The White House and Congress are engaged in tough, down-to-the-wire negotiations over raising the U.S. government’s borrowing limit and agreeing to new spending levels for as long as the coming two years.  

President Donald Trump’s latest tweetstorm against four Democratic progressive lawmakers and the early stages of the 2020 presidential election campaign are grabbing the headlines in Washington. But the outcome of behind-the-scenes discussions between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the country’s debt ceiling — its cap on borrowing to run the government — and the 2020 budget could prove more consequential.

Agreement on a new debt ceiling and a deal on a new two-year spending plan beginning in October could take both issues off the table ahead of Trump’s November 2020 re-election bid and Democratic efforts to oust him after a single term in the White House.

The century-old debt ceiling is a legal cap on the amount of money the government can borrow to cover revenue shortages. In March, the debt limit expired and the debt now totals $22.5 trillion.

Mnuchin, Trump’s point man in the spending talks, and Pelosi, leader of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, have talked several times in recent days and, according to news accounts, have made progress in reaching a deal, but aren’t at the finish line yet. Pelosi refuses to cut a deal on raising the debt ceiling until the two sides agree on new spending levels as well.

The discussions are complicated by the legislative calendar, with House lawmakers set to leave Washington July 26 for their annual five-week summer recess and the Senate a week later. Whether Trump will sign off on any deal reached by Mnuchin and Pelosi is also in question, even though the Treasury secretary has been briefing the president about the ongoing discussions.

Mnuchin has emphasized the need to raise the debt ceiling before Congress leaves on vacation. Although he has taken steps to avoid a default on the country’s financial obligations, Mnuchin and experts outside official Washington agree that the government could run out of money to pay its bills in early September, when Congress still possibly is on vacation or just returning to the capital.

The U.S. has never defaulted on its debt obligations, about 30 percent of which are held by foreign governments, led by China and Japan.  

But in years past, Congress has several times walked up to the deadline for raising the debt ceiling before approving periodic increases. Often it has proved to be an exercise in legislative brinksmanship that created tension in world financial markets about the mere prospect that the world’s biggest economy would even think of defaulting on its debt like a deadbeat consumer overdue on a monthly credit card debt.  

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell testified to Congress last week that he assumes the debt ceiling will be raised, saying, “I wouldn’t be able to capture the range of possible negative outcomes” of not increasing it. Experts say a default could lead to a spike in interest rates on loans or a stock market tumble.

“The credit of the U.S. government is of the utmost importance,” Mnuchin said. “So the debt ceiling has to be raised.”

He said the White House and Republican lawmakers, along with opposition Democrats, prefer that an agreement be reached on both a debt ceiling increase and a new budget.

“To the extent we can agree on the debt ceiling and a budget deal, that is the first choice,” he said. “We’re getting closer.”

One major stumbling block to a deal is reaching agreement on spending levels for defense and domestic social welfare programs. The Democrats are insisting on parity in raising spending in both categories. The White House has agreed to increased government spending overall, but not to as much as Democrats want for their favored domestic programs.

Trump once said he could erase the U.S. debt if he won two terms — eight years — in the White House, but the $19 trillion debt he inherited when he took office in early 2017 has jumped on his watch, increased by chronic annual budget overspending by the government and a $1.5 trillion tax cut Trump championed.

Pelosi has also called for a joint deal encompassing an increase in the debt ceiling and a budget accord, saying an agreement only on a debt ceiling increase is not acceptable to her majority bloc of House Democrats.

She also objected Monday to a White House fallback proposal for a short-term debt ceiling increase for a few weeks if negotiations falter on a budget deal.

But if no spending deal can be reached in the current talks, negotiators have till the end of September to reach a new budget agreement, when current spending for government agencies expires before the start of a new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Last year, budget battles in Washington, chiefly over Trump’s demand for $5 billion to build a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico, extended well into December. The warring parties were unable to reach agreement, leading to a 35-day partial government shutdown that extended to late January.

The Trump administration’s plan to move the government’s largest land management office from Washington to Colorado evoked a mix of praise, criticism and questions Tuesday.

The Bureau of Land Management scheduled a formal announcement of its plans Tuesday afternoon. A day earlier, delighted Republican lawmakers said the bureau’s headquarters would move to Grand Junction, Colorado, and about 300 jobs would be relocated to Colorado, Nevada, Utah and other Western states.

The bureau, part of the Interior Department, oversees nearly 388,000 square miles (1 billion square kilometers) of public land, and 99% is in 12 Western states. Those lands produce oil, gas and coal, and ranchers graze livestock on them as well.

“This is a victory for local communities, advocates for public lands and proponents for a more responsible and accountable federal government,” said Senator Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican.

Gardner released a letter from the Interior Department Tuesday confirming the move to Grand Junction, a city of about 63,000 people 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Denver.

Bill Stringer, a Uintah County, Utah, commissioner and retired Bureau of Land Management employee, said it’s a good idea to put more agency employees “closer to where the action is” and in the same time zone as many of the ranchers who seek permits on public land.

But Stringer said he wants to hear the details.

“Theoretically, it sounds like you might have better access,” said Stringer, who retired in 2014 from the BLM. “But I’m interested in seeing what it really looks like.”

He noted that flying in and out of Grand Junction could be logistically difficult for people coming from Washington. 
 
Steve Ellis, another retired bureau official who served as deputy director of the agency, questioned how effective senior leaders could be if they are in western Colorado while budget negotiations and briefings for Congress take place in Washington. 
 
“Those functions are critical, and they’re time-sensitive,” he said. “My concern is, they’re not going to operate well with key people west of the Rockies.”

Ellis dismissed the argument that Bureau of Land Management staff will make better decisions if the headquarters is in the West, saying 95% of the agency’s staff is already in field offices.

The bureau has 9,000 employees, most of them scattered among 140 state, district or field offices.

“This move will further remove BLM career leadership from policy decisions that will still be made in Washington by the [Interior] department,” Ellis said.

