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Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein says the US was founded on the principle that governments exist to protect inalienable rights. He argues expanded presidential powers and unchecked authority represents a step backwards for US democracy.

She said she and 31-year-old Ana Luz were extremely close and would talk every day on video calls. Her sister always had Kleiber by her side.

“Wherever she went, her son went too. Whatever Kleiber wanted, she would please him. If she didn’t have money, she would call me: ‘Kleiber wants this’ or ‘he’s missing this,'” Andreína said.

“She is my older sister and I always trusted her and could tell her my problems and whenever I spoke to her on a video call, the child was by her side.”

Andreína said she was certain that her sister would have been next to Kleiber in the rubble.

As she sat with her nephew in hospital, desperate search and rescue efforts were continuing after the earthquakes.

Some 2,295 deaths have been officially recorded, but the final toll is expected to be many times higher. Tens of thousands have been reported missing, and the United Nations has said it is procuring 10,000 body bags for the country.

Andreína said she had not lost hope that Kleiber’s parents would be rescued.

“Just as they found my nephew, I have faith that they are going to find my sister and my brother-in-law,” she said.

Looking affectionately at Kleiber, she said she believed “he has a purpose in the world”.

“When this child grows up, God willing, this will be his story,” she said.

Additional reporting by Euridice Ledezma

Syria has completed the formation of its transitional parliament after President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed the remaining lawmakers to the 210-member People’s Assembly, allowing the legislature to convene for the first time next week. The move marks another step in the country’s post-Assad political transition, though the chamber will operate with limited authority under Syria’s interim constitutional framework.

The parliament’s formation comes more than eight months after the selection process began following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in 2024, with the new leadership pledging a more inclusive political system while retaining a strong presidential model.

Sharaa completes formation of transitional parliament

President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed 70 lawmakers to fill the final seats in the People’s Assembly, completing the 210-member chamber after two-thirds of legislators were selected through regional electoral colleges last year.

The Assembly is scheduled to hold its inaugural session on Monday, formally beginning its role as Syria’s transitional legislature.

Women’s representation increases in new legislature

Among the presidential appointments are 15 women, raising the total number of female lawmakers from six to 21.

The appointments address one of the main criticisms of last year’s selection process, which drew scrutiny for the limited representation of women and concerns over political inclusivity.

Sweida seats remain vacant amid security concerns

Lawmakers representing the predominantly Druze province of Sweida have not yet been appointed, with authorities citing ongoing security conditions.

The province has remained outside full government control following deadly clashes between government forces and Druze fighters last year, delaying its integration into the transitional political process.

Parliament to operate under strong presidential system

The newly formed legislature will function under a temporary constitutional framework introduced in 2025 that grants limited powers to parliament while preserving broad executive authority for the presidency.

Although lawmakers can propose and approve legislation, the government is not required to secure parliamentary approval to remain in office, limiting the Assembly’s oversight role during the transition.

Political representation remains under scrutiny

The parliament’s formation has been closely watched as a measure of the new government’s commitment to political inclusion after decades of authoritarian rule under the Assad family.

Rights groups and some Syrian political figures have argued that the appointment process concentrates significant influence in the presidency and called for greater electoral independence, stronger judicial safeguards and broader representation of Syria’s ethnic and religious communities.

Implications

The completion of the transitional parliament provides Syria with its first functioning legislature since the fall of the Assad government, offering an institutional framework for drafting legislation during the transition. However, its limited constitutional authority means executive power will remain concentrated in the presidency, leaving questions over the pace and depth of political reform.

The composition of the Assembly will also be closely monitored by regional governments and the international community as they assess the credibility of Syria’s political transition and prospects for broader engagement with Damascus.

Future Outlook

The People’s Assembly’s first session will signal the beginning of Syria’s transitional legislative process, with lawmakers expected to begin debating new legislation under the interim constitutional framework. Attention will now shift to whether the parliament evolves into a more influential institution ahead of the adoption of a permanent constitution and the eventual holding of nationwide elections.

With information from Reuters.

Tielemans’s penalty late into stoppage time of extra time capped Belgium’s comeback from 2-0 down in Seattle.

Youri Tielemans struck a 125th-minute penalty as Belgium rallied from two goals down and defeated Senegal 3-2 after extra time in their World Cup last ⁠-32 clash in Seattle to keep alive their title hopes, which had looked dead and buried.

Senegal’s Lamine Camara slid in on Tielemans as the ball flashed across the face of goal and conceded the spot kick after a ⁠⁠video assistant referee review, with the Belgian picking out the top corner to complete an extraordinary comeback on Wednesday.

Habib Diarra and Ismaila Sarr had given Senegal a deserved 2-0 lead, and they looked to be cruising through to the next round before Belgium netted twice in the final four minutes through Romelu Lukaku and Tielemans to force extra time.

Belgium now face the winner of ‌‌Wednesday’s last-32 clash between cohosts United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the next round in Seattle on Monday.

It was cruel on Senegal, who controlled much of the 90 minutes, and struck the woodwork twice, but could not see out the game.

They became the fourth African side to bow out in a narrow defeat in the last 32 after South Africa, Ivory Coast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and will wonder how they managed to let this one slip.

Senegal were inches away from the lead when Ismail Jakobs’s cross from the ⁠⁠left was parried by Thibaut Courtois, but a stretching Sarr could only steer the ⁠⁠loose ball onto the post.

When the African side did break the deadlock in the 25th minute, it was no surprise. Sadio Mane’s cross was headed goal-wards by Sarr, but his effort came off the post again.

This time, the loose ball fell kindly for Diarra, and he side-footed home ⁠⁠from 7 yards.

Maxim De Cuyper forced an excellent save from Senegal goalkeeper Mory Diaw with a shot that looked to be heading into the top corner as Belgium trailed ⁠⁠at the break.

Belgium brought on Lukaku for the ineffective ⁠⁠Charles De Ketelaere at half-time, but were soon 2-0 down.

A stunning long pass from Moussa Niakhate was brilliantly controlled on the chest by Sarr, who held off two defenders before thundering the ball into the net in the 51st minute.

Belgium struggled to create clear-cut chances until the final five minutes, ‌‌and almost out of nowhere turned the game on its head by netting twice in three minutes.

First, Lukaku turned the ball in at the near post from Thomas Meunier’s low cross, and Leandro Trossard’s ball into the box from ‌‌deep ‌‌was headed into the net by Tielemans.

Those two had been involved in a heated exchange earlier in the match, but it was all smiles and hugs when the equaliser went in, before Tielemans was central again in the winner.

Taylor’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, dropped in October 2025, with a flurry of lovestruck lyrics about her now fiancé.

She reminisced about date nights spent on ferris wheels, and dreamt of raising kids in a house with “a driveway with a basketball hoop”. There’s also an entire song about his, ahem, manhood.

On the promo trail, she was peppered with questions about the wedding, but gave away very little, except to tell the BBC’s Graham Norton it wouldn’t be a small affair.

Since those interviews, Team Taylor has gone quiet.

A rumoured wedding date of 13 June 2026 passed without incident. A few days later, a flurry of activity at Swift’s Rhode Island mansion had fans speculating that a bachelorette party was in full swing.

Then the New York Times reported that Swift had hired the entirety of Madison Square Gardens for a mega event just before Independence Day weekend.

According to officials with knowledge of the booking, the plans involve an intimate gathering of about 100 people on Thursday 2 July, followed by a more extravagant celebration with about 1,000 guests the next day.

TV cameras have captured trucks unloading drapes, lights, food and even a “40-inch mirror ball”.

Tabloids are speculating about wedding performers and bridesmaids. – but we’ll only know for sure, when Taylor decides it’s time.

And given that she’s recently been spotted at New York’s Electric Lady recording studios, there’s even speculation that confirmation could come in the form of a wedding song.

Watch this space.

Şafak Bozkurt, who chairs the Van Bar Association Human Rights Centre Migration and Asylum Commission, said he was familiar with this type of push-back in the region, and aware of cases of hypothermia.

Afghan migrants have reported multiple similar incidents since 2021, when the Taliban seized power in Kabul, according to Turkey-based activist Zakira Hikmat. She said increased border surveillance in Turkey had forced them onto more dangerous routes.

Mahmout Keçen, another migrant-rights activist based in Van, said the nature of the mountains “most commonly used by Afghans entering Turkey irregularly” meant crossings had to be made in difficult, risky weather conditions.

He has worked on numerous cases involving Afghans and other migrants who alleged “ill-treatment, push-backs, denial of access to asylum procedures, and forced returns” around the Iran-Turkey border region.

The Turkish foreign ministry told the BBC such allegations were unfounded and “unfairly cast a shadow on Turkey’s successful efforts in combating irregular migration”.

“Due to its geopolitical location on migration routes and hosting a significant migrant and refugee population, Turkey aims to implement a human-centred and sustainable migration-management system that is compatible with civilisational values, that balances security and freedom.

“Thanks to Turkey’s effective measures and successful fight against irregular migration, irregular migration flows towards the European Union have been almost completely halted.”

The Iranian authorities have also been approached for comment.

England’s reaction was an explosion of celebration and sheer relief, a largely dreadful performance transformed into dramatic victory by their magnificent captain.

The celebration was for that place in the last 16.

The relief will have been Tuchel’s, who would surely have been unable to survive such embarrassment had England lost, irrespective of his contract extension.

Relief, too, for the Football Association, who placed such faith in the German and handed him the sole mission of winning this World Cup.

And it was all down to Kane.

Kane attracts superlatives and respect like a magnet. Every bit of it deserved – as proved by the stats left behind by his latest feat.

He now has five goals in this World Cup, as the race for the Golden Boot becomes a sprint between Kane, Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Lionel Messi, with Tuchel saying: “They are all sharks. They smell blood.”

Tuchel added: “These big guys at this World Cup, do they watch each other? And then they go ‘not with me, then I score, then I do a hat-trick, then you go’. What is going on? Crazy.

“Harry is so, so good. He’s our captain. He’s our leader. He decides football matches with unbelievable finishes and did it here twice. The second one was just a brilliant goal.”

Kane now moves above Pele to go joint sixth on the all-time World Cup scorers list with 13, and now has 84 goals for England, putting him level with legendary Hungarian Ferenc Puskas in ninth on all-time international scorers list.

He is the first England player to score twice in a World Cup knockout stage match since Gary Lineker against Cameroon in 1990. Kane has now scored five knockout stage goals at a World Cup. Only Lineker, with six, has scored more for England.

Most remarkably of all, he now has scored 72 goals in 62 games for club and country this season, with 11 for England and 61 for Bayern Munich.

US prosecutors have alleged those involved in the Prairieland Detention Center protest were linked to antifa.

Seven more people have been sentenced to prison over a protest that culminated in a police officer being shot outside an immigration detention centre last year.

A federal court in Fort Worth handed down the latest sentences on Wednesday. Critics, however, say the case could reshape how protest is prosecuted in the United States.

The case centres on a shooting outside the Prairieland Detention Center, near Dallas, Texas, that took place during an antigovernment protest.

Six of the defendants in Wednesday’s sentencing hearing had pleaded guilty to providing material support to “terrorism” and received prison terms ranging from nearly two to 15 years.

A seventh defendant, Ines Soto, was sentenced to 50 years in prison after being convicted of “providing material support to terrorists”, as well as charges related to rioting and conspiracy to carry an explosive.

