The Israel-Lebanon situation has escalated meaningfully. Israeli forces have seized Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, their deepest incursion in 26 years, and this is happening under a nominal ceasefire that is clearly not holding. The castle gives Israeli troops an elevated observation point over much of southern Lebanon and northern Israel. The backdrop is one of the heaviest days of Hezbollah fire since April, which prompted school closures across northern Israel on Saturday. Separately, Trump said Iran nuclear talks are progressing “slowly but surely” — not a breakthrough, but not a collapse either. The Hormuz risk premium stays live.

On European industrial policy, two stories worth reading together. Sandoz is warning that cheap Chinese imports are threatening Europe’s capacity to manufacture antibiotics, calling for stronger protections. And the FT reports China has been building a significant industrial base in Morocco — billions in investment — which Brussels fears could become a backdoor route for subsidised Chinese goods into European markets. Both stories point in the same direction: the EU is going to face sustained pressure to act on industrial competition from China, and the political appetite to do so is growing.

SoftBank has committed up to €75 billion to build data centre capacity in France, targeting 5 gigawatts. Masayoshi Son is explicitly placing France at the centre of his European AI infrastructure push. This is a large number even by AI infrastructure standards, and it will sharpen the debate about where European AI capacity ends up concentrated — and whether the UK, post-Brexit, is losing ground in that competition.

GitHub Copilot has moved to token-based billing, and developer reaction has been sharply negative. The shift ends the flat-fee model that made enterprise adoption straightforward. Worth watching if you hold Microsoft — Copilot monetisation was a core part of the AI revenue story, and friction at the developer level tends to show up in renewal rates before it shows up in reported numbers.

Jes Staley has agreed to appear in person before Congress over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. He was pushed out of Barclays in late 2021 following an FCA investigation into how he characterised that relationship. Congressional testimony raises the profile of the matter again and keeps regulatory and reputational risk attached to his name — relevant for anyone tracking the ongoing FCA proceedings in the UK.

The ISM manufacturing print for the US drops Monday morning.

Sources

Guardian, Al Jazeera, BBC News, FT, TechCrunch, Politico, The Economist, Ars Technica — 2026-05-31