Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
Hamas must be banned from Palestinian Authority elections Sovereignty Movement’s Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar: August. Everyone is on Vacation. Hamas isn't. US says it can keep naval blockade on Iran 'indefinitely,' vows more economic pressure WaPo Editorial: There is no good deal to be made with Iran See the battlefield innovations reshaping the Russia-Ukraine war After US criticism, Israel ties Lebanon withdrawal to Hezbollah disarmament Iran-backed Houthis clash with Yemeni forces and other Mideast developments Jared Kushner to visit Israel and Egypt next week with Board of Peace officials to talk Gaza China calls Taiwan's annual military drills a 'wasteful charade' Independent researcher Burak Oktenli: We’re building Beijing’s spy network for them, one convenient device at a time Oil, Hunters and Dr. Phil: How a long-shot project is shaking up Greenland Covert CIA program said to be behind mysterious attacks on Galápagos boatsIn The News
Israel
With Hamas saying it intends to participate in the Palestinian legislative election now scheduled for November 28 as part of a broad national coalition, it suddenly feels like 2006 all over again. – Jerusalem Post
The IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) killed Hamas commander Jamal Mahmoud Abu Kamil in a targeted strike in Gaza City on Thursday, according to a statement from the military. – Jerusalem Post
The air force on Thursday attacked a Gazan terror cell in Khan Yunis, the second such attack in two days. These attacks had ceased since the US-Hamas deal in late July. – Jerusalem Post
Reporters Without Borders, or Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), has been caught removing at least two Gazan terrorists from its database and list of Palestinian media workers slain in the Israel-Hamas War, after they had previously been identified as journalists by the Paris-based media rights non-profit. – Jerusalem Post
Israeli defense officials have been shocked by the speed of Iran’s recovery following the early 2026 war, The Jerusalem Post has learned. – Jerusalem Post
Surveillance soldiers on the Gaza border were reportedly sounding the alarm on Thursday about armed terrorist activity inside the Gaza Strip, in what they said feels like a repeat of their unheeded warnings before the October 7, 2023, onslaught. – Times of Israel
Israel and its supporters have long accused international humanitarian groups funded by donors of cooperating with Hamas in Gaza. – Times of Israel
Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz has instructed the IDF to prepare a plan to transfer all authorities over civilian matters in Israeli communities and among the Israeli population in Judea and Samaria to the police. – Arutz Sheva
Police officers operating in the Bedouin city of Rahat in southern Israel found an M-16 assault rifle hidden in a sandbox in a preschool. During the operation, officers also seized dozens of bullets and a pistol clip and arrested a resident of the city in his 30s. – Arutz Sheva
Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar write: That is why we must not take our foot off the gas. We must continue to pressure the Cabinet. We must continue to sound the alarm. And we must work with all our strength to ensure a victory for the Right in the upcoming elections. We can engage in politics. We must not allow politics to distract us from history. Because we must never encounter the next October 7 only after it has already begun. This time, we must be awake beforehand. – Arutz Sheva
Alexander Maistrovoy writes: “When you cut down a forest, chips will fly,” Comrade Stalin infamously loved to say. It’s exactly our situation. There is no ‘conspiracy theory’. It was a classic political intrigue, familiar to humanity since prehistoric times: weaponizing an external enemy, who in the end is granted the opportunity to kill and turns out to really want to destroy the entire nation, to ruthlessly overthrow a domestic rival. During the Hasmonean era, rival dynasties used Bedouin nomads and The Nabataeans against their rivals. Doesn’t this remind you of anything?. – Arutz Sheva
Iran
The United States on Thursday said that it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely and would ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks have floundered, global oil supply is dropping and regional tensions are rising. – Reuters
The Strait of Hormuz is “under Iran’s control and management”, the recently appointed head of Iran’s Basij paramilitary unit said on Thursday, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States had “total control” of the strategic waterway. – Reuters
The US will soon announce unprecedented economic measures against Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, intensifying the Trump administration’s effort to force Tehran’s capitulation after almost six months of war. – Bloomberg
