Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has denounced Europe’s military buildup and escalating confrontation with Russia, arguing that Western governments are steering the world toward catastrophe while arms manufacturers and political elites profit from perpetual war.

Speaking Monday on Rick Sanchez’s The Sanchez Effect, Waters said calls for European NATO members to increase military spending to 5% of national GDP were “effing insane.” He questioned how Western leaders could even contemplate a direct conflict with Russia, given the Soviet Union’s decisive role and immense losses during World War II.

“I often say to people, do you know who the Russian people are? They won the Second World War, for God’s sake. Twenty-five million of them died, saving the world for us,” he said. “And you want to have a war with them? How dumb.”

Waters blamed Western governments for prolonging the Ukraine conflict and argued that the war could have been prevented either through the Minsk agreements or through a preliminary peace settlement reached in Istanbul in 2022.

“This is 12 years since Maidan, since John McCain went and organized that so-called revolution, and murdered a few people, and got rid of the elected government, and put in the Banderites. Nazis – they’re just Nazis, and we know that,” he said. “Then we sent a moron… Who’s the stupidest man who’s ever been in government in England? Boris Johnson! Send him to the Ukraine to tell them that they’re not allowed to make peace!”

“Think of all the children and grandchildren, all the men on both sides who have been killed since then,” he said. “Why? Money. That’s all.”

The musician argued that modern conflicts are driven primarily by profit and the interests of a narrow ruling class. He pointed to major defense contractors and wealthy political donors, claiming that money has corrupted democratic institutions and made US foreign policy vulnerable to private influence.

“This ship is steering for the rocks,” he warned, urging ordinary people in Europe and the US to stop blindly trusting political leaders who promote confrontation and instead rebuild communication and cooperation across national borders.

“We have to open our eyes,” he said. “We have to start talking to our neighbors and cooperating with one another.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of “fomenting hate” following the mayor’s call for his arrest in relation to the war in Gaza.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the enclave, including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “other inhumane acts.” Mamdani, who has described Israel’s military campaign as genocide and called the Israeli prime minister a “war criminal,” last week urged US federal authorities to execute the warrant if Netanyahu visits New York for the UN General Assembly in September.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu dismissed the ICC case against him as “bogus” and said he would still travel to New York despite Mamdani’s calls for his arrest. Accusing the mayor of “fomenting hate,” the Israeli leader said: “He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers – Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone. But he’s trying to turn one group against the other.”

Washington has consistently opposed the ICC. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to “dismantle” the court by urging other countries to withdraw their support. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, who reportedly traveled to Washington on Monday, is expected to meet with President Donald Trump and attend funeral services for the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, whom the Israeli leader referred to as “a great patriot” and one of Israel’s “greatest friends.” Trump has also dismissed the prospect of Netanyahu being arrested in the US, saying in a social media post on Monday that the Israeli prime minister “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”

Multiple incidents involving Israeli settler groups occurred in the West Bank over the weekend, with two mosques and farmland set on fire, and other properties vandalized amid escalating violence against Palestinians.

The latest attacks come two days after a major clash between settlers and locals near the Palestinian village of Tal, southwest of the city of Nablus. On Friday, a large group of settlers entered the village, prompting skirmishes with locals and ultimately triggering an Israeli military raid on Tal. At least four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed in the ensuing chaos under unclear circumstances, with both sides blaming each other.

The Tal incident prompted an uptick in settler violence, and two mosques were attacked early on Sunday in the West Bank. A mosque under-construction was torched in the village of Qusra to the southeast of Nablus, and another one was set on fire in Kour, a Palestinian village southeast of the city of Tulkarm. The unfinished building was badly damaged by the blaze, while worshipers managed to extinguish the flames at the Kour mosque in time.

In both instances, the buildings were scribbled with offensive graffiti in Hebrew. The Palestinian authorities have condemned the “heinous crime,” noting that Israeli settlers attacked 45 mosques across the West Bank throughout 2025. Apart from the mosque attacks, a private home was reportedly set on fire in the town of Beit Furik, farm fields were burned, and cars were vandalized across several locations. Palestinian workers were also attacked at a stone-cutting facility near Ramallah.

Settler violence has been on the rise in the West Bank since the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas in October 2023, which triggered a major conflict in Gaza. The violence further escalated this year with near-daily attacks, according to a UN inquiry published last month. The report said that rampaging settlers have been increasingly shielded by Israeli forces during attacks on Palestinians. 

“The increasing participation of Israeli security forces in settler attacks amounts to a de facto collapse of the distinction between settlers and soldiers,” the report concluded.

At the time, Israel brushed off the UN findings, accusing the body of relying on unsubstantiated allegations and drawing a “false moral equivalence” between Hamas ​militants and Israeli civilians.

The EU’s sanctions on Russia have left Spain without access to advanced firefighting equipment amid an unprecedented wildfire emergency, with record blazes overwhelming parts of southern Europe.

Fast-moving fires near Madrid, Bordeaux, and Valencia have forced more than 360,000 people to evacuate over the past several days. Over 9,000 firefighters, troops, police, and other emergency personnel have been mobilized to battle the blaze, backed by dozens of aircraft and hundreds of vehicles. However, dry conditions and another approaching heatwave have complicated their efforts. Authorities say this year’s wildfires are among the worst on record.

Spain’s response has been further hampered by its inability to deploy its former fleet of Russian-made Kamov Ka-32 helicopters. The aircraft are considered particularly effective for wildfire missions due to their large water capacity, maneuverability, and ability to operate in extreme heat and difficult terrain.

Previously used under contracts with Spain’s national and regional authorities, the fleet has remained grounded under the EU sanctions regime that was imposed against Russia following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.

Prominent French Eurosceptic Florian Philippot said Brussels’ restrictions had effectively deprived Spain of nearly a dozen of its “best helicopters” at the height of the emergency.

Accusing Brussels of sacrificing Europeans to its “stupid Russophobic ideology,” the Les Patriotes leader wrote on X, “These idiotic sanctions are definitely a real problem, not for Russia, but for European countries,” while demanding that an end be put to the restrictions.

Spain has deployed replacement helicopters, water bombers, and drones to fight the wildfires, but the substitutes reportedly carry less water and perform less effectively in difficult conditions.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday that the area lost this summer was six times greater than that lost at the same point in 2025, while warning of “difficult and complex hours” ahead.

France has evacuated around 250,000 people, as more than 13,500 fires and outbreaks have scorched over 116,000 hectares nationwide this season, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez reported, describing the situation as “completely unprecedented” and “far from over.”

The Gironde blaze near Bordeaux alone has burned around 42,000 hectares and become intense enough to generate a rare ‘fire cloud’, which can create its own winds and lightning, prompting sudden and unpredictable changes in the fire’s behavior.

Nunez said the blaze had taken on “a life of its own” and was spreading erratically, making it exceptionally difficult to contain.

Western Europe recorded its hottest June on record this year, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. France experienced its warmest June and hottest day ever recorded, while Spain registered its hottest June days, as extreme heat and dry conditions heightened the risk of wildfires.

Three-quarters of Poles have expressed a negative attitude toward Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, according to a recent poll.

The disapproval comes amid an ongoing scandal over Kiev’s veneration of Nazi collaborators involved in the mass killing of Poles during World War II.

Zelensky sparked outrage in Poland in May by giving an elite commando unit a “heroes of UPA” award referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign targeting mostly Polish Catholic residents of what is now Western Ukraine, which resulted in over 100,000 deaths. He and other top officials declared that “no one will ever dictate to Ukrainians which heroes to honor.”

In the survey, conducted earlier this month among 1,000 Polish adults, 75.8% of respondents said they viewed Zelensky “mostly” or “definitely” negatively, according to media group Wirtualna Polska, which commissioned the poll and reported the results on Saturday. The latter response was selected by 41.9%.

Negative views were overwhelming among supporters of conservative opposition parties. Even among voters backing the ruling coalition of pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk, however, only 45% described their attitude toward Zelensky as positive, with 41% choosing the qualified response “mostly.”

Among politically unaffiliated voters, 83% of respondents expressed a negative attitude toward Zelensky. Only 7% described their opinion as “mostly good,” while 10% declined to give an answer.

Negative sentiment toward Ukrainians in Poland has nevertheless increased over several issues, including disruption to agricultural markets caused by Brussels-backed food exports, crime and widespread perceptions that some migrants have abused Polish hospitality.

The UPA controversy has significantly accelerated the decline in Polish support for Ukraine, with even Tusk saying Zelensky had crossed a line. According to police data, reported hate crimes targeting Ukrainians have risen 30% year-on-year amid the dispute.

Zelensky was also stripped of Poland’s highest state distinction, the Order of the White Eagle. He claimed he had been unfairly targeted and blamed the fallout on Polish electoral politics ahead of next year’s general election.

Three women have been stabbed in an knife attack in the northwestern part of France’s capital. The rampage was cut short by an off-duty police officer, who subdued the attacker and took him into custody.

The incident took place near the Porte de Clichy metro station on Monday afternoon. Footage circulating online shows the 31-year-old suspect randomly attacking female passersby with two large kitchen knives.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the attacker was confronted by a police officer, who managed to detain him. The three victims, aged 19, 24, and 36, were hospitalized, with two in critical condition, he added.

The incident comes a day after a suspected hardline Islamist drove a van into a crowd in Germany’s capital city of Berlin, killing one person and injuring at least 29. After his vehicle crashed, the 21-year-old suspect reportedly proceeded to stab his victims before fleeing the scene.

The attack prompted a massive multi-hour manhunt for the attacker, who was ultimately found in west Berlin late on Sunday. The police said the suspect was shot dead at the scene after he refused to surrender and lunged at the officers with a knife.

US President Donald Trump has denied that the American military is struggling with dwindling munitions as it continues its war with Iran. The remarks come as a rare pause in the fighting entered a third day, following reports that low interceptor stocks were forcing the White House’s hand in the conflict.

On Sunday, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had held off on a major new attack on Iran over concerns that the Pentagon is running low on air defense missiles.

In a statement to the WSJ, Trump pushed back on the claim, saying, “We have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need.” He did not provide further details.

According to the WSJ, a planned two-week campaign of intensified attacks on Iran was shelved to give diplomacy some space, and Trump may ultimately order the resumption of strikes. The paper reported that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine had informed the White House of the declining inventories, and that while Caine believes the low stocks would not preclude a resumption of major combat operations, they would add to the risk.

One senior official was cited as saying continued strikes were having the opposite of their intended effect, keeping Iran united and focused on an external threat rather than pushing it back to the negotiating table.

In addition, the WSJ reported that the White House warned it would consider it a risk to national security if news organizations published updated government figures on how many Patriot and THAAD interceptors have actually been fired since the war began.

Independent estimates suggest why the numbers may be sensitive. A recent CSIS analysis indicates that US and allied forces expended between 1,060 and 1,430 Patriot interceptors in the war’s early phase alone, against a US production line in Camden, Arkansas that turns out roughly 600 to 620 a year. The US has also burned through hundreds of Tomahawk missiles, with the Pentagon receiving an estimated 15 new missiles a month.

Meanwhile, the Iranian Army said that it had suspended its strikes on US military assets across the region, explaining that Tehran’s strategy in the conflict “has been entirely retaliatory.”

Sweden is establishing a new civilian intelligence agency to improve its monitoring of Russia’s political leadership, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt has told The Economist.

First announced in May and modeled on Britain’s MI6, Sweden’s Foreign Intelligence Service (UND) is due to begin operations in January.

In an article published on Sunday, The Economist described UND as Bildt’s brainchild, saying the veteran politician concluded that the country’s existing military intelligence apparatus was ill-equipped to analyze the Russian leadership. In 2022, Stockholm assumed Russia would not send troops into Ukraine and now wants to ensure it “never repeats that embarrassing blunder,” the magazine said.

While the intelligence system was “very good at tracking the military developments on the ground,” it was “not as good at looking at the politics of Russia and where they were heading,” Bildt said.

Bildt, who served as foreign minister from 2006 to 2014, was a leading advocate of Ukraine’s closer integration with the EU and co-launched the bloc’s Eastern Partnership initiative together with Poland in 2009.

Weeks of unrest and clashes with police culminated in a Western-backed coup that toppled democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in February 2014.

Crimea, a predominantly Russian-speaking region, rejected the coup and voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia in 2014. The Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lugansk declared independence within the following months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly described the 2014 coup as the starting point of the current conflict. He has argued that Russia was compelled to defend the people of Donbass after Ukraine failed to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements and adopted what he described as discriminatory language and cultural policies targeting Russian speakers.

The top US commander in the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, has advised US President Donald Trump that striking Iranian targets around the Strait of Hormuz was no longer effective, Axios reported on Sunday, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Cooper, who leads US Central Command (CENTCOM), reportedly told Trump that the designated bombing targets in the area had largely been exhausted. He added that there was no point in continuing the strikes unless the US returned to major combat operations, according to Axios.

Trump paused the strikes on Friday, abruptly ending a 13-day bombing campaign amid reports that regional mediators were rushing to broker a new ceasefire. Several American news outlets reported that Trump was also concerned about dwindling stocks of interceptors used to counter Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attacks on bases across the Middle East. Trump, however, denied that the US was running short of ammunition.

On June 26, Iran warned that transit through the Strait of Hormuz would be permitted only via routes designated by Tehran.
Local media reported on Sunday that an oil tanker exploded in the Strait of Hormuz after striking a naval mine when it deviated from the designated navigation lane. Iranian authorities did not immediately comment on the reported incident.

Both sides have signaled that the truce, first reached in April and later expanded through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on June 17, is effectively over.

The latest round of hostilities erupted over differing interpretations of the MoU, which was intended to provide more time for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran insists it has the right to control all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and has labeled routes designated by the US Navy as illegal.

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Brazil are a strategic mistake that will harm the American economy, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has written in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

Last week, the US imposed an additional 12.5% tariff on Brazilian products on top of the previous 25%, potentially raising duties on some goods to 37.5%. According to Global Trade Alert, Brazil and Türkiye now share second place in terms of the scale of the tariffs Washington applies to them, behind China.

In an op-ed published on Sunday, Lula said he was “taken aback” by Trump’s initial announcement of 50% tariffs last year, which he described as politically motivated.

Highlighting the US trade surplus with Brazil, Lula argued that the tariffs would hurt American industries which are dependent on Brazilian imports, and make products including food, footwear, textiles, furniture, and auto parts more expensive for US consumers.

“Besides being unfair, the new tariffs are a strategic mistake: They will harm the US economy and the US partnership with Brazil,” Lula wrote.

“Latin America and the Caribbean need neither aircraft carriers patrolling their waters nor punitive tariffs,” Lula wrote.

On Saturday, Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who had planned to visit the country and reportedly discuss its voting system ahead of the presidential election in October.

“Brazil’s destiny is for Brazilians alone to determine – without foreign interference or subservience,” Lula said.

In the October election, Lula is expected to face Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Bolsonaro, a close ally of Trump, was sentenced to 27 years in prison last year for plotting a coup after losing his 2022 re-election bid. He has denied the charges as politically motivated.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that Brazil drop the legal proceedings against Bolsonaro, describing them as a “witch hunt.”

Iran has claimed that Ukraine attacked one of its commercial vessels in the Caspian Sea at Israel’s behest over the weekend.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky stated earlier that the vessel struck on Saturday was transporting military cargo. Iran, which has denied involvement in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, said the attack killed one sailor.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated his country’s position during separate calls with the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“Zelensky has attacked an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor. A blatant UN Charter violation done at Israel’s behest to drag Europe into its war,” Araghchi wrote on X on Sunday.

“In calls with EU High Rep Kallas and FM Lavrov, [I] made clear that what the freeloader in Kiev did CANNOT GO UNANSWERED,” he added.

Speaking to Israel’s N12 television channel, Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgeny Korniychuk claimed that the Iranian ship was carrying components for drones and missiles. Tehran, however, insisted that the cargo was entirely civilian.

Iran confirmed in 2022 that it had delivered a “small number” of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to Russia months before the Ukraine conflict began in February of that year. Moscow has maintained that all Geran-2 drones, believed to be based on the Shahed-136 design, are produced domestically.

In recent statements and interviews with the American press, Zelensky said he was “100 percent sure” that Russia had helped Iran during its conflict with the US and Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that Moscow supplied Tehran with weapons. US President Donald Trump also said recently that he did not believe either Russia or China had provided Iran with military assistance.

The US and Saudi Arabia have signed a cooperation agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which creates a legal basis for the participation of American companies in the development of the Saudi nuclear program. The document, known as a Section 123 Agreement, was signed by US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. The parties also signed an accompanying bilateral safeguards agreement, ensuring that the transferred technologies and materials will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Although the agreement has been signed, it is not yet in full effect and must undergo the congressional review process under US law. Such documents are subject to approximately 90-day congressional deliberations, during which legislators can attempt to block the agreement. Therefore, this agreement is considered signed but not yet fully implemented.

Negotiations on the main provisions were completed in the fall of 2025. On November 18, 2025, the US Department of Energy officially announced the signing of a joint declaration, formalizing the completion of negotiations on civil nuclear cooperation. At the time, Washington had already declared its intention to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia while simultaneously establishing a special bilateral safeguards mechanism.

The Section 123 Agreement does not automatically guarantee Saudi Arabia access to nuclear materials, uranium enrichment facilities, or a full range of sensitive technologies. Such agreements constitute the legal basis, as provided for by Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, without which American companies cannot supply nuclear equipment, components, and materials. Specific projects and export operations will require separate licenses and approvals from US regulatory authorities.

This aspect distinguishes the agreement with Saudi Arabia from the so-called ‘gold standard’ implemented in the US agreement with the United Arab Emirates. In 2009, Abu Dhabi voluntarily renounced domestic uranium enrichment and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. However, this was not a mandatory element of all US Section 123 agreements, but rather a stringent political standard promoted in states with new nuclear programs. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia’s refusal to accept similar restrictions demonstrates a significant shift in the US approach to nuclear nonproliferation.

Equally concerning is the absence of a requirement for the Kingdom to accede to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Additional Protocol. The Additional Protocol expands the IAEA’s ability to verify not only declared nuclear materials and facilities, but also potentially undeclared activities. It provides IAEA with additional access, reporting, and verification tools necessary to uncover hidden elements of the nuclear program.

We may recall the position of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, expressed in an interview with CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ in March 2018. He said that Riyadh is not seeking to acquire a nuclear bomb, but if Iran develops nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will follow suit “as soon as possible.” Therefore, Riyadh has effectively tied its potential decision regarding the military nuclear program to a change in Iran’s nuclear status. This position demonstrates that the Saudi nuclear program is necessary not only for energy production but also as a possible security guarantee in the event of a changing regional situation. Riyadh may not have the immediate goal of developing nuclear weapons, but it is striving to develop scientific, technical, and industrial potential that will provide additional security guarantees in the event of a radical deterioration of the situation in the region.

For its part, the US is guided by more than just security considerations. It is no secret that the American nuclear industry competes for the Saudi market primarily with Russia, as well as with China and other suppliers. The absence of a Section 123 Agreement would effectively exclude American companies from competing for multi-billion dollar contracts. Washington also fears that overly stringent conditions will push Riyadh toward cooperation with Moscow or Beijing, where national fuel cycle requirements can be discussed in a more flexible and mutually acceptable format. Therefore, the Trump administration is attempting to simultaneously support the national nuclear industry and prevent Saudi Arabia from drawing closer to US competitors. 

Saudi Arabia will face significant political and economic costs if it seeks to develop its own nuclear weapons. Abandonment of the non-proliferation regime or the discovery of a secret military nuclear program could lead to sanctions, strained relations with the US and Europe, reduced foreign investments, and problems with Saudi Vision 2030 projects. For the Saudi leadership, which strives to transform the country into a global investment, financial, and technology hub, such consequences could be extremely painful.

Furthermore, the emergence of a Saudi nuclear arsenal could trigger a chain reaction in the Middle East. Türkiye, Egypt, and other nations in the region could begin to consider their own military-nuclear or nuclear threshold capabilities. As a result, nuclear weapons will not necessarily enhance Saudi Arabia’s security: they could make the region more unstable, increase the likelihood of preemptive action, and reduce the predictability of key players. 

Therefore, Saudi Arabia is theoretically capable of eventually acquiring nuclear weapons, especially if a national uranium enrichment infrastructure is formed and the regional balance of power shifts dramatically. However, an agreement with the US does not yet guarantee this and does not provide the country with ready-made military nuclear capabilities. The main risk lies in the fact that Washington dropped the demand for a complete ban on enrichment and the mandatory IAEA Additional Protocol; this reduces the technological gap between the civilian nuclear program and a potential military program. 

For international security, the critical question is not so much whether Saudi Arabia intends to develop nuclear weapons today, but rather what technological potential it can accumulate over the next decade and how this process will be monitored by international institutions. This raises an obvious parallel with Iran. For many years, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, the US, Israel, and several Western countries suspected that uranium enrichment could eventually bring Iran closer to developing nuclear weapons. Iran’s  potential transition from civilian to military technologies became the basis for sanctions, pressure, and military deterrence.

Now, Saudi Arabia may follow a similar path of technological development. This does not mean that Riyadh has already decided to build a nuclear bomb. However, permission for domestic uranium enrichment creates the same risk: the creation of infrastructure that, under certain political circumstances, could be repurposed for military use. The main difference is that the Saudi program will be developed with direct US support and overseen by Washington. This raises the question of double standards: why is Iran’s possession of sensitive nuclear technology considered an unacceptable threat, while similar capabilities possessed by a US ally, Saudi Arabia, are potentially acceptable?

Even a possible normalization of relations is unlikely to automatically remove Israel’s concerns. Israel traditionally strives to maintain its strategic superiority and is firmly opposed to other states in the region developing their own uranium enrichment capabilities. The new agreement has already drawn criticism from Israel, which notes that the Saudi program could trigger a regional nuclear technology race. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that Israel would agree to Saudi Arabia acquiring a full nuclear fuel cycle without additional strict guarantees, even if it is officially intended exclusively for peaceful purposes. 

While the US-Saudi agreement doesn’t make Riyadh’s acquisition of nuclear weapons inevitable, it does set a highly controversial precedent. Washington is allowing its partner to develop the very same technologies that, in the case of Iran, it has long viewed as a potential path to creating a nuclear bomb. This could both weaken the non-proliferation regime and increase mutual distrust in the Middle East, where each state will seek to obtain the capabilities afforded to its neighbors and rivals.

Iran has urged countries worldwide against aiding the US in the war against the country, warning that any support for the aggression will make them legitimate targets for retaliation.

The US and Iran have been trading tit-for-tat strikes for the past two weeks following the collapse of a tentative ceasefire earlier this month.
The Pentagon has been largely focused on targets across southern and central Iran, while Tehran has attacked US military installations across the region. The renewed hostilities have disrupted maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and a number of merchant ships have been struck.

Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), warned nations worldwide against supporting the US aggression.

“Any country – whether Britain, the Persian Gulf states, or others – if they support the US in the war, they will become our legitimate targets,” Mohebbi said on Saturday. “Recently, US B-1 bombers used airbases in Britain. If they cooperate, they will become definite and legitimate targets for us.”

The UK became one of the key hubs for the US-Israeli war against Iran earlier this year, serving as the staging point for US strategic strikes. However, London refused to grant access to the bases ahead of the initial attack, further fueling tensions between then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump, who bemoaned what he considered to be insufficient support from a close ally.

“Over the past years, we have tolerated any breach by European governments. We warn these governments, especially the new government of the United Kingdom… and the government of Ukraine, not to make themselves pawns of the United States and to refrain from engaging in adventures that do not concern them,” Nikzad said at a parliamentary session on Sunday.

The mention of Ukraine follows an incident that occurred earlier this weekend, when Kiev attacked an Iranian merchant ship in the Caspian Sea, killing one person and injuring another. Kiev acknowledged the attack, claiming it targeted “vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran” in the waterway.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying it “risks further fueling and expanding the flames of war” and warning of potential retaliation for the “reckless” attack.

The Pentagon is contemplating what could become “the most sophisticated operation in military history”  to seize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, the New York Post reported on Saturday, citing sources.

A source familiar with the matter told the outlet that the plan would send thousands of ground troops to storm heavily fortified nuclear sites, with a small team of elite commandos tasked with the actual retrieval.

The exact whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium – which could be key to creating nuclear weapons – are unclear. Tehran has four major nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz, Isfahan, and Pickaxe Mountain, with the former three coming under US-Israeli strikes last year. Out of an estimated 440kg of enriched uranium, roughly 200 kilograms are believed to be stored in deep tunnels outside Isfahan, with additional quantities thought to be at Natanz.

As for Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified complex carved deep in the granite bedrock, it was spared in last year’s strikes because it was still under construction and largely empty at the time.

However, the facility has since been reportedly reinforced, with the US and Israel suggesting that Iran may have moved centrifuges – and potentially uranium – deeper underground there, though the site is not believed to be fully operational yet.

According to the NYP, regular US troops would be tasked with storming the facilities and forming a defense perimeter. In the meantime, much smaller forces, including Seal Team 6’s Silver Squadron, the Army’s 2nd Ranger Battalion, and the 21st Ordnance Company, would be handling and transporting the material once it is pulled from the mostly destroyed Fordo plant and the badly damaged Isfahan site, the report said.

The operation would reportedly require ground crews to clear booby traps and reopen collapsed tunnel entrances, with US warplanes tasked with establishing total control of an air corridor to fly out the uranium.

“I hate to say it, but I think the most likely way to get rid of Iran’s nuclear material, at least what they currently have, is a military operation because the negotiations aren’t going anywhere fast”, Joseph Rodgers, deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the NYP. He called the prospective raid potentially “the most sophisticated operation in military history,” pointing to the logistics of operating deep inside hostile territory while guarding multiple sensitive sites.

“This would be a logistically heavy and difficult operation in a contested environment,” Rodgers added. “Iran’s military is pretty destroyed, but they’re still more sophisticated than the Cubans that were guarding [Venezuelan leader Nicolas] Maduro.”

The New York Times reported last month that much of Iran’s uranium is believed buried so deep that even America’s most powerful bunker-buster bombs may fail to destroy it, warning that a retrieval raid would carry major risks as uranium can turn highly toxic if exposed to moisture.

Typhoon Hongxia, internationally known as Noul, made landfall in southern China’s Guangdong Province early Sunday, triggering mass evacuations, widespread transportation disruptions, and torrential rain across southern China and Hong Kong.

The year’s 12th tropical cyclone – the strongest to hit China this year – came ashore near Pinghai Town in Huidong County, Huizhou City, at around 3:50 AM local time (19:50 GMT Saturday), with maximum sustained winds of 162 kph (100 mph), according to China’s National Meteorological Center. It was the first typhoon to make landfall in Guangdong this year.

More than 715,000 people were evacuated across the province ahead of the storm amid fears of flooding and landslides. The authorities suspended classes, work, production, transportation, and business activities in 12 cities.

The typhoon caused disruptions across the region. More than 190 high-speed rail services in Guangdong were canceled; regular train services were suspended.

An iron sheet shed was blown over by Typhoon Hongxia. pic.twitter.com/W1dhXNluJs

— boniy fu (@boniy520) July 26, 2026

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge temporarily halted operations, and airports across Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Xiamen were heavily affected. More than 1,800 flights across Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong were grounded.

Terrifying Typhoon Noul moment caught on camera in Guangdong on July 25: the door was blown open, a baby crib was swept away—until it flipped mid-roll, and the child managed to crawl back inside. pic.twitter.com/xNJ1lkIRZ1

— Shanghai Daily (@shanghaidaily) July 26, 2026

Shenzhen also suspended rail services and partially closed metro lines, ports, and expressways before gradually restoring operations as conditions improved.

Les autorités de la province chinoise du Guangdong ont évacué plus de 710 000 personnes avant le passage du typhon Noul, appelé « Hongxia » en Chine. pic.twitter.com/ucmqMpRg4s

— Renard Jean-Michel (@Renardpaty) July 26, 2026

Hong Kong’s Observatory initially raised the storm warning to Typhoon Signal No. 9, the second-highest tropical cyclone warning in the city’s system, as Noul passed within 80 km of the city before downgrading the alert later in the day.

Typhoon “Hongxia” caused enormous damage to Guangdong Province, Huizhou, and Shenzhen. #typhoon pic.twitter.com/Hjk7iUdW1i

— Johnson He (@Szmyled) July 26, 2026

At least 21 people were injured, according to local media. Strong winds brought down scaffolding at a high-rise construction site in the Cheung Sha Wan district.

🌪️ Typhoon Hongxia slams southern China, forcing more than 800,000 people to evacuate

The storm made landfall in Guangdong Province on the morning of July 26, packing winds of up to 45 m/s (101 mph). Authorities closed schools, suspended parts of the public transport network,… pic.twitter.com/WRzwGkynGi

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) July 26, 2026

Videos posted online show uprooted trees, roofs ripped from buildings, flooded streets, and gale-force winds hurling debris, dumpsters, and vehicles through roads in Hong Kong and neighboring Shenzhen.

Un potente tifón arrasa todo a su paso por China

El potente tifón Noul ha traído fuertes lluvias y vientos a su paso por China. Alerta naranja por tifón el domingo por la mañana, después de que Noul tocara tierra en la provincia de Guangdong.

Al menos 21 personas heridas. pic.twitter.com/1UHH5pDc2R

— RT en Español (@ActualidadRT) July 26, 2026

Although Noul weakened rapidly after moving inland, forecasters warned that heavy to torrential rain would continue through Tuesday across southern China.

Typhoon Noul, the first typhoon to make landfall in Guangdong this year, landed with 45m/s winds. Its circulation battered Shenzhen, triggering red/orange typhoon alerts, torrential rain and gusts up to 45.7m/s. All railways are suspended until noon; partial metro, cross-border… pic.twitter.com/CQ3UJsmNAp

— Shenzhen Pages (@ShenzhenPages) July 26, 2026

The highest-level flash flood alert was issued for parts of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces.

Shenzhen is taking a direct hit today as Severe Typhoon Hongxia lashes the city with powerful winds and heavy rain pic.twitter.com/1QRqTeycf7

— Surajit (@surajit_ghosh2) July 25, 2026

Beijing has activated a national emergency response for Guangdong following the typhoon’s landfall. A working team was dispatched to assess the damage, assist the local authorities with evacuations and resettlement, and help ensure displaced residents have access to basic necessities.

A Russian-US space crew returned safely to Earth on Sunday after spending more than eight months aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams landed in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, which touched down under parachutes southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan.

The crew undocked from the ISS earlier in the day after transferring to the Soyuz spacecraft for the return journey.

“This morning, the spacecraft undocked from the Rassvet module. Its deorbiting and descent to Earth proceeded normally!” Russia’s Rosatom State Corporation said in a statement.

Following routine post-landing medical checks, recovery teams will fly the crew by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, NASA said.

Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev, and Williams had been aboard the ISS since November. Their 241-day mission was the first spaceflight for Williams and Mikaev, and the second for Kud-Sverchkov.

After landing, the crew was greeted with traditional Russian nesting dolls bearing hand-painted likenesses of each astronaut and cosmonaut, a longstanding post-mission tradition.

Ahead of the crew’s departure, their ISS crewmate Jessica Meir shared farewell photos of the team on X, calling it “A bittersweet day on the Space Station.”

A bittersweet day on the @Space_Station, as we prepare to say goodbye to the Soyuz 74S crew. Expedition 74 has been full of science, technology demonstrations and station maintenance, and most importantly, enduring friendship and “huggles”. See you back on Earth my friends! pic.twitter.com/B84kuzNq16

— Jessica Meir (@Astro_Jessica) July 25, 2026

Seven crew members remain on the ISS. Sunday’s departure of the Soyuz MS-28 trio officially begins the station’s Expedition 75 mission.

Iran has formally accused the US of deliberately striking two of its search-and-rescue vessels in the Persian Gulf, calling the attack a war crime. The accusation comes as the US maintains a blockade of Iranian ports and continues to attack the Iranian Navy.

The charges were made public in the letter on Friday, sent by Gholamhossein Darzi, Iran’s deputy envoy to the UN, to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the UN Security Council president, International Maritime Organization chief Arsenio Dominguez, and the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Darzi said the Naji-15 and Naji-16 were struck in the early hours of Thursday off the coast of Hormozgan Province while they were engaged “exclusively” in search-and-rescue duties, sustaining significant damage. The diplomat did not mention any casualties.

He added that their “sole mission is to save the lives of persons in distress at sea” regardless of their affiliation, stressing that targeting rescue vessels “amounts to a war crime.” Darzi went on to say that Iranian rescue boats and marine ambulances have been repeatedly targeted since the US-Israeli operation against Iran began on February 28.

US officials have not responded to the accusation, although US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces have been attacking Iranian “maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage facilities” and coastal targets to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian and commercial vessels.

Tehran’s accusation comes amid an escalating standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, with the US maintaining the blockade of Iranian ports. Iran has said vessels can pass through the strait if they abide by its regulations.

On Saturday, Axios reported that US President Donald Trump suspended strikes on Iran after nearly two weeks of nightly bombing to give more space for diplomacy. A New York Times report, however, suggested that the halt was caused by concerns that the Pentagon is running low on air defense missiles.

Germany is rapidly losing industrial jobs and competitiveness, Federation of German Industries (BDI) chief Tanja Goenner has warned, describing the situation as “critical.”

The BDI, Germany’s main industry association, represents around 39 industrial groups and more than 100,000 companies employing over 8 million people, making it the voice of Germany’s industrial core.

In an interview with the news agency dpa released on Saturday, Goenner said Germany’s industrial sector is losing around 15,000 jobs every month, blaming structural weaknesses and external geopolitical pressures.

“The situation in industry is critical,” she said, adding that “Germany has lost ground in terms of competitiveness” as a business and manufacturing hub.

She said further deindustrialization could still be avoided by investing in new technologies such as AI but stressed that political decisions in Germany and across Europe should be judged by a single standard: “Does it contribute to competitiveness?”

The BDI estimates are broadly in line with the latest figures from Germany’s Federal Employment Agency, which show 177,000 manufacturing jobs were lost over the past 12 months, led by declines in the automotive, machinery, and metal sectors. Around two-thirds of applications for short-term work benefits also come from industry, indicating many manufacturers cannot keep workers fully employed without state support.

Volkswagen, the country’s largest automaker, recently signaled up to 100,000 job cuts worldwide. Auto supplier ZF plans to eliminate 14,000 positions by 2028, while Bosch intends to cut more than 20,000 jobs by 2030. Consulting firm Horvath estimates another 100,000 industrial jobs could disappear this year, with cuts expected across automotive manufacturing, mechanical engineering, and construction.

German energy woes

Once Europe’s industrial powerhouse, Germany has struggled with near-zero growth for years. The 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 investment remains weak, while business insolvencies reached their highest level in 20 years in the second quarter of 2026. BASF, Bosch, Volkswagen, and more than a dozen other German manufacturers have closed factories since 2022.

The US war on Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which have rattled already volatile global energy markets this year, have further worsened the situation. Earlier this week, Berliner Zeitung estimated Germany is now paying five times more for imported gas than before abandoning its long-term Russian supply contracts.

US President Donald Trump has held off on a major attack on Iran over concerns that the Pentagon is running low on air-defense missiles, the New York Times reports, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The two sides have exchanged strikes for nearly two weeks since a fragile ceasefire reached in spring collapsed, accusing each other of violating a 14-point memorandum of understanding signed on June 17.

On Thursday, Trump threatened Iran and the Houthis with “major military punishment” after the Yemen-based group struck two Saudi oil tankers, telling Axios he was considering a “massive attack” against Iran that would be “bigger than ever before.”

According to the article published on Saturday, the decision followed a meeting with senior advisers and cabinet officials a day earlier that reportedly focused on the Pentagon’s shrinking inventory of Patriot interceptors and other air defenses. Two people briefed on the discussion told the outlet that officials also feared a wider regional war, alienating Gulf allies vulnerable to Iranian retaliation, a global economic downturn, and growing energy and refugee crises.

“Few if any in Mr. Trump’s inner circle believed the plan to escalate was wise,” the NYT wrote, citing two people briefed on the discussion. One senior US official argued that further strikes were keeping Iran cohesive and focused on an external threat rather than forcing negotiations.

An analysis in April by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that the initial campaign consumed at least 45% of America’s Precision Strike Missiles, nearly half of its Patriot interceptors, more than half of its THAAD missiles, and around 30% of its Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Earlier this week, the NYT and Wall Street Journal cited US officials as saying that Iranian missiles are becoming increasingly effective at penetrating US defenses because of their speed and maneuverability, as well as Iran’s evolving tactics.

Last Friday, three US soldiers were killed in Jordan when a ballistic missile penetrated US air defenses. A fourth soldier died in Iraq while ordnance from a downed Iranian drone was being destroyed.

The IRGC has also claimed that Iranian strikes disabled US radar, communications, and air-defense systems in Kuwait, including a Patriot battery, and damaged several MQ-9 drones. Neither Washington nor Kuwait has confirmed the claims.

No US strikes were reported overnight into Saturday, marking the first pause after 13 consecutive nights of attacks.

Is France becoming a new Mexico? While gangland killings are increasingly common across the country – even in places such as Nantes, which was considered the most pleasant French city in 2012 – attacks targeting elected officials are not usual.

During the night of July 20-21, the mayor of Ales in the south of France, Christophe Rivenq, was exfiltrated from his home by the elite RAID tactical unit (Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion) and put under protection. According to Le Parisien, there was probably a car bomb next to his house. A few days before, Rivenq said his wife found tags on the fence and a letter in the mailbox with two 9 mm bullets and the signature of the DZ Mafia.

The DZ Mafia is a network of organized criminal groups forming a kind of cartel. It first became famous under this designation in 2023, but everything started long ago in the northern districts of Marseille before expanding – so far, we know that it is active in France, Belgium, Morocco, and Italy. They are accused of murder, assassination, drug trafficking, extortion, money laundering, procuring, and kidnapping.

The name ‘DZ Mafia’ refers to the alpha-2 code for Algeria (DZ). The origins of the organization’s founding members and historical sections chiefs couldn’t be clearer. But the group headed by Mehdi Abdelatif Laribi has rivals. Apart from the traditional gangs of gypsies, they fight with ‘the Yodas’, founded by Felix Bingui (half French, half Central African), and ‘the Blacks’, founded by two brothers from the Comoros. While it’s impossible to know if they were all born in France and are second or third-generation immigrants or if some arrived there later, they all started their business in the notorious gateway into France that is Marseille.

The French connection really had a makeover. And with Europe importing migrants endlessly, the face and size of the mafia in France will keep mutating.

But Rivenq is only a mayor. What can a local politician can do if this gang is able to corrupt the authorities and high-ranking politicians rumored to be drug users? According to FranceInfo: “While the fight against drug trafficking has been declared a national priority by the government, several testimonies corroborate the fact that some members of parliament and staff use narcotics, particularly to cope with workload and pressure.” Coming from state media, that sounds like a euphemism.

The French government does not do much against these gangs – and even if it really wanted to, would it be able to act? The police can’t enter many neighborhoods where gangsters are in charge, who even ‘take care’ of the poor population (for example, providing school supplies to families) in order to prevent outside meddling in their business.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) has dismissed its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, over allegations of sexual misconduct.

The chief prosecutor was ousted by the Assembly of States Parties on Friday, more than two years after the allegations first surfaced. The move was backed by an overwhelming majority of the court’s 125 members, with 82 voting in favor of Khan’s removal, 18 voting against, and 15 abstaining.

The ICC issued a brief statement on the assembly’s decision, saying the now-former chief prosecutor “committed serious misconduct and serious breach of duty.” The court did not provide further details, citing the need to respect “the privacy and rights of all those involved in this process.”

Khan’s legal team condemned his removal, criticizing the process and the fact that he was not allowed to address the assembly ahead of the vote. The decision was “determined by a process in which he was never given a fair opportunity to be heard and in defiance of the conclusions of the independent judges who examined the full evidential record,” attorney Tayab Ali said in a statement, pledging to challenge it “through all available legal mechanisms.”

The accusations first emerged in early 2024, when AP reported that Khan was accused of coercing a female aide into a sexual relationship. Khan has denied any wrongdoing and has not faced criminal charges. He remained on administrative leave from May 2025 until June 8 this year, when he was formally suspended pending dismissal.

During Khan’s tenure, the ICC issued arrest warrants for the leaders of Russia and Israel, although neither country recognizes the court’s jurisdiction. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova were targeted in March 2023 over the alleged “unlawful transfer” of Ukrainian children. Moscow has rejected the allegations, saying it evacuated unaccompanied children from the war zone and is ready to return them to their legal guardians upon request.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant similarly denounced the arrest warrants issued over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Last year, US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Khan, citing the warrants against Israeli officials and the ICC’s attempts to prosecute US troops.

The majority of Germans do not believe their armed forces are capable of protecting the country, a recent YouGov survey has found.

According to the International Flagship Survey published on Friday, 70% of respondents in Germany said they are not confident their armed forces are strong enough to fend off an attack. YouGov surveyed 2,079 adults across Germany from June 17 to July 1.

Although 40% of respondents say Germany spends too little on defense, 77% oppose higher taxes to fund defense spending, while 62% reject cuts to public services and 59% oppose increased government borrowing.

Germany recorded the lowest level of confidence among the seven countries included in the poll. Around 57% of respondents in Poland, 53% in both Britain and Australia, and 48% in Canada also doubted their armed forces’ ability to protect the country. By comparison, 52% of French respondents and 77% of Americans expressed confidence in their militaries.

Germany has adopted a plan to increase defense spending, expand active-duty military from around 183,000 personnel to 260,000, and grow the reserve force to 200,000, citing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The government reintroduced a military registration and monitoring system in January, sparking debate and protests. Deutsche Welle also reported a sharp rise in the number of young people opting out of military service as conscientious objectors.

The German economy is reeling from the cost-of-living crisis and high energy prices, exacerbated by the phaseout of Russian energy and the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Moscow has condemned what it calls the “militarization” of Germany and other European countries. President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will not attack a NATO member unless it is attacked first.

A van plowed into a crowd during a gay pride parade in Berlin on Saturday night, killing one person and injuring at least 29 others. The attack prompted a massive manhunt for the suspect, who ended up shot dead by police on Sunday.

The incident took place on Christopher Street Day, the German capital’s annual pride event, on Lennestrasse near the Tiergarten park in central Berlin.

Police spokesman Florian Nath said the suspect has been identified and remains at large. “According to the information available so far, he is a man known to the police and believed to be associated with the Islamist extremist milieu.”

Police later released a photograph of the suspect, identifying him as 21-year-old Abdul B., who was wearing a black hoodie and white pants. 

Police said the driver fled the scene after the vehicle hit a tree and that helicopters were deployed in the search. According to the Berliner Morgenpost, witnesses said the suspect was driving a white minivan, possibly a Citroen. Police later confirmed that the vehicle was a passenger van. The suspect was found in West Berlin late on Sunday and fatally wounded after lunging at officers with a knife, the city’s police have said in a statement.

Organizers canceled the parade, which was set to resume on Sunday.

‼️ [ 🇩🇪 ALLEMAGNE ]

🔸 De « nombreuses victimes » signalées après qu'un véhicule a foncé dans la foule lors de la gay pride à Berlin. pic.twitter.com/DgMjXykAGP

— Little Think Tank (@L_ThinkTank) July 25, 2026

Police spokesman Florian Nath said investigators were examining whether the suspect attacked bystanders after leaving the vehicle, following witness reports that people were lying on the ground with stab wounds.

“This is an attack on our free and open society,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner wrote on X. “After a peaceful and colorful pride parade, a gathering celebrating a tolerant and open Berlin was attacked in the most brutal way.”

Germany has seen several vehicle attacks in recent years. The deadliest incident took place in 2016, when an Islamist and failed asylum seeker drove a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring more than 50.

Iran has condemned a Ukrainian strike on a cargo ship in the Caspian Sea that killed one sailor and injured another. The Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine’s acting chargé d’affaires over the attack.

In a post on X on Saturday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky boasted about what he called “very strong results” from long-range strikes targeting “vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran, as well as a warship.”

The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying it “risks further fueling and expanding the flames of war.” It urged other nations to take a “responsible stance toward this reckless action by the Ukrainian regime” and hold its leadership accountable.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not hesitate to protect its national interests and security,” the ministry warned.

The ministry also said that “Iran has never intervened in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian confirmed in 2022 that Tehran had delivered a “small number” of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to Russia months before the Ukraine conflict began in February that year. Moscow has insisted that all Geran-2 drones, believed to be based on the Shahed-136 design, are produced domestically.

The US has developed its own version of the Iranian Shahed-136, the LUCAS, which it used during the war with Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that Iran had not requested military aid and that Moscow was not supplying it with weapons. US President Donald Trump also said recently that he did not believe either Russia or China were providing military assistance to Iran.

Kiev has actively sought to become involved in the Middle East conflict triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year. The Ukrainian leadership has claimed to have secured agreements with Gulf states to provide specialists and technology to counter Iranian drones and hopes to obtain additional air defense systems and munitions in return.

According to Zelensky, more than 200 Ukrainian military specialists have been deployed to the Middle East under the agreements. The group reportedly suffered casualties and equipment losses when an Iranian strike hit a depot in Dubai during the first wave of hostilities in the region. Kiev has denied the incident took place.

