Iran’s intelligence chief among latest key senior officials killed in Israeli airstrikes

 Iran’s intelligence chief and other key senior officials have been killed in an Israeli airstrike — further decimating Tehran’s military leadership, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Mohammed Kazemi, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ head of intelligence, was killed Sunday alongside his deputy, Hassan Mohaqiq, and others during an attack on Tehran, the IDF said.

Israeli forces were able to take out the three at once while they were attending a meeting, the IDF said.

6

Mohammed Kazemi, the head of intelligence for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Tasnim News Agency

6

Footage from the strike on surface-to-surface missile launchers in Iran.IDF

“[Israeli] fighter jets, following precise IDF intelligence, struck a structure in Tehran where several senior officials from Iranian intelligence organizations were located,” the IDF said.

“These officials played a central role in shaping Iran’s strategic assessments and planning terrorist attacks against Israel, the West, and countries in the Middle East.”

Kazemi had been the Revolutionary Guard’s chief of intelligence since 2022 and was responsible for leading counterintelligence and espionage operations — including weeding out Iranian citizens who opposed the regime.

6

Footage of the airstrikes that killed key Iranian officials.IDF

Mohaqiq previously served as chair of the Guard’s Strategic Intelligence Division, the IDF said.

Kazemi’s death was first revealed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

6

Mohammad Kazemi, head of IRGC intelligence, was reportedly killed.IDF

“Moments ago, we also got the chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran,” Netanyahu told Fox News in an interview on Sunday afternoon from an undisclosed location in Israel.

“Our brave pilots are over the skies of Tehran, and we’re targeting military sites, nuclear sites,” he added.

His death was later confirmed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

6

Mohammad Hassan Mohaqiq, his deputy, was also reportedly killed.IDF

Quds Force Intelligence Department head Mohsen Bakri and his deputy, Abu al-Fadl Nikouei, were also killed in the strike.

The Quds Force is a powerful branch within the Revolutionary Guards Corps that supports non-state organizations in several countries.

The pair played a significant role in Iran’s efforts to maintain its presence in Syria and support Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to the IDF.

The strike follows an Israeli strike last week that killed Mohammad Bagheri, head of the Intelligence Directorate in the Iranian armed forces general staff and the country’s top-ranking military official.

6

Footage of the strike on surface-to-surface missile launches in Iran.IDF
“This marks a significant blow to the Iranian regime’s intelligence apparatus and its ability to carry out terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” the IDF said.

Israel has taken out dozens of Iran’s top military leaders and scientists since it began its bombing campaign on Thursday, targeting nuclear and military sites after talks to reach a deal on Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program failed.

https://nypost.com/2025/06/16/world-news/irans-intelligence-chief-among-latest-key-senior-officials-killed-in-israeli-airstrikes/

Kulldorff, Fired From Harvard After Refusing COVID Shot, Named To CDC Vaccine Panel

 by Jennifer Kabbany via The College Fix,

World-renowned infectious-disease epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff — who was fired from Harvard Medical School last year after refusing the COVID vaccine — just got a new gig.

Kulldorff has been named a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.

Kulldorff, who had refused the COVID vaccine because of his infection-acquired immunity, lost his appointment at a Harvard-affiliated hospital in the early days of the COVID era, and in March of 2024 was officially terminated as a med school faculty member.

Since the COVID lockdowns began five years ago this month, Kulldorff argued that tactics such as social distancing, masking children, vaccines after infections, and other extreme measures were not the best course of action to fight the virus.

He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for sensible tactics that would allow the globe to reach “herd immunity” and has been signed by nearly 1 million scientists worldwide.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in announcing the new members of the panel last week on X, wrote that his selections signify a “major step towards restoring public trust in vaccines.”

Kennedy wrote he retired the 17 current members of the committee and is repopulating ACIP with eight new members “committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.”

“They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations. The committee will review safety and efficacy data for the current schedule as well,” Kennedy stated.

MassLive reported that in 2021, “Kulldorff posted on X that ‘thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should.'”

“COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers,” he wrote. “Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”

According to the New York Times, after Kennedy’s announcement, some infectious disease and vaccine experts accused the health secretary of going back on his pledge not to pick so-called anti-vaxxers.

“When Mr. Kennedy fired the entire committee, known as the A.C.I.P., he cited financial conflicts of interest and said a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccination,” the Times reported.

