News Desk

As two powerful earthquakes hit Venezuela, west of Caracas, in quick succession on Wednesday, the country’s capital sustained extensive damage.

Authorities were continuing to search for people under the rubble of collapsed buildings on Friday as 235 people were confirmed to have been killed, with 4,300 more injured.

Here is more about why Caracas has sustained so much damage.

How badly damaged is Caracas?

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck about 160km (100 miles) west of Caracas, followed less than a minute later by a magnitude 7.5 tremor, the strongest since 1900, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuela’s national assembly and brother of interim President Delcy Rodriguez, said earlier in the day that 200 people had been trapped, with 250 buildings damaged or destroyed nationwide.

In Caracas and nearby coastal areas, at least eight hospitals, the headquarters of the Venezuelan Red Cross and the French embassy were among buildings reported to have been badly damaged.

Initial assessments released on Thursday put the estimated economic damage at between 1 and 7 percent of Venezuela’s $111bn gross domestic product (GDP). Authorities have not yet provided a separate estimate for losses in the capital.

However, the heaviest damage has been reported in Caracas itself, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Bogota in neighbouring Colombia, said on Thursday.

Public infrastructure was also heavily damaged, with acting President Rodriguez reporting power outages in Caracas.

Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said late on Thursday that 235 people had been confirmed dead at medical centres across Venezuela. He also told state media that about 4,300 people had been reported injured so far. Hundreds more are feared trapped or missing under the rubble.

How badly has the city been damaged in previous earthquakes?

This is not the first time Caracas has suffered heavy damage in an earthquake.

In 1812, a powerful earthquake roiled the cities of Merida and Caracas, killing about 30,000 people, according to the USGS. The tremors caused near-total destruction of Caracas’s colonial architecture, flattening homes, churches and public institutions.

In 1967, another earthquake hit the city, causing several high-rise buildings to collapse and killing 240 people.

Why has Caracas been so hard-hit?

Venezuela has a long history of devastating earthquakes because it is located along the boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates.

Caracas is also in a deep sedimentary basin, which amplifies the seismic waves from earthquakes, Vashan Wright, a geophysicist at the University of California in San Diego, told Al Jazeera.

Another reason Caracas is so vulnerable to damage from earthquakes is that its buildings and infrastructure are not specifically designed to withstand tremors and are often standing on insecure ground.

Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said the heaviest damage in Caracas occurred in the Altamira district, where emergency crews pulled survivors from the rubble of a 22-storey building while relatives searched for missing family members. Officials said they are still assessing the full extent of the destruction.

“For example, in the [hard-hit] area of Altamira in Caracas, many of the buildings that collapsed are built on sediments, and this makes them much more vulnerable to seismic waves,” Bo said.

“Also, there’s lots of informal housing in several areas across the country, and those types of buildings are not prepared to sustain very strong earthquakes,” she added.

Adequate urban planning and building codes, which incorporate seismic activity, require substantial funding, which Venezuela can ill afford as it has long been subject to heavy sanctions from the United States and other Western countries.

While some sanctions have been lifted since the US abducted former President Nicolas Maduro in a military strike on Caracas in January and he was replaced by Rodriguez, Caracas is still grappling with the effects of decades of underinvestment.

Another issue for Caracas is that at about 7.8km, the earthquakes were shallow, which means they were more destructive than deeper quakes of the same magnitude would have been.

In deeper earthquakes, much of the energy dissipates as it moves through layers of rock. By contrast, shallow ones release their energy closer to the ground, producing stronger shaking and greater damage in populated areas.

How many people live in informal housing in Caracas?

People living in informal housing are more at risk than others during earthquakes because low-cost, self-built housing structures, often built on hillsides and other slopes, are not resilient against tremors.

The slums in Caracas are known as barrios and are densely populated, lacking proper infrastructure. They comprise self-constructed housing or structures built with unreinforced cinderblocks or bricks, often without formal foundations or steel reinforcement, mostly on the mountainous hillsides surrounding the capital.

The lack of proper urban planning, coupled with construction on steep slopes, makes the barrios vulnerable to natural disasters.

While there is no official figure for the number of Venezuelans living in informal settlements in Caracas, academic estimates suggest they account for 40 to 50 percent of the city’s nearly five million residents.

According to the latest National Survey of Living Conditions (ENCOVI), about 55 percent of Venezuelans are living in poverty.

Which countries are better prepared for earthquakes?

Many parts of the world have adapted infrastructure with seismic engineering. Many earthquake-prone countries now plan and construct buildings with damage mitigation from tremors in mind.

Japan, one of the most quake-prone nations in the world, has strict building codes, which means many structures survive shaking that would devastate poorly built homes in parts of Indonesia or Central America. In most inland earthquakes, the majority of deaths and injuries are caused when poorly built structures collapse rather than by the shaking itself.

Japan has made enormous public investments in seismic research and has superior access to advanced engineering technologies like base isolation, which involves the installation of massive steel or rubber shock absorbers beneath the foundations of buildings.

This is why global deaths and destruction from earthquakes have reduced in the past decades. For instance, in 1556, the deadliest earthquake in recorded history in China’s Shaanxi killed about 830,000 people. In 2023, an earthquake hit northwestern China near the Shaanxi province, killing 127 people.

Lionel Richie brought the first stop on his summer tour with Earth, Wind & Fire to an abrupt stop Wednesday evening, citing his health.

The 77-year-old Grammy winner, hitmaker of “Hello” and “Say You, Say Me,” unexpectedly hit pause on the concert at the Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, Minn., after taking a seat on stage multiple times during his performance of “Dancing on the Ceiling” and telling his audience he felt “dizzy,” according to videos shared on social media.

“What I have learned about my years of being in the business, when you are feeling dizzy, sit your a— down,” he joked, according to a TikTok posted Wednesday evening by user ynaffitmocha. “When you are feeling strange about yourself, sit your a— down.”

Moments later, saxophonist Dino Soldo informed the audience that the singer was “not feeling well” and would not continue the concert. A representative for the singer did not respond to a request for comment, but TMZ reported on Thursday the singer-songwriter was hospitalized after the health scare. Paramedics reportedly met the artist backstage and transported him to a nearby hospital out of precaution.

A spokesperson for the Saint Paul Fire Department did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation on Thursday.

Live Nation announced “American Idol” judge Richie and Earth, Wind & Fire’s joint tour in January, unveiling a 26-city circuit that includes stops in Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Richie and the “September” group are next set to perform at the United Center in Chicago on Friday and again at Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio. It is currently unclear whether Richie will resume performing for those concerts.

Richie and Earth, Wind & Fire are scheduled to play Inglewood’s Intuit Dome on Aug. 9. The tour ends Aug. 14 with a show at the Moody Center in Austin.

June 26 (UPI) — New York City’s rental board has approved Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s two-year rent-freeze proposal for nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, fulfilling a major campaign promise.

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to set a 0% increase for rent-stabilized one-year and two-year leases commencing on or after Oct. 1, and on or before Sept. 30, 2027.

Cheers erupted from the spectators assembled as it was announced that the motion passed.

“This is a historic victory for New York City tenants,” Mamdani said in a statement following the vote.

“After reviewing the data and hearing from New Yorkers across the city, the independent RGB has delivered a freeze on one-year leases, and the first-ever freeze on two-year leases in our city’s history. This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”

Mamdani, a democratic socialist, campaigned heavily on making life more affordable for the average New Yorker, including by creating new affordable housing and freezing rents where legally permitted.

The mayor said he is grateful for the board members’ “thoughtful consideration of the data” before casting their votes.

“I’ll continue to deliver a more affordable city by building and preserving affordable housing, lowering building operating costs like insurance, and ensuring tenants know their rights,” he said.

According to a New York City housing survey from 2023, there were 996,600 rent-stabilized units, representing about 41% of all rental units across the city. Rent stabilization generally applies to buildings with six or more units built before 1974.

The only vote against the rent freeze came from Arpit Gupta, an associate professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

In a statement published online following the vote, Gupta argued that the rent freeze will not solve the housing crisis while possibly making it worse and ultimately driving up rents. He also said the rent freeze could prevent building owners from considering improvements and renovations.

“Residents might continue to enjoy low rents but at the cost of being trapped in units that no longer fit their needs, and with few alternatives and steadily deteriorating conditions,” he said.

“A better option is to undertake the harder reforms needed to make housing more affordable and accessible — that is, build more of it.”

The vote was held following a series of hearings in which nearly 330 people participated and nearly 700 people submitted written, audio or video testimony about their experiences.

New York State Assembly Member Tony Simone said the rent freeze will impact about 2 million New Yorkers and is expected to save renters as much as $6.8 billion over Mamdani’s four-year term.

“This immediate action reflects the urgency needed to prevent more working-class New Yorkers from being priced out of our city,” he said in a statement, while stating that the structural factors that are driving up prices must be addressed.

“To truly address the housing crisis, we need to tackle its root cause: the housing shortage,” he continued.

“New York needs to build more housing units.”

The US Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in its bid to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and Syrians. The ruling allows the policy to take effect before the courts have reached a final decision on its legality.

Netflix show, Building the Band, was Liam Payne’s last completed project before his heartbreaking death in October 2024 aged 31 when he fell from a hotel balcony

Netflix has decided not to renew Liam Payne’s final TV project according to reports. The tragic singer’s series, Building the Band – which was filmed four four months before his death – is said not to have been recommissioned, despite the music competition launching the careers of four new groups.

Liam, who tragically died in 2024 aged 31 after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina, served as judge on the series alongside Nicole Scherzinger and Kelly Rowland, while AJ McLean hosted the contest.

The winning act, 3quency, received a global platform through Netflix, while several contestants have since secured recording contracts following the show’s release. However, there a reportedly no plans for a second series.

A source told The Sun: “Although there are currently no plans for a second season of Building The Band, bosses at Netflix are really proud of what they achieved. That’s because the show led to the creation of four amazing groups and all of them have since signed record deals.”