What is it with British ‘knights of the realm’ that they seem to be forever mired in corruption, scandal, and disgrace? Former Olympian Sebastian Coe can never avoid all three of those ‘specialities’, yet like his fellow Lords, Ladies, Sirs, and Dames, he appears to think that sitting high upon that horse means that he can dole out moral judgment or collective punishment. And Russia is still in his sights.

Who is Seb?

A double Olympic champ over 1,500 m in 1980 and 1984, Coe came through the ‘unusual’ training system of Loughborough University’s George Gandy. Gandy was ‘modernizing’ strength and conditioning for the university rugby team and notorious for his adherence to advances from the US, which reportedly included substances that would subsequently be outlawed.

Coe went on to translate track success to business and political wins, including nabbing a parliamentary seat for Britain’s Conservatives in 1992. He was appointed, or anointed, a Life Peer in 2000 and became Lord Coe. Yet, whether on the track or off, scandal seemed to follow the London-born man.

He returned to global prominence when the Olympic Games were returning to the British capital. The head of the London 2012 Bid Committee and then the London Organizing Committee, he outraged many with his backroom dealing and ability to walk in grey areas to get the games to London. These grey areas included bribes.

I think you see where this is going. Seb is about as clean as a piglet that’s been rolling about in a pigsty that hasn’t been cleaned in a decade. And that’s before addressing his predecessor at the apex of athletics, Lamine Diack. In January 2022, the late-Diack’s son Papa joined us on Capital Sports to explain how Lord Coe was not unaware of corruption in athletics, had been an active participant in corruption, and was willing to sell out others while staying ‘clean’. This while using the Diacks to get him elected to the top job.

So now, we finally get to what Seb’s latest scandal involves, and you will be unsurprised to learn that it is his favorite whipping boy – Russia.

Still no for Russia

When Russia was outed as having a major doping problem and banned from international athletics in November 2015, Coe was just over three months into his newly minted role of International Association of Athletics Federations and was fully aware of doping within the sport.

“There is no way, none, zero, not a chance, that Coe was oblivious to Russian doping, or doping from Brits, Irish, or anyone. He came through a doping system, raced with fellow dopers, and then he turns on the Russians. Give me a break,” a top-level British coach told me when producing a documentary for Capital Sports in 2016. At that time, it was baffling that Russia alone would be made an example of, while nothing was done within the sport to stop the scourge of doping.

“A conditional pathway back into international competition” for Russian and Belarusian athletes was discussed, Coe told the media three weeks ago, but opted against it. This from a man who told AFP in 2025 that allowing Russia back was not something he “could ever really be neutral about.” In other words, he was never going to allow Russia or Belarus back into athletics, because he had chosen a side. Because Seb never forgets.

‘Septic’ Coe

Within the sports community, Coe is widely known as ‘Septic’ and realized this when he tried to take over the IOC last year. The consummate politician and networker, he found doors slammed in his face before the election. Only one round of voting was needed to make history and have Zimbabwe swimming legend Kirsty Coventry become the first woman and African elected to the presidency.

His magnanimity, Spanish media said, was linked to a statement the Zimbabwean made regarding the IOC’s treatment of Russia and Belarus – “If conflicts in Africa don’t trigger sanctions against national teams, then Russia shouldn’t be isolated.”

Seb has not forgiven the IOC and its members for wholeheartedly rejecting him. He probably doesn’t even know why he was rejected. He will blame Russia, or Africans, or Johnny Bloody Foreigner. Because he won’t look in the mirror and realize that a history of cheating and corruption, of double-dealing and double-crossing, of betraying friends, allies, and supporters all in a quest for gold and glory builds a lot of negative karma. From the late 1970s in the Loughborough ‘factory’ to Olympic podiums, from the dank halls of Westminster to the murky heights of sports administration, Seb Coe’s world view has formed very simply. The planet revolves around him and we are lucky to inhabit it. And how to cure him of his Russophobia, as he has been accused of by Russia’s Stanislav Pozdnyakov? Simple, if Papa Diack’s experience is to be believed. A wire transfer and steak dinner.

Two British Army engineers have been arrested after allegedly stealing an armored personnel carrier from a military base and driving it through a row of civilian vehicles, causing an estimated £100,000 ($135,000) in damage, according to UK media.

Footage of the alleged joyride, first published by The Sun on Friday, shows a 15-ton Bulldog armored vehicle barreling down a narrow road lined with parked cars at Swinton Barracks, part of Tidworth Garrison in the village of Perham Down, Wiltshire. The vehicle appears to struggle to go straight and squeeze between the cars, leaving a trail of destruction. At least two vehicles were reportedly heavily damaged, including a van and an SUV.

The outlet, citing military sources, reported that the soldiers had been drinking off base before returning to the barracks early on Friday morning. One allegedly took control of the tracked vehicle while another accompanied him, as the Bulldog normally requires a crew of two.

😱 Shock Video: Tanked-Up Soldiers Go Full Fast & Furious in Stolen Armoured Beast 🪖💥​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Two allegedly drunken British Army engineers from 26 Engineer Regiment went full Fast & Furious in the early hours of this morning at… pic.twitter.com/x8YeoY8ySP

— J Stewart (@triffic_stuff_) July 24, 2026

According to the report, the Bulldog itself was undamaged and was later neatly parked in a designated bay. No injuries have been reported.

An army spokesperson later confirmed that two soldiers had been arrested following an incident at Perham Down, but declined to provide further details.

“We expect the highest standards from our personnel. Two soldiers have been arrested by the Royal Military Police following an incident at Perham Down this morning... We will not comment further while an investigation is ongoing,” the spokesperson said.

Decades of underinvestment have also left the military struggling to maintain its equipment. A shortage of specialized dry docks and qualified technicians has left the Royal Navy unable to service its nuclear submarine fleet, with all five of its Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarines reportedly stuck in port due to a maintenance backlog. Years of retirements have also shrunk the surface fleet. Last week, the UK Ministry of Defense confirmed the retirement of two Type 23 frigates, leaving the Royal Navy with just five frigates and six destroyers, down from 33 surface combat vessels in the late 1990s.

Despite the mounting problems, Britain has continued pushing ahead with militarization as part of the broader Western buildup over what it describes as the “Russian threat” – claims Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as “nonsense.” Last year, London unveiled its new Strategic Defense Review (SDR), setting a goal of achieving “warfighting readiness” by 2035.

The new defense secretary, Wes Streeting, this week pledged to make the military a spending priority for Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government. Critics, however, argue that the current state of the armed forces shows Britain is no longer capable of acting as a global military power.

For years, liberal elites across the West dismissed warnings about far-left extremism as relics of the Cold War or right-wing paranoia. Today, the evidence is undeniable. A recent US-led global initiative has the ambition to finally confront this resurgence of political terrorism with the seriousness it demands. This is not a partisan crusade but a defense of civilization against those who would burn it down in the name of utopia.

The West in flames

Europe is bleeding from a thousand cuts inflicted by far-left networks. Railways have been repeatedly sabotaged, power grids targeted, and commercial enterprises struck, inflicting billions in cumulative losses while paralyzing supply chains and public services. Police officers have been assaulted, elected officials threatened, and communities shaken – echoing the days of the 1970s Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof.

In Germany, far-left violence surged more than 40% in a single year. The authorities logged 321 sabotage investigations in 2025 alone, which were overwhelmingly aimed at military, police, railway, and energy targets. Climate activism has fused with anti-capitalism, class warfare, feminism, and outright hostility to European industry and traditional values. What begins as protests and occupations too often escalates to sabotage harming ordinary citizens.

The longest blackout in Berlin since World War II struck in early 2026, courtesy of the Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group). This far-left outfit, active since 2011 with at least 13 attacks under its belt, torched power cables near a gas-fired plant, plunging tens of thousands of households and businesses into darkness for days amid freezing temperatures. Hospitals switched to emergency power, trains halted, and daily life fractured. Their manifesto framed it as “resistance” against fossil fuels and capitalism, but the victims were everyday Germans.

Italy tells a similar story of escalating chaos. During the Winter Olympics, coordinated rail sabotages forced the cancellation of roughly 40,000 train services. A premature explosion later killed two anarchists preparing yet another railway assault. Official figures show a staggering 450% rise in anti-train sabotages in 2024-2025. An attack on the TAL oil pipeline left it offline for five days. In Greece, over 80% of radical violence stems from far-left actors.

These attacks are not isolated incidents but manifestations of a broader pattern of escalating political violence. In the US, violent far-left actors accounted for 63% of recorded anti-government attacks and plots in 2025. Their tactics have expanded beyond sabotage to include targeted political assassinations, including the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The threat is transnational, fluid, and growing bolder.

Behind the violence lies a web of organizations blending climate hysteria with revolutionary ideology. Groups like Antifa, operating across borders, exemplify the danger. The US has designated four violent far-left entities from Germany, Italy, and Greece as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Hungary under Viktor Orban took similar action after Antifa thugs attacked a peaceful patriotic march in Budapest, injuring participants. A 2025 European Parliament motion, backed by dozens of MEPs, called for declaring Antifa a terrorist organization and investigating its financial ties – including potential links to George Soros.

Support from certain foundations – such as those associated with Soros or Germany’s Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – has sustained overlapping causes that blend radical left objectives with broader progressive efforts. Mainstream media and the liberal establishment obsessively spotlight far-right threats – often conflating them with patriotic or conservative voices – while downplaying or excusing far-left excesses. In parts of the EU, these networks have infiltrated state administrations and influential think tanks, embedding ideology into governance.

This funding ecosystem sustains a global far-left apparatus that exploits open borders, lenient justice systems, and elite guilt to advance its aims. Ongoing legal proceedings, such as those in Dresden involving serious charges against Antifa members, underscore the organized nature of the threat.

Trump’s America steps up

The Trump administration has unleashed a global campaign to crush this radical left terrorism. In mid-July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism in Washington, drawing representatives from over 65 countries, including participants from Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, to address this shared challenge to governance, infrastructure security, and citizen safety.

The ministerial yielded concrete outcomes that mark a new phase of coordinated international action. Delegates forged agreement on three hard-hitting pillars of action: ramped-up designations and accountability, with the US already branding four dangerous far-left groups as terrorists and reviewing more; deeper operational teamwork through intensified intelligence sharing, coordinated travel bans, and urgent defenses for railways, power grids, and other critical lifelines; and fresh US visa restrictions slamming the door on those who engage in or bankroll far-left terror. Germany stepped forward to host the next working session, while Treasury officials vowed to tear apart funding pipelines with rewards of up to millions for tips that disrupt the money flow.

This fight against a shared ideological enemy – one hostile to traditional societies, national identities, and ordered liberty – offers common ground. Powers such as China and Russia, with their own experiences managing ideological extremism and emphasis on domestic order, might stand to benefit from – and contribute to – practical cooperation in safeguarding stability and development.

The cost of selective silence

The liberal establishment’s selective outrage is damning. While far-right actors – frequently defenders of national sovereignty and cultural continuity – face relentless scrutiny and persecution, far-left violence is often romanticized as “protest” or explained away as a reaction to “injustice.” This double standard has emboldened extremists, allowing them to infiltrate institutions and erode public safety.

The US initiative may mark a turning point, both for Western countries and beyond. By placing violent far-left networks within a broader counterterrorism framework, strengthening investigations, disrupting financial support, and expanding international cooperation, it advances the principle that no movement is exempt from accountability when it embraces violence. Other governments can contribute by improving intelligence sharing, addressing transnational networks, and ensuring that public safety remains above political considerations.

As violent far-left extremism becomes increasingly transnational, governments cannot afford selective approaches to political violence. Attacks on critical infrastructure and politically motivated violence threaten security, economic resilience, and public confidence across regions. A broad international coalition focused on confronting violent extremism can help reinforce a fundamental principle: political grievances cannot be pursued through terror.

The German government has refused to clarify whether it received warnings ahead of the Nord Stream sabotage, Ostdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (OAZ) reported on Friday, citing a written response to an opposition lawmaker.

Anna Rathert, an MP from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, asked the chancellor’s office whether it received any information from foreign intelligence agencies before the twin pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, were bombed in September 2022. She also asked why the government had not taken any precautions.

In the document, which was obtained by the outlet, the government said the issue “touches on the national interest to a particularly high degree” and could jeopardize “the trusting cooperation” between Germany and its allies. The document added that the response should be treated as “neither confirming nor denying” the matter.

In 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA had warned European intelligence agencies, including Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), about a potential attack on the Nord Stream by a pro-Ukrainian group. Der Spiegel and Cicero magazine later reported that the BND received reports from the CIA and the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD), but the chancellery dismissed them as “tall tales.”

Germany has alleged that the sabotage was carried out by a Ukrainian team using a small rented yacht. Russia has argued, however, that such a sophisticated operation could not have been carried out without Western assistance. Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the US may have been involved.

The Saudi-led coalition struck targets in the Houthi-held Yemeni port of Hodeidah on Saturday following attacks on Saudi ships in the Red Sea.

The Houthis, an Iranian-backed Shiite group that controls large parts of civil war-torn Yemen, announced a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia last week in response to what it called the unjust “siege” of the country.

Coalition spokesman Major General Turki Al-Maliki said in a statement that the strikes targeted military sites used to “threaten commercial vessels.”

According to the Houthi-aligned Al Masirah TV, telecommunications facilities were hit. The broadcaster added that a woman was injured in a strike on Kamaran Island off Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

The group’s political wing condemned the attacks and vowed to meet “escalation with escalation,” according to Anadolu.

The Saudi Defense Ministry says its forces targeted Houthi military sites in Hodeidah Governorate, including sites linked to attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea. The port of Hodeidah was not targeted, the Saudi MoD said. https://t.co/CaxWZU4byW pic.twitter.com/TTAIOTyHHi

— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) July 24, 2026

#BREAKING Saudi airstrikes against Hodeidah, Yemen. pic.twitter.com/yWC1wXSnuT

— Global OSINT (@GlobalOSINTHQ) July 24, 2026

Shortly after the strike on Hodeidah, Saudi Arabia’s industrial city of Jazan was reportedly hit in an apparent Houthi retaliatory attack. Reports said a large fire broke out at a facility operated by the kingdom’s state-run oil company, Aramco.

Fires burn at the ARAMCO oil terminal in Jazan, Saudi Arabia, following a ballistic missile attack by Ansar Allah (Houthis). https://t.co/uoqjJN3W0y pic.twitter.com/6BT4I5kWz5

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) July 25, 2026

The Houthis said they targeted two Saudi-owned tankers this week. Riyadh acknowledged that the Encelia caught fire and later said another Saudi vessel, NCC MASA, sustained minor hull damage in a separate attack on Friday.

After the war in Gaza broke out in 2023, the Houthis began firing missiles and drones at Israel and attacking ships in what they said was an act of solidarity with the Palestinians. The attacks stopped after the Houthis reached an agreement with the US in May 2025.

US President Donald Trump vowed on Thursday to inflict “major military punishment” on the Houthis, describing the group as “a proxy of Iran.” The US bombed Yemen alongside the UK and Israel in 2025. 

US President Donald Trump abruptly switched planes after leaving a NATO summit in Türkiye this month following reports of a supposed Iranian plot to kill him, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Trump flew out of Ankara aboard the older Air Force One instead of the new Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, which lacks the same defensive capabilities, according to the NYT. Officials reportedly believed there was a credible threat from “Iranian proxy forces” against the president’s life.

The switch coincided with reports that Israel had shared intelligence with the US suggesting Iran was planning to target Trump. Some US officials, however, believed Israel was trying to provoke Trump into intensifying strikes against Iran, the NYT said.

Trump later claimed he was on Iran’s hit list and warned that thousands of missiles would be fired at the country if it attempted to assassinate him.

Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed this month to avenge his father, without mentioning Trump by name. Many protesters in Iran, however, called for Trump’s death during funeral processions for the elder Khamenei and other officials.

A truce collapsed this month as the US resumed strikes on Iran in response to attacks on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The two countries previously clashed over differing interpretations of the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17.

Elon Musk should stop providing Starlink satellite internet services to Ukrainian troops if he cares about the loss of life in the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Her remarks came after Musk criticized what he described as detached diplomacy over the conflict during a podcast released this week.

“I’m really annoyed by these fancy diplomats eating seven-course dinners in fancy places while people are dying on the front lines, and pontificating that Russia should withdraw its troops,” Musk said in an interview with The Economist published on Wednesday.

Elon Musk says calls for Russia to withdraw completely from Ukraine are unrealistic and that any peace deal will require pragmatism and concessions.

“What I think would be terrible is if there’s another three years of people dying senselessly at the front lines,” Musk told The… pic.twitter.com/OHkoHlYzJz

— Brian McDonald (@BrianMcDonaldIE) July 24, 2026

Zakharova responded on Telegram on Friday, saying: “I would like to take that idea a step further and suggest removing Starlink from Ukraine so people would stop dying.”

Musk’s satellite communications network has helped Ukraine expand its long-range strikes on Russian territory, targeting energy and port infrastructure, while also regularly hitting apartment blocks and civilian vehicles. According to the Kyiv Post, drones can be equipped with Starlink terminals to maintain stable internet connection during ‘free hunting’ missions.

Ukrainian drones recently struck warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, killing seven night-shift workers in one attack. The company and the Kremlin dismissed claims that the marketplace is being used to supply the military.

Last month, a drone hit a bus in Donetsk Region, Russia, killing eight passengers. On May 22, UAVs struck a college dormitory in Starobelsk, killing 21 students, most of them young women.

US President Donald Trump has announced that he is opening a trade investigation into the EU, after Brussels fined Google $1 billion for violating its competition laws. Trump added that the investigation will likely end in new tariffs on the bloc.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said that the US will “immediately initiate a 301 Investigation” into the EU’s “practice of ‘ROBBING’ American companies.” The EU, he added, “will pay a very big price” for its decision on Thursday to fine Google €890 million ($1 billion) for prioritizing its own services over those of competitors in search results.

“After having fined Apple, for no reason at all, 15 billion dollars, Meta, 3 billion dollars, Amazon 2.5 billion dollars, and many others, we have just been informed that Google, a truly advanced and amazing group, has been fined yet another 1 billion dollars,” Trump wrote. “This brings the Google total to over 18 billion dollars.”

“The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!” he warned.  

Trump’s figure of “18 billion dollars” is misleading. Google has been fined roughly $12 billion by the European Commission over the last decade, with separate penalties imposed by national regulators.

A 301 investigation is a US government inquiry into whether another country’s trade policies are unfair, discriminatory, or damaging to American commerce. Trump said that such an investigation into the EU’s fines against US tech companies will likely result in “a substantial tariff” being placed on the bloc “at the earliest possible moment.”

The fines handed down to Google this month alone will cover more than 2% of the EU’s annual common budget. With its finances stretched from arming Ukraine, a European Commission spokesperson told Politico last week that the payout from Google will help alleviate the bloc’s growing budget deficit. 

“Google’s involuntary ‘contribution’ to the EU budget is now greater than that of two-thirds of the member states,” US Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg noted in a post on X on Friday. “Enough is enough.”

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from resorts on France’s southwestern coast, while the Spanish capital of Madrid is battling its worst wildfire in history, as southern Europe burns in one of its hottest summers on record.

Authorities in France ordered the total evacuation of Cap Ferret on Friday, commanding around 40,000 people to leave the popular resort area. The peninsula had been blanketed in a thick orange haze since Wednesday, when a fire that broke out inland near Saumos began spreading westward to the Atlantic coast.

While thousands of residents and tourists fled Cap Ferret and surrounding areas on Thursday, boats ferried hundreds of remaining holidaymakers off the peninsula on Friday morning, as flames encroached on the only road leading to the mainland.

Some 800 firefighters, backed by multiple water-bombing planes deployed by the European Commission were battling the blaze as of Friday afternoon. More than 12,500 hectares of forest have been burned.

The sky is now completely engulfed by massive, billowing clouds of dark brown and orange smoke as the wildfire in the Lège-Cap-Ferret area sends a thick plume of smoke across nearby Lacanau, Gironde Department, France.

The wildfire has already scorched around 10,000 hectares. pic.twitter.com/8aENqmWYY4

— Weather Monitor (@WeatherMonitors) July 24, 2026

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that 32 wildfires of varying size were burning across France on Friday, while 45 km south of Cap Ferret, one of these fires approached the beach town of Biscarrosse, where around 23,000 people have been evacuated.

🔥 ALERTE - Un monstre. Le mégafeu hors de contrôle en #Gironde prend des proportions phénoménales et a maintenant parcouru près de 5000 hectares depuis hier ! L'incendie a atteint Lège-Cap-Ferret où des maisons sont en flammes, des explosions sont entendues, la mairie et des… pic.twitter.com/DRMpwNlZsM

— Infos Françaises (@InfosFrancaises) July 23, 2026

While temperatures in southwestern France have dropped from an all-time high of 42.9 degrees Celsius in Biarritz last month to 28C in Biscarosse on Friday, the heatwave of the past six weeks has left the region’s forests unusually dry and vulnerable to fire. According to Nunez, 50,000 hectares across France have been burned so far this year – nearly four times as much as by this time last year.

In central Spain, where temperatures reached 44C last month, 19,000 people were ordered to evacuate areas near Madrid and the neighboring region of Avila. Two fires near Madrid and a third in Avila have since merged, prompting Spain to declare a national emergency.

“This is the worst fire in the history of the Madrid region,” regional president Isabel Diaz Ayuso said on Friday. Ayuso blamed the catastrophe on “a perfect storm, with extremely high temperatures, a relentless wind and the misfortune of having several fire fronts join together.”

21:25 Está metido en el Tiemblo, Ávila. #IFBurgohondo. pic.twitter.com/oh5iIKAT9M

— Infues Avila (@InfuesAvila) July 23, 2026

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has blamed the fires on climate change. “I’ve said it many times before, but the climate emergency kills. We’re seeing that across Europe and we’re seeing that in Spain,” he said earlier this month. On Wednesday, Sanchez called on his political rivals to back a “state pact” to tackle climate change. 

Western Europe recorded its hottest June on record last month, according to the EU’s ‘Copernicus’ Earth observation program. France’s late June heatwave was the most intense in the country’s history, according to Meteo-France, while June was the second-hottest in Spanish history.

Residents of the war-ravaged southern Lebanese village of Zawtar El Gharbiyeh say they feel “betrayed” by their government after being prevented from returning home despite the start of the IDF’s phased withdrawal, RT correspondent Steve Sweeney reports.

The criticism comes as Beirut and West Jerusalem begin implementing a US-brokered agreement for an IDF pullout from several so-called ‘pilot zones’ near the Yellow Line, Israel’s self-declared buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Israel has insisted that the withdrawal is contingent on Hezbollah disarming in those areas, a condition the militant group has rejected.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam visited Zawtar El Gharbiyeh – which lies on the Yellow Line – on Wednesday, raising the national flag and declaring a Lebanese return to the devastated village.

Residents camped outside, however, say they have remained blocked from returning to what is left of their homes.