‘PR stunt’

The Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group, also scoffed at the argument that moving the headquarters west would lead to better decisions.

“This announcement is nothing but a PR stunt,” the group’s executive director, Jennifer Rokala, said in a written statement. “Moving senior BLM leadership would only turn the agency into an afterthought, rather than a core piece of the Interior Department.”

Interior Department officials have said they also considered Denver; Salt Lake City; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Boise, Idaho, for the new headquarters.

The move is part of a broader plan to reorganize the Interior Department, launched by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Zinke stepped down in January amid ethics allegations, and his successor, David Bernhardt, continued the planning but with less fanfare.

The spacesuit astronaut Neil Armstrong wore during his mission to the moon went on public display for the first time in 13 years on Tuesday, at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum exactly 50 years to the day when Apollo 11 launched into space.

Armstrong’s son Rick unveiled the suit along with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence who recalled how the country was deeply divided in the late 1960s but came together in pride when Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

Armstrong died on Aug. 12, 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“On top of the contributions to science and human understanding, for that brief moment, the man who wore this suit, brought together our nation and the world,” Pence said.

“Apollo 11 is the only event of the 20th century that stands a chance of being widely remembered in the 30th century,” said Pence said. “A thousand years from now, July 20, 1969 will likely be a date that will live on in the minds and imaginations of men and women, here on Earth, across our solar system, and beyond.”

Armstrong’s suit was displayed for about 30 years at the Smithsonian before it was taken down in 2006 because curators were concerned about deterioration.

For the past 13 years, the suit has been subject to extensive conservation work, which included interviews with the designers and creators of the spacesuit and research into the materials and products used.

“The complexity of the suit ensured it could support human life in the harshest of environments: extreme heat and cold, radiation, micrometeorites and the threat of cuts from sharp rocks all had to be taken into consideration,” Ellen Stofan, the Washington museum’s director, said at the event.

“As our curators note, these spacesuits were actually single-person spacecraft, but while they were designed to endure the punishment of a lunar walk, they weren’t designed to last half a century on display.”

While the original boots worn by the Apollo 11 astronauts were left on the moon because of weight concerns, the Smithsonian does have the boots worn by astronauts on Apollo 17 which were brought back to Earth.

Conservation work was funded by thousands of public donations. Additional funds have been raised to conserve the spacesuit of astronaut Michael Collins, who joined Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Apollo 11 mission.

Federal prosecutors won’t bring civil rights charges against a New York City police officer in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

The decision not to bring charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo comes a day before the statute of limitations was set to expire, on the fifth anniversary of the encounter that led to Garner’s death. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Garner was black, Pantaleo is white. Garner’s words “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry for police reform activists, coming amid a stretch of other deaths of black men at the hands of white officers. Protests erupted around the country erupted, and police reform became a national discussion.

Some lawmakers and activists decried the decision.

“The Garner family has suffered too much. This decision pains me,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent running for president as a Democrat. “It is not just, and we will not have real justice for black Americans until there is serious reform of our racist criminal justice system.”

Officers were attempting to arrest Garner on charges he sold loose, untaxed cigarettes outside a Staten Island convenience store. He refused to be handcuffed, and officers took him down.

Garner is heard on bystander video crying out “I can’t breathe” at least 11 times before he falls unconscious. He later died.

A state grand jury had also refused to indict the officer on criminal charges.

In the years since Garner’s death, the New York Police Department made a series of sweeping changes on how it relates to the communities it serves, ditching a policy of putting rookie cops in higher-crime precincts in favor of a neighborhood policing model that revolves around community officers tasked with getting to know New Yorkers.

Some activists, including Garner’s family and the relatives of others killed by police, have argued the changes weren’t enough.

Garner’s family and attorney were meeting with federal prosecutors at 10 a.m. Tuesday. A news conference was planned afterward with the Rev. Al Sharpton, and they were expected to address the outcome.

Pantaleo’s attorney, Stuart London, said he was not immediately aware of the decision.

Chokeholds are banned under police policy. Pantaleo maintained he used a legal takedown maneuver called the “seatbelt.”

The medical examiner’s office said a chokehold contributed to Garner’s death.

The New York Police Department brought Pantaleo up on departmental charges earlier this year. Federal prosecutors were observing the proceedings. An administrative judge has not ruled whether he violated policy. He could face dismissal, but Police Commissioner James O’Neill has the final say.

In the years since the Garner death, Pantaleo has remained on the job but not in the field, and activists have decried his paycheck that included union-negotiated raises.
 

Bulgarian officials said Tuesday that unidentified hackers have stolen the personal details of millions of people from Bulgaria’s national revenue agency and noted a possible Russian link in the case.

Prime Minister Boyko Borissov called an emergency meeting of all law enforcement services to consider the potential harm to the country’s national security. Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov told reporters after the meeting that the hackers behind the breach contacted local media using a mailbox from a Russian domain.

The leak, the biggest in the Balkan country, contains names, personal data and the financial earnings of individuals and companies. According to local media, the hackers have stolen the details of some 5 million of the country’s 7 million people.

Goranov said the government has requested help from the European Union’s cybersecurity agency.

Speaking to the bTV channel, Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said the attack coincided with Bulgaria’s purchase of U.S. F-16 fighter jets for its air force and that it could likely be motivated by that.

“Organized criminal groups involved in cyberattacks usually seek financial profits, but here political motives are possible. The government decided yesterday to buy F-16 jets,” Marinov said.

The finance minister, however, rejected a possible link to the jet purchase, saying the cyberattack had occurred before the deal was approved.

Bulgarian media, which received an email from the hackers, said it came from Russian mail provider Yandex but demanded no ransom. The email did call for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is now in a British prison serving a 50-week sentence for jumping bail in Britain and also faces an extradition request by the United States, which seeks him on espionage charges.

Bulgarian media quoted the hackers’ email as criticizing the Bulgarian government and saying “the state of your cybersecurity is a joke.”