As for Harvard’s role in the controversy, writing in City Journal last year, Kulldorff argued that Harvard turned its back on him, open debate, and medical freedom.

“The beauty of our immune system is that those who recover from an infection are protected if and when they are re-exposed. This has been known since the Athenian Plague of 430 BC—but it is no longer known at Harvard,” he wrote.

“Three prominent Harvard faculty coauthored the now infamous ‘consensus’ memorandum in The Lancet, questioning the existence of Covid-acquired immunity. By continuing to mandate the vaccine for students with a prior Covid infection, Harvard is de facto denying 2,500 years of science.”

Kennedy, in announcing Kulldorff, noted he is a biostatistician and “a leading expert in vaccine safety and infectious disease surveillance.”

“… Dr. Kulldorff developed widely used tools such as SaTScan and TreeScan for detecting disease outbreaks and vaccine adverse events. His expertise includes statistical methods for public health surveillance, immunization safety, and infectious disease epidemiology. He has also been an influential voice in public health policy, advocating for evidence-based approaches to pandemic response.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/epidemiologist-who-was-fired-harvard-after-refusing-covid-shot-named-cdc-vaccine-panel

'NextCure Joins China-ADC Gold Rush with $745M Simcere Deal''

 

The deal gets NextCure the rights to Simcere’s novel ADC for solid tumors outside of China.

NextCure is joining the China biopharma gold rush, partnering with Simcere Pharmaceutical Group on development of a novel antibody-drug conjugate for treating solid tumors.

Through the deal announced Monday, the Maryland-based company gets ex-China rights to SIM0505, an ADC developed by Simcere that targets CDH6 combined with a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor. NextCure will pay Simcere an undisclosed upfront fee, plus development, regulatory and sales milestones for sales outside of China, adding up to as much as $745 million.

“[Simcere’s] proprietary payload is a potent cytotoxin with a potentially improved safety and efficacy profile compared to other topoisomerase inhibitors,” Michael Richman, NextCure’s president and CEO, said in the statement announcing the deal.

NextCure’s stock was worth about 70 cents apiece before trading began Monday and fell to 50 cents by Monday afternoon, a 26% drop.

The deal also gives NextCure the rights to linker and topoisomerase payload technology developed by Simcere. NextCure will use that tech to develop another ADC on an unannounced preclinical target.

Simcere already has SIM0505 in Phase I dose escalation trials in China. NextCure will take the developmental reins in the U.S. and begin its own Phase I trial in the third quarter of 2025.

Adding SIM0505 to its pipeline brings NextCure’s total offerings to two, the other molecule being LNCB74, another ADC for solid tumors. That therapy is being developed together with LigaChem. The antibody in that ADC had at one time been in development on its own, but NextCure shifted its work to an ADC formulation in late 2023. LNCB74 is currently in a Phase I dose escalation trial.

The SIM0505 deal is part of a massive recent trend in biopharma of grabbing assets from Chinese biotechs. Obesity drugs have gotten the lion’s share of attention recently, but ADCs have had just as much activity. GSK alone in the last two years has gotten two separate ADCs from DualityBio and Hansoh Pharma for gastrointestinal and lung cancers as well as sarcomas, spending close to $3 billion for the two molecules. Gilead spent $415 million in biobucks to shore up its ADC pipeline in December 2024 with a deal to use Tubulis’ conjugation technology on “ultra-stable ADCs.” Roche dropped $1 billion in January on a Phase I ADC from Innovent in small cell lung cancers.

https://www.biospace.com/business/nextcure-joins-china-adc-gold-rush-with-745m-simcere-deal

Starmer says US-UK trade deal to be completed 'very soon,' Trump proclamation expected

 Britain and the United States should finalize "very soon" the implementation of a trade deal agreed last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Canada.

Trump is expected to sign a proclamation on the terms of the deal covering steel, ethanol, autos and beef, three sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Work on the proclamation had been completed, but it was not immediately clear if Trump would sign it when he meets Starmer later on Monday, the sources said.

"I'm certainly seeing President Trump today, and I'm going to discuss with him our trade deal," Starmer told reporters on the sidelines of a Group of Seven (G7) meeting.

"I'm very pleased that we made that trade deal, and we're in the final stages now of implementation, and I expect that to be completed very soon."

Britain was the first country to agree a deal for lower tariffs from Trump, with the U.S. reducing tariffs on imports of UK cars, aluminium and steel, and Britain agreeing to lower tariffs on U.S. beef and ethanol.

