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Yemen’s Houthis threaten escalation after American strike using 5,000-pound bunker-buster bomb
Hodeida, Yemen — Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on Friday threatened to escalate attacks on Red Sea shipping after overnight strikes by the United States and Britain that the rebels said killed 16 people.
Three officials told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin on Friday that the U.S. used a 5,000-pound bunker-buster bomb as part of the joint strike against Houthi targets. The GBU-72 bomb was dropped by a U.S. Air Force jet in an effort to destroy an underground Houthi facility. One official said the bomb hit the target, but it wasn’t yet clear if it had been destroyed or if there were any civilian casualties.
The Houthis, who control much of Yemen, said 16 people were killed and 40 more wounded, including an unspecified number of civilians, but there was no independent confirmation of those numbers. If confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest strikes since the U.S. and the U.K. started their campaign in January against the Houthis, whose rocket attacks have severely disrupted the vital Red Sea trade route.
The Iran-backed Houthis have carried out scores of drone and missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, including U.S. warships, since November, citing solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the Israel-Hamas war.
Khaled Abdullah/REUTERS
The U.S. Central Command, CENTCOM, said 13 Houthi sites were targeted in the latest strikes.
“The American-British aggression will not prevent us from continuing our military operations,” Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti said on X, formerly Twitter, vowing to “meet escalation with escalation.”
In response, the rebels launched a missile attack on the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea, according to Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree, who added that the group “will not hesitate to respond directly and immediately to every new aggression on Yemeni territories.”
U.S. military officials did not immediately comment on the Houthi claim to have targeted the USS Eisenhower.
U.S. Navy
Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Al-Masirah TV network broadcast a video showing bloodied men wounded in a purported strike on a building housing a radio station in the western port city of Hodeida. The channel showed victims receiving treatment at a hospital, although the authenticity of the images could not be independently verified.
A hospital employee in Hodeida said many militants were among those killed and wounded in the attack but was unable to give exact figures.
The British defense ministry said its warplanes launched strikes in “a joint operation with U.S. forces against Houthi military facilities.”
The ministry said intelligence indicated two sites near Hodeida were involved in the attacks on shipping, “with a number of buildings identified as housing drone ground control facilities and providing storage for very long-range drones, as well as surface-to-air weapons.”
Another “command and control” site had been identified further south, it said in a statement.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said “the strikes were taken in self-defense against an ongoing threat,” adding the rebels had carried out 197 attacks since November.
CENTCOM said the strikes were “necessary to protect our forces, ensure freedom of navigation, and make international waters safer and more secure.”
Iran condemned the U.S.-U.K. military action, saying it aims to “spread insecurity in the region.”
The “governments of the United States and the United Kingdom are responsible for the consequences of these crimes against the Yemeni people,” said its foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani.
Since January, the United States and Britain have launched repeated strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the rebels’ harassment of shipping. In February, the Houthis held a mass funeral in Sanaa for 17 fighters they said were killed in U.S. and British strikes.
The U.S. and British strikes have not stamped out the campaign by the rebels, who have vowed to target American and British vessels as well as all ships heading to Israeli ports.
The Houthis also said they had shot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone with a surface-to-air missile, claiming it was the sixth such aircraft they have downed in recent months.
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Kansas’ highest court on Friday struck down state laws regulating abortion providers more strictly than other health care professionals and banning a common second-trimester procedure, reaffirming its stance that the state constitution protects abortion access.
The Kansas Supreme Court’s 5-1 rulings in two separate cases signal that the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature faces stricter limits on regulating abortion than GOP lawmakers thought and suggests other restrictions could fall. Lawsuits in lower state courts already are challenging restrictions on medication abortions, a ban on doctors using teleconferences to meet with patients, rules for what doctors must tell patients before an abortion and a requirement that patients wait 24 hours after receiving information about a procedure to terminate their pregnancies.
“We stand by our conclusion that section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights protects a fundamental right to personal autonomy, which includes a pregnant person’s right to terminate a pregnancy,” Justice Eric Rosen wrote for the majority in overturning the ban on dilation and evacuation, also known as D&E.
The panel found that the state had failed to meet “its evidentiary burden to show the Challenged Laws further its interests in protection of maternal health and regulation of the medical profession as it relates to maternal health,” Justice Melissa Standridge wrote in the majority opinion on the clinic regulations.
Justice K.J. Wall did not participate in either ruling on Friday, while Justice Caleb Stegall was the lone dissenter.
Stegall, who was appointed by conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, is widely regarded as the court’s most conservative member.
