News Briefs

US, Iran cite progress in talks over Tehran’s nuclear program, set plans for more. Iran and the United States plan to meet over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program again next week, after both sides said they made progress in their talks in Rome. A U.S. official confirmed that at a point during the negotiations Saturday, President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke face to face. Iranian officials described them as indirect talks. Before they meet again in Oman on April 26, Araghchi said technical-level talks would be held in the coming days. That experts would be discussing details of a possible deal suggests movement in the talks.

Netanyahu: Israel has ‘no choice’ but to continue fighting in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said again Saturday that Israel has “no choice” but to continue fighting in Gaza and will not end the war before destroying Hamas, freeing the hostages, and ensuring that the territory won’t present a threat to Israel. Mr. Netanyahu is under growing pressure at home not only from families of hostages and their supporters but also from reservist and retired Israeli soldiers who question the continuation of the war. In his statement, he said that Hamas has rejected Israel’s latest proposal to free half the hostages for a continued ceasefire. The prime minister spoke after Israeli strikes killed more than 90 people in 48 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday.

Supreme Court blocks new deportations under 18th century wartime law. The Supreme Court on Saturday blocked, for now, the deportations of any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under an 18th century wartime law. In a brief order, the court directed the Trump administration not to remove Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. The high court acted in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union contending that immigration authorities appeared to be moving to restart removals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

Officials investigate Puerto Rico blackout. An island-wide blackout hit Puerto Rico on April 16, leaving 1.4 million customers without power and more than 400,000 without water. Power was restored to 98.8% of customers early April 18, less than 48 hours after the outage hit, according to Luma Energy. Authorities are still investigating the causes of the blackout, which could include whether several breakers failed to open or exploded, Gov. Jenniffer González said. It will likely take weeks to find a precise reason for the blackout, although Ms. González said she expects to have a very preliminary report by April 20.

Hurricane Maria upended Puerto Rico’s electricity grid in 2017 when the territory’s government was already mired in bankruptcy. Five years later, we reported how clean-energy ambition hadn’t solved the island’s persistent power outages.

U.S. escalates strikes in Yemen. U.S. airstrikes targeting an oil port held by Yemen’s Houthi rebels killed 74 people and wounded 171 others, the group said April 18. It’s the single-deadliest known attack under President Donald Trump’s new campaign targeting the rebels. The strike on the Ras Isa port, which sent massive fireballs shooting into the night sky, represented a major escalation for the American campaign by hitting oil facilities for the first time. A second round of negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, which America has linked to the Yemen campaign, is set for April 19.

The U.S. military first attacked the Houthi rebels in January 2024 in an effort to secure shipping lanes in the Red Sea. Even Israel had failed to deter missile attacks from the Houthis.

Pakistan expels more Afghan nationals. Pakistan has expelled more than 80,000 Afghan nationals since the end of March, a senior official said on April 18, as part of a repatriation drive ahead of an April 30 deadline. Those without legal documents to stay or those holding Afghan Citizen Cards were warned to leave or face deportation. The push for repatriation began with a 2023 campaign called the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan. Pakistan has previously blamed militant attacks and crimes on Afghan citizens, who form the largest migrant group in the country. Afghanistan has rejected the accusations and has described the repatriation as forced deportation.

Pakistan has been routinely mass deporting Afghans since 2023, a dramatic about-face for a country that’s historically served as a refuge for people fleeing from neighboring Afghanistan. 

Bipartisan trip to Taiwan. Three Republican and Democratic lawmakers are making their first trip to Taiwan under the new Trump administration a bipartisan one. They aim to show both Taiwan and China that U.S. support for Taiwan’s defense remains broad, despite the harsh words and heightened tariffs President Donald Trump has imposed for the Taiwanese. Taiwan and many Asia-Pacific nations so far are eschewing the retaliatory criticism and tariffs of some of the U.S.’s European allies. Facing a 32% tariff, the Taiwanese have said they are working fast to strike new trade and investment deals that suit the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump complains about other countries’ tariffs on U.S. exports. But his real goal, many U.S. trading partners worry, is to overthrow the fundamentals of global commerce.

Supreme Court to hear birthright citizenship case. The Supreme Court is keeping a hold on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship but will hear arguments on the issue in May. Mr. Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of people who are in the United States illegally has been halted nationwide by three district courts around the country. The Republican administration had sought to narrow those orders to allow for the policy to take effect in parts of the country while court challenges play out. That is expected to be the focus of the high court arguments.

Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship could upend 150 years of law

Trump administration deepens crackdown on Harvard. President Donald Trump’s administration is escalating its battle with Harvard, threatening to revoke the university’s ability to host international students, who make up 27% of the campus population. The president also called for withdrawing the school’s tax-exempt status on April 15. On April 14, the government said it was freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard, after the institution said it would defy demands to limit activism. More than 1,000 international students across American campuses have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since mid-March, sometimes over infractions as minor as traffic violations.

They came to the US for degrees. They fear being deported without them.

