CONCORD, N.H. — Scott Brown, a Republican who once represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, announced his second bid Wednesday for the New Hampshire Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen next year. Brown, 65, was born at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and moved to Massachusetts as a toddler. After several terms in the state Legislature, he won a special election in 2010 for the U.S. Senate seat that had been held for decades by Edward Kennedy.

He lost to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in 2012. He then moved to New Hampshire, where he unsuccessfully challenged Shaheen for the Senate in 2014. Shaheen, now serving her third term in the Senate, announced in March she would not seek reelection in 2026.

Brown also served as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa during President Donald Trump’s first administration and briefly as dean of New England Law in Boston.

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He first announced he was running to WMUR-TV.

“We’ve been blessed by two great governors, Chris Sununu and Kelly Ayotte,” Brown said in a campaign announcement video of the former and current Republican leaders. “But in Washington, we haven’t been represented by the right people.”

New Hampshire has an all-Democrat congressional delegation, with four-term Congressman Chris Pappas, 44, announcing his candidacy for the Senate seat in April.

Brown said in his video that Pappas “has stood with Joe Biden as he opened the border, drove up the cost of everything, and made life just simply unaffordable.”

Pappas responded in a statement following Brown’s announcement.

He said Brown “stands with corporate special interests, supports efforts to strip away health care coverage from tens of thousands of Granite Staters, and backs President Trump’s reckless tariffs that New Hampshire small businesses are speaking out against every single day.”

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations, a collaborative global dream built into reality out of the ashes of World War II, marks its 80th anniversary this month. There’s little to celebrate. Its clout on the world stage is diminished. Facing major funding cuts from the United States and others, it has been forced to shed jobs and start tackling long-delayed reforms. Its longtime credo of “multilateralism” is under siege. Its most powerful body, the Security Council, has been blocked from taking action to end the two major wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

And as the latest conflict between Israel, Iran and the United States flared , it watched from the sidelines.

Four generations after its founding, as it tries to chart a new path for its future, a question hangs over the institution and the nearly 150,000 people it employs and oversees: Can the United Nations remain relevant in an increasingly contentious and fragmented world?

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With its dream of collaboration drifting, can it even survive?

An act of optimism created it

When the United Nations was born in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, the overriding goal of the 50 participants who signed the U.N. Charter was stated in its first words: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded that same theme: “Eight decades later, one can draw a direct line between the creation of the United Nations and the prevention of a third world war.”

There has been no such war — thus far. But conflicts still rage.

They continue not only in Gaza and Ukraine but Sudan , eastern Congo , Haiti and Myanmar – to name a few – and, most recently, Iran and Israel . The needs of tens of millions of people caught up in fighting and trapped in poverty have increased even as rich donor nations, not just the United States, are reducing their aid budgets.

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The U.N. General Assembly is planning a commemoration on the 80th anniversary on June 26. This week an exhibition on the San Francisco meeting opened at U.N. headquarters with a rare centerpiece — the original U.N. Charter, on loan from the U.S. National Archives in Washington.

But the mood in the halls of the U.N. headquarters in New York is grim.

Diplomats are anxious about the immediate future, especially the outcome expected in August of a U.S. review of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions ordered by President Donald Trump . And U.N. staff here and in more than 60 offices, agencies and operations that get money from its regular operating budget are facing 20% job cuts, part of Guterres’ reform effort and reaction to already announced Trump funding cuts .

“It’s not something to celebrate,” Kazakhstan’s U.N. Ambassador Kairat Umarov said of the upcoming anniversary.

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“This should be united nations — not disunited,” he said. “Collectively, we can do a lot,” but today “we cannot agree on many things, so we agree to disagree.”

A changing world accommodated a changing UN

In a different world of land-line telephones, radios and propeller planes, the U.N. Charter was signed by just 50 nations — mainly from Latin America and Europe, with half a dozen from the Mideast, and just a few from Asia and Africa.

Over the decades, its membership has nearly quadrupled to 193 member nations, with 54 African countries now the largest bloc followed by the 54 from Asia and the Pacific. And the world has changed dramatically with the advent of computers and satellites, becoming what the late former Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a “global village.”

The U.N. system has also expanded enormously from its origins, which focused on peace and security, economic and social issues, justice and trusteeships for colonies.

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Today, the map of the U.N. system looks like a multi-headed octopus with many tentacles — and miniature tentacles sprouting from those. In 2023, its secretariat and numerous funds, agencies and entities dealing with everything from children and refugees to peacekeeping and human rights had over 133,000 staff worldwide.

