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    Iran says diplomacy with US only possible if Israeli aggression stops

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    Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said that his country is ready for more diplomacy with the US only if Israel’s war on his country is brought to an end “and the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes he committed”.After several hours of talks with European foreign ministers in Geneva on Friday, there was no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough – or a resumption of negotiations with the US.Araghchi said: “Iran is ready to consider diplomacy once again and once the aggression is stopped and the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes committed. We support the continuation of discussion with [Britain, France, Germany and the EU] and express our readiness to meet again in the near future.”Late on Friday, Donald Trump said he was unlikely to press Israel to scale back its campaign to allow negotiations to continue.“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.Araghchi said he was willing to continue talks with his European counterparts since they have not supported Israel’s attacks directly. But he said Iran was “seriously concerned over the failure of the three countries to condemn Israel’s act of aggression” and would continue to exercise its right to “legitimate defence”.He also said Iran’s capabilities, including its missile capabilities, are non-negotiable, and could not form part of the talks, a rebuff to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who in an earlier statement said they should be included in the talks.With Israeli diplomats and military commanders warning of a “prolonged war”, the route to direct talks between the US and Iran remains blocked, leaving the European countries as intermediaries.After Friday’s talks between Araghchi and his British, French and German counterparts, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don’t see regional escalation of this conflict.”The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said there “can be no definitive solution through military means to the Iran nuclear problem. Military operations can delay it but they cannot eliminate it.”The talks are being held against the backdrop of Trump’s threat that the US could launch its own military assault on Iran within a fortnight – a step that would probably turn the already bloody war into a full-scale regional conflagration.European diplomats said they came to talks to deliver a tough message from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and special envoy, Steve Witkoff: that the threat of US military action is real but that a “diplomatic pathway remains open”.But without direct talks between the US and Iran it is hard to see how an agreement can be reached to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme in a way that satisfies the US headline demand that Iran must never have a nuclear bomb.Trump suggested that European efforts would not be enough to bring any resolution. He said: “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”The European ministers said they had expressed their longstanding concerns about Iran’s expansion of its nuclear programme, “which has no credible civilian purpose and is in violation of almost all provisions in the nuclear deal agreed in 2015”.The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said: “Today the regional escalation benefits no one. We must keep the discussions open.”Earlier on Friday, Macron said the European offer to end Israel’s war would include an Iranian move to zero uranium enrichment, restrictions on its ballistic missile programme and an end to Tehran’s funding of terrorist groups.The proposals were surprisingly broad, spanning a range of complex issues beyond Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, and appeared likely to complicate any solution unless an interim agreement can be agreed.One proposal recently aired is for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment for the duration of Donald Trump’s presidency. The concept of uranium enrichment being overseen by a consortium of Middle East countries – including Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – remains on the table.Macron, already accused by Trump of publicity seeking this week, set out a daunting agenda. “It’s absolutely essential to prioritise a return to substantial negotiations, including nuclear negotiations to move towards zero [uranium] enrichment, ballistic negotiations to limit Iran’s activities and capabilities, and the financing of all terrorist groups and destabilisation of the region that Iran has been carrying out for several years,” he said.In the previous five rounds of talks, the US insisted that Iran end its entire domestic uranium enrichment programme, but said it would allow Iran to retain a civil nuclear programme, including by importing enriched uranium from a multinational consortium.Iran claims that as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, it has an absolute legal right to enrich uranium, a position neither the European nor American powers have endorsed. In the past, European negotiators have proved more adept than their US partners in finding compromises, including the temporary suspension of domestic enrichment, a principle Tehran reluctantly endorsed between 2003 and 2004. More

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      I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

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      All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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      I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

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      All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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      Trump is Pushing Allies Away and Closer Into Each Other’s Arms

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      Important U.S. allies are trying to bolster their ties as the Trump administration shifts priorities and reshapes the world order.New trade deals. Joint sanctions against Israel. Military agreements.America’s closest allies are increasingly turning to each other to advance their interests, deepening their ties as the Trump administration challenges them with tariffs and other measures that are upending trade, diplomacy and defense.Concerned by shifting U.S. priorities under President Trump, some of America’s traditional partners on the world stage have spent the turbulent months since Mr. Trump’s January inauguration focusing on building up their direct relationships, flexing diplomatic muscles and leaving the United States aside.This emerging dynamic involves countries such as Britain, France, Canada and Japan — often referred to by international relations experts as “middle powers” to distinguish them from superpowers like the United States and China.“These are industrialized democracies, allies of the United States, supporting multilateral rules and institutions,” said Roland Paris, a professor of international relations and the director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.“And as the international order has been disintegrating, and the United States has been indicating that it’s less willing to underwrite it, what we’ve seen is a shift in the role of middle powers,” he added.That role, Professor Paris said, is characterized by the pursuit of “opportunistic and self-interested initiatives that are still collaborative,” including a slew of smaller agreements over trade and defense involving European countries and Canada.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      European Union Unveils Fresh Sanctions on Russia, Including a Nord Stream Ban

