Iran nuclear talks push past deadline
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With stubborn disputes unresolved, nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers went past a self-imposed deadline and into overtime as negotiators renewed efforts to hammer out the outline of an agreement.
Enough progress had been made to warrant the extension past midnight Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, although there still were “several difficult issues” to bridge.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who had planned to leave the talks Tuesday, was remaining. And an Iranian negotiator said his team could stay “as long as necessary” to clear the remaining hurdles.
Indiana governor wants to clarify religious-objections law; Arkansas passes similar bill
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence asked lawmakers Tuesday to send him a clarification of the state’s new religious-freedom law later this week, while Arkansas legislators passed a similar measure, despite criticism that it is a thinly disguised attempt to permit discrimination against gays.
The Arkansas proposal now goes to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has said he will sign it.
Pence defended the Indiana law as a vehicle to protect religious liberty but said he has been meeting with lawmakers “around the clock” to address concerns that it would allow businesses to deny services to gay customers.
The governor said he does not believe “for a minute” that lawmakers intended “to create a license to discriminate.”
“It certainly wasn’t my intent,” said Pence, who signed the law last week.
Lufthansa: Co-pilot told flight school in 2009 he had ‘previous episode of severe depression’
FRANKFURT, Germany — Lufthansa knew that the co-pilot of the passenger plane that crashed in the French Alps last week had suffered from an episode of “severe depression” before he finished his flight training with the German airline.
The airline said Tuesday that it has found emails that Andreas Lubitz sent to the Lufthansa flight school in 2009 when he resumed his training in Bremen after an interruption of several months.
In them, he informed the school that he had suffered a “previous episode of severe depression,” which had since subsided.
The airline said Lubitz subsequently passed all medical checks and that it has provided the documents to prosecutors. It declined to make any further comment.
French authorities say voice recordings indicate Lubitz, 27, locked the other pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the Airbus A320 in the French Alps on March 24. All 150 people aboard Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf died.
Late slide in stocks erases much of the previous day’s gain
The stock market closed out the first three months of the year Tuesday on a down note, erasing much of the gains from the prior day’s big rally.
The Dow Jones industrial average slumped 200 points, knocking the blue chip index slightly lower for the year. The Standard &Poor’s 500 index ended the quarter with a meager gain of half a percent.
The broad decline came as traders seized on the final day of the quarter to do some profit-taking and prune their portfolios. Health care stocks were among the biggest decliners. Oil prices extended their slide.
The Dow fell 200.19 points, or 1.1 percent, to 17,776.12. The 30-company index was down as much as 203 points. It’s now down 0.3 percent for the year.
The S&P 500 index slid 18.35 points, or 0.9 percent, to 2,067.89. The index is now up 0.4 percent for the year. The Nasdaq composite lost 46.56 points, or 0.9 percent, to 4,900.88. The tech-heavy index ended the quarter up 3.5 percent.
Comedy Central: ‘Unfair’ to judge Trevor Noah on tweets
NEW YORK — Trevor Noah, the newly announced host of “The Daily Show,” rejected the backlash over his graphic tweets targeting Jews and women as an unfair reflection of him and his comedy.
“To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian,” Noah posted Tuesday on his Twitter account, the same one that included past tweets others deemed offensive.
Comedy Central also came to his defense, calling Noah a “provocative” comedian who “spares no one, himself included.”
“To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair,” the network said in a statement.
By wire sources