May 11 (UPI) — The remains of one of two U.S. soldiers who disappeared during exercises in Morocco earlier this month have been recovered, the U.S. military said, as the search continues for the other soldier.
A Moroccan military search team found the remains of 1st Lt. Kendrick Lamont Key Jr. at 8:55 a.m. Saturday, the U.S. Army Europe and Africa announced Sunday.
USAREUR-AF said Key’s remains were found along the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean within 1 mile of where the two soldiers are believed to have disappeared.
His remains have been transported by the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces via helicopter to the morgue of Moulay El Hassan Military Hospital in Guelmim, located about 265 miles southwest of Marrakesh.
Next of kin have been notified and plans are underway to repatriate his remains, officials said.
“Our hearts are with his family, friends, teammates and all who knew and served alongside him,” Brig. Gen. Curtis King, commanding general of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said in a statement.
“The 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command family is grieving, and we will continue to support one another and 1st Lt. Key’s family as we honor his life and service.”
Key, 27, and a second U.S. soldier went missing May 2 near Cap Draa Training Area, a coastal military training site near Tan-Tan, during African Lion 26, this year’s version of the U.S. military’s largest Africa-based exercise.
Their disappearance is unrelated to the exercises, with military officials believing the pair may have slipped off a cliff during a hike near the training range.
The pair were reported missing at 9 p.m. May 2 during a base-wide head count, and a search was launched.
U.S. military officials said they worked with Moroccan forces, concentrating intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets in the search, which involved more than 1,000 U.S. and Moroccan military and civilian personnel.
The search effort continues for the remaining missing soldier, they said.
Key was from Richmond, Va., and was a platoon leader assigned to Charlie Battery, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command.
USAREUR-AF said he was known at Charlie Battery, which he joined last year, for “the care he showed for his soldiers, his commitment to others and the relationships he built across the formation.”
“Kendrick embodied the highest standards of service as a selfless, inspirational leader whose unwavering dedication to his soldiers and their development leaves an enduring legacy within our ranks,” Lt. Col. Chris Couch, commander of 5-4 ADAR, said in a statement.
PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s office on Wednesday as part of a corruption investigation, a person familiar with the matter said. Federal agents also were seen at the senator’s nearby cannabis business.
The search at Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas’s district office in Portsmouth comes after the Democrat helped lead the state’s recent redistricting effort.
The FBI said only that it was conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Portsmouth. The person who confirmed the FBI’s search was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Besides the search at Lucas’ office, agents in FBI T-shirts also went into the nearby Cannabis Outlet, which she opened in 2021. Several entrances to its cannabis store parking lot were blocked by unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights.
Lucas — a prominent backer of legalizing marijuana — has said the store sells legal hemp and CBD products. It has drawn scrutiny from local media amid allegations that some products were mislabeled.
Virginia has legalized pot possession, but retail sales of recreational marijuana remain illegal in the state.
A message seeking comment was left Wednesday on a cellphone for Lucas, who has been a state senator for 34 years.
State House Speaker Don Scott said he was deeply concerned by the FBI search.
“Right now, there is far more theatrics and speculation than actual information available to the public,” Scott, a Democrat, said in a statement, adding that more facts were needed “before anyone rushes to political conclusions.”
Gov. Abigail Spanberger declined to comment. Some other Virginia Democrats were quick to note that the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Trump.
The context “must be acknowledged,” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott said in a social media post.
Last week, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a threatening Instagram post against Trump, an accusation that Comey — who for nearly a decade has drawn the president’s ire — has denied. A separate mortgage fraud case, ultimately dismissed by a court, targeted Democratic New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who had brought a major civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his business.
The FBI and Justice Department have also provoked concerns among Democrats about ongoing election-related investigations, including the seizure by agents of ballots and other information from Fulton County, Ga.
Lucas has been a vocal leader of Virginia’s redistricting effort, which voters approved last month. A sign urging people to “vote yes” to “stop the MAGA power grab” still hung Wednesday on a fence separating her office’s parking lot from the parking for the cannabis shop.
Amid a national, state-by-state partisan redistricting fight kicked off by Trump’s desire to aid his fellow Republicans, Virginia voters OK’d a Democrat-backed constitutional amendment authorizing new U.S. House districts. The plan could help the party win up to four additional seats.
“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” Lucas said after the vote. Trump, meanwhile, denounced the results.
The state Supreme Court let the referendum proceed but has yet to rule whether the effort is legal. The court is considering an appeal of a lower-court judge’s ruling that the amendment is invalid because lawmakers violated procedural requirements.
Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.
Lucas, 82, has been a figure in Virginia politics since the 1980s, when she became the first Black woman elected to a City Council seat in her native Portsmouth. She now is the first woman and first African American to serve as the body’s president pro tempore.
Earlier in life, she was the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s first female shipfitter, according to her biography in the state library. The job entails making, installing and repairing sometimes enormous metal assemblies for vessels.