The source added: “The finalist groups – 3quency, SZN4, Soulidified and Midnight Til Morning – have all released original music, toured internationally – and attract hundreds of thousands of listeners each month. And Midnight Til Morning are performing at BST Hyde Park at the end of this month.”

Building the Band challenged 50 singers unknown to each other to form new groups, relying on vocal chemistry before progressing through a series of performances.

The winning act received a global platform through Netflix, while several contestants have since secured recording contracts following the show’s release.

The programme had been completed and ready for release before Liam’s death, leaving Netflix to decide whether it should proceed with the series.

After consulting the star’s grieving family, the streaming service chose to air the competition and dedicated it to the late singer.

Liam, who rose to stratospheric fame as a member of One Direction after the group was formed on The X Factor in 2010, appeared on the show mentoring aspiring singers hoping to recreate the success enjoyed by his own chart-topping band.

Since his death, tributes from his former bandmates Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik have continued to resonate with fans, while discussion around Liam’s legacy has remained a recurring topic across the music industry.

However, although Building the Band attracted significant attention because it featured the star’s final on-screen appearance, it failed to make a major impact with UK audiences, which Netflix will be aware of.

The Mirror has contacted Netflix for comment.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

EXPLAINER

Israeli and Lebanese delegations will continue their talks on Friday.

Israel continues to attack southern Lebanon on Friday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledges that the Israeli military is “not going to withdraw” from occupied areas.

Israel currently occupies about one-fifth of Lebanon.

This comes amid progress on the interim peace accord between the United States and Iran aimed at ending the US-Israel war on Iran, which began on February 28.

Here is what is happening:

In Iran

• IAEA chief says inspectors to return to Iran: The interim US-Iran peace accord – also being referred to as the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) – gives inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to Iran, the agency’s chief Rafael Grossi said, after Tehran indicated that key sites would remain off-limits until a final deal with Washington is reached and sanctions are lifted.
• “There is an agreement and to comply with that agreement, the IAEA will have to have access and inspect,” the UN nuclear watchdog chief Grossi said at a news conference in Japan. “We hope to be there soon.”
• UN halts escort of ships through Hormuz: The UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) paused its operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday after a vessel reported an attack, reigniting concerns about whether a preliminary deal to end the Iran war will hold. The cargo ship said it was hit close to Oman by a projectile, the British Navy agency UKMTO said.
• On Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned vessels not to attempt to pass the strait without its express permission, despite Oman and the IMO releasing details of a new safe route. In April, the IRGC released its own safe-transit route for approved ships, showing shipping lanes much closer to its own coast.

In the US

• Trump says unfrozen Iranian assets will be used to buy US agricultural products: US President Donald Trump reiterated during an event for US farmers that unfrozen Iranian assets will be spent on buying wheat, soya beans and corn from the US. Iran has not confirmed this.

In Lebanon

• Two killed in Israeli raid: Two people were killed and another person was wounded in an Israeli raid on the town of Mayfadoun, in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh district, the National News Agency reported, citing the country’s Ministry of Public Health.
• An Israeli air raid also hit the town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
• Talks to continue: A US State Department official has told Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli and Lebanese delegations will resume their meetings on Friday.

Global economy

• India ends commercial gas restrictions: India has lifted restrictions on supplies of commercial liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imposed during the war, when energy supplies were hit by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the global energy chokepoint.
• Aramco resumes oil loading: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, has resumed oil loading at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.

The U.S. Air Force is set to hold a classified meeting with defense contractors to share its requirements for a new air-to-air missile with a maximum range of at least 1,000 nautical miles. This is roughly 10 times the reach afforded today by the latest versions of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). An anti-air missile with this kind of extreme range would be especially well-suited for attacks on critical airborne early warning and control planes, as well as tankers and other high-value aerial assets operating in rear areas. The Air Force is also already interested in an air-to-surface version of this new weapon, which it has dubbed the Air Force Long Range Weapon (AFLRW).

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC) Armament Directorate (EB) issued a notice yesterday regarding the planned AFLRW industry day gathering. The two-day meeting is currently scheduled to take place at the Guided Weapons Evaluation Facility (GWEF) at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida on August 25 and 26. The Air Force says the event will be held at the Secret classification level and that all attendees have to have appropriate security clearances.

“The AFLRW is aimed at addressing the next generation of Air-Launched Standoff Weapon variants in line with Department of War priorities,” according to the industry day notice. “AFLRW may select multiple vendors for both the Air-to-Air (A/A) and Air-to-Surface (A/S) variants with a focus on A/A solutions for Initial Operational Capability.”

“Both [AFLRW] variants will have a threshold minimum range of 1,000 NM [nautical miles] and be capable of striking respective A/A and A/S targets in Defense Planning Scenario 2.1 and 7.1 environments in a responsive manner,” the notice adds. It does not elaborate on what those specific scenarios entail.

The notice also puts particular emphasis on modular components and open-architecture systems, and finding a “Master Integrator” to combine the various elements into a complete missile, or all-up-round.

“Industry should expect a quick-turn Whitepaper Request for Information following the event focused on the 2 solution types above for both variants,” per the notice. “AFLCMC is seeking the next generation of Air-Launched Long-Range Weapon variants that expand the United States’ ability to hit priority air, land, and sea targets far and fast!”

Beyond the range threshold, the notice does not include any other details about requirements the Air Force may have now for the AFLRW. That being said, a desire for an anti-air missile able to hit targets at least 1,000 nautical miles away is very notable by itself.

Though the exact figures are classified, the AIM-120D-3 version of the AMRAAM, the latest model in widespread U.S. service, is generally understood to have a maximum reach of around 100 miles (close to 87 nautical miles). There have been hints that it may be able to fly out further than that, at least against targets in certain envelopes. Longer-range versions of the AIM-120 may now be in development. A known key requirement for the new AIM-260A Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM) has also been extended reach over the AMRAAM. Still, even the JATM, which the U.S. Navy and Air Force are developing together, is not expected to have anywhere near the range required for the AFLRW.

It is worth noting here that the Air Force almost adopted a very long-range, high-speed missile designed to engage both air and surface targets during the Cold War. However, the maximum range of that Advanced Strategic Air-Launched Missile (ASALM) was still only expected to be 300 miles (260 nautical miles).

Starting in the mid-2000s, the Air Force and the Navy also worked together on a Joint Dual-Role Air Dominance Missile (JDRADM), intended as a single weapon to supplant the AIM-120 and variants of the AGM-88 anti-radiation missile. This evolved into the Next Generation Missile (NGM), which came to a close, at least publicly, in 2013, ostensibly over rising costs. A more secretive Triple Target Terminator (T-3) program, which had initially been conducted in parallel with JDRADM/NGM, continued afterward for at least some period of time. In 2017, a possible successor to T-3, the Long Range Engagement Weapon (LREW), but the fate of that effort is unclear.

In February, the Navy put out its own new call for a long-range anti-radiation missile capable of engaging air and surface targets, dubbed the Advanced Emission Suppression Missile (AESM). However, the service did not say what its desired range for this weapon might be at that time. The Navy has already started fielding an air-launched version of the multi-purpose Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), designated the AIM-174B. TWZ has previously assessed the AIM-174B to likely be in the same range category, broadly speaking, as the Cold War-era ASALM. We have previously explored in detail how the AIM-174B slots into the Navy’s long-range kill chains.

How The Navy’s New Very Long-Range AIM-174 Will Pierce China’s Anti-Access Bubble

Nothing approaching a range of 1,000 nautical miles appears to have ever been discussed, at least openly, in relation to any of these programs. Interestingly, the Air Force did publicly talk about the prospect of anti-air missiles with ranges of up to 1,000 miles in a report to Congress in December 2024. However, the report mentioned them as part of a projected threat ecosystem the service envisions taking shape by 2050.

“Counterair weapons with ranges out to over 1,000 miles and supported by space-based sensors will place aircraft, such as tankers, that have traditionally operated with impunity, at risk,” the Air Force’s 2024 report said. This offers a hint at the kinds of capabilities it is looking to add to its own arsenal through the AFLRW effort.

After the Navy put out its AESM contracting notice, TWZ also highlighted the value of such a missile for targeting vital airborne early warning and control assets. This is often referred to as the ‘AWACS killer’ role, which references the E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. As we previously wrote:

“All that being said, the value of an ‘AWACS killer’ missile is clear-cut. AEW&C are critical surveillance and battle management assets. Shooting them down deprives an opponent of those capabilities, inherently reducing their ability to effectively maneuver air assets and share important information, including with other nodes on the ground or at sea, as well as in the air. Knocking out these flying radar stations, which can be especially well-suited to spotting lower flying threats from their high perches, just hampers an enemy’s overall situational awareness.”

“The issue, of course, is that AEW&C planes typically orbit well behind the front edges of a conflict, creating additional challenges for targeting them. This is where something like AESM could come into play. A weapon of this type could engage other aerial targets by zeroing in on the radiofrequency emissions they pump out. This could include electronic warfare aircraft, and potentially other aerial targets. AESM might be able to take on a more general anti-air role with the addition of an active radar and/or imaging infrared seeker, as well as datalinks allowing for the use of networked targeting data. [The AGM-88E] AARGM and [AGM-88G] AARGM-ER both feature an active millimeter-wave radar seeker to enable them to hit fleeing ground targets, but a similar concept could be adapted for air-to-air use.“

AARGM F-18

“For the Navy, as well as other branches of the U.S. military, this is all particularly relevant in the context of a potential future high-end fight with China, which has made major investments in its fleets of AEW&C and electronic warfare planes. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has also been pursuing ever-longer-ranged anti-air missiles, including types that could be used to target American AEW&C platforms, as well as other key support aircraft.”

In that piece, we also touched on the potential for the AIM-174B to help meet U.S. military needs for an ‘AWACS killer’ missile. With the ability to hit targets in the air, as well as down below, out to at least 1,000 nautical miles, AFRLW would be a dramatic step above even the AIM-174B in capability.

