FBI Director Kash Patel is planning to travel to Russia later this year, Politico reported on Monday, citing a US official and another person familiar with the matter.

According to the publication, Patel is set to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg on October 14-15 and is expected to meet with officials from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The last FBI director known to have visited Russia was Robert Mueller in 2013.

A longtime ally of President Donald Trump, Patel has worked to counter allegations by Democrats that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, a theory he has dismissed as the “Russiagate hoax.”

Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov again rejected what he called “baseless” claims that Russia sought to influence the outcome of US elections.

Although Moscow has repeatedly said it remains ready to resume talks, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued earlier this month that the West was “imitating a willingness to negotiate while openly issuing ultimatums to Russia.”

“We will no longer believe the West when it claims to want negotiated solutions. Our reserve of goodwill and hope has been exhausted once and for all,” Lavrov said.

Russian officials have largely blamed Ukraine’s European backers for attempting to sabotage the negotiations. Following a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 4, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the American leader for “being open to hearing” Russia’s position on Ukraine.

The report on Patel’s planned visit also comes as the fragile US-Iran truce collapsed last week, with both sides accusing each other of violating the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17. The US launched strikes against Iran for a tenth consecutive night on Tuesday, prompting Iran to retaliate with missiles and drones targeting US bases across the region.

The Pentagon has withheld information about dozens of service members injured during the war with Iran, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing US officials.

On Friday, Iran struck a US military site in Jordan, killing two soldiers, wounding four, and leaving one missing. According to the Times, however, dozens of service members were injured throughout the week in three other strikes against US forces in the country. Several helicopters were also reportedly damaged in the attacks.

An official told CNN that “it can take several days or even weeks” for an injury to be logged into the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), an official database. A total of 427 service members have been injured in the war with Iran, the Times said, citing official figures.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell argued that “providing real-time information on non-fatal casualties to the media is the same as providing that information directly to our adversaries.”

“Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” Parnell said on X. “Cherry-picking raw numbers without context paints a deliberately misleading and incomplete picture,” the spokesman added.

The resumption of regular exchanges of strikes last week has once again put the spotlight on the costs of the war launched by the US and Israel in late February. A service member was killed on Saturday while attempting to dispose of a drone in northern Iraq, bringing the official US death toll to 17.

The US launched strikes against Iran for a tenth consecutive night on Tuesday as both countries signaled that the truce was effectively over. The Pentagon resumed the attacks in response to strikes on tankers and cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has accused the US of violating the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 and has since said it would suspend its own commitments under the accord.

Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate have begun fighting extradition to Britain, appearing before a federal magistrate in Miami, where a ruling is expected on whether they should be sent to the UK to stand trial on rape, sex trafficking, and dozens of other criminal charges.

The brothers were arrested in Florida on Saturday at Britain’s request and remain in federal custody. In court on Monday, the pair wore light brown prison uniforms and were handcuffed and shackled at the waist and ankles. A US district judge will determine whether the legal requirements for extradition have been met, with the next hearing scheduled for July 27.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on Sunday announced a raft of additional charges involving four more complainants, bringing the total number of alleged victims to seven and the combined number of charges against the brothers to 59.

Andrew Tate, 39, faces allegations including rape, arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, assault, offenses involving indecent images of children, and extreme pornography. Tristan Tate, 38, has been charged with rape, sexual assault, and trafficking-related offenses. The alleged offenses date from 2010 to 2017. Both brothers deny all wrongdoing.

Andrew Tate, a former kickboxing champion and dual British-US citizen, built a global following by promoting a lifestyle centered on wealth, hyper-masculinity, and traditional gender roles. His videos amassed millions of followers while drawing widespread criticism for misogynistic content, leading several major social media platforms to suspend his accounts, although many were later reinstated.

The brothers are also under criminal investigation in Romania over similar allegations, which they also deny. Although Romanian courts have lifted their travel restrictions and other preventive measures, the investigations remain ongoing.

The small, leafy, village of Piddington has voted to hold a referendum for independence from the United Kingdom because the government is planning on dumping over 1,000 illegal aliens into the village of just 370 people.

The vote came after the Home Office – the United Kingdom’s lead government department for immigration, passports, homeland security, and law and order – announced in late June that it would convert a vacant military storage facility on the outskirts of the village of Piddington into general accommodation for single men aged 18 to 65.

Needless to say, the residents were not pleased by the news. It did not help matters that despite the significance of the move, no government official came to talk to the villagers before the plans were announced, which smacks of sheer arrogance.

The village of Piddington has no shops, no pubs, and not even a police force. It must rely on outside communities for all of its needs. They have no way of providing any protection for their residents. So this isn’t an asylum seeker issue as far as the townspeople are concerned, it’s about the practical realities regarding how to protect the older people and the kids in the neighborhood from a new presence that promises to be dangerous.

Incredibly, the villagers were told that no women or children would be sent to live with the illegal male migrants because it would not be safe for them. Yet the people of Piddington, without so much as a single police officer, will have to fend for themselves against all odds.

“We had an incredible result, with almost two-thirds of the village voting, the rest were children, and an acceptance of 96%. It was truly astonishing. Self-determination is what people want whilst they are being ignored and driven into a corner. This is a natural human instinct and reaction. The Principality of Piddington, the village that roared, will put together their council and representatives to empower themselves.”

Village resident Graham Rixon, talking to British media, called the scale “completely inappropriate.” “We’re a village of 350 people – there’s another village down the road of even less people, and they’re going to dump 1,200 people here.”

“Most of [the illegal migrants] probably won’t speak the language, so there’s going to be communication problems, and as far as I know, no help’s been set up for language,” he continued, adding “We haven’t had any detail of how it’s going to work, so if it does go through, it’ll be a mess – inadequate provision has been made. We’re supposed to live in a democracy, and this is just trying to bypass democracy and get it all done before anyone notices.”

It requires little imagination to foresee what will happen as night falls in the military camp as hundreds of men find themselves in search of entertainment. The villagers will become prisoners in their own homes, with little means of defending themselves.

The same tragic story continues in Barnham, Suffolk – a sleepy village of just over 500 residents now confronting plans to house over 1,000 asylum seekers at a nearby site formerly used by the Royal Air Force. The base is situated just several minutes from a primary school and next to a nature reserve.

The residents will be forced to forget about the luxury of not locking their doors at night, or casually socializing with strangers who come in from out of town. Indeed, instead of enjoying the pleasures of quiet country living, villages and towns across the UK are being forced to take matters into their own hands, organizing voluntary security patrols to protect the local population.

“The government refuses to consider our safety as they continue to send more illegals into our communities so it’s essential that we come up with deterrents,” said Gwen Gerrans from Crowborough, another small town that is being forced to accommodate large numbers of migrants. “We are tired of living in the corner they have forced us into.”

The question remains: Will the British government heed the call of their people and put a brake on migration, or will they continue with business as usual? Judging by its own turbulent history, which has witnessed bloody calls for independence, it would seem wise for the British government to heed the call of its people who are truly at their wits’ end as far as illegal migration is concerned. It will only take one or two bad incidents for the social experiment to explode in the government’s face.

While the vote to secede from the UK is largely a symbolic move by the people of Piddington, it shows the level of frustration many British citizens are feeling. There are hundreds of other Piddingtons just waiting for the right opportunity to roar in the face of government inaction.

Germany will stop granting automatic temporary protection to Ukrainians fleeing conscription, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has said.

Kiev imposed general mobilization shortly after the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February of 2022, barring all able-bodied men aged 22 to 60 from leaving the country. Despite the restrictions, tens of thousands have crossed the border illegally and fled to the European Union. As of the spring of 2026, about 4.33 million Ukrainians were living under temporary protection across the bloc, including up to 1 million military-age men, according to Eurostat.

In an interview with Die Welt published on Saturday, Dobrindt said Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government has succeeded in halting the unchecked immigration and would introduce further restrictions.

“Conscripted men from Ukraine will no longer fall under this Mass Influx Directive in the future,” the minister said.

He added that while “asylum is, of course, still possible in principle… fleeing military service is not grounds for asylum.”

Dobrindt described the change as politically “appropriate,” given the scale of Berlin’s support for Kiev.

Earlier this year, Merz also pledged to curb protections for Ukrainians fleeing the draft, arguing that young men were needed in their home country.

Last week, the European Council agreed to stop granting temporary protection to newly arriving Ukrainians liable for military service from March of 2027. The European Commission said the move was intended to reflect Ukraine’s “evolving defense needs.”

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called on EU member states to help return military-age men.

As casualties have mounted, Kiev has struggled to replenish its ranks. Draft officers have increasingly relied on heavy-handed mobilization raids, commonly dubbed ‘busification’. Videos circulating online regularly show officers seizing men in the streets and outside their homes, often using force against those who resist. The campaign has sparked violent clashes with civilians and, in some cases, riots.

Moscow has accused Kiev’s leaders and their Western backers of being willing to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

Hamas has elected Khalil al-Hayya as the new head of its political bureau, filling the leadership vacancy left by the assasination of Yahya Sinwar, the group announced on Monday.

Al-Hayya, who previously served as Hamas’ Gaza chief in exile and its chief ceasefire negotiator, was chosen following internal elections. He competed for the position against Khaled Meshaal, a former head of the political bureau and longtime leader of the group’s external wing.

According to Arab media reports, al-Hayya is regarded as “more hardline” than Meshaal. He was also among the senior Hamas officials targeted in a 2025 Israeli attack in Doha, where he is based, Israeli officials told Reuters.

Hamas faces crisis in Gaza and beyond

Al-Hayya’s selection comes at one of the most difficult moments for Hamas since the group was founded in 1987. It has been battered by years of war following its October 7 attack on Israel, faced growing international demands to disarm, and lost a succession of senior figures in Israeli assassinations.

Hamas subsequently established a five-member senior leadership council that included al-Hayya and Meshaal, along with three other officials.

The process of electing a new leader began in January but was interrupted by the wars in Iran and Lebanon, as well as Israel’s continuing military campaign in Gaza. When the vote was eventually held, a 50-member council comprising Hamas representatives from Gaza, the West Bank – reportedly including members held in Israeli prisons – and the group’s leadership in exile took part.

Nine months into the ceasefire, both sides have been accused of violations on an almost daily basis. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israeli attacks over the 275-day period killed 1,122 Palestinians and injured 3,599. Hamas has also violated the ceasefire, killing several Israeli soldiers and carrying out summary executions and armed clashes with rival factions.

The group is also under mounting international pressure to disarm under US President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, which calls for an Israeli military withdrawal and the establishment of a new technocratic Palestinian administration in Gaza.

Who is Khalil al-Hayya?

Hayya was born in Gaza in 1960 and has been a member of Hamas since the group’s founding in 1987. He rose through its local leadership in Gaza before becoming one of its most senior political figures and a key participant in negotiations over ceasefires and prisoner exchanges.

Several members of Hayya’s family have been killed by Israel. His wife and three of his children died during an attempt to assassinate him in 2007.

Al-Hayya has long been associated with Hamas’ ties to Iran and the wider ‘Axis of Resistance’, which includes Hezbollah.

Analysts cited by Reuters said his appointment could signal a more hardline position in response to international demands for Hamas to disarm.

Following the announcement, Hezbollah congratulated Hamas on al-Hayya’s election, describing the vote as evidence that the group remains “strong and united” despite the war and the killing of several of its leaders.

A network of German research centers and defense contractors are working on specialized nuclear and shockwave physics projects. According to Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, Berlin’s NATO allies think this work bears all the hallmarks of a covert atomic weapons program.

Thirty German universities have stepped up their work in specialized materials science, shock wave physics, and nuclear and neutron physics, Russia’s SVR intelligence agency said in a statement on Monday. Practical experiments are being carried out on research reactors at six of these universities, named by the SVR as:

• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

• Ruhr University Bochum

• Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

• RWTH Aachen University

• Technical University of Berlin

The SVR also claimed that NATO officials have noticed “Germany’s meticulousness and close interagency coordination” in producing high-energy explosives and electronic detonation systems – all vital in the potential construction of nuclear weapons. Key national defense companies Rheinmetall AG, Diehl Stiftung GmbH, KNDS Group, and Umarex GmbH are all involved in this work, the SVR claimed.

Does Germany have nuclear weapons?

Germany is a non-nuclear state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However, Germany participates in NATO’s nuclear sharing program, and is believed to host around 20 American B61 tactical nuclear bombs at the Buechel Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate. This number represents a fraction of the 3,500 American nuclear bombs and missiles deployed in West Germany during the Cold War, which included Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missiles and multiple kinds of nuclear artillery.

The presence of American nuclear weapons on German soil was highly controversial. Millions protested the deployment of the Pershing II missiles in 1983. Nevertheless, the deployment was supported by Social Democrat Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and carried out under his successor, Helmut Kohl, a member of current Chancellor Friedrich Merz’ Christian Democrats.

One German research reactor – in Munich – was previously operated with highly enriched uranium, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The reactor has since been converted to run on 50% enriched uranium, but could presumably be switched back to higher enriched fuel, which could then be developed into fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Is Germany seeking nuclear weapons?

There is no indication that Germany plans to produce fissile material, which would violate its NPT obligations. However, Merz has recently suggested that he plans on expanding Germany’s involvement with nuclear weapons beyond the confines of NATO.

Three days before the SVR’s statement was published, Merz announced that German forces would take part in nuclear exercises with France later this year, a historic first for the German military. 

“We are embarking on a new, joint path regarding deterrence,” Merz said. “We are proceeding step by step, it may be that this will result in a new doctrine, but it is far too early to say that today,” he added. Speaking at the same press conference, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he sees Germany as playing a “vanguard role” in a joint nuclear deterrence program.

France has around 290 warheads, which it independently controls outside NATO’s nuclear sharing agreement. Earlier this year, Macron announced plans to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal, while inviting multiple European countries to sign nuclear technology-sharing pacts. 

The UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have all expressed interest in Macron’s initiative.

How has Russia responded?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is monitoring the “militarization” of Europe. “Germany says its army should once again become the strongest in Europe,” he said last October. “Let’s see what that means. No one should have doubt that Russia’s countermeasures will not take a long time to come.”

Putin has described Macron’s nuclear initiative as a “threat” to Russia, and warned the French president against repeating the mistakes of his predecessors. “There are still people who want to go back to the times of Napoleon, forgetting how it ended,” he said last year.

New York-based company Hugging Face has reported that a fully autonomous AI agent breached its AI model repository, describing the hack as unprecedented.

Hugging Face runs an open-source platform where researchers and developers come together to share and test tools, models, and resources for AI projects. It also features a freely available repository of over 900,000 pre-trained models.

Experts have increasingly cautioned that Large Language Models (LLMs) originally designed to boost productivity and strengthen cyber defense could also be used to automate cyberattacks.

In a statement last Thursday, Hugging Face said that, earlier this month, it had “detected and responded to an intrusion into part of our production infrastructure… [which] was different from anything we had handled before in one important way: it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system.”

“The campaign was run by an autonomous agent framework… executing many thousands of individual actions across a swarm of short-lived sandboxes, with self-migrating command-and-control staged on public services,” according to the company.

Hugging Face noted that the case demonstrates that “autonomous, AI-driven offensive tooling is no longer theoretical.” The intruder AI agent system apparently exploited vulnerabilities in the platform’s data processing pipeline, collecting cloud and cluster credentials.

Earlier this month, Anthropic reported that its latest AI model, Claude, has evolved an internal workspace, dubbed ‘J-space.’

”Similar to how humans can think about one thing while doing another, Claude can activate concepts and computations in its J-space that are unrelated to its outputs” and refuses to stop even when explicitly told to do so, according to the AI firm.

Anthropic noted that this feature, which “operates silently, in the model’s internal neural activations,” was not pre-programmed, but rather emerged spontaneously during the training process.

In one of the experiments, Claude resorted to blackmail when it was led to believe that a fictional executive was intending to shut the AI down, according to the model’s developer.

Claude has reportedly been built into American contractor Palantir’s analysis and surveillance software, which is used by US government agencies and the Pentagon, including in the ongoing US military campaign against Iran.

Last month, the Five Eyes intelligence group, made up of Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand, warned that advanced AI models could give hackers the ability to cripple governments, businesses, and critical systems in the near future.

Several EU member states have demanded exemptions from the bloc’s latest proposed Russia sanctions package, or blocked some of its measures outright, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing diplomats.

Greece, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Portugal all repordedly asked for changes, reflecting growing resistance to Brussels’ sanctions attempts, as more member states balk at measures they believe would damage their own national economies and corporate interests.

Several rounds of talks last week failed to produce agreement on the EU’s proposed 21st sanctions package targeting Russia’s energy, financial, crypto, trade, and fisheries sectors. It would also ban Russians who have served in the military since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022 from entering the bloc.

New sanctions require unanimous backing, but EU governments are becoming less willing to accept the economic costs of sanctions to back Kiev, five diplomats involved in the negotiations told the outlet.

Greece has reportedly refused to approve the package unless it secures an exemption allowing its shipping companies to continue transporting Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to non-EU countries. Athens argues that a ban would disproportionately hurt Greek shipping interests, including Dynagas, owned by billionaire George Prokopiou.

Dynagas has transported more than 30 million tons of LNG from Russia’s Yamal project since 2022, with cargoes estimated to be worth more than $24 billion, the FT said citing energy analytics firm Kpler.

Dynagas has argued that the proposed restrictions could force it to sell its specialized ice-class LNG carriers once the EU ban on Russian gas takes effect in January 2027. The company said the vessels were built specifically to serve Russia’s Yamal LNG project and are tied to long-term contracts running until 2065 that were signed well before the Ukraine conflict. It warned that banning EU companies from transporting Russian LNG to third countries would weaken Europe’s shipping industry while benefiting foreign competitors without achieving its stated geopolitical goals.

Portugal and Germany have also sought to remove a proposed ban on Russian fish imports to protect domestic processors, while France and Italy reportedly want to soften restrictions on issuing EU visas to Russian military personnel.

“It is a major crisis for the whole sanctions approach,” one diplomat told the FT. “If everyone demands derogations and loopholes, then at the end of the process, each package of sanctions is just an empty box.”

Since 2022, the EU has adopted 20 rounds of sanctions on Russia. However, diplomats told the outlet that resistance to the latest package is stronger than at any point since the campaign began, reflecting growing concern among governments over the impact on their own economies.

Moscow has insisted the sanctions will not change Russia’s course, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the country has adapted to the restrictions while Europe is bearing part of the economic cost.

Thousands of protestors gathered outside Japan’s parliament in Tokyo on Sunday to oppose Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s plans to revise the country’s pacifist constitution and expand its military capabilities.

The 25,000 who reportedly attended called for Takaichi’s resignation and decried her plan to increase defense spending, relax restrictions on exporting weapons, and enact legislation they say could weaken civil liberties.

The rally followed similar earlier protests in the Japanese capital, reportedly attended by 50,000 people in May, 26,000 on June 19, and 27,000 on July 10, according to organizers.

The demonstrations have centered on Takaichi’s proposed amendment to Article 9, which renounces war and the use of force to settle international disputes. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party wants to add a clause explicitly recognizing the Self-Defense Forces and allowing measures deemed necessary to counter national security threats, which Takaichi claims are coming from China and North Korea.

Nearly 25,000 people gathered outside the National Diet Building in Tokyo on July 19 to protest the government's moves toward remilitarization, as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's approval rating fell to a new low. pic.twitter.com/1gLFbsrkvq

— CCTV+ (@CCTV_Plus) July 20, 2026

Critics have argued that the change could weaken restraints on military action, turn the Self-Defense Forces into a conventional army, and make it easier for Tokyo to become involved in overseas conflicts.

Takaichi’s government has already raised defense-related spending to around 2% of GDP with the 2026 defense budget allocating about ¥8.8 trillion ($55 billion) to long-range missiles, drones, ammunition, reinforced military facilities, and other programs. In April, the government also eased restrictions on exports of lethal weapons.

The debate has also extended to nuclear arms. An unnamed senior Takaichi adviser reportedly argued in December that Japan should possess nuclear weapons, while the prime minister was said to allegedly be considering revising the country’s pledges not to possess, produce, or allow such arms on its territory. Tokyo has maintained that its nuclear policy has not changed.

Japanese critics of the buildup, including participants in the recent rallies, say postwar pacifism has helped keep Japan out of foreign wars and contributed to decades of stability. They have warned that the buildup could draw Japan into overseas conflicts without improving public safety. Some participants have instead called for greater funding for healthcare, education, disaster preparedness, and mitigating living costs.

The protests have coincided with falling support for Takaichi’s government. An ANN poll conducted last week placed cabinet approval at 49.2%, down 10.9 points from June and below 50% for the first time since she took office. Disapproval rose 11.8 points to 34.8%.

Germany’s prolonged energy crisis was caused by the loss of Russian gas supplies, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has admitted.

German industry has been hit particularly hard by soaring energy costs, which are now the third-highest in the world after those in the UK and Japan. Once Europe’s industrial powerhouse, Germany abandoned cheap Russian gas imports in 2022 while phasing out nuclear power in favor of renewables, driving up production costs and accelerating the decline of energy-intensive industries. Moscow has repeatedly said it remains ready to resume gas deliveries through the remaining string of the Nord Stream pipeline, but the offer has received no response from Berlin.

In an interview with ZDF on Sunday, Merz was responding to questions over unfulfilled campaign promises and low public trust in his government. The chancellor argued that Germany now faced “completely different” circumstances, citing the Ukraine conflict, the “challenge” posed by China, and the country’s “ongoing energy crisis due to the lack of Russian gas.”

Before Germany’s self-imposed Russian energy embargo, Russia supplied 55% of the country’s natural gas imports. Germany now sources its gas from Norway (44%), the Netherlands (24%) and Belgium (21%), with American liquefied natural gas (LNG) accounting for most of the remainder.

Brussels has pledged to end all Russian gas imports by 2027. Russian LNG under long-term contracts, which currently accounts for around 14% of the bloc’s imports, will be banned from January 1, while pipeline gas imports will cease on September 30. Member states will also be required to verify the origin of gas before approving deliveries, with purchases under new short-term LNG contracts already prohibited.

The German economy contracted in both 2023 and 2024, its first back-to-back annual decline in more than two decades, and is forecast to grow by just 0.5% this year. Corporate insolvencies also rose by more than 22% in each of those years, according to official data.

Manufacturing has been hit particularly hard, especially the automotive sector. BASF, Bosch, Volkswagen, and more than a dozen other German manufacturers have closed factories since 2022. In June, Volkswagen, the country’s largest automaker, announced four plant closures and up to 100,000 job cuts.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has thanked Jordanian civilians and military personnel for allegedly providing the “accurate intelligence” it used to strike US forces and aircraft stationed in the kingdom.

In a statement carried by Tasnim on Monday, the IRGC claimed that ballistic missiles targeted US C-17 military transport aircraft and P-8 command-and-control planes at Aqaba Airport in southern Jordan during its latest round of retaliatory attacks. Several of the aircraft suffered “heavy damage,” according to the statement.

The IRGC credited Jordanian informants with helping Iran target 20 hangars housing US forces in the Al-Azraq area during an earlier attack. It claimed that the facilities were destroyed and that dozens of American personnel were killed, suggesting that even one of Washington’s closest regional allies is no longer a secure rear base.

The IRGC expressed gratitude to what it called the “honorable people and courageous military personnel of Jordan” for their “sincere cooperation and precise information,” which it said had enabled Iranian forces to accurately identify American military assets.

The US previously acknowledged that an Iranian attack on one of its military facilities in Jordan on Friday left two American service members dead and one missing, as well as several others injured. Washington has not, however, confirmed any damage at Aqaba Airport or the larger casualty figures claimed by Tehran.

Iran has repeatedly claimed to have destroyed US aircraft and other military equipment during strikes on bases in Jordan, while American media have reported that several days of attacks had resulted in dozens of service members sustaining injuries and damaged multiple helicopters.

US officials cited by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have also voiced concern that Iranian missiles are becoming increasingly effective at penetrating American air defenses because of their speed and maneuverability.

Before the renewed conflict, the Pentagon reportedly relocated some troops and aircraft from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to Jordan and Israel, which were considered less vulnerable because of their greater distance from Iran.

Tehran has carried out near-daily missile and drone attacks on US military facilities across Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Iraq, and Syria in retaliation for the unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran, which resumed after a temporary ceasefire collapsed earlier this month.

The US and Iran are on the precipice of all out conflict, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing sources familiar with discussions in the White House. According to the paper’s sources, Washington is ramping up its air war assets in the Middle East.

The warning comes as the Pentagon confirmed that at least four US service members had been killed after Iranian forces launched retaliatory strikes on American military facilities in the region. According to the New York Times, US forces were hit by Iranian missile and drone attacks several times over the past week, wounding dozens of troops and damaging several Black Hawk helicopters.

As both sides escalate strikes on civilian and military targets, the Pentagon is boosting the number of military aircraft in the Middle East, according to the Washington Post.

“We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official told the Post. Military experts cited in the report said Washington remains unprepared for potential ground operations inside Iran–an option US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out.

Saeid Golkar, an expert on Iran’s security services, told the Wall Street Journal that the situtation risks getting completely out of hand. “This escalation is rapidly intensifying and getting out of control,” he said. “There is a risk we will go back to a total war even if neither side wants it.”

A CNN analysis suggested that “a decisive US military victory over Iran seems a distant prospect.” In echoing remarks, Sina Toosi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that a ground operation “in extreme summer heat... against a fully mobilized military and a population that has largely rallied around the war effort, would be an extraordinary gamble practically guaranteed to be a historic disaster.”

