Top Stories — Saturday, April 25, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- U.S. Unveils More Sanctions Targeting Iran’s Shadow Fleet — nyt News
- Kushner and Witkoff Traveling to Pakistan to Resume Iran Talks — nyt News
- Special Forces Sgt. in Polymarket Maduro raid bet case released; Kalshi says it blocked him — CNBC
U.S. Unveils More Sanctions Targeting Iran’s Shadow Fleet
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/25/2026, 3:54:33 AM
The United States rolled out a blitz of sanctions on Friday, targeting 40 shipping firms and vessels that it identified as being part of Iran’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers, as the Trump administration broadened its efforts to cripple the Iranian economy.
The Trump administration also imposed sanctions on an independent Chinese refinery, Hengli Petrochemical Refinery, which is one of Iran’s largest customers for crude oil and other petroleum products.
“Treasury will continue to constrict the network of vessels, intermediaries and buyers Iran relies on to move its oil to global markets,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement released by the department. “Any person or vessel facilitating these flows — through covert trade and finance — risks exposure to U.S. sanctions.”
The United States has dramatically changed its approach to sanctions on Iran in recent weeks. After granting a monthlong exemption to sanctions that allowedi the sale of some Iranian oil in March, the Trump administration imposed more aggressive sanctions, in addition to mounting its own blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in parallel to Iran’s. The reversal was intended to choke off the oil revenue that Iran uses to power its economy.
Iran relies heavily on its shadow fleet of tankers to evade Western sanctions in transporting oil to Asia.
Much of the Iranian oil that is sold to China is purchased by its independent “teapot” refineries. Hengli is China’s second largest such refinery, and it has purchased billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian crude from the Revolutionary Guards Corp, which wields pervasive military, political and economic clout throughout Iran.
Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter for The Times, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Kushner and Witkoff Traveling to Pakistan to Resume Iran Talks
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/25/2026, 3:50:57 AM
The United States and Iran on Friday were taking steps to resume peace talks, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships and ports would continue for “as long as it takes” to get Tehran to agree to a deal.
Steve Witkoff, a U.S. special envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, planned to travel to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Saturday for negotiations with Iranian officials, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.
“Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters outside the White House. “We hope progress will be made, and we hope that positive developments will come from this meeting.”
Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, who has been leading the talks with the Iranians, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “will be waiting here in the United States for updates,” Ms. Leavitt added.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived in Islamabad on Friday, Iranian state media reported. He was carrying a written response to a U.S. proposal for a peace deal, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with his plans.
Earlier, the Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said Mr. Araghchi had been expected to meet with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner this weekend. But later, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a post on X that no meeting was planned between Iran and the United States in Pakistan and that Iran would convey its position through Pakistani officials.
While Iran has publicly rejected peace talks during the U.S. naval blockade of its ports, the two Iranian officials said that Tehran has been exchanging messages through Pakistan and engaging in diplomacy to resume talks. The Trump administration has said the military cordon is aimed at crushing the Iranian economy and pressuring Tehran to make a deal.
Mr. Hegseth said on Friday that while the naval blockade would continue, the U.S. military remained poised to attack Iran again on Mr. Trump’s orders.
“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely at the negotiating table,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon.
Many sticking points remain, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium; and Tehran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen assets held abroad be released.
The United States and Iran agreed to a cease-fire more than two weeks ago. Still, tensions have remained high in and around the strait, a crucial conduit for Persian Gulf crude oil and natural gas. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he was extending the cease-fire indefinitely. But both Iran and the United States have continued to seize vessels they said have violated their restrictions on shipping in the waterway.
On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department rolled out a blitz of new sanctions targeting 40 shipping firms and vessels it said were part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers. It also imposed sanctions on a China-based independent refinery, Hengli, which the Treasury identified as one of Iran’s largest customers for crude oil and other petroleum products.
The United States and Iran moved to resume talks as clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, intensified in Lebanon on Friday, straining a separate cease-fire that was also extended by the White House.
Mr. Trump announced a three-week extension of the truce in Lebanon on Thursday, after hosting Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House. Hezbollah, which is not part of the negotiations, has signaled it intends to abide by the truce if Israel does the same.
Strikes between Israel and Hezbollah have plummeted since an initial cease-fire was announced last week. But both sides have continued to exchange fire, raising fears that the truce could collapse into an all-out war.
“Cease-fire? What cease-fire while drones are still hovering above us?” said Fatima al-Masri, 49, who was in the southern Lebanese town of Qana on Friday. She was visiting the grave of her husband, an emergency worker, who had been killed in the conflict.
“What cease-fire while we are still losing our men and our loved ones?” she said, adding, “We want this war to be over.”
The current conflict that began last month has killed about 2,500 people in Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said, as well as two civilians and 15 soldiers in Israel, officials said.
The fighting began last month, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in support of Iran, setting off a large-scale Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are still deployed in a broad section of the country’s south, which Israeli officials have said they plan to occupy indefinitely.
