The United States and Iran are set to begin a third round of nuclear talks this weekend, entering what experts describe as a more difficult phase of technical negotiations as Washington lays out its conditions.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the US does not envision Iran enriching its own nuclear material, but rather importing the nuclear fuel – uranium – needed for a civilian energy program. Iran has repeatedly stated that its right to enrich uranium is non-negotiable.

Both the US and Iran have described previous talks as positive, despite President Donald Trump’s threat of US and Israeli military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites should Tehran fail to accept a deal.

But Saturday’s talks may prove more complex, as they are set to involve negotiations on the details of Iran’s nuclear program, an area where Tehran and Washington remain sharply divided.

Here’s what we know.

How the two sides got here

A nuclear deal was reached in 2015 between Iran and world powers, including the US, under which Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions that have crippled its economy.

Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 deal allowed Iran to enrich uranium at a level that ensured that its nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful.

That agreement was abandoned by Trump in 2018 during his first presidential term. Iran retaliated by advancing its uranium enrichment up to 60% purity, closer to the roughly 90% level that is needed to make a bomb.

Iran insists its nuclear program remains peaceful.

What does Trump want and what are the key issues?

The president has said that he wants a “stronger” deal with Iran than the one reached in 2015 under the Obama administration, but US officials have flip-flopped on their demands over the past month.

In its bid to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, it remains unclear whether the US is demanding a full dismantling of its nuclear program – including its civilian energy component – or whether it would allow such a program if Iran abandons domestic uranium enrichment.

This month, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Iran talks, said there’s no need for Iran to enrich uranium beyond what is needed for a nuclear energy program. He stopped short of demanding that Iran stop enriching uranium altogether or dismantle its nuclear program.

He reversed his position a day later in a statement on X in which he said any final deal with Iran would require it to “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth meanwhile has called on Tehran to fully dismantle its nuclear program.

Then, in an interview on Wednesday, Rubio said that Iran could have a civilian nuclear program but it would have to import the nuclear fuel needed rather than produce it domestically.

“There’s a pathway to a civil, peaceful nuclear program if they want one,” Rubio told The Free Press. “But if they insist on enriching (uranium), then they will be the only country in the world that doesn’t have a ‘weapons program,’ but is enriching. And so, I think that’s problematic.”

While most countries that enrich uranium domestically also have a nuclear weapons program, others don’t. Brazil, for instance, enriches some uranium domestically for its energy program, according to World Nuclear Association. Meanwhile, the British-German-Dutch nuclear fuel consortium Urenco operates enrichment plants in Germany and The Netherlands, neither of which has nuclear weapons. Those countries, like Iran, are party to the United Nations’ Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Last week, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told The New York Times in Saudi Arabia that Riyadh and Washington were on a “pathway” to reaching an agreement that could see the kingdom enrich uranium.

“The issue is control of sensitive technology. Are there solutions to that that involve enrichment here in Saudi Arabia? Yes,” he said.

What is Iran saying?

Iran has doubled down on its right to enrich uranium and has accused the Trump administration of sending mixed signals.

“Iran’s enrichment (program) is a real and genuine matter, and we are ready to build trust regarding potential concerns, but the issue of enrichment is non-negotiable,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is representing Iran at the nuclear talks, was cited as saying by the state-run Iranian broadcaster Press TV.

Tehran has laid out its “red lines” in talks, including “threatening language” by the Trump administration and “excessive demands regarding Iran’s nuclear program.” The US must also refrain from raising issues relating to Iran’s defense industry, Iranian media said, likely referring to its ballistic missile program, which the US’ Middle Eastern allies see as a threat to their security.

Meanwhile, Iran’s highest leadership has approached the talks with extreme caution. In his first comments on the issue, Khamenei said that Tehran was “neither overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic” about the negotiations with the US.

The Islamic Republic has also tried to present a potential nuclear deal as beneficial to the US. This week, Araghchi touted the possibility of US companies playing a role in Iran’s nuclear energy program, promising “tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts.”

What other possible hurdles ahead lie?

Alongside high-level talks between Araghchi and Witkoff Saturday, technical teams will begin to hammer out the details of a potential agreement.

Michael Anton, the State Department’s head of policy planning, will head the technical team from the US side, spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Thursday.

Technical talks are “challenging” as they will try to address issues that were not pursued in the 2015 deal, said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington DC-based Quincy Institute. “This requires technical expertise to make sure these different ideas actually can become feasible.”

As well as the issue of enrichment, complications may emerge if “poison pills” are introduced, including a demand to fully dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, “Libya-style,” as Israel has pushed for, he added.

