#Pakistan moves to slash period tax, after legal challenge by two young lawyers. Pakistan’s government is set to abolish sales tax on sanitary products, in a sweeping new measure that reproductive justice advocates say could de-stigmatize ubiquitous social taboos around sexual health.

The planned withdrawal of the 18 per cent sales tax on sanitary items and contraceptives, announced as part of the country’s fiscal budget last week, comes after a campaign for improved access to commercial period products in a nation where only a tiny proportion of woman currently use them.

Such items are “indispensable for women’s health, dignity and full participation in social activities,” said Muhammad Aurangzeb, the finance minister, on Friday.

Aurangzeb said the government would also abolish tax on contraceptives, citing the country’s “alarming” population growth. “Pakistan is the fifth-largest country in the world in terms of population,” he added. “Family planning is a top priority of the government.”

Lawyers Ahsan Jehangir Khan, 29, and Mahnoor Omer, 25, are widely credited with sparking the national discourse in Pakistan after they took the government to court in a landmark legal case urging lawmakers to remove the so-called “period tax” and categorize menstrual products as essential goods instead of luxury items.

According to the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF, it is estimated that just 12 per cent of women and girls in Pakistan use commercial sanitary products. Most others resort to cloth and other homemade alternatives, advocates say.

Cost is considered a factor in the low uptake, with locally made products currently incurring the 18 per cent sales tax, and an additional 25 per cent customs tax being added on imported products, according to Khan and Omer’s legal petition submitted in October.

When coupled with other local taxes, women in Pakistan face a total 40 per cent surcharge on period products, according to UNICEF, pricing out the most vulnerable.

While welcoming the sales tax proposal, Omer, the petitioner in the legal case, and Khan, who is representing her, are pressing for the complete eradication of the entire taxation regime surrounding menstrual items, including additional levies on raw materials used to make sanitary pads.

They say that, by applying tax, the Pakistani government has systematically neglected women’s and girls’ rights to health and education – hindering their ability to fully participate in public life – and violated Article 25 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

Khan told CNN on Sunday that the ongoing case “highlighted the absurdity of the taxation regime” on sanitary items.

“If there was never a constitutional petition, the government would not have woken up to the fact that even the sales tax is wrong,” he said.

In recent years, other governments – including India, Nepal, Scotland and more than a dozen U.S. states – have made similar reforms to lower or remove taxes on period products.
‘Our fight is very much ongoing’

The UN Women agency welcomed the “important step” on Monday, saying that increased affordability of menstrual products will enable more women and girls to stay in the workplace and school.

Bushra Mahnoor, a reproductive justice activist, hailed the “symbolic value” of the proposed change.

“More than the impact this tax removal is going to have in prices, is the impact it has in de-stigmatizing menstruation, and we should not take that lightly,” she told CNN.

But Mahnoor, who co-founded the Pakistan-based non-profit Mahwari Justice, which seeks to end period poverty and menstrual stigma, cautioned that the intervention “does not impact all the menstruators in the country, and definitely not the most vulnerable ones.”

As of mid-2025, nearly 45 per cent of the country’s population were living below the World Bank’s global lower middle-income poverty line of US$4.20 (about 1,175 Pakistani rupees) per day, it reported last year.

However, on average, a pack of 10 commercial sanitary pads costs more than a third of a day’s income and might not be enough to last one woman or girl for a month.

Following a hearing in late November, a court in Rawalpindi ordered the government to give a “timely response” to Khan and Omer’s arguments as stated in their petition, so the case could proceed.

In a summary of those responses earlier this year, seen by CNN, the government denied that such tax rates were “excessive” and “discriminatory” because the structure was “designed to meet the revenue needs of the state, which funds public services, including those benefitting women.”

Now that the federal government has shared their replies to Khan and Omer’s petition, the case is due for final arguments, after which a decision will be given by the judiciary. If Omer and Khan’s case is successful, the ruling could prompt the scrapping of all taxes related to sanitary products – including customs tax on raw materials – or of import tax on imported menstrual items.

“Our fight is very much ongoing, but we are elated that at least the government has realized that these are not luxury products,” added Khan.

By Sana Noor Haq, CNN

#World leaders caught on these hot mics at the #G7. Here’s what they said. EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France — The leaders of the world’s richest democracies are talking about how to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems this week, but hot mics at the G7 summit revealed that conversations also covered lighter fare. Sports. Cigarettes. The weather. And something about Greenland?

