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Iran’s President Pezeshkian allegedly wounded in Israeli attacks

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Iran’s President Pezeshkian allegedly wounded in Israeli attacks

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was reportedly slightly injured during one of Israel’s attacks on Iran last month.

Iran’s state Fars news agency, close to the revolutionary guard, says that on 16 June, six bombs targeted both access and entry points of a secret underground facility in Tehran where Pezeshkian was attending an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council.

The president is said to have suffered leg injuries as he and others escaped through an emergency shaft. Iran is now reported to be following leads of infiltration by Israeli agents.

The Fars report has not been independently verified. Israel has not publicly commented on the report.

Videos posted on social media during the 12-day war showed repeated strikes against a mountain side in north-western Tehran.

Now it has emerged that the strikes on the fourth day of war targeted a secret underground facility in Tehran where Iran’s top leaders were at the time.

The Fars news agency report says the Israeli strikes blocked all the six entry and exit points, and also the ventilation system.

The electricity to the facility was also cut off – but Pezeshkian managed to reach safety.

The Supreme National Security Council is Iran’s top decision-making body after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Last week, Pezeshkian accused Israel of trying to kill him – a claim denied by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, who said “regime change” had not been not a goal of the war.

Israel wiped out many of top IRGC and army commanders at the very start of the war.

Iranian leaders admit they were taken completely by surprise, and there was a decision-making paralysis for at least the first 24 hours after the attack.

Israel officials admitted that Ayatollah Khamenei was also the target – but that they had lost track of him when he was moved to a secure secret location, cut off to a great extent from the outside world.

There are still many questions about how Israel had gathered critical intelligence about the whereabouts of Iran’s top officials and commanders – not to mention the locations of sensitive secret facilities.

On 13 June, Israel launched a surprise attack on nuclear and military sites in Iran, saying it acted to prevent Tehran from making nuclear weapons.

Iran – who retaliated with aerial attacks on Israel – denies seeking to develop nuclear weapons and says its enrichment of uranium is for peaceful purposes.

On 22 June, the US’s Air Force and Navy carried out air and missile strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities.

US President Donald Trump later said the attack “obliterated” the facilities, even as some US intelligence agencies have taken a more cautious view.

Merz of Germany seeks to find a solution to Trump tariff dispute in the upcoming weeks

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Merz of Germany seeks to find a solution to Trump tariff dispute in the upcoming weeks

Germany's Merz wants to use coming weeks to find solution to Trump tariff row

Iranian President Injured During Escape from Israeli Attack | Latest News on Israel-Iran Conflict

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Iranian President Injured During Escape from Israeli Attack | Latest News on Israel-Iran Conflict

More details emerge on June assassination attempt on President Masoud Pezeshkian and other officials by Israel.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian suffered minor injuries in an Israeli air strike on a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council in Tehran on June 15, a senior Iranian official said.

The assassination attempt targeted the heads of the three branches of government in an effort to overthrow it, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“This attempt will not pass without Israel paying a price,” he told Al Jazeera.

The strike was carried out shortly before noon during a meeting attended by the heads of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government along with other senior officials.

The semiofficial Fars news agency also reported new details on the assassination attempt during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, which was first announced by the Iranian president in an interview released on Monday.

The session was taking place in the lower level of a government facility in western Tehran when the attack started, Fars reported. The building’s entrances and exits were hit by six missiles to block escape routes and cut off air flow.

Electricity was severed following the explosions, but Iranian officials managed to escape through a pre-designated emergency hatch, including the president, who is said to have sustained minor leg injuries while evacuating.

The news agency said authorities launched an investigation into the possible presence of Israeli spies given the accuracy of the intelligence the “enemy” possessed.

‘They did try’

Last week, Pezeshkian said in an interview with US media figure Tucker Carlson that Israel attempted to assassinate him. “They did try, yes … but they failed,” he said.

“It was not the United States that was behind the attempt on my life. It was Israel. I was in a meeting… They tried to bombard the area in which we were holding that meeting.”

The comments come less than a month after Israel launched its unprecedented June 13 bombing campaign against Iran, killing top military commanders and nuclear scientists.

The Israeli attacks took place two days before Tehran and Washington were set to meet for a new round of nuclear talks, stalling negotiations aimed at reaching a deal over Iran’s atomic programme.