In recent years, she has been the chief executive of a Portsmouth business that runs residences, day programs and transportation for intellectually disabled adults.
Tucker, Breed and Peltz write for the Associated Press. AP writers Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Ky.; Jake Offenhartz in New York; and Claudia Lauder in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
MINNEAPOLIS — Federal agents executed multiple searches in Minnesota on Tuesday, seizing records and other evidence in an ongoing fraud investigation by the Trump administration of publicly funded social programs for children, authorities said.
Few details were released, though armed agents were seen at child-care centers in the Minneapolis area. KSTP-TV said one crew even had a battering ram.
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who has been on the defensive amid Trump administration claims that he hasn’t done enough to root out fraud, welcomed the raids. The state child welfare agency said it shared key information with law enforcement to “hold bad actors accountable.”
“We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work, and securing justice depends on it,” Walz said.
The searches were being conducted at daycares, businesses and some residences, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
Tensions between Minnesota officials and the federal government were high during an extraordinary immigration crackdown that led to the deaths of two people before Operation Metro Surge was eased in February.
Before that crackdown, the government had brought fraud charges against dozens of people, many of them Somali Americans, who were accused of fleecing a federal program that was meant to provide food to children. The investigation began during the Biden administration. More than 60 people have been convicted.
Various state and federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, participated in searches Tuesday. Officers from Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were removing boxes at some sites.
“The American people deserve to know how their taxpayer money was abused. … No stone will be left unturned,” DHS said.
Jason Steck, an attorney who represents childcare centers, said the names of targeted businesses that were shared with him show they’re operated by Somali immigrants. They were not his clients.
“A few childcare centers, a few autism centers, a few healthcare agencies of some type,” Steck said, adding that it appeared to be a “particular sweep for fraud.”
The executive director of Child Care Aware of Minnesota, a nonprofit that serves childhood educators, said the publicity will be unflattering.
“The majority are in business to do good business. You’re going to come across individuals who try to capitalize on systems that are broken and need to be fixed,” Candace Yates said.
Right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video in December that caught the attention of the Trump administration. He alleged that members of Minnesota’s Somali community were running fake child care centers so they could collect federal subsidies, fueling suspicions on top of the food aid scandal. The claims were disproven by inspectors.
President Trump, meanwhile, has used dehumanizing rhetoric, calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and “low IQ.”
In February, Vice President JD Vance said the government would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns. Minnesota sued in response, warning it may have to cut healthcare for low-income families, but a judge on April 6 declined to grant a restraining order.
Walz told Congress in March that he wanted to work with the federal government in fraud investigations, but that the immigration surge had made it more difficult.
“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” he said at the time.
Vancleave and Richer write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer contributed from Washington. AP reporters Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Corey Williams and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.
United States President Donald Trump has said a nuclear agreement currently being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he withdrew from in 2018 during his first term in office.
The original 2015 accord took roughly two years of negotiations to reach and involved hundreds of specialists across technical and legal fields, including multiple US experts. Under it, Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to subject itself to inspections in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions.
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But Trump took the US out of that pact, calling it the “worst deal ever”. Before the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February, the US had made new demands – including additional restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programme, the restriction of its ballistic missiles programme and an end to its support for regional armed groups, primarily in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
Trump’s latest remarks come amid growing uncertainty about whether a second round of talks will proceed in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, as a two-week ceasefire between the US-Israel and Iran approaches the end in just a day.
So, what was the JCPOA, and how did it compare to Trump’s new demands?
What was the JCPOA?
On July 14, 2015, Iran reached an agreement with the European Union and six major powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US, and Germany – under which these states would roll back international economic sanctions and allow Iran greater participation in the global economy.
In return, Tehran committed to limiting activities that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.
These included reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98 percent, to less than 300kg (660lb), and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent – far below weapons-grade of 90 percent, but high enough for civilian purposes such as power generation.
Before the JCPOA, Iran operated roughly 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges. Under the deal, that number was cut to a maximum of 6,104, and only older-generation machines confined to two facilities, which were subject to international monitoring.
Centrifuges are machines which spin to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope – enrichment – in uranium, a key step towards potential bomb-making.
The deal also redesigned Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to prevent plutonium production and introduced one of the most intrusive inspection regimes ever implemented by the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In exchange, Iran received relief from international sanctions which had severely damaged its economy. Billions of dollars in frozen assets were released, and restrictions on oil exports and banking were eased.
The deal came to halt when Trump formally withdrew Washington from the nuclear deal in 2018, a move widely criticised domestically and by foreign allies, and despite the IAEA saying Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.
“The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence, bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. They have not lived up to the spirit of their agreement,” he said in October 2017.
He reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran as part of his “maximum pressure” tactic. These targeted Iran’s oil exports, as well as its shipping sector, banking system and other key industries.