It was not clear why the tax agency was targeted but corruption in Bulgaria is widespread. Transparency International says Bulgaria is the most corrupt of the European Union’s 28 nations.

A Czech stud farm founded 440 years ago to breed and train ceremonial horses to serve at the Habsburg emperor’s court has been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list, acknowledging the significance of a tradition that has survived for centuries.

The National stud farm, located in the town of Kladruby nad Labem 90 kilometers (56 miles) east of Prague, is the first stud farm on the UNESCO’s list. Here’s a look at it:

A royal history

The farm officially started in 1579, when Emperor Rudolf II of the House of Habsburg gave an imperial status to an original stud established by his father, Emperor Maximilian II. The famed regular visitors to the site, which also has a small chateau and a church, included Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife Elisabeth of Bavaria.

The stud farm survived wars and a devastating 18th-century fire until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, when the newly established Czechoslovak state took over. That threatened its existence, since anything linked to the former empire was unpopular in Czechoslovakia. Yet somehow the horse breeding tradition weathered both that shift and 40 later years of communist rule.

In 2015, the whole site underwent a major renovation with European Union funds.

Making the UNESCO list

The Kladruby site occupies 1,310 hectares (3,240 acres), about the same size since the 16th century. Located on flat, sandy land near the Elbe River, it contains fields and forests along with its classic stables, indoor and outdoor training grounds and a symmetrical network of roads.

UNESCO describes it as “one of Europe’s leading horse-breeding institutions, developed at a time when horses played vital roles in transport, agriculture, military support and aristocratic representation.”

Kladruby director Jiri Machek said UNESCO’s recognition is the confirmation of “the global uniqueness of this place.”

”There are three unique aspects about it,” Machek told The Associated Press. “It’s not only about a tangible heritage, it is also the breeding of unique Kladruber horses, which means the landscape still serves its original purpose. And the third, unique thing — which is not mentioned so often _ is the intangible heritage, the traditional way of doing things, that is we have been trying to operate the stud in a traditional way.”

One of the world’s oldest horse breeds

Kladruby is the home of the Kladruber horse, a rare breed that is one of the oldest in the world with a population of only 1,200.

Kladrubers were bred to serve as ceremonial carriage horses at the Habsburg courts in Vienna and Prague. A warm-blooded breed based on Spanish and Italian horses, a convex head with a Roman nose is among their significant features.

Since the late 18th century, the Kladrubers have come in two colors, grey and black. The grey ones were used for royal ceremonies while the black ones served high-ranked clergy.  

Today, they still do the same at the Danish court, while others are used by the trumpeters from the Swedish Royal Mounted Guard. Some carry police officers in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

The breed’s peaceful nature also makes them a popular riding horse among private owners around the globe, and some compete in international carriage driving events.

If you go: Kladruby is easily accessible by car or bus. You can choose from four different guided tours with prices up to 7 euros ($7.90). Three take 45 minutes, one is 30 minutes. Discounts for children, students, retirees and families.  

Groups and tours in foreign languages (English, German) have to be booked in advance at: pruvodci@nhkladruby.cz. For individual visits, use the electronic booking system. The farm is open Tuesday to Sunday in April, May, September and October and seven days a week in June, July and August.

More information at https://www.nhkladruby.cz/en including a 3D tour.

North Korea has criticized U.S. plans to hold a joint military exercise next month with South Korea, suggesting the drills could negatively impact upcoming working-level nuclear talks with Washington.

In a statement from the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the exercise violates an agreement reached last year by Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

“We will look at the future moves of the United States, and we will make a decision regarding the holding of working-level talks,” said the statement attributed to an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

The U.S. and North Korea agreed to hold working-level talks following a hastily arranged meeting last month between Trump and Kim at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

That meeting helped restart talks that had broken down over disagreements on how to pace sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

At their first summit in Singapore last June, Trump and Kim agreed to work “toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” But neither side can agree on what that phrase means or how to begin working toward it.

In Singapore, Trump also agreed to scale back U.S. military exercises with South Korea. But North Korea still regularly complains about the smaller exercises.

The exercise scheduled for next month is called “Dong Maeng,” or “alliance” in English. The drill will replace the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise that was scaled back as part of the Trump-Kim talks.

A statement earlier in the day from the North’s foreign ministry suggested that if the U.S. goes ahead with the exercises, Pyongyang could resume intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests.

“Our decision to suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests or the U.S. decision to suspend joint military drills was a pledge to improve bilateral relations, not some kind of legislated document carved on paper,” the statement said, according to a translation by South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.

The statement said the drills would be a “clear violation of the basic spirit” of the declaration signed by Kim and Trump in Singapore.

North Korea views U.S.-South Korea military exercises as preparation to invade. U.S. officials have called the drills necessary to deter North Korean attacks. Trump often dismisses the exercises as “war games” and says they are a waste of money.

Trump last month became the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea, when he briefly stepped across the military demarcation line at the Panmunjom truce village in the DMZ.

White House officials have portrayed that meeting as historic and an example of Trump’s successful outreach to Kim. Many observers say it risks becoming a stunt, unless accompanied by progress in working-level talks.

In an interview Monday with Fox News, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the DMZ meeting “has given us another chance to sit down” with North Korean officials and “have another conversation.”

“I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have the first time. We hope we can be a little more creative too,” said Pompeo, who on June 30th said he hoped the working-level talks could resume in two to three weeks.

Trump and other U.S. officials have at times said they will not relax sanctions until North Korea gives up all its nuclear weapons. At other times, White House officials signal they are open to a more gradual approach.

A State Department spokesperson last week said the U.S. wants a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear program at the start of the process, but dismissed a report in The New York Times suggesting the U.S. was moving towards tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.

In his Monday interview, Pompeo said Trump’s “mission hasn’t changed: to fully and finally denuclearize North Korea in a way that we can verify.”

Kim wants substantial U.S. sanctions relief in exchange for partial steps to give up his nuclear program. In Hanoi, he offered to dismantle what is thought to be his main nuclear complex in Yongbyon in exchange for the removal of nearly all sanctions.