The protest in question took place on the night of July 4, 2025. Activists had gathered outside Prairieland to denounce President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportation. Some set off fireworks. Others have been accused of vandalism.

Prosecutors said that, during the demonstration, former US Marine reservist Benjamin Song shot and wounded a police officer who had just arrived at the centre. Song had reportedly shouted, “Get out the rifles,” prior to opening fire.

The Trump administration has described the protest as an act of “terrorism”, and 19 people were ultimately arrested.

Some of those detained were not present at the Prairieland protest. But the Trump administration has designated antifa — a loose-knit, left-wing antifascist movement — as a “domestic terrorist organisation”, and it accused the protest’s supporters of being part of an “antifa cell”.

Prosecutors for the US Department of Justice also argued that bringing firearms, first aid kits and body armour to the protest showed nefarious intent.

“The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement last week.

But civil liberties advocates say the case could have broad implications for protesters nationwide.

It will also likely test the boundaries of the free speech rights protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The Justice Department touted last week’s initial round of sentencing as the first time alleged antifa members were sentenced on criminal charges since Trump issued his executive order designating the group a “domestic terrorist” body.

Lawyers for the defendants, however, have largely denied links to antifa and rejected the prosecution’s characterisation of the protest.

They argued there was no planned ambush and that those carrying firearms only did so for their own protection, as is allowed under the Constitution’s Second Amendment. The fireworks, they added, were meant as a show of support for immigrants detained inside Prairieland.

On June 23, the eight defendants who chose to stand trial were handed lengthy prison terms.

Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison after being convicted of attempted murder in the shooting. The seven others received sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years. They received a combined 450 years in prison.

One defendant, Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada, has argued his only crime was to move a box of belongings, including zines. Prosecutors, meanwhile, have characterised his actions as “transporting a box containing numerous Antifa materials” and attempting to conceal them.

Several of the defendants, including Song and Sanchez Estrada, have filed notices of appeal.

In handing down last week’s sentences, US District Judge Reed O’Connor said what happened was not a protest but an “assault on democracy” and that “the need to deter this type of conduct is high”.

Catia la Mar, Venezuela – Andreina Velasquez looks up at her multistorey apartment block overlooking Catia la Mar, a coastal city in the Venezuelan state of La Guaira. The concrete slabs that once separated each floor are now stacked on top of each other.

“They fell like a pack of cards,” she said, pointing to where she used to live on the sixth floor.

Velasquez feels lucky. She left her apartment a couple of hours before a pair of deadly earthquakes shook Venezuela on June 24, reaching magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively.

She had gone to get a new key cut and was at the beach when the first quake struck.

Her neighbours did not make it. She remembers one as a gentle, retired man, another as a woman with a young daughter who had just moved in. They had been overjoyed with their view of the sea.

Velasquez is still struggling to process what she has lost. Her state was among the hardest hit by the earthquakes.

But despite her grief, she has started to hand out face masks to passersby, hoping to shield them from the gusts of dust drifting from the collapsed buildings and the stench rising from the rubble.

“I’ve been here every day. Other people came to help, but they don’t have helmets, they don’t have gloves, they don’t have masks. That’s why I’m helping,” she said.

More than 2,295 people have been killed and 11,000 injured in the twin earthquakes, according to Venezuela’s National Assembly. The United Nations has warned the death toll could rise to 10,000.

As Venezuela continues to confront the destruction, experts say recovery efforts have been driven largely by volunteers and neighbours like Velasquez.

Hospitals are overwhelmed, and government aid has been slow to reach some of the worst-affected areas.

Carolina Jimenez, the president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy group, told Al Jazeera that the result has been growing anger towards the state.

“In a government in any other country, the first responder should be the state,” she said. “In the case of Venezuela, the state has been the last responder.”

In places like Catia la Mar, north of Caracas, authorities still haven’t arrived or are lacking.

Velasquez and other locals say that help from the federal government only arrived on Sunday — three days after the earthquakes hit the country. In some parts of La Guaira, such assistance has yet to arrive at all.

“[The] response has come from citizens, from civil society, from humanitarian workers, from volunteers — but not from the government,” Jimenez said.

For years, India’s Muslim women have been subject to online abuse.
Now researchers warn that generative AI is taking that harassment to a new level, making it easier to create fake sexualised imagery and propaganda targeting Muslim women.

There’s this idea in social media that you’re supposed to choose a lane. Either you grow “purely organic”, patiently waiting for the algorithm to reward you, or you automate everything and turn your account into some kind of growth machine that runs without you.

In reality, nobody who actually tries to grow an account long-term sticks to either extreme.

Pure organic growth is slow enough to make you question whether anything is happening at all. Pure automation without real content is just noise with extra steps.

Most accounts that survive past the first few months end up somewhere in between, even if nobody says it out loud.

Where automation actually fits in

When people hear “automation”, they still imagine spam bots or engagement farms from years ago. That’s not really what we’re talking about anymore.

Used properly, automation isn’t about replacing activity. It’s about smoothing out the worst part of it – posting something decent and watching it sit at zero for hours because the algorithm didn’t pick it up.

That initial silence is where a lot of good content dies. Not because it’s bad, but because nothing happens around it early enough.

Automation in this context is just early support. A bit of initial visibility, some signal that the post isn’t completely invisible, enough to get it into circulation instead of letting it sink immediately.

Why organic alone stops scaling

Organic-only accounts usually hit the same pattern. At the beginning, everything feels like progress. A few posts perform, you get your first audience, and there’s a sense that things are starting to move.

Then it slows down. Not dramatically, just quietly. You keep posting, improving, adjusting – but the results stay in the same range. It’s not that the content gets worse. It’s that platforms don’t scale reach in a predictable way.

That’s usually where frustration starts. Not failure, just repetition. You’re doing the same work, but the outcome doesn’t change much. And that’s a difficult place to stay in for long.

Why automation alone also fails

On the other side, accounts that rely only on automated promotion usually run into a different problem. They can create activity, they can push numbers, they can make a profile look alive. But without real content behind it, there’s nothing for people to actually connect to.

No point of view, consistency and reason to follow.

People notice that, even if they don’t consciously analyze it. An account can look active and still feel empty. Automation can amplify reach, but it can’t replace identity.

The middle layer: where growth actually happens

The more stable setups usually combine both sides. Organic content is responsible for the actual message – what the account stands for, what it’s trying to say, why it exists in the first place.

Automation supports distribution – making sure that message doesn’t get lost immediately after it’s published. They solve different problems:

• organic answers what is being communicated;
• automation answers whether anyone is actually seeing it.

Most accounts struggle because they only solve one of those properly.

The psychology of perceived activity

There’s also a simpler factor that often gets ignored: perception. People don’t evaluate accounts in isolation. They compare them instantly to everything else in their feed.

An account with visible engagement feels more established. Not because people sit and analyze metrics, but because inactivity is noticeable.

Good content with no traction creates hesitation. Not rejection – just a pause. And on social media, hesitation is usually enough for someone to move on.

Adding early visibility reduces that friction. It makes the account feel like it already exists in circulation, not like it’s still trying to get noticed.

How teams actually use this mix

In practice, most teams don’t frame this as theory. They just build a workflow.

Organic content is used for messaging, storytelling, positioning. That part doesn’t change.

Promotion, including automated support, is used when something deserves more reach than it would naturally get in the first hour or two.

Some posts are left alone, some are boosted, while others are tested and dropped. It’s less about forcing outcomes and more about not letting good content disappear by default.

Services like Top4SMM are often used in that layer – not as a replacement for marketing, but as a way to stabilize visibility when organic reach is unpredictable. If you want to compare options, you can see details.

Why consistency beats intensity

A common mistake is treating growth like a short-term push. People post more, experiment harder, try to “fix” the algorithm in a week or two – and then step back when nothing changes immediately.

What actually works is much less dramatic. Steady output. Steady distribution. No spikes needed.

When both sides are consistent, results start compounding. Slowly at first, then more noticeably over time.

Final thoughts

There isn’t really a pure way to grow on social media anymore. Organic alone struggles with reach. Automation alone struggles with meaning.

The accounts that keep growing are the ones that combine both – content that actually says something, and distribution that makes sure it doesn’t disappear on impact.

Everything else mostly comes down to hoping for timing to behave like a strategy.

“Imagine the scenario; one of our Havoc hypersonic missiles loaded on an F-15EX Eagle with a mission profile locked-in and ready to go. This new missile is designed for low-cost and high-effect – it’s very difficult for an adversary to track in flight,” explains Chris Spagnoletti, chief executive officer of Ursa Major, as he discusses the company’s expanding hypersonics activities. Part of a company strategy to help overcome critical Department of War munitions shortages, Ursa Major’s Havoc was unveiled in early 2026. With a unique 3D-printed propulsion system, Havoc has been envisioned as a hypersonic missile that aims to re-write the rulebook for these types of weapons.

Ursa Major’s ambitious vision comes at a time of something of a renaissance in U.S. aerospace development and defense manufacturing, with newer firms establishing major positions within a rapidly evolving marketplace. These fresh takes on cutting-edge defense technologies also come as the United States celebrates its 250th birthday and looks back on a history of unlikely up-starts changing the world with new ideas and ways of doing business. It’s in this same spirit that Ursa Major looks to stake its claim.

The firm is evolving from a propulsion provider into a prime contractor and integrator with a keen focus on hypersonics and solving a need for affordable high-speed missiles at scale for the U.S. and its allies. In recent operations, the U.S. has fired a vast number of standoff air-to-ground weapons including more than 850 Tomahawks cruise missiles in the recent war with Iran and hundreds of high-end interceptors, stressing a system that’s been constrained by prolonged replenishment timelines. 

Spagnoletti says he strongly believes that hypersonic missiles are “the most important and pressing issue within critical munitions, with solid rocket motors coming close behind.” The company’s approach to design and production in both of these areas means Spagnoletti sees Ursa Major as being “well positioned to solve” these pressing requirements for the U.S. military.

“We are innovating on manufacturability and on new munition systems,” he continues. “It’s all under the umbrella of scalable munitions. Ursa Major’s founders really focused on developing very complicated propulsion systems, but with a strong propensity on design for manufacturability – essentially developing very high performing rocket engines as low-cost and as reliably as possible.”

Ursa Major has produced hundreds of engines and motors and accumulated more than 135,000 seconds of hotfire test time in under a decade. From its very beginnings the company has innovated through advanced manufacturing techniques that have evolved to leverage AI-enabled 3D-printing, specifically metal printing. “We’re looking at the problem set, and the landscape here is about how we can help the United States catch up as quickly as possible. We don’t just want a “me too” product, because we find there’s a lot of that in this space. This is about finding real answers to the desperate need to replenish our critical munitions fast,” says Spagnoletti.

Solid rocket motors in high demand

Having started out with liquid rocket engines, Ursa Major increasingly saw a burgeoning requirement for solid rocket motors (SRMs) for munitions, which Spagnoletti says have remained tied to traditional manufacturing approaches. Ursa Major says its approach to SRM manufacturing is designed to complement and strengthen the broader defense industrial base by providing flexible manufacturing capacity, common architectures, and modernized production methods.

Ursa Major’s manufacturing approach fundamentally changes how SRMs are designed and built using additive manufacturing, modular tooling, and software-backed production cells. This enables rapid switching between SRM variants without expensive retooling, which reduces production timelines and increases flexibility. 

