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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:
IRAN WAR – CEASEFIRE
President Trump said yesterday that Iran would “pay the price” for stalled peace negotiations. “We’ll see what happens, but we hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them again hard today,” Trump said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters during a visit to U.S. Central Command’s headquarters that “CENTCOM will be busy tonight because we are going to hit Iran hard.” Hegseth added, “[Iran is] going to have tap, tap, tap bombs dropping on key facilities… It is not to restart the war but to set the terms for a deal.” Barak Ravid reports for Axios; AP News reports.
The United States and Iran traded a new round of attacks early this morning. The latest U.S. attack began shortly after midnight in Tehran, according to U.S. Central Command. Explosions were heard in Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, Minab, and Sirik, Iranian news outlets reported. Iran’s foreign ministry said today that the latest round of U.S. strikes had “effectively rendered the ceasefire of April 8, 2026, meaningless.” Iran said it had responded with attacks on targets at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, adding that the Strait of Hormuz was now closed to any type of vessel. Shirin Hakim, Eric Schmitt, Qasim Nauman, and Lara Jakes report for the New York Times.
An Indian official said a U.S. attack yesterday on an oil tanker allegedly trying to violate Washington’s blockade on Iranian ports killed three Indian mariners. This is the second vessel with an Indian crew that has come under attack from the United States this week. Jon Gambrell, Michelle L. Price, and Konstantin Toropin report for AP News; Cherylann Mollan reports for BBC News.
Efforts to reach an interim deal to end hostilities between Iran and the United States have intensified, three Iranian sources and a European source told Reuters today. The sources said Tehran and Washington were still exchanging messages over details of a memorandum of understanding amid the current strikes. The Iranian sources said a political understanding had been reached, but issues such as the release of Iranian funds had yet to be resolved. “Iran wants $6 billion to $12 billion of its frozen funds to be released to Tehran, while Washington wants to release funds in stages for humanitarian goods and rejects returning funds to Iran outright,” said one of the Iranian sources. Parisa Hafezi and John Irish report.
U.S. strikes early Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking-water facility on Iran’s southern coast, according to an analysis by the New York Times. Iranian state media reported that the United States had hit water storage buildings, and a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. It is unclear if Washington intentionally struck the water facilities or knew what was in the buildings. Christopher Koettle and Christiaan Triebert report; Leo Sands, Sanam Mahoozi, and James McManagan report for the New York Times.
IRAN WAR – LEBANON
Israeli air strikes yesterday killed at least 17 people in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. David Gritten reports for BBC News.
IRAN WAR – OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors yesterday passed a U.S.-backed resolution telling Iran to declare its remaining enriched uranium stocks and to let inspectors verify them. The resolution text submitted by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany was passed with 21 votes in favour, three against, and 10 abstentions, diplomats at the closed-door meeting said. Francois Murphy reports for Reuters.
The U.S. Treasury Department yesterday announced it was imposing sanctions on 11 people and entities, including nine based in China and Hong Kong, for supporting weapons procurement by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian military. Reuters reports.
WEST BANK VIOLENCE
Amnesty International yesterday accused Israel of carrying out a campaign of “ethic cleansing” of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank with the intention to annex the Palestinian territory, according to a new report. “These abuses are not the result of a few ‘bad apples.’ Settler violence is a core component of a state-sanctioned campaign of ethnic cleansing,” said Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty. Julia Frankel reports for AP News.
Israeli settlers on Tuesday blocked Palestinians from putting out a fire near a Christian village in the occupied West Bank, a local priest and Palestinian civil defense firefighter said. Father Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of Taybeh, said settlers had shot at people trying to take a water tanker to the site to fight the fire. The Israeli military also temporarily stopped firefighters reaching the blaze while they arranged security coordination, a Palestinian Authority Civil Defence spokesperson said. The firefighters were eventually able to reach the fire and put it out. Ali Sawafta reports for Reuters.
OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS
The number of people displaced worldwide by conflict and persecution fell in 2025 for the first time in a decade, according to a report by UNHCR published today. Last year, 5.4 million people fled their homes, bringing the total number of refugees or people in refugee-like situations worldwide to 41.6 million, including 6 million Palestinian refugees, UNHCR said. At the same time, around 14.7 million refugees and internally displaced people returned home, a 50% increase on the previous year and the second-highest figure recorded since 1965, the agency found. Most returns were to six countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Myanmar. Olivia Le Poidevin reports for Reuters.
