Iran warned on Thursday that it will quit a landmark nuclear deal with world powers if President Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the accord.
"If the United States withdraws from the nuclear deal, then we will not stay in it," Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the state television website.
Trump has threatened to abandon the agreement when it comes up for renewal on May 12, calling it "insane".
Iran has always denied it sought a nuclear weapon, insisting its atomic programme was for civilian purposes.
Velayati warned against any move to try to renegotiate the deal signed by Iran and six world powers in 2015 curbing Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
"Iran accepts the nuclear agreement as it has been prepared and will not accept adding or removing anything," he said.
"Even if countries allied with the United States, especially the Europeans, seek to revise the nuclear agreement... one of our options will be withdrawing from the accord," Velayati added.
Britain, France and Germany -- the three European countries that signed the deal -- have repeatedly tried to persuade Trump not to abandon it.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday reiterated his commitment to the accord but admitted that it needed strengthening.
"I don't know what the US president will decide on May 12," Macron said during a visit to Sydney.
"I just want to say whatever the decision will be, we will have to prepare such a broader negotiation and a broader deal, because I think nobody wants a war in the region, and nobody wants an escalation in terms of tension in the region," he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday laughed off the global sniggers he prompted after describing the wife of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as "delicious".
The faux pas -- "delicieux" in French can also mean "delightful" -- caused widespread mirth, with one Sydney tabloid mocking up a nearly full-page photo of Macron with the cartoon head of Pepe le Pew, the lovelorn French skunk.
"A newspaper had some fun and it made me laugh a lot, especially since in the original cartoon the character has a French accent," Macron told reporters shortly before leaving Sydney at the end of a two-day visit.
Macron, who demonstrated his excellent grasp of English during numerous speeches and remarks in Sydney, added that "there is not a European leader who gives all his speeches in English".
The incident occurred at the end of a joint press conference on Wednesday when Macron turned to Turnbull and said: "Thank you and your delicious wife for the warm welcome".
At a private dinner later that night with Turnbull and wife Lucy, the hubbub over his remark "had them laughing a lot", he said.
Turnbull also commented on the gaffe, saying his wife "was very flattered" by the youthful French president's comment.
"She's asked me to say that she found the president's compliment as charming as it was memorable," he said.
"President Macron charmed Australia. He certainly charmed all of us, all the Turnbulls. I think he is a great friend of Australia."
Some in the Australian media and on Twitter were not so gracious, playing on the French reputation for romantic flair.
"Ooh La La, it's a French miss," headlined the main story in the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
The newspaper's photo-shopped front page bore the headline "President Pepe le Pew", a reference to the Warner Brothers cartoon character who spends most of his time in luckless pursuit of a female cat.
"You can take the man out of France but..." tweeted Buzzfeed Australia journalist Alice Workman, while another user took a light-hearted jab at "the Gaul of that man".
The response to Portman’s refusal to appear alongside Israel’s prime minister was intense. She was denounced by right-wing Israeli politicians. One labeled Portman’s decision as borderline anti-Semitic. Another suggested that her Israeli citizenship should be stripped. Born in Israel, Portman is a dual American-Israeli citizen.
Portman’s protest touched a raw nerve not just because of who she is – a world-famous Jewish celebrity and a well-known supporter of Israel – but also because of whom she is seen to represent. Her outspoken opposition to Netanyahu has been portrayed as typical of her generation of young American Jews whose attitudes toward Israel tend to be more critical than that of their parents and grandparents.
The end of ‘Israel, right or wrong’
American Jews were initially indifferent or even hostile to Zionism when it first appeared. It took decades, and the mass murder of European Jewry in the Holocaust, to change their attitude. But after playing an important role in Israel’s establishment in 1948, most American Jews returned their attention to their own economic needs and social mobility, paying scant attention to the faraway, fledgling Jewish state.
It was only after Israel’s stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War that American Jews fell in love with Israel, which was then
Supporting Israel came to dominate American Jewish public life and politics and became the one thing that almost all American Jews had in common. Their support tended to be unconditional and uncritical, especially during the two decades following the 1967 War when “pro-Israelism” became central to the American Jewish “civil religion.”