In addition, Ursa Major’s highly-loaded grain technology increases motor performance and range without increasing motor size. By leveraging common architectures and using a limited set of qualified propellants, it says it can reduce qualification timelines and simplify production across multiple variants. The company’s energetics (solid propellent grain) strategy aims to expand domestic propellant capacity and reduce dependence on fragile supply chains, while using reliable mix, cast, and cure processes.

“Both in the liquid rocket engine side, and in solid rocket motors, the approach from the outset is deeply embedded in our culture; how we design, how we build, how we scale,” says Nick Doucette, co-founder and vice president of strategic operations for Ursa Major. “We came at the manufacturing problems from a completely different direction. We started out building liquid rocket engines, which were – to a degree – supporting the launch industry. That approach allowed us to develop new platforms that use new types of fuels or higher performance rates and lower costs.”

“From the start it helped support a growing launch industry, but very quickly it started to find its way into the hypersonics community as our engines, products, and performance points really started to solve some interesting problems. As we leaned heavily into the hypersonics needs, we realized that the early Ursa Major approach in manufacturing and the types of tech that we’re using are really solving some of the actual problems, and that led to our solid rocket motor programs.”

When building solid rocket motors, the inert part of the manufacturing leverages additive manufacturing heavily – Ursa Major avoids fixed tooling. “For example, after we qualify a motor, say a specific diameter booster, and then the government comes back to us and says that the adversaries have adapted. Now they want slightly different thrust, or maybe get additional range. We’ve already thought about that, our manufacturing line doesn’t need to change. We can use the same manufacturing line and adapt it,” explains Spagnoletti.

“We kept the energetics formulation essentially the same – it’s tried and true and it has been munition-tested for years – but we looked at the problem from the manufacturability of the entirety of the system. From a contracting point of view, this gives the government a lot more flexibility and to be as agile as the adversary. This has been happening on the development side for the past three years, working with several primes and the U.S. Navy. They’re inherently leveraging our ability to turn things fast, and now that’s translating into contracts for us.”

“The Navy really understood our approach to manufacturing,” adds Doucette. “They challenged us to apply our approach with liquid rockets to the solid rocket motor industry. To look at the problems and peel back the onion on solid rocket motors. What we found is that the choke point actually lies the metallic components that make what we call the inert tube section, that then gets packed with the energetics. The energetics are difficult for sure, but what actually chokes the supply chain is the 36-plus months to make the metallic tube structures. To compound the problem, all these production lines of the last 30, 40, 50 years are designed around one platform. Can you imagine an automotive company that has a huge expensive factory but only ever makes one car model! I mean, it would economically go out of business.”

“We have demonstrated that, by looking at the steps to make a solid rocket motor, be it metal printing the end domes or how we do the internal features and make the actual case to how we in some cases load the highly-loaded grain to get more performance, we can do all of it on the same production line for any motor between two inches and 22 inches in diameter. The same equipment, the same people, the same factory footprint. If we want to scale, we just copy paste the factory. If the demand signal changes in a year – which if recent conflicts give us any indication they probably will – that factory can switch over to a different munition. We just stop making one size and tool up for the new size in a matter of months.”

Ursa Major’s primary 93-acre corporate headquarters is located in Berthoud, about an hour north of Denver, Colorado. Here the company has the facilities to test its liquid rocket engines on site and it also designs, develops, and manufactures here. “Our main building is really split in half,” explains Spagnoletti. “On one side we have liquid rocket engine manufacturing and development to power hypersonics, and on the other behind a steel rolling door are the solid rocket motor development and low-rate production as part of our replenishment of critical munitions.”

“At the Colorado site, we’re actually grinding, mixing, casting, curing thousands of pounds of energetics per year for our solid rocket motors, with a lot of automation built-in to not only protect the people but also to make the process more consistent. We have another site for our high volume solid rocket motor production – it needs a lot of space – and we are targeting to manufacture hundreds of thousands of pounds of energetics for use in various shapes and sizes by the middle of 2027.”

The company has expanded with more than 400 acres for SRM production in Galeton, Colorado.

Solid rocket motors of all sizes

Nick Doucette already sees the solid rocket motor work evolving. “We will eventually boost-power our Havoc system with our solid rocket motors. Remember, we got into SRMs due to seeing the critical munition needs, with an open door for manufacturing innovation and a problem we want to help solve. So we’ve built a manufacturing approach and we are now building a multitude of different size classes for different customers.”

The smallest SRM that Ursa Major is actively working on is for the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System, or APKWS, from BAE Systems. “This currently uses a very dated motor and there’s been a lot of need in the industry to essentially innovate on that motor,” explains Doucette. “So we’ve been working extensively with both BAE Systems and the U.S. Air Force on that particular platform, especially with highly loaded grain, and we see a very promising future there.”

Doucette explains that Ursa Major has already made several hundred 2.75-inch motors for testing and development. This will be an extended range version of the motor, packing a significantly larger amount of energetic material into the same size rocket casing.

In 2024, Ursa Major won a contract with the Naval Energetics Systems and Technologies (NEST) program to develop and test a new design to apply its SRM manufacturing processes to the Mk104 dual-thrust rocket motor that powers the U.S. Navy Standard Missile 2 (SM-2), used for surface-to-air defense, and the SM-6 anti-air, land, and sea missile.

Trusted solid rocket motor providers are in limited supply, and the versatility of Ursa Major’s production process opens up a raft of potential opportunities, particularly in the missile defense space. The 10-14-inch range is what Doucette calls a “sweet spot” for interceptor missiles.

Asked about air-to-air missiles, Doucette says: “of course, we’re looking at it. There’s been a lot of conversations around how Ursa Major would approach the problem, but we have a lot going on already, so we’re making sure we don’t try to swallow the whole critical munitions list at once.”

“Most of these larger hypersonic weapons are all boosted,” adds Doucette. “These have a booster in the back end, and we have additionally completed internal work to develop that 22-inch diameter SRM capability. So now we can do anything from 2-inch to 22-inch on that same production line using our common modular manufacturing approach.”

Unleashing Havoc

Ursa Major’s parallel efforts in hypersonics brings the story full circle. Alongside the solid rocket motors business, hypersonic missiles have become a critical part of the company’s efforts, as Nick Doucette picks up the story. 

“There’s two specific products that Ursa Major makes in the hypersonics realm right now. The first is an engine that’s liquid oxygen-powered with rocket fuel. We call it Hadley, and we’ve had that for the better part of a decade. Hadley powers the Stratolaunch hypersonic Talon A testbed, for example. We don’t make the vehicle, we just provide the engine and support services, and Hadley has flown 10 times now.”

“The challenge with Hadley is that it uses cryogenic liquid oxygen, which presents a whole suite of issues from a tactical perspective. A military user can’t sit and wait for the propellant to get cold, like you do with liquid oxygen. We needed to make a similar engine, slightly lower thrust, a little smaller, but essentially in the same packaging, make it storable and most importantly, make it tactical, so that you can drop it from a plane or shoot it vertically from a ship. So we switched from liquid oxygen to hydrogen peroxide.”

“The catch there was that the only way we were able to do that in the right packaging, tightness, and density, was to use 3D-printing. Fast-forward through six years of insane additive development and the Draper engine became a reality. It simply would not have been possible without massive advances in the additive world because of the complexity of what we’re doing geometrically. It’s a really challenging thing to do.”

Draper is a 4,000-pound-thrust engine that is powered by hydrogen peroxide and rocket fuel. Its use of non-cryogenic storable propellants enables long-duration storage, rapid deployment, and operational flexibility in real-world conditions. Its massive potential drove Ursa Major to search for a suitable hypersonic vehicle design to match it with.

“We strongly believed that Draper introduced a differentiating threat vector for any adversary,” Doucette continues. “China has had boost-glide hypersonics for a decade. Other hypersonic designs use a scramjet, which are costly and complex. Draper opened up hypersonic performance, where you have a wide range of trajectories and adaptability as well as other really creative mechanisms that, to be honest, the adversaries don’t have. I mean it’s wildly different, which we see as being a very valuable asset to the national security arsenal.

“The concept of using a liquid rocket engine for a hypersonic weapon is absolutely game changing. Draper can be throttled – unlike solid rocket motors that use a pre-mixed propellant and oxidizer that cannot be controlled once ignited – plus it’s designed to be more safely stored than other liquid rocket engines, providing the tactical storage capabilities that are typical of a solid rocket motor.”

Doucette says that Ursa Major looked to find a partner for the vehicle itself, but concluded that none were suitable, particularly when it came to moving fast. The decision was made to go it alone in-house with an air vehicle. The result is Havoc, which is designed like other hypersonic programs to fly in excess of mach 5, and intended to be launched in a variety of ways; as a single-stage from an aircraft or ground-launched with added booster stages. It’s also designed to run out at circa $3-million apiece. “We entered a rapid campaign in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory and we went from concept to flight-ready in about six months,” Doucette says.

Hypersonic missiles currently in testing with the USAF include the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), which is a boost-glide hypersonic system, with rocket boost and an unpowered glide vehicle inside. The Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM, also features rocket boosters, but with an air-breathing scramjet second stage vehicle. Both are limited to operations in the Earth’s atmosphere – whereas Havoc can operate either in or above the atmosphere.

“With regard to propulsion in aerospace defense, there’s three main types; air-breathing, solid powered, and liquid powered,” Doucette explains. “In the world of hypersonics, specifically, we’re talking about fast-moving, somewhat unpredictable, missile systems that are moving at over five times the speed of sound. You have the same propulsion methods, but liquid fuel has never really been introduced.”

“The air-breathing hypersonic weapons are typically scramjets and ramjets, which the U.S. has been developing for a very long time. They’re expensive and exquisite, but very long range.

“China has something in the order of 600-700 operational boost-glide systems in its arsenal right now. This is not new to them. They’ve been practicing, watching, and rehearsing.” Doucette warns that the U.S. fielding a boost-glide or scramjet hypersonic weapon may not really change the dynamic, which is why Ursa Major’s argument for its liquid-powered weapon is so strong.

“The novelty of being liquid-powered is that it carries its own oxidizer and fuel, which means it can go anywhere – in the atmosphere, out of the atmosphere, high, low. A solid rocket can technically do the same thing, but the big difference with the liquid system is that it can turn on and off an infinite number of times. A solid is going where it’s going, but a liquid could be on one trajectory and a split second later turn it off, then instantaneously head on a different trajectory because you can maneuver it from a powered vector perspective. Draper is also fully throttleable down to 10% all the way up to 100%.”

There are currently no competing systems that have the ability to bridge the gap between running in atmosphere and out of atmosphere with such a degree of throttle control. Ursa Major is currently the only company with a hypersonic vehicle and experience in the liquid-powered hypersonic realm. It has twice ground-launched from a rail what it calls “Havoc Block 0” in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory, under its Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator (ARMD) program. These demonstrator flights have been designed as multi-domain tests. “The great thing about Havoc is that we can alter the wings, add our solid rocket motor boost system, and it means we can ground launch, VLS [vertical launch system] launch, or air-launch,” Doucette says.

“Havoc provides something the Department of War has not previously seen,” adds Chris Spagnoletti. “Having a mid- and long-range tactical weapon that can deep throttle, turn on and off at will, is agnostic to atmosphere, rapidly change vector, accelerate and de-celerate, skim the sea, fly outside the atmosphere – this really opens up the aperture of what a munition can do. This is very tough for conventional systems to figure out what it’s intending to do.”

