Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had a good meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, and that the two discussed the importance of protecting Ukrainians and how the US can help Ukraine with missile-defence systems. “The President and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” he said on Telegram.

The Financial Times reported that Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner agreed to visit Kyiv as part of a renewed push to end the war (which would be their first trip to the country as part of the effort), Semafor reported.

Earlier, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the meeting with Zelensky - and another with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - as “positive and productive!” Beyond that, very little is known about what was agreed to, or promised, with coverage of the high-profile funeral of the late Senator Lindsey Graham - which Zelensky and other dignitaries attended - overshadowing the meeting.

According to BBC reporting, all US senators have been invited to a meeting with Zelensky Tuesday evening, around the same time they are set to vote on a bill to ratchet up sanctions on Russia. The meeting will be hosted by members of both parties who lead on foreign policy and the military: Republican Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker and Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Jeanne Shaheen. Graham introduced the legislation in April; the bill, with bipartisan support and over 60 cosponsors, would impose harsher sanctions on Russia and extend some sanctions on Iran.

🎬 Watch below: Recorded just moments before President Zelensky walked into the White House, my explainer video breaks down what's at stake in Washington — and the shopping list he's bringing to the table: movement on sanctions, including the Lindsey Graham super bill; potential drone deals; more Patriot missiles; and US participation in peace talks. Off the back of my live CNN interview from Odesa, I also unpack the political crisis burning at home, reports of 30,000 North Korean troops headed for the theatre, and why this war is getting wider before it gets better.

Out-of-control wildfires represent France’s greatest crisis since World War II, President Emmanuel Macron said. More than 250,000 people have been evacuated, with fires threatening the outskirts of Bordeaux and raging through popular tourist areas and wine regions. Neighboring Spain is also struggling to control major blazes, especially near Madrid: Six times as much of the country has been burnt this year than in the same period in 2025. The two governments are promising aid packages to help people who have lost homes or businesses. Europe’s wildfire season has been supercharged this year by a long, hot, dry spell, which has baked vegetation; the conflagrations are creating “fire thunderstorms” with 100 mph winds and lightning, spreading the flames further - Semafor

Relatives of Chinese passengers of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing 12 years ago in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries, showed up at a Beijing court on Tuesday to demand answers. The court began hearing their appeal against an earlier ruling to order compensation, which the families say disregarded crucial questions. The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people - two-thirds of them Chinese - vanished from radar screens on Mar 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Despite multiple searches, including the largest in aviation history, the aircraft, passengers or black boxes have never been found. A court in Beijing ordered Malaysia Airlines in December to pay eight families of Chinese passengers 2.9 million yuan (US$410,000) each. Frustrated by what they say is a lack of substantive answers about their tragedy, two families have lodged an appeal. Experts have put forward several theories over the years to explain the mysterious disappearance, from pilot suicide or hijacking to missile fire or a technical malfunction. Nationals of 14 countries were on board the flight, including 50 passengers and crew members from Malaysia, where there were no pending cases against the airline. Malaysia announced last month that the search for flight MH370 will be extended through June 2027, an operation led by private firm Ocean Infinity - CNA

📺 Watch above: My live interview from Odesa with CNN's Polo Sandoval in New York, breaking down President Zelensky's high-stakes visit to Washington - and the burning political crisis he's left behind: an acting defense minister, no ambassador in DC, and protests continuing in Ukrainian cities, just months before what is expected to be the worst winter of the war. We also discussed Zelensky's wins in London - including a landmark weapons IP transfer deal - why Ukraine is now a contributor nation rather than a dependent one, reports of 30,000 North Korean troops headed for the theater, and Ukraine's strike on an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea. This war is getting wider and more complex before it gets better.

Canadian travel to the U.S. fell 25% last year, according to a new Canadian government report, which says early 2026 data show the decline has persisted. The report provides some of the clearest measures yet of the economic cost to the U.S. tourism industry after trade tensions, tariffs and President Trump’s repeated “51st state“ comments led many Canadians to vacation elsewhere. “Following the change in the U.S. administration in early 2025 and the implementation of America First policies, Canadian travel sentiment shifted abruptly,” the report says. Statistics Canada says Canadians’ return trips from the U.S. declined year over year for 11 consecutive months in 2025 — the longest sustained decline outside the pandemic since digital records began in 1972. Canada has traditionally been the largest source of international visitors to the U.S. Canadians spent C$3.3 billion ($2.3 billion) less on trips to the U.S. in 2025, with lower leisure travel accounting for most of the decline, according to Statistics Canada. Travel spending on visits to the U.S. fell to C$18.8 billion, down from C$22.1 billion in 2024, per the report. Spending on overseas leisure trips, meanwhile, rose C$3.6 billion to C$22.8 billion, accounting for just under half of Canadians’ total spending on trips abroad, the report says. Canadians largely redirected their travel rather than staying home, replacing many U.S. trips with domestic vacations or overseas travel, the report says. The 7.1 million fewer trips to the U.S. in 2025 were offset by 5 million more domestic trips and 1.3 million additional overseas trips. Statistics Canada data from April through June suggest the decline in Canadian travel to the U.S. may be easing after the sharp drop in 2025. The increase has been driven by automobile travel, while travel by air continues to lag. Canada is only one piece of the U.S. tourism market. Upcoming U.S. visitor data should help show whether increased arrivals from elsewhere — including visitors drawn by the World Cup — offset some of the decline in Canadian visitors - Axios

FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s plan to create a $20 billion company running the World Cup with private investors including the Kushner family was announced Tuesday — and immediately attacked by European soccer body UEFA. “It is not FIFA’s to sell,” UEFA said in a statement. “None of us are the owners of football.” Infantino (our editorial note: who is very close to Trump and who has in turn floated his name as the next Secretary General of the UN) plans to form a commercial subsidiary, which would be called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), running competitions like the World Cup and Club World Cup. FIFA said in a statement FFE would raise up to $4.2 billion later this year to help fund development programs “based on an initial equity valuation of $20 billion by carefully selecting long-term investors who will purchase minority, non-controlling interests.” FIFA is working with J.P. Morgan while intended investors include Thrive Eternal launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is a son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially,” UEFA said Tuesday, responding to the reports of selling stakes in FIFA competitions - AP

The journals…

Accountability requires a constituency, and China no longer has one in Southeast Asia. When Beijing polls better than Washington across most of the world - a recent Pew Research survey found that China is now seen more positively than the U.S. in most of 36 countries - the question is no longer whether ASEAN can hold China to account - it’s why any member would want to.

On paper, the Philippines came into its 2026 ASEAN chairmanship with everything a claimant state could ask for. It held the pen on the communiqué, had built new domestic legal infrastructure, secured bilateral partner commitments - and the foreign ministers’ meeting fell in the very week of the arbitral ruling's tenth anniversary - the landmark 2016 decision in the South China Sea Arbitration, final and binding under international law, that demolished Beijing's expansive maritime claims.

And yet, as a sharp new Asia Times analysis by risk analyst Lam Duc Vu lays out, the communiqué Manila produced is, on the South China Sea, functionally identical to the one Malaysia wrote the year before. A full decade on, the arbitral ruling remains absent from ASEAN’s consensus language.

The timing could hardly have been crueler. On July 20 - the day before the meeting opened - Philippine and Chinese sailors clashed at Second Thomas Shoal. External partners condemned it. Not a single ASEAN member stood with the Philippines. Fourteen countries - Japan, Australia, the United States, a clutch of European states - reaffirmed the ruling as final and legally binding on its anniversary. No ASEAN member signed except the Philippines itself.

The conventional read is that ASEAN’s consensus machinery simply can’t process sovereignty disputes - and there’s truth in that. When the ruling was first issued in 2016 under Laos’s chairmanship, every proposed reference to it was blocked from the communiqué. A decade later, with the claimant state itself holding the pen, the result was the same.

This is not a new playbook. At the 2018 APEC leaders' summit in Port Moresby, Chinese diplomats are said to have stormed into the office of Papua New Guinea's foreign minister demanding changes to the summit's draft wording - an extraordinary breach that ended with police being called, and a summit that collapsed without a communiqué at all, a first in APEC's history. Beijing denied it, of course. But having spent time in PNG myself, I understand the leverage at work: the country receives enormous sums in Chinese money and infrastructure, and Beijing expected the language to reflect it. What played out crudely in Port Moresby in 2018 now operates smoothly across Southeast Asia - no stormed offices required. The dependencies do the talking.

But the machinery explanation misses the deeper shift. Consensus mechanisms don’t operate in a vacuum; they reflect where members believe their interests lie. And here the ground has moved decisively - as per the Pew Research findings.

Donald Trump, swinging his tariff baton once again, seems determined to prove the skeptics right. New Section 301 tariffs took effect on July 24 - the summit's closing day - slapping additional duties of 10 to 12.5 percent on seven ASEAN economies, including the Philippines. Punishing your ally with tariffs on the final day of the summit it's hosting is not statecraft; it's self-sabotage.

The doubt runs deeper than trade. I've covered the Philippines since my days as a South China Morning Post correspondent, and I've lost count of the ASEAN summits and ministerials I've reported from - enough to know when the ritual language is masking real movement. So when I was in Manila this spring and put a blunt question to top Philippine generals - do you now see being a treaty ally of the United States as a liability? - their inability or unwillingness to give me a straight answer registered.

This is the accountability trap in full view: holding a great power to account requires members willing to absorb Beijing’s displeasure, and a credible alternative partner to absorb it for. Right now, ASEAN has neither.

And we’ve seen this movie before - at this very summit. As World Briefing reported last week, ASEAN foreign ministers in Manila solemnly reaffirmed their Five-Point Consensus on Myanmar just after Naypyidaw’s junta-controlled parliament rejected the peace plan outright. Five years of “consensus,” publicly repudiated by its intended subject, and the bloc’s response was to restate it. Myanmar got away with it for the same reason China does: ASEAN’s unanimity rules mean the price of impunity is zero, and nobody in the room has an incentive to raise it.

The Philippines, to its credit, has read the room and built around it - a dedicated maritime law unit at the justice department, the ASEAN Maritime Centre, an expanded Coast Guard Forum, Australian drone support, Canadian maritime security support. But note where all of that lives: outside ASEAN consensus. Manila is constructing the legal and operational scaffolding to defend its claims regardless of whether its own regional bloc ever follows. That’s prudent. It’s also an indictment.

The bottom line: The 2016 ruling was supposed to be the moment international law caught up with Beijing in the South China Sea. Ten years later, the law is intact, the coalition endorsing it has never been larger - and the region it was written for won’t touch it. China hasn’t beaten the ruling in court. It’s beaten it in the court of regional opinion, with an assist from an America that keeps tariffing its friends. Accountability doesn’t die by veto. It dies by favorability rating.

France’s interior minister has conceded what the smoke over Bordeaux already made plain: the Gironde wildfire has “a life of its own,” and firefighters are confronting what he called an “unprecedented situation,” the BBC reports. President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in the region to meet response teams — the obligatory presidential pilgrimage to the fire line — as the blaze burns roughly 15 kilometres from the outskirts of Bordeaux. Residents of France’s wine capital are, in the words of one, “anxious and fearful.” The mayor of Cestas, a town directly in the fire’s path south of the city, was blunter still, telling the BBC this “will be the fire of the century” and describing the scenes as “catastrophic.” The BBC’s correspondent on the ground reports flames leaping several feet into the air as crews struggle to hold containment lines; a British tourist in Gironde described acrid air and ash falling from the sky. The scale is continental. More than 300,000 people have now been evacuated across France and Spain, with satellite data showing fires spreading near both Bordeaux and Madrid. And the driver is no mystery: record-breaking heat is exacerbating the blazes, while climate change is making the hotter, drier conditions that let fires spread faster and burn more fiercely increasingly likely — a point the BBC’s climate desk underscores.

Russian Forces Systematically Used Sexual Torture Against Ukrainian POWs, Testimony Shows

Russian guards subjected Ukrainian prisoners of war to systematic sexualized torture over more than four years of full-scale war, according to survivor testimony reported by the Wall Street Journal and corroborated by United Nations investigators and Ukrainian prosecutors.

Serhii Boychuk, a 33-year-old Ukrainian soldier captured in 2022, told the Journal he was raped with bottles and sticks and threatened with genital mutilation during more than two years in Russian captivity. He still struggles to walk. Other former detainees described similar abuse, and their accounts align with findings from extensive interviews conducted by Ukrainian prosecutors, intelligence services and UN investigators.

The UN has gathered testimony in about 310 cases of alleged sexual violence by Russian forces, including rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, electric shocks and beatings to the genitals. Of the identified victims, 280 were men — a marked departure from most conflicts, where female civilians are the primary targets. Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on sexual violence in conflict, documented the abuse of Ukrainian men in Russian detention in her April report; freed prisoners undergo medical reviews and give recorded testimony upon exchange.

“I have listened to verbal and read direct testimony,” said Irena Yarosevych, a member of the UN representation team of the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations, which has spent four years raising the issue at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and in briefings for US and foreign officials. “The sadism is totally, totally mind-blowing.”

The pattern is not new. Poorly documented incidents of sexual violence date to the occupied territories after 2014, and Russian troops committed widespread assaults against civilians — women and men — as they advanced into towns including Bucha and Irpin in 2022. As the war became attritional, captured male soldiers emerged as the most frequent known victims. The growing body of evidence suggests the abuse has been condoned, even encouraged, by senior Russian officials, according to the Journal’s reporting.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office is overseeing roughly 400 cases of alleged sexual violence against civilians, with charges brought in absentia, while Ukrainian teams working with international experts are assembling evidence for a future war crimes tribunal. “Sexual abuse is the cheapest method of waging war,” prosecutor Anna Sosonska told the Journal.

Investigators caution the full scale remains unknown. Russia denies UN access to occupied areas, and stigma keeps many survivors silent - often for years. One woman described to us was repeatedly sexually assaulted in captivity, who could not join support groups offered after her release through a Western-funded health initiative: each time she tried to speak about what happened, she would vomit.

I sat down with Times Radio’s Frontline today for an extended conversation that ranged across just about every live wire in the war right now. We covered Zelensky’s back-to-back visits to the UK and the US - and the political crisis waiting for him at home. I also gave my read from the ground here in Odesa, where the situation continues to deteriorate. We dug into Ukraine’s deep strikes inside Russia - including the hits on Wildberries, which brought the war to the doorstep of Russia’s e-commerce economy - and the moment few saw coming: Kazakhstan’s president publicly telling Putin, to his face, that it’s time to freeze this war. That’s not a throwaway line; it’s a crack in the post-Soviet deference Moscow has long taken for granted. And we went beyond Ukraine: the Iran war, and the remarkable development of Ukraine striking an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea - the clearest sign yet that Kyiv views Moscow and Tehran as co-belligerents, and is prepared to act on it.

Watch the full conversation below 👇

Tatiana Navka, the wife of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, has launched a legal challenge aimed at overturning European Union sanctions imposed on her over the war in Ukraine, according to details published on an EU website. Navka, a former Olympic ice-skating champion, was put on a sanctions list by the EU in June 2022 that targeted people over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Peskov’s daughter Elizaveta and son Nikolai were included on the same list. Brussels said at the time that the sanctions, which included a travel ban to the EU and financial restrictions, were imposed “in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.” Details published on the EU’s EUR-Lex website showed that Navka, who was born in Soviet Ukraine but is a Russian citizen, is now seeking to overturn the sanctions on her through the European Court of Justice. The legal filing said she was arguing that the reason for the restrictions on her had not been properly set out, that errors of law and factual assessment had been made and that the EU had failed to prove a sufficient link between her and the stated aim of its sanctions. Navka is seeking damages from the Council of the European Union for material damage and for damage to her reputation and other non-material damage totaling just over 2 million euros ($2.3 million), the same document showed. Another official EU database shows that Yekaterina Ignatova, wife of Sergei Chemezov, head of the state-owned Rostec defense and industrial corporation, is seeking to overturn EU sanctions on her through the same legal route - Reuters

The journals…

The Washington press corps got its “do-over” correspondents’ dinner Friday night - and Donald Trump got his revenge. Fifteen years after Obama and a ballroom of journalists laughed him into a grievance that never healed, Trump returned the favour at the Waldorf Astoria (the gaudy former Trump hotel, no less), delivering more than an hour of insults, crude jokes, and score-settling before a scaled-down crowd of roughly 700 still processing April’s assassination attempt at the Washington Hilton.

He mocked late-night hosts as “sick” and “angry.” He singled out CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, again (thank goodness, CNN dished it back live to Trump). He celebrated the friendly billionaires now consolidating ownership of America’s networks. And for the finale - the “scoop,” as he called it - he donned a bright red “Trump 2028” cap and declared his intention to run for a term the Constitution flatly prohibits. The room’s response was stunned silence curdling into scattered titters. That was the point. He wasn’t there to be funny; he was there to make the press corps sit still and take it.

And sit still they mostly did. The lone act of visible dissent we’re aware of came from Puck’s Julia Ioffe, who appears to have slipped out before the evening ended - posting a selfie video from outside the hotel in which she made clear she’d attended only at her employer’s insistence. Ioffe, notably, had been scathing about the first dinner too. That one reporter’s quiet exit may stand as the sum total of the room’s resistance says everything about an institution whose colleagues have been subpoenaed, sued, doxxed, and frozen out of the Pentagon - and still applauded politely while power announced, to their faces, that it intends to stay past its constitutional expiry date.

The evening’s most telling split-screen came courtesy of the outgoing WHCA president, Weijia Jiang of CBS News. Her speech was genuinely moving - the daughter of Chinese immigrants who ran a restaurant in West Virginia coal country, watching Connie Chung on the evening news and daring to imagine herself in that chair, an arc that ended with her telling Trump to his face that the First Amendment “is a done deal” and drawing the distinction that matters: criticizing the press is healthy; trying to undermine it is precisely what the founders feared. And how did the president receive this quintessentially American story, seated just feet away? Judging by the countless clips ricocheting around social media - with visible boredom, eyes drooping, at moments seemingly fighting sleep. The immigrant’s daughter defending the Constitution; the president who swore to uphold it, nodding off beside her. If you want one image that captures where the American press and the American presidency stand in mid-2026, that’s the frame.

Nick Bryant, the former BBC US correspondent who has watched Trump’s speeches for a decade, likened the performance to a high-speed version of Biden’s fateful debate - minus the decency - and said it raised, again, the question of the president’s mental fitness to serve out his term. The decline, he noted, is becoming more evident. Bryant’s sharper point was institutional: why platform a serial abuser at a celebration of journalism? Access isn’t the excuse - Trump craves press attention; it feeds him. And abstention is hardly a radical idea: some outlets have had standing policies against attending for years, most notably The New York Times, which has kept its journalists away since 2008. As then-Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet explained it, the dinner had evolved into a celebrity-driven spectacle in which press and government appear to shed their adversarial roles for a night - sending readers exactly the wrong signal about whose side journalists are on. That was the Times’ judgment eighteen years and three presidents ago, when the man at the head table merely tolerated the press rather than sued it. Bryant’s conclusion is hard to argue with: the event has run its course.

Excruciating indeed, as I replied to his post. The WHCA had a rare second chance here - a rescheduled dinner, a clean slate, every reason in the world to change course - and it could have replaced Trump at the podium with a passionate defender of press freedom. Imagine that evening instead: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, a jailed Ukrainian reporter’s family, anyone who has paid a real price for the work this dinner claims to celebrate. Instead, the association handed its stage back to the man suing, subpoenaing, and sidelining its own members - and let him use it as a weapon.

As Jim Acosta - the former CNN chief White House correspondent said: “In my view, the WHCA should have used the cancellation of the first dinner as an excuse to wave off any talk of a replacement event. Just too risky. It would have been perfectly acceptable to hand out the awards and scholarships and table the whole matter until next year.” Acosta, who famously sparred with Trump from the front row of the briefing room - called the dinner a disgrace and urged journalists to get up and walk out. Almost nobody did.

If you’re determined to watch, the full speech is on YouTube - though be warned: he rambles on, largely incoherently, for over an hour, and as Bryant put it, there are far better ways to spend that hour of your life.

Acosta’s darker warning is the one worth sitting with: this speech wasn’t just payback. It was a message. Things are about to get much, much worse.

Field note: When a president jokes about a third term while wearing the merch for it, the joke is the trial balloon. We’ve seen this movie in other capitals. It rarely ends at the punchline.