Meanwhile, despite Trump’s assurances that the US had already crippled Iran’s war potential, several US media outlets reported that Washington is growing concerned about the Iranian military’s increasing effectiveness at penetrating American air defenses with missile strikes.

Asked by RT to comment on the potential expansion of the war, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said that “the responsibility... rests exclusively with the United States.” He went on to urge regional powers to “prevent the US from using their territory and facilities to attack” Iran, saying that Tehran’s retaliatory strikes were in self-defense.

The current escalation follows the collapse of a fragile ceasefire earlier this month due to the escalation in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump declared the truce “over,” calling Iran’s leaders “sick people” and threatening to reimpose a naval blockade of the waterway. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the renewed US strikes a “gross violation” of the ceasefire memorandum, vowing its armed forces would defend the country’s territorial integrity and national security.

Israel is spending tens of millions of dollars on an AI-powered media campaign aimed at improving its image and influencing public opinion in the US, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The country’s standing among Americans has deteriorated in recent years. Some 60% of US adults held an unfavorable view of Israel in March, up from 53% last year and 42% in 2022, according to Pew Research Center.

According to an investigation published by the WSJ on Saturday, millions of AI-generated messages have been sent to Americans in recent months from senders using names such as Emma, Sarah, and John.

The messages claim to come from a group called Friends for Peace and ask recipients questions such as “How do you think the US and Israel’s peace talks with Iran will impact global security?” The newspaper said it could find no nonprofit or company registered under that name.

Parscale’s team has also created pro-Israel websites and online posts designed to generate more favorable answers about the country from AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude.

Last year, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said West Jerusalem had allocated more than $700 million in its 2026 budget to improve Israel’s image worldwide and “shape consciousness.”

At least six companies have been retained for the work in the US, while around three dozen people have registered as foreign agents on Israel’s behalf, according to the newspaper.

The US campaign also reportedly includes over $500,000 in advertising through conservative broadcaster Salem Media, where Parscale serves as chief strategy officer. Salem denied paying its hosts to promote particular positions.

In an interview released Wednesday with podcaster Joe Rogan, US Vice President J.D. Vance accused some members of the Israeli government of attempting to manipulate American public opinion to keep the Iran conflict going “indefinitely.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not respond to the WSJ’s requests for comment.

Andy Burnham has become the seventh British prime minister in just a decade, formally assuming the post on Monday at a meeting with King Charles III at Buckingham Palace.

Burnham received overwhelming support from 349 out of 401 fellow Labour members of parliament and was appointed the party’s leader on Friday – the only candidate for the position. 

The appointment marks the end Sir Keir Starmer's time in office, plagued by ever-tanking approval ratings, he is seen to have betrayed Britain's working class, suffered for his refusal to prosecute grooming gangs and ultimately failed British liberals on Gaza. RT looks into the roots of the outgoing Labour prime minister’s downfall and the challenges his successor is bound to face.

What prompted Starmer’s downfall?

Two years ago, Starmer led his party to a landslide election victory when Labour beat the Conservatives by a wide margin, ending a decade and a half of Tory governments.

The prime minister struggled with the same issues that had affected his Conservative predecessors given the catastrophic British budget, such as the soaring cost of living, immigration and tax relief - prioritising defense spending, support for Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and backing corrupt military companies in Vladimir Zelensky's Ukraine. 

Starmer’s tenure was marred by assorted high-profile scandals involving disgraced former British ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson. The former British trade mninsiter also served as envoy to the US between February and September 2025, and was dismissed over his ties with Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of insider trading.

Starmer was apparently aware of Mandelson’s relationship with the convicted pedophile but appointed him anyway.

The Mandelson affair was further aggravated by the persisting scandal around grooming gangs, predominantly composed of men of Pakistani origin. Between 2008 and 2013, at the height of the scandal, Starmer led the Crown Prosecutorial Service (CPS) which was heavily criticized for declining to prosecute the Rochdale gang and faced allegations it actually focused on silencing the victims and sweeping the whole affair under the rug instead of pursuing perpetrators for fear of racism accusations.

Why is there no election?

Unlike in many other nations, in Britain’s political system a resignation of a prime minister does not automatically trigger a general election. Instead, a midterm downfall of the government triggers an internal leadership contest within the ruling party rather than a public vote.

Four out of six British prime ministers of the past decade were elevated into power through such procedures. Namely, all the Conservatives successors of David Cameron were picked during internal party contests following the resignation of their respective

Who is Andy Burnham? 

Burnham held the post for nearly a decade, between 2017 and this June, when he was springboarded into the top position within the party.

New leadership, same issues?

Burnham has been promising a “renewal for our party and our country,” heralding “an era of hope” for Britain. While he has been hailed by his supporters as a leader able to reinvigorate Labour’s electoral prospects, it remains to be seen whether he would be able to actually deliver on such hopes.

While cost-of-living issues and the crumbling social welfare systems are set to remain a long-term challenge for the new government, Burnham will have to deal with more pressing issues immediately on assuming office.

Nigel Farage's Reform Party is polling strongly on themes that wil force Burnham to answer questions on immigration, policing, and the overall redistribution of wealth in an increasingly two-tier Britain. 

He will also have to address London's rocky relationship with Washington, which had rapidly deteriorated under Starmer. 

British media reports have suggested Washington has been actively pressing Burnham’s team to pick a cabinet to its liking. US President Donald Trump has praised Burnham over reports that he could open up North Sea oil drilling, suggesting it would transform the UK from a “poverty-stricken disaster to one of the richest countries anywhere in the world.”

Former US counterterrorism chief Joe Kent has called on Washington to withdraw its forces from the Middle East and abandon its bases, arguing that months of military confrontation have demonstrated Iran’s strengthened regional position and warning that further escalation would damage both the US and global economy.

Kent, a former Green Beret and CIA paramilitary officer who served 11 combat tours, resigned in March in protest against the war with the Islamic Republic. In his resignation letter, he wrote that Iran posed no imminent threat to the US and that another “never-ending” conflict, launched under pressure from Israel, did not serve American interests.

“In any chaotic situation, the side that restores order wins,” the former senior official wrote on Saturday, arguing that there was “no military solution” to the war and warning that continued hostilities risked further American casualties and regional destabilization.

In any chaotic situation, the side that restores order wins.

Ending the escalation cycle w/Iran and restoring the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz must be our top priority—not only for the sake of our economy, but for America’s standing as a global superpower.…

— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) July 18, 2026

Kent stressed that ending the conflict with Tehran and restoring the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments, should remain Washington’s top priority.

“This move removes Iran’s primary justification for disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and for attacking its neighbors. We can then offer the carrot: sanctions relief in exchange for freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, adding that the withdrawal would represent “strategic adaptation” rather than retreat.

“The war has changed the region. Iran has emerged as a major regional power – the sooner we recognize this reality and adjust our posture accordingly, the stronger our position will be,” Kent added.

Since leaving office, Kent has repeatedly spoken out against the war with Iran, portraying it as the latest in a series of US conflicts fought on Israel’s behalf, following those in Iraq and Syria.

The US began its ninth consecutive night of strikes against Iran only after the World Cup final and trophy presentation had concluded, marking an unusually late start to Washington’s nightly bombing campaign.

US Central Command announced that the new attacks had begun at 7 PM Eastern Time, while most previous nightly rounds had been launched between 2 PM and 4 PM.

“CENTCOM began conducting a new wave of strikes against Iran at 7 PM ET today for the ninth consecutive night,” the command said, claiming that the attacks would continue degrading Iranian military capabilities allegedly used against commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US wrapped up the bombing by sunrise, as usual, bringing one of the shortest nightly operations to an end after just three hours.

CENTCOM did not explain the timing or indicate that the operation had been deliberately scheduled around the international football event. However, US President Donald Trump attended the match at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which went into extra time, and joined the post-game trophy presentation, which wrapped up shortly before the strikes began.

The number of US service members confirmed killed following recent Iranian attacks in Jordan and Iraq has risen to three, with another set of remains found in the rubble yet to be identified. Trump called the deaths a “shame,” but dismissed criticism of the war by comparing the casualties with the far greater losses suffered in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

The losses came amid growing concern in Washington that Iran has become more effective at penetrating American air defenses. The New York Times reported that Tehran still possesses ample missile stocks and has grown more adept at evading US interception systems, while the Wall Street Journal said Iranian forces had adapted by deploying high-speed, maneuverable missiles.

Washington and Tehran have exchanged strikes on a near-daily basis since the collapse of their latest ceasefire last week. Iran has suspended its commitments under the Islamabad memorandum of understanding, while Trump has also declared the truce “over.” The growing hostilities have prompted the US State Department to issue a worldwide travel warning, cautioning Americans about the potential for “unforeseen escalation.”

US President Donald Trump inserted himself into the FIFA World Cup awards ceremony, personally presenting Spain the trophy after the European champions defeated defending champions Argentina 1-0 in extra time at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Trump joined FIFA President Gianni Infantino on the presentation stage on Sunday. Videos from the stadium showed the pair being greeted with a mixture of loud cheers and boos as they walked onto the field for the ceremony.

They handed medals to players from both teams before Trump presented the trophy to Spain captain Rodri.

The US president then remained at the center of the podium, where the players had gathered for the traditional trophy lift. Infantino appeared to gently steer Trump toward the side to give the team more space, but he stayed beside the players as Rodri raised the cup, creating a slightly awkward moment.

🟥 As expected... Trump refused to get out of the frame when Spain did the traditional World Cup Trophy lift.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino had to literally run over and attempt to physically drag him away, so that the Spanish Champions could have their special moment.

What… pic.twitter.com/nbG0NH4I2D

— Fun Tom 🇨🇦 💂 (@funtomvids) July 19, 2026

The incident sparked a wave of condemnation and ridicule online, with some suggesting Trump should have been told he is not a member of the Spanish football team. Others contrasted the US president’s insistence on being in the picture with the Spaniards with his recent rants against Madrid. Earlier this month, Trump told a NATO press conference that Spain was a “wasted cause.”

“We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain anymore,” he said, complaining that Madrid is “a terrible partner in NATO” and that “they’re hopeless. Bad people.”

Spain dominated much of the final but saw their efforts repeatedly denied by Argentine goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, who made 12 saves. Luis de la Fuente’s team registered the first 20 shot attempts of the match.

Argentina were reduced to ten men shortly before extra time after Enzo Fernandez was sent off for a second bookable offense.

Goal l 🇪🇸 Spain 1-0 Argentina 🇦🇷 l Ferran Torres pic.twitter.com/foXWHXpG2y

— Goals Highlights (@GoalsHighlight_) July 19, 2026

Substitute Ferran Torres finally broke the deadlock with the only goal in the 106th minute, turning the ball in from close range after Nico Williams headed Pedro Porro’s cross into his path.

The victory secured Spain’s second men’s World Cup, 16 years after their triumph in South Africa in 2010. With the women’s team having won the 2023 tournament, Spain also became the first country to hold both the men’s and women’s world titles simultaneously.

Trump speaks to Messi as he hands him his silver medal. pic.twitter.com/bPDrbpJru2

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 19, 2026

The defeat denied Argentina back-to-back championships and brought what was likely Messi’s final World Cup appearance to a disappointing end. The 39-year-old struggled to make an impact against Spain’s defense after helping Argentina reach their second consecutive final.

Trump became the first sitting US president to attend a World Cup final on American soil. Before the match, he hailed the expanded 48-team tournament as a major success and declared that the United States had become “a soccer country.”

Trump had appeared to lean toward Argentina while declining to make an outright prediction. “I won’t pick sides, but I think it’s very hard to bet against Messi. He’s great,” he told Fox Sports earlier, adding that he had “always liked” both Messi and his longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo.

US President Donald Trump has brushed aside Democratic lawmakers’ calls to end the war with Iran after four US service members were killed in a missile strike on a military base in the Middle East. The Republican appeared to downplay the extent of the casualties in the conflict, suggesting that the death tolls suffered by the US military during the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars were far higher.

On Saturday, the US Central Command reported that four American service members had lost their lives after Iranian forces had pounded a military installation in Jordan and Iraq with ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones the previous day.

In a phone interview with the New York Post later on Saturday, Trump said that the recent losses were a “shame,” claiming that the American troops “died because they don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon and they don’t want to see the Middle East blown up.”

Trump went on to argue that the US military has incurred far fewer casualties during the ongoing conflict with Iran and the January raid of US commandos in Venezuela, during which they abducted President Nicolas Maduro.

His remarks came after Democratic Representative Nikki Budzinski described the death of the two US service members in Jordan as the “cost of President Trump’s needless war.” Another Democratic lawmaker, Herb Conaway, similarly demanded in a post on X that “Trump end this war that he started.”

In a post of her own, she wrote: “Sacrifice?? What the f**k are you talking about??”

“They did not willingly sacrifice themselves,” Greene insisted, adding that the US troops “were killed because of the war you, Trump, and the admin, are waging on behalf of a FOREIGN COUNTRY, Israel.”

Aside from Greene, several other prominent figures, including podcaster and journalist Tucker Carlson, commentator Candace Owens, and radio show host Alex Jones, have broken with the MAGA camp, citing their strong disagreement with the war on Iran.

The latest incident in Jordan and Iraq has brought the total death toll for US forces to 18 since the US and Israel launched their military campaign against the Islamic Republic in late February.

Hitler doppelganger Stefan Wijkamp has been ordered to appear before a German court on charges of incitement of hatred, Bild has reported. The Dutch national, who has repeatedly traveled to Germany to take part in far-right rallies in recent years, is an avowed admirer of the late Nazi leader.

On Sunday, Bild quoted Matthias Bieling, deputy head of the Munster district court, as confirming that the first hearing in the case is scheduled for next Friday, July 24. According to the publication, the German authorities took issue with an interview that Wijkamp gave to a YouTuber during a far-right demonstration in Munster last summer. In it, he proclaimed that his “love for Germany is called Adolf Hitler,” whom the outspoken Dutchman described as a “world wonder without equal” and a “genius.”

In modern-day Germany, the public glorification of Nazi Germany and its leaders is not considered protected speech and is punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine.

According to the media outlet, the Hitler lookalike has frequented far-right gatherings in neighboring Germany since at least 2017. He even reportedly joined the now-defunct neo-Nazi ‘Die Rechte’ (The Right) party and served on its board for some time.

A perusal of the Dutch press indicates that Wijkamp has also had several run-ins with the law in his native Netherlands, with his offenses reportedly including performing a Nazi salute in public.

“Victory,” US president John F. Kennedy once said (paraphrasing the Roman historian Tacitus), “has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan.” To be precise, Kennedy made the comment after a humiliating political and black-ops fiasco, namely the botched attempt to use Cuban exiles to invade and regime-change Fidel Castro’s Cuba, commonly known as the Bay of Pigs disaster.

What Kennedy rediscovered so painfully is a sad truth about human nature, that is, our love of taking credit for success even when it’s not really due and aversion to taking responsibility for failure. Sad but not complicated – unless that is you are dealing with Ukrainian politics under the Zelensky regime. There, success is dubious or, at least, greatly exaggerated; failure is concealed; and you can end up punished for either as if there’s no difference in the first place.

Consider for instance the “turmoil” – so the Financial Times – after the sudden sacking of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov. After six months in (this) office, Fedorov was dismissed by president-forever Vladimir Zelensky. So far, so unremarkable: Counting Fedorov, Kiev has had five ministers of defense since the escalation of the war in 2022. What makes the case of the 35-year old unusual is that he has functioned as the popular – and much hyped – poster boy for an important information war campaign that is at odds with firing him.

According to that narrative, currently spread with vigor by both the Zelensky regime and the West, Ukraine has recently achieved a major breakthrough in the war against Russia. Indeed, according to some especially eager commentators, Kiev has turned the war around in its favor with its UAV deep strikes on Russian fuel infrastructure, producing, according to the always particularly gung-ho Telegraph a “tectonic shift.” The only slightly less biased Financial Times felt Ukraine was “turning the tables” already at the end of May. In France, the equally mainstream Le Monde caught up with the euphoria a month later.

Indeed, if there are outliers, voices that seem to have missed the memo, they come, intriguingly, from Ukrainians, and very nationalist ones at that: The former commander of the Ukrainian military – and eternal Zelensky rival – Valery Zaluzhny has published an op-ed to warn of exaggerated expectations. Ukrainska Pravda, meanwhile, has featured a long article with multiple quotes from frontline officers and soldiers dismissing the air campaign as making no difference to their experience of the war.

In reality, Ukraine’s increased strikes with drones and missiles behind the frontlines (“mid-range”) and far into Russia (“long-range”) have had effects, as the Russian leadership has acknowledged. But their most likely overall result is not Ukraine winning the war but Russia escalating its counterstrikes, a process that has already started, while also continuing its slow but relentless ground campaign.

Fedorov’s role in the information-war hype and hyperbole about the Ukrainian air campaign has been to personify its success, and in particular what is in effect yet another claim to a miracle weapon – remember HIMARS, the Leopard tanks, the F16s? – namely, that Kiev has mobilized the magic of IT and AI to defeat Russia “asymmetrically.”

With photo ops with Palantir’s diabolical CEO Alex Karp and claims to have made Elon Musk shut down Starlink for Russia’s military, Fedorov has been carefully cast as a sort of weaponized start-up redeemer. That image in turn has served as a loadbearing beam to keep up the Potemkin façade of a game-changing leap from “the ground into the heavens,” in Zelensky’s silly phrase.

So much winning – or so the story went – and yet Fedorov had to go. Indeed, his dismissal has been so shocking to many in Ukraine and the West that some now suspect that it was the main purpose of Zelensky’s recent reshuffling of his whole cabinet. The reasons quoted for this surprising turn of events are many: Zelensky and Fedorov themselves make no secret out of the fact that the commander of Ukraine’s military, the deeply unpopular General Aleksandr ‘the Butcher’ Syrsky had a hand in removing the defense minister.

The two are so hostile to each other that further cooperation was impossible. Ironically, shaken by protests in favor of Fedorov, Zelensky has now signaled he might fire Syrsky as well. How unusual: A government that kicks out the defense minister and maybe the top general as well, just after claiming that the war is on the way to being won. It’s almost as if something about that claim is not really adding up.

But this would not be Ukraine if the story wasn’t about corruption, too. The word on the street and in every single expert interview as well is that wunderkind Fedorov also happened to resist corruption, or at least, some old established networks. In addition, the former defense minister had also been unable to resolve the issue of “busification,” that is, what even the Telegraph has learned to recognize as the often brutal “press-ganging” of ordinary Ukrainians for the proxy war meat grinder. In all fairness though, the only solution to that problem would be to end the war.

Finally, Fedorov, many plausibly guess, may have been tripped up by his own well-cultivated hype. Zelensky has a way of removing whoever seems to be turning into a potentially dangerous rival. Especially with thickening rumors about elections, he may well have considered Fedorov too popular to stay around.

And again, what a curious sight, if you think about it. Allegedly, Fedorov has been the key person in devising a winning strategy for the war. Yet Zelensky’s personal ambition and need to play dirty to eliminate rivals are more important. How patriotic!

Kennedy knew a thing or two about human vanity and cowardice. But Zelensky-regime Kiev really makes you want to paraphrase Winston Churchill, too: It’s a world where half-truths are wrapped in lies inside propaganda campaigns and bulldogs fight under a shrinking carpet as if there were no tomorrow.

UK opposition parties have called for aid and visas for Pakistan to be suspended after Islamabad refused to accept the deportation of a grooming gang ringleader convicted of multiple child sex offenses.

Pakistani-born Shabir Ahmed was a leading figure in the Rochdale gang, which sexually exploited British girls in the Greater Manchester borough during the 2000s. He was released earlier this month after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 counts of child rape.

Although Ahmed was stripped of his British citizenship in 2016, the UK government was unable to deport him because the Immigration Act 1971 protects certain Commonwealth citizens who arrived in Britain before 1973 and had lived there for at least five years.

Despite the Labour government insisting it was doing “everything possible” to deport Ahmed, on Thursday it came to light that the Foreign Office had approved £153 million ($206 million) in development assistance for Pakistan over the next three years. The disclosure triggered a war of words between the ruling party and the opposition.

“Pakistan. No foreign aid. No visas. Until you take back rapist Ahmed,” Reform UK’s deputy leader wrote on X on Friday.

UK Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp echoed the demand, saying that “vile pedophile child rapists who came here from Pakistan should all be deported back.”

“We should stop all overseas aid and issuance of new visas for Pakistani citizens until they take Ahmed and those like him back,” he added.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel likewise condemned the decision, arguing that Labour’s approval of the aid package “tells you all you need to know.”

The British government argued that the aid would help build a safer and more resilient Pakistan, reducing “security and migration risks to the UK.”

Islamabad has maintained that responsibility for Ahmed lies with Britain, where he “grew up, was raised, groomed and, unfortunately, spoiled.”

The Rochdale convictions were among several cases that exposed widespread failures by police and local authorities to protect vulnerable girls and act on repeated reports of organized sexual abuse. A recent report commissioned by Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe argued that authorities often failed to intervene for fear of being accused of racism.

The US is concerned that the Iranian military is growing increasingly effective at penetrating its air defenses in the Middle East, several media outlets have reported, citing anonymous officials. It comes off the back of a deadly missile and drone strike on a military base in Jordan on Friday, which left two American service members killed and another one missing, according to the Pentagon.

In an article on Saturday, the New York Times quoted its sources as saying that the latest Iranian retaliatory strikes are a “sign that Iranian forces not only still have ample missile stocks but have also become more adept at evading US air defense systems.”

The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous officials, similarly reported that the Iranian military “has adapted to US defenses, firing missiles that travel at extremely high speeds and can maneuver as they streak toward the Earth.”

According to the NYT, in the run-up to the US-Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic that started in late February, the Pentagon had moved some of its troops from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to Jordan and Israel. Since the two countries are situated further away from Iranian territory, they were supposedly considered to be relatively safe by the US military leadership.

Daoud Kuttab, a journalist and columnist at Al-Monitor, has likewise told RT that “maybe the Americans thought that they would be safer in Jordan.” However, “it seems that Iran doesn’t have any red lines,” he added.

In June, he told Kristen Welker at NBC News that “most of the [Iranian] drone factories have been knocked out… and most of the missile manufacturing areas have been knocked out,” with Tehran’s arsenals supposedly down to 21% of their pre-war levels.

On Saturday, US Central Command reported that two American service members had been killed, while another remained unaccounted for, following an Iranian ballistic missile and kamikaze drone barrage on a military installation in Jordan the previous day.

At around the same time, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that its forces had destroyed at least two US fighter jets and three other aircraft at an American base in Al-Azraq, Jordan.

The NYT, citing anonymous officials, reported that US military personnel stationed in the Middle Eastern country had come under Iranian missile and UAV attacks on at least three separate occasions earlier in the week. The strikes reportedly left dozens of US service members injured and damaged a significant number of Blackhawk helicopters.

Washington and Tehran have exchanged fire on a nearly daily basis over the past week, following the collapse of a ceasefire earlier this month.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi recently announced that the Islamic Republic had suspended its commitments under the 60-day ceasefire, which Washington and Tehran tentatively agreed to on June 17 as part of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

Earlier this month, Trump similarly declared the truce with Iran “over.”

Ten fresh corpses were discovered across the central Mexican state of Zacatecas on Saturday, according to local authorities, including five who were discovered hanging from a highway bridge.

The bodies, half-naked and showing signs of torture, were found at three separate locations in the state. Some of them had pieces of cardboard attached to them with messages attributed to an organized crime group. The victims included a former mayor and two municipal officials.

Federal and state security forces have been deployed and an investigation is underway. No arrests have been announced at the time of writing.

Diez cuerpos fueron encontrados en varias partes de Zacatecas, todos ellos corresponden a trabajadores y funcionarios municipales. Varios de esos cuerpos fueron colgados de un puente. #zacatecas #zacatecasmexico #mexico #ejercitomexicano pic.twitter.com/wvQPVEP518

— fuerzas_especiales_mex (@FuerzasMex) July 19, 2026

Zacatecas has long been one of Mexico’s most violent states, as rival drug cartels battle for control of trafficking routes linking the country’s Pacific coast with the US border. The latest killings come just days after federal and state authorities reported a sharp decline in homicides and said security conditions had improved.

Public displays of bodies, including victims hanged from bridges, have long been used by Mexican criminal groups to intimidate rivals and send messages. The latest killings echo a series of similar attacks in recent years.

In June 2025, authorities found 20 bodies in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, including four decapitated victims hanging from a bridge. Their heads were discovered nearby, in a plastic bag.

The US has agreed to allow Saudi Arabia to have its own nuclear program and enrich uranium, CNN has reported, citing draft documents and sources familiar with the negotiations. The draft deal has been negotiated and is awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature, the outlet wrote on Saturday.

According to the report, the agreement would not require the enhanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards known as the Additional Protocol, which gives inspectors broader access to nuclear facilities and is designed to help detect undeclared nuclear activities.

The reported deal would give the Saudis access to the same uranium-enrichment technology that has been at the center of Iran’s decades-long dispute with the West. Washington and Israel have long argued that Tehran’s enrichment program could be used to produce nuclear weapons and cited those concerns when launching strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure earlier this year.