Mayor Abed Ezzedine said that local authorities had received little information about the withdrawal and that residents were still being denied access.

“If things stay as they are, it means Israel will remain there for a long time,” he said.

Meanwhile, all three of the ‘pilot zones’ selected by Israel remain close to strategically important high ground that the IDF has so far failed to seize from Hezbollah, Sweeney noted.

Watch RT’s full on-the-ground report:

I didn’t watch a single full game of this FIFA World Cup and was asleep before the final kicked off on Sunday. It would have been awkward watching a match wanting both teams to lose. The best things to witness at this jamboree were the mindbending, moral amnesia of the anti-Trump and pro-Palestine mob, and the whining of sports media and pundits at the length of the half-time show. Even Granny grabber Wayne Rooney criticized the performance of a 70-year-old woman [Madonna]. Then again, who’d know better than the man who has a penchant for women twice his age. It was off the field that the best news, for many, came and it opened a way for Russian football to come in from the cold.

Background

Russian football had been under the US- and UK-led pogrom against Russian sports since 2010. Triggered by receiving the hosting rights for the FIFA 2018 World Cup, Russia got caught in the battle for control of the lucrative anti-doping industry. After a series of major doping scandals on their watch and their federal funding under threat, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) battled the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), using Russia as a convenient, and deserving, whipping boy.

From December 9, 2019, Russian national teams were not allowed to display the flag and badge in competition by WADA decree. Russian football fans were generally accepting and then the conflict in Ukraine escalated. I was live on air that night with Capital Sports and we were first to break the news of the UEFA and FIFA agreement with the Russian Football Union (RFU). I supported the freeze then and still do now. It was the safest thing to do given the total lack of respect towards human life shown by Ukraine in recent months, as well as their US and European backers. I still err on the side of caution. Football stadia are too wide open for terror attacks, however, FIFA are for turning.

Despite the difficulties facing Russian teams and athletes as bans and suspensions are gradually being lifted and teething problems being sorted, the most important sport in the world is strongly considering bringing Russia back.

By inviting Russia to take part in their inaugural under-15 World Cup, FIFA knew they were going to catch flak. In 2023, UEFA wanted to re-admit Russia’s under-17 boys’ and girls’ teams to continental competition, but the football associations of England, Ireland, Sweden, Romania, and Poland showed it a red card. The timing for the Irish announcement was telling, September 28, a little over a week before Israel began her brutal response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack. None of the aforementioned associations have refused to play Israel. Indeed, Ireland will play Israel twice this fall.

However, FIFA and UEFA are determined to normalize relations with Russia, and keep them in Europe, as a specter has returned to haunt the Europeans.

Upward and east

In July 2022, I completed a survey of 31 Asian football associations to gauge their feelings on accepting Russia as a member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). This was a follow up to one I carried out in March-April that same year. Within the space of a few months, there was a positive change. From eight of nine wanting Russia initially, 25 of 31 said ‘yes’ in the follow-up survey. And even the clause of cessation of hostilities in Ukraine showed a marked contrast. In July, only six of 31 believed that for Russia to play in Asia the conflict had to end, with a surprising 22 saying it didn’t matter. Asian nations wanted to welcome Russia to the club.

“There is an appetite for Russia to join [the AFC] and you get it from here (Thailand) to China to even Japan,” top sports marketing executive Marcus Luer told me last year. The CEO of Total Sports Asia was keen to point out that money would play a large part. “Of course, Russian companies would bring funds in to make Asian sports more attractive.”

Former General Secretary of the All-India Football Federation, Shaji Prabhakaran, echoed those sentiments in a discussion with me earlier this year.

“If Russian teams, clubs were to play here [Asia] the big local companies, in India for example, would come in and invest because it’s then national [pride].”

What will happen?

Easing Russia back into the football family will begin with boys’ and girls’ youth competitions. Beach soccer and Futsal will come next, then women's teams. Men’s football, club and national team, will be a harder re-admittance. And there’s a simple reason why. Profile and security.

Nobody will be bothered, apart from the Baltic states, about Russia’s under-15 girls’ team playing their German counterparts. Nobody will care about the Russian Beach Soccer team rolling around on the sand in Italy or Georgia. They don’t matter because there isn’t the TV or fan interest, but in the UEFA Champions League or European Championship qualifiers…

“Security concerns alone are, God, terrifying,” a UEFA official said on condition of anonymity. “You’d find the majority of nations not just willing, but ok with Russian teams and clubs back. Though, apart from security and danger, there’s a bigger worry here [within UEFA].”

“Boycotts!”

This has been a bane of UEFA’s disciplinary committees and officials since 2022. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Estonia have shown their ‘solidarity’ with Ukraine by refusing to allow their kids to play with kids from Belarus. Now before you get on your high horse, I admire them for this stance. And before you think of getting into the saddle to attack me, think! If more nations followed through on their morals and principles, wouldn’t that be better?

Ireland would refuse to play Israel in September and October, Iran and fellow Asian nations would have boycotted the 2026 World Cup over mistreatment. European nations would stay home due to the unprovoked bombing and assistance in said bombing by two of the hosts [US and Canada]. The world would be a better place because nations put sports at the same level as humanity and human well being.

I asked, on our call, in his opinion would it only be the Baltic trio?

“Good God no, the Brits would carry on a treat. Poland, maybe. Ukraine, can you imagine Lokomotiv Moscow and Shakhtar Donetsk get drawn together? And for national teams, we’d have to have the Russia games behind closed doors in, Timbuktu.”

Russian off to…

I’m old enough to remember the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster when ‘fans’ of Liverpool FC from England killed 39 fans of Italy’s Juventus FC. English clubs were banned indefinitely by UEFA, even if English national teams were allowed to continue play. The disgusting behavior of English fans at the 1988 European Championship, where they rioted and rampaged across West Germany, did seem at odds with UEFA’s stance from 1985. And even after English fans, following their national team at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, ran amok in Italy, their clubs were allowed back into continental competition from 1990-91. Except for Liverpool FC, who served an additional year.

High on making the 1990 semifinals in Italy, English football grew, ‘hooliganism’ was addressed and the English Premier League was formed. With all the money that was to flow into the game there, and in Europe, transgressions were forgotten as cash became king. Today, the Premier League is the top league in the world and proof that expensive style outweighs sub-standard substance.

Everyone I’ve spoken with in Russian football, since the beginning of this latest World Cup, is hopeful of a “return to normal days.” Russian football needs international competition, and vice versa. However, the key is money. Can Russia pay enough to subsidize the boycotts that will come and can UEFA stand up to EU and UK bullying over finances and club ownership?

And why am I so certain in this? Because it’s happened to clubs from Belarus, most recently Torpedo Belaz Zhodino. Last month the club, part of the state-owned vehicle maker Belaz structure, had their prize money from last season withheld by UEFA. Being owned and sponsored by the ‘state’ was used as the reason. Do we really believe that devious and destructive politicians and NGOs won’t assault UEFA to demand that Zenit be banned over Gazprom? Or heaven forbid CSKA Moscow perform well in Europe again, since they’re still the ‘Army Club’ and owned by the state-owned VEB corporation!

While FIFA are willing and ready to end Russia’s exile, they might well nudge Russian teams and clubs east to Asia, because to keep them in Europe will hit them where it matters, in the pocket. And from over 35 years of experience in professional football, I can say with great confidence, that money matters more than morals and fair play in the ‘beautiful game’. Saddle up for trips to Myanmar, the Maldives, and maybe even Australia.

The Iranian military has attacked US bases in multiple Gulf states, and warned locals to keep their distance from “US terrorist army forces” in anticipation of more strikes. The attacks came immediately after US forces bombed the Iranian cities of Ahvaz, Khorramabad, and Jask.

Sirens sounded twice in Bahrain on Friday morning, as two waves of attacks targeted Sheikh Isa Air Base and Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. 

“This morning, the fuel tanks, large equipment warehouses and silos, and the barracks of the US terrorist army forces at the Isa Air Base in Bahrain were targeted by Arash kamikaze drones,” the Iranian Army said in a statement broadcast on Iranian state media. In a separate statement, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that it had damaged an observation tower at Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

Both facilities have come under Iranian attack on multiple occasions since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in February. Footage shared on social media showed plumes of smoke rising from the area of the naval base after the second round of sirens sounded.

The Iranian army also confirmed striking Camp Buehring, Camp Doha and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, as well as “aircraft hangars, aviation maintenance hangars and a barracks” at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The IRGC said that it inflicted casualties on American personnel in an attack on Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

Iranian-linked forces also attacked a base hosting US personnel in Erbil, Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

Bahrain and Kuwait secretly sent their own jets to carry out attacks inside Iran earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. These previously unreported missions could explain why Iran focused almost all of its firepower on these two counties on Friday, as it did against the UAE in response to Emirati jets striking its Lavan Island refinery in April.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that command centers, drone sites, telecommunications towers, coastal surveillance sites, and naval assets  were targeted in order to “further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Wednesday that any US aggression would be met with a “decisive response.”

“Our defense doctrine is clear: eye for an eye. Any aggression against Iran, including our infrastructure, will compel a powerful and decisive response,” he wrote on social media.

Our defense doctrine is clear: eye for an eye.

Any aggression against Iran, including our infrastructure, will compel a powerful and decisive response.

Those who contribute to such aggression, whatever the kind of support, will also be considered as legitimate targets.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 22, 2026

Iran has long held that the presence of the US military endangers the Gulf states. “We warn the general public in countries where American soldiers are stationed to immediately stay out of a radius of 500 meters from the places where American soldiers are hiding, in order to be safe,” the IRGC said in a statement on Friday.

Arkady Dvorkovich, the Russian president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), has announced that he is suspending his powers as head of the organization after being placed on the EU’s latest sanctions list.

The sanctions package – the bloc’s 21st since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, and one Brussels struggled for weeks to finalize amid internal divisions over its potential fallout – was published on Thursday.

It targets Russia’s energy, financial, crypto, trade, fisheries, and LNG transport sectors while imposing restrictions on 170 entities and 48 individuals over alleged “public support” for Russia’s military operation. Dvorkovich, a Russian economist and former deputy prime minister who has led FIDE since 2018, was among those blacklisted.

In a statement published on the FIDE website on Friday, Dvorkovich called the decision “unlawful and unfair” and pledged to challenge it “by all possible means.”

Statement by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich

Today, the EU decision to include my name in the 21st sanctions list was published. I want to state unequivocally that I consider this decision unlawful and unfair, and this decision will be immediately challenged by all possible… pic.twitter.com/SmiinxF71u

— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) July 23, 2026

“I am confident that justice will prevail,” he wrote, adding that, to avoid disrupting FIDE’s operations, he decided to voluntarily suspend his powers as president until the sanctions are lifted or overturned in court.

Dvorkovich added that First Vice President Viswanathan Anand would assume the duties of the presidency. The FIDE Council ratified the handover the same day.

Analysts note that while Dvorkovich has suspended his powers in practice, he technically remains FIDE president because he has not resigned. Should a court overturn the sanctions, his authority would automatically be restored. However, experts warn the sanctions could complicate his previously announced plans to seek a third term in September.

The Russian and Soviet chess school is widely respected for developing a state-backed training system that produced generations of leading grandmasters and world champions, including Mikhail Tal and Anatoly Karpov. Just this winter, 12-year-old Russian prodigy Sergey Sklokin-Bagiyan stunned the chess community at the World Blitz Championship in Doha, defeating 19-year-old Indian Grandmaster and reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju.

EU piles on sanctions even as ‘common sense’ returns to sports bodies

A number of Russian sports and cultural figures were placed under Western sanctions, ostensibly in solidarity with Ukraine over their alleged support for Russia’s military operation. Alongside Dvorkovich, Russian Sports Minister and head of the country’s Olympic Committee Mikhail Degtyarev was also included in the EU’s latest sanctions package.

However, the tide appears to be turning.

FIDE, which banned Russian and Belarusian teams from its competitions in March 2022, readmitted Russian and Belarusian teams last year to official competitions for youth and junior events, and lifted all restrictions last month on the Belarus Chess Federation, allowing Belarusian players and official teams to compete under their national flag. World Aquatics, World Gymnastics, and the International Fencing Federation also restored Russian and Belarusian participation under their national flags and anthems.

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, clearing the way for Russian athletes to return to international competition. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova welcomed the move last week, saying, “Common sense has prevailed!”

Washington’s decision to impose sweeping new tariffs over alleged failures to combat forced labor has triggered protests and bewilderment among some of its largest trading partners.

The duties, which took effect on Friday, target goods from 60 economies that account for more than 99% of US imports. The EU, Australia, Brazil, Norway, Japan and China have all challenged the justification behind them.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas rejected Washington’s accusations as unfounded and claimed the bloc offered stronger protections for workers than the US. “We have paid vacations, we have very good labor conditions for our employees, so it’s not really grounded,” she said.

Kallas also claimed that European companies valued “predictability” and stressed that Brussels had honored its trade commitments to Washington. Her remarks come as the EU struggles with high energy prices and weakening industrial competitiveness after abandoning cheap Russian gas.

Australia called the tariffs “unjustified,” while Brazil accused Washington of exploiting a human-rights issue to impose new trade restrictions. Norway said there was “no basis” for the measures, Japan defended its labor and trade standards, and China rejected the allegations along with unilateral tariffs.

The new duties range from 10% to 12.5% and replace a temporary 10% global tariff that expired on Friday. Countries that have adopted or pledged to enforce bans on forced-labor imports generally face the lower rate, while the others have been assigned 12.5%.

Oil, gas, fertilizer, certain food products, aircraft, critical minerals and goods already covered by separate US tariffs are exempt.

A Romanian F-16 fighter jet has shot down a drone that entered the country’s airspace, President Nicusor Dan has said. The drone incursion has not yet been blamed on any foreign military.

In a post on X, Dan said that the drone was intercepted around 11 am on Friday, and that an investigation has been launched. The Romanian Defense Ministry said that the drone was picked up by radar over the Black Sea earlier on Friday morning, and was tracked as it moved westward towards the port of Sulina.

It was intercepted over an “unpopulated area” around Padina, 90 km northeast of Bucharest, and destroyed with an air-to-air missile, the ministry added.

The incident is the third of its kind in Romania over the last two months. On June 5, a Ukrainian naval drone exploded near an oil terminal in Constanta, Romania’s largest Black Sea port, while three more detonated offshore. The drones were operated by the Ukrainian navy, which claimed that it lost control of the devices.

Dan’s response was dramatically different in the two cases. The Romanian president made no formal complaint when the Ukrainian naval drone entered the country’s main port while others exploded off Constanta, describing the incident as an unfortunate consequence of the “military operation led by Ukraine against Russian aggression.”

After the drone crash in Galati, Dan ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Constanta and attempted to trigger NATO’s Article 4, which is invoked when a member state determines that their “territorial integrity…or security” is threatened. Dan also announced that he would “accelerate Romania-Ukraine cooperation on the co-production of drones” and increase military aid to Kiev.

Russia argued that its Geran drones carry higher payloads of explosives than the UAV that struck the apartment building, and that a stricken Geran would not have been able to cover the distance from Ukrainian air defense positions to Galati. Moscow suggested that the incident was used by Bucharest to justify plans made in advance – such as closing the consulate and stepping up aid to Kiev.

Bangladesh’s president, Mohammed Shahabuddin, has resigned, citing health issues. The speaker of the National Parliament will now become the country’s interim president until a new person is elected.

Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad confirmed Shahabuddin’s resignation at a press briefing on Friday evening. In his resignation letter submitted to the speaker, Shahabuddin said that he was suffering from several health conditions.

He said he was diagnosed with autonomic neuropathy and that he occasionally loses consciousness for brief periods as a result of this illness.

Reports said Shahabuddin received treatment at the Combined Military Hospital over the past two days.

Shahabuddin’s resignation comes much ahead of the official end of his tenure in April 2028. The president’s office in Bangladesh is largely ceremonial.

Shahabuddin, 76, was ⁠elected unopposed for a five-year term in 2023 as a nominee of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party.

The resignation assumes significance as Hasina has announced that she would return to Bangladesh in December. 

Shahabuddin, who remained in office after Hasina fled to India in August 2024, oversaw a transition that first saw a caretaker administration led by Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus.

Elections held this past February propelled Bangladesh National Party’s Tarique Rahman to power. Hasina’s Awami League, which is now banned, was not allowed to participate.

A Reuters report quoting three sources said that the Tarique Rahman government had pressed Shahabuddin to step aside because of his long-standing ties to Hasina. 

On Monday, July 20, Hungary officially entered a new political reality. For the first time in 16 years, the Fidesz party lost control of the country’s most important institution – its presidency. Viktor Orban’s last remaining pillar of power collapsed.

The situation, initially perceived by Fidesz supporters as a temporary political crisis, had become catastrophic by mid-summer, leading to a restructuring of the country’s entire legal and political order. Several components can be roughly identified in the purge initiated by the team of new Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar. The main ones include a thorough search for evidence of corruption within Fidesz, blocking any attempts by the new opposition to challenge the ruling party at the legislative and executive levels, and dismantling the symbols of power that had made the party’s rule unique on the domestic and international stage.

Anti-corruption committees and judicial prosecutions

Currently, five parliamentary committees are working with extraordinary powers to investigate corruption; a dedicated anti-corruption ministry is planned for later. These bodies, acting as a ‘criminal case factory,’ have been given the authority to open archives and refer materials to the courts and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Key investigations cover strategic contracts, the activities of intelligence agencies, the business sector, and municipal finances.

For example, the Strategic Contracts Audit Committee is initiating an audit of contracts for the construction of the Russian Paks II nuclear power plant project and automotive agreements with China. The economic structure of the old regime is being reviewed through the Committee on Large Business and the Reform of State Media. The Committee on Fiscal Decentralization aims to reform the existing budget system. The work has several goals: transitioning from a media ‘wolf hunt’ to a conveyor belt of show trials against Fidesz elites, and unlocking €18 billion in European funds.

The main defendants in the future criminal cases are Orban’s inner circle and Orban himself. His son-in-law, businessman Istvan Tiborcz, and his company Elios, which provided street lighting through EU-funded public procurement, are under attack. A second major target is Fidesz’s main sponsor, Lorinc Meszaros, and his work on the construction of the Budapest-Belgrade railway (worth approximately $3 billion). Former Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who left politics for a position at the Chinese automotive giant BYD, is also being investigated for covert contacts with Moscow and the transfer of classified information. Szijjarto himself has gone on the defensive, stating: “Accusations of treason are excessive; I have never passed classified information to Russia.”

An analysis of the legal framework being developed by five commissions jointly with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) indicates that legal prosecution of Orban will be based on several articles of the Hungarian Criminal Code (BTK): embezzlement of state property on an especially large scale; abuse of power; budget fraud as part of an organized group; and, finally, high treason. The prospect of this trial being a showpiece leaves Orban with virtually no room for maneuver, forcing him to choose between a public trial or, as Magyar hopes, forced political exile.

It’s important to understand that what’s happening is based on a consensus within Hungarian society: recent sociological research has recorded that 66% of Hungarian citizens demand the prosecution and accountability of senior officials from the previous administration. Magyar’s TISZA party itself and its leader are at the peak of their popularity – polls show that the recently divided country is consolidating around the new leader and that approximately 62% of the country’s population trusts him.

Removing barriers

The legal framework that supported the old government’s monopoly is also undergoing deep revision and purge. The country has abolished the notorious Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, whose purpose was to identify and block “agents of foreign influence,” and nationalized the “Public Interest Trust Funds” created by Orban, which owned and managed colossal state assets, including 21 state universities and large stakes in the country’s main strategic corporations (the energy group MOL, the country’s largest commercial bank OTP Bank), castles, clinics, and resorts. Magyar introduced a strict term limit for the prime minister and members of parliament – no more than eight years in total. This reform is aimed against Orban specifically – after 18 years at the helm of the country, the former prime minister is now legally barred from any possibility of returning to power.

Against the backdrop of these changes, the removal of former President Tamas Sujok took place. He did not wait for impeachment in parliament; he was forced to resign as a result of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. Furthermore, this amendment effectively purges the judiciary, limiting the age of judges to 70 and shortening their mandates to six years. These measures are aimed at removing those appointed by Fidesz and stripping the president of the Constitutional Court of her administrative monopoly. Finally, Hungary’s accession to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has eroded the influence of Attorney General Peter Polt, allowing for the direct enforcement of Brussels’ orders to audit public contracts. Furthermore, the lifting of the ban on municipal lawsuits against the center is being used to bankrupt Fidesz-controlled entities through lawsuits for embezzlement.

Debunking uniqueness

On July 7, Hungary’s main state television channel, M1, and Radio Kossuth suddenly went offline, with the TV stations rolling out an unprecedented statement: “Public media cannot lie. We apologize for doing so for many years.” This move was initiated by the Commission for the Reform of Public Media. Magyar’s message to voters was that behind the facade of a ‘struggle for sovereignty,’ unique in the EU, lay a usurpation of the media landscape. This paradoxically brought the history of leadership full circle: in all his campaign outings, Orban’s image was built on the demonization of former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, whose reign from 2004 to 2009 was remembered for a leaked audio recording in which he was heard saying that “we lied morning and evening.” Now, in the eyes of the public, Orban himself has been transformed into Gyurcsany.

The investigation surrounding the Ludovika University of Public Service has become a painful one. New commissions have opened secret archives and discovered that, under the guise of “climate conferences,” a recruitment hub for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad had operated at the university for years. The university’s leadership has already admitted that orders to provide institutional cover came from the very top – from Orban’s government apparatus. Following this, the country has taken a fresh look at the uniqueness of Hungary’s “sovereign” foreign policy, not to mention the abrogation of his cabinet’s anti-Semitic attacks.

Magyar: The West’s enforcer with an agenda

The demonstrative destruction of Fidesz should not be viewed as a local initiative by Peter Magyar. It enjoys significant, coordinated support among Euro-Atlantic elites, who have accumulated a critical amount of anger at Orban. The main beneficiary of this process is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for whom the destruction of Orban’s legacy is a matter of personal revenge for years of blackmail, vetoes, and caricatured billboards on Hungarian streets.

Secondly, there is the head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Laura Kovesi: Budapest’s official accession to her office provides a historic opportunity to launch a show trial against top Central European politicians. Finally, there are Atlanticist forces in the United States who also stand to gain from a show trial in a country that was previously the main regional stronghold of the conservative MAGA movement.

Peter Magyar is currently operating within the Euro-Atlantic mainstream, but it would be a mistake to dismiss him as a run-of-the-mill enforcer. We see before us a confident leader whose primary objective is to secure the field, establish himself, and maintain power. He will emerge as an independent actor only later, once he has settled his tactical “debts” to European institutions and established direct contacts with Washington.

