GRIF MAG

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Iran has indicated it is prepared to make concessions on its nuclear programme in talks with the U.S. in return for the lifting of sanctions and recognition of its right to enrich uranium, as it seeks to avert a U.S. attack.

Both sides remain sharply divided -- even over the scope and sequencing of relief from crippling U.S. sanctions -- following ‌two rounds of talks, a senior Iranian official told Reuters.

However, Reuters is reporting for the first time that Iran is offering fresh concessions since their talks ended last week, when the sides appeared far ‌apart and heading closer to military conflict. Analysts say the move suggests Tehran is trying to keep diplomacy alive and stave off a major U.S. strike.

The official said Tehran would seriously consider a combination of sending half of its most highly enriched uranium abroad, diluting the rest ​and taking part in creating a regional enrichment consortium - an idea periodically raised in years of Iran-linked diplomacy.

Iran would do this in return for U.S. recognition of Iran's right to "peaceful nuclear enrichment" under a deal that would also include lifting economic sanctions, the official said.

In addition, Iran has offered openings for U.S. companies to participate as contractors in Iran's large oil and gas industries, the official said, in negotiations to resolve decades of dispute over Tehran's nuclear activities.

"Within the economic package under negotiation, the United States has also been offered opportunities for serious investment and tangible economic interests in Iran's oil industry," the official said.

The White House did not respond immediately to queries on the issue.

Washington views enrichment inside Iran as a potential ‌pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and wants its right to ⁠enrich uranium to be recognised.

Iran and the United States resumed negotiations earlier this month as the U.S. builds up its military capability in the Middle East. Iran has threatened to strike U.S. bases in the region if it is attacked.

The Iranian official said the most recent discussions underscored the gap between the two sides, but stressed that "the possibility of reaching ⁠an interim agreement exists" as negotiations continue.

IRAN SEEKS 'LOGICAL TIMETABLE' FOR LIFTING SANCTIONS

"The last round of talks showed that U.S. ideas regarding the scope and mechanism of sanctions relief differ from Iran's demands. Both sides need to reach a logical timetable for lifting sanctions," the official said.

"This roadmap must be reasonable and based on mutual interests."

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday he expects to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva on Thursday, adding there is still "a good chance" of ​a ​diplomatic solution.

Araqchi said on Friday that he expected to have a draft counterproposal ready within days, while Trump said he was considering ​limited military strikes.

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Citing officials on both sides and diplomats across the Gulf and Europe, ‌Reuters reported on Friday that Tehran and Washington are sliding rapidly towards military conflict as hopes fade for a diplomatic settlement.

On Sunday, Witkoff said the president was curious as to why Iran has not yet "capitulated" and agreed to curb its nuclear programme.

"Why, under this pressure, with the amount of seapower and naval power over there, why haven't they come to us and said, 'We profess we don't want a weapon, so here's what we're prepared to do'? And yet it's sort of hard to get them to that place," Witkoff said on Fox News.

READINESS TO COMPROMISE ON NUCLEAR WORK

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Iran's leadership is seeking to buy time via the talks.

"Iran will use that time for various reasons, including to avoid a strike and to harden nuclear, missile, and military facilities," he said.

While rejecting a U.S. demand for "zero enrichment" - a major sticking point in ‌past negotiations - Tehran has signalled its readiness to compromise on its nuclear work.

Washington has also demanded that Iran relinquish its stockpile ​of highly enriched uranium (HEU). The International Atomic Energy Agency last year estimated that stockpile at more than 440 kg of uranium enriched to ​up to 60% fissile purity, a small step away from the 90% that is considered weapons grade.

Ali Larijani, ​a close adviser to Iran's supreme leader, told Al Jazeera TV that Iran was ready to allow extensive IAEA monitoring to prove it is not seeking nuclear weapons.

The agency has ‌been calling on Iran for months to allow for inspection of three nuclear sites that ​were struck by the U.S. in June last year at ​the close of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Since then, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work has stopped.

