Search This Blog

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Iran lawmaker calls for missile strike on Trump in Turkey

 

Iranian hardline lawmaker Hamid Rasaee on Tuesday called for the location where US President Donald Trump is staying during the NATO summit in Turkey to be targeted with a missile.

In a post on Iranian social media platform Virasty, Rasaee said Trump’s presence in Turkey for the summit created an opportunity to strike his place of residence, using derogatory language against Trump.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/liveblog/202607049017

US Treasury revokes Iran oil authorization

 

The US Treasury Department revoked a June 21 authorization for the production, delivery and sale of Iranian-origin crude oil, petrochemical products and petroleum products, replacing it with a new general license effective Tuesday.


The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said General License X was revoked and superseded in its entirety by General License X1.

The new license allows companies until July 17 to wind down transactions previously authorized under the June 21 waiver but bars new purchases or loading of Iranian-origin crude oil, petrochemical products or petroleum products from July 7.

Any payment to a blocked person must be made into a blocked, interest-bearing account in the United States, OFAC said.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/liveblog/202607049017

Bahrain condemns Iranian attack on Saudi, Qatari oil tankers in Strait

 

Bahrain's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday condemned an Iranian attack on the Saudi oil tanker Wadiyan and the Qatari oil tanker Al-Rukayyat in the Strait of Hormuz, saying the incident endangered the crews of both vessels.

The ministry said the attack threatened international maritime security and global energy supplies, and violated international law and the Islamabad memorandum of understanding.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/liveblog/202607049017

Oil jumps 4% after US revokes Iran oil license

 Crude oil prices jumped by more than 4% on Tuesday after the United States Department of the Treasury revoked a temporary waiver that authorized the sale of Iranian oil. The move comes after Iran supposedly struck three oil tankers over the past day in the Strait of Hormuz. "Iran's actions in the Strait were wholly unacceptable to the United States and will be met with consequences," a US official told CNBC.

In addition, Qatar summoned the Iranian deputy ambassador earlier today after a Qatari oil tanker, Al Rakayat, was hit.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for August deliveries increased by 4.35%, going for $71.53 per barrel at 3:02 pm ET. A minute later, Brent for September's settlements advanced 4.49%, selling at $75.22 a barrel.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Oil-jumps-4-after-US-revokes-Iran-oil-license/66649766

Le Pen says she will run for president in 2027

 France's National Rally parliamentary group leader, Marine Le Pen, said on Tuesday that she plans to run for president in the 2027 election, after the Paris Court of Appeal shortened her ban on holding public office from five years to 45 months, with 30 months suspended.

"Tonight, I am a candidate for the presidential election ... I will not change my mind," Le Pen told French news channel TF1. "I will campaign without an electronic bracelet," she added, clarifying that she will appeal to the French Court of Cassation to suspend the sentences handed down by the Paris Court of Appeal, which include her wearing an electronic tag.

The former French presidential candidate also said that she and National Rally leader Jordan Bardella represent a "winning" duo that is "very strong in its convictions."

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Le-Pen-says-she-will-run-for-president-in-2027/66649617

'Zelensky: 30K Russian soldiers eliminated every month'

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared on Tuesday that Ukraine is eliminating around 30,000 Russian soldiers every month.

"In June alone, nearly 28,000 Russian soldiers were eliminated, and we have video confirmation for every single one of them. The overwhelming majority were struck by drones," he said at the NATO summit in Ankara. He added, however, that Kyiv takes no pride in this and is only showing what modern war looks like. He reiterated that this is not a war Ukraine started, but is one that the country is "forced to fight."

Ukraine's president noted that one of Europe's biggest challenges at the moment is protection against Russian ballistic missiles, stressing that the Old Continent needs its own capabilities to produce anti-ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, Zelensky stated that Ukraine "completely eliminated the very idea of Russia having a strategic rear." He insisted that all of Russia's major oil refineries have been hit.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Zelensky:-30K-Russian-soldiers-eliminated-every-month/66646185

Beijing Weighs Restricting Foreign Access To China's Top AI Models

 Up until now, the politicization of AI models generally ran in one direction with US "frontier" LLM providers such as Anthropic and ChatGPT complaining consistently that Chinese open-sourced models were "distilling" (i.e. reverse-engineering) their products. And whether true or not, China has certainly been able to catch up dramatically to the US, with China's latest open-model, GLM 5.2, viewed as just barely behind the latest comparable US offerings, while the average gap between US and Chinese models has shrunk to almost nothing.