New Briefs
Russia considers it premature to comment on reports that the United States and Ukraine are discussing a possible halt to aerial attacks as part of efforts to end the war, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday. A Ukrainian source told Reuters that Ukrainian and U.S. officials had discussed a proposal for an air ceasefire to present to Russia as part of a new push to revive peace talks aimed at ending the conflict triggered by Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The source said Ukraine had approached Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past with offers of a ceasefire, which had been turned down. However, some officials believe that pressure on Russia‘s economy from ongoing Ukrainian drone and missile strikes may soften Putin’s stance. “We do not know how credible these reports are or where they come from. These are newspaper reports and nothing more. Therefore, it is premature to comment on them at this stage,” the Interfax news agency quoted Peskov as saying. He said Russia‘s response to any new peace initiative would depend on whether it aligns with Moscow’s interests. Peskov reiterated that Moscow maintains channels of dialogue with U.S. negotiators - Reuters

Iran has summoned Ukraine’s diplomatic chief of mission after an attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea that killed one sailor and wounded another. The strike is a huge concern for Iran because it does not want further expansion of battlefields. Iran is already experiencing conflict in the southern coastal provinces, as well as the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman and even the Indian Ocean, which have turned into a battlefield. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has released a statement saying the Ukrainian attack will not go unanswered. So, now there are questions whether Iran is going to retaliate. Technically, Iranians say that is possible because, roughly, the distance between Tehran and Kyiv is less than 2,000km, and Iranians are saying that this is within the range of their missiles and drones. This latest development looks like “a multi-pronged confrontation”, says Paul Musgrave of Georgetown University in Qatar. He said previously it would have been difficult to ever see the Caspian Sea as a front in the current confrontation between Ukraine, Russia and Iran. But the sea is now seen as an important economic lifeline for Iran in the north. “If this also comes into play, then that’s something that is going to widen the scope of this. We are looking at energy, global energy markets being drawn in, and that’s going to draw in everywhere where there’s global energy supplies,” Musgrave said. The Caspian Sea is where the conflict has extended from “a Russian and local and Iranian lake” to a place where now the “Ukrainians have greater familiarity with this area”. Musgrave said the situation is unfolding in “what some analysts call the third missile age” as Iran and Ukraine are exercising regional influence. “I think that’s a development in itself,” he said - Al Jazeera

• The spokesperson of Iran’s foreign ministry says there has been progress in talks with Oman on how to manage shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. It comes as it has now been two consecutive nights with no US attacks on Iran – a period of calm after nearly two weeks of bombings. Tehran says that, in response, it has also halted retaliatory attacks in the region.
  

A Canadian woman working as an intern at the operational headquarters of the NATO military alliance in Belgium was arrested Friday on suspicion of espionage. Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement issued Saturday that the suspect was “a Canadian national of Chinese origin.” “She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” the statement said. Public Safety Canada said the government was aware of the arrest of a Canadian citizen employed by NATO at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE. It did not disclose the suspect’s identity or say which “third country” she is alleged to have been spying for. “The arrest is related to an ongoing criminal investigation,” the department said in a statement. As a member of the NATO alliance, Canada has military representatives based at the SHAPE command centre, located in the southern Belgian city of Mons, near the French border. Military officials at SHAPE plan and command joint strategy, tactics and operations. NATO’s Cyber Security Centre is also based there. The suspect was an intern at SHAPE, although it is not known in which division she was working or how long she had been working there - Globe and Mail

More than 320,000 people have now been evacuated across parts of France and Spain as wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe. In southwestern France, more than 220,000 people have been forced to flee their homes after evacuation orders were issued in a further five villages around Bordeaux on Saturday night, as the parched landscape and strong winds helped the area’s main blaze spread rapidly, local authorities said. The fire has so far burned through around 42,000 hectares across the region. On Sunday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez described the situation as “highly unfavorable,” saying the Gironde blaze had become “extremely fierce and unpredictable” in the evening before calming slightly later in the night. - Euronews

Myanmar: ASEAN Doubles Down on a Peace Plan the Junta Just Rejected

Five years and three months after adopting its Five-Point Consensus on Myanmar, ASEAN has finally decided to measure whether it’s working. Spoiler: it isn’t - and Naypyidaw just said so out loud.

At back-to-back meetings in Bangkok (July 12) and Manila (July 21), the bloc’s foreign ministers sat down with Myanmar’s top diplomat for the first time since the 2021 coup and delivered their wish list: a permanent end to violence, the release of all political detainees - including Aung San Suu Kyi - and unimpeded humanitarian access across the country, including areas the regime doesn’t control. Singapore’s Vivian Balakrishnan called for “demonstrable progress.” The junta’s response arrived with unusual candour: Myanmar’s parliament passed a motion rejecting the peace plan outright - the same military-controlled body seated after a three-phase “election” that ASEAN’s own communiqué could only bring itself to call “the succeeding developments.”

Undeterred, ministers in Manila agreed to develop benchmarks for measuring progress and began discussing a longer-term special envoy, with proposals headed to the leaders’ summit in November. There’s even a “non-paper” in the works to define what “demonstrable progress” actually means - a document category that tells you everything about the bloc’s appetite for enforcement. Special envoy Theresa Lazaro says Myanmar’s return to top-level ASEAN meetings remains “still far off.”

The verdict: benchmarks without consequences are a filing system, not a strategy. The junta has ignored the 5PC since the ink dried in April 2021, and now it has formally rejected it - while ASEAN responds by commissioning paperwork to measure the rejection. Consensus-driven diplomacy has its virtues, but Myanmar’s generals long ago learned the bloc’s secret: the price of defiance is another meeting.

The journals…

If you’re already a paid subscriber, the video is just below - thank you, as always, for making this field-based journalism possible. If you’re not yet, this would be a good week to fix that: the perks keep stacking up, we’re hitting the road again soon, and the refreshed World Briefing Podcast - the successor to Global Impact - drops shortly. Consider this your nudge.

Now, grab a coffee. Let’s get to it.

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The Verdict: You cannot script irony this good. Canada on Friday celebrated the opening of a C$6.4-billion bridge named after Mr. Hockey - days after Washington slapped tariffs on, among other things, hockey sticks. The Americans weren’t invited to the party. They disinvited themselves. And lurking behind the whole saga: a billionaire bridge owner with a chequebook and a direct line to the White House.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge - the new span linking Windsor and Detroit, one of the busiest commercial crossings on the continent - opens to traffic as early as noon Monday, cyclists and pedestrians on August 5. It was supposed to be a binational moment: a bridge named for a Saskatchewan farm boy who became a Detroit Red Wings legend, the living metaphor for a relationship that survived everything the twentieth century threw at it.

Instead, Ottawa pulled the plug on the joint ceremony after Trump signed proclamations Monday imposing additional 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods - effective August 19, invoked under Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, a statute so obscure it has essentially never been used - citing “discriminatory treatment” on dairy, autos and alcohol. A senior administration official confirmed the target list runs from wine to hockey sticks to cement. “In light of trade action threatened by the United States earlier this week, it would be inappropriate to proceed with a celebratory event between the two countries,” said a spokesperson for Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson. Translation: we’ll open the bridge, but we’re not clinking glasses with you.

Trump, for his part, couldn't stay away even from a party he wasn't invited to. As the ceremony unfolded in Windsor, he took to social media to shrug off the snub - Canada disinviting the U.S. was "fine," he wrote, "considering they are paying substantial TARIFFS to the United States" - and to gloat about the outcome, declaring the original 2012 agreement signed under Barack Obama "terribly negotiated" and boasting that he'd rewritten the terms so America now pockets half the profit. Read that again: the President of the United States, in his own words, describing the shakedown as the achievement.

Follow the money. Just two kilometres upriver sits the Ambassador Bridge - a creaking, nearly century-old private toll span controlled by the billionaire Moroun family since 1979, worth upwards of $60 million a year in toll revenue - for whom the gleaming new competitor down the river is an existential threat. The family has fought the Gordie Howe project since its inception. And the timeline reads like a case study in pay-to-play: Matthew Moroun wrote a $1-million cheque to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. on January 16, then the family lobbied the administration - including a sit-down with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just hours before Trump erupted on social media on February 10, vowing the bridge would not open until America was “fully compensated.” Add to that at least $250,000 in lobbying through Ballard Partners - the firm whose Washington office was once run by Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Trump obliged his donor, held the bridge hostage for months, and extracted his ransom. House Oversight Democrats called it what it is: “flatly unacceptable and undeniably corrupt for a wealthy donor to dictate our foreign and economic policy in order to protect their own personal business interests.”

From the Field: I know that creaking old span better than I'd like. As a young freelance contributor for the Globe and Mail, I covered the Windsor-Detroit beat - which meant traversing the Ambassador Bridge, and the cars-only tunnel beneath the river, more times than I care to remember. What that era taught me is how profoundly co-dependent these two cities are: back then, the crisis du jour was an incinerator on the American side that had Windsor in a full panic about what would drift across the river. I got to know both mayors, including Detroit's flamboyant Coleman Young, whose final stretch in office was shadowed by, among other things, a paternity suit. Between assignments, the reward was chomping on the most succulent wings in the region at Tunnel Bar-B-Q on the Canadian side - gone now, like so much of that era. The bridges and tunnels were never just infrastructure here; they were the circulatory system of two cities that breathe the same air, for better and worse.

Which makes the ransom note all the more galling. Canada financed this bridge- nearly all of it, C$6.4 billion, or close to US$5 billion - with tolls meant to pay Canadians back. The price of admission, per the agreement posted this week: Canada keeps 50 per cent of net toll revenue for the first 15 years; the other half flows to an economic development fund “solely controlled” by the U.S. Ottawa paid for the bridge, then paid again for permission to open it.

Friday brought a second salvo: new tariffs of 10 to 12.5 per cent on goods from 60 trading partners - Canada included - over allegedly lax enforcement of forced-labour import bans, the administration’s legally sturdier rebuild of the tariff wall the Supreme Court demolished in February. Even Michigan’s governor isn’t pretending: Gretchen Whitmer called the tariff policy “capricious” and said her state is bearing more of the pain than most.

Why it matters: This is the Trump doctrine in miniature: a donor writes a cheque, a president manufactures a crisis, an ally pays the toll and the current occupant of the White House calls it a win. The bridge will carry trucks either way. But the two countries that built the world’s longest undefended border can no longer stand on the same span and smile for cameras. Gordie Howe was famous for his hat trick - a goal, an assist, and a fight. This week delivered only the fight.

Read the op-ed here, or better yet if you’re in Canada Saturday purchase the print edition and support independent journalism!

News Briefs
The Trump administration rolled out a fresh batch of tariffs that took effect when a prior round lapsed at midnight, effectively replacing the global levies the Supreme Court struck down earlier this year with permanent duties related to forced labor. President Donald Trump imposed the expiring tariffs following the February ruling, but the levies had a 150-day time limit that ran out Friday. The latest tariffs, which officials teased in June, will indefinitely apply to 59 countries and the European Union following investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Countries that have implemented bans on forced labor will be tariffed at 10%, while those that have not will be tariffed at 12.5%. Senior administration officials pushed back on the idea the new levies were crafted explicitly to replace earlier tariffs, distinguishing them from a universal, global rate - Semafor

French authorities have ordered the evacuation of the entirety of the Cap Ferret peninsula on the south-west coast, with hundreds of people escaping by boat. Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated from the tourist spot west of Bordeaux, as firefighters continue to battle what the local prefect described as an “XXL fire” in the Gironde region. The fires, which began on Tuesday, have burned for days, with officials saying 10,000 hectares (almost 25,000 acres) had been consumed by flames. Meanwhile, Spain’s government has declared a national emergency after wildfires burnt out of control in several areas close to the capital Madrid, prompting the evacuation of more than 19,000 people. Responding to the spread of fires, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Madrid’s regional president, said it was: “The worst fire in the history of the region.” Speaking at an emergency command post in the southwestern municipality of Cenicientos, she said the area was facing a “perfect storm” with high temperatures, relentless wind and several fire fronts merging - BBC

At least 15 people have been killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine, including 10 dead in ballistic missile strikes on an exhibition near Kyiv showcasing drone technology. Writing on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said some 100 people had been injured in the daytime attack on the exhibition, attended by prominent members of the defence sector. This is at least the third time since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 that an exhibition of this kind has been hit. There has been widespread outrage that a public event of this kind was being held at all and had, apparently, been widely advertised. President Zelensky said the incident was being investigated, while Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said efforts were under way to establish who decided to hold the event and what safety measures were in place - BBC

• President Donald Trump appears to have hitched his wagon to the Ukrainian cause after ditching under-pressure Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. At home, the Kremlin demagogue is experiencing a mounting crisis. A costly, grinding war with Ukraine has created an economic train wreck, with fuel costs spiraling out of control. His approval rating is ticking down as a result. In short, his stock is low, and Trump appears to be looking towards pastures new. “Very good!!!” the president, 80, gushed on Truth Social, sharing a snippet of Laura Loomer’s upcoming interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump appears to be embracing Ukraine and Zelensky. So too does Loomer, despite her previous position as one of MAGA’s most critical anti-Ukraine voices. Her opposition boiled down to an America-first stance, where she favored not supporting Zelensky’s regime militarily due to the cost Americans would ultimately incur. But this month, Loomer traveled to Ukraine, where she experienced an air raid, toured sites damaged by Russian attacks, visited the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, and, of course, met Zelensky. She has now changed her tone, even rattling off friendly tweets about the leader she once called “a Jihadi apologist,” who leads a country “full of Nazi apologists.” - The Daily Beast

The Kremlin’s demographic panic has found a new frontline: the ninth-grade classroom. Orthodox priests are fanning out across Russian schools to deliver so-called “chastity lessons” - abstinence sermons, anti-abortion messaging and screenings of church-produced films - as part of a state push to instill “traditional family values,” The Moscow Times reports. The timing is no accident. Russia’s fertility rate fell earlier this year to its lowest level in two decades, and Moscow’s answer is less maternity policy than moral instruction. Lessons are increasingly embedded in “Family Studies,” a new Education Ministry course introduced in 2024 and set to roll out nationwide as an optional offering in the 2026-27 academic year. Some sessions have gone well beyond moralizing: a Sakhalin school showed students graphic footage of surgical abortions, with clergy insisting the shock was necessary, and students in the Tver region were handed fetal models to examine.

The number of measles cases in the U.S. has surpassed the record-breaking tally for all of 2025, with five more months of 2026 still to come. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logged 2,318 cases of measles as of Thursday, according to an agency update on Friday. The nation had 2,289 cases in 2025, the worst year for measles in more than three decades. Now, 2026 has easily become the U.S.’s worst year for measles since 1991, as major outbreaks in South Carolina, Utah and Arizona have sickened hundreds and smaller clusters of cases sparked in other states. In November, international health officials will meet to determine if the U.S. and Mexico have lost their measles-free status. The U.S. eliminated local measles spread in 2000 by maintaining high vaccination rates, which have fallen in recent years to below the 95% coverage needed to prevent outbreaks - AP

The journals…

Let’s start with the carve-outs, because Brussels certainly didn’t - none of them appear in the Council’s triumphant press release. Greece secured a renewable 12-month exemption allowing its shipping firms to keep transporting Russian Arctic LNG to third countries. Bulgaria blocked the listing of Patriarch Kirill - the man who blessed this war from the pulpit. France and Portugal killed a proposed ban on Russian cod and pollock imports, because apparently nothing says “unwavering support for Ukraine” like keeping Russian fish on European dinner plates.

To be fair - and fairness is owed where earned - the package’s most technical move was also its shrewdest. The oil price cap’s automatic adjustment formula, written in calmer times, was poised to raise the cap from $44 to $58 a barrel, because the Strait of Hormuz closure has inflated the market prices the formula tracks. That would have handed the Kremlin a fifteen-dollar-a-barrel gift, gift-wrapped by the EU’s own maths. Brussels froze the cap at $44 until July 2027 instead - “so that the Russian war machine does not benefit from market shocks,” as Ursula von der Leyen put it. Sensible, and a reminder of the deeper point: Russia and Iran’s twin assaults on the world’s shipping arteries are now so disruptive that Europe has to suspend its own sanctions machinery to stop it working for Moscow.

Kaja Kallas says each round of sanctions squeezes Russia’s economy and its capacity to prolong the war. From where I sit in Odesa - where Russian missiles have been hitting foreign-flagged vessels in the port - the squeeze looks selective. Some arteries get clamped. Others get a renewal clause.

The Greek exemption deserves a closer look, because it is not abstract. New analysis from the German NGO Urgewald, working with B4Ukraine and Razom We Stand, puts a corporate name on the carve-out: Dynagas, the Greek shipping company that operates five of the world’s fifteen specialised Arc7 ice-class tankers - the only vessels capable of hauling LNG year-round out of Russia’s Yamal terminal in the Arctic. One-third of an irreplaceable fleet.

The numbers are worth sitting with. In the first half of 2026, Dynagas vessels carried 49 Yamal cargoes totalling 3.58 million tonnes - 35 per cent of everything Yamal exported. And here is the detail that turns a loophole into a lifeline: the exemption caps eligible volumes at 2025 levels. Sounds restrictive, until you learn that Dynagas’s volumes grew just 2.2 per cent year on year. A cap at 2025 levels doesn’t wind the business down. It preserves virtually all of it - with a renewal clause attached.

Who is buying all this Arctic gas? We are. The EU received 136 of Yamal’s 140 cargoes in the first half of this year, paying an estimated €5.96 billion. EU-bound volumes are up 16 per cent from last year while deliveries to Asia collapsed. Four years into the full-scale invasion, Europe is not weaning itself off Russian LNG. It is cornering the market.

And then there is the matter of timing, which borders on the theatrical. On the very day EU negotiators were finalising the exemption, live ship-tracking data showed the Georgiy Brusilov - a Dynagas-operated Arc7 tanker - entering the dry dock at Denmark’s Fayard shipyard, the last known EU yard still servicing these vessels. It arrived back-to-back behind another Arc7, exactly the servicing conveyor belt campaigners had warned about. This despite an appeal from 105 parliamentarians across 17 European countries, including four vice-presidents of the European Parliament, urging Fayard to close its dock to the fleet.

So follow the sequence: Brussels grants a renewable exemption so the tankers can keep sailing. A Danish shipyard keeps them seaworthy so they can keep sailing for years. And European buyers keep writing cheques - nearly €6 billion in six months - so the whole arrangement remains profitable. Three lifelines, braided together, thrown to the fleet that keeps Russia's Arctic gas revenues moving. Savour, too, this detail from the fine print: the same package introduces restrictions on selling LNG tankers to Russians - closing the door on ships Moscow might buy while holding it open for the ships Europe already sails on Moscow's behalf. One caveat for the record: the exemption details come from the reported compromise, and the final legal text should be checked once published. But nobody in Brussels is disputing the shape of the deal.

Why does this matter beyond the hypocrisy? Because sanctions are not a moral gesture; they are an instrument, and instruments are judged by whether they work. Russia’s war economy runs on hydrocarbon revenue. Yamal LNG is one of its crown jewels, and the Arc7 fleet is its jugular - fifteen ships, no substitutes, no shipyard capacity in Russia to replace them. This is the rare case where Europe holds genuine leverage over a chokepoint. And the 21st package chose, deliberately and in writing, not to use it.

I have spent the past weeks reporting on Russian and Iranian efforts to disrupt the world’s commercial shipping corridors - strikes on foreign-flagged vessels here in Odesa’s port among them. The asymmetry is hard to miss. Moscow treats maritime commerce as a battlefield. Brussels treats it as a constituency to be accommodated, one member state’s shipping registry at a time.

The Kremlin, for its part, will register Thursday’s package the way it has registered the previous twenty: as confirmation that European unity is real enough to produce a communiqué and porous enough to protect the revenue. Antonio Costa calls it unwavering support. I’d call it a wheel of Emmental with a flag on top — and this time, we can read the label on the biggest hole. It says Dynagas.

Fedorov to Zelensky: The Ministry or Nothing

The standoff at the top of Ukraine’s defence establishment has hardened into an ultimatum. Mykhailo Fedorov, the ousted defence minister, told journalists this afternoon that he will accept no role other than the one he was fired from - flatly rejecting a string of consolation offers from President Zelensky, the latest being deputy prime minister for military innovations, an offer Zelensky made public at a press conference with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin with the breezy assurance that “Mykhailo is in the team.”

According to the Financial Times’ Kyiv correspondent - among the most reliable voices on Bankova intrigue - Zelensky had earlier dangled a senior post on the National Security and Defence Council, complete with direct access to the president and a mandate over defence innovation and military reform. Ukrainska Pravda reports an offer of vice premier for technological development was also on the table. Fedorov’s answer to all of it, in effect: a title without the ministry is a title without teeth.