Paradoxically, when it comes to the lives of ordinary people in large Hungarian cities, the problems caused by this same fiscal tax haven’t changed. Today, the old “illiberal” dictate from the center remains unchanged, demonstrating that political purges from above can be combined with tax collection from below. A typical example here is how, on July 15, the authorities of the traditionally opposition city of Pecs were forced to pay another 600 million forints (almost $1.9 million) into the budget under the old ‘solidarity tax’ (which itself has not been abolished). In other words, the ordinary Hungarian from Pecs, who voted for change in April 2026, in reality faced the same everyday devastation: due to empty coffers, people wait 40 minutes at bus stops, schools and hospitals remain without repairs, and street lights are turned off after 11 PM to save money.

As for Russia, its interests in the region inevitably face a period of protracted uncertainty. Magyar’s agenda vis-à-vis Moscow will boil down to two variables: a decidedly tough public discourse, transparent to the West, and a hidden, pragmatic, and non-public dialogue track. This pragmatism is critically important for Hungary’s large business community (including the banking, pharmaceutical, and IT sectors), which largely supported Magyar in the April 2026 elections. The era of Budapest’s sovereign maneuvering is over, but the contours of a new Magyar balancing act are only just beginning to emerge.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to seize frozen Iranian assets to cover “any and all damages” to ships and cargo damaged due to the conflict in the Middle East. Iran has hit back, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warning that the move sets an “incendiary precedent” that could have global ramifications.

Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday, warning that “from this point forth, any and all damages done to Ships, Cargo, or anything related thereto, will be paid for by Iranian Money that the United States has in its possession, and controls.” 

He added that “these damages may be very substantial,” describing it as “the fair and equitable thing to do.”

The remarks came hours after Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a group with strong ties to Iran, claimed strikes on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. The US has also accused Iran of targeting vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, while Tehran has insisted that any passing ships should abide by the regulations it imposed.

Araghchi pushed back on Trump’s ultimatum, calling it a dangerous departure from international norms. “Seizing another nation’s assets to pay for unrelated future claims is an incendiary precedent,” he wrote on X, adding that “once governments normalize confiscation, no one’s assets are safe,” and the “ensuing chaos will not be pretty or peaceful.”

Trump did not specify which frozen funds would be tapped or under what legal authority. The US holds an estimated $2 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets, with billions more suspended in countries such as Iraq, Qatar, Japan, and Luxembourg. The fate of some of the funds, primarily frozen by the US, was discussed during talks between Washington and Tehran before the collapse of the talks earlier this month.

The threat to confiscate Iranian funds echoes the West’s handling of roughly $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets that have been frozen since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Most of the funds were frozen in the EU, though the bloc has not confiscated them outright due to legal hurdles.

In 2024, the US passed legislation authorizing the seizure of Russian assets and their transfer to Ukraine, though Washington has not resorted to this yet. Moscow has denounced the asset freeze as “theft.”

Swiss prosecutors have requested a life sentence for a right-wing politician who backed multiple child-protection bills and now faces charges including drugging and raping a minor.

Patrick Frei, formerly of the Swiss People’s Party, allegedly sedated a woman and her daughter, who was underage at the time, and systematically sexually abused them, according to a press release issued on Monday by the Aargau Public Prosecutor’s Office. The 57-year-old is also accused of drugging and raping another adult woman.

“The victims were repeatedly placed in an acutely life-threatening condition by the administration of the substances, which could have caused them to suffocate at any time,” the press release said.

Because Frei allegedly “accepted the possible death of the victims,” he has also been charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, prosecutors said.

The victims, a Polish mother and daughter, moved to Switzerland after living in Ireland, according to the Swiss news outlet Watson. The mother was Frei’s partner and worked for him under an employment contract that supported her residence permit. After his arrest, she lost her job and later applied for welfare.

The migration authorities questioned whether the employment arrangement was genuine and opened proceedings that could result in both victims being deported, Watson reported.

The daughter, now 18, “has lost faith in the authorities” because of the abuse she suffered and the lack of support she received from Swiss institutions afterward, her lawyer told Swiss public broadcaster SRF on Wednesday.

The local migration office is continuing to review the case, Aargau State Councillor Dieter Egli told SRF.

Heavy explosions were reported in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on Friday local time as the US carried out strikes for the 13th consecutive night.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said US forces targeted command centers, drone sites, telecommunications towers, coastal surveillance sites, and naval assets to “further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iranian media reported strikes in central and southern parts of the country, including the city of Khorramabad near the Iraqi border and the port city of Jask on the southern coast.

Videos posted on social media show explosions and large fires in Ahvaz.

A very large bombardment is happening in the Ahvaz region of Iran right now. The real battle has begun.#IranWar‌ #USA pic.twitter.com/G0cHrgs07h

— Judy Berxwedan (@Judy20255) July 23, 2026

BREAKING: The US has carried out a large-scale attack on Ahvaz in Iran's main oil region, with more than 35 strikes so far in the past hour.

Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan Province, housing Iran's major oil production and refining infrastructure, with oil facilities likely… pic.twitter.com/uCi7w4Nmde

— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) July 24, 2026

Four people were killed and five injured in Ahvaz, Press TV reported, citing officials in Khuzestan Province.

CENTCOM released footage of strikes on military vehicles, port facilities, and small vessels.

The US has stepped up its attacks in recent days, targeting maritime surveillance towers at ports and bridges in the southern province of Hormozgan.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes killed four American service members over the weekend, marking the first US combat fatalities in several months.

The hostilities continue amid reports that the US deployed additional forces to the region, including bombers and commando units, as President Donald Trump considers expanding the war.

Iran has remained defiant in the face of Trump’s demands, insisting that it has the right to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and accusing the US of violating a memorandum of understanding signed last month.

A landmark US-Saudi nuclear agreement will only proceed if Riyadh joins the Abraham Accords and establishes diplomatic relations with Israel, the White House said on Thursday. The deal would use American technology and expertise to help the Kingdom develop a civilian nuclear energy program.

The clarification marked a significant shift from Wednesday’s announcement, which made no public mention of linking the agreement to the normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations. Riyadh has repeatedly insisted it will not recognize Israel without progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

“This deal is contingent on this condition as far as the president is concerned, so we’ll continue to talk with our Saudi counterparts to get the deal finalized and hopefully see them joining the Abraham Accords very soon,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

The Abraham Accords are a series of US-brokered agreements launched during President Donald Trump’s first term that established diplomatic relations between Israel and primarily Arab states. Current signatories include Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

The omission has raised concerns among nonproliferation experts and lawmakers in Washington, who warn it could leave Saudi Arabia free to enrich uranium — a capability that could eventually be used to produce nuclear weapons and potentially trigger a regional arms race. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman previously said Saudi Arabia would seek nuclear weapons if Iran acquired them.

The agreement, expected to underpin a multibillion-dollar nuclear energy program involving US companies, must still be reviewed by Congress before it can take effect.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has blamed New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric for the stabbing of two people on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Thursday. The assailant reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

The victims – a Jewish man and an Asian man – were hospitalized and are expected to survive, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on X.

Police arrested 51-year-old Raul Morales as the sole suspect. “Detectives are continuing to work the case and determine the motive, but according to victim and witness statements, Morales yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ during both attacks. The NYPD is currently evaluating whether this is a potential hate crime,” Tisch said.

Tisch added that although the suspect has no known history of mental illness, his mental state “may have been a factor.”

In a statement on X, Mamdani also said that witnesses and the victims reported hearing the attacker shout “Allahu Akbar,” adding that “these hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city.”

NEW: 2 stabbed in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, including at least one ‘visibly Jewish’ victim; suspect yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ pic.twitter.com/6nq7hwiyt4

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) July 23, 2026

Saar described the incident as “a horrific anti-Semitic stabbing attack,” accusing Mamdani of incitement.

“This violence did not happen in a vacuum. Months of incitement against the Jewish state from Mamdani have helped create a climate in which Jews are targeted,” Saar wrote on X.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and called AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group, “monsters.” Some Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), described his remarks as anti-Semitic, while more than 700 rabbis and cantors across the US signed a letter last month urging him to apologize.

Mamdani has denied being anti-Semitic. “As mayor, I will always stand steadfast with our Jewish neighbors to root the scourge of anti-Semitism out of our city,” he said in November 2025 after swastikas were painted on a Jewish school.

He also defended his criticism of AIPAC. “I used the term [monsters] to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world, not solely AIPAC, but frankly super PACs at large, who are spending millions of dollars on deceptive and misleading ads that are blanketing the airwaves,” he said.

The US and other Western countries have seen an upswing in anti-Semitic incidents since the outbreak of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in 2023, as well as the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran launched in February 2026.

I recently read about a new trend where men are having fillers injected into their scrotums to make themselves more attractive. Some, trying to save money, turn to unlicensed beauty therapists. Others go even further and inject hyaluronic acid themselves at home and, as a result, they sometimes lose the very thing they were trying to improve.

Admittedly, the problem is still more common in the United States, but even here we already have dancers and performers who regularly fill that area with whatever they can get their hands on, apparently in the hope of impressing women.

To put it bluntly, there are plenty of questions, such as who is supposed to find an enlarged scrotum attractive? I can at least understand men who use fillers to increase the size of their penis, although that procedure raises enough questions of its own, but has anyone ever met a woman who chooses a man based on the size of his scrotum? The most he is likely to achieve is to surprise her.

It’s an interesting phenomenon because as recently as 30 years ago, people suffering from body-image problems had very few tools with which to “improve” themselves. The most accessible option was flamboyant clothing, and even that only really became available during perestroika for Russians. 

Soviet citizens who were dissatisfied with their appearance had far fewer ways of “boosting their attractiveness” and men had practically none. A man who looked too extravagant risked attracting the attention of the authorities, while women with body-image issues often took up sewing or knitting and made their own unusual, custom-made clothes. People in the 1980s had few other means of changing their appearance as even dyeing one’s hair a bright color was difficult and could attract unwanted attention.

Until fairly recently, people who were constantly dissatisfied with themselves had little opportunity to mutilate themselves because the tools simply weren’t available.

Cosmetology had little to offer them either and before eyebrow and lip tattooing became widespread, there were few truly radical procedures. One of the more shocking treatments popular with earlier generations was a scorching peel, in which the skin was effectively burned away and, later, chemical peels became available and the industry expanded rapidly.

Then came permanent make-up, silicone breast implants, silicone lip filler and hyaluronic acid as new techniques appeared, allowing fillers to be injected into the cheekbones and forehead, and then thread lifts emerged, along with many other procedures capable of producing irreversible consequences. And that’s before we even get to plastic surgery.

For some time now, life has become especially difficult for vulnerable people who are dissatisfied with themselves, their lives and their careers as they are overwhelmed by the demand to demonstrate success, to appear permanently desirable and to radiate sexual energy 24 hours a day.

The vast pseudo-beauty industry preys on such people as it sells them the idea of endless self-improvement and because competition within the industry is fierce, the procedures it offers become increasingly radical so “self-improvement” gradually turns into monstrification.

A gangrenous scrotum or facial fibrosis caused by a thread lift isn’t even the worst possible outcome because fillers can migrate and block blood vessels, tissues can stretch permanently and nerves can be damaged. People can lose both their appearance and their health in the pursuit of an invented ideal, but, at the same time, the pressure on insecure and dissatisfied people is increasing.

In the past, they saw role models mainly on television or in fashion magazines, but today they constantly compare themselves with perfect faces and bodies in advertising, social media and the accounts of boastful, insincere bloggers.

They see beautiful, successful, heavily edited people living in large, lavishly furnished apartments, owning country houses with perfect lawns and driving expensive cars.

Now there is also artificial intelligence and neural networks generate images of perfect women and handsome men that are sometimes impossible to distinguish from real people. The hypothetical Ellen is now forced to compete not only with Hollywood stars, but with artificial ideals.

The real world around Ellen is full of ordinary people, overweight, tired, with sallow skin, thin lips, crooked legs and bad shoes, but the pressure from the media has become so great that the average person no longer compares herself with those walking beside her in the street but with faces on billboards and images on the internet.

The dissatisfaction created by failing to match the group of rich and beautiful people with whom the average person identifies gradually turns into self-loathing and then every available means of conforming to the ideal is brought into play, and the more money such a person has, the wider the range of bodily alterations available.

When I see faces standardized by fillers and plastic surgery, worn out by fibrosis and stretched tissue, I understand that I am looking at victims of dissatisfaction with themselves and their lives. These are people who have decided that the problem lies not in their competence, education, personality or lack of natural charm, but in the shape of their nose or the fullness of their lips.

Most importantly, this now affects both sexes. Until recently, it was mainly women who sought to improve their appearance, but, as the philosopher Jean Baudrillard once observed, in order to sell beauty products to men, men first had to be taught to think like women about their bodies.

Men also watch pornography, and artificial intelligence has entered that world too, so, as a result, what the viewer sees on the screen may bear little resemblance to what he sees in his own trouser and this is frustrating.

A man may not have a girlfriend because he is dull or simply unattractive, but instead he decides that the real problem is a small scrotum, whereas female viewers blame their lack of success on unattractive breasts or a “wrong” vagina.

And off they go as the man enlarges his scrotum, unaware that somewhere his potential partner is having hyaluronic acid injected into her labia, and both believe this is how they will achieve happiness and recognition.

Of course, people need protection from the immense pressure of marketing and forced consumption, especially when it threatens their health, but the beauty industry has learned to monetize dissatisfaction with extraordinary efficiency. It invents new defects and then sells the cure, and when men have begun injecting fillers into their scrotums in pursuit of perfection, it is clear that the process has gone much too far.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team

Germany is paying five times as much for imported gas as it did before abandoning its long-term Russian supply contracts as part of the EU sanctions, Berliner Zeitung has reported.

Berlin now has to rely on the volatile international energy market, which is reeling from the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the ongoing conflict between the US and Iran, the newspaper wrote on Wednesday.

Once Europe’s industrial powerhouse, Germany abandoned cheap Russian gas imports in 2022 as part of the EU’s sanctions campaign against Moscow following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Combined with the phaseout of nuclear power in favor of renewables, this self-imposed embargo has dealt a major blow to Germany’s industrial sector.

According to Berliner Zeitung, Germany’s gas import price has risen from €12 ($13.65) per megawatt-hour in 2020, when long-term contracts with Russia were still in force, to more than €60 ($68.25) this week amid the continued exchange of strikes between the US and Iran.

“The old Russian contracts were cheaper than the market price,” the media outlet said, adding that Germany would also be unable to increase gas imports if needed since “the pipelines from Norway are at their [full] capacity” and “cannot handle much more.”

On Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged that the energy crisis was caused by “the lack of Russian gas.”

Moscow has said it is ready to resume gas deliveries through the Nord Stream pipeline string that survived the 2022 sabotage attack but has received no response from Berlin.

Germany plans to impose new tariffs on its already struggling industrial sector to fund the construction of a national gas reserve.

The EU also pledged to end all Russian gas imports by 2027, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stating in March that Brussels would stick to this course even in the event of physical gas shortages or the threat of power cuts.

The Ansar Allah movement of Yemen (the Houthis) has announced what it calls a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia.

The group’s military spokesman, Yahya Saree, framed the move as retaliation for what he described as 12 years of Saudi-led blockade by sea and air against Yemen. The wording itself is worth pausing on, because it is unusually vague for a movement that is normally precise in its threats. The Houthis do not trade with the Saudis in any meaningful volume, so an “embargo” in the classical economic sense makes little sense. What it more likely means is a readiness to strike vessels entering or leaving Saudi ports, something the group has both the geography and the missile reach to attempt along the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

So far the escalation has stayed at the level of radio warnings. Houthi units have reportedly been broadcasting messages on open channels to ships heading toward Saudi ports, ordering captains to turn back immediately and threatening to strike any “merchant” vessel that ignores the warning. As of this writing, no actual attack on a ship in the Red Sea has been reported. But the announcement alone changes the temperature of a relationship that had been simmering rather than boiling for the better part of a year.

It is important to separate this move from the conflict around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Houthi campaign against shipping in that strait since late 2023 was framed explicitly as solidarity with Gaza, a war fought in Iran’s broader interest but dressed in Palestinian colors. This new threat against Saudi Arabia is a different animal. It is not a proxy gesture on behalf of Tehran. It looks like a decision made by the Houthis themselves, using a moment of regional tension to apply direct pressure on Riyadh and, more importantly, to expand their own territorial and political weight inside Yemen.

To understand why a single radio warning matters, it helps to remember how deep the animosity between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia actually runs. The conflict traces back to 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition intervened militarily to reverse Houthi gains and restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government. What followed was nearly a decade of war marked by airstrikes, a naval and air blockade on Houthi-controlled ports, and a humanitarian catastrophe that made Yemen a byword for the human cost of proxy warfare in the Gulf.

That caution stands as the backdrop for today’s threats. Riyadh has not forgotten 2019, and the Houthis know it. The naval warning is, in part, a reminder of that leverage.

Posturing for the home audience

The timing of the blockade announcement lines up with a broader mobilization drive inside Houthi-held territory. In late June, the movement announced the creation of a new internal structure, the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces, modeled openly on Iran’s Basij militia. The stated goal is to build a network of thousands of volunteers in every district under Houthi control to give the movement “eyes and ears” in every neighborhood and village.

Recruitment leans heavily on the Palestinian cause as a rallying point, but the deeper function of the new force looks more domestic than ideological. Reporting suggests recruitment and training activity actually began quietly right after October 7, 2023, well before the public announcement, and that it draws mostly from the poorest segments of the population, people drawn less by ideology than by access to food aid. Fighters receive no salary, only in-kind donations and a place on humanitarian assistance lists, and training emphasizes small arms handling alongside political indoctrination of younger recruits, who are considered more open to it.

This points to a movement managing real strain at home. Front-line fighters reportedly have gone unpaid for months, receiving occasional gifts worth around $35 along with qat (a traditional drug in chewing herb form) rather than a regular wage. Discontent has grown loud enough that some Houthi officials initially mocked citizens complaining about hunger on social media before switching to harsher suppression of dissent. The movement’s public line blames Saudi Arabia for the unpaid salaries of state employees and insists the war against the US and Israel takes priority over social demands, a framing that conveniently redirects internal frustration outward.

The bigger picture is a leadership trying to reassert control after a rough stretch. Israeli and American airstrikes in 2025 killed the movement’s top military commander along with most of its civilian ministers, forcing senior figures to sharply limit public appearances and communication. That in turn has slowed the passage of military and political orders down the chain of command. A structure like the Popular Mobilization Forces, built for surveillance and loyalty enforcement as much as for combat, is a classic response to that kind of internal fragility.

Three drivers seem to explain the timing. First, rising regional tension tied to American and Israeli pressure on Iran gives the Houthis an opening to posture as part of a wider resistance front. Second, there is real internal pressure inside Houthi-held areas, an economic crisis and tribal resentment that mobilization can help paper over by offering young men a role, a stipend of sorts, and a sense of purpose. Third, negotiations with the Saudi-backed government in Aden have been stuck for a long time, and mobilization functions as leverage, a way of consolidating loyalty and territorial control while the diplomatic track goes nowhere.

Read together, these three factors support the same conclusion drawn from the Popular Mobilization Forces story. This is not simply Tehran pulling strings. It looks like the Houthi leadership is using a genuinely tense regional moment, plus its own domestic troubles, to justify an internal power consolidation and to test how far it can push Riyadh without inviting the kind of retaliation the Kingdom delivered in earlier years.

A key oil artery and a curious American absence

If the Houthis were to move from radio threats to actual strikes, geography narrows the target list considerably. Ansar Allah’s effective reach runs along the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula, which puts the port of Yanbu squarely inside the danger zone. Yanbu is the terminus of the East-West pipeline, the artery that carries oil from fields in central and eastern Saudi Arabia across the peninsula to the Red Sea. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, this pipeline is currently the only route by which Riyadh can move its hydrocarbons to export markets, which makes Yanbu far more than an ordinary port. It is close to the kingdom’s only remaining pressure valve for oil exports.

What makes the situation stranger is the American posture around it. Even during the recent period of truce between Iran and the US, at least two US Navy destroyers were kept on station near Yanbu as a deterrent. That cover has since been withdrawn, and American warships have not returned to the area. Why Washington pulled back, and why Riyadh has not pushed hard for the protection to resume, remains unclear. It is one of the more puzzling details in the current standoff, and it leaves an obvious question mark over how seriously either side is treating the risk to Yanbu.

Whether Riyadh actually launches a new campaign against the Houthis will likely hinge on something bigger than the port skirmishes themselves, namely whether the US moves toward a ground operation of its own in the region. Saudi Arabia has shown little appetite to invade Houthi territory on its own initiative. The scars from the 2019 humiliation are still visible in how cautiously the Kingdom’s military and political leadership has behaved since. At the same time, Riyadh cannot simply absorb a credible threat to Yanbu and its pipeline infrastructure without some kind of response.

The result is something close to a standoff where neither side wants to fire first, and both are watching for a signal from a more powerful patron before committing. For the Houthis and for Saudi Arabia alike, the stakes attached to that first move are unusually high, which is exactly why, for now, the fight is still being conducted over the radio rather than with missiles.

Taken together, the picture that emerges is of a Houthi movement acting largely on its own calculations rather than simply executing an Iranian script. Facing unpaid fighters, a hungry population, and a leadership forced into the shadows after last year’s strikes, Ansar Allah has reached for the two tools that have worked before, a domestic mobilization drive dressed up as ideological loyalty building, and an external threat aimed at Riyadh that costs nothing so long as it stays rhetorical. Saudi Arabia, still shaped by the memory of 2019, has responded with preparation rather than open confrontation, and the fate of Yanbu and its pipeline hangs on decisions being made well beyond Yemen’s borders, most notably in Washington. Nothing here points to an imminent war. It points instead to two exhausted, wary actors each testing how much pressure the other can absorb before the radio warnings turn into something worse.

The US Senate has blocked a resolution that would have forbidden President Donald Trump from waging war against Iran without Congressional approval. A similar resolution passed the House of Representatives hours earlier.

The Senate defeated the resolution in a 49-47 vote on Thursday, with Democrat Senator John Fetterman joining his Republican colleagues to oppose it, and Republican Senator Susan Collins lending her support to the measure.

Republican Senator Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who had backed previous resolutions aimed at reining in Trump’s war powers, missed the vote. “The Iran war has not been a success,” Paul told reporters on Wednesday. “I think by any objective measure we’re worse off than we were before the war.”

A similar resolution was passed by the House of Representatives earlier on Thursday, with four Republicans breaking ranks to squeeze the measure through in a 214-208 vote. However, the resolution lacked any legal power, and was described by its author, Representative Pramila Jayapal, as a “vote of conscience.”

Four Americans have been killed since hostilities resumed, three in Jordan and one in Iraq, according to the US authorities. The New York Times has accused the Pentagon of withholding information on dozens of service members injured in separate Iranian strikes last week.

