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Ukraine war briefing: Sanctions waiver on Russian oil could end soon, Trump suggests

The US could soon reinstate sanctions on Russian oil shipments, Donald Trump indicated, as leaders at the G7 summit moved on Tuesday to put the war in Ukraine back on top of their agenda. Trump said the sanctions on Russia – partly waived by the US due to the Iran war, ostensibly to help lower oil prices – can go back in place as more oil moves through the strait of Hormuz. “Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We’re in a position to do that soon.” Russia should make peace with Ukraine, the US president said after a “very good” meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Look, Russia should make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on both sides. “I’m gonna do whatever I can.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said of Trump’s statement: “I found him to be very cooperative, and ‌I also saw him listening very attentively. And ‌in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to end the war.” Zelenskyy told Reuters that G7 leaders agreed Russia was not winning the war and they discussed additional sanctions targeting Russia’s oil exports, its banking sector and its military production. Two European diplomats, however, told Reuters that Trump had been noncommittal on imposing further US sanctions on Moscow. A French diplomat said G7 leaders committed to providing Kyiv with more air defence capabilities. A Ukrainian ⁠Su-24M bomber aircraft crashed on a mission in ⁠the Khmelnitskyi region ⁠in western Ukraine on Tuesday ⁠and its two-member crew was killed, ⁠the Ukrainian air ‌force said. Ukraine is estimated to have about a dozen of the ageing SU-24 family of warplanes. They are used to launch the Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France. Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least eight people on Tuesday, officials said. A drone strike in Nikopol, central Dnipropetrovsk region, killed “a mother and son – a woman of 87 and a 51-year-old man” as well as a third person not immediately identified, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. “The enemy targeted people ‌walking along the road with an FPV drone,” Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He posted a blurred photo of a wheelchair on a ‌road and what appeared to be a body underneath. Russian shelling of the Donetsk region city of Sloviansk killed three people, while drone strikes on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 16, according to officials. Five Russian ⁠attacks on the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of Zaporizhzhia left one ⁠person dead, three injured and set ablaze ⁠a home ‌and a ‌shopping centre, ‌said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor. Repairs to the nearly 1,000-year-old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv could take around two years, an official said ⁠on Tuesday. A ⁠Russian attack on the complex set fire to the roof of the Dormition Cathedral within ⁠the vast Unesco world heritage site. More than ‌80% of the 11th-century cathedral’s roof had been damaged, but firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading inside the cathedral, Maksym Ostapenko, director general of the complex, was cited as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency. A Russian artist critical of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot and killed in ⁠the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska, a prosecutor has said. Local media identified the victim as Robert ⁠Kuzovkov, who was also known by his artistic pseudonym, Semyon Skrepetsky. Pjotr Sauer writes that five shots were fired at the ⁠victim, including one ⁠to the head, in the attack on Monday, according to Marcin Kozak, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor in Lublin. Two Belarusians ⁠had been detained but no one had yet been charged. Other Russian exiles suspected Kadyrov was responsible. The Chinese ⁠embassy in London said it had complained to British ⁠authorities about sanctions on several entities, including four from ⁠China, for allegedly supplying key military equipment to Russia. “China has consistently promoted peace talks and strictly controlled exports of dual-use goods,” an embassy spokesperson said. “Normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia should ⁠not be disrupted or affected.” Britain’s latest sanctions package, announced on Tuesday, includes cracking down on third-country suppliers of critical military equipment to Russia in China, Thailand and Turkey. The US extended by 15 days until 1 July a sanctions waiver on Serbia’s Russian-controlled oil company NIS, allowing it to continue importing and processing crude, the firm said. Washington has demanded since early 2025 that Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom Neft sell it stake in NIS, which has been threatened by US financial sanctions that have been repeatedly postponed. Talks on the sale of the Russian-held stake in NIS to Hungary’s MOL energy company have gone on for months, with the US Treasury’s foreign assets control office extending the deadline for their completion until 16 June.

