden’s pledge to combat climate change. Friday’s decision also completes an earlier plan that called for closing nearly half the reserve to oil and gas leasing.

A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, jumped out ahead of Friday’s announcement about the new limitations in the National Petroleum-Reserve Alaska before it was publicly announced. Sullivan called it an “illegal” attack on the state’s economic lifeblood, and he predicted lawsuits.

BILLINGS, Mont. — The Biden administration on Thursday finalized a new rule for public land management that’s meant to put conservation on more equal footing with oil drilling, grazing and other extractive industries on vast government-owned properties.

Officials pushed past strong opposition from private industry and Republican governors to adopt the proposal. GOP members of Congress said in response that they will seek to invalidate it.

The rule from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — which oversees more than 380,000 square miles of land, primarily in the U.S. West — will allow public property to be leased for restoration in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling.

Millions of people around the world will pause on Monday, at least for a moment, to mark Earth Day. It’s an annual event founded by people who hoped to stir activism to clean up and preserve a planet that is now home to some 8 billion humans and assorted trillions of other organisms.

Earth Day has its roots in growing concern over pollution in the 1960s, when author Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” about the pesticide DDT and its damaging effects on the food chain, hit bestseller lists and raised awareness about nature’s delicate balance.

But it was a senator from Wisconsin, Democrat Gaylord Nelson, who had the idea that would become Earth Day. Nelson had long been concerned about the environment when a massive offshore oil spill sent millions of gallons onto the southern California coast in 1969. Nelson, after touring the spill site, had the idea of doing a national “teach-in” on the environment, similar to teach-ins being held on some college campuses at the time to oppose the war in Vietnam.

DENVER — The 12 students and one teacher killed in the Columbine High School shooting were remembered Friday in a vigil on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the tragedy.

The gathering, set up by gun safety and other organizations, is the main public event marking the anniversary, which is more subdued than in previous milestone years.

Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who began campaigning for gun safety after she was nearly killed in a mass shooting, was among those speaking at the vigil. So was Nathan Hochhalter, whose sister Anne Marie was paralyzed after she was shot at Columbine. Several months after the shooting, their mother, Carla Hochhalter, took her own life.

The organizers of the vigil, which will also honor all those impacted by the shooting, include Colorado Ceasefire, Brady United Against Gun Violence and Colorado Faith Communities United Against Gun Violence,

but they say it will not be a political event.

The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by

federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday by the Biden administration.

The new provisions are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden. He had promised to dismantle rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who added new protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, is any mention of transgender athletes.

The administration originally planned to include a new policy forbidding schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes, but that provision was put on hold. The delay is widely seen as a political maneuver during an election year in which Republicans have rallied around bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

Instead, Biden is officially undoing sexual assault rules put in place by his predecessor and current election-year opponent, former President Donald Trump. The final policy drew praise from victims’ advocates, while Republicans said it erodes the rights of accused students.

SEATTLE — Today marks marijuana culture’s high

holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts.

This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital.

Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.

The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” with its refrain of “Everybody must get stoned” — 420 being the product of 12 times 35.

New York lawmakers are proposing rules to humanely

drive down the population of rats and other rodents, eyeing contraception and a ban on glue traps as alternatives to poison or a slow, brutal death.

Politicians have long come up with creative ways to battle the rodents, but some lawmakers are now proposing city and statewide measures to do more.

In New York City, the idea to distribute rat contraceptives got fresh attention in city government Thursday following the death of an escaped zoo owl, known as Flaco, who was found dead with rat poison in his system.

City Council Member Shaun Abreu proposed a city ordinance Thursday that would establish a pilot program for controlling the millions of rats lurking in subway stations and empty lots by using birth control instead of lethal chemicals.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A man died in a fire under an Atlan

tic City pier near a homeless encampment, authorities said.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday that Bruce Eder, 67, died in a fire that began Thursday evening under the Central Pier at the boardwalk and Tennessee Avenue.

Fire Chief Scott Evans said Eder was believed to be homeless, and the prosecutor’s office said he appeared to be sleeping when the fire broke out. An autopsy was to be performed to determine his cause of death.

The prosecutor’s office said “a small homeless encampment was observed in the area of the fire,’’ adding a small campfire had been set near where Eder’s body was found.

“Although the fire was intentionally set, it does not appear to be criminal in nature,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Tesla is recalling 3,878 of its 2024 Cybertrucks after it

discovered that the accelerator pedal can become stuck, potentially causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally and increase the risk of a crash.

The accelerator pedal pad may dislodge and become trapped by the interior trim, according to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.