President Trump announced via Truth Social Monday evening that the United States would not carry out a planned military strike on Iran. CBS News reported on the announcement, in which Trump wrote that he was standing down to allow diplomatic talks to proceed. “We will NOT be doing the scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow,” he posted, adding that he remained prepared “to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice.” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said the conditions for any agreement require that Iran “must renounce their nuclear ambitions for good.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, responding through state media, said: “We have not discussed any details regarding nuclear matters at this stage.”
The talks are being conducted through Pakistani intermediaries, following eighty days of open military conflict between the United States and Iran with no formal resolution. Both sides are describing the situation as active negotiations while publicly maintaining incompatible positions.
This specific dynamic has a precedent. In June 2019, Trump authorized and then cancelled a retaliatory strike against Iran after Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone, telling reporters he called off the attack when he was told approximately 150 people would die. That reversal came without further military escalation. This reversal comes after eighty days of an ongoing conflict that has already produced casualties on multiple sides, which is a materially different situation. The gap between a near-miss and a pause is not a small one.
The nuclear question has been the central tension in U.S.-Iran relations since at least the late 1970s. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated under the Obama administration and accepted by Iran, sought to limit Iranian uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from that agreement in May 2018. Iran has been enriching uranium at levels well above the JCPOA limits ever since. What “renouncing nuclear ambitions for good” would require, and what Iran would receive in return, remains unspecified by either government. That’s where negotiations typically begin. It’s also where they most often end.
Two Navy EA-18G Growler jets collided in midair Saturday during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, Fox News reported. One of the aircraft caught fire before the collision. All four crew members, two from each jet, ejected successfully. Eyewitness David Katz told reporters he “saw four parachutes deploy from the aircraft, two from each plane.” He added: “One of the planes was impacted and started burning in the air.” Naval Air Forces spokesperson Cmdr. Amelia Umayam said the crew members “were being evaluated by medical personnel while first responders remained at the scene.” The Navy has opened a formal investigation. Both jets were assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 129, based at Whidbey Island, Washington.
Major U.S. military air show accidents are relatively rare. The last large-scale fatality event involving military aircraft at an air show occurred at the Reno Air Races in September 2011, when a modified P-51 Mustang crashed into a crowd of spectators, killing eleven people. Saturday’s Idaho collision is the category of event where the outcome is usually different. Two aircraft burning and falling, four crew members reaching the ground alive. That’s not the typical result.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost his Republican primary election Saturday, becoming the first sitting elected Republican senator to fail renomination since Richard Lugar of Indiana in 2012, Fox News reported. Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming both outperformed Cassidy, advancing to a runoff. Cassidy, a physician who chairs the Senate health committee, voted to convict Trump in the February 2021 impeachment trial following January 6. Former Sen. Mitt Romney called the result “a loss for the country,” describing Cassidy as “an exceptionally brilliant and creative mind, an MD who chairs healthcare, and a person of character.” Sen. Lindsey Graham offered the contrasting view, saying GOP voters will reject anyone who tries “to destroy” Trump or his agenda.
Richard Lugar served Indiana in the Senate for thirty-six years and lost his 2012 primary to a Tea Party challenger who argued Lugar had drifted too far toward compromise. Lugar died in 2019. He had spent much of his Senate career on arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, and the destruction of Soviet-era chemical and biological weapons through what became known as the Nunn-Lugar program. The voters who replaced him were not particularly wrong that he had moved toward the center. They were also not wrong that he had been effective there. Primary elections tend to resolve that tension the same way each time.
Canadian health authorities confirmed a case of hantavirus in a passenger who traveled aboard the MV Hondius, a Dutch-flagged expedition cruise vessel that departed Argentina on April 1, Fox News reported. The World Health Organization had identified eleven cases as of May 13, including eight confirmed, two probable, and one inconclusive. Three people have died. The outbreak involves Andes virus, which is the only recognized strain of hantavirus documented to spread from person to person. The ship was carrying 147 passengers and crew. The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed: “One individual’s sample was confirmed positive for hantavirus.”
The first recognized outbreak of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the United States occurred in the Four Corners region in the summer of 1993, when thirty-five people died after exposure to deer mouse droppings in rural New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. That outbreak was rodent-to-human. The MV Hondius situation appears to involve human-to-human transmission, which is what makes Andes virus different from nearly every other hantavirus strain. The WHO case count will matter less than whether the transmission chain has been broken.
The International Energy Agency is projecting that global oil demand will contract by roughly 1.5 million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2026, which would represent the sharpest decline since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the May market analysis published by Crestwood Advisors, which cited the IEA’s figures. The IEA attributes the pressure to ongoing Middle East conflict and its effects on trade and shipping. Oil prices have risen since the U.S.-Iran conflict began. Longer-term inflation expectations remain near the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, and the AI-driven equity rally has continued to push major stock indices higher despite the broader geopolitical backdrop.
The 1973 OPEC oil embargo reduced U.S. crude imports by roughly 10 percent and produced gasoline lines, national speed limit reductions, and a recession that extended into 1975. The oil intensity of the American economy has fallen by more than half since then. The country imports less crude as a share of what it consumes, drives more fuel-efficient vehicles, and heats fewer homes with oil. An oil demand contraction today looks different than it did fifty years ago. It still matters.
The number of potential Alzheimer’s treatments in clinical development has grown by roughly 40 percent over the last decade, according to Positive News, which cited researchers presenting their work at a recent conference. Scientists are now testing drugs targeting every stage of the disease, from prevention in patients who show no symptoms to treatment in advanced cases. A blood test analyzing RNA markers can already forecast how a specific patient’s disease is likely to progress. Imperial College London’s Dr. Clair Duncan said the test could determine whether a patient “will get better or deteriorate, and how they might respond to treatment.” A working version is expected within five years. Dr. Jeffrey Cummings described the research pipeline as pointing toward “a future in which Alzheimer’s can be effectively treated.”
Alois Alzheimer first described the condition that carries his name at a medical conference in 1906. Effective treatment has been a goal of medicine for 120 years. Forty percent more candidates in the development pipeline is not the same as a cure. But it is a 40 percent wider door.
And a word about Carol Gifford.
Carol writes the Health section, and her recent work has been the kind that earns the section’s name in the most practical sense. Her piece on the best shoes for plantar fasciitis, published May 6, doesn’t read like a product review. It reads like an explanation from someone who understands both the biomechanics and what it feels like to be told your foot pain finally has a name. Tomorrow she publishes a guide to knee braces for arthritis. Carol brings something to Health that’s rarer than it should be: she writes about the body the way a good doctor talks to a patient who is also an intelligent adult. No alarm, no hedging, no unnecessary qualification. Just solid information, written by someone who actually knows what she’s talking about.
It is Tuesday. A president called off an Iran strike and said he could restart it at any moment. Four Navy pilots ejected from burning aircraft over an Idaho air show and survived. Louisiana voted out a senator who voted to convict in 2021 and became the first sitting Republican senator to lose a primary since 2012. A cruise ship traced a rare hantavirus outbreak to the one strain that spreads person to person. The IEA projected the steepest oil demand drop since COVID. And Alzheimer’s researchers said the treatment pipeline is 40 percent larger than it was a decade ago. That’s the day.
