Good morning. There's a particular kind of relief that comes from finishing something only halfway: the deal that isn't really a deal yet, the captaincy that begins with a loss, the state visit that produces a stack of paperwork instead of a breakthrough. This week handed out three of those at once, and every one of them still counts as progress.
In today's newsletter: Israel and Lebanon sign a framework agreement in Washington that Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls only "the beginning of the beginning," Shreyas Iyer's first match as India's T20 captain ends in a loss to Ireland, and Bangladesh's Tarique Rahman makes his first official trip to Beijing and brings up a river India watches closely.
Closing levels · 2026-06-25
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Markets have been closed since Thursday: Friday's Muharram holiday ran straight into the weekend, so Thursday's numbers are still the freshest read on the board. Trading resumes Monday.
Israel and Lebanon Just Signed Their First Deal in Years, and Hezbollah Wasn't in the Room
Israel and Lebanon signed a framework agreement in Washington on Friday, capping four days of US-brokered talks and marking the first formal accord between the two governments in years. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced it himself, and was careful not to oversell it: "It's the beginning of the beginning."
The fine print matters more than the signing photo. The ceasefire only takes effect once Hezbollah fully stops firing and pulls its fighters out of the South Litani Sector in southern Lebanon, and in exchange Israel will hand two areas inside its own buffer zone over to the Lebanese army. Washington is sweetening the deal with $100 million in aid and training for Lebanese troops.
Hezbollah was not at the table for any of it, and nobody in Washington, Beirut or Jerusalem will say out loud whether the group plans to honour a ceasefire it didn't sign. For India, which still draws most of its crude from a region that spent the last two years on edge, even a fragile de-escalation is one less reason for oil prices to spike.
This follows the same playbook Washington used in Gaza: a narrow, technical first step, pilot zones, troop pullbacks, cash, that buys time before anyone touches the harder political question of whether Hezbollah ever actually disarms.
Israel isn't withdrawing from southern Lebanon, it's handing over two specific pockets inside its own buffer zone as a pilot. Israeli officials have also signalled they'll keep striking Hezbollah targets if they think it's necessary, deal or no deal.
India's New Captain Starts His Reign With a Loss to Ireland
Shreyas Iyer's first match in charge of India's T20 side ended in a 34-run defeat to Ireland at Belfast's Stormont ground, India's first loss to the Irish in nine meetings between the two sides. Ireland posted 182/9, built on half-centuries from captain Lorcan Tucker and Gareth Delany, before India collapsed from a competitive position to be bowled out for 148, losing their last four wickets for just 13 runs.
It was also India's first T20I since lifting the World Cup in March, and the decision to leave teenage prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi out of the XI for the series opener didn't go unnoticed back home. Iyer, who took over the armband from Suryakumar Yadav, gets a chance to set things right when the two sides meet again in the series decider.
Bangladesh Goes to Beijing, and Brings Up a River India Watches Closely
Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman held bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People during his first official visit to Beijing since taking office in February, with the two sides signing 13 memorandums of understanding covering trade, investment and infrastructure.
Rahman also asked China to back the long-delayed Teesta River management project, with both sides agreeing to expand cooperation on the river's master plan, dredging, flood control and irrigation, a politically delicate ask given how closely New Delhi watches Chinese involvement so close to its northeastern border.
Breaking.exe
Tokenmaxxing is over. Enterprise clients of OpenAI and Anthropic are pulling back from the spend-now, optimise-later approach that defined the last two years of AI adoption, with companies like Uber capping monthly AI budgets and at least one major customer ditching Claude entirely for cheaper Chinese models. |
Space, the final committee meeting. ISRO wrapped up the two-day BRICS Heads of Space Agencies meeting in Bengaluru, bringing together officials from Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa and five partner nations to push a shared satellite constellation and a proposed BRICS Space Council. |
Anthropic's new colleague never takes a sick day. Anthropic launched Claude Tag, an always-on AI teammate that lives inside a Slack channel rather than a single chat window, keeps context across conversations, and will fully replace Claude's older Slack app by August. |
134.3 crore and counting. India's telecom subscriber base crossed 134.3 crore in May, per the latest TRAI data, with Airtel and Reliance Jio together accounting for nearly 94 percent of all new connections added during the month. |
Pangaea Revisited
Lagos buries another building. A three-storey building collapsed in Lagos's Alakija neighbourhood, killing nine people, including a two-year-old girl, with 27 more rescued from the rubble in a city where shoddy construction keeps making headlines for the worst reasons. |
Trump's tax on taxing Big Tech. Donald Trump threatened a 100 percent tariff on any country that imposes a digital services tax on American tech firms, reviving a threat he first made against France and aiming it at the rest of Europe this time. |
The mole gets life. A Kyiv court sentenced former SBU counterterrorism chief Dmytro Kozyura to life in prison for treason after finding he had spied for Russia's FSB since 2018, passing on details of Ukrainian critical infrastructure and missile strike damage. |
Cat finally talks. Tender fixer Vusimuzi "Cat" Matlala pleaded guilty to fraud and corruption over a R228 million police tender and agreed to a 15-year sentence, seven of them suspended, in exchange for testifying against senior police officials in the case. |
Also, Also, Also
Shivaji goes streaming. Riteish Deshmukh's historical epic Raja Shivaji began streaming on Netflix after a theatrical run that made it the first Marathi film to cross Rs 100 crore domestically. |
Dembele does it in one half. Ousmane Dembele scored a first-half hat-trick as France beat Norway 4-1 to finish top of Group I with a perfect record, leaving Erling Haaland to watch from the other end. |
Riteish, you're under arrest again. Lock Upp Season 2 premieres on Netflix today, with Farah Khan and Riteish Deshmukh as the new jailers locking up 14 celebrity contestants for six weeks. |
The monsoon keeps its appointment. India's southwest monsoon pushed further into Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, with the IMD flagging thunderstorms and gusty winds as it advances toward Uttarakhand and the rest of the country. |