News Desk

Brent crude edges up as tit-for-tat strikes imperial return to normality in key waterway.

Oil prices have climbed following the latest flare-up in hostilities between the United States and Iran.

Brent crude, the primary international benchmark, rose about 0.9 percent on Monday after tit-for-tat US and Iranian strikes over the weekend renewed doubts about a return to normal shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent futures for August delivery stood at $73.21 a barrel as of 03:30 GMT, 127 cents higher than the day before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28.

“Brent’s partial rebound this morning reflects a market that had perhaps run too quickly on ceasefire optimism,” Fabien Yip, a market analyst at IG in Sydney, Australia, told Al Jazeera.

“Oil had nearly unwound its entire war premium, despite an MoU with no enforcement details and ongoing strikes. Thursday’s attack on a commercial vessel was a reality check, and this weekend’s tit-for-tat exchanges have compounded that,” Yip said.

Asian stock markets were mixed on Monday morning, with losses in Tokyo and Seoul and gains in Hong Kong and Taipei.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 was 0.7 percent lower, while South Korea’s Kospi was down 1.9 percent.

Japanese and Korean stocks tied to the AI boom saw some of the biggest losses amid heated debate about whether tech firms’ massive investments in the emerging technology will pay off.

Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group fell about 5 percent, while Advantest Corporation, a key maker of semiconductor testing equipment, slumped 3.7 percent.

South Korean memory chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped about 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index and Taiwan’s Taiex both rose, gaining 2.2 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively.

“Quarter-end profit-taking is adding to the selling pressure, with investors locking in gains from what has been a remarkable run. The Kospi is up roughly 95 percent this year, and the Nikkei up 37 percent,” IG’s Yip said.

“The underlying concern, however, is whether the AI boom can continue to translate into sustained earnings growth, or whether margin pressure is arriving sooner than the market anticipated.”

US Central Command announced strikes against Iran on Friday and Saturday, citing Iranian attacks on two commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, which in peacetime serves as a conduit for about one-fifth of the global trade in oil and liquified natural gas.

Iran responded to the strikes by launching a series of missiles and drones targeting US military assets in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Washington and Tehran agreed to cease their attacks and renew their negotiations on ending the war, multiple media outlets reported late on Sunday, citing unnamed US officials.

Axios, citing an unnamed senior US official, reported that the sides would hold talks in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.

Iran has yet to comment on the reported agreement to cease hostilities or the planned talks.

US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a memorandum of understanding to end the war on June 17, but the agreement has repeatedly come under strain due to flare-ups in hostilities and disagreements about the meaning of the text.

Four days after twin quakes left 1,450 dead and nearly 69,000 missing in Venezuela, residents and volunteers say they feel abandoned by the government as they race to save lives from the rubble.

REALITY TV star Maura Higgins has everyone asking “Who’s that curl?” as she shows off her latest hairdo.

The Love Island star switched her usual sleek locks for something with a little more volume.

Maura, 35, teamed her new look with a black dress slashed to the waist, black heels and big shades.

She was in the South of France for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The event is the world’s largest for the advertising and marketing industry.

Maura posted the pics on Instagram.

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She made light of her love for reinventing her image, wrote: “I’ve been about 47 different people this year.”

Since leaving the Love Island villa in 2019, Irish Maura has appeared on some of the biggest shows in the world.

She was on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2024.

Maura later hosted Love Island USA: Aftersun.

Earlier this year she was on The Traitors US — where she was a Faithful and finished runner-up.

In September she will be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars — America’s version of Strictly.

Australian national Simon Peter Carman has been charged with murder after the body of 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla was found inside a suitcase. CCTV footage appears to show the pair entering a hotel together and Carman leaving hours later with only a suitcase.

Canada beat South Africa 1-0 thanks to a stoppage-time strike by Stephen Eustaquio from distance to reach the World Cup last ​16 for the first time in their history.

We made it. With just days left in Phase I voting, this week marks the last issue of The Envelope, and the last edition of this letter from the editor, until we return with a crop of newly minted Emmy nominees in August.

Until then, may you have a summer as magical as a German soccer fan’s road trip through the American South — and enjoy reading the below highlights from our coverage.

Cover story: ‘Industry’

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

How do “Industry” stars Myha’la and Marisa Abela want the series to end? Let’s just say they are as unsentimental about their characters as series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay.

“I want there to be a huge statue of Harper Stern in front of J.P. Morgan,” Myha’la says of her hard-charging trader. “And a bird s— on her arm.”

“In her mouth,” interjects Abela, who plays Harper’s No. 1 frenemy Yasmin Kara-Hanani.

After the laughter ringing through the room subsides, though, Abela does allow for a moment of reverence — for the HBO drama if not for the disreputable people who populate it. “I don’t know if I need Yasmin to be happy at the end of it,” the actor says, reflecting on her character’s emergence as a Ghislaine Maxwell type in the Season 4 finale. “I know I want it to feel worthy of everything that has come before… What I love about the show is that [the writers] don’t often backtrack. You commit to something and then you have to live with the f— fallout. Which is savage.”

Read more of our conversation in this week’s cover story.

Writers Roundtable

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Though he joined The Envelope’s 2026 Emmy Writers Roundtable to discuss the return of another beloved comedy, “The Comeback,” we couldn’t resist asking Michael Patrick King about the intense fan reactions to his “Sex and the City” revival “And Just Like That…”

“What happened was, it was really well made, but it wasn’t their Carrie,” he said. “Even though you stand behind it, you go, ‘Wow, that’s a surprise. I thought that they would be interested in 57-year-old women who still hadn’t figured everything out. And instead they wanted them to be 35 and still allowed to be lost.’”