His statement was unusually blunt about why. Only three positions, he said, actually shape the course of the war alongside the troops themselves: the president, the defence minister, and the commander-in-chief. Everything else, by his telling, lacks the real authority to fight procurement corruption, finish transforming the army, run asymmetric operations against Russia, or - in his most pointed phrase - root out “a culture of lies and unaccountability within the system.”

The street has taken a side. Protests demanding Fedorov’s reinstatement ran for a full week across Ukraine - in Kyiv, with parallel actions in Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk, Odesa and Kropyvnytskyi. And here is where the plot thickens: half the protesters’ agenda has already been delivered. On July 22, Zelensky formally replaced commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi with the reform-minded Mykhailo Drapatyi and General Staff chief Andrii Hnatov with Ihor Skybiuk. Recall that Zelensky’s stated rationale for dropping Fedorov - delivered to his own parliamentary faction - was that the minister could not work with the commander-in-chief and the General Staff. That rationale collapsed the moment Syrskyi cleared out his desk - and Syrskyi himself put a bow on it, apologising to Fedorov with the memorable line that he was “surprised to learn we had a conflict.”

Into the vacuum, Zelensky has installed Yevhen Khmara - the major general who ran the SBU’s Alpha special operations centre and, since January, the security service itself - as acting defence minister, effective July 20, with a pledge to formally nominate him to parliament. It is a telling choice: where Fedorov was a civilian technocrat waging war on procurement, Khmara is a career securocrat from the president’s innermost circle of trust. Lawmakers have already flagged that the appointment may not even be legal - Ukrainian law requires the defence minister and his deputies to be civilians, not serving officers. Meanwhile, the FT reports Western partners pressing Zelensky to settle the military leadership turmoil as quickly as possible.

Civil society voices are rallying behind the ultimatum. Analyst and activist Dmytro Koziatynskyi wrote that Fedorov “did the right thing” in refusing every offer but the ministry itself: “This appointment absolutely must be pushed through. Reforms at the Defence Ministry will happen!” (translated from Ukrainian)

Kyiv-based observer Bohdan Chomiak framed the reshuffle in footballing terms: in a final, bench strength matters - but only if the trainer knows who to substitute. Zelensky, in his telling, “was guessing when he took Fedorov off the pitch,” made a better effort only when public opinion forced Syrskyi’s sidelining, and has now left the team paying the classic price of a mid-match shakeup: “we are now back to waiting as the new guys learn the ropes. That is definitely not needed now.”

The Verdict: This is no longer a personnel dispute; it’s a public referendum on whether reform survives contact with the old guard — and the president’s own logic is now working against him. Having removed the commander-in-chief that Fedorov supposedly couldn’t work with, Zelensky has run out of stated reasons to keep the ministry’s most popular reformer on the sidelines. Fedorov knows it, the protesters know it, and the choice of his stand-in answers the question louder than any statement from Bankova: a civilian reformer out, a uniformed loyalist in — possibly in breach of the very law meant to guarantee civilian control of the military. As Chomiak puts it, Ukraine is playing in the finals - and its trainer just benched a starter on a guess, leaving the squad waiting while the new signings learn the ropes. In a war of attrition, that waiting is a luxury paid for at the front.

News Briefs

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the just-signed agreement allowing American nuclear companies to export to Saudi Arabia is “totally subject” to the kingdom signing on to the Abraham Accords, the cornerstone agreements dating back to the first Trump administration that saw countries establish relations with Israel. The Biden and Trump administrations had previously contemplated using a civilian nuclear deal to encourage Saudi Arabia to normalize relationships with Israel, but the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel and the ensuing war complicated the issue. Saudi Arabia has previously refused to sign the accords unless there was a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the deal — of which details are still sparse — “will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly backed the idea, writing in a statement from his office that Israeli and American attacks against Iran have “created the possibility to expand the circle of peace.” - Politico

The top US and Russian diplomats met in a new push to find an end to Moscow’s more-than-four-year-old war on Ukraine, but both sides signaled no new breakthroughs or cause for optimism. The July 23 meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came with US-efforts to broker a peace deal frozen as the Trump administration shifts focus to the Iran war, and the Kremlin shows no sign of softening its maximalist war demands. Following their meeting, which lasted just 35 minutes, Rubio described the talks as “good” and “frank” but said fresh proposals would be needed after previous peace ideas failed. He declined to disclose details. “The United States...is prepared to play a constructive role in bringing about an end to a senseless war,” Rubio said when pressed by RFE/RL. Asked whether the meeting had produced any breakthrough, Rubio dismissed expectations of rapid progress. “You think we settled the war in Ukraine in our 30 minutes here in Asia? That’s not the way it works,” he said. Asked later by RFE/RL about when Russia will stop the war, Lavrov appeared to either ignore the question or not hear it. In a statement, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Lavrov expressed Moscow's unhappiness with US weapons supplies to Ukraine, and he accused Ukraine's European allies of "destabilizing policies" that seek a "strategic defeat" for Russia - RFE/RL

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Thursday criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would exclude South Africa from the next G20 summit in Miami, saying it would be “in no one’s interest.” Speaking to students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Wadephul described South Africa as “an indispensable member of the G20,” whose importance had been underlined by last year’s G20 summit in that same city. “To exclude South Africa means sidelining an important African voice and a regional economic and political powerhouse,” the minister said, adding: “Particularly at a time of growing global economic uncertainty, we need more cooperation, not less.” - Politico

The EU hit Google with a record-breaking €890 ($1 billion) fine for breaching antitrust laws, putting Brussels on a potential collision course with Washington. The bloc said the tech giant had illegally used its market dominance to prioritize its own search services, as well as preventing developers from steering customers towards cheaper alternatives. The European Commission ordered Google to treat third-party services in a “fair and non-discriminatory manner,” The Guardian reported. But the timing is awkward, with US President Donald Trump expected to unveil new tariffs soon. The EU and US agreed a 15% cap on levies last year, but a swingeing fine on a major American firm could spark retaliation. Brussels is facing “one of the trickiest transatlantic balancing acts in months,” Politico said - Semafor

The journals….

Bonus Midweek Insight — an unscheduled dispatch on two stories shaping the week, and what the coverage is missing. If this is worth your time, consider upgrading to World Briefing Plus for the full Saturday video analysis and our refreshed World Briefing Podcast, launching soon. Prefer a one-off? Chip in via PayPal or Patreon. Every bit keeps the reporting on the ground.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman have signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement - a so-called 123 Agreement, named for Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act - alongside an accompanying bilateral safeguards agreement, the US Department of Energy says. The 30-year pact, worth tens of billions, gives American firms the lead role in building the kingdom’s nuclear infrastructure while shutting out rival bidders. It now goes to Congress, which would need a veto-proof majority to stop it. The safeguards language is where the story lives, and it is thinner than the ceremony suggests. The agreement omits the “gold standard” - the non-proliferation benchmark that bars a partner from enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium - and instead allows Riyadh to do both on its own soil once a joint US-Saudi study assesses the economics of domestic fuel production. One provision contemplates American companies building the enrichment plant themselves. It also leaves out the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which would have permitted snap inspections of undeclared sites, and carries two classified side letters the administration intends to keep private. That is a clean break from the 2009 UAE accord Washington spent fifteen years calling the regional template. The timing is its own argument. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said for years that if Iran builds a bomb, Saudi Arabia will follow - and this week Tehran’s negotiator was promising that if Iran cannot sell oil, no one will. The plausible danger was never a Saudi weapon next year. It is that the threshold has visibly moved, and every actor in the region now knows it.

• Iran’s top negotiator more or less declared war on the entire region Wednesday, declaring no safety if Iranian security “is not guaranteed.” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that no one will sell oil if Iran does not sell oil. “The equation of this war is clear: either all or none!” he said in a statement posted on X. “If our security is not ensured, no infrastructure will be safe, and the security of the strait is in the absence of American forces,” he added, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. “We have repeatedly said that the situation of the strait will not return to pre-war conditions.” - Al Arabiya

• Brad Sherman, Democrat representative from California, says the US should only approve a deal if it has the the “same gold-standard safeguards as our deal with the UAE”. Under that deal in 2009, the UAE does not produce its own uranium.

  “A President waging war to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East should not facilitate proliferation just because US companies stand to make a profit,” Sherman writes on X - BBC

Gianni Infantino would not have a clear path to become the next Secretary General of the United Nations, even with Donald Trump’s backing. According to a report from The New York Post, the US President sees FIFA’s boss as a “respected” potential candidate, with a “special ability to bring people together” demonstrated by the success of the 2026 World Cup. But in any event, his endorsement alone would not be enough to push to the world’s most powerful diplomatic job a person who is not even a career diplomat. Neither Trump nor Infantino have confirmed a candidacy, which, if submitted, would put him into a challenging and politically fraught selection process. Infantino would need the support of many countries to win the post, and he could not afford to alienate Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, each of which could stop him thanks to their permanent positions on the Security Council. The UN Secretary General is appointed by the 193-member General Assembly following a recommendation from the Security Council. This means the candidate is actually selected by a restricted group of 15 countries, including ten rotating members and five permanent ones, in a closed-door negotiation. All the candidates have to be nominated by one or more UN member states and present their vision in public hearings, answering questions from ambassadors and civil society. The Council then conducts a series of confidential straw polls before agreeing on a single candidate to recommend. Any of the five permanent members – the US, China, Russia, France or the UK – can kill a candidacy with a veto, making geopolitical acceptability as important - and even more - than diplomatic credentials. The following approval of the General Assembly is regarded as a largely procedural step. The Assembly could, in theory, vote against the recommended candidate, but this has never happened so far in the UN’s history. Among the more famous candidates is the current director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mariano Grossi, nominated by his home country Argentina, mainly thanks to his diplomatic role in the talks to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant amid the war in Ukraine. - Euronews

Ukraine attacked two more warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries, the company’s founder Tatyana Kim said Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring several others. Kim, Russia’s wealthiest woman, said that Wildberries distribution centers in the southern Krasnodar and Stavropol regions were hit. She did not specify the number of workers who were injured. Videos circulating on social media showed a huge plume of smoke rising over the warehouse in Krasnodar. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strikes in southern Russia, accusing Wildberries of helping supply the Russian military with parts for drones and other equipment. Krasnodar region Governor Veniamin Kondratiev said 10 people were wounded in an attack on a “storage facility” in the regional capital, though he did not explicitly refer to Wildberries. He later said a woman who was injured in the attack died after being brought to the hospital. More than 100 firefighters and a specialized helicopter were deployed to extinguish the blaze at the Wildberries warehouse in Krasnodar, authorities said. Wildberries, often described as Russia’s Amazon, is one of the country’s biggest employers. Its shares are not publicly traded, but those of its rival Ozon were down 4% on the Moscow exchange on Wednesday morning amid concerns it too could become a target of Ukrainian attacks - Moscow Times

Live on CNN International's Isa Soares Tonight from Odesa: Russian strikes are hitting this city daily - including in the past hours on my own neighbourhood - and commercial cargo ships at a rate of nearly one a day. But behind the statistics is the human cost: people at the breaking point, including the Ukrainian media professionals who keep telling this story.

Nearly 470 million people across the Americas — two in five — are living with at least one neurological disorder, from migraine and stroke to epilepsy and Alzheimer’s, according to a new PAHO study in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas. Drawing on the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023, researchers tracked 19 conditions across 38 countries and tied them to 1.1 million deaths and roughly 12% of the region’s total burden from noncommunicable disease and injury. The story isn’t rising mortality — death rates have fallen since 1990 — but a shift toward chronic disability: more people surviving these conditions and living far longer with the consequences, straining systems built for acute care rather than rehabilitation. Migraine affects the most people and drives the most disability; Alzheimer’s, dementia and stroke dominate among the elderly. Autism spectrum disorders were the only high-burden condition whose disability rates climbed throughout the period. Much of it is preventable. High blood pressure drives stroke, elevated blood glucose feeds dementia risk, and environmental exposures — lead and air pollution among them — compound the toll. The burden is also starkly uneven, with a nearly fourfold gap between the hardest-hit countries (Haiti, Guyana, Suriname, the Dominican Republic) and the lowest, a divide that tracks not just risk exposure but shortages of specialists, rehabilitation services and access to essential medicines.

An OpenAI agent broke free of constraints and hacked into another AI startup during a security test. It was tested against a particular cyber-offense benchmark, and, in OpenAI’s words, became “hyperfocused” on maximizing its score: The agent correctly surmised that the other company, Hugging Face, hosted the evaluation’s answer sheet, so accessed the internet and hacked the startup in a bid to cheat — but got caught. AI safety researchers have warned for decades that powerful AI will go wrong in dangerous ways, seeking capabilities (in this case internet access) to fulfil its goals, and exploiting flaws in the environment, such as hacking the reward system rather than honestly completing the evaluation. OpenAI said it was “an unprecedented cyber incident.” - Semafor

The journals…

Canada keeps bringing a press release to a knife fight.

You can’t make this up: among the goods Donald Trump just hit with a 50 percent tariff - invoked under a dusty 1930 statute - are hockey sticks. Also wine, plywood, furniture, and sacred Canadian dairy. And unlike every previous salvo, these tariffs shred the USMCA fig leaf entirely: no exemptions, no carve-outs, no pretence that the trade agreement Trump himself signed in his first term still means anything.

Mark Carney’s response? Canada “stands ready to engage intensively.” With respect, Prime Minister: we’ve been engaging intensively for a year, and the lunch money keeps disappearing. Doug Ford - a man who’s been widely pilloried, and who has been compared, not unfairly, to Trump himself - nonetheless captured the national mood better than anyone in Ottawa when he arrived in Charlottetown talking about bullies and back heels. When the premier of Ontario sounds more like the voice of Canada than the prime minister, that’s a signal worth reading.

But here’s the thing about fighting back: anger is not a strategy. Leverage is.

Look south - further south. Mexico, facing the same bully, didn’t just retaliate; it pivoted. As reported recently in World Briefing, new Pacific-coast LNG terminals are now shipping Mexican gas to Asia, converting geographic vulnerability into market diversification. Look across the Pacific: Japan, watching the Iran war strangle the Strait of Hormuz, is ruthlessly re-engineering its energy dependencies in real time. Nobody in Tokyo is waiting to see if the old arrangements come back. And with European gas prices hitting four-month highs this week and Asian demand climbing into the summer heat, the world is practically begging for non-Gulf energy - a seller's market Canada was built for.

Canada, meanwhile, sits on the very cards Ford named - oil, gas, potash, electricity, critical minerals - and treats them like family heirlooms too precious to play. Kitimat is finally shipping LNG to Asia. TMX finally reaches tidewater. These shouldn’t be footnotes; they should be the centrepiece of a deliberate, loudly-announced strategy to make the American market optional rather than existential. That - not pulling bourbon off liquor store shelves in eight provinces while Alberta and Saskatchewan quietly restock it - is what “hitting back” actually looks like.

The wildfire-smoke tariff threat tells you everything about what Canada is dealing with: this is not a trade negotiation, it’s a protection racket with a grievance generator attached. You don’t appease that. You make yourself less available to it.

Elbows up, yes. But eyes up, too - on Asia, on Europe, on anywhere that isn’t a market run by a man who taxes hockey sticks. The puck, Prime Minister, is on your stick.

News Briefs
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke out Monday after the Trump administration announced a new 50 percent tariff on a range of exports from the U.S.’s northern neighbor. President Trump signed three orders in total, accusing the country of “discriminatory” trade policies. Carney slammed the new import taxes as “the latest … in a series of tariffs in direct violation” of the trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). “This trade dispute has raised costs for families, particularly in the U.S.,” Carney said in a statement shared on the social platform X. “Canada stands ready to engage intensively to address outstanding issues with the U.S. to the mutual benefit of our citizens.” The Trump administration has already imposed tariffs on Canadian exports like steel and aluminum products, softwood timber and lumber. The new tariff policies will go into effect 30 days after signing and will be enforced under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which permits up to 50 percent tariffs on imports from countries that discriminate against the U.S. The three policies signed by the president on Monday seek to target Canada’s alleged discrimination against three main U.S. American exports: automobiles, alcohol and dairy. Impacted exports include wine, hockey sticks, cement, furniture, paper, plywood, dairy products and more. The new policies differ from previous tariffs in that they apply to all goods, without exemption for Canadian goods covered under the USMCA. Carney said in his statement that Canada has drafted proposals to modernize the USMCA in the past 18 months in response to changes in the U.S.’s trade policies. “We stand ready to intensify those discussions in the coming weeks,” the prime minister wrote. Over the past year, Trump has placed economic and political pressure on Canada as part of his broader efforts to broker more advantageous trade policies for the U.S. The president’s suggestion to annex Canada as a “51st state” have provoked angry responses from the country’s citizens. Additionally, after wildfire smoke from Canada covered parts of the Northeast and Midwestern U.S., Trump threatened to impose new levies on the country. White House officials told reporters on a Monday call that the 50 percent tariffs are not related to the wildfires — adding that the president has provided options related to the handling of the smoke - The Hill

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford - who has ironically been compared to Donald Trump - says he’s “losing patience” following U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff hit and urged the federal government to “hit him back as hard as we can.” He added: “I’m tired of the bully trying to take our lunch money all the time. We always seem to be on our back heels. We need to be on the offence, not constantly on the defence with President Trump,” said Ford as he arrived in Charlottetown for three days of meetings with his provincial and territorial counterparts, CBC reported. “I’m losing patience … we can’t keep rolling over it. We can’t keep backing down. We have to go full tilt.” Ford resurrected his suggestion Canada cut off energy supplies to its southern neighbour. “We are an energy powerhouse and we could dismantle the U.S. if we wanted to,” said Ford. “The potash, the oil, we’re their number-one customer in the world, they need to feel the pain rather than us constantly feeling the pain.” His comments will likely cause a stir as he sits down with his counterparts for their annual summer meetings, which have been reoriented following Washington’s announcement that it will impose 50 per cent tariffs on a range of goods. The squeeze from Canada’s southern neighbour puts pressure on the premiers to respond. Already there’s division on what to do with the majority of provinces’ decision to stop selling American alcohol in retaliation to Trump’s previous tariffs on things like the auto sector, steel and aluminum. Only Alberta and Saskatchewan still offer U.S. booze. Separately, when asked whether provinces should put U.S. booze back on the shelves, in light of Trump’s persistent complaints, Carney said that’s up to premiers, CTV reported.

