Xinhua
23 Apr 2025

Expert-level Iran-U.S. talks postponed to Saturday

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday that the technical talks with U.S. experts initially scheduled for Wednesday in Oman will be held on Saturday.

"Based on Oman's suggestion and as agreed by the Iranian and U.S. delegations, the technical consultation meeting, supposed to be held on Wednesday within the framework of the indirect talks between the two sides, was postponed to Saturday," Baghaei told reporters, according to a statement by the ministry.

Iran and the United States held the second round of indirect talks on Tehran's nuclear program and the removal of Washington's sanctions in Rome on April 19, with mediation from Oman. The first round took place in Muscat on April 12, and a third session is scheduled to be held in the Omani capital again this coming Saturday.

Shortly after the Rome talks, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that technical negotiations at the expert level were arranged, where the details of a potential agreement's framework may be discussed. It added that the third session would review the result of the experts' work.

Harvard University sues Trump administration over funding freeze

Harvard University said Monday that it has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration's funding freeze, calling the action "unlawful and beyond the government's authority."

In a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the university said that this case involves "the government's efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard."

"Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard's refusal to comply with its illegal demands," Harvard University President Alan M. Garber wrote in a letter to members of the Harvard Community.

A report by The New York Times said that the lawsuit "signaled a major escalation" of the ongoing fight between higher education and Trump, who has vowed to "reclaim" elite universities.

The administration has cast its campaign as a fight against antisemitism, but has also targeted programs and teaching related to racial diversity and gender issues, according to the report.

U.S. State Department announces comprehensive reorganization plan

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced a comprehensive plan to reorganize the U.S. State Department, aiming to deliver on U.S. President Donald Trump's America First foreign policy.

Rubio said in a statement that "we are facing tremendous challenges across the globe" and "In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition."

"Over the past 15 years, the Department's footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared. But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America's core national interests," Rubio noted.

"That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century," he said, adding that "This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America's core national interests will cease to exist."

The plan will reportedly reduce staff in the United States by 15 percent and eliminate more than 130 domestic offices.

Mexican president presents Trump with reasons to ditch tariffs but fails to get a deal

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday she was able to present her U.S. counterpart Donald Trump with arguments against tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles in a telephone call last week, though they reached no agreement.

"We are discussing the issue of tariffs on steel, aluminum and automotive products. We did not reach an agreement, but we are presenting arguments" to prevent the import taxes from taking effect, Sheinbaum said at her regular morning press conference at the National Palace.

"In the case of steel and aluminum, we are arguing that we have a deficit; that is, the United States exports more steel and aluminum to Mexico than Mexico exports to the United States," she explained.

She said Mexico has two avenues to address the tariffs: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade, and World Trade Organization rules related to the "Most Favored Nation" clause, which aims to ensure equal treatment in trade matters.

IMF downgrades global growth forecast to 2.8 pct in 2025 amid increased tariffs

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday downgraded its global growth forecast in 2025 to 2.8 percent, a hefty 0.5 percentage point decrease from its January projection, according to the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO).

"Since the release of the January WEO Update, a series of new tariff measures by the United States and countermeasures by trading partners have been announced and implemented, ending up in near-universal U.S. tariffs on April 2 and bringing effective tariff rates to levels not seen in a century," the report said.

Noting that the tariffs alone are a "major negative shock," the IMF said that the "unpredictability" with which these measures have unfolded negatively impacts economic activity and the outlook.

"The global economic system under which most countries have operated for the last 80 years is being reset, ushering the world into a new era. Existing rules are challenged while new ones are yet to emerge," IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said at a press conference.

China's 8th batch of aid supplies arrives in quake-hit Myanmar

The eighth batch of emergency humanitarian aid supplies dispatched by the Chinese government on Tuesday arrived at Yangon International Airport in Myanmar, which was devastated by a 7.9-magnitude earthquake on March 28.

The aid supplies include 24,600 bone plates, 132,000 bone screws, 4,526 intramedullary nails, 30 sets of tool kits, 1 million bottles of sodium penicillin for injection, 400,000 bottles of metronidazole tablets, 90,000 boxes of cefradine capsules, 300 boxes of medical disinfectant tablets, and 2,000 barrels of medical iodine cotton swabs.

As of April 18, the earthquake has claimed 3,726 lives and injured 5,105 people, with 129 others remaining unaccounted for, according to Myanmar's official data.

Israeli army kills 25 Palestinians in Gaza attacks

At least 25 Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli attacks targeting several areas across the Gaza Strip overnight, the territory's Civil Defense said on Tuesday.

Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal described it as "a particularly difficult night" for Gaza residents, citing a combination of air raids, artillery shelling, and gunfire from military helicopters.

Nine people were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a residential building in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Two others were killed in a drone strike on Salah al-Din street, northeast of Rafah, located in the far south of the enclave.

In northern Gaza, nine were killed in two separate airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp. An additional five, including children, died when the Bakr family home was hit in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.

Yemen's Houthis shoot down U.S. MQ-9 drone, launch fresh attacks at U.S. aircraft carriers

Yemen's Houthis said in a statement on Tuesday that the group had shot down a U.S. MQ-9 drone over the Yemeni northwestern province of Hajjah, and launched fresh attacks against two U.S. aircraft carriers.

"We shot down a hostile American MQ-9 drone while carrying out hostile missions in the airspace of Hajjah province," Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in the televised statement aired by Houthi-run al-Masirah TV.

"The drone was shot down, using a locally manufactured surface-to-air missile," he said, adding: "The MQ-9 drone is the seventh drone we had shot down this April and the 22nd since November 2023."

Sarea also said the group launched fresh attacks against two U.S. aircraft carriers, from which the U.S. military has been conducting airstrikes against Houthi targets across northern Yemen since mid-March.

"We carried out two military operations targeting the American aircraft carriers: the USS S. Harry Truman and the USS Carl Vinson and their escorting warships in the Red and Arabian Seas, using cruise missiles and drones," Sarea said.

Israeli airstrikes kill Hezbollah, Islamic Group members in Lebanon

A leader of Lebanese Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group) and a Hezbollah operative were killed on Tuesday in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, according to Lebanese sources.

One of the airstrikes targeted a vehicle in the village of Baawerta in Mount Lebanon, and the other targeted the town of Haniya in southwestern Lebanon's Tyre District, the Public Health Emergency Operations Center at the Ministry of Public Health said in two statements.

A Lebanese security source told Xinhua that the person killed in the Baawerta airstrike was Hussein Atwi, a senior Jamaa Islamiya leader from the town of Al-Hebbariyah, and the one killed in the Haniya airstrike was Ali Kaid Hashem, a Hezbollah activist from the village of Majdal Zoun, both of whom from southern Lebanon.