DUBAI/TEL AVIV — Iran is reviewing a US proposal to end the war in the Gulf but has no intention of holding talks to end the widening Middle East conflict, the country’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

The comments by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi suggested some willingness by Tehran to negotiate an end to the war if its demands were met, despite an initial response that was negative as Iranian officials publicly poured scorn on the prospect of any negotiations with the US.

The exchange of messages through mediators “does not mean negotiations with the US,” Mr. Araqchi said on state television.

“They put forward ideas in their messages that were conveyed to top authorities, and if necessary, a position will be announced by them,” Mr. Araqchi said.

Additionally, Iran has told intermediaries that Lebanon must be included in any ceasefire agreement with ​the US and Israel, six regional sources familiar with Iran’s position said.

US President Donald Trump’s 15-point proposal, sent through Pakistan, calls for removing Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, halting enrichment, curbing its ballistic missile program and cutting off funding for regional allies, according to three Israeli cabinet sources familiar with the plan.

The White House declined to disclose specifics of its proposal and threatened to escalate its strikes.

“If they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily, and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

A senior Israeli defense official said Israel was skeptical Iran would agree to the terms, and that Israel was concerned US negotiators might make concessions. Israel also wants any agreement to preserve its option to conduct pre-emptive strikes, a second source said.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the Central Command chief leading US forces in the Middle East, said in a video briefing that the US had hit over 10,000 targets inside Iran and was on track to limit Iran’s ability to project power outside its borders.

Mr. Cooper said 92% of Iran’s largest naval vessels had been destroyed and that its drone and missile launch rates were down by more than 90%. The US and Israel have damaged or destroyed two-thirds of Iran’s missile, drone, and naval production facilities and shipyards, Mr. Cooper said.

Still, the war has raged on with no let-up in air attacks against Iran, as well as Iranian drone and missile strikes against Israel and US allies.

The Israeli military on Wednesday described several new waves of attacks on Iran during the day, including one on Iran’s construction of ships and submarines. The semi-official Iranian SNN News Agency said a residential area was hit in Tehran, with rescuers searching the rubble. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia said they repelled new drone attacks.

MARKETS RESPOND POSITIVELY TO PROPOSAL
Global equity markets regained some ground while oil prices fell on Wednesday after reports that Washington had sent the proposal to Iran, with investors hoping for an end to a war that has disrupted global energy supplies and risks fueling inflation.

The Pentagon is meanwhile planning to send thousands of airborne troops to the Gulf to give Mr. Trump more options to order a ground assault, sources have told Reuters, adding to two contingents of Marines already on their way. The first Marine unit, aboard a huge amphibious assault ship, could arrive around the end of the month.

Iran could open a new front at the mouth of the Red Sea if attacks are carried out on its territory, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency cited an unnamed military source as saying on Wednesday. The source said that Iran has the capability to pose a “credible threat” in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which lies between Yemen and Djibouti.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said his country would attack an unnamed neighboring country if it cooperated with efforts by “the enemies” to occupy one of its islands.

Since the start of what the US calls “Operation Epic Fury”, Iran has attacked countries that host US bases and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday warned: The “world is staring down the barrel of a wider war” in the region.

“It is time to stop climbing the escalation ladder – and start climbing the diplomatic ladder,” he said at the UN headquarters in New York. — Reuters

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people, in a $6 million verdict that will serve as a bellwether for numerous similar cases.

The jury found Meta liable for $4.2 million in damages and Google for $1.8 million, small amounts for two of the world’s most valuable companies with annual capital spending over $100 billion each.

The Los Angeles trial is meant to serve as a bellwether, or test case, for the thousands of similar lawsuits consolidated in California state courts.

‘ACCOUNTABILITY HAS ARRIVED’

The case involves a 20-year-old woman, a minor when the case began who is known in court by her first name Kaley. She said she became addicted to Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design, such as the “infinite scroll” that encourages users to keep looking at new posts.

The jury found Google and Meta were negligent in the design of both apps and failed to warn about their dangers.

“Today’s verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived,” the plaintiff’s lead counsel said in a statement.

Meta and Google disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal, spokespeople for each company said.

Shares of Meta closed up 0.3%, and Google parent Alphabet finished 0.2% higher.

US law strongly protects social media companies from liability for what is on their platforms, but the plaintiff in the Los Angeles proceeding focused on platform design rather than content.

The verdict is a “setback” for Meta and Google, said Gil Luria, a technology sector analyst at investment firm D.A. Davidson.

“This process will likely get dragged out through future cases and appeals, but eventually may cause these companies to put in consumer safeguards that may dampen growth,” he said.

Snap and TikTok were also defendants in the trial. Both settled with the plaintiff before it began. Terms of the agreements were not disclosed.