Even if they disagreed with what the Israeli government did, American Jews generally toed the line in public, as vocal criticism of Israel was taboo within the American Jewish community. Even in private, criticism was frowned upon. The prevailing belief was that only Israelis had the right to criticize their government since it was their lives at risk.
There has been a profound shift happening in American Jewry’s attitude toward Israel for some time (as I show in my book “Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel”). Public criticism of Israel and acts of protest by American Jews have gradually become much more common, though they remain highly contentious – as is evident from the vitriolic reactions to Portman’s protest.
Portman, then, is hardly a trailblazer. She is simply continuing what has by now become something of a tradition of American Jewish protest against Israeli government policies. These protests have become much more frequent in recent years during Netanyahu’s second term in office].
Nor is Portman as typical of her generation of young American Jews as her many detractors and defenders seem to believe.
Discomfort with idea of Jewish state
Younger American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal in their politics – even more so than other young Americans. They are also “dovish” in their attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a major survey of American Jews by the Pew Research Center in 2013, for instance, only a quarter of Jews aged 18 to 29 believed that Netanyahu’s government was “making a sincere effort to bring about a peace settlement with the Palestinians.”
But the brand of liberal Zionism that Portman espouses – supportive of Israel, but often critical of its behavior, especially (but not only) toward Palestinians – is actually becoming unfashionable among her highly educated and politically engaged American Jewish peers.
The New York Times front page on May 15, 1948.
New York Times
For many, their problem with Israel is not just its current prime minister, its government’s policies and its nearly 51-year-long occupation of the West Bank. It is also Israel itself that they are uncomfortable with, specifically its identity as a Jewish state.
It is not only what Israel does that bothers them, but also what Israel is.
In a recent survey of Jews living in San Francisco’s Bay Area, just 40 percent of those between the ages of 18 to 34 said they were comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state. Just over a third thought that a Jewish state was very important. Most older Jews, by contrast, said they were comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state and thought it was very important to have one.
Colliding beliefs
Most young American Jews have been raised with two complementary belief systems: a political liberalism that emphasizes equality and opposes all forms of discrimination, and a non-Orthodox Americanized Judaism that emphasizes universalism and a commitment to social justice.
Many find it hard to reconcile the values they have internalized from these belief systems with the idea of a state that gives preferential treatment to Jews at the expense of its non-Jewish citizens, most notably its Arab minority – as Israel does.
Not only do many young American Jews take issue with what they regard, correctly or not, as the inherently discriminatory nature of a Jewish state, they also see less of a need for such a state.
Their chronological and emotional distance from the Holocaust – which more than anything else convinced earlier generations of American Jews of the need for Jewish statehood - is no doubt a large part of the reason why younger American Jews are less likely to believe that Jews need a state of their own to shelter and protect them. Indeed, a 2012 survey showed that the Holocaust had a much greater influence on the political beliefs of older American Jews than younger ones.
Younger American Jews are also far more accustomed to feeling secure in the United States. This sense, though, has been challenged over the past couple of years as the American far right has become emboldened and anti-Semitic incidents have sharply increased.
Nevertheless, they have grown up during an era in which American Jews are more assimilated, more affluent and more influential, culturally and politically, than ever before. These younger Jews are less inclined to believe that gentiles are hostile to Jews and that Jews are always at risk, as older generations of Jews have generally done.
Indeed, many younger American Jews, such as the writer Emma Goldberg, are more likely to identify with the notion of “white privilege” than with the notion of Jewish victimhood.
If, in their eyes, a Jewish state is discriminatory and no longer really necessary, then many younger American Jews struggle with supporting it. They feel ambivalent about Israel, if not altogether alienated from it. This is particularly true for the children of interfaith marriages – now almost half the population of young American Jews – whose Jewish identities tend to be less ethnic and more cultural.
As Israel approaches the 70th anniversary of its establishment on May 14, many older American Jews will be happily celebrating the achievement of Jewish sovereignty after two millennia of statelessness. Many younger ones will be wondering whether the Jewish state is really something to celebrate at all.
When Mark Zuckerberg told Congress Facebook would use artificial intelligence to detect fake news posted on the social media site, he wasn’t particularly specific about what that meant. Given my own work using image and video analytics, I suggest the company should be careful. Despite some basic potential flaws, AI can be a useful tool for spotting online propaganda – but it can also be startlingly good at creating misleading material.