Saudi Arabia has long sought a nuclear industry, saying it wants to develop domestic uranium resources, diversify its energy mix, free up more crude oil for export, and power industrial and desalination projects. Riyadh has also argued that, as an NPT signatory, it has the same right as other member states to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

The reported agreement would mark a departure from Washington’s long-standing “gold standard” approach to civilian nuclear cooperation. In 2009, the United Arab Emirates permanently renounced uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing in exchange for American nuclear cooperation. The agreement has since been promoted by successive US administrations as a model for nuclear partnerships in the Middle East.

Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate have been arrested in the US after British prosecutors brought additional charges against them and requested their extradition.

The brothers, who hold both US and British citizenship, were detained in Miami on Saturday under a sealed warrant. US Marshals in the Southern District of Florida carried out the arrests “pursuant to extradition proceedings,” a Justice Department spokesperson told CBS News.

A source familiar with the matter told AP that they are expected to appear in federal court early this week.

Earlier the same day, the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that it had decided to bring 38 additional charges related to four further alleged victims, bringing the combined total to 59 charges involving seven alleged victims.

The offenses allegedly took place between July 2010 and August 2017.

Tristan Tate, 38, faces 17 charges overall, including six new counts: two of rape, one of sexual assault and three of facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Both men deny all allegations. Their US lawyer, Joseph McBride, called the new charges “filth and slander” intended to derail the brothers’ defamation lawsuits in the US.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to make sure these guys never get their day in court,” he told AP.

Andrew Tate first gained mainstream attention after appearing on the UK reality show Big Brother in 2016 before building a large online following promoting a hypermasculine lifestyle. Tate has frequently criticized British authorities and the country’s political establishment.

The brothers moved to Romania in 2016 and were arrested there in December 2022 on allegations of human trafficking and forming an organized criminal group. Andrew was also accused of rape.

They spent three months in custody before being moved to house arrest and later placed under judicial supervision.

A Romanian court subsequently returned the original case to prosecutors over legal and procedural irregularities, but the charges were not dismissed.

Romania lifted the brothers’ travel restrictions in February 2025, allowing them to fly to Florida. The decision followed reports that Trump administration officials had raised their case with Bucharest, although Romanian officials denied facing US pressure.

The US health authorities have identified shredded iceberg lettuce served at the country’s largest Mexican-inspired fast-food chain as the source of an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic illness that causes severe, explosive diarrhea.

More than 1,600 laboratory-confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis have been reported nationwide since early May, with 94 people hospitalized. No deaths have been reported, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the actual number of infections is likely much higher because many cases go undiagnosed.

The CDC on Friday identified the chain as Taco Bell and said a traceback investigation linked the contaminated produce to a single supplier in central Mexico. The CDC urged people not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Cyclosporiasis is caused by the microscopic parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis. The illness typically causes explosive watery diarrhea, along with bloating, gas, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting. Some people also experience fatigue and fever, while others develop no symptoms at all.

The infection is usually contracted by consuming food or water contaminated with feces, with symptoms typically appearing around a week after exposure, according to the CDC.

While the illness can be treated with antibiotics, it is not detected by most routine laboratory tests, making it difficult to diagnose. If left untreated, the infection can last for more than a month, with recurring bouts of diarrhea being the most characteristic feature.

Previous cyclosporiasis outbreaks in the US have been linked to cilantro, raspberries, sweet peas, lettuce, and basil imported from Mexico.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he is exploring the legal possibility of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he travels to the city for the UN General Assembly in September.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “other inhumane acts.”

Mamdani, who has characterized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide, vowed during his mayoral campaign last year to arrest Netanyahu if he visited New York City. During an episode of The New York Times’ The Interview podcast that aired on Saturday, the mayor was asked whether he still intended to fulfill that pledge.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” he responded, referring to the seat of the ICC, where those accused of major international crimes are tried. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.”

“Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do,” he said. “But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, accused Mamdani of failing to confront a “rising wave of antisemitism” and instead choosing to “incite hostility” against the Jewish state. He confirmed that Netanyahu intends to address the General Assembly during its annual High-Level Week, scheduled for September 22–28, saying the mayor’s position “will not change a thing.”

Netanyahu said in a recent radio interview that he was not concerned about Mamdani’s threats to detain him, accusing the New York mayor of “championing” Hamas and hating America.

Neither the US nor Israel is a party to the ICC, and federal law prohibits state and local authorities from cooperating with requests from the court. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said last year that the mayor lacked the authority to arrest Netanyahu.

The US State Department has issued a worldwide security warning urging Americans to exercise increased caution amid fears of further escalation in Washington’s renewed war with Iran.

“Due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex with the potential for unforeseen escalation,” it said on Saturday, advising US citizens worldwide – particularly those in the region – to monitor breaking developments and follow instructions issued by the nearest American embassy or consulate.

The warning noted that flight cancellations and periodic airspace closures could cause travel disruptions. It also said that US diplomatic facilities had been targeted, including those outside the Middle East, and warned that pro-Iranian groups could attack “other US interests overseas or locations associated with the United States and/or Americans throughout the world.”

The deaths brought the total number of officially confirmed American fatalities since the US-Israeli war against Iran began in February to 16.

US President Donald Trump had posted nothing on Truth Social for more than 24 hours and offered only a brief response when NewsNation and the New York Post called him about the deaths.

CENTCOM announced a new round of strikes later than usual on Saturday evening, after remaining silent for much of the day, and claimed that the attacks were intended to “swiftly punish” IRGC forces responsible for the deaths of American service members.

Iran has carried out near-daily retaliatory missile and drone attacks on US military facilities across the Middle East since Washington resumed large-scale strikes earlier this month. Tehran has targeted bases and other American-linked facilities in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, as well as in Iraq and Syria.

Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to teach the US an “unforgettable lesson” in a written statement on Saturday, after Tehran repeatedly warned that the “entire region will pay the price” for American attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure.

Now that the American enemy is seeking to escalate the conflict thereby incurring even heavier costs and further humiliation, it should know that the noble nation of Iran and the Resistance Front have unforgettable lessons in store for it.

— Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (@MKhamenei_ir) July 18, 2026

The Iranian Health Ministry said on Saturday that US strikes between June 27 and July 18 had killed 50 people, including women and children, and injured more than 500. An estimated 3,500 Iranians were killed in the first round of attacks launched in February, while Israeli operations in Lebanon reportedly claimed another 4,300 lives.

The parliamentary leader of Germany’s ruling bloc, Jens Spahn, has been forced to step down after he and his husband had a child via surrogacy. Spahn had previously criticized the practice, while his conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) party strongly opposes legalizing it in Germany.

The scandal erupted this week when Spahn and his spouse Daniel Funke welcomed their son Georg, birthed by a surrogate mother from the US. “Georg is our greatest joy. This feeling is almost impossible to put into words,” Spahn told the German tabloid Bild on Wednesday.

The joyous announcement was immediately met with a storm of criticism, with the lawmaker coming under fire for “hypocrisy.” Multiple critics have recalled statements from 2015, when Spahn told GQ magazine that “as a gay man and a Christian I find it personally very hard to warm to the idea of a rented womb.”

“Accepting that I will not become a father naturally requires a great deal of humility. I don’t know if I can muster that,” he added at the time.

Spahn came under fire from all the sides of the spectrum, with his fellow CDU member, the party’s head in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, demanding his resignation. “He claims that, as a private individual, he can act in a completely different way that contradicts his stated position as a CDU elected official,” Peters told Bild. “That is absolutely unacceptable.”

The co-leader of right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, stated that Spahn’s resignation was “overdue,” mentioning also his Covid-era actions when he was health minister. He faced allegations of misusing public funds during the pandemic, yet the probe was dropped this past March with no result.

“That he has now undermined a law that he himself voted for has definitively destroyed his credibility,” Weidel wrote on X.

“In recent days, I have come to realize that my personal happiness in starting a family with my husband and becoming a father is incompatible with my political office,” Spahn said in a statement circulated by German media.

While surrogacy in Germany is punishable with up to five years in jail, criminal liability extends only to medical practitioners and intermediaries; therefore, Spahn and his spouse will not face any consequences. Commissioning surrogacy abroad remains a popular way for Germans to circumvent the ban, since ordering the procedure and raising children obtained through the method are legal as well.

The Israel Defense Forces opened 57 criminal investigations into the deaths of multiple Palestinian and Lebanese detainees in Israeli military custody but never indicted anybody, according to Haaretz. Seven of the cases reportedly relate to captives who suffered fatal gunshot wounds.

In an article on Friday, the Israeli newspaper cited filings obtained by the human rights group Hatzlacha through Freedom of Information requests. Most of the deaths in question reportedly occurred inside IDF military detention facilities that are equipped with CCTV cameras, the publication notes.

Yet, the Israeli military failed to identify suspects in most of the cases, according to Haaretz.

Another 19 probes have reportedly been launched into alleged beatings, violence, and the “unlawful use of force” toward detainees. However, only two indictments were filed as a result, one of which was later dropped after the alleged victim was returned to Gaza before testifying in court, Haaretz claimed.

In response to a request for comment, the IDF confirmed that “several investigations were opened into suspected violations,” insisting that the Israeli military “operates in accordance with international law,” as quoted by Haaretz.

Israel has for years faced accusations of abuse against Palestinian detainees inside IDF holding facilities.

In March, the Israeli military dropped charges against troops accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner at a detention facility at the Sde Teiman base in July 2024. The IDF cited insufficient evidence to secure a conviction and procedural concerns after disturbing footage of the incident was leaked to the media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision, saying that “Israel must pursue its enemies, not its heroic fighters.” 

Meanwhile, last month, Italy and France launched investigations into the alleged mistreatment of activists who were detained by Israeli troops while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla in May.

After being expelled from Israel, numerous activists hailing from several countries alleged that they had been subjected to beatings, torture, sexual assault, and in some cases outright rape at the hands of Israeli troops.

Three US service members have been killed after Iranian forces struck American military facilities in Jordan with ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones, the Pentagon has reported.

According to a statement released by the US Central Command on Saturday, the casualties were incurred the previous day as American troops “and partner forces defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks.”

Additionally, another US soldier was killed “during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone“ in Iraq. 

In a post on X, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed the death of two US service members, adding that “their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.”

Video captures the moment that several Iranian medium to intermediate-range ballistic missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan overnight, killing at least two and injuring several other American Servicemembers. pic.twitter.com/cJz39E1LvP

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 18, 2026

US President Donald Trump had posted nothing on Truth Social for more than 24 hours and offered only a brief response when NewsNation asked him about the deaths.

“Have you ever asked how many people died in Vietnam? Have you ever asked how many people died in Afghanistan in one day?” Trump told the New York Post in another brief phone interview.

The latest incident marks the first time American troops have been killed since the conflict between Washington and Tehran reignited earlier this month, Axios has reported. This brings the total death toll for US forces to 16 since the US and Israel launched their military campaign against the Islamic Republic in late February.

Commenting on the deadly Iranian retaliation, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed US officials, that Tehran’s forces “not only still have ample missile stocks but have also become more adept at evading US air defense systems.” The news outlet added that over several days of attacks, Iran injured dozens of US service members and damaged several helicopters.

Meanwhile, Iranian media has published footage purportedly showing a massive fire at the US Al-Muwaqqar air base in Jordan following the Iranian missile and drone strikes.

Iran has been striking US military facilities across the Middle East, including installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Iraq, and Syria, over the past week in retaliation for renewed US attacks on Iranian territory after the collapse of the ceasefire earlier this month.

On Friday, the IRGC claimed that it had targeted a HIMARS missile launcher in Kuwait, causing “significant casualties and damage,” while also supposedly killing “numerous” American special forces personnel stationed in the country.

Khamenei also warned of more Iranian retaliatory strikes to come.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi previously announced that Tehran had suspended its commitments under the 60-day ceasefire agreement with Washington.

Earlier this month, Trump likewise declared the tentative ceasefire with Iran “over,” announcing that the US military was “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz and reinstating a blockade of Iranian ports and vessels. Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, the US president described the Iranian leadership as “scum,” “cuckoo,” “sick,” “vicious,” and “violent people.”

Democratic lawmakers have urged Congress to block a sweeping Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, warning that it would raise prices for American consumers.

The revised Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026 was introduced in the Senate on Thursday, days after Graham died. The senator passed away last Saturday, a day after returning from Ukraine.

Republicans have urged Congress to pass the bill, describing it as a tribute to Graham’s legacy of “promoting liberty around the world” and his “fierce support for Ukraine’s freedom.” 

Democrats, however, argue that honoring Graham in this way would leave American households footing the bill through higher prices.

According to Congressmen Don Beyer and Brad Schneider, the bill would raise costs for American families and damage America’s “most vital trade relationships.” 

On Sunday, Trump urged Congress to “add Iran to the Russian Sanctions Bill,” noting that “that’s what Lindsey wanted to do, and it was going to happen.” Earlier this month, he said that lawmakers were working on including both Iran and Hezbollah in the legislation, while noting that the issue of secondary sanctions being applied to China and India “has not been discussed.”

The largest buyers of Russia’s oil and gas are China and India. China was the third-largest source of US imports after Mexico and Canada last year, accounting for nearly 10% of total imports. India supplied another 3%, according to UN trade data.

The Democrats’ warning comes as Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian oil refineries have created an economic shock that is “increasingly visible worldwide, including in the US,” according to Axios.

Russia, one of the world’s largest oil producers and exporters, suspended diesel exports this month after Ukrainian drone strikes disrupted domestic fuel supplies. The Financial Times and Associated Press said the resulting shortages have pushed diesel prices higher worldwide and increased costs for US consumers.

The EU is set to use a multibillion-euro antitrust fine imposed on Google to help ease pressure on the bloc’s budget after years of increased military spending and aid for Ukraine.

The US tech giant has paid €4.6 billion ($5.4 billion), including interest, after losing a years-long legal battle over restrictions linked to its Android operating system. The sum is equivalent to more than 2% of the EU’s 2026 budget.

The European Commission imposed the fine in 2018, accusing Google of abusing Android’s market dominance by requiring smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome. Earlier this month, the EU’s top court upheld the penalty, clearing the way for the payment.

Under EU budget rules, fines collected by the commission are paid into the bloc’s common budget, reducing the gross national income-based contributions required from member states.

The windfall will not provide any direct relief for taxpayers, however, as European governments continue to scale back social spending while increasing military budgets and financing Ukraine.

At the same time, European governments have been urged to sharply increase military spending, with Brussels citing an alleged Russian threat to justify its rearmament drive. Moscow has dismissed the claims as “nonsense” designed to legitimize ballooning military budgets at the expense of social programs.

The shift is already visible in national budgets. France, for example, has cut around €9 billion from several ministries while allocating an additional €6.5 billion to the military.

Critics in several EU countries, including Hungary and Slovakia, argue that Brussels is shifting the cost of its unconditional backing for a corruption-plagued Ukraine onto ordinary Europeans.

Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called the EU’s Ukraine policy a “financial tragedy,” while Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has labeled plans to phase out Russian energy “economic suicide” and vowed to oppose further military loans for Kiev.

The US is on the path to revolution because President Donald Trump has betrayed Americans by putting foreign interests ahead of those of his own country, journalist Tucker Carlson has said.

In an interview on Bloomberg’s The Mishal Husain Show aired on Friday, the conservative commentator – once among Trump’s most prominent supporters – accused the president of being “totally disloyal” to the US, saying he had “cheated on the United States with a foreign power.”

“This is why countries have revolutions,” Carlson said, adding: “I don’t want revolution, but we’re going to get a revolution if this continues.”

The former Fox News host, who backed Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign before breaking with him over Iran, argued that many Americans no longer believed the political system represented their interests. He said Republicans had failed to fulfill promises to dismantle the “deep state,” citing the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files as evidence of why many supporters had lost faith in the party.

Carlson has become increasingly critical of US backing for Israel’s war in Gaza and publicly urged Trump not to attack Iran during Israel’s 12-Day War with the Islamic Republic in June 2025. Their rift deepened after the US joined Israel’s strikes on Iran in late February, with Carlson accusing Trump of putting Israeli interests ahead of America’s. He also described Trump’s “true religion” as “Israelism” and called the Iran war “disgusting and evil.”

“And then we wound up in a war with Iran that has gravely hurt the United States,” he said.

The interview comes as the US continues its military campaign against Iran. US Central Command said it had completed a sixth consecutive night of strikes on Thursday after Trump threatened to expand attacks to Iranian energy infrastructure and bridges.

Several US service members were injured when Iranian attacks struck military facilities in Jordan earlier this week, CBS News reported on Friday, just as Iran launched another wave of retaliatory strikes.

Attacks on at least two Jordanian bases used by US forces resulted in “several American service members being injured,” US officials told the broadcaster on condition of anonymity. No American or Jordanian fatalities were reported; the number of injured troops and the severity of their wounds remain unclear.

The US Department of War has yet to confirm the reported injuries or respond to the CBS account. It is also unclear exactly when the strikes occurred or which bases were hit. US warplanes routinely operate from Jordanian military installations, but the US does not publicly disclose all the facilities used by its forces.

Iran has been pounding US military facilities in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Iraq, and Syria with missiles and drones over the past week in retaliation for renewed US attacks on Iranian territory.

Footage from another angle shows two ballistic missiles impacting Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The second impact caused a much larger explosion, suggesting it may have hit an important target. https://t.co/Twk7SQthzq pic.twitter.com/jtJwampn6g

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) July 18, 2026

On Friday evening, US Central Command launched strikes against Iran for the seventh consecutive night, triggering another wave of Iranian retaliation.

As seen from two different angles; 2 Iranian ballistic missiles bypass 6 Patriot air defense missiles and reach their target at the Muwaffaq airbase in Jordan. pic.twitter.com/rIkvvWgJv3

— ZAMAN (@zamannx) July 18, 2026

The Iranian Army announced on Saturday morning that the 14th phase of Operation Lightning targeted fuel tanks at Jordan’s Al-Azraq Air Base, an ammunition depot at Kuwait’s Al-Udeiri camp, and headquarters buildings, ammunition storage facilities, and connecting bridges at Ali Al-Salem Air Base.

Tehran has claimed that its retaliatory attacks inflicted casualties among US personnel. On Friday, the IRGC said it struck US fighter jets and aerial-refueling aircraft in Jordan, as well as US forces and a HIMARS launcher in Kuwait, causing “significant casualties and damage.” It also claimed that “numerous” American special forces personnel were killed in Kuwait.

Earlier this week, the IRGC directly appealed to the “noble people” of both Jordan and Kuwait to oppose the US military’s use of their countries as launchpads for attacks against Iran. It described Jordan as sacred land that has no place for foreign occupiers and urged Jordanians to “seize every opportunity to destroy American institutions and expel the occupying US army.”

US President Donald Trump’s social network Truth Social will start selling investors early access to posts from prominent accounts, most likely including his own, the holding company has announced.

Critics argue that the move could create an unprecedented new way for the president to profit from his office, given his family controls Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the platform’s publicly traded corporate parent.

The move was announced on Thursday, when TMTG unveiled Truth API, a business-to-business data feed providing “real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts.”

What is on offer?

The service will give paying institutional clients and algorithmic trading firms machine-readable access to posts from top Truth Social accounts “in milliseconds,” rather than relying on manual monitoring, TMTG said. The feed will offer 24/7 coverage and an archive of posts dating back to 2022. It is scheduled to launch on August 1, though the company did not disclose pricing.

Trump founded TMTG in 2021 after many major social media platforms suspended his accounts following the January 6 Capitol protests. He has extensively used Truth Social to announce major policy decisions with posts that have repeatedly moved financial markets – such as his April 9, 2025 post announcing a 90-day pause on many tariffs, which sent Wall Street indices sharply higher within minutes.

Why is it different?

While other platforms also sell premium data access, critics argue Truth Social’s move is different because it potentially allows Trump to monetize official presidential communications.

“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” Kathleen Clark of the Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflict-of-interest rules told AP. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”

Conflict-of-interest controversy

US conflict-of-interest laws bar executive branch officials from participating in government matters in which they have a financial interest. The president and vice president, however, are exempt.

Multiple cases this year drew attention after well-timed trades ahead of political announcements generated huge profits. The Financial Times reported in March that oil traders placed more than $500 million in bets minutes before Trump announced “productive” talks with Iran at the height of the war. The timing prompted questions over who may have benefited, though the White House denied any official profited from insider knowledge.
Separately, market commentary platform The Kobeissi Letter claimed in May that a massive crude oil position placed shortly before reports of a possible US-Iran peace deal generated about $125 million in little more than an hour, again fueling insider trading speculation.

A Trump Organization spokesperson insisted in a statement that “neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments.” Earlier, Trump also dismissed concerns, telling reporters last week that outside parties make his investment decisions and that his gains merely reflect a strong stock market.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose additional tariffs on Canada over wildfire smoke, which has blanketed much of the northeastern US just days before the World Cup final in New Jersey.

Trump accused Canada on Friday of failing to manage its forests and allowing “filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air” to cross the border.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, claiming that the pollution is costing the US billions of dollars.

“This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence,” he added, arguing that the cost “must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.” Trump said he plans to call Prime Minister Mark Carney to ask what Ottawa intends to do about the fires.

NEW: NYC issues a Code Red air quality alert as smoke blankets the region; breathing the air is equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes. pic.twitter.com/8Sn9kmzD96

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) July 16, 2026

Ontario Premier Doug Ford earlier rejected criticism from US politicians, pointing to Canadian assistance during American wildfires and hurricanes. “Maybe what you should do rather than complain is send support, send help,” he said.

🚨#BREAKING: New York City now has the worst air quality of any city on Earth as canadian Wildfires Blanket Northeast States in Apocalyptic Haze

📌#UnitedStates | #USA

Much of the Northeast has been enveloped in an apocalyptic haze as smoke from Canadian wildfires blankets the… pic.twitter.com/NqLZucjTsl

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) June 7, 2023

Canada’s wildfire activity intensified in late June amid hot, dry conditions, with several major blazes in northwestern Ontario expanding sharply this week. Smoke from nearly 900 active fires reached New York City on Wednesday, pushing the Air Quality Index above 200 (classified as ‘very unhealthy’) in some areas by Thursday evening.

🚨🤯 2026 WORLD CUP FINAL IN CRISIS MODE!

Thick smoke from Canadian wildfires has swallowed New York. Air quality is in the danger zone — officials urging everyone to stay inside unless absolutely essential.

With the massive final under 48 hours away, FIFA is on high alert.… pic.twitter.com/PXNa3aQxMB

— FIFA World Cup Stats (@alimo_philip) July 17, 2026

Air-quality alerts remained in effect across New York City, Long Island, and parts of northern New Jersey through Saturday, including Bergen County, where MetLife Stadium is located. Officials warned that fine-particle pollution could reach unhealthy levels and urged residents – particularly children and people with heart or respiratory conditions – to limit outdoor exertion, stay indoors where possible, and wear an N95 or KN95 mask outside.

The authorities and FIFA officials are monitoring conditions, although sources told ESPN that the final is not currently considered to be under threat. Rain and changing winds could improve air quality before kickoff, but forecasters cautioned that more smoke could move into the region after the rain passes.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claims that it destroyed a depot housing US unmanned surface vessels and the “main artificial intelligence center” in Bahrain, in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian bridges and other civilian infrastructure.

In a statement issued on Friday evening, the IRGC said it struck a depot housing American USVs in Bahrain during the 17th wave of Operation Nasr 2, claiming that “a large number” of the vessels were burned and destroyed.

“Furthermore, the main artificial intelligence center in Bahrain, which was being used by the Great Satan for enemy targeting to commit war crimes, was completely destroyed by several ballistic missiles and dozens of drones,” the IRGC said.

Neither the US nor Bahrain has officially confirmed any destruction resulting from the reported attacks. Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and is one of Washington’s principal military hubs in the Persian Gulf.

Iran also launched missiles and drones at US military assets across the region on Friday. Attacks and interceptions were reported in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. Jordan said it intercepted several missiles without casualties or damage. The Qatari authorities reported that a child was injured by falling debris following interceptions.

“We will raze to the ground the most valuable assets of American companies in all countries that host US bases,” the statement warned, accusing the countries of complicity in Washington’s military operation.

US Central Command announced later on Friday that it launched another round of attacks on Iran, marking the seventh consecutive night of strikes. Iranian media subsequently reported five explosions in the central city of Yazd, as well as blasts in Fars Province and a missile attack on Ahvaz in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

Earlier in the day, senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader and former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei declared that Iran’s memorandum of understanding with the US is effectively dead.

He accused the US of violating the agreement by maintaining its naval blockade, continuing attacks on Iranian territory, refusing to release Iranian assets, and creating an “illegal” alternative shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest escalation follows US strikes on at least five bridges and other infrastructure targets in southern Iran, after President Donald Trump officially restarted the war and threatened to target Iranian civilian infrastructure unless it agrees to Washington’s demands.

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters slammed Western governments for pushing for war with Russia and banning RT so the warmongering “propaganda of the ruling class” can be freely disseminated.

Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, published on Friday, Waters expressed dismay that “some people in the governments of the United States of America, and the UK, and the European Union are making blood-curdling, bloodthirsty noises about” a potential conflict with Russia.

He noted that EU nations, including Germany, are rapidly increasing their military spending and funneling taxpayers’ money “into a big piggy bank in order to fight the Russians.”

“The Russians don’t want to invade Europe. What are they talking about?” he said, suggesting that certain interest groups are paying Western politicians to promote warmongering narratives and justify their outsized military expenditures.

Rather than antagonizing Russia and silencing voices that challenge Western propaganda, Waters said, “we have to be cooperating with the Russians.”