The North Korean leader has said he will give the U.S. until the end of the year to become more accommodating. U.S. officials have shrugged off the deadline.

It took 400,000 people to put Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a half-century ago.

That massive workforce stretched across the U.S. and included engineers, scientists, mechanics, technicians, pilots, divers, seamstresses, secretaries and more who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve those first lunar footsteps .

Some of them will be taking part in festivities this week to mark the 50th anniversary

A brief look at four:

Amid the sea of white shirts, black ties and pocket protectors inside NASA’s firing room for the liftoff of Apollo 11 sat JoAnn Morgan.

July 16, 1969 was her prime-time debut as the first female launch controller. It wasn’t easy getting there.

Morgan, 78, who began working for NASA in 1958 while in college, typically got the overnight shift before launches. She’d be replaced by a male colleague a few hours before showtime.
 
“The rub came on being there at liftoff,” she recalled.
 
And there was the taunting. She’d get obscene phone calls at her desk at Kennedy Space Center and lewd remarks in the elevator.

The situation was even more strained next door at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The old launch-pad blockhouses there had a single restroom _ for men. So Morgan found herself dashing to a nearby building for a women’s restroom, just as portrayed in “Hidden Figures,” the 2016 hit movie.

“I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a real passion for it,” Morgan said. “Finally, 99 percent of them accepted that `JoAnn’s here and we’re stuck with her.’ “
As Apollo 11 loomed, Morgan’s boss went to the top to get her on liftoff duty. By then, the harassment had pretty much stopped.

While NASA’s countdown clocks ticked toward a 9:32 a.m. launch, Morgan monitored ground instrumentation, everything from fire and lightning detectors to guidance computer data. When the official firing room photo was later taken _ showing Morgan with her left hand raised to her chin _ she was listening to Vice President Spiro Agnew address the team after the launch.

With Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins on their way, her job was done, at least for Apollo 11. Morgan and her husband Larry, a high school band director, slipped away on vacation and watched the July 20 moon landing on a hotel TV. As they toasted the first lunar footsteps, he told her, “Honey, you’re going to be in the history books.”

Morgan went on to become Kennedy’s first female senior executive. Retired since 2003, she splits her time between Florida and Montana, and encourages young women to study engineering.

Tedd Olkowski was on emergency standby for the launch countdown of Apollo 11.

His job was to help Collins _ should the unlikely need arise before liftoff _ escape from the Saturn V rocket, descend 32 stories in a high-speed elevator and then slide down a 200-foot (61-meter) tube into a bunker deep beneath the pad.

Armstrong and Aldrin had their own guardian angels, according to Olkowski, space center workers who, like himself, had volunteered for the potentially dangerous assignment.

NASA figured the astronauts, impeded by their cumbersome white spacesuits, could use extra help getting from a burning, leaking or even exploding rocket, all the way down to the so-called rubber room.

The rubber-padded, shock-absorbing room led to a domed, blast-proof chamber 40 feet (12 meters) under Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The dungeon had strap-in chairs, two-way radio and enough food to ride out a cataclysmic event. There was a similar setup under Pad 39B. Neither bunker was ever needed and later abandoned.

Olkowski’s regular job was working with the pad’s closed-circuit TV system. He was a skinny 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, but stood 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and jumped at the chance to be on an emergency team since he was already out there keeping tabs on the cameras.

With an hour remaining in the countdown, the pad was evacuated by everyone except the Apollo 11 crew. Olkowski joined other workers a safe three miles (5 kilometers) away and watched the world’s biggest rocket thunder away on humanity’s first moon landing.
“Even though we weren’t considered major players in it, we were just there to help the astronauts if they needed help, yeah, I mean it was exciting, especially now when I look back,” he said.

Soon afterward, Olkowski quit his job to go to college, then spent a career with General Telephone and Electronics Corp. Now 74 and retired, he lives in League City, Texas, next door to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Olkowski got a chance to meet up with Collins a decade or so ago.

“I said, `Mike, I know you don’t remember me. It was a long, long time ago …’ “
You might say Spencer Gardner was NASA flight director Gene Kranz’s right-hand man for Apollo 11.

As Mission Control’s flight activities officer in Houston, Gardner occupied the console to the right of Kranz, just across the aisle. Barely 26, Gardner was one of the youngest flight controllers on duty when the Eagle lunar lander settled onto the Sea of Tranquility with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

His job was to stay on top of the astronauts’ timeline. What if, for instance, the moon landing had to be aborted? Everything downstream would need to change. So Gardner constantly was thinking ahead, considering how best to rejuggle the flight plan if necessary.

Looking back, Gardner wishes he’d savored the moment of touchdown more. But he had a job to do and there was no time for reflection.

After the Eagle landed and his shift ended, Gardner went to a friend’s home, where everyone gathered around a black-and-white TV that night to watch Armstrong’s “small step” and mankind’s giant leap.

Gardner wasn’t on duty for the July 24 splashdown. But he went to Mission Control anyway, joining the flag-waving, cigar-smoking crowd as Apollo 11’s astounding voyage came to an end in the Pacific.

Gardner ended up working five more Apollo missions and also attended night law school. He left NASA in 1974 and became an assistant district attorney, then joined a law firm. He still practices law in Houston at age 76.

“This is, to use the `Hamilton’ expression, the room where it happened,” he said inside the newly restored Apollo-era Mission Control last month. “Other than the lunar module and the command module, you couldn’t get any closer to it than this. We were in the room when it happened, and the sense of completion, I guess, struck me later. We had done what President Kennedy had asked us to do.”

Navy frogman Clancy Hatleberg was the first to welcome Apollo 11’s moonmen back to Earth.

His mission on July 24, 1969, was to decontaminate Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their command module, Columbia, immediately after splashdown in the Pacific.

The astronauts needed to be quarantined. Otherwise, who knows what moon germs might escape.

