U.S. officials reportedly believed Israel was plotting to assassinate Iran's top negotiators, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, during cease-fire talks in April 2026, according to current and former American officials. Fearing such strikes would collapse the diplomatic process and reignite the war, the President Donald Trump administration indirectly warned Tehran by asking counterparts in Middle Eastern countries to relay the threat.

While both officials were considered legitimate targets during the active phase of the conflict that began on February 28, 2026, the U.S. determined that killing them after negotiations started would leave "no one else to talk to."

Specific threats and security incidents surrounded the negotiations, particularly during a high-stakes meeting in Islamabad. When Ghalibaf traveled to meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance on April 12, Pakistani fighter jets escorted his delegation.

On the return flight, Iranian intelligence detected two Israeli fighter jets entering Iranian airspace from Iraq with intent to attack. This prompted an emergency landing in Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, forcing the delegation to complete the journey to Tehran by land. Ghalibaf's senior adviser, Mahdi Mohammadi, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page.

Ghalibaf had previously survived two other Israeli attempts on his life, including a strike on a secret bunker meeting of senior government officials under a mountain, earlier in the 2026 war and during the 12-day war in June 2025. In both incidents, Ghalibaf was reportedly rescued from under the rubble.

“Today Mr. Ghalibaf and Mr. Araghchi, and other members of the negotiating team, have put their lives on the line knowing the grave security risks and this is called a real sacrifice, not political maneuvering,” Mohsen Zanganeh, a lawmaker, told local media in late April after the Islamabad meeting.

Diverging war aims between the U.S. and Israel fueled the tension, as Washington sought an interim peace deal while Israel remained skeptical of ending hostilities in April, without regime change in Tehran.

Reportedly, Israel had temporarily removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf in March from its target list to facilitate talks, however, U.S. officials later learned Ghalibaf remained a target and directly asked Israel to stand down.

Prior to the April negotiations, Israel had already killed two other potential negotiation partners, national security official Ali Larijani and former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, complicating the diplomatic landscape.

In June, the United States and Iran reached a framework agreement that sought to open the Strait of Hormuz and set the outline for follow-on talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. Ghalibaf and Araghchi flew to Qatar, in late May, for talks and traveled to Switzerland in June for a meeting with Vance and the American delegation.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 551 rocket launched the Amazon Leo (LA-08) mission at 0430 UTC on Thursday (July 2) from Space Launch Complex-41 (SLC-41) at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying 29 spacecraft for Amazon Leo broadband megaconstellation. All of the satellites were successfully deployed in low Earth orbit (LEO) as planned, ULA announced 70 minutes after liftoff.

Leo is the Amazon's broadband constellation in LEO (hence the name), which will eventually consist of about 3,236 satellites. It will compete with SpaceX's Starlink network, which has nearly 11,000 satellites currently and growing.

About 396 Amazon Leo satellites have reached orbit on a total of 15 missions to date, atop three different rockets -- the Atlas V, SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Arianespace's Ariane 6 -- making it the third-largest constellation currently active. With this milestone, Amazon Leo announced that the constellation has enough satellites to support continuous service across initial latitudes, preparing for an initial service rollout later in 2026.

LA-08 also represented the final flight in ULA’s Leo Atlas campaign, with the company having launched 224 satellites with a 100% success rate across eight Atlas V missions.

The 29 Amazon Leo satellites on Thursday's mission weighed a total of about 18 tons, tying the record for the heaviest load ever launched by an Atlas V. That mark was set on the Amazon Leo 5 mission in early April and has been equaled multiple times since.

Thursday's launch marks a strategic transition for Amazon Leo’s deployment strategy, shifting from the Atlas V to ULA’s newer, heavy-lift Vulcan rocket. Future Leo missions with ULA will utilize Vulcan, which is designed to carry larger payloads (over 40 satellites per launch) to accelerate deployment rates.

Amazon has secured more than 100 launches across multiple providers, including Arianespace, SpaceX, and Blue Origin (New Glenn), to meet its Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deadline of deploying 50% of the planned 3,236-satellite constellation by July 2026.

Open Standard, an independent entity governed by a consortium of over 140 companies announced the upcoming launch of a new dollar-pegged stablecoin called Open USD ($OUSD). Backed by a coalition of major players including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase, Stripe and Google, Open USD is a direct enterprise-grade challenge to the long-standing duopoly of Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC).

OUSD will launch natively on Solana, Stellar, Base, and Polygon simultaneously to capture fragmented liquidity and high-speed payment networks. Stripe plans to make OUSD the default stablecoin for its platform, while Coinbase will integrate it into its Base layer-2 network.

Unlike incumbents that keep reserve earnings, OUSD plans to distribute nearly all interest generated by its backing assets (cash and US Treasuries) to its partner companies after a small management fee. The stablecoin offers fee-free minting and redemption with no volume caps, incentivizing partners to drive adoption.

If all goes as planned, this is the ultimate selling point for enterprises. Instead of the issuer hoarding the interest generated by the multi-billion dollar reserve backing the stablecoin, Open Standard will distribute almost all reserve yield back to the network partners who adopt, distribute, and hold the coin (minus a nominal operational management fee). This transforms giant businesses from mere users into co-owners of the economic model.

For large corporations moving billions of dollars, the existing costs and artificial volume limits associated with creating or destroying tokens are a bottleneck. OUSD's zero-fee minting and redemption at institutional scale is another potential selling point.

Zach Abrams, the CEO of Bridge (the stablecoin infrastructure platform acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion), is serving as the founding CEO of Open Standard. It will be controlled by a board of partner representatives rather than a single issuer, addressing enterprise concerns about counterparty dependence.

The consortium explicitly welcomes financial institutions, PSPs, card issuers, merchants, fintechs, exchanges, DeFi protocols, platforms, and marketplaces.

Tether and Circle combined control roughly 80% of the $300B+ stablecoin market. However, their business models are centralized: they collect user cash, invest it into yield-bearing assets like US Treasuries, and keep almost 100% of the interest profits for themselves.

Analysts note thar consortium-led networks like Open Standard's, are historically plagued by slow decision-making and friction when navigating fragmented global regulations. If Open Standard executes smoothly, OUSD could become the "SWIFT network" of programmable enterprise money; if not, it risks becoming an over-hyped corporate experiment.

Open USD is slated to go live later in 2026, meaning its liquidity and peg-stability are still untested.

Circle’s shares fell between 13% and 17% within hours of the announcement. Investors reacted to the realization that major partners like BlackRock and BNY (who historically support Circle's ecosystem) are now backing a direct economic competitor.

In a long X post, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire publicly welcomed the competition but reiterated USDC's status as the most trusted asset, hinting at future enterprise-revenue-share changes. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino wrote: "Welcome OUSD. Player 2 has entered the game." (a diss on USDC?).

Stablecoins like USDT and USDC have grown explosively because they offer fast, borderless, 24/7 dollar liquidity on blockchains.

USDT leads due to early adoption and liquidity (especially on Tron), while USDC gained traction through better transparency, regulatory compliance, and institutional trust. Both benefit from interest earned on reserves (mostly short-term U.S. Treasuries), which historically flowed mostly to the issuers.

Regulatory clarity accelerated corporate involvement. The upcoming OUSD launch aligns with the GENIUS Act, signed into law in 2025, by President Donald Trump which has opened the market for new, compliant stablecoin infrastructure.