Rapidly scaling production

Spagnoletti says Ursa Major’s hypersonic program can scale quickly because of the company’s additive manufacturing and AI-driven manufacturing processes. Draper’s liquid propellant also has additional advantages when it comes to production. “We can drain the fuel, bring them into a facility, and that now-inert system doesn’t need massive keep-out distances,” explains Spagnoletti. “So, say in a 100,000 square foot building, we can produce 500 full-up missile systems per year inert, then fuel them right before we ship them or at the operational location.”

“Some companies are advocating for things like multi-year contracts, and that really matters to them because they’re setting up rigid long-term production lines. We’ve flipped that on its head where if a customer decides in say five years they want this weapon to look different, we have a common modular approach that we can swap things out. Most of the aerospace systems I’ve worked on in my career have long five or 10-year windows. Design, build, qualify – they don’t want to make hardware changes because it’s going to take ages and cost a lot of money to modify and qualify those systems. They’re inherently resistant to change, not because they don’t want to help and adapt, but because the system allows a massive amount of inertia, production lines have rigid tooling and processes, they can’t adapt. What’s different about Ursa Major is, again, that we design for manufacturability and leverage advanced manufacturing.’

Ursa Major Additive Manufacturing

In addition to its Colorado facilities mentioned earlier, Ursa Major also has a plant in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a center of excellence for 3D-printing, they then ship to Berthoud for final assembly and test. A lot of parts and components are manufactured in house, including valves, tanks, pressurization systems, avionics, but it does have dependency on some external suppliers where appropriate. “We have some really strong partnerships where we can’t bring things in-house. We’re such experts in additive manufacturing that we know when not to do it.”

“Importantly, we are not reducing costs by using the cheapest parts. In my 36 years in the aerospace industry, when it comes to building a critical munition, I know the devil’s in the details – it has to work every time and there’s only so cheap you can go before you start to sacrifice reliability. Some of our competitors are trying to achieve a lower cost hypersonic system, which is great, but those are typically salvo weapons where you just launch a lot of them. The Havoc missile system is more of a strategic asset.”

Ursa Major is making significant moves in the U.S. military’s missile stockpile recapitalization effort. It has opened up versatile methods of producing solid rocket motors, and it has demonstrated the functionality of Havoc with the Air Force Research Laboratory, including the concept of operations with the liquid rocket. Spagnoletti points out that the U.S. used to use liquid rockets prior to the advent of solid rocket motors. Use of additive manufacturing and 3D-printing is always in the conversation too, it’s how this company can scale its innovations fast.

The next major milestone it’s driving towards is a follow-on demonstration phase for Havoc – a boosted, full hypersonic flight. “We’re pushing for that in 2027,” says Spagnoletti.

As America marks its 250th year, the dream of a hypersonic missile with a 3D-printed engine that can be delivered in large quantities at an affordable price could materialize into another significant landmark in the story of American defense innovation. At least that’s Ursa Major’s goal, and it appears to look more promising by the day.

President Donald Trump is flying on the U.S. Air Force’s new VC-25B Bridge aircraft for the first time. The modified, Qatari-gifted Boeing 747-8i is taking Trump and others to North Dakota for the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and for other celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. The Air Force formally accepted delivery of the plane less than two weeks ago.

The White House has confirmed to TWZ that this is Trump’s first flight aboard the Bridge aircraft. The plane has been the source of controversy, including over its ability to adequately serve in the Air Force One role, something TWZ has questioned in detail in the past. The gifting of the jet from Qatar in the first place was also highly irregular, and the justification for needing it at all remains up for debate. The converted 747-8i has also been painted in a new scheme for U.S. executive aircraft preferred by Trump, which is a major departure from the Kennedy-era Air Force One livery that had been the standard for 60 years.

Decorative books, soft lighting, framed photos on new AF1, a gift from Qatar and retrofitted for presidential use by Trump. Some of the 1st images out publicly from @StevenCheung47, who is pictured with Ross Worthington, Natalie Harp, Karoline Leavitt, Meredith O’Rourke, Stephen… pic.twitter.com/jdVWNPvCmA

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 1, 2026

For the first time, the VC-25B bridge aircraft has flown over the Washington, D.C. area with the callsign “AIR FORCE ONE.” @POTUS is on his way to North Dakota today. pic.twitter.com/VVwTbsyAKi

— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) July 1, 2026

“This will be the first flight of what I think is maybe the greatest commercial plane ever built. I said to Boeing, what’s the best one? They said this is the best plane ever built. And you’re going to have the privilege of flying it, and I have the privilege also of flying it,” Trump told reporters before boarding the plane at Andrews Air Force Base. “I’m excited about the first flight.”

One of the Air Force’s two existing VC-25A Air Force One aircraft is serving as a backup for Trump’s trip today.

VC-25B-Bridge Makes Maiden Flight as AIR FORCE 1

US Air Force VC-25B-Bridge #AF83F3 is in the air from JB Andrews as AIR FORCE 1 for the first time.

USAF VC-25A #ADFDF9 is serving as SAM47 for this trip, a role that this aircraft hasn’t been in for years. pic.twitter.com/8fblf7iA6h

— TheIntelFrog (@TheIntelFrog) July 1, 2026

Bloomberg was first to report that the trip to North Dakota would be Trump’s first flight aboard the Bridge aircraft. NBC News had previously reported that the inaugural flight of the Bridge aircraft might come later in the week, taking Trump on a planned trip to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on July 3. It is still very possible, if not probable, that the plane will take Trump to South Dakota, as well.

Reuters also reported back in May that the debut of the VC-25B Bridge jet might come during a July 4th flyover. The former Qatari jet was unveiled to the public on June 19, but it has been confirmed that it will fly over Washington, D.C. as part of the celebrations this weekend.

Significant questions do still remain about the Bridge aircraft’s ability to support the full spectrum of Air Force One mission requirements, especially given that the plane was modified for this role in just 10 months. U.S. officials and defense contractor L3Harris, which did the conversion work, have insisted that operational concerns have been addressed and have downplayed any potential risks.

“One of the first things we have to do on this aircraft, in conjunction with the U.S. government, is ensure it is safe. There was a lot of content and buzz on blogs and whatnot about is the aircraft secure? Is there anything that we wouldn’t want coming in on the aircraft? Somebody could listen in, something like that,” Jason Lambert, President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) at L3Harris, told TWZ in an interview last week. “I can assure you that was very effectively managed to the highest degree. Experts from the U.S. government, experts from L3Harris, experts in cyber security, electronic warfare, ensured that every square inch of that plane was clean, not only on the exterior but interior of the plane and all systems within. So I’ll say, there’s just electronic scrubbing, is how I would describe it, to ensure that it was safe and secure. Frankly, that work took place even before we were able to do any real work on the plane.”

“Survivability of the aircraft was something that was absolutely thought of, but I can’t comment on the specific systems on the aircraft yet. That’s one I’ll have to direct you back to the Air Force,” he added. Lambert also deferred to the Air Force when asked about hardening against electromagnetic pulses, command and control capabilities, and other core Air Force One requirements.

Readers can find the full interview here.

The Air Force’s two existing VC-25A Air Force One aircraft remain in service, as evidenced by the one serving today as a backup. Boeing is still working toward delivering two fully-equipped VC-25B jets around the end of the decade. The VC-25Bs are set to replace the aging and increasingly difficult to sustain VC-25As, which were converted from older 747-200 models. However, that program has suffered repeated delays and cost growth. The Air Force is also now operating an additional 747-8i, acquired from Lufthansa, as a trainer for aircrew and ground personnel. A second ex-Lufthansa 747 will serve as a source of spare parts for the expanded Air Force One fleet.

Trump’s inauguration flight today aboard the VC-25B Bridge jet makes clear that it is now firmly in the Air Force One rotation.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

“I am temporarily relocating to Kumalia.”

When Kaka Ali said those words over the phone on June 8, I nearly asked him to repeat himself. I had been speaking to him about farming and survival in northern Borno for nearly two years. Kumalia was where he was born, but it was also a place that most people had long stopped calling home.

The community is located within Monguno Local Government Area (LGA) in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. The Boko Haram insurgency had emptied it in 2016, forcing residents to flee to Monguno town and Maiduguri, the state capital. The government never formally reopened the community. In the years that followed, its name surfaced mostly in conversations about what the insurgency had taken.

“Why would you go back there?” I asked. 

“The negotiations did not go through,” Kaka replied. 

I did not fully understand what he meant until weeks later.  

On June 21, I reached him again. I learnt that he had returned to Monguno to attend the funerals of four friends who were killed the previous day by suspected Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists while working on a farm near Kartari, a remote settlement close to Cross Kauwa town in Kukawa LGA, on the shores of Lake Chad. Twelve other farmers were also killed in the incident. 

The men had travelled to Kartari from different parts of northern Borno, drawn by the search for land to cultivate after farming had been disrupted closer to home. That same day, in Zabarmari, a farming community in Jere LGA, another 11 farmers were reportedly killed. By then, Kaka’s explanation about Kumalia finally made sense.

The warning had come months earlier at the onset of cultivation in February, when farmers across parts of northern Borno began receiving warnings from ISWAP terrorists not to farm this season. The message spread among returning farmers and community leaders through word of mouth.

“They approached farmers who had gone to Kartari and told them we must not cultivate this year,” said Musa Abubakar, a farmer from Cross Kauwa. “They also informed community leaders in villages close to them, and those leaders passed the message to us in other towns,” he said. 

According to Musa, farmers who wished to cultivate were instructed to relocate with their families to terror-controlled territories, locally known as Daula, and farm there instead. Many initially assumed it was another extortion attempt because for years, cultivating in parts of northern Borno had meant paying terror groups for access to land. In 2024, HumAngle documented how farmers in the region paid millions of naira in levies and so-called farming permits to ISWAP. This season, farmers pooled their money together, some contributing at least ₦50,000 each, hoping to negotiate their way back to their fields. However, the effort failed, and the warning held.

So they began looking elsewhere. Some moved toward the Lake Chad region. Others returned to abandoned communities. More than 100 farmers from Monguno, according to Kaka, relocated to Kumalia, where they erected makeshift shelters from sticks and dry grass to plant their crops. They plan to stay until the harvest season in November or December.

The women were not left behind either. 

“My sister is there,” Kaka, the 30-year-old father of two, said. “Many women went with their children. The older ones trekked with their parents. The younger ones are carried on their backs or transported in push carts.” 

Kaka’s older sister, Yabusam Ali, travelled with one of her children and left the others with their grandmother in Monguno. Other women made similar calculations, weighing which children could endure the walk and which would be safer left behind. Yabusam said conditions remain basic but manageable. 

“There is drinkable water there,” she told HumAngle. 

For now, that is enough. Kumalia has no schools, no health facilities, and no visible state presence. It is a settlement held together by necessity. Over the coming months, the community will once again have residents, not because it is safe, but because it has become the least dangerous option left.

Across Borno, the farming ban, enforced through violence and the threat of it, is reshaping how rural families survive. Some have abandoned cultivation entirely. Others have confined themselves to plots within sight of military positions. A growing number are returning to communities the state had given up on, betting that the promise of a harvest is worth living beyond its protection. Together, these choices are accumulating into something larger than disrupted planting seasons: a food security crisis taking shape incrementally, in the daily calculations of people who can no longer be certain what the harvest will bring, or whether there will be one at all.