The Pacific region offers a host of practical examples to give a better sense of what this kind of reach means. The distance between U.S. bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa and Taiwan is roughly 390 nautical miles. The distance between Andersen Air Force Base on Guam and Taiwan is around 1,500 nautical miles. AFLRW-armed aircraft flying over the East China Sea or the northern end of the South China Sea would conceivably be able to engage targets with hundreds of missiles inside the Chinese mainland, as long as suitable targeting data was available. The AFLRW’s range would be relevant on other potential hotspots globally, as well.

AFLRW would give the Air Force a way to pick off airborne early warning and control aircraft, as well as tankers, bombers, other kinds of surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, and potentially even unsuspecting tactical jets. The missiles would be able to do so without necessarily alerting them to the fact that they are being targeted at all, at least till it’s too late to escape. Having air-to-air missiles that can go after targets at such great ranges means the need to project tactical airpower and support aircraft far forward and deep into harm’s way for the counter-air mission would be less critical, at least during the first opening stages of a conflict. By eliminating key force multiplying aircraft with long-range weaponry, conditions would be better for the survivability of traditional counter-air packages.

On top of offering a new way to hold higher-value targets in rear areas at risk, AFLRW would give Air Force aircraft added flexibility to engage targets closer to the tactical edge, but not necessarily near where they might be flying at any one time. In the aforementioned Pacific scenario, areas of active combat in the air and on the surface could easily be dotted across a broader zone spanning thousands of square miles.

As mentioned, the Air Force also sees anti-air threats being able to reach further and further out. This means stand-off munitions, in general, will need greater reach to help reduce the risk to launch platforms. The AFLRW’s range recommendation is a tacit admission that the U.S. military will face growing challenges piercing adversary anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) bubbles, especially the ones that China has established and is continuing to expand on. It also highlights the increasing risks to friendly airborne early warning and control aircraft, tankers, and other supporting aerial assets needed for sustained air combat operations. Chinese air-to-air missiles are already outreaching their American counterparts, and the U.S. is working to change that now with AIM-174, AIM-260 and other programs.

There are still questions about what it might take to develop a feasible AFLRW with at least a 1,000 nautical mile range, and what might be able to carry a missile with that kind of reach. It is worth remembering here that the Air Force has openly talked about the possibility of the B-21 Raider bomber taking on a greater role in air-to-air combat in the future, which might include acting as a ‘weapons truck’ loaded with anti-air missiles. The aforementioned ASALM was also intended primarily for employment from bombers. For bombers like the B-21, the AFLRW would also just offer a valuable organic way to address threats in the air and down below, potentially hours ahead of arriving over the target area.

The AFLRW will also have to cover the very long distances it flies at least relatively quickly, especially to be relevant for attacking time-sensitive or otherwise fleeting targets. This might require a multi-stage or air-launched ballistic missile-like design or even something more exotic.

There is also the question of targeting at such extreme distances. These weapons will not rely on the sensors and targeting information generated by the platforms they are launched from. Above all else, the AFLRW will, by default, have to be tied into a deeply networked ‘kill web’ that brings together tertiary sensors and other supporting elements across vast networking layers. That ‘web’ would be spread across the air, land, sea, space, and even cyberspace domains, and incorporate assets from other branches of the U.S. military beyond the Air Force.

Above all else, the space-based aircraft tracking layer will be very important when it comes to enabling this weapon. The Air Force’s 2024 report on future threats confirmed this. The U.S. military itself is actively working to field new distributed satellite constellations to provide potentially game-changing persistent air and ground moving-target indicator (AMTI/GMTI) capability globally, with exactly these kinds of long-range kill chains in mind, as you can read more about here. Very stealthy aircraft working farther forward that are in line-of-sight of potential targets are another way these weapons can be employed. The USAF also has just such a platform.

Much remains to be learned about the Air Force’s plans for the air-to-air and air-to-surface versions of the AFRLW, and what other requirements the service has for those missiles. The industry day gathering scheduled for August will provide the service with additional information about what options might be available and on what timeframe.

Regardless, the Air Force has now made clear publicly that it wants a solution that can kill planes a thousand miles away from the launch aircraft. This matches all the signals that the Pentagon has been sending indicating it is very concerned about its ability to pierce an enemy’s protective bubble in the years ahead. Above all else, it points to a new era of net-centric warfare where the kill web is truly king.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Hugh Ryan is an absolute superstar of queer history. His first two books, “When Brooklyn Was Queer” and “The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison,” were magnets for awards and accolades. After spending recent years immersed in cultural stories, he’s turned his investigative eye on his own coming of age with the rollicking, raw, funny and sharp memoir “My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond.” Pivoting from scholar of history to student of life, Ryan shares lessons learned from beloved but homophobic middle school teachers (“The nicest mother— I knew could accidentally curb-stomp my heart at any moment”) to ones acquired on the dance floor (“Dancing is sex on a communal level: an embodied ecstatic ritual of union”).

Ryan swung through L.A. on his book tour, and what better place to host a paean to the ’90s than the ASU FIDM Museum, where the exhibit “Obsessed: Fashion and Nostalgia in the ’90s” is serving Westwood plaids, Calvin Klein’s minimalist silk parachute sheath and Donatella’s zipper-slashed, leather mourning dress. A fellow survivor of the era, I interviewed Ryan and the evening was introduced by the exhibition’s sparkling curator, Christina Frank, who cheekily shared period photos of the author alongside images from the museum’s ’90s archives, asking: Who wore it best? Whether it was Ryan channeling designer inspo or fashion-snatching looks from the streets, the display — like the book that inspired it — was colorful and daring, inspired and eccentric and wholly unique. At a time when nostalgia for the ’90s is seemingly everywhere, “My Bad” places the decade into context, including its paradoxical freedoms and oppressions, with the intimate, funny rough language of your freakiest, funnest bestie.

Michelle Tea: Your previous books are this amazing, accessible scholarship. In “My Bad,” your language is so different — you’re cussing! The academic gloves are off — which isn’t to say that it’s not brainy. Was this just the voice that the book wanted? It’s like, “Oh, so we’re just like sitting on the curb having a cigarette together.”

Hugh Ryan: I actually wanted to buy a box of clove cigarettes while I was doing the research, but apparently they’re illegal now because they’re deadly and full of fiberglass.

So much of it is about writing it for people today who are younger, who look up to my books and are like, “I’m going to get my PhD and be just like you!,” and I was like, I didn’t do that, I’ve misrepresented myself somehow, and I want to be really real. Also, I had this job for four or five years where I ghost wrote a kids’ books series, and I was eventually fired, because I took a beloved character — who I am not allowed to name — and made her curse, which she had apparently never done in her 100-year history. When I made her say ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ while solving a mystery, the internet went wild, and you can find the Amazon page where I am ruined. So, the ability to curse in my work and have a real voice was something that, from very early on in my career, I was like, “Oh no, I got to be real careful about being too much myself on the page.”

Ryan in ‘90s Calvin Klein; Dave Navarro walks the Anna Sui Spring/Summer 1997 runway. (Hugh Ryan; Michel Arnaud; Gift of Arnaud Associates, 2000; From ASU FIDM Museum Collection)

MT: You needed to break that pattern of self-censoring. What was it like to shift the focus of your intellectual investigation onto yourself?

HR: Excruciating. At first I really enjoyed it, when it was just this idea. I’ve never really told these stories. In the early versions of it, everything I wrote was jokey, silly, overly stylized, not honest. I wasn’t ready to really dig in. I think that I had a lot of layers of defensiveness that I didn’t even understand I had until I had to write things down. My agent kept being, “No, no, this isn’t real, stop with these jokes, it is funny, but you have to get into the serious issues.” There was a large resistance inside me. Asking, “OK, how did my experiences relate to the ’90s as a whole?” actually let me talk about myself and the time period I emerged from. I needed that scaffolding to feel comfortable.

MT: How do you feel about Gen X’s legacy as basically the coolest generation?

HR: I mean, I kind of love it.

MT: We’re having the most sex, even though we’re so old now. And we’re tough, because we’ve survived so much queer trauma. You write in “My Bad” about having Snapple bottles thrown out windows at you.

HR: If you looked queer and you were out in the world, it was just accepted that at some point during the day someone was going to be violent towards you. Verbally, maybe physically. It just was what it was. Though I will say, having now, later in my life, thrown some Snapple bottles really hard just to feel it, it does feel very good. They’re heavy, they’re glass, they explode. If you can get your hands on some classic ’90s Snapple, just throw them, just try it.

MT: We have to have a queer, Gen X ritual of throwing Snapple bottles, like a rage room.

Ryan in the ‘90s. In his new memoir “My Bad,” Ryan looks back on this time with the intimate, funny rough language of your freakiest, funnest bestie.

(Hugh Ryan)

HR: I do think that it’s easy to forget all of that, because I think we all wanted to forget it to a certain degree. We wanted to let go of our pain. Both the people who were hurt and the people who caused those hurts had some amount of evolution. This is something I think about a lot with my family. If you read the book, in the early chapters it’s rough with my folks. They were loving, but also had no idea what to do with me. I was not just gay, I was weird and trans and confused, and always making noise and acting out and being inappropriate. There’s all this tough stuff, and then we try to forgive each other and let it go, but without saying it. Writing the book was this moment of, “Oh no, am I making us talk about all the bad times again?” It took me sitting with that and realizing — that’s the only way to get to the other side. I’ve seen this change in my family, and it felt important to document how shitty it was, so we could see the change.

MT: What sign are you?

HR: Cancer.

MT: You’re Cancer?!

HR: Yeah, tell me about it. I know so little about astrology. It’s the straightest thing about me, how little I know about astrology.

MT: I don’t even know what to say, because I’m getting such Aquarius-Virgo-Gemini from you that Cancer is just blowing my mind.

HR: I do have a shell, I know that about myself. And that was my first two books. Now I’m trying to invite people in.

MT: Will you talk about the club kid scene in New York City in the ’90s?