A rat sighting in New Zealand can trigger an urgent response. Meet the ‘ghostbusters’ hunting them down

In many places around the world, discovering a rat in your garden would barely register a second thought. But in parts of New Zealand, a single rat, possum or stoat can trigger an urgent response, as the country embarks on a world-leading project to eradicate introduced predators by 2050 to save its unique wildlife from further decimation. Wellington resident Davin Hall knows first hand. In March he noticed large tunnels cutting through the compost bin at his home. He suspected a rat and after two weeks of trying to catch the pest, he called in the cavalry: a team of pest-catchers who will try all methods possible to hunt down and kill a single rat. “It’s kind of like this idea of Ghostbusters,” says James Willcocks, project director at Predator Free Wellington, which hunts down pests in the New Zealand capital. “If we get any intel from the public that might be a suspected rat then we need to be able to deal with that immediately.” The team fields roughly five tip-offs a week and each is treated with urgency. First, they set out to determine whether there is a rat, says Philip Wisker, Predator Free Wellington’s eradication technical officer. Occasionally, people call in with reports of rat faeces in their shed, which sometimes belongs to the wētā – an unusual endemic insect. The difference lies in the smell – wētā poo “smells like nutmeg, spicy”; rat poo smells “quite pooey”, Wisker says. A dog detector team is then sent out to sniff out signs of rats, followed by the “capture team” who sets up cameras, traps and bait. When they find the rat – and they almost always do – it is promptly sent off for genomic sequencing, to determine if it is local or has travelled into the region. In Hall’s case, they had success. The intruder was a “giant rat”, 529 grams heavy and 495mm long with a meaty tail and piebald coat. The Norway rat – a species that arrived in New Zealand on European ships in the 1700s – was one of the largest the Wellington team had caught. A similar response plays out if a stoat is spotted on Waiheke Island, in Auckland’s Hauraki gulf, where just a few remain, and again for possums in Akaroa, near Christchurch, and Otago Peninsula in Dunedin, where they have been eliminated. In regions where eradication efforts have been successful, or are close to it, locally run predator-free projects are increasingly relying on residents to call in tip-offs to their “hotlines” when they see, or suspect, a predator has returned. “If we can activate those 20,000 sets of eyes and ears that are a community – or the 212,000 eyes and ears living in Wellington city – then we’ve got the most sensitive detection network anywhere in the world,” Willcocks says. Who ya gonna call? 0800 NO RATS New Zealand’s only endemic mammal species are bats and marine mammals. Subsequently, its birds evolved in unusual ways – the country is home to more species of flightless birds, both living and extinct, than any other place in the world. Isolation from land-based mammals left the country’s birds largely defenceless against introduced predators. An estimated 25m native birds are killed annually by rats, stoats, possums, and cats, and 50 bird species have gone extinct, according to the Department of Conservation. Predator Free Wellington has, over 10 years, managed to eradicate rats from Miramar peninsula, a 15-minute drive from the city centre. Now it is in phase two of its project – elimination in a number of nearby suburbs before it expands further into the city. It has achieved this through extensive trapping and monitoring networks, a large volunteer workforce, widespread community buy-in and now, residents calling 0800 NO RATS when they see a pest. Since the project began in Wellington, the population of native birds on Miramar peninsula has increased by 500%. In Waiheke, populations have increased by 99% since 2020. Still, the teams refuse to become complacent. Rats can breed multiple times a year and catching a single interloper early can stop it re-establishing a population. Expert dog handler Sally Bain is one of the rat-catchers. On the Miramar peninsula, she scours the coastline for signs of rats, with her two highly trained dogs, Kimi and Rapu, who lead with their noses to the air. A rat was recently discovered in a rat trap here, prompting a search of the area. Close to a small construction site, the dogs become animated. Rats regularly hide in cars, cabins and construction materials, Bain says, and the dogs’ interest in the site could either signal there are more rats hiding there, or this was where the dead rat had originated. Stamping out rats in a city of people is no small task. Day after day, Bain traverses Wellington’s tricky hilly terrain hunting them down. When asked what drives her, Bain says: “Humans weren’t the only ones who suffered when we turned up here.” “It’s about what you save, not what you kill.” For Wellington residents like Hall, those efforts and the wider buy-in from the community – from building and setting traps to keeping their eyes open for rats – have been “remarkably successful”. He says: “We’ve got kererū … pooping on people’s cars and sitting on powerlines, a family of kākā who live in the area and chase each other around. All these native birds have come back and getting rid of the rats means they get to stay.”