Egyptian, Pakistani, and Qatari mediators are reportedly urging Washington and Tehran to agree to a new ten-day ceasefire and sit down for talks aimed at salvaging the previous deal. However, Trump has described talks as “a waste of time,” and on Thursday, the president told Axios that he is “considering a massive attack” on Iran, “bigger than ever before.”

With Yemen’s Houthis now targeting shipping in the Red Sea, and with Trump claiming that Israel would rejoin the war “in two minutes if I ask them to,” Russia has called on all sides to de-escalate.

In a statement on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged “all sides in the conflict to demonstrate a responsible approach and restraint and to refrain from any actions that could expand the geography of military confrontation and lead to the further deterioration of the military-political situation in the Middle East.”

Two recent developments, one in the Black Sea and the other in the Persian Gulf, illustrate how rapidly the international order is unravelling. They also reveal something else: while Western powers are increasingly willing to discard the old rules, they are proving incapable of replacing them with a stable new order.

A few days ago, the European Union member states announced plans to establish a maritime security center in either Bulgaria or Romania. On paper, the initiative has been presented as enhancing regional security, but in practice, it points towards the gradual militarization of the Black Sea and the erosion of the Montreux Convention, the 1936 agreement that has limited the presence of non-Black Sea naval powers in the region for nearly 90 years.

At almost the same time, the confrontation between Iran and the United States has entered a new phase. Tehran has reinstated its control over the Strait of Hormuz following renewed hostilities, and Washington has responded by announcing a naval blockade of the Islamic Republic. Once again, one of the world’s most important trade routes is being held hostage to geopolitical confrontation.

These two cases may appear unrelated, yet, in reality, they reflect the same trend in the collapse of long-established international arrangements, without any credible replacement.

As Western European governments prepare for what they increasingly describe as a long-term confrontation with Russia, they are showing little interest in preserving the security architecture inherited from the twentieth century. The Montreux Convention is becoming another casualty of this shift.

Ankara, despite enjoying special rights under the convention, is unlikely to resist. As a NATO member, Türkiye ultimately remains bound by alliance solidarity, regardless of its diplomatic balancing. Moreover, a larger Western military presence in the Black Sea also serves Turkish interests by strengthening deterrence against Russia.

But reality is more complicated than that slogan suggests, and the situation in the Persian Gulf demonstrates why.

The US and Israeli military operation against Iran earlier this year shattered a regional balance that, while imperfect, had maintained relative stability for decades. The Persian Gulf had become one of the world’s most predictable regions for energy exports, but, today, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is plagued by constant uncertainty, as Washington and Tehran compete to impose rival systems of control and neither side appears capable of achieving a lasting victory.

The United States undoubtedly possesses sufficient military power to dominate the region temporarily and it can deploy carrier strike groups, conduct air operations and suppress Iranian capabilities when necessary. But military superiority alone doesn’t create political order and while destroying an opponent’s ability to challenge you is one thing, establishing a durable system of rules that others accept is something entirely different.

History offers a consistent lesson in how stable international orders require more than overwhelming force.

Second, they require a hegemon prepared not only to enjoy the benefits of leadership but also to bear its costs, because stability is expensive and it demands continuous military and political investment, as well as incentives for rivals to cooperate rather than sabotage the system at every opportunity.

This is precisely where the United States now faces its greatest difficulties. The Arab monarchies continue to purchase American weapons and publicly affirm their partnerships with Washington, but they are simultaneously expanding relations with China and Russia while keeping channels open with Iran. 

None wishes to organize its foreign policy solely around American priorities, nor do these governments see today’s United States as an entirely dependable patron.

For more than a year, Donald Trump’s administration has centered its foreign policy on ‘America First’ as Washington openly questions long-term commitments, pressures European allies to shoulder more of their own defense burden, and increasingly dismisses international institutions that previous American administrations once championed.

That objective failed, and as a result, Washington now finds itself in an increasingly uncomfortable position where it has strengthened its ties with several Gulf monarchies but still lacks any realistic strategy for dealing with Iran itself.

Absent a willingness to commit to a major ground war or to undertake the enormous costs of rebuilding a regional political order, the United States can do little more than manage an unstable equilibrium.

The result is a cycle of recurring crises rather than lasting stability, and this exposes the central weakness of attempts to rely on military power alone.

The contemporary world no longer resembles the nineteenth century, when a handful of European empires could impose political orders across vast regions of the globe through force and maintain them for generations, because today’s international environment is far more fragmented. Regional powers possess greater autonomy, alternative partnerships are readily available, and no outside power enjoys the resources necessary to dominate indefinitely. That’s why brute force increasingly produces only temporary successes.

Breaking rules has proved easier than writing new ones, and ultimately, military power remains an essential component of international politics, but power alone has never been sufficient. Every durable international order has required institutions and states willing to invest continuously in maintaining them, but the United States increasingly lacks both the capacity and, consequently, the desire to fulfill that role.

This only reinforces the logic behind Russia’s long-standing position that however imperfect existing international arrangements may be, they remain preferable to replacing them with an international system governed by improvisation and the law of the jungle. When established rules disappear without credible alternatives, instability becomes the norm, and everyone ultimately pays the price.

This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.

EU regulators have fined Google €890 million ($1 billion) for anti-competitive practices, days after the European Commission confirmed that it will use another €4.6 billion fine against the US tech giant to plug its budget deficit.

Two fines were handed down on Thursday by the European Commission. Google was fined €460 million for prioritizing its own services – such as shopping and travel deals – over those of rival companies in search results, in violation of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. A second fine of €430 million punished Google for preventing app developers listed on the Google Play marketplace from steering users to cheaper offers on rival app stores.

“The DMA is to make sure we have a fair and level playing field,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said on Thursday. “With these decisions we want to make sure there is competition.”

Google, which now has 60 days to give its rivals equal prominence in search results, condemned the decision.

Earlier this month, Google lost a years-long legal battle against a separate €4.6 billion EU antitrust fine. 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.

European Commission fines are paid directly into the EU’s common budget. A commission spokesperson told Politico last week that the €4.6 billion payout – equal to more than 2% of the bloc’s annual budget – would be used to alleviate the EU’s growing deficit.

With Brussels urging member states to increase their military budgets, ramping up its own defense expenditure, and borrowing tens of billions of euros to prop up Ukraine, the bloc’s budget deficit is projected to reach 3.6% of GDP by 2027. The EU has approved a €90 billion Ukraine support loan for 2026-2027, tripled its spending on its ‘European Peace Facility’ weapons fund from 2021 to 2026, and hiked its common ‘European Defense Fund’ from €590 million to €8 billion in the same period.

As the EU struggles to meet its commitments to Ukraine and build out its own, independent tech stack, fining foreign tech companies has proven to be a lucrative source of revenue. Earlier this week, the commission imposed a €550 million penalty on AliExpress over the Chinese platform’s alleged failure to stop the sale of counterfeit goods.

In total, this month’s fines to Google and AliExpress add up to €6.04 billion, more than the yearly contributions of Portugal, Finland, Greece, and Cyprus combined.

At least one Turkish sailor was killed and others wounded following a drone strike on a Türkiye-flagged coal bulker off Russia’s port of Novorossiysk on Wednesday, amid intensified Ukrainian attacks on shipping in the Azov and Black seas.

The Istanbul-registered MV Reyhan Sari was carrying coal from Russia’s Taman Port to Trabzon in Türkiye when it was struck by a UAV. A crew member working in the engine room died at the scene of the impact, Türkiye Today reported on Wednesday.

The ship was able to continue under its own power and reach waters off Samsun, two injured crew members were evacuated by helicopter and taken to hospitals in the city, according to a statement from operating company cited by the media.

Speaking to the Ihlas News Agency (IHA), one crew member said that the attack took place around 1:30 AM.

“They hit my cabin with a drone. They pulled me out from under the wreckage,” he reportedly said. “While I was in the sickbay, the second explosion happened. They blew up the deck completely. There were dead and wounded there.”

Karadeniz'de Türk bayraklı gemiye dehşet verici dron saldırısı! O anların görüntüsü ortaya çıktı... 💥

Rusya'dan Trabzon'a kömür taşıyan "Mv Reyhan Sarı" isimli kuru yük gemisi, Novorossiyk açıklarında kamikaze dronla hedef alındı. Saldırıda 1 mürettebatımız hayatını kaybetti, 2… pic.twitter.com/xbalb11pJk

— Sarıyer Söz (@sariyersoz) July 23, 2026

According to Ukraine’s drone forces commander, Robert Brovdi, Ukrainian forces struck a total of 13 ships on Tuesday and Thursday in the Azov and Black seas, “one tanker, 10 dry cargo ships and two tugboats.”

Overnight on Wednesday, Russian forces hit port infrastructure in Odessa used to unload and store military cargo, as well as fuel and lubricant tanks intended for the Ukrainian army, the Russian Defense Ministry has reported.

The Kremlin has stressed that attacks on vessels used to transport military cargo to Ukraine will continue as part of a broader move to sever Kiev’s naval logistics in response to Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Russian civilian and energy infrastructure.

The US is engaged in a proxy war with Russia that could escalate into a global conflict within years unless Washington changes course, renowned journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson has told RT’s Olga Bataman and Tara Reade.

There is no convincing strategic, political, or moral justification for the US to be in conflict with Russia, Carlson insisted, claiming that the Ukraine conflict has been driven by what he described as the “neocon war lobby” in Washington out of “hatred” for both Russia and Europe.

“The truth is you can’t make a case for war with Russia,” he said on the latest episode of East Meets West with Olga and Tara, aired on Wednesday, adding, that the US is already there because the CIA is targeting Ukrainian attacks on Russia. “We are at war with Russia. I grieve saying that. It’s so crazy. It’s so reckless. It’s so destructive... but we are.”

Carlson warned that those pushing for a confrontation with Russia fail to understand how damaging it would be for the US, arguing that the policy is driving Moscow closer to Beijing, Washington’s main geopolitical rival.

Asked whether US President Donald Trump still had a chance to broker peace amid mounting sanctions pressure on Moscow, Carlson replied: “I don’t think there is, no,” noting that sanctions are also “an act of war.” He cited the Sanctioning Russia Act – championed by the late Russia hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham – which imposes tariffs of up to 500% on imports from countries that continue buying Russian resources and which Trump recently agreed to adopt, ostensibly to honor the senator’s legacy.

“Why is Trump going along? It’s because he is a slave to the neocon war lobby,” Carlson said, arguing that the entire effort is driven by “a tiny group” of people” with “evil motives” who are trying to provoke a new world war. “And I think we’re going to get this war. If someone doesn’t slow this down right away, [by] 2030, I think it’s imminent.”

The EU has relented on objections from member states, granting what one diplomat has described as an “outrageous exemption,” to issue a watered-down sanctions package targeting Russia. Greece successfully lobbied to allow EU companies to continue transporting Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to third countries, media reports claimed on Thursday.

The package, the EU’s 21st since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, was presented by the European Commission in June. It was designed to target Russia’s energy, financial, cryptocurrency, trade, and fisheries sectors, bar former Russian servicemen from entering the EU, and phase out the transportation of Russian LNG by EU companies.

The EU formally adopted the sanctions on Thursday night, targeting a number of banks and individuals, including former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator on Ukraine.

The bloc held several failed rounds of talks on the package, which requires unanimous approval from all 27 EU member states, with a number of nations arguing that some of the proposals would harm their economic interests. Greece, which has the world’s largest independent cross-trade LNG fleet by capacity, warned that banning EU shipping companies from transporting Russian LNG would harm Greek shipping interests, including Dynagas.

Dynagas, one of the few European companies that operate ice-class LNG carriers capable of reaching Russia’s Yamal LNG project in the Arctic, says its vessels are tied to contracts running until 2065 that predate the Ukraine conflict. It argued that the sanctions could force it to sell its fleet, weakening Europe’s shipping industry while benefiting foreign competitors. Greece also reportedly warned that the measure could trigger widespread reflagging to jurisdictions where EU rules would be harder to enforce, and pushed for an indefinite exemption.

Watered-down deal

Apart from the Greek concession, the final package is reportedly significantly diluted. A Baltic-backed proposal to ban Russians who served in the military after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict from entering the bloc was scaled back after France, Italy, and Greece pushed back. The measure now only applies to short-stay visas and narrows the criteria from general military service to direct participation in military operations.

The package, however, reportedly blacklists around 250 individuals and entities accused of supporting Russia’s military operation against Ukraine, “spreading propaganda,” or helping circumvent sanctions, as well as more than 600 vessels linked to the supposed ‘shadow fleet’, which allegedly helps Russia bypass sanctions on oil exports. It also targets Russian banks, crypto platforms, and oil traders.

The final version of the package must still undergo technical revisions before being adopted by all 27 member states.

Behind Brussels’ ‘united front’

Analysts and diplomats say the long-debated package highlights growing divisions within the bloc as the sanctions increasingly clash with member states’ economic interests.

Some say the standoff exposes the fact that there was never actual unanimity on sanctions, and that former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s departure has deprived other EU capitals of a convenient shield. For years, the scapegoating of Orban allowed other governments to hide behind Budapest while defending their own economic interests. With Peter Magyar now in office and Hungary no longer blocking the sanctions, the objections have openly surfaced.

“It has been a surprise and a disappointment how many member states have stalled in their actions,” Finnish MEP Ville Niinisto told Politico. Another diplomat said: “Orban was difficult, but he never actually blocked whole packages.”

Moscow has long maintained that the sanctions will not alter its political course or have a decisive impact on its economy, while analysts have warned that the sanctions largely backfire on those that impose them.

An Oregon school employee who was fired for displaying children’s books that reject transgender ideology cannot challenge their dismissal, a US appeals court has ruled.

Two Obama and Biden-appointed judges dismissed education specialist and licensed clinical social worker Roderick Theis II’s First Amendment right to display ‘He Is He’ and ‘She Is She’ in his office at La Grande Middle School. Theis also displayed conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s ‘Johnny the Walrus’, a satirical children’s book about a boy struggling with his ‘walrus’ identity, at another school office.

The district received a complaint and called the books a “bias incident” against transgender students. Theis denied that he tried to harm anyone, but was ordered to remove them whenever students were present.

A judge later allowed him to display the books only when his office was empty, but at one point, several students came in and asked to read them. A teacher filmed the encounter and filed a complaint, after which the district fired Theis.

He sued the district, arguing that the order and his subsequent firing violated his First Amendment right to free speech.

On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the free speech case and upheld Theis’ dismissal in a 2-1 ruling.

Judges John Owens and Jennifer Sung, appointed by former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden respectively, said the books could be treated as the school’s own message because they were visible to students while Theis was working.

Trump-appointed Judge Lawrence VanDyke issued a fierce dissent, arguing that the books were personal office decorations no different from Pride flags, Black Lives Matter posters, or political endorsements displayed by other employees.

The appeals court previously ruled against Olympus Spa, a women-only Korean nude spa that had been ordered to admit transgender-identifying male customers. The spa is currently seeking to take its case to the US Supreme Court.

The ruling comes amid a wider rollback of transgender and DEI policies in the US. The Trump administration has restricted military service for people with gender dysphoria, moved against medical transition for minors, dismantled federal DEI programs, and backed sex-based rules in women’s sports.

While Republican-led states have adopted similar measures, Democratic-led jurisdictions, activists, and some courts have continued to defend gender-identity-based policies.

A software glitch in New Jersey mistakenly registered thousands of non-citizens to vote, allowing nearly 400 to cast ballots, Governor Mikie Sherrill has said.

The disclosure has reignited debate over election integrity in the US. In a statement on Tuesday, the White House argued the incident underscored the need to pass President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act, which would require states to verify citizenship before registering voters in federal elections. Democrats and voting rights advocates, however, said the case reflected an isolated administrative error rather than evidence of widespread non-citizen voting.

According to Sherrill, the glitch affected roughly 6,600 people applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards through the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission between mid-2023 and mid-2024. Although they correctly identified themselves as non-US citizens, a software malfunction automatically added them to the voter rolls.

State officials said fewer than 400 of those mistakenly registered ultimately voted. The ballots accounted for less than 0.01% of the more than four million votes cast in New Jersey during the 2024 election, and the authorities said they found no evidence that the error affected the outcome of any race.

The governor also criticized the previous state administration, accusing it of failing to detect and disclose the problem sooner.

Federal officials have urged states to review their voter registration databases, while election authorities in several states have questioned broader claims of non-citizen voting and called on Washington to provide evidence supporting them.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Thursday on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila, Philippines.

The two diplomats did not make any statements or take questions from reporters before or after the meeting, which lasted around 35 minutes due to a tight schedule. It marked their first in-person talks since September 2025.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated after the meeting that the talks focused on bilateral relations and major international issues, including the Ukraine conflict and the situation in the Persian Gulf.

While discussing the Ukraine crisis, she said Lavrov briefed Rubio on the “real state of affairs” along the front line, warned against further arms deliveries to Kiev, and accused European countries of pursuing a destabilizing policy aimed at inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia.

Lavrov also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness for a diplomatic settlement and its commitment to the US proposals accepted by President Vladimir Putin at the summit in Anchorage, Alaska last year, she said.

Zakharova stated that the two diplomats also welcomed the resumption of full-fledged contacts between Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos and NASA and supported expanding parliamentary and cultural exchanges. They discussed improving conditions for Russian and US diplomatic missions and agreed to maintain contacts between their foreign ministries, including through international organizations.

However, he noted that the Anchorage proposals referenced by the Russian side were no longer viable because Kiev had rejected them and that a peace agreement could only work if both sides accepted it.

He said any eventual settlement would therefore require “new ideas and new concepts,” adding that Washington remains ready to put forward fresh proposals and play a constructive role if the circumstances are right.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, cautioned against reading too much into the meeting. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said continued contacts were “positive” but did not yet amount to “new momentum” or an acceleration in the talks.

He added that Moscow remained in dialogue with Washington through existing channels and hoped face-to-face discussions would continue once US negotiators were available to travel to the Russian capital.

Although initially promising, the talks have so far failed to produce any breakthroughs and have largely stalled since the US became embroiled in the war in the Middle East.

Moscow has praised Trump’s efforts while largely blaming Ukraine’s European backers for trying to sabotage the negotiations. Earlier this month, Lavrov argued that the West is not seeking a settlement in good faith, adding that “the reserve of goodwill and hope has been exhausted.”

President Vladimir Putin affirmed last month that Russia is sticking to its original terms, including demands that Ukraine recognize Russia’s new borders and abandon its plans to join NATO in favor of permanent neutrality.

Yemen’s Houthis said they struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea in the first attack of the kind since the Iranian-backed militant group declared a naval blockade of the kingdom.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Wednesday that the group targeted the Saudi-flagged vessels Encelia and Layla with missiles and drones. He added that around ten ships changed course since the blockade was formally imposed on Monday.

According to the UK Maritime Trade Operations coordination center, a vessel reported that it caught fire after being struck by an unidentified projectile around 130 km from Al Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia. There were no reports of casualties.

A video posted on social media appears to show a large fire aboard a ship.

BIG: First Saudi oil tanker reportedly hit by Houthi missile near Yemen, engulfed in flames. pic.twitter.com/R3nG7FSdW1

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 22, 2026

The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) later cited a source at the kingdom’s Transport General Authority as confirming that the Encelia caught fire after being struck. The source said all crew members were safe.

In a statement on Wednesday, Saree said the group would continue to enforce what he described as a policy of “a siege for a siege,” which Riyadh considers illegal under international law.

The Houthis imposed the blockade a week after forces loyal to Yemen’s Saudi-backed government bombed Sanaa International Airport in an attempt to prevent an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation from Tehran from landing. The group has regularly launched missiles and drones at Israel since the start of the Gaza war, before reaching a ceasefire with the US in May 2025.

The US has compromised its national interests by waging wars on Israel’s behalf, conservative journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson told RT’s Olga Bataman and Tara Reade.

In the latest episode of East Meets West with Olga and Tara, aired on Wednesday, Carlson accused President Donald Trump of betraying his voters by launching an “immoral” attack on Iran alongside Israel in late February. He added that the war forced him to abandon his support for Trump and the Republican Party.

The US president “did precisely what he said he would never do, and he did it at the behest of Israel,” Carlson said.

“Trump got into this war because he was pushed by Israel. I saw that happen. I’m not guessing. That’s not anti-Semitism. That’s a fact. I was disgusted by it, as I think most Americans were,” he said, adding that dissident Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, were “driven out” of the party.

“I think America lost its sovereignty many years ago. The CIA and Mossad have worked together – in some cases, really as one – for over 60 years,” Carlson said.

“There is a long track record of the United States and its 350 million people being misused by Israeli intelligence.”

Carlson claimed that Israel fed the US false intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and that Israel sold Trump “the lie” that killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would trigger the collapse of the Iranian government.

Although Trump has denied that he entered the war with Iran solely because of Israel, he said in a recent interview, “Israel would have been blown up a long time ago had I not got involved.”

The White House is withholding $400 million in military aid for Kiev approved by Congress, US Senator Dick Durbin has said. The funding, allocated by lawmakers in January, will not be available until at least 2029, Durbin said during a hearing on Wednesday.

The money is part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), a Pentagon-led program in which Ukraine receives training, equipment, and advisory assistance from the US.

According to Durbin, the package has yet to reach Kiev and has so far “bounced back and forth.” On Wednesday, he said the administration of President Donald Trump “informed us that the money will not be available in many aspects until the next president is in office.”

“The payment plan tells us to be prepared to spend that money in fiscal year 2029,” he said while questioning Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.

Caine replied that he was unaware of the delay and told the senator to raise the matter with the “civilian leaders.”

In March, the Washington Post reported that the US government could have diverted the money allocated for Ukraine to replenish military stockpiles depleted during the war with Iran.

Senator Mitch McConnell wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post a month later, complaining that the $400 million in Ukraine aid approved by Congress was “now collecting dust at the Pentagon.”

On Wednesday, Durbin said he met with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara earlier this month. According to the senator, Zelensky was “very explicit in terms of what he needed” in the conflict with Russia.

Trump has criticized his predecessor, Joe Biden, for his unconditional support for Ukraine and said any future US military aid should be paid for by Kiev’s European backers.

Zelensky has repeatedly blamed the West for weapons shortages and delays in deliveries for Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield. Moscow has maintained that foreign military aid only serves to escalate the conflict and will not prevent Russia from achieving its military objectives.

The number of measles cases reported across the US this year has climbed to 2,295, the highest annual total since 1991, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

Measles is a highly contagious viral respiratory disease that was officially eliminated in the US in 2000 following a successful mass vaccination campaign. However, cases surged last year, rising more than eightfold from 2024.

“Unvaccinated individuals or those with unknown vaccination status represent almost all reported measles cases,” JHU said in an update on Wednesday. “These outcomes are consistent with estimates that two doses of measles vaccine protect 97% of those vaccinated.”

The last time national infection numbers were higher was in 1991, when the US recorded 9,643 cases, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The largest outbreaks this year were centered in South Carolina and Utah, following a major multistate outbreak in Texas that spread into neighboring New Mexico and other states in 2025, according to JHU.

