RUSSIA - President Donald Trump has already pulled the US out of the landmark deal earlier this month. A new deal should be drawn up, Pompeo asserted, while laying out 12 “basic requirements.” Many of those were predictable, such as requiring Tehran to “stop enrichment of uranium and never preprocess plutonium” – because obviously, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is not good enough to hold Iran to its word. One major point used as a bargaining chip is, however, entirely unrelated to the Iranian nuclear program. It reads: “Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command from Syria.” The demand conveniently ignores the fact that Iranian troops were invited by the Syrian government and have been helping fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) on the ground – while the US troops, stuck in Syria indefinitely, were not.

GERMANY - The vast majority of Germans believe the US is not a reliable partner for Berlin when it comes to political cooperation, according to a new poll. It comes after Chancellor Merkel said that Europe can no longer rely on Washington. The survey, commissioned by public service TV provider ZDF, found that 82 percent of Germans believe the US is not a reliable partner, with only 14 percent believing it is. The remaining four percent were unsure. It comes after German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated earlier this month that Europe "needs to take its fate into its own hands," noting that "it's no longer the case that the United States will simply just protect us."

ITALY - Coalition partner party leaders will go to the Quirinal Palace Monday evening to meet with Sergio Mattarella, the Italian President, to officially form a populist, Eurosceptic government which has prompted panicked headlines across the continent. The emergence of the League (‘La Lega’, northern Italy, tax-reforming, anti-mass migration) and Five Star (southern Italy, anti-establishment) coalition follows months of hard-fought negotiations since the national elections in early March. League leader Matteo Salvini is also to take a ministry representing an area of key interest for his voters as he is tipped to take the Immigration office. Before the election, his party promised to deport some 500,000 illegal and irregular migrants from the country, a move which will almost certainly bring Italy into serious conflict with the European Union.

MIDDLE EAST - The Palestinian president’s condition has seen a “clear improvement” after he was taken to hospital with a fever, an Arab lawmaker in Israel’s parliament with close ties to Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday. Abbas was hospitalized on Sunday with a fever, just days after undergoing ear surgery. The 83-year-old leader has endured a series of recent health scares which have revived anxiety over a potentially chaotic, and even bloody, succession battle that could further weaken the Palestinian cause.

USA - Israel, Saudi Arabia and elements of the US want to see regime change in Tehran and this is a “risky situation,” a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiations team Seyed Hossein Mousavian has warned. “Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia, they are after regime change, they are after creating a war with Iran,” he told BBC Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur. “They are after dragging the US and the international community into a new war in the region,” he added.

IRAQ - A firebrand cleric who led a militia which fought British and American troops in Iraq is on course to win the country’s elections, in what would be a surprise upset for Western-backed incumbent Haider al-Abadi. Moqtada al-Sadr’s Sairoon alliance of reformed Shia militants and communists was ahead in eight of Iraq's 18 provinces and second in four others. His Mahdi Army waged a brutal and costly insurgency against coalition troops during the 2006-2008 civil war and offered a reward for any British soldiers captured.  Mr Sadr has since disavowed violence against fellow Iraqis and in 2008 ordered his forces to become a humanitarian group. Mr Sadr himself rebranded as a secular nationalist, campaigning against corruption and for reform, a message which seemed to resonate with Iraqis tired of entrenched sectarianism and graft.

UK - Wedding watchers have hailed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for their multicultural ceremony today — saying it broke the Royal mould. Their nuptials at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle featured a rip-roaring sermon from an American preacher and a moving rendition of Stand By Me by a black gospel choir. Ingrid Seward, Editor in Chief of Majesty Magazine, told The Sun Online: "There's never been a royal wedding like it in modern history. It was certainly a departure from tradition and bodes well for the future of the modern monarchy." Their wholly modern ceremony was a far cry from Royal Weddings of previous generations and showed the Monarchy mirroring modern Britain. Mixed-race divorcee Meghan, 36, was embraced with open arms by her in-laws — a welcome not extended to previous newcomers to the family.

USA - The Reverend Al Sharpton has claimed that the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and the mixed-race actress Meghan Markle is evidence that white supremacy is “on its last breath.” Sharpton made the remarks while speaking at his weekly National Action Network rally Saturday in Harlem as the Royal Wedding took place. “When you got little white girls in Wales saying, ‘I want to be like Meghan,’ there’s a shift worldwide that white male supremacy is on its last breath,” Sharpton said. He went on to suggest that now many young girls look up to successful black women, a fact he says is concerning to many white parents, and a fear that he says was exploited by President Donald J Trump.

USA - In a joint statement released Saturday, the United States and China announced that a “consensus” was reached to “substantially reduce” the $370 billion trade imbalance between the two countries. “There was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States trade deficit in goods with China,” the joint statement said, adding, “To meet the growing consumption needs of the Chinese people and the need for high-quality economic development, China will significantly increase purchases of United States goods and services.” Reducing the United States’ trade deficit with China was a core campaign promise of President Donald Trump.

EUROPE - In March, Trump slapped tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum, but granted the 28 EU countries a temporary exemption until June 1. He also temporarily exempted big steel producers Canada and Mexico, provided they agree to renegotiate a North American trade deal to his satisfaction. "It's Europe's economic sovereignty, and what we are demanding is that we are exempted without conditions or time limits," French President Emmanuel Macron said in Bulgaria, where EU leaders have gathered for a summit with Balkans countries. Convinced that the US move breaks global trade rules, the EU has drawn up a list of "rebalancing" duties worth some 2.8 billion euros ($3.4 billion) to impose on US products if it is not permanently exempt. It has vowed not to negotiate under threat.

USA - Concordia Publishing House (CPH) is the publishing arm of the 2 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a conservative denomination that rejects ordaining women, abortion, and homosexual marriage. According to its website, it publishes “the world’s most widely circulated daily devotional resource,” printing and distributing over 850,000 copies quarterly, and its children’s books have been published in the millions of copies. But none of this matters to the world’s most visited website, Google.com, who has refused to do business with CPH.

VATICAN - Warren Buffett once called them “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Now Pope Francis, of all people, is taking aim at derivatives. In a sweeping critique of global finance released by the Vatican on Thursday, the Holy See singled out derivatives including credit-default swaps for particular scorn. “A ticking time bomb,” the Vatican called them. The unusual rebuke - derivatives rarely reach the level of religious doctrine - is in keeping with Francis’s skeptical view of unbridled global capitalism.

VATICAN - The L’Osservatore Romano is the daily newspaper of the Vatican City State. The paper was founded in 1861. It is classified as a semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. Previous popes condemned the evil of communism. Not Pope Francis. This is a confusing time for the Catholic Church. The paper this week praised communist founder Karl Marx. More than a 100 million people were killed by communist regimes in the 20th century.

MIDDLE EAST - The modern Middle East has been plagued by ruinous wars: country versus country, civil wars with internecine and sectarian bloodletting, and numerous eruptions centered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But never in the last 70 years have they seemed as interconnected as now with Iran and Saudi Arabia vying for regional control, while Israel also seeks to maintain a military supremacy of its own.

UK - The United Kingdom’s Sentencing Council has proposed Orwellian new guidelines that would make it a criminal offense to engage in free speech online whenever doing so might offend people who aren’t white or who belong to the cult of LGBT. Reports reveal how the Sentencing Council is actively advocating that the perpetrators of online “hate” posts, as it’s calling them, be sentenced to prison time. Social media users who share or even just comment on posts dealing with race or LGBT issues, for instance, would face a minimum six-month prison sentence, while the authors of such posts would face up to three years in prison.