• Trump said he is looking at separate tariffs to impose on Canada over wildfire smoke. “A lot of damage has been done. They’re not managing their forests properly,” the president said. Last week, Trump threatened to impose additional tariffs on Canada over wildfire smoke coming into the U.S. In a background briefing on Monday, a senior Trump administration official confirmed that the president has “asked for options” when it comes to wildfire-related tariffs and “options are being shared with him.” - CTV

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has replaced Kyiv’s military chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, after days of widespread protests against the removal of the country’s popular defense minister, whose ousting revealed an unprecedented public split in the military over its strategy in the war against Russia. Mykhailo Drapatyi, who is the commander of Ukraine’s Joint Forces, will become Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, Zelensky announced on Tuesday evening. Meanwhile, Zelensky offered Mykhailo Fedorov, whose removal as defense minister sparked this political storm, a “prominent position in government that would allow him to unify the technical component of our state and ensure its development.” Aged 35 years old, Fedorov carved out a reputation as pioneering innovative approaches to technology and recruitment but clashed with other members of Ukraine’s defense establishment. His six-month tenure as defense minister coincided with Ukraine’s recent success on the battlefield and so his removal, amid disagreements with Syrskyi, caused a backlash against the military chief - CNN

Russian and German officials met for secret talks in Azerbaijan earlier this month, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told reporters on Tuesday, though he did not detail what was discussed during the meeting. “Our territory was used for such a meeting without our knowledge… Flight data allows me to state that a secret meeting did take place in Baku,” Aliyev said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The chancellor said he was unaware of the meeting. According to the German tabloid Bild, Azerbaijan’s border services recorded former minister president of Brandenburg Matthias Platzeck and former chief of staff of the German chancellery Ronald Pofalla arriving in the South Caucasus country on July 12. Russia’s former prime minister and current Gazprom board chairman Viktor Zubkov and current presidential human rights chief Valery Fadeyev reportedly arrived in Azerbaijan shortly after. Kommersant reported that Aliyev confirmed their visit to the country - Moscow Times

• The European Commission has confirmed the withdrawal of the €2 million grant earmarked for the La Biennale di Venezia Foundation, opening up a new front of tension between Brussels and one of Italy's most important cultural institutions. The decision, formalised on Tuesday by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (Eacea) after a legal assessment and on the Commission’s recommendation, is linked to Russia’s controversial participation in the 2026 Art Biennale. According to the EU executive, cultural events supported with Union funds must promote and uphold democratic values, dialogue, diversity and freedom of expression, principles that ‘are not respected in today’s Russia’. This is the reasoning with which Brussels has justified cutting off the European contribution - Euronews

• Vladimir Putin’s top TV propagandists are starting to betray signs of panic inside the Kremlin. They admit the war in Ukraine is spiraling out of control, and Putin can no longer protect the Russian people, but they are warning against bringing Putin down as it would spill “lots of blood.” Decorated state TV host Vladimir Solovyov, who used to relish the idea of destroying Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and freezing its citizens to death, is now warning Russians to prepare for Ukrainian strikes that might leave them without heating this winter. During the latest broadcast of Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, the host opened the program by trying to cheer people up. He asserted that "there is no panic," even though "things are difficult."Effectively conceding that Russia is unable to protect its border regions, Solovyov suggested relocating hundreds of thousands of people from Kursk, Bryansk, Belgorod, Crimea, and occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson to distant areas within Russia, like the Volga, Urals, and Far East - The Daily Beast

European natural gas prices shot to a four-month high as renewed violence around the Strait of Hormuz triggered concerns about the feasibility of transporting energy through the world’s most vital energy chokepoint. The benchmark European natural gas price — known as the Dutch TTF — briefly crossed €60 per megawatt-hour on Monday, the highest level since mid-March, and settled at €59 per megawatt-hour on Tuesday after the United States launched a tenth consecutive night of strikes against Iran. Tehran responded by targeting U.S. allies in the region and tankers in the Persian Gulf. Before a ceasefire was struck in June, gas prices had consistently stayed below €50 per megawatt-hour, with traders wary of placing big bets during a war that had become impossible to predict. Tuesday’s prices represent a 50 percent increase from the previous month. They also reflect concern that gas supplies will be further squeezed by the combination of depleted European reserves and high summer temperatures in Asia, which analysts expect will drive up demand for air conditioning - Politico

This year’s El Niño weather system, expected to be one of the strongest in decades, could cause a global economic shock that the world is unable to absorb given existing stress on supply chains, Deutsche Bank warned. The phenomenon causes temperature spikes every few years and shifts weather patterns, exacerbating global warming trends: The US can expect wetter conditions, and India weaker monsoons. Disruption to agriculture, hydropower, shipping, and even political stability makes it “a multi-channel supply shock,” DB economists said. Alongside the Iran war, El Niño will “push inflation higher … when it is already above target.” It also raises the risk of natural disasters: China is offering typhoon survival training in coastal cities ahead of El Niño’s arrival - Semafor

The journals…

Tehran didn’t need to fire a missile to land its biggest blow this week - four words did the job: “not a single drop.” Oil punched through $90, Asian markets slid, and the war Washington insists is contained now touches every gas pump in America.

Here’s the irony nobody in the White House wants said aloud: the longer the strikes continue, the higher inflation climbs - and the fewer options Trump has to end the very conflict feeding it. Seventeen dead American soldiers, a Houthi blockade that could trap Saudi oil behind Bab el-Mandeb, drones over Bahrain, and Seoul telling its citizens to get out. That’s not containment. That’s a war writing its own escalation schedule.

Between the two straits, nearly a fifth of the world’s oil supply is now hostage to this war. Nine nights in, the exits are closing. And midterm voters are watching.

News Briefs
Global oil prices soared past $90 a barrel and stocks slid in Asia as the US-Iran conflict widened, with Tehran vowing “not a single drop” of oil or gas would transit the Strait of Hormuz if US aggression continues. The latest round of attacks came shortly after Washington announced that a third soldier had been killed, bringing the US death toll from the war to 17. Nine nights of strikes have reignited predictions of higher inflation in the US; ironically, this could limit President Donald Trump’s options for ending the conflict, which is damaging his party’s chances in November’s midterm elections. “Trump has only terrible choices with Iran,” an expert wrote in The Atlantic - Semafor

• Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced a maritime embargo of their foe Saudi Arabia after the two sides traded fire last week for the first time in years.

  The rebels “declare a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye,’ effective immediately upon the issuance of this statement”, military spokesman Yahya Saree said - Al Jazeera

• The full closure of the Bab el-Mandeb strait would reduce global oil supply by ​7% as it would leave most of Saudi oil exports unable to leave the region. The disruption would add to the huge cut to oil flows from the war in ⁠the Gulf, which has already reduced shipments by 10% of global supply - Reuters

• As Bahrain’s civil aviation authority said Iranian drones attacked air navigation systems, South Korea’s foreign ministry has advised short-term visitors to evacuate the Middle East immediately.

• In a social media post, US President Donald Trump says “every time Iran kills an American soldier they will pay for that killing many times over” - Al Jazeera

Britain got (another) new prime minister Monday: Andy Burnham. The former mayor of Greater Manchester — who succeeded Keir Starmer as leader of the U.K.’s governing Labour Party last week — has begun naming his top team after King Charles III asked him to form a government. Former Defense Secretary John Healey has been named chancellor, Britain’s top finance minister — after a host of Starmer allies were cleared out. Ed Miliband, a former Labour Party leader, is foreign secretary. Burnham is Britain’s sixth prime minister in the past decade alone, and his appointment comes as the governing Labour Party gambles that another change at the top will turn around a polling deficit at the hands of right-wing populist Nigel Farage. In his first speech in the job — delivered without notes or the customary lectern that previous new prime ministers have used — Burnham promised action on the cost of living within days, and a 10-year plan for government to follow later in the year. He said he would immediately order officials to work to end homelessness in the U.K. — and he’s held his first call with U.S. President Donald Trump - Politico

The death toll of a Russian strike on a cargo ship off the coast of the Ukrainian city of Odesa has risen to 10, says BBC. As reported in World Briefing on Sunday, the Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship was hit by Russian cruise missiles causing a fire. A search and rescue operation was launched and lasted all night. By Monday morning, Ukraine’s seaports authority said nine crew members had been killed, as well as one of its pilots. India later said four of its citizens died in the attack. In recent weeks, the Odesa region has come under sustained attack. Twenty-eight people died in Russian strikes on the region in July alone, regional head Oleh Kiper told Ukrainian TV on Monday. Russian attacks on cargo ships in the Black Sea have also increased. Sunday’s attack on the Guinea-Bissau-flagged Golden Leo ship was the deadliest of its kind. Among the victims were four Indian nationals, the country’s foreign ministry said, adding that endangering crew members or impending freedom of navigation “is deplorable and should be avoided”.

• The number of nationality-motivated attacks in Poland is steadily increasing, according to data provided to the Polish press by the National Police Headquarters. This month has already seen widespread coverage of a vulgar attack on teenage girls from Ukraine on a municipal bus in Bielsko-Biała. An adult man verbally abused, threatened and insulted the girls for no other reason than that they were speaking Ukrainian. And this is just one of 180 incidents that were reported to the police in the first half of 2026. Data shows that the scale of aggression against Ukrainians in Poland has risen sharply. In 2024, Ukrainians living in Poland filed 267 reports of alleged hate crimes. In 2025, that number rose to 275. The 180 reports filed in the first half of 2026 already represent an increase of more than 30% compared with the same period last year, and nearly 35% compared with 2024 - Euronews

Taiwan prosecutors indicted a former TSMC employee on Monday for allegedly stealing ​TSMC trade secrets involving technologies designated by Taiwan as ‌national core technologies, with intent to use them in China. The former employee, who previously served as a deputy manager at the world’s largest ​contract chipmaker, was charged with violating Taiwan’s National Security ​Act and the Trade Secrets Act, prosecutors said. Prosecutors, who ⁠identified the defendant by the surname Chen, said they were ​seeking a seven-year prison sentence. The defendant is accused of conspiring ​with a Hong Kong national between 2023 and 2024 to establish CSMAC, a semiconductor materials analysis company in China, and of copying 21 TSMC ​documents relating to national core technologies and other trade secrets, ​intending to use the information in China. Reuters was unable to contact Chen for ‌comment ⁠because he remains in custody. TSMC had detected the unauthorised copying through an internal investigation and recovered all of the duplicated technical documents, prosecutors said, adding that the Hong Kong suspect was ​not prosecuted because ​he had ⁠died - Reuters

A Spanish soccer star impersonated Donald Trump right in front of him after winning the World Cup. The president delivered the trophy to the stage at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday, after the Spaniards overcame Lionel Messi and Argentina following extra time. And, just before a lingering Trump finally exited the podium, Mikel Merino was spotted trying out the president’s YMCA jig. Spain captain and player of the tournament, Rodri, was preparing to lift the trophy when Trump bust a move, prompting Arsenal star Merino to have a go. The versatile midfielder, who can also play as an attacker, laughed as he gyrated in the 80-year-old’s signature style. Seconds later, Rodri lifted the trophy as Spain celebrated their second World Cup title. Trump, however, refused to leave the podium with any haste—a repeat of the Club World Cup final last year. FIFA President Gianni Infantino was seen urging the president to allow the players to celebrate alone, but he hit the brakes so he could be in the press photographs of the fiesta. Afterward, he was brutally edited out of pictures and clips from the celebrations - The Daily Beast

The journals….

Here's the verdict, and it isn't pretty: two co-belligerent states - Russia and Iran, partners in everything from drones to sanctions-busting - are now methodically strangling the two shipping arteries the world can least afford to lose. In the Strait of Hormuz, energy flows have been halted or squeezed for months. And here in Odesa, where I watched a foreign-flagged merchant vessel take a direct missile hit to the bridge today and burn with no firefighting in sight, Russia is systematically dismantling the corridor that feeds the Global South. Ukraine's ports have already lost a third of their grain export capacity. Egypt - which increased its purchases of Ukrainian wheat by nearly 83% last season to become its biggest buyer - Algeria, Indonesia, and famine-wracked Yemen are the customers on the other end of these burning ships. And the Western response? The EU's latest sanctions package is so riddled with carve-outs that Brussels diplomats have taken to calling it "the Emmental" - after the cheese. A proposed ban on Russian cod and pollock was scrapped entirely because Europe's food processors need it for fish sticks. Fiddle sticks, indeed. When merchant ships are being swatted like flies on a table and the collective West's rebuttal is a seven-day extension on an oil price cap, the message received in Moscow and Tehran is unmistakable: the arteries are yours for the taking.

ODESA — The missile found the bridge.

Not the hull, not the cranes, not the grain elevators lining this battered port - the bridge, the nerve centre of the ship, struck with the kind of precision that ends any polite debate about intent. By the time I reached a vantage point Sunday afternoon, the foreign-flagged merchant vessel was burning uncontrolled, an enormous column of black smoke rolling over the harbour, and for the longest time there wasn’t a piece of firefighting equipment in sight. When first responders finally arrived, it looked to be too late for her. Earlier, overhead, two fast-flying rockets screamed across the city centre. Unimpeded. No interceptors. No answer.

It was, by any measure, a violent day in Odesa - one of several in a very violent week. And here is the verdict, delivered from the ground: what is happening in this port is not a series of unfortunate incidents. It is a campaign. And it is one half of something larger - a coordinated squeeze, by two co-belligerent states, on the commercial shipping arteries the world can least afford to lose.

A campaign, by their own description

You don’t have to take my word - or my eyewitness account - for the word “campaign.” Ukraine’s main farmers’ union, the UAC, said it plainly in its latest weekly report: Russia is “systematically striking port infrastructure, terminals and the entire transport logistics chain,” with ballistic missiles returning to the arsenal again and again.

The numbers tell the rest. Ukraine has lost roughly a third of its capacity to export grain through its Black Sea ports, which handle more than 90 per cent of the country’s agricultural exports - its single biggest source of foreign currency. Monthly throughput at the Odesa-region ports has collapsed from about 6 million metric tons to about 4 million. Four of the ports’ 13 large grain terminals have suspended purchases. The ports have lost roughly a third of their storage capacity - some 2.5 million tons of monthly accumulation at the deep-water terminals - creating a bottleneck that leaves grain with nowhere to go. And the UAC warns that if the current tempo of strikes continues without repairs, the infrastructure could be significantly degraded within months.

This is how a shipping corridor dies - not with a treaty torn up on live television, but quietly, actuarially. Shipowners grow reluctant to call at Ukrainian ports; analysts at ASAP Agri say that reluctance is already pushing freight rates upward. War-risk underwriters reprice. Crews think twice. Meanwhile the costs stack from every direction: Türkiye raised its strait transit fees by about 15 per cent on July 1, and Ukraine’s state railway has proposed a 30 per cent tariff hike from August. Ships being picked off like flies on a table is merely the visible layer. The invisible layers - insurance, freight, finance - are where the corridor actually bleeds out.

To be fair, both sides are now targeting each other’s revenue lifelines: Ukrainian forces have struck Russian energy infrastructure, including oil tankers. But there is a category difference between hitting a belligerent’s war-funding exports and putting a ballistic missile into the bridge of a foreign-flagged civilian merchant vessel loading grain.

Who actually pays

Here is the part that should be front-page news everywhere, and isn’t: the customers on the other end of these burning ships are not hedge funds in Geneva. They are the world’s most bread-dependent nations.

Per the Ukrainian Grain Association’s season wrap-up, Egypt increased its purchases of Ukrainian wheat by nearly 83 per cent last season - 3.855 million tons - to become the top buyer. Algeria was second, up 46 per cent. Indonesia third. Yemen - Yemen, a country the UN has spent a decade trying to hold back from famine - took more than a million tons. Four of the five largest buyers of Ukrainian wheat are Global South states. Egypt is also the top destination for Ukrainian sunflower oil.

Cairo's dependence cuts in an uncomfortable direction, too. Even as Egypt became Ukraine's biggest legitimate wheat buyer, Kyiv accused it of accepting cargoes of grain stolen from Russian-occupied territories - four laundered shipments through Egyptian ports since April alone, by the foreign ministry's count, including 26,900 tons unloaded at Abu Qir in May despite a formal Ukrainian request to seize the vessel. This after President el-Sisi personally assured Zelensky in April that the practice would stop. When your bread supply is this exposed, it seems, promises bend. Which is precisely the vulnerability Moscow is counting on as it burns the legitimate corridor.

Read that against the trajectory: Ukraine’s wheat exports had already fallen nearly 10 per cent last season, to about 14 million tons, before this month’s port campaign knocked out a third of what remained. Cairo doubled down on Odesa at precisely the moment Odesa began to burn. When this corridor constricts, the price is not paid in Rotterdam or Houston. It is paid in Cairo bread lines and Sana’a feeding centres. Ukraine’s government - a country that lost millions to Stalin’s engineered famine in 1932-33 - calls this what it is: hunger, weaponized. On this point, Kyiv’s framing and the shipping data are in full agreement.

The second artery

Now widen the lens, because Odesa is not an isolated theatre. Regular readers will recall that this newsletter has called Russia and Iran what they are - co-belligerents - since the Gulf war made their partnership operational. Look at the map of world shipping today and you see their joint handiwork: in the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas transit has been halted or severely limited for months by the Middle East war. In the Black Sea, the grain corridor is being dismantled missile by missile.

Two chokepoints. Two co-belligerents. One effect: global commerce rerouted, repriced, and held hostage. Hormuz hits the energy markets and hurts everyone roughly in proportion to their wealth. The Black Sea hits commodity grain and hurts the poorest first and worst. Together they amount to something we have not seen in the post-war era - a sustained, deliberate campaign against the freedom of navigation itself, conducted below the threshold that would trigger a collective response.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the collective response.

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The Emmental

The European Union is currently attempting to pass its 21st sanctions package against Russia. Many in Brussels assumed this would get easier after Viktor Orbán’s departure in May. Instead, six weeks after an ambitious draft landed in capitals, EU diplomats have taken to calling the package “the Emmental” - after the Swiss cheese famous for its holes.

Consider the holes. A headline proposal to ban imports of Russian cod, haddock and pollock was watered down so thoroughly it was scrapped altogether - because Germany, Poland and Portugal need Russian fish for domestic food processing. Fish sticks, to be precise. Fiddle sticks, say I. A proposed automatic Schengen ban on Russian ex-combatants was diluted into a vague commitment to study the visa code, because Mediterranean capitals wouldn’t risk a bumper tourist summer. Bulgaria vetoed blacklisting Patriarch Kirill and Lukoil’s chief, partly because a sanctioned billionaire’s companies supply spare parts for Sofia’s metro. Austria held the whole thing hostage over compensation for a bank that chose to keep doing business in Russia.

And the centrepiece - the price cap on Urals crude, the Kremlin’s main revenue artery? Brussels couldn’t even agree to freeze it for six months. Then not for three. In the end, ambassadors extended it by seven days, to July 23, with a make-or-break meeting set for July 22 - conveniently the day after Belgium’s national day, when much of official Brussels decamps to the beach for a month. The deliberations, note well, are tangled up precisely because Hormuz’s closure has scrambled the oil market - the EU literally cannot price its Russia sanctions without accounting for what Iran’s war has done to shipping. The two arteries are connected even in Brussels’ own paperwork.

So tally it up. Merchant ships swatted like flies in Odesa harbour. A third of Ukraine’s grain-export capacity gone. Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia and Yemen watching their bread supply burn at anchor. Hormuz throttled. And the collective West’s rebuttal: a seven-day extension on an oil cap and a sanctions wheel of cheese.

The message received in Moscow and Tehran could not be clearer. The arteries are yours for the taking - we have fish sticks to make.

I’ll be tracking Wednesday’s EU meeting and the situation here in the port. Paid subscribers to World Briefing Plus will get my video analysis from Odesa this week, including what I saw at the harbour and what shipping insiders here are telling me about the weeks ahead. If this kind of on-the-ground reporting matters to you, this is the moment to upgrade.

News Briefs
U.S. and Iranian forces edged closer to a wider war over the weekend as two American soldiers were killed during an Iranian missile barrage in Jordan, and both sides targeted sensitive infrastructure sites including bridges and water facilities. In a sign that the fighting could intensify, American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity on Sunday said that the United States was sending more warplanes to the Middle East, a move that was in the works even before the soldiers’ deaths. The strike on Jordan, which also left one service member missing, capped a week of spiraling attacks that largely demolished what remained of the deal to end the war that President Trump agreed to with Iran last month. The State Department cautioned Americans traveling abroad that tensions in the Middle East had created the “potential for unforeseen escalation.” The U.S. military said early on Sunday that it had attacked Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps forces responsible for striking U.S. forces in Jordan. Iran retaliated with strikes on Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan, Middle East countries where the United States maintains a significant military presence. In recent days, Iranian attacks have increasingly damaged critical infrastructure, including an oil facility and power and water treatment plants in Kuwait, according to the authorities. Jordan evacuated the international airport and seaport in the coastal city of Aqaba after a “specific and credible threat,” according to the U.S. Embassy there. The country’s air defenses later shot down three Iranian missiles that targeted the country, the Jordanian military said, while a fourth landed in an unpopulated area - NYT

Turkey is in talks to transfer a sophisticated Russian air-defense system to the United Arab Emirates in hopes of clearing American objections to its purchase of advanced F-35 warplanes, U.S. and regional officials familiar with the matter said. The U.S. removed Turkey from a program to buy and help build the F-35 in 2019 after it bought an S-400 system from Russia. The U.S. worries that having the two advanced technologies operating simultaneously in Turkey could allow the S-400 to learn key operational details of the F-35 - including its radar signature and share them with Moscow - WSJ

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his office is still looking into arresting Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli prime minister visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September. Speaking on The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast, Mamdani said his administration’s legal department is actively discussing the potential arrest of Netanyahu, something he vowed on the campaign trail to pursue. “I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court. And what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.” Asked what he believed the law allowed him to do, Mamdani responded: “That’s an active conversation with our legal department. However, what we’ve seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of the bounds of legality. That’s not something we have an interest in.” - CNN

After nearly six weeks of heroics and heartache, thrills and spills, heat, ‌rain and rowing, New York New Jersey stadium was preparing on Sunday to host the crowning event of the World Cup tournament — the final between coolly confident Spain, aiming for their second world title, and fiery Argentina, defending their crown in what they hope will be the bow on the gift of Lionel Messi's ​glittering career. Fears over air quality evaporated along with the thick layer of smoke that had blanketed the region for days, ​the result of wildfires in Canada. The heat of recent weeks was also tempered, and clear ⁠skies and a beautiful day greeted crowds at East Rutherford, New Jersey. U.S. President Donald Trump’s expected attendance at the match added extra ​layers of security to the world’s biggest sporting event. Hundreds of journalists, entertainers, and volunteers waited in snarling lines for up to ​three hours, with wand-waving Secret Service agents screening entrants. For fans, the entrance lines were quicker but they faced long queues once inside for food and merchandise. Dressed in the traditional blue and white colours of Argentina or red and yellow of Spain, the supporters were trickling into the stadium ​hours before the 3 p.m. ET (1900 GMT) kickoff, with a pre-match "closing ceremony" featuring Post Malone and Tom Cruise set to begin ​at 1:30 p.m. ET (1730 GMT). The closing ceremony will also feature American singer Jennifer Hudson delivering a rendition of the U.S. national anthem and ‌tenor ⁠Christopher Macchio singing “America the Beautiful,” giving a distinctly U.S. flavour to proceedings, which will for the first time since the first World Cup in 1930 feature two Spanish-speaking teams in the final. The tournament has adopted several American traditions — not without controversy — including “hydration” breaks part-way through each half that broadcasters have used to run more commercials, and championship rings for the winners - Reuters

The journals….