HR: I just touched up on the edges of it. The club kid movement really stopped after effective retrovirals come in, in 1996. Suddenly club kids saw a future for themselves, and did not all imagine that they were going to die of AIDS imminently. The ones who I’ve interviewed have said, “That’s the moment at which suddenly, dressing for Friday night no longer felt like what you spend two weeks doing.” But when it was happening, it was amazing. There were these free magazines in New York City, HX and Next, little queer rags full of party promotions and photos of half-naked people in clubs, and ads for those awful viatical companies that would buy up your life insurance if you had AIDS. They were very weird, but they’re like style bibles for me. And then you would go to the clubs.

When you went to Limelight, there would be two entrances, one for straight people and one for gay people. The bouncer at the line for the straight entrance was a giant gay guy, who — this was abusive, and probably wrong, but it was very funny — he’d be like, “You two make out if you’re gonna tell me you’re gay, make out or you don’t come in.” You only got access to half the club if you went in the straight entrance — the other half was only for queer people, and so you would have these straight folks trying to get in. It was amazing, and it was a place where I came to really love my body, because up until then the only things I had been told my body were for were sports, and that was never going to be me. There, I could dance all night.

Limelight was the coolest, but I loved Tunnel. Tunnel was 80,000 square feet of nightclub in a former railway terminal. There was a room entirely designed by the artist Kenny Scharf, and it was covered in fake fur — in a club when smoking was still allowed! It was the worst smelling place I’ve ever been in my whole life. I would sneak down there wearing giant Jnco raver pants, and watch everyone. These giant pants had these huge pockets in them, and I would put a big, gallon Ziploc bag with a clean T-shirt and clean socks inside the pant pocket. When the night was done I would go out, get food, change my clothes, and put the dirty clothes inside the Ziploc bag. I still had to have the pants on. I carried like the smell of 1,000 humid homosexuals with me everywhere I went.

The club, Ryan says, “was a place where I came to really love my body, because up until then the only things I had been told my body were for were sports, and that was never going to be me.”

(Hugh Ryan)

MT: Speaking of being grimy — you were also really affected by Burning Man.

HR: I had met this guy, we totally fell in love. He was a high school dropout computer hacker who was the epitome of the bisexual ’90s — longhaired, androgynous, everything I wanted to be. You know, that very queer thing of: Do I want you, do I want to be you, should we go on a road trip or a killing spree? We were in love and I did not want to go back to school. I had had a terrible junior year, and I was looking to make new mistakes. He was like, “I’m gonna go to this thing called Burning Man, do you want to go? It’s out in the desert, there’s all this art, and it’s super cool,” and I was like, “When is it?” And it was the very first week of classes my senior year, and I was like, “Yeah, absolutely.”

It was amazing. We got adopted by these people who called themselves the Church of Mez, or Mezbians. They were extremely rich Microsoft engineers. We were completely unprepared, because we’d f—ing come in on the Greyhound bus. You’re supposed to bring a gallon of water per person per day, just to start with, and we had nothing. We had a tent and a sleeping bag, and these people thought we were somewhere between pets and aphrodisiacs.

It felt like such an amazing thing to get to touch. And I know that all of those people ended up being like fascist tech bros of today, I’m sure, and I worry about the environmental degradation that I did not know anything about. And it was so white, so many white people with dreadlocks and those terrible tribal tattoos. Like many things in the book, I have to write about it tenderly, even though I know there are so many problems. I don’t think I would be who I was if I didn’t show some tenderness towards those spaces that made me, or at least allowed me to see myself.

Michelle Tea is the author of more than 20 books for grown-ups, teenagers and children.

SEOUL, June 26 (UPI) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw tests of a new rocket launcher system and other weapons as part of a plan to bolster firepower along the inter-Korean border, state-run media reported Friday, highlighting Pyongyang’s continued effort to modernize conventional weapons capable of threatening the Seoul metropolitan area.

The new weapons, tested at an undisclosed location Thursday, included an upgraded 240mm 24-tube multiple rocket launcher with an automated guidance system and an extended range of 56 miles, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Also tested were shells for a 155mm self-propelled howitzer with an extended range of 40 miles and a special warhead for a tactical ballistic missile. KCNA said the warhead was “aimed at inflicting fatal damage on major targets including airfields, ports and power facilities of the enemy.”

Kim described the launches as a demonstration of the “great technological progress” made in implementing the party’s policy of “bringing about a change in the fire posture on the southern border.”

He added that the policy was intended not only to strengthen defenses but also to build a “deadly and destructive offensive posture to make no enemy dare to confront.”

Seoul, home to more than 10 million people, lies roughly 30 miles from the border, while the surrounding Gyeonggi Province is one of South Korea’s most densely populated and industrialized regions.

The tests come amid an extended push by Pyongyang to harden its military posture toward South Korea. Last month, Kim called for strengthening frontline defenses along the border to create an “impregnable fortress,” and Thursday’s weapons tests appear to represent the firepower component of that broader effort.

North Korea has ramped up fortification work near the Military Demarcation Line inside the DMZ, including the installation of barbed-wire fencing and preparations for mine-laying operations. South Korea’s Defense Ministry on Monday called the activity a violation of the armistice agreement that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War.

Earlier this week, Pyongyang also commissioned its first 5,000-ton destroyer, the Choe Hyon, which Kim said is armed with nuclear-capable missiles. Images released by state media appeared to show missile launchers and radar systems resembling those found on Russian warships, prompting speculation that Pyongyang has received technical assistance from Moscow.

North Korea has deployed troops, artillery and weapons to support Russia’s war in Ukraine and is widely believed to be receiving financial support and advanced military technology in return.

While South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has sought to ease tensions with North Korea since taking office last year, he has also called for strengthening Seoul’s military capabilities in response to Pyongyang’s expanding weapons programs.

On Friday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry unveiled a plan to rapidly expand the military’s drone and counter-drone capabilities, citing lessons from modern conflicts and North Korea’s growing military cooperation with Moscow.

“Since North Korea is currently receiving technology transfer from Russia, we decided that we urgently need to proactively respond to various changes in the war operation environment,” Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said at a press briefing.

The plan calls for acquiring 20,000 low-cost reconnaissance and loitering drones by 2030 while accelerating the deployment of homegrown K-Lucas long-range suicide drones. It also includes expanded counter-drone capabilities, including laser weapons, high-power microwave systems and interceptor drones designed to defeat low-cost aerial threats.

As part of the strategy, South Korea aims to train 500,000 “drone warriors” across the army, navy, air force and marines. Ahn said drones should become “a universal means of combat” across the armed forces, with every soldier eventually able to operate them “like a second personal weapon.”

A hospital has launched an investigation after the medical details of a child seriously injured in a crocodile pit were accessed by up to 40 members of staff.

The three-year-old boy, who is now in a stable condition at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, was attacked in the enclosure at Johnsons of Old Hurst near Huntingdon.

Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) said it was exploring if there were legitimate reasons for the records to be accessed and it had referred itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

“Where any member of staff is found to have accessed patient records without legitimate clinical or operational reasons we take robust disciplinary action,” it added.

Officers said they were called to the zoo at 13:34 BST on 18 June.

Police said the boy, who was from Cambridgeshire and visiting the zoo with his family, sustained serious injuries “while in the enclosure” and was pulled out by members of staff.

A 30-year-old man from Norfolk was subsequently arrested and bailed on suspicion of attempted murder.

For a long time, the lifestyles and foibles of the modest bourgeoisie were a mainstay of art-house cinema, with urbane, upscale audiences happy to turn out to see versions of their own lives depicted on the screen. But more recently, as ideas about what middle age looks like have shifted, along with the changing demographics of viewers, these films have largely disappeared. Which is what makes the seriocomic “The Invite” feel both fresh and something of a throwback — a movie for those who worry about losing their edge.

Directed by Olivia Wilde, “The Invite” was a clear standout when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and now arrives in theaters as one of the best dramas of the year so far. It feels daring for how it wants to actually examine the emotional costs of contemporary grown-up life, bringing wincing laughs of recognition.

The film begins with married couple Angela and Joe, played by Wilde and Seth Rogen, checking back in at their home in San Francisco at the end of the day. He has been at the teaching job he resents and she has been frantically preparing for the dinner party she may not have told him about. Their daughter is away at a sleepover for the evening and it seems they no longer fully know how to relate to each other. As they bicker and jab, their quiet dissatisfaction with their lives stops being so quiet.

Angela has invited over their neighbors from the apartment upstairs, who they do not know well and who often have loud sex. That couple, Piña and Hawk, played by Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, seems more assured, self-possessed and adventurous, the kind of people you can absent-mindedly invent stories about, assuming their lives are much cooler than your own.

Things go in ways both expected and unexpected, the two couples warily feeling each other out as they wait to spring their own private agendas. Over the course of the evening, things will be alternately tense, flirty, vulnerable and revelatory as surprisingly little food is eaten. (Other substances get ingested instead.)

An adaptation of Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film “Sentimental,” the screenplay is credited to Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. In an unusual step, the script was further workshopped and developed with the cast during rehearsals. Rogen came up with some of the biggest laugh lines and Norton wrote the deeply earnest monologue he delivers late in the film. (The popular Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel is also credited as a consultant.)

This American version expands upon the characters more than Gay’s original film while consistently returning to the disappointment of Angela and Joe’s lives in terms both big and small. Neither of them are the people they once thought they might become. Whether two people who are each unhappy can make it as a couple becomes the overriding theme of the film.

This is Wilde’s third movie as a director and it is, by far, her most cohesive and accomplished, both contained and expansive. Her debut, 2019’s charming end-of-high-school tale “Booksmart,” had a throw-everything-at-the-wall quality, as if she wanted to get out every idea and try every trick in case she never got another chance to direct. Wilde’s follow-up, the 2022 psychodrama “Don’t Worry Darling,” became mired in behind-the-scenes gossip and tabloid speculation that overshadowed what was intended as a stylized portrait of female rage and discontent.