For more juicy tidbits from the minds of of TV’s top writers, be sure to check out the full conversation, which also included Megan Gallagher (“All Her Fault”), Jonathan Glatzer (“The Audacity”), Andrew Guest (“Wonder Man”), Bruce Miller (“The Testaments”) and Sonja Warfield (“The Gilded Age”).

How Connor Hines won over Ryan Murphy

Writer Connor Hines, who translated the real-life relationship between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette into FX’s major hit “Love Story.”

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

While our On Writing series of screenwriter essays are always revealing — about the inspiration behind a series, the process of adaptation or the making of a major plot turn, to name just a few — I don’t remember one as candid about the art of the pitch as Connor Hines’. In this week’s issue, the writer behind “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” explains how he prepared to present his vision for the new anthology’s first season to one of TV’s most powerful producers, Ryan Murphy. As it turns out, landing the meeting is not the (only) hard part.

“I spent roughly three months in the trenches with [producers] Brad [Simpson] and Nina [Jacobson], deepening and refining my presentation [to Murphy] — one that I’d recite in the shower, on runs, at Trader Joe’s, while I drove,” Hines writes. “It was a crash course in storytelling, producing, and understanding the alchemy that propelled so many of Ryan’s shows into the zeitgeist.”

More stories from our June 16 issue

June 28 (UPI) — Ukrainian long-range weapons struck two major Russian oil refineries on Sunday as President Vladimir Putin promised to ramp up security against Kyiv’s attacks in an address to United Russia party members.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in a social media post that the Slavyansk oil refinery in the Krasnodar region and another facility in the Yaroslavl region were hit, accompanying those claims were video showing buildings ablaze with thick smoke pouring into the sky.

The Slavyansk refinery is about 186 miles from the front lines of the Russian invasion in eastern Ukraine, while the Yaroslavl facility significantly farther away, at approximately at 434 miles.

Zelensky said Ukrainian forces celebrated the nation’s Constitution Day with the attacks, which continued Kyiv’s recent ramping up of its strikes on Russian infrastructure located far behind the front lines through the use of sophisticated long-range weaponry.

“We continue our operations that weaken Russia’s ability to wage this war,” Zelensky said. “Each of our long-range sanctions means fewer resources serving Russia’s war machine, and another step toward peace.”

Sunday’s strikes appeared to be a continuation of Zelensky’s newly announced 40-day “influence campaign” of using intermediate- and long-range weapons against Russia’s oil infrastructure in a bid to bring Putin to the negotiating table.

The Russian-installed occupation authorities in the Crimean Peninsula announced a regional state of emergency on Friday amid gas shortages shortly after the initiation of campaign.

In Moscow, meanwhile, Putin on Sunday obliquely admitted Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign was affecting Russians’ lives, but then quickly dismissed those concerns.

In a speech to the 23rd congress of his United Russia Party, Putin vowed to improve security and defenses against Ukrainian attacks.

“The congress of United Russia, our leading political party, is taking place at a difficult time — it would be safe to say that it is a pivotal moment for our country and a period of radical and systemic transformation of the entire world,” the president said, while pointing the finger at “Western elites.”

“Once again, Russia is confidently repelling any attempts to deter our progress. We have sufficient resources, means, and political will, and nobody should doubt that,” he declared.

Putin did not mention the wide-scale gasoline shortages being felt around the country but vowed to ensure the security of Russia.

Strikes come a day after fighters armed with guns and explosives killed three soldiers in Karachi.

Pakistan’s security forces have carried out a ground operation and air strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in response to deadly attacks, killing 29 fighters, officials have said.

In a post on social media, Pakistani Minister of Information Attaullah Tarar said the operation was launched in response to multiple attacks by armed groups across the country.

“Three targets in Paktia, Paktika and Kunar were destroyed during precision strikes,” Tarar said on X, referring to three eastern Afghanistan provinces.

There was no immediate response from Afghanistan.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks targeting police and security forces in recent years.

Authorities have blamed the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, and allied armed groups for most of the violence.

It comes a day after fighters armed with guns and explosives targeted the regional headquarters of the paramilitary Rangers in the southern port city of Karachi, killing three soldiers.

Security forces killed three attackers and arrested another assailant, whom the military identified as an Afghan national in wounded condition.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Pakistan Taliban, claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack in a statement on Saturday night.

Tarar said Pakistan’s latest operation along the Afghan border targeted hideouts and safe havens of the Pakistan Taliban.

The Pakistan Taliban are a separate armed group from the Afghan Taliban, although the two are allies.

The Afghan Taliban returned to power in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021.

The latest operations are likely to further strain the already tense relations between Islamabad and Kabul.

Sunday’s cross-border strikes and ground operation came less than three weeks after Pakistan’s military launched air strikes on what it said were fighter group hideouts in Afghanistan.

They ended about a month of relative calm following what Islamabad had described as an “open war” between the neighbouring countries, despite international efforts to broker a lasting peace.

The escalation follows months of tit-for-tat military action between the countries.

Hundreds of people have been killed in cross-border fighting since February, when Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes after Pakistan carried out air strikes inside Afghan territory.

Multiple rounds of internationally mediated peace talks have failed to secure a lasting ceasefire.

China also hosted the two sides in April, and Beijing later said that Pakistan and Afghanistan had agreed not to escalate their conflict and to explore a solution.

Since last year, Pakistan has carried out multiple strikes along the border and inside Afghanistan, targeting alleged hideouts of the Pakistan Taliban and other armed groups.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harbouring fighters who carry out deadly attacks inside Pakistan, especially the Pakistan Taliban.

