All The International Politics!

Ukraine’s drone strike on an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea last weekend has escalated tensions between the two countries and highlighted the growing links between the separate conflicts they’re fighting. Iran has vowed to respond to Saturday’s attack, which it said was against a commercial vessel and killed a sailor. Ukraine claimed the vessel was carrying military equipment between Iran and Russia.

While U.S. President Donald Trump threatens tariffs over wildfire smoke drifting south, Canadian fire experts say large forest fires are inevitable.  Over the past week, Trump has criticized Canadian fire management and said the country is "poisoning" U.S. air. He suggested Canada might have to pay.  But experts say Canada's worsening fire seasons reflect a harder reality: not every blaze, or the smoke that comes from it, can be stopped.

U.S. President Donald Trump‘s latest tariff threat against Canada is based on a nearly 100-year-old trade statute that has never been used to impose tariffs before — and not even goods covered under the Canada-U.S. Mexico Agreement on free trade (CUSMA) are safe. Trump signed three executive orders Monday to impose a 50 per cent tariff on many Canadian goods under Section 338 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930, which allows a president to tariff any country that “discriminates” against U.S. commerce.

Police arrested 14 activists in central London on Sunday after they staged a protest marking one year since Palestine Action was banned, inviting officers to join the proscribed group. Standing outside New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, activists from Defend Our Juries handed out leaflets urging serving officers to join Palestine Action. Police arrested the demonstrators under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act, which criminalises inviting support for a proscribed organisation and carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. The arrests mark an escalation in the policing of the campaign.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that Christians in Lebanon had asked Israel to “annex” their villages, many of which Israeli forces have damaged or destroyed. Speaking on the pro-Israel US news outlet with host Jacqui Heinrich on "The Sunday Briefing", Netanyahu said “we…take care of our friends, especially the Christians in the Middle East”.

Less than two weeks before his daughter’s wedding, Khalil al-Masri set out with his eldest son to complete what should have been one of the family's happiest final preparations: paying for and confirming the reservation of the wedding dress she had chosen at a shop in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood. With the reservation confirmed, the two stopped at a nearby sweet shop to celebrate, where they met two friends. As they sat together at a table outside the shop, a live bullet pierced Masri’s head, leaving him unconscious as his son and friends watched in horror.

Behind his thick glasses, 25-year-old Inam Ahmad’s eyes move with a strained flicker, a visible reminder of the permanent damage inflicted by pellet guns in Indian-administered Kashmir. “My life is not only dark. I live with the pain every day as the pellets in my skull move or heat up,” says Ahmad, who lost 80 percent of his eyesight in 2017 at the age of just 16 when pellets fired by Indian armed forces pierced his skin and lodged inside his head, behind his eyes. 

Heavy, acrid wildfire smoke blanketed much of the eastern United States on Saturday, marring preparations for the weekend's highly anticipated World Cup final to be held in an open stadium in New Jersey. Wildfires burning in Canada have sent noxious smog billowing across the border, with residents in New York, Washington, D.C., and the American Midwest urged to stay indoors because of dangerously poor air quality. At one point on Saturday, the smoke made New York the most polluted city in the world, followed closely by Toronto and Washington, according to air-quality tracker IQAir.

Organised by International Gay Rugby, the biennial competition attracts up to 4,000 players from around the world, with the Amanda Mark Cup for women’s teams also set to be part of the event. The bid is being led by Leeds Hunters, with support from Leeds City Council, the University of Leeds, the Leeds Rhinos Foundation and Leeds Tykes.

The US president made the remark on Tuesday (1 July) at the dedication of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, with Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump seated in the audience. Trump had been reflecting on the only two father-and-son pairs to receive the Medal of Honor, the US military’s highest award, Theodore Roosevelt and his son Theodore Roosevelt Jr, and Arthur MacArthur and his son Douglas MacArthur, before turning to his own sons, Donald Jr and Eric.

Cruz was present at the Stonewall Inn during the historic 1969 uprising that helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. While she was described by The New York Times as having played a quieter role in comparison to activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, she became a deeply respected elder within New York’s transgender community over the decades that followed.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a key Republican who ‌went from a vocal critic of Donald Trump to one of his most loyal allies on Capitol Hill after Trump became president, has died at age 71. The South Carolina lawmaker died after a "brief and sudden illness," his office posted on X early on Sunday. NBC News said emergency personnel ​had responded to a call for cardiac arrest at his Capitol ​Hill home on Saturday night.

A diarrhea-causing parasite has led to a growing outbreak in the United States that has sickened more than 1,000 people and sent dozens to hospital.  As of Wednesday, multiple states had reported cyclospora infections, which can cause watery diarrhea, bloating, fever and nausea.  While cases are common in the spring and summer, the current outbreak has led to an unusually high number, making it one of the largest the country has seen. No deaths have been reported. 

A Canadian whose son was killed on the front lines of the Ukraine war is now working to help those whose loved ones are missing in action get answers. His new organization, called the International League of POW/MIA Families of the War in Ukraine, aims to establish a central body responsible for helping families around the world.

Speaking at the Attitude PRIDE Awards on 4 July, journalist Willoughby was asked if she had any hope for the trans community. “Not really. I get the impression that the Labour machine is too great to actually turn around,” she said. “Andy Burnham at the end of the day is one individual and we’ve already seen early signs that he’s having to comply and maybe water down his true feelings to actually get the gig as Prime Minister, which is really disappointing.”

A 25 June screenshot shared on the message board Resetera by user Neha showed a failed attempt to search for LGBTQ+-tagged titles on Steam’s Chinese interface; they were met with a warning stating that the content “violates local laws and regulations” and cannot be displayed. Another user on X posted a similar screenshot showing the same message on Steam.