Editorial: Crucially, Trump needs to keep the threat of significant escalation on the table, especially if Iran takes even the smallest step toward reconstituting its nuclear program. Cutting deals with a murderous regime has never been a good idea. Feeding Iran more money would reward bad behavior and fund the next round of chaos. The savviest dealmaker knows when it’s time to walk away. – Washington Post
Nazee Moinian writes: Tehran is wounded, not exhausted. Managing to survive two wars, a decapitated leadership, gutted air and naval defenses, weakened proxies and a spiraling economy have allowed it to play a weak hand strongly. But survival isn’t legitimacy, and aggression isn’t strength. The U.S. and Israel have drastically diminished the regime’s capabilities. American negotiators also need to abandon old assumptions for a more nuanced understanding and strategy. Until then, Tehran will continue to use its weakness to shuffle the cards. – Wall Street Journal
Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth write: It is time to remove Iran’s leverage over the strait and the regime itself, which simply cannot remain in power. The pros of regime change outweigh the cons. When the regime is removed, Iran’s enriched uranium, nuclear, ballistic missile and drone programs, support to proxies, threats to their Gulf State neighbors and their own citizens, and safe passage through the Strait can be resolved with the succeeding government. Iran is the root cause of conflict throughout the Middle East. The White House needs to stop trying to negotiate with it. – The Hill
Sina Toossi writes: Several months into his tenure as supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei is beginning to put his own stamp on Iran’s military and national security establishment. In a sweeping series of appointments, he has effectively recreated Iran’s senior command, reorganizing the institutions responsible for managing both war and diplomacy. Many of the appointments were necessitated by the extraordinary attrition that Iran’s military leadership has suffered across successive rounds of war since June 2025. – Foreign Policy
Russia and Ukraine
Ukraine has gained an edge on the battlefield in the first half of this year. Improvements in midrange strikes helped its army take out Russian logistics and slow Russia’s battlefield gains. – Wall Street Journal
As families strolled along a promenade in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa recently, a lone cargo ship sailed in the distance. Suddenly, a drone dropped out of the clear blue sky and slammed into the vessel, sending smoke billowing across the horizon. – New York Times
Russian authorities quickly cleared up damage on Friday from a fire at the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, a major hub for oil exports, that had been triggered by a Ukrainian drone attack, regional governor Alexander Drozdenko said. – Reuters
A Russian military officer was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday in Russian-annexed Crimea, and a woman was arrested on suspicion of assassinating him on behalf of Ukrainian special services, the regional governor said. – Reuters
Five people were killed while trying to defuse an explosive device in Sevastopol, the largest city in Russian-controlled Crimea, regional governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Thursday. – Reuters
The United Nations estimates that more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during its war in Ukraine are still being “deprived of their liberty,” many held incommunicado and on grounds that don’t comply with international law. – Associated Press
The Ukrainian president is struggling to find someone of sufficient influence to represent Kyiv to the Trump administration. – Politico
Editorial: Even polling from the Kremlin-linked Public Opinion Foundation shows a change. Mr. Putin’s approval rating began the year near 80%, but that dropped to 66% the week of July 12, and it has since hovered at 70%. Mr. Putin has demonstrated again that if a party or a candidate has the potential to embarrass him, he will prevent that outcome, one way or another. That’s why Yabloko had to go. – Wall Street Journal
Tom Rogan writes: These Russian vessels operate as “shadow tankers,” sailing under shell companies and the flags of third countries. Their seizure represents a proportionate reaction to Russia’s conduct of the bloodiest, largest land war in Europe since 1945. Of course, President Vladimir Putin isn’t happy about the overdue enforcement of sanctions. His economy is suffering badly under sanctions and the burdens of his struggling war effort. Putin needs the revenue from the cargo his ships are carrying. And Putin is gambling that if he escalates against the West, he’ll be able to force the Europeans into backing down. So, on Wednesday, Putin used a visit to his Pacific Fleet to threaten a direct response to European naval activity. – Washington Examiner