This sure looks like Barack Obama saying some things he probably would never say.
Researchers already know that online fake news spreads much more quickly and more widely than real news. My research has similarly found that online posts with fake medical information get more views, comments and likes than those with accurate medical content. In an online world where viewers have limited attention and are saturated with content choices, it often appears as though fake information is more appealing or engaging to viewers.
The problem is getting worse: By 2022, people in developed economies could be encountering more fake news than real information. This could bring about a phenomenon researchers have dubbed “reality vertigo” – in which computers can generate such convincing content that regular people may have a hard time figuring out what’s true anymore.
However, those methods assume the people who spread fake news don’t change their approaches. They often shift tactics, manipulating the content of fake posts in efforts to make them look more authentic.
Context is also key. Words’ meanings can change over time. And the same word can mean different things on liberal sites and conservative ones. For example, a post with the terms “WikiLeaks” and “DNC” on a more liberal site could be more likely to be news, while on a conservative site it could refer to a particular set of conspiracy theories.
Using AI to make fake news
The biggest challenge, however, of using AI to detect fake news is that it puts technology in an arms race with itself. Machine learning systems are already proving spookily capable at creating what are being called “deepfakes” – photos and videos that realistically replace one person’s face with another, to make it appear that, for example, a celebrity was photographed in a revealing pose or a public figure is saying things he’d never actually say. Even smartphone apps are capable of this sort of substitution – which makes this technology available to just about anyone, even without Hollywood-level video editing skills.
Researchers are already preparing to use AI to identify these AI-created fakes. For example, techniques for video magnification can detect changes in human pulse that would establish whether a person in a video is real or computer-generated. But both fakers and fake-detectors will get better. Some fakes could become so sophisticated that they become very hard to rebut or dismiss – unlike earlier generations of fakes, which used simple language and made easily refuted claims.
Human intelligence is the real key
The best way to combat the spread of fake news may be to depend on people. The societal consequences of fake news – greater political polarization, increased partisanship, and eroded trust in mainstream media and government – are significant. If more people knew the stakes were that high, they might be more wary of information, particularly if it is more emotionally based, because that’s an effective way to get people’s attention.
When someone sees an enraging post, that person would do better to investigate the information, rather than sharing it immediately. The act of sharing also lends credibility to a post: When other people see it, they register that it was shared by someone they know and presumably trust at least a bit, and are less likely to notice whether the original source is questionable.
Facebook could use its partnerships with news organizations and volunteers to train AI, continually tweaking the system to respond to propagandists’ changes in topics and tactics. This won’t catch every piece of news posted online, but it would make it easier for large numbers of people to tell fact from fake. That could reduce the chances that fictional and misleading stories would become popular online.
The denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the resolute position of North Korea, China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday cited the isolated state’s leader, Kim Jong Un, as telling a visiting senior Chinese diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi.
Wang told Kim that China supported an end to the state of war on the Korean peninsula and North Korea’s switch to economic construction, the ministry added.
Wang is currently visiting Pyongyang.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez
A reactor at EDF Energy’s Hunterston B nuclear power plant in Scotland will remain offline for additional safety checks after cracks were found in its core, Britain’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said.
Ageing reactors generate just over 20 percent of Britain’s power but almost half of this capacity, including Hunterston, is due to go offline by 2025, prompting the government to plan new plants.
ONR was informed in March about keyway root cracks found during planned inspections of graphite bricks in the core of Reactor 3 at Hunterston.
Graphite bricks ensure reactors can be cooled and thousands of them are used in reactor cores.
“Inspections confirmed the expected presence of new keyway root cracks in the reactor core and also identified these happening at a slightly higher rate than modeled,” EDF Energy said in a statement.
The reactor has been offline since March and was due to come back online this month, but EDF Energy has extended the outage until later this year.
“While Hunterston B Reactor 3 could return to operation from the current outage, it will remain offline while the company works with the regulator to ensure that the longer term safety case reflects the findings of the recent inspections and includes the results obtained from other analysis and modeling,” it said.
Hunterston B in North Ayrshire, Scotland, has been generating electricity since 1976. Last year, it produced enough electricity for 1.8 million homes.
CRACKS
In 2015, EDF Energy said routine inspections had revealed cracks in part of the graphite core at a Hunterston B nuclear reactor. It said three of 6,000 bricks had cracked, something that had been expected to begin happening at that point in the power station’s life.
