The United States delivered its initial official nuclear proposal to Iran today, just hours after UN nuclear watchdogs disclosed a significant uptick in Iran’s accumulation of highly enriched uranium, according to a report by The New York Times.
Rather than submitting a complete agreement, U.S. officials presented a set of key points. These included a call for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment efforts and participate in a regional nuclear energy initiative alongside the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and several other Arab nations.
The proposal was transmitted through Oman and acknowledged by both Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the White House as having been received.

In a damning new report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that Iran conducted secret nuclear activities using undeclared material at three long-suspected sites — confirming fears that Tehran was operating a clandestine nuclear weapons program. The confidential report, obtained by Reuters, was requested by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors and outlines decades of nuclear violations. It concludes that Iran operated a covert and structured nuclear weapons initiative until the early 2000s, and stored nuclear material and contaminated equipment at a fourth site, Turquzabad, between 2009 and 2018 — the same facility publicly exposed by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the United Nations in 2018.

[COMMUNICATED]
For Some, It’s Joy. For Others, It’s Just Pressure.
In thousands of homes across our community, Shavuos is being planned with excitement; menus, learning, flowers, guests… But in over 1,500 homes, what should be a Yom Tov of joy is instead a source of quiet stress.
They’re not thinking about which cheesecake to try or which appetizer to make. It’s not about extras. It’s about basics.Milk? Eggs? Chicken? Challah? Can they make Yom Tov at all?
And this year more than ever, those questions are real.In this economy, even basics feel out of reach for so many.

US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff slammed Hamas for its response to the latest ceasefire proposal, calling it “totally unacceptable” and a move that “only takes us backward.” According to an Israeli official familiar with the details, Hamas’s response to the proposal included demands for a seven-year ceasefire, a complete IDF withdrawal from all areas of Gaza captured since March, the cancellation of the new US-supported aid distribution system in Gaza, and a return to the previous system supported by the United Nations. “This isn’t a response — it’s a slammed door,” the official stated. Earlier on Shabbos, Hamas announced that it submitted a response to the proposal to Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

China launched a spacecraft that promises to return samples from an asteroid near Mars and yield “groundbreaking discoveries and expand humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos,” the country’s space agency said. The Tianwen-2 probe launched early Thursday from southern China aboard the workhorse Long March 3-B rocket. The probe will collect samples from the asteroid 2016HO3 and explore the main-belt comet 311P, which lies even farther from Earth than Mars, according to the China National Space Administration.

A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will help power artificial intelligence technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, federal officials said Thursday. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the project Thursday alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It’s due to switch on next year.

President Donald Trump stated on Friday that discussions surrounding a potential truce and hostage exchange deal in Gaza are advancing, and he anticipates a formal update might be released either later in the day or by Shabbos.
Trump further noted that negotiations with Iran concerning its nuclear program also appear to be progressing.
“They’re very close to an agreement on Gaza, and we’ll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow, and I think we have a chance of making a deal with Iran. They don’t want to be blown up, they would rather make a deal, and I think that could happen in the not too distant future,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump bid farewell to Elon Musk in the Oval Office