Category: 2. World

Canada will rescind a tax on big US technology firms, just hours before first payments were due, to allow trade talks between the two countries to restart.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump called off negotiations over a trade deal, describing the tax as a “blatant attack”, and threatened higher tariffs on imports from Canada.

In response, Canada has said it will introduce legislation to remove the tax and would halt the collection of payments, which were due on Monday.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News on Monday that negotiations between the North American neighbours would “absolutely” restart as a result.

The digital services tax (DST) would have meant US tech giants including Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple faced a 3% charge on Canadian revenue above $20m.

Canada’s finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, issued a statement saying the tax would be rescinded.

“The DST was announced in 2020 to address the fact that many large technology companies operating in Canada may not otherwise pay tax on revenues generated from Canadians,” it said.

“Canada’s preference has always been a multilateral agreement related to digital services taxation,” the statement added.

Many countries, including the UK, are changing how they tax large multinational technology firms, which have millions of customers and advertisers around the world, but high corporation tax bills due to the way their businesses are structured.

It was estimated that Canada’s tax would cost the tech giants more than C$2bn ($1.5bn; £1.06bn) in its first year as the tax was being applied retroactively to January 2022.

Last year’s federal budget estimated the tax would bring in C$5.9bn in total over the next five years.

Trump, who has forged a close relationship with tech company owners in his second term in office, has pushed back against such taxes.

He described Canada’s policy as “egregious” adding “economically we have such power over Canada”.

In a social media post on Monday, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thanked Canada for removing the tax, saying it would have “been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America”.

Three quarters of Canada’s goods exports go to the US, worth more than $400bn a year, while Canada takes just 17% of US production.

In a statement, the American Chamber of Commerce hailed the move to rescind the tax.

“This is a constructive decision that allows both countries to focus on strengthening their economic partnership,” said chamber president Rick Tachuk.

Canada’s climbdown comes after a rollercoaster few months for US-Canada relations.

Shortly after taking office Trump threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs and even to annex the US’s northern neighbour.

The antagonism helped propel Canada’s Liberal Party, led by former central banker, Mark Carney, back into power.

Since then there appeared to be a rapprochement, with Canada and the US saying they aimed to agree new trade terms by 21 July.

Canada’s digital services tax has been a long-time irritant for the US dating back to the previous Biden administration.

Ottawa had received repeated warnings that it could undermine the trading relationship and lead to retaliation.

But earlier this month, Champagne said Canada would move ahead with collecting the scheduled payments from big tech companies regardless of ongoing talks with the US.

“It is hard to overstate how badly the government managed the DST issue over the past five years,” Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively on the policy, wrote on his blog on Monday.

He pointed to, among other factors, making the tax retroactive and downplaying bipartisan concerns from US lawmakers.

There has been Canadian opposition to the tax as well, with business groups warning costs will be passed along to consumers.

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Some 935 people were killed in Iran during the 12-day air war with Israel, based on the latest forensic data, a spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary said on Monday, according to state media.

Among the dead were 38 children and 132 women, the spokesperson, Asghar Jahangir, said.

The death toll was a sharp increase from a previous Iranian health ministry tally of 610 killed in Iran before a ceasefire went into effect on Tuesday last week.

Jahangir also revised the number of people killed in an Israeli strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison to 79, up from 71.

Israel launched the air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.

Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Israel’s “act of aggression had led to many war crimes”. He said Iran would transfer evidence to international organisations which he said should hold Israel to account.

“The Zionist regime’s (Israel) action was done without any reason or justification, therefore we do not believe in separating military and civilian (victims),” Baghaei told reporters at a regular press briefing.

He said any “martyr or destroyed building is an example of war crimes.”

Construction activity visible at Iran’s bombed Fordo nuclear facilitypublished at 10:34 British Summer Time

10:34 BST

Kayleen Devlin and Benedict Garman
BBC Verify

Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies shows heavy construction equipment operating at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran – one of the sites targeted by the US military.