Satellite images show that Iran has advanced work at a location reportedly bombed by Israel last year, recently building a concrete shield over a new facility at a sensitive military site and covering it in soil, experts say.

BENEFITS FOR BOTH SIDES

Among U.S. demands are restrictions on Tehran's long-range ballistic missiles and an end ​to its support for regional proxy groups.

Iran has flatly rejected discussing its missiles, while ‌sources have told Reuters, without elaborating, that "the issue of regional proxies is not a red line for Tehran".

Iranian authorities have said that a diplomatic solution would provide economic benefits for both Tehran ​and Washington.

The Iranian official said Tehran would not hand over control of its oil and mineral resources.

"Ultimately, the U.S. can be an economic partner for Iran, nothing more. American companies can always participate ​as contractors in Iran's oil and gas fields."

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Alex Richardson, Ros Russell, William Maclean)

KARACHI, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Pakistan said it launched strikes on militant targets in Afghanistan after blaming recent suicide bombings - including assaults during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan - on ‌fighters it said were operating from its neighbour's territory.

Women and children were among the dozens ‌killed and injured in Saturday's attacks, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said, in remarks Reuters could not verify. Its defence ministry vowed to ​respond.

The strikes mark a sharp escalation in tensions just days after Kabul released three Pakistani soldiers in a Saudi-mediated effort to calm relations following months of clashes along the rugged frontier.

Pakistan's information ministry on Sunday said the strikes involved "intelligence-based selective targeting of seven terrorist camps and hideouts" along the Afghan border belonging to ‌the Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State ⁠Khorasan Province.

It added that it had "conclusive evidence" that earlier attacks on Pakistani soil were carried out by Khwarij - its term for the Pakistani Taliban - acting on instructions ⁠from "their Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers."

Kabul has repeatedly denied allowing militants to use Afghan territory to launch attacks in Pakistan.

AFGHANISTAN VOWS TO RESPOND

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Afghanistan's defence ministry condemned what it called a blatant violation of sovereignty and a breach of ​international ​law, warning that "an appropriate and measured response will be ​taken at a suitable time."

The foreign ministry ‌said it had summoned Pakistan's ambassador over what it described as violations of Afghan airspace and the bombing of civilians, calling the strikes "a provocative act."

A Taliban spokesperson said the attacks had killed and injured dozens of people, including women and children, but Reuters was unable to independently verify the remarks.

Among the attacks Pakistan cited as being orchestrated from Afghanistan were a mosque bombing in Islamabad and violence in the ‌northwestern border districts of Bajaur and Bannu.

On Saturday, the Pakistani ​military said a suicide bomber in these districts targeted a ​convoy of security forces. Five militants died ​in a gun battle and two soldiers were killed when an explosives-laden vehicle ‌rammed into a military vehicle.

Tension has forced repeated ​closures of border crossings, disrupting ​trade and activity along the 2,600-km (1,600-mile) frontier.

Clashes in October killed dozens before a fragile ceasefire was agreed, but Pakistan continues to accuse Afghanistan's Taliban rulers of harbouring militants who stage attacks ​inside its territory - a claim ‌Kabul denies.

(Reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi, Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar, Saud Mehsud in Dera ​Ismail Khan and Yunus Yawar and Sayed Hassib in Kabul; Writing by Lucy Craymer; ​Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Clarence Fernandez and Ros Russell)

In and out of court, more than half of the amendments enshrined in the Bill of Rights are being fought over as a direct result of President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.

In his second term, Trump and his administration have been aggressive in stretching the boundaries of political conventions, resulting ina number of court challenges. Trump's push to eliminate birthright citizenship, freeze federal funds and bypass Congress through executive orders have tested the separation of powers.

