Today’s Big Story

Israel and Iran Agree to Cease-Fire

The truce, announced by President Trump, is spurring cautious hopes for an end to the warfare

Israel said early Tuesday that it had agreed to the ceasefire with Iran proposed by President Donald Trump and that it had achieved its military objectives. Statements by both nations came shortly after Trump declared that the ceasefire between the two adversaries had begun, even as details of the agreement remained unclear and the two adversaries continued to exchange hostilities.

Plenty of uncertainty surrounded Trump’s announcement, which apparently had caught some of his own officials by surprise. Both sides continued to trade fire in the last moments before confirming a truce was in effect. And even after, Israel said Iran had fired another missile barrage and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the IDF “will respond with force”.

Before the ceasefire’s start, Israel carried out strikes on Iran overnight, with the Israel Defense Forces ordering citizens to evacuate parts of two neighborhoods in Tehran Monday evening. This was hours after Iran fired missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar in response to the American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.

But by around 7:30 a.m. in Israel, a tentative calm appeared to have taken hold as the military issued an all-clear, allowing people to exit bomb shelters. There were no immediate reports of new Israeli strikes on Iran. Soon after, President Trump announced the truce was now in force. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!”, he posted to Truth Social, signing his name as if to make it an official proclamation.

Has the possibility of a nuclear war really been avoided? It’s still far too early to tell. The events over the next few days will decide whether the president’s victory lap is a genuine breakthrough or just another illusion in a land of “forever wars”. But news of the cease-fire sent markets higher in Asia, where countries need energy imports to power their economies. Stocks in South Korea surged the most at three percent. S&P 500 stock futures were about one percent higher, signaling an expected rise when trading begins in New York.

Housing Market Is Still Sluggish

Home sales just posted their slowest May in 16 years

The home sales slump in the U.S. continues: Last month was the slowest May for existing home sales since 2009. The Wall Street Journal reports that sales rose slightly in May but held near historically low levels—the latest sign that buyers are staying away because of high home prices.

The spring market is usually the busiest time of year for the housing industry, but this year’s spring has been a bust, since home prices are still hovering near all-time highs and mortgage rates have been stuck above 6.5%. The key challenge is affordability, with median home prices up 52% compared to May 2019, while wages gained 30% over that period, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun tells NPR.

Right before COVID, the monthly payment for a home at the median price, including the prevailing interest rate, was roughly $1,000 a month, Yun said. “Today it’s a little over $2,000. So that doubling in the monthly payment for a new set of buyers is hindering the market condition.” Home shoppers who can afford to buy at current mortgage rates benefited from a wider selection of properties on the market. There were 1.54 million unsold homes at the end of last month, a 6.2% increase from April, and 20.3% higher than May last year, ABC News reports. That’s still well below the roughly 2 million homes for sale that was typical before the pandemic, however.

What’s Your Social Media Worth?

People are paying to get their Instagram account back

What if you tapped on your Instagram and the app locked you out? According to a growing number of social media posts, including on sites like Reddit and X, Instagram users report that their accounts were banned even though they had not violated the company’s terms of service or other policies. What’s more, Tech Crunch reports that when they submitted an appeal to have their account reviewed, some claimed they received no response.

Some, who pay for Meta Verified subscriptions, apparently get priority access to customer service, but others have been flocking to alternative platforms to gripe about unanswered appeals, beg for help, and threaten lawsuits. Then there are those who have resorted to hiring “brokers” to connect them with Meta employees for help. Is that legal? Not exactly. Is it savvy? Sure.

Meta has even fired and disciplined several workers for abusing the system and sued individual brokers, but The Globe and Mail found the black market still in play—with several brokers making up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure locked accounts, according to lawsuits filed in the U.S. and Canada. One reporter for a Korean newspaper found out that he was among thousands of Koreans banned from Instagram and said AI was to blame. He said it had career implications, but spoke with another banned user who had just sparked a romance in his DMs, but now that he’s blocked, the budding relationship is on ice. Take away my silly Reels but don’t take away my rom-com hopes and dreams!

Last Call for Booze?

Is even “moderate” drinking not good for us?

The debate about the safety of even moderate alcohol use has heated up again. Experts used to think that low or “moderate amounts of alcohol” were good for you. That assumption was based on research showing that people who drank in moderation lived longer than those who abstained or drank excessively. Red wine was good for the heart and all that. But many researchers now think that those conclusions were based on data analyses that had “all kinds of methodological problems,” one doctor told the New York Times.

Then, last December, a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine gave a conflicting answer. It reviewed scientific evidence on the relationship between alcohol consumption and health outcomes. The report found no firm evidence that moderate drinking affects weight gain or cognitive decline. It also concluded that compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate drinking was linked with a lower risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from heart disease. However, a different report on alcohol’s health effects has found even moderate drinking—within the bounds of U.S. nutrition guidance—could carry health risks, including injuries, liver disease and cancer.

Perhaps this confusion is why the U.S. government is expected to eliminate from its dietary guidelines the long-standing recommendation that adults limit alcohol consumption to one or two drinks per day. And as one Vox reporter points out, there’s a trope among doctors that most people think they’re moderate drinkers but aren’t thinking about those numbers as they drink. “I might pour a glass of wine and think I’m having one glass of wine, but a doctor would see two glasses of wine if it’s a really generous pour.” In any case, I’m glad there are more and more non-alcoholic options available to us these days.

Why 50,000+ Investors Are Backing BOXABL's Vision

Invest in yourself.