Kansas’ top court declared in a 2019 decision that abortion access is a matter of bodily autonomy and a “fundamental” right under the state constitution. Voters in August 2022 also decisively rejected a proposed amendment that would have explicitly declared abortion not a fundamental right and allowed state lawmakers to greatly restrict or ban it.
Lawyers for the state had urged the justices to walk back their 2019 ruling and uphold the two laws, which haven’t been enforced because of the legal battles over them. The state’s solicitor general, appointed by Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, had argued the 2022 vote didn’t matter in determining whether the laws could stand.
The court disagreed and handed abortion-rights supporters a big legal victory.
Kansas has become an outlier among states with Republican-controlled Legislatures since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision in June 2022, allowing states to ban abortion completely. That’s led to an influx of patients from states with more restrictive laws, particularly Oklahoma and Texas. The Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, projected last month that about 20,000 abortions were performed in Kansas in 2023 or 152% more than in 2020.
Kansas doesn’t ban most abortions until the 22nd week of pregnancy, but it requires minors obtain the written consent of their parents or a guardian. Other requirements, including the 24-hour waiting period and what a provider must tell patients, have been put on hold. A lower court is considering a challenge to them by providers.
Abortion opponents argued ahead of the August 2022 vote that failing to change the state constitution would doom long-standing restrictions enacted under past GOP governors. Kansas saw a flurry of new restrictions under former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback from 2011 through 2018.
The health and safety rules aimed specifically at abortion providers were enacted in 2011. Supporters said they would protect women’s health – though there was no evidence provided then documenting that such rules in other states led to better health outcomes. Providers said the real goal was to force them out of business.
The other law was the first of its kind in the nation when enacted in 2015 and deals with a certain type of dilation and evacuation, or D&E, procedure performed during the second trimester.
According to state health department statistics, about 600 D&E procedures were done in Kansas in 2022, accounting for 5% of the state’s total abortions. About 88% of the state’s abortions occurred in the first trimester. The state has yet to release statistics for 2023.
The D&E procedure ban would have forced providers to use alternative methods that the Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion-rights advocacy group, has said are riskier for the patient and more expensive.
The 2019 ruling came in the early stages of the lawsuit over the 2015 ban. The justices kept the law on hold but sent the case back to the trial court to examine the ban further. A trial judge said the law could not stand.
Three of the court’s seven justices joined the court since the 2019 decision. All three were appointed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, a strong abortion-rights supporter, but one of the three, Justice K.J. Wall, removed himself from the cases.
Frustrated singles are breaking up with dating apps.
Last year Americans downloaded dating apps more than 36 million times, which is down 16% from 2020.
“The way people are using dating apps today and the speed of communication. It’s swipe, swipe, swipe, onto the date. Getting ghosted, getting frustrated, being burned out. Wash, rinse and repeat,” said dating coach Damona Hoffman, who is also the author of “F the Fairytale.”
Hoffman said an increasing number of her clients are feeling what she calls “dating app burnout,” which is stress and fatigue caused by endless swiping.
She said she sees too much “zombie dating.” It’s a term she came up with to describe the behavior she sees on dating apps. She defines it as mindless scrolling, searching for validation and not meaningful connection, and talking to too many people.
“A lot of these DMs and texts, they don’t go anywhere. So that’s really leading to the dating burnout because we get our hopes up. Our adrenaline goes up and then it’s like withdrawal when the person doesn’t materialize into a date.”
Hoffman met her husband online and knows firsthand how frustrating it can be, but said the goal is for connection and users need to apply more empathy.
“We’re feeling this sense of, I call it the communication crisis that we’re in, and you feel it even if you’re not dating. You feel this ‘everybody’s talking but we’re not saying anything.'”
She suggests “dating hygiene,” which is being strategic with your time, eliminating go-nowhere connections and taking stock of your profile on dating apps by tracking reactions and responses.
“Which of the dates and conversations are actually turning into something real, so that you’re not putting all of this energy into connections that don’t make you feel good first of all, or materialize into a relationship.”
Hoffman, who also hosts a podcast called “Dates and Mates,” advises speaking to the individual on the app for just one week before meeting in person.
“The whole goal of dating apps is to meet in person so what happens when you stay in the texting trap and you stay on the app too long, you develop a false sense of intimacy.”
Hoffman said she wants to help people feel more in control of their dating destiny and as a professional who has helped people find love for almost 20 years both online and offline, she disagrees with the saying “you will find love when you least expect it.”
“When people approach dating mindfully, strategically, they get results,” she said. “They get to the relationship.”
If you’re sick of swiping, she suggests attending events, try speed dating, hire a matchmaker or engage in your community to make connections.
The CEO of Match Group, the company that owns Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge and Match.com, said late last year that they are “optimistic about the future” and that he expects to see the decline in paid users “moderating.”