The Twin Cities campaign, though, has been a flashpoint, with fights over at least six — the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and 10th — of the first 10 amendments. Conservative-leaning scholars see both lawyers and judges overstepping their bounds in fiery filings and opinions, while liberal-leaning counterparts see a notable disregard by the Trump administration for Bill of Rights provisions.

"You could teach a great constitutional law seminar about the Bill of Rights just through the violations that have taken place in Minneapolis alone," said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former constitutional law professor. "There have been massive violations of the civil rights of minority groups in the past, like Native Americans and African Americans and Asian Americans, but it is hard to sum up any historical analogy to the systematic violation of all of the fundamental constitutional rights of the people in such a comprehensive and indiscriminate way."

Randy Barnett, director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, said he saw the battle over the Bill of Rights in Minneapolis as "unprecedented" for how many far-fetched claims he believes advocates have made that have gained traction with district court judges.

"As a Ninth Amendment scholar, I'm a little disappointed that this provision has yet to be thrown against the wall to see if it sticks," joked Barnett, who represented the National Federation of Independent Businesses in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said the administration "is working to lawfully deliver on President Trump's mandate to enforce federal immigration law and carry out the largest mass deportation campaign of criminal illegal aliens in history."

"The real story should be the unrelenting unlawful rulings issued by lower court judges pushing their own policy agenda," she continued. "President Trump will not waver when implementing the agenda he was elected on."

The Fourth, Fifth and 10th Amendments

In court, the Fourth, Fifth and 10th amendments have been core to legal battles over specific immigration enforcement actions.

John Yoo, who served in President George W. Bush's Justice Department, said many of the constitutional fights are taking place because of how unsettled areas of immigration law are.

"There's very few Supreme Court cases about it, and very few about the responsibility of the federal and state government," said Yoo, a strong advocate for presidential power who helped author the "torture memos" on interrogation after the Sept. 11 attacks. "So whenever you have that kind of uncertainty, that's where people step in — lower courts, litigants — and just start getting creative."

Yoo added that the contests over the Fourth Amendment might be the most significant as the space where individual liberties may most be at stake. That amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires the federal government to obtain warrants based on probable cause to enter a person's home. It has been tested under a Trump administration policy that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter people's homes with administrative warrants issued by the executive branch, instead of a judge.

The question over the use of administrative warrants has already arisen in court. Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, accused the Trump administration of ignoring the Fourth Amendmentin a ruling last monthordering the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, from an immigration detention center in Texas. The two have since returned home to Minneapolis.

Biery said the administration was treating the Fourth Amendment like a "pesky inconvenience."

"Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster," Biery wrote. "That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer."

In that same opinion,Biery also pointed to the Fifth Amendment, which provides for due process rights. The judge wrote that the father and son "seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law."

Another Clinton-appointed federal judge, Michael J. Davis in Minnesota —who has handleda number of petitions stemming from Operation Metro Surge — wrote last month of "an undeniable move by the Government in the past month to defy court orders or at least to stretch the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights."

Moderate Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a frequent Trump critic who is not seeking re-election this year, said he's confident the courts will step in to halt unconstitutional activity related to Minneapolis and ICE.

"I think the warrants will lose in court," Bacon said. "In the end, I think the courts will be an effective backstop. But I don't know why they want to push the envelope. I wouldn't do it, but in the end I think our Constitution will be secured and we got a good court that will do it. The problem is it just takes awhile to make that happen."

The 10th Amendment, meanwhile, was the basis for Minnesota officials to argue for a temporary restraining order to block the administration from carrying out Operation Metro Surge. That amendment reserves powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government — or prohibited to the states — to the states or citizens at large. Minnesota officials alleged that the operation was aimed at forcing change to state immigration policies, running afoul of the amendment.

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Katherine Menendez, a federal judge in Minnesota appointed by President Joe Biden, rejected the request from Minnesota officials,writing last month that their argumentswere not strong enough to justify blocking the administration.

