Ancient DNA shows genetic link between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Researchers sequenced whole genomes from the teeth of a remarkably well-preserved skeleton found in a sealed funeral pot in an Egyptian tomb site dating to between 4,495 and 4,880 years ago.

Four-fifths of the genome showed links to North Africa and the region around Egypt. But a fifth of the genome showed links to the area in the Middle East between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, known as the Fertile Crescent, where Mesopotamian civilization flourished.

“The finding is highly significant” because it “is the first direct evidence of what has been hinted at” in prior work,” said Daniel Antoine, curator of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum.

Earlier archeological evidence has shown trade links between Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as similarities in pottery-making techniques and pictorial writing systems. While resemblances in dental structures suggested possible ancestral links, the new study clarifies the genetic ties.

The Nile River is “likely to have acted as an ancient superhighway, facilitating the movement of not only cultures and ideas, but people,” said Antoine, who was not involved in the study.

The skeleton was found in an Egyptian tomb complex at the archaeological site of Nuwayrat, inside a chamber carved out from a rocky hillside. An analysis of wear and tear on the skeleton — and the presence of arthritis in specific joints — indicates the man was likely in his 60s and may have worked as a potter, said co-author and bioarchaeologist Joel Irish of Liverpool John Moores University.

The man lived just before or near the start of ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom, when Upper and Lower Egypt were unified as one state, leading to a period of relative political stability and cultural innovation — including the construction of the Giza pyramids.

“This is the time that centralized power allowed the formation of ancient Egypt as we know it,” said co-author Linus Girdland-Flink, a paleogeneticist at the University of Aberdeen.

At approximately the same time, Sumerian city-states took root in Mesopotamia and cuneiform emerged as a writing system.

Researchers said analysis of other ancient DNA samples is needed to obtain a clearer picture of the extent and timing of movements between the two cultural centers.

Christina Larson, The Associated Press

#Rwanda has exercised command and control over M23 rebels during their advance in eastern Congo, gaining political influence and access to mineral-rich territory, according to a confidential report by a group of United Nations experts.

Denmark expands military service to include women, Under a law passed by Denmark’s parliament in June 2023, Denmark will require women turning 18 after July 1, 2025, to register for assessment days for potential military conscription, aligning with measures already in place for men.

Until now, women, who last year made up around 24% of all recruits, had been allowed to join the military on a voluntary basis.

“In the world situation we’re in right now, it’s necessary to have more conscripts, and I think that women should contribute to that equally, as men do,” Katrine, a recruit in the Danish Royal Life Guard, told Reuters without giving her last name.

In Denmark, volunteers are signed up first for conscription, while the remaining numbers are drawn up in a lottery system.

The armed forces are in the process of making adjustments in barracks and equipment better suited for women.

“There are different things that they need to improve, especially in terms of equipment. Right now, it’s made for men, so perhaps the rucksacks are a bit too large and the uniforms are large as well,” said Katrine.

Denmark, which together with NATO allies last week agreed to boost defence spending, plans to gradually increase the duration of the conscription period from four months to 11 months in 2026 and raise the number of recruits doing military service from around 5,000 now to 7,500 in 2033.

Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Tom Little, editing by Franklin Paul

Al-Qaida-linked group claims attack against Mali army position near Senegal.

The al-Qaida-linked JNIM extremist group claimed responsibility for the coordinated attack on several Malian army positions in the country’s west and central regions.

One position was in Diboli, across the border from Senegal, which has been largely spared the extremist attacks.

“The border region to Senegal is a major gateway for trade and imports from Dakar ports to Mali that had been relatively stable for years,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. “This will also worry border communities in Senegal.”

Malian army spokesperson Col. Majo Souleymane Dembélé said on national television that the army had “neutralized” 80 attackers. There were no details on any casualties among soldiers.

Mali, a landlocked nation in the semiarid Sahel region, for more than a decade has battled an insurgency by armed groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Following military coups, Mali’s authorities have expelled French forces and turned to Russia’s mercenary units for assistance, but the security situation has been deteriorating.

Attacks by extremists have been on the rise in Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso in recent weeks. JNIM has established a strong presence in both.

Baba Ahmed, The Associated Press

Judges rule against human rights groups’ claim that the U.K. is illegally arming Israel.

Al-Haq alleged that the U.K. broke domestic and international law and was complicit in atrocities against Palestinians by allowing essential components for the warplanes to be supplied to Israel.

The government said the ruling showed it had rigorous export rules and it would continue to review its licensing agreements, a spokesperson said.

