The United States and Iran have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that aims to end the war the US and Israel launched on Iran on Feb. 28. The 14-point agreement, signed by Donald Trump at a June 17 gathering hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in the Palace of Versailles—where the treaty to end World War I was signed in 1919—opens up the Strait of Hormuz for a 60-day ceasefire window, during which the two sides have vowed to negotiate a long-term resolution to the Iranian nuclear standoff. The US will also terminate all sanctions against Iran, provide $300 billion for post-war reconstruction, and unlock all frozen Iranian funds and assets.

US President Donald Trump suggested June 16 that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa could wipe out Hezbollah if Israel was unable to do so without causing heavy civilian casualties. The comment came in spite of repeated statements from Damascus ruling out any military intervention in neighboring Lebanon.

Trump's executive order purporting to establish a regulation regime for artificial intelligence actually serves the aim of a government partnership with the AI industry to advance the police state. Ironically, it is the AI company Anthropic that is calling for a moratorium on development of the technology until its threats are assessed. Pope Leo XIV's encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," raises critical points but still echoes the illusion that this technology, now threatening to develop its own powers of "recursive self-improvement," can be effectively regulated. There are encouraging signs of worker pushback against replacement by AI, and an emerging anarchist critique of the technology. Of course the Trump regime is targeting critics for repression as "anti-tech extremists." In Episode 331 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again calls for total abolition of AI, citing unacceptable threats to humanity on ecological, epistemological and eschatological grounds.

Amnesty International on June 3 condemned China for banning family members from visiting the resting places of people who perished in the 1989 Tiananmen Square repression. This is the first time in 37 years that the Chinese authorities have banned the visit.

Protesters clashed with security forces May 30 at the site of a planned luxury resort on Albania's Adriatic coast linked to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the daughter and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. The site, at Zvërnec, is one of the last nearly pristine coastal zones in the entire Mediterranean, and is located within Albania's southern Greek-speaking region. The project has raised serious concerns among local ethnic Greek residents over the loss of their traditional lands.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation May 29 that places limits on where and how Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents can enforce immigration law in the state. The new legislation also prohibits state and local police from cooperating with ICE to enforce civil laws.

The head of the World Health Organization has appealed for a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province, where Ebola is rapidly spreading. Director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' statement said even a temporary truce would allow health workers through and save lives. "I urge you, I implore you: give us the space to help the people who need it most," he said, addressing the armed factions active in the province. Out of nearly a thousand suspected Ebola cases in the DRC and Uganda, over 220 people may have died, with the WHO warning that the outbreak could potentially be much larger.

The administrative subpoenas issued for Hasan Piker and Medea Benjamin over their participation in the Cuba caravan are to be opposed—in part because the subpoenas will only give their sinister politics greater cachet among neophyte activists! Piker's shameless shilling for the dictatorships of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin invisibilizes the victims of their ethno-supremacist detention states—such as the Uyghurs of Xinjiang and the Crimean Tatars. This more critical point is obscured in the endless outrage over his supposed anti-Semitism. And with Xi and Putin joining with Trump to build a fascist world order, Piker's brand of campist pseudo-opposition (however overheated) is compromised from the start, mirroring what it ostensibly opposes—subpoenas notwithstanding. In Episode 330 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down in his typically unsparing manner.