Matt Waldman and Samuel Charap write: Negotiators have met in Abu Dhabi, Berlin, Geneva, Istanbul, Paris, and Riyadh; envoys have shuttled to Moscow and Miami. Those efforts deserve credit. But activity is not strategy—and, as demonstrated by the massive strikes across Ukraine and Russia in recent weeks, it has yet to produce results. To make real progress toward peace, Washington should apply lessons from decades of international mediation experience. Although all conflicts are unique, past negotiations show that getting the process right is essential, and they offer. – Foreign Affairs
Lebanon
Israel won’t withdraw from southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed, the defence minister said on Thursday, qualifying remarks he made a day earlier that had suggested Israeli forces would occupy the territory indefinitely and drew U.S. criticism. – Reuters
A Lebanese official denied on Thursday a Reuters report that Beirut had agreed with Israel to a shortlist of countries that could send troops to Lebanon to verify the disarmament of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and said it was following up on the issue with Washington. – Reuters
Former members of the South Lebanon Army and their families who fled to Israel following the IDF’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 have been left in limbo after Lebanon’s parliament passed a controversial General Amnesty Law on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post
Lebanon’s parliament passed the long-disputed General Amnesty Law on Wednesday, legislation aimed at easing severe overcrowding in the country’s prisons by reducing or commuting the sentences of thousands of prisoners and detainees. – Jerusalem Post
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Wednesday condemned what he said was Israel’s “systematic destruction” in the country’s south, calling it a violation of international law, as Defense Minister Israel Katz said its military was “destroying all the houses” there. – Times of Israel
Robert Wilkie and Keith Kellogg write: Since its founding in the 1980s, Hezbollah has been the linchpin for the international coordination of terrorist networks from Latin America to Eastern Europe. It has further destabilized the already fractured state of Lebanon, and it has attacked governments, tourists, and Jews across the globe. Its tentacles reach into narco-terrorist syndicates and Mexican drug cartels. – Washington Examiner
Yemen
Yemen faces its most serious threat of a return to large-scale war since a U.N.-brokered truce in 2022, U.N. envoy Hans Grundberg warned on Thursday, as the world body said more than half the country’s population was experiencing acute food insecurity. – Reuters
Clashes between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and government forces in Yemen raged overnight and into Thursday, raising fears that the country’s civil war could reignite and open another front in the Middle East. – Associated Press
Crew members of a Yemeni commercial ship who survived a deadly attack by Houthi rebels earlier this week said a second missile struck the vessel just as rescue efforts from the initial strike were underway, causing even more chaos and casualties. – Associated Press
X suspended the account of Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree on Thursday for violating the platform’s rules, amid the Iran-backed Yemeni group’s attacks on Yemeni government forces, Saudi Arabia and commercial shipping. – Times of Israel
Saudi Arabia
Yemen’s Houthis said they attacked an Aramco refinery in Saudi Arabia’s Jazan with two drones on Thursday, the Iran-aligned movement’s Saba news agency reported. – Reuters
Saudi Arabia is weighing whether to back a Yemeni ground campaign to retake the Red Sea coast from the Houthis, an offensive that would test forces Riyadh has spent seven months assembling out of rival Yemeni militias. – Jerusalem Post
Tina Ghazimorad writes: Ultimately, Riyadh must recognize that trimming Houthi branches is futile without confronting the head of the octopus in Tehran. No matter the financial or diplomatic cost, Saudi Arabia cannot neutralize the danger on its borders without actively aligning with the Iranian people and their leader, Prince Reza Pahlavi, in their fight to dismantle the regime […] Without decisive, unyielding resolve, mirroring the strategic clarity shown by Israel, Saudi Arabia’s grand developmental visions, particularly its multi-billion-dollar Red Sea projects, remain vulnerable. In the current volatile landscape, a single act of Houthi piracy or drone warfare can turn Riyadh’s economic dreams into ashes. – Jerusalem Post
Gulf States
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said two of its vessels were attacked while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday evening, with no injuries reported, as the United Arab Emirates accused Iran of carrying out the attack. – Reuters
