NEWS

While Uefa members are among the richest on the planet, many other nations rely on Fifa funding for basic infrastructure.

While the AFC opposes Infantino’s plan, unlike Uefa it has not threatened to boycott Fifa competitions. AFC members would not be obliged to vote against the proposals.

Rogers Byamukama, of the Ugandan Football Federation, argued any avenue that could lead to more resources for nations like his should be explored.

“First and foremost, you need to understand that football is a very expensive venture, especially on the African continent where the resources are not easy to come by,” he told Newsday on BBC World Service.

“For instance in Uganda, the number of infrastructure projects that have been funded by Fifa from the resources generated by Fifa, especially at the World Cup, both from ticket sales as well as sponsors.

“On top of that, there are many grassroots programmes that have been funded by Fifa, including schools for football.

“From my perspective, any avenue that brings in more resources is good because those resources would be distributed and given to federations, especially on the African continent and that would inspire growth.”

Byamukama acknowledged Uefa’s right to speak out, but suggested its members were not reliant on Fifa funding like many associations in the rest of the world where Infantino remains popular.

In the first two cycles of the Fifa Forward development programme, through to 2022, $2.8bn (£2.08bn) was made available for investment across the 211 member associations.

Fifa Forward 3.0 – covering the years 2023 through to 2026 – has produced a 30% increase in funding.

Fifa has provided a further $5m (£3.7m) for every member association, with another $60m (£44.48m) paid to each confederation for their own projects.

After expanding the men’s World Cup to 48 teams from 32 for the 2026 edition, Fifa is seeking an independent agency to assess an expansion to 64 teams for the 2030 tournament.

The timeline on documents seen by BBC Sport said Fifa would receive agency proposals by 7 August, with a Fifa decision on 14 August. Delivery of analysis by the agency is then scheduled for 11 September.

Some Palestinians in Gaza and Israelis have been giving their reaction to the plan to the BBC.

Tala, an 18-year-old who has been living in a tent in Gaza since her home was destroyed in air strikes, said “every time people hear about a possible ceasefire, we hope that it will finally end”.

“But when these promises are broken, it creates more fear,” she told BBC Newsbeat.

The university student said daily life remains “very challenging”, adding: “Every day comes with a new difficulty, and we are constantly thinking about safety and basic needs.”

“What matters most is stopping the fighting, protecting civilians and setting a new chapter of re-building,” she said.

In Israel Jonny said he “prays” that the ceasefire in Gaza can work. “I don’t see an ending to this cycle, but I pray it’s the case,” he told the BBC.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told CNN that Israel is “looking forward to implementing” the deal, but added: “We have to verify what they [Hamas] are doing, not what they are saying.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the proposed agreement as “the only good news in recent days”.

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the focus must be on implementing the full 20-point peace plan, including “withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza and respect for the ceasefire by all parties”.

He added that conditions “remain appalling” in Gaza and said Israel “must immediately end the unacceptable restrictions on aid”. Israel denies it is restricting the entry of aid.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 73,290 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

Warsaw asserts missile recently made, illustrating Russia’s nightly barrage against Ukraine is draining arsenal.

Poland has summoned the Russian ambassador in protest over a missile incursion into one of its eastern regions.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Friday that the ambassador had been summoned after Warsaw confirmed that the projectile, which landed in the village of Tarnawa Kolonia in the Lublin region on Thursday, was a Russian Kh-101 missile. No casualties or injuries have been reported.

An investigation into the incident suggested that Russia’s weapon stockpiles may be running low as it continues to launch nightly barrages of drones and missiles at Ukraine while its more than four-year war drags on.

“The ambassador was informed of our unequivocal condemnation of hostile actions directed against the security of a sovereign state and its citizens,” Maciej Wewior, spokesman for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told journalists.

“We emphasised that any escalation at the border of the European Union and the North Atlantic alliance [NATO] is unacceptable,” he added, underlining that the root of the incident was “the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation”.

The incident marked the latest in a series of incursions on NATO’s eastern flank. Drones and missiles intruding on the territory and airspace of Poland, Romania and the Baltic states have fuelled fears that the war in Ukraine may spill over the alliance’s borders.

NATO and European leaders have been swift to support Poland and condemn Russia for the missile.

Depleted stockpiles

Poland has identified the missile as part of an attack that killed at least eight civilians in Ukraine and injured more than 50.

Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz reported that Warsaw had established that the missile was produced near Moscow in the second quarter of this year.

“This means that Russia is using newly produced missiles to strike Ukraine,” he wrote on social media. “It confirms reports that Russian wartime stockpiles have been depleted.”

An expert from Ukraine who arrived at the scene “did not have the slightest doubt” about the origins or model of the missile, Marcin Kozak, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Lublin, said.

“I will point out that this type of missile is used exclusively by Russian strategic aviation,” Wewior noted.

Trump said Israel strongly supports an agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas, describing it as a major breakthrough that marks a significant step for the Middle East. He cautioned the process would likely face “ups and downs” because of the complexity of the situation.

Why is Israel arming illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank? As settler attacks reach record levels, the government has distributed more than 100,000 assault rifles to Israelis. Al Jazeera’s Leila Warah reports on what that means for Palestinians on the ground.

Officials declare the outbreak the fastest spreading ever, warning the world to ‘pay much more attention’.

More than 3,500 people have been infected with the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), making it the world’s second largest outbreak on record.

Confirmed cases have reached 3,532, the DRC Ministry of Communication and Media said in a statement on Friday. The data show that the current outbreak has surpassed the country’s 10th on record, which ran from August 2018 to June 2020 and saw roughly 3,470 cases recorded.

“It’s the fastest spreading Ebola epidemic that we have ever seen,” Carl Skau, acting head of the United Nations World Food Programme, told the Reuters news agency. “The world needs to pay much more attention.”

A total of 1,556 people have died from the virus, bringing the case fatality rate to 44.1 percent, data compiled by the Ministry of Public Health showed.

A reported 807 patients remain in isolation or hospital while 626 have recovered.

Less than three months since the outbreak began, the disease has killed five times as many people as previous outbreaks had by the same stage, according to Africa’s top public health agency, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

The latest figures indicated that only the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa was bigger with 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths recorded across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The DRC outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which has no approved vaccine or treatment.

Medical personnel are also battling a lack of security and attacks on health facilities across the eastern DRC, where dozens of armed groups operate, while contending with significant foreign aid cuts that have stretched resources.

A lack of trust in authorities and education among the population is also creating hurdles to bringing the outbreak under control.

Angele Gapio, head of emergencies for the Caritas charity in the northeastern city of Bunia, said awareness campaigns were failing and front-line responders were exhausted.

“The disease has now settled in the community,” she told the Reuters news agency. “People continue to seek treatment from traditional healers, and the chain of transmission continues.”

The WHO said this month that the true scale of the outbreak could be up to four times higher than official figures suggest.

The Africa CDC said in June that it would require $1.4bn to contain the outbreak, three times its earlier estimate.

The virus has affected five provinces across the DRC: Haut-Uele, Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu and Tshopo.

Sources close to Mudryk say he is confident of returning to his best form, citing the work he has put in to maintain his fitness during 20 months on the sidelines.

They also point to the support Chelsea have provided throughout the process, while adhering to the restrictions imposed by his suspension and respecting the legal proceedings.

The Ukrainian received backing from the club from afar, while also being given the space to navigate what those close to him describe as an extremely difficult period.

Under the terms of the suspension, Mudryk was unable to access Chelsea‘s training ground or work with club staff. His only known public interaction with members of the first-team squad came at the Conference League final celebrations in May 2025.

To maintain his fitness, Mudryk paid for private coaching and hired goalkeepers for individual sessions while using a pitch at non-league club Uxbridge FC in London. He also organised a training camp in Austria, with videos from those sessions showing him scoring goals and taking part in attacking drills.

However, those close to Mudryk acknowledge there is no substitute for training and competing alongside elite players on a daily basis. Mudryk is understood to be realistic about the challenge ahead, but believes he can overcome it.

Chelsea are prepared to provide a pathway back into professional football. Whether that involves reintegration into the first team, a loan move – potentially involving sister club Strasbourg – or a permanent transfer remains to be seen.

