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Where negotiations between the U.S. and Iran stand 04:28

President Trump told CBS News that negotiators for United States and Iran are "getting a lot closer" to finalizing an agreement between the two countries.

Sources familiar with the negotiations told CBS News that the latest proposal includes a process to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, the unfreezing of some Iranian assets held in foreign banks, and a continuation of negotiations.

Mr. Trump declined to provide specifics about the agreement, but said that "every day it gets better and better."

"I can't tell you before I tell them, right?" Mr. Trump told CBS News in a phone interview.

Mr. Trump did say that he believes the final agreement will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, adding that he "wouldn't even be talking about it" otherwise. Mr. Trump added that the agreement would also result in Iran's enriched uranium being "satisfactorily handled."

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"I will only sign a deal where we get everything we want," he said.

Sources told CBS News that Mr. Trump is still mulling proposals and has not made up his mind yet. The sources said he is consulting with advisers and talking to foreign leaders, including leaders from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.

Mr. Trump said that if the U.S. and Iran do not come to an agreement, "we're going to have a situation where no country will ever be hit as hard as they're about to be hit."

Mr. Trump has previously threatened Iran, saying before the start of a ceasefire that began in April that "a whole civilization will die" without a deal, and recently warning the country that "the Clock is Ticking."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Saturday that there "may be news later today" about where negotiations between Iran and the U.S. stand.

"There's been some progress done, some progress made, even as I speak to you now, there's some work being done," Rubio said, ahead of a formal dinner at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. "There is a chance that, whether it's later today, tomorrow, in a couple days, we may have something to say, but this issue needs to be solved, as the president said, one way or another."

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The U.S. military conducted a rapid response exercise involving Marines and military aircraft in Venezuela’s capital Saturday, over four months after theouster of then-President Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuela US Drill

Two Marine Corps Osprey aircraft, which have characteristics of both a helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane, flew overthe recently reopened U.S. Embassy in Caracas. They landed in the parking lot with the downdraft blowing tree branches. Forces then descended from the aircraft.

“Ensuring the military’s rapid response capability is a key component of mission readiness, both here in Venezuela and around the world,” the embassy said on Instagram.

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Venezuela’s government had announced the drill earlier this week. Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the U.S. would conduct the exercise to prepare “in the event of medical emergencies or catastrophic emergencies.”

The drill comes almost two months after the U.S. formally reopened its embassy in Caracas. The reopening followed the restoration of full diplomatic relations with the South American country afterMaduro's ouster in early January.

Some Caracas residents Saturday gathered near the embassy to watch the aircraft, while a few dozen others gathered elsewhere in the city to protest the exercise. Protesters held a Venezuelan flag with the message “No to the Yankee drill” written over it.

U.S. military aircraft last flew over Caracas on Jan. 3, when elite forces rappelled down from helicopters and captured Maduro and his wife. Both were taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges. They have pleaded not guilty.

HELSINGBORG, Sweden (AP) — NATO allies and defense officials expressed bewilderment Friday at U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would send5,000 U.S. troopsto Poland just weeks after ordering the same number of forces pulled out of Europe.

The apparent change of mind came after weeks of statements from Trump and his administration aboutreducing — not increasing — the U.S. military footprintin Europe. Trump's initial order set off a flurry of action among military commanders and left allies already doubtful about America's commitment to Europe's security to ponder what forces they might have to backfill on NATO's eastern flank with Russia and Ukraine.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it was reducing levels in Europe by about 5,000 troops, and U.S. officials confirmed about 4,000 service members wereno longer rotating into Poland from Germany. The dispatch to Germany of U.S. personnel trained to fire long-range missiles was also halted.

But in a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said he would now send "an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” citing his strong ties with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, whom Trump endorsed in elections last year.

“It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told reporters Friday at a meeting she was hosting of her NATO counterparts, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Ministers from the Netherlands and Norway were sanguine about Trump’s latest move, as was Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže, who said allies knew the U.S. troop “posture was being reconsidered, and now there is no change of posture. For now.”

U.S. defense officials also expressed confusion. “We just spent the better part of two weeks reacting to the first announcement. We don’t know what this means either,” said one of two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

But Rubio said Washington’s allies understand that changes in the U.S. troop presence in Europe will come as the Trump administration reevaluates its force needs. “I think there’s a broad recognition that there are going to be eventually less U.S. troops in Europe than there has historically been for a variety of reasons,” he said.

US withdrawal followed German criticism

The latest surprise came despite a U.S. pledge to coordinate troop deployments, including one from NATO’s top military officer, U.S. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, on Wednesday.

Trump's initial announcement that he would withdraw troops came as he fumed over remarks by GermanChancellor Friedrich Merz, who said that the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called alack of strategy in that war.

Trump told reporters that the U.S. would be cutting even more than 5,000 and also announced newtariffs on European cars. Germany is the continent’s biggest auto producer.