The government last year suspended about 30 of 350 existing export licenses for equipment deemed to be for use in the conflict in Gaza because of a “clear risk” the items could be used to violate international humanitarian law. Equipment included parts for helicopters and drones.

But an exemption was made for some licenses related to components of F-35 fighter jets, which are indirectly supplied to Israel through the global spare parts supply chain and have been linked to bombing the Gaza Strip.

While Al-Haq argued the U.K. shouldn’t continue to export parts through what they called a “deliberate loophole” given the government’s own assessment of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, the government said the parts were distributed to a collaboration involving the U.S. and six other partners to produce the jets.

Components manufactured in the U.K. are sent to assembly lines in the U.S., Italy and Japan that supply partners -- including Israel -- with jets and spare parts, the court said.

Two High Court judges ruled that the issue was one of national security because the parts were considered vital to the defense collaboration and the U.K.’s security and international peace. They said it wasn’t up to the courts to tell the government to withdraw from the group because of the possibility the parts would be supplied to Israel and used to violate international humanitarian law in Gaza.

“Under our constitution that acutely sensitive and political issue is a matter for the executive, which is democratically accountable to Parliament and ultimately to the electorate, not for the courts,” Justices Stephen Males and Karen Steyn wrote in a 72-page judgment.

Al-Haq and the groups that supported it, including U.K.-based Global Legal Action Network, Amnesty International and Oxfam, described the ruling as a disappointing setback, but said they had already made significant gains in getting the government to suspend some arms exports to Israel and they vowed to continue pressing their case.

“Despite the outcome of today, this case has centered the voice of the Palestinian people and has rallied significant public support, and it is just the start,” said Shawan Jabarin, general director of Al-Haq. “We continue on all fronts in our work to defend our collective human values and work towards achieving justice for the Palestinians.”

Compared with major arms suppliers such as the U.S. and Germany, British firms sell a relatively small amount of weapons and components to Israel. The Campaign Against Arms Trade nonprofit group estimates that the U.K. supplies about 15 per cent of the components in the F-35 stealth combat aircraft, including its laser targeting system.

Brian Melley, The Associated Press

For the first time since the 1990s, #NATO did not include a reference to its commitment to the open-door policy in its final summit declaration, Izvestia writes. For over 30 years, this provision had consistently appeared in all of the alliance’s concluding documents. Experts believe the omission was a tactical decision aimed at avoiding provoking US President Donald Trump, who opposes Ukraine’s accession to the bloc. Nonetheless, NATO has not abandoned the open-door policy. The alliance continues to expand cooperation with post-Soviet states, including Armenia, Russia’s ally in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia is firmly opposed to NATO enlargement, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Galuzin told Izvestia.

"Everything at the NATO summit was done so as not to antagonize Trump. NATO has a long history. The alliance has outlasted many politicians and will outlast Trump. This is not a rejection of the open-door policy," Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Governance at the Higher School of Economics Mikhail Mironyuk told Izvestia.

Thomas Graham, Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush for Russia and Eurasia, told the newspaper that the situation simply arises from the fact that the United States was opposed to including such a provision in the declaration, and this should not be interpreted as signalling a change in the other allies' position.

#Trump says he’s not planning to extend a pause on global tariffs beyond July 9.

Letters will start going out “pretty soon” before the approaching deadline, he said.

“We’ll look at how a country treats us — are they good, are they not so good — some countries we don’t care, we’ll just send a high number out,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” during a wide-ranging interview taped Friday and broadcast Sunday.

Those letters, he said, would say, “Congratulations, we’re allowing you to shop in the United States of America, you’re going to pay a 25 per cent tariff, or a 35 per cent or a 50 per cent or 10 per cent.”

Trump had played down the deadline at a White House news conference Friday by noting how difficult it would be to work out separate deals with each nation. The administration had set a goal of reaching 90 trade deals in 90 days.

Negotiations continue, but “there’s 200 countries, you can’t talk to all of them,” he said in the interview.

Trump also discussed a potential TikTok deal, relations with China, the strikes on Iran and his immigration crackdown.

Here are the key takeaways:
Few details on possible TikTok deal

A group of wealthy investors will make an offer to buy TikTok, Trump said, hinting at a deal that could safeguard the future of the popular social media platform, which is owned by China’s ByteDance.

“We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I’ll need, probably, China approval, and I think President Xi (Jinping) will probably do it,” Trump said.

Trump did not offer any details about the investors, calling them “a group of very wealthy people.”

“I’ll tell you in about two weeks,” he said when asked for specifics.