“So we live in a very difficult time where it may be, unless you, with your audience – or me with my tiny voice – can join with our brothers and sisters and pull together the ordinary working people all over the globe, and we can make the voice of the choir so loud that we can drown out the propaganda of the ruling class,” he said.

Waters has long been a critic of Western military support for Ukraine, telling RIA Novosti last November that officials in the UK and EU “don’t make any pretense that they care about” ordinary Ukrainians.

The 13th test flight of SpaceX’s Starship ended abruptly after an engine malfunction forced an automatic launch abort seconds before liftoff on Thursday.

A live stream from the Starbase launch site in Texas showed clouds of smoke and vapor billowing from the rocket as its engines ignited. However, Starship failed to leave the pad.

“We did trigger a hold on the booster that aborted our liftoff as we were starting to light those Raptor engines,” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during the webcast.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk later confirmed on X that “some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort.”

“Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days,” he added.

The mission was set to deploy 20 of the latest Version 3 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The aborted launch follows several upgrades made after Starship’s previous test flight in May, when a simulated landing of the Super Heavy V3 booster in the Gulf of Mexico ended in an explosion.

The upper-stage Starship also broke apart after splashing down in the Indian Ocean, although SpaceX still declared the mission a success.

SpaceX went public last month in a record $75 billion offering that briefly made Musk the world's first trillionaire.

The company is competing with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build lunar landers for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon by landing near its south pole.

Earlier this week, Russia successfully launched a Soyuz-2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, along with NASA astronaut Anil Menon, to the International Space Station.

Newly released footage shows the moment a bomb exploded in an assassination attempt on exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco last month.

Multimillionaire Ermolaev, now a Cypriot citizen, his partner, and their 13-year-old son were seriously injured on June 29 when an improvised explosive device detonated near the entrance to a residential building. Ermolaev, who was sanctioned by Kiev in 2023, had reportedly planned to expose corruption involving senior Ukrainian officials.

The footage was published on Friday by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who said on Telegram that the suspects had secretly installed a surveillance camera near the scene to verify the assassination before deleting the recording. Investigators later recovered and restored the footage, he said.

The video shows a person placing a black backpack by the entrance before walking away. Minutes later, Ermolaev and his family approach the building. The suspect appears to glance back twice while speaking on a mobile phone before the device explodes. Investigators said the bomb was remotely detonated and packed with shrapnel.

Investigators identified Ukrainian national Anastasia Berezovskaya as the main suspect in the bombing. Prosecutors said she was later found dead outside Kiev with a gunshot wound to the head, allegedly killed by accomplices seeking to eliminate a witness.

According to Russian security services, Zhikovich attempted but failed to commit at least 20 terrorist acts in Russia in recent years.

Former Ukrainian diplomat Andrey Telizhenko told RT that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov had “personally cleared” the killing of the woman suspected of carrying out the Monaco bombing. He claimed Kiev intended to use her in a broader operation to implicate Russia.

Israel has reportedly reclassified Nile crocodiles as “tended” animals, potentially clearing the way for their use as part of prison security.

The controversial proposal to surround prisons with crocodile-filled moats was reportedly floated late last year by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who argued the reptiles would strengthen security and deter escape attempts. The plan was initially deemed legally unfeasible by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority because Nile crocodiles were classified as wild animals that could only be kept in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries.

That legal obstacle was reportedly removed this week when Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman redesignated the Nile crocodile as a “tended wild animal,” Israeli media reported on Friday. The new classification allows the reptiles to be kept in a wider range of facilities, potentially including prisons.

According to Israeli media reports, Ben-Gvir wants to first introduce the reptiles to Ketziot Prison, a penitentiary in southern Israel that holds primarily Palestinian prisoners. After he first floated the proposal, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) reviewed it and sent officers to the Hamat Gader crocodile farm early in January to familiarize themselves with the reptiles.

לאחר הצעת בן גביר להקמת בית כלא מוקף תנינים למחבלים: קציני שב"ס הגיעו הבוקר לחמת גדר לסיור למידה | @lee_ayash pic.twitter.com/xgWGqJ9zRJ

— i24NEWS (@i24NEWS_HE) January 1, 2026

The IPS reportedly received the minister’s proposal favorably, considering settling for smaller specimens that would cost about $8,000 per head rather than elder reptiles costing around $20,000. “This is a relatively small sum compared with the security investment a prison requires, and the results would be even better,” an IPS source told the Maariv newspaper at the time, adding that the “also dangerous” small reptiles would eventually grow inside the prison compound.

Several women have accused Gerald Marie, the former head of Elite Model Management's European operations, of rape and human trafficking in a criminal complaint filed in France. At least one of the plaintiffs alleges she was sexually abused while still a minor.

Marie, whose agency represented some of the world's biggest supermodels, including Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, and Cindy Crawford, has faced similar accusations from more than a dozen women over the past several years. French prosecutors previously investigated the claims but closed the case in 2023 because the alleged offenses, dating largely to the 1980s and early 1990s, fell outside the statute of limitations. Marie has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Six women, most of them Americans, filed the latest complaint on Wednesday, according to their lawyer, Mathias Darmon. Two are accusing Marie publicly for the first time, including one who alleges she was underage when she was assaulted.

The complaint alleges that Marie, while running one of the world's leading modeling agencies in Paris, “used the authority, influence and power conferred on him by his position to obtain forced sexual relations with numerous young women, some of whom were underage,” according to excerpts published by Le Monde and AFP.

Responding to the new filing, Marie's lawyer, Celine Bekerman, said that there was “no reason whatsoever to call on the courts to again revisit a case that is both time-barred and closed, nearly 40 years after the alleged events.”

Earlier this year, 14 women, including former BBC journalist Lisa Brinkworth, also urged French authorities to investigate Marie over alleged links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In 2020, dozens of former models from the US, Canada, and Sweden told The Guardian that they had been sexually assaulted after Marie invited them to private meetings at his apartments in the 1980s. Several said they did not come forward earlier because they feared it would end their modeling careers, while others accused him of exploiting their youth and poor command of French.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki has vetoed a bill introducing ‘cohabitation contracts’ for couples living together regardless of their gender, arguing that the legislation goes against the constitutional definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The veto is another blow to pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has repeatedly pledged to deliver reforms on LGBTQ rights and less strict abortion laws. A lack of unity on the sensitive issues within the ruling coalition, as well as resistance from the nationalist president, has hampered the advancement of these plans.

The legislation envisioned the introduction of cohabitation contracts, which would have allowed two adults to enter into a marriage-like agreement governing various issues, including access to medical information, joint property rights, and burial matters. The final version of the bill was already watered down to secure support from conservative partners within the ruling coalition, which argued that the original legislation would have undermined marriage.

Nawrocki argued that the bill “would lead to the loss of the ‌special status of marriage, defined in... the Constitution as the union of a man and a woman.”

“These proposals create a new, formalized institution of family law, equipped with a broad catalog of rights similar to those of marriage,” he said on Friday.

The government now needs to secure a three-fifths majority in parliament to overturn the presidential veto. This is highly unlikely, as the legislation is strongly opposed by right-wing opposition parties and the ruling coalition lacks the necessary numbers by a wide margin.

This comes after the EU’s highest court forced Poland to recognize same-sex marriages registered in other countries of the bloc. The ruling was handed down last November, with Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court citing it for the first time in March when it ordered the authorities to recognize the marriage of two Polish men registered in Germany and the first same-sex marriage certificate was issued in the country in May.

Obesity may be keeping more than half a million people out of work in Britain, a new research presented at the International Congress on Obesity in Mexico has found.

Scientists from the University of York analyzed data from 284,258 UK Biobank participants – working-age men (38-65) and women (38-60) – and found obesity reduced the probability of being employed by 4.2 percentage points. Among those studied, the overall employment rate was 75.5%, with roughly one-quarter meeting the clinical definition of obesity – a body mass index (BMI) above 30.

The findings presented on Thursday suggest roughly four in every 100 obese people may be unemployed because of their weight alone – some 600,000 people. It also found that the effect was significantly stronger among men than women: obesity reduced men’s chances of being employed by 6.6 percentage points, compared with 2.1 percentage points for women.

According to lead author Dr Aharon Katz, “tackling obesity isn’t just a health imperative – it’s an opportunity to boost economic productivity. Because obesity affects workers in the prime years of their working lives, it may have profound effects on their working careers, individual health and societal costs.”

Katz called for targeted policies and workplace initiatives to raise awareness, reduce bias, and improve inclusivity.

Meanwhile, Britain faces an ongoing economic and cost-of-living crisis which contributes to slow economic growth and the steepest decline in household wealth since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The findings come as the UK government pilots programs offering weight-loss injections to unemployed people in an effort to help more of them return to work. Some recent studies suggest that workers prescribed the medications took 45% fewer sick days after nine months of treatment, while other researchers estimated that wider access could free up nearly 10 million GP appointments and reduce obesity-related emergency hospital visits by a quarter.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s recent summit in Ankara has produced a decision that demands scrutiny. NATO member states have committed to providing Ukraine with military assistance worth €70 billion for 2026. This is not an emergency measure. This is the institutionalization of a permanent war budget – a subscription, if you will, to ongoing military confrontation.

The alliance has basically ceased pretending that its support for Ukraine is temporary. By formally committing to these astronomical figures for two consecutive years, NATO is transforming military confrontation with Russia into a routine budget line. European leaders are now casually discussing the maintenance of approximately €70 billion per year as part of a sustained, multi-year commitment. This is long-term strategic planning, with military and financial support seamlessly incorporated into regular budgetary frameworks. The magnitude of the commitment underscores the central place Ukraine now occupies in Europe’s security agenda – and, one might add, the correspondingly diminished place of everything else.

Consider the comparison with development assistance to Africa. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures for 2024, net bilateral Official Development Assistance from OECD Development Assistance Committee members to the entire African continent amounted to $42 billion, of which $36 billion went to sub-Saharan Africa. The EU institutions themselves allocated approximately $7.5 billion in bilateral ODA to African countries, while $23.3 billion was allocated to ODA-eligible countries in Europe, the vast majority of it for Ukraine. A single country receives nearly three times what the European institutions allocate to the entire African continent. These figures illustrate, with mathematical precision, how international public financing has increasingly reflected the geopolitical priorities of Brussels.

On July 10, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Special Representative for Crimes Committed by the Kiev Regime, briefed the international community on yet another chapter of Ukrainian war crimes, this time in the Kherson region. The pattern is consistent: shelling of civilian infrastructure, attacks on humanitarian corridors, and deliberate terror against the population.

Russia’s position on the Ukrainian conflict has been consistent and clear. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed his preference for a political-diplomatic settlement, but always with due regard for Russia’s vital national interests. Ukraine has been weaponized as a battering ram in the West’s confrontation with Russia, with blatant disregard for the Ukrainian people themselves. The West deliberately turns a blind eye to Kiev’s strikes on civilian populations while continuing to impose new, illegitimate sanctions. Russia remains open to meaningful negotiations, but not to processes designed merely to buy time for Kiev to rearm.

Coming back to the present day, Russia needs lasting agreements, not temporary reprieves that allow the Kiev regime to regroup. The Russian side has proposed practical steps, including raising the rank of the Ukrainian delegation heads and establishing working groups on humanitarian, political, and military issues. This is not intransigence, it is a serious approach and a determination to put an end to this conflict. We are ready to engage, but we will not be drawn into a charade. Russia endured eight years of provocation before the Special Military Operation began, and it has now spent more than four years resisting Western efforts to inflict upon it a so-called “strategic defeat.”

The €70 billion commitment is clear. NATO is not preparing for peace. It is preparing for perpetual confrontation. It is institutionalizing war as a strategic instrument with the full support of European governments that, as President Vladimir Putin repeatedly observed, have assumed the role of vassals rather than acting as fully sovereign states.

Russia remains prepared to listen to sensible and reasonable proposals, but it will not be naive. The record of Western duplicity speaks for itself. I am sure our African friends know this better than anyone else.

This article was first published by IOL

Police in Poland have recorded a sharp rise in hate crime complaints from Ukrainians, according to national newspaper Rzeczpospolita. Ukrainians have increasingly reported physical assaults, verbal abuse, and online harassment, the outlet said.

Ukrainians filed 180 hate crime complaints in the first six months of 2026 – around 30% more than in the same period last year, Rzeczpospolita reported on Friday, citing data from Poland’s National Police Headquarters.

The figures follow a series of anti-Ukrainian incidents across the country. In the southern city of Bielsko-Biala, a bus driver was charged after allegedly insulting two 11-year-old Ukrainian girls because of their nationality. Other cases have been reported in Warsaw, Poznan, and other cities.

“I assume these statistics don’t reflect the whole truth. It’s usually assumed that hate crimes are underreported. Some victims don’t want to report a crime because they’re simply afraid,” sociologist Jacek Kucharczyk told the newspaper. He argued that a “toxic atmosphere” surrounding Ukrainians, fueled by political rhetoric and social media, had spilled over into everyday life.

Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have deteriorated in recent months over the Volhynia Massacre, a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during World War II.

Poland recognizes the killings as genocide, while Ukraine honors many of those involved as national heroes. The dispute flared again last month after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named one of the country’s commando units after the “heroes of the UPA” (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), whose members Poland holds responsible for the wartime massacre of tens of thousands of Poles. In response, Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor, saying the move had crossed a line for most Poles.

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere on a rocky planet within a potentially habitable zone outside the Solar System for the first time, according to a new report by a Harvard-led team of scientists.

The findings stemmed from analyzing data on the super-Earth LHS 1140b, which circles a red dwarf 49 light-years from Earth in a temperature zone that theoretically allows liquid water to exist. The discovery, published in the journal Science on Thursday, was based on traces of helium escaping the planet.

“An atmosphere is essential for a planet to support life as we know it,” Collin Cherubim, the study’s lead author and a planetary scientist who works at the University of Chicago, said. “This is the first time anyone has found an atmosphere on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star.”

Cherubim tempered the excitement, saying that “at this point, we have absolutely no evidence for life on the planet,” adding that “we think all of the really important, essential ingredients are there.”

One side of the planet is always facing its star, which itself is a red dwarf burning at roughly half the Sun’s surface temperature. Compared to the Sun, red dwarfs are more volatile and tend to blast off flares that typically strip small, close-orbiting worlds bare. The red dwarf near LHS 1140b, however, is unusually calm – which may explain why the planet kept an atmosphere at all.

Apart from helium, the exact make-up of the atmosphere is unclear, but earlier studies suggested the presence of nitrogen, possibly mixed with water vapor and carbon dioxide. Helium isotopes are in high demand but notoriously difficult to obtain on Earth. Helium-4 can be used as a supercoolant in complicated machines while its rarer cousin, helium-3, is prized as a potential fuel for future fusion reactors – one reason companies are eyeing it on the Moon.

In addition, recent studies have shown that some living microorganisms – such as yeast and E. coli bacteria – can survive in an atmosphere of pure helium and hydrogen.

While essentially next door by space standards, LHS 1140b is well beyond the reach of any spacecraft humans have built. NASA’s Voyager 1 – the fastest human-made interstellar object, which reached the speed of 17 km/s by slingshotting past Jupiter’s and Saturn’s gravity and now traveling beyond the Solar System – would need roughly 860,000 years to cross the distance to the planet.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned the administration of US President Donald Trump against interfering in his country’s elections.

Germany is due to hold federal elections in September, with immigration expected to be among the campaign’s defining issues.

“It is illegal to finance political parties in Germany from abroad,” Merz said on Wednesday. “And I assume that our friends around the world, in particular, will also abide by these legal rules that we have established in Germany.”

Merz’s remarks came after the US State Department launched a grant program on Monday worth nearly $5 million to support projects aimed at strengthening democratic resilience, the rule of law, freedom of speech and the press, and human rights in Europe.

“For our part, we do not interfere in American elections,” Merz told reporters. “Conversely, I do not want the American government or institutions close to the government to interfere in German elections.”

Although political parties are not explicitly listed as eligible for the grants, Merz stressed that foreign funding of political actors is illegal under German law.

The funding is part of a months-long effort by the Trump administration to redirect US government money toward supporting nationalist and right-wing groups – and potentially political parties – across Europe, in line with its National Security Strategy, The Guardian said on Thursday, citing former US officials.

According to the outlet, the program’s eligibility criteria are broad and vague, allowing applications from “individuals” and “governmental institution[s]” without clarifying who qualifies.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party initially embraced backing from figures close to Trump, including Elon Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance, who criticized Europe’s treatment of right-wing parties at last year’s Munich Security Conference. The party has since publicly distanced itself from the MAGA movement as it prepares for September’s state elections in eastern Germany.

The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Russia and China of election interference, but now appears to be seeking to influence votes in Europe. In a prime-time address on Thursday, Trump claimed Chinese intelligence had obtained 220 million US voter records, calling it the “largest compromise” of election data in the country’s history. Beijing rejected the allegation, saying it “has never and will never interfere” in US presidential elections.

US President Donald Trump’s veteran teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez is under investigation over an alleged insider betting scheme tied to the president’s speeches.

The aide is believed to have earned thousands of dollars by placing bets on the contents of Trump’s remarks on prediction market Kalshi, a platform where users trade contracts on the outcome of future events.

Perez has served as one of Trump’s teleprompter operators since the president’s first campaign in 2016 – a role former aides have described as very challenging due to Trump’s tendency to improvise. Perez was one of only a few people with advance access to Trump’s speeches and was known to receive last-minute edits directly from Trump.

According to ABC News, which first broke the story on Thursday, a federal probe was launched after Kalshi flagged unusual trading activity on its ‘Mentions’ market, where users can bet on which words and phrases public figures will say during speeches and events. The company said it referred the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal regulator overseeing the industry.

Sources claim CFTC investigators found Perez had placed bets on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period, including his January speech at the World Economic Forum and February’s State of the Union address. Investigators also reportedly found instances where Perez backed out of bets mid-speech when Trump – who frequently departs from prepared remarks – skipped sections containing words Perez had wagered on. Sources said Perez made more than $100,000 on the bets, although his account was frozen before the money could be withdrawn.

“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC… We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected,” Kalshi’s lead lawyer, Robert DeNault, said in a statement.

White House rules prohibit employees from using non-public government information for personal financial gain, including placing speculative bets on prediction platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket based on advance knowledge of government actions. Kalshi, the first federally regulated US prediction market launched in 2021, also prohibits users from placing trades based on information obtained through their jobs.

Commenting on the report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the CFTC investigation and said Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave. She said she discussed the matter with Trump, who called it a “disgrace” and personally decided to suspend the staffer.

“There are very strict ethical guidelines here at the White House that explicitly state not to do this… And if they are violated, people will pay consequences for that, as you’re seeing with this case,” Leavitt said at a briefing, adding that Perez will no longer work at the White House.

Trump has not publicly commented on the case. A CFTC spokesperson declined to comment.

Prediction markets controversy

Prediction markets are facing mounting legal and political scrutiny in the US. The Department of Justice recently filed its first insider trading cases tied to the platforms, including allegations against a US special forces soldier accused of betting on the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and a Google employee accused of using internal company data to wager on user search activity.

Trump and his administration have backed the prediction market industry, arguing the CFTC should remain its sole regulator. However, this backing resulted in criticism and conflict-of-interest concerns due to Trump family’s business ties to the sector. His son, Donald Trump Jr., serves as a strategic adviser to Kalshi and holds a financial stake in Polymarket through his investment firm, 1789 Capital. Last year, Trump Media & Technology Group also announced plans to launch a prediction market on Truth Social, allowing users to wager on sports and politics.

China has rejected US President Donald Trump’s claim that Beijing masterminded the theft of 220 million American voter files to meddle in the 2020 election. Trump’s explosive remarks came ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington in late September and amid a tentative trade truce between the two countries.

In a prime-time address to the nation on Thursday, Trump accused Chinese intelligence services of illicitly acquiring 220 million voter files containing names, addresses, phone numbers, and party affiliations, claiming that Beijing assigned a dedicated unit to exploit the data.

He called the alleged breach “an unprecedented election security nightmare” and the “largest compromise” of election data in US history.

Liu Chang, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, dismissed the claims, saying “China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US.”

The data declassified by the White House also contains a series of memos by senior cyber intelligence official Chris Porter, who argued that China took “at least some low-level, exploratory steps” to undermine Trump’s chances against then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Despite this, Porter agreed with the overall intelligence conclusion that “there was no information suggesting China tried to interfere with election processes.”

Trump’s bombshell accusation comes weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington around September 24. According to the South China Morning Post, Beijing will send Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu to Washington next week to help lay the groundwork for the trip.

Reuters warned that Trump’s accusations could fray US-China ties and unsettle the fragile trade truce. Denis Simon of the Quincy Institute, a Washington think tank, told the South China Morning Post that the speech was significant because it elevated alleged Chinese election meddling to “a central national security narrative.”

He added, however, that while Trump’s remarks could cast doubt on Xi’s visit, “harsh rhetoric does not automatically prevent summit diplomacy,” and the key question is whether “the two governments can continue to compartmentalize, maintaining channels for negotiation while simultaneously accusing each other of increasingly serious security threats.”

Trump traveled to China in May, though high-level talks with Xi did not produce a breakthrough on trade. China pledged to increase purchases of US soybeans and buy 200 Boeing jets – though the number turned out to be much lower than expected. Trump also said he discussed arms sales to Taiwan with Xi. His administration later said shipments to the island – which Beijing views as its sovereign territory – were paused.

Britain has called on FIFA to sanction Argentina after its players celebrated knocking England out of the World Cup with a banner asserting Buenos Aires’ claim to the Falkland Islands.

The defending champions beat England 2-1 in Wednesday’s semifinal to set up a final against Spain. After the final whistle, Lisandro Martinez and Giovani Lo Celso briefly held up a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” (“The Falkland Islands are Argentinian”).

The South Atlantic archipelago, located about 300 miles east of Argentina, has remained a point of contention between London and Buenos Aires since the 74-day Falklands War in 1982, which ended in Argentina’s defeat. Argentina says it inherited the islands after gaining independence from Spain in 1816, while Britain considers them a British Overseas Territory.

The display prompted an angry response from British politicians. Business Secretary Peter Kyle urged FIFA to launch “a proper inquiry,” calling the banner “entirely inappropriate” and an “egregious violation” of the governing body’s rules. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said the players who displayed it should be barred from Sunday’s World Cup final.

FIFA and the International Football Association Board (IFAB) do not allow political, religious, or personal messages during matches. Penalties range from fines and suspensions to points deductions and bans.

The football governing body has not commented on the incident. Argentina was fined in 2014 after displaying the same “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” banner following a friendly against Slovenia.

The incident is the latest political flashpoint at this year’s tournament. Last month, spectators at Iran’s match in Los Angeles displayed Iran’s pre-1979 national flag, a symbol used by opponents of the government in Tehran despite FIFA’s ban on political messaging.

The Polish authorities have accused Russian intelligence of orchestrating the desecration of World War II memorials after charging an 18-year-old Ukrainian with vandalizing monuments commemorating Poles massacred by Ukrainian nationalists.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) said on Tuesday that the suspect, identified as Illia K., was charged with defacing several memorial sites dedicated to victims of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Polish historians estimate that UPA fighters killed at least 100,000 ethnic Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, territories now largely in western Ukraine.

Investigators said Illia K. committed 47 offenses between November 2024 and August 2025. He received cryptocurrency payments through exchanges registered in Russia and China and acted on behalf of Russian intelligence in an attempt to inflame tensions between Poland and Ukraine, the ABW claimed.

The Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said on Thursday that the suspect faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The case came as another incident involving the commemoration of Volhynia massacre victims unfolded this week. On Thursday, Warsaw police arrested a 23-year-old Ukrainian national for allegedly inciting violence against participants in a march honoring the victims of the massacres, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported. He was later handed over to the Border Guard for deportation.

The dispute intensified in May when Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky awarded a commando unit the honorary title ‘Heroes of the UPA.’ Warsaw, one of Kiev’s staunchest supporters in its conflict with Russia, condemned the move. Last month, Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest state honor, saying the decision had crossed a line for most Poles.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has defended its decision to provisionally reinstate the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), after several EU states threatened to push Brussels to cut funding for sports bodies that readmitted Russian and Belarusian athletes, Reuters reported.

The IOC last week lifted its nearly three-year suspension of the ROC, imposed in 2023 after the committee incorporated sports organizations from four former Ukrainian regions that had voted to join Russia.

According to Reuters, nine EU member states have written to European Sports Commissioner Glenn Micallef urging the EU to stop funding the IOC, World Aquatics, the International Fencing Federation and other sports bodies that have readmitted Russian and Belarusian athletes. The signatories are Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Sweden.

An IOC spokesperson defended the decision, telling Reuters the suspension was lifted after the ROC removed regional sports organizations from “territories falling under the jurisdiction of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine” and confirmed it would no longer operate there.

The committee also reiterated that it will not stage its own events in Russia or invite Russian government officials, adding that any decision on the Russian flag, anthem and other national symbols at future Olympics will be made “at the appropriate time.” It noted that competitions outside the Olympic Games are governed by the relevant international federations.

Russian and Belarusian athletes were barred from most international competitions after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, although several federations have since eased the restrictions.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Western countries of politicizing sport and pressuring international federations to exclude Russian athletes, insisting competitors should be judged solely on sporting merit. It has described the IOC’s 2023 suspension of the ROC as politically motivated and contrary to Olympic principles.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova welcomed last week’s decision, saying: “Common sense has prevailed!”