Libya in 2003 dismantled its nuclear program in the hopes of ushering in a new era of relations with the US after its two-decade oil embargo on Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

After relinquishing its nuclear program, Libya descended into civil war following a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Gadhafi’s regime and led to his killing. Iranian officials have long warned that a similar deal would be rejected from the outset.

Another hurdle could surface if the US demands that restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program “be in perpetuity,” Parsi said. “Meaning, this would not be like normal arms control agreements, (where) restrictions are time-limited and over time expire.”

The 2015 deal had an expiration date, ending in October 2025 unless otherwise decided by the United Nations Security Council.

When he pulled out of the deal in 2018, Trump lambasted the agreement’s 10-year time limit, saying that even “if Iran fully complies, the regime can still be on the verge of a nuclear breakout in just a short period of time.”

Parsi said there may be an opportunity to extend the timeline. “But anything that pushes toward infinitive and in perpetuity restrictions is very likely going to fail, and perhaps by design.”

Where does Israel stand?

Israel has been among the staunchest advocates for Iran to fully dismantle its nuclear program so it can never acquire a nuclear bomb.

The only deal that Netanyahu would view as acceptable is a Libya-style nuclear deal.

The New York Times reported last week that Trump had waved Israel off striking Iran’s nuclear sites as soon as next month to let talks with Tehran play out. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office did not deny the veracity of the article, instead asserting that Israel’s actions have delayed Iran’s nuclear program.

Responding to the report, Trump said: “I wouldn’t say waved off,” but “I’m not in a rush to do it because I think that Iran has a chance to have a great country and to live happily without death.”

US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine should recognize Russia’s control over Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow annexed more than a decade ago, is threatening to upend international law and order.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has long made it clear this is a red line for him.

“There is nothing to talk about. It is against our constitution,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

Trump scolded Zelensky for that remark, accusing him of making it “so difficult to settle this war” and saying Crimea was “lost years ago.” It is a topic Trump revisited in an interview with Time magazine, saying as part of his proposal to end the war “Crimea will stay with Russia. And Zelensky understands that, and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time.”

This spat between the two presidents has put the region firmly back on the agenda. Here’s what we know.

Is this legal?

No. If the Trump administration was to somehow recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, it would be breaching international law as well as multiple declarations and agreements made by the United States, including by the first Trump White House.

“In terms of international law, such a pronouncement would be null and void,” said Sergey Vasiliev, an international law expert and professor at the Open University in the Netherlands.

Recognizing Crimea as part of Russia would put the Trump administration in breach of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the US made a commitment to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders, in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons.

In 2018, during the first Trump administration, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement reaffirming the US’ refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claims of sovereignty over Crimea.

Carla Ferstman, a law professor at Essex University and director of its Human Rights Centre, said that recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea by the US “could in principle provide some weight” to Moscow’s claim that the peninsula’s status was decided in a 2014 referendum that was condemned by Western powers as a sham.

“Far more likely, however, is that such a declaration creates a further rift between Europe and the US, and within NATO,” she said.

Recognizing Crimea as Russian would also be illegal under Ukraine’s constitution – which is one of the reasons why Zelensky said it was out of the question.

But Vasiliev said that even if Ukraine changed its constitution and signed some sort of agreement handing sovereignty of Crimea to Moscow, this could be considered invalid if Kyiv was coerced into it.

What would it mean in practice?

Since any recognition of Crimea as part of Russia would be in breach of international laws and norms, it is unlikely that other countries would follow in the US’ footsteps.

“Given the fluidity of US positions under the Trump administration, it is not clear that it would have any practical impact,” Ferstman said.

“If this manifested into a clear and permanent position of the US, then it would make it more difficult for the US to engage in collective efforts in support of Ukraine and would make the gulf between the US and other NATO partners more entrenched,” she added.

Why is Crimea so important to Ukraine?

Crimea has been part of independent Ukraine since the country split from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Roughly 2.5 million people lived in Crimea before its illegal annexation in 2014 and many more would regularly visit the tourist hotspot, known for its beaches and nature reserves.

Many other Ukrainians have emotional links to the peninsula.

How did Russia annex Crimea?

The crisis in Crimea started shortly after the 2014 mass protests in Ukraine that toppled the country’s Russian-backed regime of Viktor Yanukovych.

As the nation grappled with the chaos caused by the Maidan protests, Russian soldiers dressed as civilians or in uniform without identifying insignia – at the time referred to as “little green men” – started popping up outside government buildings and military bases across Crimea.