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Rubio insisted that Trump’s decision “is not a punitive thing. It’s just something that’s ongoing.”

The US has a commitment to keep at least 76,000 troops in Europe

About 80,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Europe. The Pentagon isrequiredto keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment on the continent unless NATO allies are consulted and there is a determination that such a withdrawal is in U.S. interests.

The withdrawal of 5,000 troops might drop numbers below that limit.

But Trump's latest post suggests that troop numbers in Europe would not change. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski welcomed the decision to send more forces to his country, saying it ensures that “the presence of American troops in Poland will be maintained more or less at previous levels.”

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also welcomed the move. On Thursday, before Trump took to Truth Social again, Rutte had underlined that it was important for Europe to take care of its own security. “We have a process in place. This is normal business,” he told reporters.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, meanwhile, U.S. officials briefed the allies on the Pentagon's aims for its commitments to the NATO Force Model, which involves contingency planning for Europe’s defense in the event of serious security concerns. It was widely expected that a further reduction of U.S. forces would be coming.

Asked whether any cuts were announced, Rutte said: “I’m afraid it’s much more complicated than that.” He said the procedure “is highly classified” and declined to give details.

Rubio played down concerns about a shift in U.S. force levels in Europe, saying: "Every country has to constantly reevaluate what their needs are, what their commitments are around the world, and how to properly structure that.”

Cook reported from Brussels. Associated Press writer Emma Burrows in London contributed.

This story has been updated to correct the title for Gen. Alex Grynkewich

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tulsi Gabbard resigned as President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence on Friday, saying she needed to leave office as her husband battles cancer. She is the fourth Cabinet member to depart during Trump’s second term, all of them women.

In her resignation letter, which she posted on social media, Gabbard said she told Trump she would leave her job overseeing the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies on June 30. She said her husband had recently been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.”

“At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote in the letter, which was reported earlier by Fox News.

Trump, in his own social media post, said “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.” He said her principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, will serve as acting director of national intelligence.

While Gabbard says her departure is for personal reasons, the juxtaposition between her long-held, anti-interventionism stance and Trump’s series of overseas military operations had seemed to put them on a collision course.

Iran put Gabbard and Trump at odds

There had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president's decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration. Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center,announced his resignationin March and said he “cannot in good conscience” back the war.

Gabbard, a veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, built her political name on her opposition to foreign wars. This put her in an awkward position when the U.S. joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.

During a congressional hearing in March, her measured comments were notable for their careful non-endorsement of the Iran war. She repeatedly dodged questions about whether the White House had been warned of potential fallout from the conflict, including Iran’s effective closure of theStrait of Hormuz, a waterway crucial for global oil shipments.

Gabbard said in written remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee that there had been no effort by Iran to rebuild its nuclear capability after U.S. attacks last year “obliterated” its nuclear program. That statement contradicted Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that the war was necessary to head off an imminent threat from the Islamic Republic.

This created several awkward exchanges with lawmakers who asked Gabbard for her opinion on the threat posed by Iran as the nation’s top intelligence official. She repeatedly said it was Trump’s decision to strike, not hers.

“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said.

Gabbard’s departure follows Trump havingousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noemin late March, in the midst of mounting criticism over her leadership of the department — including the handling of the administration’s immigration crackdown and disaster response.

The second Cabinet member to leave was Attorney General Pam Bondi, in response to growing frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. And Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April, after being the target of various misconduct investigations.

Lukas, who will be taking over for Gabbard, was an intelligence aide to the acting director of national intelligence, Ric Grenell, in 2020 during Trump's first term. A former policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, he also served as deputy senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council in the final year of Trump’s previous administration.

A surprising choice for the job

A military veteran but without any intelligence experience,Gabbardwas a surprising choice for director of national intelligence. She ran for president in 2020 on a progressive platform and her opposition to U.S. involvement in foreign military conflicts.

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Citing her military experience, she argued that U.S. wars in the Middle East had destabilized the region, made the U.S. less safe and cost thousands of American lives. Gabbard later dropped out of the race and endorsed the ultimate winner, PresidentJoe Biden.

Two years later, she left the Democratic Party to becomean independent, saying her old party was dominated by an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and “woke” ideologues. She subsequently campaigned for several high-profile Republicans and became a contributor to Fox News.

She later endorsed Trump, who also was a strong critic of past U.S. wars in the Middle East and campaigned on a pledge to avoid unnecessary wars and nation-building overseas.

Iran caused early tensions

But friction with the president started soon after he began his second term and tapped Gabbard to lead ODNI, which was set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to improve coordination between the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Shortly after taking on the job and before this year's war, Gabbard testified before lawmakers that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons. After Trump launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites last June, he said Gabbard was wrong and thathe didn’t care what she said.

She appeared to be back in Trump’s good graces when she took a lead role in Trump’s effort to relitigate his 2020 election loss to Biden. She appeared at an FBI search of election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, even though her office was created to focus on foreign espionage, not state elections.