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      Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced a proposal meant to ramp up pressure on Moscow.The European Union’s executive arm unveiled its latest package of sanctions against Russia, aiming to apply pressure to President Vladimir V. Putin by damaging the nation’s energy and banking sectors.The sanctions proposed on Tuesday — which still need to be debated and passed by member states — would ban transactions with the Nord Stream pipelines, hoping to choke off future flows of energy from Russia into Europe.They would lower the price cap at which Russian gas can be purchased on global markets, hoping to chip away at Russian revenues.And they would hit both Russian banks and the so-called “shadow fleet,” old tanker ships, often registered to other countries or not registered at all, that Moscow uses to covertly transport and sell its oil around the world to skirt energy sanctions. The new measures would blacklist a new batch of ships that are being used in this way.The proposal is the 18th sanctions package to come out of Brussels since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Taken as a whole, the measures are a sweeping effort to threaten Russian economic might and morale at a critical juncture in the war.The announcement comes as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine stall. Despite pressure from the Trump administration to work toward a cease-fire, the latest round of talks between the two sides, earlier this month in Istanbul, created little result outside of another agreement to swap prisoners.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Macron Will Visit Greenland This Month, Defying Trump

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      President Emmanuel Macron of France plans to travel to the island nation, which President Trump has vowed to take control of, on the way to Canada for a Group of 7 meeting.In a challenge to President’s Trump’s vow to take control of Greenland, President Emmanuel Macron of France will visit the enormous Arctic island on June 15 with the aim of “contributing to the reinforcement of European sovereignty.”The French presidency announced the visit on Saturday, saying that Mr. Macron had accepted an invitation from Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, and Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, with whom it said Mr. Macron would discuss “security in the North Atlantic and the Arctic.”Greenland, a semiautonomous island that is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally, has been thrust in recent months from a remote, uneventful existence to the center of a geostrategic storm by Mr. Trump’s repeated demands that it become part of the United States, one way or another.“I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,” Mr. Trump told NBC in March, but added that he would not “take anything off the table.”Mr. Macron, who has seen in the various provocations directed at Europe by the Trump administration an opportunity for European assertion of its power, will be the first foreign head of state to go to Greenland since Mr. Trump embarked on his annexation campaign this year.JD Vance, the American vice president, visited Greenland in March. The trip was drastically scaled back and confined to a remote military base after the threat of local protests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Europe Secured a Tariff Delay From Trump, but Can It Now Make a Deal?

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      Officials from the European Union and the United States will start a new negotiating push on Monday, after President Trump delayed until July 9 the 50 percent tariffs he imposed on the bloc.When President Trump this weekend delayed 50 percent tariffs on the European Union by more than a month, officials on both sides of the Atlantic billed the move as an opportunity to kickstart discussions and reach a trade deal.“Talks will begin rapidly,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday night, after speaking by phone with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.And Paula Pinho, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said at a news conference on Monday that the discussion between the two leaders offered “a new impetus for the negotiations.”But the path toward de-escalation remains fraught. The United States and the European Union still have different priorities, ones that could remain an obstacle to a rapid agreement. And it is not clear that either the demands or offers on the table have changed.The goal is for the two sides to reach some solution before July 9, when the 50 percent levies are now set to take effect — delayed from the June 1 date Mr. Trump had set when he first announced them last week.Discussions are poised to resume immediately. Maros Sefcovic, the E.U.’s trade commissioner, was set to have a phone call Monday afternoon with Howard Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump announces he will pause threatened 50% tariffs on Europe after call with EU chief – US politics live