Russia has had a major naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol for over 200 years. A dispute over that facility and the Black Sea fleet stationed there erupted between Kyiv and Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union. The argument was later settled in a deal that saw Ukraine leasing the base to Russia in exchange for stable gas prices.

While Moscow denied any involvement in the appearance of the little green men in Crimea, it held a sham referendum on joining Russia just weeks after the covert operation. Putin would later acknowledge he had deployed Russian troops there.

Did Ukraine fight for Crimea?

In his latest tirade against Zelensky, Trump asked “why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”

The truth is more complicated than Trump suggests.

The Russian operation took Ukraine – and much of the world – by surprise. Russia spent weeks covertly beefing up its military presence across the peninsula before taking control, overpowering the Ukrainians.

Moscow says Crimea was always Russian. Is that true?

No. Before the annexation, Crimea was part of independent Ukraine, known as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the only self-governing region within unitary Ukraine.

The peninsula voted for Ukrainian independence in a referendum in 1991. Before that, it was part of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine.

And while it’s true that Crimea was part of Russia for more than a century and a half – since it was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783 until it was transferred to Ukraine in 1954 – this period is a relatively short blip in Crimea’s long written history, which dates back to 1,000 BC.

Over the course of the millennium, the peninsula was part of the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires, it was invaded by Mongols and fought over by Venice and Genoa.

For some 300 years, Crimea was under the control of Crimean Tatars, who are recognized as the peninsula’s indigenous people. After the 18th-century Russian annexation, the Tatar population lived through more than two centuries of persecution and exodus.

What has happened since?

Russia has imposed an increasingly brutal and repressive regime on Crimea and its people over the past 11 years, human rights observers say.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has repeatedly reported on the human rights violations allegedly committed by Russia in occupied Crimea – from unlawful detentions, to sexual abuse and torture, to forcing people to send their children to Russian schools and training programs.

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses, despite substantial evidence and victim testimonies.

According to official data from the Ukrainian government, more than 64,000 have fled the peninsula to other parts of Ukraine since the annexation. However, Crimean NGOs estimate the number of refugees might be twice as high, as not everyone has officially registered with the government.

Meanwhile, Moscow has worked on its plan to “Russify” the peninsula. It put in place incentives to persuade Russian citizens to relocate to Crimea and the Ukrainian government estimated in 2023 that some 500,000 to 800,000 Russians had moved there permanently since it was annexed, with the number jumping sharply after the opening of the Kerch bridge that connects Crimea to Russia.

A senior Russian general has died in a car blast in the Russian city of Balashikha on Friday morning, according to authorities.

Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed in the explosion of a Volkswagen Golf, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The blast was caused by an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel, it added.

The Investigative Committee said it has opened a criminal probe into the case. It added that an investigative team, including forensic experts and law enforcement officers, had begun examining the scene in Balashikha, which lies less than 20 miles east of Moscow.

Russian state news agency Tass earlier reported that an explosive device had blown up a car in the city, citing emergency services. Tass reported that the device was “homemade.”

Friday’s reported blast comes two days after a fire broke at an underground car park in Moscow’s business district following an explosion there.

Pope Francis never returned to his native Argentina after he became head of the Roman Catholic Church. But some of the faithful here believe he sent a final message home, in the unlikeliest but perhaps most appropriate of ways.

Francis was a lifelong soccer fan — and occasional youth goalkeeper — and a card-carrying member of his favorite club, San Lorenzo.

And it’s the number on that card that’s become the talk of Buenos Aires.

“It has to be destiny,” said Ramiro Rodríguez, who arrived wearing a rosary over his team shirt at a small chapel that’s the spiritual birthplace of the club, for a Mass to celebrate the life of Francis.

The number that’s causing the stir is assigned to “regular member” Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Pope’s birth name: 88235.

And as person after person has pointed out, Francis was 88 when he died, at 2:35 a.m. Argentina time on Easter Monday.

For Rodríguez, it was another otherworldly, even divine, connection.

“I went to the Vatican in 2019 and I wore my San Lorenzo (jersey), of course,” Rodríguez, 23, said. “I didn’t see him, but I knew he was there with all his energy and healing the world and that’s very significant to me.”

In a preface the late Pope contributed for an upcoming book by Cardinal Angelo Scola, he left an eloquent message about ageing and dying. “Death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of something,” he wrote.

Talking to those who knew him well, it seems likely he would also have appreciated the warmth and good nature of the desire to see a meaning in his soccer club membership number.