The consequences extend far beyond the communities where cultivation has been disrupted. Agriculture remains one of Nigeria’s largest employers and a critical source of food for millions of households. The World Bank estimates that nearly four in every five rural households in Nigeria depend on farming, while livestock rearing is especially common across the country’s northern regions. When insecurity forces farmers off their land, harvests decline, market supplies tighten, and food prices rise.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a food security monitoring and forecasting initiative, estimates that between 21 and 22 million people across northern Nigeria will require humanitarian assistance during the June-to-August lean season, driven by escalating conflict, lower-than-expected household food production, and constrained access to food. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) similarly projects that more than six million children across northern Nigeria will experience acute malnutrition this year, with conflict, displacement, and reduced access to food among the principal drivers.

Kaka had already made these calculations. “Are you not afraid of attack from the terrorists, or of being mistaken for one by troops?” I asked him. “We will die even if we don’t go,” he replied. “So, it is all the same.”

Flags on the farm

Just as Kaka mentioned, several farmers in northern and central Borno say the people who first heard the warnings were often those who had gone ahead of the rains to clear their fields. 

In Monguno, Koso Abubakar said farmers preparing their land were approached and warned against cultivation. They returned to town carrying the news, and from there, the message spread from household to household. In Cross Kauwa, a farming and fishing community on the shores of Lake Chad, the warning reached those working near Kartari, a remote settlement under Kukawa LGA. Community leaders received it and relayed it to surrounding towns.

In Lassa, a farming community in Askira-Uba LGA in southern Borno, it arrived with violence. Andrew Adamu, a farmer there, said suspected terrorists attacked and flogged women they found working on their fields at the beginning of the season. “They said nobody should farm there,” he said. “They [the women] said they had mounted their flags on those lands.” 

The flags, a territorial marker used by terror groups across the region to signal control, were understood immediately. Few people in Lassa are now willing to venture beyond the land immediately surrounding the town.

Musa, a farmer in Cross Kauwa, said the warning came with an additional condition in the northern Borno community. He said that farmers willing to cultivate were instructed to relocate permanently with their families to terror-controlled territories and continue to farm there while paying levies instead. The requirement to relocate permanently was new. The levies were not. But this time around, levy negotiations failed in some places. 

However, in parts of southern Monguno, some farmers were reportedly permitted to cultivate after paying ₦50,000 each. The inconsistency stirred speculation that the restrictions reflected internal disagreements among ISWAP commanders rather than a unified policy. 

“It was said that two Amirs controlling two farming villages had a dispute over farming fees,” Kaka explained. “The Amir controlling where we farm said he would not allow anyone to farm this season. The other Amir said farmers were welcome to cultivate in his territory after paying this year’s levy.”

HumAngle could not independently verify the claim.

When negotiations collapsed, the consequences began to accumulate. In Lassa, Andrew said, women were beaten while working on their farms. In Auno, Konduga LGA, a 55-year-old farmer was attacked and killed while working on his land earlier in February, according to residents. News of his death, Aja Bukar, another farmer, said, spread quickly through surrounding communities, confirming what many had hoped was merely a threat. 

Then, on June 20, 15 farmers were killed near Kartari while working on their fields. Bashir Suleiman, a farmer from Doron Baga, said the victims included four farmers from Monguno, six from Kukawa town, three from Baga, and two from Cross Kauwa. 

In Cross Kauwa, Musa said most farmers have stayed away from their fields since. The few still cultivating have been permitted by the military to plant low-growing crops, such as beans and groundnuts, within a fixed distance of the community’s defensive trench. Beyond that line, he said, most no longer believe the harvest is worth the risk.

The return to Kumalia

For the first time in nearly a decade, Kumalia has residents again. Not many, and not enough to resemble the farming community it once was before the insurgency emptied it in 2016, but enough to bring movement back to a place which has long given up — children’s voices have returned. Smoke rises from cooking fires in the morning. The fields are being planted. And temporary shelters made from sticks, ropes, and dry grass stand across parts of the settlement. 

Getting there, however, is not easy. According to Modu Baluye, a farmer who also relocated to Kumalia, reaching the settlement takes five hours of walking over terrain most vehicles cannot cross. “We travel by foot,” he said. “There is no means of transportation except push carts.” The shelters, he said, are simple: stick frames with dry grass roofing, which offers little protection from rain or wind, but they are enough to house families for the months between planting and harvest.

For years, displacement pushed families out of places like Kumalia and into towns where security forces could better protect them. Now, insecurity around farming is pushing some of those same families back, not into safety but into a different kind of exposure: too far from the state to be protected, yet close enough to armed groups to be noticed.

Communities across northeastern Nigeria have learned, often through grief, that living or farming in remote and ungoverned territories can attract a different kind of violence during military operations. Aerial surveillance, in vast terrains where terror groups move through civilian spaces, collect levies, and use local markets, must be able to distinguish between farmers and fighters. In places like Kumalia, unrecognised by the government, absent from any official resettlement record, populated by people living in makeshift shelters on cultivated open land, that distinction is not guaranteed.

In April 2026, reports showed that more than 30 civilians were killed when a Nigerian Air Force strike hit a village market in Jilli, a remote settlement between Gubio LGA in Borno State and Geidam LGA in Yobe State. Military authorities described it as an active terrorist enclave. Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum later acknowledged that the area’s market had been officially closed due to terrorist activity, yet civilians were among the dead. It was not the first such incident. In 2017, a military aircraft bombed a displaced persons camp in Rann, Kala-Balge LGA, killing more than 100 people including aid workers. And in 2024, HumAngle documented cases in which fishermen around Lake Chad were reportedly misidentified during military operations.

Farmers in Kumalia are aware of this history. It sits alongside the warnings from ISWAP, the distance from town, and the inadequacy of their shelters. It is part of what they weighed before they went.

The price of survival

Every morning before sunrise, Esther Danjuma sets up her stall on the roadside outside the Divisional Council Church (DCC) Internally Displaced Persons’ camp in Shuwari, Maiduguri. She heats cooking oil, prepares her bean paste, and waits for the first customers. By the time most people in Maiduguri are awake, she is already working. 

The 26-year-old was displaced from Amuda in Gwoza LGA years ago. Until recently, she measured time by farming seasons, not calendar months. Before the warning reached Chabbal, a farming community in Magumeri LGA where she and thousands of others from the DCC displacement camp cultivate each season, she grew sorghum, sesame, and groundnuts. Last year, she harvested five bags each of sorghum and sesame and three bags of groundnuts. This year, she planted nothing.

“I never thought I would sell kosai,” she told HumAngle. She earns at least ₦3,000 daily. This helps her care for herself and her elderly grandmother at the camp, she said.

A few shelters away from Esther lives Andrawus Yakubu. While Esther replaced farming with a small business, Andrawus has replaced it with whatever work presents itself each day. On some days, he works at construction sites. On other days, he digs pits, cuts logs, or takes on manual labour wherever opportunities arise. The work is irregular and physically demanding, but Andrawus says he cannot afford to be selective. “I will do whatever legal thing that my strength can do,” the father of nine told HumAngle.

For years, Andrawus supplemented his household income through farming in Limanti, a rural community in Konduga LGA. Like many displaced residents of the DCC Shuwari camp, he relied on the farming season to feed his family and reduce their dependence on the market. Last season, he cultivated four hectares of land, harvesting five bags of millet, 12 bags of groundnuts, and eight bags of beans. This season, however, the farming restrictions have forced him to abandon farming. 

Others have chosen to leave Borno altogether. In Auno, Aja Bukar said the killing of a farmer earlier this year convinced many residents that remaining in the area was no longer worth the risk. Some households, including his, have since relocated to Damaturu in neighbouring Yobe State, hoping to find safer opportunities elsewhere.

These different responses – the roadside stall, the day labour, and relocation to another state – all lead back to the same question: what can replace a harvest, if anything?

Agriculture remains the backbone of rural livelihoods across Borno and the wider North East. In Borno, farming is not only an occupation but also a source of sustenance for families; it is how they feed themselves, pay school fees, buy medicine, and prepare for the long dry season. Yet years of conflict have steadily eroded that foundation, limiting access to farmland, disrupting markets, and deepening food insecurity.

When farmers abandon their fields, the consequences ripple far beyond the households directly affected: Harvests decline, local markets receive fewer supplies, and children and other vulnerable groups bear the greatest nutritional burden. The effects are felt not only in the villages where cultivation stops, but across communities that rely on those harvests for food and trade.

The region has been here before. In 2023, HumAngle documented how repeated attacks on farming communities forced many residents to abandon cultivated fields, leaving crops worth millions of naira to wither or be destroyed. A year later, the trend persisted, contributing to worsening food insecurity and malnutrition among vulnerable households, particularly children.

What is unfolding this season is not unique to Borno. Across the North West and North Central, terror groups have used similar tactics to control access to rural farmland, taxing farmers, threatening communities, and displacing those who resist. In Zamfara, HumAngle reported in June that farmers were displaced despite paying millions in levies. Another report the same month showed that 17 farmers were killed in Maradun while working their fields. In 2024, Reuters reported from Katsina that attacks on farmers were driving up food prices. According to SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy, 1,356 farmers have been killed across Nigeria since 2020.

The scale of what is at stake is significant. UNICEF estimates that around three million children may require treatment for severe wasting in 2026, with conflict-affected northeastern states carrying a disproportionate share.  

Across Borno, people are making decisions whose consequences they cannot yet fully see.

Poland won’t transfer additional MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters to Ukraine because Kyiv won’t provide drone production technology information, the country’s defense minister and deputy prime minister said. The move represents a pivot from policies of the previous Polish government and comes amid worsening relations between Kyiv and Warsaw.

As we have previously reported, under former President Andrzej Duda, Poland donated 14 of its MiG-29s to Ukraine, becoming the first country to commit to supplying combat jets to Kyiv. However, under new Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who was elected last August, the country is now seeking something tangible in return for the Fulcrums.

“I proposed what I believe was a very partnership-based approach. MiGs in exchange for drones,” Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who serves as defense minister and deputy prime minister, told the Polish Polsat News outlet. “The Ukrainians initially agreed, but they did not honor this arrangement, so there will be no MiGs for Ukraine because Poland does not have drones or the capability to use them.”

TWZ cannot independently confirm the Polish defense minister’s claims.

The Polish defense minister lauded Ukraine’s defense technology.

“Ukraine has such significant capabilities in the field of drones that, in return for the military equipment it has received, it could have shared its know-how with Poland and provided partial access to its technologies,” he said.

Kosiniak-Kamysz added that he was not criticizing the previous administration’s policies toward Ukraine.

“I’m not going to bash them over this issue; that’s far from my intention,” he told Polsat. “They did the right thing—in fact, I’d go further: I would have done the same. They acted correctly, and Ukraine was in a much more difficult situation back then.”

The Polish move echoes U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance on Ukraine and the NATO alliance writ large. The American leader has frequently criticized the Biden administration for giving Ukraine military aid with no compensation and NATO for not doing enough to pay for its own defense.

Kosiniak-Kamysz’s pronouncement about halting the Fulcrum transfer follows Nawrocki’s confirmation last December that Poland would transfer the additional MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for counter-drone systems.