Kabul denies the accusations.

TAYLOR Swift is used to being greeted by deafening cheers from thousands of adoring fans.

So the pop superstar was in for a surprise when she was met with a chorus of boos during a recent appearance.

The 36-year-old appeared on the big screen with a pre-recorded video message paying tribute to country music legend Alan Jackson at his farewell concert in Nashville.

But while many in the crowd cheered, others loudly booed as Taylor thanked the singer for his decades-long career.

In the message, she said: “Hey Alan, it’s Taylor. I just want to say thank you for your decades of unbelievable songwriting and your performances, and the ways that you’ve given so much to us, the fans.”

The mixed reaction was clearly audible as her message played.

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Alan, who has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, is best known for hits including Chattahoochee, Livin’ on Love, Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning), It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere and Remember When.

Stars including Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, Lainey Wilson and Lee Ann Womack performed during the emotional farewell show.

Video tributes also poured in from Keith Urban, Zac Brown, Kenny Chesney and NASCAR legends Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Alan is retiring after a 15-year battle with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a hereditary neurological condition that damages the nerves connecting the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body.

Taylor’s appearance came as rumours continued to swirl over her wedding to fiancé Travis Kelce, with the superstar believed to be tying the knot in New York on July 3.

Reports have claimed guests were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements when they received their save-the-date invitations, with the ceremony expected to take place at a huge venue such as an arena or museum.

From the prime minister to sport celebrities and fans on social media, Canadians have revelled in their team’s win.

Canada have enjoyed a historic run at the FIFA World Cup 2026, and it will continue thanks to Stephen Eustaquio’s 92nd-minute goal against South Africa, which sent the cohosts into the global tournament’s round of 16 for the first time.

The 29-year-old midfielder’s strike on Sunday rewrote Canadian football history, capping off a narrative that Jesse Marsch has been scripting since taking the reins two years ago.

“Think about how we talked about sticking to the plan, sticking to who we want to be, playing aggressive, accessing the quality, you guys showing your character,” an impassioned Marsch told his team as they circled around him on the pitch following their victory.

“You guys are Canadian heroes! Canadian heroes for the future children of this country, who play this sport. This sport has a big future because of you guys.

“You should be so proud of who you are. You should be so proud of this game. You went after it, moment after moment.”

The same words were echoed by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who had barely exited his flight and watched the final minutes of the game on his phone.

“What a game. What a team. What a country,” Carney wrote on social media.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, where Eustaquio was born and raised before his family moved to Portugal, congratulated the team for advancing to the next round, as did Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre.

Mayor of Vancouver, Ken Sim, wrote to the team, saying: “You wore your hearts on your sleeves, gave everything on the field, and gave all of us a memory we’ll never forget.”

Social media was flooded with footage of Canada fans turning watch parties and fan festivals into a sea of red. Even Los Angeles Stadium, where Canada came down the West Coast to play South Africa, was thronged with fans supporting the World Cup cohosts.

Football enthusiasts and analysts on social media said the victory felt surreal for Canada, where sport like ice hockey, basketball and baseball enjoy far more popularity than football.

Fellow Canadian athletes joined in the social media celebrations. Multiple Olympic champion swimmer Summer McIntosh, tennis star Felix Auger-Aliassime, and Olympic champion runner Andre de Grasse were some of Canada’s top athletes to back the men’s football team after their win.

Famed Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield also congratulated the team after wishing them well earlier on Sunday.

FC Bayern congratulated Alphonso Davies for returning to international duty after he sustained a hamstring injury with them in May, during the UEFA Champions League semifinal. The game saw a noticeable shift in pace and tactic when Davies was subbed in on the 74th minute.

From the opponent’s side, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa congratulated Canada for winning “with Bafana Bafana breathing down your necks”.

Former German footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger, however, who was called out by Ivory Coast manager Emerse Fae for racist undertones in his remarks on the African team, seemed unfazed by Canada’s historic win.

“Overall, not a convincing performance, but thanks to the clearer chances, progressing is fine. Alphonso Davies brought fresh wind after coming on as a substitute,” he wrote on social media.

“However, against the Netherlands or Morocco, the team will have to improve significantly.”

In May 2026, just hours before President Donald Trump met President Xi Jinping, OpenAI’s Vice President of Global Affairs Chris Lehane floated the idea of a US-led global governance body for artificial intelligence that would include China as a member. The model, according to media reports, was compared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a familiar reference for managing strategic technologies with global consequences.

One month later, at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, a different tone emerged. Several influential AI executives joined leaders from advanced economies to discuss AI governance, online safety, and global security. According to Axios, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis leaned towards a more selective framework among democratic countries, while OpenAI’s Sam Altman used broader language, calling for an international forum to develop shared testing standards and risk assessments.

These two moments reveal something important: the meaning of “global AI governance” remains unsettled. In one setting, global means including China for legitimacy. In another, it can mean a trusted coalition designed to manage access, capability, and strategic risk. AI governance is becoming part of the architecture of global power.

Three Voices, Different Emphases

Their presence at the G7 showed how quickly AI firms have moved from building systems to helping shape the politics around them. The leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Mistral, Cohere, and other firms were not simply observers of geopolitics. They were part of the conversation about how technological power should be governed.

Their positions were not identical. Amodei reportedly urged democratic countries to coordinate more closely so that AI governance would not fragment. Hassabis stressed the strategic importance of frontier capability. Altman, by contrast, used more institutionally neutral language, suggesting that advanced AI should not be shaped only by the companies building the most capable systems.