Omar Abboud knew how quick-witted his friend he still knew as Jorge was and how much he enjoyed a joke, but never at anyone else’s expense.

“He has a different kind of humor,” Abboud said of the Pope, “a kind of joke that was with the people, not over the people. He has an intelligent, smart humor.”

Abboud, a prominent Muslim leader in Argentina, formed The Institute of Interreligious Dialogue with then-Cardinal Bergoglio and Rabbi Daniel Goldman in 2002. They visited each other’s communities and regularly held meetings and public exchanges to break down barriers between faith groups.

Abboud said he last visited the Pope in January, when the two spoke of artificial intelligence and how it could be regulated. He said he learned much from his friend Jorge and their discussions about literature and sacred texts. And he’s just beginning to talk about him in the past tense.

“He used to be a good friend, we need him. Really, words are not enough,” he said, his voice trailing off.

Francis is on the minds of everyone we meet — from his friends to people who admired him from afar, to those to whom he had ministered.

Flowers and messages are left in tribute at his childhood home, a square where he once played kickabout with other kids, and the church where he heard the call from God to join the priesthood. That church, the Basílica de San José de Flores, has an engraving marking the date when Francis received his vocation, while in the confessional — September 21, 1953.

So many candles have been burned to honor Francis that the steps of the Metropolitan Cathedral are covered with wax.

Seven days of official mourning were declared to honor Francis in Argentina, but they won’t all be filled with sadness.

The Mass held at San Lorenzo’s chapel ended more as a pep rally and there will be another crowd for the soccer team’s next match on Saturday, a few hours after Francis is laid to rest in Rome.

The team will wear commemorative jerseys to honor the late pontiff, and there is talk a new stadium will bear the name “Papa Francisco.” In a sign of his humility, Francis once wrote he didn’t much like that idea.

A Swiss Guardsman used to keep Francis updated on match scores and San Lorenzo’s progress by leaving notes on his desk; the Pope has said he had not watched television — barring seismic events like 9/11 — since 1990.

Francis said his love for sport was not only for the competition — and San Lorenzo is only one of several teams in soccer-mad Buenos Aires, the capital of soccer-mad Argentina, whose men are the current World Cup champions — but for the participation.

He believed sports, especially team games, get young people away from their screens and shuttered virtual lives and teach them to be out in the world.

The club may have lost Regular Member 88235 but Buenos Aires will remember him.

A homemade flag at the cathedral linked Francis and San Lorenzo with a simple phrase that seems to apply to Buenos Aires today: “Mis Dos Amores,” my two loves.

Francis reciprocated that love, writing in his book “Hope:” “My homeland, for which I continue to feel just the same great, profound love. The people for whom I pray every day, who formed me, who trained and then offered me to others. My people.”

In Flores, the working-class neighborhood where Francis lived and worked, a woman left a note outside his childhood home.

It read: “You were one of us — an Argentine — and a gift to the world.”

Moscow has inflicted another round of deadly strikes on Ukraine despite US President Donald Trump’s plea for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “STOP!” attacking its neighbor.

At least eight people were killed in drone strikes across the country, a night after Russia launched its deadliest bombardment of Ukraine since the middle of last year.

A drone attack on the eastern city of Pavlohrad on Friday killed three people, including a 76-year-old woman and a child, and injured 10 others, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said.

In southern Ukraine, two people were also killed in strikes on Kherson, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said, adding the strikes targeted critical infrastructure and residential buildings. Two more people died in attacks on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and one person was killed in Kharkiv in the northeast of the country, regional leaders said.

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv was the main target of Russia’s massive bombardment on Thursday, which hit several locations across the city, killing 12 people and wounding 87 others. Ukraine’s emergency services said on Friday that it had completed the search for survivors in the rubble of one residential block, hit by what Ukrainian authorities said was a North Korean ballistic missile.

The fresh round of attacks come after President Trump vented his frustration over the lack of progress on a peace deal on Thursday, saying he is “not happy” and urging Putin to “STOP!” the attacks, in a post on his Truth Social platform. Hours later, however, Trump said he believed both Russia and Ukraine want peace.

On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to arrive in Moscow for further talks with Putin on reaching an agreement.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was “ready to reach a deal,” in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, but added that there were still some specific points that needed to be “fine-tuned.”

Earlier this week, Trump launched a new tirade against Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing him of harming peace negotiations, after Zelensky said it was against his country’s constitution to recognize Russian control of Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Any move to recognize Russia’s control of Crimea would reverse a decade of US policy and could upset the widely held post-World War Two consensus that international borders should not be changed by force.