“After the unnecessary and unclear public uproar surrounding this issue—unfortunately, public opinion has been somewhat misinformed about this matter—we are seeking a symmetrical strategic partnership,” Nawrocki said during a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “This exchange of MiGs for anti-drone systems does not contradict our policy.”

It is unclear exactly what drone technology Poland was seeking or what Ukraine refused to provide. Ukraine has yet to comment on the matter. However, Kosiniak-Kamysz’s comments come as Polish-Ukrainian relations are spiraling downward.

Earlier this month, Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Warsaw’s top award, escalating a row between the allies over the memory of WWII.

“Zelensky had infuriated Warsaw this month by naming a military unit after an insurgent army that took part in massacres against Poles in WWII,” AFP reported.

For much of this conflict, Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, serving as a logistics hub and providing military assistance. As we noted earlier in this story, Poland’s initial donation of MiG-29s opened the door for the transfer of dozens of others from several NATO nations. That was followed by the eventual provision of F-16 Vipers and later French Mirage 2000 fighters.

Despite receiving more modern fighters: “Zelensky has noted that Ukraine requires MiG-29 aircraft because its pilots are already trained to operate them,” according to the Ukrainian United24 media outlet. “He added that transitioning to F-16 fighters requires lengthy retraining, temporarily reducing combat readiness, whereas MiG-29s would allow Ukraine to maintain operational air capabilities more immediately.”

Uncrewed systems will be at the heart of the UK Armed Forces in the future, under a more than $6.6-billion initiative that looks to transform all three services and the way they fight. Perhaps most dramatically, the new defense plan will see the Royal Navy sacrifice its future destroyer for a “hybrid,” distributed concept, with autonomous vessels being paired with crewed ones. But there are equally far-reaching measures set to reconfigure the British Army and Royal Air Force (RAF) around uncrewed and autonomous capabilities, some of which remain very high-risk as they are still deep or even early in development.

In a speech today, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer set out his government’s long-awaited Defense Investment Plan. The aim of this is nothing less than “keeping the country safe for years to come,” the government said, and for this, the UK Armed Forces will lean heavily on autonomous systems. Most of these don’t currently exist in physical form, at least as far as we know. At the same time, the effort stresses the rapid fielding of capabilities. This illustrates just how ambitious, and risky, the plan is.

The Defense Investment Plan provides a budget of more than £5 billion ($6.6 billion) over four years just for drones and related capabilities. This is part of a much larger overall spend on defense, amounting to £298 billion ($395 billion) over the same period. This sum also includes £15 billion ($20 billion) of additional spending on top of last year’s Spending Review.

By the end of the decade, Starmer asserted, the proportion of U.K. GDP spent on defense will be higher than at any time during the last 30 years and is in line with NATO ambitions to reach a level of 3.5 percent of GDP.

The government points to the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, specifically, as evidence of the need for a “drone transformation.”

“Drones are rapidly reshaping warfare, with cheap systems destroying high-value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years,” the government said, in announcing the plan. “Ukraine uses roughly 200,000 drones a month to defend itself from Russia’s barbaric invasion, while at the height of the Iran conflict, 700 offensive drones were being launched per day,” it adds.

Royal Navy

The changes forecast for the Royal Navy have so far garnered the most attention.

As part of a previously announced plan to create a so-called “Hybrid Navy,” the service will receive four new types of uncrewed vessels that will operate in conjunction with crewed warships and aircraft.

Of these new vessels, the Type 91 will be an uncrewed missile platform, serving as a ‘floating magazine’ to increase the overall firepower of the fleet. A combination of air defense, long-range land attack, and anti-ship missile capabilities seems likely, although any armament fit will likely be readily changeable and highly modular. The lessons of the conflict in the Red Sea provided dramatic evidence of how quickly missile cells can be depleted in an intense air-warfare environment.

Also uncrewed, the Type 92 vessels are described as “sense platforms” and will have a primary anti-submarine warfare (ASW) tasking. As such, they will ensure the Royal Navy’s sensor reach is extended further into the North Atlantic, where the Type 92s will support previously ordered frigates in the hunt for Russian submarines.

The Type 93 is defined as an extra-large uncrewed underwater vessel and is intended as an adjunct to crewed hunter-killer submarines. They will carry both sensors and weapons (presumably torpedoes) to help search and destroy enemy submarines. This is an area in which the Royal Navy has been struggling particularly, with significant gaps in its fast-attack submarine force due to limited availability.

Finally, the Type 94 is another uncrewed sense platform, but is optimized for air defense missions. It will use its sensors to look for aerial threats on behalf of both the fleet and in support of homeland missions.

The Types 91 and 94 will eventually be tied together by at least six Common Combat Vessels, which will form part of a networked Maritime Air Defense system. Arriving in service in the 2030s, the crewed Common Combat Vessels will serve as the “brains” behind this architecture, and the overall system will eventually take over the air defense tasking currently handled by the Type 45 destroyers.

The Maritime Air Defense system and the Common Combat Vessels, which are widely assumed to be roughly frigate-sized vessels, supersede earlier plans for the new Type 83 destroyer. This was previously expected to replace the Type 45 in the late 2030s, although for some time now its future had appeared threatened by increasing Admiralty interest in ‘arsenal ship’ concepts like the Type 91.

The Hybrid Carrier Air Wing outlined in the Defense Investment Plan is something we have discussed before.

In its last Strategic Defense Review, the U.K. Ministry of Defense introduced it as follows:

“The Royal Navy must continue to move towards a more powerful but cheaper and simpler fleet, developing a ‘high-low’ mix of equipment and weapons that exploits autonomy and digital integration. Carrier strike is already at the cutting edge of NATO capability, but much more rapid progress is needed in its evolution into ‘hybrid’ carrier air wings, whereby crewed combat aircraft (F-35B) are complemented by autonomous collaborative platforms in the air, and expendable, single-use drones. Plans for the hybrid carrier air wings should also include long-range precision missiles capable of being fired from the carrier deck.”

While there is no further mention of the deck-launched long-range precision missiles at this point, the Defense Investment Plan does note that Project Pantheon will serve as the development effort for the Hybrid Carrier Air Wing and will include trials of unnamed jet-powered drones alongside the F-35B.

While not referred to specifically, the Royal Navy has already outlined its ambition for ‘cat and trap’ drone operations aboard U.K. carriers, which is known as Project Ark Royal.

If realized, the project will see the two Queen Elizabeth class carriers start to operate drones that can undertake a variety of missions and then increasingly heavier, complex, and higher-performance ones. Later on, full catapult-assisted takeoff but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) capability could also add fixed-wing crewed aircraft, as we have explored in the past.

Larger fixed-wing drones are an aspiration that the Royal Navy is already working toward under Project Vixen, which you can read more about here.

As we have discussed in the past, there are many technological hurdles ahead as the Royal Navy looks to introduce carrier-capable drones. Beyond the launch and recovery systems, it will also need to develop control stations, datalinks, unique procedures, and much more to ensure the drones can be safely and effectively integrated within the carrier air group, for example. Even working out the intricacies of deck handling and flow integration involving drones combined with crewed fixed-wing jets and helicopters will be a considerable effort.

Project Pantheon certainly looks like it will move all of this ahead, although it should be noted that the size of the jet-powered drones for the program has not been stated. Already, the Royal Navy has conducted trials involving smaller, jet-powered drones, with the QinetiQ Banshee Jet 80+, best known as a target drone, being launched from HMS Prince of Wales in 2021. Even the Banshee could provide a suitable platform for a rapidly introduced decoy or one-way attack munition.

The Royal Navy’s elite amphibious and special operations-capable light infantry force, the Commandos, are also earmarked for further investment including “new high-speed boats and the latest drone and autonomous technology.”

Less surprising was the government’s commitment to strengthen the U.K.’s nuclear deterrent, including allocating more than £63 billion ($83 billion) over the next four years to fund the four Dreadnought class ballistic missile submarines and the SSN-AUKUS nuclear attack submarines, as well as a new warhead for British Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

‘£64bn will be invested into renewing the UK’s nuclear deterrent’

The money will go into building new submarines, developing a new sovereign warhead, and buying 12 F-35A fighter jets, to guarantee “British and European security”, Starmer says
https://t.co/vzwgATWaj2 pic.twitter.com/9tf0Wc2mFG

— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 30, 2026

British Army

Moving on to the British Army, this service will benefit from more investment into “inexpensive expendable autonomous systems and loitering munitions.” This will include around $66 million boost over the next 12 months for the Army’s Rapstone program, which will pay for additional first-person view (FPV) and interceptor drones.

The British Army gets a new uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) program, as yet unnamed, which plans to rapidly develop and produce uncrewed vehicles and associated mission systems via U.K. industry.

In the air, Project Nyx will provide the British Army with up to 24 autonomous armed drones that will operate in a crewed-uncrewed teaming arrangement with the service’s recently upgraded Apache attack helicopters. Planned to be operational by 2030, the drones will be outfitted for reconnaissance, precision strike, and electronic warfare.

Lastly, under Project Corvus, up to 24 surveillance drones will replace the British Army’s much-troubled Watchkeeper drone system, carrying out intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR).

Royal Air Force

While standout announcements for the Royal Air Force are fewer than for the other services, the flying branch does secure around $10.6 billion for the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) over the next four years. This should drive forward the effort to a next-generation stealth fighter for the Royal Air Force, alongside Japan and Italy. 

More intriguingly, the Defense Investment Plan mentions a “new, national Collaborative Combat Air program,” which would appear to supersede various earlier ‘loyal wingman’-type programs. The Collaborative Combat Air program aims to develop “new autonomous fighter jets which will fly alongside crewed jets,” and a demonstrator is expected to be in the air by at least 2030.

As part of the nuclear deterrence budget, the Royal Air Force will also receive the 12 F-35As that will be armed with U.S.-owned B61-12 tactical nuclear bombs, allowing them to join NATO’s nuclear mission. You can read more about that plan — and questions about its feasibility — here.

Finally, the Storm Shroud system will provide the Royal Air Force with a new uncrewed electronic warfare drone, which will enter service this year. The Storm Shroud has already been trialed in exercises and is equipped with the Leonardo BriteStorm stand-in jammer, which you can read more about here.

All three services will benefit from an initiative to boost munitions and weapons stockpiles, a growing concern for militaries across the board, which has been highlighted by depletions through transfers to Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

The United Kingdom will spend £11 billion ($14.5 billion) to increase U.K. stockpiles, including long-range strike weapons, low-cost cruise missiles, and one-way effectors. Conceivably, a lot of these efforts will be kickstarted by separate projects originally launched to provide Ukraine with U.K.-made weapons. By 2030, there is a plan to build at least six new energetics factories as part of an overall increase in national munitions production capacity. 

Less obvious are the cuts that the British Armed Forces will face in some areas.

The government says it will phase out its Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles, many of which have already been transferred to Ukraine. The plan says that “We are now pivoting to the next generation of low-cost cruise missiles,” without providing further details.

Also facing the axe are more than 30 Wildcat and the oldest (Mk 6A variant) Chinook helicopters, as well as plans to upgrade a satellite communications system.

A drone-based defense plan

By putting drones squarely at the forefront, Starmer’s long-delayed Defense Investment Plan is certainly eye-catching. It also comes with immense developmental risk, involving many concepts that remain unproven in the real world.

However, there are still plenty of stress factors, not least the demands of senior officers from all three services for additional funding.

