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"Asian stocks rallied Monday while oil prices tumbled," reports CNBC, "after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a peace deal aimed at ending nearly four months of conflict..." The strongest reaction was seen in energy markets. U.S. crude oil futures for July delivery were down 4.77% to $80.83 per barrel by 8:27 p.m. ET. Brent futures, the international benchmark, for August delivery traded about 4% lower to $83.77 per barrel. Asian equities surged. South Korea's Kospi jumped 5.1%, Japan's Nikkei 225 climbed 3.6%, and the broader Topix advanced 2.6%... The U.S. dollar index weakened 0.32% to 99.483, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 5 basis points to 4.423%, suggesting that investors were dialing back inflation concerns on easing energy prices. "The most immediate implication is a repricing of the inflation risk premium that markets have been carrying since the Strait closed," said Billy Leung, investment strategist at Global X ETFs... Besides safe-haven Treasurys, gold also rose. "Gold is the interesting outlier here," Leung said. "In a clean risk-on trade, gold should be selling off as the geopolitical premium unwinds, but it is holding bid around $4,300, which tells you the market is not fully trusting the deal yet." Spot gold prices were up almost 2% at $4,302.19 per ounce. That skepticism reflects lingering uncertainty around the agreement, which remains unsigned and subject to implementation risks. [Josh Gilbert, lead Asia Pacific analyst at trading platform eToro] cautioned that "the deal isn't actually signed until June 19th, the details are still thin, and this conflict has shown more than once that headlines can turn on a dime." Analysts at Commonwealth Bank of Australia also stressed that the oil outlook hinges on how quickly shipping and production can normalize. Vivek Dhar, head of commodities and sustainability research at CBA, expects Brent to fall to around $80 a barrel by year-end, assuming the Strait remains open and exports recover. However, he warned that damage to refining infrastructure, the presence of sea mines and uncertainty over tanker traffic could slow the return to normal operations. Even so, he said markets are likely to take comfort from the prospect that oil flows need only recover to around 60%-70% of pre-war levels to restore expectations of a global supply surplus. For investors, the biggest implication will likely be what cheaper energy means for inflation and central banks. Lower oil prices ease pressure on households and businesses while reducing the risk of a broader inflation resurgence just as major central banks enter a busy week of policy meetings. UPDATE: "A US official is rejecting Iran's assertion that it will receive billions of dollars in frozen funds before a planned 60-day negotiating period begins following Friday's signing of an agreement," reports CNN: The pushback came after Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said the next phase of talks would depend on Washington first fulfilling several obligations, including releasing Iranian funds frozen abroad. The differing accounts underscore a significant gap between how the United States and Iran are describing what must happen before the next round of negotiations can move forward.

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15 Jun 2026 2:31am GMT

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15 Jun 2026 2:30am GMT

"As the use of artificial intelligence spreads across companies worldwide, it is relieving workers of tedious old chores but creating new ones," reports the Los Angeles Times. "Most people don't realize the amount of time that they're spending working on the tools to get the time savings that they're professing," said Paul Leonardi, Duca Family professor of technology management at UC Santa Barbara." Leonardi is one of the co-authors of the new study published by the Work AI Institute, whose contributors include academics from Stanford University and UC Berkeley. The institute is sponsored by AI company Glean... The research surveyed 6,000 digital workers across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia between December and January. The report found that we are in a phase of significant personal productivity gains, but few companies are translating these gains into revenue and business growth. While 75% of individuals reported a boost in productivity, only 13% of the organizations say they have seen significant business gains as a result of AI adoption, the survey found... The reason the boost in productivity sometimes leads to waste, Leonardi said, is the time people spend correcting the bot's work and gathering the right files, documentation, and tacit knowledge required for it to produce high-quality output. "It's pretty striking the amount of time and effort people are spending," Leonardi said. Most employees now spend over six hours a week of their workday babysitting their work chatbots, the survey said. There is a "thick, mostly invisible layer of human labor holding the whole thing together," the report said. The survey found that for every hour a worker spends getting useful output from AI, they spend roughly another hour making it usable. Of the total time workers spend interacting with AI each week, 37% goes to botsitting, 36% to actually using the tool to produce work. Part of the reason so much time disappears into botsitting is how often the tools fall short: Workers report that more than a third of AI sessions fail outright, requiring a full restart or substantial rework. Paradoxically, as more workers hand over bigger parts of their jobs to AI, they are offloading personal judgment and responsibilities to the bots. The survey found 41% of workers say they sometimes deliver AI-generated work they couldn't explain if asked... "I think what's happening with a lot of these Gen AI tools right now is we're essentially expecting individual contributors to act as managers," Leonardi said. "They're just managing these AI tools, AI agents, and we're expecting that they'll be able to produce way more, but we're not taking into account all of the work that actually goes into managing." This problem isn't likely to go away.

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15 Jun 2026 1:19am GMT

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15 Jun 2026 1:07am GMT

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15 Jun 2026 12:07am GMT

Catch up on the latest Linux news: Alpine 3.24, Linux kernel 7.1, COSMIC Desktop 1.0.16, Wine 11.11, Yserver is a new X11 server for Linux, and more.

14 Jun 2026 11:51pm GMT

Microsoft dropped "massive" updates for six stock Windows apps, reports the "Microsoft enthusiast" site Neowin. Here's some of their more interesting highlights for Clock, Media Player, Calculator, Voice Recorder, Photos, and Paint: The Photos app (version 2026.11060.2004.0): AI watermarking - "AI-generated or edited images can now carry a visible Copilot watermark. You choose Never, Always, or Ask Every Time in Settings, with a confirmation when saving. The watermarking is off by default in settings." Calculator (version 11.2605.9.0): More accurate square-root results. "Fixed rare cases where a calculation that should equal zero (like sqrt(2.25) - 1.5) returned a tiny leftover value instead...." Reliable launch after upgrading. "Fixed an issue where upgrading from much older versions could leave outdated settings that stopped the app from opening..." The Clock app (version 11.2605.9.0): "Timers keep counting after they hit zero - When a timer runs out, it now keeps counting up (for example, -00:27:31) so you can see how far past the time you've gone..." "Correct sun and moon icons during midnight sun - Fixed an icon that wrongly showed a moon during all-day daylight in polar regions... " "No more double announcements - Screen readers no longer read the timer value twice." Media Player (version 11.2605.14.0). "Playlists need a name - You can no longer accidentally save a playlist with a blank name."

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14 Jun 2026 11:15pm GMT

DietPi 10.5 switches Raspberry Pi GUI installs to KMS/DRM by default, updates camera handling, and reworks display configuration.

14 Jun 2026 10:59pm GMT

Oracle's Always Free Ampere A1 allowance now lists 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM, down from the previous 4 OCPUs and 24 GB limit.

14 Jun 2026 10:16pm GMT

University of Leicester historian thinks Eilmer of Malmesbury saw two different comets: in 1018 and 1066

14 Jun 2026 4:02pm GMT

There's nothing new or surprising, but it's still an entertaining film from one of our greatest directors.

13 Jun 2026 5:17pm GMT

Researchers have quantified the length and mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks globally.

13 Jun 2026 11:18am GMT