The First Amendment

First Amendment rights have most notablyarisen in the charging of journalist Don Lemon. The former CNN anchor last month followed protesters into a Minnesota church and livestreamed a demonstration against a pastor who protesters claimed worked for ICE. Lemon, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges he faces, was arrested last month and charged alongside eight co-defendants involved in the church protest.

Lemon and free speech advocates have argued his conduct is protected by the First Amendment. He was charged with conspiracy against the rights of religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship.

"I wanted to say this isn't just about me. This is about all journalists, especially in the United States," Lemon said outside court in Minnesota last week. "For more than 30 years, I've been a journalist, and the power and protection of the First Amendment has been the underpinning of my work."

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he's considered Lemon's case but hasn't arrived at a conclusion about whether his arrest and prosecution were justified.

"If there is a disruption of a church service and you have someone who is aware of it, comes in with it, and then actually is in the middle of asking questions of individuals while their church service is being disrupted, are they exercising First Amendment rights? Or are they violating somebody else's First Amendment rights to freedom of religion?" Rounds asked. "I don't know the answer to that, but once again, a question of fact but also a question for the courts."

Separately,a class action lawsuitfiled by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Department of Homeland Security alleges that DHS agents violated the First Amendment rights of protesters in Minnesota. (It isincredibly difficultto win damages by suing individual federal agents for constitutional violations.)

The Second Amendment

Tom Homan, the Trump administration official who took over leadership of the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, dubbed Operation Metro Surge,announced earlier this monththat it would be winding down. DHS said this month that 4,000 people had been arrested since the operation began in November. Immigration authorities shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 years old, in separate confrontations.

Those killings, particularly Pretti's, have had Second Amendment implications. After Pretti's death last month, the president and administration officials criticized the ICU nurse for carrying a concealed handgun — which he was legally permitted to do — when he approached federal law enforcement before being shot.Eyewitness videos showedfederal agents apparently discovering and removing the gun during that altercation, and they did not appear to show Pretti holding the weapon during the altercation.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she didn't "know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign."

The sentiment, shared by other administration officials, sparked a riftwith some gun-rights advocates. At the time, the White House pointed to comments made by Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino in an interview with CNN where he said: "We respect Second Amendment rights, but those rights don't count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers."

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., whose family has posed with guns in its Christmas photo, said he has major objections to top Trump officials' comments about restricting gun rights.

"The administration is just bungling all of the statements on the Second Amendment," said Massie, who has clashed with Trump and has drawn a Trump-endorsed primary opponent. "Carrying a firearm to a protest is not a death sentence — it's a constitutional right."

Other conservatives took issue with the remarks following Pretti's shooting, too.

"Yes, you absolutely can carry at a protest. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an anti-2A [Second Amendment] statist," Dana Loesch, a conservative radio and TV host,wrote on X, adding, however, that people "cannot interrupt a federal op while armed."

The Third Amendment

Then, there's the rarely cited Third Amendment, which was briefly the subject of debate in Minneapolis, too. That amendment prohibits the government from forcing Americans to house soldiers without their consent.It arosewhen staff at aMinneapolis hotel apparentlycanceled room reservations for ICE agents — an episode DHShighlighted.

Beth Colgan, a law professor at UCLA, acknowledged this amendment comes up so rarely that it's essentially become "a trivia question as 'What is the Third Amendment?'"

Looking at the constitutional fights stemming from the Twin Cities in totality, Colgan said it's unclear what the long-term impact will be.

"I think that's something people should be very worried about," she said.

As for whether the battles were anything out of the ordinary, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, law school, said they assuredly were.

"It is unusual," said Chemerinsky, who worked in the Department of Justice during the Carter administration, "for one set of government actions to clearly violate so many provisions of the Constitution."

Watched more than 1.3 million times since it was posted by Russian comedy group "Plyushki" to YouTube last month, the video comes with a disclaimer.

