The US fertility rate has been trending down for decades, leaving researchers and policymakers searching for causes that may help pinpoint solutions. There have been all kinds of theories, including soaring costs of childcare, the rise of birth control and even the role of car seat regulations. A new paper offers a provocative culprit in a succinct package: the smartphone. But some other researchers are skeptical that this single factor could play such an outsized role in a much longer-term trend. 2007 marked a particularly significant “inflection point” in the US fertility rate, said Caitlin Myers, an economist with Middlebury College and the National Bureau of Economic Research, who is the lead author on the new paper.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/12/health/fertility-decline-smartphone-study
A federal judge on Friday said she doesn’t believe President Donald Trump’s plan for a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” is fully dead, and issued an order indefinitely blocking the proposal. Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia said she has decided to block the fund under a court order because acting Attorney General Todd Blanche or others haven’t said under oath the proposed fund was dead, that they haven’t rescinded the so-called settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS establishing the fund, and that Trump himself has suggested he still wants the fund to exist. “When the President of the United States says” he wants something to happen, Brinkema said in court Friday morning, “that’s a pretty good indicator there will be an incentive and motive to make it happen.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/12/politics/anti-weaponization-fund-ruling
When Ukrainian children’s home director Liubov Rudyka took the minors in her care to Naples after Russia invaded, she thought she was bringing them to safety. It never occurred to her that Italy might not want to give them back. And yet, four years later, their return has become a legal battlefield. Ukrainian authorities have told CNN that several children who were evacuated to Italy with Rudyka are among dozens of Ukrainian minors whose return home has been prevented by the Italian courts. A dispute over their situation escalated in April, after Kyiv announced that one of the Ukrainian children, a 15-year-old boy named Sasha, had been legally adopted by an Italian family – despite having a mother who wants him to return to Ukraine. Kyiv argues that the evacuations were meant to be temporary and that while the war continues, the situation has stabilized in parts of the country and there are safe places for the children to return to. The Ukrainian government’s main worry is that the longer the children stay abroad, the less likely they are to return in the future – a worrying prospect for a country that faces a major demographic crisis.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/12/europe/ukraine-children-italy-dispute-adoption-intl-cmd
In recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence. Getting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was just a month ago, when President Donald Trump was publicly signaling that he might order the US military to seize it, the sources said. The new fortifications by the Iranians add an additional layer of complexity to the Trump administration’s proposed deal with Tehran to remove and destroy its uranium, and the move raises questions about who will take on the dangerous task of digging it out.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/13/politics/iran-sealed-uranium-cache-tunnels-placed-mines
There is suddenly newfound optimism about the Trump administration reaching an agreement with Iran to extend the ceasefire and to start to bring the war to an end — and not just inside President Donald Trump’s head this time. Even Iran’s foreign minister says an agreement “has never been closer.” But it’s important to note that, even if there’s good reason for the optimism, this would not be a peace deal, in and of itself. It’s the first step in a much longer process.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/12/politics/trump-iran-war-deal-pitfalls