US and Iran deal to end war allows Tehran to sell oil and fuel – as it happened

Two months of final negotiations will begin immediately after the initial deal between the US and Iran is signed on Friday. Negotiations will continue for a 60-day window after the ceremony, officials told AFP, leading to a plan for the lifting of economic sanctions and decisions on the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme. A US-Iran deal aimed at ending the Middle East war will be signed at Switzerland’s mountainside Burgenstock resort on Friday, the Swiss foreign ministry confirmed to AFP. The site, located near Lucerne in central Switzerland, is difficult to access and therefore easily secured. It “was proposed by the Pakistani and Qatari mediators, as well as by the US and Iran”, Switzerland’s foreign ministry said. Trump said that he would send the deal with Iran to the US Congress for a review. “I like the idea, send it to Congress please,” he said at the start of a meeting with the UAE president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the sidelines of the G7 summit. “I mean who wouldn’t approve it.” Speaking at the G7, US president Donald Trump has said the strait of Hormuz will be open by Friday and that the full text of the peace deal will be released in a “formal setting”. Trump also said he expects the “second stage” of the deal “to go quickly”. The US will allow Iran to immediately start selling oil and fuel again as part of the deal to end the war, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Iran can only sell oil if they keep to the terms of the deal, as US official told Reuters. It includes the free flow of navigation in the strait of Hormuz and not obtaining an nuclear weapon. An Iranian deputy foreign minister on Tuesday said the two-month US naval blockade on Iranian ports had been lifted ahead of the planned formal signing of a deal ending the war. “The lifting of the blockade was something we had emphasised from the outset. It has now begun, and the blockade has been lifted prior to the formal signing” scheduled for Friday, said Iranian deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi, according to the government’s website. John Thune, the US Senate majority leader, has reportedly asked the Trump administration for the text of the MOU with Iran. However, he says he has had no response so far, Punchbowl News’s Andrew Desiderio. Hezbollah believes Iran will not sign a nuclear ⁠deal with ⁠Washington unless Israel pulls its troops from southern ⁠Lebanon and told Reuters it understands that Tehran will ⁠push for Israel’s withdrawal in ‌its next ‌phase of talks with Washington. Hezbollah’s media ‌office said such a withdrawal would be the result of, and not a precondition for, the next ‌set of talks between Iran and the US, set to begin after the two formally sign their memorandum of understanding this ⁠coming Friday. The US must uphold every clause of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Iran and US, particularly when it comes to ending the war in Lebanon, Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, posted on X on Tuesday. “Iranian resilience forced a strategic pivot: the US came to the table on Iran’s terms,” Azizi wrote. “Now, Washington must prove its commitment by ending the war against Lebanon and upholding every clause of the MOU. Any breach will be met with a decisive, crushing response.” Israeli drone ⁠strikes targeted three vehicles in southern ⁠Lebanon ⁠on Tuesday, killing at least four people ⁠and wounding others, Lebanon’s National News ⁠Agency reported. Two people were killed ‌in a ‌double-tap strike, with ‌a drone hitting a car in the village of Mayfadoun followed by a ‌second strike after people had gathered at the scene. Iran’s Top Joint Military Command, Khatam al-Anbiya Central ‌Headquarters, said in a statement that Israel should expect a hard response from the Iranian armed forces if it did not stop its attacks on southern Lebanon, days after Tehran and Washington announced a MoU to end the regional war. Qatar, a key mediator between the US and Iran, said it believed the framework peace agreement could deliver security to the Middle East. “We are cautiously optimistic that the signing of the memorandum of understanding will lead to the next phase of regional security through the talks that will take place on the nuclear programme and on other issues,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari told reporters in Doha, as he praised Pakistan’s mediation efforts.