Kishore Mahbubani, who served twice as Singapore’s U.N. ambassador, credited the United Nations with thus far preventing World War III. While there are still wars, deaths have continued a long-term decline “and the world is still, overall, a much more peaceful place,” he said.

“And many small states still live in peace, not having to worry about the neighbors occupying them,” said Mahbubani, a respected geopolitical analyst.

Mahbubani and others also point to successes in the 71 U.N. peacekeeping operations since 1948, including in Angola, Cambodia, Sierra Leone (which is currently a member of the Security Council) and Liberia (which will join in January).

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There is also wide praise for specialized U.N. agencies, especially those dealing with hunger, refugees and children as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N’s nuclear watchdog, and the International Telecommunications Union. Among numerous responsibilities, it allocates the global radio spectrum and satellite orbits and brings digital connectivity to millions.

As Guterres told the Security Council earlier this year, “The United Nations remains the essential, one-of-a-kind meeting ground to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.”

What actually gets done at the UN?

Every September, world leaders get a global platform at the General Assembly . And every day their ambassadors and diplomats meet to debate issues from conflicts to climate change to the fight for gender equality and quality education. Sometimes, such talks produce little or no results. At others, achievements get overlooked or ignored by the broader world community, far from the hubs of diplomacy.

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And the Security Council is the only place where Russia and Ukraine regularly face off over the ongoing war following Russia’s 2022 invasion — and where the Palestinian and Israeli ambassadors frequently confront each other.

Despite its successes and achievements over past decades, Singapore’s Mahbubani called the U.N. today “a very sad place,” lamenting that Guterres had failed “to inspire humanity” as the late Pope Francis did. “But,” Mahbubani said, “it should celebrate the fact it is alive and not dead.”

John Bolton , a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who was national security adviser during Trump’s first term, was also critical of the state of the U.N. in 2025. “It’s probably in the worst shape it’s been in since it was founded,” said Bolton, now an outspoken Trump critic.

He pointed to gridlock in the Security Council on key issues. He blames rising international tensions that divide the council’s five veto-wielding powers – with Russia and China facing off against U.S., Britain and France on many global challenges.

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Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, a think tank, said the United Nations has bounced from crisis to crisis since the 1990s. With the gloomy geopolitical picture and U.S. funding cuts impacting humanitarian operations, he said this “is not just another blow-up that will blow over.”

“Everyone seems to be resigned to the fact that you’re going to have a smaller U.N. in a few years’ time,” Gowan said. “And that is partially because virtually every member state has other priorities.”

What happens in the UN’s next chapter?

Guterres has launched several major reform efforts , getting approval from U.N. member nations last September for a “Pact for the Future” – a blueprint to bring the world together to tackle 21st-century challenges. Gowan said Guterres’ successor, who will be elected next year and take over in 2027, will have to shrink the organization. But many cuts, consolidations and changes will require approval of the divided U.N. membership. Possible radical reforms include merging U.N. aid and development agencies to avoid duplication.

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Don’t forget, says Gowan, that a huge amount of diplomatic business — much of it having nothing to do with the United Nations — gets done because it is in New York, a place to have those conversations.

“If you were to close the U.N., there would also be a lot of intelligence people and spies who would be deeply disappointed. Because it’s a wonderful place to cultivate your contacts,” Gowan said. “Americans may not realize that having the U.N. in New York is a bonanza for us spying on other nations. So we shouldn’t let that go.”

Ian Bremmer, who heads the Eurasia Group, a political risk and consulting firm, said the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine the United Nations — which the United States conceived in 1945 — will make China more important. With Trump exiting from the World Health Organization , the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA and cutting humanitarian funding, he said, China will become “the most influential and the most deep-pocketed” in those agencies.

Bremmer, who calls himself a close adviser to Guterres, insisted the United Nations remains relevant — “with no caveats.”

“It’s a relatively poorly resourced organization. It has no military capabilities. It has no autonomous foreign policy,” Bremmer said. “But its legitimacy and its credibility in speaking for 8 billion people on this little planet of ours is unique.”

He added: “The important thing is that as long as the great powers decide not to leave the United Nations, every day that they stay is a vote of confidence in the U.N.”

Expansion of the U.N. Security Council is probably the most fertile area for potential change. Decades of discussions have failed to agree on how to enlarge the 15-member council to reflect the global realities of the 21st century, though there is wide agreement that Africa and Latin America deserve permanent seats.