As world leaders made their way into conference rooms at a lakeside resort, microphones set up for their weighty discussions about war and trade often caught off-the-cuff banter.

Meloni quit smoking

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’ s smoking habits were the subject of a hot-mic moment on Tuesday. Asked by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz if she had already had a cigarette that morning, Meloni revealed that she hadn’t smoked “since the first of May.”

Her turn against tobacco prompted enthusiastic congratulations from leaders of Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and the European Union. Meloni raised her hands in celebration. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had a question for her.

“Do you have a patch?” Carney asked, grabbing his own arm.
Sports talk includes ‘Allez les blues!’

With the World Cup underway in the United States, Mexico and Canada, soccer naturally became a fallback of discussion.

As leaders gathered for lunch, French President Emmanuel Macron and others weighed in. Someone shouted “Allez les bleus,” the cheer for the French team. Another leader can be heard talking about the recent Champions League victory by Paris-Saint Germain.

U.S. President Donald Trump turned attention to the UFC cage-match event he hosted at the White House on Sunday. Trump, who sat ringside on his 80th birthday, spoke glowingly about Dana White, the CEO of UFC.

At another point in the day, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer effused about Cape Verde’s surprise 0-0 draw against World Cup champion Spain. “Quite remarkable, I have to say,” he said.

Trump makes a cryptic Greenland reference

In a moment of intrigue, Trump was caught on microphone talking with European Council President António Costa.

“You understand?” Trump said before pausing and looking squarely at Costa. “Greenland.” The start and end of the conversation was unclear.

European politicians have been outraged by Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Macron loses track of time — literally

Later, Trump added some levity after Macron appeared to have left his watch behind when he departed the group’s working lunch. Carney drew attention to it, saying, “He’s left his watch here. We’ve got his watch.”

“Give me it if he left, gimme,” Trump chimed in, drawing laughs from the group.

Trump gets a jersey for his birthday, and a bike

The day brought a few instances of gift-giving diplomacy.

Macron gave all seven of his counterparts personalized bicycles to promote the Cycling World Championships scheduled next year in the French Alps, according to David Lappartient, president of the Union Cycliste Internationale, on social media.

There was no hot mic moment to detect the reaction of Trump, who is not known to bike and has joked about doing minimal exercise beyond regular golf outings.

Merz, who recently sparred with Trump over the war in Iran, presented Trump with a German national team soccer jersey bearing Trump’s name and the number 47. Trump raised it and smiled for a photo before setting it aside.

Merz posted a photo of the exchange on social media and offered a pointed message: “After all, we’re on the same team.”

Indigenous #Taiwanese to paddle to the Philippines reconnecting long-lost route

#US-Iran memorandum general in nature — JD Vance . The US vice president says that the details of the agreement will be worked out during technical negotiations.

The US-Iran memorandum of understanding is a short document of a general nature; the details of the agreement will be worked out during technical negotiations, US Vice President JD Vance stated.

"The memorandum of understanding is about a page and a half, so it is a very general document. <…> On a number of issues, we are going to have to figure this stuff out during the technical negotiation phase, but what the memorandum of understanding does is set up a framework whereby the Iranians get the benefits of the bargain by meeting their obligations under the bargain," he told CNN in an interview.

Who was Niño #Guerrero? The alleged drug kingpin the U.S. killed in #Venezuela, Shortly after 9 p.m. on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump made an unusual announcement on his social media platform Truth Social.

Trump said that the U.S. and Venezuela had collaborated to kill Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, also known as “Niño Guerrero” and identified as the top leader of the notorious criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization early on in Trump’s second term.

The attack on Guerrero Flores was “swift and lethal,” Trump announced, adding that under his leadership, the U.S. will “find these vicious murderers and drugs lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong.”

In his post, Trump included a 10-second video of the alleged assassination, showing a bird’s-eye view of a building with a galvanized metal roof being blown apart.

The government of Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez said in a separate statement that the joint operation was carried out “in the southeast of Bolívar state” in Venezuela, adding that the U.S. and Venezuela had exchanged both intelligence and specialized technical support.

Until the joint attack was announced on Friday, Guerrero Flores’ whereabouts had been unknown. The criminal leader, who, authorities say helped found Tren de Aragua, had been a fugitive for years, with a criminal record stretching back decades.

Trump described Guerrero Flores as “infamous” in his announcement, but few Americans likely know anything about him. Those curious would find little information in government records and statements. Guerrero Flores’ State Department wanted page has a single, grainy black and white photo, with his height and weight listed as “unknown.”