At least 1,060 people were killed in Iran during the conflict, according to Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.

The Israeli attacks drew waves of retaliatory drone and missile fire, killing 28 people in Israel, according to authorities.

Iran targeted Israeli military and intelligence headquarters with ballistic missiles and drones before the US brokered a ceasefire.

The air in the Upper Midwest is so dense that a pork loin hanging from a tree would turn into ham

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The air in the Upper Midwest is so dense that a pork loin hanging from a tree would turn into ham

Much of the Upper Midwest on Saturday was dealing with swaths of unhealthy air because of drifting smoke from Canadian wildfires, covering the northern region of the U.S. at a time when people want to be enjoying lakes, trails and the great outdoors.

Most of Minnesota and parts of Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin were ranked “unhealthy” for air quality on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency map. Part of North Dakota that is home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other tourist attractions was ranked “very unhealthy,” some of the worst air quality in the nation.

In Minnesota, “If you have a nice pork loin you can hang from a tree, it’ll turn into ham,” quipped Al Chirpich, owner of the Hideaway Resort near Detroit Lakes, where people come to enjoy tree-lined Island Lake for fishing and other water activities.

Normally there would be boats and jet skis all over, but on Saturday he couldn’t see a boat on the lake, where the smoke impaired visibility and curtailed his camper business. None of his 18 RV sites was occupied. His seven rental cabins drew a handful of customers.

“I suspect when the weather clears, we’ll be swamped again. Fourth of July, I had probably 20 boats here lined up at my docks, and today my boat is the only one,” Chirpich said.

The conditions started Friday, dragging smoke from the Canadian wildfires down to the surface, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Jennifer Ritterling, in Grand Forks. Periods of bad air quality are expected to last through the weekend in the region, she said.

Limiting time outdoors, keeping windows closed and running air purifiers are good ideas for people with lung conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and even healthy people, Ritterling said.

“Our summers up here are fairly short and so everyone wants to get out and enjoy them, and it’s a little frustrating when there’s this smoke in the air,” she said.

Fires in Canada prompt state of emergency for some

All of Manitoba is under a state of emergency because of the wildfires, which have led to 12,600 people evacuating their homes in the province. The fires in the central Canadian province have burned over 3,861 square miles (10,000 square kilometers), the most land burned in 30 years of electronic record-keeping.

Under 1,000 people have evacuated their homes in Saskatchewan, where wildfires also continue to burn.

North Rim in Grand Canyon still closed

In Arizona, the North Rim in Grand Canyon National Park is still closed because of a 2.3 square-mile (6.1 square-kilometer) wildfire and another fire nearby on Bureau of Land Management land that has burned nearly 17 square miles (44 square kilometers).

More than 200 firefighters and support personnel worked to halt the uncontained fire Saturday as it burned across a high-altitude plateau between the communities of Lonesome, White Sage and Jacob Lake.

In Colorado, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park remains closed because of a 4.4-square-mile (11.3-square-kilometer) wildfire burning on the South Rim of the park, known for its dramatic, steep cliffs. A few miles from the fire, an evacuation was ordered for the community of Bostwick Park, and a nearby highway also was shut.

The fires in and near both national parks led to evacuations of hundreds of people.

Chirpich, the Minnesota resort owner, said he has plans to go to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park on Thursday and is “a bit pensive about how that’s going to be there.”

“I’m going to leave one smokehouse for another, I guess,” he said.

Fossilized Ancient Fish Uncover Earliest Known Instances of Choking

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Fossilized Ancient Fish Uncover Earliest Known Instances of Choking

The first known cases of accidental choking have been discovered, dating back 150 million years, when some opportunistic fish got more than they bargained for picking off algae and slime from dead squid-like creatures. Lucky for them, the fish are no longer around to learn about the embarrassing fate of their ambitious ancestors.

Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) have uncovered this ancient tale of instinct gone wrong through analysis of fossils of Tharsis, an extinct genus of ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii). The common fish, classed as micro-carnivores with tiny teeth, most likely survived on a steady diet of zooplankton or other small organisms, using suction feeding that required little breakdown of their small meals. At the time, the genus was one of the largest in the Solnhofen Archipelago, making up around 26% of the entire fish fauna.