Her latest fulfills and exceeds the promise of those earlier movies. Shot on 35mm film by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, the action of “The Invite” is almost entirely confined to Angela and Joe’s apartment, which thanks to a recent renovation has plenty of rooms to explore. All four players are exceptional in their roles, playing smartly off their screen personas while exploring the nuances of the characters and their intersecting dynamics.

Wilde’s Angela is expressive and antic; Rogen’s Joe is sullen and snarky. Cruz is alluring and watchful, while Norton turns out to be the film’s secret weapon. He has a low-key comic energy and helps guide the story through a few of its trickier emotional turns. At one point he simply rises from behind a couch and it plays like a punchline.

Skip the next two paragraphs if you want to hold onto the film’s purest pleasures. Those noises from upstairs have been Piña and Hawk hosting group sex parties and they are now cruising Angela and Joe for some extramarital couples’ fun. Here, the movie pivots from passive-aggressive party conversation into farce, as Angela and Joe try to process the idea anyone else might find them desirable, as they have long since given up on seeing themselves in that way.

Wilde in particular lights up during this section, Angela’s mind racing at possibilities she never considered for herself while fumbling over the practicalities of protocols and just how this would work. Before pushing the film into its final forlorn section, the excitement that something sexy might happen charges the actors. It is very likely that streams of Sade’s seductive “By Your Side” will skyrocket.

But the focus stays very much on the struggles of married life. One of the biggest strengths of “The Invite” is the way it keeps evolving as the night progresses so it never feels claustrophobic or repetitive. There is a sense of visual invention and imagination to the film that continues all the way through, such as a moment when Wilde crouches down to check on a doomed soufflé in the oven and addresses the camera directly, looking up as if talking to Rogen. The viewer is frequently placed in an adjacent POV to the different characters, as if you are there in the room too.

The film has a propulsive rhythm to it, a relentlessness, even as Wilde and editors Yorgos Mavropsaridis and Anthony Boys know when to ease off the throttle and take it easy for a bit. The film breathes in a dynamic way, the last few beats taking a startling turn toward a somber wistfulness. The ending is just enigmatic enough to have audiences talking it through as they make their way out of the theater.

The end credits include a handwritten dedication, “For Diane,” a nod to Diane Keaton. The live-wire wit and idiosyncratic verve that she embodied in “Reds” and “Something’s Gotta Give” are very much on display here. Early in the story, Norton dryly notes, “We love a contentious environment.” Thanks to Wilde’s confident direction and the ensemble’s unpredictable performances, audiences will too.

June 25 (Asia Today) — South Korea is preparing to conduct the fifth launch of its homegrown Nuri rocket in September as the government moves to expand launch infrastructure and accommodate growing commercial demand.

Taeseog Oh, administrator of the Korea AeroSpace Administration, said Wednesday that the agency plans to convene a launch management committee in early August to set the final launch date.

“At this point, we expect the launch to take place in September,” Oh said during a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Sacheon, about 190 miles southeast of Seoul.

Assembly of the rocket’s individual stages is expected to be completed this week. Full assembly of the three-stage launch vehicle is scheduled to begin next week.

After the fifth launch, the agency plans to begin upgrading the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Jeolla Province, which has handled South Korea’s major space launches.

“The supplementary work required under the Naro Space Center modernization project is moving forward,” Oh said. “The project is currently undergoing a preliminary feasibility review, and work is expected to begin next year.”

The agency is also planning a second national space center to meet an expected increase in government and commercial launches and support future launch vehicles.

Oh said South Korea plans to begin the second space center project in 2028 and establish infrastructure capable of supporting reusable launch vehicles by the mid-2030s.

“A reusable launch vehicle requires not only a launch site but also a landing site,” Oh said. “By the mid-2030s, we intend to secure future-oriented launch infrastructure capable of operating reusable vehicles.”

The agency began accepting applications Monday from local governments seeking to host the center. A final candidate site is expected to be selected in October.

Oh said some South Korean companies have reported difficulty securing launch slots from U.S. companies such as SpaceX because of rising global demand.

“We will work to establish conditions in which satellites developed domestically can be launched aboard our own launch vehicles,” he said.

The agency also plans to upgrade the existing Naro Space Center while developing the second facility.

The expansion is intended to support more frequent satellite launches, newly developed launch vehicles and the reusable rocket South Korea aims to develop by 2035.

Oh also emphasized the need to increase government investment as the country seeks to shift toward NewSpace, an industry model driven more heavily by private companies.

The government is reviewing the agency’s budget proposal for next year.

“The government recognizes the importance of the aerospace budget, and we will work to expand it,” Oh said.

“In South Korea, even the government-led Old Space model was not sufficiently developed,” he said. “Government investment and private-sector participation must occur simultaneously for an aerospace industry ecosystem to take shape.”

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260625010008848

Caracas, June 26, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan casualties from Thursday’s double earthquake continue to rise amid ongoing search and rescue efforts to remove survivors from flattened buildings.

On Thursday night, Venezuelan authorities reported 235 people dead and over 4,300 injured. There are 250 buildings with serious damage or completely collapsed. 

The death toll is expected to rise sharply with unofficial missing people databases compiling more than 40,000 unaccounted persons. However, the figure has steadily decreased in recent hours, while organizers have also pledged to remove duplicate filings.

Social media channels have been flooded with reports of missing friends and relatives.

The Caribbean nation was struck by 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes in quick succession on Wednesday. The tremors were concentrated in central and northern states, including the capital. Coastal La Guaira State was the worst affected, with government officials reporting over 100 collapsed buildings.

Search and rescue efforts continued on Thursday as civil protection teams and volunteers rushed to locate survivors and remove them from under the rubble. The Venezuelan government called on the private sector to collaborate with heavy machinery. Several areas of La Guaira are also hard to reach.

Venezuelan grassroots organizations also mobilized, organizing the collection of food, clothes and medicines for displaced families and setting up makeshift shelters.

Videos on social media showed the Venezuelan armed forces likewise moving equipment and mobile surgical units to the coastal area. Commercial flights to and from Simón Bolívar International Airport airport in La Guaira, the main air hub serving Caracas, have been temporarily suspended following damage to a major runway and the air traffic control tower.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez visited the most affected areas on Thursday afternoon and oversaw ongoing efforts to deploy heavy machinery and provide food and shelter for displaced families.

“We express our support and solidarity to all those affected and we hope to find as many survivors as possible,” she told reporters. “We are working around the clock and we have called for international assistance.”

Venezuelan efforts were reinforced on Thursday night with the arrival of emergency teams from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. Additional brigades are reportedly on the way from Colombia, Brazil, and the US, among others.

Alongside search and rescue teams, the US Department of War announced a deployment of logistical support assets.

In a statement, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the deployment of the amphibious transport ship USS Fort Lauderdale and the littoral combat ship USS Billings alongside Hercules transport aircraft. Marine Corps Major General Kevin J. Jarrard landed on Thursday night and will reportedly oversee the efforts.

The Trump administration is providing $150 million in humanitarian aid to be channeled through “assistance” partners including Catholic Relief Services and multiple UN agencies.

Washington has, however, opted to maintain its punishing economic sanctions regime against the South American country. On Thursday, the US Treasury Department issued General License 60 (GL60) authorizing transactions related to earthquake relief efforts. However, Venezuelan assets abroad, including bank accounts, remain frozen, meaning that aid efforts will still face hurdles or require US approval.

Caracas has also been unable to access around $4.8 billion in gold held by the Bank of England as well as nearly $5 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights issued during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Since January, the Trump administration has issued multiple sanctions waivers to allow Western corporations to secure favorable energy and mining agreements with the acting Rodríguez government. Transactions between Caracas and its historic allies in China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran continue to be prohibited by the waivers and subject to secondary sanctions. The White House has likewise seized control of Venezuelan export revenues, disbursing a portion back to Caracas at US officials’ discretion.

Edited and with additional reporting by Lucas Koerner in Caracas.

Netflix viewers will want to add this 2022 thriller to their watch lists

Fans say this gripping thriller ruined their sleeping schedules.

Netflix viewers have been completely hooked on Harlan Coben’s latest drama, and for good reason. I Will Find You landed on the streaming platform on June 18 and has already climbed to Number 1 on the most-watched TV show charts.

It centres on David Burroughs, a father wrongfully imprisoned for his young son Matthew’s murder. But when he discovers Matthew may be alive, David is forced to escape and uncover the truth.

The show only has eight episodes, which many viewers have already devoured over the last week.

Those on the hunt for another bingeable crime drama should look no further than Black Bird, streaming now on Apple TV+.

Starring Taron Egerton, the six-episode drama was inspired by the real story of Jimmy Keene. Once an aspiring sports star, Jimmy’s life takes a turn when he starts dealing drugs. He gets caught and is unexpectedly sentenced to 10 years in prison on drug and weapon charges.

But Jimmy is soon gets a life-changing offer from the FBI: he must befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall and coax a confession out of him to help find the bodies of over a dozen women. If successful, Jimmy would have his criminal record wiped.

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The drama dives into the dangers Jimmy faces along the way, as well as convicted killer Hall’s (played by Paul Walter Hauser) chilling crimes.

Critics and casual viewers were completely captivated by the series when it first hit screens in 2022. It bagged a stellar 98% score from Rotten Tomatoes reviewers, alongside a slightly less-generous 95% rating from audiences.

These figures are significantly higher than I Will Find You, which has earned a 60% critical rating and 65% audience score.

Raving about Black Bird, one fan said: “It was a gripping thrill ride from start to finish. Beautifully acted and very well written. The worst part about the show was that it ended!”

A second praised: “Chilling but surprisingly heroic true-crime drama! The tension never lets up, pulled along by an incredible story and great performances.”

While a third fan added: “I literally watched all six episodes in a row because I needed to know what happened. It’s gripping, intense, and at some points I just wanted it all to be over because the psychological pressure on Jimmy becomes almost too much even I felt it— but in a way that keeps you hooked.”