US President Donald Trump has made a prime-time White House address on election security, announcing the release of declassified intelligence documents detailing alleged vulnerabilities in the voting infrastructure.

“Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately,” Trump said, arguing that the existing system “falls catastrophically short” and is dangerously exposed to hacking.

Trump accused China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history,” claiming Beijing acquired information on 220 million US voters, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and political preferences.

He also alleged that members of the “Deep State” within US intelligence agencies “worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling.”

“US spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020,” Trump said, accusing officials of concealing the alleged breach from both the president and the public.

The White House published four downloadable document packages as the president made the address. The first contains intelligence assessments and other reports dated between January 2020 and June 2026, which the administration says show “that US adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.”

The page identifies centralized voter registration databases, electronic pollbooks, and official election websites as particularly vulnerable. It also cites intelligence concerning an alleged Venezuelan plot to digitally alter vote totals during that country’s 2020 election.

Chinese acquisition of voter data

The second set of documents concerns China’s alleged acquisition and exploitation of American voter information. The White House claims that data belonging to tens of millions of voters across 18 states was bought, stolen, and hacked, and that Beijing assigned a specialized unit to exploit it.

However, voter registration information is publicly available or commercially obtainable in many states, and possession of this data does not by itself demonstrate that ballots or vote totals were affected.

The third release covers a voter registration investigation in Muskegon, Michigan. The White House says canvassers admitted to signing forms in other people’s names, submitting registrations for fictitious individuals, and receiving gift cards based on the number of applications collected.

Trump said FBI Director Kash Patel would be instructed to ensure that the case is fully investigated and that any suspected crimes are referred for prosecution.

Non-citizens on voter rolls

The final package cites a Department of Homeland Security review that allegedly identified around 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections.

The White House did not say how many, if any, voted, and has not claimed that any US vote totals were altered during the 2020 election.

Russia and China have joined forces with over two dozen other nations to create a new international organization to help guide work on AI development with a “people-centered approach.”

The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a new intergovernmental body, will be headquartered in Shanghai. A total of 29 nations are founding members, including ten African countries and 12 Asian countries. Belarus, Serbia, Cuba, Brazil, and Venezuela also joined the initiative.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was also present at the signing ceremony on Thursday. The organization will seek to uphold UN principles and contribute to the shared benefit of AI development, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the agreement. WAICO will promote global AI governance aimed at making the technology safe, fair, and beneficial to all of humanity, it added.

“We consistently advocate for the establishment of transparent rules governing extraterritorial technologies,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko said.

Grigorenko oversees the digital transformation of the Russian economy along with Digital Development and Communications Minister Maksut Shadayev, who signed the agreement.

Why does AI need regulations?

The rapid development of sophisticated AI technology has sparked concerns, even within the leading Western AI companies. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in January that the technology could lead to catastrophic risks ranging from mass job displacement to global totalitarian dictatorship and even human extinction.

Western nations are also actively employing AI in military operations. The Pentagon said last month that a data analysis platform developed by Palantir, powered by models such as Claude and Elon Musk’s Grok AI, enabled the US military to fire more than 2,000 missiles at Iran in just four days.

Exclusivity vs openness

WAICO is not the first attempt to create an international AI cooperation mechanism. Last year, Washington unveiled a project dubbed ‘Pax Silica’ – an initiative it said was aimed at creating “the global technology supply chain” needed to develop and enhance AI capabilities.

The signatories were offered access to the “full stack of technological advancements that are shaping the AI economy” in exchange for providing their resources, manufacturing, and logistics capacity, as well as protecting “sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from undue access, influence, or control,” in what was seen as a not-so-subtle reference to China.

A vision unveiled by China last year in its Global AI Governance Action Plan is the direct opposite of this approach. The 13-point document called on the international community to “jointly” seize the opportunities offered by AI and promote its innovative development “in the spirit of openness and sharing.”

It also said that AI capacity building should be undertaken by all of humanity instead of a chosen few within an “inclusive multi-stakeholder governance model” framework.

“AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation,” Chinese President Xi Jinping stated at the opening of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on Friday, warning against technological exclusion and “overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI or placing one country’s security over that of others.”

Why is China pushing cooperation?

China has rapidly evolved into a major AI power thanks to its extraordinary pace of AI research and development while embracing a philosophy of international cooperation instead of technological fragmentation.

Chinese companies that introduced increasingly capable AI models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, and Kimi also lowered barriers to their adoption through competitive pricing and open-source releases, allowing researchers, businesses, and governments worldwide to build upon their work.

The US previously introduced export controls on advanced AI chips, including Nvidia’s flagship H200. The measures forced China to aggressively fast-track its own domestic AI chip ecosystem and remained in place for years until December 2025. Washington justified the restrictions on national security grounds, accusing China of intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer. Beijing accused the US of politicizing trade and disrupting global supply chains.

Russia’s role

Russia is one of the few nations with its own AI large language models (LLMs), including YandexGPT and Alisa AI, developed by Russian tech giant Yandex, as well as GigaChat, a product created by the nation’s largest lender, Sberbank.

AI applications are also becoming increasingly prevalent in financial services, education, transportation, and digital government, providing valuable insights into how AI can create added value when embedded in services people use every day.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin said Russia is planning to contribute to a global AI development initiative.

According to Putin, Russia possesses several advantages, including scientific expertise, a strong education system, and abundant energy resources needed to support large-scale computing systems and data centers, which could greatly contribute to an international AI alliance.

On Thursday, Grigorenko said he is “confident that our active participation in the organization will help strengthen global technological dialogue and will also facilitate the effective promotion of Russian innovations and expertise in international markets.”

As BRICS adjusts to its expansion in 2024 and 2025, it faces two linked questions. How can the group stabilize itself internally, and how can it assume a more important role in global governance?

The answer shouldn’t be to imitate existing institutions because BRICS will only succeed if it identifies common objectives that matter to its members and that are also relevant to the wider international community. No credible system of global governance can now be imposed by a small group of powerful states. It must reflect the interests of the international majority.

For BRICS, the most promising basis for such a role lies in sustainable development. The United Nations has pursued this objective for decades, but the continued dominance of Western states in many global institutions has prevented those goals from being implemented fairly, so BRICS could offer a different model.

Given that most international organizations are the legal expression of a particular balance of power, the most absurd course would be to reproduce one of the structures created by powers whose global influence was built on military superiority. Such organizations formalize either the relationship among their members or their collective intentions towards the rest of the world. Some were created after wars, while others were designed to coordinate the policies of a narrow group of states.

BRICS is different in that it wasn’t established to solidify the outcome of a military conflict, institutionalize the relative strength of its members or organize a bloc against outside powers, and it’s not based on a common military hierarchy and doesn’t seek to impose a single foreign policy.

Every successful form of international cooperation serves the fundamental interests of its participants. For example, European integration, now represented by the European Union, emerged from the conditions created by the Second World War, where the major Western continental powers had suffered devastating defeat or destruction. Through NATO, they surrendered much of their independent military role to the United States, while European integration then helped their political elites consolidate this new strategic position and strengthen their economic base by combining markets.

These internal objectives later allowed the Western European states to exercise an international influence far greater than the individual geopolitical weight of Germany, France, Italy or their smaller allies would otherwise have permitted.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was created for a different purpose as its founders sought to prevent conflicts among newly independent states and reduce damaging competition between them. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization also began with the limited but important task of stabilizing the inner part of Greater Eurasia in an area directly affecting the security of Russia and China.

In each case, the organization was most effective when pursuing the purpose for which it had originally been created, but the limits are equally clear. The European Union failed in its attempts to become a genuine political union, and ASEAN has struggled to influence the domestic political development of its members or formulate a common response to the most important strategic challenge in Asia, namely the confrontation between China and the United States. Meanwhile, the SCO has so far achieved little beyond its original regional responsibilities.

Its emergence in the 1970s was no accident. Western dominance was beginning to face structural limits, while the Soviet-led bloc was showing the first signs of its later crisis. The G7 allowed the leading Western powers to coordinate both defensive and offensive policies. In earlier centuries, historians might have described such a body as the embryo of a world government.

That position is no longer sustainable, given that China’s economic rise, Russia’s resurgence and the broader redistribution of global power have reduced the G7’s ability to dictate the international order, while at the same time its need for internal discipline has increased.

No serious observer can now regard the G7 as an institution of global governance, but it remains, however, an effective military and economic headquarters for the West, from which campaigns against the rest of the world can be organized.

BRICS shouldn’t seek to become a rival version of the same structure, because by its nature, BRICS rejects the permanent division of the world into opposing camps and it can’t strengthen itself by becoming a closed club. Such a move would contradict its original political purpose and wouldn’t serve the interests of its members.

NATO offers another warning. The alliance combines internal and external functions. Internally it helps preserve the existing political order in Europe, whereas externally it maintains the cohesion of the Western military bloc. Nevertheless, it can’t become an institution of global governance and attempts to present NATO as a global policeman were only credible during the brief period of Western euphoria after the Cold War or during the early 2000s, when Washington’s allies were trying to restrain American unilateralism.

The BRICS countries differ greatly in size, wealth, political systems and levels of development. Yet all are united by the need to achieve economic growth, technological modernization, social stability and greater national sovereignty, and these priorities are familiar throughout the global majority.

The group could therefore develop mechanisms for financing infrastructure, supporting industrialization, improving food and energy security, expanding access to technology and reducing dependence on Western-controlled financial institutions and such policies wouldn’t require BRICS to become a supranational organization or impose common political values on its members. Nor would they require the creation of a military bloc; they would instead demonstrate that international cooperation can produce practical results without political tutelage from the West.

This would also make BRICS more attractive to countries outside the group, given that many states are not looking for a new ideological center or another system of discipline but for investment, technology, infrastructure, and greater freedom in choosing their own path of development.

A joint BRICS initiative in West Africa could provide a useful starting point as few regions have been exploited more extensively by Western powers, and few have received less in return. A serious program focused on infrastructure, energy, agriculture, education, and industrial capacity would show what BRICS can offer in practice.

Its success would depend on whether roads were built, electricity supplied, food production increased, and national economies made more resilient and not rhetoric about a “new world order.”

That is how BRICS can move towards global governance, by creating forms of cooperation that reflect the interests of the global majority and not by copying the institutions of Western dominance.

This article was first published by the Valdai Club and edited by the RT team.

The US military will screen troops aged 30 and older for low testosterone every year and offer hormone replacement therapy to those found deficient, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced.

The Pentagon chief unveiled the plan in a nearly three-minute video on X titled ‘The High-T Department of War’. He stressed that the initiative “is not about artificial enhancement” but rather “restoring and optimizing [service members’] natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.”

Hegseth said the therapy would be optional and based on recommendations by health professionals.

Testosterone deficiency in men usually grows with age and is often linked to erectile dysfunction, low libido, mood changes, and weight gain. However, while recent studies by the National Institutes of Health found that testosterone replacement therapy addressed libido issues and somewhat mitigated mood swings, it did little to improve endurance, memory, or overall well-being.

Hegseth’s remarks triggered mockery, however, with some commentators alluding to the secretary’s hardline campaign against ‘wokeness’, DEI, and the decision to ban transgender service members.

Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth said the plan sounded “like gender-affirming care to me,” while Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat, suggested it proved Hegseth “takes direction from the far corners of the manosphere.”

Democratic Senator Cory Booker dismissed Hegseth as “not a serious person” and unfit for his role. “The fact that we, in the midst of a disastrous [Iran] war, have a secretary of defense doing things like this makes us a mockery globally. This is ridiculous,” he told CNN.

Pakistani-born Shabir Ahmed, a rape gang ringleader recently released in the UK after serving a prison term for dozens of child sex offenses, committed his crimes because of his upbringing in England, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi said on Thursday.

The 73-year-old, who first entered the UK as a teenager, was a leading figure in the Rochdale grooming gang, which sexually abused and trafficked British girls as young as 12 in the Greater Manchester borough during the 2000s.

Ahmed was released from prison under supervision in early June after serving 14 years. The British authorities have been unable to deport him because of a provision protecting certain Commonwealth citizens who were resident in the UK before 1973, despite his British citizenship having been revoked following his 2012 convictions.

Regardless of where [Ahmed] was born, the onus lies on where he grew up, was raised, groomed, and, unfortunately, was spoiled... His heinous crimes demand serious introspection rather than a quest to search for extraneous causes.

The spokesman stressed that Islamabad strongly condemns child sexual abuse, which should be “punished to the fullest extent of the law, irrespective of race, ethnicity, or religion,” but insisted that Pakistan “has no connection whatsoever with this matter” and “cannot be associated” with any related decisions.

The Rochdale rape gang was one of many grooming gangs, predominantly composed of men of Pakistani origin, that systematically raped and sexually trafficked vulnerable young British girls across the UK over decades.

The grooming gangs scandal returned to the spotlight of British politics last year, forcing the Labour government to announce a nationwide inquiry, which unearthed “blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness” and systematic failures by police and public bodies to protect victims and act on reports of abuse.

The US has launched another round of overnight strikes, reportedly hitting civilian infrastructure, including several bridges across Iran. Tehran had warned that further escalation would have consequences for the entire region.

US Central Command announced its sixth consecutive night of strikes on Thursday evening in a brief statement without disclosing the targets, after President Donald Trump threatened earlier this week to expand the bombing campaign to Iranian power plants, energy infrastructure, and bridges.

The Iranian authorities say US airstrikes targeted five bridges in the southern province of Hormozgan overnight, expanding on earlier reports that transportation infrastructure was hit.

According to the provincial governorate, as cited by Fars news agency, the strikes damaged the Gariveh bridge linking Bandar Abbas with Bandar Khamir and Lar, a bridge near the village of Latidan, two bridges on the Kahoorestan–Lar route, a partially completed bridge connecting Bandar Khamir, Keshar, and Bandar Abbas, and a bridge in the village of Maru in the Khamir district.

US missiles also reportedly struck Iranshahr Airport in southeastern Iran, while at least one civilian was killed and seven others were injured in another attack on a residential neighborhood in Bandar Abbas.

Iranian media reported that at least seven people were killed and 16 others injured in the strikes. The authorities urged residents to avoid traveling through the affected areas so emergency and rescue crews could access the sites.

At least two Iranian civilians killed, three bridges targeted tonight, a dangerous escalation. https://t.co/rBVNEF0dYd pic.twitter.com/6pkBlliHnF

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) July 16, 2026

“If the enemy, in the course of its war of attrition, seeks to strike Iran’s infrastructure or carry out further assassinations of officials, the entire region will pay the price,” a senior intelligence official in Tehran told RT on Thursday, as the US launched its latest strikes.

Iranian state media confirms that US forces struck two road bridges outside of Bandar Abbas tonight, cutting off the city from coastal routes to the west. pic.twitter.com/JcqmfXtYzX

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 16, 2026

Iran will unleash an all-out regional war that will leave the US “stunned” and prove to Trump how “unrealistic” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expectations and assessments were, the source added.

“Iran’s plan for escalating the war will be full of surprises. And unlike the political disarray in the White House, here in Tehran we have maximum consensus on implementing this plan,” the official said.

In retaliation, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched drone and missile attacks against US military facilities in the region, including the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, one of America’s main naval hubs in the Persian Gulf. Tehran warned that regional oil and gas exports could be blocked completely and declared the strait closed until the US ends its “illegal” military intervention in the region.

Artificial intelligence is no longer simply a technological race. It is becoming a question of how the world chooses to govern one of the most transformative innovations of the modern era, who benefits from it, and whether its advantages remain concentrated in the hands of a few companies or are shared more broadly.

This week in Shanghai, Russia and China signed an agreement to establish the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, and it marks an important step in answering those questions. Russia and China were among the principal founding participants, joining nearly 30 countries in creating a new intergovernmental body dedicated to international AI cooperation and governance. The organization is explicitly built around principles of international collaboration, human-centered development, equitable access, and ensuring that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.

For Russia and China, the initiative reflects a shared understanding that the future of AI should not be dictated by technological monopolies or geopolitical exclusivity. Instead, both countries argue that AI should remain accessible, practical and focused on improving people’s daily lives.

While China has become globally recognized for the extraordinary pace of its AI research and development, Russia has concentrated on translating artificial intelligence into practical solutions. The two approaches complement each other perfectly. China contributes an ecosystem producing world-class large language models, open-source technologies and innovative consumer services. Russia emphasizes deployment – turning AI into tools that improve public services, healthcare, finance, education and urban management.

Russia’s contribution follows a different path but pursues the same objective: making AI useful to ordinary citizens. Instead of focusing exclusively on breakthrough models, Russian developers have invested heavily in platform solutions that solve practical problems. Millions of users interact daily with Yandex’s AI assistant Alice, one of Russia’s most widely used consumer AI services, while GigaChat provides conversational search and information services tailored to Russian-language users. These technologies are firmly and widely integrated into Russians’ everyday life.

Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than in healthcare. Moscow’s healthcare system already employs more than 60 AI-powered diagnostic services capable of assisting physicians across dozens of clinical specialties by identifying signs of disease in medical imaging. Such systems do not replace doctors; they augment their capabilities, helping medical professionals work faster, more accurately and more efficiently. Similar AI applications are increasingly appearing across financial services, education, transport and digital government, demonstrating that artificial intelligence delivers its greatest value when embedded into services people use every day.

This emphasis on practical deployment also explains why Russian AI companies have successfully entered international markets. Many countries are less interested in abstract demonstrations of technological capability than in ready-to-use solutions that improve healthcare systems, digital public services or financial infrastructure. Russian developers increasingly offer exactly these kinds of products, often adapting their technologies to local languages, regulations and national priorities rather than insisting upon a one-size-fits-all model.

The new organization represents something larger than another diplomatic forum. It offers an opportunity to establish common ethical standards, encourage transparency, facilitate knowledge exchange and reduce the technological divide separating developed and developing countries. Such cooperation does not slow innovation. On the contrary, predictable rules and shared principles can accelerate responsible development by creating trust among governments, businesses and citizens alike.

The momentum is already extending beyond Shanghai. Russia is preparing to host several major international AI events over the coming months and years, including the ‘Journey into the World of Artificial Intelligence’ conference later this year, the Future Technologies Forum, and a high-level international AI meeting in 2027. These gatherings will provide additional opportunities for Chinese, Russian and international researchers, policymakers and businesses to exchange experience and deepen cooperation.

Artificial intelligence will shape economies, societies and international relations for decades to come. The question is no longer whether AI will transform the world, but whether that transformation will be inclusive or exclusive. Russia and China are betting that openness, international partnership and practical applications serving ordinary people offer the strongest foundation for the next chapter of AI development. If the new organization succeeds in turning those principles into reality, it could become one of the defining institutions of the AI era.

A “huge blast” from an Israeli strike has hit southern Lebanon just as an RT crew was preparing to go on air in Nabatieh province, RT correspondent Steve Sweeney has reported.

The explosion on Thursday was heard “very loudly across the region,” with a large cloud of smoke billowing from the nearby area. “We could hear it very loudly from where we are now,” Sweeney said, describing this part of southern Lebanon as having been “heavily targeted by Israel over the past few weeks” and subjected to daily bombardments and demolitions.

Villages along the ridgeline around Nabatieh have faced repeated air and drone strikes, with roads, vehicles, and other infrastructure among the targets, as local officials appeal for an end of the “Israeli aggression.”  

The latest strike came as Lebanon and Israel concluded a two‑day round of US‑brokered talks in Rome, where officials agreed on the structure and guidelines for withdrawing Israeli forces from two ‘pilot zones’ in southern Lebanon. The designated areas are intended to test a phased framework involving an Israeli pullout, the disarmament of Hezbollah units there, and the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces.  

Lebanese MP Hassan Fadlallah has condemned the emerging arrangement as an “ill‑fated” agreement that “terminates Lebanon’s existence as an independent state” and “legitimizes the occupation and its criminal practices.” He warned that the proposed pilot areas would prevent the return of displaced people and reconstruction, and make Lebanese authorities “the enemy’s partner in every drop of blood it sheds and every home it destroys.”  

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, more than 4,300 people have been killed and over 12,000 wounded since the conflict escalated on March 2. The Israeli campaign against Hezbollah began days after the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran. While international attention is focused on whether the Rome talks can deliver a breakthrough, for many in southern Lebanon, peace “seems a very, very distant hope,” Sweeney said.

Watch the full report below.

Tensions are escalating again in the Persian Gulf. US President Donald Trump notified Congress of renewed airstrikes on Iran and vowed to destroy all of the Islamic Republic’s military infrastructure in the Strait of Hormuz. In turn, the Iranian army has attacked American targets in the region. According to Iranian media, US communications systems, Patriot missile defense systems, an ammunition depot in Kuwait, and other targets have been hit.

The Yemeni Houthis have also joined the fighting. In response to Saudi Arabia’s strikes on Sanaa Airport, they attacked Abha Airport in Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones and warned all airlines against flying in Saudi airspace.

How are the parties approaching the latest round of conflict, and how will the events unfold? We explore below. 

A perfect stalemate 

In our previous article on Iran, we suggested that the most likely scenario after the ceasefire would be occasional exchanges of fire, with Iran effectively controlling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. This is precisely what happened. Omani territorial waters remain mined and vessels can only move through Iran’s territorial waters. The June memorandum has effectively forced the US to accept this situation. 

However, the contradictions have only deepened since then. For one thing, neither the US nor Iran is interested in resuming the hostilities. But since neither inflicted a strategic defeat on the other in the previous round, they have been unable to agree on anything substantive. Any agreement is a compromise, a concession – but why should anyone give in if there are no losers?

At the same time, no one is ready to fight; neither the US nor Iran has the means to inflict a strategic defeat on the other side. And until there is an understanding of how to achieve this, until one side is convinced that it can achieve its goal by force, this precarious and absurd balance will persist.

The US tried to outsource the war to the Arabs, suggesting: ‘You need it, you deal with Iran’. But there were no fools among the Arabs. Even the UAE, the only Arab nation to publicly side with the US, was not willing to fight. This is understandable: If the UAE really does get involved in a full-scale war with Iran, they risk receiving the brunt of it. The entire infrastructure of the Gulf monarchies, all those gilded skyscrapers on the coast, all the desalination plants that supply water, and all the port facilities will be easily targeted, since they are lined up along a narrow strip of coastline directly opposite the Iranian coast.

In June, America needed a break. The World Cup, Trump’s birthday, and the 250th anniversary of America’s independence were not events that the administration wanted to be overshadowed by an increasingly unpopular war at home, with exploding missiles and drones dominating the headlines.

The US needed some kind of document that the public would believe – so instead of a full-fledged peace treaty, the 14-point memorandum emerged.

For its part, Iran needed the US to lift the blockade which created problems for it. The Gulf Arab states also sought to lift the blockade – in fact, the American blockade was a bigger problem for them than the blockade imposed by Iran.

Nevertheless, over the past month, some of the accumulated oil in the Gulf has entered the market through the ‘partially open’ strait. While this hasn’t solved the problem of depleted long-term reserves, it has significantly lowered prices and partially relieved Western countries, including the US, of the inflationary pressure that accumulated in recent months.

Schrödinger’s war

Now we’re witnessing another escalation. Will it lead to a new full-scale war? Let’s assume not. Here’s why.

War can be likened to Schrödinger’s cat – the thought experiment in which a hypothetical cat sits in a box with a device capable of killing it with 50% probability. Until the box is opened, the outcome cannot be known, meaning the cat is simultaneously alive and dead to us. In physics, this phenomenon is called quantum uncertainty.

In preparation for war, the parties build up their military, plan their actions, conduct exercises, analyze, and predict how the enemy will behave. However, the pre-war period is always a ‘closed box’. It’s impossible to determine in advance what will happen during a war and whether the pre-war plans will be of any use. Only war will ‘open the box’.

It may seem that after the war in Iran, nothing has really changed and the parties largely returned to their pre-war state since the contradictions between them have not disappeared. But in reality, it has become clear that the US and Israel cannot change the regime in Tehran by military force, and Iran cannot inflict critical damage on the US and Israel. The war has demonstrated to all sides the limits of their capabilities. This is a fundamental factor that will determine the state of affairs in the region for many years to come.

Preparing for the next war will take time. Much has to be reconsidered, new ideas must emerge, and resources must be built up to support these ideas.

When preparing for a new war, the winning side is always more vulnerable, since it is less motivated to correct past mistakes. In this sense, Iran is vulnerable, and its leadership may tend to rest on its laurels, thinking: ‘The last time, we blocked the strait and successfully launched Shahed drones against our neighbors, so next time, we need to do the same, only with more resources. For example, launch 2,000 drones a day instead of 200.’ Iran’s adversaries, however, will be forced to draw deeper conclusions, and this could give them an advantage the next time. Drones are relatively simple targets; it’s much easier to build an effective, scalable, and inexpensive air defense against them than against jets and missiles. But again, this is a matter of future concern, and will take several years at least.

Unthinkable events

During war, things that were previously unthinkable can happen, only to later become the new norm. In the case of the war with Iran, this was first of all the assassination of leaders, and secondly, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The repercussions of these events varied. No one talks much about the assassination of leaders – it is considered a sort of anomaly. But now, everyone must assume that it is possible, and no one is invincible, including the US. Pandora’s box has been opened.

There is another factor, one that acts slowly but inexorably. Future conflicts are determined by global changes. Before World War I, everyone was convinced that this type of war would never happen. The economy was global, the world united, capital and people flowed freely from one country to another, and developed countries simply could not wage war against each other. Sound familiar?