Tensions around the Defense Investment Plan have already led to fierce discussions between the Ministry of Defense and the Treasury. These came to a head when John Healey resigned as defense secretary earlier this month.

In an effort to placate criticisms, Starmer added another £1 billion ($1.3 billion) to the defense budget after Healey walked. However, Healey had reportedly been pushing the Treasury for a total rise closer to £18 billion ($23.8 billion).

I want the Defence Investment Plan to be a success. And I thank the MOD officials who’ve worked so hard over many months on it. I welcome the extra funding and focus the Treasury has ceded over the last couple of weeks. (1/6)

— John Healey (@JohnHealey_MP) June 30, 2026

The government has also responded to criticism that it is moving too slowly to address emerging threats and changing security demands.

“The Defense Secretary [Dan Jarvis] has spent the last two weeks refocusing the Defense Investment Plan so that it prioritizes getting the latest kit into the hands of military personnel,” the MoD said.

So, there we have it. The U.K. government has injected $6.6 billion into a defense plan that aims to do no less than reconfigure the British Armed Forces as “a flexible, integrated force with attack drones flying alongside Army helicopters, RAF jets made invisible from enemy detection with new drones, and a hybrid Royal Navy made up of crewed and uncrewed vessels.”

It is a bold vision and one that will face further challenges, not just in terms of cost and technological hurdles, but also from senior officers who will still question whether traditional crewed platforms — as well as all other military requirements — are adequately funded.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

We are living in a time of deep rupture. From Gaza to Ukraine, Myanmar to Kashmir, the United States to Europe, polarisation has become the defining rhythm of our age. Dialogue is no longer just difficult – it is risky. Leaders speak in absolutes. Humiliation and fear spur violence. In this context, the role of the mediator is more fragile, more necessary, and more human than ever.

At the centre of this episode is William Ury, cofounder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and one of the architects of modern conflict resolution. Through his life’s work, we trace the hidden anatomy of peace: How trust is built when no one believes in it, how negotiations survive egos, trauma, and political pressure, and how humanity is preserved when everything pushes towards dehumanisation.

Ultimately, The Possibilist reveals that peace is not the domain of diplomats alone. It belongs to all of us. In our homes, our workplaces, and our communities, we all carry a form of power. Political power may change laws – but moral power, the power of empathy, courage, and presence, can change hearts.

A film by Fatima Lianes

“I’m still begging for people to help me get him out.” A mother’s plea as rescuers race to reach people trapped beneath collapsed buildings after twin earthquakes struck Venezuela. Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports.

At the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on June 17, Kenyan President William Ruto revealed that his country was nearing a critical minerals agreement with the United States. Far more significant was Kenya’s insistence that its rare earths, lithium, graphite, copper, nickel and niobium be refined and processed domestically rather than exported as raw materials. This was not simply another minerals deal; it was a signal that African governments are trying to rewrite the extractive bargain.

That demand, long voiced but rarely enforced, is beginning to reshape African resource governance. Namibia has prohibited exports of unprocessed lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite and rare earths. Mali is constructing a 200-tonne-a-year gold refinery while requiring more local refining. Ghana will begin buying 30 percent of large-scale gold output from July 2026 to strengthen local refining and reserves. Across the continent, governments are increasingly requiring natural resources to create industries at home before generating profits abroad. The turn is not confined to critical minerals; it reflects a wider push to keep more value from natural resources at home.

Kenya’s move comes as the global race for critical minerals intensifies and Africa assumes greater strategic importance. Lithium consumption rose by almost 30 percent in 2024 as countries accelerated investment in electric vehicles, battery storage, renewable energy systems and advanced manufacturing. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects lithium use will increase fivefold by 2040, with graphite and nickel requirements roughly doubling.

This commodity boom differs in one crucial respect: The supply of critical minerals cannot expand rapidly. New mines often take well more than a decade to move from discovery through permits and development to first production, even as global demand continues to accelerate. The IEA estimates that, under its Stated Policies Scenario, announced mining projects will leave lithium supply 40 percent short of projected demand by 2035. Countries seeking secure supplies therefore have greater incentives to invest where the minerals already exist, giving African governments more room to negotiate local value addition, technology transfer and industrial investment.

For generations, the continent’s economic role has been brutally simple: Dig, ship and buy back the finished product. The transition minerals boom offers a rare opportunity to reverse that relationship. But this will require reliable power, transport, finance and skills, not export bans alone.

Mining is only the first step. The greatest wealth is created further along the production chain, when minerals are refined, processed and assembled into products that command far higher prices than the ore that left the ground. United Nations data illustrates how rapidly export value rises along the lithium-ion supply chain. In 2022, global exports of lithium ore and brine were worth about $20bn. Battery materials generated $51bn, cell components and battery packs $106bn, and electric vehicles $135bn.

Africa’s challenge is to move further along that chain. Every additional stage completed on the continent captures more income, creates more skilled jobs and embeds more technology before a single battery reaches the market.

Refining minerals is not an end in itself. It is the first step towards building the productive capabilities that distinguish manufacturing economies from extractive ones. Around every refinery cluster, engineering companies, chemical producers, equipment manufacturers, laboratories and specialist suppliers can emerge. Taiwan’s experience offers a broader lesson: With sustained policy, skills and supplier networks, industrial capabilities built in one generation can create higher-value industries in the next.

Africa’s growing confidence reflects a profound shift in supply chain politics. In a market this concentrated, countries that combine mineral deposits with downstream ambition can negotiate stronger terms. What has changed is not simply demand, but dependency: China is the dominant refiner for 19 of the 20 strategic minerals tracked by the IEA. For copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths, the top three refining countries control 86 percent of processed output. The continent should demand beneficiation, meaning the processing of raw materials into higher-value products before export, alongside technology transfer and industrial investment before those resources enter global supply chains.

History offers a cautionary lesson.

Gold, diamonds, copper and oil generated billions of dollars in exports across the continent, yet most resource-rich economies remained dependent on exporting raw commodities rather than manufacturing higher-value products.

The colonial economy was built around those outward flows. In what is now Zambia, copper from Nkana, Mufulira and Nchanga moved through Ndola and across the rail network to Beira, the Mozambican port that linked the Copperbelt to overseas smelters and factories. Across the Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana, cocoa from Kumasi travelled by rail to Sekondi and later Takoradi before entering Britain’s chocolate industry.

Today’s export restrictions, refining mandates and beneficiation policies seek to disrupt that flow. The prize is to capture the industries built around those minerals before they take root elsewhere.

The real wealth in Africa’s transition minerals boom will not be measured by what leaves its ports, but by what never has to. Every tonne of lithium refined, every battery precursor produced and every stage of manufacturing completed before export shifts more income, technology, investment and skilled employment onto the continent.

Research by Publish What You Pay suggests that expanding higher-value mineral processing across Africa could generate an additional $32bn in annual exports, add up to $24bn to the continent’s gross domestic product and create about 2.3 million jobs. More importantly, it would leave behind industries, technologies and expertise that outlast the minerals themselves.

Nigeria’s Dangote refinery provides Africa’s clearest demonstration of what beneficiation can achieve. Located in the Lekki Free Zone outside Lagos and built at a cost of about $20bn, the 650,000-barrel-a-day facility is Africa’s largest single-train refinery.

Since beginning production in early 2024, the refinery has helped transform Nigeria’s energy sector. For decades, the country imported much of its refined fuel, spending billions of dollars in foreign exchange. The refinery now supplies much of the domestic market while exporting petrol, diesel and jet fuel to Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

Between February and March 2026, Nigeria’s clean petroleum exports more than doubled from about 100,000 barrels a day to 214,000 barrels, while helping anchor a new industrial ecosystem of marine infrastructure, storage terminals, petrochemical plants and fertiliser production.

Indonesia exemplifies the same principle.

After banning exports of unprocessed nickel ore on January 1, 2020, Indonesia became a leading producer and exporter of processed nickel products. The country targeted $21.3bn in foreign investment in mining and processing projects, while the value of its nickel product exports rose from less than $1bn in 2015 to nearly $20bn in 2022. New smelters, refineries, battery-material plants and electric vehicle manufacturing have expanded rapidly, though the boom has also brought environmental and labour concerns.

Africa’s transition minerals require the same strategic intent. If Zambia refines copper, Zimbabwe processes lithium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo produces battery precursors, and South Africa manufactures battery components, engineering firms will expand, chemical industries will grow, and skilled workers will find opportunities at home instead of abroad. Railways will carry higher-value products instead of raw ore, tax revenues will become more stable, and manufacturing will increasingly replace extraction as the main driver of long-term economic growth.

No African country needs to manufacture every component of an electric vehicle or every battery cell. Copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite and manganese are spread across different economies, making regional integration an economic necessity rather than a political aspiration. Shared power systems, transport corridors, research institutions, standards and integrated markets will determine whether Africa exports minerals or manufactures products.

That makes the African Continental Free Trade Area indispensable. Properly implemented, it can turn isolated mineral deposits into regional manufacturing systems by lowering trade barriers and allowing countries to specialise. Together, African economies can develop an integrated industrial base that none could achieve alone.

Africa has lived through too many extractive booms that enriched others first. Copper built industries across Europe and North America while Zambia remained dependent on raw exports. Cocoa supplied Britain’s chocolate manufacturers while Ghana captured only a fraction of the value added.

The global energy transition gives Africa its best opportunity in generations to rewrite that history.

Africa can finally mine, beneficiate and industrialise on its own terms.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Swedish defense firm Saab announced today that it had signed a contract to provide 16 Gripen E fighters to Ukraine. Once they arrive in the country, the jets will likely provide Ukraine with its most capable combat aircraft, and the development comes after Stockholm agreed to donate up to 16 of the previous-generation Gripen C/Ds to Ukraine. Handover of the Gripen C/Ds in Ukraine is slated to take place in early 2027, while the Gripen Es are scheduled for delivery starting in 2029.

The deal was signed between Saab and the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration (FMV), the governmental procurement agency acting under the Swedish Ministry of Defense. The order is valued at around SEK 24.6 billion (approximately $2.5 billion) and will be booked in the third quarter of this year.

Saab is scheduled to deliver the new jets to the FMV between 2029 and 2030, after which they will be transferred to Ukraine.

In addition to the 16 Gripen E fighters, the contract also includes spare parts and associated items and equipment.

“I am deeply proud that Sweden and Saab can now enable the provision of Gripen E to Ukraine, bringing a world-class fighter that will transform the Ukrainian Air Force’s capability. This will significantly strengthen Ukraine’s air defense and help ensure the nation can protect its people and safeguard its future,” said Micael Johansson, President and CEO of Saab, in a statement from the company.

The same statement also outlined particular features of the Gripen series that it says make it ideal for operations with the Ukrainian Air Force:

“Gripen is designed to address advanced threats in demanding environments. Operational flexibility and resilience enable operations from short stretches, temporary runways or roads, supporting dispersed operations and high availability. The software-based architecture facilitates continuous upgrades and adaptation to evolving operational requirements. With low maintenance requirements and fast turnaround, Gripen provides an advanced and cost-effective fighter capability that is easy to operate and maintain.”