Even among frontier AI developers, there is no settled imagination of global governance. Should it include all major AI powers, including strategic rivals? Should it be built around trusted coalitions? Should it prioritize safety, democratic values, geopolitical advantage, or public legitimacy?

The question became more complicated because the G7 discussions came shortly after the US government imposed export controls that forced Anthropic to suspend foreign access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. Reuters reported that the order required Anthropic to block access to the models for foreign nationals, leading the company to disable them more broadly to ensure compliance. The episode showed how frontier AI governance can move from abstract principles to abrupt restrictions. Even among democratic allies, technological solidarity has limits. When AI becomes strategic infrastructure, every country begins to think about its own room for maneuver.

The Asymmetry of “Global”

The deeper issue lies in who has the power to define the word “global” in the first place. In May, global governance could mean a US-led institution that includes China. In June, it could mean coordination among democracies to manage frontier capability and strategic access. The definition changed because the political room changed.

This reveals a double asymmetry. The first is technical: only a small number of firms can define what counts as a frontier model, how its capabilities should be tested, and who should be allowed to access it. The second is narrative: the same ecosystem also helps frame the language through which the world discusses governance.

For countries outside the frontier AI circle, they may be invited to conversations but not always to the stage where categories, thresholds, and governance priorities are first shaped. They may be asked to adopt best practices whose assumptions were formed elsewhere. They may be told that risks are global, even when preparedness remains highly unequal.

G7 outreach to partner countries such as India, Brazil, Kenya, South Korea, and Egypt is important. It recognizes that AI governance cannot remain a conversation among advanced economies alone. Yet there remains a difference between being present in a forum and helping design the architecture of the forum itself. The question is who defines the table, the agenda, the risk categories, and the meaning of global governance itself.

When the AI Frontier Moves Towards the Market

There is another reason why a broader governance imagination is necessary. Frontier AI innovation is no longer centered primarily in universities or public research institutions. It is increasingly shaped by private firms with the capital, compute, talent, data access, and infrastructure required to train and deploy the most capable models.

Stanford’s AI Index 2025 noted that nearly 90 per cent of notable AI models in 2024 came from industry, up from 60 per cent in 2023. A report prepared for the European Economic and Social Committee on generative AI and foundation models also described significant US dominance across the value chain. These findings point to a structural shift: the frontier is becoming more concentrated, more expensive, and more closely tied to corporate and geopolitical capacity.

Much of AI’s progress has come from companies willing to take risks, scale products, and build technical capability at extraordinary speed. But the center of gravity has shifted. When frontier AI is largely financed, defined, and deployed by market actors, the default imagination of AI development can tilt towards commercial viability, platform advantage, user growth, and strategic positioning.

Public interest does not disappear in such a system. It risks becoming secondary unless other actors are strong enough to bring it back into the room.

Open Future, a European digital policy organization, has warned that concentrations of power in AI can make public activities dependent on “a narrow group of monopolists.” The phrase matters because infrastructure-level dependency can weaken society’s ability to negotiate the terms of the technologies it relies on.

A Wider Public-Interest Layer

In a multiplex digital world, power does not flow only through states or markets. It also moves through universities, civil society organizations, professional associations, media, labor groups, open-source communities, public-interest technologists, and moral institutions. Together, these actors form the society layer often missing from discussions dominated by states and markets.

States define security priorities. Companies define technical possibility. Society must help test legitimacy. Who bears the risk? Who benefits from deployment? Who is excluded from design? What harms are being normalized because they are commercially convenient or geopolitically useful?

This is why Pope Leo XIV’s recent intervention on AI is politically relevant beyond its religious context. In his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he argues that protecting the human person in the age of AI requires renewed reflection on the common good, solidarity, social justice, and human dignity. Such interventions will not replace regulation or technical standards. They help recover a truth easily lost in frontier AI politics: governance is also about preserving the human meaning of technological progress.

The same question of authorship is beginning to appear in empirical research. Ongoing fieldwork-based research at the University of Oxford has started to examine whether countries in the Global South are developing approaches to AI governance that are neither simple copies of Western regulatory templates nor rejections of international cooperation but pragmatic syntheses shaped by local institutional capacity, regulatory sequencing, and historical experience with technology transfer. Indonesia has appeared as one of the country cases in this line of inquiry.

Governance models worth studying are not only those negotiated in Évian, Brussels, Washington, or New York. They are also being improvised, often informally, by mid-sized digital economies navigating dependency and ambition at the same time.

The United Nations’ Global Digital Compact (GDC), adopted in September 2024, offers a useful multilateral reference point. It frames digital cooperation and AI governance around inclusion, human rights, open standards, interoperability, digital public goods, and multi-stakeholder cooperation. The Compact does not resolve the power asymmetries of frontier AI by itself, but it gives societies, alongside states and firms, a language for claiming a legitimate role in digital governance.

The practical task is to strengthen public-interest evaluation: the ability to test social impact, language bias, local risks, institutional misuse, and deployment consequences in different societies. The aim is to preserve enough room for public reasoning so that the future of AI is not defined only by those with the largest models, the biggest markets, or the strongest strategic leverage.

Imagining a More Inclusive AI Governance

The lesson from the IAEA analogy and the G7 discussions is not that one model is right and the other is wrong. Both reflect real concerns. A broadly inclusive governance arrangement may be necessary for legitimacy, especially when AI risks cross borders. A trusted coalition may also be necessary when capability access raises genuine security concerns. The problem begins when either model claims to be global while leaving too many societies downstream of decisions made elsewhere.

For emerging economies, the strategic challenge is not simply to wait for a better invitation to the next summit. Participation matters, but it is not enough. Countries and societies need stronger capacity to evaluate AI systems, understand their dependencies, articulate local risks, and negotiate governance terms with greater confidence.

