July 1, 2026 - Daily News Digest
On this day in 1963, the US Post Office Department debuted the ZIP code.
QotD: “Problems persist for both motorists and businesses,” and “there are still queues at petrol stations, and finding the right grade of petrol isn’t always easy,” Russian President Putin said in a rare admission.
US/IRAN/MIL – US and Iran enter technical talks to secure peace deal, shipping restarts.
The U.S. and Iran held indirect technical talks in Doha on Wednesday as they seek to agree on the flow of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and secure a lasting ceasefire, a source with direct knowledge of the talks and an Iranian official said.
The talks are based on a 14-point interim accord signed last month that was meant to halt the war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in February and reopen the strait, while setting up 60 days of negotiations for a permanent peace deal.
However, the U.S. and Iran have sparred publicly over the meaning of the interim pact, leading to tit-for-tat military strikes over the past week and leaving little sign of progress on more complex issues, including on Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran is determined to win international recognition of its control over the strait and its ability to levy fees on ships entering or leaving the Gulf, even if it has to do so by force, according to two senior Iranian sources.
Traffic has partially resumed through the waterway, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade before the war.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said removing Iran's highly enriched uranium is a top priority, told reporters on Wednesday that "the denuclearization of Iran is moving along well", without giving details.
UKR/RUS/ENERGY – Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries plunge Russia into a summer fuel crisis.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-fuel-crisis-gas-ec7e67f94ead8bf3ba064c785c2a8871
It drew a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged “problems persist for both motorists and businesses,” and “there are still queues at petrol stations, and finding the right grade of petrol isn’t always easy.”
He insisted the shortages are “not critical” and “temporary.”
But that appeared to do little to reassure at least one motorist in Moscow, the wealthy capital typically better-insulated from economic shocks than the rest of the country.
“I think the situation is not very good,” the motorist waiting in line told The Associated Press on Monday, the day after Putin’s televised remarks.
“They say one thing on television, and in reality it’s another. ... People are queueing everywhere,” he added, declining to give his full name out of safety concerns.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday echoed that sentiment, writing on Telegram that “Putin can go on and on, claiming on TV that he supposedly has everything under control,” but Russians can see that the war “has reached the point where even an oil state -- a gas station, as Russia used to be called -- is now facing gas shortages.”
An AP count shows over 50 reported attacks by Ukraine on oil refineries, depots, terminals and other energy infrastructure in Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula since March. Often, the same facility was hit more than once -– such as the refinery in the Black Sea town of Tuapse that was struck four times.
MORE/MONACO – Who is Ukrainian oligarch Vadym Yermolaiev, the suspected target of the Monaco bombing?
Just before 9pm, a powerful explosion ripped through the ground floor of a block of flats, wounding three people including a 13-year-old child. For now, local authorities are treating the incident as an “attempted murder”, Thibault said, stressing that no suspect had yet been found.
Monegasque authorities have refused to identify the victims of the attack, revealing only that they lived on the building’s ground floor and had arrived in the micro-state in 2021.
But information obtained by French news station BFMTV and confirmed to AFP by a source close to the investigation suggests that one of the three people was Vadym Yermolaiev, a wealthy oligarch from Ukraine.
“He is a very typical oligarch from the 1990s,” he said. “He was probably in the top five oligarchs in the Dnipro region – which is one of the richest regions.”
Yermolaiev was targeted with Ukrainian sanctions in 2023 for having continued his business dealings in Crimea – annexed by Russia in 2014 – even after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The multi-millionaire first made a name for himself as “Mr Shopping Mall” in the thriving city of Dnipro in Ukraine’s south-east, inaugurating what was at the time the country’s largest shopping complex – Most-City – in 2006.
Even before he found himself on a list of sanctioned businessmen, Yermolaiev had left the country. In 2019, he renounced his Ukrainian nationality in favour of Cypriot citizenship.
SPAIN/MOTHER NATURE – Spain heat wave kills over 1,000 in second-hottest June ever.
https://www.dw.com/en/europe-heat-wave-100-dead-spain/a-77781523
More than 1,000 people died from heat-related causes during the recent heat wave in Spain, as the country recorded its hottest first half of the year on record, officials said on Wednesday.
Spain's Carlos III Health Institute said in a report that at least 1,028 heat-related deaths were reported during the heat wave last month.
This number was more than double the 407 recorded in June 2025. This was also the most deaths attributed to heat in June since 2015.
On June 23, at the peak of the heat wave, 35.7 million people, which made up roughly 73% of Spain's population, were exposed to health risks
Spain's national weather agency Aemet said in a post on X that last month was the country's second-hottest June on record, with temperatures averaging 3.2 degree Celsius above normal.
"The first half of 2026 becomes the warmest for the whole of Spain since records began, with a temperature 1.6 degrees Celsius above normal," Aemet posted.
MEXICO/WORLD CUP/SEC – Three people die in Mexico World Cup celebrations as fans crowd streets.
Three people died from suffocation as thousands of fans crowded Mexico City streets during World Cup celebrations, the capital's health secretariat said in the early hours of Wednesday.
The deaths occurred near the Angel of Independence landmark, where thousands of soccer fans had gathered to celebrate Mexico's 2-0 victory over Ecuador in the round of 32.