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      Donald Trump has warned that if Vladimir Putin attempts to conquer all of Ukraine, it will lead to the “downfall” of Russia, while also criticising Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Sunday night post on Truth Social.“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post, adding, “I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”Earlier on Sunday the US president told reporters that was he was “very surprised” that his Russian counterpart had intensified the bombardment of Ukrainian cities despite the US president’s efforts to broker a ceasefire.Pressed by a reporter to say if he was now seriously considering “putting more sanctions on Russia”, Trump replied: “Absolutely. He’s killing a lot of people. What the hell happened to him?”In his post on Sunday night, Trump also criticised Zelenskyy, saying the Ukrainian president was “doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does.”“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you all the latest news lines throughout the day.Donald Trump has announced that he will pause his threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union until 9 July, after a “very nice call” with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.The European Commission president announced in a social media post that she had spoken with Trump and secured the delay to give the two sides more time to negotiate.European assets rallied on Monday, Reuters reported. The euro hit its highest level against the dollar since 30 April, while European shares surged and were poised to recoup the previous session’s losses.“Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” von der Leyen wrote. “To reach a good deal, we would need the time until July 9.”Brussels and Washington have been locked in negotiations in a bid to avert an all-out transatlantic trade war, after Trump’s tariff threat on Friday dramatically raised the stakes.Trump warned he would impose 50% tariffs on all of the bloc’s imports into the US, saying “discussions with them are going nowhere”, adding that the tariffs would be applied from 1 June. Trump claimed he was “not looking for a deal”, repeating his longstanding view that European states had “banded together to take advantage of us”.For the full story, see here:In other news:

      President Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by unleashing the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine and said he was weighing new sanctions on Moscow, though he also scolded Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump posted the remark on Truth Social as sleeping Ukrainians woke to a third consecutive night of Russian aerial attacks, listening for hours to drones buzzing near their homes and eruptions of Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire.

      The United States demanded that South Korea resolve the large trade imbalance between the countries during recent trade talks, South Korean media reported on Monday. The US repeatedly raised the issue of the trade imbalance in the commodity sector and both countries agreed it was necessary to address it, broadcaster YTN and the Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed South Korean trade official who was part of the trade delegation.

      Trump said on Sunday his tariff policy was aimed at promoting the domestic manufacturing of tanks and technology products, not sneakers and T-shirts. Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey, Trump said he agreed with comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on 29 April that the US does not necessarily need a “booming textile industry” – comments that drew criticism from the National Council of Textile Organizations. “We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts. We want to make military equipment. We want to make big things. We want to do the AI thing with computers,” Trump said.

      Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday he has written to US president Donald Trump to organise a meeting between the United States and the Asean regional bloc. Malaysia is chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations grouping this year.

      Hong Kong’s education bureau has called on the city’s universities to “attract top talent” by opening their doors to those affected by the Trump administration’s attempt to ban Harvard from enrolling international students. Last week the Trump administration revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effectively banning the university from accepting foreign students.

      Federal judges are discussing a proposal that would shift the armed security personnel responsible for their safety away from the Department of Justice and under their own control, as fears mount that the Trump administration is failing to protect them from a rising tide of hostility. The idea of creating their own armed security detail emerged at a meeting of about 50 federal judges two months ago, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

      Trump has been warned by fiscal hawks within his own party in the US senate that he must “get serious” about cutting government spending and reducing the national debt, or else they will block the passage of his signature tax-cutting legislation known as the “big, beautiful bill”. More

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      Trump Delays E.U. Tariffs Until July 9

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      President Trump said he would give the European Union more time to negotiate a trade deal before 50 percent tariffs take effect.President Trump said on Sunday that he would delay imposing 50 percent tariffs on all imports from the European Union until July 9 to allow more time for trade negotiations.In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said that he had spoken to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, about his recent threat to enact the tariffs on June 1 if a trade deal could not be reached in the next week.Mr. Trump has expressed frustration over negotiations with the E.U., saying that the union has been slow to offer trade concessions during a 90-day window to reach a deal that satisfies the administration. But his threat to hit the union with a steep tariff raised the chances of an economically destabilizing trade war with one of the world’s largest economies.On Sunday, Mr. Trump appeared to relent, at least for now.“The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly,” Mr. Trump wrote, referring to Ms. von der Leyen. The European Commission is the executive arm of the European Union.Ms. von der Leyen, in a separate social media post on Sunday, said that she had a “good call” with Mr. Trump and had conveyed to him that the E.U. needed extra time to reach a trade deal. She said that talks would advance “swiftly and decisively.”“The E.U. and the U.S. share the world’s most consequential and close trade relationship,” she wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More