Updated 4 hours ago - World U.S.-Iran nuclear talks back on after Arab leaders lobby White House Barak Ravid facebook (opens in new window) twitter (opens in new window) linkedin (opens in new window) email (opens in new window) sms (opens in new window) Add Axios on Google Man standing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Jan. 17. Photo: Iranian Leader Press Office/Anadolu via Getty Images Plans for U.S.-Iran nuclear talks on Friday are back on, after several Middle Eastern leaders urgently lobbied the Trump administration on Wednesday afternoon not to follow through on threats to walk away, two U.S. officials told Axios. The talks will be held in Oman, as Iran insisted, despite the U.S. initially rejecting changes to the original plan to meet in Istanbul. Why it matters: The standoff had sparked fears across the Middle East that President Trump would pivot to military action. At least nine countries from the region reached out to the White House at the highest levels strongly urging the U.S. not to cancel the meeting. "They asked us to keep the meeting and listen to what the Iranians have to say. We have told the Arabs that we will do the meeting if they insist. But we are very skeptical," one U.S. official said. A second U.S. official said the Trump administration agreed to hold the meeting "to be respectful" to U.S. allies in the region and "in order to continue pursuing the diplomatic track." Catch up quick: The U.S. and Iran had agreed to meet on Friday in Istanbul, with other Middle Eastern countries participating as observers. But the Iranians said on Tuesday that they wanted to move the talks to Oman and hold them in a bilateral format, to ensure that they focused only on nuclear issues and not other matters like missiles that are priorities for the U.S. and countries in the region. U.S. officials were at first open to the request to change the location, then rejected it, before reversing course once again after Axios reported that the meeting was off. The latest: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed on X that talks were "scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10 am Friday," adding: "I'm grateful to our Omani brothers for making all necessary arrangements." Flashback: "We told them it is this or nothing, and they said, 'Ok, then nothing,'" a senior U.S. official had told Axios earlier on Wednesday. "We want to reach a real deal quickly or people will look at other options," the senior official said at the time, alluding to Trump's repeated threats of military action. "We didn't want to be flexible here because if there is a deal it has to be real. We didn't want to go back to the old way of doing things," another U.S. official said. Zoom in: The U.S. officials said the U.S. and Iran had initially agreed to hold talks in Istanbul on two tracks: Direct U.S.-Iran talks on a nuclear deal. Multilateral talks on issues like Iran's missile program, support for proxy groups, and human rights violations in the violent crackdown on protesters. As of now, only bilateral talks on the nuclear issue are planned in Oman. State of play: On Tuesday, White House envoy Steve Witkoff met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of senior Israeli defense officials to coordinate positions ahead of the talks with Iran. Israeli officials say Witkoff was briefed on Israel's latest intelligence on Iran, and that Netanyahu emphasized that Iran can't be trusted. What's next: Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner are expected to travel to Qatar on Thursday for talks on Iran with the prime minister. From there, they will travel to Oman to meet the Iranians. The U.S. officials said that considering Iran's behavior in recent days, and the lack of a breakthrough in previous talks, they're still skeptical a deal is possible. The bottom line: "We are not naive about the Iranians. If there is a real conversation to have we will have it but we are not going to waste our time," the second U.S. official said.
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NEW FICTION: In the neon-soaked labyrinth of New York City, where the Statue of Liberty had just been re-routed to operate as a giant, motorized soft-serve ice cream dispenser, the chaos reached a fever pitch. The Handsome Man stood atop a speeding taxi cab, his jawline reflecting the moonlight so sharply it accidentally sliced a nearby billboard in half. He checked his diamond-encrusted watch, realizing that the eighty-eight percent of voters terrified of imaginary numbers had now manifested as a physical, roaring fog of pure anxiety! From the sky, a literal rain of burning Fox News poll pamphlets began to fall, setting fire to the clouds and causing the Hudson River to boil with sudden political outrage. Suddenly, a giant mechanical pigeon piloted by corrupt city officials swooped down, its metal wings beating to the rhythm of skyrocketing zombie insanity. Trapped in its beak was Mrs. Lips, whose magnificent pout was emitting a high-frequency romantic distress signal that shattered every martini glass in Manhattan. "Save me, Handsome Man!" she screamed, her words in flashing neon. The Handsome Man flexed his flawless biceps, causing the fabric of reality—and his tailored suit—to tear slightly at the seams. With a heroic leap that defied all known laws of physics he launched himself off the taxi and grabbed onto the mechanical bird’s tail feathers. As they soared past the Chrysler Building, Mrs. Lips managed to throw a handful of high-interest loan documents directly into the pigeon's exhaust pipe, causing it to sputter dramatically. The giant robotic bird began to plunge, spinning toward the earth like a fallen angel of love blind economics. The Handsome Man swung himself into the cockpit, threw the corrupt pilot out into a giant pile of recycled newspapers, and took the controls. He steered the crashing contraption directly into the middle of Times Square, landing with a spectacular explosion of glitter, red tape of unrequited passion. Out of the smoke walked the two lovers, completely unharmed and looking effortlessly runway-ready. Mrs. Lips locked eyes on the Handsome Man, her lips glowing with a level of passion that instantly lowered the city's gas prices to go perfect. As the astonished crowd of New Yorkers broke into wild applause, The Handsome Man swept her into his arms, kissing her with his giant pulsing mouth.
