Iran said Friday that in order to reach a deal, the United States will have to drop its "excessive demands", tempering the optimism expressed after talks seen as a last-ditch bid to avert war.

The Oman-mediated talks follow repeated threats from President Donald Trump to strike Iran, and with the United States conducting its biggest military build-up in the region in decades.

Iran and the United States held hours of indirect negotiations Thursday over Tehran's nuclear program but walked away without a deal, leaving the danger of another Mideast war on the table as the U.S. has gathered a massive fleet of aircraft and warships in the region.

Oman's Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, who mediated the talks in Geneva, said there had been "significant progress in the negotiation" without elaborating.

Pakistan's defense minister early Friday said that his country had run out of "patience" and now considers itself in an "open war" with neighboring Afghanistan after both sides launched strikes following what Islamabad described as an Afghan cross-border attack.

In a post on X, Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces and expected the Taliban to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability. Instead, he alleged, the Taliban had turned Afghanistan "into a colony of India," gathered militants from around the world and begun "exporting terrorism."

Cuba will defend itself against any "terrorist aggression," President Miguel Diaz-Canel declared Thursday, a day after a deadly shoot-out between gunmen on a U.S.-registered speedboat and Cuban coast guard vessels.

"Cuba will defend itself with determination and firmness against any terrorist and mercenary aggression against its sovereignty and national stability," the president said on X, denouncing Wednesday's confrontation as an attempted "infiltration."

Israel's parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill that would put the country's Orthodox chief rabbinate in charge of the entire Western Wall in Jerusalem, raising fears among liberal Jews that mixed-gender prayer at the site will soon be outlawed.

The bill, if approved, threatens to further strain relations between Israel and the Reform movement, the largest stream of Judaism in the United States.

The International Monetary Fund says it is allowing Egypt to draw on about $2.3 billion from an earlier approved loan, noting that the country has made progress in restoring economic stability and reducing inflation as part of a reform program.

The IMF said in a statement Wednesday that the decision to release the funding followed reviews of the government reforms, which it credited with bringing about "a broad-based economic recovery" in the world's most populous Arab country. It noted that the gross domestic product grew at a rate of 4.4% from 2024 to 2025.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Thursday called an early general election for March 24, as the country digests a standoff with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has designs on Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

Voters in the Scandinavian country, a NATO and European Union member, will determine who sits in the Folketing, or parliament. It has 179 seats — 175 of which go to lawmakers representing Denmark and two apiece to lawmakers from Greenland and the kingdom's other semiautonomous territory, the Faroe Islands.

Instagram said Thursday it will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm. The alerts will only go to parents who are enrolled in Instagram's parental supervision program.

Instagram says it already blocks such content from showing up in teen accounts' search results and directs people to helplines instead.

Phil Collins, Mariah Carey, Lauryn Hill, INXS, Iron Maiden, Luther Vandross and Shakira are some the 2026 nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a wide net that includes rap, metal, R&B, hip-hop, Britpop, blues rock and pop.

The hall revealed the list of 17 performer nominees Wednesday, a list that also includes Melissa Etheridge, Jeff Buckley, Pink, New Edition, Sade and the Wu-Tang Clan.

Every day, Iranians go to stores and find prices rising. Some post photos on social media of the shrinking contents of their shopping carts as they struggle to buy enough basic staples for their families. The mounting cost of living is an extra weight bearing down as Iranians prepare for a possible war with the U.S. and wrestle with the aftermath of protests that swept the country last month.

"Everybody is under pressure: merchants, civil servants, laborers," said Ebrahim Momeni, a 52-year-old retired civil servant. "The weaker class of people is being crushed."