Two of EDF Energy’s nuclear power plants in Britain - Heysham 1 and Hartlepool - were offline for months in 2014 for inspections after a crack was found on a boiler spine at Heysham 1.
In Belgium, the regulator ordered production to be stopped at two nuclear reactors in 2012 after finding indications of tiny cracks in core tanks.
The cracks turned out to be particles of hydrogen that were trapped inside the tanks when they were made by a Dutch company in the early 1980s.
EDF said it expects Hunterston B’s Reactor 3 to return to service “before the end of 2018”. EDF Energy’s outage website shows an expected return date of Oct. 4.
Its Reactor 3 and Reactor 4 are both Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors. The outage will reduce its 2018 output by 3 terawatt hours, the company said.
EDF Energy said the operation of its other UK reactors was not affected.
Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter
Top US and Chinese officials kicked off crucial trade talks Thursday in Beijing but both sides sought to dampen expectations for a quick resolution to a heated dispute between the world's two largest economies.
The gathering comes months after US President Donald Trump sparked a series of tit-for-tat exchanges by threatening to impose huge tariffs on billions of dollars worth of goods, sparking fears of a potentially damaging trade war.
"It is not realistic to resolve all issues through only one round of negotiations" Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, told a regular news briefing Wednesday.
The "discussions and negotiations should be based on the basis of equality and mutual respect, and the outcome mutually beneficial and win-win. Let's wait and see," she said Thursday, announcing that the talks had begun.
The US delegation includes Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, White House economic advisers Peter Navarro, Larry Kudlow, Everett Eissenstat and ambassador Terry Branstad.
Most of the team gathered at a hotel in central Beijing Thursday before heading to the US embassy and on to talks at China's state guest house.
While walking to their motorcade the American officials smiled and ignored reporters who shouted questions. Kudlow flashed a thumbs up.
Each member of the team is known to harbour strong views with varying degrees of hawkishness on the dispute -- from Navarro, author of "Death by China", to Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has publicly expressed optimism on resolving the spat.
"I'm always hoping but not always hopeful," Lighthizer said on Tuesday before departing for Beijing. "It's a big, big challenge."
Trump is watching and tweeting from Washington.
"Our great financial team is in China trying to negotiate a level playing field on trade!" he tweeted as his trade delegation prepped in the Beijing hotel.
"I look forward to being with President Xi in the not too distant future. We will always have a good (great) relationship!"
Xi Jinping's top economic advisor Vice Premier Liu He is leading the talks for China.
Liu's visit to Washington earlier this year for trade talks produced few tangible results.
- Concialiatory moves -
As the trade dispute heated up this spring, China made a series of conciliatory gestures.
Xi gave a speech vowing to cut tariffs in some sectors, drawing a warm response from Trump.
China followed up with a timeline to lift foreign ownership restrictions for automakers and this past weekend announced it would immediately raise limits for some sectors of the financial industry allowing foreign firms to take controlling stakes.
Still Chinese officials have said meeting a Trump demand to reduce the bilateral trade surplus by $100 billion annually was "impossible".
If the talks fail, the US's threatened tariffs on Chinese imports such as electronics, aircraft parts, and medicine could be imposed in late May.
China would likely fire back by implementing its $50 billion list that targets soybeans, cars, frozen beef, whiskey and a slew of other US products.
Markets in the US fell Wednesday as trade worries persisted and Hong Kong dipped into the red Thursday.
- Tech battle -
The immediate threat of tariffs obscures an escalating contest between the two countries over technology.
US officials are concerned about Beijing's "Made in China 2025" industrial policy which they see as a Chinese plan to dominate key high tech industries.
Before boarding a plane for Beijing, Ross called the policy "frightening".
Last month, Washington banned Chinese telecom and smartphone giant ZTE from purchasing crucial US components for seven years -- threatening the company's survival -- as punishment for breaking US export controls.
The US has also reportedly opened a similar probe into another Chinese telecom major, Huawei, after restricting its operations in the country on national security grounds.
Washington's moves, perceived by Beijing as an attempt to contain China's strategic ambitions in hi-tech, have not gone unnoticed.
Xi told scientists last week that the country must develop its own core technology.