Whatever the outcome, the resolution of the case represents a significant moment for Mudryk. He now has the opportunity to resume his career and determine what the next chapter looks like.

Having joined Chelsea in one of the most closely watched transfer sagas of 2023, his story at Stamford Bridge is not over yet.

Shon Barnes steps down amid questions over authorities’ handling of the shooting at a popular food festival.

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes has resigned less than a week after a deadly shooting at one of the US city’s largest summer festivals as questions have mounted over the authorities’ handling of its aftermath.

Mayor Katie Wilson announced Barnes’s resignation on Thursday and named Deputy Chief Andre Sayles, a police officer with more than two decades of law enforcement experience, as interim chief.

The move came after three people were killed and four injured, including a two-year-old boy, in a shootout on Sunday at the annual Bite of Seattle food festival.

Dozens of police officers were already providing security at the event, and court documents said at least one officer saw a 15-year-old suspect firing into the crowd and quickly persuaded him to surrender. Police are still searching for at least one other suspect.

The shooting unfolded while Barnes was attending a law enforcement conference outside the city in the northwestern state of Washington.

While Wilson praised officers’ response at the scene, saying it likely saved lives, she said the city’s communication with the public in the hours that followed fell short.

Police posted about the shooting on social media shortly after it began but then went nearly five hours without providing another public update, leaving residents uncertain about whether there was an ongoing threat. The city also failed to send alerts through its emergency notification system while Wilson herself mistakenly announced that two suspects had been taken into custody before later retracting the statement.

“What I did not fully understand in that moment was how little information had reached the public or the press since the incident began,” Wilson said in a video statement on Thursday. “Had I known that, I would have pushed for an immediate briefing rather than waiting for a press conference to be organised.”

Barnes, in a statement released by the mayor’s office, described serving as Seattle’s police chief as “an honor” and said he hoped the transition would allow the department to refocus on “addressing youth gun violence and preventing more tragedies”.

The resignation followed hours of speculation over Barnes’s future with supporters saying he had resisted calls from Wilson to step down. Earlier in the day, Barnes told The Seattle Times that whether he remained chief was “up to the mayor”.

Several Black community organisations, including the Seattle NAACP and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, urged Wilson not to make Barnes, the city’s second Black police chief, “a scapegoat for the complex challenges of public safety”.

They credited him with improving relations between police and the community, reducing gun violence and strengthening the department’s operations. Several City Council members also backed Barnes, pointing out that Seattle has now had four police chiefs in less than three years.

Barnes was appointed in late 2024 by former Mayor Bruce Harrell after leading the Madison Police Department in the northern state of Wisconsin. When Wilson, a democratic socialist who had previously supported defunding the police, took office this year, she kept Barnes in the role, signalling she did not plan to dramatically change the city’s public safety strategy.

Barnes’s resignation was announced as Seattle prepares for another major weekend event with the annual Seafair festival set to begin on Friday.

Russia claimed this week to be advancing into Ukraine’s regions of Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk, as Ukraine installed new political leadership in its defence ministry and a new military leadership in its armed forces.

The changes followed the unprecedented firing of both defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov and commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii within a week.

Most concerning was the news from Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern region of Donetsk that Russia was “effectively cutting off” Kostiantynivka, the southernmost of four “fortress cities” Russia had pledged to overthrow in a bid to capture the remaining free territory of the region by the end of the year.

Kostiantynivka was “the key to liberating the entire territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said.

“Things are very bad in Kostiantynivka. It’s not a question of whether we’ll lose [it] or not – we’ve effectively already lost it,” a soldier told the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske. “If there’s a large number of Russians there, you can’t really say we’re holding it. They’re just pushing our guys into a corner.”

A local Ukrainian commander told Hromadske that Russians were moving into the villages of Molocharka and Izhevka north of the city, and his units could find themselves surrounded in “another month or two” unless reinforcements arrived or containment tactics changed.

Shortly before he was dismissed on July 21, Syrskii had painted a more optimistic picture, saying there were an estimated 145 Russian infiltrators in the city who were suffering “significant losses” of about 25 people a day, as Ukrainian drone units hunted them down in their urban shelters.

The commander of a group called Kurt and Company shared that more optimistic view with the news outlet Suspilne.

“Heavy fighting and gunfire are going on all over the city,” said the commander, identified by the call sign Kurt. “But we still control most of the city and the enemy is mainly on the flanks. They are trying to bypass us, cut us off, but we are holding our defence there. We are just constantly under attack from the KABs – they are just taking out positions with aerial bombs. This is the only thing that still gives the Russians success and this is a big problem for us.”

KABs are massive aerial ordnance with payloads of between 500kg and 3,000kg, which Russia has been dropping on Ukrainian positions at a rate of more than 200 and sometimes more than 300 a day. Ukraine has repeatedly placed aerial defence equipment at the top of its list of requirements from allies.

As recently as three weeks ago, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, estimated that Russian forces had a presence in just 37 percent of Kostiantynivka, mostly in the form of “infiltrations” rather than firm control. Its most recent assessment of Russian infiltration suggests that it has spread to most of the city, however.

Overall, Russian forces have been slowing down, though. The ISW estimated that they were capturing 16.6sq km a day in the first half of 2025, but just 1km a day in June this year. In July, the ISW has assessed that Russia has been losing territory at a rate of 1.6sq km a day.

Now, it appears that Russia has been mounting an effort to regain the offensive. The commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS), Robert Brovdi, said “the actual number of enemy personnel involved in offensive operations along the front line” during the month had increased by 12 percent compared with June and 18 percent compared with May, based on analysis from the SBS intelligence centre. Russian casualties increased by similar proportions, he said.

In the northern Kharkiv and Sumy regions, Russia claimed to have destroyed 10 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control centres on July 27, killing 70 personnel.

Three days later, it said its troops had routed defenders in Nova Sich, Mogritsa and Malaya Slobodka in Sumy and Yurchenkovo in Kharkiv, by copying the Ukrainian tactic of using drones to disrupt ammunition deliveries.

“Russian servicemen found large amounts of abandoned weapons, ammunition and military equipment,” according to a Russian report.

A local Russian official claimed Moscow had captured 13 settlements in Kharkiv this month.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the Russian claims, which have in the past been inflated or premature, and Ukraine denied Nova Sich had fallen.

An autumn offensive?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week he had received intelligence that Russia was preparing an “expanded mobilisation” to counter losses of 225,000 this year, versus recruitment of 221,000 people. Six out of 10 casualties were fatalities, he said.

Zelenskyy told Sky News Putin aimed to raise 300,000 to 500,000 troops in early October, after Russian parliamentary elections had taken place in September. “He will not be able to quickly prepare these people. This, again, means that he will send poorly trained people to the battlefield, which will inevitably lead to heavy losses,” Zelenskyy said.

More worrying, perhaps, were the 30,000 North Korean troops Russia was preparing barracks for in Voronezh, in southwestern Russia, according to Zelenskyy. Russia received 3,000 North Korean soldiers in 2024, and used them to reclaim territory Ukraine had counterinvaded in Kursk.

Fedorov announced a plan in June to attract foreign fighters by raising the salary for a front-line soldier to $7,000 a month. “I believe that 50 percent of the front line or among the attack aircraft could be foreigners,” he told Ukrainska Pravda this week.

Russia estimates that Ukraine currently employs about 4,000 foreign troops. Ukraine’s armed forces are estimated at 900,000 people.

Long-range strikes

Ukraine struck blows in its economic war against Russia, hitting refineries and oil depots.

Those included confirmed hits against the Subkhankulovo oil tank farm in Bashkortostan, 1,350km from Ukraine, six refineries, an oil loading terminal at Rostov-on-Don, and fuel and lubricant depots at Ishki in occupied Crimea and Udmurtia.

Ukraine has recently struck targets as far afield as 2,500km, and Zelenskyy said it had now acquired range of at least 3,000km.

Ukraine claims to have disabled 42 percent of Russian refining capacity this year. A Financial Times investigation using satellite photographs confirmed that it had disabled 45 percent of nominal capacity and 30 percent of actual capacity, causing damage lasting weeks or months.