Taliban police killed at least one person on Tuesday during a protest in western Afghanistan against the arrest of women for allegedly violating dress code regulations, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said yesterday. The U.N. mission said it had “confirmed that at least one person, a boy, was killed by gunfire, while several others suffered injuries, including from being beaten with sticks.” It said it was also verifying reports of a second fatality. Elena Becatoros reports for AP News.
TECH DEVELOPMENTS
OpenAI has banned China-linked accounts that use ChatGPT to draft social media influence campaigns targeting U.S. debates over tariffs and AI data centers, the company said yesterday. OpenAI said it had uncovered two operations that used ChatGPT to generate posts and political cartoons about U.S. tech policy. “This was not a case of an influence operation creating a debate,” Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI’s intelligence and investigations team, told reporters. “The debate existed already. This was an influence operation from China trying to interfere in it.” Sam Sabin reports for Axios.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei yesterday backed a testing regime for frontier AI models that would allow governments to block or deter deployment if a third-party auditor deems it too risky for public release, according to a blog post. Owen Dahlkamp reports for POLITICO.
U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A meeting between New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Colombian President Gustavo Petro this week was called off following a meeting between U.S. and Colombian officials in Bogotá in which State Department officials made it clear that such a meeting was unacceptable, two sources said. Colombian officials interpreted this as a threat that Petro would be arrested if he proceeded to travel to the United States, the sources added. A State Department official told the Washington Post that the visit would violate Petro’s visa restrictions. John Hudson reports.
Speaking during a visit to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Hegseth yesterday warned the Cuban government against seeking weapons that could strike the naval base or the U.S. mainland, saying it would invite confrontation that Cuba could not withstand. Phil Stewart reports for Reuters.
U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
A former CIA officer, David J. Rush, who is under FBI investigation after authorities found $40 million in gold bars at his home, previously worked on a highly classified China intelligence program with Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen A. Feinberg, according to current and former officials. Feinberg did not know about the criminal investigation into Rush when he reached out to a senior CIA official to push for Rush to have a greater role in the program, the officials added. Maark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes report for the New York Times.
The Justice Department has indicted eight pro-Palestinian activists who it says were responsible for orchestrating a harassment campaign against top University of Michigan officials, the Jewish Federation of Detroit, and others in an effort to push the university to divest from Israel. Katie Mettler and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel report for the Washington Post.
House Republicans will move forward today with an effort to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until July. House Speaker Mike Johson (R-LA) fast-tracked the measure, meaning it will need two-thirds majority support for passage. It is likely to fail as Democrats said they would oppose any renewal while Bill Pulte serves as acting Director of National Intelligence. Caitlin Yilek reports for CBS News.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS
According to two officials, Bill Pulte told outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday that her tenure would end immediately. However, after speaking with Trump, Gabbard’s departure date was set for June 19 – earlier than her originally planned June 30 exit, but not effective that day. Marc Caputo reports for Axios.
The FBI has seized more than a dozen websites allegedly used by overseas operatives linked to the Chinese government to recruit current and former U.S. officials with security clearances, offering paid “consulting” and analyst jobs while seeking sensitive or potentially classified information. Holmes Lybrand reports for CNN.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION
A federal judge in Washington yesterday declined to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund from being set up and disbursing payments. The judge said the lawsuit appeared to be moot in light of statements by administration officials that the fund is not proceeding. A federal judge overseeing a separate lawsuit in Virginia has already temporarily blocked the administration from establishing the fund. Josh Gerstein reports for POLITICO.
19 Democratic states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit yesterday claiming federal agencies have flouted the law by hastily implementing Trump’s executive order that seeks to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives by federal contractors. The lawsuit claims that more than two dozen federal agencies are adding terms to federal contracts barring “any racially discriminatory DEI activities” without notice or explaining what is prohibited. Daniel Wiessner reports for Reuters.
Did you miss this? Stay up-to-date with our Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions.
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