"To tackle the next key problems in science and technology, we should abandon fantasies and rely on ourselves," he said.
The Trump administration on Wednesday stepped up efforts to win Senate confirmation of career CIA officer Gina Haspel to become the intelligence agency’s first female director.
In a telephone conference with reporters, White House congressional affairs chief Marc Short acknowledged that Haspel’s Senate confirmation was not a sure bet. “I still expect it will be a close vote,” he said.
President Donald Trump nominated Haspel to succeed Mike Pompeo, who became secretary of state last month.
Short said that in response to congressional requests that the CIA declassify more documents on Haspel’s career as a CIA undercover officer, including assignments helping supervise the agency’s involvement in interrogation practices that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, the administration was “looking to declassify” more documents.
On Wednesday, the White House published a chronology of Haspel’s CIA career, reporting that her first day in the agency’s Counterterrorism Center was Sept. 11, 2001, the day members of al-Qaeda crashed passenger planes into the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center.
Some of Haspel’s counter-terrorism work has raised questions about her suitability to lead the agency among critics of her nomination, including prominent Senate Democrats.
Many details of Haspel’s work remain classified. Sources familiar with her career who requested anonymity said that at one point she was the chief of the CIA station in the country where harsh interrogations were used on at least one suspected terrorist.
Later, she served as chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, the head of CIA undercover operations. In consultation with Rodriguez, Haspel drafted a cable ordering CIA officers to destroy videotapes of al-Qaeda suspects being tortured.
Haspel’s supporters argue that while she drafted the cable, Rodriguez sent it without the approval of then-CIA director Porter Goss and without informing Haspel that he would do so.
However, in “Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA,” a memoir about his decades as a top CIA lawyer, John Rizzo, said Rodriguez and Haspel were “the staunchest advocates inside the building for destroying the tapes.”
“The account in the book is erroneous,” said a CIA spokesman.
The destruction of the tapes, and Haspel’s role in their destruction and the interrogation practices they depicted, is a key issue for Senate critics of Haspel, who have complained that public agency disclosures regarding its interrogation programs have been “inadequate.”
The CIA last month released a 2011 memo showing that the agency’s then-deputy director, Michael Morell, had cleared Haspel of wrongdoing in the destruction of the videotapes.
Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by John Walcott and Leslie Adler
At least 88 Central American asylum seekers from a caravan through Mexico had crossed into the United States by Wednesday, a movement that prompted U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to beef up legal resources on the border.
Dozens more remain just outside the entrance to the port of entry in a makeshift camp, waiting to plead their case.
Women, children and transgender people were among those who waited for hours inside the walkway to the U.S. gate before being allowed to pass through to begin the asylum process.
Those remaining wandered among boxes of cereal and diapers in a labyrinth of giant tents, near-luxury conditions for the bedraggled migrants, compared to the scarcity they had endured for weeks on their journey through Mexico to the U.S. border.
On Wednesday, U.S. officials let in three groups totaling 63 migrants, a dramatic uptick from the trickle permitted since Monday.
Border officials had allowed through only a few at a time, saying the busy San Ysidro crossing to San Diego was saturated and the rest must wait their turn.
In response, the Justice Department was sending 35 additional assistant U.S. attorneys and 18 immigration judges to the border, Sessions said, linking the decision to the caravan.
“We are sending a message worldwide: Don’t come illegally. Make your claim to enter America in the lawful way and wait your turn,” he said, adding that he would not let the country be “overwhelmed.”
Despite unusual attention on the annual, awareness-raising caravan after President Donald Trump took issue with it last month, the most recent data through December does not show a dramatic change in the number of Central Americans seeking asylum.
Apprehensions of people crossing to the United States illegally from Mexico were at their highest in March since December 2016, before Trump took office.
More than 100 members of the caravan, most from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, have been camped in the square near the entrance of the San Ysidro pedestrian bridge from Mexico to the United States, waiting for their turn to enter the checkpoint.
PLEADING THEIR CASE
At least 28 migrants who made it into the United States on Wednesday had anxiously filed through the walkway to the U.S. gate the night before. Two by two, they walked up to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer standing in the gate to ask if they might pass through.
First to try was a man and his small nephew, a football under his arm; then a mother and child; then a woman with her grandsons.
