The US president says Iran will not obtain nuclear weapons, ‘which is what it was all about’. Plus, how AI could help botanists combat the extinction risk to rare plants
Good morning. Donald Trump has declared the strait of Hormuz will be “completely open” from Friday. “The deal’s all signed. And the strait is already partially opened,” the US president said as he arrived at the G7 summit in France.
“I think a lot of great things are going to happen in the Middle East. And very importantly, the oil is plummeting down and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today,” Trump said. “The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. They fully agreed to that with strong policing powers, and they won’t have a nuclear weapon, which is what it was all about.”
The comments will be seen as optimistic and premature – no peace deal has been signed, no nuclear agreement has been agreed and the strait of Hormuz, which was open before Trump’s war on Iran, has now been heavily mined.
Continued Israeli breaches of the ceasefire in Lebanon and Iran’s claims about its right to charge fees in the crucial Hormuz waterway revealed some of the agreement’s loose ends. The memorandum of understanding is due to be formally signed at a ceremony in Geneva on Friday, and technical discussions led by the US vice-president, JD Vance, will begin later this week.
What is the reaction in Israel? Analysts have pointed out that none of Benjamin Netanyahu’s promises at the beginning of the war – regime change in Tehran and the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme – have been fulfilled. The Israeli prime minister did not denounce the deal, but distanced himself from the negotiations and said Israel would not leave the territory it was occupying in Lebanon.
What else is on the agenda at the G7 summit? The G7 will seek to shore up waning US support for Ukraine, with the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, vowing to “choke off” Russian revenue with further sanctions and provide hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of energy support for Ukraine.
Eight people are presumed dead after a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff at an air force base in California’s Mojave desert. Those onboard were military personnel, government employees and civilian contractors, according to Col James Hayes, the deputy commander at Edwards air force base. He said officials did not plan to release the names of those who died in the crash until next of kin had been notified.
What do experts say may have caused the crash? Jeff Guzzetti, an aviation safety expert, suspected a flight-control malfunction caused the crash, given how quickly the plane went down after takeoff. He noted that testing new equipment on a 70-year-old aircraft inherently heightened risks. “I think it was definitely a controllability issue,” he said.
Gavin Newsom claimed on Monday that Donald Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The California governor said federal agents had knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees in recent days as part of an effort to find evidence of a crime.
A source familiar with the matter told the Guardian that the administration had been conducting several investigations of the California governor for about a year, including one regarding his wife and her taxes, and one related to his former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who recently pleaded guilty to fraud. The justice department and the FBI declined to comment.
What did Newsom say? “Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he’s coming after me because I am considering running for president. Because he hates that I have consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit.”
The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is under fire for sending a “bullying” letter to a scientific journal that removed a “flawed” vaccine study.
Florida is suing TikTok after the state’s attorney general accused the company of violating a state law that limits social media access for teens.
Ministers in the UK have been lobbying the Trump administration in an effort to avoid a backlash after the country announced a social media ban for under-16s that affects US tech companies.
The International African American Museum in South Carolina is to furlough all its staff for 20 days over a period of six months, citing “a shift in the political and funding environment”.
Starbucks Korea will simultaneously close all its stores for a mandatory history lesson, after a disastrous promotion evoked memories of a pro-democracy massacre.
Half of the world’s children are exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards threatening their health, education and survival, according to a Unicef report. “The lives of children continue to be upended by the impact of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods,” said the UN agency’s executive director, Catherine Russell. “Half of the world’s children are now living with at least three overlapping climate threats shaping their daily lives.”
Tim Haines, co-creator of the TV series Walking with Dinosaurs in the 1990s, worked with more than 300 scientists to breathe life into the creatures seen in Surviving Earth, a series he says shows that “no matter what the Earth has tried to do, life has always managed to crawl through it and come out the other side stronger”. The prehistoric mastodon in the room is that given the climate crisis, it is easy to imagine we are in the midst of an imminent extinction event as well.
The day began peacefully in Soweto. Student leaders led their fellow students into the streets of the South African township and began to march toward Orlando stadium in a protest against the government’s imposition of the white-minority language Afrikaans as the medium of instruction. By the end of the day, dozens would be dead.
Once a year, Dutch kids, parents and teachers take part in a walking festival, heading out for four nights in a single week to explore their neighbourhoods, exercise and make friends. It’s a tradition that seems to be genuinely transformative
The rise of AI and digitisation could be a turning point in the “race against extinction” faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a major report from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, UK.
A far-right, white supremacist ideology known as “remigration” aims to make life so punishing for immigrants that they leave the US. It’s also the policy of the Trump administration. In this podcast, Carter Sherman speaks with the journalist and author Paola Ramos about the immigrants who have made the difficult decision to leave the US, and how their departure could spell the death of the American dream.
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