Trump faces a stark choice on Iran

04:01 |

Weekend Briefing

From Reuters Daily Briefing

By Robert MacMillan, Reuters.com Weekend Editor

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. Our journalists are back on the ground in Iran after many years, and the On Assignment podcast shows how they cover the stories of ordinary Iranians trying to survive in wartime. Thousands of No Kings rallies are expected across the U.S., support for Israel is dividing Republicans on generational lines, and AI deepfakes are trying to confuse American voters. We visit Windsor, Ontario to see how Donald Trump's tariffs are hurting border businesses, and City Memo takes us to Kuala Lumpur.

Iran still has many missiles

REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Assessment: The U.S. can determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran's arsenal of missiles and drones, five sources said. Iran-linked hackers said they got access to FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email inbox. Trump faces a stark choice: cut a deal and get out of Iran or risk a lengthy conflict that could consume his presidency. Yemen's Houthis launched their first missiles at Israel since the war began.
Warnings and fears: Trump's pause in the fighting followed warnings from Gulf states that the war was growing far more dangerous and fears that the U.S. misjudged Tehran's readiness to escalate. History lesson: The West's attempt to protect Red Sea shipping from Houthi attacks along Yemen's coast was a failure. Doing the same thing in the Strait of Hormuz will be harder.

War darkens economic outlook

Slick going: An equity selloff deepened and Brent crude futures settled at more than $112 a barrel. Options traders bet that the price will hit at least $150 by the end of April. As one analyst said, "Words alone aren't cutting it right now." Gas supplies face a longer recovery than oil does because there are fewer ways to reroute it and less capacity to store it, columnist Gavin Maguire says.
Collateral damage: The Iran conflict is causing trouble all over the place, from disrupted fuel supplies in Africa to shortages in Asia. Myanmar's rice farmers are scrounging for diesel, the Thai fishing industry is nearing a standstill, French farmers are considering switching to less costly sunflowers from corn, and cholera aid for African countries has stalled.

Ukraine nears drone deal with Middle East states

Support: Ukraine is in talks to help several countries to fend off Iranian drone strikes. It signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates on Saturday. India may risk violating Western sanctions by buying crude directly from Russia even as New Delhi's diplomats try to end punitive U.S. tariffs on India's exports.
Maneuvers: Ukraine is making long-range strikes on energy infrastructure to maintain pressure on Russia despite the U.S. easing sanctions on its oil, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The Kremlin denied reports that Vladimir Putin asked some businessmen to donate money to stabilize Russia's finances during the Ukraine war. Russian lawmakers will visit their U.S. counterparts in the first such trip since the war began.

How UBS helped get Ghislaine Maxwell Tucked Away

'A privacy-lover's dream': Behind the cash purchase of the $1.1 million "Tucked Away" estate – Ghislaine Maxwell's final home before her arrest – were funds sent by UBS on her behalf a month earlier. The Swiss bank processed the transfer three months after U.S. criminal investigators issued it a grand jury subpoena related to Maxwell's financial dealings and its probe into international sex trafficking of children.
And in France: Investigators searched the Paris offices of Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild as part of an inquiry into alleged corruption involving a French diplomat linked to Jeffrey Epstein. Bank of America agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused it of facilitating their sexual abuse by Epstein.

Who's Sora now?

Project canceled: OpenAI canceled Sora 30 minutes after its teams met Walt Disney Co. staffers on a project linked to the artificial-intelligence video tool. That marks the end of a deal between the two companies in which Disney planned to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and lend many of its characters for use in short AI videos.
You're invited after all: A top AI conference said it would ban papers from researchers at any entity under U.S. sanctions, prompting outrage in China. The NeurIPS conference then reversed its policy change, saying they had issued it in error.

Before I forget…

Congress failed to overcome the funding standoff that has snarled airports and frozen paychecks for tens of thousands of federal workers. Trump said he would ensure that airport security screeners get paid.
Air Canada's CEO apologized for delivering his condolences over the fatal LaGuardia plane collision with a fire truck in English and not in French. Some air controllers say the airport was understaffed on the night of the accident.
German prosecutors charged 66-year-old Daniela Klette, one of the last surviving alleged militants of the Red Army Faction, with attempted murder, bomb attacks, kidnapping for ransom and aggravated robbery.
Finland's Supreme Court fined a member of parliament for calling homosexuality a developmental disorder.
A U.S. judge threw out discrimination claims by a white former law student against the historically Black Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Europe's soccer fans filed a complaint with the European Commission over the high cost of tickets for the FIFA World Cup in North America.

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