It’s a time frame Trump often cites, most recently about a decision on whether the U.S. military would get directly involved in the war between Israel and Iran. The U.S. struck Iranian nuclear sites just days later.

Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for 90 more days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.

It is the third time Trump extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when a national ban — approved by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court — took effect.
Trump insists U.S. ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear facilities

U.S. strikes on Iran “obliterated” its nuclear facilities, Trump insisted, and he said whoever leaked a preliminary intelligence assessment suggesting Tehran’s nuclear program had been set back only a few months should be prosecuted.

Trump said Iran was “weeks away” from achieving a nuclear weapon before he ordered the strikes.

“It was obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday on X that Trump “exaggerated to cover up and conceal the truth.” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that his country’s nuclear program is peaceful and that uranium “enrichment is our right, and an inalienable right and we want to implement this right” under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. “I think that enrichment will not — never stop.”

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on CBS that “it is clear that there has been severe damage, but it’s not total damage.”

Grossi also said the U.N. nuclear watchdog has faced pressure to report that Iran had a nuclear weapon or was close to one, but “we simply didn’t because this was not what we were seeing.”

Of the leak of the intelligence assessment, Trump said anyone found to be responsible should be prosecuted. Journalists who received it should be asked who their source was, he said: “You have to do that and I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”

His press secretary said Thursday that the administration is investigating the matter.
A ‘temporary pass’ for immigration raids on farms and hotels?

As he played up his immigration crackdown, Trump offered a more nuanced view when it comes to farm and hotel workers.

“I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been,” the Republican president said.

He noted that he wants to deport criminals, but it’s a problem when farmers lose their laborers and it destroys their businesses.

Trump said his administration is working on “some kind of a temporary pass” that could give farmers and hotel owners control over immigration raids at their facilities.

Earlier this month, Trump had called for a pause on immigration raids disrupting the farming, hotel and restaurant industries, but a top Homeland Security official followed up with a seemingly contradictory statement. Tricia McLaughlin said there would be “no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine” immigration enforcement efforts.
Status of China trade talks

Trump praised a recent trade deal with Beijing over rare earth exports from China and said establishing a fairer relationship will require significant tariffs.

“I think getting along well with China is a very good thing,” Trump said. “China’s going to be paying a lot of tariffs, but we have a big (trade) deficit, they understand that.”

Trump said he would be open to removing sanctions on Iranian oil shipments to China if Iran can show “they can be peaceful and if they can show us they’re not going to do any more harm.”

But the president also indicated the U.S. isn’t afraid to retaliate against Beijing. When Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo noted that China has tried to hack U.S. systems and steal intellectual property, Trump replied, “You don’t think we do that to them?”

David Klepper and Ali Swenson, The Associated Press

Intercepted Iranian communications downplay damage from U.S. attack, Washington Post reports.

A source, who declined to be named, confirmed that account to Reuters but said there were serious questions about whether the Iranian officials were being truthful, and described the intercepts as unreliable indicators.

The report by the Post is the latest, however, to raise questions about the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program. A leaked preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency cautioned the strikes may have only set back Iran by months.

President Donald Trump has said the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, but U.S. officials acknowledge it will take time to form a complete assessment of the damage caused by the U.S. military strikes last weekend.

The White House dismissed the report by the Post.

“The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense. Their nuclear weapons program is over,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was quoted as saying by the Post.

In an interview broadcast on Sunday on Fox News, Trump reiterated his confidence that the strikes had destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “It was obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before. And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time,” he said on the “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” program.

Reporting by Phil Stewart and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Chris Reese

#Zelenskyy signs decree for Ukraine’s withdrawal from anti-landmine treaty. The Ottawa Convention bans signatories from acquiring, producing, stockpiling or using anti-personnel mines, which are designed to be buried or hidden on the ground.

They often leave victims mutilated if they are not immediately killed, and unexploded mines cause long-term risks for civilians.

Russia “is extremely cynical in its use of anti-personnel mines,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address.

“This is the trademark of Russian killers -– to destroy life by any means at their disposal,” he added.

More than 160 countries and territories are signatories to the Ottawa Convention, though neither the United States nor Russia have joined.

To enter into force, the decision still must be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament and notified to the United Nations.

The withdrawal would normally come into effect six months after the notification.

But according to the convention itself, if “on the expiry of that six-month period, the withdrawing state party is engaged in an armed conflict, the withdrawal shall not take effect before the end of the armed conflict.”

Zelenskyy said Ukraine -- more than three years into Moscow’s invasion -- was “aware of the complexities of the withdrawal procedure when it is carried out in wartime.”

“We are taking this political step and thus sending a signal to all our partners on what to focus on,” he added.