State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. has become more aggressive and nimble since the Iran war disrupted exports and as the United Arab Emirates looks to maximise its resources after exiting OPEC in May, according to numerous trade sources. – Reuters
Shimon Refaeli writes: The achievement of the Abraham Accords is not only that Israelis fly to Dubai, that Israeli and Emirati companies do business, and that an Israeli flag flies over an embassy in an Arab country. The more important achievement is proving the possibility of creating a different model in the Middle East. A model in which countries do not have to agree on everything to live in peace […] Strength and interests can preserve it in times of crisis. But for peace to last for generations, it must be taught in the classroom. This is the lesson of the United Arab Emirates, and it should also be the lesson for any future arrangement in the Middle East. – Jerusalem Post
Middle East & North Africa
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition. – Associated Press
A drone strike ignited a fire at an electrical substation in western Libya on Wednesday, knocking the facility out of service in the latest of a wave of attacks on energy and oil infrastructure that threaten to plunge the country into further chaos. – Associated Press
Ilan Berman writes: Things like the removal of foreign fighters from Syria’s security forces, meaningful protection of religious and ethnic minorities and comprehensive revision of extremist educational materials shouldn’t be aspirational goals. They should be minimum requirements for deeper partnership. Until they are, Washington needs to proceed with considerably more caution than is currently in evidence. – Washington Post
Arash Azizi writes: The parties to the Mecca pact include some of the world’s most powerful Muslim-majority countries: the two with the biggest economies in the region (Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which also spend the most on their militaries), and the Muslim world’s sole nuclear power (Pakistan). Iran has traditionally maintained good relations with Turkey and Pakistan; its cultural bonds with these two countries are strong and go back centuries. More recently, the Islamic Republic has worked to improve its relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly since reestablishing diplomatic ties with Riyadh in 2023. – The Atlantic
Korean Peninsula
North Korea on Friday denounced major U.S.-South Korean military drills and said they were more provocative than last year’s exercises, state media reported. – Reuters
North Korea has stepped up a campaign of rhetoric against Japan’s military buildup and its security ties with the United States and South Korea, saying they threaten regional stability. – Reuters
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung favours a constitutional reform that would allow presidents to serve a four-year term and seek re-election while strengthening parliamentary powers, the Yonhap news agency reported on Friday, citing a presidential Blue House official. – Reuters
TerraPower and South Korea’s SK Innovation signed on Friday a preliminary global agreement on small modular reactors (SMRs), Seoul’s Industry Ministry said, opening a path for the SK Group affiliate to participate in the U.S. company’s projects at home and abroad. – Reuters
China
Zhu Rongji, China’s former premier, is often remembered for opening the country to the global economy. But among Chinese people, his death has also prompted nostalgia for his blunt words and pugnacious outbursts, a contrast with the political rigidity of the present. – New York Times
China’s defence ministry on Friday dismissed Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military drills as a “wasteful charade” that “stoked war panic”, in the Chinese government’s first official comment on the 10 days of war games since they began last week. – Reuters
China on Friday rejected allegations that it is conducting widespread espionage on New Zealand, saying the claim in the country’s latest security assessment stemmed from a Cold War mentality. – Reuters
China’s exports of electric trucks to other Asian countries have spiked, adding to a surge in domestic sales as higher fuel costs as a result of the Iran war accelerate regional electrification. – Reuters
China’s car industry is on a tear overseas, storming markets from Europe to Southeast Asia and heaping pressure on long-established automakers like Toyota Motor and Volkswagen. – Reuters
Chinese autonomous driving firm Pony.ai announced on Friday plans to deploy more than 2,000 robotaxis in Europe under an expanded partnership with Uber – Reuters
China will continue imposing anti-dumping duties on single-mode optical fibre imports from India for another five years starting on Friday, the commerce ministry said on Thursday. – Reuters
China accused New Zealand of acting as a “pawn for anti-China forces” after its intelligence agency said Beijing was conducting espionage against the country on a significant scale. – Bloomberg