Throughout the caravan’s 2,000-mile (3,220-km) odyssey from southern Mexico, its members maintained hope they would ultimately get the chance to plead their case for asylum in the United States, all the while knowing that U.S. officials might reject them.
The Trump administration cites a more than tenfold rise in asylum claims versus 2011 and growing numbers of families and children, who are more likely to be allowed to remain while their cases await hearing, as signs that people are fraudulently taking advantage of the system.
Trump wants to tighten laws to make it harder for people to claim asylum. For now, though, despite his orders to keep such migrant caravans out of the country, international and U.S. law obliges the government to listen to people’s stories and decide whether they deserve shelter.
The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday it had launched prosecutions against 11 “suspected” caravan members on charges of crossing the border illegally.
Nicole Ramos, an attorney advising caravan members in Mexico, said she did not believe the individuals facing U.S. criminal charges were part of the caravan group.
“Quite a few people have claimed to be part of the caravan, including a sizeable contingent of Guatemalan men who were never part,” Ramos said.
Reporting by Delphine Schrank; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Clarence Fernandez
The U.S. government is looking into reports that three Americans detained in North Korea have been relocated from a labor camp to a hotel near Pyongyang ahead of a planned summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no immediate confirmation of any change in the detainees’ status. Trump administration officials have pressed for their release as a show of goodwill by North Korea before the unprecedented U.S.-North Korea summit expected in late May or early June.
“As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hostages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail. Stay tuned!” Trump said in a Twitter post late on Wednesday.
Earlier on Wednesday, South Korean media reports quoted a South Korean activist as saying North Korea had relocated the three Americans from a labor camp to a hotel on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Choi Soung-yong, the activist, told Reuters that Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul were moved in early April following instructions from superior authorities, citing residents in Pyongyang.
The United States and North Korea “seem to have decided on a date to release these people,” said Choi. “North Korea probably wants to straighten out their affairs; rehabilitate them.”
The activist added the three were being kept in separate rooms in the same hotel and said he did not know what had happened to them since being relocated.
“We cannot confirm the validity of these reports,” a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said.
“The welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the Department of State. We are working to see U.S. citizens who are detained in North Korea come home as soon as possible,” she said.
Randall Brandt, a spokesman for Tony Kim’s family, said in an email: “While we are encouraged by overall momentum, the family has no indication of a release and has had no contact with Tony since Ambassador Yun last June.”
He was referring to Joseph Yun, the State Department’s former North Korea negotiator, who saw the detainees on a visit to Pyongyang last year.
Sol Kim, the son of detainee Tony Kim, said on social media that he is optimistic but has no information.
“We are hopeful but we have no indication that they have been released. Thank you for your continued prayers and efforts to help bring them home,” he said.
Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom and Eric Walsh in Washington, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas and Christine Kim in SEOUL; Editing by Peter Cooney, Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker
U.S. President Donald Trump has all but decided to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord by May 12 but exactly how he will do so remains unclear, two White House officials and a source familiar with the administration’s internal debate said on Wednesday.
There is a chance Trump might choose to keep the United States in the international pact under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief, in part because of “alliance maintenance” with France and to save face for French President Emmanuel Macron, who met Trump last week and urged him to stay in, the source said.
A decision by Trump to end U.S. sanctions relief would all but sink the agreement and could trigger a backlash by Iran, which could resume its nuclear arms program or “punish” U.S. allies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, diplomats said.
Technically, Trump must decide by May 12 whether to renew “waivers” suspending some of the U.S. sanctions on Iran. One of the White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said it was possible Trump will end up with a decision that “is not a full pullout” but was unable to describe what that might look like.
A presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday about what he said was documentary evidence of Tehran’s past nuclear arms program could give Trump a fresh argument to withdraw, even though U.N. inspectors say Iran has complied with the terms of the deal.
Iran has denied ever seeking nuclear weapons and accuses its arch-foe Israel of stirring up world suspicions against it.
The pact between Iran and six major powers - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - was among former U.S. President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policies but has been described by Trump as “one of the worst deals I have ever witnessed.”
The White House official said Trump was “most of the way there toward pulling out of the deal but he hasn’t made the decision” and that he “seems poised to do it but until a decision is made by this president it is not final.”
Top aides are not seeking aggressively to talk Trump out of withdrawal because he seems intent on it, a second White House official said.
