|
(Main headline, 2nd story, link)
Related stories:
IRAN: STRAIT OPEN
*OBAMA GAVE THEM $400 MILLION
OIL PRICE PLUNGE
FRIDAY RELIEF!
CUBA IN MAY?
|
|
Trump officials say the program is vital to national security, but skeptics — including some Republicans — have stonewalled its reauthorization without changes to protect civil liberties.
|
|
President Trump on Thursday repeated his claim that a deal to end the war on Iran is "very close" and that direct talks with Iran could resume in Pakistan as soon as this weekend. Despite the claims, the Pentagon is surging thousands of additional troops to the Middle East, including an additional 6,000 sailors and aviators joining the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier battle group. Around 4,200 others with the Navy and Marines are expected to arrive near the end of the month. Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, says "we might be, at some point, returning to a hot war" because the Iranians, too, have "preserved a degree of retaliatory capacity." The main question on the negotiating table is whether the Iranians, who "have been saying for years that they don't want nuclear weapons," will curb their nuclear activity, and if so, whether the U.S. would "be willing to provide them with economic incentives and sanctions relief."
|
|
The companies had asked the justices to clear the way to move environmental lawsuits out of state courts, to friendlier federal venues.
|
|
The Senate would need to also approve the stopgap measure that passed the House early Friday. Libertarian-leaning House Republicans had balked at a long-term extension.
|
|
A three-judge panel gave a group of 17 transgender women a few weeks to seek further recourse in court before their transfer to men's facilities could take effect.
|
|
Todd Lyons said he would leave to spend more time with his family. He has spoken about a surge in threats against ICE officers, saying that he knew the reality firsthand.
|
|
The president did not specify which leaders. Meanwhile, Pakistani officials were working to extend the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and arrange new negotiations.
|
|
After the first round of ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan collapsed over the weekend, we speak to two former nuclear negotiators about prospects for ending the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, including what another nuclear deal might look like. Robert Malley, a U.S. negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal (which President Trump withdrew from in his first term), says Trump's "mercurial" behavior makes it difficult to predict his objectives and the course of any future talks. "Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA" and was blindsided by the U.S.'s decision to pull out of the deal, says Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who served as spokesperson for Iran's nuclear negotiation team from 2003 to 2005. Now its leaders "don't know whether the U.S. is really for diplomacy or not."
|
|