It may seem silly now, but the possibility of lunar bugs was “a really serious concern” back then, according to Hatleberg, who was 25 at the time and fresh from an underwater demolition team rotation in Vietnam.

Hatleberg was one of four frogmen on the recovery team who jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. The others secured the capsule, then moved upwind in a raft. That’s when Hatleberg moved in, carrying disinfectant.

Covered in a protective garment, Hatleberg momentarily opened Columbia’s hatch to toss in a bag with three of the outfits. Once the astronauts had the gray garments on, they emerged from the capsule one by one onto a waiting raft.

The first spaceman out offered his hand to shake. Hatleberg paused _ shaking hands was not part of the NASA protocol that he’d practiced. He recalled thinking, “I was the last person who could screw the whole thing up.”

Hatleberg shook hands anyway.
 
Once the astronauts were wiped down by Hatleberg with a potent bleach solution, they were lifted into a helicopter and flown to the USS Hornet, where their quarantine mobile home awaited them along with President Richard Nixon.
 
Hatleberg scoured Columbia before it, too, was transported to the aircraft carrier. He cleaned the raft and the flotation collar that had been around the spacecraft, then punctured them and watched them sink with his own decontaminated garment, any moon bugs swallowed by the sea.

“There were so many other people whose jobs were more important than mine,” Hatleberg said. Looking back, he’s still in awe at what the Apollo astronauts accomplished. “They were the ones who risked their lives to take that giant leap for all mankind. They’re the heroes and they always will be _ in my heart.”  
 
Hatleberg _ who at 75 is working again as an engineer in Laurel, Maryland _ said he always thought Aldrin was the first one he helped from the capsule. That is until a year or so ago, he said, when a Hornet curator pulled out old footage and zoomed in on the name tag.

It read Armstrong.

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface – the first men on the moon. The U.S. space agency, NASA, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this historic event in style – by restoring and reopening the control room that handled the historic Apollo 11 mission. Today it is a museum, but it looks every bit alive and real as it did in 1969, as though engineers and scientists just stepped away for a moment. Lesia Bakalets visited the control room. Anna Rice narrates her story. 

Egypt’s parliament on Monday removed jail penalties from a law controlling operations of non-governmental organizations, but rights groups rejected the changes as insufficient.

Justified by officials to protect national security from meddling by foreign-funded charities, the 2017 law restricted NGOs’ activity to developmental and social work, with jail terms of up to five years for non-compliance.

Activists saw it as an attempt to block humanitarian work and the law contributed to a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to freeze millions of dollars in military aid to Egypt for nearly a year.

The new legislation, approved overwhelmingly by parliament on Monday, removes the jail penalty and replaces it with fines between 200,000 and 1 million Egyptian pounds ($12,070-$60,350).

As well as ending jail sentences, the changes – which must still be ratified by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi – enable NGOs to receive money from Egypt or abroad as long as it is deposited in a bank account within 30 days.

The government has 60 days to challenge payments.

Although the new legislation was meant to answer criticisms, 10 Egyptian and international rights groups said last week the impending changes were not enough. They said other laws imposing strict controls on NGOs and civil society also needed revamping.

In 2013, 43 Americans, Europeans, Egyptians and other Arabs were sentenced to jail on charges including operating NGOs without necessary approval. Most were acquitted last year.

A case against domestic NGO workers, more than 30 of whom have been given travel bans and asset freezes, remains open.

“The new draft is but a re-marketing of the repressive law that contains a hostile attitude towards civil society groups,” the 10 groups said in a statement.

“The aim is to calm international public opinion, but the changes are not in line with the constitution or Egypt’s international obligations,” said Mohamed Zaree, Egypt program director at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

Charities have long played an important role in feeding, clothing and providing healthcare and education in a country where millions live on less than $2 a day.

Sissi came to power after spearheading, as defence minister, the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as president in 2013.

Under Sissi, Egypt has seen a crackdown on dissent that campaigners say is unprecedented in its recent history.

His backers say tough measures are necessary to stabilize Egypt, which was rocked by years of unrest after protests toppled veteran leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he hoped both North Korea and the United States could “be a little more creative” as the two sides push to restart talks aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Pompeo did not say when the negotiations would begin.

President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month. During the meeting, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross into North Korea and the pair agreed to restart talks.

Trump and Kim have met three times and held two summits over the nuclear issue. Talks in Hanoi in February collapsed without agreement between the two leaders, as the United States insisted North Korea completely denuclearize and North Korea pushed for relief from sanctions.

“I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have the first time. We hope we can be a little more creative too,” Pompeo said in a radio interview on “The Sean Hannity Show”

“The president’s mission hasn’t changed: to fully and finally denuclearize North Korea in a way that we can verify.

That’s the mission set for these negotiations,” Pompeo added.

Pompeo’s remarks come after Chinese President Xi Jinping urged Trump to show flexibility in dealing with Pyongyang and to ease sanctions on the country “in due course.”

China signed up for U.N. sanctions after North Korea performed repeated nuclear and missile tests, but has suggested they could be reduced as a reward for good behavior.

South Korean officials have expressed uncertainty that the talks between the United States and North Korea can take place this month.

North Korea has frozen missile and nuclear bomb testing since 2017, but U.S. officials believe Pyongyang has continued to expand its arsenal by producing bomb fuel and missiles.

Joe Biden is taking an aggressive approach to defending the Affordable Care Act, challenging not just President Donald Trump but also some of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination who want to replace the current insurance system with a fully government-run model.

The former vice president has spent the past several weeks highlighting his support for the health care law, which is often called “Obamacare.” He told voters in Iowa that he was “against any Republican (and) any Democrat who wants to scrap” the law. He’s also talked of “building on” Obamacare.

He released a proposal on Monday that would add a “public option” to the 2010 health care overhaul, with  expanded coverage paid for by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. He was back in Iowa and touted the public option as “the quickest … most rational way to get universal coverage.” A sudden transition to “Medicare for All,” he said, “is kind of risky.”

