European Council president Costa said on the 19th he is setting up a diplomatic channel through his office to convey EU messages directly to Russia, saying the EU should not rely on third parties to interpret its communications. He made the remark at a post-summit press conference. While the US has led diplomatic contact on a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire and talks, Europe seeks a larger role; some EU leaders remain reluctant about direct engagement with Russia.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Iran's international standing and prestige have risen during the current war and called for consolidation of the rights of the Iranian people and the resistance front.

A study in Nature reports a new quantum sensor that can effectively cancel background noise limiting measurement precision, enabling searches for previously undetectable weak signals and potentially informing the formation of supermassive black holes. Imperial College London, which led the research, said detecting the universe’s composition and new gravitational-wave sources requires measurements of extremely weak signals. Atom interferometers use interference of atomic matter waves, but the laser pulses required introduce noise that can swamp those signals and prevent meaningful data.