G7, Tech Giants Agree to Block Extremist Content Online

From left, European Commissioner for Security Union Julian King, United States' Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, Canada's Minister of Public Safety Ralph Edward Goodale and Italy's Minister of Interior Marco Minniti attend the G7 Ministers of the Interiors meeting on the island of Ischia, near Naples, Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. (Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP)
From left, European Commissioner for Security Union Julian King, United States' Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, Canada's Minister of Public Safety Ralph Edward Goodale and Italy's Minister of Interior Marco Minniti attend the G7 Ministers of the Interiors meeting on the island of Ischia, near Naples, Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. (Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP)
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G7, Tech Giants Agree to Block Extremist Content Online

From left, European Commissioner for Security Union Julian King, United States' Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, Canada's Minister of Public Safety Ralph Edward Goodale and Italy's Minister of Interior Marco Minniti attend the G7 Ministers of the Interiors meeting on the island of Ischia, near Naples, Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. (Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP)
From left, European Commissioner for Security Union Julian King, United States' Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, Canada's Minister of Public Safety Ralph Edward Goodale and Italy's Minister of Interior Marco Minniti attend the G7 Ministers of the Interiors meeting on the island of Ischia, near Naples, Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. (Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP)

G7 countries and tech giants including Google, Facebook and Twitter on Friday agreed to work together to block the dissemination of extremism over the internet.

"These are the first steps towards a great alliance in the name of freedom,"  Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said after a two-day meeting with his Group of Seven counterparts, stressing the role of the internet in extremist "recruitment, training and radicalization."

Officials said the goal was to ensure pro-”jihadist” content is taken down within two hours of it going online.

"Our enemies are moving at the speed of a tweet and we need to counter them just as quickly," acting US Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said.

While acknowledging progress had been made, Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd insisted "companies need to go further and faster to not only take down extremist content but also stop it being uploaded in the first place".

The meeting on the Italian island of Ischia off Naples also focused on ways to tackle one of the West's biggest security threats: militants fleeing Syria and returning to Europe.

Tens of thousands of citizens from Western countries travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS between 2014 and 2016. Some then returned home and staged attacks that claimed dozens of lives.

Minniti warned last week that fighters planning revenge attacks following the recent collapse of the ISIS stronghold in Syria’s Raqqa could hitch lifts back to Europe on migrant boats from Libya.

The US and Italy signed an agreement on the sidelines of the G7 meeting to share their fingerprint databases in a bid to root out potential extremists posing as asylum seekers.

Earlier, EU President Donald Tusk promised the bloc would fork out more funds to help shut down the perilous crossing from Libya to Italy.

The EU would offer "stronger support for Italy's work with the Libyan authorities", and there was "a real chance of closing the central Mediterranean route", he said.

Italy has played a major role in training Libya's coastguard to stop human trafficking in its territorial waters, as well as making controversial deals with Libyan militias to stop migrants from setting off.

Minniti said the G7 ministers had discussed how to go about "de-radicalising" citizens returning from the ISIS frontline, to prevent them becoming security risks in jails.

The Group of Seven --- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US -- said it had also called on the web giants to work with their smaller partners to bolster the anti-extremism shield.



French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
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French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)

France's intelligence chief said on Tuesday that all aspects of Iran's nuclear program have been pushed back several months after American and Israeli air strikes, but there is uncertainty over where its highly-enriched uranium stocks are.

"The Iranian nuclear program is the material, it is highly-enriched uranium, it is a capacity to convert this uranium from the gaseous phase to the solid phase. It is the manufacturing of the core and it is the delivery," Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE intelligence service, told LCI television.

"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged and that the nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months."

Lerner, who was speaking for the first time on national television, said a small part of Iran's highly-enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed, but the rest remained in the hands of the authorities.

"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.

Other intelligence assessments have also suggested that Iran retains a hidden stockpile of enriched uranium and the technical capacity to rebuild.

Lerner echoed those comments saying there was a possibility Iran could press ahead with a clandestine program with smaller enrichment capacities.

"That's why France is so attached to finding a diplomatic solution to this nuclear crisis," he said.