Gabbard made big changes in her time in office

Gabbard vowed to eliminate what she said was the politicization of intelligence by government insiders. But she quickly used her office to support some of Trump’s most partisan arguments — that he won the 2020 election.

She also worked tounderminethe results of earlier investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia.

In her year on the job, Gabbard oversaw a sharp reduction in the intelligence workforce, as well as the creation of a new task force that shecharged with considering big changesto the intelligence service.

Earlier this year, an intelligence sector whistleblower filed a complaint that Gabbard was withholding intelligence for political reasons, a complaint that prompted calls from Democrats for Gabbard’s resignation.

Gabbard, 44, was born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa, raised in Hawaii and spent a year of her childhood in the Philippines. She was first elected as a 21-year-old to Hawaii’s House of Representatives but had to leave after one term when her National Guard unit deployed to Iraq.

As the first Hindu member of the House, Gabbard was sworn into office with her hand on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu devotional work. She was also thefirst American Samoan elected to Congress.

During herfour House terms, she became known for speaking out against her party’s leadership. Her early support for Sen.Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Democratic presidential primary run made her a popular figure in progressive politics nationally.

Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C.

May 21 (Reuters) - Sichuan Kelun-Biotech Biopharmaceutical said on Thursday its experimental treatment combined with partner Merck's Keytruda improved ‌survival rate in patients with advanced lung cancer, meeting ‌the main goal of a late-stage study.

The trial tested the drug, sacituzumab ​tirumotecan or sac-TMT, in combination with cancer therapy Keytruda as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, against Keytruda alone.

The combination significantly improved progression-free survival, with patients living ‌longer without the disease ⁠worsening, compared to those treated with Keytruda alone, the company said.

The study had enrolled more than ⁠400 previously untreated patients in China with advanced disease and PD-L1 expression, a marker that helps determine response to immunotherapy.

The treatment ​also showed ​higher response rates of about ​70%, compared with 42% ‌for Keytruda alone.

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Merck is developing sac-TMT with Chinese biotech firm Kelun-Biotech, which discovered the therapy, which is currently being tested across multiple cancers, including lung, breast and gastrointestinal tumors.

Sac-TMT is an antibody-drug conjugate, a type of targeted therapy that delivers cancer-killing ‌chemotherapy directly to tumor cells by ​binding to a protein called TROP2.

Safety ​remained consistent with the ​known profiles of the drugs, although serious side ‌effects were more common in ​the combination group, ​including low white blood cell counts and anemia, the company said.

NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer ​in the United ‌States, accounting for about 87% of all cases, according ​to the American Cancer Society.

(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole in ​Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Colorado Democrats voted overwhelmingly to censure one of their own, Gov. Jared Polis, forcommuting the prison sentenceof Tina Peters, the election conspiracy theorist who amplified President Donald Trump's baseless claims that mass fraud caused his 2020 election loss.

About 90% of the state party's roughly 700 Central Committee members voted Wednesday for censure. It means that Polis, who is term-limited and serving his final year in office, will be barred from being an honored guest, featured speaker, or officially recognized party representative at party-sponsored events.

Peters, 70, is a former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind barsafter being convictedin 2024 for a scheme to make a copy of her county’s electioncomputer system.

She is set for release June 1 after Polis commuted her sentence Friday.

Trump has championed Peters' cause. Reducing her sentence set a “dangerous and disappointing” precedent when democracy and voting rights are under attack nationwide, the Colorado Democratic Party said in a statement.

“It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president,” the statement said.

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About 700 state party members, including current and former elected officials, petitioned for the party to condemn Polis. The subsequent censure vote was taken in a regularly scheduled party Central Committee virtual meeting.

In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld Peters' conviction but ordered her to be resentenced, saying the judge wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

In commuting her sentence, Polis told Peters in a letter she deserved prison time but had been given an “extremely unusual and lengthy” sentence for a first-time, nonviolent offender.

He defended the commutation after the censure vote.

“The governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship," Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama said in an emailed statement Thursday.

Peters thanked Polis and apologized for her crime in a statement after her sentence commutation.

Peters sneaked an outside computer expert, an associate ofMyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to make a copy of her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during a system upgrade in 2021. She then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, and photos of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.

May 20 (Reuters) - The United States has ‌removed Francesca ‌Albanese, a U.N. expert ​on the Palestinian territories, from its list of sanctioned ‌individuals, according ⁠to the U.S. Treasury Department ⁠website.

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The removal comes a week ​after a ​federal ​judge temporarily ‌blocked the sanctions, finding that the Trump administration likely violated her free-speech ‌rights by imposing ​the ​measures ​after she ‌criticized U.S. ally Israel’s ​war ​in Gaza.

(Reporting by Christian Martinez ​in ‌Los Angeles and ​Ryan Patrick Jones ​in Toronto)