MOUNTING CRITICISM

Large technology companies in the US have faced mounting criticism in the last decade over child and teen safety. The debate has now shifted to courts and state governments. The US Congress has declined to pass comprehensive legislation regulating social media.

At least 20 states enacted laws last year on social media usage and children, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, an organization that tracks state laws.

The legislation includes bills that regulate the use of cellphones in schools and require users to verify their ages to open a social media account. NetChoice, a trade association backed by tech companies such as Meta and Google, is seeking to invalidate age verification requirements in court.

US senators Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, in statements after the verdict, called on Congress to pass legislation directing social media companies to design their platforms with kids’ safety in mind.

A separate social media addiction case brought by several states and school districts against technology companies is expected to go to trial this summer in federal court in Oakland, California.

Another state trial is slated to begin in Los Angeles in July, said Matthew Bergman, one of the attorneys leading the cases for the plaintiffs. It will involve Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Separately, a New Mexico jury on Tuesday found Meta violated state law in a lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general, who accused the company of misleading users about the safety of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and of enabling child sexual exploitation on those platforms.

TRIAL ARGUMENTS

At trial, the plaintiff’s lawyers sought to show Meta and Google intentionally targeted kids and made decisions that put profit over safety. Meta’s attorneys emphasized the plaintiff’s difficult home life as a child as the cause of her mental health struggles, while YouTube argued her usage of the streaming platform was minimal.

Jurors saw internal documents revealing how Meta and Google sought to attract younger users, and heard executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, take the stand last month to defend company decisions.

When asked about Meta’s decision to lift a temporary ban on beauty filters that some inside Meta warned could be harmful to teen girls, Mr. Zuckerberg said he decided to let users express themselves.

“I felt like the evidence wasn’t clear enough to support limiting people’s expression,” he said.

How free speech and content moderation factored into the companies’ decisions is likely to play a part in any appeal. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in May during his first visit to China in eight years, a closely watched trip postponed due to the ongoing Iran war.

Mr. Trump’s effort to reschedule the trip reflected the Republican president’s eagerness to project confidence in a challenging Middle East war and simultaneously to manage a tense relationship between the world’s biggest economies.

Initially slated to travel next week, Mr. Trump will now visit Beijing on May 14 and 15, he said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. Mr. Trump added that he would host Mr. Xi for a reciprocal visit in Washington later this year.

“Our Representatives are finalizing preparations for these Historic Visits,” Mr. Trump said. “I look very much forward to spending time with President Xi in what will be, I am sure, a Monumental Event.”

China’s embassy said it had no information to provide on the announcement of the visit. Beijing normally does not detail Mr. Xi’s schedule more than a ​few days in ⁠advance.

The long-scheduled trip – and Washington’s broader effort to reset relations in the Asia Pacific region – have been repeatedly overtaken by events.

In February, the Supreme Court curtailed the US president’s power to impose tariffs, a source of leverage for Mr. Trump in negotiations with the US’ third-biggest trading partner. Later that month, Mr. Trump’s joint military operation with Israel against Iran introduced a new point of tension with Beijing, Tehran’s main oil buyer.

Mr. Trump’s last trip to China, in 2017, was the most recent by a US president. Mr. Trump’s visit in May will be the leaders’ first in-person talks since an October meeting in South Korea, where they agreed on a trade truce.

WHITE HOUSE SAYS XI UNDERSTANDS TRUMP’S REASONS FOR DELAY

The two-day trip is set to combine the lavish pomp and circumstance that has become a feature of Mr. Trump’s trips abroad with hard-nosed diplomacy.

While the two sides could strike goodwill agreements in Beijing on trade in agriculture and airplane parts, they are also expected to discuss areas of deep tension like Taiwan, where little progress is expected.

Mr. Trump has dramatically ramped up US arms sales to Taiwan during his second term in office. The moves have angered Beijing, which claims the democratically governed island as its own territory.

It is also not clear whether the war with Iran, which has shaken the global economy, will be settled by the time of the Xi-Trump meeting.

Mr. Trump has sought support from the world’s major oil consumers, including China, to help counter Iran’s efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr. Trump’s request for assistance so far has largely been rebuffed. China, which imported around 12 million barrels of oil daily during the first two months of ​2026, the most in the world, has ​not directly responded to ⁠his request.

Asked whether the war could wind down in time for the China trip, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that “we’ve always estimated approximately four to six weeks. So you could do the math on that.”

Ms. Leavitt also said Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi spoke about rescheduling the trip and that Mr. Xi had understood the reasons for doing so.

“President Xi understood that it’s very important for the president to be here throughout these combat operations right now,” she said. — Reuters