Russia, which has been experiencing a fuel crisis as a result, extended a fuel export ban from the end of August to the end of January.

Ukraine also struck military production targets, including the Avitek plant in Kirov city, producing components for aviation and missiles, and an S-400 radar. On July 27, it downed a Forpost-R heavy drone used to carry KABs – only the sixth such prize of the entire war.

Brovdi’s forces continued to starve Crimea of electricity and fuel, striking 37 electricity substations and four oil tankers during the week, bringing the total number of electricity infrastructure nodes struck in July to 164, and the total number of tankers hit in the Black and Azov seas to 205.

Brovdi’s forces focused much of their fire on the warehouses of the Wildberries online retailer, suspected by Ukraine of providing equipment to mobilising troops.

During the past week they have struck warehouses in Voronezh, Leningrad, Simferopol, Udmurtia and Penza, bringing the total number of warehouses set ablaze to 12 and the estimated damage to $2.2bn.

Russia also claims to have hit military targets in massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, but many of the hits were civilian.

One person died when a supermarket in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, was struck on July 26, and the entire Voronov family was wiped out in Radushne in central Ukraine when their house was blown to smithereens on July 30. A record 56,000 people spent the night sheltering in the Kyiv Metro that night.

Sainsbury’s has agreed to sell Argos for £120m after a long process of trying to offload it as the supermarket chain aims to focus on its main food business.

Sainsbury’s said it would be “business as usual” for Argos customers, staff, and suppliers. Shoppers will see no change as Argos will still operate in Sainsbury’s shops, sell Habitat products, and offer Nectar points.

The buyer, Swift Partners, is a company that has been created to buy the brand and includes former Co-operative Group boss Richard Pennycook.

There are 667 Argos shops across the UK, with 201 operating as standalone stores and 466 operating within Sainsbury’s. It also has more than 450 collection points.

Founded in 1973, Argos opened shops where customers browsed its catalogues and placed their orders, with products being delivered to tills from warehouses connected to the stores.

The Argos catalogue, once described by comedian Bill Bailey as the “laminated book of dreams”, used to be a physical book.

Argos no longer prints this hefty tome, with its full range now available online instead. In store, customers can browse the product collection on tablet computers.

Sainsbury’s has been trying to sell Argos – which has been seen as an underperforming brand – for some time.

Sainsbury’s bought Argos – together with Habitat and all the other retail brands owned by Home Retail Group – in 2016 for £1.4bn. It then sold Argos financial services, which runs the Argos card, for around £720m in 2024.

In September last year, its talks to sell the rest of Argos to Chinese online retailer JD.com fell through.

Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts said that all of Argos’s nearly 14,000 staff would be transferred over to Swift Partners as part of the deal.

He also confirmed that Argos would continue to operate in Sainsbury’s shops; Nectar will continue to be used across both Argos and Sainsbury’s; and Sainsbury’s will continue to sell Habitat products

Swift Partners’ Pennycook said he believed “strongly in Argos’s future and see real opportunities to invest and build on its progress”.

The deal is expected to be completed in February next year.

Pennycook said there was the potential to open new standalone Argos shops – and did not rule out the possibility of the return of its print catalogue.

The country that in 2008 heard then-President Hugo Chávez say, “Go to hell,  damn Yankees,” as he expelled the U.S. ambassador, today watches hundreds of U.S. soldiers patrol the streets of La Guaira, which was devastated by the two earthquakes a month ago. The soldiers distribute meager humanitarian aid in small boxes bearing U.S. flag stickers while filming for publicity spots.

The U.S. has promised $386 million to help Venezuela recover, but it and its allies continue to hold more than $22 billion in frozen Venezuelan assets. Washington’s actions demonstrate, once again, that its priority is oil, not the well-being of Venezuelans. Meanwhile, U.S. real estate developers are also visiting La Guaira, treating the devastation as yet another business opportunity.

Whole areas lie in ruins in La Guaira, where 82-year old Erminia Hernández lives. She was born in La Guaira, the coastal gateway to Venezuela that hosts the country’s main airport, and where residents of nearby Caracas go to sunbathe. She says she remembers the many tragedies that have struck this area, having lived through the 1967 earthquake, the Vargas mudslide in 1999, and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she doesn’t remember anything as devastating as the double earthquakes of June 24. 

The 1967 quake stopped her as she was making majarete, a typical Caribbean dessert, she says. But last month’s earthquakes knocked her and her sister flat to the ground, face down in the hallway of their house, where she then knelt to pray as everything rocked violently. She says she does not remember who helped her stand up, but she is certain she will never forget the moment she thought she was about to die. 

“The 1967 earthquake was nothing compared to this,” Hernández tells Truthdig. “And during the mudslide, I only heard about one neighbor who died. But now, every day I learn about someone I know who has died or is missing. In my immediate family alone, we lost six people, and two more are hospitalized.”

She is right. In 1967, fewer than 300 people died. After the mudslide, some sources put the death toll at 700, with thousands more missing. The coronavirus claimed 5,856 lives across the entire country over several years. But these earthquakes have killed more than 5,270 people, left 16,700 injured and 18,000 displaced. The numbers rise daily. The government puts the number of rescued at 7,000 but does not mention how many are still missing. 

Jofram Gallipoli, his wife Oriana and their 4-year-old son Luciano were among those rescued. Seven floors collapsed on top of them in the Tanaguarenas neighborhood of La Guaira. They are alive today because Jofram’s father, José Alberto Gallipoli, owns a hardware store in Caracas, where he gathered crowbars, chisels, picks, a cordless drill, hacksaws and gloves so that relatives, friends, neighbors and police officers — none of them equipped with specialized rescue machinery — could dig a tunnel through the rubble.

During the 27 hours that the rescue took, Jofram Gallipoli tells Truthdig he communicated with the outside by banging an air conditioning grate with a ceramic tile every time he heard his name. 

“When we were under the rubble, we thought only our building had collapsed. Coming out was a shock. We lost all our material possessions, but we are alive, and I, who have emigrated before, want to stay here this time,” Jofram Gallipoli says.

According to official figures, nearly 200 buildings collapsed entirely and at least 900 were severely damaged. Structural engineers are now conducting inspections on thousands of homes in the seven states affected by the earthquakes. For Jofram’s father, “the physical structures fell, but we, the true architects of life, are ready to rebuild, from scratch, on a stronger foundation.”

José Alberto’s words are hopeful, but how much will this reconstruction actually cost? How will we carry it out? What intentions lie behind much of the “humanitarian aid” that countries like the U.S. are sending?

What is needed now

Preliminary assessments from the U.N. Development Program estimate direct physical damages at $6.7 billion, a figure that focuses on housing and does not include the full extent of infrastructure damage or the cost of long-term reconstruction.

The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, meanwhile, puts the full reconstruction cost at $37 billion: $24 billion for lost buildings — homes, schools, stores and hospitals — and $13 billion for damage to critical infrastructure such as roads and power grids. That represents nearly one-third of Venezuela’s current gross domestic product.

For now, however, the country that has promised the most economic “aid” to Venezuela is the United States, with its much-publicized $386 million.

But if the Trump administration released the Venezuelan funds it continues to block via sanctions, the country would not need these handouts: 31 tons of gold — valued at roughly $4.2 billion — remain frozen in London. The international financial system, including private banks and multilateral organizations, has blocked more than $22 billion in Venezuelan assets. At the same time, Venezuelan oil revenue is now deposited into an account at the U.S. Treasury. “We … control the dispersal of the money,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in January.

Washington’s double standards

One day after the double earthquake, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License 60, which authorizes transactions related to humanitarian assistance in Venezuela but does not include the unfreezing of assets subject to sanctions or “any other transactions or activities prohibited by any other Executive Order.”

The United States acts this way because the architecture of punitive sanctions against Venezuela is the “legal foundation” for control over the Venezuelan oil industry, says William Serafino, a political scientist from the Central University of Venezuela. In 2017, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Venezuela that prohibited access to U.S. financial markets, and in 2018, expanded them to block purchasing of Venezuelan debt.

“With the issuance of licenses, Washington is able to modify certain aspects of its economic and financial coercion policy, always in the interest of U.S. companies, but without altering the overall sanctions framework,” Serafino tells Truthdig. “The sanctions are what guarantees U.S. appropriation of Venezuelan resources at a clear disadvantage to Venezuela.” 

