A “surprised” White House bristled on Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly canceled a trip to Washington.
Washington said that US President Barack Obama had offered a meeting, but was turned down. Netanyahu had been expected to visit this month on a trip coinciding with a major pro-Israel group’s annual summit. The White House said Israel had proposed two dates for a meeting between the leaders and the US had offered to meet on one of those days.
“We were looking forward to hosting the bilateral meeting,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council. “We were surprised to first learn via media reports that the prime minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit.”
The unusually pointed pushback from the White House was the latest signal of ongoing tensions between the US and its closest Middle East ally, which have never fully recovered since Obama incensed Netanyahu’s government by pursuing and then enacting a nuclear deal with Iran.
The flareup comes just days before US Vice President Joe Biden is set to meet with Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem.
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.
The White House disputed reports in the Israeli media that said Netanyahu canceled the trip after the White House had been unable to find a date for a meeting that worked with Obama’s schedule. Price said those suggestions were false.
It was not the first time Obama had been caught off guard by Netanyahu’s travel plans. Last year, the White House accused Netanyahu of a breach of diplomatic protocol when he announced plans to speak to a joint session of US Congress without consulting or notifying the president.
Netanyahu used that speech to implore US lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear deal.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.