EUROPEANS LOSING HOPE
Trump gave Britain, France and Germany a May 12 deadline to fix what he views as the deal’s flaws - its failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile program, the terms by which inspectors visit suspect Iranian sites, and “sunset” clauses under which some of its terms expire - or he will reimpose U.S. sanctions.
While European officials continue to work toward such a “fix,” they believe the odds are against reaching one.
One of the main sticking points has to do with the “sunsets,” where the United States in effect wishes to find a way to extend some of the limits on Iran’s nuclear program beyond their expiration dates under the agreement.
The source familiar with the debate said U.S. negotiators are hamstrung by the fact that they do not really know where Trump’s “red line” is and so they cannot tell the Europeans what would secure Trump’s blessing.
Trump could refuse to renew the waivers but give new U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo time to negotiate more with the Europeans, exploiting the deal’s dispute resolution mechanism or the time before the most draconian sanctions take effect.
Several sources familiar with the negotiations said that if Trump pulls out, a question for the Europeans will be whether this would be the start of a much harder U.S. line toward Iran, including military confrontation.
“The Europeans are not keen to be dragged into a regional conflict by the U.S.,” said one source familiar with the talks.
Two U.S. intelligence officials said they were particularly concerned about Iranian retaliation in harder-to-trace actions such as cyber attacks on the United States or its allies and attacks on soft targets by people without obvious ties to Tehran.
Such attacks are considered more likely than actions that might trigger a U.S. military response against Iranian nuclear and military targets.
Reporting by Steve Holland and Arshad Mohammed; additional reporting by John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Lesley Wroughton; editing by Yara Bayoumy and Grant McCool
Two kinds of river dolphins are dying off fast in the Amazon region, and may face extinction unless they are more vigorously protected against fishing, researchers in Brazil said Wednesday.
Once considered abundant in the Amazon basin, the boto (Inia geoffrensis) and the tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis) are now halving in population every 10 years, said the report in the journal PLOS ONE.
Experts say the freshwater dolphins are increasingly being killed for use as bait, a practice that endangers their survival, particularly since the females bear a single calf on average every four to five years.
"Until recent decades, the boto was sheltered from harm to some extent by legends and superstitions," but the relatively new hunt for them grew with the use of flesh and blubber as bait for catfish which have become widely available commercially, the study said.
Researcher Vera da Silva from Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia and colleagues based their findings on 22 years of surveys in the Mamiraua Reserve in Brazil -- an area described as a core part of their range -- where dolphins have been tracked by boat monthly from 1994 to 2017.
"At current rates, boto populations are halving every 10 years, and tucuxi populations are halving every nine years," said the report, which is the first to quantify current population trends in Amazon freshwater dolphins.
"The results are profoundly concerning, and show rates of decline among the most severe of any measured in a cetacean population since the early years of modern whaling."
The International Union for Conservation of Nature currently lists these freshwater dolphins as "data deficient," meaning not enough is known about their numbers in the wild to assess the degree of threat to the population.
But the PLOS ONE study argued that if the IUCN Red List considered the latest findings, both species would be classified as critically endangered.
River dolphins are already legally protected in the Amazon basin, but the laws need greater enforcement, researchers said.
Another type of river dolphin found in South Asia (Platanista gangetica) is considered endangered by the IUCN.
In China, the Yangtze River dolphin or baiji (Lipotes vexillifer), was declared functionally extinct in 2006 due to human activities like overfishing, dam building, pollution and boat traffic.
The United States is sending 35 assistant U.S. attorneys and 18 immigration judges to the Mexican border to deal with a surge in illegal immigrants trying to enter the country, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Wednesday.
“We are not going to let this country be overwhelmed. People are not going to caravan or otherwise stampede our border,” Sessions told reporters.
Dozens of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans slept a third night outside a U.S. port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico, after traveling in a caravan across Mexico to seek asylum in the United States.
Reporting by Eric Beech; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Eric Beech
As Israel approaches the 70th anniversary of its establishment on May 14, many older American Jews will be happily celebrating the achievement of Jewish sovereignty after two millennia of statelessness. Many younger ones will be wondering whether the Jewish state is really something to celebrate at all.
Reassuringly, people who have some exposure to accurate news are