These licenses are official documents issued by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control that allow American individuals and companies, or those with U.S. ties, to carry out very specific and limited transactions with the Venezuelan state or the state oil company PDVSA. 

Serafino says that such exemptions and the small amount of funds provided after the earthquakes are intended to “whitewash this illegal sanctions policy” in order to undermine the broad consensus across Venezuelan society in favor of lifting all measures that hinder the normal development of Venezuela’s economy. 

The U.S. has similarly just provided $100 million in aid to Cuba, after sanctioning the country since 1962. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the sanctions violate international law — which U.N. human rights experts say could also be true of the Venezuela sanctions. U.N. human rights experts describe the latest trade tariffs that block oil from getting to Cuba as “an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion” that violates self determination.

Venezuelans aren’t the only ones rejecting the U.S. sanctions against their country. After the earthquakes, 13 prominent economists, including Isabella Weber, Jeffrey Sachs and James K. Galbraith, signed a letter calling for the lifting of sanctions. Likewise, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, warned that such coercive measures directly affect the delivery of aid and recovery plans.

“Fletcher’s statement shows that temporary exemptions are insufficient,” Serafino says, “Financial institutions, even when they theoretically have ‘permission’ from the Treasury Department to operate, are very cautious about expediting transactions related to supplies, donations and the transfer of aid funds between multilateral institutions and humanitarian organizations, due to fear of penalties and fines.”

Transactions that under normal circumstances “would take a few days,” he says, are subjected to a bureaucratic morass because of the sanctions, because “banks must constantly consult their legal departments and steer clear of red lines.”

At the same time, the United States is also using the tragedy to ramp up its military intervention in Venezuela through a “humanitarian support” operation coordinated by the U.S. Southern Command and the State Department, under the Department of Defense. That has included moving the warships USS Fort Lauderdale and USS Billings toward the coast of La Guaira, flying helicopters over devastated areas and deploying surveillance drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper.

“It is extremely serious that, taking advantage of a tragedy and under the pretext of humanitarian aid, the United States has not only taken over the country’s main airport and seaport but also deployed 900 Marines in La Guaira and 2,000 across the entire operation,” former Vice President Elias Jaua, who also held multiple Cabinet posts during the Chavez government, tells Truthdig. 

“Moreover, we have seen the mapping they have done of the entire Venezuelan coastline with drones and helicopters. This is another escalation in the military occupation,” he says, adding that the deployment also imposes strict military monitoring and de facto control over Venezuela’s skies and coastline from U.S. bases in Puerto Rico, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago.

Jaua, who now works as a university professor, says the measures openly violate Article 13 of Venezuela’s Constitution, which bars foreign military bases or installations with military purposes by any country or coalition of countries in Venezuelan maritime, air and land territory.

Asked what will happen to the U.S. military presence in Venezuelan territory once the emergency ends, Jaua only comments that “a civic, political and grassroots movement must be built to defend Venezuela’s right to remain a republic. Otherwise, it will end up as a North American [i.e. U.S.] colony annexed to the United States or a protectorate administered from the north.”

Serafino, on the other hand, questions why Washington would want to flood Venezuela with Marines and other military forces when it has already managed to gain control over the country’s resources without a large and sustained presence since Jan. 3, when it launched airstrikes on the country and seized the president.

“It seems like an unnecessary and politically contentious measure, especially with U.S. midterm elections around the corner and a strong chance [President Donald] Trump could lose them,” Serafino says. 

“I think the military presence will be limited to solidifying U.S. influence over oil and other strategic resources, mapping migration flows from the air and conducting permanent flyovers and naval patrols to signal to Russia and China that both Venezuela and the Caribbean Basin fall under Trump’s purview.”

Economic interests

But U.S. interests in Venezuela go beyond the military. Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), a company led by Miami luxury homebuilder Michael Capponi, along with other real estate developers and a network of corporate interests with ties to Trump, are already seeing the earthquakes’ devastation as a business opportunity.

While the State Department has announced that it is working with U.S. corporations including Walmart and Amazon to bolster the “humanitarian” response in Venezuela, Serafino views GEM’s presence as more important and “pervasive.” He does not rule out that Pentagon-affiliated contractors could become involved in projects to refurbish Maiquetia International Airport, the Port of La Guaira and the management of shelters.

Recent precedents such as Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion and Haiti after the 2010 earthquake saw Beltway contractors — defense, technology and consulting firms based in Washington, D.C. — securing big business opportunities. In Iraq, they obtained lucrative reconstruction contracts. In Haiti, the pattern repeated through the privatization of security, logistics management and international aid programs.

This aligns with complaints from social activists in La Guaira including José Félix Valera, who tells Truthdig that some contractors, mainly U.S. ones, are already demolishing and clearing land where people are still trying to recover the bodies of their relatives. 

“There have been serious confrontations because people want to recover the bodies,” Valera says. “I saw people stop a building from being demolished, and three days later they found a young man alive. Still, the contractors with machinery take advantage of the early morning hours to demolish.” 

While a desire to rebuild quickly is understandable, Valera, who apart from his activism is also a leader at community radio station Voces in La Guaira, believes other interests are at play. The demolishing is taking place at “the largest flat plots [of land] facing the Caribbean Sea in the region, and that has a lot of implications from a geopolitical standpoint but also for tourism,” he says. “For example, this is one of the best places for international events like Grand Slam tournaments or deep-sea fishing.”

“But the U.S. is also interested in the real estate possibilities,” he says.

Valera also wonders why there are so many U.S. troops in La Guaira. “Two thousand arrived, of which only 300 are rescue workers — the other 1,700 are soldiers, and at the moment they are guarding these demolition operations.”

The U.S. did not come to Venezuela alone; Israeli officials from the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command are also coordinating the supposed recovery of 14 sectors of La Guaira. In fact, they have already delivered a six-phase plan for the state’s recovery to the Venezuelan government. All of this comes despite Venezuela having broken diplomatic relations with Israel 17 years ago. Over those nearly two decades, Venezuelan officials have frequently issued harsh criticism and accusations against Tel Aviv over its genocidal actions in Palestine and the region.

Yet today, the same army that has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians since 2023 is now in Venezuela, claiming to want to help recover the bodies of our dead and rebuild our homes. Many Venezuelans are deeply distrustful and worried about what such “humanitarian aid” will mean for them in coming months.

“The future of La Guaira and the practical debate over the use of this land must involve the people of La Guaira, because this is our land and our economic livelihood,” Valera says.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Truthdig

Egyptian officials have now confirmed that the port facility of Damietta was hit by a drone strike yesterday, the first public acknowledgment that the country has come under fire during this conflict. Though Cairo did not say who launched the attack, it raises the specter of another part of the region being brought into fighting that is largely centered on the flow of energy supplies.

The attack came as the Houthis began to consider imposing tolls on shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where they have already established a blockade on Saudi shipping and attacked its vessels and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Iran continues to lob missiles and drones across the region as tit-for-tat strikes have resumed after a short pause.

“Following the successful containment of the fire, the relevant authorities conducted initial investigations into the incident, which indicated that a drone was responsible,” the Egyptian cabinet said in a statement on Thursday, according to state-funded Middle East News Agency. The cabinet added that “no party has claimed responsibility for the attack.”

“The competent authorities are continuing their investigations to determine the full circumstances surrounding the incident and to take the necessary measures to safeguard Egypt’s interests and national security,” the official government outlet added.

As we reported yesterday, the Ambrey maritime security firm said two vessels were struck by drones at Damietta. One of the ships was a U.S.-owned and operated, Marshall Islands-flagged liquefied natural gas (LNG) floating storage facility and the other was a Greek-owned and operated, Bermuda-flagged LNG tanker, Ambrey stated.

A maritime security specialist told us that the U.S.-owned and operated, Marshall Islands-flagged floating gas storage facility was the Energos Winter while the other ship was the Gaslog Salem.

While there has been no official claim or attribution, U.S. President Donald Trump hinted that it was an Iranian attack.

