Trade & tariffs: New Zealand’s Trade Minister Todd McClay used the Future of Investment and Trade (FIT) Partnership meeting in Auckland to warn that higher US tariffs are “not unexpected,” arguing tariffs raise costs and barriers for exporters, including small economies like Iceland. EU climate policy: The European Commission and Iceland agreed in principle to extend Iceland’s EU ETS aviation emissions exemption by three years, keeping it until 2030, as part of a wider ETS overhaul aimed at protecting industrial competitiveness. Tourism & air links: Iceland’s tourism industry expects Air China’s planned direct flights from China to lift year-round arrivals (especially winter and shoulder seasons), while regulators should watch compliance by foreign tour operators. Local recovery: Grindavík has set up four specialist risk-assessment working groups covering town safety, education, housing/return, and evacuation procedures to support rebuilding and displaced residents’ return. Business & media: Glassriver and Germany’s Network Movie are co-developing Áróra, an investigative TV drama series based on Lilja Sigurðardóttir’s bestselling crime novels, set across Iceland and London. Crypto regulation: BitPay won EU-wide MiCA authorization via its Dutch unit, enabling regulated crypto payments and stablecoin services across the bloc. EU labour rules: EU lawmakers backed a reform shifting unemployment benefit responsibility from the country of residence to the country of employment for many cross-border workers. Tech & security: Researchers reported TuxBot v3 Evolution, an LLM-assisted IoT botnet framework targeting exposed Linux devices for distributed denial-of-service attacks.