Russia becomes the first country to formally recognize Taliban’s latest rule in #Afghanistan. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it had received credentials from Afghanistan’s newly appointed Ambassador Gul Hassan Hassan. The official recognition of the Afghan government will foster “productive bilateral cooperation between our countries,” the ministry said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry called it a historic step, and quoted Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi as welcoming the decision as “a good example for other countries.”

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021 following the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces. Since then, they have sought international recognition while also enforcing their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

While no country had formally recognized the Taliban administration until now, the group had engaged in high-level talks with many nations and established some diplomatic ties with countries including China and the United Arab Emirates.

Still, the Taliban government has been relatively isolated on the world stage, largely over its restrictions on women.

Although the Taliban initially promised a more moderate rule than during their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, it started to enforce restrictions on women and girls soon after the 2021 takeover. Women are barred from most jobs and public places, including parks, baths and gyms, while girls are banned from education beyond sixth grade.

Russian officials have recently been emphasizing the need to engage with the Taliban to help stabilize Afghanistan, and lifted a ban on the Taliban group in April.

New supply management law won’t save the system from Trump, experts say.

“It’s certainly more difficult to strike a deal with the United States now with the passage of this bill that basically forces Canada to negotiate with one hand tied behind its back,” said William Pellerin, a trade lawyer and partner at the firm McMillan LLP.

“Now that we’ve removed the digital service tax, dairy and supply management is probably the number 1 trade irritant that we have with the United States. That remains very much unresolved.”

When Trump briefly paused trade talks with Canada on June 27 over the digital services tax — shortly before Ottawa capitulated by dropping the tax — he zeroed in on Canada’s system of supply management.

In a social media post, Trump called Canada a “very difficult country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products.”

Canada can charge about 250 per cent tariffs on U.S. dairy imports over a set quota established by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement. The International Dairy Foods Association, which represents the U.S. dairy industry, said in March the U.S. has never come close to reaching those quotas, though the association also said that’s because of other barriers Canada has erected.

When Bill C-202 passed through Parliament last month, Bloc Québécois MPs hailed it as a clear win protecting Quebec farmers from American trade demands.

The Bloc’s bill, which received royal assent on June 26, prevents the foreign affairs minister from making commitments in trade negotiations to either increase the tariff rate quota or reduce tariffs for imports over a set threshold.

On its face, that rule would prevent Canadian trade negotiators from offering to drop the import barriers that shield dairy and egg producers in Canada from price shocks. But while the law appears to rule out using supply management as a bargaining chip in trade talks with the U.S., it doesn’t completely constrain the government.

Pellerin said that if Prime Minister Mark Carney is seeking a way around C-202, he might start by looking into conducting the trade talks personally, instead of leaving them to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.

Carney dismissed the need for the new law during the recent election but vowed to keep supply management off the table in negotiations with the U.S.

Pellerin said the government could also address the trade irritant by expanding the number of players who can access dairy quotas beyond “processors.”

“(C-202) doesn’t expressly talk about changing or modifying who would be able to access the quota,” he said. Expanding access to quota, he said, would likely “lead to companies like grocery stores being able to import U.S. cheeses, and that would probably please the United States to a significant degree.”

Carleton University associate professor Philippe Lagassé, an expert on Parliament and the Crown, said the new law doesn’t extend past something called the “royal prerogative” — the ability of the executive branch of government to carry out certain actions in, for example, the conduct of foreign affairs. That suggests the government isn’t constrained by the law, he said.

“I have doubts that the royal prerogative has been displaced by the law. There is no specific language binding the Crown and it would appear to run contrary to the wider intent of the (law that it modifies),” he said by email.

“That said, if the government believes that the law is binding, then it effectively is. As defenders of the bill insisted, it gives the government leverage in negotiation by giving the impression that Parliament has bound it on this issue.”

He said a trade treaty requires enabling legislation, so a new bill could remove the supply management constraints.

“The bill adds an extra step and some constraints, but doesn’t prevent supply management from eventually being removed or weakened,” he said.

Trade lawyer Mark Warner, principal at MAAW Law, said Canada could simply dispense with the law through Parliament if it decides it needs to make concessions to, for example, preserve the auto industry.

“The argument for me that the government of Canada sits down with another country, particularly the United States, and says we can’t negotiate that because Parliament has passed a bill — I have to tell you, I’ve never met an American trade official or lawyer who would take that seriously,” Warner said.

“My sense of this is it would just go through Parliament, unless you think other opposition parties would bring down the government over it.”

While supply management has long been a target for U.S. trade negotiators, the idea of killing it has been a non-starter in Canadian politics for at least as long.

Warner said any attempt to do away with it would be swiftly met with litigation, Charter challenges and provinces stepping up to fill a federal void.

“The real cost of that sort of thing is political, so if you try to take it away, people are screaming and they’re blocking the highways and they are calling you names and the Bloc is blocking anything through Parliament — you pay a cost that way,” he said.

But a compromise on supply management might not be that far-fetched.

“The system itself won’t be dismantled. I don’t think that’s anywhere near happening in the coming years and even decades,” said Pellerin. “But I think that there are changes that could be made, particularly through the trade agreements, including by way of kind of further quotas. Further reduction in the tariffs for outside quota amounts and also in terms of who can actually bring in product.”

The United States trade representative raised specific concerns about supply management in the spring, citing quota rules established under the CUSMA trade pact that are not being applied as the U.S. expected and ongoing frustration with the pricing of certain types of milk products.

Former Canadian diplomat Louise Blais said that if Canada were to “respect the spirit” of CUSMA as the Americans understand it, the problem might actually solve itself.

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