Confronted with the invasion, “Ukraine is compelled to give unconditional priority to the security of its citizens and the defence of the state,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said the decision to withdraw was “difficult but necessary” in order to “protect our land from occupation, and our people from horrific Russian atrocities.”.

The move follows similar decisions by Kyiv’s allies Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- all neighbours of Russia.

In March, human rights groups condemned their intention to pull out from the convention.

After decades in the U.S., #Iranians arrested in Trump’s deportation drive.

Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years, married a U.S. citizen and raised their daughter. She was gardening in the yard of her New Orleans home when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers handcuffed and took her away, her family said.

Kashanian arrived in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum, fearing retaliation for her father’s support of the U.S.-backed shah. She lost her bid, but she was allowied to remain with her husband and child if she checked in regularly with immigration officials, her husband and daughter said. She complied, once checking in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina. She is now being held at an immigration detention center in Basile, Louisiana, while her family tries to get information.

Other Iranians are also getting arrested by immigration authorities after decades in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security won’t say how many people they’ve arrested, but U.S. military strikes on Iran have fueled fears that there is more to come.

“Some level of vigilance, of course, makes sense, but what it seems like ICE has done is basically give out an order to round up as many Iranians as you can, whether or not they’re linked to any threat and then arrest them and deport them, which is very concerning,” said Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group.

Homeland Security did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Kashanian’s case but have been touting arrests of Iranians. The department announced the arrests of at least 11 Iranians on immigration violations during the weekend of the U.S. missile strikes. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said, without elaborating, that it arrested seven Iranians at a Los Angeles-area address that “has been repeatedly used to harbor illegal entrants linked to terrorism.”

The department “has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said of the 11 arrests. She didn’t offer any evidence of terrorist or extremist ties. Her comment on parole programs referred to President Joe Biden’s expanded legal pathways to entry, which his successor, Donald Trump, shut down.

Russell Milne, Kashanian’s husband, said his wife is not a threat. Her appeal for asylum was complicated because of “events in her early life,” he explained. A court found an earlier marriage of hers to be fraudulent.

But over four decades, Kashanian, 64, built a life in Louisiana. The couple met when she was bartending as a student in the late 1980s. They married and had a daughter. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, filmed Persian cooking tutorials on YouTube and was a grandmother figure to the children next door.

The fear of deportation always hung over the family, Milne said, but he said his wife did everything that was being asked of her.

“She’s meeting her obligations,” Milne said. ”She’s retirement age. She’s not a threat. Who picks up a grandmother?”

While Iranians have been crossing the border illegally for years, especially since 2021, they have faced little risk of being deported to their home countries due to severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. That seems to no longer be the case.

The Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, including Iranians, to countries other than their own in an attempt to circumvent diplomatic hurdles with governments that won’t take their people back. During Trump’s second term, countries including El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama have taken back noncitizens from the U.S.

The administration has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for several deportations to South Sudan, a war-ravaged country with which it has no ties, after the justices allowed deportations to countries other than those noncitizens came from.

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested Iranians 1,700 times at the Mexican border from October 2021 through November 2024, according to the most recent public data available. The Homeland Security Department reported that about 600 Iranians overstayed visas as business or exchange visitors, tourists and students in the 12-month period through September 2023, the most recent data reports.

Iran was one of 12 countries subject to a U.S. travel ban that took effect this month. Some fear ICE’s growing deportation arrests will be another blow.

In Oregon, an Iranian man was detained by immigration agents this past week while driving to the gym. He was picked up roughly two weeks before he was scheduled for a check-in at ICE offices in Portland, according to court documents filed by his attorney, Michael Purcell.

The man, identified in court filings as S.F., has lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, and his wife and two children are U.S. citizens.

S.F. applied for asylum in the U.S. in the early 2000s, but his application was denied in 2002. His appeal failed but the government did not deport him and he continued to live in the country for decades, according to court documents.

Due to “changed conditions” in Iran, S.F. would face “a vastly increased danger of persecution” if he were to be deported, Purcell wrote in his petition. “These circumstances relate to the recent bombing by the United States of Iranian nuclear facilities, thus creating a de facto state of war between the United States and Iran.”

S.F.’s long residency in the U.S., his conversion to Christianity and the fact that his wife and children are U.S. citizens “sharply increase the possibility of his imprisonment in Iran, or torture or execution,” he said.

Similarly, Kashanian’s daughter said she is worried what will happen to her mother.

“She tried to do everything right,” Kaitlynn Milne said.

Kim Chandler, Claire Rush And Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press