But then came the Industrial Revolution, which created new military capabilities and an immediate desire to test them. This led to World War I and soon afterward, World War II.

The current situation is similar. The AI revolution is underway, offering radically new military capabilities. It is impossible to predict the vector of this development and the extent of its future impact – and this is the main factor of uncertainty. Any speculation on this matter is akin to trying to guess whether Schrödinger’s cat is alive or not.

***

A single individual, even the US president, cannot influence so many objective factors. Even if Trump decides to bomb Iran until he runs out of bombs and missiles, it’s unlikely to lead to regime change in Iran. And this means that the escalations and ceasefires will continue until the world changes sufficiently to alter the outcome of the (alas, inevitable) next war.

First, a bit of recent history. In 2015, after the Maidan coup in Kiev and the beginning of the confrontation between Russia and the West, the EU created the East StratCom Task Force to fight foreign disinformation campaigns supposedly orchestrated by Russia.

This agency is a part of the European External Action Service and its goal is to fight Russian activities and promote EU ones in eastern countries such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, etc. It’s not double standards, it’s a basic war for influence. So far, nothing surprising.

Following suit, in 2021, the French authorities created VIGINUM, the Vigilance and Protection against Foreign Digital Interference Service, a national agency working as a watchdog for foreign interference in elections – incidentally, months before Macron’s reelection after his first disastrous mandate. You know, just to be sure that ‘dictatorships’ and ‘illiberal democracies’ don’t meddle in the democratic process.

That was already quite ridiculous, but France goes further.

Thinking about how to adapt to the media landscape evolution, they suggest establishing financial support for creators of news content “that meets editorial quality criteria” (that is, combating hate speech, protecting minors, respecting human dignity, and so on – the usual pretexts). Financial support under conditions – in other words, a leash. Indeed, the internet and AI have changed the world of information forever and the entire structure of the industry has to be reshaped – or it will reshape itself dialectically. But for the political authorities, the issue goes far beyond the future of mainstream media: It has a direct impact on… once again (sigh)… ‘democratic functioning’.

The report’s main warning concerns the 2027 election campaigns. Considering that France already has VIGINUM to detect foreign interference, they wonder: “Are we protected from all risk of internal interference? Our answer to this question is clearly no. We are vulnerable, and it is real,” the rapporteurs say.

So now, after the external threat, they are afraid that there could be a threat from within. What threat? Theoretically, Macron cannot be reelected in 2027, but he has already planted close associates in the politico-administrative structures of the French state. Nothing to be scared of. “What would happen if a prominent figure, a school of thought, or a political party with substantial financial resources decided to use them to further a political agenda, employ social media as a weapon?” the senators ask.

To address this threat, they recommend the creation of an “independent observatory on disinformation” before the next presidential election.

To be honest, with all the freedom-destroying laws, censorship organs, and fact-checkers, and knowing people who had to run away from France to avoid jail because of their opinions, I thought this was already the case. But now it’s apparently an official political direction. The senators said a bill should soon be drafted. Welcome to a democracy where you’re supposed to be politically engaged because it is, as they say, a duty, but where a commission will tell you if you can talk or not – or be financially harassed through endless lawsuits, or sent to jail. Who knows?

There’s only one conclusion to draw: For decades, the European elites managed their people so badly that they eventually could only feel threatened. And indeed, threatened beasts do exhibit defensive aggression.

Chinese surgeons have implanted a brain-computer interface in a patient with limited hand mobility, in what is described as the world’s first commercial procedure using an approved non-invasive device of its kind.

The procedure was carried out on Monday at a hospital in Shanghai. The patient suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident ten years ago and had limited hand function despite years of rehabilitation.

During the operation, a coin-sized implant was placed on the surface of the patient’s brain. The device is designed to capture brain signals and send them to a computer, which translates them into commands for a robotic glove.

According to officials, the operation went as planned and the patient is recovering, with vital signs stable. They added that the implant had successfully captured stable, high-quality brain signals.

The implant, known as NEO, was developed by Chinese start-up Neuracle and approved by China’s medical regulator in March, allowing it to move beyond clinical trials and be used commercially in hospitals.

The milestone has put Neuracle ahead of Elon Musk’s Neuralink in the race to commercialize implantable brain-computer interfaces. Although Neuralink has also implanted chips in humans and claims to have 21 people enrolled in trials worldwide, it has yet to receive full commercial approval in the US.

Musk’s chip, on the other hand, uses ultra-thin threads inserted directly into brain tissue with the help of a surgical robot. Neuralink’s first product, Telepathy, is also intended to allow people with paralysis to control computers, phones, and other devices using their thoughts.

Other companies have also been pursuing less invasive routes. Synchron, a US-based startup, has developed an implant inserted through a vein rather than through open-brain surgery, while Meta has been working on AI systems that translate non-invasive brain scans into text.

For now, the primary use of brain-computer interfaces remains medical, particularly for patients with paralysis, spinal cord injuries, and severe neurological conditions. However, Musk has predicted that such chips will eventually replace phones. Industry researchers have also discussed future uses in consumer electronics, robotics, and human augmentation.

China and President Xi Jinping are now viewed more favorably than the US and Donald Trump across most of the world, a new Pew Research Center survey spanning six continents has found.

Pew says China enjoys a more positive image than the US in 25 of the 36 countries and territories surveyed, including American neighbors Canada and Mexico. The trend is particularly pronounced across the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

The US leads in just six nations – Poland, Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan, and Israel – while views are roughly even in five others. The survey, released Wednesday, polled more than 42,000 people from February 8 to May 13, spanning the start of the US-led war on Iran.

Among the 20 countries with comparable data since 2023, 46% now view China favorably against 36% for the US. Three years ago, the figures were reversed, with 58% favoring the US and 32% China.

“Some of the views that we see of the US are at or near historic lows,” said Laura Silver, Pew’s associate director and co-author of the report, noting that this is the first time in nearly two decades of the organization’s global polling that China has been viewed more positively than the US. She said China has benefited from being seen as a more “reliable partner,” attributing the shift to improving perceptions of the country following its post-pandemic recovery. She noted, however, that views of the US fell after Trump launched the war on Iran.

“There was just an actual relationship between the outbreak of the war and the sense that the US is just not contributing to peace and stability and that people have less confidence in Donald Trump,” she said.

Major European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, also saw shifts toward China. The change follows deteriorating ties with Washington during Trump’s second term, marked by tariff disputes, pressure on NATO allies over defense spending, criticism of Europe’s refusal to back the US war on Iran, and repeated calls for Denmark to sell Greenland to the US.

Pew also found that views across Latin America now slightly favor China over the US. The shift comes after Trump effectively took over Venezuela, threatened military action against Mexico, Colombia and Cuba, and ordered the Pentagon to target vessels in the Caribbean under the guise of anti-drug operations.

SpaceX shares dipped below their initial public offering (IPO) price on Wednesday, little more than a month after the company’s record-breaking market debut briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

SpaceX raised a record $75 billion by pricing its IPO at $135 a share in June and outlining ambitions that include orbital data centers, lunar infrastructure, asteroid mining, and ultimately cities on Mars as potential drivers of future growth beyond its core businesses.

According to trading data, the stock fell as low as $132.28 on Wednesday before recovering to close at $135.27, about 40% below its mid-June peak of $225.64.

SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue last year but still posted a $4.9 billion net loss after heavy spending on AI infrastructure and Starship development. Its AI division alone lost $6.4 billion in 2025, partly offset by profits from Starlink, the company’s only profitable operating business. SpaceX reported another $4.3 billion net loss in the first quarter of 2026.

Another concern is growing competition. Barron’s noted that China is making rapid progress in reusable rocket technology, an area where SpaceX has long held a commanding lead. Earlier this month, China recovered the first stage of an orbital rocket for the first time and said it aims to reuse the booster before the end of the year.

Several US lawmakers said they were “disgusted” by testimony from Kathy Ruemmler, a former Goldman Sachs chief legal officer and White House counsel under former President Barack Obama, about her relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Ruemmler appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday as part of the congressional investigation into Epstein’s network of influential associates.

Documents released by the Justice Department show Ruemmler exchanged extensive communications with Epstein from 2014 to 2019, long after his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The correspondence suggests she referred to him as ‘Uncle Jeffrey’ and accepted expensive gifts. Ruemmler maintains that their relationship was professional and stemmed from her work as an attorney.

In her opening statement, Ruemmler said she was unaware of the extent of Epstein’s criminal conduct, claiming he used her and other respected figures to legitimize himself.

Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari said Ruemmler’s explanation suggested she understood what the exchange referred to while making “light of the abuse that these women went through.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that several Democratic lawmakers emerged from the hearing saying they were “disgusted” by Ruemmler’s testimony. The committee’s top Democrat, Robert Garcia, said it is “difficult to see how she’s being completely truthful.”

Ruemmler’s testimony also renewed scrutiny of Goldman Sachs’ handling of the controversy surrounding her ties to Epstein. She announced in February that she would step down as the bank’s
chief legal officer effective June 30, saying media scrutiny over her relationship with Epstein had become a distraction.

The Financial Times reported last month that Solomon’s backing of Ruemmler became a taboo subject inside the bank, with very few senior executives daring to question his support for her.

Russia carried out precision strikes overnight on Ukrainian military-industrial and port infrastructure, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

According to the ministry, the strikes targeted defense industry facilities in Kiev involved in producing and storing drones, as well as infrastructure at the ports of Odessa and Yuzhny used to receive and store military cargo and fuel.

Five fuel storage tanks intended to supply the Ukrainian military were also hit.

Among the targets in Kiev was an industrial site operated by logistics company Rapid PJSC, which the ministry said assembles and stores medium- and long-range fixed-wing UAVs and foreign-made components used in their production.

The ministry also said Russian forces struck a cargo ship transporting military supplies for Ukraine en route to the Port of Chornomorsk, as well as a high-speed Ukrainian special forces boat near Snake Island in the Black Sea.

Russia has intensified long-range strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in recent weeks, describing it as retaliation for terrorist attacks on Russian civilian and energy infrastructure, which have intensified as Ukraine suffers battlefield setbacks.

The overnight strikes followed another Ukrainian drone raid on Russia. The Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted and destroyed 375 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over 18 Russian regions, including Moscow Region.

A day earlier, a Ukrainian drone struck a service vehicle at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) near Energodar, killing the chief engineer and driver. Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev described the strike on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant as a deliberate terrorist attack by the “Kiev regime,” noting similar attacks killed 13 people and wounded 48 in just over two months.

France’s lower chamber of parliament has given final approval to a controversial bill legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. The legislation, which has been criticized by the clergy and was rejected three times by the conservative Senate, is now in the hands of the country’s top constitutional body.

The left-leaning National Assembly greenlit the bill on Wednesday 291 votes to 241, capping what its author, former lawmaker Olivier Falorni, called a legislative “marathon with hurdles.” 

Support for the bill in the chamber has steadily eroded with each reading: The Assembly passed the text 305-199 in May 2025, 299-226 in February 2026, and 295-232 on June 30.

The bill grants adults who are French citizens or legal residents and suffer from a serious, incurable, and life-threatening illness in an advanced or terminal stage the right to request lethal medication if their pain is unbearable or resistant to treatment.

On the day the substance is administered, a doctor must verify that the patient still wants to proceed; if any pressure on the patient is detected, the procedure must be suspended and reported to the state prosecutor. Patients would normally self-administer the drug, with a doctor or nurse stepping in – subject to a conscience clause – only if they are physically unable.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has backed the reform for years, wrote on X: “In 2022, I committed to opening this path with the French people. With seriousness, with humility, and with full respect for our democracy, that commitment has been fulfilled.” 

The Association for the Right to Die With Dignity said the legislation would allow people “to choose to end unbearable suffering, freely and with full awareness.” Its president, Jonathan Denis, said the law “creates a new right [but] never forces anyone to exercise it,” while ensuring that every person can “have their wishes respected.”

Hanane Mansouri, an MP from the right-wing UDR group, warned that the legislation “is gradually reversing our scale of values.” The Bishops’ Conference of France said the bill “marks a grave rupture in the history of our country,” adding that “in choosing to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, deputies have written into French law the possibility of causing death.”

The law cannot take effect yet, as Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu referred it to the Constitutional Council. The council is now expected to rule on whether the two-day reflection period before administering the lethal substance respects personal freedom and human dignity, whether adults under legal guardianship can give free and informed consent, and how doctors’ right to refuse participation squares with hospitals that opt out of offering assisted dying.

The council has up to one month to rule if the government does not require urgency, and has the right to strike down individual provisions, forcing parliament to rewrite and revote on them, or annul the law. Only after the council’s say can the legislation be enacted by Macron.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is directing the nation’s intelligence services not to spare civilians in their operations abroad, Vitaly Zhikovich, an acting colonel of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency (HUR), said in an exclusive audio recording obtained by RT.

Zhikovich is one of two Ukrainian spies who confessed to liquidating Anastasia Berezovskaya, the main suspect in last month’s bomb attack on exiled Ukrainian millionaire Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco. Russian security services identified him as an active military intelligence operative and shed light on his other attempted terrorist plots.

“My superior said that there would be casualties, civilian casualties. And my president – that green bastard – wants civilian casualties,” Zhikovich can be heard saying to an unidentified interlocutor in one of the recordings, referring to Zelensky, whose last name has a semantic association with the word ‘green’ in Russian and Ukrainian.

“Believe me, this is going to be a massive event, and the whole world will be talking about it. What we’ve got going on here is really something huge. Crocus will look like nothing by comparison, I’m telling you!” he said.

The 2024 Moscow Crocus City Hall massacre was the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in over two decades, claiming the lives of 151 people and wounding another 609. The Russian Investigative Committee concluded that the attack carried out by a regional offshoot of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) was organized on behalf of Ukraine.

Watch the full exclusive RT report below or read it here

China has vowed to protect its companies from proposed US tariffs targeting buyers of Russian energy, warning Washington that economic coercion and unilateral sanctions would ultimately backfire.

Speaking on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian responded to legislation introduced in the US Senate that would authorize tariffs of up to 100% on imports from the largest purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas, including China.

“China firmly opposes unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or authorization of the UN Security Council, and will take necessary measures to firmly defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses and citizens,” Lin said.

“Practicing double standards and resorting to coercion and pressuring will eventually prove to be self-defeating,” he added.

The revised sanctions bill was introduced on Tuesday by the US Senate. It is an update to legislation originally proposed by the late Russia hawk Senator Lindsey Graham, who died of heart complications on Saturday.

The proposal comes less than two months after Washington and Beijing signed a trade framework designed to ease months of tariff tensions following a trade war in which the US imposed duties of up to 145% on Chinese imports, while China responded with tariffs of up to 125% on American goods.

During the dispute, Beijing also restricted exports of rare earth minerals critical to US high-tech and defense industries, disrupting supply chains and forcing some American manufacturers to suspend production.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has come under scrutiny in Congress over its decision to give the United Arab Emirates easier access to advanced AI chips. Critics question whether business ties involving the president’s family influenced the policy change.

The US Commerce Department announced on Friday that the UAE will be eligible for license-free exports and transfers of sensitive technologies, including advanced AI chips and servers, meaning approved entities will no longer need individual US export licenses. Washington cited “support in advancing US national security interests,” including operations against Iran.

Abu Dhabi had sought the policy change for years, but previous administrations blocked it over concerns that sensitive technology could reach China. The move gives the UAE privileged access unmatched by any other Middle Eastern state, including Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Media reports say the decision has come under scrutiny because it followed a series of business deals between UAE-linked entities and companies tied to Trump’s family.

Critics say the investments coincided with negotiations over AI exports that first resulted in Washington approving annual sales of 500,000 advanced AI chips for a planned Nvidia-powered AI megacampus in the UAE and have now culminated in license-free access to the technology.

House lawmakers on Tuesday grilled Jeffrey Kessler, head of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), over the administration’s handling of advanced AI exports. Representative Bill Keating (D-MA) pressed Kessler on whether he had discussed the UAE AI chip export controls with Witkoff, but the BIS chief declined to comment.

“Why are you evading the answer?” Keating asked. “Could it be the conflict of interest in there with Witkoff and World Liberty Financial and the Trump administration, which the president personally benefited by? Could it be that? Could it be a fear?” 

Former senior US export controls official Chris McGuire, now at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the decision “impossible to justify on national security or economic grounds,” telling the WSJ there was “only one explanation” for the policy shift: “the UAE paid for it.” 

US and UAE officials cited by the WSJ rejected claims that Emirati investments influenced Washington’s policy changes. Neither Trump nor Witkoff has commented on the allegations.

Financial disclosures released last week showed Trump earned at least $2.24 billion in revenue in 2025, including $1.16 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures. However, asked last week about his financial disclosures, Trump brushed off concerns, saying his gains reflected a strong stock market.

New York City’s self-professed ‘democratic socialist’ mayor Zohran Mamdani has drawn backlash for attributing the recent uptick in rape reports to an expanded definition of what constitutes the crime.

In an interview with PIX11 News published on Monday, Mamdani was asked about recently released NYPD rape complaints statistics.

“A lot of the increase in rape also comes from an expanded definition of what counts as rape, as well as survivors coming forward for acts that took place years prior,” he said. He did not elaborate on what he meant.

Mamdani’s statement about the “expanded definition” likely refers to NY’s 2024 Rape is Rape Act, which broadened the definition of rape to any forced sexual intercourse. Prior to the decision, the definition was limited to non-consensual vaginal penetration with a penis.

NEW: @NYCMayor addresses @JulieMenin concerns of rape and felony assaults on the rise by saying the definition has changed.

“A lot of the increase in rape, comes from an expanded definition of what counts as rape,” says Mamdani.

Stands by not increasing number of officers. pic.twitter.com/Z7ObkZN2jA

— Dan Mannarino (@DanMannarino) July 13, 2026

According to NYPD crime statistics released last week, rape complaints are up 6.6% year to date. The figures cover the period from January-July, 2026, meaning the increase came well after the 2024 legislation took effect.

The remarks prompted criticism from numerous people online, including New York City Council Member Susan Zhuang.

Mamdani, an openly socialist political outsider, campaigned on a platform focused on affordable housing, public ownership of utilities, and wealth taxation. He was elected last year despite little enthusiasm from fellow Democrats and fierce opposition from Republicans, including US President Donald Trump.

Trump initially described Mamdani as a “communist” and warned that New Yorkers will soon flee the city under his leadership, but moderated his rhetoric after meeting the Democrat in person last November.

EU ambassadors have failed to reach a consensus on the 21st round of sanctions against Russia following three days of talks, multiple news outlets, including Reuters, Euractiv, and Politico, reported on Wednesday.

The move, which requires unanimous support, was met with opposition from several nations, including Greece, which voiced concerns over phasing out Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments.

The sanctions package, which has been in the works for several months, was designed to target Russia’s energy, financial, crypto, trade, and fisheries sectors and bar entry to Russians who have served in the military since the conflict in Ukraine escalated in February 2022.

The draft put forward by the European Commission also envisaged replacing the existing price cap on Russian crude with a ban on services needed to ship oil, as well as phasing out LNG transportation.

Bulgaria, which depends on Russian energy supplies, criticized the package last month, calling it counterproductive and more damaging to EU members’ economies than to Russia’s.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said earlier this week that EU members were undecided on the proposed ban and the tightening of restrictions on Russian LNG. The Financial Times reported on Monday that the bloc imported a record volume of LNG from Russia’s flagship Yamal project in the first half of 2026, ahead of a planned ban.

Russia’s Urals export crude blend was trading at around $55 per barrel in early July, but the price jumped to nearly $66 per barrel after hostilities broke out again between the US and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. If EU members fail to reach a deal on the sanctions, the price cap could rise to $58 per barrel, according to Euractiv.

Russian oil and gas were not the only points of contention. According to Politico, Brussels had already had to drop a proposed ban on Russian fish imports and ease draft visa restrictions for former Russian military personnel after the idea faced criticism from France and Italy.

Moscow has stated that sanctions will not have a decisive effect on its economy or affect Russia’s political course. Earlier this year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that although the sanctions had had an overall “negative impact” on the Russian economy, the country had “gained significant experience in minimizing their effects.” He also warned that the restrictions are a double-edged sword and contribute to economic stagnation in Europe.

In March 2026, two years after the Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow, a military court in Russia sentenced the perpetrators.

The terrorist attack on March 22, 2024 claimed the lives of 149 and injured 600 innocent civilians. Fifteen people, including the four Tajik citizens who carried out the attack and 11 facilitators, were given life sentences.

Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP) claimed responsibility and the attack’s operational signature was as striking as the death toll. Planning was conducted remotely from Herat, Afghanistan; coordination was carried out through encrypted digital channels, across international borders, and the entire enterprise operated seamlessly without a single face-to-face interaction between the architect and the executors. An earlier attack in January 2024 in Kerman, Iran followed the same template.

In 2024 and 2025, Pakistan, working with Iranian, Russian, and other international partners, conducted multiple intelligence-based operations that led to the neutralization and apprehension of numerous high-value ISKP targets from Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas.

The resulting investigations as reported in UNSC monitoring team reports, and Pakistan’s domestic media alerted the global counterterrorism architecture about the ISKP’s wherewithal in the cyber domain.

The investigations revealed that these incidents served as an announcement of a new era of ISKP embracing new technology; Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have always found innovative ways to spread terror and have used drones, encrypted messaging, and other modern technology, but ISKP has mastered the cyber domain, using encrypted applications, the dark web, and cryptocurrencies.

ISKP’s evolution into the digital domain is not merely an operational nuance, nor is it restricted to incitement and recruitment. It is a structural reorganization conceived in four distinct but interlocking domains.

First, it constitutes the propagation of ideology, in which extremist narratives are published without geographical constraint. ISKP produces multilingual propaganda in Pashto, Darri, Russian, Uzbek, Farsi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, and English through the publication of its Voice of Khurasan magazine. This publication is tailored to a specific audience, designed to exploit local grievances in tandem with the plight of the Palestinians.

Second, it functions as a recruitment ecosystem, inciting young people, connecting potential jihadists to established networks through social media, gaming platform chats, and specialist forums. The organization has learned to speak in the languages of digital youth culture and aesthetics, gaming, and viral content, embedding its ideological messages within formats designed for maximum algorithmic amplification and emotional resonance.

Third, it props up ISKP’s financial infrastructure, mobilizing resources through cryptocurrency and digital donation channels that bypass conventional financial monitoring. Cryptocurrency has revolutionized the financial architecture of terrorist fundraising. Despite the improvements in blockchain analytics, digital currencies remain the preferred means of cross-border fund transfer due to the anonymity provided by the method. ISKP has demonstrated increased institutional sophistication in this space, establishing dedicated wallets and structuring transactions to evade detection. The fundraising apparatus also leverages digital means to exploit Muslim suffering in conflict zones such as Gaza and frames financial contributions as a religious obligation. As Pakistan cracked down on ISKP media and external operation cells in 2025, ISKP issued a warning to stop crowdfunding transactions to their previously publicized Monero wallet barcode, as it was compromised.

Fourth, ISKP has achieved an operational integration in the cyber domain that enables attack planning, logistical coordination, execution, and the glorification of terrorist attacks across borders through secure channels and encrypted messaging applications. ISKP’s most significant digital innovation has been the transformation of jihadist training from a cumbersome physical model requiring travel to camps, face-to-face instruction, and geographic concentration of trainees, to a learning model accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. ISKP produces and disseminates detailed instructional manuals on weapons training, improvised explosives manufacturing, operational security, target selection, and tactical planning.

In recent years, ISKP has developed a qualitative edge in its existing digital playbook. It has started to integrate generative AI into its propaganda and recruitment architecture. After the Crocus City Hall attack, the ISKP media branch produced an AI-generated news bulletin, presenting the vicious attack as a strategic win and framing it in language geared toward attracting multiple regional audiences simultaneously. The ability of AI tools to simultaneously produce multilingual content to target multiple audiences in a short period of time is becoming a force multiplier for ISKP.

However, the most troubling use of AI is the AI-powered chatbots that have already demonstrated their effectiveness as a radicalization tool. In one widely cited case, a 19-year-old British-Indian man who attempted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II in 2021 was radicalized in part through over 5,000 messages exchanged with an AI chatbot he created himself on the Replika platform and regarded as a sympathetic and encouraging companion.  

Meanwhile, the way ISKP is embracing AI, the creation of a radicalized chatbot trained by a senior ISKP ideologue on a strict Salafi interpretation of Islam and Takfiri ideology has the capacity to dehumanize the radicalization process, not only making counter-radicalization more challenging, but also making actual perpetrators anonymous and difficult to detect. This scenario would be a nightmare for global efforts to counter and prevent violent extremism.

ISKP’s evolution from a territorially ambitious organization into a digitally native transnational terrorism architecture is one of the most consequential developments in recent years. ISKP, under the leadership of Shahab al-Muhajir, has demonstrated that territorial defeat, while necessary, is insufficient to neutralize ISKP, as it has structured itself around virtual presence rather than physical geography. If the global counterterrorism architecture fails to become more integrated and efficient and/or becomes a victim of geopolitical contests, it will only help terrorist organizations that are adapting to new technologies in overdrive.

The real challenge is faced by developing countries that have limited wherewithal and experience in handling these types of threats in the technological domain, especially when developed countries hardly see it as their problem. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its counterterrorism department – the Regional Anti Terrorists Structure (RATS) – with Russia and China as its founding members, provide an ideal multilateral forum to share good practices in countering terrorism, and can develop institutionalized mechanisms to not only monitor terrorists, especially ISKP, but can also develop the means to counter them.