However, some curious fossils have told a different story of how some Tharsis literally bit off more than they could chew. In the fossils sourced from the Solnhofen lagoons in southern Europe – a series of shallow bodies of water that existed during the Late Jurassic period – the scientists observed that the fish remains were intertwined with rostra, or the internal structures, of extinct squid-like belemnite Hibolithes. The soft-bodied belemnites appeared to be trapped in the mouths and gills of the fish.

What’s more, the fossils were so well preserved that the belemnites also had remnants of epibionts attached to their bodies, like oysters. It was the existence of these freeloading organisms that indicated to the researchers that the belemnites were long deceased, as bivalve larvae won’t attach to living, free-moving cephalopod tissue. As such, the belemnite body parts were thought to be floating in the lagoon’s water column for some time before a Tharsis individual made its deadly choice.

Belemnites were also rare in the Solnhofen Plattenkalk basins, where the fish fossils were sourced, as the low-oxygen lagoons were not fit habitats for such cephalopods. But instead of sinking to the bottom after death, the carcasses would have floated into the waters shared by the Tharsis fish and kept buoyant due to their gas-filled phragmocone chamber.

“The evidence suggests that the subadult Tharsis specimens have been nibbling and sucking microbial mats or soft tissue remnants off a floating, dead belemnite and accidentally sucked in the ‘bulb’ at the end of the hastate rostrum,” the researchers noted. “Once this happened, the belemnite proved to be a deadly trap due to its peculiar shape and sheer size. Even though the fish tried to pass the obstructive item through its gills, there was no way of getting rid of it, leading to death by suffocation.”

Tharsis specimens with belemnite lodged through mouth and gill apparatus from the Solnhofen Archipelago Bavaria, Germany. (a) J. Geppert specimen from the Eichstätt or Solnhofen Basin (b) S. Schäfer specimen from the Eichstätt Basin

The fascinating fossils show that the pointy rostrum of the belemnite remains had entered the fish through the mouth, and because of the animal’s bullet-like shape, quickly filled the mouth of the Tharsis. The fish then, choking on the convenient snack, would have attempted to push the belemnite tissue out through the gills, while the inflated phragmocone remained in the mouth cavity, suffocating the animal in the process.

“The fully open mouth of the subadult Tharsis specimens described here is roughly capable of swallowing prey about 1 cm in diameter,” the researchers wrote. “So, if the Tharsis swallows the ‘bulb’ of the belemnite rostrum, it can continue sucking it in until the phragmocone widens and is about 1 cm in diameter, but no further, because then it will become too wide for its mouth. Once the first maximum of the rostrum’s ‘bulb’ was overcome, it was probably easier to go further in than out. In addition, most fishes with small teeth capable of suction feeding like Tharsis cannot bite off prey or spit out what is far inside.”

The scientists believe that it wasn’t a case of the fish having “eyes too big for their belly,” but they were most likely trying to nibble slime or algae off the belemnite carcass and accidentally ended up with the rostrum wedged in their mouths – the point of no return.

Tharsis with belemnite lodged through mouth and gill apparatus from Blumenberg, Eichstätt Basin, Bavaria, Germany. (a) complete specimen (b) close-up of the belemnite phragmocone with an attached oyster (see arrow). (c) close-up of the oyster
Tharsis with belemnite lodged through mouth and gill apparatus from Blumenberg, Eichstätt Basin, Bavaria, Germany. (a) complete specimen (b) close-up of the belemnite phragmocone with an attached oyster (see arrow). (c) close-up of the oyster

Why this sorry tale of a tragic meal time is significant is that such a detailed story of death is rare in fossils, and it’s the first known case of this kind of choking death in vertebrates. It also shows how – much like today when marine species ingest plastics mistaken as food – animal instinct can fatally backfire.

“Consequently, one would not expect an encounter of belemnites as prey for Tharsis – and yet, there are several such incidents documented in the fossil record, which – such is the nature of the fossil record – ended deadly for the presumed predator,” added the researchers.

So while their untimely demise happened within minutes 150 million years ago, thanks to this discovery their tales of mealtime misadventure are now permanently etched in the history books.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: LMU Munich via Nature

Gisele Pelicot receives France’s Legion of Honour

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Gisele Pelicot receives France’s Legion of Honour

Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who earned international recognition after publicly testifying at her mass-rape trial last year, has been given France’s top honour.

