A man detained in Bahrain last month as the island kingdom came under missile attack from Iran vanished for days, until his family was called to retrieve his body from a military hospital. Relatives said Mohamed al-Mousawi, a Shiite Muslim who had previously been imprisoned, was saving money to start a business. His body was returned covered in slash marks and bruising, including on the soles of his feet. His death has become a flashpoint in the Sunni-ruled, Shiite-majority country on the war’s front lines, where critics say authorities have revived tactics used to suppress Arab Spring protests in 2011. Bahrain, a monarchy that hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, has arrested dozens of people throughout the war for filming strikes and demonstrations, expressing support for Iran, and on suspicion of spying for it. “They want to make sure nobody challenges the state’s narrative and silence any voices not telling the story (of the war) how they want it to be told,” said Sayed Ahmed AlWadaei of the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy. Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said al-Mousawi was arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran, allegations denied by his family, and that images of his wounds were “inaccurate and misleading.” Bahrain’s government said in a statement that the country is defending its national security. It denied any sectarianism, saying authorities have acted lawfully and that independent bodies investigate allegations of abuse. Al-Mousawi served about 11 years of a 21-year prison sentence on charges including arson and belonging to a terrorist cell before being released in 2024 as part of a royal amnesty. A relative and a close family friend, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said al-Mousawi disappeared on March 19 after attending prayers with two friends who also have not been seen since. Rights groups have long accused Bahrain of enforced disappearances. On March 27, his family received a call to collect his body. The relative, who saw it at the morgue, said al-Mousawi appeared to have been whipped with cables. He said there were apparent electrocution burns, including behind his knees, and cigarette burns elsewhere on the body. The AP separately reviewed images of al-Mousawi’s body, which bore marks described by a total of five witnesses who saw it in person. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said al-Mousawi had been held by the National Security Agency. As part of reforms following the 2011 protests, the domestic spy service was stripped of its powers to arrest over abuse allegations. But they were restored in 2017 as Bahrain deepened a long-running campaign to suppress dissent. The Interior Ministry said images of “injuries sustained by the deceased are inaccurate and misleading and have been deliberately disseminated to mislead public opinion,” without elaborating. The death certificate from the military hospital said he died of a heart attack. His family said the 32-year-old had no preexisting conditions. Ahmed Banasr, a forensic expert with the New York-based Physicians for Human Rights, said the wounds in the images were consistent with blunt force trauma. Wounds on the soles of his feet help rule out other explanations, such as a fight or fall. “The findings are highly consistent with alleged torture,” he said. Al-Mousawi was among dozens of Bahraini Shiites ensnared in a crackdown that critics say has escalated since Israel and the U.S. launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28. Rights groups see the arrests and al-Mousawi’s death as a new phase in Bahrain’s long-running campaign of repression that reached a peak in 2011 as pro-democracy uprisings swept the region. That year, the ruling Al Khalifa family crushed mass demonstrations with help from troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Periodic unrest has continued since, with the government casting the mostly Shiite protesters as Iranian proxies. Unlike other Sunni monarchies in the Gulf, Bahrain — like Iran — has a Shiite majority. “It really remains to be seen how far the government is going to go in its crackdown on people,” said   Maryam al-Khawaja, a Bahraini activist living abroad whose father is jailed in Bahrain. “What we’re seeing right now is definitely a lot more heavy-handed than we have in the past few years.” Bahrain’s government said its security measures are “a direct and proportionate response” to Iran’s attacks. “The individuals arrested include those who filmed military and strategic sites during an active attack on Bahraini territory, those who passed sensitive information, and those who publicly expressed support for a state that had just launched strikes against Bahraini soil,” it said. “To present arrests made on the basis of conduct as evidence of sectarian persecution and conflate the two — is a framing that we firmly and unequivocally reject,” it added. Since the war’s start, at least 41 people — including migrant workers — have been arrested for sharing images of what authorities described as “Iranian aggression,” or for expressing sympathy for it. Some are accused of treason — a charge that can carry a life sentence or the death penalty. Bahrain has tallied more than 600 Iranian drone and missile strikes, which have killed at least two people and struck infrastructure, including a desalination plant, an oil refinery and an aluminum smelter. Iran has also repeatedly targeted the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters. Some demonstrators have mourned the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and celebrated strikes on Bahrain, according to videos seen by AP. They also show firebombs being thrown and cars set ablaze. The day after the war began, 21-year-old Hussein Fatiil and a friend posted social media videos of themselves waving a poster of Iran’s supreme leader at a protest outside the U.S. Embassy. Minutes later, plainclothes officers took them away in an unmarked car. The men resurfaced hours later, calling home from a police station after being interrogated, Hussein’s father, Naji Fatiil, told the AP. Three days later, Hussein called his family again and said he’d been charged with five offenses, including misusing social media and inciting hatred and treason, his father said. “The charges are extremely serious and exaggerate what happened,” he said, adding his son said the protest outside the embassy was peaceful. “Now he might be charged with the most severe punishment. All I want is for my son to have a normal life and not be sentenced to death.