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Failure of US-Iran talks dents hopes for a crisis off-ramp

Analysis by Nic Robertson Sunday April 12, 2026 As the sun dipped below the horizon in Islamabad and rose again over the city, the talks stretched on through the night and into another day. Their collapse without an agreement deals a serious blow to the fragile hopes that a diplomatic escape route might still be found in this crisis. The stakes could hardly have been higher. These were the most senior US-Iranian negotiations since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, and the complexity of the discussions was…

US Court Overturns Intellectual Disability Finding for Death Row Prisoner

The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a lower court’s ruling that had shielded Joseph Clifton Smith, a convicted murderer from Alabama, from execution due to an assertion of intellectual disability. The justices determined that the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals needs to provide further clarification on its previous decision, which deemed Smith's death penalty unjustifiable following a pivotal 2002 Supreme Court ruling. This earlier decision established that executing individuals who are intellectually…