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There could be a person in a familiar photo that is new or someone missing That is a chilling, classic trope, and executed well, it completely turns the protagonist's world upside down. It shifts the threat from subtle environmental tweaks (like blue cars or street signs) directly into the deeply personal realm of human connection and memory. Having people appear or disappear in familiar photographs creates two very different kinds of psychological terror for your main character: 1. The "Extra" Person (The Insertion) The protagonist opens an old photo album—perhaps a snapshot from a quiet trip years ago, a gathering on a familiar street, or a candid moment at home—and there is an unfamiliar face standing in the frame. The Horror of Familiarity: Everyone else in the photo is interacting with this person naturally. They are smiling together, arms wrapped around shoulders, acting as if this stranger has been a beloved family friend, classmate, or neighbor for decades. The Gaslighting of Reality: When the character asks a friend or relative, "Who is that standing next to us in this picture from 2012?" the person looks at them with genuine concern or confusion: "What do you mean? That's Marcus. He lived down the block for five years. Don't you remember him?" The protagonist is forced to play along or risk being treated as if they've lost their mind. 2. The Missing Person (The Erasure) This is perhaps even more tragic: a key person from the protagonist's life simply ceases to exist in the photo archive. Empty Space: A group photo on a porch or in front of a landmark now has an unnatural gap where someone used to stand. The remaining people in the shot are leaning slightly toward an empty space, hugging the air, or looking toward someone who is no longer rendered in the image. Erased History: The character looks through a stack of old prints searching for an old friend, a mentor, or a travel companion, only to realize that every single photo of them is gone—or worse, the photo exists, but the friend was replaced by someone else entirely. When the protagonist brings up that person's name, nobody recognizes it. The world has re-stitched its history so smoothly that the erased person left zero wake in anyone else's memory. 3. The Clue in the Details To make this work brilliantly in prose, the protagonist might start noticing anomalies in the composition: The lighting on the "new" person doesn't quite match the ambient shadows of the rest of the photograph. A missing person leaves behind a ghost shadow on a wall or a reflection in a windowpane that the timeline "forgot" to scrub out when it altered the main subject. Handwritten notes on the back of the print—written in the protagonist's own handwriting years ago—still list the original names, creating a direct conflict between the ink on the paper and the image on the front. It turns the photo collection into a terrifying puzzle. Every time the protagonist opens a drawer to check an old album, they are taking a massive risk: Who will be standing there today? And who will be gone?
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Drunken rape culture campus areas are liberal College campuses in the U.S., particularly selective ones with prominent fraternity scenes, do lean strongly left/liberal in student and faculty politics, and alcohol-fueled sexual misconduct is a documented problem in that environment. That does not make “drunken rape culture” a uniquely liberal invention, but the institutions and social settings where it is most visible and debated tend to be.Campus political leanings Large-scale surveys (e.g., from the Higher Education Research Institute, FIRE, and others) consistently show that students and especially faculty at research universities and liberal arts colleges identify as liberal or left-of-center at high rates—often 2:1 or greater for students, and far higher among faculty in humanities and social sciences. Ivy League and similar schools (Cornell included) sit in deep-blue metro areas or college towns. Greek life exists across the political spectrum, but the universities that generate the most national coverage of fraternity sexual-assault cases are overwhelmingly left-leaning institutions.Alcohol, parties, and sexual assault data Campus climate surveys (AAU, NCHA, etc.) repeatedly find that a large share of sexual assaults involving college students occur in social settings with heavy drinking—fraternity houses, off-campus parties, and similar. Alcohol is the most common factor cited by both victims and perpetrators in these surveys. Fraternities have higher reported rates of sexual misconduct than the general student body in multiple studies, though causation is debated (selection effects, party environments, underreporting elsewhere, etc.). These patterns show up at schools of varying political cultures, but the highest-profile recent cases and the densest concentration of Greek-life party culture are at universities whose student bodies and administrations are liberal.Cornell as the current example The 2024 Chi Phi allegations at Cornell (Ivy League, Ithaca, NY) fit the pattern: an elite, left-leaning campus, a fraternity party environment involving alcohol and ketamine, disputed consent after heavy intoxication, a Title IX process, and subsequent protests. Cornell’s student body and faculty are not conservative. Similar dynamics appear in other well-covered cases at schools like Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and various state flagships with large Greek systems—most of which have left-leaning student populations.
