By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump continued his criticism of Pope Leo XIV on Thursday – in part by making a false claim about the pope’s stance on nuclear weapons.

Asked by CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins why he is fighting with the pope, Trump said he has “nothing against the pope” but that “I have to do what’s right.” He added moments later: “I’m not fighting with him. The pope made a statement. He says, Iran can have a nuclear weapon. I say Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump’s claim about the pope’s words is not true, as Collins immediately pointed out to him.

Pope Leo hasn’t made any statement saying Iran can have a nuclear weapon. In fact, the pope has repeatedly denounced nuclear weapons and made unequivocal calls for the countries of the world to abandon them.

The pope has also spoken out against the war the US and Israel launched against Iran in late February. But having made statements calling for an end to the conflict is simply not the same as having made statements endorsing Iran having nuclear weapons; many critics of the war have argued that diplomacy is the best way to prevent Iran from developing these weapons.

Trump is free to argue that they’re wrong. But it’s incorrect to claim this position inherently means they’ve actually said Iran can have nuclear weapons.

Pope Leo has repeatedly denounced nuclear weapons

The US-born Pope Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, was elected pope in May 2025. The next month, when Israel was on the verge of attacking Iran, he said, “The situation in Iran and Israel has deteriorated gravely, and in such a delicate moment, I would like to renew strongly an appeal to responsibility and reason. The commitment to creating a safer world, free from the nuclear threat, should be pursued through respectful encounter and sincere dialogue, to build a lasting peace, based on justice, fraternity and the common good.”

Days later, the pope said, “The Church is brokenhearted at the cry of pain rising from places devastated by war, especially Ukraine, Iran, Israel and Gaza. We must never get used to war! Indeed, the temptation to have recourse to powerful and sophisticated weapons needs to be rejected.” (He didn’t specifically mention nuclear weapons.)

In a July 2025 statement marking the 80th anniversary of the US nuclear bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pope Leo said, “Though many years have passed, the two cities remain living reminders of the profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons.” He also said, “Indeed, true peace demands the courageous laying down of weapons – especially those with the power to cause an indescribable catastrophe. Nuclear arms offend our shared humanity and also betray the dignity of creation, whose harmony we are called to safeguard.” And he called to “reject the illusion of security founded on mutually assured destruction.”

The Vatican’s representative to the United Nations, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, said in October 2025, “The Holy See affirms its unwavering conviction that e

Por Gonzalo Zegarra, CNN en Español

La incertidumbre electoral en Perú comenzó a permear en la economía, que durante la última década de inestabilidad política ha mostrado resiliencia, principalmente en la inflación y la fortaleza de su moneda, pero que no escapa del impacto en los indicadores de cara a un posible giro en la conducción del país.

No fue un buen miércoles para el sol peruano ni la bolsa de Lima, en una jornada en la que el izquierdista Roberto Sánchez pasó al segundo puesto y se acerca a una segunda vuelta, aunque la disputa con el ultraderechista Rafael López Aliaga continúa y los resultados podrían demorar semanas en ser oficializados. Este jueves, los valores se recuperaron parcialmente, cuando López Aliaga también remontó y se ubica a menos de 10.000 votos de Sánchez.

“Todavía hay bastante incertidumbre”, dijo a CNN Diego Macera, miembro del directorio del Banco Central de la Reserva (BCR) del Perú. “Hubo presiones en el tipo de cambio y los bonos soberanos”, repasó, aunque destacó que el BCR es independiente y “tiene espacio de sobra para la volatilidad”, al contar con reservas cercanas a un 30 % del PBI, récord a nivel regional. “No estamos ni de cerca a lo que pasó en 2021”, añadió, en referencia al “lunes negro” bursátil que ocurrió cuando el izquierdista Pedro Castillo ganó la segunda vuelta a Keiko Fujimori.

Cambiar ocho veces de presidente en 10 años no sumió al país en una crisis económica o financiera, pero de todas maneras hay daños colaterales. “Evidentemente la inestabilidad nos ha pasado y nos pasa factura”, comentó Macera, también director del Instituto Peruano de Economía (IPE).

Por ejemplo, en 2023, que debía ser un período de recuperación tras los efectos de la pandemia, el año comenzó con una crisis política y social tras la destitución y detención del presidente Pedro Castillo, con protestas que dejaron un saldo de decenas de muertos, y terminó (entre otros factores) con una contracción económica de 0,4 %.

Para Macera, no alcanza con repasar los años en los que la actividad creció, sino que es pertinente analizar el potencial desperdiciado. “Es difícil ver el contrafactual, comparar qué hubiese pasado con una política funcional en los últimos 10 años, con los precios internacionales que hay hoy en día”, dijo. “No diría que estamos blindados, la política sí afecta”, añadió

Una de las consecuencias de los cambios presidenciales es una aún mayor rotación de ministros. “Es un promedio (de cambio) altísimo para la región, cada 6 a 7 meses en el Ministerio de Economía en los últimos 10 años. En la Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros es algo parecido. En otros cargos, la rotación es mayor: un ministro del Interior cada tres a cuatro meses. Es una locura”, comentó.

El analista destacó que ello “baja el peso” de la oficina de los funcionarios: “Si estoy negociando con un ministro, ya sea como gobernador regional, congresista, inversionista o miembro de un organismo multilateral, para un proyecto de dos o tres años, sé que lo más probable es que esa persona dure cinco meses. Voy a tener a otras cuatro o cinco personas como él. El éxito y la predictibilidad es bien baja”.

