CNN news 2015-03-28 加文本

cnn news 2015-03-28

The Middle East, Europe and East Asia are three of the places we're headed today on cnn Student News. I'm Carl Azuz. Glad to have you along.

First up, the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, traveled to the U.S. capital yesterday. He spent part of his day with President Obama. A big focus of their meeting, U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

There are currently just under 10,000 American forces in Afghanistan. The Obama administration had planned to reduce that number to 5,500 by the end of this year. But Afghan's President Ghani believes that could cause problems for his country's troops. With support and training from U.S. forces, the Afghan military is fighting the Taliban, Afghanistan's former rulers, as well as the al-Qaeda terrorist group. So he wants U.S. troops to stay longer in Afghanistan.

After their meeting yesterday, President Obama announced that there would be no reduction this year in the number of U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan.

Less than a week from now is a deadline for the U.S. and some other Western countries to reach a deal with Iran over its controversial nuclear program. The U.S. wants Iran to put that program on hold. Iran wants sanctions, the international penalties on its economy, to be lifted. Israel, a U.S. ally whom Iran has threatened in the past, has warned the Obama administration not to agree to a deal with Iran. Did Israel spy to get info on the deal?

There are two parts to this story, two main allegations. The first is that the Israeli government spied on the negotiations with Iran. The second is that the government then used the information they gleaned from inside those negotiations and used it to influence Congress.

The Israeli government, the administration here, from Benjamin Netanyahu, denies the first of those allegations, that Israel ever spied on the negotiations to begin with. They issued a very strongly worded statement. That statement reads, "These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel's other allies. The false allegations are clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share."

At the same time, we know that Benjamin Netanyahu has used words from our understanding of the negotiations, so it's clear that they believe they have inside information on what's happening inside these deals, although they're being now vague about how they got that information.

And what we've seen here over the past few weeks is a shift in strategy from Benjamin Netanyahu. At first, he was trying to use the information to affect and influence the White House, to try to get them to either stop or block the negotiations. Now, we've seen Netanyahu shift his focus to Congress, to try to influence the Republicans, his strongest ties in Congress, especially House Speaker John Boehner.

So the question is, what is the biggest story that will come out of this? What are the real effects of these allegations? And that's where we'll see the effects on the negotiations, or, rather, the relations between President Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. They're already strained. They're already troubled. We've heard over the last few weeks that they're at at least all-time low. And yet, with these new allegations, this new back and forth we're now seeing, those relations are getting even worse.

French President Francois Hollande says it's unlikely that anyone survived the commercial plane crash Tuesday in the French Alps. German Wings is the budget carrier of Lufthansa. One of its flights with 150 people on board was traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany. Officials say its crew did not issue a distress call. Air traffic controllers did after they lost radio contact with the plane yesterday morning. The crash happened in a remote part of Southeastern France. It's hard to access because of mountainous terrain and bad weather. Wreckage stretches for hundreds of feet. Officials were able to recovery one of the plane's flight data recorders, which could give some answers about what happened.