Biden hopes his positioning as Obamacare’s chief defender will be a reminder of his close work alongside former President Barack Obama, who remains popular among Democratic voters. And it could reinforce his pitch as a sensible centrist promising to rise above the strident cacophony of Trump and more liberal Democrats who are single-payer advocates.

The emerging divide between Biden and his progressive rivals could give him an opportunity to go on the offense ahead of the next presidential debates at the end of the month. Biden has spent the past several weeks on defense, reversing his position on taxpayer funding for abortions and highlighting his past work with segregationist senators. Kamala Harris slammed Biden during the first debates, blasting the segregationist comment and criticizing his opposition to federal busing orders to desegregate public schools during the same era.

Those episodes called Biden’s front-runner status into question, and in New Hampshire over the weekend it was clear he wanted to turn the tables on his rivals backing Medicare for All.

“I think one of the most significant things we’ve done in our administration is pass the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “I don’t know why we’d get rid of what in fact was working and move to something totally new. And so, there are differences.”

He argued that some of his opponents, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, aren’t fairly representing the consequences of their proposals.

“Bernie’s been very honest about it,” Biden said. “He said you’re going to have to raise taxes on the middle class. He said it’s going to end all private insurance. I mean, he’s been straightforward about it. And he’s making his case.”

Sanders will deliver a health care speech on Wednesday and is already hitting back at Biden. The Vermont senator insists his plan would be a net financial benefit for most households and rejects any suggestion that he hasn’t supported the Affordable Care Act.

“I traveled all over the country to fight the repeal of Obamacare,” Sanders tweeted Monday. “But I will not be deterred from ending the corporate greed that creates dysfunction in our health care system. We must pass Medicare for All.”

Speaking at an AARP forum in Iowa on Monday, Biden took pains to say he wasn’t criticizing rivals.

“I’m not being critical of my opponents,” he said. “I’m about what I’m for, not what they’re for. I’m not in that game because that just elects Donald Trump.”

Biden’s health care proposal is anchored by a “Medicare-like” plan that any American, including the 150 million-plus Americans now covered by job-based insurance, could buy on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

The proposal would make existing premium subsidies more generous and expand eligibility for middle-income households, lowering their out-of-pocket costs. It also would extend premium-free coverage to lower-income Americans who have been denied access to Medicaid in Republican-run states that refused to participate in the Affordable Care Act.

The campaign puts the taxpayer cost at $750 billion over 10 years, which would be covered by returning the top marginal income tax to 39.6%, the rate before the 2017 GOP tax cuts . Some multimillionaires also would lose certain capital gains tax advantages.

Biden’s aides framed his plan as more fiscally responsible and politically realistic than a single-payer overhaul. The idea behind a public option is to extend coverage to those who can’t afford decent private coverage while forcing corporate insurers to compete alongside the government, theoretically pressuring those private firms to lower their premiums and out-of-pocket costs for their policy holders.

The dynamics illustrate Democrats’ overall leftward shift on health care.

A decade ago, the public option was effectively the left flank for Democrats, a reality made obvious when Obama angered House liberals by jettisoning the provision to mollify some centrist Senate Democrats. Now, after Sanders’ insurgent 2016 presidential bid and his promise of “health care as a human right,” the left has embraced single-payer, with moderates moving to the public option.

Some Democratic White House hopefuls are joining Biden in advocating for the public option, arguing it will be difficult to go much further.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet greeted Biden’s proposal with a reminder that he’s been pushing a public option on Capitol Hill. He urged his Senate colleagues, including Sanders, Harris and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to “reconsider their Medicare for All approach.”

Bennet and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota are among the moderates arguing that a public option is the next logical move, even for single-payer advocates.

“I think it is a beginning and the way you start and the way you move to universal health care,” Klobuchar said in the first debate.

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is more frank, warning that Republicans will brand single-payer proposals as “socialism” and reclaim the health care advantage the party enjoyed in the 2018 midterms.

The European Union says talks are under way on whether a barter mechanism aimed at salvaging some trade with Iran might include oil, as Europeans scramble to ease tensions between Iran and the United States.

Following a meeting among European foreign ministers in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the special barter mechanism with Iran known as INSTEX would be open to third-party countries. The mechanism is aimed at working around U.S. sanctions, and for now, it narrowly targets humanitarian goods.

“The issue of whether INSTEX will deal with oil or not is a discussion that is ongoing among the shareholders,” Mogherini said. “We have around 10 member states and some are considering actively dong that.”

Europeans are increasingly alarmed the four-year-old Iran nuclear deal, known in shorthand as JCPOA, is on the verge of collapse — a message delivered by France, Britain and Germany as they urged nations to resume talks.

Earlier Monday, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt offered a sliver of hope.

“Iran is still a good year away from developing a nuclear bomb,” he said. “There is still some closing, but small window to keep the deal alive.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the Europeans must remain united. He criticized Iran’s decision on breaching the deal’s uranium enrichment caps as a bad response to a bad decision by the U.S. in pulling out last year.

Iran says the Europeans haven’t done enough to compensate for the tough sanctions Washington has since reimposed against Tehran. Experts are skeptical INSTEX will have much of an impact. Mogherini acknowledged the mechanism proved much more complex than the Europeans originally expected, but she had a message for Iran.

“We’re doing our best,” she said, “and we hope that this will be enough for the Iranian public opinion and Iranian authorities to realize that we are committed to the full implementation of the JCPOA.”

She said for now, the parties in the nuclear deal do not see Iran’s breaches as significant non-compliance, noting all of Tehran’s steps are reversible. Iran has long said its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

The United Nations told the United States it is concerned by tight travel restrictions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during his visit to New York this week, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said on Monday.

Zarif arrived in New York on Sunday after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on the visit amid heightened tensions between the two countries. But Zarif is only allowed to travel between the United Nations, the Iranian U.N. mission, the Iranian U.N. ambassador’s residence and New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, a U.S. State Department official said.

