Plus, Ukraine offers Russia truce in Black Sea.

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Daily Briefing

Daily Briefing

By Kate Turton

Hello. The US says it can keep up a naval blockade on Iran 'indefinitely,' as oil traders and policymakers wonder whether global oil stocks are big enough to weather another six months of war.

Meanwhile, Apple trains its own AI model for the Chinese market, and Chinese car sales are booming almost everywhere - just not at home.

Plus, the week in unusual pictures.

Today's Top News

 

A sailor observes flight operations as an F/A-18E Super Hornet, prepares to make an arrested landing on aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. US Navy/Handout via REUTERS

  • The United States said that it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely and would ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks have floundered, global oil supply is dropping and regional tensions are rising. 
  • Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that reports about poor conditions aboard aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East were "completely misrepresented." Reuters Pentagon Correspondent Idrees Ali is on the Reuters World News podcast with more.
  • President Donald Trump has allowed the US Navy to build ships overseas and ordered it to abandon a complex ‌system for launching jet fighters from its aircraft carriers and instead return to using steam catapults, the White House said.
  • Ukraine has sent Russia an offer suggesting they both halt attacks ‌on civilian targets in the Black Sea, a source said, after mounting strikes on vessels and ports there raised fears over global food supplies. Read our exclusive.
  • Reform UK leader Nigel Farage won his self-triggered by-election in southern England, but saw his strategy to silence critics backfire when his main rival, Count Binface, a comedian dressed as a trash can, took ‌more than a quarter of the vote.
  • Jewish settlers set up a tent outside a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra in the occupied West Bank before Israeli soldiers arrived and it was taken down, footage showed, as settlers pressed ‌a siege which Palestinians say aims to drive them from their land.
  • The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted to inscribe Trump's name on the building, Democratic US Representative Joyce Beatty said, setting up a potential clash with a federal judge who had ordered the name removed.
  • Record rainfall in Japan stranded thousands of travelers at ‌Tokyo's Narita airport, bringing floods to the surrounding area that disrupted transport, knocked out power to 20,000 homes and killed eight.
 

Business & Markets

 
  • As the US-Iran war drags on with no end in sight, oil traders and policymakers are grappling with a critical question: are global oil stocks enough to offset what could become the biggest supply disruption on record?
  • Apple has trained a large language model specifically for the China market, three people familiar with the matter said, a departure from the iPhone maker's strategy of relying on third-party models to power AI features ‌in the country.
  • China's car industry is on a tear overseas, storming markets from Europe to Southeast Asia and heaping pressure on long-established automakers like Toyota and Volkswagen. But it is a different story at home, where car sales have been in steady decline since late last year.
  • Extraordinary corporate compensation deals for Elon Musk have opened the door for the CEOs of other S&P 500 companies to win huge paydays, a new study ‌shows.
  • Workers at Ukrainian steel giant Zaporizhstal have kept the sprawling complex running in the face of years of Russian drones, missiles and bombs. Now, the nearly century-old mill at the heart of Ukraine's southeastern steel industry faces a new threat to its survival: import quotas and carbon tariffs from the European Union.
 

The Week Ahead

  • The latest print of Japanese gross domestic product will offer a glimpse into how Asia's second-biggest economy is weathering the Iran war and its tolerance for a central bank interest rate hike.
  • The next round of US primaries will see voters casting their ballots in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming.
  • As world markets go into full summer mode, here's all you need to know about the coming week in financial markets.
 

Justice Department hasn't delivered promised sex-trafficking crackdown 

 


The Trump administration has repeatedly said the fight against sex trafficking is one of its top priorities.

Reuters interviews with 25 former prosecutors, current agents and victims’ advocates, and a review of federal court records tell a different story: Investigations have stalled and prosecutions declined in the past six months because of staffing shortages, funding cuts, immigration enforcement and growing distrust of the government among victims.

Federal sex-trafficking ‌charges have dropped this year to the slowest pace since 2010.

Read more
 

And Finally...

 REUTERS/Rula Rouhan

From people dancing on a climate-controlled “rainy street” to a stand-up paddleboarding festival in Moscow, this is our round up of unusual images from around the world this week.