"Some of the jokes are based on wordplay and do not carry any religious, philosophical, or ideological assertion," it says, acknowledging that comedy can be arisky business in Russia, where some have been jailed for jokes, particularly if they are thought to be critical of thewar in Ukraine.

"Maybe there's problems in the country," one of the comedians said, a nod to the fact that addressing the country's issues head-on could be dangerous. "There's a lot of cameras here," another replied, to laughter from the crowd, because the words for camera and jail cell are the same in Russian.

While there have been no repercussions for the group, others including Artemy Ostanin are not so lucky. The 29-year-old was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison by a Moscow court earlier this month after he was found guilty of inciting hatred for a joke about being tripped up by a disabled person. A second joke about Jesus Christ led to a conviction for offending religious believers.

They were brought to the attention of authorities in March by pro-government activists from a group called Zov Naroda, or Call of the People, which accused him of mocking a fighter who lost his legs in the war in Ukraine — a claim he denied, insisting the joke had been misinterpreted.

Aware that he could be in trouble, Ostanin fled toBelarus, only to be arrested and deported back to Russia. He told the Moscow courtroom that he was severely beaten in a forest and his hair was cut off by Belarusian security services, an independent Russian media outlet, Sota Vision, reported in its trial coverage.

Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia's Human Rights Council, also posted a picture on Telegram of Ostanin with heavy bruising and blood on his back.

Belarus' interior ministry issued a statement on Telegram denying he'd been beaten.

Fellow stand-up Nikolai said his friend was "a convenient target" and the severe sentence was meant to scare other comedians into toeing the line. "It's easier to harshly punish one person so the others live with the knowledge that it's best not to take risks," he told NBC News in an interview earlier this month.

NBC News agreed not to use the last names of the people interviewed inside Russia, over fears for their security.

A relatively new thing in Russia, stand-up comedy took off in the last decade after it was aired on TV, turning relative unknowns into huge stars.

Even today, "it's hard to find a bar in Moscow that doesn't host a stand-up gig at least once a week," Nikolai said.

But "the state isn't well-versed in humor," according to Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the rights group First Division, which specializes in defending people accused of political crimes and espionage. He added that authorities take "everything seriously and literally," and Russia has introduced more laws that punish people for speech.

Among the more draconian was legislation introduced shortly afterPresident Vladimir Putinlaunched what the Kremlin refers to as its "special military operation" in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Those found guilty of "discrediting" the Russian army could face up to 15 years in prison.

Previously, few topics were off-limits, including issues like the #MeToo movement, according to Anastasia, a 35-year-old artist from Moscow who regularly attended comedy gigs before the crackdown. She added that people took pride in how free and vicious Russian humor could be.

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That changed dramatically after the war started almost four years ago, she said, adding that in the current climate, comedians "play it safe." Before delivering their jokes, she said, some comedians will tell their audiences that they don't want to offend them, while others will tell the crowd that they have a joke "but I won't say it."

As a result, she said, she was going to fewer gigs because a lot of the material became repetitive.

"Every time, we stoop to a whole new low. And there's no end to it. We live in some kind of frightening mirror world," said Anastasia, adding that although she wasn't a fan of jokes about disabled people, she was frustrated by Ostanin's prison sentence.

After 2022, Nikolai said, he removed material about the army because he had been heckled and told to stop joking aboutthe war, and he'd heard others had been beaten up for doing so.

Some comedians who wanted to joke about those things have left Russia, among them Denis Chuzhoy, who performs in English using the name "Dan the Stranger," a literal translation of his name in Russian.

Once popular in his homeland, he said his fortunes changed after he spoke out against the war. During a show in the northwestern city of Vologda, he recalled, two men stood up and handed him a funeral wreath with a ribbon that read "to Russia's traitor," one of the reasons he decided to relocate to Spain.

Today, comedians in Russia are "retelling wife jokes," Chuzhoy, who now performs in both Europe and the U.S., said in an interview earlier this month. While he mostly jokes about death and depression, some of his posts on social media reference Putin and the Russian state.