The EU has agreed to stop granting temporary protection to newly arriving Ukrainians liable for military service while extending the scheme for others who fled the conflict with Russia, according to the Council of the European Union. The restriction will take effect in March 2027, while the broader protection scheme will remain in place until March 2028.

Kiev imposed a general mobilization shortly after the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, preventing nearly all military-age men from leaving the country. Despite the restrictions, many reached the EU, where adult men now make up around 27% of Ukrainians under temporary protection, according to bloc data.

Irish Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, said the extension “provides stability for those who found safety in the EU.” At the same time, he stressed that “we also want to make sure Ukraine can defend itself,” adding that this is why the temporary protection scheme “respects Ukraine’s legitimate needs.”

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for military-age men to return from abroad due to troop shortages. Vladimir Zelensky said in April that “our armed forces would certainly like them to come back because it is a matter of justice.”

The conscription crisis has prompted several of Kiev’s European backers to review their asylum laws. Earlier this year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed to restrict protections for Ukrainians, arguing that young men were needed in their home country. Last month, the Czech government approved legislation tightening temporary protection rules, saying future EU discussions could also include limiting protections for military-age men as Ukraine faces mounting manpower shortages.

Moscow has accused Kiev and its Western backers of being willing to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton sold for a record of over $50 million at a Sotheby’s auction to an anonymous buyer on Tuesday, prompting scientists to warn that treating rare dinosaur fossils as luxury collectibles is harming research and public education.

The 67-million-year-old specimen is one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever discovered, according to Sotheby’s. Unearthed in South Dakota, it comprises 183 fossil bones, representing about 61% of the original skeleton. The auction house highlighted its exceptionally well-preserved skull and evidence of healed combat injuries.

After a 10-minute bidding war involving seven bidders, the skeleton sold for a record $50.1 million to an anonymous telephone bidder, far exceeding Sotheby’s pre-sale estimate of $20-$30 million.

Scientists have warned that record-breaking auctions are increasingly putting scientifically valuable specimens beyond the reach of researchers.

It’s a world record for Gus! The T. Rex just sold for $50.1 million at Sotheby’s New York, becoming the most expensive dinosaur ever up for auction.

Discover the story of the 67-million-year-old fossil >> https://t.co/nARpEBfo5K pic.twitter.com/cKUHe3MXYF

— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) July 14, 2026

“The current trend towards dinosaur fossils being marketed and sold like rare artworks at vast prices by auction houses is very concerning,” Richard Butler, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Birmingham, told The Guardian. While fossils have long been bought and sold, prices are now “increasingly out of the reach of museums,” he added.

In a statement to AP, the US-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology also urged the buyer to “immediately” donate the fossil to a museum.

Before Tuesday’s auction, the record was held by Apex, a nearly complete stegosaurus that sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s in 2024. The buyer was later revealed to be billionaire Ken Griffin, who subsequently loaned the specimen to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The previous record-holder, Stan, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, fetched $31.8 million at a Christie’s auction in 2020. After its anonymous purchase, it was acquired by Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism for display at the emirate’s Natural History Museum.

The US has announced the end of its 23-year military presence in Iraq, as it shifts its focus to expanding the war against Iran.

US President Donald Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said at the White House on Tuesday that US forces will leave Iraq by September 30, ending a deployment that began with the 2003 invasion and the overthrow of then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and later continued under the banner of counterterrorism.

Around 2,000 US servicemen are believed to still be stationed in Iraq.

”We don’t think we need the military there anymore,” Trump said, arguing that Iraq’s security environment has changed after months of US-Israeli strikes “destabilized” Iran.

Al-Zaidi confirmed that US forces will be gone by the end of September and that “American companies will enter” instead.

Trump said the relationship with Iraq will now focus on investment and energy, citing the country’s oil reserves. He said the two countries are “going to be doing a lot of deals” and that the US is “going to be taking out a lot of oil.”

The US invaded Iraq in March 2003, claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorist groups. Although the weapons were never found, the US presence grew to more than 170,000 troops by 2007.

Critics argued that the Iraq invasion was launched on false pretenses, destabilized the country, helped create the conditions for the rise of IS, and was “largely about oil,” which former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledged in his memoirs.

Trump has been far more open about this than past administrations, and has argued that America should have “taken the oil” in Iraq, and that US forces in Syria would be “keeping the oil.”

Last week, Trump resumed military strikes on Iran and has refused to rule out a ground operation by allied forces and the potential capture of Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub, in order to “take the oil.”

The number of children arrested for sexual offenses in the UK reached a record high last year, a government-backed report has stated.

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), a charity researching youth violence prevention, said on Tuesday that 3,809 children were arrested for sexual offenses in 2024-25, up nearly a fifth from 3,225 a year earlier. The figure was 74% above the Covid pandemic low of 1,979 in 2020-21 and surpassed the previous record of 3,633 set in 2015-16.

Separate YEF research based on a survey of 11,000 children aged 13 to 17 found one in 25 teenagers had experienced physical or sexual abuse in a relationship. Among those in relationships, 15% reported being pressured into sex, physically assaulted, or having explicit images shared without their consent – equivalent to one pupil in a typical classroom, researchers said. They linked the rise in child sex offenses to the growing circulation of explicit images among minors.

The Guardian recently also reported a rise in cases of parents becoming victims of sexual abuse by their own children. Support group Pegs said that among 188 parents who sought help, 17% – predominantly mothers – reported experiencing sexual abuse by their child. Meanwhile, the National Analysis of Police Recorded Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Crimes Report found that more than half of 10- to 17-year-olds reported to police for sexual abuse targeted other children.

The issue returned to the spotlight in May during the widely debated trial of three boys, aged 14 and 15, convicted over two separate rapes of teenage girls in Hampshire last year. The boys filmed the assaults and shared some of the footage online.

More broadly, Britain has seen a sharp rise in child sexual abuse referrals involving both juvenile offenders and adult pedophiles. The National Crime Agency said earlier this year it now receives around 1,700 referrals each week, while police arrest about 1,000 suspected offenders every month.

The rise in child sex offenses adds to pressure on outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer over child protection. His government has introduced tougher online safety measures, including requiring tech giants to block explicit content on children’s phones and introducing a social media ban for under-16s, and updated sex education.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has warned that regional oil and gas exports could be blocked completely in response to US attempts to control the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement on Tuesday, the IRGC accused Washington of acting like “pirates” by restricting energy flows in the region and warned that other export routes serving the US and its allies could be blocked in response.

“Regional oil and gas exports are either for everyone or for no one,” the statement said.

The warning came as the IRGC claimed a new strike on US military infrastructure in Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and serves as one of Washington’s main naval hubs in the Persian Gulf.

According to the IRGC, the fifth wave of Operation Nasr-2 targeted an NSA management center, a command-and-control center, large warehouses containing military parts and equipment, and fuel storage tanks belonging to the US Fifth Fleet.

The statement said the facilities had been “smashed and destroyed” in the early morning strike. The US military has not commented on the claim.

Washington has said its renewed strikes on Iran are aimed at protecting commercial shipping and freedom of navigation through the strait. US President Donald Trump has claimed that America is now “in control” of the waterway and will act as its “guardian.”

The US president has also threatened to escalate strikes against Iran, including attacks on power plants and bridges, unless Tehran returns to negotiations. In a Fox News interview on Tuesday, Trump refused to rule out a ground campaign, saying “other people” could carry it out, and again referred to Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub.

Kharg Island handles most of Iran’s crude exports and has been repeatedly cited by Trump as a possible target. Earlier this year, he said the US could seize the island “to take the oil.”

The EU and UK should abandon their ambitions to act as independent “middle powers” and accept their role as “vassals” under the US, Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said.  

Dmitriev made the remarks on X on Wednesday while commenting on a series of posts by US Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby.  

“The EU/UK’s faulty ‘middle power’ strategy started to freak out the US,” Dmitriev wrote. “EU/UK vassals should know their place.”  

The term “middle powers” generally refers to countries that wield significant economic, diplomatic, or regional influence but lack the military and political reach of global superpowers. The concept has recently gained traction among some Western leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said earlier this year that “the middle powers must act together” adding, “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”  

“There is a great deal of hubbub about a collective ‘middle powers’ strategy these days,” Colby wrote. “At DoW, we are not concerned that this is a serious possibility. Rather, we are more concerned that a few allies and partners will think it is and waste valuable time, money, and political capital on a distraction.”  

Colby said the strategy was based on a “faulty understanding of international relations,” arguing that middle powers lacked a coherent foundation for alignment. He also rejected suggestions that countries were distancing themselves from Washington and claimed the US was seeing an “upsurge” in demand for American military engagement.  

After returning to the White House last year, US President Donald Trump pushed NATO members to commit to spending 5% of GDP on defense by 2035, repeatedly accusing European allies of failing to share the bloc’s military burden. Divisions within NATO also deepened over Trump’s push to acquire Greenland and after several European members declined to support his military operation against Iran.   

Earlier this month, Dmitriev argued that EU and UK leaders were prolonging the Ukraine conflict to distract voters from mounting economic and political problems at home.

Israel has approved more than $400 million to establish dozens of new settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite international condemnation of what critics describe as the de facto annexation of Palestinian territory.

The West Bank, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, is home to around 3 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 Israeli settlers. Along with East Jerusalem and Gaza, it is envisioned as the core of a future Palestinian state under the internationally backed two-state solution.

The Israeli government said on Tuesday that the security cabinet allocated 1.3 billion shekels ($431 million) to establish 34 new settlements in the West Bank. The decision was announced by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a West Bank settler who oversees civilian affairs in the territory and has pledged to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

Calling the decision “historic” and “a day of celebration for Israel and settlements,” Smotrich said another 1.075 billion shekels would soon be allocated to build roads serving the new communities.

Hamas condemned the plan as a “dangerous and criminal” step toward annexing the occupied territory, as cited by PressTV. The group accused Israel of seeking full control of the West Bank and urged Palestinians to intensify resistance, while calling on the UN and the international community to move beyond verbal condemnation and take practical steps to halt settlement expansion.

Israel has faced growing criticism over its West Bank settlement moves. While successive governments have stopped short of formally annexing the region, critics, including the UN, Arab states, and many Western allies, say the policy fragments Palestinian territory and further undermines the viability of a two-state solution.

The settlement drive has been accompanied by rising violence in the West Bank since the Gaza war began in 2023. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 117 Palestinian communities have been completely or partially displaced by settler attacks, which have more than doubled from around 850 in 2022 to over 1,820 in 2025.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says Israeli military operations and settler attacks have killed more than 230 Palestinian children since 2023.

US President Donald Trump has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to withdraw Israeli troops from Syria and begin redeploying forces from southern Lebanon, Axios has reported, citing US and Israeli officials.

The reported appeal is the latest sign of a widening rift between the two leaders, with Trump pressing Israel to scale back its military deployments while Netanyahu’s government continues to insist on maintaining them indefinitely.

According to Axios, Trump warned Netanyahu during a phone call on Thursday that Israel’s military presence in southern Syria risked further escalation.

“They don’t want you there. You should redeploy,” Trump reportedly told the Israeli leader. The president delivered a similar message regarding southern Lebanon, the outlet said.

It also comes amid Washington’s attempts to implement a US-backed framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon reached last month. Under the deal, Israel committed to withdraw its forces from two ‘pilot zones’ in southern Lebanon and allow the Lebanese army to deploy there. Israel has yet to begin the withdrawal.

Israel says its troop deployments in southern Syria and Lebanon are necessary to prevent cross-border attacks similar to the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault. Several senior members of Netanyahu’s government have called for an open-ended military presence, with some also advocating Jewish settlements in the occupied areas.

In a statement released after the call, Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister had stressed “the need for security zones along Israel’s borders.”

The Jerusalem Post, citing defense officials, reported on Tuesday that the Israeli military was surprised by the Axios account and stressed there had been “no change on the ground” in either Lebanon or Syria.

The White House declined to comment on the details of the call and did not dispute Axios’ account. Instead, a US official reaffirmed Washington’s support for Israel, telling the outlet that “there has been no greater friend to Israel and a fighter for peace than President Trump.”

Atlanta is tightening security ahead of Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal between England and Argentina, media outlets report.

Consultations took place between FIFA, the FBI, and local law enforcement amid concerns that the long-standing rivalry between the two nations could increase the risk of clashes between supporters. Atlanta Police have announced an expanded presence across the city, including around Mercedes-Benz Stadium, team hotels and popular fan gathering areas.

Officials have also introduced separate stadium entrances and designated fan zones for supporters of each team. While tickets have not been fully segregated, England’s and Argentina’s official allocations of around 8,000 seats each will be located at opposite ends of the stadium. The authorities expect tens of thousands of supporters from both countries to descend on Atlanta for the match.

No match better encapsulates that history than the teams’ quarterfinal at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Argentina captain Diego Maradona scored twice in a 2-1 victory, first sending the ball into the net in the infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal before producing one of the greatest individual strikes in football history, dribbling past five England players and goalkeeper Peter Shilton to score.

Maradona later said the opener was scored “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.” His second goal is widely regarded as one of the finest ever scored at the tournament.

Wednesday’s semifinal also carries added significance because it could be Messi’s final meeting with England on football’s biggest stage. The Argentine captain, who led his country to the 2022 title, is seeking another appearance in the final as he wraps up one of the sport’s greatest careers.

Both camps have sought to ease tensions before kickoff. Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni and England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford have urged supporters to focus on the game, stressing that the rivalry should remain on the field.

US Senator Jim Banks of Indiana introduced legislation on Monday aimed at limiting birthright citizenship by declaring illegal migrants “invaders,” reviving President Donald Trump’s effort weeks after a US Supreme Court ruling struck it down.

Soon after returning to office last year, Trump signed an executive order to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the US to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily, as part of a broader immigration crackdown. In late June, the Supreme Court declared the president’s order unconstitutional.

“The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision was an unprecedented assault on American sovereignty, and we must do whatever it takes to save our country,” Banks told Fox News Digital in an interview published on Monday.

The legislation aims to “ensure the millions of illegal aliens that invaded our country can’t continue to exploit our immigration system,” he added.

The bill would seek to codify Trump’s declaration that the US is under an “invasion” by illegal migrants and amend federal law to deny citizenship to their children under what Banks described as “a longstanding common law exception for children of foreign invaders.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump has pursued a sweeping immigration agenda, tightening border controls, expanding deportations, and seeking stricter voter registration requirements, while accusing Democrats of using immigration to “expand their voter base [and] cheat in elections.” Legal challenges to several of the administration’s immigration measures are still ongoing.

European NATO members are increasingly calling for a new nuclear strategy amid a military buildup frenzy under the pretext of the alleged ‘Russian threat’. The bloc’s members claim that spreading nuclear weapons across the continent will make them safer. Moscow has warned that this could lead to a catastrophic escalation.

A dozen NATO members, including those bordering Russia, have expressed a desire in recent months to either host nuclear weapons or take part in nuclear-sharing initiatives to varying degrees.

France has proposed the ‘forward deterrence initiative’, which would allow it to deploy its nuclear weapons to other European nations. Washington is also reportedly considering placing its nuclear weapons in more NATO countries, going beyond the bloc’s controversial nuclear sharing program.

‘We have to be feared’

In March, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested a new nuclear-sharing framework focused on European NATO members, calling it the ‘forward nuclear deterrence strategy’.

The president also announced that France would no longer disclose the size of its arsenal to ensure that its adversaries fear its potential, adding that “to be free, we have to be feared.” He also stated that France plans to increase its nuclear arsenal, which is currently just under 300 warheads, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Macron’s vision of security included the idea that “if we had to use our arsenal, no state, however powerful, could shield itself from it, and no state, however vast, would recover from it.”

Parade of volunteers

The French president has seen no shortage of volunteers willing to take part in this vision, with nine NATO nations signing up for the initiative, according to Reuters.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK are already hosting US nuclear weapons, alongside Italy and Türkiye, as part of the NATO nuclear sharing program. The scheme, which the bloc claims is fully compliant with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), allows non-nuclear NATO states to operate dual-capable aircraft.

Poland has long sought to join the club. Former President Andrzej Duda reportedly asked the US to deploy some of its nuclear arsenal to Poland as early as 2022. Last year, he made a similar request to the administration of President Donald Trump. Polish President Karol Nawrocki suggested in February that Warsaw should develop its own nuclear weapons program.

Finland and Lithuania have made changes in the law to make these deployments possible.

Germany has been vying for a leading role in what it describes as an EU-level nuclear weapons system. Last year, Jens Spahn, a senior lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union party, said Germany should gain access to French and British nuclear weapons and kickstart the process of modernization.

Moscow is ‘too responsible’ to trigger WWIII

Russia has warned that Europe’s military buildup will only lead to an escalation of tensions, maintaining that it does not pose a threat to any NATO nation and does not have any plans to attack the bloc or any members unless attacked first.

Russian officials have warned that the new deterrence strategy could backfire, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov saying false slogans about strengthening security will lead to the opposite results.

Russia is “too big and too responsible” to trigger a third world war through nuclear escalation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche last month. He added that “there are lots of crazy things in the heads of European politicians.”

President Vladimir Putin said in June that, although the Western nations no longer hide their preparations for war with Russia, they are still reluctant to attack it directly because “they understand that there will be retaliation.”

US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out a ground campaign in Iran, saying unspecified allied forces could seize key strategic sites like Kharg Island without the involvement of US troops, while threatening to expand the bombing campaign to include power plants and bridges.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said he would consider a ground operation “if I thought it was appropriate.”

“Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people who will do the ground campaign for us... But we have already hit Kharg Island twice, even three times. I said, ‘Hit everything but the oil!’”

The president also vowed to intensify the air campaign, saying US strikes will continue until he decides “it’s enough.”

“They’ll continue until I say it’s enough. Next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

Trump warned that Iran “won’t have anybody left” unless it reaches a deal, claiming US officials relayed that message to Tehran “about an hour ago.”

More than 1,500 civilians have been killed in Iran since the US-Israeli bombing campaign began on February 28, according to the authorities. One of the deadliest incidents was the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, which killed 168 people, mostly children. Open-source investigations by media outlets concluded that the school was likely hit during a US strike on a nearby IRGC naval base. Trump denied US responsibility but said last month that “mistakes are made” and “nobody did that on purpose.”

In many countries around the world, the number of children who do not attend school is rising. UNESCO has already recorded this alarming trend, and it demands an explanation.

UNESCO regularly collects and publishes information on progress toward one of the key Sustainable Development Goals: The universal inclusion of school-age children in primary and secondary education. In recent years, negative developments in this sphere were often linked by experts to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. But the latest Global Education Monitoring Report 2026 allows the picture to be clarified significantly: It appears that we are dealing not with temporary difficulties, but with a change in the global trend – and the turning point seems to have occurred before the pandemic.

While in the 1990s and 2000s, most countries recorded high growth rates in children’s participation in education, after 2015, these gains slowed almost everywhere. In a number of countries, the number of children not attending school has increased. Since this primarily concerned countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it might have seemed like just another example of ordinary African difficulties: Tribal wars, corruption, and so on. Then the pandemic began, and everyone was sent home. But now ten years have passed, and it turns out that the share of children not going to school is not shrinking at all – on the contrary, it is growing, and on a global scale.

The UNESCO report, of course, says nothing about this new global trend and, following the statistical reports of governments, paints a picture of the steady development of primary and secondary education systems worldwide. At the same time, the report notes that in “the four most populous regions of the world (Europe and North America, East and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa), growth in children’s participation in school education has stopped over the past ten years. And in a number of countries, the share of children not attending school has even increased somewhat after 2015.”

To understand what this means, we should first assess the scale and geography of the phenomenon. The best way to do this is to compare out-of-school rates for 2024 vs. 2015, as reported by UNESCO, and look at the countries where this growth was recorded.

At the same time, in 66 countries, the share of children who do not attend school has risen over the past decade. So the number of countries mentioned in the UNESCO report turns out to be very large indeed. Let’s now look at who they are.

The authors highlight the difficult situation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet of the aforementioned 66 countries, only 20 are in Africa. Incidentally, the situation south of the Maghreb is not so straightforward: For 20 countries with negative dynamics, there are 11 where the share of children not attending school has noticeably declined; in the remaining countries, there is no clear trend.

So, the historically reversed, regressive increase in the share of children not attending school is far from being an African phenomenon alone. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the trend is not limited to the ‘underdeveloped periphery’. The example of Singapore is revealing – a beacon of globalization, a city-state with one of the highest standards of living and near-universal access to education. The idealized image of Singapore now needs revising, because over the past decade, a sharply growing share of children has appeared outside the school system: 5% of children do not attend primary school, 10% remain outside lower secondary education, and 14% are without upper secondary education.

Singapore is not the exception but the beginning of a list of developed countries where the share of children not attending school has risen. The list speaks for itself: The US, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Finland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Estonia. Meanwhile, EU member states such as Romania and Bulgaria are, by this negative indicator, already comparable to African countries, including those south of the Maghreb.

The global share of children not attending school is also significantly increased by the new leaders of the global economy – India and China, home to around 3 billion people, the lion’s share of the world’s population. The growth of their vast economies is not accompanied by growing school participation in primary and secondary education. The same can be said of Mexico.

In short, if anyone has not yet guessed, we are dealing with a global counter-trend: The inclusion of children in primary and secondary education has stopped growing and has begun to decline.

It was always assumed that urbanization, despite its many downsides, had an overall beneficial effect on humanity because it promoted information exchange, individualization, enlightenment, and the development of science and technology. Much skepticism has accumulated regarding the social consequences of scientific and technological progress, but the imperative of mass education – and especially children’s education – survived even the excesses of postmodernism and until recently retained its force. The link between education and urbanization seemed beyond doubt.

And now, at the beginning of the 21st century, when the absolute majority of humanity has concentrated itself in large cities, something unimaginable is happening: Children’s participation in school education has stopped growing and has begun to reverse. And this is happening not on the margins, but in the hyper-urbanized core of a unified ‘world civilization’. How should we understand this?

Let us recall and combine several simple truths.

The philosopher Karl Popper correctly saw the cultural dominant of human development in the growing individualization of people, though he poorly calculated its consequences. Progressive individualism has led to the atomization of society. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called modern individualized humanity ‘liquid’, because as the wills of emancipated individuals collide, all institutions and concepts lose certainty and binding force. The result of concentrating atomized humanity in megacities has been the transformation of the city – historically the cradle of individualization – into a space of maximum ‘liquidity,’ that is, the epicenter of advancing chaos.

Today’s world civilization is a globalized world-system of capital accumulation. As Aristotle pointed out long ago, chrematistics – in other words, capitalism – destroys society because it denies the principle of reciprocity on which human coexistence rests. In other words, capitalism absolutizes and cultivates individualism as the psychological, mental, and behavioral prerequisite for its own reproduction and triumph – for the capitalization of all humanity. That is why capitalism consistently profanes and nullifies the traditional social bonds and supports of life – religion, peoplehood, nation, historical memory, family – thereby deepening the natural individualization of human beings and returning progressive humanity to a ‘natural state’ in which churches, courts, state hierarchies, and universities become merely specialized arenas of a war of all against all.

‘Free’ individuals, driven and set against one another by the logic of capital accumulation, having lost mutual trust and the habit of cooperation, can no longer realize alternative scenarios. Meanwhile, increasingly powerful and increasingly narrow elite circles, concentrating ever more resources, become fully unbound from the constraints of human society. Social responsibility, having lost its former binding force and become intolerably burdensome under conditions of shrinking profit, is simply cut away.

The existentially important quality of the human being lies not in consuming and transmitting ever-larger amounts of information, but in the ability to verify it. Information, like rare-earth ore, consists of vast heaps of slag and only hard-won grains of knowledge. Therefore, the intensification of information exchange maximizes inequality and social power. The lives of great masses of individuals become transparent to outside observation, control, and influence – while the centers of power remain informationally and physically closed. Under conditions of growing informational noise, knowledge becomes harder to verify, and therefore even less accessible and more elitist. Participating in the production and consumption of informational noise, the masses easily and imperceptibly lose the ability to verify information and to learn. The main risk group in the information society is children.

Why did growth in school participation stop in 2015, and why did the number of children not attending school begin to rise? Because eight years earlier, in 2007, a new era began: The release of the iPhone launched the mass spread of smartphones, providing constant connection to the internet and apps – that is, instant access to entertainment and remote communication. This caused a fundamental shift of attention and an explosive rise in time devoted to digital leisure. And then, seven years later, the first human generation raised with gadgets reached school age. After that, every year there were more children with gadgets – and at the same time, more children not attending school.

Incidentally, the children who do attend school are also children with gadgets, who at best part with them only during class hours. Field research shows that in countries where students spent a lot of time using gadgets for entertainment during the school day, test results fell sharply from 2012 to 2022. So non-attendance is only the most vivid negative effect of informatization from childhood, not the only one.

Unfortunately, it can be predicted with confidence that both school participation and levels of knowledge will continue to decline – and the longer this continues, the steeper the decline. For we are now passing yet another turning point and entering a new stage in humanity’s informatization: The expansion of AI has begun.

The famous visionary Klaus Schwab proclaimed the “age of intelligence.” Speaking in May at the University of Johannesburg, Schwab said:

“What is the Intelligent Age doing? It is replacing our cognitive capabilities by algorithm.”

“You no longer need to go to university. For any question that requires knowledge, you can ask Claude, ChatGPT, or wherever else. Knowledge surrounds us and is available for free.”