This is a call for a more plural architecture of governance, where states, markets, and society all have meaningful roles. The uncomfortable question is not whether AI requires international coordination. It clearly does. The harder question is whether that coordination can remain open enough for societies, not only states and companies, to shape the terms of technological power.

In the age of frontier AI, the future will not be determined only by who builds the largest models. It will also be shaped by who gets to define risk, test systems, question assumptions, and decide what counts as progress.

Every era that has tried to govern a transformative technology eventually learns the same lesson: legitimacy borrowed from power is not the same as legitimacy earned through participation. The IAEA’s own history shows that global trust is rarely built at the moment institutions are created; it is earned over time, through broader representation, credible restraint, and shared accountability. The real question for AI governance is whether it can shorten that distance by design, rather than waiting for legitimacy to arrive only after contestation.

OLIVIA Attwood has revealed how Pete Wicks is making sure she doesn’t forget him while she’s partying in Ibiza.

The presenter shared a huge bouquet of red roses sent by Pete, along with a note saying they were to “make her feel better” as she battled a monster hangover.

The 36-year-old also admitted she was relying on an IV vitamin drip to nurse herself back to health on the party island.

The TV star is currently in Ibiza filming the latest series of Bad Boyfriends and is expected to be away for four weeks.

When she’s not filming, Olivia has been letting her hair down at some of Ibiza’s biggest superclubs.

Meanwhile, Pete, 37, has spoken publicly about their romance for the first time after the pair were pictured packing on the PDA during a recent holiday.

RED HOT

Olivia Attwood slips into VERY revealing dress on set of Bad Boyfriends in Ibiza

Speaking on his Staying Relevant podcast with Sam Thompson, Pete opened up about the couple’s trip to St Tropez.

Joking about the loved-up snaps, Sam asked: “Question, if you don’t mind, why have I never been locked in an embrace with you in a pool?

“I’ve never been in that position with you before. You looked so comfortable and relaxed.”

Deliberately dodging the question, Pete replied: “I had a very, very lovely holiday.”

He added: “It was delightful. Switched off from the world as much as I could.

“We had lots of plans, we had lots of different things going on, we had a whole itinerary.”

Pete and Olivia are believed to have been dating since the presenter split from footballer husband Bradley Dack in January.

After their split, Olivia claimed Bradley had “lied and cheated” during their relationship and admitted she felt like a “f*****g idiot”.

The presenter was later linked to her radio co-host Pete after they were spotted kissing in March.

Since then, Olivia has admitted she would get married again.

Speaking on Gogglebox, she said: “I’ve decided now I am going to get married a few times, or engaged, because I like the ring.”

Washington and Tehran have agreed to stop attacks and renew talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, Axios reports.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the military for planning and operations as a decision support tool at multiple stages. The US’s use of Anthropic’s Claude model against Iran marks a significant moment in the history of warfare. Integrated via Palantir’s Maven Smart System, AI-supported intelligence analysis, target identification, and operational simulations enabled planners to process information faster than human capabilities. While analysts have framed this as an “AI war,” the more significant shift lies in the growing influence of algorithmic systems in shaping military decision-making architectures.

Admiral Brad Cooper, who led Operation Epic Fury, said that AI systems processed massive amounts of intelligence and surveillance data, allowing commanders to gain insights within seconds. This is part of a wider movement to shift more complex intelligence tasks to algorithmic systems, raising questions about transparency, oversight, and reliance on algorithmic assessments.

This is also observed in other conflict zones, but in different operational roles. In Gaza, Israel’s Lavender system, developed by Unit 8200, assisted in the targeting of 37,000 suspected individuals, based on reported affiliations, using AI. Structural strikes and real-time tracking were made possible through the use of additional tools like “The Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?” These systems reduced human review into quick, seconds-long “stamp of approval” decisions, moving targeting to machine-driven validation. In Ukraine, AI tools were used to assist in drone operations and battlefield analysis by training datasets. Initial programs, like Project Maven, relied on manually labeling 150,000 images. Currently, the Brave1 has enabled over 100 defense-tech firms to train combat AI on millions of annotated images from ongoing missions to improve these AI models.

The modern battlefield produces unprecedented volumes of data from interwoven sensor networks, drones, satellite imagery, and localized communications streams. This information comes at high speed and volume, which can overload the human brain. AI is being used to deal with this information overload, but there are concerns about the accuracy of AI-driven assessments and how much human oversight might be required to rely on AI. Military officials emphasize that humans have the final authority, but systematic integration poses challenges to oversight quality. The other predicament is automation bias, a psychological phenomenon in which a human operator, particularly under pressure or high stress, is likely to rely on the system’s recommendations. Therefore, striking a balance between speed and responsibility, ethical judgment, and accountability in the use of force is a key challenge.

Another area of concern pertains to legal and ethical issues. International humanitarian law is based on the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. With the growing use of AI in military operations, it becomes more difficult to apply these principles, thereby making accountability and scrutiny more difficult. The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that, when algorithmic systems provide input for analysis, targeting, or operational planning, it is hard to assign responsibility for any errors. Even with humans “in the loop,” the black-box nature of machine learning limits transparency and complicates legal review. It is not just a theoretical problem; it has been seen in practice. In the early US campaign against Iran, an AI-assisted missile struck a girls’ school near an IRGC compound, killing 120 children, likely due to a classification error. Anthropic’s CEO’s admission of limited awareness over Claude’s use in the strike highlights a broader issue. AI developers are fully aware of the risks associated with delegating autonomous functions to AI, yet they continue to promote its adoption. As AI assumes greater decision-making roles, concerns over misidentification and the possibility of AI acting against human directives are often overshadowed by narratives emphasizing its benefits.