But implementation of the deal has been delayed while details were being hammered out. The proclamation readied by the White House will set an effective date in coming weeks, one of the sources said.

On steel and aluminium, the U.S. agreed to lower the 25% tariffs on imports from Britain to zero, subject to setting a quota for British steel imports that must meet supply chain requirements.

Britain had avoided tariffs of up to 50% on steel and aluminium that the U.S. imposed on other countries earlier this month, but could face elevated tariffs from July 9 unless a deal to implement the tariff reduction is reached.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-uk-trade-deal-completed-145553431.html

G7 leaders struggle for unity as Trump says removing Russia from group was a mistake

 Group of Seven leaders met on June 16 seeking a common approach on wars in Ukraine and the Middle East but before their summit formally began, US President Donald Trump said removing Russia from the former Group of Eight over a decade ago had been a mistake.

Mr Trump's overt statement of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin was an early challenge for a once tight-knit grouping that has struggled to find unity as Washington retreats from multilateralism.

G-7 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the US, along with the European Union, are convening in the resort area of Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies until June 17. 

Speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Mr Trump said the former Group of Eight had been wrong to kick out Russia in 2014 after it annexed Crimea.

“This was a big mistake,” Mr Trump said, adding he believed Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Mr Putin not been ejected.

“Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else ... he’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that he basically doesn’t even speak to the people that threw him out, and I agree with him,” Mr Trump said.

His comments raise doubts about how much Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can achieve when he meets the leaders on June 17. European nations say they want to persuade Mr Trump to back tougher sanctions on Moscow.

Mr Zelensky said he planned to discuss new weapons purchases for Ukraine with Mr Trump.

Mr Trump spoke on June 14 with Mr Putin and suggested the Russian leader could play a mediation role between Israel and Iran.

French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed the idea, arguing that Moscow could not be a negotiator because it had started an illegal war against Ukraine. 

A European diplomat said Mr Trump's suggestion showed that Russia was very much on US minds. 

European officials said they hoped to use June 17's meeting with Mr Zelensky and Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte and next week's Nato summit to convince Mr Trump to toughen his stance.

“The G-7 should have the objective for us to converge again, for Ukraine to get a ceasefire to lead to a robust and lasting peace, and in my view it’s a question of seeing whether President Trump is ready to put forward much tougher sanctions on Russia,” Mr Macron said.

With an escalating Israel-Iran conflict, the summit in Canada is seen as a vital moment to try to restore a semblance of unity among democratic powerhouses.

In another early sign the group may struggle to reach agreement on key issues, a US official said Mr Trump would not sign a draft statement calling for de-escalation of the Israel-Iran conflict.

A Canadian official, though, said the conflict would come up in bilateral meetings throughout the day and it was too early to speculate on the outcome of those conversations. A senior European diplomat echoed those comments, saying Trump had yet to make a decision.

Draft documents

Canada has abandoned any effort to adopt a comprehensive communique to avert a repeat of the 2018 summit in Quebec, when Mr Trump instructed the US delegation to withdraw its approval of the final communique after leaving.

Leaders have prepared several draft documents seen by Reuters, including on migration, artificial intelligence, and critical mineral supply chains. None of them have been approved by the United States, however, according to sources briefed on the documents.

Europeans are on the same page on most issues, a European diplomat said. But without Mr Trump, it is unclear if there will be any declarations, the diplomat said.

The first five months of Mr Trump's second term upended foreign policy on Ukraine, raised anxiety over his closer ties to Russia, and resulted in tariffs on US allies.

Talks on June 16 will centre around the economy, advancing trade deals, and China. 

Efforts to reach an agreement to lower the G-7 price cap on Russian oil, even if Mr Trump decided to opt out, were complicated by a temporary surge in oil prices since Israel launched strikes on Iran on June 12, two diplomatic sources said. Oil prices fell on June 16 on reports Iran was seeking a truce.

The escalation between the two regional foes is high on the agenda, with diplomatic sources saying they hope to urge restraint and a return to diplomacy and would encourage Mr Trump to sign a declaration.

"I do think there's a consensus for de-escalation. Obviously, what we need to do today is to bring that together and to be clear about how it is to be brought about," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/g-7-leaders-struggle-for-unity-as-trump-says-removing-russia-from-group-was-a-mistake