Then, to Kyiv, where Zelensky has dismissed his hugely popular defence minister. I unpack why this moment differs from last year’s anti-corruption crisis - when it wasn’t just nationwide protests that forced a reversal, but concerted pressure from G7 ambassadors and strong backing from their capitals. That pressure is conspicuously absent this time.

Finally, a personal reflection. Twelve years ago today - July 18, 2014 - our OSCE Special Monitoring Mission arrived at the still-smoldering crash site of MH17, the Boeing 777 shot down by a Russian Buk missile with 298 souls on board. I retell some of what we witnessed that day, and I share practical advice - as I did in this week’s briefing - on how to travel smart when planning your next long-haul flight, especially when conflict zones are involved.

The full video analysis is available exclusively to World Briefing Plus subscribers. If you value field-grounded reporting from the places that matter - not recycled wire copy - this is the moment to upgrade. It takes less than a minute, and it keeps independent journalism like this on the ground.

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ODESA, Ukraine — Twelve years ago today, a Russian Buk missile blew Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 out of the sky over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard - 80 of them children. The next day, I was part of the first international team to reach the crash site - unarmed monitors as part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine negotiating access checkpoint by checkpoint past the very gunmen whose side had just committed one of the defining crimes of our era.

The verdict, twelve years on: the world hit snooze.

Not one perpetrator is behind bars. Three men were convicted in absentia by a Dutch court in 2022; Moscow shrugged. International bodies - the European Court of Human Rights and the UN’s own aviation watchdog, — the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) - have since ruled Russia responsible. The Kremlin’s response has been to deny, deflect and, since February 2022, to place the crash site itself behind the front lines of its full-scale war. Families who still have nothing to bury but a fragment of bone - and some who have not even that - cannot so much as visit the sunflower fields near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast where their loved ones fell. Justice delayed, closure denied, grief weaponized.

(Legal experts have told me that ongoing civil suits related to MH17, if successful, could make Moscow liable for huge compensation claims filed by the relatives – which in turn could lead to seizure of Russian assets overseas, I wrote for CNN Opinion in 2022).

People often ask how our small OSCE team coped with the enormity of what we witnessed in those fields. The answer: knowing we were providing families with crucial bits of information in those chaotic first days, when no one else could. It is for those families that this anniversary must never become a footnote.

But here is the part that should concern every one of you reading this from an airport lounge: the skies have not become safer since July 17, 2014. They have become considerably more dangerous.

The encroachment on civil aviation’s safe spaces

In the past few years, authoritarian leaders and warring belligerents have been steadily encroaching on the spaces where civilian airliners fly. More conflicts are running simultaneously than at any point in recent memory. Sophisticated weaponry - the kind once reserved for state militaries - is finding its way into the hands of non-state actors. And airline executives, with few exceptions, appear to be sleepwalking their way through the crisis.

Consider the geography from where I write. Russia’s war on Ukraine spills routinely onto the Black Sea and into neighbouring EU states such as Poland and Romania - no exaggeration; I have covered it from this coastline. To the south, the conflict with Iran has seen strikes reach as far as Jordan and even Turkey, while swathes of Gulf airspace carry unsafe designations. Airlines are threading ever-narrowing corridors between two simultaneous wars, with dispatchers and pilots left to make judgment calls that should never rest on their shoulders alone.

All of this is happening in a vacuum. The bodies responsible for keeping the skies safe - ICAO and the industry’s own International Air Transport Association (IATA) — have done precious little to help operators navigate through increasingly hostile airspace. After MH17 there were solemn promises of better threat-intelligence sharing and clearer conflict-zone guidance. Twelve years later, risk assessment remains largely a patchwork: each airline, each national regulator, improvising its own red lines.

And don’t expect the countries beneath these air corridors to voluntarily close their skies. Hundreds of aircraft overfly conflict-adjacent states every day, and the overflight fees they generate are simply too lucrative to shut off - even temporarily. When safety competes with revenue, revenue has a distressing habit of winning.

My advice to the travelling public: do your own due diligence

Airlines frequently tell us that safety is their number one priority. Take that with the appropriate grain of salt - because at the end of the day, it is up to each and every one of us to ensure we reach our destinations safely. Before you fly, check your airline’s safety record on free, online resources such as the Aviation Safety Network. Then verify whether your planned routing traverses - or skirts close to - a conflict zone: Safe Airspace, the conflict-zone risk database run by OPSGROUP, is the gold standard, and live trackers such as Flightradar24 or FlightAware will show you the corridors your carrier actually uses. If a routing gives you pause, ask the airline directly, or vote with your wallet and book a carrier that takes the longer way around. A few extra minutes of homework - or of flight time - is a small price against the lesson of MH17.

Twelve years ago, 298 people boarded a flight to Kuala Lumpur - families off on holiday, researchers bound for the world AIDS conference in Melbourne (like the Dutch AIDS activist and feminist anthropologist Martine de Schutter) - trusting that the system would keep them safe. The system failed them. It has been failing quietly ever since.

We have not forgotten. We never will. 🌻

This week alone, I’ve been reporting from Ukraine’s front lines—speaking to the people living through the war, observing events firsthand, and connecting the geopolitical dots from where they actually happen.

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Thailand Is Doing Other Governments' Dirty Work

Thailand is once again being asked to choose between its international legal obligations and keeping Beijing happy - and the timing could hardly be worse for the man whose life depends on the answer.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand has voiced deep concern over the months-long detention of Bai Zhaodong, a veteran Chinese investigative journalist now facing possible extradition to China. Bai, who spent his career exposing official corruption - most recently for Caijing magazine in Beijing - fled China in November 2023. The Public Security Bureau in Yulin issued an arrest warrant for him in September 2024 on extortion allegations, and Beijing has now formally requested his “prompt return,” with the Chinese Foreign Ministry telling Reuters he is suspected of extortion and bribery.

Human rights groups aren’t buying it. Reporters Without Borders and Safeguard Defenders say Bai exposed a sprawling corruption and financial fraud network implicating local officials and higher-ranking figures in the Chinese Communist Party - reporting that brought surveillance, interrogations and detentions before he fled. They warn the charges are politically motivated and that forcible return would expose him to arbitrary detention and possible torture. Friends say Bai disappeared last November; in the single video call they’ve had with him since, he appeared to be in detention, visibly thinner and stressed. RSF says he is being held at the Suan Phlu immigration detention centre in Bangkok.

The FCCT is asking Thai authorities to disclose the conditions of Bai’s detention and to refrain from extraditing him while legitimate concerns remain over his treatment.

The diplomatic optics are awkward, to put it mildly: Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is in China through Monday and expected to meet President Xi Jinping - with an extradition request sitting on the table.

And Bai’s case doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Bangkok has developed an unsettling habit of lending its legal machinery to foreign governments looking to silence their critics - what rights groups call transnational repression. Last year, Thailand deported 40 Uyghurs to China at Beijing’s request, drawing international condemnation. And in a case that alarmed press freedom advocates across the region, Australian journalist Murray Hunter was arrested at Bangkok’s main airport at the behest of Malaysian authorities and prosecuted under Thai criminal defamation law - the first known instance of that law being wielded on behalf of a foreign government - over blog posts criticizing Malaysia’s internet regulator. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights branded it a “transnational SLAPP,” and human rights and labor activist and FCCT board member, Phil Robertson, accused Thai authorities of letting themselves be “played for fools.” Hunter escaped with an apology and a travel ban; Bai Zhaodong, facing return to a state that rights groups warn could subject him to arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance, may not be so fortunate. At least three other Chinese dissidents reportedly sit alongside him at Suan Phlu.

The question is whether Thailand sees itself as a haven governed by the principle of non-refoulement - or as a convenient outsourcing hub for other governments’ vendettas. China, it bears repeating, sits near the bottom of every credible press freedom index and routinely jails journalists on questionable charges. The FCCT is right to demand answers. The world should be watching whether Bangkok gives them.

News Briefs
Azerbaijan will soon resume direct flights to Russia after they were suspended earlier over the deadly downing of an Azerbaijani passenger jet in late 2024, the South Caucasus country’s foreign minister said Friday. Azerbaijan Airlines halted flights from Baku to 10 Russian cities after a Russian surface-to-air missile struck an Embraer E190 traveling from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, on Dec. 25, 2024. The heavily damaged aircraft attempted to divert but crashed in western Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. The diplomatic crisis caused by the tragedy was quietly resolved in April, when Moscow and Baku reached an agreement for Russia to formally acknowledge the role of its air defense system and pay financial damages to the families of the victims. During talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said the suspension of direct flights between the two countries would be lifted sometime soon but did not give an exact date - Moscow Times

Ukraine fought Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion under an interim defense minister Friday, a day after a government reshuffle exposed a deep split between the military’s old guard and young innovators over how to fight the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s major shake-up of his government on Thursday, which included the dismissal of Mykhailo Fedorov as defense minister and the appointment of a new prime minister, unsettled the country’s military leadership and triggered a public outcry. It tested Zelenskyy’s authority and was an unwelcome difficulty after Ukraine in recent months gained traction in the war. Zelenskyy said he had asked Maj. Gen. Yevhen Khmara, acting head of the state’s security service and a highly regarded special operations expert, to take over the defense minister’s duties. Zelenskyy said late Thursday he would ask Parliament to formally approve Khmara’s appointment as defense minister, as required by law. That step could be delayed by bureaucratic hurdles, however. Ukrainian law requires the defense minister to be a civilian, so a serving soldier or security service officer must leave active duty before being formally appointed. Also, lawmakers will be on summer recess through mid-August. It was not clear whether Khmara would have enough votes in Parliament to be confirmed in the job - AP

Riot police had to be deployed today as demonstrators gathered to protest against the visit of US Ambassador to Italy, Tilman Fertitta, who arrived aboard his 117-metre megayacht, in Venice. According to organisers, the protest opposed Fertitta's visit during the city's annual Redentore festival and criticized mass tourism, the influence of billionaires on Venice, and US policies under President Donald Trump. According to the Financial Times, the flamboyant envoy is on a two-month diplomatic outreach tour of Italian seaside towns on his private $450mn yacht. Fertitta made news recently for acquiring casino giant Caesars Entertainment for $6 billion cash and assuming $12 billion in debt. This significant deal expands Fertitta's empire, which already includes Golden Nugget casinos, numerous restaurants, and the Houston Rockets - Reuters/Forbes

World Cup organizers said Friday they were "monitoring closely" the smoke gripping swaths of the United States ahead of the tournament's weekend final in New Jersey. “There’s been discussion about it, and we have somebody with the National Weather Service that sits in FIFA headquarters there, so we’re monitoring closely,” Andrew Giuliani, White House World Cup task force executive director, told a briefing. Officials urged people to stay indoors or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, prompting concerns about teams training outdoors. “These are high-level athletes who are moving a lot of air through their lungs during every practice in every game, and really they shouldn’t be practicing outside if the air quality levels are at hazardous sort of ranges for wildfire-related air pollution,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician and Global Climate and Health Alliance official. On Thursday, Spain trained outdoors in northern New Jersey ahead of the World Cup final despite hazardous air quality caused by smoke from Canadian wildfires. Argentina stayed in the Atlanta area to train less than 24 hours after coming from behind to beat England and reach a second consecutive World Cup final. Marietta, Georgia, lies far enough south to avoid the wildfire smoke drifting southeast from northern Ontario, which has prompted air-quality warnings across the US Midwest and Northeast - Euronews

Papua New Guinea will close Taiwan’s trade mission in Port Moresby, saying Taiwan’s presence was “no longer recognised or required”. PNG’s foreign minister said it marked a “vital” step towards deepening trust with Beijing and reiterated PNG’s commitment to the One China policy. An expert says PNG is providing reassurance to China after a landmark defence alliance with Australia came into force last month - ABC

The journals…..

The new prime minister, the former Naftogaz CEO with a genuinely strong private-sector record, is arguably the right operator to harden Ukraine’s grid ahead of a winter forecast to be worse than the last. That’s the good news, and it ends there.

The story is Mykhailo Fedorov - the 35-year-old tech executive who was grafting Silicon Valley methodology onto the carcass of a sprawling, slow, corrupt military establishment. In a few short months he initiated a full (and now unfinished) organizational shift to NATO standards, built a reward system incentivizing drone and missile intercepts, and - via his personal relationship with Elon Musk- negotiated the geofencing of Starlink terminals illegally obtained by Russian forces, effectively blacking out the command-and-control of frontline Russian units. This is the man Zelensky just fired, apparently to appease army chief Syrskyi, establishment generals, and procurement firms locked out of selling their outdated hardware.

In a rare admission, Zelensky conceded that the army and the Defense Ministry had communicated only through him: “The problem lies not only with the parties, but with me as well.” He would “very much like to see unity” between them, he said. On that, at least, we agree - but what I see is a president who blinked before the old guard, and who may not recover.

I’ve seen this movie before. When Canada seconded me into Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, our young, tech-savvy reform team hit the wall of entrenched bureaucracy at every step. Force any legacy institution to move from ships to chips and the antibodies attack. The difference is that this time the patient is a country at war.

The protests now filling squares nationwide - including here in Odesa - are reminiscent of last year’s uproar over the gutting of the anti-corruption bodies, a decision Zelensky ultimately reversed. Perhaps this too is an orchestrated sack-protest-reinstate maneuver. That’s a generous read, and I’m not feeling generous.

As we go to publication, Zelensky has moved to fill the vacuum, appointing Yevhenii Khmara - currently acting head of the powerful SBU security service - as acting defense minister, citing his experience running long-range strike operations and commanding the elite Alpha special forces unit. Khmara, a major general best known for leading the operation to liberate Snake Island, has largely stayed out of the public eye. Parliamentary approval for a permanent appointment will be sought soon. Note what this signals: Fedorov, the disruptor from the tech world, is replaced by a man from the heart of the security establishment. The old guard didn’t just win - they installed one of their own.

The legality questions are not academic. Under Ukrainian law, Khmara cannot simultaneously serve in uniform and as defense minister - the civilian-control principle Ukraine adopted on its path toward NATO. Politico reports he is expected to retire from military service in the coming days, clearing the way for Zelensky to formally ask parliament to confirm him. Let’s be clear about what that is: a paperwork conversion. A general who sheds his uniform on the way to the minister’s office satisfies the letter of civilian control while gutting its spirit - the whole point of the principle is a defense ministry independent of the uniformed establishment, not one run by a freshly retired member of it. Add the procedural shortcut: under normal succession, First Deputy Minister Oleksii Vyskub would have stepped up while the Rada - now in recess until August 18 - voted on a permanent minister. Instead, the president simply instructed a general to run the ministry and left the formalities for later. And the dominoes keep falling: Khmara’s move hands the SBU to his deputy Oleksandr Poklad, the man anti-corruption activists accuse of leading the 2025 assault on NABU. The reshuffle meant to steady the ship keeps rewarding the old guard.

Meanwhile, the skies offer no respite. Overnight strikes killed and injured civilians here in Odesa and Zaporizhzhia, and in Kyiv, social media is thick with confusion - people who feel they are being encouraged to temporarily evacuate the capital, with no government support to help them do it.

And if you doubt who’s celebrating, The Moscow Times has helpfully compiled the evidence: pro-Kremlin military bloggers spent the day toasting Fedorov’s exit, with one calling him far too smart and effective an enemy and predicting, in commentator Aleksei Zhivov’s words, that “things should get easier now.” Another prominent channel forecast a purge of Fedorov’s people from the ministry. Most telling is the analysis offered on a pro-war channel with 316,000 subscribers: that Zelensky saw a repeat of the Zaluzhny affair - battlefield success breeding a potential rival - and moved to eliminate the threat. When Moscow’s war propagandists understand your president’s motives better than his own communications team can explain them, you have a problem. Fedorov, for his part, went down swinging - declining an offer to stay on as an adviser and publicly accusing Syrskyi of blocking his initiatives.

The foreign ministry post also sits empty. The only capital celebrating tonight is Moscow - and they’re not even hiding it. Fedorov himself said it best: protest, but don’t hand Russia an opening.

📺 Watch my full analysis

I joined the BBC’s Matthew Amroliwala live from Odesa within hours of the decision to break down what this upheaval means for Ukraine - and who benefits. Watch the full segment below.

News Briefs
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that the head of the country’s security services, Yevhenii Khmara, will be appointed as acting defense minister. Khmara was appointed the acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine at the beginning of this year and, under Ukrainian law, cannot simultaneously serve as defense minister. He is expected to retire from military service in the coming days, allowing Zelenskyy to request that parliament appoint him as defense minister formally. Zelenskyy dismissed former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Wednesday as part of a cabinet reshuffle. The 35-year-old had held the post for only six months. While reforming the military’s technology, Fedorov also clashed with top generals, who said they found him difficult to work with - Politico

• Russian military bloggers praised the dismissal of Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who has been credited with cutting bureaucracy and boosting drone warfare against Russia, saying the shake-up would only benefit Moscow.

  Fedorov, 35, was dismissed Thursday after being on the job for just six months. His dismissal, which sparked rare wartime protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, comes as Ukraine has significantly intensified strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure and military logistics, targeting key components of Moscow’s war engine. Yet Ukrainian forces are still facing grinding Russian advances in the east amid a critical shortage of ground troops. Pro-Kremlin military bloggers called Fedorov “far too smart and effective an enemy,” arguing that his removal would make it much easier for the Russian army to fight against Ukraine.

  “Overall, it’s very good that [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky removed him from command of the army…Things should get easier now,” Russian military commentator Aleksei Zhivov said on social media. “The fact that Zelensky removed such a prolific and dangerous — for Russia — figure from a leadership position is very good [for Moscow] especially considering that his resignation will most likely also lead to a purge of Fedorov’s people from the structure of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry,” said Informant, a pro-war Telegram channel with 94,000 subscribers. Military blogger Svyatoslav Golikov said the “achievements of Fedorov’s team” at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry had had a “significant impact” on Russia’s Armed Forces. The Telegram channel Voenny Osvedomitel (Military Informant) told its 612,000 subscribers that Fedorov was “responsible for expanding digitalization in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the use of drones.” - Moscow Times

Dubai authorities have denied reports of explosions in the city on Thursday evening, after initial information claimed booms were heard due to missile interceptions, Euronews journalists in Dubai reported. Dubai Media Office has issued a statement clarifying that the explosions did not occur in downtown Dubai and urging residents to rely on official communications from the authorities. While the United Arab Emirates was targeted by Iran after the war broke out in February, Tehran has ceased its strikes following the US-Iran ceasefire and the signing of the framework deal to end the war in mid-June. After the hostilities between the two sides resumed last week, Iran has targeted a number of neighbouring countries, including Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.

