Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the U.S. and Iran were "very close" to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would extend the ceasefire by 60 days, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and launch talks on limiting Tehran's nuclear program.
Why it matters: The signing of the MOU would be the most significant diplomatic breakthrough since the war started, but a final agreement tackling President Trump's nuclear demands would require further intensive negotiations.
Americans exposed to Ebola in Africa will quarantine in Kenya and be moved to treatment facilities in Europe if they test positive, senior Trump administration officials said on Thursday.
Why it matters: The administration's plan to keep affected Americans from returning to the U.S. has angered some public health experts, who say there already are specialized facilities stateside to treat them.
Why it matters: Prolonged blackouts due to limited fuel supply are disrupting essential services, making even basic tasks — like cooking — difficult or impossible.
Decades of failures by both political parties left the U.S. strategically vulnerable, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will argue in a speech Friday, and the Trump administration is focused on turning the tide.
Driving the news: Bessent's talk, titled "While America Slept," which invokes U.S. strategic failures before World War II, will argue that this has been an era of dangerous complacency and the deterioration of U.S. manufacturing strength, a Treasury official tells Axios.
U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, but President Trump has yet to give his final approval, two U.S. officials and a regional source involved in the mediation efforts tell Axios. Iran has also not confirmed its acceptance.
Why it matters: The signing of the MOU would be the most significant diplomatic breakthrough since the war started, but a final agreement that tackles Trump's nuclear demands would still require further intensive negotiations.
An increasing share of regular folks in South Korea are going all in on the country's stock market — borrowing money so as not to miss out on the AI-fueled stock boom there.
Why it matters: The entire economy is now hanging on the success of a few chipmakers.
The latest: South Korea's KOSPI index, which crossed 8,000 for the first time on Tuesday, is up 207%from a year ago.
A few big, newly minted trillionaire chipmakers are behind the surge, including SK Hynix and Samsung.
The big picture: A mania for stocks has swept the country, as Bloomberg reported earlier this year.
Zoom in: And retail traders are borrowing to fuel the buying binge: Margin loans are at a record high, according to reporting earlier this month in the Korea Times.
Middle-aged and older Koreans are increasingly getting in on this — borrowing money so as not to miss out, "mirroring" younger generations but "often with larger sums at stake."
Threat level: Some of these folks are risking retirement money with leveraged bets — Korea already has a high poverty rate (40%) for older adults.
If the AI trade falters, the country's entire economy is on the line, writes Ed Yardeni at Yardeni Research.
"Asia's fourth‑largest economy increasingly resembles a giant leveraged bet on AI."
The bottom line: What could go wrong? See our piece on how American investors are using a record amount of borrowed money to bet on stocks.
The Trump administration is bracing for the potential collapse of Cuba's totalitarian government as early as this summer, and has war-gamed new military response plans in case the island descends into chaos, U.S. officials tell Axios.
Why it matters: President Trump hasn't authorized an invasion and prefers a peaceful transition to a free Cuba, so the administration will keep pushing economic sanctions to try to strangle the regime in Havana in a slow-motion constriction.
The war in Iran has exacerbated a shortage of missile-defense weaponry that is likely to plague the U.S. and its partners — from Ukraine to Taiwan — for years to come.
Why it matters: The conflict is draining weapons stockpiles far faster than American factories can replace them, leaving the Pentagon and its allies scrambling to ramp up production and find cheaper alternatives.
