President Trump announced he is pausing the so-called Project Freedom operation in the Strait of Hormuz, saying there’s “great progress” toward a “complete and final agreement” with Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the offensive stage of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is over. Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called U.S. demands “impossible,” saying Washington expects Iran to submit to unilateral conditions. Oil prices plunged earlier today amid reports that the U.S. and Iran could reach a deal soon. This comes after a day of intense fighting in the strait. According to the U.S. military, Iran launched cruise missiles, drones and small boats at U.S.-protected ships, and a South Korean-operated vessel caught fire. President Trump said the U.S. sank seven small Iranian boats, and denied any U.S. warship was struck. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing today. Wang said China is ready to play “a greater role in restoring peace and tranquility to the Middle East.”

The husband of Iran’s imprisoned human rights activist Narges Mohammadi is speaking out after her hospitalization for severe ​medical problems. Mohammadi’s family is demanding she be transferred from Zanjan Prison to Tehran, where she could receive better ​medical care, but authorities continue to deny her transfer. Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times and sentenced to a cumulative 31 years in prison. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her advocacy against torture and the death penalty in Iran. This is Narges Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani.

Taghi Rahmani: “Narges believes in human rights, in justice and in equality for women. She sees the struggle for human rights as an ideal and has extraordinary courage. And she has expressed this. She has always had this. Narges, in any situation, works for the improvement of human rights. That is her belief.”

In Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least three Palestinians, including a 15-year-old child, on Tuesday. Gaza health authorities said one Palestinian was killed and two others were wounded in an airstrike near the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, while another was killed by Israeli tank shelling in the central part of the besieged strip. A third strike hit a police station in northern Gaza, killing the teenager. Despite the U.S.-brokered so-called ceasefire, Israel has been conducting near-daily attacks on Gaza. At least 830 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire took effect in October. This is an eyewitness to the Israeli strike on a police station on Tuesday.

Ezz El-Din Khedra: “We suddenly heard a blast. I ran outside and found the police station had been hit. I looked and saw people lying on the ground, martyrs and wounded. I started moving wounded people and putting them in the car. We came here to Al-Shifa Hospital with a martyr. When will the war stop? When will the strikes on us stop? When will the injustice end? Will all of this continue to happen to us?”

A court in Israel has again extended the detention of two members of the Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla that was violently intercepted by Israeli forces on international waters last week. Spanish national Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian national Thiago Ávila were among an estimated 175 activists forced off their humanitarian aid ships at gunpoint during Israel’s raid on the flotilla. The other activists were taken to a port on the Greek island of Crete. This is a lawyer representing Abukeskek and Ávila, who had visible bruises on his face after Israeli soldiers beat him.

Hadeel Abu Salih: “We also talked about the detention conditions, which amount to psychological torture, since both Thiago and Saif are being kept in isolation since they got — since they were moved to the custody of the Israeli Prison Services. And they are blindfolded each time they are taken out of the cell, even when they go through a medical procedure, which also violates the most basic medical ethical standards.”

Abukeshek and Ávila are being held without charge. Thiago Ávila’s mother died in Brazil yesterday. Click here to see our coverage of this story.

In Britain, four Palestine Action activists have been convicted of criminal damage over their involvement in a 2024 protest and raid on a factory operated by the Israeli defense firm Elbit. Two other defendants on the same trial were acquitted. The four activists were found guilty Tuesday of smashing up Elbit military equipment. Their legal team said in a statement, “They went into this trial with their heads held high and with the knowledge that no matter the verdict, by destroying Israeli military drones, their action likely saved lives in Palestine.” The British government has banned Palestine Action under its Terrorism Act.

Thirty House Democrats sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging the Trump administration to publicly acknowledge Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program. Led by Democratic Congressmember Joaquin Castro, the lawmakers wrote, “Congress has a constitutional responsibility to be fully informed about the nuclear balance in the Middle East, the risk of escalation by any party to this conflict, and the administration’s planning and contingencies for such scenarios. We do not believe we have received that information.” The letter breaks a bipartisan policy of silence on Israel’s nuclear program dating to a secret 1969 agreement between President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

The Pentagon says it launched another strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing three people Tuesday. The Trump administration once again claimed the vessel was carrying drugs, without providing any evidence. Since September, the Pentagon says it has killed at least 190 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The attacks have been widely condemned as illegal.

Tightening U.S. sanctions on Cuba are likely the main cause for the sharp increase in the island’s infant mortality rate from 2018 to 2025. That’s according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which found the infant mortality rate in Cuba has increased by 148% and is likely to get worse due to harsher sanctions under President Trump’s second term. Infants with cancer have been particularly impacted as hospitals and clinics face extended power blackouts and diminishing medical supplies. CEPR’s Director of International Policy Alexander Main, one of the report’s co-authors, said, “The Trump policy of 'maximum pressure' on Cuba has killed a lot of babies … it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current U.S. fuel blockade targeting Cuba.”

The Guardian reports ICE has hired a private security company accused of torture, forced disappearances and child abuse to help track down undocumented immigrant children who came to the United States alone. MVM is a security contractor based in Ashburn, Virginia, that abducted and transported immigrant children under the Trump administration’s first-term family separation policy. The company has been at the center of legal turmoil over reports of child abuse, including detaining children in a vacant office building in Phoenix, Arizona, for weeks in 2018.

A CNN report has found the Department of Veterans Affairs opened investigations into multiple staffers who attended vigils at VA clinics and hospitals nationwide in honor of Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents deployed to Minneapolis in January. Pretti was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. Union leaders have called the probes a “witch hunt.”

Senate Republicans unveiled a $70 billion immigration enforcement package Monday that includes $1 billion for the Secret Service tied to Trump’s White House ballroom project. The Trump administration has insisted the East Wing renovation would be privately funded and cost taxpayers nothing. But Democrats called the bill a giveaway, noting the bill’s language is broad enough to cover the entire ballroom construction. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said Republicans were “ignoring middle-class needs and funneling money into Trump’s ballroom while throwing billions at two lawless agencies.”

In Indiana, Trump-backed challengers unseated five Republican state senators who had voted against his redistricting plan last year, with the incumbents losing by double digits. Roughly $12 million was spent on advertising across the seven contested state Senate races, most of it from Trump-allied outside groups. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy won the Republican gubernatorial primary and will face Democrat Amy Acton, the state’s former public health director, in November. Former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown won the state’s Democratic Senate primary.

Here in New York, dozens of activists staged a protest in front of the Philippines Consulate calling for an investigation into the killing of 19 people, including a journalist and two Filipino Americans in the province of Negros. The Philippine Army claims those killed are suspected members of New People’s Army, an armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. This is Andan Bonifacio of the group Bayan USA speaking to Democracy Now!

Andan Bonifacio: “Negros is an island that has long been plagued by a lot of different social problems, landlessness, exploitation of sugar cane workers. And for that reason, a lot of the communities there have been fighting back and have been organizing, protesting for their rights. And it’s inspired many, many people to go to Negros to integrate with those communities, to live with them.”