For Pakistan, these developments are neither distant nor theoretical. In a region where crises can escalate quickly, AI-enabled decision support offers advantages but also carries risks. It improves situational awareness and accelerates analysis but compresses decision time, limits verification, and heightens the risk of miscalculation. Considering both, Pakistan is accelerating efforts to build AI capacity and strengthen its supporting infrastructure. At the policy level, this translates to a recognition that successful adoption is not just about adopting algorithms but about enhancing data governance, institutional maturity, and a skilled workforce capable of embedding AI into decision-making processes. Thus, Pakistan’s approach remains focused on leveraging AI to bolster human judgment in intelligence fusion, surveillance, logistics, and cyber defense.

There is a clear lesson from the academic literature and initial operational experience: algorithmic systems are transforming military information processing. However, as their role in decision-making grows, they also entail bias, error propagation, lack of transparency, and overreliance on machine-generated recommendations. AI, therefore, must be used as a support system, with humans retaining final decision-making responsibility. This requires investment in training, auditability, and institutional safeguards to ensure that human decision-makers are meaningfully engaged, rather than merely present in form. The future of warfare will likely be defined not by machines acting alone, but by humans making increasingly time-pressured decisions shaped by machine-generated insights. The central strategic challenge is not whether to adopt algorithmic tools, but how to ensure that their speed never outpaces sound judgment.

Death in Paradise fans instantly recognised the star behind drug lord Miranda Priestly.

Death in Paradise fans were swift to work out where they’d seen drug lord Miranda Priestly before.

Death in Paradise returned tonight, Sunday, June 28, on BBC One for a classic instalment of everyone’s beloved cosy crime drama.

This time round, DS Florence Cassell (portrayed by Josephine Jobert) assumes an undercover position as the nanny for Miranda Priestly (Victoria Ekanoye), a formidable drug lord.

It fell to Florence in this two-part special to penetrate Miranda’s drug operation, but BBC audiences couldn’t help being distracted by the star playing this week’s antagonist.

Who is Victoria Ekanoye?

Death in Paradise welcomed actress Victoria Ekanoye to play Miranda Priestly in the two-part special which originally broadcast three years ago.

Before her guest appearance in Death in Paradise, Ekanoye enjoyed a two-year spell in none other than ITV’s Coronation Street as Angie Appleton.

Internationally, Ekanoye is perhaps best recognised for portraying Rachel, the devoted confidante and aide to Elizabeth Hurley’s Queen Helena in The Royals.

Some of her other most prominent screen roles have included Girl Taken, The Turkish Detective, Doctors and The Worst Witch.

However, before she shifted her focus to television, Ekanoye launched her career in musical theatre, performing in the West End’s The Lion King as Queen Sarabi and Nala.

She has also tried her hand at singing, appearing in the 2019 series of The X Factor: Celebrity, where she competed in the “Over 31s” category.

The 44 year old was represented by judge Nicole Scherzinger and finished in 11th place.

Ekanoye has a number of exciting projects in the works, including the forthcoming BBC drama The Split Up, which serves as a spin-off of the hugely popular legal series The Split.

Furthermore, the actress is set to appear in a romantic drama called As Bad as Me, as well as An English Christmas Wish, which is anticipated to land later this year.

Death in Paradise is available to watch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

Ireland won the second T20 by one run over India, who did not hand a debut to teen sensation Sooryavanshi.

Ireland have secured a landmark series win over T20 world champions India in Belfast with a tense one-run victory after India again denied teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi a debut.

Harry Tector marked his 100th T20 international appearance with a fine 50, as Ireland recovered from a slow start to post 154-8 at Stormont.

India-born Jai Moondra, who struck with his first ball in international cricket on Friday, had Sanju Samson lbw off the first ball of India’s chase.

He also dismissed Abhishek Sharma in the same over, before soon removing India captain Shreyas Iyer.

India regrouped after a rain delay, with Tilak Varma making 55 and Harshit Rana 21 late on, but that was not enough, as they finished on 153-9.

India’s 15-year-old batting prodigy Sooryavanshi forced his way into the squad for the white-ball tours of Ireland and England following several stunning displays in the 20-overs-per-side Indian Premier League.

Sooryavanshi emerged as the leading run-scorer in this season’s edition after amassing 776 runs for the Rajasthan Royals, a tally that included one century and five fifties.

But as had been the case in the first of the two-match series on Friday, when Ireland won by 34 runs for their first international men’s win over India in any format, the rising star was left out.

Sooryavanshi’s next chance to make an international debut will come in Wednesday’s first T20 against England at Chester-le-Street, the headquarters of county side Durham.

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s national football team has once again failed to realise the dream of reaching the knockout phase of the World Cup, with the wartime 2026 tournament stirring up a wide range of emotions among Iranians inside and outside the country for different reasons.

Team Melli ended its seventh appearance in the tournament after a 1-1 draw in Seattle on Friday against Egypt left them in third place in Group G, with only three points gleaned from three draws.

The team was eliminated a day later, after a series of other match results left them just outside of the tournament’s eight third-placed teams advancing to the next stage after FIFA expanded from 32 to 48 teams.

“This was very unlikely to happen, I couldn’t believe how we got out again, with just one spot away from advancing,” Milad, a resident of Tehran who watched all matches impacting Iran’s run at the World Cup, told Al Jazeera.

The circumstances were so peculiar that, among other things, they left the head coach pondering divine intervention, and state television accusing other teams of cheating and collusion.

