Pakistan announced Sunday that it will host direct talks between the United States and Iran, the Associated Press reported. There was no immediate confirmation from Washington or Tehran.
“Pakistan is very happy that both Iran and the U.S. have expressed their confidence in Pakistan to facilitate the talks,” Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said after diplomats from Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia met in Islamabad. “Pakistan will be honored to host and facilitate meaningful talks between the two sides in the coming days.”
The diplomats departed for their home countries by Sunday evening. The talks that were supposed to continue Monday didn’t.
Meanwhile, the war kept widening. Iran’s military declared that the private residences of American and Israeli officials in the region are now legitimate targets. Israel announced its air force had dropped more than 120 munitions on weapons research sites in Tehran over a 24-hour period. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would expand its invasion of southern Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen launched two drones toward Israel, which the Israeli military said it intercepted early Monday. Oil climbed to $108.31 a barrel on the Brent index Sunday evening, according to AP live updates, up from $105.32 on Friday. It was about $70 before the war began.
“I don’t know at what moment our homes could be targeted,” said Razzak Saghir al-Mousawi, 71, an Iranian crossing into Iraq, according to the AP. “I am definitely afraid.”
In December 1950, five months into the Korean War, the United Nations General Assembly appointed a three-person committee to negotiate a ceasefire between the United States and China. Both sides expressed willingness to talk. Both sides kept fighting. The ceasefire came two and a half years later, in July 1953. Offering to host talks and holding talks aren’t the same thing. Holding talks and reaching an agreement aren’t the same thing either.
The partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security reached its 45th day on Monday, and the fracture that caused it is visible at the top of the Republican Party.
For a few hours before dawn on Friday, it looked like a deal had arrived. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer agreed to fund most of DHS while setting aside the immigration enforcement provisions that had stalled every previous attempt. Thune told reporters the plan would “get at least a lot of the government opened up again,” the AP reported.
House Speaker Mike Johnson killed it by afternoon.
“I have to protect the House, and I have to protect the American people,” Johnson told reporters as he marched out of his office. He called the Senate plan “a joke.” Rep. Nick LaLota of New York said that on a Republican conference call, dozens of members opposed it. “The Senate chickened out,” LaLota said. “The cowards there, only a few of them in the middle of the night with I think only three to five senators present on the floor, chickened out because they wanted to go home for two weeks.”
Congress left for a two-week spring recess. No resolution is expected before mid-April.
Nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began on February 14, according to the AP. President Trump signed an executive order Friday to pay TSA agents, though it doesn’t cover the Coast Guard, FEMA, or thousands of other DHS employees. White House border czar Tom Homan said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deployed to airports would stay “as long as they need us, until they get back to normal operations and feel like those airports are secure.”
In December 1995, a government shutdown over a budget dispute between President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich lasted 21 days. It was considered, at the time, extraordinary. The current shutdown is now more than twice that length, and the dispute isn’t between opposing parties. It’s between the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate, both Republicans.
Israeli police prevented Catholic leaders from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass, the AP reported. It was the first time in centuries that the church’s doors were closed to its own clergy on the day that begins Holy Week for Christians.
The Latin Patriarchate called the police decision “a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure.” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, and the Custos of the Holy Land were both turned away. Police cited safety concerns related to the ongoing Iran war, noting that shrapnel from intercepted missiles had recently struck a rooftop near the church.
But the Patriarchate said the church had been hosting private Masses throughout the war, and it wasn’t clear why Sunday was different.
Criticism came from around the world. By Sunday evening, Israeli police announced they had approved a “limited prayer framework” for Holy Week, according to AP live updates. Details of what would be permitted were not immediately available.
The status quo governing Jerusalem’s holy sites dates to an agreement reached under the Ottoman Empire in 1757 and reinforced in 1852 and 1878. It prescribes, in extraordinary detail, which religious communities may use which spaces and when. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim access to their respective holy places has survived Ottoman rule, the British Mandate, Jordanian control, and Israeli sovereignty. The principle has been tested in wars before. It hasn’t been suspended on Palm Sunday.
In January, California became the first state to require food manufacturers to add folic acid to corn masa flour, the AP reported. A similar law takes effect in Alabama in June. Legislation is pending or being considered in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Oregon.
This is the kind of story that will never lead a cable news broadcast and will matter more than most stories that do.
In 1998, the federal government began requiring folic acid in enriched wheat flour, bread, cereal, and pasta. The mandate cut rates of neural tube defects, conditions like spina bifida and anencephaly, by about 30 percent. The CDC called it one of the top public health achievements of the twentieth century. Roughly 1,300 cases a year were prevented.
But corn masa flour, a staple in Latino diets, was left out.
For 28 years, that gap persisted. Rates of neural tube defects among Hispanic infants stayed high while rates in other communities fell. Andrea Lopez of Bakersfield, California, lost her first son, Gabriel Cude, to a neural tube defect 15 years ago. He was 10 days old. She’s now a lawyer with two daughters. “It’s such a small effort for such a tremendous impact,” she told the AP.
Four more states have expressed active interest: Texas, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
In Los Angeles, 74 people were arrested Saturday night after a “No Kings” rally, the AP reported. Police said the arrests were for failing to heed a dispersal order after the rally ended. One additional person was detained for possessing a weapon described as a dagger.
Some protesters threw rocks and broken concrete blocks at officers near a federal detention center. Two DHS officers struck by concrete sustained injuries. Andre Andrews Jr., a Navy veteran who walked the entire rally route and recorded it, told the AP that the peaceful march was effective. “The peaceful protest was good for the cause. You have the right to do that,” he said. “But the other people, they were definitely causing problems.”
The arrests were an exception. Organizers said more than 3,100 events were registered across all 50 states for the third round of “No Kings” protests.
The USS Massachusetts was commissioned Saturday in Boston Harbor, the AP reported. It’s the first submarine named after the state and the 25th Virginia-class fast attack sub in the fleet. It cost over $2.8 billion, weighs about 8,000 tons, and carries 24 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Its commanding officer, Mike Siedsma, a 21-year Navy veteran, said he didn’t think a submarine had been in Boston Harbor since the late 1980s or early 1990s. He didn’t say where the boat was headed. Earlier this month, a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka.
“The geopolitical situation is very interesting,” Siedsma said.
That’s one way to put it.
And in Necedah, Wisconsin, a 16-month-old kangaroo named Chesney escaped from Sunshine Farm petting zoo by scaling an eight-foot fence, the AP reported. He was gone for three days.
Some stray dogs had rushed the enclosure and spooked him. His keeper, Debbie Marland, organized search parties, chased reported sightings, and rented heat-seeking drones. Colton Johnson, who usually uses the drones to help hunters recover deer, said Chesney’s heat signature was unique. “It almost looked like a dinosaur running through the woods,” he told the AP. “It’s got a long tail, and the way it moves.”
Chesney stayed within three miles of the farm the entire time. He was found Saturday.
Marland said she was putting on about 37,000 steps a day during the search. “I haven’t done so much exercise in a very long time,” she told the AP.
Chesney is named for country music star Kenny Chesney, along with his roommate, Kenny. They live at the farm with horses, sheep, alpacas, pigs, Highland cows, and a Bactrian camel. The farm opens for the season in mid-May. Chesney will be there, presumably on the correct side of the fence.