Toronto police link dozens of shootings to ‘multilayered’ gun-for-hire network

Police investigators in Toronto have said that dozens of shootings – including one at the US consulate in March – are linked to a “multilayered” gun-for-hire network that is also responsible for attacks on synagogues around Canada’s largest city. Toronto’s police chief, Myron Demkiw, told reporters on Tuesday that young adults and teenagers are being recruited through encrypted messaging apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp by “bad actors” and paid by the networks to carry out the attacks. Shooters are required to film their attacks in order to get paid. “Who is paying for this?” he said. “This is what we are trying to determine.” A veteran Toronto police officer was killed last week during a raid linked to the shootings. Constable Marc Pinizzotto, 43, was shot early on Thursday morning while a team of officers executed a search warrant at an apartment building in the city’s north-west. Police have charged 19-year-old Nicholas Bennett, who remains in hospital, with first-degree murder. They also announced charges against Jayon Burgher and Sheldon Tracey-Stewart for their roles in some of the shootings. Both are 18 years old. Police are still searching for 19-year-old Zara Jabbi, who they say is linked to the attack at the consulate. No one was injured in the March attack. Police said two handguns seized during dawn raids last week could be connected to 27 separate shootings across the Greater Toronto Area and investigators believe the seized guns were being passed between multiple shooters. “While we’ve been able to connect these firearms to numerous instances, we are still working to identify not only the individuals responsible for pulling the triggers but also those who may have directed or organized these acts of violence,” said Joe Matthews, the Toronto police service’s chief superintendent. Demkiw said the shootings were part of a “broader” trend that police are seeing in the city and in other regions, adding the investigators were working with the FBI. “What we are dealing with in this case and in other unrelated incidences, including shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, is a recurring and similar modus operandi and that is criminals for hire,” Demkiw said. “It is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community.” Investigators have been looking at the possibility that the shooting of the US consulate was linked to a global terror network that has threatened retribution for US attacks on Iran. In May, US authorities charged Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, an Iraqi national, with terrorism. He is alleged to be the architect of nearly 20 attacks in Europe. US court documents suggest he has also claimed responsibility for the Toronto consulate shooting. In a criminal complaint, the FBI alleged that in a recorded telephone call al-Saadi suggested that “our people” were behind the attack. “I know there’s been a lot of reporting about criminal groups and foreign actors,” said Demkiw. “But what I can tell you is that we are still working actively to investigate who is responsible for orchestrating these criminal acts.”

Where does Iran deal leave US-Israel relationship as they reach ‘a fork in the road’?