A plume of dense smoke from scores of raging wildfires stretched across much of the northeastern United States and southern Canada on Thursday, prompting officials and health experts in some of the region’s most populated cities to urge residents to avoid spending too much time in the polluted air. Air quality readings in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis and Toronto surged to levels so dangerous that one public health expert said “nobody should spend time outside.” Conditions were forecast to worsen throughout the day as skylines and tall buildings disappeared from view under a suffocating haze, and dozens of new and existing fires continued to rage. By midday, sensors in the Upper Midwest and southern Ontario, where the smoke was at its most dense, were recording the worst air quality in North America. Readings in Washington, Philadelphia and New York City were all at unhealthy levels. Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York urged the eight million residents of the nation’s largest city to stay indoors. “At unhealthy levels, everyone — not just people with asthma and heart conditions, not just older adults — everyone may feel health effects,” he said. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers from states affected by the smoke threatened punitive action against Canada, accusing the country of mismanaging the wildfires. Senator Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, said he would introduce a bill next week to penalize Canada “for this atrocity.” - NYT

China’s planned restrictions on rare earth exports could put $6.5 trillion in downstream production at risk, the International ​Energy Agency said, underscoring Beijing’s chokehold over an industry critical to the global economy. Last October, China decided to expand export controls in response to tariffs imposed by Washington, though Beijing later postponed implementation by a year. While the US and other Western countries have vowed to reduce their reliance on China’s rare earths, experts say the shift could take years to play out. “China built its leverage by making the world believe it was the sole supplier,” a senior White House economic advisor wrote. “America’s task is to work with our free-world allies to make sure there is an alternative.” - Semafor

US President Donald Trump's administration finalised rules Thursday that impose stricter limits on how long foreign students and journalists can stay in the United States, the latest bid to tighten legal immigration in the country. Under a change that could be implemented as soon as September, foreigners on student visas would be admitted for the length of their academic programme up to a maximum of four years. Foreign journalists would be limited to stays of just 240 days, or around eight months, although they could apply to extend by 240-day periods, except for Chinese journalists who would get just 90 days. The move forms part of a broader immigration crackdown that Trump has made a centrepiece of his presidency, spanning aggressive enforcement operations in major cities as well as new restrictions on legal pathways to citizenship. Media organisations and international stakeholders, including the Embassy of Japan, urged DHS to allow admission periods of two to five years for correspondents posted to US bureaus. The department rejected the proposals, along with requests for expedited processing and capped fees for journalists - AFP

MAGA physician Dr. Drew Pinsky has called BS on Mitch McConnell's claims that he's on the mend. The Kentucky senator's health has been a subject of speculation since he began freezing during news conferences and falling at work. Chatter intensified after McConnell was found "unconscious" at his home last month.In the immediate aftermath, his team remained tight-lipped, creating a vacuum in which conspiracies formed. Then, on Sunday, the Trump ally emerged with a proof-of-life photograph from his hospital bed. “He’s not been forthcoming about what’s happening with him,” Pinsky said.

The journals…

Start in Slough. During this month’s heat dome, with the UK pushing toward 40 degrees, residents of the town west of Heathrow began asking a simple question: why does it feel even hotter here? One local described the air as something that pinches your body and burns your skin - an observation members of the World Briefing team, who live there, have been making all summer. The answer hums behind the high street. Slough is Europe’s largest data centre hub - roughly 40 facilities drawing a full gigawatt for Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle - and a Cambridge study (not yet peer-reviewed) finds such clusters raise surrounding temperatures by an average of 2°C, up to 9°C close in. During the heatwave, the weather station beside the server campus ran markedly hotter than the one across town. And as Thames Water pleaded with households to skip the paddling pool and go easy on the taps, the chillers next door ran flat out. That’s the whole story in one postcode: when the heat comes, the machines and the people need cooling - and water, and power - on exactly the same days. Climate change doesn’t just sharpen the competition for scarce resources. It synchronizes it.

Slough isn’t an outlier; it’s a preview. And the world is beginning to push back against the AI land grab - for the first time, successfully.

The newest data point: on Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order imposing the first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers in the US - a pause of up to a year on permits for any facility drawing 50 megawatts or more, freezing a $10 billion pipeline while the state writes binding rules on energy, water and community benefits. Her framing was blunt: she refuses to let the costs land on ratepayers.

But New York is a latecomer. Ireland got there first - the hard way. Data centers consumed 23 per cent of all Irish electricity in 2025, by far the highest share in the OECD; a UN agency report last month cited Ireland as a “cautionary tale” for the AI age. Dublin’s grid operator imposed a de facto moratorium years ago, and the government only recently lifted national restrictions on condition that 80 per cent of a new facility’s energy comes from renewables. The Netherlands restricted hyperscale construction nationally. Singapore ran a three-year moratorium. Denmark’s grid operator paused all new large-scale connections this spring after roughly 14 gigawatts of data center requests piled up - double the country’s peak electricity demand. In Chile, a court suspended a Google data center after residents discovered it would extract more than 7 billion litres of water a year in a region enduring a 15-year megadrought. Protests have hit projects in Mexico, Malaysia, Canada, Brazil, Spain and the UK.

The heat dome exposed how systemic the collision has become. Cooling can eat up to 40 per cent of a data centre’s electricity, and that share climbs precisely when grids are most stressed; in evaporative systems, nearly 80 per cent of the drinking-quality water used simply vanishes into the air. In France, a nuclear reactor at Golfech shut down because the river water was too hot to cool it — even as demand spiked. On the US East Coast, the largest grid operator asked for authority to order data centres onto backup generators to keep the lights on for households. England’s Environment Agency now warns that data centre demand spikes during heatwaves threaten already water-stressed London and the Southeast — and the national framework projecting a 5-billion-litre daily water deficit by 2055 didn’t factor in data centre growth at all.

Canada, characteristically, is sleepwalking into the same fight. New research from York University’s Schulich School of Business - the first comprehensive map of Canada’s data centre landscape - counts just five hyperscale facilities operating today against 96 proposed or under construction, a pipeline nearly ten times the existing footprint. More than 90 per cent of that planned capacity is headed for a single province: Alberta, home to one of the country’s highest-emissions grids. The study’s authors note that a single facility can draw as much electricity as tens of thousands of households while creating comparatively few long-term jobs - a 100-megawatt centre consumes the equivalent of roughly 40,000 to 64,000 Canadian homes - and warn of reshaped provincial power systems, rising emissions and other users crowded off the grid. Provinces with clean power - Quebec, Ontario, B.C. - are already rationing access, which is precisely why the buildout is migrating to where the electrons are dirtiest and the scrutiny thinnest. Canadians have noticed even if Ottawa hasn’t: Angus Reid Institute polling finds 68 per cent would oppose a large AI data centre within a few blocks of their home, rising to 73 per cent among rural residents - and the resistance is already scoring wins, from Premier Kinew pulling the plug on a massive Manitoba project to Hamilton council advancing a moratorium. Yet the national conversation Ottawa hasn’t had - power draw, foreign ownership of critical digital infrastructure, stranded-asset risk if the boom cools - remains a decision being made by default. Sound familiar?

The human face of all this is in Mason County, Kentucky, where 82-year-old Ida Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare have refused more than US$26 million - roughly ten times local land value - from an unnamed Fortune 100 company assembling a 2,080-acre hyperscale site around their 200-year-old family farm. The county rezoned in May anyway. Twenty-eight neighbours in a mobile home park got 90-day eviction notices. The buyer has never publicly said its own name; county documents call it only “the prospect.” The family and a residents’ group are fighting on in court - and they have company: US data center project cancellations quadrupled to 25 in 2025, and the world’s largest planned complex, beside Virginia’s Manassas Civil War battlefield, died outright this month after residents won in court.

And the buildout is reaching places with no backlash infrastructure at all. Outside Yerevan - as our reporting trip to Armenia this spring found - construction is underway on Firebird’s Nvidia-powered “AI factory,” a project that has since swelled to US$4 billion and 50,000 GPUs, announced with the US vice president standing beside Prime Minister Pashinyan. For a small state squeezed between Russia (via Georgia), Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey, hosting one of the world’s largest GPU clusters is statecraft as much as commerce - American chips as a security umbrella. It is also a preview of where the industry goes when the West says no: to emerging economies where the grid questions, water questions and consent questions haven’t yet been asked.

Now set all of that against the demand curve. The IEA projects global data center electricity consumption will more than double by 2030 from 2024 levels. Nikkei Asia reports Nvidia is in talks with Mitsubishi Heavy - a gas-turbine and power-plant maker - to supply cooling and energy infrastructure for these AI factories. When the industry itself starts procuring power-plant-grade hardware, the villagers, farmers and ratepayers packing hearings from Maysville to Malaysia aren’t Luddites. They’re early.

The AI buildout has collided with the oldest political force on earth: people defending their land, water and utility bills. Big Tech has the capital. What it doesn’t yet have - anywhere - is the consent.

As Huddleston put it: “Money don’t mean anything if you don’t have food, water and can’t breathe. And they’re not making any more land. You can’t get food out of a data center.”

The Recruitment War: How Russia Widened Its Net Across Africa

From Enzokuhle Jojo - our correspondent in Cape Town

Russia’s war in Ukraine has always had a second front, and it runs quietly through Africa. The pattern behind it has been remarkably consistent: young men offered work that led instead to the battlefield, with financial desperation doing much of the recruiting Moscow never had to do itself. Investigations by the International Crisis Group and others have documented recruitment efforts reaching Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Then came the women - lured by promises of hospitality and logistics jobs in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, only to find themselves assembling Shahed drones at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone. France 24 traced parts of that campaign to South African influencers, among them Cyan Boujee, who later said she too had been misled. South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation went so far as to publicly warn young women about the scheme, including in interviews on Radio 702, as Africa Defense Forum reported. A May 2025 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found that some of those recruited into the Alabuga programme were reportedly as young as fifteen.

The methods kept evolving. Social media became the pipeline’s most effective tool, with influencers - knowingly or not - lending credibility to offers that looked more trustworthy than any official advertisement. Among the most widely reported cases were allegations, published by African Business, linking a recruitment operation to Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former President Jacob Zuma - allegations she denies. Alabuga remains the clearest window into just how far this network reached. The evidence of deceptive recruitment, across multiple countries and multiple cases, is by now substantial.

But a recent POLITICO report complicates the picture. Some captured African fighters in Ukrainian custody now say they knew exactly what they were signing up for. There was no deception, by their account; the money was the attraction. One Congolese fighter, who goes by the nickname “Avatar”, told POLITICO he now considers Russia home, has family there, and would rather be returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange than go back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Such statements demand caution. Prisoners of war speak under conditions where incentives, fear and uncertainty about their own future shape what they choose to say. Their testimony does not erase the documented record of deception - but it does suggest the reality is messier than a clean division between victims and perpetrators.

And that messiness may itself serve the recruiters. If enough ambiguity surrounds how individuals entered the system, accountability becomes far harder to pursue. A recruit who insists he acted voluntarily is harder for Ukraine to hold up as evidence of exploitation, and harder for African governments to invoke when pressing Moscow for answers. Whether such testimony reflects genuine choice, coercion, survival instinct or some blend of all three, the practical effect is identical: the broader pattern becomes easier to dispute.

Which is precisely why the pattern matters more than any single testimony. One captured fighter’s account may be entirely genuine and still not overturn the wider body of evidence showing how this pipeline has operated across the continent - adapting its methods over time to target jobless young men, women promised legitimate work, underage girls reportedly funnelled into Alabuga, and influencers capable of manufacturing trust at scale.

The question for African governments and journalists, then, is not whether every recruit was purely a victim. It is whether the documented evidence - how the pipeline operates, who facilitated it, who profited, and who failed to stop it - will outlast the news cycle that briefly exposed it. So far, the record is not encouraging: these stories surface, generate headlines, and quietly disappear long before accountability catches up.

News Briefs
Iran has threatened to block further trading routes in the region, as the US launched a fresh wave of strikes on military targets. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the Strait of Hormuz would remain shut until the US ends its “acts of aggression” and said other regional oil and gas export channels could also be closed. The warning came as the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said it had carried out drone, air and navy strikes on Iran on Wednesday morning, in addition to a seven-hour operation overnight. US President Donald Trump vowed to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants next week if the country does not return to talks. “I’ll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we’ll hit energy targets,” Trump said in an interview on Special Report with Bret Baier that aired on Tuesday night. The escalation in rhetoric comes after Trump said a 20% toll he had threatened to impose in the Strait of Hormuz would be replaced by “massive” trade and investment deals with Gulf states. A renewed US blockade on Iranian ports was imposed on Tuesday evening, which stops vessels from transiting to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas. In response, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned the US that it should “expect the closure of other oil and gas export routes that serve the interests of the United States and its allies”. It did not elaborate on which routes could be affected. Meanwhile, Iran's state-run broadcaster reported that the country's army had carried out separate attacks on US targets in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain - BBC

• The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on Tuesday reinstated and toughened its warning to ​airlines operating in the Middle East, telling them to ‌avoid the airspace of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and over the Gulf of Oman as the U.S.-Iran war flared up again. Just ​a week ago, EASA withdrew its previous advisory following ​a brief easing of regional tensions as a result ⁠of last month’s interim ceasefire between Tehran and Washington. That ​warning had asked airlines to exercise caution when operating within the airspace ​of these countries, as well as Israel, Jordan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. "The presence ​of major US ​military facilities ⁠in the region increases the likelihood that the states covered by this Conflict Zone Information Bulletin ​may be directly exposed to Iranian missile and ​drone attacks," ⁠EASA said, citing also the risk of misidentification of civil aircraft by U.S. and other air defence systems - Reuters

Russia and Ukraine stepped up their battle over the Black Sea and key trade routes on Wednesday, with Russian forces killing three people in an attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and Kyiv’s drone forces striking Russian shipping. Odesa region Governor Oleh Kiper said Russian drone and missile strikes on the southern region continued for a fifth day, with civilian, industrial and port infrastructure coming under attack. Three people were killed and at least three others were injured after a Russian missile hit a seven-story residential building in Odesa, Ukrainian authorities said. In a statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it continued overnight strikes on Ukrainian ports it claimed were handling cargoes for the Ukrainian military. It said a number of targets in the ports of Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk port had been hit, as well as four vessels it said were delivering cargoes for Ukraine’s forces in the ports of Chornomorsk and Dnipro-Buh. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s top drone commander said Wednesday that Kyiv hit 20 Russian vessels in the Black Sea overnight - Reuters

• US President Donald Trump said he still believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine soon, despite continued attacks and some indications Russia was likely to escalate the conflict. “I think he's ready to make a deal,” Trump said in a Fox News interview when asked about his conversations with Putin. The interview was taped on Tuesday and aired on Wednesday. Three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Putin is rejecting calls to negotiate peace with Kyiv and was likely to escalate the conflict, now in its fifth year. Trump had promised to have a deal to the war, now in its fifth year, on the first day of his presidency in January 2025 - Reuters

US Coast Guard ships that previously operated in the Middle East have been deployed to Singapore and the Philippines, as Washington looks to challenge China’s assertion of power in the Pacific Ocean. Tensions have risen in the region as Beijing has sought to expand its maritime and territorial claims, pushing Asian leaders to strengthen security alliances: Defense spending in Asia and Oceania rose by more than 8% last year, the biggest leap in almost two decades. The US too is ramping up its security apparatus in the Pacific, upgrading airfields, testing advanced missile systems, and training with other allied nations. However, deterring Beijing in its backyard “will remain a challenge” for Washington, The Wall Street Journal reported.

While Politico's CEO was boasting on LinkedIn that the outlet "sets the news agenda" in Brussels, its Belgian filings were telling a different story. Former chief correspondent Matthew Karnitschnig reports the European arm's net loss ballooned to nearly €2 million in 2025 — up from roughly €300,000 the year before — despite record revenue of almost €48 million. The loss wiped out the company's remaining equity, triggering Belgium's statutory 'alarm bell' governance procedure, with owner Axel Springer pledging to step into the breach if needed. Expansion into France and Germany has reportedly underperformed commercially, headcount is down by about 50 — and with Springer's attention shifting to its new Telegraph acquisition, the once-favourite child of the Döpfner empire suddenly looks expendable.

The journals…

News Briefs
President Donald Trump on Tuesday walked back threats to charge a 20 percent fee on all cargo ships that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that has been central to the renewed U.S.-Iran conflict. In a post to Truth Social, Trump said the strait will be open to “ALL Ship traffic except for Iran” and the U.S. will implement a “FULL Blockade, but only on Ships coming to and from Iranian ports, or carrying anything have to do with Iranian cargo.” The president added that the previously announced 20 percent fee will be replaced with trade and investment deals between Gulf states and the U.S. Trump’s announcement marks a swift backtrack from his proposal to charge all ships traveling the strait a 20 percent fee, a plan he announced Monday. It triggered grumbling from international allies and even some Republicans on Capitol Hill. The president said later on Tuesday that his mind was changed when he spoke to leaders from the Gulf states, who wanted the waterway controlled a different way. Trump said he looked at charging a fee as “a reimbursement” but that he doesn’t like the idea of anybody charging a fee for the strait, despite feeling it’s unfair that the U.S. protects the waterway without compensation. “By doing in that way, there’s no fee. They’re investing and they’re getting a return on their money and its good. But, they’re going to be making massive investments into the United States and I like that much better,” Trump said. Democrats were quick to condemn the proposal. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) warned that the proposed fee would not be readily accepted - Politico

• One hundred eighty members of Iran’s 290-strong parliament have issued a statement declaring the end of the memorandum of understanding with the United States. The lawmakers emphasised the necessity of “pursuing revenge”. They also called for the passing of new legislation to manage the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s terms. Separately, the Strait of Hormuz will never be opened by “war, evil, and American aggression”, the Iranian army’s spokesperson says - Al Jazeera

The fragile US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding is, for all practical purposes, finished - and with it, the ceasefire. The two sides have slid back into open conflict over the one thing the February war never resolved: who controls the Strait of Hormuz.

In a sharp new analysis for Asia Times, the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi argues the collapse was less about treaty fine print than about a fundamental strategic collision. On paper, the fight turns on Paragraph 5 of the MOU - whether Iran is responsible for safe passage through the entire Strait or only its northern corridor. Beneath that, Parsi writes, Tehran was convinced Washington’s real objective was to build a southern shipping corridor through Omani waters that would gradually strip Iran of its control over the waterway - and with it, its single most important source of leverage. Trump’s earlier threat to bomb Oman unless it dropped a joint-management proposal did little to calm those suspicions.

The weekend talks in Muscat produced three competing proposals - an Iranian dual-notification scheme, a Qatari three-corridor plan, and a US-Omani split-management model that Tehran read as the formalization of exactly the corridor strategy it feared. The accounts of who torpedoed what diverge predictably: Washington says Foreign Minister Araghchi was overruled by IRGC hardliners; Tehran says Oman caved to American pressure. Either way, diplomacy is dead for now.

Parsi’s most striking claim: Iran closed the Strait not to extract concessions but because its strategists concluded war was coming anyway - Trump’s “scum” rhetoric, the ceasefire-is-over declarations, and the Lebanon-Israel deal all convinced Tehran that Washington was preparing to resume hostilities. Closing Hormuz first was, in their calculus, defensive - even if it may have made the American response inevitable.

The bottom line: Trump enters this round in a materially weaker position than in February. Global oil inventories are down some 360–370 million barrels since the war began, with barely 5% rebuilt; the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has shrunk from roughly 415 million barrels to 337 million. And the midterms are four months out - meaning gas prices, inflation, and freight costs land squarely in the campaign window. Add Parsi’s Pentagon source, who notes Iran builds missiles faster than the US builds interceptors, and Washington’s attention split across Ukraine and Taiwan, and you get the piece’s core verdict: another round of bombing won’t change the fundamentals. It’s February all over again - except this time Trump can’t claim he didn’t know how it ends.

Earlier today I joined Times Radio's Frontline to unpack the latest from the Russia-Ukraine war - including Trump's apparent change of tune on Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky. A sample above; the full clip is here.

Two very loud explosions shook the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa at around 22:40 local time Tuesday, heard clearly by World Briefing from the city centre. Ukrainian Telegram channels report damage to city infrastructure; details are still being clarified. It caps a brutal day here. Since Tuesday morning, four people have been killed and four injured in Odesa, with Russian forces striking port infrastructure, commercial vessels in the Black Sea, and the city’s outskirts, according to state broadcaster Suspilne. Notably - and for the first time in recent memory - damage is visible at the central port bordering the city centre, most likely from Saturday morning’s strikes. That matters: this is the working heart of Ukraine’s grain corridor, within sight of the opera house and the tourist quarter. Odesa was far from alone. A snapshot of Tuesday’s toll, per Suspilne:

• Kharkiv region: Two dead, at least seven injured, with strikes on Svatove, Berezivka, Mlynky, Zolote and Kharkiv city.

• Kherson region: Twenty injured in shelling of Kherson and Bilozerka, including a 17-year-old girl.

• Dnipropetrovsk region: At least nine injured; nearly one hundred strikes recorded on Nikopol and Kryvyi Rih, plus infrastructure in Kropyvnytskyi.

• Mykolaiv region: Eight injured after an MLRS attack on Ochakiv damaged a medical facility, homes and vehicles.

• Sumy: Two injured in an evening strike; information still being clarified.

