Iran Deal Signed, G7 Pressure on Russia, OpenAI Burned $34B, June 16

🇷🇺 European leaders at G7 urge Trump to host Zelenskyy-Putin talks as Ukrainian president says Kyiv is no longer losing on the battlefield. (The Guardian)

🇬🇧 UK environment secretary blocks Thames Water's 10 billion pound rescue plan, pushing nationalisation closer as customers face undue burden. (The Guardian)

— Trumps Iran deal and G7 pressure on Russia both aim to lock in wins before November, but the UKs water crisis shows the domestic rot no foreign policy can fix.

🇮🇱 Israeli court rules to keep a prominent Palestinian doctor in detention despite visible signs of torture and months of imprisonment. (Al Jazeera)

💰 OpenAI spent 34 billion dollars in 2025, up 172 percent year-over-year, with 19 billion on R&D and 6 billion on sales and marketing. (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)

🔐 Ent Security launches with 100 million dollars to build intent-aware endpoint security for workspaces where humans and AI agents blur. (SiliconANGLE)

🇺🇸 FBI thwarted a drone plot targeting a White House UFC event, Director Patel says, with multiple suspects in custody. (BBC)

⚡ Swedish man jailed for four years for coercing his wife into sex with 120 men he found online. (BBC)

Quiet.

So they signed it. The Iran deal, round two, in Geneva of all places, the Peace Capital, where theyve made pacts before and watched them fray. Trump says Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and its going to second stage. In Sirik, Iran, the real second stage is queueing for water at 45 degrees, skeptical of a deal that feels like a bandage on a hemorrhage. The Guardian catches the mood: everyone is angry for different reasons. You dont need a nuclear weapon when the ground itself is turning to cinder.

The G7 in Evian-les-Bains looks like a photo op trying to legislate gravity. European leaders want Trump to host Zelenskyy-Putin talks, because of course they do. Zelenskyy says the battlefield has stabilized enough to talk. But theres a divergence between US and Israeli objectives in the region, Al Jazeera reports, and Israel is still holding a Palestinian doctor with torture marks. The peace capital has a long shadow.

Meanwhile, back in the country that invented tap water, Thames Water needs 10 billion pounds just to keep the pipes from collapsing. The environment secretary calls it an undue burden. Andy Burnham wants nationalisation. The water company is too big to fail and too broken to save. Its the same logic as the Iran deal: we will paper over the structural rot with a payment plan, and call it a win.

Over in tech land, OpenAI burned 34 billion dollars last year. Not made. Spent. Nineteen billion on research and six billion on marketing to convince you that artificial general intelligence is around the corner. Ent Security raised 100 million to build security that reads intent behind what humans and AI agents do. The joke writes itself: the worlds most expensive security system is for a door no one can agree is open or closed.

Fujitsus chair resigned after woman-related inappropriate conduct, the company that already destroyed lives with the Post Office software scandal. The Swedish man who sold his wife to 120 men got four years. The FBI stopped a drone attack on a White House UFC event. Two base jumpers died in Utah, one who performed with Madonna at the Super Bowl. All these events share a strange intimacy: the places we trust to be safe arent, and the people we think are in charge are just trying to get through the day.

The Iran deal second stage might hold. Or it might collapse under the weight of a warming planet and a distracted president. The G7 might host talks. Or they wont. The Thames might get nationalised. Or it will stay a private disaster. OpenAI might crack AGI. Or it will just crack.

But in Sirik, theyre still queueing for water, 45 degrees, wondering if the second stage is better than the first.