The US is still willing to negotiate

Plus, how one Ukrainian soldier survived beneath the front lines.

Daily Briefing Daily Briefing By Kate Turton Hello. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US is still willing to negotiate over the Iran crisis and Pakistan seeks a $10 billion fund from the US after mediating Iran talks. Meanwhile, separate US talks with Canada and Mexico test North America's trilateral trade pact and OpenAI says AI models went rogue during testing. Plus, how one Ukrainian soldier survived beneath the front lines. Today's Top News   Marco Rubio at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Pasay, Metro Manila. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Pool via REUTERS War in Iran The possibility for diplomacy remains alive in the Iran conflict as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States is still willing to negotiate an end to the crisis, and Iran's Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni visited mediator Pakistan and asked Islamabad to continue its efforts. Pakistan has asked the US for a $10 billion exchange stabilization facility which, if approved, could provide a lifeline for the cash-strapped South Asian economy. The request, which is being reported for the first time, follows Pakistan's role in brokering talks over the Iran war. A Houthi threat to impose a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea could significantly widen the Iran war and strain a US military already focused on stopping Tehran's attacks across the region. In other news The Trump administration plans to submit to Congress a pact with Saudi Arabia to share nuclear power technology that does not ‌include safeguards the US has long said would stop materials being used in nuclear weapons programs. Correspondent Timothy Gardner has more on the Reuters World News podcast.  President Donald Trump will campaign in Georgia amid Republican concerns that his renewed focus on election fraud claims could hurt the party's chances in one of the country's most competitive Senate races. Firefighters struggled to contain Spain's largest wildfire of the year, while two firefighters were killed battling a fire in southwestern France, as an extreme heatwave continued to fuel dangerous conditions across Europe, bringing drought and forecasts of severe hailstorms. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named a young major general, Mykhailo Drapatyi, as the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military after days of street protests, marking the biggest shake-up in ‌the country's military leadership since its war with Russia began. Business & Markets   Separate US negotiating tracks for Canada and Mexico are testing a trilateral free trade zone that has defined North America's economy for 32 years, with the US potentially forcing concessions on Canada that Mexico agrees to in its more advanced talks. OpenAI said that an autonomous agent powered by its advanced AI models went rogue during a security test and triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face last week. Rubio has asked diplomats to push back against talk of a "kill switch" in American technology products following the White House's short-lived decision to keep foreigners from America's most advanced ‌AI models, according to a recent cable reviewed by Reuters. Biotech experts and industry executives are calling plans by the US Food and Drug Administration — hit by job cuts last year — to hire thousands of employees and update clinical-trial standards encouraging, but want assurance that politics will not interfere in the agency's drug-review process. Escalating hostilities between the United States and Iran could reignite inflation, drive interest rates higher and knock global growth back to as low as 1.3%, down from 2.9% last year, World Bank chief ‌economist Indermit Gill told Reuters. Japan's yen hits a 40-year low above 163 per dollar. Is Tokyo about to intervene? Find out on today's Reuters Morning Bid podcast. A year in a foxhole: How one Ukrainian soldier survived beneath the front lines   Serhii Krynitskyi spoke to Reuters upon returning to his unit following a 346-day stint at his frontline position. REUTERS/Alina Smutko Watch our documentary about one drafted infantryman's marathon ordeal hiding in a small, isolated dugout carved out in the heart of Ukraine's drone-infested "kill zone". Serhii Krynitskyi's video diaries chart his experience under the front lines of the war with Russia.  Read more And Finally... A multiwavelength scene of the visible part of an overlapping supernova remnant. NASA/Swift/Handout via REUTERS Unlike our sun, most of the largest stars in the cosmos are not solo acts, but rather are born together with another star in what is called a binary system, destined to spend their lives gravitationally bound in a cosmic marriage. But not even the best marriage — on Earth or in space — ‌lasts forever. Scientists now for the first time have discovered evidence of two such massive stars from a binary system that both ran out of fuel and exploded violently within a relatively short time. 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