So, who was “Niño Guerrero?”

Straight out of Aragua

Although the State Department’s biography on Guerrero Flores is thin, it includes his full name and date of birth – though that, strangely enough, differs from the birthday listed in Venezuelan court records. Both documents say that Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores was born in the city of Maracay, capital of the Venezuelan state of Aragua, in 1983.

According to a Venezuelan Supreme Court ruling from 2018, Guerrero Flores’ criminal record began in 2005, when he was arrested for the murder of an official. Years later, in September 2012, he escaped from a notorious prison in Tocorón, Aragua before being recaptured in 2013.

It was after his recapture, sometime between 2013 and 2015, that Tren de Aragua began to approach its current form.

The group gradually accrued more power and territory from within Tocorón Prison, and Tren de Aragua began to ally with other criminal gangs to expand its influence. It eventually came to control the San Vicente neighbourhood in Guerrero Flores’ hometown of Maracay, according to the think tank InSight Crime and reports from the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence.

On Dec. 15, 2016, a trial court in the state of Aragua sentenced Guerrero Flores to 17 years and two months in prison for twelve crimes, including intentional homicide, escape from custody, concealment of a weapon of war, drug trafficking and criminal association.

But Tren de Aragua’s control within Tocorón prison was so absolute, with gang-built swimming pools and restaurants within the penitentiary walls, that imprisoning Guerrero Flores there was as effective as letting him go. It was only when the Venezuelan government took full control of the facility in October 2023 that they discovered he had vanished. He had become a fugitive and remained one until his death.

The U.S. Department of State offered a reward of US$5 million for information leading to his capture or conviction. In December 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Guerrero Flores with ordering, directing, and facilitating acts of terrorism within the United States.

From prison gang to foreign terrorist organization

With Guerrero Flores at its head, Tren de Aragua not only expanded its presence in Venezuela, but also reached other countries in the region and even, allegedly, crossed the Atlantic.

According to InSight Crime, the gang maintains a presence in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Meanwhile, Transparencia Venezuela — the Venezuelan arm of the nongovernmental organization Transparency International — says the criminal group operates in Brazil and Costa Rica, as well. Likewise, Mexican authorities have reported the arrests of alleged leaders and people related to Tren de Aragua. In 2023, a CNN investigation documented its presence in the United States.

In March 2024, Guerrero Flores’ brother Gerso was arrested in Barcelona, Spain and extradited to Venezuela a few months later. A little over a year later, Spanish police arrested 13 individuals whom they described as the first known Tren de Aragua cell dismantled in the country.

In July 2024, then-U.S. president Joe Biden designated the Tren de Aragua as a major transnational criminal organization. But at the start of his second term, Trump went a step further, signing an executive order designating the gang as a foreign terrorist organization. Soon afterward, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina followed suit.

Tren de Aragua and other Latin American gangs lie at the center of the Trump administration’s initial wave of deportations. Since his second term began, the president and his allies have argued in and out of court that the presence of alleged gang members within the United States are part of a wider “invasion” of the U.S. from its southern border.

The U.S. government used that rationale to deport hundreds of people in March 2025 after Trump invoked the Foreign Enemies Act.

A few months later, in September, the U.S. Defense Department began pursuing alleged drug trafficking vessels operating in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, some of which they alleged are linked to the Venezuelan gang.

More than 200 people have died in the U.S. strikes against those vessels. The Trump administration has not presented public evidence of the presence of narcotics on the attacked ships, nor of their links to drug cartels.

CNN’s Michael Williams, Rafael Romo, Ray Sanchez, Belisa Morillo, Laura Weffer, Osmary Hernandez, Max Saltman, Sebastian Jimenez, Pau Mosquera and Jaide Timm-Garcia contributed to this report.

By Uriel Blanco, CNN

#Armenia's elections regulator confirms victory for PM's party in poll closely watched by #Russia.

Armenia’s polling authority on Sunday confirmed that the party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won a general election seen as a vote on its geopolitical future and a test of Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus country.

Pashinyan’s government is seeking closer relations with the European Union and the United States despite longstanding ties with Russia that have been championed by his critics.

Final results issued by the Central Electoral Commission for the ballot held on June 7 showed the ruling Civil Contract party won 49.7 per cent of the vote, and it will be able to form a government.