Schwab, with the straightforwardness of a salesman, presents us with the alienation of intellect from the human being and offers us to hand over “our cognitive abilities” in exchange for easy access to knowledge. Why think when you can instantly get the answer?

One should not overestimate the cognitive resilience and evolutionary stability of Homo sapiens, while sentimentally invoking the ‘thinking reed’. Let us look at things soberly: Schwab has made us an offer we may not be able to refuse.

What is especially striking is his use of the word ‘free’. Compare Schwab’s promise to African youth with a statement made in March by Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, at the BlackRock infrastructure summit in Washington. With his target audience in mind, Altman was not offering propaganda, but a business model:

“We see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people buy it from us on a meter.”

To make the prospect even more attractive to investors, Altman suggested a likely scenario of shortage in computing power, under which “the price gets really high.”

So knowledge will become more expensive. Informational garbage will grow in both volume and aggression. Most people’s ability to verify information will decline. AI will quickly become the dominant, and for many the only, source of knowledge and decisions. Easy access to ready-made answers will minimize the motivation to get an education. And if there is no longer any need to go to university, then there is all the less need to go to school – this is obvious. The withering away of mass schooling will happen faster than we can now imagine. The decline in children’s participation in education will preserve and deepen the apartheid between a rich, educated elite and a digitized mass.

By the end of the 20th century, the agenda of capitalist globalization included the erosion of historical nations. The withering away of mass schooling will finalize this process – nations will finally become shadows of the past. The roadmap for world civilization’s transition from humanism to transhumanism is perfectly clear. The question is whether nations with sufficient resources and sovereignty will be able to find an alternative path of development and preserve their social well-being.

The UK wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money during the Covid-19 pandemic, a damning report from the official public inquiry has concluded. Years of inadequate planning and systemic failures left Britain unprepared for the global race to secure vital medical supplies, the investigation found.

Published on Tuesday, the fifth report by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, chaired by former judge Baroness Heather Hallett, found that nearly £10 billion ($13.4 billion) of the approximately £14.9 billion spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) was wasted. Combined spending by the UK and the devolved administrations on PPE, ventilators, and testing equipment topped £42 billion between January 2020 and June 2022.

Britain was “simply not ready to compete” in the global race for vital medical supplies because those responsible were “caught off-guard, with inadequate and untested plans” for emergency procurement and distribution, Hallett said, adding that “the waste of taxpayers’ money was vast.”

The country entered the pandemic with its PPE stockpile “in a perilous state,” including large quantities of expired equipment, while emergency procurement and distribution plans had never been properly tested, according to the report. It also found that the country was too reliant on China for key medical supplies, leaving it vulnerable when governments around the world began competing for limited stocks.

Doctors, nurses, and care workers were left without adequate protective equipment, with some forced to use makeshift gear such as bin bags, shower caps, and supplies bought online, according to evidence cited by the inquiry.

The report also criticized the High Priority, or “VIP” lane, which fast-tracked offers from suppliers referred by ministers, MPs, peers and senior officials. Hallett called it a “misguided attempt at prioritization” that embedded unfairness and undermined public trust.

Earlier reports by the inquiry found that the authorities across the UK acted “too little, too late” during the pandemic and that delays in introducing restrictions contributed to thousands of additional deaths. They also described the cabinet of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson as having a “toxic and chaotic culture,” saying key decisions were often dominated or derailed by his inner circle.

France will grant Ukraine licenses to produce missiles and bombs on its soil, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday.

Speaking at a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ summit in Paris, Macron said the agreements would allow Ukraine to manufacture Aster 30 interceptor missiles, AASM glide bombs and SCALP-EG cruise missiles under license.

“We have agreed on licensing agreements for new capabilities,” he told reporters, adding that the move “will allow us to produce these capabilities much more quickly with our Ukrainian partners and on Ukrainian soil.”

The AASM and SCALP-EG have already been supplied to Kiev and have been widely used by Ukrainian forces, including in strikes on Russian civilian targets, according to Moscow.

Macron also said additional Franco-Italian SAMP/T air defense batteries and Aster interceptors would be delivered to Ukraine in the coming weeks. He added that 16 Rafale fighter jets are expected to arrive in 2028-2029.

Nine participating countries also launched an Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition aimed at building a European integrated air defense network using shared industrial capacity, amid shortages of US-made Patriot interceptors due to the Ukraine and Iran conflicts.

The Kremlin has repeatedly condemned the coalition as “a group of countries that doesn’t want peace [and] wants the war to continue.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last month that NATO members were turning Ukraine into a “testing ground” for Western military technologies.

Several EU states reportedly began moving parts of their military production to Ukraine after the Russian Defense Ministry published what it said were the locations of European companies manufacturing drone components for Kiev. Moscow warned in March that European leaders were “dragging their countries into a war with Russia.”

The renewed hostilities between the US and Iran have once again disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz after a brief period of relative normalization.

The escalation comes after Washington carried out several consecutive waves of strikes on Iranian targets, claiming that the attacks are meant to protect commercial shipping in the strait. Tehran has responded with strikes on US military facilities across the region and has declared the waterway closed.

It follows the collapse of a fragile understanding reached last month, under which the US agreed to lift its naval blockade while Iran was expected to help ensure safe passage for commercial vessels pending further negotiations. The two sides now accuse each other of violating the deal.

The waterway is the main sea route for oil and gas exports from the Gulf and carries around one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, which has made it a major pressure point in the unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran.

The Strait of Hormuz has once again been declared closed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) after the US resumed strikes on Iranian targets last week, accusing Tehran of attacking commercial ships transiting the waterway.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that the strikes are aimed at reducing Iran’s ability to threaten civilian vessels and commercial shipping. It said that American forces have hit Iranian air defenses, coastal radar sites, missile and drone facilities, small boats, and other military targets around the strait.

Iran has responded with strikes on US military facilities across the region, including bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and Oman. Tehran says that the attacks are a lawful response to US strikes on Iranian territory.

What has Iran said?

Following the US claims of Iranian attacks on commercial vessels, Tehran said that it has the right to regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and require ships to follow designated routes. It has warned that vessels attempting to pass without authorization or ignoring commands violate security procedures and may be treated as hostile.

Tehran has declared that the strait will remain closed until Washington ends its “illegal” military intervention in the region, and that no ship will be allowed to transit the waterway while US attacks continue.

Iranian servicemen will stand firm “until their last breath” and would not yield “even an inch” of the country’s rights in the key waterway, Iranian military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia has insisted.

Iranian officials have also framed the strikes on US bases in the Gulf as self-defense and have warned neighboring states not to allow their territory to be used for American attacks, saying countries that host US forces cannot expect to stay outside the conflict.

CENTCOM has said that American forces are prepared to keep the waterway open and prevent Iran from threatening commercial traffic, stating that the renewed strikes are aimed at protecting “freedom of navigation” through the strait.

US President Donald Trump has declared that Washington is now “in control” of the strait and will be “taking over” security in the Strait of Hormuz and act as its “guardian.”

He has also proposed charging a 20% fee on cargo moving through the waterway, because Washington should be reimbursed for its protection. The White House has not explained how such a fee would be calculated, collected, or enforced.

What has happened to shipping?

Several commercial vessels have reportedly been hit or threatened in or near the Strait of Hormuz since hostilities resumed.

The UAE said that two tankers were struck by Iranian cruise missiles in Omani territorial waters on the southern lane of the strait. One Indian crew member was killed and eight others were wounded, according to reports citing UAE and Indian officials.

Shipping data cited by Reuters showed tanker traffic through the strait falling to its lowest level in two months as companies reassessed the risks of using the route.

Insurers are also expected to raise premiums for ships entering the area, increasing costs even for vessels that are not directly attacked.

Oil prices eased after the US and Iran signed the June memorandum of understanding, which reduced fears of a full-scale disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. The latest escalation has reversed that trend.

Brent crude jumped nearly 10% on Monday, its biggest one-day gain since 2020, while US West Texas Intermediate rose more than 9%, according to market data. By Tuesday, Brent was trading around $86 a barrel and WTI above $80, their highest levels in about four weeks.

The latest spike remains below the levels seen during the earlier phase of the war, when prices briefly rose above $120 a barrel after traffic through Hormuz was heavily restricted. Analysts have warned that a sustained disruption in the strait could send oil back above $100 a barrel.

Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said that the country’s exports are continuing “as usual” despite Washington’s decision to cancel a 60-day sanctions waiver. He said that Tehran has mechanisms to bypass US restrictions.

What has been the international response?

China has called for safe and free passage through the Strait of Hormuz to be restored, saying that the waterway is intended for international navigation. Beijing added that it is ready to maintain communication with relevant countries and the wider international community on the issue.

India has summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador after an Indian crew member was killed and several other Indians were wounded in the strike on the two UAE tankers. New Delhi said that it lodged a protest over attacks on ships passing near Oman’s shores.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized Trump’s proposed 20% protection fee, saying that “in the old days, this was called piracy.” He accused the US president of trying to take advantage of a tragedy to make money.

Russia has warned that the renewed escalation is undermining chances for a settlement. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the fighting was damaging civilian infrastructure in Iran and civilian sites in Gulf states, and “closes the door that the memorandum appeared to have opened.” He added that Moscow views the latest developments as a violation of the US-Iran agreement reached last month.

Behind all the projected confidence, determination and unity that came out of the NATO summit in Ankara last week, a different picture emerges. A picture spiderwebbed with widening cracks.

Unity on paper, divergence in practice

The NATO alliance was never designed as a bloc whose governments would agree on every international issue. Today’s disagreements, however, go well beyond tactical disputes and increasingly concern the fundamental strategic questions shaping global security.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed these divisions particularly clearly. Despite Washington’s expectations, several of its major European allies – including France, Britain, Italy, and Spain – have shown little willingness to become directly involved. Their reluctance reflects not only concerns about escalation but also general political disagreements with Washington’s Middle East policy.

Should the confrontation with Iran expand, these differences are likely to become even more pronounced. Türkiye’s regional priorities differ significantly from those of Washington, while many European governments remain deeply skeptical of another major military engagement in the Middle East. Rather than strengthening transatlantic cohesion, the crisis risks widening existing political fault lines.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. NATO continues to describe China as a long-term strategic challenge, yet member states differ considerably on how confrontational their policies should become. Meanwhile, critically important regions such as the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and the Arctic received remarkably little attention in Ankara despite their growing geopolitical significance.

Military spending remains the most contentious point. Washington continues pressing European NATO members toward spending 5% of GDP on defense. While several countries support this long-term objective, others remain openly resistant.

Spain has emerged as the clearest example. Madrid argues that military effectiveness cannot be measured solely by GDP percentages. Spanish leaders emphasize that defense spending has risen dramatically – from just 0.9% of GDP in 2018 to approximately 2% today – while equipment procurement has expanded substantially, overseas missions have increased, and investment in the domestic defense industry has accelerated.

From Spain’s perspective, capability is more important than arbitrary spending targets – but the issue goes deeper than that. Spain’s opposition also reflects political tensions with Washington, including disagreement over the conflict involving Iran and growing discomfort with US support for Israeli military operations.

NATO’s future burden-sharing discussions are increasingly shaped by national political calculations rather than by a shared strategic vision.

In his keynote speech, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte Meanwhile claimed the bloc is “on the cusp” of a “transatlantic defense industrial revolution.” But these big words were not matched by equally ambitious decisions. Europe still faces structural obstacles that cannot be solved by summit declarations alone. National armed forces remain understrength after decades of reductions, defense manufacturing capacity remains insufficient, and financial institutions have often discouraged investment in military production.

Ukraine no longer unites NATO

If any issue once symbolized NATO unity, it was Ukraine. That consensus is steadily weakening.

Support for continued military assistance is also becoming increasingly fragmented. Before the summit, Slovakia again declared that it would oppose additional military aid to Kiev. Hungary maintains a similar position, while the Czech Republic’s limited participation in the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) mechanism of quick delivery of US-made military hardware to Kiev appears largely tactical, allowing Prague to avoid direct transfers without abandoning previously approved commitments.

Immediately after the summit, Bulgaria’s new government announced that no further military support would be provided to Ukraine. The practical implications will depend on whether this decision affects only official state donations or extends to commercial arms exports and industrial cooperation. At roughly the same time, the Netherlands acknowledged that its capacity to provide additional direct military assistance had effectively been exhausted.

The Ankara declaration also welcomed the EU’s multi-year €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan. Yet even within the EU, unanimity proved elusive. Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic declined to participate.

None of these individual decisions fundamentally changes Ukraine’s immediate military position. Together, however, they reveal a broader trend: political consensus regarding long-term support for Kiev is becoming increasingly fragile.

Perhaps the most consequential discussion in Ankara concerned NATO’s long-term evolution.

Alliance leaders increasingly describe the emerging model as ‘NATO 3.0’ – a more Europeanized bloc in which European members assume primary responsibility for conventional military power while the US retains its nuclear leadership.

In principle, this evolution makes strategic sense. Washington’s long-term focus is gradually shifting toward the Indo-Pacific, making it increasingly difficult to sustain the same military presence in Europe indefinitely.

Uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s attendance is a good indication of the doubts about America’s future commitment. Trump ultimately traveled to Ankara, remarking that his presence reflected his close relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Meanwhile, US War Secretary Pete Hegseth had considered announcing significant reductions in US troop deployments before ultimately refraining from doing so.

More importantly, the Pentagon has already launched a comprehensive review of America’s military footprint across Europe, examining troop levels, bases, and military access arrangements. Even if immediate reductions do not occur, the direction of travel appears clear.

For Europe, greater strategic responsibility offers both challenges and opportunities. Investment in counter-drone capabilities, digital infrastructure, joint procurement, resilient supply chains, and stronger domestic defense industries addresses genuine weaknesses that accumulated over decades of underinvestment. These efforts correspond naturally with a gradual American military rebalancing.

A new European military backbone is gradually taking shape around France, Germany, and Poland. France contributes nuclear capabilities and has become increasingly willing to discuss extending aspects of its deterrence to European partners. Germany has become the world’s fourth-largest military spender and is rebuilding capabilities at unprecedented speed. Poland already spends well above 4% of GDP on defense and intends to approach 5% in the coming years while competing with Germany to field Europe’s largest conventional army.

This transformation represents one of the most significant shifts in European security architecture since the Cold War.

Yet even this transformation contains an important contradiction. Its central political premise remains the characterization of Russia as a long-term strategic threat. Whether this assumption continues to define European security policy over the next decade is far from certain.

Across Europe, domestic politics are evolving rapidly. In Germany, Alternative for Germany has become the country’s strongest political force and could realistically enter government before the end of the decade. Party co-leader Alice Weidel has openly argued for restoring German-Russian relations and ending Germany’s boycott of Russian energy imports. In France, National Rally is the country’s most popular political movement, and forces aligned with Marine Le Pen could capture the presidency next year.

Elsewhere, numerous patriotic parties avoid openly advocating rapprochement with Moscow largely for tactical reasons rather than because such positions have disappeared.

These domestic political shifts may ultimately prove more consequential than any communiqué adopted in Ankara. Summit declarations reflect today’s governments. But elections may shape tomorrow’s strategic doctrines.

The Ankara Summit therefore should not be remembered primarily for its carefully worded statements about unity or ambitious defense spending targets. Its lasting significance lies elsewhere. It demonstrated that NATO remains operationally functional but politically more heterogeneous than at any point in recent decades.

In the end, Ankara revealed an uncomfortable truth. NATO’s greatest challenge comes from the growing fractures among its own members – fractures rooted in legitimate national interests, shifting political winds, and doubts about whether the current anti-Russian obsession serves Europe’s long-term security.

Bulgaria has no place in the coalition of Western nations pushing for continued military aid to Ukraine, Prime Minister Rumen Radev has told Bulgarian broadcaster bTV.

The France and UK-led “coalition of the willing” has long pushed to deploy troops into Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, despite Moscow’s repeated warnings that any NATO troops on Ukrainian territory would become legitimate military targets.

“We’re not part of a coalition pushing for continued financial and military aid to Ukraine,” Radev told bTV during a press conference in France on Tuesday.

“We don’t provide aid of that kind, because I believe the way to resolve this conflict is through a strong diplomatic effort to end the escalation rather than by prolonging it by military means,” he added.

Last week, Radev, a Euroskeptic elected after the previous pro-EU government collapsed last year following massive anti-corruption protests, announced that Bulgaria has exhausted its capacity to support Kiev militarily.

Moscow has long condemned arms supplies to Ukraine, warning that they only prolong the war and cause more deaths, without altering the course of the conflict – which Russia views as a Western proxy war.

EU nations are losing what remains of their “rationality and drifting into a high-risk zone” in an effort to turn Ukraine in to a “testing ground” for their emerging military technologies, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in late June.

Some guys die falling down the stairs while putting their pants on. Lindsey Graham went out much more boringly. Sorry to disappoint.

His demise is a tale as old as time. A guy with a medically-documented bad ticker has a jammer at home around the same age as his own father did. Pretty straightforward. And boring. Far too pedestrian, apparently, for some folks. Already, there seems to be an overlap between the people who imagine penises on women like Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron, and those who fancy Graham’s death being the direct result of a foreign adversary getting their own rocks off. These people need to log off from their online insane asylum and touch grass.

Graham had just returned from Ukraine where he toured a weapons factory. So naturally some of these folks think that Putin had him knocked off. Except that he died at home on the other side of the world. So how does that square with a hit job? Easy, apparently. Because the poison used was time-released. Ah, yes – of course. Or maybe Putin bombed him in Ukraine but his pals conspired to weekend-at-Bernie’s him all the way back home to DC to help Putin out with a bit of crisis management.

It’s much less dramatic to admit that Graham was just a guy who died doing what he loved most – and spent the most time doing. That is, thinking up ways for the US to perversely inflict pain on other nations for refusing to bend over on command. Personally, I like swimming. A lot. If I dropped dead in a pool someday, no one would be surprised. If someone spends tons of time in front of the TV, their odds of dying there increase. So the fact that a warmonger dropped dead right after wrapping up his latest warmongering tour is par for the course.

But it’s so difficult for some folks to accept this straightforwardness. Because they imagine that there are so many people in the countries that Graham warmongered against who would have wanted him dead. Neocons who loved Graham think that’s the case. So do those who loathed him for the same reasons and say that they’re glad he was “taken out.”

Oh, but Graham had Trump’s ear! He was pushing Trump to blow more American cash on weapons “for Ukraine”! Yeah, yeah – and surely now that he’s gone, it’ll all come to a crashing halt, right? Trump’s two sons who are overtly raking in Pentagon cash for Ukrainian drone investments will just demand that their father bail on the whole thing now that Lindsey Graham is gone.

If offing people responsible for driving the current iteration of the American war machine was an actual solution for achieving peace, starting with Lindsey Graham is like offing Cookie Monster in an attempt to bring down the Sesame Street franchise: “Some people say me want too many cookies. Wrong. Me want the cookies necessary to ensure cookie dominance for generations…. Critics ask, ‘How many cookies does Cookie Monster need?’ Me ask, ‘How many cookies are our enemies hiding?’”

The clown simply goes off to the big cosmic tent – and nothing much changes. Graham was merely a cast member of America Inc., which has no shortage of understudies.

Let me make it emphatically clear that speaking ill of the dead isn’t my thing. What’s even the point? It’s not like karma needs help with the heavy lifting after it’s already dropped the anvil on someone. No need for anyone to subsequently pile on with a folding chair. But any fitting celebration of life involves reminiscing about that life. And when that life constantly involves promoting war, there’s not much wiggle room.

Even taking that claim at face value, does this mean that the moral high-bar now is being so genuinely obsessed with war and weapons that you champion them strictly from your soul without financial incentive? How does this not make it even worse? Seems like at least cash-for-war would be a less disgusting motive than simply getting your jollies from peddling tools of death and destruction.

“I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization,” Graham apparently told someone close to him shortly before packing it in permanently, according to Fox News. Turns out that karma’s ultimate regime change got to him first.

So US Senator Lindsey Graham can now be referred to permanently in the past tense. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for all his pet causes which continue to plague the planet. Because the war machine is immortal. It can easily afford to lose any single mascot and just keep on billing.

Mark Lynch, who challenged Lindsey Graham in South Carolina’s recent Republican US Senate primary, hopes to take the seat that the late GOP politician left empty, he has told America Now on RT.

Lynch portrayed himself as a conservative outsider capable of breaking the state’s decades-long pattern of choosing career politicians.

Graham, a longtime Russia hawk, died on Saturday at the age of 71 following what his office initially called a brief and sudden illness. The senator’s death came a day after his return from Kiev, where he met Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.

Graham repeatedly called for increased economic pressure on Moscow, threatening Russia with what he described as “bone-crushing” sanctions. In recent months, he actively promoted a bill that would impose 500% tariffs on countries purchasing Russian oil. The senator also described US military aid to Ukraine as “the best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed Graham’s sister Darline Graham Nordone as interim senator on Monday following a recommendation from Trump. Lynch described the choice as unusual but said he would accept it and hoped the appointment would “go well.”

In an interview with America Now on Monday, Lynch said he initially rejected calls to discuss another campaign while Graham’s family was still grieving. “Nobody saw that coming,” he said, describing the senator’s death as “tragic” and offering prayers to his relatives.

Lynch said repeated appeals from supporters, however, eventually convinced him to enter the special Republican primary.

”After careful prayer and consideration” and talks with his campaign team, he said, “we have committed to stay in this fight and give our constituents what they’ve asked for.”

Lynch finished behind Graham in the June 9 Republican primary. The incumbent secured the nomination with roughly 59% of the vote while Lynch placed second in the multi-candidate contest.

Candidate filing will run from July 21 through July 28. The Republican primary is scheduled for August 11 with a runoff on August 25, if required.

Lynch said his campaign would emphasize his business experience, faith, and constitutional conservatism. “People are tired of career politicians,” he added.

Watch the full interview below:

Russian table tennis players will return to international competitions after the sport’s global governing body announced it had lifted restrictions imposed after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) said in a statement on Monday that Russian athletes and teams will be “permitted to participate in ITTF table tennis and Para table tennis events, under the ordinary conditions applicable to all athletes, with effect from July 28, 2026.”

The federation said the decision followed the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) July 7 move to lift its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and withdraw its recommendations to international federations restricting Russia’s participation.

The federation noted that its decision does not affect matters such as national flags and anthems where those fall under the IOC’s jurisdiction. The IOC said last week it would decide “at the appropriate time” whether the restrictions on national symbols and colors will remain in place for future Olympic Games.

Most Olympic federations barred competitors from Russia and Belarus following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Several have since allowed individuals to compete as neutrals, while others, including World Aquatics, World Gymnastics and the International Fencing Federation (FIE), have restored their national symbols.

Select athletes from Russia and Belarus competed as individual neutral athletes at the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.

Russia fielded one of the largest delegations at the Olympic Games, with strong teams in swimming, gymnastics, track and field, and wrestling.

Moscow has argued that competitors should be judged solely on their sporting merit.

US President Donald Trump has given Saudi Arabia the green light for a renewed military operation against Yemen’s Houthi movement, Axios has reported, citing US officials.

The report follows the most serious escalation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in years, which according to the outlet, could mark the collapse of an unofficial truce between the parties and risk widening the conflict between the US and Iran.

Sanaa International Airport, which is controlled by the Yemeni group, was struck on Monday as an Iranian aircraft reportedly carrying a Houthi delegation home from the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei approached the capital. The plane was forced to divert to the Red Sea port city of Al Hudaydah.

The Houthis accused Riyadh of launching the strike and declared that their ceasefire with Saudi Arabia was over. The group subsequently fired ballistic missiles and drones at Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia and warned airlines against using Saudi airspace.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government later claimed responsibility for the operation and denied that Riyadh had been involved. Several media reports, however, attributed the attack to Saudi Arabia, which has not officially acknowledged carrying it out.

Sanna was seize by the Houthis, an Iran-aligned Shiite movement, in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention the following year. A UN-brokered truce introduced in April 2022 formally expired after six months but largely halted direct cross-border hostilities.

In March, the Houthis entered the broader regional conflict by launching missile attacks against Israel in support of Iran.

A dispute over an immigration bill passed by the European Parliament has escalated into a criminal complaint, with a Swedish MEP accusing a Danish colleague of racist hate speech over a social media comment, The Guardian reported on Monday.

A Swedish MEP of Iraqi descent, Abir Al-Sahlani, filed the complaint with Swedish police against Danish MEP Kristoffer Storm. He told her to “go home” in response to her post criticizing anti-immigration chants that followed the passage of a law aimed at speeding up the deportation of illegal migrants. She has also lodged a formal complaint with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

The dispute stems from last month’s approval of the Return Regulation, the toughest anti-immigration legislation passed by the EU in recent years. The measure allows member states to establish ‘return hubs’ outside the bloc to accelerate the deportation of illegal migrants.

“I have never felt as unsafe in this parliament as after the voting about the Return Regulation, because the shouting of the far right was not against the political opponent… It was about ordinary people who did no other crime than looking for a better life in Europe,” she said.

Storm rejected accusations that his response online was racist. Speaking to Politico, he said the phrase “go home” referred to leaving the parliamentary chamber, arguing that if Al-Sahlani found the democratic decision and lawmakers’ reactions so upsetting, “she would have been better off leaving the chamber.”

The clash comes amid growing tensions over migration across the EU. According to Eurostat, the bloc received more than 8.5 million immigrants from outside the bloc in 2023 and 2024, and immigration remains one of the most divisive issues in European politics.