The spat over Crimea is the latest in a series of very public disagreements between Trump and Zelensky.

Trump has insisted he has been equally as tough on Putin, but got defensive on Thursday when asked by White House reporters what concessions Russia had made in the conflict.

“Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country. Pretty big concession,” Trump said.

“We’re putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that, and some people that are close to it know or he wouldn’t be talking right now.”

Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday, is breaking with tradition when it comes to where he will be laid to rest – choosing a light-filled basilica instead of the grottoes of the Vatican.

Popes are usually buried within Vatican City, beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. But Francis will be the first pontiff in more than a century to be buried outside the Vatican, as he requested a “simple” tomb a couple of miles away in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore – also known as St. Mary Major.

Francis’ funeral will take place on Saturday in St. Peter’s Square, before his body is taken to the basilica – on the other side of the river in central Rome – for burial.

“The tomb must be in the earth; simple, without particular decoration and with the only inscription: Franciscus,” the pontiff said in his will, released by the Vatican. He also said the costs of his burial would be covered “by a sum provided by a benefactor.”

While Francis’ tomb will be humble, the basilica above it glitters with sunlight and gold. The ceiling is covered in gilded wood, and light pours in through high-up windows to illuminate intricate mosaics that line the nave. Mourners and visitors have flocked here in the days since Francis’s death, interested to see for themselves a place that he loved.

Perched on top of one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, Santa Maria Maggiore is one of four papal basilicas. Its bell tower is the tallest in the Italian capital, rising to a height of 246 feet, and its position on the hill makes it the highest point in the city.

The legend goes that the Virgin Mary came to both Pope Liberius and an Italian aristocrat asking for the church to be constructed in her honor in a place that would be miraculously revealed. Rome’s Esquiline Hill was identified as the spot after snow fell on its summit in August of 358, at the height of summer. In contemporary times, a celebration marking the “Miracle of the Snow” takes place at the basilica on August 5 every year.

The church as it stands today was commissioned by Pope Sixtus III in the year 431. The mosaics date from that time, and the interior also boasts Classical columns plundered from other buildings, although it’s encased in a Neoclassical facade built in the 1700s.

The church has long held a special significance for Pope Francis, who used to visit on Sunday mornings to honor the Virgin Mary.

He would often visit the basilica before and after foreign trips, as well as after hospital stays, to pray to the most important Marian icon, the Salus Populi Romani, to which he entrusted the protection of his apostolic journeys, in keeping with Jesuit tradition.

Clearly a spot close to his heart, it’s where Francis began his first full day as leader of the Catholic Church in 2013. It is also the first place he visited after leaving the hospital last month, offering flowers to be placed before the icon of the Virgin Mary before returning to his residence in the Vatican.

Francis revealed his plans to be buried there in December 2023, explaining that he felt a “very strong connection” with the basilica. “I want to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore,” Francis said. “Because it is my great devotion.”

A “place is already prepared” for his burial, the pope said in 2023, adding that he had been working on streamlining papal funerals.

“We simplified them quite a bit,” Francis said. “I will premiere the new ritual,” he added with a smile at the time.

Although seven other popes are buried in Santa Maria Maggiore, Francis will be the first not to be interred in St. Peter’s Basilica since Leo XIII, who died in 1903 and was laid to rest in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. The last pope to be buried at Santa Maria Maggiore was Clement IX, back in 1669.

This is not the only time the pope has broken with tradition: Francis also refused to live in the Apostolic Palace, the official papal residence, instead choosing to live in a small apartment in the Vatican guesthouse, Santa Marta.

Throughout his life, he was known for eschewing luxuries. As a cardinal in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was known for taking the subway instead of using a chauffeured car. Later in his career, he would travel to work at the Vatican in an unassuming blue Ford Focus.

The day after his death, Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore was far busier than usual, with mourners, worshipers and other visitors coming by the hundreds. The atmosphere was filled with sentiment but not somber, and the afternoon Mass opened with a brass quintet and bright organ music.

“It was just a remarkable experience,” Kerry Bruder, 71, from Ontario, Canada, said after seeing the vast artworks and marble sculptures inside the church. “You know that people for centuries have been going in there… and it just made you feel small, but in a good way.”

Victoria Ferreira, who traveled to Rome from Brazil for Easter, said she had already visited the basilica days before – but it felt different after the pontiff’s death, adding that “it was very emotional.”

“He filled us with love, with empathy, with hope,” she said. “And I think we need to, more than ever, have this in our mind and in our actions – to be like him.”