Emergency teams tended to three unconscious people at different locations around Paseo de la Reforma, authorities said. The capital's most emblematic boulevard and the streets around it had been closed to traffic and set up for the soccer celebrations.
"After receiving advanced resuscitation efforts, the deaths of a 44-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman from suffocation have been confirmed," the health authority initially said on social media.
The third fatality was a 48-year-old woman who was treated on a nearby street after suffering asphyxiation and died after being taken to hospital, the secretariat added in a later post.
SOUTH AFRICA/PROTESTS/MIGRATION – Over 900 arrested during South African anti-migrant protests.
South African police arrested more than 900 people during nationwide anti-migrant protests on Tuesday that were mostly peaceful but at times turned violent, with shops looted, police said on Wednesday.
Of 120 marches, 108 were peaceful while 12 required police intervention, deputy national police commissioner Tebello Mosikili told a press conference, adding reasons for the arrests ranged from immigration violations to public violence, harbouring undocumented migrants and robbery.
Police said in a separate statement that one person was shot dead late on Tuesday in Johannesburg's Alexandra township, where residents were looting informal cornershops known as spaza shops owned by foreign nationals.
Police reinforcements were deployed across five of the country's nine provinces overnight, while soldiers were sent to Johannesburg's inner-city Hillbrow neighbourhood, where two people were injured in a shooting.
CHINA/MYANMAR – Myanmar set to restart contentious $3.6 bn dam project backed by China.
Myanmar's new government aims to complete within roughly eight years a contentious $3.6 billion dam project at Myitsone in northern Kachin state, said two sources with knowledge of comments by Khet Htein Nan, who leads the state administration.
The comments came after junta chief turned president Min Aung Hlaing returned from a visit last month to China, which has long sought to build the massive hydropower project in the northermost province of the war-torn country.
"It will begin shortly," Htet Paing Htoo, a member of the Kachin State parliament, told Reuters regarding construction work suspended in 2011 after rare public outrage over a hydropower project that would have been Myanmar's largest.
"An official announcement will be released. The president himself has already stated that it will be restarted."
The halt angered China, but resentment at its deep influence in Myanmar and environmental concerns about flooding an area roughly the size of Singapore prevailed over plans to export 90% of the 6 gigawatts of generated power to the giant neighbour.
ROME/VATICAN – Defying Pope Leo XIV, traditionalists go ahead with bishop consecrations in Switzerland.
https://apnews.com/article/vatican-traditionalist-pope-latin-975a7dd408e151310f5e515030cd6c97
A group of traditionalist Catholics directly defied Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday by consecrating four bishops without his consent, dismissing the resulting excommunications and saying the break with the church was necessary to defend the Catholic faith.
The Society of St. Pius X, which opposes modernizing reforms in the Catholic Church, went ahead with the five-hour ceremony at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, despite a last-ditch appeal by Leo to call it off. The American pope warned in a letter Tuesday that consecrating bishops without his approval amounted to a “sin of extreme gravity” that will actually harm their faithful.
The consecrations amounted to a crisis for Leo, who has prioritized church unity and healing tensions with traditionalists that worsened during the Pope Francis pontificate.
The SSPX, as the society is known, is a threat to the Holy See because it represents a parallel, ultra-Catholic faith. It now has six bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians training in five seminaries, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.
US/EXEC – Trump made over $1.4 bn in 2025, led by crypto ventures.
https://www.dw.com/en/us-trump-earned-over-14-billion-in-2025-led-by-crypto-ventures/a-77778642
The filings with the US Office of Government Ethics showed Trump-related ventures made:
$800 million from crypto platform World Liberty Financial received by Trump's companies
This included more than $520 million from token sales and over $250 million from selling interests in the business
$635 million from the sale of his Trump meme coins
$80 million from legal settlements with media companies
$52 million from licensing his name to overseas property developments, and
over $500 million in revenue from golf courses and resorts
World Liberty Financial is a crypto venture co-founded by Trump and his sons, and the president splits the earnings with his family members.
US/AI/TECH – US lifts restrictions on Anthropic’s advanced AI models.
https://www.dw.com/en/anthropic-claude-fable-mythos-us-lifts-restrictions-on-ai-models/a-77779879
The United States has lifted export restrictions on Anthropic's most advanced AI models, the company said late on Tuesday, after Washington suspended access over national security concerns about three weeks ago.
"We've received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5," Anthropic posted on X.
"Claude Fable 5 will be available again globally tomorrow," the company said.
The US government had ordered Anthropic on June 12 to suspend access to the advanced models for foreign nationals, including Anthropic employees after identifying potential vulnerabilities that could allow misuse of the technology.
Last week, authorities allowed a small group of American cybersecurity firms access to Mythos 5.
In a letter seen by Reuters, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the restrictions were lifted after Anthropic agreed to:
proactively detect and address security risks;
cooperate with the US government on protocols for Mythos, Fable and future models and;
report any malicious activity to the US government.
Lutnick added the department could reimpose restrictions if circumstances change or the company fails to meet its commitments.
Comments (1)
Seems like making peace is harder than fighting a war. Bad loosers....😇