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Imperial Germany famously signed a treaty under humiliating terms to end WWI at Versailles, codifying a surrender despite the fact that the war was overwhelmingly fought beyond its borders.

Likewise, Iran never got close to US shores during the war, and did not need to. 

Its missile and drone attacks depleted the US’s stockpile of air defence interceptors to dangerous levels, while its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz drained Washington’s strategic oil reserve to a forty-year low and starved the global economy of fossil fuels.

The world was facing an “economic catastrophe”, US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday. The US president ended up signing a deal with Iran, at the same French palace where Germany and its foes ended WWI.

The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the US and Iran ushers in 60 days of negotiations to reach a permanent end to the war started by the US and Israel. In Washington, both supporters and opponents have called the deal a debacle - even if they agree with ending the war on the MoU’s terms.

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The Barack Obama presidential center opened in Chicago on Thursday after more than a decade in the making amid a musical fanfare and paeans to democratic principles that evoked a previous age, all while delivering an implied rebuke to Donald Trump.

Featuring appearances by a cast of musical stars and retired politicians from a less polarised era, it was a seemingly perfect antidote to the crass spectacle of cage fights on the White House lawn.

Without naming the current White House occupant, Barack and Michelle Obama launched full-frontal attacks on Trump’s auIt was the former first lady who aimed the sharpest barbs at Trump – four days after an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) competitor called her “a man” during a bout held at the White House last Sunday to mark the US’s 250th anniversary.

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The Justice Department is seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging a Chicago suburb’s housing reparations program for Black residents, arguing it is “racially discriminatory” and unconstitutional.

The city council in Evanston, Ill., earmarked $10 million in revenue generated from cannabis sales taxes in 2019 for a first-of-its-kind local reparations program for Black residents and their direct descendants who suffered housing discrihttps://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5927763-justice-department-evanston-reparations-housing-discrimination/mination due to the city’s policies and practices between 1919 and 1969.

The Restorative Housing Program, implemented in 2021, offers those families grants of up to $25,000 that can be used to make a down payment on a home, repair property or pay interest and late penalties on property within the city.

Those who can prove they were harmed by the city’s policies and practices after 1969, when the city banned housing discrimination, may also qualify.

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Portions of the sealant that was recently applied at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as part of a series of renovations to the landmark appears to have begun peeling off the pool basin on June 18.

Images published by Getty Images show a tear in the sealant and portions of the "American Flag Blue" paint floating to the surface. The images show the latest in a series of problems that have arisen in the wake of the repainting of the reflecting pool as a part of renovations commissioned by President Donald Trump.

Trump announced the plan to refurbish the pool in April, saying the landmark had been the subject of complaints due to its cleanliness levels and leaking foundation. The National Park Service told USA TODAY the pool had leaked 16 million gallons a year.

He told reporters that contractors would sandblast, caulk and resurface the pool basin. The pool is part of a citywide initiative to spruce up landmarks ahead of the Fourth of July and celebrations of the country's 250th birthday.

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Donald Trump abruptly diverted the confirmation process for Jay Clayton as the US’s top intelligence chief early Wednesday, in a move that will allow the president’s controversial selection for acting director of national security, Bill Pulte, to assume the role and remain in place for at least several weeks until Clayton is confirmed.

Trump pushed the Senate to confirm Clayton after his appointment of Pulte as acting director sparked bipartisan pushback and stalled his administration’s push for renewal of the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).

Democrats and some Republicans have decried Pulte’s nomination, saying that his background as the chair of a federal mortgage regulation agency is insufficient to lead America’s intelligence community.

In a surprising post on Truth Social in the early morning hours on Wednesday, Trump declared: “we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today.”

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Staff from the House oversight and judiciary committees visited the Texas prison where Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, is serving her sentence, according to Democratic lawmakers.

In a statement, the Democratic representatives Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin said staff from the committees traveled to the minimum-security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, on Tuesday to seek answers about Maxwell’s transfer there, and about allegations that she has received preferential treatment at the prison camp.

According to the Democratic lawmakers, prison staff provided the committee staff with “an extensive tour of the grounds and programming of the facility”.

However, the lawmakers claimed that the “Bureau of Prisons leadership repeatedly shut down our lines of questioning or could not provide basic information about our central concerns, including Ms Maxwell’s extraordinary treatment, allegations of sexual assault at the facility and retaliation against inmates who tried to blow the whistle.

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