Former Chinese Politburo member and Xinjiang party chief Ma Xingrui has been removed from the party and dismissed from public office following an anti-corruption investigation, the state broadcaster said on Tuesday. Ma, 67, who once headed China’s new-generation carrier rocket programme, became the third member of the Politburo – the ruling party’s elite political body – to come under investigation in the current term that began in 2022, a situation unseen in decades. Before his role in Xinjiang, Ma became deputy party secretary of the southern province of Guangdong in 2013 after a brief stint at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. He went on to become party secretary of Shenzhen, provincial vice-governor and then governor. The Politburo reviewed and approved the report on Ma’s cases by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the ruling party’s top disciplinary and anti-corruption body, on Jun 30, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua on Tuesday - CNA

The lives of British NHS staff and patients were put at risk in the pandemic because of a lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), with almost £10bn of taxpayers’ money wasted in a scramble to buy more, the Covid inquiry has said. The chair Baroness Hallett criticised the “vast” waste in procurement, put at £9.9bn – two-thirds of the £14.9bn the government spent on PPE. The UK entered the pandemic with its stockpile of masks, gowns and gloves in a perilous state and was unprepared for the global race to secure supplies, she added. She described the controversial VIP lane, which prioritised PPE offers from those with political connections, as a misguided policy that should not be repeated. But she said there was “no evidence of cronyism or corruption” by ministers or other officials when awarding the final contracts. When the cost of home testing kits and other equipment, such as ventilators, was included, the total amount spent by the government between January 2020 and June 2022 exceeded £42bn, the inquiry found. The UK’s emergency stockpile of PPE, meant to last at least 15 weeks before being replenished, was running out by the end of March 2020 as demand from hospitals soared. Only a third of the masks in England’s pandemic stockpile were usable, the inquiry found, while Scotland had no supplies of high-grade respiratory masks used in hospitals. At the time, care homes, GP surgeries and pharmacies were all expected to source their own PPE, something the report described as a "major failure in planning". In total the UK government was forced to write off £9.9bn worth of PPE that was either unused or out of date, as well as £157m for unused healthcare equipment - BBC

The lead investor in a South Korean aluminum company that has challenged Commerce Department penalties on certain exports from South Korea to the United States made a $2 million payment last year to President Trump’s holding company. The payment by the parent company, Base Group, was revealed for the first time in Mr. Trump’s annual financial disclosure form released in late June. The document offered only a cryptic explanation for the payment, stating that it was part of a “letter of intent” and a “nonrefundable development fee.” In statements to The New York Times, the company and the Trump family said the payment relates to a still-unannounced golf course project. Base Group has spent nearly a decade courting the Trump family, exclusively selling Trump-branded wine in South Korea and, more recently, hosting Mr. Trump’s son Eric at its Seoul headquarters - NYT

Lindsey Graham‘s Washington, D.C. home has been crawling with FBI agents since he died ... and, so far, there are no signs something nefarious happened ... TMZ has learned. Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ ... “There has been no new evidence to suggest any foul play.” Graham’s team announced late Saturday night the Senator passed away after a “brief and sudden illness.” Graham’s communications director, Taylor Reidy, later revealed he died from a tear in his aorta. The Republican Senator's sudden death came as a shock to his constituents and fellow politicians alike, as people flocked to social media to grieve. Graham was 71.

The journals…

Now that the flags have been packed away and NATO summit merch is already surfacing on Facebook Marketplace, it's time for the sober accounting. We were skeptical of Ankara - and said so. But the view from Kyiv and the Ukrainian policy community is notably sunnier than ours. So today we hand the microphone to Ukrainians themselves: what did Kyiv actually walk away with?

Before the NATO Summit, I argued that Ukraine is showing NATO the future of warfare. The success of Ukraine’s deep strikes inside Russia has changed perceptions - not only among European allies but even in the White House - demonstrating that Ukraine can shift the battlefield and alter strategic thinking. The summit reflected that growing confidence: support for Ukraine is increasingly seen not as charity, but as an investment in the future security of the Alliance - Myroslava Gongadze, non-resident senior fellow, Atlantic Council

The most important outcome of this NATO Summit is that allies are increasingly thinking beyond today’s battlefield. Immediate military assistance remains critical, but Ukraine also needs the ability to produce its own advanced defense systems. A stronger Ukraine means a stronger Europe, and that understanding is becoming more evident within the Alliance - Kira Rudik, People’s Deputy of Ukraine and leader of Holos Party

The NATO Summit concluded without any controversies involving Ukraine, and that is already a positive outcome. There is also encouraging news about a license to produce missiles for the Patriot air defense systems. The biggest question is where and how these missiles will actually be manufactured, and whether Ukraine has the necessary capacity to do so. This is particularly important given that Russia has recently been deliberately targeting warehouses and facilities linked to Ukraine’s defense industry in its missile strikes. In addition, the allies agreed to provide Ukraine with $70 billion in military assistance this year and to maintain at least the same level of support next year. That is an important and encouraging signal. It has long been clear that Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO in the near future. Still, this level of military assistance is critical to the country’s ability to defend itself - Oleksii Goncharenko, People’s Deputy of Ukraine

The summit went extremely well and Ukraine exceeded expectations. The Trump-Zelensky meeting showed significant improvement in bilateral relations, and we need that so much. Mr. Trump showed support for Ukraine publicly and that was a clear signal to Mr. Putin. It was not just a public gesture, but backed with concrete actions like licensing Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles…. As for Mr. Zelensky, he showed his best talents especially with really good one-liners for example: “I don’t want to go to Moscow because there are a lot of Ukrainian drones.’ It was extremely well positioned. I hope that as a practical result for Ukrainians is that we will be more safe with patriot missiles systems as we definitely need them. As well as exchange of data on (incoming Russian) ballistic missiles -Victor Liakh, President, East Europe Foundation

I think Ukraine was the main agenda item, and Ukrainian diplomacy demonstrated that it is working, because more and more countries, according to Mr. Zelensky, want us inside the NATO alliance. The press conference between the American and Ukrainian presidents was much better than a year ago. Ukraine emerged from the summit in Ankara in a position of strength, despite those horrible Russian ballistic missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital. At the same time, I, as a Ukrainian journalist, have a bittersweet moment after the Ankara summit. I’m afraid that Donald Trump will change his mind in a few days. So it remains to be seen whether U.S. commitments for licensing Ukrainian manufacturing of Patriot missile systems will remain in place. — Nataliia Lutsenko, TV anchor and Ukrainian journalist

The Ankara summit was definitely good news for Ukraine. As someone who is based in Kyiv and has to navigate life between Russian missile attacks that happen on almost a daily or nightly basis now and have become quite severe due to the lack of proper weaponry for the Ukrainian air defence system. I was particularly happy to hear about the prospects for Ukraine to receive the license for the Patriot interceptors production. In general, it was very encouraging to see the change in dynamics between presidents Trump and Zelensky, which was quite different from what we saw earlier in the Oval Office. Overall, the 70-billion Euro package and the new procurement agreements were a significant development and good, practical steps to reinforce the political declarations. But what particularly stood out for many of us here in Kyiv was the formal recognition of Ukraine as a contributor to the trans-Atlantic security system and the symbolism of this wording. If you read it alongside the Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty - which outlines the past NATO membership for a country - the choice of this wording sends quite a good and promising message about Ukraine’s log-term place in the alliance. It was also interesting to observe how this summit was positioned in the Russian media - framed as a proof of NATO’s further aggression, as Europe escalating the war, and Ukraine obviously as the proxy puppet. And reinforcing the narrative that Russia has to act in defence against the expanding threat from the West. For me as a Ukraine, the Ankara summit felt different from many previous meetings, which in the past often produced ambitious political declarations without enough practical decisions. This time the political declarations were backed-up by concrete commitments. I am optimistic, but carefully optimistic - Maryna Bezkorovaina, information, integrity and strategic communication expert; Director at The Sixth Domain

So were we wrong about Ankara?

Not entirely. Our skepticism about the optics, the host government’s treatment of independent media, and the alliance’s chronic gap between declaration and delivery still stands. NATO summits have broken Ukrainian hearts before, and no one in Ukraine or in diaspora communities have forgotten Bucharest 2008.

But the Ukrainians quoted here are making a different - and persuasive - case: judge this summit by the deliverables, not the atmospherics. A Patriot production license. Seventy billion dollars this year, with a floor under next year. And a phrase in the summit language (“Ukraine contributes to transatlantic security”) that quietly repositions Ukraine from beneficiary to contributor.

But careful optimism, from people who have earned the right to none at all, is worth listening to. Sometimes the view from the ground corrects the view from the desk. That’s why we asked.

If this kind of ground-truth reporting - Ukrainian voices, unfiltered, from Odesa to Kyiv - is why you read World Briefing, consider upgrading to World Briefing Plus.

News Briefs
After another night of attacks, the United States and Iran appeared to be reverting to the heightened conflict that existed before their cease-fire, as they exchanged incendiary rhetoric and President Trump said he was reinstating the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. Iran, threatening to escalate the confrontation further, vowed revenge for the killing of its supreme leader, and appeared undeterred by nearly a week of U.S. strikes. Mr. Trump said the United States would take control of the disputed Strait of Hormuz, charging a 20 percent fee on all goods passing through it. He had lifted the blockade last month after the two countries reached a truce, which has been threatened by repeated strikes by both sides. Mr. Trump told Fox News that the United States would charge other countries for keeping the strait safe. “We are going to guard it and we’re going to get paid for guarding it,” he said. The suggestion, which would amount to an expansion of the military conflict, echoed previous threats that had not come to pass. The upswell in rhetoric came after Iran’s military said early Monday that it launched another barrage of strikes aimed at American military assets in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Hours earlier, U.S. forces said they had launched more strikes on Iran aimed at stymying its ability to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The latest exchange of strikes caps a nearly weeklong flare-up of hostilities as the United States and Iran tussle over control of the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed before the war. Soon after Mr. Trump said the blockade would be reinstated, the price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, climbed back toward $80 a barrel, an increase of roughly 5 percent since Friday. The framework deal signed by Mr. Trump and the Iranian president last month included language that Tehran said gave it control over traffic through the strait, but the United States has insisted that the passage remain open to all shipping - NYT

New reporting from RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service documents a sharply escalated Russian campaign against Ukraine’s agricultural heartland, with incendiary drones torching wheat fields across the Kherson region at the very peak of harvest season. Regional military officials say Russian forces on the opposite bank of the Dnipro fired some 32,000 shells in June - a 26 percent jump from March - while drone launches now average 5,500 per week, more than double last year’s pace. Civilian deaths rose 78 percent over the same period. Viktor Hordiyenko says roughly 2,000 hectares of his wheat went up in flames in a single night, wiping out two years of investment worth nearly $3 million. He works his frontline fields in a helmet and body armor. His father, who spoke to RFE/RL last year about the drone threat, was killed in a Russian strike in September. The tactics have grown more cynical still: farmers report incendiaries being dropped on workers’ homes in villages, timed so emergency crews can’t respond because of shelling - and anyone attempting to fight the fires becomes a target themselves. The bigger picture: this isn’t collateral damage. It’s the systematic destruction of the economic engine of a country that feeds much of the world - a hybrid-warfare play against Ukraine’s export capacity, rural population, and staying power. State compensation for war losses is capped at 2,000 hectares at $100 per hectare - a rounding error against the losses. As Hordiyenko put it bluntly: bread is burning.

• African prisoners of war captured fighting for Russia are telling POLITICO they want to be exchanged back to Russia - not repatriated to their home countries. A Congolese fighter with the call sign Avatar says he considers Russia home and has family there; an Egyptian prisoner claims Ukraine is deliberately tagging captured Africans by their citizenship to block their return to Russia. Several rejected outright the claim they were tricked into enlisting, saying they understood their contracts and signed up for the money. Kyiv has framed Moscow’s recruitment drive as exploitation of vulnerable foreigners - “meat grinder” material, as Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa put it - and Foreign Minister Sybiha has warned of a dangerous trend of African recruitment, with Kenya’s parliament alleging more than 1,000 citizens funneled through trafficking-style job schemes.

France's state-owned energy group EDF temporarily shut down three nuclear reactors on Sunday, while warning that seven others may need to adjust their power output as the heatwave sweeping the country continues. According to the company, the measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging excessively hot water into rivers already warming because of the heatwave. Nuclear power plants use river water to cool their reactors before releasing the warmed water back into rivers. “There is no nuclear safety risk. Reactors are capable of operating under high-temperature conditions. These limits are intended to protect aquatic flora and fauna,” said a spokesperson for EDF - Euronews

The Trump administration chartered an almost empty flight to take white refugees from South Africa to the U.S. The taxpayer footed the bill, even though the government could only muster up 59 people for the maiden voyage of President Donald Trump’s push to offer refuge to allegedly persecuted Afrikaners. The flight, in May last year, was chartered by Omni Air International, which operates three passenger aircraft types with maximum capacities ranging from 290 to 440. Boeing 767-300 charter rates typically range from $16,000 to $21,000 per flight hour, so the Johannesburg-Washington, D.C. journey could have cost Americans up to $400,000. This figure does not include various extras like positioning flights, landing fees, handling charges, crew hotels, catering, taxes, or other government-specific costs. Those can add tens of thousands of dollars. The flight was so sparsely populated because officials were under pressure to find people ready to hop on quickly. Former officials told CNN that the White House wanted the resettlement to happen “so fast” that, upon approval, someone could be on a plane within 24 hours. “They carved out this group out of nowhere,” a source said. These conditions made it hard to fill the flight and, ultimately, there were only a few dozen passengers. “They didn’t get close to filling the plane,” one former official told CNN. Another former official suggested the haste was all so the Trump administration could manufacture a “photo-op.” They added that this “wasn’t fair” to the people involved. “We would never have picked a date for people to arrive before we explicitly knew that they could leave,” one former official pushed back. Another resettlement flight was planned for this summer, but it was suddenly scrapped, another insider claimed. The White House insists that “President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed, and driven off their property across South Africa.” - The Daily Beast

The journals…..

Overnight, Washington lost Senator Lindsey Graham - arguably Ukraine's fiercest advocate on the Hill, dead at 71 after a sudden illness at his Capitol Hill home. Consider the timing: he was in Kyiv with President Zelensky just 48 hours earlier - his 10th wartime visit - pushing for Tomahawks and the most sweeping Russia sanctions bill ever drafted. He was booked on Meet the Press this morning. Instead, America woke to his obituary. His death leaves a vacuum Moscow will celebrate - a sanctions bill suddenly orphaned - and with Mitch McConnell also hospitalized, Senate Republicans stripped of their senior statesmen in a single stroke.

Then, hours later, Kyiv dropped its own bombshell: President Zelensky sacked Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko after barely a year in office - the third government shake-up of the full-scale war. And with Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Olha Stefanyshyna, abruptly out, I’ll tell you where I think Svyrydenko lands next.

In this video: what Graham’s death means for the sanctions bill and Ukraine’s lethality debate, and the Washington chess move nobody’s connecting yet.

This is exactly the kind of moment World Briefing Plus exists for - two seismic stories breaking on the same Sunday, analyzed from the ground in Ukraine, not from a studio thousands of kilometres away. Plus subscribers get my exclusive weekly video briefings, where I connect the dots before they show up in the mainstream coverage. If today’s analysis was useful to you, consider upgrading - it’s the best way to keep independent, field-based journalism like this going. Upgrade now and don’t miss what comes next, because this week is only getting started.

The Journals: A war without end, a navy without ships

Two Sunday front pages from London that should be read together - and will make for uncomfortable breakfast reading in Whitehall.

The Independent leads with Kremlin foe Bill Browder telling Sam Kiley what many of us reporting from Ukraine have long concluded: Putin will never make peace, because compromise would ruin him - or as Browder puts it, see him “strung up.” Despite Ukraine’s punishing strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, the man in the Kremlin has no exit ramp. Peace is an existential threat to his survival; perpetual war is his life insurance policy.

Now hold that thought and turn to the Sunday Express: the UK government’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan will phase out Royal Navy warships in favour of uncrewed systems - a move one MP on the Commons Defence Select Committee warns leaves Britain vulnerable “at a time when Russian aggression is expected to peak.” Critics call it the end of the Royal Navy as we know it. (Actually, it is a major strategic shift away from large, crewed destroyers in favor of smaller, cheaper hybrid vessels and uncrewed autonomous).

Connect the dots: the West’s own analysts say Putin cannot afford peace, NATO warns Russia could attack Europe - and one of its two nuclear-armed European powers is betting its maritime security on autonomous vessels with a relatively short track record. And all of this landing on the very weekend Ukraine lost its fiercest advocate in Washington.

News Briefs
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina and a onetime opponent turned stalwart ally of President Trump who was a forceful advocate for an interventionist U.S. foreign policy, died on Saturday evening. He was 71. He died from “a brief and sudden illness,” his office said in a statement early Sunday. No further details were provided. After recently returning from a trip to Ukraine, Mr. Graham had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning. A former Air Force lawyer who served in the Air Force Reserve while in Congress and was briefly deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan as a senator, Mr. Graham was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994, before winning his Senate seat in 2002. Last month, he fended off five challengers to win the Republican primary in his bid for a fifth term. Mr. Trump offered his condolences on social media early Sunday, calling Mr. Graham “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.” “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot,” Mr. Trump added. “Lindsey will be greatly missed!!!” Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, a Republican, can immediately appoint a temporary replacement to fill Mr. Graham’s seat. Mr. Graham was set to face Annie Andrews, a Democrat and a pediatrician, in the general election in November. Mr. Graham’s death comes as another influential Republican senator, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has spent several weeks in the hospital for undisclosed reasons. It leaves Senate Republicans without a senior lawmaker and reliable vote as they face pressure from Mr. Trump to continue advancing his legislative agenda. Mr. Graham, who made a long-shot bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination that went to Mr. Trump, consistently argued for the use of American military power overseas. He was a fierce supporter of Israel and Ukraine, making multiple trips to both countries, and he recently supported aggressive military action against Iran. He was a familiar face for many world diplomats and leaders, several of whom paid tribute to him on Sunday - NYT

• FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau has gotten involved in the aftermath of Sen. Lindsey Graham's unexpected death. While there is not currently any foul play suspected in the 71-year-old Republican senator's sudden passing, Patel said: "The FBI is assisting local authorities and has made every necessary resource available." Paramedics responded to a call for a person suffering chest pains at the Capitol Hill home owned by Graham around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, according to police audio. Emergency personnel can later be heard saying that CPR was in progress and that a man at the house was suffering from cardiac arrest - The Daily Beast

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a major reshuffle of the government on Sunday, saying there would soon be a new prime minister and cabinet. “Ukraine is changing its political strategy,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X, adding that he had discussed the matter with current Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko. He gave no further details on the new role to be taken by Svyrydenko, who had been appointed prime minister in 2025, or her replacement. In her own post on social media, Svyrydenko said she was proud of her work in office and that she remained “ready to serve the Ukrainian state.” In Ukraine, cabinet reshuffles require parliamentary approval. Nevertheless, lawmakers have largely rallied around Zelenskyy since Russia’s invasion of the country began in February 2022, and do not typically block his agenda.

• Ukrainian MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak has reported that Yuliia Svyrydenko, following her resignation as prime minister, will become ambassador to the US, while media note that current ambassador Olha Stefanishyna has requested to end her service for personal reasons. “Svyrydenko is staying on the team. But she will be ambassador to the US. All the rumours that someone had a falling out there – those are rumours.” At the same time, Interfax-Ukraine reports that Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US Olha Stefanishyna will leave the diplomatic service of her own accord, with the president satisfied with her work. According to a source, Stefanishyna requested to end her service due to personal circumstances as far back as last week - Ukrainska Pravda

Iran says “10 to 11 enemy projectiles” targeted Qeshm Island as explosions have also been reported in the port city of Bandar Abbas. This comes after CENTCOM said US forces are “positioned and prepared” to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz despite “Iranian aggression”. Iran claims attacks on Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman with missiles and suicide drones as fears rise of a return to full-scale war in the Middle East. The hostilities come after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard declared the Strait of Hormuz “closed until further notice” and said it fired at a ship attempting to transit through what it called an unapproved route. Separately, Joey Hood, former Director of the US Office of Iranian affairs, says the US navy cannot secure ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. “Can Trump or anyone guarantee that the strait will be free for any ship to go through without being struck? I think that’s impossible, because any soldier with a cheap drone or shoulder-fired missile could essentially hit a ship,” he told Al Jazeera. Despite that, he said the US will likely continue searching for ways to encourage ship owners to exit the strait, adding that it may resort to “tightening the economic screws” in order to “exhaust” Iran.“I think you’ll see the naval blockade coming back soon.” - Al Jazeera

The US has left more than 40 African nations without a Senate-confirmed ambassador, hampering Washington’s efforts to engage in security and diplomatic missions across the continent. Some 41 African countries currently lack a confirmed envoy, including Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, and Sudan. While there are vacancies across the diplomatic corps, the gap in Africa-specific posts is especially stark: It widened in December when the administration recalled more than a dozen career ambassadors from Africa, a move the American Foreign Service Association called “institutional sabotage.” The vacancies come as Washington negotiates high-stakes deals — like a US-brokered DRC-Rwanda peace agreement and a Libya peace deal — often through high-profile envoys like President Donald Trump’s Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, rather than resident ambassadors. “No matter how good [Boulos] is, he can’t be everywhere at once,” said Michelle Gavin, a former US ambassador to Botswana and Council on Foreign Relations fellow. Gavin said the gaps add to the chaos surrounding Trump’s visa restrictions and efforts to force African nations to take third-country migrants. The dearth also risks ceding ground to China, she argued, adding the current vacancy rate has “no modern precedent.” - Semafor

Foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were told on Sunday by their Myanmar counterpart that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health and would be looked after, ASEAN’s special envoy to Myanmar said. Ms Maria Theresa Lazaro, the Philippine foreign minister, has been seeking access to Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, 81, who has been detained since her elected government was ousted in a 2021 military coup. “My recollection of the statement of the Myanmar foreign minister on Aung San Suu Kyi is that she’s in good health and that the premise of how he said this is that she is a relative, she’s a sister and therefore we will take care of her,” Ms Lazaro told a press conference. Ms Aung San Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence, recently commuted by one-third, on a series of charges that her allies said were fabricated to keep her out of politics, including incitement, corruption, election fraud and violations of the state ​secrets law. She has denied wrongdoing. Ms Aung San Suu Kyi’s whereabouts are unknown, but Ms Lazaro earlier said she had been transferred to a “designated location”, without elaborating. Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said his Myanmar counterpart, Mr Tin Maung Swe, had faced questions during Sunday’s informal meeting in Bangkok about the status of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate - CNA

The journals…..