It took more than a day after news of Donald Trump’s deal with Iran went public for Benjamin Netanyahu to speak out. When he finally appeared at a press conference on Monday evening, the Israeli prime minister skirted a cornerstone of his past public appearances: his excellent relationship with the US president. “There are cases in which President Trump and I do not see eye to eye,” he said when asked about that. “I am responsible for Israel’s security interests, and it needs to be done wisely.” As to the deal, he told its many critics not to pass judgment yet: “We do not know what the agreement will be.” Increasingly, the Israeli prime minister who had dominated relations with five US presidents has had to face the prospect of Israel going it alone against Iran. It is a remarkable turnaround from a mere four months ago, when his intervention and a White House presentation that he had given to successive US administrations finally hit home, convincing Trump to mount a joint attack. But if Netanyahu has not been forthcoming about his souring relationship with Washington, then the converse has not been true. In one conversation with Axios, Trump said that he was “so pissed off” and told Netanyahu that he had “no fucking judgment”. In public, Trump laid into Netanyahu for launching strikes against Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah is in conflict with Israel, on the “special day” when his peace treaty was to be announced. “Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, adding that “too many people are being killed.” “You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody,” he said. “There are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah.” For Netanyahu, who has leveraged enormous lobbying support in the United States, this was a nightmare turnaround. The combined pressure of a US president desperate to exit the war he launched and of an upcoming Israeli election challenge have flipped the script, leaving him as a potential spoiler to a grand bargain that could have enormous political consequences for him. “Let’s be clear, Trump has enormous leverage,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “No American president has ever talked to an Israeli prime minister the way Donald Trump has talked about Netanyahu. No American president has ever allowed his private conversations to be leaked and so profanity-laced and mocking. It’s really quite extraordinary.” There are many politically charged unknowns in the deal, including the potential release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets or other financial aid to Iran, a clause of the Obama-era Iran deal that Trump had publicly blasted at the time. “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it,” he subtweeted Obama in 2015 when the White House signed the nuclear deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Now, Trump has telegraphed his desire to get out of the war he launched earlier this year – leaving Netanyahu to manage a difficult set of political consequences. Besides the release of frozen assets, attention has turned to southern Lebanon, where Iranian officials and US officials have claimed there will be a ceasefire but Israeli politicians have said that troops will not abandon their positions. US officials have said that Israeli forces would not be forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon and would have the right to defend themselves, but privately have sought to restrain Netanyahu to prevent a deal from being derailed. “Their withdrawal was not a condition of the deal,” said a senior US administration official. “The deal is a ceasefire, and it will not be a one-way ceasefire, meaning that if Iran is not able to control Hezbollah, and if they attack Israeli positions or Israeli towns, Israel will have the right to defend themselves and respond.” But that is not a blank check – and Netanyahu is in a bind. On the one hand, he has led the country in three wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without a clear victory in any. Declaring peace, particularly one dictated from abroad, will bolster criticism of his foreign policy as he faces a tough re-election in the autumn. On the other, with the US now relying on Gulf intermediaries and Pakistan to broker a peace, the strategic interests of the United States and of Israel are diverging. During a briefing on Monday, one senior Trump administration official extolled the direct, high-level conversations that the US was now holding with the Iranian leadership. “We’ve reached a fork in the road,” said Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute and former senior US diplomat. “Netanyahu sold President Trump on this action plan that went sideways quickly, and now President Trump wants to end this war as quickly as possible.” “So he’s done with that, but Netanyahu is paying as prime minister of a country – the only country in the world where this is a really popular war,” he added. Down but never out, Netanyahu will have to find a way to navigate the coming week before Friday’s signing ceremony and then the months of what observers expect to be a tenuous ceasefire and difficult negotiation period. With the terms of the deal between Iran and the US still unpublished, Netanyahu may still expect negotiations to fail – as many do – given the right pressure. Netanyahu’s “got to figure out a way to navigate this in the next several months”, said Miller. “And I think the Iranians have figured that they have him in a box.”

Iran’s top envoy says peace deal with US dependent on Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon

Iran’s top diplomat has said a peace deal with the US would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, as concern grows that Israel could undermine diplomatic efforts to finally end the Middle East war, with Donald Trump even criticising his ally and war partner as irresponsible. “Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end,” said the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. A Hezbollah media relations official also said the group had received ⁠assurances from Iran that it ⁠would ⁠demand a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon ⁠in its next phase of talks ⁠with the US. The comments came as Donald Trump, speaking at the G7 leaders summit, rounded on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he had to behave “more responsibly in Lebanon”, adding that a recent Israeli bombing attack on Beirut was “vicious”. “Israel has been fighting Hezbollah for too long and too many people are being killed,” Trump said. “You don’t need to knock down an apartment house when you are looking for somebody because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they are not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you.” He suggested the Syrian government may do a better job in “dealing” with Hezbollah. While Damascus is run by former rebels who fought against Hezbollah during the Syrian civil war that overthrew President Bashar al-Assad, the government there now seeks stability. Trump said he maintained an “unbelievable personal relationship” with Netanyahu, and described the fighting as a “pinprick” in comparison with the deal with Iran. Trump’s remarks suggest he is losing patience with Israel’s apparent refusal to accept a ceasefire, and the threat it is posing to the 60-day ceasefire he has negotiated with Iran. “Without the US, without me,” he said, “there would be no Israel because there is no other president prepared to do what I did”. Trump added he did not like that Israel had attacked Beirut only two hours before Iran was due to sign the memorandum. On Tuesday, Israeli drone attacks killed at least four people in Lebanon, including a “double-tap” strike in which a drone targeted a car in the village of Mayfadoun and then launched a second strike after ⁠people gathered at the scene, local media reported. The threat to the peace plan posed by Israel’s actions in Lebanon will only deepen fears of European leaders about the durability of the peace plan. Gulf states attending the G7 summit in Évian, France, were quizzed by Europeans about proposals for Arab states to invest as much as $300bn (£223bn) in the Iranian economy as a reward for Iran meeting its commitments to verifiably reject nuclear weapons. The fund, according to the US vice-president, JD Vance, would only be implemented when the US accepted that Iran had met demands to dismantle its nuclear programme, and would not involve US government finances. European powers had been at the centre of the talks that led to the 2015 nuclear arms control deal with Iran – the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) – but have been entirely excluded from the US decision to go to war, as well as from the negotiations to end a conflict that has rattled their economies. They believe European nuclear expertise must be present in the coming round of talks. The 14-clause memorandum of understanding, a framework to open the strait of Hormuz and restart talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, has still not been published. European concerns centre on the deal’s lack of detail, while Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme, an issue not directly addressed in the deal. Some European diplomatic hawks fear the Iranian military will be more inclined to seek a nuclear weapon after successive US attacks, even if the closure of the strait of Hormuz has proven to be an astonishingly effective alternative deterrent. Trump was also facing backlash from Israel and American conservatives over a section of the agreement stating that waivers of sanctions on Iranian oil sales would take effect immediately upon signing the agreement on Friday, covering necessary services including banking, transportation and insurance needed to facilitate the sales. There is also growing concern that Trump has effectively conceded that Iran, after 60 days, can charge “maritime service fees” on commercial shipping transiting the strait. Any uncertainty about the future governance of the strait would discourage commercial shipping from continuing to enter the waterway. There were, however, signs that the US blockade of Iranian ports had been lifted, with a growing number of ships starting to move. The $300bn Iran investment plan included in the memorandum of understanding proposes a huge financial commitment from Gulf states that have been hit hard by the three-month war, including by Iranian attacks on key Gulf energy installations that led to a near collapse in relations. The investment fund is an alternative to the Iranian demand for compensation from the US and Israel for launching what Tehran views as an unlawful and unjustified war, even as negotiations over its nuclear programme were continuing. Three Arab leaders attended the talks: Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates; Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the president of Egypt; and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar. The Iran war has taken attention away from the crisis in Gaza, to the frustration of the Arab states. Apart from the investment fund, Iran is also expecting that half its funds frozen by US sanctions, largely receipts on previous oil trades, will be released. Roughly $24bn of its assets are frozen abroad, including $8bn in Qatar. US officials have been evasive about whether and when this unfreezing may occur. US officials had conceded the existence of a $300bn reconstruction fund in the deal on Monday, but said the fund was not a grant to Iran but an enabling vehicle for Gulf states to be given priority to make commercial investments in Iran, and so would act as an incentive for Tehran to dismantle its nuclear programme. Vance said: “We are absolutely open to the Gulf coast countries investing in the reconstruction of Iran, but only if Iran ends their nuclear programme, ends their enriched stockpile of material and is really open to an inspection and enforcement regime that gives American people confidence that they are never going to have a nuclear weapon.” Iranian sources say the deal sets out options for the disposal of the highly enriched uranium, and downblending of the stockpile to 3.67%, a level of purity sufficient for civilian purposes but not to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The text also keeps open Iran’s right to enrich uranium domestically, Iran’s key red line.

