Mohammad Ghalibaf, new strong man of the Iranian regime, denies any negotiation with the United States

Are the United States actually in discussions with a senior Iranian leader as claimed by Donald Trump yesterday? The US president took the opportunity to suspend his ultimatum for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. According to the news site Axios, this mysterious interlocutor would be the president of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf. “No negotiations” have started, replied the interested party, denying “false information to manipulate financial and oil markets.” One thing is certain, the deaths of several Iranian leaders since the beginning of the war have elevated Mohammad Ghalibaf in the hierarchy of the mullah regime.

Pakistan says it is ready tonight to host negotiations to end the war in the Middle East, “in the interest of peace and stability in the region and beyond,” says Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

On another front of the war in Lebanon, negotiation is not on the agenda. Israel continues its military operations against the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. With a new goal according to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, the conquest of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. Caught between Hezbollah and the Hebrew state, the Lebanese government has decided to expel the Iranian ambassador to Beirut. France, through the mouth of Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, applauds a “courageous decision.”

In Russia, it has been three weeks now since mobile internet has been cut off in central Moscow. The same is true in St. Petersburg and in many major cities in the country. “Security measures,” say the authorities. But in the absence of specifics, many Russians doubt and frustration is rising, even if it is expressed little publicly due to the repression in Vladimir Putin’s country.

The Bank of France is improving. After two difficult years, the institution today published less imbalanced accounts. In 2023 and 2024, it had suffered heavy losses due to the sharp rise in the key rates of the European Central Bank to curb inflation. This had forced it to draw on its reserves to limit the damage. The Bank of France had to do it again last year, but to a lesser extent. And the message that Governor François Villeroy de Galhau wanted to convey, as he is leaving his post, is that the Bank of France has a solid foundation to absorb new shocks.

Another hacking case involving approximately 774,000 students or former students has been revealed tonight. Their personal data provided to access housing has been hacked, announced tonight the CNOUS, the National Center for University and School Works. This concerns data extracted from the platform mesrdv.etudiant.gouv.fr.

Two days after the municipal elections, it’s time for evaluation and possibly settling scores for the Socialists. The Socialist Party is convening its national bureau in less than an hour. And First Secretary Olivier Faure intends to defend a positive assessment of the election for his troops. But several figures within the party do not share the same analysis, such as François Hollande or Boris Vallaud, the head of the socialist deputies. Two personalities have even called for the resignation of Olivier Faure, former First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis and the mayor of Saint-Ouen Karim Bouamrane.

This is an important moment in the appeal process of Nicolas Sarkozy, retried for the alleged Libyan financing of his winning presidential campaign in 2007. The hearing of the controversial intermediary Alexandre Djourhi, sentenced to the harshest sentence in the first instance: six years in prison with an arrest warrant issued in court, he was released after two and a half months of detention. He had been found guilty of aggravated money laundering, active corruption, and trafficking in influence. Since this morning, Alexandre Djourhi is being questioned about a prominent episode of this trial, the exfiltration by France of Bechir Saleh, the former chief financial officer of the Gaddafi regime. An exfiltration carried out between the two rounds of the presidential election in 2012.

He is a major player in the French media landscape, often accused of using his media to promote a conservative agenda. Vincent Bolloré is currently in front of the members of the investigation commission on public broadcasting. The billionaire is notably the owner of CNews, a channel that launches attacks against Radio France and France Télévisions, which are considered left-leaning. According to Vincent Bolloré, the problem with public broadcasting is that it costs taxpayers a lot while the state coffers are not well filled.