And a final viewer gushed: “As a guy who thought he check out one episode, Black Bird absolutely wrecked my sleep schedule—in the best way.”

Black Bird is streaming on Apple TV.

June 25 (Asia Today) — A South Korean civic leader proposed creating a satellite communications network modeled on SpaceX’s Starlink to provide outside information to people in North Korea.

Jang Man-soon, chairman of the Committee for Ten Million Separated Families and a co-chair of Citizens’ Solidarity for ONE KOREA, called the proposed system “Korea Link.”

“If we place a system similar to Starlink over North Korea, we could inform North Koreans who have access to approximately 8.5 million mobile phones about the realities and conditions in South Korea,” Jang said during an interview Thursday at the National Assembly in Seoul.

The figure was Jang’s estimate and could not be independently confirmed.

Jang said the network could communicate the importance of freedom to North Korean residents and correct historical accounts and information distorted by the North Korean government.

He said it could also help North Koreans develop pride in the goal of Korean unification.

Jang argued that a new means of communication is necessary because traditional methods of reaching North Koreans, including radio broadcasts and border loudspeakers, have become increasingly restricted.

He said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “two hostile states” policy is partly intended to isolate residents from outside information.

“North Korea is at a disadvantage in politics, economics, culture and military power, so the government is trying to block outside information from reaching its people,” Jang said.

Jang also discussed the declining prospects for families separated by the division of the Korean Peninsula and the 1950-53 Korean War.

“The wish of separated families is no longer simply to reunite with relatives,” he said. “It is to set foot in their hometowns.”

Many first-generation separated family members are now in their 90s, and few still have living parents in North Korea, he said.

“Their greatest wish is to visit their hometowns before they die,” Jang said.

He warned that public awareness of separated families is fading with each generation.

Jang called for expanded unification education for young people, opportunities to hear testimony from first-generation separated family members and educational visits to areas near the inter-Korean border.

“The reality is that only about half of the public now believes unification is necessary,” he said. “We are preparing various activities, including youth education, testimony from first-generation separated families and visits to border regions.”

Jang urged the South Korean government to participate in practical projects intended to support North Korean residents and preserve awareness of freedom and unification.

“If we view the people of North Korea as members of the same nation, I hope the government will participate in the practical plans we are pursuing,” he said.

“We must work together to establish a foundation that will allow future generations to understand the meaning of genuine freedom in the Republic of Korea.”

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260625010009002

The Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force have fully abandoned an attempt to axe the acquisition of E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft, and to use E-2D Hawkeyes to help fill the resulting gap. In something of a twist, the Pentagon has proposed cutting U.S. Navy E-2D purchases, as well as raiding a classified Air Force account, to keep the E-7 program going. The House Appropriations Committee has now pushed back on the E-2D part of that plan. The back-and-forth underscores the critical importance of airborne early warning and control aircraft and the strain on existing U.S. fleets.

Defense News drew specific attention to the new jostling over funding for the E-7 in a report earlier today. Breaking Defense had been among the first to report the basic points yesterday. The House Appropriations Committee had released the details in a report accompanying a draft defense spending bill for the 2027 Fiscal Year, which we will come back to in a moment.

To recap quickly, roughly a year ago, the Pentagon and the Air Force disclosed their intention to axe the E-7 program, which had suffered delays and cost overruns, and acquire additional E-2Ds as an interim gap-filler. Questions about the future survivability of the Wedgetail were also raised. The Air Force’s long-term goal was then and still is now to eventually push most air moving-target indicator (AMTI) tasks into space, though that is still years away from truly becoming a reality. Congress subsequently intervened to save the Wedgetail, appropriating billions for the effort in Fiscal Year 2026. The E-7 was again missing from the Air Force’s proposed 2027 Fiscal Year budget, which raised the prospect of a new battle with Congress.

Top Pentagon and Air Force officials subsequently said that the viewpoint on the Wedgetail had fundamentally changed, and submitted an amendment to the budget request to include funding for the program. Per a memo earlier this month from Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the White House, this was done in two ways. $898,549,000 was taken from “Other Procurement, Air Force” section of that service’s budget proposal, while another $650,549,000 came out of “Aircraft Procurement, Navy.”

The combined $1,549,098,000 was moved into the “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Air Force” account. According to Vought’s memo, the funding would go toward “priority requirement to deliver two E-7 Wedgetail prototype aircraft and continue Engineering Manufacturing and Development activities for a program of record.”

The Air Force already has seven E-7s on order now, including the two jets to support rapid prototyping efforts. It is unclear when the service expects to begin flying Wedgetails operationally. Before the attempt to cancel the program, the target date for initial operational capability had already slipped from 2027 to 2032. It should be noted here that variants of the E-7 are already in service in Australia, South Korea, and Turkey, and that the United Kingdom is set to field a fleet of Wedgetails, too.

The report the House Appropriations Committee released yesterday included important additional context about the latest funding plans.

“While the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 did not include funding for the E–7 Wedgetail program, the Secretary of the Air Force and Secretary of Defense testified before the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that they support this critical platform and have submitted a budget amendment to the Office of Management and Budget to restore funding for the platform,” it explained. “The shift in mindset at the Department of Defense translated to requested transfers from the Special Update Program in Other Procurement, Air Force, and the E–2D program in Aircraft Procurement, Navy for a total investment of $1,549,098,000 for E–7 in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Air Force in fiscal year 2027.”

“While the Committee wholly supports the E–7 program and funding realignment, the Committee also restored the E–2D program to six aircraft for fiscal year 2027,” the report added. “The Committee understands the operational necessity of the E–2D platform; the complementary nature of the E–2D and E–7; and believes that more aircraft, not fewer, are necessary to support our warfighters now and in the future.”

It is not immediately clear whether the draft spending plan that the House Appropriations Committee has now put forward still includes the full $1,549,098,000 for the E-7 program, as well as the restoration of funding for the E-2D purchases. The memo from OMB had stressed that its intent in shifting funding around was not to add to the roughly $1.5 trillion topline for its proposed 2027 Fiscal Year defense budget. Congress can, of course, appropriate additional funds as it sees fit, and often does.

Regardless, this new debate over how and where to find funding for the E-7 highlights larger issues surrounding airborne early warning capacity within the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.

“The conflict in Iran has reinforced the need for the Air Force to maintain a credible airborne battle management capability, currently being met with the Air Force’s E–3 Airborne Warning and Control System and the Navy’s E–2D Hawkeye programs,” the House Appropriations Committee’s report also notes. “As the E–3 is set to retire, the E–7 Wedgetail will serve as [a] modern replacement for lost battle management capability, commensurate and interoperable with assets already being utilized by key allies.”

This is all true, as TWZ has previously stressed in detail, long before the latest conflict with Iran erupted in February. Airborne early warning and control is absolutely vital to the prosecution of modern air operations, and even more so now in an age of exploding drone and cruise missile threats. The substantial deployment of E-3s to Saudi Arabia was one of the clearest indicators that a major campaign against Iran was increasingly imminent. The same had been true about the lead-up to the operation to capture ex-Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Not mentioned in the report, however, is the Air Force’s slashing of the E-3 fleet in recent years, the service’s repeated deferral of any plans to acquire a replacement for those aircraft, and the loss of Sentry on the ground in an Iranian attack in March. The strain on the Air Force’s E-3s has been readily apparent for years now.

The House Appropriations Committee report also leaves out any broader context about the planned E-2D purchases for Fiscal Year 2027. When it released its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 back in 2024, the Navy had no plans to order more Hawkeyes, at least over the next five years. In its 2026 Fiscal Year budget request, the service asked for funding for four E-2Ds, presumably as part of the plan to cancel the E-7. Congress subsequently appropriated funding for three Hawkeyes in that fiscal cycle.

When it rolled out its latest budget request earlier this year, the Navy outlined all-new plans to buy 12 E-2Ds – six in Fiscal Year 2027, two in Fiscal Year 2028, and four in Fiscal Year 2029 – explicitly “to replenish accelerated service life burn down of existing force structure due to Overland Airborne Early Warning (AEW) tasking.” This underscores operational strain on the Hawkeye fleet, which can only have been further added to by operations in relation to Iran over the past few months. This also points to E-2Ds supplementing E-3s in providing overland coverage.

Just yesterday, the White House sent Congress a separate supplemental funding request for nearly $90 billion, primarily to help cover various costs associated with the war against Iran.

How exactly the E-7 program gets funded in Fiscal Year 2027, as well as what happens to the plans to order more E-2Ds, remains to be seen. The House Appropriations Committee’s draft defense spending plan could still evolve in various ways in the coming weeks and months, and will need to be reconciled with companion legislation making its way through the Senate. Once Congress passes the bill, President Donald Trump will still need to sign off on it, too.

It’s also worth noting that other potential options for providing additional airborne early warning and control capacity in the interim are emerging.

What is clear is that both the E-3 Sentry and E-2D Hawkeye fleets remain as critical as ever, but have been even more stressed by recent operations against Iran, with new E-7s still years away from entering service.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

AFTER years of writing about politics, technology and the chaos of the modern world, Matt Bellamy wanted something different for Muse’s tenth album.

“The theme was to get back into mystery a little bit,” he says. “The mysteries of the universe, mysteries of spirituality and returning to the rawness of the unknown.”

Inspired by the 1977 Wow! Signal — an unexplained radio signal from space once seen as possible evidence of alien intelligence — and a turbulent period in his personal life, the record finds Bellamy searching for meaning on both a cosmic and personal level.

“I’ve turned completely apolitical,” he admits. “It’s weird when you go through things in your personal life — the news just becomes an annoying noise.

“When your life’s going great, you get drawn into the news and what’s going on in the world.

“But when you’re actually going through something yourself, the news and politics just become a headache.

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“I’m a little bit gloriously out of touch. I’ve normally been so in touch, my finger’s always been on the pulse, and a lot of the albums I’ve made talk about the rise of populism. But this album and my life for the last year-and-a-half has been different.”