Israel appeared to escalate its operations on Friday, issuing evacuation warnings for the southern Lebanese town of Deir Aames before launching airstrikes hours later. The town lies beyond the six-mile-deep “forward defense line” that Israel said it would control amid the cease-fire, suggesting that Israel’s strikes were widening.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Hezbollah had launched rockets from the town a day earlier toward northern Israel. Hezbollah also said it had again fired drones at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Friday.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has pledged to continue demolishing border towns and villages amid the cease-fire. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese remain displaced from the region, many with little idea if or when they can return.
During the talks at the White House on Thursday, Lebanon called for an end to those demolitions, according to a senior Lebanese official briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Hezbollah, for its part, expressed contempt for the state of the cease-fire on Friday, pointing to the continued Israeli military operations and reiterating its pledges to respond with force.
Mohamad Raad, Hezbollah’s leader in the Lebanese Parliament, said in a statement that the truce was “not a cease-fire at all,” and he urged the Lebanese government to withdraw from direct negotiations with Israel.
“The authorities should feel ashamed before their people,” Mr. Raad said, raising already simmering tensions between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, a group it does not control.
Israel’s strikes this week killed Amal Khalil, a reporter for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and wounded another person in southern Lebanon, further rattling the tenuous truce.
The cease-fire agreement, released last week by the State Department, said that Israel would cease “offensive military operations” in Lebanon but “preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent or ongoing attacks.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accused Hezbollah in a recorded video statement on Friday of moving to “sabotage” peace efforts between Israel and Lebanon, signaling the military had no intention to cease attacks against the group.
“We have maintained full freedom of action against any threat, including emerging threats,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We attacked yesterday, we attacked today. We are determined to restore security to the residents of the north.”
Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Alan Rappeport, Pranav Baskar, Sarah Chaayto, John Ismay, Michael Levenson and Abdi Latif Dahir.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
Euan Ward is a Times reporter covering Lebanon and Syria. He is based in Beirut.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Special Forces Sgt. in Polymarket Maduro raid bet case released; Kalshi says it blocked him
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/25/2026, 3:50:21 AM
The Army Special Forces soldier criminally charged in connection with making hugely profitable bets on Polymarket related to the U.S. military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was released Friday on an unsecured $250,000 bond after appearing in federal court in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke was ordered to appear Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he has been indicted on wire fraud and other charges related to allegedly using classified information about the planned operation to win nearly $410,000 from the bets and then trying to cover up the scheme.
Van Dyke, who has served in the Army since 2008, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, where he is based at Fort Bragg.
Kalshi, Polymarket's leading competitor in the prediction markets sector, confirmed on Friday that it had blocked Van Dyke from opening a Kalshi account. Reuters first reported that Kalshi had blocked Van Dyke's attempt to create an account.
Elisabeth Diana, a spokeswoman for Kalshi, said she could not give details of when the 38-year-old Van Dyke tried to open an account or why he was prevented from doing so.
But a civil lawsuit filed against Van Dyke on Thursday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleges that on Dec. 24, he "submitted an application to open an account at a CFTC-licensed and regulated designated contract market, not affiliated with Polymarket, which allows U.S.-based users to trade event contracts."
Kalshi is such a licensed market.
"At the time, the DCM offered event contracts related to Venezuela, including event contracts related to the removal of Maduro," the CFTC lawsuit says.
"Van Dyke was unable to open his account at the DCM, despite contacting the DCM's customer support chat on or around December 26, 27, and 28, 2025."
Van Dyke allegedly opened his Polymarket account on Dec. 27, nearly three weeks after he became involved in planning and executing the Jan. 3 raid in Caracas that ended with U.S. Special Forces capturing Maduro and his wife and putting them on a Navy ship to be sent to the U.S., prosecutors said. The couple face federal drug charges in the same court where Van Dyke was recently indicted, prosecutors said.
In the week leading up to the raid, Van Dyke used his Polymarket account to make a series of wagers on contracts on questions of whether U.S. forces would be in Venezuela by Jan. 31, whether Maduro would be out of office by that date and on related questions, the indictment alleges.
He allegedly wagered about $33,000 in more than a dozen bets, according to the indictment, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Van Dyke's arrest is the latest in a series of controversies involving prediction markets, whose growing popularity has raised concerns about gambling addiction and about people with inside information exploiting their knowledge to wager on event contracts.
On Wednesday, a day before Van Dyke's arrest, Kalshi revealed it had fined and suspended one Senate candidate and two candidates for the House of Representatives for trading on their own campaigns.
Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, in a post on X on Friday, said his company had notified the Department of Justice about suspicious activity on Van Dyke's account.
"Grateful the DOJ officially acknowledged Polymarket's cooperation on this case. Noise aside, the reality is we work proactively with all relevant authorities on any suspicious activity on our marketplace," Coplan said.
"We flagged this, referred it, and cooperated throughout the process," he said. "This happens constantly behind the scenes, despite what many are led to believe."
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a CNBC minority investment.
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
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