United States (U.S.) Navy has effectively implemented the naval blockade of Iran and has turned back nine ships in just the first 48 hours of the blockade.

The blockade was announced by the U.S. President Donald Trump after Iran and U.S. officials failed to reach an agreement during Islamabad Talks, on Sunday, in Pakistan.

In an update on Wednesday, April 15, 2025, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) that vessel reversed course without the need to fire shots, adding that at least five of those ships were carrying oil.

CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper said that an estimated 90% of the Iranian economy is fueled by trade through sea, adding, “U.S. forces have completely halted economic trade going into and out of Iran by sea.”

Thousands of U.S. service members, including 5,000 Sailors and Marines from the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, are carrying out operations to enforce the blockade of ships entering and departing Iranian ports.

CENTCOM said: “U.S. forces are present, vigilant, and ready to ensure compliance.”

It warned that the American forces were ready to act against any vessel trying to violate the blockade.

Pakistan, acting as a mediator, is attempting to secure a cessation of hostilities between both countries and have intensified its diplomatic efforts. Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir arrived in Tehran to arrange a second round of talks.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also embarked on an official diplomatic visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye in a bid to end the Iran war. 

Golden Globe-winning actor and comedian Ramy Youssef talks about his new comedy special, “Ramy Youssef: In Love,” which tackles topics like AI and religion but through a “lens of love.” He explains his inspiration and how he includes personal stories about his family and marriage.

Anthropic’s Claude AI is reportedly down on Wednesday, April 15.

As reported by Downdetector, over 15,000 users have reported the incident. The major problem of outage is connectivity issues.

The service disruption started in the early morning hours, with users increasingly reporting issues.

By 8:02 a.m. PT, over 7,000 users had reported problems.

Within 25 minutes, the outage reports escalated to double, surpassing 15,000 affected users.

46% of the users cited the problem in Claude code, while 24% referred to the problems in Claude chat. On the other hand, 18% reported a problem with the mobile app.

Users report that login failures and website accessibility issues also prevail.

Anthropic’s status page revealed that the organization had confirmed that it was “investigating the problem.” However, at 8:08 a.m. PT, the status changed to show that a “fix is being rolled out.”

By 8:25 a.m. PT, Anthropic stated that “the Claude API is now fully recovered as of 8:01 PT/16:01 UTC.”

In the official statement, Claude acknowledged the issue, writing: “We are currently working on mitigating the ongoing errors for Claude AI. Claude Code users who are logged in are still able to use it, but logging in is still broken.”