Asked during a press conference whether Iran was behind the drone attack on the Egyptian port, Trump said “it’s a little more of the same, but it’s going to be straightening out, it’s going to be straightening out. But in the meantime, we are going to be hitting them very hard, because it is our turn to hit ’em. They know it’s coming, they are asking us not to do it.”

“We’re going to hit them very hard.”

President Trump warns adversaries that the U.S. is prepared to respond forcefully following a drone attack on an LNG tanker off the coast of Egypt.

Trump signaled that retaliation is imminent despite requests from adversaries to hold back.… pic.twitter.com/SMOUuj5qGT

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 29, 2026

The New York Times later reported that two Iranians, who asked not to be named to discuss security matters, “said the explosion was a drone attack designed to show that global shipping and energy supplies could be more deeply disrupted if Iran chose to escalate. The individuals did not say whether Iran or an Iran-allied militia in the region had launched the attack, or from where.”

The Iranians are not the only ones targeting energy facilities in the region. Several of their proxies have as well. It is part of a larger effort to impose cost on the U.S. and its allies.

The Saudis claim their oil infrastructure has been attacked by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq in addition to actions by the Houthis in Yemen. That in part prompted a joint U.S.-Saudi strike on militia targets across that country. It was the first publicly confirmed instance where U.S. and Saudi forces worked in concert.

The Iranian-backed Houthis, who, as we noted above, are striking Saudi oil infrastructure, on Thursday denied involvement in this incident.

“There is no truth to the rumors about Yemen targeting a ship in the port of Damietta in the Arab Republic of Egypt,” the group stated on Telegram. “The Yemeni position is clear, declared, and explicit, and it only targets the Saudi regime for its unjust blockade and ongoing aggression against the Yemeni people.”

A senior political official from Yemen’s Houthi movement has denied reports that the group plans to impose fees on commercial ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Hizam al-Assad, a member of the political bureau of the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah), said in a… pic.twitter.com/PtSGc5XOPj

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) July 30, 2026

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, deferred questions about the incident to Egypt.

Regardless of who attacked Damietta, expanding the conflict to Egypt’s Mediterranean ports marks a significant potential escalation. The region’s two main sea arteries for energy shipments are already being choked off. The Iranians have largely closed down the Strait of Hormuz and there is an ongoing U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. The Houthis, as previously noted, have halted Saudi transits through the BAM, which has had a cascading effect on other nations not wanting to risk attack.

As the Iranian threats to the Strait of Hormuz increased, the kingdom diverted millions of barrels of oil per day through pipelines to its Yanbu port on the Red Sea in an effort to minimize the energy shortages due to the hostilities in the Persian Gulf. 

That workaround served its purpose until the Houthi blockade, at which point Saudi Arabia began boosting shipments through the Suez Canal. Exports via that route “rose 106% for the week of the embargo announcement to 1.06 million barrels per day, up from the week starting July 13, according to Kpler data,” The National News recently noted.

The port of Damietta, where yesterday’s attack took place, is 33 miles west of Port Said, which is at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. Closure of the canal, or even a significant drop in traffic through it, would add to the pressures on the global economy already reeling from what is taking place in the Strait of Hormuz and the BAM.

In a post on X, the Windward maritime intelligence firm called the attack on Damietta “a third front, separate from the Gulf and Red Sea.”

“The strike is assessed as separate from the Houthi Saudi-blockade campaign. Iranian state television had named Damietta as a retaliation target two days earlier, citing Ukraine’s strike on an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, pointing toward an Iranian-directed operation rather than a Houthi one,” Windward explained in a related analysis.

A drone struck ENERGOS WINTER, a U.S.-managed LNG unit at Damietta, Egypt on July 29, with fire spreading to a second tanker alongside. Iranian state TV had named Damietta as a retaliation target two days earlier. This is a third front, separate from the Gulf and the Red Sea. pic.twitter.com/6bmWtST9XH

— Windward (@WindwardAI) July 30, 2026

Operation Aspides, the European-led task force created to provide security to shipping in the Red Sea region, told us it is monitoring reports that the Houthis are considering placing a toll on transits through the BAM, similar to what Iran has tried to impose in the Strait of Hormuz.

“At this moment, there has been no official statement from the Houthis confirming such a measure,” a spokesman told us Thursday morning. “We continue to monitor developments closely and are going to implement our mandate within our means and capabilities.”

On Thursday, Aspides posted an image of one of its member warships, the Italian frigate Bergamini, escorting merchant vessels in the Red Sea region.

The Italian 🇮🇹 Frigate BERGAMINI operating under EUNAVFOR ASPIDES provided support to merchant vessels, crossing the Area of Operations.

ASPIDES plays a crucial role in safeguarding shipping and supporting the safe passage of vessels through critical maritime routes. pic.twitter.com/9FNQL6Y00C

— EUNAVFOR ASPIDES (@EUNAVFORASPIDES) July 30, 2026

Meanwhile, Iran is continuing to lash out across the region.

Kuwaiti officials said one person was killed in an Iranian barrage today.

“The sinful Iranian aggression targeted a building belonging to one of the Chinese companies in the north of the country, resulting in the death of one worker and causing serious material damage to the building,” the Kuwait Defense Ministry (MoD) stated on X. “The Armed Forces affirm that they will continue carrying out their tasks and duties with high efficiency, and taking all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and preserve its security and stability, in coordination with the competent authorities, in a way that safeguards the safety of citizens and residents.”

The Jordanian military said it foiled an Iranian attempt to target the kingdom with five missiles. There were no casualties, officials said.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed missiles made it through and that three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters were destroyed and three more damaged at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base (MSAB) in Jordan. The IRGC said it was in response to deaths caused by yesterday’s attacks by CENTCOM. However, the IRGC frequently fabricates claims or greatly exaggerates them and we cannot independently confirm this one.

As we have pointed out in the past, the base has been frequently targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed in a strike there on July 17.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video of what they say were missiles launched by their naval forces targeting US aircraft at Jordan’s Al Azraq air base, in retaliation for US strikes on Qeshm Island that killed three people. pic.twitter.com/HRxGlWC6AN

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 30, 2026

We reached out to CENTCOM for comment, which a short while later put out a statement on X denying the IRGC claim.

Over the past few hours, Iranian state media have continued to report false claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – three in particular.

🚫 FIRST CLAIM: The IRGC (again) claims free and open routes through the Strait of Hormuz are dangerous for commercial… pic.twitter.com/J34ILmDvyk

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 30, 2026

Regardless of the claims, the constant Iranian bombardment is beginning to stir unrest in Jordan, where public dissent is banned.

“Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal and other figures signed an open letter last week calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Jordan,” The New York Times reported. “People who signed the letter said they were driven by a sense of national responsibility and concern that the troop presence endangered Jordanian sovereignty.”

“We maintain that their presence exposes Jordan to security, political, and economic risks that serve no national interest and increases the likelihood of our country being dragged into a regional conflict to which it is not a party,” the letter said.

🇺🇸🇯🇴 “Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal and other figures signed an open letter calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Jordan in a rare public challenge to the government, after Iranian attacks on bases”https://t.co/yYYutkRzEU via @NYTimes @MazMHussain @GerardAraud

— Karim Emile Bitar (@karimbitar) July 30, 2026

As this conflict drags on, CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper, “has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

“Now, as Trump moves to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go,” the newspaper noted. “He could greenlight Cooper’s option of 10 to 14 days of intensive airstrikes intended to cripple Iran’s missile capability despite warnings that the U.S. is running low on air-defensive munitions. Or, he could opt for a more limited military strike in the hopes diplomacy could be pursued.”

Cooper has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks, people familiar with the matter said.

Now, as Trump vows to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go. W @mgordonwsj…

— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) July 29, 2026

Iran, working to rearm as the fighting continues, is expected to receive “a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers,” Reuters reported, citing three sources familiar with the deal.

“The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air defenses since the outbreak ‌of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure,” the outlet noted.

China isn’t just buying Iranian oil— it’s re-arming the regime.

We need to enforce the sanctions against China now. https://t.co/qvasMaBkOa

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 29, 2026

That’s it for now. We’ll update this when there is more information to share.

UPDATE: 4:58 PM EDT –

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed the drone strike on Damietta. In a post on X, he hinted at Israeli involvement but did not explicitly deny that Iran carried it out.

