Read Online  |  June 24, 2025  |  E-Paper  | 🎧 Listen

☀️ Good morning! It’s Tuesday. Thank you for reading the Morning Brief, an exclusive newsletter for Epoch Times subscribers.

👋 New to Morning Brief? Subscribe.

🎧 Prefer to listen? Get the podcast.

I’d like to hear from you - ivanmb@epochtimes.nyc. 

President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (C) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio sit in the Situation Room as they monitor the mission that took out three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites, at the White House in Washington on June 21, 2025. (Daniel Torok/The White House via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump announced on Monday that Israel and Iran have agreed to a cease-fire, declaring the beginning of an end to what he referred to as “the 12-Day War.”

“It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE ... for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform just after 6 p.m. EDT.

Hours earlier, Iran targeted a U.S. base in Qatar in what appeared to be a symbolic counterstrike. Iran gave advance warning about the attack, according to the president. There were no U.S. casualties.

Both sides would wind down their final military operations within six hours and begin what he expected to be a “peaceful and respectful” cease-fire on both sides, the president said. After 24 hours, the conflict will be declared over, Trump said.

If that comes to fruition, it will mark a rapid de-escalation of a conflict that some feared could spiral into an international war. Trump thanked both parties for their dedication to avoiding that outcome.

“I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR,’” Trump wrote. “This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!”

The United States had carried out targeted strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow, over the weekend, acting on estimates that Tehran was close to obtaining enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. (More)

The Federal Reserve Bank in Washington on Jan. 14, 2025. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times)

The Federal Reserve will no longer factor “reputation risk” into its bank examinations, a move aligned with efforts by Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration to combat what they describe as politically motivated financial discrimination—particularly debanking.

The central bank said it has begun reviewing and revising its supervisory materials to remove references to reputation risk, replacing them where appropriate with more specific discussions of financial risk.

“This change does not alter the Board’s expectation that banks maintain strong risk management to ensure safety and soundness and compliance with law and regulation,” the Fed said in a statement.

The decision is a significant shift in how regulators assess banks, particularly as scrutiny intensifies over claims that some institutions have denied services to lawful businesses—such as cryptocurrency firms, religious organizations, or political groups—based on subjective concerns about reputational harm.

Although banks generally have wide discretion over account relationships, critics argue that invoking reputational risk can mask discriminatory decisions. These concerns have fueled growing bipartisan calls to ensure fair access to financial services.

“This is how debanking works,” Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Epoch Times in a 2023 interview. “The bank closes the accounts, doesn’t give a clear reason, and cites some kind of risk toleration policy for the denial, under circumstances that look very suspiciously like it was because of your religious or political views.”

Both now-President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had their bank accounts closed in the aftermath of the 2020 election. (More)

More Politics:

From Georgia to Oregon, New England to New Mexico, data center projects are drawing opposition in local government hearings by residents concerned about the voracious demand for electricity, water consumption, and noise. Critics also argue that data centers don’t produce the jobs other land uses generate.

In Texas, people in small towns question data center development in the broader context of rapid rural industrialization.

In Pennsylvania, ad hoc groups say data centers are tapping into nearby natural gas fields, increasing the frequency of fracking, and straining water supplies.

In Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and across the country, residents say the scale and proximity of these high-tech campuses degrade their neighborhoods and devalue properties.

Objections vary, depending on proposal and site, but a common complaint is state and local governments offering data center projects tax incentives that are often shielded from public scrutiny through nondisclosure agreements. Companies say these pacts shield proprietary corporate intelligence, but the perceived lack of transparency fosters suspicion and anger when residents realize local planners are set to approve a proposal they knew little to nothing about until it appeared to be a done deal.

“Just from our experience, it seems like one of the big concerns is that, yeah, there is no community outreach,” Kamil Cook, Public Citizen’s Texas climate and clean energy associate, told the Epoch Times. “There’s no method by which the community can be informed in a way that actually makes it seem like their voice is valued and that they have a choice in these matters.” (More)

More U.S. News

A higher-than-expected number of miscarriages and other forms of fetal loss were associated with COVID-19 vaccinations in Israel, a new study shows.

Researchers found 13 fetal losses—four more than the nine expected—for every 100 pregnant women who received a COVID-19 vaccine during weeks eight to 13 in pregnancy, according to the study, which was published as a preprint on the medRxiv server.

Most people in Israel, including pregnant women, received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Pfizer did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.