Varios políticos y analistas atribuyen la estabilidad macroeconómica del país a la gestión de Julio Velarde, quien desde hace 20 años comanda el directorio del Banco Central. Castillo, que había expresado algunas dudas, lo ratificó en 2021, por lo que su período vence en octubre y el nuevo presidente deberá decidir si lo vuelve a proponer, más allá de que Velarde, de 73 años, mencionó la posibilidad de un retiro.

Un informe de Videnza Instituto cuestionó la propuesta de Sánchez de remover a Velard

The post LIVE Art & Wine Tour Returns April 30 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

By Patrick Oppmann, CNN

Havana, Cuba (CNN) — Cuba’s president says his nation does not want war with the United States, but he vows that, if attacked, Cubans would defeat American forces.

Dressed in military fatigues, Miguel Díaz-Canel addressed a crowd of government supporters commemorating the 65th anniversary Thursday of the start of the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. The failed attempt by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to oust Fidel Castro prompted the Cuban revolutionary leader to openly declare his support for socialism for the first time, setting up a Cold War-era standoff with the US that endures to this day.

The 1961 debacle at the Bay of Pigs, one of the CIA’s most conspicuous failures, has been enshrined ever since by Cuban officials as the David vs. Goliath moment that cemented support for Castro’s revolution.

Referencing growing tensions with the Trump administration, Díaz-Canel told the crowd: “We have to be ready to resist serious threats, including military aggression. We do not seek it, but it is our duty to prepare to avert it, and, should it prove inevitable, to win it.”

“As long as there is a woman and a man willing to give their lives for the revolution, we will be victorious,” Díaz-Canel added.

“We don’t want to be an American colony,” chanted a group of government supporters in the crowd.

The Cuban leader made the comments three days after US President Donald Trump again threatened the communist-run island with military strikes.

“We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” Trump said Monday, referring to the Iran war.

Saber rattling between the US and Cuba has reached a fever pitch following a US military operation in Caracas in January that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a staunch ally of the Cuban government.

During the operation, US forces killed 32 Cuban soldiers and intelligence officials who formed part of a secret contingent guarding Maduro. Since his capture, the Trump administration has blocked all oil shipments to Cuba except for one tanker of Russian oil that Trump says he allowed to reach the island in March out of humanitarian concerns.

Under the oil blockade, the already struggling Cuban economy has all but ground to a halt. Power shortages now extend for most of the day in many parts of the island, hospitals are unable to treat thousands of patients, and fuel has become increasingly scarce.

The Trump administration has called on the Cuban government to open the communist-run island politically and economically. It has also said some Cuban officials, including Díaz-Canel, should step down as part of a deal.

US officials have contacted members of the Castro family to reach a deal with Raúl Castro, who retired in 2021 as president but is still considered to be the ultimate power broker in the island’s hermetic political system.

“My father is rigorously following all

By Kristen Holmes, Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — With Vice President JD Vance, a one-time Iran war skeptic, now tasked with brokering a deal to end it, President Donald Trump has been monitoring his progress closely and inquiring with various friends and advisers how they’d rank his performance, according to three people familiar with the conversations.

The president has wondered aloud how they think Vance compares to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a potential rival for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, these people said.

Never over the course of Trump’s second term has his second-in-command been more in the spotlight than in the past week, when a pair of foreign visits and a dust-up between the president and the leader of the world’s Catholics — of which Vance is one — placed him squarely at the center of Trump’s whirlwind.

For now, Trump seems to have full confidence in Vance’s negotiating abilities, with the vice president on standby to return to Pakistan to resume negotiations with Iran if a deal appears to be coming together, according to sources familiar with the talks.

But the president, who spoke by phone with Vance as many as a dozen times during the first round of talks in Islamabad last weekend, has made clear he’s watching carefully.

“If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” Trump said, somewhat in jest, of an Iran deal during an Easter lunch this month. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”

As momentum builds for another round of talks with Iran, the White House voiced full support for Vance’s role.

“Vice President Vance continues to show why President Trump has tapped him to lead the Iran negotiations along with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. His ability to take on some of the biggest challenges head-on makes him an invaluable member of the Administration full of top performers,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. Cheung traveled to Pakistan with Vance last weekend.

Navigating the fray poses a challenge for Vance. The staunch Trump loyalist has publicly defended a war he argued against in private, and backed Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo XIV, even amid outcry from some of his fellow Catholics.

Yet on both fronts, Vance has also offered positions that — while not at odds with his boss — allow for a degree of distinction.

Confronted by hecklers decrying the administration’s Middle East policy at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia this week, Vance deflected the criticism onto the Biden administration. But later in the event, he acknowledged the Iran war’s unpopularity.

“I recognize that young voters do not love the policy we have in the Middle East,” he told the half-empty arena. “I understand.”

In the lead-up to last weekend’s marathon talks with Iran in Pakistan, Vance downplayed his role in the negotiations as merely “answering a lot of phone calls.”

Yet when Trump convened a Cabinet meeting on March 26, it was Vance he turned to first for an update on the war, not his secretaries of state or defense. By then, the vice president had been in regular contact with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to work through proposals to bring the hostilities to an end.

At the time of the Cabinet meeting, Vance’s initial hesitation about launching a new foreign war was well known. Trump had even acknowledged it, shrugging it off as a minor difference in viewpoint.

“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump explained in early March. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”

Still, some Trump allies say they have been watching carefully for signs of Vance placing any daylight between himself and the president, on Iran or other issues that have caused consternation among some conservatives.

At the event in