Tariffs 101: Why women’s products cost more
Did you know that women’s clothing and personal care products are often priced higher than men’s? It’s been that way for years and there’s even a name for it. Pink Tax. Now with Trump implementing widespread tariffs, how will this impact women’s goods and jobs? This week on Now You Know, we talk to Prachi Agarwal, a research fellow at the International Economic Development Group at ODI Global. She focuses on trade policy and women in trade, explaining how tariffs work and why they disproportionately impact women. Adblock test (Why?)
Iran ‘needs more time’ to decide on resuming nuclear talks with US
Foreign minister’s comments come as the G7 calls for negotiations on a deal to address Iran’s nuclear programme. Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi has ruled out a quick resumption of talks with the United States after President Donald Trump said US negotiations with Tehran could restart as early as this week. Araghchi’s comments on CBS Evening News on Monday came as the foreign ministers of the G7 issued a statement calling for dialogue on a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran and the US were holding talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme when Israel launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure. The US later joined in Israel’s attacks, by bombing the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan sites on June 21. Tehran insists its programme is peaceful, but the US and Israel say they want to ensure Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon. Araghchi said negotiations would not start as quickly as Trump had indicated, and that Iran first needs assurances against further attacks. “In order for us to decide to reengage, we would have to first ensure that America will not revert back to targeting us in a military attack during the negotiations,” the minister said. “I think with all these considerations, we still need more time,” he said, although “the doors of diplomacy will never slam shut”. The Trump administration is seeking talks with Iran after the US president, during his first term, abandoned an agreement his predecessor signed with Tehran in 2015, which curbed the nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. Under that deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium below 3.67 percent purity for fuel used in commercial nuclear power plants. Advertisement After Trump ditched the deal, Iran responded by producing uranium enriched to 60 percent, above levels for civilian usage but still below weapons grade. Trump has said the US attacks had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, and senior officials said it would be almost impossible for the country to resurrect its atomic programme. Araghchi pushed back against that assertion, however. “One cannot obliterate the technology and science for enrichment through bombings,” he told CBS. “If there is this will on our part, and the will exists in order to once again make progress in this industry, we will be able to expeditiously repair the damages and make up for the lost time.” Since the US and Israeli attacks, and the ensuing ceasefire, Iran has put on hold its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) due to what Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday called the the agency chief’s “destructive” behaviour towards the country. Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said tensions are growing between Iran and the IAEA. “They [Iranians] are saying that they will only allow the inspectors to return once they secure the nuclear sites” that have been bombed by the US and Israel, Serdar said. Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations, meanwhile, said they supported the ceasefire between Iran and Israel, and urged for negotiations between Tehran and Washington to resume. “We call for the resumption of negotiations, resulting in a comprehensive, verifiable and durable agreement that addresses Iran’s nuclear program,” the G7 foreign ministers said on Monday. The ministers also urged “all parties to avoid actions that could further destabilise the region”. Adblock test (Why?)
Elon Musk slams Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, calls for new political party
The world’s richest man and the US president have traded insults over Donald Trump’s tax cuts and spending bill. Tech billionaire Elon Musk has stepped up his criticism of United States President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and spending bill and renewed his call for a new political party. Musk’s criticism of Trump’s 940-page “Big, Beautiful Bill“, which proposes tax breaks and sweeping cuts to healthcare and food programmes, has been met with strong criticism from the Democratic Party as well as some members of Trump’s Republican Party. In early June, Musk, a major campaign donor to Trump and a former key aide, called the bill a “disgusting abomination”, leading to a public falling out with the Republican president. The two then appeared to cool tensions, with Trump telling reporters that he wished Musk well, while the latter wrote on X that he regretted having gone “too far”. But as US Senators gathered to vote on amendments to the bill on Monday, Musk ramped up his criticism once again, saying lawmakers who had campaigned on cutting spending but backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame!” “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk said. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO called for a new political party, saying the bill’s massive spending indicated “that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he wrote. Trump’s DOGE suggestion Trump hit back at Musk on Tuesday, stating that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – which Musk had previously led – should review the subsidies that Musk’s companies have received, to save the federal government “BIG” money. Advertisement “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. In response to Trump’s post, Musk posted on his own platform, X, saying, “I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now.” Hitting the debt ceiling is the only thing that will actually force the government to cut waste and fraud. That’s why the debt ceiling legislation exists! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2025 It remains unclear how much sway Musk has over the US Congress or what effect his statements might have on the bill’s passage. But Republicans have expressed concern that his on-again, off-again feud with Trump could hurt their chances to protect their majority in the 2026 midterm congressional elections. Bill Schneider, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera it would likely be difficult for Musk to establish a viable political coalition consisting of the bill’s opponents. “Elon Musk is a billionaire. There are not enough billionaires to form a party in the US, even if they are unhappy with President Trump,” Schneider told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC. “Now, he has issues with Trump, who is not a very popular figure. He has a lot of opponents, a lot of critics, particularly among women in the US,” he added. “Republicans, almost all of whom are likely to support this particular bill, are very worried about how much debt it’s creating because of the huge tax cuts. Democrats are worried about the dangers to the safety net. It’s kind of hard to put those two worries, those two constituencies, together into one political party.” Adblock test (Why?)