These qualities, not restricted to, but notably baked into the Gripen design philosophy, are something we have explored as long ago as 2022, in the context of potential deliveries to Ukraine. In our previous coverage, we noted:

Designed during the Cold War to meet the Soviet threat, the Gripen was engineered for efficiency, durability, and ease of operation under wartime conditions. It was specifically designed to be serviced and rearmed by small teams — often including conscript personnel — while operating from dispersed locations such as roads and improvised airstrips instead of traditional air bases. The aircraft’s entire concept centers on maintaining combat operations in demanding environments, including prolonged cold-weather conditions.

Gripen – Always combat ready

Even with its existing fighters, the Ukrainian Air Force has developed tactics and equipment to operate these jets from dispersed locations around the country. Prior to the current conflict, Ukrainian fighters were training to make use of highways as alternatives to traditional runways.

Already, the Gripen C/D represents a significant advance, but, as noted, these are previous-generation jets, and they are secondhand aircraft drawn from Swedish stocks to expedite delivery.

Compared to the Gripen C/D, the Gripen E, as you can read about here, is a very different proposition, despite its superficially similar appearance.

In contrast to the older jet, the Gripen E has a bigger fuselage that accommodates approximately 30 percent more fuel and has a more powerful General Electric F414 engine, plus a total of 10 hardpoints for weapons and other stores. The cockpit is entirely revised, and the pilot is provided with a single Wide Area Display (WAD), replacing the three separate displays in the Gripen C/D.

The Gripen E can carry up to seven MBDA Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles, weapons also compatible with the Gripen C/D, although in the new aircraft these are integrated with the Leonardo ES-05 Raven active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, and the Leonardo Skyward G infrared search and track (IRST) sensor.

The ES-05 Raven is set to be the first AESA fighter radar for Ukraine. Arrays of this kind bring a significant boost to modern combat aircraft. In comparison with traditional mechanically scanned array technology, an AESA can find and track a target at a much greater range, more quickly, and with a greater degree of accuracy. This also applies to smaller threats, including those with limited radar signatures, or flying at very low levels, which older radars find much harder to detect. This makes it especially relevant to hunting drones and cruise missiles, which are small targets often encountered by Ukraine en masse.

One particular feature of the ES-05 Raven on the Gripen E is the fact that the radar is mounted on a rotating repositioner, also known as a swashplate. As you can read about here, this enables the electronically scanned antenna, which is normally fixed in a forward position on fighter aircraft, to be slewed to the left and to the right in order to increase its field of view.

As we have discussed in the past, the Meteor would provide Ukraine with a class of air-to-air weapon that it badly needs to redress the balance against Russian fighter jets.

The Meteor is among the most capable air-to-air missiles in operational service anywhere in the world. Thanks to its ramjet propulsion, which can be throttled during different phases of flight, the Meteor is generally considered to be effective against certain types of targets out to around 130 miles.

The Meteor also features an active radar seeker for the terminal phase and a two-way datalink that feeds it with in-flight updates as it flies out to its target and provides information to the pilot in the launch aircraft.

Meteor

All Gripens can also be armed with the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) that arms Ukraine’s F-16 fighters as well as several of its ground-based air defense systems.

The jet also includes a new Saab Electronic Warfare System (EWS), featuring a 360-degree spherical Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS).

Less obvious is the Gripen E’s avionics architecture, which is designed to enable the rapid insertion of new hardware and updated software applications to take on new missions. Customers are also able to design and develop their own software to introduce new technologies and systems to keep pace with ever-evolving threats.

Furthermore, Ukraine will be able to maximize the potential of its Gripens by operating them in conjunction with its two Saab 340 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft equipped with Erieye radar that have been donated by Sweden.

The Saab 340 AEW&C can serve as an airborne fighter control platform by detecting and tracking Russian targets, prioritizing threats, and directing friendly fighters to intercept them. Using its datalink system, the aircraft can also provide mid-course guidance updates to missiles after launch. This allows fighter pilots to engage targets without necessarily activating their own radar. Instead, a missile can be assigned a target before launch, fired, and then receive continuous guidance updates from the AEW&C aircraft until it reaches the target. The Erieye radar is also notably effective when tracking ground and maritime targets.

Brazil was the first export customer for the Gripen E (also taking the two-seat Gripen F version), with its decision to buy the fighter influenced to a significant degree by the opportunity to establish a domestic production line. It was followed by Thailand, which secured a small batch of Gripen E/Fs to bolster its existing Gripen C/D fleet, and Colombia, which is also buying Gripen E/Fs. Meanwhile, Sweden has ordered 60 Gripen Es, the first of which was delivered to an operational unit last year.

Otherwise, the commonality between the aircraft will ensure that the Gripen E is easier for the Ukrainians to introduce.

According to Swedish officials, the training of Ukrainian pilots and technicians on the Gripen C/D is already underway and will be expanded this fall.

These Gripen Es could be just the start of a much bigger program.

The long-term ambition remains 100-150 Gripen aircraft. However, this transfer only exists as a statement of intent for now, as we have previously reported.

A similar letter of intent covers a plan for Kyiv to buy up to 100 Dassault Rafale F4 fighters from France over the next 10 years. These Rafales are at least as advanced as the Gripen Es, and superior in some respects, but there remain glaring questions about whether they can both be procured, especially in such numbers.

The Gripen E is an even bigger deal for Ukraine than the Gripen C/D. The Ukrainian Air Force has already received Western-supplied F-16s and a smaller number of Mirage 2000s, but still relies heavily on its Soviet-era fighters. The MiG-29 Fulcrum, in particular, has been continually adapted to carry new weaponry, both Western-supplied and locally developed, but these are all aging jets and the fleet overall has been steadily reduced by attrition.

Taken together, the Gripen C/D and Gripen E will provide Ukraine with a modern, networked fighter force unlike anything it has operated before. Combined with long-range Meteor missiles and Erieye AEW&C support, the aircraft will significantly enhance Ukraine’s ability to challenge Russian airpower and defend its airspace, and it will also be able to deliver precise attacks against surface targets.

Perhaps more importantly, these Swedish-made jets will bring the Ukrainian Air Force into a new era in which it is spearheaded by advanced, Western-made combat aircraft.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Chinese stocks advanced after fresh manufacturing data pointed to sustained factory expansion and President Xi Jinping reaffirmed his commitment to promoting high-quality economic development. The upbeat market reaction reflected growing optimism over the resilience of China’s industrial sector and the continued strength of technology and innovation-driven industries.

However, investor sentiment remains tempered by concerns over uneven economic growth, with persistent weakness in consumer confidence, the labour market and the property sector continuing to weigh on the broader recovery.

Strong factory activity boosts market confidence

China’s manufacturing sector expanded for a seventh consecutive month, marking its strongest quarterly performance since late 2020. The data reinforced expectations that industrial production remains a key pillar of economic growth despite ongoing challenges in other parts of the economy.

The stronger-than-expected factory activity provided investors with reassurance that export-oriented manufacturing and industrial output continue to support China’s recovery.

Xi reiterates commitment to high-quality growth

President Xi Jinping renewed his pledge to pursue high-quality development, signalling that Beijing remains committed to an economic strategy centred on technological innovation, industrial upgrading and sustainable long-term growth.

The remarks reinforced expectations that policymakers will continue prioritising advanced manufacturing, strategic industries and innovation rather than relying solely on traditional stimulus measures to support the economy.

Technology sectors continue to outperform

Technology-related stocks led gains as investors increased exposure to sectors expected to benefit from China’s industrial and technological ambitions. Chipmaking equipment, biotechnology and software companies posted strong advances, reflecting continued confidence in industries viewed as central to China’s long-term economic transformation.

The rally highlights investors’ preference for sectors with stronger earnings potential and policy support.

Traditional sectors show signs of broader participation

Alongside technology stocks, gains also spread to agriculture and property-related shares, suggesting investor optimism is gradually broadening beyond high-growth industries.

Although these sectors continue to face structural challenges, their recovery indicates improving market sentiment and expectations that policy support could help stabilise weaker areas of the economy.

Economic recovery remains uneven

Despite encouraging manufacturing data, investors remain cautious about China’s broader economic outlook. Consumer spending continues to be constrained by weak confidence, labour market pressures and the prolonged downturn in the property sector, creating an uneven recovery across different parts of the economy.

The divergence between strong industrial performance and softer domestic demand continues to shape investment strategies and policy expectations.

Future Outlook

Chinese markets are likely to remain supported by resilient manufacturing activity, continued policy backing for innovation and expectations of further measures to sustain economic growth. However, the durability of the rally will depend on whether improvements in industrial production translate into stronger domestic consumption and broader economic recovery.

Investors will closely monitor upcoming economic data and government policy announcements for signs that Beijing can address persistent weaknesses in the property market, employment and consumer confidence while maintaining momentum in high-value manufacturing and technology sectors.

With information from Reuters.

Adverse weather does not dampen Mexico’s party as the cohosts storm into the last 16 by beating Ecuador.

Mexico turned on the style at their iconic Azteca Stadium on Tuesday, brushing Ecuador aside 2-0 to break their FIFA World Cup knockout curse dating back 40 years.

The round-of-32 match was delayed for an hour due to stormy weather, and when it started, the co-hosts flew out of the blocks, mounting wave after wave of attacks.

In a supercharged atmosphere, Julian Quinones gave Mexico a deserved lead midway through the first half with a thunderous strike, and then turned provider for Raul Jimenez.

Ecuador desperately needed to wrest back the momentum after the break but struggled to shift through the gears, with the home side largely in control.

Mexico had not won a World Cup knockout game since 1986, when it last hosted the tournament.

Tuesday’s win means Mexico are now unbeaten in 10 World Cup games at the Azteca and will fancy their chances against England or the Democratic Republic of Congo in the round of 16.

Mexico were one of only three teams in the group phase to win all three of their matches, alongside title favourites France and reigning champions Argentina, and did not concede a single goal.

Ecuador finished third in their group, scoring just two goals.

Gilberto Mora, 17, was named in the starting line-up for Mexico, becoming the second-youngest player to start a knockout match at the World Cup finals behind Brazil legend Pele in 1958.

The home team started on the front foot, refusing to allow a shell-shocked Ecuador to settle.

Jimenez wasted a glorious headed chance in the seventh minute, and Mora flashed just wide.

At the other end, John Yeboah muscled his way into the penalty area in a rare foray forward for the visitors, clipping the outside of the near post.

Mexico took the lead in the 22nd minute when Saudi-based Quinones received the ball from Roberto Alvarado and tore down the left before driving into the box and unleashing an unstoppable shot past goalkeeper Hernan Galindez, raising the roof.

The first hydration break failed to change the script, and Mexico doubled their lead after half an hour when Quinones fed Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Jimenez, who fired a rocket into the top corner.

Raul Rangel produced a fine save to keep out another Yeboah effort, as Ecuador got a foothold in the match, but chances kept flowing at the other end.

Ecuador coach Sebastian Beccacece made several changes after the break in an effort to find a way back into the match. But Mexico, largely content to sit back, still looked the more threatening team, with Cesar Montes twice going close.

Ecuador substitute Kevin Rodriguez poked just wide with just over a quarter of an hour remaining, but their chances ran out. Piero Hincapie was sent off in stoppage time after covering his mouth during a confrontation with an opposition player to cap a miserable night for Ecuador.

Mexico will hope the Azteca, which hosted the World Cup final in 1970 and 1986, works its magic again in the last 16 on Sunday.

From the quarterfinals onwards, all the matches at the World Cup will be taking place in the United States.