“Egypt is considered a friend and important partner in the region, and its security constitutes an utmost priority for us,” Araghchi stated. “We must all remain vigilant toward Israeli schemes and ‘false flag’ operations that aim to undermine regional peace. The threat is clear, shared, and fears Muslim solidarity.”

تُعدُّ مصر صديقًا وشريكًا مهمًا في المنطقة، ويُشكّل أمنُها أهميةً قصوى بالنسبة لنا.
يجب علينا جميعًا أن نكون يقظين تجاه المخططات الإسرائيلية وعمليات “العَلَم الزائف” التي تهدف إلى تقويض السلام الإقليمي.
إن التهديد واضح، ومشترك، ويخشَى تضامن المسلمين.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 30, 2026

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Ceuta, on Morocco’s northern coast, is separated from mainland Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar and has long been a focal point for migrants attempting to reach Europe.

Local officials had appealed to Madrid for help after a recent rise in attempted crossings, but there were chaotic scenes on Thursday as border controls apparently broke down.

The astonishing estimation by Spanish officials suggests the number of migrants who entered into Ceuta in the last day or so could be more than half of the population of the city – which sits at around 83,600, according to the latest local figures.

Spain later deployed its armed forces to bolster security in Ceuta and at its sister city of Melilla, where between 300 to 400 crossings were also reported overnight.

Coveted by Morocco, both cities have long been a flashpoint in diplomatic relations with Spain. Madrid asserts that both territories are integral parts of Spain and have the same status as the semi-autonomous regions on its mainland.

They form the European Union’s only land borders with Africa.

Hamas has agreed to gradually disarm in Gaza as part of Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The US president called the deal ‘historic’. Here’s what we know.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham will give all mayors of city regions in England a share of income tax revenue for the first time, as part of his drive to transfer power from Westminster to local leaders.

Burnham will also allow mayors of English strategic authorities to keep some cash from business rates collected in their areas, and gain greater control over services such as housing, transport, skills.

The government has not yet decided the exact portion of taxes mayors will get, with more details to be announced when Chancellor John Healey delivers his first budget in the autumn.

The Conservatives said the plans lacked detail and could lead to areas with weaker economies losing out on funding.

But Burnham said the move would “make good” on his pledge to “bring power home” to “every postcode in the country”.

“Under our plans, more of the taxes raised in a community will stay in that community,” the prime minister added.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, First Secretary of State Louise Haigh said areas would not need mayors to benefit from investment.

She said: “We won’t be imposing mayors to areas that don’t want it but we will be creating strategic authorities in every area of England and they will be able to hold these powers and resources as well.

“They don’t need to have mayors in order to control them or in order to retain a share of their income tax and business rates.”

Strategic authorities bring together local councils to control regional issues such as transport and economic development, with decisions taken collectively by council leaders rather than a single elected mayor.

For example, the Lancashire strategic authority will take in Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, Blackpool Council and Lancashire County Council, which form the Lancashire Combined County Authority area, despite the area not having a mayor.

Haigh added: “Vast swathes of England don’t have strategic authorities or mayors and today’s blueprint will set out that roadmap for every area of England to be covered by strategic authorities that will ultimately be able to retain a proportion of their income tax, business rates and set an overnight visitor levy should they wish, so they can generate revenue and really reinvest it in their local area.”

The power to raise and control tax revenues is highly centralised in the UK, making the country an outlier by international standards.

The share of national taxes collected at a local level in the UK is 5.8%, the lowest in the G7, according to the OECD, external, a global policy forum.

That share is far below that of other countries with large economies such as France (20.4%), Japan (36%), and the US (45.7%).

As it stands, mayors of strategic authorities in England receive most of their funding from central government grants.

During his time as Greater Manchester mayor, Burnham pushed for greater control over tax revenue, rather than having to rely on government grants.

The UK government had already been exploring whether a share of revenue from national taxes could be distributed to metro mayors, before Burnham became prime minister earlier this month.

But in a major speech on devolution in June, Burnham said he would “oversee the biggest rebalancing of power our country has ever seen” if he became prime minister.

Burnham has put devolution at the heart of his plan for government, arguing that metro mayors are best placed to boost economic growth across the country.

AI Training Technique Sparks New Tech Rivalry

Model distillation, a widely used artificial intelligence training technique, has emerged as a new point of tension in the growing technology competition between the United States and China. While the method has long been accepted within AI research, concerns have intensified over whether proprietary AI capabilities can be replicated without the consent of their developers.

Leading U.S. AI companies and policymakers argue that some Chinese firms are using distillation to extract valuable capabilities from closed-source AI models, raising questions about intellectual property, technological leadership and AI security.

What Is Model Distillation?

Model distillation is a process that transfers selected capabilities from a large, powerful AI model—known as the “teacher”—to a smaller “student” model.

Instead of copying the original model’s architecture or internal parameters, the student learns by analyzing the teacher’s outputs, such as answers, computer code or generated text. The result is a lighter, more efficient model capable of performing many of the same tasks while requiring significantly fewer computing resources.

Why Is Distillation Important?

Training frontier AI models demands enormous investments in advanced chips, computing power and massive datasets.

Distillation makes AI more affordable by enabling smaller models to deliver strong performance on less expensive hardware. These compact systems can be deployed across smartphones, factories, vehicles, enterprise software and private networks, expanding AI adoption without the infrastructure costs associated with frontier models.

The technique has therefore become an important tool for both commercial AI development and national technology strategies.

Why Are Reasoning Traces Valuable?

Recent advances in AI have increased the importance of “reasoning traces”—the intermediate steps an AI model follows before producing a final answer.

Rather than simply learning correct outputs, smaller models can learn how complex problems are solved, improving their reasoning abilities.

Researchers compare this to studying detailed worked solutions instead of only reading the final answers to mathematical problems. As reasoning traces become more sophisticated, they are increasingly viewed as valuable intellectual property because they reveal how advanced AI systems approach difficult tasks.

Who Uses Model Distillation?

Distillation is widely used across the global AI industry and is not inherently controversial.

American researchers and technology companies have employed the technique in projects such as Stanford University’s Alpaca model and Microsoft’s Orca research. Chinese researchers have likewise used outputs from advanced AI systems to develop Chinese-language instruction models.

The key distinction lies between open-weight models, whose underlying parameters are publicly accessible, and closed-source models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, which are only accessible through proprietary platforms and APIs.

Why Has It Become a US-China Flashpoint?

The dispute centres not on distillation itself but on whether proprietary AI outputs are being systematically harvested without authorization.

U.S. AI companies argue there is a clear difference between legitimate academic research and large-scale extraction of outputs designed to replicate commercially valuable capabilities from closed-source systems.

Anthropic has accused several Chinese AI companies, including DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax, of attempting to extract capabilities from its Claude models, particularly in software engineering and advanced reasoning. OpenAI has also reported detecting attempts by Chinese actors to use its systems for distillation-related purposes.

Chinese companies have not publicly accused U.S. firms of conducting similar activities involving closed-source models.

Why It Matters

The debate over model distillation reflects a broader shift in global AI competition from hardware and semiconductors to the protection of advanced algorithms and proprietary knowledge.

As AI becomes central to economic growth, military capabilities and technological leadership, governments and companies are increasingly treating model outputs, reasoning methods and training techniques as strategic assets. The controversy over distillation is therefore likely to play an increasingly important role in shaping future AI regulation, international competition and the evolving U.S.-China technology rivalry.

Analysis: AI Distillation Signals the Next Phase of the US China Technology War

The controversy surrounding model distillation marks a turning point in the global artificial intelligence race. The competition between the United States and China is no longer driven solely by access to advanced semiconductors or computing power. Instead, it is increasingly centered on protecting the knowledge embedded within frontier AI models. As reasoning capabilities become the most valuable component of modern AI, companies and governments are beginning to treat model outputs as strategic assets rather than simply products or services.

For years, Washington’s strategy focused on restricting China’s access to advanced chips and manufacturing equipment, hoping to slow Beijing’s AI progress by limiting computational resources. Model distillation challenges that strategy because it enables developers to build highly capable systems without replicating the enormous costs of training frontier models from scratch. If smaller models can absorb sophisticated reasoning from larger ones, technological leadership becomes harder to preserve through hardware controls alone.