The team behind the study includes Retsef Levi, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who was recently named to the committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines, and Dr. Tracy Hoeg, who works for the Food and Drug Administration.

The researchers analyzed electronic health records from Maccabi Health Services, one of four organizations that provide health care to Israelis. They looked at 226,395 pregnancies that occurred between March 1, 2016, and Feb. 28, 2022. The primary analysis looked at fetal loss for pregnant women after dose one or dose three of a COVID-19 vaccine, with fetal loss including miscarriage, abortion, and stillbirth.

The researchers came up with an expected number of fetal losses based on a model that drew from data before the COVID-19 pandemic, then compared the expected number of fetal losses with those that occurred from week eight of pregnancy onwards.

They identified 13,214 fetal losses after the pandemic started, compared with 12,846 fetal losses in the reference period, finding that women who received a COVID-19 vaccine during weeks eight to 13 in pregnancy experienced a higher-than-expected number of fetal losses.

“If you believe this result ... every 100 women that you would vaccinate during weeks eight to 13, you are going to see close to four additional fetal losses,” Levi told The Epoch Times. (More)

More World News

📷 Photo of the Day: Students practice traditional wrestling, locally known as Lamb, during the Olympic Day celebrations at the Leopold Sedar Senghor Stadium in Dakar, on June 23, 2025. Senegal will be the first African country to host the Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2026. (Patrick Meinhardt/AFP via Getty Images)

 📸 Day in Photos: Ship Capsizes in Indonesia, Forest Fires in Greece, Amazon Launches Satellites (Look)

🎙️ Podcast: Nearly 3,000 years ago, a famous chancellor in China successfully used trade to expand the power and territory of his state. Today, the Chinese communist regime has borrowed strategy from the same playbook, but here’s why this may reveal Beijing’s major weakness. (Listen)

✍️ Opinion: US Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites a Masterclass in How to Defeat Terrorism, by Conrad Black (Read)

🎵 Music: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade (Listen)

🎓 (Sponsored) FreedomProject Academy is celebrated by Dan Bongino, Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Megyn Kelly, and Kirk Cameron for their classical instructional. View FPA’s courses, teachers, sneak peek videos, and take advantage of their 15% discount on all courses. 

… and don’t forget:

📫 Forward this email to a friend and tell them to subscribe. (Here)

☕ Love coffee, mugs, stickers, and clothes?  Check out our shop.

💬 Feedback? Reply to this email or write to ivanmb@epochtimes.nyc

Minister Abbey on the Isle of Sheppey, UK. (Colin Park/CC BY-SA 2.0)

For much of his long life, English author Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was wildly popular with the public. He first attracted attention with his plays, but it was his off-stage fiction—short stories like “Rain” and novels like “Of Human Bondage”—that won him worldwide acclaim and made him one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. 

Hollywood produced successful films of both these stories, as well as many others, which added to his renown. Even after his death, movies based on his work, like “The Painted Veil” and “The Razor’s Edge,” proved to be box office hits.

However, the scorn showered on Maugham by many critics during his lifetime, who judged his work as second-rate and lowbrow, has taken the shine off that popularity. Far fewer people read Maugham these days. Far fewer still have heard of Maugham’s last play, his 1933 “Sheppey.”

Yet within that satiric comedy is one of the most famous passages of 20th-century literature, the story about Death’s appointment in Samarra. 

The plot goes as follows: Joseph Miller, nicknamed “Sheppey” for his birthplace, the Isle of Sheppey, wins a small fortune in the lottery. From that point on, those who know him—his wife, his daughter, the owner of the salon where he works as a hairdresser, and others—want a piece of the action.

Fearing that Sheppey is wasting the money on charity and on the possible purchase of a piece of land on the island, they find a psychiatrist who, after meeting with Sheppey, declares this witty, simple man mentally incompetent.

At the play’s end, before anyone can act on the psychiatrist’s diagnosis and have Sheppey committed, Death pays him a visit. She soon reveals that she has come to take him away. Sheppey first considers it a joke, then a mistake, and finally a relief. (More)

Spot the Difference is our readers’ favorite. Play it here.

Play more games at Epoch Fun ➞

Thanks for reading.

Have a wonderful day.

—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li.

Copyright © 2025 The Epoch Times, All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is: The Epoch Times. 229 W. 28 St. Fl. 7 New York, NY 10001 | Contact Us

Our Morning Brief newsletter is one of the best ways to receive the most up-to-date information. Manage your email preferences here or unsubscribe from Morning Brief here.