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state’s voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground. The lawmakers’ failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session. “They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature. Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes. But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement. “We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider. House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson’s plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn’t use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution. “The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump’s backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.” A spokesperson for Jones didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday. Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed. “This is uncharted territory,” he said. Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.” Republican House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year. “You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said. Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session. A spokesperson for Kemp didn’t answer questions about what the outgoing Republican governor would do. Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November. Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible. “They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it,” Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed. Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said. “If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said. Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner. Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so. Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem. “This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran fired on targets across the Middle East, sparking multiple blazes at a Kuwaiti oil refinery, while American and Israeli airstrikes hit the Islamic Republic on Friday as the war neared the end of its fifth week unabated. The U.N. Security Council prepared to meet over Tehran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Despite claims from the U.S. and Israel that Iran’s military capabilities have been all but destroyed, Tehran has continued to keep the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors, hitting Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery early Friday in a drone attack. The refinery has been hit multiple times during the war and state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. said firefighters were working to control several blazes. Kuwait also said that an Iranian attack damaged a desalination plant. Such plants provide the majority of the water for the Gulf Arab states and much of it for Iran. Sirens also sounded in Bahrain warning of Iranian attacks, Saudi Arabia said it had destroyed several Iranian drones, defenses were activated in the United Arab Emirates and Israel reported incoming missiles. Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, but it wasn’t immediately clear what was hit. Iran’s attacks on Gulf region energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have sent oil prices skyrocketing and is impacting global economies. Spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, were around $109 early Friday, up more than 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war with their attacks on Iran. Shipping had flowed freely through the strait before the war, but U.S. President Donald Trump has said it’s not now Washington’s responsibility to get the waterway reopened, instead putting the onus on others, saying this week that the countries that depend more on fuel shipped through Hormuz should “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.” The U.N. Security Council was expected to vote Saturday on a proposal from Bahrain that would authorize defensive action to ensure vessels can safely transit the strait. Bahrain’s initial draft would have allowed countries to “use all necessary means” to secure the strait, but Russia, China and France — who have veto power on the Council — expressed opposition to approving the use of force. Following meetings in Seoul between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and French President Emmanuel Macron, the two leaders said they resolved to “cooperate to ensure safe passage” through the strait but did not offer specifics. The day before, Macron had said the American expectation that the waterway could be reopened by force was unrealistic. Macron said a military operation “would take an infinite amount of time and would expose anyone passing through the strait to coastal threats from (Iran’s) Revolutionary Guard.” He added that reopening of the strait “can only be done in coordination with Iran,” through negotiations that would follow a potential ceasefire. Thousands of U.S. Marines and paratroopers have been ordered to the region and Trump could try a ground operation to take Iran’s Kharg Island, its main oil terminal, or territory along the strait, but both carry significant risks, former CIA Director Bill Burns said on a Foreign Affairs magazine podcast. “Then there’s the third option, which is effectively declaring victory and the inversion of the old Colin Powell Pottery Barn rule, which was ‘We break it, we own it,’” Burns said, referencing a comment attributed to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “Instead, it would be, ‘We break it, you own it, and it’s over to you guys,’ whether it’s European allies or Gulf Arabs or anybody else