During the Egypt match, centre-back Shoja Khalilzadeh appeared to score a 93rd-minute winner that would have automatically sent Iran into the Round of 32, but VAR ruled it out after a few centimetres of his right foot were offside.

A member of the coaching staff had his nose broken after another staff member inadvertently headbutted him during emotional group celebrations of the goal before it was overturned.

Khalilzadeh’s goal celebration included posing with sunglasses, so Egypt – which advanced to the knockout phase – later taunted him with an Instagram picture of striker Mohamed Salah giggling while wearing sunglasses.

A disgruntled head coach Amir Ghalenoei told state television during a live post-match interview that he believed everyone enjoyed the match, but at times it seemed like “God was at odds with us” due to the lack of good luck – which also included Iran scoring three VAR-overturned goals during the competition, the highest of any team.

He also blamed tough conditions faced by the players and the entire staff during an unprecedented World Cup campaign, in which the main host country, the United States, has been at war with a participating nation, Iran, for the past four months.

The US military bombed several islands in the Strait of Hormuz in Iran’s southern waters just hours before kick-off in the Iran-Egypt match.

Football federation officials, as well as other staff and media personnel, were denied visas to travel to the US for the tournament, on grounds that included their alleged affiliation with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the force running war and politics in Iran.

The playing squad was only allowed in under unusually tight restrictions, and had to be mostly based in Mexico’s Tijuana instead of the originally designated Tucson in Arizona.

They had to enter the US within 24 hours of a match and leave on the same day, with only a slight easing allowing them to arrive two days early for the Seattle match.

‘Completely mad’

After the Egypt match, Iran needed just one of three things to go their way: Croatia had to lose to Ghana, but it won 2-1; DR Congo had to fail to beat Uzbekistan, but won 3-1; and Algeria vs Austria had to produce a winner, but the match ended 3-3.

Hours before the Algeria-Austria match, Javad Khiabani, a sports presenter infamous for decades of eccentric football commentary, released a video message in Arabic, addressed to the “Muslim brothers in Algeria”. He asked them to defeat Austria and allow Iran, a Muslim-majority country that has suffered war, to advance.

Other hosts of Iranian state television and radio channels broadcasting the match live went through an emotional rollercoaster after Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez scored deep into stoppage time, creating a 3-2 result that would have sent Iran through.

“Now, a Muslim country is doing something to keep another Muslim country in the knockout stage,” shouted another ecstatic commentator, again linking the sport with religion.

He and many Iranians watching at home were devastated moments later when Austria’s Sasa Kalajdzic used his first touch of the game to equalise with a header in the box. The result benefited both teams, because it sent both into the next round, with Austria facing Spain and Algeria facing better odds against Switzerland.

Some inside and outside Iran suggested the game was rigged, but Austria’s head coach Ralf Rangnick responded to match-fixing allegations by saying: “If Alfred Hitchcock had written such a drama, I probably would have said he was completely mad”.

Killings that scarred society

For a second consecutive World Cup, Iran’s national football team did not enjoy unified support from Iranians inside or outside the country, due to the fallout from public protests against the Islamic Republic, the theocratic establishment that has governed Iran since the 1979 Revolution.

In January 2026, thousands of Iranians, including at least 230 children, were killed during nationwide anti-establishment protests that erupted across the vast country of over 90 million. The government, as with previous protests, put all the blame on “terrorists” organised by the US and Israel, but Amnesty International called it an “unprecedented deadly crackdown” by the state that also included a total internet shutdown.

Just months after the killings that scarred parts of Iranian society, some believe football players – who have all avoided commenting on the protests, but in some cases have backed the state – are not representatives of a unified Iran.

Outside the stadiums in the US during the World Cup, some anti-Islamic Republic Iranians protested using Iran’s pre-1979 lion-and-sun flag, as opposed to the official flag which features the word “Allah” in the centre, but most diaspora Iranians ended up cheering for the team in packed stadiums.

Mohammad Khakpour, a former Team Melli captain now based in the US, wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that the fact Iranians had contrasting emotions after Iran’s elimination from the tournament carries a social message.

“When a part of the society feels that Team Melli is no longer representative of their emotions, pains or hopes, a chasm is created,” he said. “The people may not be happy from a football loss, but they may at times be happy about the collapse of an image that they do not consider to be true”.

Farhad, a 36-year-old resident of eastern Tehran, told Al Jazeera that decades from now, people may remember Team Melli not only as representing the Islamic Republic but also for the football record it left behind.

“Personally, I preferred it if they advanced, but I’m not devastated that they didn’t,” he said.

The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.

That book, and the stream of his that followed, seduced millions of readers, plenty of them no doubt hoping that with the proper dosage they, like Castaneda, might also transform into a crow and soar across the purple skies of the dusty Southwest. That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, “American Trickster,” reveals the depth of his deception — and, just as potently, how easily people can be taken in by it.

“He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,” Marshall writes. “He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.” This is a 1970s story, but anybody in the present can relate.

Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s, first at L.A. City College and later at UCLA, he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books. His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of “The Teachings” spoke effervescently about both.

Author Ru Marshall

(Allen Frame)

It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups “A Separate Reality” and “Journey to Ixtlan” — were massive bestsellers. Castaneda made it to the cover of Time magazine. His work provided George Lucas with more than a little inspiration for his master-and-student space opera, “Star Wars.” And he became a target for parodists, the surest sign of fame. Donald Barthelme satirized him in his story “The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge.”