Obama, Bush decry ‘travesty’ of Trump’s gutting of USAID on its last day
Former United States Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush have delivered a rare open rebuke of the Donald Trump administration in an emotional video farewell with staffers of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Obama called the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID “a colossal mistake”. Monday was the last day as an independent agency for the six-decade-old humanitarian and development organisation, created by President John F Kennedy as a soft power, peaceful way of promoting US national security by boosting goodwill and prosperity abroad. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered USAID to be absorbed into the US State Department on Tuesday. The former presidents and U2 singer Bono – who held back tears as he recited a poem – spoke with thousands in the USAID community in a videoconference, which was billed as a closed-press event. They expressed their appreciation for the thousands of USAID staffers who have lost their jobs and life’s work. Their agency was one of the first and most fiercely targeted for government cuts by Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk, with staffers abruptly locked out of systems and offices and terminated by mass emailing. Trump claimed the agency was run by “radical left lunatics” and rife with “tremendous fraud”. Musk called it “a criminal organisation”. Obama, speaking in a recorded statement, offered assurances to the aid and development workers, some listening from overseas. “Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,” he told them. Advertisement Obama has largely kept a low public profile during Trump’s second term and refrained from criticising the seismic changes that Trump has made to US programmes and priorities at home and abroad. “Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,” Obama said. He credited USAID with not only saving lives, but being a main factor in global economic growth that has turned some aid-receiving countries into US markets and trade partners. The former Democratic president predicted that “sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realise how much you are needed”. Asked for comment, the State Department said it would be introducing the department’s foreign assistance successor to USAID, to be called America First, this week. “The new process will ensure there is proper oversight and that every tax dollar spent will help advance our national interests,” the department said. USAID oversaw programmes around the world, providing water and life-saving food to millions uprooted by conflict in Sudan, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, sponsoring the “Green Revolution” that revolutionised modern agriculture and curbed starvation and famine. The agency worked at preventing disease outbreaks, promoting democracy, and providing financing and development that allowed countries and people to climb out of poverty. Bush, who also spoke in a recorded message, went straight to the cuts in a landmark AIDS and HIV programme started by his Republican administration and credited with saving 25 million lives around the world. Bipartisan blowback from Congress to cutting the popular President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, helped save significant funding for the programme. But cuts and rule changes have reduced the number getting the life-saving care. “You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work – and that is your good heart,” Bush told USAID staffers. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you,” he said. More than 14 million of the world’s most vulnerable, a third of them young children, could die because of the Trump administration’s move, a study in the Lancet journal projected Tuesday. “For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict,” study co-author Davide Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, said in a statement. Advertisement Bono, a longtime humanitarian advocate in Africa and elsewhere, was announced as the “surprise guest”. he recited a poem he had written to the agency about its gutting. He spoke of children dying of malnutrition, a reference to millions of people who Boston University researchers and other analysts say will die because of the US cuts to funding for health and other programmes abroad. “They called you crooks,” Bono said, “when you were the best of us.” Adblock test (Why?)
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,223
Here is how things stand on Tuesday, July 1: Fighting The Russian-installed governor of the occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, Leonid Pasechnik, said that Russian troops are now in full control of the entire region. If confirmed, that would make Luhansk the first Ukrainian region fully occupied by Russia after more than three years of war. Luhansk is one of four regions that Russia now claims as its own. Russia’s state media and war bloggers also said that Russian forces have taken control of the first village in the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk. This came as Moscow-appointed officials said Ukrainian forces attacked the city of Donetsk in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, killing at least one person, damaging several buildings and setting a market on fire. Also in Donetsk, Russian forces have occupied one of Ukraine’s most valuable lithium deposits near the village of Shevchenko, The Kyiv Independent reported, citing Roman Pohorilyi, the founder of the open-source mapping project Deep State Map. The Ukrainian Air Force, meanwhile, said it detected 107 Russian Shahed and decoy drones in the country’s airspace overnight, a day after the country experienced the biggest aerial attack from Russian forces since 2022. Russian strikes in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region left two civilians dead and eight wounded, including a 6-year-old child, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Outside the immediate region, Bloomberg reported an explosion on an oil tanker near Libya, in the latest unexplained blast on vessels that had previously called at Russian ports. Advertisement Politics and diplomacy Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the United States to consider whether new sanctions on Russia would help the Ukraine peace effort after a top Republican senator said he had received US President Donald Trump’s blessing to move forward on a bill introducing punitive measures against Moscow. US envoy Keith Kellogg responded to Peskov’s comments, describing them as “Orwellian”. “Russia cannot continue to stall for time while it bombs civilian targets in Ukraine,” Kellogg said in a post on X. German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul, speaking during a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of making “pure mockery” of peace talks. “His apparent readiness to negotiate is only a facade so far,” Wadephul said, adding that Germany was trying to help Ukraine get to a point where it could “negotiate more strongly”. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Moscow was introducing “reciprocal measures” restricting access to 15 media outlets from the European Union, in retaliation for the latest round of EU sanctions on Russia. In North Korea, images on state television showed leader Kim Jong Un draping coffins with the country’s national flag in what appeared to be the repatriation of soldiers killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine, according to the Reuters news agency. Norway said it would deploy F-35 fighter jets to Poland to protect Polish airspace and a key logistical hub for aid to Ukraine, a day after Warsaw scrambled aircraft in response to Russian air attacks on western Ukraine, near the border. Economy The International Monetary Fund said it would provide $500m to Ukraine, after completing a routine review of its $15.5bn four-year support programme. Adblock test (Why?)