Singapore’s Mahbubani said he believes the United Nations “will definitely survive.” The “genius” of its founders, he said, was to give the big powers after World War II a veto in the Security Council, preventing the global body from dying as its predecessor, the League of Nations, did. That survival, Mahbubani believes, will continue: “It will,” he said, “outlast us all.”

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — An immigration detention facility located at an isolated Everglades airfield surrounded by mosquito-, python- and alligator-filled swamplands is just days away from being operational, federal officials said Tuesday. Florida officials are racing ahead with the construction of what they’ve dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda , working to build a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and temporary buildings similar to sites used during natural disasters.

The construction of the facility in the remote and ecologically sensitive wetland about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami is alarming environmentalists, as well as human rights advocates who have slammed the plan as cruel and inhumane.

State officials say the installation is critical to support the federal government’s immigration crackdown, which has resulted in a record-high number of detentions, totaling more than 56,000 immigrants in June, the most since 2019.

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Here’s what to know.

5,000 detention beds by early July

Construction of the site in the dog days of summer is part of the state’s plan to operationalize 5,000 immigration detention beds by early July, according to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier , a former chief of staff for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and a key architect of the state’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign. Uthmeier helped coordinate the state-funded flights of about 50 Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in 2022.

In the eyes of Florida officials, the harsh conditions surrounding the far-flung Everglades airstrip and its nearly 10,500-foot (3,200-meter) runway make it an ideal location to house and transport migrants.

“We don’t need to build a lot of brick and mortar,” Uthmeier said in an interview with conservative media commentator Benny Johnson. “And thankfully, Mother Nature does a lot on the perimeter.”

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“There’s really nowhere to go. If you’re housed there, if you’re detained there, there’s no way in, no way out,” Uthmeier added.

The Trump administration wants to more than double its existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds.

A tax-cutting and budget reconciliation bill approved last month by the U.S. House of Representatives includes $45 billion over four years for immigrant detention , a threefold spending increase. The Senate is now considering that legislation.

Democrats and activists decry the plan

More than 50 years ago, environmental advocates, including the famed Marjory Stoneman Douglas, rallied to stop the same stretch of land from being turned into what was to be the largest airport in the world .

Now, activists are rallying to halt what some critics have described as a state-backed “heist.”

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“Surrounded by Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve, this land is part of one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country,” reads a statement from the advocacy group Friends of the Everglades. “Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past. This land deserves lasting protection.”

Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost condemned the detention center, calling its apparent use of alligators as a security measure a “cruel spectacle.”

“Donald Trump, his Administration, and his enablers have made one thing brutally clear: they intend to use the power of government to kidnap, brutalize, starve, and harm every single immigrant they can — because they have a deep disdain for immigrants and are using them to scapegoat the serious issues facing working people,” Frost said in a statement.

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Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at American Friends Service Committee, an immigration advocacy group, warned that the health and safety of detainees is being put at risk.

“What’s happening is very concerning, the level of dehumanization,” Bilbao said. “It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty.”

Bilbao, who leads a group of immigration advocates who help immigrants at one of the ICE offices in South Florida, said she’s concerned about the health risks of the heat and mosquitoes, and the challenges the remoteness of the site presents to community members hoping to protest or monitor activities there.

DHS is backing the initiative

Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have applauded the effort and the agency’s “partnership with Florida.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the new facility will be funded in large part by the Shelter and Services Program within the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which is best known for responding to hurricanes and other natural disasters.

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“We are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal aliens,” said Noem in a written statement provided to the AP. “We will expand facilities and bed space in just days.”

Managing the facility “via a team of vendors” will cost $245 a bed per day or approximately $450 million a year, a U.S. official said. The expenses will be incurred by Florida and reimbursed by FEMA, which has a $625 million shelter and service program fund.

Immigrants arrested by Florida law enforcement officers under the federal 287 (g) program will be held at the facility, as well as immigrants in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Under the revived 287 (g) program, local and state law enforcement officers can interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation .

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Agencies across all 67 Florida counties have signed more than 280 such agreements, more than a third of the 720 agreements ICE have reached nationwide.

Florida is using emergency powers to build the site

State officials are commandeering the land using emergency powers, under an executive order issued by DeSantis during the administration of then-President Joe Biden to respond to what the governor deemed a crisis caused by illegal immigration.

Florida is moving forward with the construction on county-owned land over the concerns of Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, local activists and Native American tribal leaders who consider the area sacred.

By relying on executive orders, the state is able to sidestep purchasing laws and fast-track the project, which Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried has said amounts to an abuse of power.

