Iran War Day 38, Artemis II Photos, June 1
🇬🇧 Peter Mandelson's full 1,000+ page files drop today; No 10 sources brace for "excruciating" revelations about his US ambassador bid. (Guardian) 🇧🇪 Wise shares tumble as the fintech confirms it is answering questions from Belgian prosecutors over money-laundering controls. (Guardian) 💻 Palo Alto Networks says Mythos found 24+ critical bugs, burning $1M+ of tokens, subsidized by Anthropic; some firms plan to boost Mythos spending. (The Information)
The oldest scandal in British politics meets the newest tool in cybersecurity.
🇮🇷 Iran says no peace talks with US until Israel stops operations; US struck Iranian radar sites; Iran targeted American bases in Kuwait. (BBC, Guardian) 🇮🇱 Netanyahu orders strikes on Beirut's Dahieh suburb; residents flee as traffic gridlocks the southern suburbs. (Al Jazeera, BBC) 🇬🇭 Ghana's parliament passes sweeping law criminalising LGBTQ+ activity; community groups say people fear losing homes and jobs if the president ratifies it. (Guardian) 🇭🇺 Hungary's PM Peter Magyar moves to amend the constitution to remove President Tamas Sulyok, who missed his Sunday deadline to leave. (Al Jazeera)
Quiet.
Let's start with a meteor that lit up the sky from Delaware to Montreal, a fireball that made everyone look up for a second. It was a good weekend for the skies above Massachusetts, and a bad one for everyone under them in the Middle East.
The best news today is a three-year rewilding project on a former dairy farm in Somerset where bird species jumped from 67 to 94, butterflies from 11 to 24, and small mammals just came back. Nature heals when you stop doing things to it. Also good: a cyclist in Bochum, Germany, rescued four members of a family who nearly drowned in the Ruhr River during a waterside barbecue. Human scale. Actual help. Hold those thoughts.
But the heavy stuff broke open again. Netanyahu ordered strikes on Beirut's Dahieh, the Hezbollah stronghold, and the videos show people fleeing with their kids and their bags, stuck in gridlocked traffic, knowing what comes next. Iran said no more peace talks with the US until Israel stops operations in Lebanon and Gaza. The US struck Iranian radar sites around the Strait of Hormuz. Iran targeted American bases in Kuwait. The Strait is the choke point for 20% of the world's oil. If that closes, everything changes.
Down in Ghana, the parliament passed a sweeping law criminalising LGBTQ+ activity. Community groups say people are panicking, afraid of losing homes and jobs and access to healthcare. The president hasn't ratified it yet, but the fear is already real. In Hungary, Peter Magyar is rewriting the constitution to remove the president who missed his deadline. Victor Orban's old playbook is being used against his own man.
The Peter Mandelson files are out, 1,000 pages of documents about his appointment as US ambassador. No 10 is bracing for excruciating revelations. The phrase "toe-curling" is actually being used by government sources. And in a completely different kind of money story, the UK has banned two leftwing US commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, from entering the country. Free speech activists are furious. The UK government says they've been accused of propagating antisemitism. Pick your side, but note the pattern: governments are getting very comfortable deciding who gets to speak.
Wise, the fintech darling, is answering questions from Belgian prosecutors about money-laundering controls. Its shares tumbled. Meanwhile, Palo Alto Networks says Mythos, their AI bug-hunter, found 24 critical bugs and burned over a million dollars in tokens. Anthropic is subsidizing it. Some companies say they'll boost spending. The machines are finding the holes in the machines, and we're paying for the privilege.
The bottom is a short line from Al Jazeera: "An Israeli strike killed my children. What pains me is not just their loss but also the normalisation of their murder." A father named Ryan and a mother named Yaman. Not numbers. Not geopolitics. Two dead kids who were someone's whole world.
Here's the connection nobody drew: the same governments that can't stop killing children in Gaza can't stop banning commentators in London. They have infinite capacity to decide who lives and who speaks, and zero capacity to stop the killing. The machinery of control is perfect. The machinery of protection is broken.
The rewilding farm in Somerset shows what happens when you stop intervening. The butterflies came back. The birds came back. The small mammals just showed up, uninvited but welcome. Maybe that's the lesson for everything else. Maybe the answer is to stop doing what isn't working. But nobody in power will ever try it, because doing nothing doesn't look like leadership.
The meteor over Massachusetts was a rock from space, burning up in the atmosphere, visible to millions. It did nothing. It just existed. And for a moment, everyone looked up together.
#JustKnow #news #geopolitics #middleeast #technology #climate