“It’s very frustrating. This is a reflection that we have been unable to stop measles virus transmission in this country,” he added.

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, recommended that people receive the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine following the Texas outbreak. He added, however, that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”

President Donald Trump, speaking to ABC News last year, said he recommended the MMR vaccine. “I recommend it... Do I mandate it? No,” he said.

Vaccine hesitancy is on the rise in the US and globally, with experts attributing the trend to misinformation spread during the Covid-19 pandemic and protests against vaccine mandates.

Washington is controlled by a “closeted gay mafia” largely made up of Republican politicians, former US President Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son, Hunter, has claimed, alleging that “everybody knew” late Senator Lindsey Graham was gay.

Longtime Russia hawk Lindsey Graham died earlier this month at the age of 71 from an aortic dissection, according to the preliminary findings of a medical examiner that was released by his office. The senator’s death came a day after his return from Kiev, where he had met Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.

Biden made the remarks while discussing Republican politicians in Washington for a podcast interview that was released on Saturday.

”I believe the biggest problem in America is not the oligarchy, it’s the closet-ocracy,” Biden said. “Everybody knows there is this closeted gay mafia, largely Republican, that exists in Washington, DC, and everybody knows every single one of them who’s gay.”

“I believe that internal conflict creates so much vitriol inside a person that they take it out on the rest of the world,” he said.

He suggested that, after spending “their whole lives” in the closet, these officials develop a “blackened heart” because they “can’t be who” they want and “take it out on everybody else” through their policies.

After returning to the White House in 2025, US President Donald Trump prioritized combating what he calls ‘woke bias.’ He has since signed several executive orders rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and what he calls “radical gender ideology” in the federal government and its regulated industries.

Rumors about Graham’s sexuality have been circulating for years, but the senator repeatedly denied them. “I ain’t gay,” he told New York Times Magazine in 2010.

Graham represented South Carolina in the Senate from 2003, building a reputation as one of Washington’s most hardline foreign policy hawks. After opposing Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and repeatedly calling for strikes on Iran, he became one of Congress’ fiercest Russophobes.

Graham repeatedly called for putting 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.”

Italy’s Corriere della Sera was ordered to pay compensation to a sociology professor that it defamed as a “Putinist” after a court determined that the pro-Russia influence network he supposedly belonged to never existed.

In a Tuesday ruling, a court in Milan found that the newspaper had defamed Professor Alessandro Orsini by referring to him as a member of “Putin’s Network in Italy.” Corriere della Sera, a mainstream broadsheet paper, was ordered to pay €27,500 in compensation to Orsini.

“Publishing and allowing the publication of an article that attributes to Orsini the status of a member of an organized network of pro-Putin supporters aimed at propaganda and counter-information… constitutes conduct damaging to his personal and professional image and reputation,” the judge noted in the ruling.

However, COPASIR’s president admitted at the time that the committee had “never conducted its own investigations into alleged influencers.” Italy’s undersecretary for intelligence services, Franco Gabrielli, added that “the names given by the newspaper do not appear in any type of investigation.”

During the trial, Corriere della Sera claimed it had received “other and different information” from confidential sources to back its story but was unable to prove this in court.

The judge noted that, not only had the newspaper failed to prove that Orsini participated in an organized propaganda network, but it was unable to prove that the network even existed in the first place.

As a result of the Corriere della Sera article, Orsini lost his position at Luiss University and was dropped as a contributor by Italian broadcaster RAI.

Orsini has been a persistent critic of Italy’s support for Ukraine. In early 2022, he accused Prime Minister Mario Draghi of “total subordination to America,” while blasting the West for “doing nothing for peace.”

“We must be open to recognizing the independence of Donbass and lifting sanctions,” he said in an appearance on RAI. “Draghi must say he’s no longer sending weapons to Zelensky.”

The rule of Vladimir Zelensky has been a catastrophe for Ukraine, and that is how it will be remembered once the dust of relentless info war campaigns in his favor – and against his critics – settles.

While the corruption of the Zelensky regime is stupendous, that fact – sad as it is – is not what makes him special, however. Because exorbitant, shameless embezzlement, kickbacks, and fraud have been the Ukrainian establishment’s perverse normal since independence. Zelensky and his cronies are certain to have cashed in like no one before because the West has pumped in money as never before while turning two blind eyes to what happens to it. But in principle, Zelensky has merely done what they all do. Not that that makes it any better.

Zelensky’s truly distinct contribution to Ukraine’s misery has consisted in two other things. His unprecedented ramping-up of authoritarianism – begun long before the escalation of the war in 2022 – and his merciless choice to relentlessly sacrifice his country and its people to serve as cannon fodder in a Western proxy war against Russia.
Zelensky’s responsibility before his country is all the greater because he once either knew better or he lied. During his 2019 election campaign, when he generally “avoided serious interviews and discussions about policy – preferring instead to post light-hearted videos to social media,” as the BBC back then was still ready to report, the comedian-on-the-way-to-the-presidency made one and only one specific promise: that he understood the absolute priority of peace and would do everything to find a negotiated solution with Russia.

Now, in the summer of 2026, it may seem as if Zelensky’s grip on Ukraine is finally slipping. A combination of street protests and – inevitable if quiet – Western pressure has forced him into a humiliating climb-down. After the president’s sudden dismissal of the popular – and much-hyped – defense minister Mikhail Fedorov, the protesters had demanded his re-instatement and the sacking of Fedorov’s rival, the military’s commander-in-chief Aleksandr ‘the Butcher’ Syrsky. Zelensky has now fired Syrsky to be replaced by General Mikhail Drapaty, while some new influential position for Fedorov is being discussed.

Boris Johnson, currently a more-than-usual washed-out has-been of British politics, busy trying to catch the public eye, has made meager headlines with blaming the Ukraine War on the Britain’s new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband. How is that supposed to work? Somehow via Syria. Yes, really.

The single most important cause of this perfectly avoidable war was of course the West’s reckless policy of NATO expansion. And the man who helped most directly to make the war go on when it could have ended quickly was Boris Johnson. But sure: “Syria.”
Boris, though, does stand for something, namely just how bizarre much of this developing story is. Here is a regime that, together with its Western supporters and users, has just been running an absurd but pervasive propaganda campaign claiming its drone and missile strikes are winning the war. And yet both the minister of defense and the head of the military have to go. An odd way to celebrate impending victory.

The most likely real reason for Fedorov’s sacking – whether it will be reversed or sort-of-reversed – is that Zelensky fears him as a rising political competitor, as Ukrainska Pravda reports. And while firing the defense minister, Zelensky himself created the cover story that there was no other way to deal with conflicts between Fedorov and Syrsky. In that way, it is Zelensky who made Syrsky, already widely disliked for wasting the lives of Ukrainian soldiers with futile and stubborn tactics, a target for the protesters.

The diehard Zelensky fans at Britain’s Telegraph may try to sell this outcome as “nimble” Zelensky successfully buying time by making Syrsky his fall guy in the same manner that he had already sacrificed his very intimate friend and top fixer Andrey Yermak to dodge the fallout from his own corruption. In reality, Zelensky has lost face again. His authority, brittle in any case, has taken another hit.

For Ukraine, though, none of this is good news. Yes, the de facto dictator Zelensky has suffered a defeat, and the abhorred ‘butcher’ Syrsky has been removed. But he has been replaced by a man who, while almost two decades younger, is very unlikely to be any better. Drapaty, who is treated with the usual kid gloves by Ukrainian and Western mainstream media, may or may not be an efficient commander. What is certain is that he first came to public attention in 2014, when his units brutally cracked down on resistance in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol (before, as often forgotten, losing control of the city). Nothing in his career since then indicates a change of attitude. This is the man in charge of the whole Ukrainian military now.

Zelensky may well know that his own hype about the current air campaign turning the war around is propaganda. Yet clearly that does not mean that the Ukrainian leadership is willing to be serious about a negotiated solution. Emboldened by exceedingly rash Western support, Kiev has not yet given up on continuing a losing war, propped up by brutal forced mobilization, until an end that will be even more bitter than Ukraine’s current wretchedness.

Iran’s latest round of missile and drone strikes disabled multiple US radar, communications, and air-defense systems in Kuwait, according to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC which claimed American bases across the region had suffered a “dark night.”

In a series of statements carried by Press TV on Tuesday, the IRGC said its forces targeted several US military installations as part of the latest wave of its Nasr-2 Operation.

The strikes reportedly hit early warning and missile-defense radar, communications and satellite systems, a Patriot air-defense battery, and a hangar housing MQ-9 drones. Several UAVs were also destroyed or severely damaged, according to the IRGC.

”The brave sons of a powerful Iran delivered crushing blows to the desperate enemy, as the dark night continued for US radar and air defense systems across the region,” the force said.

The IRGC described the attacks as a radar-suppression campaign intended to clear the way for “more decisive and heavier waves” of missile and drone strikes against American forces.

The Iranian Army separately claimed that loitering drones had struck three US bases in Kuwait, targeting troop facilities, helicopter parking areas, administrative buildings, and other support infrastructure.

The IRGC also said it had destroyed a US missile-defense radar system and an F-15 fighter inside a shelter at an American base in Jordan.

Neither the US nor Kuwait have confirmed the reported destruction of radar systems, aircraft, or air-defense equipment.

Washington has acknowledged that four American service members were killed during recent Iranian attacks and related incidents in Jordan and Iraq.

However, The New York Times reported on Monday that the Pentagon has withheld information about dozens of troops injured in previously undisclosed strikes. Several helicopters were also damaged, according to the paper.

US officials cited by the NYT and Wall Street Journal have warned that Iranian missiles are becoming increasingly effective at penetrating American defenses due to their speed, maneuverability, and adapted tactics.

In retaliation for renewed American strikes launched as part of the unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran, the Islamic Republic has carried out near-daily missile and drone attacks on US military facilities across the Middle East since a temporary ceasefire collapsed earlier this month.

A French fashion industry scout with ties to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead outside Paris, prosecutors told AFP on Wednesday.

Daniel Siad, who was 69, was reportedly found unresponsive in his kitchen by a 28-year-old woman who lived with him on Monday.

“An investigation to determine the cause of death was opened on Monday evening following the discovery,” French prosecutors said in a statement cited by local media. An autopsy is to be carried out as part of the probe.

At the time of his death, Siad was the subject of an investigation by French prosecutors following several complaints, including rape allegations. The investigation had been assigned to a specialist office responsible for combating human trafficking.

Siad’s name appears in the Epstein files published by the US Justice Department more than 2,000 times. They contain correspondence between Siad and Epstein, in which the French scout suggests multiple models to the late pedophile, asks for money and trades sex jokes.

The former scout was not the first of Epstein’s former associates to die before they got to testify in court.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although it has continued to fuel public scrutiny and speculation because of his connections to wealthy and powerful figures.

Despite years of government investigations, witness depositions and disclosures, no Epstein ‘client list’ has been made public, and none of his high-profile contacts have been charged with any crimes related to the sex trafficker’s case.

A Mexican national serving a decades-long prison sentence for murdering a Michigan woman has filed a federal lawsuit against US President Donald Trump, seeking $75 million in damages, a public apology, and American citizenship after claiming his case was exploited for political gain.

Brandon Ortiz-Vite, 27, is serving a sentence of 39 to 102 years after pleading guilty to the murder of Ruby Garcia in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2024. Prosecutors said he shot Garcia multiple times before abandoning her body along a highway and driving away in her vehicle.

Ortiz-Vite had previously been deported from the US but later reentered the country illegally.

In a handwritten complaint filed in federal court, Ortiz-Vite named Trump and White House communications director Steven Cheung as defendants. He alleges Trump turned him into a national symbol during the 2024 presidential campaign by repeatedly highlighting his case in speeches and advertisements focused on illegal immigration.

During a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Trump described Ortiz-Vite as “America’s problem” and later featured his mugshot in campaign advertisements referring to “murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers” living illegally in the United States.

Brandon Ortiz-Vite was convicted of Ruby Garcia's murder in 2024. Now he's asking a federal judge to order President Trump to apologize for mentioning his case. https://t.co/VAhMqMovxn

— 13 On Your Side (@wzzm13) July 17, 2026

In the lawsuit, Ortiz-Vite claims the publicity subjected him to harassment behind bars and reduced him to a stereotype.

“I was put into a category. Who I was as a person no longer mattered! What only mattered was my race,” he wrote in the complaint.

Ortiz-Vite argued that Trump had unfairly politicized his case, claiming the publicity “belittled me, shattered my dignity and what I was as a person.”

Ortiz-Vite is seeking $75 million in damages, a public apology from Trump, and US citizenship. He alleges the president’s repeated references to his case caused him public humiliation.

Legal experts cited by US media have said the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. Former federal prosecutor Matthew Borgula said federal courts are required to screen prisoner lawsuits before they can proceed and argued the complaint is unlikely to survive that process.

“Being publicly embarrassed by a politician isn’t a constitutional violation,” Borgula said, adding that Trump’s statements about Ortiz-Vite were “substantially true.”

Democrats grilled US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over the Iran War during his testimony before the US Senate as the White House requested additional funding for operations in the Middle East.

The US and Iran resumed regular exchanges of strikes earlier this month, with both sides saying the truce had effectively collapsed.

Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the campaign against Iran launched by US President Donald Trump together with Israel on February 28 has so far cost an estimated $37.5 billion.

He said he was seeking $87 billion in congressional funding for the Pentagon, including $67 billion for operations in the Middle East.

“Without these funds, we face critical shortfalls that threaten our ability to also simply pay our service members, rapidly replenish equipment and munitions, and sustain vital operations without disruption,” he said.

In a series of tense exchanges, Democrats argued that Trump had failed to achieve his stated war goals and accused the secretary of misleading the public.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York said Iranian strikes had killed at least two US service members in Jordan last week, despite Hegseth’s earlier insistence that Iran’s remaining missile stockpiles were “depleted and decimated.”

“That consternation is why so many New Yorkers are perplexed, stressed out and find this war to be incredibly unpopular,” she said.

“The Iranian defense-industrial base is effectively gone, but they do have underground facilities,” Hegseth replied, adding that Iran has “spent 47 years trying to hide their missiles under mountains.”

Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff similarly asked Hegseth whether the missile threat had been defeated four months ago.

“No one ever stated that every single missile was gone,” the Pentagon chief replied. “We never expected them to completely lose the ability to launch missiles,” he added, arguing that Iran could not go “toe to toe” with the US in terms of missile strikes.

During his opening statement, Hegseth was interrupted several times by protesters denouncing US strikes on Iran and Israel’s war in Gaza.

Hegseth defended the campaign as highly effective, saying that, unlike previous US administrations, Trump would not allow the country to be dragged into “stupid wars.”

“Militarily, Iran has been completely overmatched and crushed from the beginning,” he claimed.

.@SecWar: "President Trump said we're not fighting stupid wars like [Iraq and Afghanistan] again, and he hasn't. That's why we haven't been trying to remake Iranian society, but simply, in a realist, America First way, ensure they never have a path to a nuclear bomb—full stop." pic.twitter.com/fJrNCjCd3q

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 21, 2026

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

The US and Iran have been exchanging regular strikes for nearly two weeks following the collapse of a fragile ceasefire deal reached in spring. Both sides have accused each other of violating the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) – an agreement signed last month that was expected to serve as a roadmap for the final settlement.

Washington and Tehran particularly clashed over the fate of the Strait of Hormuz – a key route for global oil shipments. Iran maintains it should define the rules for the ships passing through the strait under the MoU while the US demands the Islamic Republic fully “reopen” it to international navigation.

Neither side has since demonstrated any signs of backing down as both Washington and Tehran have fallen back into escalatory rhetoric, with exchanges of fire continuing on a daily basis.

Deal violation

The latest outbreak of hostilities between the US and Iran began on July 7, when Washington announced a new round of “powerful strikes” targeting the Islamic Republic. The US said that the strikes followed Iranian attacks on three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. While Tehran has not officially accepted responsibility for it, Iranian media reported that one of the vessels was struck after “ignoring repeated warnings.”

Following the tanker incidents, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said American forces struck more than 80 targets in Iran in response to a “clear violation of the ceasefire.”

The Iranian Foreign Ministry called the move an MoU violation, with the nation’s military vowing a “decisive response.” Iranian media then reported that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the military launched missiles and drones at 85 “key US military facilities” across the Middle East.

Ceasefire ‘is over’

Shortly after the strikes began, US President Donald Trump declared the April ceasefire with Iran “over” and called the Iranian leadership “scum.” On July 13, he told Congress that he had resumed “limited defensive strikes,” while the US military reported daily attacks on dozens of Iranian targets.

Trump also claimed the US would “take over” the Strait of Hormuz and charge vessels for passage, declared himself Tehran’s “number one target,” and threatened to “completely decimate” Iran if it targeted him.

‘Keep your word or pay the price’

Tehran condemned “the aggressive attacks carried out by the US terrorist army” under a “false pretext,” while Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed “severe punishment” for the strikes.

Top negotiator Mohammad Ghalibaf said Washington would pay the price for not honoring its MoU commitments. “The era of one-sided deals is over,” he said, adding that “reality is knocking."

A senior Iranian intelligence official told RT last Thursday that Tehran has a plan for “escalating the war” that is “full of surprises,” warning that “the entire region will pay the price” if the US continues targeting Iranian civilian infrastructure as part of its “war of attrition.”

Cost of war

The Pentagon has confirmed at least four American soldiers killed since the latest escalation began in early July. Nearly 100 service members have been injured, US Department of War spokesman Sean Parnell said, adding that most injuries were minor and 96% of those affected had returned to duty.

The New York Times reported on Monday that the Pentagon was concealing the true scale of US casualties, saying dozens of soldiers had been injured in three unreported Iranian strikes on US forces in Jordan and that several helicopters were also damaged.

US strikes on Iran killed at least 50 people and injured more than 500, AP reported over the weekend. Both sides have reported strikes on military and infrastructure sites, often publishing videos online.

CENTCOM did not comment on the Iranian claims, instead reporting attacks on “dozens of targets at multiple locations,” including Iranian air defense systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone capabilities, and small boats.

Iranian media reported US attacks on bridges in central and southern Iran, as well as on Iranshahr Airport and a southern port city. The IRGC stressed that the bridge strikes caused civilian casualties.

The hostilities and Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz have also pushed oil prices higher. Brent and WTI crude rose to five-week highs of $91.34 and $85.03 a barrel on Tuesday, Reuters reported, up more than 20% since July 7.

How are the Middle East and world reacting?

The UN has repeatedly voiced its concern over the latest escalation, while calling for a new diplomatic push to settle the conflict. Last week, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said Secretary General Antonio Guterres was “particularly concerned about attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region” and called them “unacceptable.”

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have meanwhile declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in a major regional escalation. The announcement was made after forces loyal to the Saudi-backed government bombed Sana’a International Airport in an attempt to prevent an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation returning from Tehran from landing.

The development sparked concerns about the security of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait – another key waterway, linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

What’s the latest?

America’s policy of ever-expanding military attacks on Iran has led to a stalemate, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing the latest intelligence assessment. The report written primarily by the CIA stated that Iran would survive a US naval blockade for months and is unlikely to change its negotiating position because of continued US strikes, the paper reported.

Washington and Tehran risk remaining “in an indefinite limbo between peace and war,” the paper warned. It also reported separately that the US was “planning for a wider war” despite lacking the resources for a prolonged campaign.

On Friday, Axios reported that Washington had notified Israel that it was sending dozens of additional refueling planes ahead of a possible expansion of operations against Iran. Saeid Golkar, an expert on Iran’s security services, told the Wall Street Journal that the escalation was “rapidly intensifying and getting out of control” as both sides risk plunging into a “total war.”

US President Donald Trump has slapped 50% tariffs on a broad range of Canadian imports, citing what he called Ottawa’s “unequal treatment” of American cars, dairy products, and alcohol.

Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs was partly struck down by the US Supreme Court earlier this year. He invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose the new duties. The tariffs will take effect in 30 days and apply even to goods covered by the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA), the White House announced on Monday.

The move marks the latest escalation in a trade war that has intensified since Trump’s return to the White House. Washington has already imposed tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum, automobiles, and other imports. Ottawa has responded with countertariffs and other retaliatory measures.

Washington argues that Canada unfairly taxes certain US-made vehicles, maintains protectionist barriers on dairy imports, and continues provincial boycotts of American alcoholic beverages. The administration said those measures amount to “discriminatory treatment” of US products.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the move, accusing Washington of violating the USMCA while leaving the door open to negotiations.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford urged Ottawa to respond in kind. “If these tariffs proceed, Canada should respond tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar,” he wrote on X.

Earlier this month, Trump threatened additional tariffs on Canada, claiming its poor forest management had blanketed parts of the US in wildfire smoke and that Canada should pay for its alleged “willful negligence.”

“Canada has taken US alcohol products off Canadian shelves,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said, adding that the new tariffs were intended to “hold Canada accountable for its retaliation and discrimination.”

Ottawa responded to Trump’s trade offensive in 2025 with 25% duties on about C$30 billion ($21.7 billion) worth of US goods. While Mark Carney later rolled some of those back, tariffs on American cars, steel, and aluminum remain in force.

The latest move is part of a sweeping tariff drive launched after Trump’s return to office in January 2025. He has imposed duties on imports from allies and rivals alike, targeting countries including China, Canada and Mexico, as well as steel, aluminum, and automobiles.

Earlier this week, Andy Burnham traipsed out to Buckingham Palace, symbolically kissed the hands of King Charles III – as tradition demanded – and the “King of the North” was duly anointed the new UK prime minister.

Amidst the subsequent euphoria within the Labour Party, the fact that Burnham’s swift rise to the prime ministership was the result of the brutally executed political coup that had deposed his predecessor – the now patently unelectable Keir Starmer – was not mentioned.

Also glossed over was the fact that the Burnham coup was engineered by a small group of Labour Party technocrats (some of whom had been involved in making Starmer prime minister and expelling Jeremy Corbyn from the party) and supported by a majority of anxious Labour backbenchers fearful for their political futures.

The manner in which Burnham became prime minister, and that he did so without winning a general election, raises the question as to whether he has a genuine mandate to implement his recently minted policy program – very much a work in progress and expanding daily – such as it currently is this week.

Amidst the ongoing leadership churn that characterizes contemporary UK politics, such issues of principle no longer matter. It is sufficient that a new prime minister be presentable, have a mild dose of charisma and be capable of inspiring a degree of hope amongst his fellow MPs, as well as an increasingly disenchanted and bitter electorate. Burnham ticks all these boxes in spades, has the ability to conceal his ruthlessness well, and, as an added bonus, is a Northerner and an enthusiastic football fan to boot.

What more could the ailing UK Labour Party possibly ask for in a leader?