Russia thaws relations with Taliban. Russia on April 17 suspended its ban on the Taliban, which it had designated since 2003 as a terrorist organization, in a move that paves the way for Moscow to normalize ties with the leadership of Afghanistan. No country currently recognizes the Taliban government that seized power in August 2021, but Russia has been gradually building relations with the movement. President Vladimir Putin said last year the Taliban was now an ally in fighting terrorism from Islamist militant groups, after a March 2024 attack claimed by the Islamic State at a concert hall outside Moscow killed 145 people.

Last December, we reported how, after Syria’s Russian-backed Bashar al-Assad fell from power, the Kremlin had to absorb the shifting balance of power in the region.

Google and Meta face monopoly accusations in court. Google was branded an abusive monopolist by a federal judge for the second time in less than a year, this time for illegally exploiting some of its online marketing technology to boost profits. The ruling issued April 17 came after a separate ruling in August that Google’s namesake search engine has been illegally stifling competition. A historic antitrust trial involving Meta is also ongoing. CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified on April 17 that he did not buy Instagram and WhatsApp to take out competitors, as the Federal Trade Commission alleges.

Is Google using its clout to maintain a monopoly over internet search? In 2023, we covered how an antitrust lawsuit had big implications for competition in the tech industry.

In 2024, we covered how the European Union, aligned with the United States, was moving to protect consumers from market dominators, including Apple, Alphabet, and Meta.

Trump targets endangered species protection. The Trump administration plans to eliminate habitat protections for threatened species. Environmentalists say the move would lead to the extinction of endangered species because of logging, mining, and other activities. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said in a proposed rule issued April 16 that habitat modification should not be considered “harm” – a key definition in the Endangered Species Act – because it is not the same as intentionally targeting a species. Drew Caputo, an attorney at Earthjustice, said the proposal “threatens a half-century of progress in protecting and restoring endangered species.”

When people alter the natural world, animals are forced to adapt. Sometimes, a solution they discover may itself be threatened, requiring humans to tackle the problem anew.

Trump sues Maine over trans athletes. The Trump administration sued Maine’s education department on April 16 for not complying with its push to ban transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports. The lawsuit announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi escalates a dispute over whether the state is abiding by the federal Title IX anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination in education based on sex. The lawsuit follows weeks of feuding between the Republican administration and Democratic Gov. Janet Mills that has led to threats to cut crucial federal funding. Ms. Bondi said other states, including Minnesota and California, could also be sued.

Who should decide the best way to protect vulnerable children – their parents, or the state? In December 2024, we reported how that question lies at the heart of the biggest transgender rights case in U.S. Supreme Court history.

U.K. Supreme Court defines womanhood biologically. The Supreme Court has ruled that the U.K. Equality Act defines a woman as someone born biologically female. Five judges ruled unanimously that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman. The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes. But the court added that its ruling “does not remove protection from trans people,” who are “protected from discrimination on the ground of gender reassignment.”

In the United States, actions by the Trump administration have been pushing back on transgender inclusion, amid sharp public divides and emotional debates over things like women’s sports and care for children.

Judges clash with Trump over El Salvador deportees. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen arrived in El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, sent there by the U.S. in March despite a court order preventing his deportation. The Supreme Court has also called on the administration to facilitate his return. A federal judge in a separate case said he found probable cause to hold the administration in criminal contempt of court for violating his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador.

How a deportation case is turning into a tussle over presidential authority

With Venezuelan deportations, is Trump taking a page from El Salvador’s playbook?

AI-generated music grows. About 18% of songs uploaded to Deezer are fully generated by AI, the French streaming platform said on April 16, underscoring the technology’s growing use amid growing concerns over copyright risk. Deezer said more than 20,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded on its platform each day, which is nearly twice the number reported four months ago. The rising use of generative AI in creative industries has triggered a wave of lawsuits, with artists, authors, and rights holders accusing AI firms of using copyrighted material without consent or compensation to train their models.

As the influence of artificial intelligence grows, calls are rising for better public awareness of its impact on daily life and global dynamics.

Small town book brigade. Residents of a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books – one by one – to a new storefront about a block away. The “book brigade” of around 300 people even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order, said Michelle Tuplin, the store’s owner. “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this’ and ‘that’s a good one,’” she sad. The endeavor took just under two hours – much shorter than hiring a moving company, according to Ms. Tuplin.

Last summer, the Monitor interviewed Evan Friss, the author of “The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore” and the important role they play in communities as places where ideas and activism could flourish.

Kenyan authorities catch rare ant smugglers. Four smugglers caught trying to transport thousands of live ants out of Kenya for sale on exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia will be sentenced for trafficking wildlife. In a case hailed as a milestone by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), authorities intercepted live queen ants, including the Giant African Harvester Ant, concealed in modified test tubes and syringes. Aficionados enjoy keeping ants in transparent cases and watching them build complex colonies. The KWS trumpeted the case as a landmark in the fight against biopiracy.

Wild animals are disappearing in Latin America. Colombia is fighting back.