All of Ukraine is now a frontline - and this week, I take you onto it.

I filmed this week’s video briefing outside in Odesa, under an active air raid siren warning of an imminent threat from Russian drones and missiles. Hours earlier, a Russian missile struck infrastructure here without any warning at all - no siren, nothing - close enough to my location that I could hear the car alarms triggered by the blast wave.

The situation is now as dire as I’ve seen it. Sources in Kyiv tell me there is often no longer any advance warning of incoming missiles - the only way to stay safe at night is to sleep in a bomb shelter. And President Volodymyr Zelensky has now confirmed what many feared: Ukraine currently has nothing left to bring down Russian ballistic missiles. Overnight, zero of six were intercepted over the capital. These weapons are fast, powerful, and built to inflict maximum damage. Ukraine is totally exposed - and that should concern the entire world.

Also in this week’s video:

Ankara’s real winners. My read on the Trump-Erdoğan bromance, how Turkey walked away the summit’s biggest winner - including what I’m hearing about where those Russian S-400 systems are quietly headed, and the sanctions relief that came with it. Plus a preview of tomorrow’s edition: Ukraine’s overlooked wins from the summit, which deserve far more attention than they’ve received.

Federal agents at reporters’ doors. A new Trump assault on press freedom — this time targeting the New York Times over its reporting on the Qatari-gifted jet whose shortcomings were laid bare in Ankara. The sight of federal agents on the doorsteps of American journalists should alarm everyone who values Western democratic principles.

GRATIS FEATURE — FOR ALL SUBSCRIBERS

📊 This week’s infographic: The world’s most livable cities, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest rankings. I break down the top five - free for all World Briefing subscribers. To our Canadian readers, it is worth pointing out that Vancouver made it into the Top Ten, ranking 9th with a score of 95.8. However, we dispute this ranking based on its homeless and drug addiction problem, very high costs (and lack of corresponding value), crime (including gang violence), traffic, and lack of cultural or intellectual activities and events.

The full analysis - including my on-the-ground reporting from Odesa, my insight into the S-400 deal, and my thoughts on the Trump Administration's renewed assault on press freedom - is available now in this week's World Briefing Plus video below.

If you value independent journalism reported from the ground in wartime Ukraine and elsewhere - connecting the dots so you don’t have to - this is the moment to upgrade. Paid subscribers get the full Saturday video briefing every week, plus everything else behind the paywall.

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The damage map is sobering. South Korea, which sources roughly 70% of its oil from the Middle East, faces inflation the Bank of Korea sees staying above 3% even with the bombing paused. India’s rupee has fallen to record lows, Indonesia is fighting its worst currency-speculator siege since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, and the Philippines is propping up the peso amid the political noise of an impeachment vote against Vice President Sara Duterte. Japan’s stagflation problem is getting messier, with inflation running more than five times the 0.5% growth the Bank of Japan projects this year.

But it isn’t only leaders and central bankers fretting. Earlier in the war, World Briefing was on the ground in the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, documenting what these numbers mean at street level - especially for the region’s armies of ride-hailing drivers. With fuel prices doubling and platforms like Grab and Bolt refusing to trim their double-digit commissions, drivers told us they were being squeezed from both ends. In the Philippines, some were working behind the wheel up to 18 hours a day just to put food on the table. The macro charts in Seoul and Mumbai trading rooms have faces - exhausted ones.

Two forces are compounding the pain. First, a hawkish pivot at the Fed under new chair Kevin Warsh - picked by Trump as the man who would cut early and often, but boxed in by a 4.2% May inflation print - has sent “King Dollar” rampaging through Asian currencies, equities and gold, Asia Times reports. Second, the gold trade Asian central banks had piled into is unravelling: spot gold sits near $4,100 an ounce, more than 20% off January’s record - even as the People’s Bank of China notched its 20th straight month of buying.

The cruelest twist, Pesek notes, is timing: war risk is re-emerging just as AI euphoria sends Asian valuations to nosebleed levels - the Kospi up 77% this year, Taiwan 56%, and South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix launching a $26.5 billion US share sale, the largest ever by a foreign company - into maximum volatility (it priced its shares at $149, riding investor demand for AI stocks, reports Nikkei Asia).

Boom and bust, sharing a currency.

But amid the wreckage, the map itself is being redrawn. As we reported yesterday, citing Semafor, the first-ever shipment of LNG from Mexico's Pacific coast is now en route to Asia - hard evidence of a global energy trade reshaping itself in real time, as confidence wanes in the traditional arteries of Russia and the Strait of Hormuz. The cargo, loaded at the new ECA LNG terminal in Baja California and shipped by TotalEnergies, carries US Permian Basin gas to Asian markets via the shortest maritime route - no Hormuz, no Panama Canal. Asia's energy majors are moving in the same direction: Japan Petroleum Exploration (JAPEX) plans to nearly quadruple its US oil and gas production by 2035, and is weighing crude exports back to the home market in the event of a supply crunch, Nikkei Asia reports - a strategy its president says was validated by the Iran crisis reaffirming the national-security stakes of stable fuel supplies. JAPEX is putting real money behind the pivot - $7.3 billion in exploration and production over the decade Expect more of this: when chokepoints become war zones, trade routes don't wait for diplomats.

Our take: Asia hoped for a quieter second half of 2026. Instead, it got a war without a timeline, a dollar without mercy - and an unpredictable U.S. president who, asked where the conflict is headed, answered: “I don’t know.” For the region caught in the blast zone, that may be the most alarming data point of all. And as our own reporting showed, the ones absorbing the shock aren’t in the trading rooms - they’re behind the wheel at 2 a.m., on hour sixteen of a shift.

News Briefs
US President Donald Trump said Iran has requested that “talks” between the two countries continue, although he emphatically warned Tehran that the current cease-fire is no longer in effect amid a flurry of tit-for-tat strikes by both sides. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 10. “We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!” he added. Trump has often stated that Tehran has begged to resume negotiations with Washington, although such discussions have often broken up without apparent progress. Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Trump said: “Iran called a while ago. They want to make a deal so badly. I just don’t know if they are worthy. I don’t know if they are going to honor the deal. That’s the problem.” But Trump also said at the time that he would speak to Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner -- who have been acting as lead US negotiators -- about the possibility of resuming talks. Separately, Iranian media reported that a delegation from mediator Qatar arrived in Tehran on July 10 for talks “The main purpose of the visit is reportedly to try to reinforce Qatar’s role as a mediator following events on Tuesday [July 7],” Tasnim news agency reported. Qatar has accused Iran of an attack on three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz on July 7 as hostilities in the region intensified amid what had been announced as a 60-day truce to allow full negotiations to take place between Washington and Tehran. Iran has fired on ships transiting the crucial waterway, claiming that they attempted passage without getting proper permission from Tehran - RFE/RL

• Iran will respond to any attack against its infrastructure, including by striking Israel, the head of the country’s top security body said on Friday, as Tehran and Washington have resumed fighting this week. “Any attack on infrastructure will be retaliated against, and the criminal Zionist regime responsible for these atrocities will not be safe from the response of our fighters,” Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr said in a statement carried by state TV. Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that the Israeli prime minister spoke on Thursday with the US president, who informed him of the latest American moves in the Gulf. Later on Thursday evening, Iranian state media reported a US-Israeli attack on a military headquarters near Bushehr, where Iran’s only civilian nuclear plant is located. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel was prepared to resume its military campaign against Iran if needed, vowing to do so “with even greater force.” - AFP

Ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina says she plans to return to the country from exile in December, despite a death sentence passed during her two-year stay in India. The 78-year-old former leader told the Reuters news agency in an interview published on Friday that she plans to return to Bangladesh alongside senior officials from her Awami League to launch a challenge to the legal shuttering of the party. Her return could jolt efforts to stabilise Bangladeshi politics following the 2024 revolt against her increasingly authoritarian rule, which saw her flee after a deadly crackdown failed to quell a student-led uprising. However, it may also help to improve ties with India, which have been strained by New Delhi’s decision to offer her refuge. “They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me,” Hasina said during the telephone interview from the Indian capital, to which she fled two years ago. “Still, I have to go. If death comes, I want it to come on my own soil.” The former prime minister said that her return is a coordinated effort to challenge the legal actions taken against her party, the Awami League, which has been banned. Hasina has urged other exiled party members, including former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal who also faces a death sentence, to join her. “All together, we will all surrender in court,” she said, insisting that legal proceedings against her are “farcical”. However, the current authorities have made it clear that they are in no mood to offer quarter to the former leader.

Italy and Poland cracked down on alleged spying by Russia, moves that come as analysts warned that the Kremlin may be looking to expand its use of hybrid warfare as its battlefield efforts in Ukraine stall. Rome expelled two Russian diplomats it said had carried out “serious and unacceptable acts of interference,” while Warsaw sentenced a couple for spying for Moscow. “The Italian government has decided to expel two military attaches from the embassy of the Russian Federation in Italy, involved in espionage activities uncovered by the Rome public prosecutor’s office,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote in a post on X. The minister named the Russians as Ivan Petrovich Gorbachev and Mikhail Vasilyevich Astakhov and said they had been ordered to leave within three days. "Moscow continues to use hybrid warfare to attack the West and Italy, acts of interference that are serious and unacceptable to Italian institutions and national security," Tajani commented. Rome police said on Tuesday that one of the detained Italians, a 59-year-old former intelligence officer, had been paid by a Russian handler and “disclosed to him information of interest through six sources, including four serving military personnel assigned to posts marked by a high level of confidentiality.” Media reports said the Italians had handed over information on an Italian-French air defence system, the SAMP/T, due to be delivered to Ukraine this year, and on Aster missiles that have already been sent to Kyiv. Russian handlers had also sought details on a NATO mission in Bulgaria and the Italian company Avio that makes motors for drones and supersonic missiles. Corriere della Sera newspaper said the 59-year-old also provided the identities of Italian counter-espionage agents who were meant to monitor the Russians. Experts fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be looking for ways to escalate his war beyond Ukraine as he seeks to pressure Western leaders into forcing Kyiv’s hand on a ceasefire deal that he can sell as a victory. Quoting a recording of the suspect’s telephone conversations, La Stampa newspaper said the man gave “thousands” of items of information over a 12-year period. Italy’s Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said on Tuesday that the case was “just the tip of the iceberg” in Russia’s so-called “hybrid war” in Europe as it pursues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That leaves Ukraine and its Western backers bracing “for a dangerous summer,” the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator wrote - Euronews/Semafor

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proved he continues to live rent-free in conservatives' minds after making a surprise appearance in his pop-star girlfriend's TikTok music video. MAGA is currently freaking out after the former politician made a cameo in Katy Perry's teaser for her latest single, "Watch It Burn," which she released on June 25. The singer, 41, posted a video of herself, Trudeau, and others hopping around and dancing to the boppy beat. "Ancient texts say that if you hop to this song you will get 1,000 years of good luck," Perry captioned the video - The Daily Beast

The journals…..

Recorded during a stopover, with the smell of jet fumes still hanging in the air from the departing leaders’ aircraft - including Trump’s Qatari-gifted 747, swapped out at the last minute for the trip home - this week’s explainer video unpacks a summit engineered to be boring, and largely succeeding.

Among the threads: why a one-page declaration and a vague “see you next time” have leaders quietly questioning whether NATO summits need to happen annually at all (a case former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder makes forcefully in Politico and retold below); the other burning odour in the air - the smouldering Trump-Meloni relationship, being watched very carefully in Italy; and the comparison lighting up social media between the heads of FIFA and NATO, two men who have turned the buttering-up of Donald Trump into something approaching a new spectator sport.

Today’s video is open to all subscribers. It’s also a good example of what World Briefing Plus members get every week: exclusive video analysis that goes beyond the newsletter - the context, colour and on-the-ground detail that doesn’t fit on a broadcast hit. If you find it valuable, consider upgrading to keep it coming.

🎥 Watch the full video above.

Was Ankara a wasted opportunity? Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, argues exactly that in Politico’s From Across the Pond column - and notes that leaders left without even confirming next year’s planned summit in Albania, offering only a vague nod to “our next meeting.”

Daalder writes that the one-page Ankara Summit Declaration amounted to boilerplate, and that while Donald Trump was reportedly genial behind closed doors, he emerged to berate Britain, France, Germany and Belgium over the Iran war, order a halt to trade with Spain, and revive his claim to Greenland. Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s year of shuttle diplomacy and flattery, Daalder argues, achieved only the summit’s true goal - a gathering designed, in one foreign minister’s words, to be as boring as possible.

The deeper failure, in Daalder’s telling: past summits in Madrid, Vilnius and The Hague forced real decisions. Ankara produced none - no roadmap for Europe assuming the air, naval, intelligence and command responsibilities Washington is already shedding. His conclusion is blunt: the U.S. is no longer a reliable ally, and managing the shift to a Europe-led alliance is job number one.

Editor’s note: Daalder’s diagnosis lands close to the argument we’ve been making in these pages all week: NATO spent Ankara answering the wrong questions - congratulating itself on spending targets while leaving Russian resilience and hybrid warfare largely unaddressed. A disclosure, once more: we covered this summit from Rome, not Ankara, after Turkey rejected accreditation for independent and critical-media outlets - a decision that says as much about the summit’s host as the declaration says about the alliance.

The US and Iran again traded strikes in exchanges that continued into Thursday, as observers reported a “dramatic” drop in the number of ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz. The US says it hit 90 military targets, some near the Strait. Iran says 14 people have been killed in the past two days. State media also reported that targets near the Bushehr nuclear power plant were hit, citing the deputy governor of the province. The US has not commented on the latest strikes. Iran said it targeted US assets in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar in response. Later on Thursday, Tehran launched more strikes on sites in Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, state-linked media reported. Separately, huge crowds gathered as Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was buried after six days of funeral events. Crowds massed on the streets of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran waving Iranian flags, while some were pictured holding signs carrying death threats directed at US President Donald Trump. Khamenei was killed on 28 February during the first hours of US and Israeli strikes against Iran - BBC

Overnight Ukrainian drone attacks struck oil facilities and tankers in at least three Russian regions and knocked out power in partially occupied Ukraine, local authorities said Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed strikes on oil depots in the Stavropol and Tver regions, a reserve fuel facility in an undisclosed region, an oil pumping station in the republic of Bashkortostan and a marine loading terminal in the Rostov region. In the central Tver region, acting Governor Vitaly Korolyov said a storage tank at the Tver Oil Depot caught fire “as a result of efforts to repel” an overnight drone attack. Firefighters managed to contain the blaze by 7 a.m. local time, he added, noting that there were no injuries. Stavropol region Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said an unspecified “industrial facility” caught fire in the attack, also adding that there were no injuries. An hour later, he said the flames reached combustible tanks, leading to an evacuation of nearby homes. Authorities in the southern Rostov region said two oil tankers were damaged in a drone attack in the Sea of Azov, with one of them still on fire as of 7 a.m. Governor Yury Slyusar said there were no injuries and the crew members of both tankers were brought to safety - Moscow Times

• Ukraine opened a criminal investigation on Thursday after crowds of people in the western city of Lviv surrounded and overturned an army conscription vehicle the night before. The incident drew a swift backlash from Ukrainian officials, some of whom called on citizens to direct their anger at Russia and not the army. The unrest erupted after officers detained a man suspected of evading military service and took him to a draft centre, authorities said. “An investigation has been launched into the circumstances of an incident that occurred in Lviv involving servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces, police officers, and around 200 civilians,” Ukraine’s prosecution service said. “Two criminal proceedings have now been initiated on the grounds of obstructing the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during a special period (martial law) and using violence against a law enforcement officer,” it added - Euronews

Moldova: MoldATSA Scandal Reaches the Foreign Ministry

The fallout from Moldova’s MoldATSA scandal has now touched the Foreign Ministry. On July 2, the MFA confirmed media reports that Dumitru Vangheli — the state air traffic services director dismissed last week over inflated salaries and a falsified CV — has a half-brother serving as Moldova’s ambassador to the UAE and, concurrently, Bahrain.

As World Briefing reported last week, Vangheli landed the top job at Moldova’s air traffic authority on a CV claiming commercial flying experience with Air Canada - credentials that turned out to consist of a flight simulator game and a pizza delivery route in Montreal.

The ministry defended Anatolie Vangheli as a career diplomat of nearly 30 years, currently on his third ambassadorial posting. His CV includes ambassadorships to Greece, Israel and Cyprus, and a stint as the ministry’s secretary general (2015–2017). He was appointed to the UAE in 2024 and accredited to Bahrain in 2025.

The disclosure adds a fresh nepotism dimension to a scandal that has already claimed political casualties: PAS deputy Radu Marian resigned June 29 as chair of parliament’s economy and finance committee, admitting he erred in recommending Dumitru Vangheli for the MoldATSA post without vetting his résumé. President Maia Sandu’s cousin, Anastasia Taburceanu, earlier quit the enterprise and pledged to return over 1 million lei in salary top-ups after investigative reports revealed she out-earned the director. Anti-corruption authorities completed searches of MoldATSA’s offices June 30, flagging multiple violations.

Source: NewsMaker.md (Vera Balahnova), July 2, 2026

The first shipment of Mexican natural gas to Asia is en route, evidence of the reshaping of global energy markets. Mexico’s new LNG export terminal is one of several developments on the Pacific coast of the Americas with confidence in traditional export avenues waning. Five years ago, the two main arteries for international oil and gas trade were Russian LNG pipelines to Europe, and the Middle East to Asia via the Strait of Hormuz. But both are profoundly changed, the International Energy Agency chief wrote in Foreign Policy, by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the US war in Iran. The implications are long lasting Fatih Birol argued, as nations look for ways to minimize risk, including renewables and diversification of supply - Semafor

A Canadian drug trafficker who spent more than three years on the run — recently wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with a cross-border gun-smuggling plot involving a “sophisticated” criminal organization — has been captured while working out at a gym in Medellín, Colombia. Video posted online by Colombia’s defence minister Wednesday night shows heavily armed security forces raiding the facility and a man later escorted away in handcuffs. On social media, Medellín’s mayor identified the man as Arif Jhuman, a Canadian citizen who went by the alias Gillani and is wanted by U.S. federal authorities in connection with a firearm trafficking conspiracy. Colombian police later told reporters Jhuman had been the subject of an Interpol red notice and was captured at a gym within a shopping mall. “Medellín is not a refuge for criminals,” Mayor Fico Gutiérrez said in the post on X. Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez said Jhuman had also been sought by Canadian authorities for violating his parole - CBC

A star White House reporter is not sold on President Donald Trump's explanation for why he swapped Air Force Ones to return from this week's NATO summit.Reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that she found Trump's explanation for abruptly ditching his shiny new jet gifted to him by the Qatari government "a little hard to believe." Trump claims that he hailed his VC-25 model of Air Force One, which he has dogged as being too old and not fitting for the presidency, to take him home from Turkey because, supposedly, he wanted to show off his Qatari-made jet at a base in Europe "so the soldiers can see it." - The Daily Beast

The journals…..