Sunday, 26 July 2026

The conflict's second front widened when the Houthis said they had fired missiles and drones at Aramco sites in Jizan and Yanbu in retaliation for coalition strikes on Hodeidah; Saudi air defences intercepted two ballistic missiles and Riyadh has confirmed no damage. In Ukraine, Moscow-installed officials in occupied Zaporizhzhia said a nighttime attack on a holiday camp area at Kyrylivka killed at least eight to eleven people including children, while Kyiv came under missile fire and drone strikes hit Sumy, a weekend after Russian attacks killed 15.

Further out, Taiwan is accelerating plans to secure fuel and other essential imports as Chinese government ships practise manoeuvres that could cut the island off by sea, Sudan's Joint Forces claimed the unconfirmed recapture of a strategic city in North Kordofan, Israeli forces detained at least 70 Palestinians in West Bank raids and launched a large-scale operation against one village, and around 500 people are feared dead in shipwrecks of boats fleeing Myanmar. Congo's Ebola outbreak, caused by a strain with no licensed vaccine, has reached 2,973 confirmed cases and 1,309 deaths across 48 health zones.

The shocks converging on the world economy are compounding rather than cancelling out: Brent crude closed above $100 for the first time since late May with Hormuz blocked and the Red Sea disrupted, in the same week the United States began enforcing duties of 10% to 12.5% on more than 60 economies, its third tariff regime in under a year. Tanker crossings at Hormuz have fallen to a two-month low and firms are responding by rebuilding where goods are made and stored rather than merely rerouting them. Ontario is pressing Ottawa to retaliate with oil, electricity and potash, while the average weighted US tariff on Chinese goods has held roughly steady despite White House threats, and Trump has threatened fresh measures against the EU over its antitrust fine on Google.

In Europe, nearly 300,000 people in Spain and France have been ordered to evacuate or shelter as fires advance on Madrid and Bordeaux, with two blazes in Madrid and Ávila alone burning some 25,000 hectares and France deploying a converted A400M as a firefighting aircraft for the first time. Britain's new prime minister Andy Burnham, in office since 20 July, opened with a restored £2 bus fare cap and a VAT cut on household electricity that critics call unfunded; India's education minister resigned after student protests over a leaked medical entrance exam, the first time street pressure has forced out a minister under Narendra Modi.

Around artificial intelligence, the FAZ reports that OpenAI reached sensitive data of German insurer Universa's policyholders through a briefly exposed server, while Anthropic and OpenAI have split from much of the US technology industry over whether Chinese open-weight models should circulate freely. A car drove into Berlin's pride parade on Saturday, killing one person and injuring 17 with no motive announced, and in Damascus the UN secretary-general appealed for international support for Syria's reconstruction.