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said energy exploration with China in the disputed South China Sea remains possible, as he sought to deescalate tensions with Beijing. – Bloomberg
Burak Oktenli writes: The direction is sensible, but Washington is still using the wrong unit of analysis. Washington has spent years confronting connected technology by category. Commerce has restricted connected-vehicle hardware and software tied to China and Russia. The FCC has moved against foreign-made drones, routers, robots, and connected power inverters. Each action addresses a real exposure. Intelligence collection can cross all of those product boundaries. – Washington Examiner
South Asia
An Air India Airbus A320 dropped about 300 feet this month, injuring 24 people on board, after the aircraft registered a loss of hydraulic pressure that briefly left key flight controls unresponsive, according to a preliminary Airbus analysis reviewed by Reuters. – Reuters
Indian dependence on Russia’s crude surged to a record in July, with shipments from the country making up 50.83% of imports by the third-biggest oil buyer and consumer, or 2.47 million barrels per day, data from trade sources showed. – Reuters
India’s top gas importer Petronet LNG does not yet have a definite liquefied natural gas supply plan from its leading supplier Qatar, its CEO said on Thursday, as the Middle Eastern producer reviews force majeure on a month-to-month basis. – Reuters
India’s parliament on Thursday passed a bill that will restrict state governments from imposing new taxes, cesses or other levies on mineral rights and mineral-bearing lands unless permitted under conditions set by the federal government. – Reuters
Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have “forcibly disappeared” six staff members of a local organization working on women’s and children’s rights, a U.S.-based advocacy group said, following a separate U.N. report that two Afghan employees of its mission in the country were detained. – Associated Press
Fireworks burst over Pakistan’s capital at midnight as jubilant crowds poured into streets across the country to mark the 79th anniversary of independence, waving national flags and chanting “Long Live Pakistan.” – Associated Press
Obaidullah Baheer writes: Turning this around doesn’t have to mean officially abandoning Western principles and recognizing the Taliban. Western governments can restore or expand support for health care, education and livelihoods through the U.N. and other independent organizations. The World Bank already does this, funding a range of programs, bypassing the Taliban government. However painful the U.S. withdrawal remains for Americans, it’s time the United States and other countries turned the page and supported the efforts of ordinary Afghans to rebuild their lives. – New York Times
Asia
Taiwan is giving its coast guard an expanded role in national security as part of a defense strategy that is focused on keeping China’s landing forces from reaching its shores and warning Beijing of the difficulties it will encounter if it invades. – Wall Street Journal
Taiwan’s opposition-controlled parliament voted on Friday to hold three referendums, including one on caning criminals convicted of sex crimes and fraud, and another to support nuclear power, which could be held later this year. – Reuters
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday the AUKUS defence pact remained “full steam ahead” after an overnight call with U.S. President Donald Trump, adding that he had urged Trump to fully exempt Australia from all tariffs. – Reuters
Preliminary results on Friday showed that Prime Minister Mark Brown’s Cook Islands Party would likely retain control of parliament, winning 12 of the Pacific nation’s 24 seats, although bad weather delayed voting on the remote island of Nassau. – Reuters
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr confirmed on Friday that he would endorse a candidate for the 2028 presidential election, but said he had yet to decide who he would back. – Reuters
Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov said on Thursday he planned to seek a second term in an election next January in the Central Asian state. – Reuters
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said on Friday that a new state export firm will monitor key commodity shipments and its role will be expanded, but said it would not take over control of exports. – Reuters
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto lashed out at bureaucrats, state firms, police and the military over corruption and waste in a major speech, putting his hard-edged governing style on display as investors and voters grow increasingly uneasy with his policies. – Bloomberg
Europe
Britain’s leading populist has been battered by a string of scandals over political donations. His Reform UK party lost its lead in the polls. And on Thursday he faces an election for his own parliamentary seat against a man who goes by Count Binface and wears a trash can on his head. – Wall Street Journal