The 72-year-old was named knight of the Legion of Honour on a list announced ahead of France’s Bastille Day.

Pelicot waived her right to anonymity during the high-profile trial against her husband who had drugged and raped her, in addition to inviting dozens of strangers to also abuse her over nearly a decade.

Pelicot was among 589 other people given France’s highest award on Sunday.

She attended almost every day of the trial, which ended last December with Dominique Pelicot, 72, being given a maximum 20 years in jail for aggravated rape, after confessing to drugging her and recruiting around 50 men to rape her while she lay comatose in bed.

“I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too,” Pelicot previously told reporters, adding that she wanted to make “shame swap sides” from the victim to the rapist.

French President Emmanuel Macron has publicly paid tribute to Pelicot as a trailblazer, adding that her “dignity and courage moved and inspired France and the world”.

According to her lawyer, a memoir detailing Gisèle Pelicot’s story in her own words will be published early next year.

Federal court postpones implementation of FTC’s ‘click-to-cancel’ rule for subscription services just days before launch

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Federal court postpones implementation of FTC’s ‘click-to-cancel’ rule for subscription services just days before launch

A federal appeals court has blocked the US Federal Trade Commission’s “click-to-cancel” rule just days before it was scheduled to take effect, dealing a blow to consumers who had pushed for easier subscription cancellations.

In October last year, the FTC approved the rule that would require companies to make canceling subscriptions as simple as signing up for them.

The change was expected to affect music streaming giants like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, which collectively serve hundreds of millions of subscribers in the US and globally.

However, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the rule on Tuesday (July 8), citing “procedural error” in the FTC’s rulemaking process. The rule was set to take effect on Monday (July 14).

The court found that the FTC failed to conduct a required preliminary regulatory analysis for rules with economic impacts exceeding $100 million annually.

“While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission’s rulemaking process are fatal here.”

US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

The court wrote: “[T]he [Administrative Law Judge] found that the proposed rule would have an annual effect on the national economy surpassing the $100 million threshold.”

It added: “While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission’s rulemaking process are fatal here.”

It added: “The Rule does contain a severability provision which keeps the remaining provisions in effect if any provisions are stayed or determined to be invalid.”

“The Rule does contain a severability provision which keeps the remaining provisions in effect if any provisions are stayed or determined to be invalid.”

US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

The FTC finalized the regulation in October last year after receiving over 16,000 public comments, aimed to crack down on what the FTC called “deceptive practices” in subscription services. Under the rule — which represented an n update to the FTC’s 1973 Negative Option Rule — companies would have been prohibited from charging consumers without informed consent and required to clearly disclose terms before collecting billing information.

In addition to digital service platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, the rule also targeted  gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, and other subscription services.

The blocked regulation was part of the Biden administration’s “Time is Money” initiative, launched last year to address consumer frustrations.

In August last year, Neera Tanden, former White House domestic policy adviser, said: “The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies, through paperwork, hold times and general aggravation waste people’s money and waste people’s time and really hold onto their money.”

The rule was challenged in court by the US Chamber of Commerce and a group of companies including Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Disney Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Music Business Worldwide

59 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, including children collecting water | Latest updates on Israel-Palestine conflict

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59 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, including children collecting water | Latest updates on Israel-Palestine conflict

At least 10 Palestinians have been killed at a water collection point in central Gaza, six of them children, as famine spreads in the besieged enclave and food and water supplies remain at critically low levels.

Israeli forces on Sunday killed at least 59 Palestinians, 28 of them in Gaza City, as they targeted residential areas and displacement camps across Gaza, medical and local sources told Al Jazeera.

The attack on the water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, which also wounded 16 people, came as the Israeli military steps up attacks as it prepares to force the entire population of Gaza into a concentration zone in the south.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said there is a water crisis across the Gaza Strip.

“Even though water is not suitable for drinking as most of the time it’s contaminated, thirst is pushing people to these areas,” he said, referring to Nuseirat.

“This is not the first time it’s happening. This is close to 10 times and just in the past few months when people were directly and deliberately targeted as they were trying to get water.”

Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza killed at least 110 Palestinians on Saturday, including 34 people waiting for food at the Israeli- and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution site in Rafah.