Threat of blacklist

Late last month Washington threatened to blacklist Zarif, a move that could impede any U.S. effort to use diplomacy to resolve disagreements with Tehran. However, sources have told Reuters that Washington had decided to hold off for now.

Longtime U.S.-Iran strains have worsened since U.S. President Donald Trump last year quit a 2015 international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Haq told reporters that the U.N. secretariat is “in close contact with the permanent missions of the United States and Iran to the U.N. and has conveyed its concerns to the host country.”

U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, said no U.S. government officials would meet with Zarif.

“There is no back channel currently going on between the United States and anybody in the Iranian regime. Everything that’s being said is being said by the president and the secretary of state publicly,” Hook told Fox News Channel.

The United States had restricted Zarif’s travel “in a manner that is fully consistent” with its obligations under a 1947 agreement with the United Nations, the U.S. State Department official said.

Mouthpiece of an autocracy

The official accused Zarif of using U.S. freedoms “to spread malign propaganda” and said Zarif “is a mouthpiece of an autocracy that suppresses free speech.”

Despite the travel restrictions, Zarif did interviews on Monday with Britain’s BBC and U.S. network NBC at the residence of the Iranian U.N. ambassador on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said that all of Zarif’s meetings, interviews and speeches would be done at the United Nations, the Iranian U.N. mission or the Iranian U.N. ambassador’s residence.

“Putting restrictions on his presence in some streets in New York will certainly not effect his work schedule,” he said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

SDG meeting

Zarif is due to attend a ministerial meeting at the United Nations on sustainable development goals, which aim to tackle issues including conflict, hunger, equality and climate change by 2030.

Iranian diplomats, like the envoys of North Korea, Syria and Cuba, are already confined to a radius of 25 miles from Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan.

Under the 1947 U.N. “headquarters agreement,” the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But Washington says it can deny visas for “security, terrorism, and foreign policy” reasons.

In April 2014, the United States would not grant a visa to Iran’s chosen U.N. ambassador, Hamid Abutalebi, because of his links to the 1979-1981 Tehran hostage crisis when radical students seized the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Abutalebi said he acted only as a translator.

Iran complained to a U.N. committee, but ultimately ended up appointing a new ambassador in early 2015.

Yemen’s warring parties have agreed new measures to enforce a ceasefire and facilitate a troop pullback from the flashpoint port of Hodeidah, the United Nations said on Monday.

Representatives of the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government met on a U.N. ship in the Red Sea for talks on Sunday and Monday, a U.N. statement said.

The United Nations is trying to broker a withdrawal from Hodeidah – the main entry point for food and humanitarian aid – so U.N.-supervised management can take over.

Yemen’s four-year war has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions on the brink of famine.

The U.N. statement said both sides were keen to reduce hostilities after a rise in ceasefire violations at Hodeidah.

“They agreed on a mechanism and new measures to reinforce the ceasefire and de-escalation, to be put in place as soon as possible,” it said, without giving more details.

The two sides met as members of the “Redeployment Coordination Committee,” a body set up by the United Nations and chaired by Danish Lieutenant General Michael Lollesgaard to oversee the ceasefire and troop exit.

The committee finalized conceptual agreement on troop withdrawals, which now required political leaders’ buy-in, the statement said. Political leaders would also have to agree on “local security forces, local authority and revenues,” the statement said, without elaborating.

New York’s mayor is fending off criticism because he was in Iowa campaigning for his presidential bid while Manhattan was in the grips of a major power outage.

Bill de Blasio said Monday on MSNBC that he was in frequent contact with agencies handling the emergency and that he thinks first responders did an “incredible job.”

The Saturday night blackout darkened more than 40 square blocks of Manhattan, including Times Square.

De Blasio sidestepped criticism from numerous quarters, including from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat. A front-page New York Post editorial called for de Blasio’s ouster.

De Blasio said he took a four-hour car ride from Iowa to Chicago and got on the first available plane home.

He insisted that the blackout response was well-managed with his remote supervision.

Ugandan pop star and opposition figure Bobi Wine said Monday he will challenge longtime President Yoweri Museveni in a 2021 election “on behalf of the people.”

But Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said he is concerned about his safety after what he believes was an attempt on his life last August. His driver was shot dead in his car after protesters threw stones at the president’s motorcade.
 
Wine’s arrest at the time sparked protests in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The 37-year-old said he is fearful of harm from running for president because “there has never been a threat to this regime like the threat we pose to it today as a generation.”
 
“I live every day as it comes, not being sure of the next day,” Wine said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I am not blind to the fact that the regime wants me dead and wants me dead as soon as possible.”
 
Authorities have repeatedly denied Wine is being targeted.
 
As the leader of a popular movement known as “People Power,” Wine has captured the imagination of many who want to see the exit of Museveni, a U.S. ally on regional security who has held power since 1986 and looks set to seek a sixth term.
 
Wine said his aim ahead of the election is “to multiply myself in various young men and women, so that there are as many Bobi Wines as possible.”
 
Uganda has never witnessed a peaceful transfer of power since the East African country gained independence from Britain in 1962.
 
“Power has been taken away from the people by those that wield guns, and that’s what we want to put an end to through the vote,” he said.
 
Wine first came to national prominence in 2017 when, as an independent candidate, he won election as a lawmaker representing a constituency near Kampala. He has since successfully campaigned for other opposition candidates, raising his profile as a leader and attracting encouragement to run for president.
 
Wine is “a symbol,” a potential catalyst for change in a country where many young people are jobless and angry over official corruption, said Mwambutsya Ndebesa, history lecturer at Uganda’s Makerere University. “He can still be symbolically a game changer in a system where the political space has been narrowed.”
 
Yet the singer’s candidacy comes with multiple challenges, including limited opportunities to hold rallies or stage concerts. Police violently foiled his recent attempts to hold public events, firing bullets and tear gas. Authorities insist such action is necessary in order to protect public order.
 
Wine also faces treason charges stemming from his alleged role in the incident in which the president’s convoy was attacked with stones. Prosecutors added additional charges of annoying the president over that incident. He also is charged with the offense of disobeying statutory authority after he led a demonstration against a new tax targeting social media. He denies all the charges.
 