One of Sicily’s busiest airports has canceled more than 700 flights in the past week because of steady eruptions from Mount Etna, a volcano that has spewed millions of cubic yards of ash through eastern Sicily and its airspace. – New York Times
In one of the most remote towns on earth, on the frozen crust of Greenland’s east coast, the American oilman made his pitch. Near to the very room where they were all sitting, he told a crowd of Greenlanders, could be as much as 13 billion barrels of oil. – New York Times
A European Union ban on public funding for utility-scale solar inverters from “high-risk” countries is set to shift the market towards European suppliers, SMA Solar’s chief executive said on Thursday. – Reuters
The Swiss government on Thursday recommended that parliament reject an initiative aimed at blocking a new agreement between Switzerland and the European Union that would mark the biggest overhaul in bilateral economic relations in a generation. – Reuters
Sweden’s ruling right-wing coalition government is lagging centre-left opposition parties ahead of an election for parliament next month, but the gap between the two sides has narrowed since June, a new opinion poll showed. – Reuters
A blast at a storage facility for petroleum products at the Netherlands’ Rotterdam port killed one person and wounded six others on Thursday, officials said, as police investigated the cause of the explosion. – Reuters
French authorities evacuated 525 villagers after a wildfire broke out in the pine woods of the southwestern Landes region, near an area already devastated by major blazes this summer. – Reuters
Romania took Cernavodă’s second and last operating nuclear reactor offline on Thursday after the drought-hit Danube River fell too low to supply its cooling pumps. – Politico
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Thursday cast doubt on a deal struck by his predecessor that would see Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom expand Hungary’s nuclear power capacity. – Politico
NATO plans to fortify its eastern edge using drones, sensors and artificial intelligence in a massive network designed to spot and help repel a potential Russian attack. – Politico
Africa
Kevin Rideout, an American missionary pilot who was seized in Niger last fall, is in U.S. custody and on his way to the United States, two U.S. officials said on Thursday. – New York Times
The distance between life and death is razor thin at one medical clinic in Rwampara, the heart of the epidemic ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo. – New York Times
Democratic Republic of Congo health authorities have identified a person who has died from Ebola in a province not previously affected by the ongoing outbreak, an official told Reuters, raising fears of wider transmission from multiple exposures before and after the patient’s death. – Reuters
Mali President Assimi Goita has pardoned a French man who was sentenced in June to 20 years in prison for his alleged involvement in a plot to destabilize the country, an official statement said on Thursday. – Reuters
Mali’s army said 82 of its soldiers who had been held prisoner since nationwide attacks in April by al Qaeda-linked militants and a rebel group were freed on Thursday. – Reuters
Madagascar’s government has imported a shipment of diesel to help ease energy supply disruptions triggered by the Iran war, but it has angered a group of private companies by bypassing them under a new system where the state imports fuel directly. – Reuters
Ghanaian cocoa farmers are pushing back against a newly passed law that restricts how they can use their own land, urging President John Dramani Mahama to withhold his assent until they have been properly consulted. – Reuters
Russian state-aligned military forces operating in the Central Sahel relied on at least 75 flights by military and military-linked aircraft between January 2025 and July 2026, according to a new analysis by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based research organization that tracks illicit networks. – Defense News
The Americas
New Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has asked the Trump administration to bring its deadly military campaign against drug trafficking groups to his country, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. – Washington Post
Police in Ecuador on Tuesday found 1,000 pounds of cocaine bearing the image of Norwegian soccer star Erling Haaland tucked into a false bottom of a truck near the Colombian border. – Washington Post
The mysterious strikes targeting multiple Ecuadorian fishing boats near the Galápagos Islands this year were carried out as part of a covert CIA program, The Washington Post has learned. – Washington Post
The Brazilian government has opened a process that could result in the adoption of reciprocal measures against the United States in response to tariffs recently imposed by Washington on the country’s goods, it said in a Thursday statement. – Reuters