Mahmoud said nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed since the GHF began distributing food parcels in Gaza at the end of May through its “monopoly of humanitarian aid distribution”, pushing aside other efficient, more organised and trusted organisations, including the United Nations.

“A person can pick up a food parcel for their family, but that is not nearly enough to feed hungry children and hungry family members, and that’s the tragedy,” he said.

“People are forced to make these dangerous trips from northern Gaza, from Gaza City, all the way to Rafah city. They walk for 12 to 15km [7.5 to 9 miles], and it takes them a whole day. Some do that at night, sleeping inside bombed-out buildings, to get there as early as possible. Despite all of these efforts to get there as early as possible, they are met with live ammunition and deliberate shooting by Israeli forces.”

[Al Jazeera]

At least 67 children have died of hunger in Gaza since October 2023, Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Saturday.

Furthermore, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, warned of a sharp rise in malnutrition cases as Israel’s blockade of the coastal enclave entered its 103rd day.

In a statement, the agency said one of its clinics in Gaza has seen an increase in the number of malnutrition cases since March when the Israeli siege started. “UNRWA hasn’t been allowed to bring in any humanitarian aid since,” it said.

The warnings came as Israeli forces continued to target starving Palestinians.

On Sunday, an Israeli warplane struck a house in the al-Sawarkah area west of the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 10 people.

In the northern Gaza Strip, six Palestinians were killed and others injured when an Israeli warplane bombed a house in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City.

Five others were killed and several more injured in a separate air strike that hit a house on Hamid Street in western Gaza City.

In the al-Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City, a girl and another person were killed and several injured when Israeli forces bombed a home there.

In southern Gaza, Nasser Medical Complex medics confirmed the deaths of three people after an Israeli strike on a displacement tent in the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis city.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces blew up several residential buildings in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

The strikes came amid an apparent deadlock in a week of indirect talks in Qatar between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas for a ceasefire to halt the 21-month war.

Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a genocidal offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023, killing more than 58,000 Palestinians so far, most of them women and children.

Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people in Gaza have been forcibly displaced at least once during the war, which has created dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory.

In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Challenging Clients

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Challenging Clients



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Charges dropped against doctor accused of destroying Covid vaccines in the US

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Charges dropped against doctor accused of destroying Covid vaccines in the US

Reuters US Attorney General Pam Bondi, a woman with short blonde hair wearing a black blouse, speaks in front of a US flag, with US President Donald Trump behind her wearing a dark blue jacket, white shirt and bright blue tie.Reuters

Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had ordered the charges to be dropped

The US attorney general has ordered charges to be dropped against a doctor accused of destroying Covid-19 vaccines worth $28,000 (£20,742), distributing fake vaccination record cards, and giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine at their parents’ request.

Pam Bondi said Dr Michael Kirk Moore Jr. “gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so”. He had been indicted by the Justice Department under the Biden administration in 2023.

The plastic surgeon was already on trial in Utah, where he had pleaded not guilty to all charges including conspiracy to defraud the US.

The acting US Attorney for the district of Utah, Felice John Viti, filed to dismiss the charges on Saturday, saying this was “in the interests of justice”.

Dr Moore was accused of providing fraudulently completed vaccination certificates for more than 1,900 vaccine doses, the US Attorney’s office in Utah said in 2023.

These were allegedly provided, without administering the vaccine, for a charge of $50 (£37), in exchange for direct cash payments or donations to a specific charity.

The government also accused him of giving children saline shots at their parents’ request so that the “children would think they were receiving a COVID-19 vaccine,” according to the US attorney’s office.

He was accused alongside his company – Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah, Inc. – and three others of seeking to defraud the US and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Bondi wrote on X on Saturday that she had ordered the Justice Department to drop the charges because Dr Moore “did not deserve the years in prison he was facing”.

She said US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Mike Lee, both Republicans, had brought the case to her attention, calling them champions for “ending the weaponization of government”.

Lee thanked the attorney general for “standing with the countless Americans who endured too many official lies, mandates, and lockdowns during COVID”.

Dr Moore and other defendants faced up to 35 years in prison on multiple charges, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The current US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ran a group for eight years, Children’s Health Defense, that repeatedly questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccination.

Kennedy has in the last year repeatedly said he is not “anti-vax” and will not be “taking away anybody’s vaccines”.

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