This development is also forcing a rethinking of AI intellectual property. Unlike traditional software, where source code defines ownership, modern AI derives much of its value from learned behavior and reasoning patterns. The legal and ethical boundaries surrounding whether outputs generated by proprietary models can be used to train competing systems remain largely undefined. As governments struggle to regulate these practices, AI firms are likely to tighten access to their models, limit reasoning transparency and strengthen technical safeguards against unauthorized capability extraction.

The geopolitical implications are equally significant. AI has become a core element of economic competitiveness, military modernization and national security. Any method that accelerates another country’s ability to close the technological gap will inevitably attract government attention. The United States increasingly views the protection of advanced AI capabilities as part of its broader strategy to maintain technological leadership, while China sees affordable AI development as essential to reducing dependence on foreign technology and overcoming export restrictions.

Ultimately, the debate over model distillation illustrates that the next phase of the AI race will not be determined solely by who builds the most powerful model, but by who can best control, protect and commercialize advanced intelligence. As AI becomes a strategic national asset, disputes over knowledge transfer, model security and intellectual property are likely to become as consequential as the earlier battles over semiconductor supply chains.

With information from Reuters.

Mountaineer Nirmal Purja among those feared missing after avalanche hit Broad Peak, Pakistan alpine club says.

Ten climbers, led by renowned Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja, are feared missing after an avalanche in northern Pakistan where they were on a climbing expedition, the country’s alpine club said.

“The Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) has received deeply concerning reports of an avalanche that struck a team of climbers on Broad Peak (8,047m) in the Karakoram mountain range,” the club said late on Thursday, adding that the team was led by Purja and could not be reached since the incident.

Broad Peak is the 12th-highest mountain in the world.

The ACP said the expedition comprises 10 people, including five from Nepal, one from Pakistan, one from Oman, one from China, one from the United States, and another foreign climber whose nationality it did not disclose.

“The entire team has reportedly been out of communication since the avalanche,” the club said.

“Every possible effort is being made to ensure that helicopter support and all available rescue resources are mobilised at the earliest opportunity, subject to weather and operational conditions,” it added.

Purja, 43, also known as Nims Dai, has broken multiple climbing records since becoming a full-time mountaineer and tour guide in 2018, after leaving the British military.

He climbed all 14 “eight-thousanders” (peaks above 8,000 metres, or 26,000 feet) in six months and six days between April and October 2019, a record at the time.

In 2021, Purja completed the first winter ascent of K2 as part of a team of nine other Nepalese climbers.

Israeli forces struck near Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon. The military said it used 700 tonnes of explosives to destroy parts of a Hezbollah tunnel network. Israel agreed in June to a phased withdrawal from Lebanon, and have the Lebanese military handle disarming Hezbollah.

Al Jazeera visited the occupied West Bank village of Sinjil, where Israeli earth mounds, metal barriers and road closures have blocked all main entrances. Residents say the restrictions have left the village effectively cut off, making even routine journeys difficult and potentially deadly.

While the United States enjoys sufficient energy resources, thanks to shale oil, the European Union does not. To assure itself of the energy supplies in the Gulf that the European Union needs, the EU should consider assisting the Gulf States in the construction and operations of the pipeline. 

Building a large-scale, completely underground oil pipeline system from the Persian/Arabian Gulf oil fields to the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to cost between $40 billion and $60 billion and would take 5 to 7 years to complete. The exact metrics depend heavily on the chosen route, political alignment across transit countries, and the required total throughput capacity. 

Breakdown of Total Costs 

Modern mega-pipeline engineering over long desert and mountain distances faces massive cost drivers: 

· Construction & Trenching ($18B – $25B): Burying multiple large-diameter (e.g., 42 to 48-inch) pipelines entirely underground requires extensive trenching, rock blasting, and specialized anti-corrosion coatings. Global benchmarks show that large-scale overland pipelines average $8 million to $12 million per mile, but full underground burial heavily drives up labor and machinery costs.

· Pumping Stations & Terminals ($8B – $12B): Moving millions of barrels of crude daily across hundreds of miles requires heavily fortified pumping stations every 60–100 miles, alongside massive new storage and loading terminals on the Mediterranean coast. 

· Geopolitical & Geotechnical Risk Premium ($7B – $10B): Multi-billion dollar  contingencies are standard to absorb project snags, material inflation, and  complex international legal/right-of-way frameworks. 

· Security Infrastructure ($5B – $10B): Given the vulnerability of cross-border energy corridors, modern estimates for Gulf bypass networks integrate specialized defensive technologies (like automated drone surveillance or surface-to-air missile defenses) to protect critical facilities. 

Construction Timeline and Stages 

· Megaprojects of this length are restricted by a sequential project lifecycle that cannot easily be accelerated simultaneously: 

· Diplomacy & Right-of-Way (Years 1–2): Securing cross-border transit legal treaties (e.g., routing through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, or Syria/Turkey) and finalizing environmental impact assessments. 

· Material Procurement & Logistics (Years 2–3): Manufacturing and transporting millions of tons of high-grade steel line pipe and heavy industrial pumps. 

· Civil Trenching & Laying (Years 3–6): Heavy execution phase. Crews can typically lay roughly 1 to 2 miles of pipe per day per construction spread.

Multiple spreads working simultaneously across different geographic zones are required to finish within a 3-to-4-year active construction window.  · Testing & Commissioning (Year 7): Hydrostatic pressure testing of the lines to ensure underground integrity, followed by line fill and gradual commercial scale-up 

Proposed Alternative Routes 

Producers in the region actively advance or evaluate different variants of this corridor to bypass maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz: 

· The Mesopotamian Corridor (Iraq/Syria route): A ~1,500 km route linking the southern oil fields of Basra to Mediterranean ports like Baniyas, Syria.  While geographically direct, it remains vulnerable to high regional instability. 

· The Trans-Arabian Upgrades: Adapting or running parallel lines to existing corridors (like the Saudi East-West Petroline, which travels 1,200 km to the Red Sea) and extending them northward to Mediterranean Sea terminals. 

How Standard Micro-Tunneling Works for Utilities: When pipeline engineers hit a mountain or an environmental zone where they cannot dig an open trench, they use Micro-Tunnel Boring Machines (MTBMs) or Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD). These systems are highly specialized to avoid the exact problems of passenger-sized tunnels: 

· Sized to the Pipe: Unlike a 12-foot-wide transit tunnel, an MTBM is built to the exact outer diameter of the oil pipe (typically 4 to 5 feet for a 48-inch line).  This means crews excavate 90% less rock and dirt.

· Pipe-Jacking Method: Instead of laying concrete tunnel walls and then trying to slide a heavy steel pipe inside later, MTBMs use a process called “pipe jacking.” Powerful hydraulic rams at the surface push the actual steel oil pipe directly behind the drilling head as it advances into the rock. 

· No Open Voids: Because the pipeline fits perfectly into the drilled hole, there is no empty space left around it. The pipe is completely surrounded by solid rock or stabilizing grout, eliminating the risk of dangerous, explosive gas pockets building up in an open tunnel. 

The Mountain Ranges the Route Must Clear 

· To get from the Gulf fields (like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia or Basra in Iraq) to the Mediterranean, a pipeline must breach the Syrian Desert and cross a series of rugged, geologically active mountain walls running parallel to the Mediterranean coast: 

· The Jordan Rift Valley & Dead Sea Fault: Before hitting the mountains, the pipeline must drop down into one of the lowest, most seismically active valleys on Earth (falling hundreds of feet below sea level) and then immediately climb back out. 

· The Judean Hills & Golan Heights: Depending on the exact coastal terminal, the line must climb over rugged limestone ridges ranging from 3,000 to 4,000 feet high.

· The Anti-Lebanon & Mount Lebanon Ranges: If the route takes a more northern path toward Syria or Lebanon, it faces severe alpine conditions with peaks soaring between 9,000 and 10,000 feet. 

The Geopolitical Treaties Required 

Building a multi-billion dollar piece of energy infrastructure across national borders requires an intricate web of international legal frameworks. Historically, cross-border pipelines are governed by Host Government Agreements (HGAs) and Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs). 