Bellamy has split from US model Elle Evans, his wife of six years, who he quietly separated from in October 2025.

“I’ve been through a separation involving two young kids,” he says carefully.

“I can’t really talk about the reasons behind it, but it was not your normal run-of-the-mill situation. I became a full-time single parent for a period of eight months.

“She’s doing a lot better now and she’s getting better, but it was an unusual situation to go through. It made writing the album so much easier.

“It’s hard to talk about what’s behind the album because I don’t throw people under the bus. And I don’t want my kids to grow up reading stuff.”

Bellamy, 48, is in London for band rehearsals and when we meet, he’s just back from the gym in a bid to shape up for the tour.

“I’m not that old,” he laughs. “But I met Mick Jagger at a party and I went straight in on the fitness. I was, like, ‘What is your secret?!’ He said when he was in his 30s, he started working out a few weeks before a tour.

“By the time he got to his 40s, he was working out for the same length as the tour.

“If it was a three-month tour, he’d work out for three months before. And by the time he got to his 50s, he was just working out all the time, all year round.”

The 1977 Wow! Signal fascinates Bellamy because it remains unexplained and happened around the time the band members were born.

“The Wow! Signal is probably, to this day, still the most interesting signal that’s ever been seen in space,” he explains.

“It happened in 1977, which is basically within 12 months of all the band being born.

“Chris [Wolstenholme] and I were born in 1978 and Dom [Howard] in 1977, so I just thought it was funny that this little Wow! Signal appeared around the time we came into this world.

“I think this album was really me letting go a little bit and engaging with the unknown.

“What is this thing inside me, or all of us, that wants to not be alone? I don’t mean with a partner or friends. I mean this thing in the universe. At the moment, we appear to be so alone, and we have this drive, which you see through religion and science.

“Behind all of it, we just don’t want to be alone.”

That search drew Bellamy back to one of his formative influences.

“I grew up watching Contact, the Jodie Foster film from the 90s,” he says. “I used to read Carl Sagan’s books and that film really stayed with me.”

It has also led him into the world of AI.

He adds: “I’ve spent time in the tech world, in California’s Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, and I had some involvement in that world.

“I went to a private talk where Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) was talking off the record about his thoughts on AI.

“I saw (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg talking about it, too, and I was interested in what they were saying.

“When you really hear them, they know they’re ushering in an intelligence which is beyond us. They start to see it as, ‘Well, we’re just kind of messengers bringing in this thing that is going to be more intelligent than us’.”

Bellamy says he enjoys asking AI philosophical questions — and that is where Hexagons began.

“That’s actually my favourite thing to do with AI, and where I got the idea for Hexagons,” he says. “And again, I think that is part of the same human condition.

“Whether it be religion, looking for aliens in space or trying to bring in artificial intelligence, it’s kind of all the same thing.”

Epic, organ-led Be With You was the first song that made the album’s direction clear.

“You can look at it as a love song, or you can look at it as a religious song, almost,” he says.

“I’m not a religious person, but I decided to play the song on a church organ.

“I went to the biggest church organ in Los Angeles, so the song was recorded in this church-like setting.

“I liked the idea that it could be perceived as searching for alien life, or searching for alien intelligence of some kind, or God. That was the first song that felt right, lyrically and musically.

“There are a lot of personal elements in the album that are quite unusual for me.”

Bellamy says the album came from a difficult period, but that made the music flow.

“This was actually the easiest album for me to write and make for 15-plus years,” he says.

“Space Debris is probably the biggest reveal of what I went through, especially lyrically at the end,” he says.

“It’s the rawest moment of explaining what really happened over the last year. I like using space analogies — space debris, things breaking up and falling apart in gravity — to describe the chaos and feeling in your life.

“It also fits the theme of connecting this search into outer space for a higher power with the chaos and feeling in your own life.

“I hope the fans don’t ask me to play that one live.”

If Space Debris is the album’s rawest confession, Bellamy says it also opened the door to bigger questions running through the record.

“What I went through threw me off into the unknown,” he explains.

“When things go wrong in your life, that’s when you’re most likely to seek meaning or search for answers.

“In my case, it was a blend between religious thought, alien intelligence and AI.

“I don’t know what it is, but you’re searching for this higher power to guide you, or to give you answers.

“Music became my catharsis. It became my way to understand my situation.

“Making this album gave me flashbacks to these periods where music was my everything.

“It wasn’t something I had to do to pay the bills. It wasn’t something I had to do for the record label. It was something that I had to do for myself.

“That’s why I think this album is probably, since the 2000s anyway, the most raw, emotionally raw and honest album I’ve done.”

Bellamy says despite the personal nature of the album, Chris and Dom were central to every song.

“I’ve always been in charge of the lyrics, and I’m the leader in terms of the concepts,” he says.

“But musically, this is the most equal album we’ve had for a long time.”

The Wow! Signal includes some of the best tracks Muse have made in years.

Cryogen has already been compared to early Muse, while Shimmering Scars shows off the vulnerability in Bellamy’s voice.

“Cryogen is deliberately Muse from 2001,” he says.

With Shimmering Scars, he explains: “I felt like I needed to do five or six takes, so we could edit the best bits in.

“But producer Dan Lancaster was, like, ‘Nah, let it be raw, let it be weird.’

“To me, it sounded a bit off — not quite what I wanted it to be. But he was, like, ‘No, that’s the whole point. That sounds a little bit raw’.

“This is the first album where we said, ‘Let’s give Dan a go at producing it’. The last two albums were self-produced, so it was nice to hand the reins to someone else.

“He did a great job keeping us towards that more raw, vulnerable state in the performances.”

Bellamy believes AI is pushing younger listeners back towards authenticity.

“My stepson with Kate [Hudson], Ryder, is 22 and he’s just graduated from NYU,” he says. “Then Bing is 14, and I’ve got the two little ones as well.

“Having a boy who’s 22 and a boy who’s 14 means I get a real sense of what’s going on in their generation.

“I think that generation is turning away from pop, hip-hop and dance a little bit. They’re seeking raw, chaotic-sounding music.

“I think the reason why is because that generation is drowned by AI. AI is dominating everything they do, from schoolwork to music and the arts.

“I could be wrong but from what I sense from them, they’re gravitating towards what they know to be real.”

Recent single Nightshift Superstar was the band wanting to go French disco.

“I love Daft Punk, Justice and ABBA,” Bellamy says. “I went to see ABBA’s show and I loved it. They’re some of the best songs ever written. So after that and seeing Justice in Paris, I was, like, ‘How do we do that? Let’s just go there’.

“The song has a late-70s feel but with a more cutting-edge tone associated with modern dance music.

“But the good thing about it is that it really is us playing.”

One surprise on The Wow! Signal is Hush — a collaboration with pop star Ellie Goulding.

“Ellie was in the studio next-door, working with Marshmello on something,” says the singer.

“We have known each other for years and always wanted to try and do something together.

“Muse fans will read online that we’ve done a song with Ellie Goulding and think it’s going to be a pop song.

“But it’s got one of the biggest, heaviest riffs we’ve done in a long time. To me, it sounds a bit like New Born or something from 2001.

“The verses get a little bit poppy, I guess, but the main riff is pretty hard rock, so I thought it was quite fun to get Ellie’s voice over that kind of heaviness.

“I think it’ll be a nice surprise.”

Bellamy says the song came together by chance.

“This was an experiment,” he says. “It’s the only song on the album that really involves multiple writers.

“Ellie popped her head in towards the end of the day, at about 11pm, and went, ‘Hey, what are you guys up to?’ We played the song and she said, ‘Oh, can I sing on it?’ We tweaked the lyrics and turned it into a duet.

“It came completely by chance. It wasn’t planned to be a collaboration.”

Bellamy says the reaction from Muse fans to the new songs has “been the best we’ve had for at least 15 years” and he’s looking forward to getting back on the road following their special Brixton Academy show in April to launch the album.

The show marked Muse’s first appearance at the venue in 25 years, just before the release of Origin of Symmetry.

“I didn’t realise it had been so long,” Bellamy says.

“I remember the last time we played there, it was around the second album and I was so nervous because it was the biggest show Muse had ever done.

“We got to debut Be With You for the first time, and we had a great time.”

Visually, Bellamy says the full Wow! Signal world will come to life properly when Muse return to Europe in November.

“The American tour starts with what I’d call a medium-level production,” he says.

“But when we come to Europe, including London and Manchester in November, that’s when we’re going to ramp it up to a really sophisticated production.

“I think there’ll be a lot of geometry, a lot of hexagons, shapes and lasers, and strange, interesting visuals.

“Hopefully we’ll build the spaceship you see on the album cover in the arena.”

• The album The Wow! Signal is out today.

The Wow! Signal

June 25 (UPI) — Authorities in northern Canada on Thursday confirmed that three people are dead after a plane responding to forest fires in the Northwest Territories crashed the night prior.

NWT Fire said responders were able to access the crash site on Thursday and confirmed the fatalities.

“Our organization is grieving alongside the families, friends, colleagues and the broader wildfire community as we process this unthinkable loss,” it said in a statement.

“We will honor those who lost their lives in the line of duty at the appropriate time and in accordance with the wishes of their families.”

The bird dog aircraft, with three people aboard, crashed Wednesday evening near Fort Simpson where it was deployed along with an airtanker group to fight a nearby wildfire.

Though the identities of the victims have not been made public, Yellowknife-based Buffalo Airways confirmed one was an employee.

“It is with heavy hearts that we confirm the loss of one of our aerial firefighting pilots while actioning fire west of Fort Simpson,” Buffalo Airways said in a statement.

Buffalo Airways said the involved plane was a Turbo Commander 690 aircraft operating as a bird dog during the wildfire operations.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada announced in a statement that it is deploying investigators to the scene.

“My thoughts are with the families of the pilot and two firefighters who died in the plane crash near Fort Simpson,” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said in a statement.