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The orders grant sweeping authority to the state’s head of emergency management, Kevin Guthrie, including the power to suspend “any statute, rule, or order” seen as slowing the response to the emergency, and the ability to place select law enforcement personnel from across the state under his “direct command and coordination.”

“Governor DeSantis has insisted that the state of Florida, under his leadership, will facilitate the federal government in enforcing immigration law,” a DeSantis spokesperson said in a statement.

“Florida will continue to lead on immigration enforcement.”

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SPIELBERG, Austria — Here’s a guide that tells you what you need to know about Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix. It’s the 11th round of the 2025 Formula 1 season. How to watch the Austrian Grand Prix on TV — In the U.S., on ESPN. — Other countries are listed here . What is the Austrian Grand Prix schedule? — Friday: First and second practice sessions.

— Saturday: Third practice and qualifying.

— Sunday: Austrian Grand Prix, 71 laps of the 4.32-kilometer (2.68-mile) Red Bull Ring. It starts at 3 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET / 1400 GMT).

Where is the Austrian Grand Prix taking place?

Up in the mountains near the town of Spielberg, it’s the home race for the Red Bull team, which competes under the Austrian flag and often ups its game at the Red Bull Ring. Max Verstappen is the most successful driver in the history of the Austrian Grand Prix, but George Russell won last year’s race for Mercedes after Verstappen and Lando Norris collided while fighting for the lead.

What happened in the last race?

Russell took the win ahead of Verstappen at the Canadian Grand Prix but all the focus was on the two McLarens colliding. Norris clipped Oscar Piastri while trying to pass his teammate and then hit the wall. Piastri recovered to finish fourth, extending his standings lead to 22 points over Norris, who failed to finish a race for the first time in almost a year.

What do I need to know about F1

so far?

Get caught up:

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Key stats

5 — Max Verstappen took pole position for the five previous races at the Austrian circuit, winning three of them. That includes one at the track in 2021 for the Styrian Grand Prix.

4 — Oscar Piastri’s fourth-place finish in Canada ended a run of eight podium finishes in a row, underlining the consistency which has powered his title challenge.

155 — All but seven of Red Bull’s 162 points this season have been earned by Verstappen. Teammate Yuki Tsunoda was out of the points in Canada for the third race in a row.

What they’re saying

“Of course there’s always going to be some little roadblocks and chicanes and things to navigate through, but in the end of the day, I think, as long as we pull through the other day together, that’s the most important.” — Lando Norris reflects on his collision with Oscar Piastri in Canada.

“Of course the last race was great, winning in Canada, but we’re striving for more. We want to be in that championship fight.” — George Russell.

“Promosso” — Mercedes’ 18-year-old rookie Kimi Antonelli celebrates with a simple message, “passed” in Italian, after completing his high school exams.

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WASHINGTON — A U.S. intelligence report suggests that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment. The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage , the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.” On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “New intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated: “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.”

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Gabbard’s office declined to respond to questions about the details of the new intelligence, or whether it would be declassified and released publicly.

The U.S. has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the U.S. strikes — and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities — could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon.

The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people.

At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo.

The White House pushes back

Trump defended his characterization of the strike’s impact.

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“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as “preliminary” and “low confidence.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “These leakers are professional stabbers.”

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

The CIA and the DNI office declined to comment on the DIA assessment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries. The Israeli government also has not released any official assessments of the U.S. strikes.

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Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from U.S. intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the U.S. assessment was shared with reporters.

“It’s treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel.

Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran “totally destroyed” and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu said Tuesday in a televised statement: “For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed … we brought to ruin Iran’s nuclear program.” He said the U.S. joining Israel was “historic” and thanked Trump.

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Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites.

Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fueled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use. The U.S. and others assessed prior to the U.S. strikes that Iran’s theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

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Vice President JD Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the U.S. has cut off Iran’s ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon.

“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term,” Vance said.

Approximately 42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90%, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

What experts say

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi informed U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on June 13 — the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — that Tehran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials.”

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American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on June 19, three days before the Americans struck.

Subsequent imagery “revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the U.S. airstrikes,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. “We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation.”

Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60% out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck,” said Eric Brewer, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

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Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage.

Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Iran also announced on June 12 that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites. After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan’s facilities, including tunnels, could become operational.

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But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran’s control, this offers Tehran “a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert program and for getting a bomb,” Brewer said.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy center, said that “if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges,” it can “build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60% gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels.”

But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear program, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.

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Liechtenstein reported from Vienna and McNeil reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, David Klepper, Ellen Knickmeyer and Aamer Madhani in Washington and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.