Iran has once again shut down the Strait of Hormuz, just one day after reopening the vital shipping lane. It comes as the U.S. Navy intercepted and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship Sunday in the Sea of Oman. Iran said the seizure violated the ceasefire reached earlier this month. Despite the escalation, President Trump announced a U.S. delegation is heading to Pakistan for a new round of peace talks, repeating his claim that a deal is “very close.” But Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday that Tehran has “no plans” to participate. Speaking to Fox News Sunday, President Trump warned, “If Iran does not sign this deal, the whole country is getting blown up.” This is Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Mohammad Reza Naqdi: “Victory will certainly be ours. We hold the upper hand. Even if you look at the battlefield through ordinary calculations, victory is ours, and we have the advantage. They have already struck whatever they could. They did whatever they were able to do. They say they hit 33,000 targets. They keep inventing numbers for themselves. They say they sank all our forces. Well, if you sank all our naval forces, then why did you not dare come and reopen the strait?”

In southern Lebanon, a French peacekeeper was killed and three others wounded after a U.N. patrol came under fire on Saturday. French President Emmanuel Macron blamed the attack on Hezbollah, while the group denied responsibility. Israel has been known to target humanitarian aid convoys.

The incident comes just days after Israel and Lebanon announced a 10-day ceasefire brokered by the United States. On Sunday, the Israeli military published for the first time a map of its new deployment line inside southern Lebanon, which runs five to 10 kilometers deep into Lebanese territory, putting dozens of villages under Israeli occupation. Israel is calling it a “buffer zone.” Meanwhile, an image went viral on social media showing an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to smash a statue of Jesus on a cross in occupied southern Lebanon, drawing widespread condemnation. Israel’s army says it’s investigating the soldier. It comes as tens of thousands of displaced Lebanese rushed back to their villages in south Lebanon to destroyed homes and scenes of devastation. This is Jamila Bassam, who was displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Jamila Bassam: “We will rebuild with our own hands. We’re not afraid. Even if it takes us 10 years to repair, it doesn’t matter to me. My house in the village is also gone, but we will repair it, too, and it will come back even better than it was. What matters is that we live with pride and dignity, not to be ruled by anyone.”

British authorities are investigating whether a series of recent arson attacks on Jewish sites in London are linked to what they described as “Iranian proxies.” A 17- and 19-year-old were arrested in connection to an arson attack on a synagogue in northwest London over the weekend. A Persian-language media company was also reportedly attacked in recent days. No one has been injured. This is Rabbi Yehuda Black of the Kenton United Synagogue.

Rabbi Yehuda Black: “As far as I’m aware, at 11:30 last night, my synagogue, Kenton United Synagogue, was fire bombed. They threw into the medical room a fire bomb. There was smoke everywhere. I’m glad to say that the synagogue was not burned down. It’s a beautiful synagogue. It’s a gem of a synagogue. But at the end of the day, I don’t think that they’ve succeeded in what they wanted to do in that respect.”

Oil and gas prices surged over 6% after the U.S. Navy said it intercepted and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN that gas prices may stay above $3 per gallon until next year. Meanwhile, Air Canada has temporarily suspended flights from Toronto and Montreal to New York’s JFK Airport for five months, citing rising fuel prices. Separately, Spirit Airlines is reportedly seeking emergency U.S. government funds to stay afloat amid the fuel price surge.

In Gaza, UNICEF reported that Israeli fire killed two truck drivers it had contracted to deliver clean water to Palestinian families on Friday. Israeli attacks have killed more than 750 ⁠Palestinians since last October’s so-called ceasefire. It comes as U.N. Women published a report detailing how Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian women and girls since 2023. This is the chief of humanitarian action at U.N. Women.

Sofia Calltorp: “Between October 2023 and December 2025, more than 38,000 women and girls were killed in Gaza, the result of Israeli air bombardment and land military operations. This includes over 22,000 women and 16,000 girls, amounting to an average of at least 47 women and girls killed every day. Women and girls accounted for a proportion of deaths far higher than those observed in previous conflicts in Gaza.”

In Louisiana, a 31-year-old Army veteran murdered eight children, including seven of his own, in a mass shooting rampage that spanned four locations across Shreveport on Sunday. Two women were left critically injured, both of them the mothers of the murdered children. The gunman was previously arrested in 2019 and sentenced to probation for firing five bullets at a vehicle near a school where children were playing.

