Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Trump's announcement today that, quote, he just had an excellent conversation

with the highly respected President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon and Prime Minister Bibianet Njahou of Israel.

These two leaders have agreed that in order to achieve peace in caps between their countries,

they will formally begin a 10-day ceasefire in caps at 5pm Eastern.

It has been my honour to solve nine wars across the world, and this will be my tenth, so let's

get it done in caps.

Joining us for a reality check is Habib Bhattah, a Beirut-based independent investive journalist,

filmmaker and founder of Beirutreport.com.

I contributed to The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera, Lebanon's daily star newspaper and others.

He has covered Lebanon in the Middle East for over 20 years and

previously taught journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut and is now

a professor of digital media at St. Lawrence University in New York. Then we'll examine

how big oil is making $30 million an hour in extra profits from the war on Iran and speak with Basef Sen, the

Climate Justice Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies. Previously he worked

for about 11 years as a strategic corporate campaign researcher at the United Food

and Commercial Workers and also had experience as a campaigner on the World Bank

and International Monetary Fund.

We will discuss his article at Common Dreams, We Must Fight Fossil Fuel Oligarchs to Save Democracy.

And then we'll speak with Lindsay Koschgerian, the program director of the National Priorities Project,

where she oversees National Priorities.org. Her work on the federal budget includes analysis of the National Priorities Project, where she oversees National Priorities.org.

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