As complaints on both sides have become more vocal (amid occasional bans of the latest Anthropic model by the White House admin), last week we reported that for the first time, China's tech giant Alibaba banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude ‌Code at work after the tool drew scrutiny for features that can help identify China-linked users, Reuters reported.

Fast forward to today when the Reuters reported that in the latest escalation, Beijing is preparing to fully flip the script on the US tech sector as Chinese authorities have held meetings with top tech firms over the past month about potentially restricting overseas access to China's most advanced AI models, including those yet to be released. 

The talks follow a number of steps by Beijing to keep homegrown ‌AI within the country and underscore how China, like the US, is now treating cutting-edge artificial intelligence as a critical national asset that needs controls. Companies present at the talks included ‌tech giants Alibaba and ByteDance as well as startup Z.ai, creator of the GLM-5.2 mode, said Reuters' sources. 

Since the emergence of DeepSeek's R1 model last year, Chinese AI models have made massive ​inroads globally thanks to their low costs and increasing capabilities. Any decision by Beijing to limit access to those products could ripple across AI markets as costs for many businesses would likely increase. It would be a boon to AI supplier stocks  which have plunged in recent days as a result of fears that US users of LLMs may gravitate to much cheaper, if just as capable, Chinese alternatives leading to huge revenue declines at US frontier companies. 

At the meetings, led by China's Ministry of Commerce, participants discussed putting limits on the most advanced AI models, both closed-source and more open versions, according to two of the sources.

Officials talked about making any leak or theft of proprietary AI technology an offense under China's stringent national security law. The officials also raised the possibility of implementing new measures to restrict who ‌can fund domestic AI startups, the source added.

The scope of the ⁠potential restrictions is still being discussed, two sources said, adding that they may only apply to future models. It was not immediately clear when or even if they would come into force.

All three leading Chinese AI companies - Alibaba, ByteDance and Z.ai - have a range of AI models, some closed-source while others are open-weight, meaning users can download, run and customise the underlying systems. Alibaba's Qwen and ByteDance's Doubao are two of the most widely used AI models in China. Z.ai has recently set Silicon Valley abuzz as the capabilities of its ​GLM-5.2 ​model come close to leading U.S. offerings but at a fraction of the cost. 

Trump's administration has also been deeply concerned about national security ‌implications of AI, in particular the potential for American AI products to be misused by military intelligence in China, Russia and other countries of concern. In June, it ordered that foreign nationals not have access to Anthropic's most advanced Fable and Mythos models, which prompted the company to disable the models for all users globally as nationality could not be verified in real time.

Export controls for Fable, which is designed for the general public, have since been lifted after new safeguards were put in place. But Mythos, designed for cybersecurity professionals, is still only available to some "trusted" U.S. organizations.

Some US AI experts have also said the US needs to regulate the use of Chinese AI models. According to two of the sources, Chinese authorities are deeply worried about the ‌potential for Mythos to exploit software vulnerabilities and that Washington might deploy the model against Chinese interests.

That echoes ​concerns publicly voiced by state media and Zhou Hongyi, founder of cybersecurity firm 360, a major vendor to government ​and enterprise clients, who has said China needs to develop its own Mythos.

Amid the rising techno-nationalism, China has implemented numerous measures to protect homegrown AI this year. In April, the country's state planner ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Chinese-founded AI startup Manus. In ‌early June, authorities issued sweeping new rules, tightening control of overseas deals ​that involve Chinese investors, technology, data and national security.

China ​had also launched investigations this year into Manus and other local AI startups that had moved abroad, seeking to establish whether they have broken export control laws, according to two of the sources and a third person.

In its report, Reuters says that it was not able to learn how any potential new restrictions on overseas access to Chinese ​AI models might work. But some hints might be gleaned from a May ‌roundtable of Chinese legal experts on regulations governing open-source AI.

According to a summary of the discussions published in an official Supreme People's Court journal, participants proposed a ​tiered system: basic open-source tools subject to a simple filing, more advanced technologies facing security reviews, and the most sensitive frontier models barred from public release or restricted ​to domestic use. 

If indeed China is about to start its own AI "firewall", the question is what happens then? Recall, in blowback to the short-lived tokenmaxxing idiocy, a growing number of American enterprises are quietly gravitating toward cheaper Chinese models.

But if China itself limits access to US clients, does this mean that the balance of power shifts back to US LLMs which will then become the only available AI vendors to US corporations. If so, is Beijing making a big mistake depriving its nascent AI ecosystem of US client revenues, and instead allowing US models - which recently found themselves on the defensive in response to much cheaper Chinese alternative - to take an even bigger lead for round 2? 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/beijing-weighs-restricting-foreign-access-chinas-top-ai-models