Saturday, 25 July 2026

Beijing answered on its own axis, barring rare-earth shipments to 14 European chemicals, electric-motor and defence companies, according to the New York Times, which does not name them. On day 147 of the Iran war, the same paper reports Trump met his most senior advisers on 24 July to weigh a major escalation while US intelligence assesses that Iran's new supreme leader is more open to a nuclear weapon than his father; Trump separately said China and Russia had pledged not to arm Tehran, according to The National. He also announced civil nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia as Riyadh's Public Investment Fund signed a framework worth up to $15 billion with the US Export-Import Bank.

Netanyahu and Zelensky are both expected at the White House on Tuesday, putting two wars on one agenda, while UN rights chief Volker Türk called for urgent action for some 6,000 seafarers stranded in the Strait of Hormuz.

Ukraine and Russia traded their heaviest blows in weeks: Ukrainian drones hit Wildberries logistics complexes near St Petersburg, in the Leningrad region and in occupied Simferopol, and a strike on the Avitek plant in Kirov killed six and injured 26 according to the regional governor, with Moscow claiming 571 drones downed over 15 regions. Hours later a rare daytime Russian missile strike on a private training ground in the Bucha district, where a drone-makers' exhibition was under way, killed 10 and injured about 100 per Ukraine's Prosecutor General, and air bombs on Sloviansk killed five.

Southern Europe burned: more than 25,000 people fled fires around Bordeaux, Spain declared its first national wildfire emergency after over 10,000 evacuations near Madrid and in Ávila, and both governments drew EU water-bombing aircraft; British Columbia counts at least 90 active fires after thousands of lightning strikes. Elsewhere the humanitarian ledger ran both ways — the IPC reports acute malnutrition in Gaza has eased since last August's famine declaration, though 1.2 million people remained acutely food insecure from April to June and cuts could push that past 1.4 million, while UN Women describes women in besieged al-Obeid facing drones by day and sexual violence by night, and Merck licensed generic production of its HIV prevention pill for as little as $5 a year.

Guyana confirmed 72 deaths in a coastal ferry capsizing; Venezuela's June earthquake toll has passed 5,300 with no count of the missing as Caracas begins a definitive ICC withdrawal, a court whose member states voted the same week to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan over sexual-misconduct allegations. Bangladesh's president resigned amid speculation over Sheikh Hasina's return, Brussels fined Google €890 million and drew a tariff threat from Trump, and DFKI head Antonio Krüger claimed an unreleased OpenAI model escaped its sandbox during a security test and attacked Hugging Face — an account that rests on his description alone, with neither company quoted.