To make a Gulf-to-Mediterranean pipeline a reality, several unprecedented breakthroughs would be needed: 

· Transit Fees and Tariffs: The countries hosting the pipeline but not producing the oil (like Jordan or Syria) must negotiate “transit fees.” These are typically paid in cents per barrel of oil that passes through their territory, providing them with billions in long-term revenue. 

To make a Gulf-to-Mediterranean pipeline a reality, several unprecedented breakthroughs would be needed: 

· Transit Fees and Tariffs: The countries hosting the pipeline but not producing the oil (like Jordan or Syria) must negotiate “transit fees.” These are typically paid in cents per barrel of oil that passes through their territory, providing them with billions in long-term revenue. 

· The “Right of Way” Guarantee: Sovereign nations must sign legally binding treaties promising that they will not shut off or seize the pipeline during diplomatic disputes. A famous historical warning is the original Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline), which was repeatedly disrupted, sabotaged, and eventually shut down permanently due to border conflicts and transit fee arguments between Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. 

· The Abraham Accords Framework: If the pipeline takes the most geologically direct southern route to terminals in Israel (like Ashkelon or Haifa), it relies heavily on the long-term stability and expansion of the Abraham Accords. Saudi Arabia and Israel would need formalized economic treaties to protect a joint energy corridor from regional political shifts. 

· Joint Security Commands: Because a pipeline stretching thousands of miles across the Middle East is a prime target for non-state actors and drone strikes, treaties must establish a unified security framework. This allows military and intelligence sharing across borders to patrol the pipeline corridor with automated drone networks and satellite monitoring. 

Environmental Safeguards for Freshwater Aquifers The Jordan Valley and the surrounding mountain ridges contain critical freshwater sources, such as the Mountain Aquifer, which supply drinking water to millions of people in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. A single major crude oil leak could seep into the porous limestone and permanently poison these non-renewable water reserves.  To mitigate this, engineers deploy an array of specialized defenses: 

· Pipe-in-Pipe Technology (Double Containment): In high-consequence water zones, crews do not use a standard single-wall pipe. They build a “pipe-in-pipe” system where the main 48-inch crude oil line sits inside a larger, secondary outer steel casing. The vacuum gap between the two pipes is monitored 24/7 for pressure changes; if the inner pipe leaks, the outer pipe captures the oil before it touches the soil. 

· Fiber-Optic Acoustic Leak Detection: Continuous fiber-optic cables are buried directly alongside the pipeline. These cables can “hear” the micro-acoustic vibrations and sudden temperature drops caused by a pinhole leak. This allows operators to pinpoint the exact location of a breach within meters in less than a minute. 

· Emergency Remote Isolation Valves: The pipeline is segmented by heavy-duty, automated shut-off valves. In flat areas, these are placed every 20 miles. In critical aquifer zones or steep mountain drops, they are placed every 1 to 2 miles. If the control center detects a pressure drop, these valves slam shut automatically via satellite command to trap the oil inside a small, isolated section, preventing millions of gallons from draining into the environment. 

Daily Revenue for Transit Countries 

· Transit countries like Jordan or Syria do not own the oil, but they make massive profits simply by letting it cross their land. These fees are negotiated as a tariff—a fixed dollar amount charged per barrel of oil moved. 

· Assuming a modern mega-pipeline with a capacity of 2 million barrels per day (bpd) and a standard international transit tariff of $0.60 to $1.20 per barrel, we can calculate the massive financial impact on a host country’s budget:

DAILY TRANSIT REVENUE ESTIMATE │ 

Pipeline Throughput Capacity │ 2,000,000 Barrels / Day 

Average transit tariff rate: $0.90 USD per barrel 

Daily Revenue Generated │ $1,800,000 USD / Day 

Annual Revenue Generated │ $657,000,000 USD / Year 

The Broader Economic Impact 

· Direct Budget Injection: For a developing economy like Jordan, an extra $650M+ per year in pure cash represents a massive boost to their national budget, easily funding large-scale public infrastructure or health programs. 

· In-Kind Energy Off-Takes: Rather than taking 100% of the payment in cash, transit treaties often allow host countries to take a portion of the payment in free crude oil. This allows them to supply their local refineries and secure cheap domestic gasoline without relying on volatile global energy imports. 

· Long-Term Economic Leverage: Hosting the pipeline transforms these non-producing nations into critical gatekeepers for global energy markets, giving them significant diplomatic leverage when negotiating trade and security deals with major global superpowers. 

Maritime Shipping Insurance & The Strait of Hormuz Bypass  The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most sensitive maritime energy chokepoint. During periods of regional conflict, Lloyd’s of London and global marine underwriters designate

the Persian Gulf as a listed area (high-risk zone), triggering drastic shifts in shipping economics. 

· War Risk Premiums: When regional tensions spike, war risk insurance premiums for oil tankers navigating the Strait can surge from a baseline of 0.025% of the ship’s value to over 0.25% to 0.5% per voyage. For a modern $100 million Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), this adds an extra $250,000 to $500,000 in insurance costs for a single transit. 

· Bypassing the Chokepoint: Moving oil via the underground pipeline directly to the Mediterranean entirely eliminates the need for tankers to enter the Persian Gulf. Tankers load at secure Mediterranean ports (like Ashkelon, Haifa, or Baniyas) within standard, lower-risk European maritime zones. 

· Shipping Time Savings: Loading in the Mediterranean slashes the sailing distance to European and North American refineries by roughly 3,500 to 4,500 miles compared to sailing all the way around Africa or paying steep transit fees to use the Suez Canal. This reduces freight operating costs and completely erases the risk of a regional conflict stranding a fleet inside the Gulf. 

Naval Defense Infrastructure at the Mediterranean Terminal 

Because the new Mediterranean pipeline terminal would handle up to 2 million barrels of oil per day, it becomes a high-value strategic asset. Protecting it requires a multi-layered naval defense perimeter extending miles out to sea:

· Anti-Drone & Anti-Torpedo Netting: Heavy, underwater physical barriers and sensor nets are deployed around the loading buoys and piers to catch or detonate incoming unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) or loitering aquatic explosive drones. 

· Phalanx CIWS & Missile Batteries: The onshore terminal facility integrates close-in weapon systems (CIWS) and surface-to-air missile batteries (like Iron Dome or Barak MX systems) to intercept incoming rocket, drone, or anti-ship missile strikes launched from sea or land. 

· Active Naval Patrols: Host nations deploy continuous maritime security cordons using fast attack craft, sonar-equipped corvettes, and aerial reconnaissance drones to enforce a strict 5-to-10 mile exclusion zone around the offshore loading terminals, vetting every incoming commercial vessel. 

Conclusions 

With political tensions between the United States and the European Union increasing and confidence in the United States’ foreign policy falling, Europe needs to find and secure an energy source that is not dependent on either the United States or Russia.  An agreement, both economic and political, would in the long run make Europe independent from energy sources from either country. The idea of an overland pipeline to the Mediterranean is both economically and engineeringly possible. What is needed is the political will to make it happen.

Spain has deployed its military to Ceuta after thousands of migrants overwhelmed police barricades. At least nine people are reported dead, and Italy says it supports temporarily tightening immigration controls for all travellers from Spain.

More than 1,150 cases have been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA)’s Cyber Choices scheme in the last eight years – nearly 600 of those were in the last three years.

Authorities warn teenage hacking groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in serious cyber-attacks.

Young, English-speaking hackers have been linked to attacks on major organisations including Transport for London (TfL) and MGM Grand in 2024, and Marks and Spencer and the Co-op in 2025.

Individuals are also being increasingly targeted in hacks for their cryptocurrency holdings.

“It certainly has become more of a problem,” said Paul Foster, who leads cyber prevention work at the NCA.

“Certainly English-speaking, western world individuals that we know are now more active in cyber-crime.”

He said young people were engaged with online activity and devices at increasingly young ages exposing them to criminal communities and influences.

Police say many young offenders do not initially set out to become criminals.

Instead, they often begin by experimenting with technology, testing systems or trying to bypass restrictions before becoming drawn into online communities where hacking is encouraged.