France to ditch Palantir’s AI data tools in favour of domestic provider

France’s domestic intelligence service is to ditch AI data tools from the US tech company Palantir in favour of a domestic provider in an effort to avoid “strategic dependency”, the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has said. “We must use our own AI models; we cannot accept new strategic dependencies in ‌the digital sphere,” Lecornu posted on social media. “We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools.” There is increasing concern among European governments at their reliance on US-controlled technologies. Washington decided last week to restrict foreign nationals’ access to Anthropic’s latest AI model. Lecornu’s office said the French DGSI intelligence agency would replace Palantir’s tools with those from the French firm ChapsVision, although since the US company’s long-term contract was renewed in 2025, the process is likely to take several years. France must “build real autonomy” and “not depend on the goodwill of certain partners, who are capable of turning off the access tap” for artificial intelligence, the prime minister said. ChapsVision, which was founded in 2019 and made €200m (£173m) in revenue in 2025 against Palantir’s $4.5bn (£3.3bn), said it would become the “technological foundation” for “many public agencies for their critical data processing needs”. ChapsVision’s technology, which collects, prepares and analyses data, has reportedly also been selected by Germany’s BfV internal security service. Palantir said it would “continue to support the French government wherever its solutions are needed”. Co-founded by the rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel, an ally of Donald Trump, Palantir has worked with the US government to supply software to ICE, which is carrying out an immigration crackdown, and to identify targets in the US-Israel war on Iran. Campaign groups have long warned that the US company’s products pose risks relating to surveillance, infringements on individual freedoms and data protection. Palantir insists it simply provides powerful data-processing services. Germany’s military has said it will no longer use the company’s products, while Britain is reviewing the National Health Service’s £330m data contract with Palantir after political and parliamentary pressure. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has also blocked a proposed £50m Palantir contract with the capital’s Metropolitan police on value-for-money and procurement grounds. Palantir has threatened legal proceedings in response. Lecornu said on Tuesday that France planned to invest €655m in artificial intelligence and set up a shared chatbot for all state services. It will also create a public health chatbot for the state-owned health insurance agency Ameli. The money would fund “infrastructure, computing capacity, research, companies and industrial sectors”, he said. France had begun rolling out a government AI tool offering a chatbot to 1 million of its 2.6 million civil servants. Built on models from the French startup Mistral AI, the system is intended to help in instances such as speeding up legal cases or helping researchers secure grants, with ministers eager to crack down on the security risk posed by commercial AI tools. Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

EU and UK announce summit to discuss ‘reset’ in post-Brexit relations

The EU and the UK have announced they will hold their next summit to discuss the “reset” in relations between London and Brussels on 22 July. The summit, which will be held in Brussels, has been delayed several times, with talks over a youth mobility scheme allowing under-30s to work, travel or study in each other’s territory deadlocked in recent weeks, fuelling speculation the summit would be postponed until the autumn. António Costa, the president of the European Council, confirmed the date at the G7 meeting in Evian on Tuesday. “Close EU-UK cooperation is essential for our shared European security, resilience and prosperity,” he said. “We are working closely together to make our upcoming second summit on 22 July a success.” The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who could be facing a leadership challenge after this Thursday’s Makerfield byelection, said: “My Labour government is delivering on our promise to reset our relationship and put Britain at the heart of Europe. “Together we will tackle the cost of living, boost jobs and create opportunities for young people.” The head of pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain, Naomi Smith, said “whoever is in No 10 in July must recognise the increasing importance” of the bloc, and that even “signalling an intention to pursue membership” would help generate the political will to underpin rejoining. The summit was originally supposed to take place in May but delays over the youth mobility programme pushed it back to the end of June, then early July. Up until the last two weeks, senior EU diplomats expressed disappointment that the “momentum is being lost” in the “reset” that Starmer has so often promised since he took office in 2024. Other key topics on the agenda are a food and farm produce trade agreement that will see red tape and physical checks on exports into the EU removed, with the UK agreeing to align with the bloc’s standards. The sanitary and phytosanitary agreement is already agreed in part, with the UK recently unveiling some of the checks that would be removed, allowing food producers time to prepare for the implementation of the deal, probably next summer. Talks are also progressing on an emissions trading system, which will allow the UK to align with the EU’s trading rules involving penalties for those products with high carbon emissions. However, the UK’s resistance to some of the EU’s demands in a youth experience programme, including a restoration of the pre-Brexit home tuition fees for EU students, is thought to have held up the summit. EU diplomats have warned there would be no summit without a youth experience programme, one of the few EU red lines in the reset negotiations.