The pro-Russian opposition Strong Armenia party had appealed to the commission to annul the results, citing alleged “widespread violations” during the vote. Strong Armenia and other opposition parties held a rally in front of the Central Electoral Commission while it was meeting to finalize the election results.

The gap between the announcement on June 8 of the preliminary results and the final results gave parties the opportunity to log complaints on any perceived irregularities.

Polling observers for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in #Europe (OSCE) said Armenian voters had been offered a “genuine choice” but that the election had been conducted against a background of “highly confrontational...divisive rhetoric” and “uneven campaign opportunities.” Armenian investigators had issued six arrest warrants for members of Strong Armenia on the eve of polling day, accusing them of buying votes.

U.K. detains sanctioned oil tanker believed to be linked to Russia’s shadow fleet. LONDON — Armed British forces boarded and detained a sanctioned tanker Sunday that is suspected of being part of the Russian “shadow fleet,” shipping oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday.

Royal Marine commandos rappelled from helicopters onto the vessel, the Smyrtos, in the English Channel, in what the country’s Defense Ministry called “the first U.K.-led operation of its kind.”

The vessel will be held and monitored off the south coast of England for investigation, according to the Defense Ministry. The operation was carried out “in close coordination” with French authorities, who have previously intercepted a number of vessels linked to the “shadow fleet.”

“This operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide,” Starmer said.

Russia is believed to be using a fleet of hundreds of ships to evade sanctions over its war against Ukraine.

Sailing under a Cameroon flag, the Smyrtos left the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on June 5 destined for Port Said, Egypt, according to the MarineTraffic website.

U.K. authorities said that such operations were “directly bearing down on the resources sustaining Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and reducing its capacity to threaten security across Europe and beyond.”

Ukraine President Voldymyr Zelenskyy thanked Starmer and the British people for their “principled resolve.”

“It was Russia’s hubris, fueled by high oil and gas revenues, that paved the way for this war, and every decision by partners that deprives Russia of money also limits the war itself,” Zelenskyy said on X.

“Europe urgently needs to take legislative steps to enable not only the detention of tankers and restrictions on oil shipments, but also the confiscation of the oil they carry.”

Elise Morton And Brian Melley, The Associated Press

For several global central #banks, the question of whether the Iran war poses more of an immediate danger to inflation or growth is likely to remain open for now

The issue with the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline is in logistics and not in the price and it will be solved soon, chairman of the Russian part of the Russia-China Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development and special envoy of the Russian President Boris Titov told TASS in an interview.

"The press wrote a lot about the Power of Siberia 2 [deal], which has not been signed yet. I can tell you that although I am not dealing with this issue but what I know as the co-chairman of the Russia-China friendship committee, the issue lies in technical problems," Titov said.

"This is not the matter of price as many mass media outlets wrote, that we cannot negotiate the price. The issue is not with that. The issue relates more to logistics. Making a proper decision on the route of this gas pipeline," the special envoy said.

"This is a working point that will be solved soon," Titov added.

#Funeral for #Iran's supreme leader set for July, while a deal nears to end the war.

ISLAMABAD — Key mediator Pakistan on Saturday said a deal to end the Iran war was closer than ever and U.S. President Donald Trump asserted it would be “signed tomorrow,” while Iran made some of its most optimistic statements yet but indicated a bit more time was needed.

Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately after the signing.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said a deal was expected to be finalized within 24 hours. Each side was expected to sign electronically. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the signing ceremony was scheduled for Sunday but did not provide details.

Iran foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei in statements carried by state media said the signing “will not happen tomorrow,” but “the likelihood of finalizing the memorandum of understanding in the coming days is high.”

A tenuous ceasefire has been in place since April 7. Trump has asserted multiple times in recent weeks the countries were on the cusp of a deal.

Iran has long expressed wariness in negotiations, pointing out that previous talks with the U.S. last year and early this year ended with attacks by the U.S. and Israel.
Trump to discuss demining the strait at G7 summit

Trump was expected to discuss demining the Strait of Hormuz during the Group of Seven summit that starts Monday.

A senior U.S. official, who briefed journalists on condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House, said Trump planned to meet on the G7 sidelines with the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and United Arab Emirates to discuss efforts to wind down the war.

G7 members Britain and France have expressed interest in assisting with demining once the conflict is paused.

It was not clear how many mines are in the strait that Iran has effectively controlled since shortly after the war began, virtually shutting down oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf. The U.S. has blockaded Iranian ports in response.