That the ’70s American psyche, brutalized by Watergate and Vietnam, found solace in Castaneda’s sophistry isn’t surprising. More shocking is that the academic establishment tolerated it too: UCLA awarded him a PhD in anthropology with “Ixtlan” serving as his dissertation. Castaneda, Marshall writes, made an end run around the department’s Yaqui expert, with the other committee members overly impressed by his au courant melange of fieldwork and gauzy ruminations, despite the fact that his timelines and grasp of mycology didn’t make sense. “If we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so,” Don Juan mused. Perversely, Castaneda’s success proved him right.

“American Trickster,” at more than 600 pages, is at once more information about Castaneda than any reader needs, and not nearly enough. Marshall (who in 2006 published a novel, “A Separate Reality,” inspired by Castaneda), has gone to ground on every element of his subject’s life, from his upbringing in Peru to his celebrity (he’d find his way into the orbits of former Gov. Jerry Brown, Federico Fellini and Oliver Stone at various points), to the years before his death of liver cancer in 1998. By that point he’d focused his attention on Tensegrity, a modified martial arts practice demonstrated at pricey workshops, and gathered a host of followers, mostly women, who he played against each other and psychologically abused in various ways.

But who did this guy think he was? How did he come to invent such a strange spiritual system, and develop the nerve to sell it both to mainstream publishers and the academic establishment? Why did he keep a box of knives under his bed? “Carlos acted in the zone where the trickery of the cult leader and that of the literary hoaxer (and the anthropological hoaxer) overlap,” Marshall writes. But all the biographical detail brings us no closer to what made him such a successful triple threat of eyewash.

Perhaps a book that couched Castaneda’s story more deeply in the context of the ’70s counterculture and the nature of cults past and present would make his story clearer. But perhaps not — his tale is inevitably something to wonder at, evidence of humans’ capacity to spin a yarn that flatters our egos and urge to understand our spiritual selves, and to buy into what’s spun.

Maybe it’s unsurprising that one of the first people to publicly sound the alarm about Castaneda was a novelist. In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review questioning a credulous review of Castaneda’s books. (The New York Times had spiked a more skeptical one, Marshall reports.) “It is quite possible that Don Juan represents a ‘non-ordinary’ reality so strange to me that I cannot accept it, and must try to reason my way out of believing,” she wrote. “But I don’t think so… I’d be very interested in whether other readers share my bewilderment.” No doubt others did. But what if bewilderment was exactly what they were seeking?

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

June 28 (UPI) — Three firefighters were killed while battling a wildfire in western Colorado, the Department of the Interior announced Sunday.

Two others were being treated for burn injuries sustained in the Saturday “burnover” incident at the Knowles and Gore fires in Mesa County near the Colorado-Utah border, officials in a statement.

The identities of the fallen Wildland Fire Service and Forest Service firefighters were not immediately released pending notifications of their relatives.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said he was “devastated about the loss of three heroic firefighters who died in the line of duty in Western Colorado.”

In a statement, the he praised “the men and women who serve on the front lines of these fires risk their lives to keep us safe and to protect the lands and communities we love.

“To the loved ones of those lost, and to their fellow crew members — some who are still battling the flames — know that the State of Colorado mourns alongside you.”

Polis said the Colorado National Guard, the federal Bureau of Land Management and local officials and firefighters have been deployed to fight the Snyder-Mesa Fire, which on Sunday was estimated to be more than 28,000 acres, and to recover the bodies of the three fallen firefighters.

The governor said the two surviving firefighters had been extracted by helicopter.

On Saturday he activated the State Emergency Operations Plan and directed the Colorado Department of Public Safety to take responsibility for all response, recovery and mitigation efforts on the Snyder Mesa Fire.

The deaths came as powerful wind gusts, extremely low humidity and the threat of dry lightning fueled an outbreak of large wildfires across the southwestern United States.

Utah has been the hardest hit. Including the deadly blaze along the Colorado border, multiple fires exceeding 10,000 acres have erupted over the past week across the state. The Cherry and Iron Fires southwest of Provo, along with the Cottonwood Fire in south-central Utah, are among the largest active wildfires.

The weather pattern responsible for the heightened wildfire danger is expected to persist through much of the week, forecasters say.

June 28 (UPI) — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Sunday he plans to send housing affordability legislation to President Donald Trump for a signature Monday despite his refusal to sign the package last week.

In an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Johnson said he believes Trump will sign the legislation.

“I’m going to send the bill over to him Monday, and it will become law,” Johnson said.

“I certainly want him to take the biggest, boldest marker that he has and do that big Trump signature proudly on that legislation because we’re delivering for the people, and that’s what he wants to do.”

Both chambers of Congress overwhelmingly voted in favor of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week. The legislation seeks to lower housing costs, expand homeownership access, and limit corporate and institutional ownership for rental purposes.

The bill includes 60 pieces of legislation that would also seek to ease bureaucracy to hasten housing development, modernize federal housing programs and banking regulations, and incentivize local governments to prioritize housing.

The non-profit National Low Income Housing Coalition said the United States is facing a shortage of 7.2 million affordable units for low-income renters, resulting in a housing crisis in every state.

The House voted 358-32 and the Senate voted 85-5 in favor of the bill.

Trump was originally scheduled to sign the legislation Wednesday, but he canceled those plans, saying he won’t sign housing legislation until lawmakers approve the SAVE America voting bill.

There haven’t been enough votes to pass the legislation, which would require people to prove their citizenship before they can register to vote. Opponents to the law say it would disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters.

In an appearance Sunday on NewsNation‘s The Hill Sunday, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., said he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump doesn’t sign the housing legislation.

“I don’t know with this president, because he’s said that he doesn’t care about rising costs,” Subramanyam said.

“He said … if he doesn’t have a housing problem and his friends don’t have [a] problem with housing, then it doesn’t matter to him. So I actually wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t sign it.”