Trump formally orders lifting of Syria sanctions
US Treasury says it removed 518 Syrian individuals and entities from its list of sanctions after president’s decree. Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle a web of sanctions against Syria, a move that will likely unlock investments in the country more than six months after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Trump’s decree on Monday offers sanction relief to “entities critical to Syria’s development, the operation of its government, and the rebuilding of the country’s social fabric”, the US Treasury said in a statement. The Syrian government has been under heavy US financial penalties that predate the outbreak of the civil war in the country in 2011. The sprawling sanction programme, which included provisions related to the former government’s human rights abuses, has derailed reconstruction efforts in the country. It has also contributed to driving the Syrian economy under al-Assad to the verge of collapse. Trump promised sanctions relief for Syria during his visit to the Middle East in May. “The United States is committed to supporting a Syria that is stable, unified, and at peace with itself and its neighbours,” the US president said in a statement on Monday. “A united Syria that does not offer a safe haven for terrorist organisations and ensures the security of its religious and ethnic minorities will support regional security and prosperity.” The US administration said Syria-related sanctions against al-Assad and his associates, ISIL (ISIS) and Iran and its allies will remain in place. While the US Treasury said it already removed 518 Syrian individuals and entities from its list of sanctions, some Syria penalties may not be revoked immediately. Advertisement For example, Trump directs US agencies to determine whether the conditions are met to remove sanctions imposed under the Caesar Act, which enabled heavy penalties against the Syrian economy for alleged war crimes against civilians. Democratic US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar had partnered with Republican lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna to introduce earlier this week a bill that would legislatively lift sanctions on Syria to offer long-term relief. Real relief for the Syrian people requires repealing certain laws. My bill with @RepLuna permanently repeals the sanctions and gives the post-Assad Syria a fighting chance. https://t.co/gExbLiKS7z — Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) June 30, 2025 As part of Trump’s order, the US president ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review the designation of interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”. Moreover, the US president ordered a review of the status of al-Sharaa’s group, al-Nusra Front – now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – as a designated “foreign terrorist” organisation. Al-Nusra was al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, but al-Sharaa severed ties with the group in 2016. Al-Nusra later became known as Jabhat Fath al-Sham before merging with other rebel groups as HTS. Al-Sharaa was the de facto leader of a rebel enclave in Idlib in northwest Syria for years before leading the offensive that overthrew al-Assad in December 2024. Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and praised the Syrian president as “attractive” and “tough”. The interim Syrian president – who was previously known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani – has promised inclusive governance to allay concerns about his past ties to al-Qaeda. But violence and kidnappings against members of al-Assad’s Alawite sect by former rebel fighters over the past months have raised concerns among some rights advocates. Al-Sharaa has also pledged that Syria would not pose a threat to its neighbours, including Israel, which has been advancing in Syrian territory beyond the occupied Golan Heights and regularly bombing the country. Adblock test (Why?)
“Don’t see any solution” soon for Haiti violence
While the media and intl community focus on other conflicts, Etienne Cote-Paluck discusses the ongoing violence in Haiti While the media and international community are focused on other conflicts, Etienne Cote-Paluck, editor-in-chief of Haiti Magazine, shines a light on the ongoing violence in Haiti. Adblock test (Why?)
Video: Israeli drone kills Palestinian carrying sack of flour
NewsFeed Video shows an Israeli drone killing a Palestinian carrying a sack of flour in Gaza City. Israel has killed around 600 people trying to get food from sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been condemned as “an abomination” and “a death trap” by the United Nations. Published On 30 Jun 202530 Jun 2025 Adblock test (Why?)
Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ but controversial bill faces crucial vote
NewsFeed Republicans in the US are trying to get President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax and spending bill passed by the Senate despite opposition from Democrats, who say it will be the most expensive bill in history while giving benefits to the wealthy. Published On 30 Jun 202530 Jun 2025 Adblock test (Why?)
Will a new deal end war in eastern DR Congo?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have signed a deal to end their long-running conflict. Years of fighting between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda may be at an end – thanks to a peace deal signed in the United States. Rwanda has agreed to remove thousands of troops from eastern Congo that were supporting the Rwandan-backed armed group M23, as it took control of major cities and mining areas. That was widely seen as a major escalation and stoked fears of a regional conflict. So can this agreement succeed where many others have failed? And is this deal really about US interests in Congolese minerals? Presenter: Nick Clark Guests: Gatete Nyiringabo Ruhumuliza – Political commentator and writer Zainab Usman – Senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Vava Tampa – Founder and chief campaigner of Save the Congo Adblock test (Why?)