Hopes of finding more survivors of the powerful earthquake that rocked Colombia early this week were fading on Thursday as rescue workers narrowed their searches, while families in the worst-hit areas waited for news of missing relatives. – Reuters
Venezuelan authorities plan to focus on reconstruction efforts and recovering gold reserves worth an estimated $4 billion held in the Bank of England’s underground vaults, National Assembly chief Jorge Rodriguez said on Wednesday, as monthly inflation surged to 20%. – Reuters
One of the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Brazil’s capital was vandalized on Thursday as tensions between the countries remained high. Police said they detained one man in connection with the case but that he has already been released. – Associated Press
The Israeli aid delegation to Colombia, dubbed the “Alliance of Friends,” took off Thursday night to assist in the aftermath of the country’s devastating earthquake, the Home Front Command announced in a statement. – Jerusalem Post
Juan Pablo Spinetto writes: Don’t forget that this is Brazil, a nation of politics-as-telenovela, and the Oct. 25 runoff is still far enough away that anything can happen between now and then to sway voters. Emboldened by a string of rightwing election wins in Latin America since his return to power in 2025, it’s possible Trump will double down on his efforts to influence Brazil’s elections. After all, Brazilians aren’t exactly fond of their options, with Lula carrying a 49% rejection rate to Bolsonaro’s 53%, and other candidates struggling to gain traction.The reality is that Brazil is stuck between two less-than-ideal choices, but the decision belongs to the voters and not outside actors with agendas that may not serve the interests of Brazilians. – Bloomberg
North America
Cuba is throwing a weeklong party to celebrate Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday on Thursday with ballet performances, poetry and more than 300 academic papers and panel discussions on the impact of “Castro Thought” on everything from education and science to sports. – Wall Street Journal
The Dominican Republic has formally asked Cuba to withdraw nine members of its diplomatic mission and their relatives, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, without explaining further. – Reuters
A Canadian government source directly familiar with trade negotiations with the United States said on Thursday that talks were progressing well and Washington also wanted an agreement before a new U.S. tariff deadline on August 19. – Reuters
The U.S. government said on Thursday it would fully resume activities throughout Mexico’s western state of Michoacan, after earlier security concerns disrupted U.S. inspections needed to export the region’s prized avocados. – Reuters
Costa Rica has extradited two alleged drug traffickers to the U.S. to face charges, Costa Rica’s attorney general said on Thursday, identifying the suspects as Gilbert Bell Fernandez, known as Macho Coca, and Gabriel Lozano, nicknamed Compadre. – Reuters
United States
The U.S. Court of International Trade on Thursday ruled in favor of President Donald Trump’s 2025 decision to rescind a “de minimis” exemption for tariffs on some imports of less than $800, a rare win for the president in the trade court’s review of emergency economic powers. – Reuters
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will impose tariffs on imports of drones and their components, including from some key U.S. allies, with the Trump administration saying the country was “too reliant” on foreign sources of drones. – Reuters
Saad Khan writes: Iran has cultivated radicalized sympathy among segments of the global Shiite diaspora by weaponizing religious symbolism, historical grievance, and apocalyptic doctrine. That domestic problem reflects a larger failure of Western analysis. After 9/11, Sunni militancy understandably dominated the attention of security officials, think tanks, and commentators. But backdoor cooperation with Iran against the Taliban, and later against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, helped create a dangerous analytical imbalance. While Washington and its allies focused almost exclusively on Sunni jihadism, Iran expanded its reach across the Middle East and South Asia, then into Europe and North America. – Washington Examiner
Leo Lewis writes: I see this disease all around me, spreading across the entire political spectrum of America’s next generation. Jews therefore have to fight for the health and strength of the free world to keep themselves safe, and non-Jews have to fight for the safety and protection of Jews to keep Western civilization safe. We must commit ourselves to strengthening and renewing the civilization that upholds the principles the antisemites reject, the very principles that built the free world. – The Free Press
Cybersecurity