Wine would be ineligible to run for president if he were to be convicted of any of those crimes.
 
“We know that the regime is going to try anything within their reach to block us from contesting,” Wine said.
 
Museveni, who is 74 and remains popular among some Ugandans, is expected to run again after parliament passed legislation removing a clause in the constitution that prevented anyone over 75 from holding the presidency.
 
As the bill was being debated, security personnel during one chaotic session entered the parliamentary chamber and roughed up opposition lawmakers, including Wine, who had been trying to delay a procedural vote.
 
The president accuses Wine and other opposition figures of trying to lure young people into deadly rioting.
 
Museveni’s party, which dominates the national assembly, has endorsed him as its sole candidate for the next election. The opposition is divided, with veteran opposition figures frequently attacking each other in public.
 
Although Wine’s rise as a possible presidential contender has energized the opposition, it also has exposed rifts among the opposition figures who hope to take power after Museveni.
 
As Wine’s stature rose, tensions grew between him and Kizza Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate who has been Museveni’s most serious election opponent. Besigye was criticized by Wine’s supporters after he suggested that the singer was not yet ready to become president, underscoring how difficult it will be for the opposition to unite against Museveni.  
 

Bitcoin slumped more than 10% over the weekend to a two-week low as fears of a crackdown of cryptocurrencies grew on mounting scrutiny of Facebook’s planned Libra digital coin.

Bitcoin fell 11.1% from Friday to $9,855 early on Monday, its lowest since July 2. The original cryptocurrency slumped 10.4% on Sunday alone, its second-biggest daily drop this year.

It was last up 1.3% at $10,319.

Politicians and financial regulators across the world have called for close scrutiny of Facebook’s Libra coin, with concerns ranging from consumer protection and privacy to its potential systemic risks given the social media giant’s global reach.

In a sign of widening U.S. attention, a proposal to prevent big technology companies from functioning as financial institutions or issuing digital currencies has been circulated for discussion by Democratic lawmakers, according to a copy of the draft legislation seen by Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump had last week criticized bitcoin, Libra and other cryptocurrencies, demanding that firms seek a banking charter and subject themselves to U.S. and global regulations if they wanted to “become a bank”.

Bitcoin, which initially shrugged off Trump’s Tweet, fell sharply after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called for a halt to Facebook’s project until concerns from privacy to money laundering were addressed.

“Together they have increased the tail risk that the U.S. will look to crack down on it in some way,” said Jamie Farquhar, portfolio manager at crypto firm NKB Group in London.

Underscoring the growing attention on Facebook’s plans, Japanese authorities have also set up a working group to look at Libra’s possible impact on monetary policy and financial regulation, government sources told Reuters.

European Central Bank policymaker Benoit Coeure is due to deliver a preliminary report on the matter at a meeting of G7 finance ministers this week in Chantilly, north of Paris.

Bitcoin climbed nearly 55% in nine days after Facebook unveiled its plans for Libra on June 18, touching an 18-month high of nearly $14,000. The project has boosted hopes among some investors that cryptocurrencies could gain wider acceptance.
 

The health ministry of Democratic Republic of Congo said Monday two community health workers engaged in Ebola prevention have been killed in the eastern North Kivu province. The ministry said the workers had been receiving death threats for months.

Ministry officials, meanwhile, have confirmed the first case of Ebola in Goma, a city of more than 2 million people, along the Rwandan border.

Authorities said the patient is a pastor who took a bus from Butembo, one of the towns hardest hit by Ebola, to Goma. He arrived in Goma on Sunday and was quickly taken to an Ebola treatment center.

The health ministry said in a statement: “Given that the patient was quickly identified, as well as all the passengers on the bus from Butembo, the risk of the disease spreading in the city of Goma is low.”

The French news agency AFP reports the bus driver and passengers are receiving vaccinations Monday.

Ebola has killed more than 1,600 people in DR Congo.

Efforts to contain the disease have been hampered by violent attacks on health care workers and treatment centers.

Some Congolese people have also contributed to the spread of the disease by refusing to take their loved ones to treatment centers and not adhering to burial guidelines designed to reduce Ebola transmission.
 

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Monday that the international deal on Iran’s nuclear program “isn’t dead yet,” and that while the opportunity to find a resolution to the current crisis surrounding the agreement is closing, it is still possible to keep it alive.

He spoke ahead of talks with other European Union foreign ministers in Brussels where they planned to discuss the Iran situation.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed to by Iran and a group of world powers that included Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to allay concerns Iran was working to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran has long said its nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes, and it won badly needed relief from sanctions in return for limiting its nuclear activity far below what would be needed to make a weapon.

Hunt said Monday that Iran was more than a year away from having the capability to build a nuclear device.

Boris Johnson, a Conservative favorite to succeed Theresa May when she steps down as prime minister later this month, seemed to dismiss the importance of the leaked cables.

He described them as “embarrassing but it is not a threat to national security.”

“It is the duty of media organizations to bring new and interesting facts into the public domain,” said Johnson, himself a journalist and former editor.

In May 2018, Johnson, then Britain’s foreign minister, went to Washington to try to persuade Trump to not abandon the Iran pact.

After British and U.S. officials met, Darroch reported back to London that there were divisions within the Trump administration over Trump’s intention to quit the Iran accord. The diplomat criticized the White House for a lack of long-term strategy to deal with Iran.

“They can’t articulate any ‘day-after’ strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region,” he wrote.

Trump has long attacked the 2015 international Iran nuclear deal aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons development as ineffective and repeatedly blamed Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry for pushing for its adoption.

Trump withdrew the United States from the deal last year and reimposed economic sanctions, hobbling the Iranian economy and limiting its international oil trade.

Five other countries — China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain — along with the European Union have remained in the accord, but voiced their displeasure as Tehran has exceeded the size of the uranium stockpile and the uranium enrichment level allowed under the pact.