to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.” The U.S. has presented Iran with a 15-point plan for a ceasefire that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but no signs of progress were apparent in the diplomatic effort, with Iran regularly noting the U.S. has attacked the nation the last two times it was in negotiations with the Trump administration, including to start this war. In a proposal published Friday in Foreign Affairs, Iran’s former top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested, however, that Iran should now “use its upper hand” to make a ceasefire deal. Zarif, the former foreign minister who helped reach the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, wrote that Tehran “should offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions — a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now.” While Zarif has no official position now in Iran’s theocracy, he helped get reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian elected. He also would not have been able to publish such a piece without at least running the positions past senior members of the country’s theocracy. It is not clear how Trump would respond to such a pitch, particularly as Zarif referred to the envoys Trump sent previously to negotiate with Iran — close friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner — as “completely illiterate on both geopolitics and nuclear technicalities.” More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed. More than 1,300 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion in its fight with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant group. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there. ___ Rising reported from Bangkok. AP journalists Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Iran fired missiles at Israel and some Gulf nations, setting alight a refinery in Kuwait, while explosions could be heard around Tehran and the central Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday, as the United States prepared to further reinforce its already significant military forces in the Middle East. As the war that began Feb. 28 was to enter its sixth week, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait warned about incoming missile fire, although it was unclear if anything was struck. Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan but it wasn’t immediately clear what was hit. Iranian drones struck Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery Friday, sparking fires at the facility. The state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. issued a statement on the attack, the third so far since the war began, and said firefighters were working to control the blazes. There were no injuries reported, the company said. Iran’s attacks on Gulf region energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, has sent oil prices skyrocketing. Oil prices surged while Asian financial markets rose moderately during cautious trading. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 11.4% to $111.54 a barrel. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 per barrel. U.S. President Donald Trump said U.S. forces will keep hitting Iran “very hard” in the next two or three weeks. The largest American aircraft carrier in service sailed out of Split, in Croatia and “remains poised for full mission tasking in support of national objectives in any area of operation,” the Navy’s 6th Fleet announced. It was unclear where it was going. The USS Abraham Lincoln remains in the Arabian Sea and the USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier departed Norfolk on Wednesday to head to the Mideast. Here is the latest: Kuwait said Friday an Iranian attack damaged a desalination plant. The attack came after an oil refinery was hit by drones Friday morning. Kuwait said without elaborating that the attack on the desalination plant caused “material damage to some of the plant’s components.” Desalination provides the majority of the water for the Gulf Arab states and Iran, drawing the salty waters of the Persian Gulf into drinking water for the desert region. About 90% of drinking water in Kuwait comes from desalination. Desalination plants have become a major target in the war, with Iran initially accusing the U.S. and Israel of striking one before beginning to target them in the Gulf Arab states. Those states view attacks on desalination plants as a threat to their very livelihoods. Iran’s former top diplomat suggested Tehran could down-blend its highly enriched uranium in a deal to end the war. Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested Iran could enrich uranium below 3.67%, the level set by the 2015 nuclear deal U.S. President Donald Trump pulled America out of in 2018. However, Trump has maintained Iran must have no enrichment. Zarif also suggested the inclusion of China and Russia in any deal to do a single uranium enrichment site for all of the region, where Iran “would transfer all its enriched material and equipment to that space.” That is a proposal suggested in previous rounds of talks. Zarif also suggests Washington and Tehran could “explore dispatching diplomats to serve in their respective interest sections, restoring consular services and removing travel restrictions on each other’s citizens.” The U.S. and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since 1980, when President Jimmy Carter severed ties over the hostage crisis. Iran’s former top diplomat offered terms Friday to see a ceasefire in the war with the United States and Israel. Mohammad Javad Zarif, who helped reach the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, made the proposal in Foreign Affairs magazine in a piece published Friday. While Zarif has no official position now in Iran’s theocracy, he helped get reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian elected. He also would not have been able to publish such a piece without at least running the positions past senior members of the country’s theocracy. While insisting Iran “is clearly winning” the war, Zarif wrote that Tehran “should offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions — a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now.” It remains unclear how U.S. President Donald Trump would respond to such a pitch, particularly as Zarif referred to Trump’s close friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as “completely illiterate on both geopolitics and nuclear technicalities.” A team searching a Thai ship that was struck near the Strait of Hormuz on March 11 has found human remains onboard, the Thai Foreign Ministry said Friday. The Mayuree Naree was hit by a projectile just north of Oman. Three of its crew members were declared missing. The search team was hired by the ship’s owner, Precious Shipping Co. The company and the ministry did not say when the ship was searched or its current location. A previous search of the vessel was disclosed March 30. The ministry said the team has not been able to immediately verify the identity of the remains, which were found in a damaged area of the ship. Former CIA director Bill Burns is warning the crisis over Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz could become a case of “we break it, you own it” for America’s allies. Burns, a former State Department diplomat, made the observation in a podcast by Foreign Affairs magazine. He noted U.S. President Donald Trump could try a ground operation to take Iran’s Kharg Island, its main oil terminal, or territory along the strait, but both carry significant risks. “Then there’s the third option, which is effectively declaring victory and the inversion of the old Colin Powell Pottery Barn rule, which was ‘we break it, we own it,’” Burns said, referencing a comment attributed to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “Instead, it would be, ‘we break it, you own it, and it’s over to you guys,’ whether it’s European allies or Gulf Arabs or anybody else to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.” Former CIA director Bill Burns has described the U.S.-Israeli war launched against Iran as “a war of choice” that may have only further empowered the most hard-line elements within its theocracy. Burns, a former State Department diplomat, made the observation in a podcast by Foreign Affairs magazine. “This is a regime that is inept at many things like managing its economy, but it is designed to preserve itself and designed to repress its own people and designed to withstand even the decapitation of its senior leadership,” said Burns, who secretly negotiated with the Iranians ahead of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers during the Obama administration. Burns also disagreed with U.S. President Donald Trump’s assessment that there had been a “regime change” in the airstrike campaign killing top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “In some ways, it’s certainly a much weaker regime, but it’s also one that’s even nastier and more radical and, you know, less open,” he said. He added that Iran’s theocracy thought “victory is survival.” “I’ve believed for a long time that this is a regime that’s on a kind of one-way street to its eventual collapse, but I worry that, you know, in this war, what we’ve done rather than accelerate that moment of collapse is slow it down a little bit,” Burns said. French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung agreed Friday to work together to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and ease global economic uncertainties caused by the war in the Middle East. In a televised briefing after their meeting in Seoul, Macron underscored the need for France and South Korea to cooperate to help reopen the strait and de-escalate Middle East animosities. Lee said the two affirmed “their resolves to cooperate to secure the safe shipping route in the Strait of Hormuz.” The two leaders did not elaborate on how they would help reopen the strait and took no questions. Macron was making his first visit to South Korea since taking office in 2017. Iranian drones struck Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery Friday, sparking fires at the facility. The state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. issued a statement on the attack and said firefighters were working to control the blazes . There were no injuries reported, the company said. Kuwait has blamed Iran, as well as Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, for drone attacks targeting the small, oil-rich nation on the northern edge of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait operates three oil refineries. Mina al-Ahmadi has come under attack at least three times in the war so far. Refineries are key to Kuwait’s oil production because without them, oil wells would have to be shut down for lack of a destination for the oil. Restarting refineries is extremely time consuming for safety reasons and those wells would remain largely inactive until refineries are back on line. Oil prices continued to surge on worries of a prolonged Iran war but the Asian markets that were open Friday rose moderately in cautious trading, while others were closed for the Good Friday holidays. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 11.4% to $111.54 a barrel. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 per barrel. The U.S. only relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction of the oil it imports, but oil is a commodity and prices are set in a global market. The situation is very different in Asia. Japan, for example, relies on access to the Strait of Hormuz for much of the nation’s oil import needs and would need to rely on alternative routes. But some analysts say Japan and oher nations are counting on an agreement with Iran to allow transports. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.9% in Friday morning trading to 52,938.62. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.1% to 5,344.41. The Shanghai Composite sank 0.5% to 3,899.57. Trading was closed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia and India. Wall Street, where trading is closed Friday, finished its first winning week since the start of the Iran war, although trading started out with a decline driven by a surge in oil prices. Bangladesh is curtailing office hours and enforcing early closure of malls and shops beginning Friday to handle its energy crisis related to the war. The country’s cabinet ordered 30% spending cuts for fuel and power at government offices, suspended some staff training and stopped purchases of new vehicles, ships and aircraft. Decorative lighting will not be allowed for celebrations. Bangladesh, a nation of more than 170 million people, is seeking alternative fuel sources and $2.5 billion in external financing for imports, which account for 95% of its fuel. Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Friday urged motorists getting away for a long weekend during the Easter holiday to fill up in cities because most of the nation’s fuel shortages are in rural areas. Among 2,400 gas stations in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, 182 had run out of diesel by Friday. In Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, 76 gas stations were out of diesel. In the remaining states ranked by the most populous first, Queensland had 75 stations without diesel, Western Australia had 37, South Australia had 28 and in Tasmania there were seven. “For those Australians planning a road trip this weekend, given our shortages are predominantly in rural and regional Australia, it makes sense to fill up in the city to help the country if you can,” Bowen said in Sydney. The government, which blamed regional shortages on panic buying and distribution problems, is concentrating on delivering fuel to farmers for planting crops. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Easter is around the corner, and it’s time to start thinking about how to decorate your eggs. Whether you’re dying eggs for your table spread or planning to hide them for an egg hunt, it’s important to follow food safety guidelines to minimize germs and maximize your egg quality. Eggs are remarkably long lasting, so there needn’t be a giant rush to eat them. “Stores usually do turn over eggs pretty quickly, so the recommendations is you should consume eggs three to five weeks after you purchase them,” said Kara Lynch, food safety educator with Michigan State University Extension. There is also a benefit in letting eggs age just a bit, as older eggs can be easier to peel. That’s because eggs shrink over time within the shell, creating an air pocket between the egg and the shell. Egg processors clean eggs before they reach store shelves, but it also is important to thoroughly cook eggs to reduce the risk of foodborne illness, especially salmonella. That bacteria lives naturally in the gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts of chickens, said Kimberly Baker, associate extension specialist at Clemson University. To cook your eggs, place them in a saucepan, fill it with water and bring it to a boil. After that, put the lid on, turn the heat off and let it sit for about 12 minutes. Some also favor turning down the heat and simmering eggs. You can vary the time in the hot water depending on a desire for harder boiled or slightly creamier eggs, but the yolk should be pretty solid to be safe. Boiling them for too long can risk creating green sulfur development on the outside of the yolk. After that, Don Schaffner, food science department chair at Rutgers University, said there are two options. You can run your eggs under cold water to reduce the temperature. From there, you can color them right away or place them back in the fridge until you’re ready. Or, after you’ve boiled them, you can let them air dry until they’ve cooled. The boiling process sanitizes the eggs, and as long as they are kept out of water, Schaffner said, they will remain safe to eat. “You’ve boiled the egg, you’ve gotten rid of any bacteria that might be in the egg. And now you’ve air-cooled it, right? So it’s going to cool more slowly, it’s probably going to cook more,” he said. “But most importantly, you don’t have to worry about any bacteria from the water getting internalized into the egg.” Either artificial or natural food dye is OK as long as the dye label says it’s food grade. For those keeping track, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been updating its guidance and regulations regarding certain dyes. And no, it’s not a problem if the dye seeps through the shell. “Eggs kind of naturally have their own abilities to absorb only so much,” Baker said. As you’re decorating the eggs and have the eggs outside, she suggested keeping your eggs in an ice bath, so they can stay at a cooler temperature while you’re decorating. Eggs should generally be kept at or below 40 degrees (4.4 degrees Celsius) to minimize the risk of contaminants. Cooked eggs that weren’t air-cooled should spend no more than two hours at room temperature. And that’s cumulative, including the time spent decorating and the time spent hiding during the Easter egg hunt. But if it’s particularly warm, then that two-hour rule may be shortened to one hour, Lynch said. Hard boiled eggs are generally good for about a week in the fridge. Be careful with your eggs as you handle them. One of the biggest concerns is making sure your eggs haven’t cracked during an Easter egg hunt, making them vulnerable to contaminants. And once the egg has been hard boiled, there’s no way to kill bacteria that get inside, Baker said. “We don’t want to be putting them in the soil or in lawns where pets have gone to the bathroom,” she said. Whether the eggs are hidden outdoors or in a corner of your home, you should rinse them in cool water before you peel them. And wash your hands, too, just in case the eggs have picked up something. If the Easter egg hunt means your eggs will be at room temperature for longer than two hours, experts recommended using plastic eggs for the hunt instead of real ones to minimize food safety risk. “If it’s an outdoor Easter egg hunt at any time, I would say go with the plastic eggs and be safe,” Baker said. “And use your dyed Easter eggs as your centerpiece on your table or your buffet, and enjoy them that way.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com