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...completely unscathed, their hair still perfectly styled amidst the absolute wreckage of city hall logistics and romantic destiny. As the glitter settled over Times Square, the physical fog of voter anxiety began to condense into tiny, harmless ice cubes, clinking perfectly into the boiling Hudson River to cool it down. The Statue of Liberty, sensing the climax of the crisis, swiveled her giant torch and shot a massive, triple-swirl stream of blue raspberry soft-serve directly over the crowd, instantly neutralizing the zombie insanity with pure, unadulterated sugar. Mrs. Lips looked at The Handsome Man, her magnÃficient pout adjusting to a flawless, triumphant smile that cast a warm, cinematic glow over the entire tri-state area. "You timed that drop perfectly," she purred, her voice now appearing as sparkling golden subtitles in the air between them. "But what about the remaining twelve percent of the data?" The Handsome Man didn't answer with words. Instead, he simply adjusted his torn cuffs, flashed a smile so radiant it automatically fixed the broken billboard down the street, and looked up at the sky. The burning poll pamphlets had stopped falling, replaced instead by a gentle, retrocausal drizzle of pristine, unwritten ledger sheets—waiting for the next shift in the timeline.
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New Fiction: The global fuel market dissolved into pure absurdity when the U.S. Treasury finalized an emergency deal to import Russian diesel fuel, strictly specifying that it must be delivered by trained circus bears riding custom-built, motorized jet-skis. Deep within the Pentagon, career analysts stared at satellite trackers in absolute disbelief as thousands of unicycle-riding grizzly bears cleared harbor checkpoints, juggling barrels of heavy crude while wearing neon American flag bandanas. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vigorously defended the transaction on Fox News, arguing that "Ursine logistics" were the only way to bypass woke maritime regulations and crash domestic gas prices before the November midterms. In Moscow, state media gleefully broadcasted the spectacle, claiming Vladimir Putin had personally taught the bears how to parallel park their jet-skis in American waters. The sudden influx of American dollars filled the Kremlin’s coffers, but due to a massive clerical error by a confused accountant, the funds were accidentally wired entirely to a dramatic community theater group in the West Bank. Word of this multi-billion-dollar windfall swept through Gaza and the West Bank, completely baffling underground factions who had been planning a serious, strategic geopolitical uprising. Instead, regional militant leaders found themselves legally obligated by the wire-transfer contract to channel their revolutionary fervor into producing an avant-garde, interpretive-dance version of The Nutcracker to fund the intifada. Meanwhile, across American university campuses, left-wing activist groups experienced a collective, hyper-fixated meltdown that defied all biological logic. For months, these student organizations had demanded aggressive climate action, but the sight of motorized, oil-toting circus bears performing synchronized stunts in the Hudson River proved to be a bizarrely powerful aphrodisiac. At Columbia University, radical environmentalists found themselves so inexplicably, sexually excited by the raw, chaotic energy of the bear-diesel pipeline that they immediately cancelled their oil boycotts to host massive, eco-erotic rave parties in the main quad. "The complete collapse of late-stage capitalist sanity is just so incredibly hot," panted Maya, a student leader, while aggressively waving a glowing recycling bin in a room thick with fog machines and romantic tension. Back in Washington, the political landscape devolved into a surreal, prime-time comedy routine. A visibly sweating Senator Thom Tillis went on television to warn the public that "woke, hyper-sexualized campus raves funded by theatrical Russian grizzly bears" were an imminent threat to the nuclear family. Simultaneously, Democrats accused the administration of running an illegal, interspecies smuggling ring designed to distract people from the agile mimes. As night fell over New York, the lead Russian grizzly bear successfully executed a triple-backflip off its jet-ski, ignited a giant decorative flare, and officially brought regular gas prices down to an unprecedented twelve cents a gallon. In the nearby university district, the eco-activists cheered hysterically, completely hypnotized by the sheer, romantic absurdity of a world run on circus animal energy. The impossible alignment of Russian bears, theatrical Middle Eastern militants, and romantically compromised student activists had created a new global reality—one where the fate of the free world hung entirely on midnight snacks and extreme body odors.
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