The goal was to force Iran back to the negotiating table to agree to a new deal, which also included a discussion about Tehran’s missile capabilities, further curbs on enrichment and more scrutiny of its nuclear programme.
What has happened to Iran’s nuclear programme since the JCPOA?
During the JCPOA period, Iran’s nuclear programme was tightly constrained and heavily monitored. The IAEA repeatedly verified that Iran was complying with the deal’s terms, including one year after Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the agreement.
Starting in mid-2019, however, Iran began incrementally breaching the deal’s limits, exceeding caps on uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels.
In November 2024, Iran said it would activate “new and advanced” centrifuges. The IAEA confirmed that Tehran had informed the nuclear watchdog that it planned to install more than 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium.
In December 2024, the IAEA said Iran was rapidly enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, moving closer to the 90 percent threshold needed for weapons-grade material. Most recently, in 2025, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440kg (970lb) of 60-percent enriched uranium.
What are Trump’s latest demands for Iran’s nuclear programme?
The US and its ally, Israel, are pushing Iran to agree to zero uranium enrichment and have accused Iran of working towards building a nuclear weapon, while providing no evidence for their claims.
They also want Iran’s estimated 440kg stock of 60pc enriched uranium to be removed from Iran. While that is below weapons-grade, it is the point at which it becomes much faster to achieve the 90 percent enrichment needed for atomic weapons production.
In March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a strongly worded statement, said Trump had no right to ”deprive” Iran of its nuclear rights.
(Al Jazeera)
What else is Trump asking for?
Restrictions on ballistic missiles
Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, Tehran had always insisted negotiations should be exclusively focused on Iran’s nuclear programme.
US and Israeli demands, however, extended beyond that. Just before the war began, Washington and Israel demanded severe restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
Analysts say this demand was at least partly triggered by the fact that several Iranian missiles had breached Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Dome” defence system during the 12-day war between the two countries in June last year. While Israel suffered only a handful of casualties, it is understood to have been alarmed.
For his part, Trump has repeatedly warned, without evidence, about the dangers of Iran’s long-range missiles, claiming Iran is producing them “in very high numbers” and they could “overwhelm the Iron Dome”.
Iran has said its right to maintain missile capabilities is non-negotiable. The JCPOA did not put any limits on the development of ballistic missiles.
However, a United Nations resolution made when adopting the nuclear agreement in July 2015 did stipulate that Iran could not “undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons”.
Ending support for proxy groups
The US and Israel have also demanded that Iran stop supporting its non-state allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a number of groups in Iraq. Together, these groups are referred to as Iran’s “axis of resistance”.
In May last year, Trump said Tehran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons”, during a GCC meeting in Riyadh.
Three days before the war on Iran began in February, during his State of the Union address to Congress, Trump accused Iran and “its murderous proxies” of spreading “nothing but terrorism and death and hate”.
Iran has refused to enter a dialogue about limiting its support for these armed groups.
Can Trump really get a new deal that is ‘much better’ than the JCPOA?
According to Andreas Kreig, associate professor of Security Studies at King’s College, London, Trump is more likely to secure a new deal that closely resembles the JCPOA, with “some form of restrictions on enrichment, possibly with a sunset clause, and international supervision”.
“Iran might get access to frozen assets and lifted sanctions much quicker than under the JCPOA, as it will not agree to a long drawn-out, gradual lifting of sanctions,” Krieg pointed out.
However, he warned that the political landscape in Tehran has hardened. “Iran now is a far more hardline and less pragmatic player that will play hardball at every junction. Trump cannot count on any goodwill in Tehran,” he said.
“The IRGC is now firmly in charge… with likely new powerful and tested levers such as the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates as a parallel elite military force to the army and has a great deal of political and economic power in Iran. It is a constitutionally recognised part of the Iranian military and answers directly to the supreme leader.
Overall, Krieg stressed, the US-Israel war on Iran “leaves the world worse off than had Trump stuck to the JCPOA”, even if a new compromise is eventually reached.
Moreover, since the revocation of the JCPOA, the US and Israel have waged two wars on Iran, including the current one. The 12-day war in June last year included attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and killed more than 1,000 people.
Attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have continued since the latest war began on February 28, including on the Natanz enrichment facility, Isfahan nuclear complex, Arak heavy water reactor, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Nevertheless, King’s College’s Krieg said there is still room for a negotiated outcome if Tehran and Washington scale back their demands.
“Both sides can compromise on enrichment thresholds, and on temporary moratoriums on enrichments. But Iran will not surrender its sovereignty to enrich altogether, and the Trump administration will have to meet them halfway,” he said.
“While the Iranians will commit on paper not to develop a nuclear weapon, they will want to keep R&D [research and development] in this space alive.”
Economic incentives will be central, he added. “Equally, Iran would want to get immediate access to capital and liquidity. Here, the Trump administration is already willing to compromise.”