Apple has trained a large language model specifically for the China market, three people familiar with the matter said, a departure from the iPhone maker’s strategy of relying on third-party models to power AI features in the country. – Reuters
Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek formally released its V4 Pro model on Thursday, pricing it several times higher than its V4 Flash model as it seeks to turn stronger benchmark performance into a premium flagship offering. – Reuters
China’s top foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp said on Friday that AI-related demand would continue to underpin orders for its production, and that it had raised prices for its most sought-after capacity. – Reuters
Top social media platforms urged the Australian government not to place too much weight on early evidence showing most children still use their products despite a landmark under-16 ban, as lawmakers weigh tougher penalties and investigative powers for regulators. – Reuters
French taxpayers’ data, both individuals and professionals, were stolen in a cyberattack, the French Finance Ministry said late on Thursday. – Reuters
A plan to ramp up the data processing powers of the EU’s policing agency Europol poses “serious risks” to people’s privacy, Europe’s data protection supervisor warned Thursday. – Politico
A bipartisan House delegation met with top Vatican officials on Wednesday to discuss artificial intelligence during a visit that briefly included Pope Leo XIV, according to two people with knowledge of the trip granted anonymity to disclose details of the private meetings. – Politico
After more than doubling its artificial intelligence use cases from 2024 to 2025, it appears the FBI is on track to sustain or increase its pace again in 2026. – Fedscoop
A newly-signed presidential memorandum enlisting private sector companies in federal law enforcement hacking operations against criminal organizations could present a number of legal, practical and moral pitfalls, cyber experts told CyberScoop a day after the order was released. – Cyberscoop
Germany’s cabinet approved legislation Wednesday that would let its intelligence agencies hack foreign systems, sabotage adversaries’ supply chains and feed false information to extremists inside Germany, in the biggest overhaul of the country’s spy laws of the postwar era. – The Record
Derek Kan writes: Google’s proposal is a self-regulatory organization, like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees U.S. stockbrokers. These organizations often end up stifling competition. When an industry writes its own rule book under government authority, following those rules becomes a weapon that the biggest players wield against new entrants […] The mistake shared by all three is one of sequencing: They would build the regulator before deciding what it may not do. Set the limits first. Then decide what to build within them. – Washington Post
Rishi Iyengar and Christina Lu write: Cyber warfare is increasingly coming for U.S. water supplies. Water providers in at least seven U.S. states have been targeted by cyberattacks over the past two weeks, according to multiple agencies including the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Some officials indicated that as many as a dozen states could have been impacted. – Foreign Policy
Defense
The U.S. military is preparing to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment, U.S. officials said, amid growing concerns over living conditions aboard the Lincoln and the strain on troops during the Iran war. – Wall Street Journal
The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, or roughly 25 percent of its fleet, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter. – Washington Post
President Donald Trump ordered the Navy to return to using steam catapults to launch planes off of aircraft carriers, acting on a longtime complaint despite opposition from many naval officers. – Bloomberg
The Army is opening some of its most advanced test ranges to private companies, giving these organizations the opportunity to battle-test their most advanced technology before going into the prototype phase. – Military.com
Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg’s new instruction for the Pentagon to provide nearly $244 million through March for undisclosed Palantir products was influenced by the Trump administration’s Business Operators for National Defense program, according to two sources who said it also illustrates the government’s plans to further fast-track the tech giant’s military offerings. – Defensescoop
The Space Force’s acquisition arm has contracted five vendors to demonstrate that its future mega-constellation can effectively share information between systems owned by different companies. – Defensescoop
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief AI officer is anticipating a future in which digital agents work together across a combatant command to help the military and intelligence community achieve mission success. – Defensescoop