“Protecting Canadians from wildfires requires profound sacrifice and courage. We owe them our deepest gratitude.”

Officials were responding to 19 forest fires throughout the territory Thursday.

The aircraft involved in the Wednesday evening crash was supporting wildfire suppression efforts on FS009-26, a lightning-caused fire located in the Marten Hills area.

Officials said Thursday night that the fire was about 100 hectares and responders were working to suppress its growth. It presented no risk to communities, infrastructure or buildings, they said.

Brent crude rises after cargo ship comes under attack in key waterway.

Oil prices have jumped after the United Nations maritime agency called off its planned evacuation of ships stranded around the Strait of Hormuz following an attack on a cargo vessel in the waterway.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose as much as 4 percent on Thursday after the International Maritime Organization paused its evacuation plan amid renewed violence in the strait.

Brent futures for August delivery stood at $74.89 per barrel as of 02:00 GMT, after earlier dropping below $72.48, their closing price the day before the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran.

After dropping sharply following the US and Iran’s signing of a memorandum of understanding on ending the war last week, the price of Brent currently stands at about 3 percent above its pre-war level.

Asian markets opened lower on Friday, with key indices in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan seeing steep losses.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 and Seoul’s Kospi both fell more than 3 percent in morning trading, while the Taiex dropped about 1 percent.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index was down about 1 percent.

The latest attack in the strait, through which about one-fifth of global oil and liquified natural gas supplies transit in peacetime, dealt a blow to hopes for a return to normal shipping in the region after a recent resurgence in traffic.

On Wednesday, 70 vessels transited the waterway, a more than twofold increase from the previous day and the highest daily figure since March 1, according to ship tracking platforms MarineTraffic and Kpler.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said on Thursday that a cargo vessel reported being struck by an “unknown projectile” on its starboard side while attempting to cross the strait near the Omani coast.

Multiple media outlets, including The New York Times, CBS News and the Reuters news agency, cited unnamed US officials as saying the attack had been carried out by Iran.

Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which claims the right to regulate shipping in the strait, said after the attack that any vessel attempting to use routes outside its designated “framework” would not be guaranteed safe passage.

“The consequences arising from passage through unauthorized routes shall be the responsibility of the owner, operator, and vessel commander,” the authority said on X.

June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta in Singapore, said the attack was a reminder to markets of the fragility of peace in the strait amid the tenuous US-Iran ceasefire.

“There is a pressing need for tankers to enter and offload the high crude stocks from onshore tanks in order for normal production to resume again,” Goh told Al Jazeera.

“Thus, security of the passageway is paramount to recover the lost supply.”

Emmerdale’s Charity Dingle has confessed all about her baby lie, Dr Todd’s blackmail and sexual assault to partner Mackenzie Boyd in dramatic scenes on the ITV soap

Emmerdale’s Charity Dingle confessed all to Mackenzie Boyd in the latest episode of the ITV soap. The Woolpack landlady, who has been played by Emma Atkins, certainly has had a lot to deal with in recent weeks and finally told her partner everything after weeks of hiding away and suffering a breakdown.

Last year, Charity tried become a surrogate for her granddaughter Sarah only to find out that she was naturally pregnant by Ross Barton. Still, she kept this all a secret and Sarah believed that all had gone to plan with the surrogacy.

Unfortunately, Dr Caitlin Todd, who had relentlessly bullied Sarah’s partner Jacob when she was in charge of him at the hospital, found out the truth and used it to blackmail Charity into handing over money. This all culminated in harrowing scenes where she sexually assaulted a drunken Charity.

Earlier this week, newcomer Serena Sugden, played by former Wicked star Casey Al-Shaqsy, made Charity see that she needed to expose Todd, even if that meant revealing everything to her family and on Thursday night’s episode, Charity bravely faced the music.

Having candidly informed Mack that Sarah’s baby was the product of a one night stand she had with Ross, Mack stormed out and looked set to tell all to Charity’s granddaughter. But when he returned home, he told Charity that he couldn’t do it.

It was then that Charity told Mack about Dr Todd’s blackmail against her after she discovered the truth about the child in question, and then disclosed that she had been the victim of rape at the hands of the retired medic.

Clearly taken aback by the shock revelation, on top of everything else he had heard that day, Mack (Lawrence Robb) calmly told Charity that the only thing they could do now was to go to the police – even after it seemed that Todd had got away with it all when she previously claimed that everything was consensual.

Charity told Mack: “The only way through this is telling the truth and facing the consequences of what I have done. No matter what.”

“I tell Sarah. And then I go back to the police. If I tell the police about the blackmail, it’s going to open a can of worms and that’s gonna drag Sarah into it. I think that girl Serena was right. I have to see this through.”

However, Mack told Charity that telling Sarah that she is not the mother of her baby might not be the best idea just yet, meaning that the secret could stay secret a little while longer – but he was absolutely convinced that she had to “fight” for justice above all else.

He said: “It’s gonna be a lot for everyone to deal with it, so maybe we cross that bridge when we come to it. What matters right now is that you go to the police.”

“I can be angry with you and still be there for you when you need me the most. Charity, I need you to listen to me for a second here because – Dr Todd is not karma. She’s a rapist who took advantage of you when you were vulnerable. So I need you to get out of that way of thinking because it lets her off the hook.

“You’re gonna fight back, you’re gonna go to the police, you’re gonna get them down here and you’re going to tell them absolutely everything.”

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads .

June 25 (UPI) — A cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz was attacked Thursday, prompting officials to halt the evacuation of sailors stranded in the chokepoint by the war.

It was unclear who attacked the cargo ship. According to the British navy’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations office, the vessel was struck on its starboard side by an unknown projectile at about 5:40 p.m. local time. It was about 7 1/2 nautical miles southeast of Dahit, Oman, when it was attacked, it said.

The vessel’s bridge sustained damage, but no casualties or environmental impact were reported.

Following the attack, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization paused its evacuation operation in the Strait of Hormuz.

“I have decided to temporarily pause its implementation in order to reconfirm that the necessary safety guarantees continue to be in place for the ships on our evacuation list and all those in the region,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said in a statement.

The war, which began Feb. 28, left some 11,000 sailors stranded in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy shipping route. The IMO announced the evacuation operation Tuesday, after the United States and Iran agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding that seeks to pave a path to ending the war.

Under the U.N. plan, a number of vessels have already been evacuated.

The vessel struck Thursday was not transiting the Hormuz under the IMO’s evacuation framework, the U.N. agency said.

Though it unclear who was responsible for the attack, the Iran’s U.S.-sanctioned Persian Gulf Strait Authority, newly created by Tehran to oversee and manage the strait, issued an advisory Thursday, stating it is not responsible for the protection of vessels transiting “outside designated routes.”

“Any consequences arising from unauthorized routing shall be the sole responsibility of the vessel owner, charterer and master,” it said.

Control of the strait has been a focus of ongoing U.S. efforts to end the war.

Iran effectively closed the strait after being attacked Feb. 28, causing energy prices to surge and threatened nations with worsening energy crises.

Since then, Iran has attempted to maintain control of the strait and has sought to impose fees on ships that transit it.

The United States is seeking to secure free maritime travel through the strait as part of the MOU. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is currently in the Middle East trying to sell the MOU to allied nations.

However, the Institute for the Study of War said in a report Thursday night that Iran’s alleged attacks and threats directed at vessels in the strait “advance its objective of establishing control over the waterway” as well as “undermine international efforts to guarantee safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Iran is using military threats and economic incentives to try to convince Gulf states to support its efforts to control the strait, but the Gulf states appear to be resisting Iranian pressure at present,” it said.

Former German player’s comments that ‘African football’ is ‘a bit unorthodox sometimes, a bit wild’ sparked controversy.

Even in one of the most joyous moments in his country’s footballing history, Ivory Coast manager Emerse Fae found himself managing sadness over the remarks of a former role model that have sparked debate about potential racist connotations.

Nicolas Pepe’s brace guided the Ivory Coast to a 2-0 win over Curacao and took his nation to their first-ever World Cup knockout phase on Thursday.

But afterwards, Fae was asked to respond to analysis given by former German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger on German public TV ahead of Germany’s 2-1 win over the Ivorians in both teams’ second Group E match in Toronto.

Here is how DW.com characterised what Schweinsteiger said: “Ahead of the Group E clash in Toronto, which Germany won 2-1, Schweinsteiger said in his role as a pundit for German public broadcaster ARD that the Ivorians played ‘African football’, which he characterised as ‘a bit unorthodox sometimes, a bit wild, not quite as tactical.’”

In his response, Fae noted how he once admired the former Bayern Munich man so much that he sometimes was called “Bastian” by his friends.

“I think it’s sad,” said the 42-year-old Fae, who is only several months older than the 41-year-old Schweinsteiger. “He was a very, very good player; a great player.

“I’ve always loved him, personally. As a midfielder, I’ve always liked the way he played, the way he understood football. … So when I heard his comments, I was disappointed, disappointed in the man.

“Because when you know football the way he knows it, it’s odd that you would speak that way, which we could call racist if we were calling a spade a spade, but that’s the way it is.”

Schweinsteiger played parts of 13 seasons for Bayern Munich, helping the German club giants win eight league titles and one UEFA Champions League crown. Internationally, he was a key contributor to Germany’s 2014 World Cup-winning squad.

He has not publicly commented on the remarks in the days since.

On Thursday, Fae’s side got the better of one of the game’s most famous managers, the 78-year-old Dick Advocaat, who, in guiding Curacao, was managing in his third World Cup.

Fae’s group also earned a 1-0 victory to open the tournament against Ecuador, a team that came into this World Cup unbeaten in 19 matches and hailed for its defensive solidity.

“I can’t change the way he talks,” Fae said of Schweinsteiger.

“But all I can do is show on the pitch that Africa is not just the physical game. We are very technical as well, very tactical. And all I can hope is that this was just a clumsy statement, that it wasn’t particularly reflective of what’s in his mind.”