Images from 29 June show an excavator and crane at the top of a newly constructed access road close to an area targeted by the American bunker-busting bombs. Further down the mountainside, a bulldozer and lorry are visible.

Construction vehicles are also working at the entrance to the site and at a bombed building on the east side of the complex – both of which were damaged in Israeli strikes the day after the US attacks.

According to nuclear weapons expert David Albright, who analysed imagery of the same site taken on 28 June, the construction work may include backfilling the craters, carrying out engineering damage assessments and radiological sampling.

Following the US strikes President Donald Trump said they had “obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Friday that Iran could resume uranium enrichment “in a matter of months.”

The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog says Iran could begin enriching uranium again within months following an attack by the U.S. military on three of its facilities earlier in June.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. office that inspects countries’ nuclear programs to ensure compliance with nonproliferation agreements, made the comments in an interview recorded Friday and aired on Sunday by CBS’s Face the Nation.

“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” he said.

Grossi said he believed the facilities that were hit by U.S. bombs suffered severe but not total damage, and added that Iran had other means of achieving its nuclear goals.

“Iran had a very vast ambitious program, and part of it may still be there, and if not, there is also the self-evident truth that the knowledge is there. The industrial capacity is there. Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology, as is obvious,” he said.

President Trump said shortly after the strikes that the U.S. had “totally obliterated” Iran’s three main nuclear facilities, and other administration officials have echoed a similar assessment of the mission’s success.

But a preliminary report by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested Iran’s nuclear facilities may have only suffered “limited” damage, setting back the nuclear program by months.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that report was a “preliminary, low-confidence report that will continue to be refined” and called the U.S. operation a “a ”historically successful attack.“

Grossi told CBS that it was possible Iran could have moved canisters of enriched uranium before the attack to a secret offsite location. The IAEA previously reported that Iran had a stockpile of over 400 kilograms — or nearly 900 pounds — of highly enriched uranium.

But President Trump reiterated in an interview aired on Fox News Sunday morning that he believes that wasn’t the case. ”First of all, it’s very hard to do. It’s very dangerous to do. It’s very heavy, very very heavy,“ Trump said.

Trump said he believed the attacks also caught Iran by surprise — particularly the strike on its underground Fordo facility. ”And nobody thought we’d go after that site, because everybody said, ‘that site is impenetrable.’“

Grossi said it was important for the IAEA and Iran to resume discussions, and for international inspectors to be able to continue their work in the country. ”We have to go back to the table and have a technically sound solution to this,“ he said.

Copyright 2025 NPR

An explosion and fire at a pharmaceutical factory in Telangana, India, have killed at least 12 people and injured several others

NEW DELHI — An explosion and fire at a pharmaceutical factory in India’s southern state of Telangana killed at least 12 people and injured several others, authorities said Monday.

The fire department recovered the charred bodies of 10 workers in an industrial area about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the state capital Hyderabad (31 miles), the state’s fire services director G.V. Narayana Rao told The Associated Press.

Two other workers succumbed to burns and were pronounced dead at a hospital, Rao said, adding that debris of the gutted pharmaceutical unit of Sigachi Industries was being removed to find out if any more workers were trapped. Nearly three dozen injured workers were admitted to hospitals. he said.

“It was an explosion in a spray dryer unit of the factory, which is used to process raw material into fine powder for making drugs,” Rao said.

India is home to some of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies, playing a pivotal role in the global supply of generic medicines and vaccines. The country’s robust manufacturing and cost-effective production have made it a hub for pharma giants.

Industrial accidents, particularly involving chemical reactors, aren’t uncommon in such factories, underlining the need for authorities to implement stringent safety protocols and regulatory oversight in a sector critical to public health.

Sigachi Industries Limited is an Indian company dealing with active pharmaceutical ingredients, intermediates and vitamin-mineral blends, according to the company’s website. It has five manufacturing facilities across India, and also subsidiaries in the U.S and the United Arab Emirates.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a social media post expressed his anguish over the loss of lives and announced financial support of 200,000 Indian rupees ($2,333) each to the next of kin.