Burnham could, therefore, pose as something of a political outsider – even though he had previously been an MP for more than a decade – mercifully free from the taint of having been a member of Starmer’s failed and unelectable government.

Burnham’s great virtue as a politician – possibly his only virtue – is his undeniable ability to convey a sense of hope to both party members and disgruntled UK voters. Any politician seriously seeking high office must possess this skill – something that Starmer lacked, and Nigel Farage seems to have forgotten recently as he embraced a rather pathetic and counter-productive brand of political victimhood. Burnham is very good indeed at engendering hope – and recently he has spoken of little else.

Not surprisingly, the theme of hope was at the heart of the brief off-the-cuff speech Burnham delivered outside 10 Downing Street on Monday morning after returning from his audience with the King.

Burnham promised to “make this the moment we bring back hope”; to “make politics work better”; “build a national sense of unity”; and “bring forward the biggest changes in the last 40 years”.  Burnham also stated that “later this year” he would “bring forward a 10 year plan for Britain” that would restore the nation to prosperity.

Never have so many platitudes been crammed into one brief speech.

Somewhat oddly, Burnham also promised to “immediately put an end to rough sleeping (homelessness)” – hardly a major problem given Britain’s current state of acute decline, and one, incidentally, that Burnham failed to effectively solve when he was the mayor of Manchester.

This, however, is typical Burnham. He shies away from important issues and focuses on policy minutia – thus his solution for the cost-of-living crisis, namely abolishing bus fares.

Will Burnham be able to avoid Starmer’s fate and that of the five other incompetent UK prime ministers that have lost office in the last decade?

The answer to that question is clearly “no” – because it is already apparent that Burnham’s nostalgic politics of hope is nothing more than a rhetorical ideological façade covering up a misguided and unworkable policy program that is incapable of being implemented.

Late last week, Burnham delivered a lengthy and revealing speech to the Labour Party faithful – who were reveling in their delight at the imminent departure of Keir Starmer, who only two years ago they had cheered enthusiastically from the rafters.

Burnham’s speech was replete with feel-good platitudes. This was troubling enough – but even more disturbing was Burnham’s complete lack of historical insight into the enormous economic and political changes that have reshaped Britain over the past 40 years.

In his speech, Burnham set out the key policies that he will seek to implement. He promised to unify the Labour Party; create “a new politics” – based upon the political devolution of power to local councils – and a “new economic model” – based upon the nationalization of water, power, housing and transport, together with re-industrializing the economically devastated North of England.

As for unifying the fractured Labour Party – a hopeless task if there ever was one – this appears unlikely if the unseemly factional squabbling over appointments to Burnham’s cabinet that broke out this week is any guide. The fact that Ed Miliband was not made Chancellor certainly does not augur well for party stability in the future.

Many local councils are hopelessly corrupt and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, as many recently elected Reform councilors have discovered to their dismay. They are far less well-placed to govern effectively than the more powerful regional parliaments.

In any event, the critical problems that confront contemporary Britain – including the cost-of-living crisis, ongoing economic decline, mass immigration, net zero policy, cultural division, foreign policy issues, and defense spending – can only be solved by a strengthened central government directly exercising real and enhanced political power. To take more political power away from Westminster is a recipe for political disaster.

Extraordinarily, Burnham did not refer to any of these pressing problems in his speech.  Nor is there any sign that Burnham will depart from the policies of the failed Starmer government on these issues. For example, one of Burnham’s first acts as prime minister was to make a telephone call to Vladimir Zelensky and assure him of his “steadfast” continuing support for the Ukrainian regime.

As for Burnham’s policies of nationalization and re-industrialization, while nationalization may be warranted in some areas – London Water, for example – the notion that the North of England can be re-industrialized borders on sheer economic lunacy.

Burnham does not seem to realize that the economy that Thatcher presided over no longer exists and cannot be revived. It was replaced decades ago by a de-industrialized service economy that is compelled to operate within a globalized economic framework.

Burnham, of course, did not explain how his massive nationalization and re-industrialization program would be funded.

The world-view underlying Burnham’s speech is also very revealing. Burnham sees Britain as having taken a wrong political turn under Margaret Thatcher, and views Thatcherism and neoliberalism as the twin contemporary evils that must be eradicated from UK politics if Britain is to return to the prosperity that, according to him, it enjoyed in the 1970s. Implicit in this belief is the view that Blair’s New Labour was nothing more than a continuation of Thatcherism.

In the same way that Burnham ignores the emergence of the globalized economy, he is blind to the political revolution introduced by Tony Blair’s New Labour – a revolution that created a new political framework within which British politics has operated for the past three decades.

The Blairite political revolution – of which Burnham was a part, having served in Blair’s cabinet – replaced traditional politics with a technocratic and bureaucratic model of politics in which power was stripped away from parliament, and came to be exercised by global elites through the bureaucracy, the judiciary, various quangos and an ideologically complaint media – in a manner that made radical political and economic change virtually impossible.

Burnham’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of the Blairite political revolution (which was perpetuated by subsequent conservative governments) means that his nostalgic policy program is incapable of being implemented – irrespective of whether it would achieve its professed goals or not.

Any UK politician committed to genuine radical reform must first dismantle the complex political structure created by Blair. Burnham, however, because of his lack of historical insight, is incapable of even contemplating such a course. That would require genuine radicalism of a kind that the British Labour Party has rarely possessed.

Burnham will therefore inevitably find himself, perhaps sooner than he imagines, in a similar position to that of his six immediate predecessors, all of whom promised hope and change of various kinds (and with varying degrees of sincerity) but were prevented by the political system created by Blair and the global elites from delivering either.

More importantly, there is a Pollyannaish quality to Burnham – despite his ruthlessness – and one gets the impression that he may actually genuinely believe that his altogether fanciful policy prescriptions can be implemented.

If Burnham thinks that the small coterie of Labour Party apparatchiks who brutally cut down Starmer and elevated him to the prime ministership will not ruthlessly dispense with his services, should he prove to be a political failure, then he is even more naive than he appears to be.

From this perspective, Burnham’s politics of hope reveals itself to be an anti-intellectual exercise in ahistorical ideological nostalgia – that will rapidly disintegrate when Burnham is eventually compelled to confront the bleak reality of actually governing a declining and deeply divided Britain, and, at the same time, attempt to implement a misguided and unworkable set of policies.

Interestingly, Burnham refused to take questions from journalists after his recent speeches, and the only interview that he has given recently was to a sycophantic ex-footballer and sports broadcaster. Burnham has also firmly rejected calls to to recall parliament – thereby skillfully avoiding parliamentary scrutiny for the next six weeks.

Is it perhaps the case that Andy Burnham suspects – consciously or unconsciously – that the specious nostalgic politics of hope that he is currently peddling will not be able to withstand even a modicum of rigorous intellectual scrutiny?

Italian police violently clashed with demonstrators in the northern city of Bologna after a Moroccan-born man died on Sunday pleading for help while being restrained by police.

Abderrahim Fakir, a Moroccan-born entrepreneur who ran a small removals and cleaning business, died after police were called to investigate reports of a man behaving aggressively and damaging a vehicle, local media reported.

Video of the incident filmed by a neighbor show Fakir lying face down, repeatedly crying, “aiuto, aiuto, basta” (“help, help, that’s enough”) as two police officers restrain him. He appears to struggle for breath before becoming motionless.

Thousands protested on Monday night, demanding “justice and truth for Fakir.” Police deployed tear gas and water cannon after demonstrators threw firecrackers. A smaller group later clashed with police into the night, leaving 64 officers injured, prosecutors said.

“You can’t die like this,” Fakir’s sister, Khadija, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “The police have to protect us. If someone is agitated, you have to calm them down… not kill them like a dog.”

Bologna prosecutors have opened a probe and requested the officers’ bodycam footage. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Fakir’s death must be fully investigated but added that “nothing can justify violence against law enforcement.”

The incident has sparked a political row, with opposition parties accusing the government of fostering a climate of hostility toward migrants. Senator Ilaria Cucchi, whose brother died in police custody in 2009, condemned the officers’ conduct and criticized expressions of support for police following Fakir’s death.

The case has also revived scrutiny of allegations of racial discrimination in Italian policing. In 2024, the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said Italian law enforcement had engaged in racial profiling, particularly targeting Roma communities and people of African descent.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni rejected those findings, saying police deserved respect rather than “insults.” Other members of her government also dismissed the report. The dispute deepened a broader political debate over institutional racism and policing in Italy.

In Italy, the incident has drawn comparisons to the death of George Floyd, who died in 2020 while being restrained by American police, as well as to the enforcement tactics used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Donald Trump.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar has been forced into a humiliating climbdown over his nomination of chess grandmaster Judit Polgar to become the country’s next president. Amid outrage across Hungary’s stark political divide, Polgar’s rebuttal of Magyar’s offer represents a setback for his crusade to sweep away all remnants of Viktor Orban’s legacy.

Magyar announced that he had nominated Polgar for the role on Monday. “Our country needs unity, peace and a president that all Hungarians can be proud of,” he wrote on social media, adding that Polgar’s name “has been synonymous with talent and perseverance for decades.”

Shortly afterwards, Polgar shot down the offer. “I do not feel enough strength within me to take on the historic responsibility of uniting a divided nation, ​so I am unable to accept the request,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

However, cracks in Magyar’s coalition have been appearing since he took office in May. Conservatives were enraged when LGBT flags appeared on Budapest’s Elizabeth Bridge, and liberals watched in frustration as Magyar kept Orban’s strict migration policies in place and refused to fully endorse Ukraine's bid for EU membership. 

Magyar seeks a pawn to replace Hungary’s chess queen

Polgar, who became a chess grandmaster at the age of 15 and was the world’s top-ranked female player when she retired in 2014, was pitched as a unity candidate, but her nomination triggered a public backlash and angered MPs within Magyar’s own party.

Having changed the law to force out the country’s sitting president, Magyar was criticized for nominating Polgar without any public consultation, with some questioning her loyalty to Hungary due to her dual Hungarian-Israeli citizenship. Tisza officials claimed they had no say in the process, and reporter Csaba Toth claimed that Magyar decided to nominate Polgar on a whim after meeting the chess legend at a July 4 reception at the US Embassy in Budapest.

In a video statement on Monday night, Magyar apologized for any “communication errors” that his “joy and enthusiasm” in nominating Polgar had caused. He said that he would meet with party members this week to choose a new candidate from outside the “divisive politics of the decades before the 2026 regime change.”

Regime change in Hungary

Magyar’s choice of words – “regime change” – was no mistranslation. Since taking office, the PM has made a point of purging officials, institutions, and symbols of Orban’s rule from Hungarian politics. Less than a week after taking power, Magyar opened Orban’s offices to the public in a bid to expose his predecessor’s lavish lifestyle. This stunt backfired when tours of the building revealed a spartan interior. A similar ploy exposing “gold-colored toilet brush holders” at the Hungarian Central Bank was mocked online.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prime Minister of Hungary is shooting videos in one of the guest toilets of the Hungarian Central Bank...
Once we move past the obvious - that a prime minister should perhaps not be filming toilets and toilet brushes... would you consider this to be a… pic.twitter.com/XR4hlhLNvF

— Koskovics Zoltán (@KoskovicsZ) June 1, 2026

In just over two months, Magyar has shut down state media outlets after forcing them to apologize for “lying” during the Orban years, banned long-serving Fidesz MPs from reelection, probed former Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s supposed links to Russia, and seized Fidesz’s data servers, in what Orban’s party called an act of “autocracy.”

The amendment “violates the rule of law, the principles of democracy, and the separation of powers,” and declared that the “core values of a free society… have been trampled underfoot for the sake of political power,” the former president said on Monday. 

“If they can do this to the President of the Republic, they can do it to anyone,” Orban wrote on social media, adding: “God protect Hungary!”

“The problem is not with Judit Polgar, but with Peter Magyar’s actions,” Amnesty International said in a statement. “It is time for the current government and parliamentary majority to finally stop the practice of deciding alone who the country’s next president should be.”

Today, the final barrier fell. Arbitrary rule is no longer a looming threat; it is a reality. If they can do this to the President of the Republic, they can do it to anyone. God protect Hungary!

— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) July 18, 2026

Peter Magyar’s next move

Polgar is a beloved public figure in Hungary, and has international appeal after starring in a Netflix documentary – ‘The Queen of Chess’ – earlier this year. Had she accepted Magyar’s offer, the PM could have used her popularity to gloss over the divisive power grab that ousted her predecessor. Magyar now has 30 days to nominate a new president, but whoever accepts the position will inherit an office stripped of its legitimacy, from which they can be expelled by Magyar’s supermajority at a moment’s notice.

In his rush to sweep away the remnants of the Orban era, Magyar is being accused of tearing up the ‘rule of law’ principles that he swore to protect, and neutering an office that, despite its largely ceremonial role, has the power to dissolve parliament and veto legislation. 

As such, “no serious person with sound judgment, genuine credibility, and a reputation worth protecting will lend their name to this constitutional outrage,” pro-Orban analyst Zoltan Koskovics wrote on X. “That leaves the usual suspects: a Communist relic from Hungary’s sham opposition, or a shameless political opportunist incapable of thinking beyond the next five minutes.”

Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has appointed former Labour leader and ‘net-zero’ architect Ed Miliband as foreign secretary despite concerns over his past record and lack of conventional diplomatic experience.

Burnham made the announcement after formally taking office on Monday. He replaced Keir Starmer, who resigned following falling public support, heavy Labour losses in local elections, and a series of scandals within his government.

Miliband, 56, previously served as Starmer’s energy secretary from 2024 and was one of the former prime minister’s most prominent cabinet members. He was widely regarded as the mastermind of the controversial ‘net-zero’ program to completely decarbonize electricity generation in the UK by 2030. He previously led Labour between 2010 and 2015 but resigned after the party lost that year’s general election.

His appointment as foreign secretary, however, has revived criticism of Miliband’s record as energy secretary. Conservatives, Reform UK, trade unions, and sections of the British media have accused him of worsening Britain’s energy crisis through his efforts to accelerate the transition to renewable power and opposition to new North Sea drilling.

Miliband has dismissed the accusations, claiming that volatile international gas prices and Britain’s dependence on imported fossil fuels are responsible for rising bills. He has insisted that further expanding renewable power would eventually make energy cheaper.

Critics have also highlighted the fact that Miliband has never held a diplomatic, defense, or national security position. His supporters, on the other hand, argue that his involvement in international climate negotiations has given him the necessary experience.

The Telegraph has reported that the White House is also “deeply concerned” about his appointment, particularly due to his role in defeating a 2013 proposal for British military action in Syria. He had also reportedly encouraged Starmer to deny US access to British bases in the early stages of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

In his first statement as foreign secretary, Miliband promised to defend British interests, strengthen the country’s alliances, seek an end to the Iran conflict, and pursue peace between Israel and Palestine.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Burnham has promised an “era of hope” and “renewal” for the UK. However, hе has so far largely retained Starmer-era foreign policy points, pledging continued support for Ukraine, NATO, closer military cooperation with the EU, and increased defense spending despite the country’s escalating cost-of-living crisis, weakening public services, and rising unemployment.

Despite promising a harder line on Israel, it also remains unclear how tough Burnham will really be, given that he and 11 of 22 cabinet members in his newly formed government are members of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) lobby group, which promotes Israeli interests in the UK.

US President Donald Trump is allegedly pressing the new British prime minister, Andy Burnham, to continue allowing American forces to use UK military bases for strikes on Iran, The Telegraph claimed on Tuesday.

The report came after the two leaders held their first phone call on Monday, shortly after Burnham formally took office. Trump described the conversation as “very good” and praised the “outstanding relationship” between the US and UK.

According to Trump, the two discussed North Sea oil, trade, their military alliance, and the demining of the Strait of Hormuz, among other issues. Burnham also invited the US president to Manchester for next year’s G20 summit.

Neither side publicly said whether the use of British military facilities was discussed. However, The Telegraph reported that Washington has demanded that Burnham continue to let the US use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia, the British-controlled military base in the Indian Ocean.

A US official told the newspaper that Trump remained deeply disappointed with NATO countries that had refused or restricted American access to their bases during the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, initially rejected a US request to use Diego Garcia for strikes on Iran. The decision angered Trump, who later said he was “very disappointed” in the British prime minister, and contributed to a sharp deterioration in relations between London and Washington.

Britain later allowed American aircraft to operate from RAF Fairford, but the base has since become a focus of anti-war protests demanding that London prevent British territory from being used in attacks on Iran.

His decision is expected to be shaped by opposition within the Labour Party, where a significant number of legislators have criticized the US-Israeli war on Iran, and by his own cabinet after appointing Ed Miliband as foreign secretary. Miliband previously helped persuade Starmer to reject Washington’s original request to use British bases.

The new prime minister has been presented by supporters and sections of the British media as a symbol of political “renewal” after Starmer’s deeply unpopular tenure. Burnham himself has promised an “era of hope” and a “renewal for our party and our country.”

On broader foreign policy, however, Burnham has so far signaled continuity rather than change. He has pledged to maintain Britain’s support for Ukraine, strengthen military ties with the EU, and continue increasing defense spending despite the country’s escalating cost-of-living crisis, weakening public services, and rising unemployment.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has dismissed two Western-backed military initiatives related to Ukraine, arguing that Prague does not need to be part of them.

Asked on Monday whether the Czech Republic would join the newly announced Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition, aimed at building an architecture against ballistic missile threats, he replied that it would likely become “another declaration from which nothing will come out.”

“Being in some coalition on paper, like the ‘Coalition of the Willing’, achieved nothing. It never produced anything, just politicians talking. I don’t need to be part of such a coalition,” Babis said, as cited by TASR news agency on Monday.

“The result of the Czech Republic’s participation in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ is zero,” he added.

Babis’ party won last year’s election on a nationalist platform that included reversing the Ukraine aid policy championed by his predecessor, Petr Fiala, and urging a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with Russia instead.

Babis’ remarks come amid growing criticism of Western military support for Ukraine among several Central European governments. Earlier this month, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said Sofia had no place in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ because it opposed continued military and financial aid to Kiev.

Slovak President Peter Pellegrini has likewise ruled out contributing to NATO’s latest €70 billion ($80 billion) military assistance package for Ukraine, while Hungary has consistently refused to provide military aid.

It has also repeatedly warned against Western military and financial support for Ukraine, arguing that it only serves to prolong the conflict without altering its outcome, while also increasing the risk of a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved another tranche of its loan to Ukraine despite acknowledging that Kiev isn’t on schedule implementing reforms aimed at tackling corruption.

In a statement issued on Monday, the IMF said its Executive Board had completed the first review of Ukraine’s 48-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF), approving the release of a $690 million tranche. The latest payment brings total IMF disbursements under the $8.1 billion loan program to approximately $2.2 billion, according to the fund.

The IMF said the program’s performance has been “broadly satisfactory,” but noted that reform implementation had slowed. It cited “slippage” in structural reforms, including governance and anti-corruption measures. “Several structural benchmarks [were] completed with a delay or missed,” it said, adding that revised timelines for key reforms had been agreed upon.

Anti-corruption reforms have long been among the IMF’s central conditions when lending to Ukraine. Under the loan program, Kiev pledged to strengthen anti-graft institutions, improve governance, and implement a series of structural reforms, with each tranche of funding contingent on regular reviews of its progress.

Ukraine’s military has been rocked by repeated graft scandals since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, with investigators uncovering procurement schemes involving inflated prices for food, ammunition, armored vehicle components, drones, and electronic warfare equipment.

A series of high-profile corruption scandals has also hit Ukraine’s energy sector. In November 2025, authorities uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme at state nuclear company Energoatom allegedly run by Timur Mindich, a close business associate of Vladimir Zelensky who was dubbed “Zelensky’s wallet” by the media.

In June, Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities announced that they had uncovered another Energoatom graft scheme involving the alleged theft of at least $3.8 million in public funds that investigators also linked to Mindich.

Jury selection has begun on Monday in a closely watched murder trial of a Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three young children in a case that has drawn nationwide attention.

A shocking crime inside an otherwise ordinary American family has raised broader questions about mental illness, psychiatric treatment, and criminal responsibility, with jurors expected to hear sharply conflicting accounts of Lindsay Clancy’s mental state at the time of the killings.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, has pleaded not guilty to murdering her daughter Cora, 5, her son Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old son Callan at the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts in January of 2023. Prosecutors allege she deliberately strangled the children while her husband was picking up takeout, before attempting suicide by jumping from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed.

The defense is expected to pursue an insanity defense, claiming Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis after months of worsening psychiatric symptoms, repeated hospitalizations, and multiple medication changes. Her attorneys contend she sought medical help before the tragedy and was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions.

“Our society fails miserably in treating women with postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis,” Reddington said during a 2023 arraignment hearing. “This is a situation that clearly was a product of mental illness.”

Prosecutors reject that account, maintaining the killings were intentional and carefully planned. They are expected to present evidence they say shows Clancy acted with deliberation, including sending her husband on an errand before the children were killed.

The children’s father, Patrick Clancy, who discovered their bodies, is expected to testify. In addition to the criminal proceedings, both he and Lindsay Clancy have filed separate civil lawsuits against the mental health providers who treated her before the killings, alleging that failures in her psychiatric care contributed to the tragedy.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, marking the biggest escalation between the two sides in years.

The move came a week after forces loyal to Yemen’s Saudi-backed government bombed Sana’a International Airport in an attempt to prevent an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation returning from Tehran from landing.

In a statement on Monday, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree condemned what he called an “unjust and oppressive siege” of the country.

“The Yemeni Armed Forces declare a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye,’ effective immediately,” Saree said in a video posted on X.

The spokesman warned that “any foolish act” by Saudi Arabia “will be met with a comprehensive and decisive escalation.”

The Saudi Foreign Ministry condemned “the Houthi terrorist militia” and vowed to “take all necessary measures to protect its ships in accordance with international law.”

While the Saudi-led bombing campaign was unable to dislodge the Houthis, it was condemned by the UN and human rights organizations, worsened Yemen’s humanitarian crisis and displaced millions of people.

The Houthis responded to the bombing by launching missiles and drones at targets in Saudi Arabia, including airports and energy facilities.

After the war in Gaza broke out in 2023, the group began attacking ships in the Red Sea in what it described as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians. Those attacks largely ceased following a US-Houthi ceasefire in May 2025.

The security of the Red Sea, which is linked to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal and to the Indian Ocean via the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is vital to global shipping.

The announcement of the blockade comes as the Strait of Hormuz, another key maritime chokepoint, remains closed due to the ongoing US-Iran war. The US launched strikes against Iran for a tenth consecutive night on Tuesday, with both sides signaling that the truce was effectively over.

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 US 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, Russian 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 the Islamic Republic to retaliate with missiles and drones targeting American 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 New York Times, however, dozens of service members were injured throughout the week in three other strikes against American 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 outlet reported, 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 its 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 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.