The Trump administration is prepared to allow the establishment of a $300bn investment fund for Iran if Tehran agrees to a final settlement to end the war that includes a nuclear deal. A senior US official said Washington had discussed the possibility of sanctions relief and “a big $300bn fund to rebuild their country”. The incentives would be connected to Iran’s “performance” adhering to the memorandum of understanding that is to be formally signed in Switzerland on Friday. A person briefed on the talks said the establishment of the fund would be contingent on a final settlement that is part of the MoU and would follow an extension of the ceasefire by 60 days, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and further negotiations on a nuclear deal. They added the fund would not come from governments and instead would be created for companies keen to invest in the nation of 90mn with abundant energy resources. The structure and management of the fund were not immediately clear. “Ther...
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US-Iran deal may get oil flowing again, but region’s root problems are unsolved An Iranian woman waves a national flag at Valiasr Square in Tehran. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images in Jerusalem Few analysts believe final settlement can be reached in 60 days – and even if it is, war and instability could soon return In much of the Middle East, news that the US and Iran had come to a fragile agreement was greeted with relief tempered with doubt that any deal would resolve the turbulent region’s deep problems or even prevent a future return to war. In Kuwait, a frequent target of Iranian drone strikes during the 15-week conflict, Iyad Joumma, a 37-year-old Jordanian engineer, spoke for many. ADVERTISEMENT CONTENT RESUMES ON SCROLL While the agreement may allow the region to catch its breath, he said, its success “will depend on the ability of the parties involved to address the root causes of the tensions”. Of a dozen analysts and experts consulted by...
Backlash Grows Over TV Star’s Data Center Kevin O’Leary of ‘Shark Tank’ criticizes detractors as tools of Beijing BY WILL PARKER BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah—Kevin O’Leary is trying to build one of America’s largest data centers. That is, he said, if he can stop the Chinese government from interfering. O’Leary aims to develop a natural-gas and data-center project covering thousands of acres in the Hansel Valley. For weeks, he has encountered furious pushback from people across the state, largely over the potential impact on the Great Salt Lake, which has been receding for years. The entrepreneur-turned-TV personality said there is more to some of his local opponents than meets the eye. They are part of a propaganda campaign waged and funded by China to stymie U.S. progress in the race for AI global dominance, he asserts. He has made his case during regular appearances on cable-news shows and through social-media accounts. O’Leary has provided scant evidence of Chinese government involv...
Warsh Wants the Fed to Stop Talking So Much BY NICK TIMIRAOS Kevin Warsh boiled down his advice for the Federal Reserve before an audience of investors last year. “Stop talking so much,” he said. “More thinking, less talking.” For more than a decade, Warsh has argued that the Fed should say less. How much a central bank reveals about its thinking shapes mortgage rates, markets and the cost of borrowing for everyone. Wall Street will parse Wednesday’s meeting, his first as Fed chairman, for any sign of where he’ll take it. As a Fed governor through the 2008-09 crisis, Warsh had a front-row seat watching Ben Bernanke pioneer two of the central bank’s biggest innovations this century—a far larger holding of bonds and a more systematic practice of explaining its moves. Bernanke was extending a shift Alan Greenspan began in the 1990s, when the Fed first started announcing its rate decisions and signaling where they might head. Warsh quit in 2011 after souring on the bond buying and ha...
Russia Strikes Cultural Landmarks Thousand-year-old cathedral damaged in attacks on Ukraine that kill at least 11 BY JAMES MARSON Russian airstrikes on Ukraine sparked a blaze that tore through the roof of the main cathedral at the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, one of the holiest sites in Eastern Orthodoxy, amid an assault Sunday and Monday that led to devastating damage to Ukrainian cultural sites. Ukrainian political and church leaders decried the Russian missile-and-drone attacks that killed at least 11. Cultural locations across the country were damaged, including an art museum in the eastern city of Kharkiv and film studios in Kyiv that house a collection of 100,000 costumes. President Volodymyr Zelensky called the damage at the monastery “an attack on the Christian community and on the cultural heritage of humanity.” “It is important that the world does not remain silent in response to this latest act of Russian barbarism,” he said on social media. The night sky glowed orang...
AI giants are learning a hard lesson about pricing power Anthropic, until Friday’s White House move, looked like one of the more rationally valued companies in its peer group Based on its annual revenue run-rate of nearly $50bn, Anthropic’s proposed $1tn valuation, assuming little or no debt, would represent a multiple of 20 © Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty Images Published 10 hours ago First comes innovation, then comes negotiation. Anthropic’s unfortunate skirmish with the US government, which slapped an export ban on its most advanced AI models on Friday, shows that for any industry, creating impressive products is of limited use if a company can’t sell them profitably. That’s a fact that investors chasing thirteen-digit AI valuations might previously have missed. Anthropic’s case is, to be fair, an odd one. The White House’s curb on the company’s newest models comes in the context of an already-fractious relationship between the two sides. But it raises ...
In Latest Attacks, Russia Is Exploiting a Major Weakness for Ukraine Ukraine is running out of American-made Patriot air-defense interceptors, and is pleading for more. Listen · 10:07 min Ukrainian service members next to a launcher of a Patriot air-defense system, in an undisclosed location, in 2024. Credit... Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters Published June 13, 2026 Updated June 15, 2026, 8:28 a.m. ET Russia’s ballistic-missile attacks against Ukraine have grown in ferocity and magnitude in recent weeks because Russian military planners are exploiting one of Ukraine’s greatest weaknesses: The Ukrainian military does not have enough Patriot missile interceptors to keep up with the barrages . Air-defense units around the country are stuck making impossible calculations. Salvos can now include more than 1,000 drones and dozens of missiles. Exhausted crew members who have at times spent 24 hours glued to their radars with little food or sleep are overwhe...