Meanwhile, in Iowa City, five people, including three college students, were wounded early on Sunday when a gunfight erupted near the University of Iowa campus. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 114 mass shootings in the U.S. since January 1.

In Ukraine, at least six people were killed and over a dozen wounded after a gunman opened fire on crowds in the streets of Kyiv Saturday. The 58-year-old suspect, who has not been named, was killed by police after he took several people hostage inside a supermarket. Authorities are investigating the mass shooting as an act of terrorism. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacker was born in Russia, had lived in the Donetsk region, and set fire to an apartment before taking to the streets in a shooting rampage.

The U.S. military has confirmed another strike on a boat in the Caribbean, saying it killed at least three people on board. The Trump administration again claimed the vessel was carrying drugs without providing any evidence. Since September, U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific have killed nearly 200 people.

In related news, two U.S. Embassy staffers died in a car crash in northern Mexico. Two Mexican law enforcement officials were also killed. The four officials were returning from a drug enforcement operation when the accident took place.

Mexican officials confirmed a devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year was caused by a pipeline leak near a field operated by the state-run Pemex, contradicting earlier claims. Environmentalists had accused the Mexican government of lying about the causes of the spill off the coast of Veracruz, which spread across more than 370 miles and into at least seven nature reserves. Over a dozen groups, including Greenpeace Mexico, in March shared satellite images that showed the real root of the spill was a Pemex pipeline leak, which the company had not disclosed.

The Justice Department has tapped a Trump loyalist to lead a Miami-based federal investigation into former federal officials who investigated Trump. Eighty-one-year-old Joe diGenova previously served as a U.S. attorney under President Reagan. After the 2020 presidential election, he supported efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. DiGenova was named to the role after the Justice Department removed career federal prosecutor Maria Medetis Long, who resisted pressure to bring charges against former CIA Director John Brennan. That investigation is centered around the 2017 intelligence assessment that found ​Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in support of Donald Trump.

A federal appeals court is allowing President Trump to continue building his $400 million ballroom at the White House’s former East Wing, reversing a lower court’s order from the previous day that temporarily blocked the construction. Last fall, Trump tore down the East Wing to build the ballroom, prompting a lawsuit by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Trump has said the ballroom ​would be a “shed” for ​a “massive” military ⁠complex being built underneath. Meanwhile, the Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were hand-picked by President Trump, has approved plans to build a 250-foot tall “Triumphal Arch” in Washington, D.C. The gold-adorned structure would tower over the nearby Lincoln Memorial and would dwarf other federal monuments.

A federal judge in California has blocked the $6.2 billion mega-merger of Nexstar Media Group and its competitor Tegna. The combined company would control 265 television stations in 44 states and Washington, D.C., making it the largest owner of local TV affiliates in the United States, controlling far more than the FCC’s ownership cap of 39%. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley ruled in favor of U.S. attorneys who sued to block the merger, agreeing it would likely increase costs, reduce competition and weaken local news coverage. Nexstar says it will appeal the ruling.

In Wisconsin, police fired tear gas, pepper spray and rubber-coated steel bullets at hundreds of animal rights activists on Saturday as they attempted to rescue about 2,000 dogs from a facility that breeds beagles for medical experimentation. The crackdown by Dane County sheriff’s deputies left scores of people injured, including one protester who had two teeth knocked out. Twenty-five people were arrested. Protesters were attempting to enter a property owned by Ridglan Farms, which agreed last fall to surrender its state breeding license and stop selling dogs to other laboratories by July 1 as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on animal mistreatment charges. A state judge found Ridglan Farms likely broke Wisconsin animal cruelty laws by housing beagles in brutal conditions, performing surgeries without anesthesia and leaving wounds untreated, along with other violations. Ridglan Farms still holds federal research credentials and plans to continue breeding beagles for its own experimentation. Last month, activists successfully entered the property and freed about two dozen beagles, who were subsequently adopted.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has wrapped up a two-day visit to Spain, where he held bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. On Saturday, they joined a pair of gatherings that brought together leaders of more than 100 progressive political parties across five continents to discuss ways to combat the rise of the far right in the U.S., Europe and South America. This is Brazilian President Lula.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: “We must replace despair with hope, and hatred with optimism. The global progressive movement has an important mission: to restore the ability of progressive forces to envision a better future, one characterized by social justice, equality and democracy.”