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Israel, Iran escalate strikes

The conflict between Israel and Iran intensified Sunday, as the countries exchanged fresh strikes and warned of further attacks. “We are in a state of war,” an Iranian government spokesperson said, while an Israeli military official said the country’s onslaught on Tehran wouldn’t stop “for a moment.” US President Donald Trump urged both sides to “make a deal” to halt the fighting, but the odds of a diplomatic solution in the near future appear slim. The escalating nature of the strikes — Israel hit Iranian nuclear sites and urban areas, CNN reported, while Iran struck Israeli residential buildings and infrastructure — have raised fears of a wider regional war; US-Iran nuclear talks set for Sunday were called off.

Conflict could alter power dynamics

The escalating Israel-Iran conflict could redraw the region’s power dynamics, analysts said. Israel, which cast the offensive as a fight for its survival, has targeted Iranian nuclear sites, but also appears to be “engaged in regime change,” a Foreign Policy columnist argued — although US President Donald Trump, desperate to avoid a regional war, reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader. Israel’s decision to attack seems linked to a loss of confidence in Washington’s nuclear talks with Iran, the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman wrote, leading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “short circuit” the negotiations. America’s future posture will be critical: Pentagon officials have been divided over military support for Israel, Semafor reported.

Markets brace for more turmoil

Oil prices surged along with safe-haven assets like gold and the US dollar, as markets reeled amid the Israel-Iran conflict. Middle East stocks largely fell on Sunday, and analysts expect other world markets to slide Monday over fears that rising oil prices will cause global economic disruption and lead to stagflation. A worst-case scenario is a complete disruption to the Iranian supply and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Investors, already grappling with heightened geopolitical risk as traditional security and trade alliances falter, should brace for more uncertainty, experts told Bloomberg: “Volatility is here to stay and markets have not adjusted for the geopolitics question marks yet,” one analyst said.

G7 begins under shadow of war

The G7 summit began in Canada on Sunday, as the conflict between Israel and Iran looms over the already fraught gathering. This year’s meeting, which brings together the leaders from the seven largest industrialized democracies, has been characterized as the “G6 versus Trump,” Politico wrote, with officials expected to pressure US President Donald Trump on trade and Russia: “It’s like preparing the red carpet for Godzilla,” one Canadian official said. Even so, the escalation in the Middle East could expose fresh divisions. The UK and France have urged restraint, while Japan condemned Israeli strikes and Trump called them “excellent.” The leaders will now likely try to influence Trump’s handling of the conflict, given Washington’s leverage over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

New reality of US political violence

Two Minnesota lawmakers were shot, one fatally, on Saturday in an apparent assassination plot that underscored the growing frequency of political violence in the US. Authorities said a gunman impersonating a police officer killed a high-ranking state representative and her husband in their home, and also targeted a state senator and his wife. Like school shootings, politically motivated attacks are an “inescapable reality” in the US, The New York Times wrote: In the last several months, two Israeli embassy staffers were killed in Washington, and an arsonist set the Pennsylvania governor’s residence on fire. Easy access to weapons, incitement from public figures, and “intense polarization that paints political opponents as treasonous enemies” are driving the violence, political scientist Brian Klaas wrote.

The symbolism of two military celebrations

Military celebrations in the US and Germany reflected the two countries’ changing relationship to their respective armed forces. Germany on Sunday held its first-ever Veterans Day; past attempts to commemorate Berlin’s forces “received timid support in a country still fundamentally ashamed by its militarist past,” War on the Rocks wrote. But the Ukraine war made support for Germany’s troops more acceptable, and the new government is pushing a massive rearmament effort. And in Washington on Saturday, President Donald Trump held a military parade partly overshadowed by his earlier deployment of troops to quell California immigration protests, The New York Times wrote. The domestic display also highlighted Trump’s distaste for overseas wars, as Israel and Iran exchanged strikes.

If China wins the AI race

America’s lead over China in the race to build increasingly powerful artificial intelligence is far from assured, analysts said. As it stands, US firms have the upper hand, but breakthroughs by Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Huawei suggest the gap is narrowing fast, two experts wrote in Foreign Affairs, warning that the US needs to prepare itself to lose the AI competition to China. Washington should mitigate that risk, including by making its models more open and attractive. Models like DeepSeek’s R1 make a case for more Western focus on building “cheap, powerful, yet compute-efficient models” for global markets, the head of global policy at Hugging Face told Rest of World: “I see this race as a culmination of years of different cultural values.”

‘Human’ hearts beat in pig embryos

Chinese researchers said they have grown hearts containing human cells in pig embryos for the first time. The embryos survived for 21 days, during which time the vital organs started beating, according to findings presented last week in Hong Kong; the study still needs to be peer-reviewed. The aim of so-called chimera research is to one day create animals with human organs that can be safely transplanted into people, solving the dire shortage in donor organs. Pigs are considered a possible donor species because their organs are anatomically similar to those of humans, although these efforts have attracted some controversy among ethicists and animal rights advocates.

Alcohol loses investment allure

The alcohol industry is losing its market appeal after decades of reliability. People across the developed world, and especially younger generations, are drinking less, in large part for health reasons — although “weight-loss drugs and the growing legalisation of cannabis in the US” may also be relevant factors, the Financial Times’ noted. As a result, industry shares have slumped — Johnnie Walker-maker Diageo has shed 50% of its value since 2022, the owner of Jack Daniel’s is down two-thirds, and many analysts think LVMH should spin off its struggling wine and spirits unit. Developing markets, notably India and Brazil, as well as non-alcoholic alternatives offer some brands hope, but alcohol companies, “once considered a defensive staple… have lost their allure.”

Tracing the new Pope’s family tree

The new Pope Leo XIV descends from a surprisingly international and multiethnic family tree, a new genealogy analysis found. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., who presents American TV show Finding Your Roots, wrote in The New York Times that he traced Leo’s ancestors back to his 12th-great grandparents in the early 1500s. Among those were 40 born in France, 24 in Italy, and others from Cuba, Haiti, and Guadeloupe, Gates wrote, a reflection of America’s unique history of immigration. And 17 of Leo’s identified ancestors were Black, including his grandfather, while he was also found to be related — distantly — to Justin Trudeau, Hillary Clinton, and Madonna.

June 16:

• OPEC releases its monthly oil market report.
• Chinese leader Xi Jinping visits Kazakhstan.
• Britain’s King Charles III marks Garter Day in the UK.

An exhibition in Japan highlights supernatural spirits imbued with the fears and anxieties of everyday life. Yōkai are objects of Japanese folklore going back centuries: A spider-woman spirit was especially feared in the Edo Period, but yōkai have since evolved to be more playful and cute. The Yokai Art Museum runs an open competition for contemporary entities, which were recently compiled in a book. The submissions show “what’s keeping people up at night in Japan,” The Japan Times wrote. It includes the “rice swindler yōkai” (borne from the country’s current rice shortage), a decontamination yōkai that licks away radioactive waste, and several related to climate change and ecological fears.

Bluntness comes easily to Sebastian Siemiatkowski, particularly when he’s explaining how artificial intelligence threatens employment in his own business and beyond.

But even though the co-founder and CEO of Klarna had an AI-generated version of himself read his company’s financial update last month, he told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson that he doesn’t think AI will replace him any time soon — even if “it is definitely easier to replace the CEO than it is to replace a nurse.”