The bravest comedian he'd seen recently on a video filmed in Russia did a routine "about the right way to eat pizza," he said. As the comic held a pizza with two slices missing from the bottom, it eventually became clear that it "looks like a peace sign," he said.

On the first day of the Ukraine invasion, he added, it was made clear to comedians performing on TV that joking about this was off-limits. "We're making a comedy show, not a revolution," they were told by show producers in group chats.

Those who defied the ban were threatened with "dismissal or criminal charges," he said.

Even those who don't appear to have criticized the war are not immune, like Nurlan Saburov, a popular comedian from Kazakhstan who earlier this month was banned from Russia for 50 years for "criticism of the special military operation, as well as violations of immigration and tax legislation," according to the state-run TASS news agency.

In a statement on Instagram, Saburov said he did not want to comment on the situation and his lawyers were handling the matter.

Nonetheless, Nikolai said some political stand-up did still exist in Russia at a grassroots level. Comedians perform in front of loyal audiences of around 20 people "whom they basically know personally," he said. "No one will even consider doing it on TV. No one's suicidal," he added.

Comparing stand-up in Russia to an electric fence, he said it was "easy to get through, but God forbid you brush the side — you're dead."

Back in Moscow, a soldier who lost his leg in the war in Ukraine stood on the stage of a show broadcast on Russian social media channel VK.

"I'm the only comedian who's actually fought for every audience member," he said, to cheers from the crowd.

Larry Marano/Shutterstock

NEED TO KNOW

• Train's song "Drops of Jupiter" came out in January 2001, and is still beloved 25 years later

• Monahan's mother died in 1998, but he says she "delivered" him all the "lyrics and melodies" while he was asleep

• "I felt like my mom wrote that song with me," he told PEOPLE in 2025

Pat Monahan, the lead singer of Train, got inspiration for "Drops of Jupiter" from someone very special: his late mother.

The Grammy-winning musician recently joined Lynn Hoffman on theMusic Saved Mepodcast to talk about his decades-long career and how the hit 2001 song came to be. He explained that, after the band first gained traction with their 1998 hit "Meet Virginia" from their self-titled debut album, they were looking to piggyback off its success.

"We recorded an album calledSomething Moreand delivered it to Columbia Records. And they didn't think we had a first single," the 56-year-old explained. "I was emotionally not in the mood because I lost my mother just recently. And now I don't have a single for this record company."

Monahan's mother, Patricia Ann Monahan, died in December 1998 from lung cancer while the band was on tour.

Jeremy Chan/Getty

"One night, I went to sleep and probably was asleep for 10 minutes and woke up with all the lyrics and melodies in my head, as though my mother had delivered me the message, 'This is what it's like when you go to the other side. You can swim through the planets and come back with drops of Jupiter in your hair, and don't worry about me,'" he recalled.

"Drops of Jupiter" was officially released as the lead single off the album of the same name on Jan. 29, 2001.

However, he noted that there was one particular part of the song that he didn't get from his mom.

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"So then with the [lyric] 'looking for yourself out there,' that was the emotional part of it for me, that was like... it somehow had to translate into a love story, and so that was, that was the little bit of something I gave to the song that maybe my mother didn't deliver," Monahan added.

Scott Legato/Getty

Monahan admitted he was surprised the track did so well, saying that "there was no reason for that song to become a hit."

"It's the same thing as any other song that was big for us. Like, even 'Meet Virginia' was a quirky little song, and then a song with a ukulele," he said of his popular songs, referring to "Hey, Soul Sister."

"'Drops of Jupiter' was like four minutes and 20 seconds or something at a time when there were, you know, two-and-a-half-minute songs on the radio," Monahan added. "So it was pretty interesting that it happened."

When talking toPEOPLEin 2025, Monahan said he "felt like my mom wrote that song with me."

"We were kind of talking back and forth about [it]," he said.

Read the original article onPeople