NEWS

The global ratings agency has also maintained the country’s sovereign rating at AA.

Fitch Ratings has removed Qatar from “Rating Watch Negative” while maintaining its sovereign rating at AA amid the US-Israel war on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz blockade.

The global ratings agency announced the decision on Friday, citing reduced risks to the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities since March.

The agency, however, kept a negative outlook on the rating, citing ongoing risks surrounding the movement of gas exports through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

“The impact of the war on the credit profile will take longer to discern,” the agency said in a statement.

Qatar, one of the world’s largest gas exporters, continues to face export disruptions and shortages caused by damaged energy facilities during the war on Iran, which began six months ago.

Earlier this year, credit agencies S&P and Moody’s also affirmed Qatar’s ratings, noting that the country’s sizeable financial cushion helps protect it from the economic impact of the war.

Defending singles champions Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka have sailed into the last 16 of the US Open as tennis icons Serena and Venus Williams suffered an agonising defeat on their long-awaited return to Grand Slam doubles.

Alcaraz, coming off a four-month injury absence, beat China’s Wu Yibing 6-3, 6-4, 6-1 on Friday to book his place in the fourth round, while Sabalenka was similarly dominant in a 6-3, 6-4 defeat of Kamilla Rakhimova.

Alcaraz will face 20th-seeded American Tommy Paul for a place in the quarterfinals after Paul beat 15th-seeded Alexander Bublik 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (4/7), 6-1, 6-3.

“The way he plays is unbelievable, the rhythm he has on every shot – forehand, backhand,” Alcaraz said of Wu. “His balls skid a lot on the court and, for me, it’s really difficult to control sometimes.

“But I think I stayed there. I played aggressive. I played smart in the toughest moments.”

Wu recovered an early break in each of the first two sets, but Alcaraz pocketed both with breaks in the final games, and after saving a pair of break points in the first game of the third, the Spaniard rolled home.

“I think my level is really good,” he said. “I’ve got into the rhythm of the competition. I’m getting there.”

World number one Sabalenka did not face a break point in her dismissal of Rakhimova, firing 29 winners with 10 aces.

The numbers did not tell the whole tale of a match that saw 92nd-ranked Rakhimova challenge Sabalenka in a second-set slugfest.

Sabalenka was also unimpressed by the pervasive smell of marijuana – an increasingly common issue at the US Open – wafting down from the stands during her match.

“It’s a bit tricky to handle that smell while you’re trying to compete at your best,” said Sabalenka, who at one point complained to the umpire about the issue.

Sabalenka, who must repeat as champion to have a chance of remaining number one, next faces Taylor Townsend, the 96th-ranked American who beat 15th-seeded Russian Diana Shnaider 6-2, 6-7 (3/7), 6-3.

Williams sisters lose thriller

With Alcaraz and Sabalenka among the early starters, all eyes on the evening session were on the Williams sisters, partnering in a Grand Slam doubles event for the first time since 2022.

The duo returned to the US Open stage comes after 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena came out of a four-year retirement to play at Wimbledon.

But the most famous sister act in tennis – who won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together along with three Olympic gold medals – were beaten 6-3, 6-7 (6/8), 7-6 (10/7) by 14th seeds Chan Hao-ching of Taiwan and Australia’s Maya Joint in a marathon three-hour battle.

The Williams duo had shown flashes of their brilliant best after recovering from losing the first set to level the match after taking the second set on a tie-break.

Momentum and a raucous New York crowd appeared to be carrying them towards victory after they sprinted into a 5-0 lead in the third-set tie-break. But Chan and Joint fought back superbly to erase the deficit before clinching victory.

Pegula through, Muchova upset

In other singles action on Friday, third-seeded American Jessica Pegula, one of the players with a chance to knock Sabalenka off her No 1 perch, mounted a desperate fightback to beat Canadian Leylah Fernandez 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 in a battle of former finalists.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk beat Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-3, 6-2 and American Emma Navarro upset seventh-seeded Czech Karolina Muchova 6-3, 7-5.

Back in the men’s draw, American 11th seed Frances Tiafoe was a comfortable 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 victor over Monaco’s Valentin Vacherot, seeded 22.

Tiafoe’s win earned him a last 16 showdown with Russian seventh seed Daniil Medvedev.

Medvedev was a similarly unfussy winner over French 26th seed Arthur Rinderknech, easing to a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win in just under two hours.

Unseeded former world number three Stefanos Tsitsipas – whose ranking has plummeted to 53 – meanwhile toppled 18th seed Jiri Lehecka, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7/3), 6-1 to reach the US Open fourth round for the first time.

Tsitsipas will face American eighth seed Ben Shelton in the last 16. Shelton defeated Canada’s Denis Shapovalov 7-6 (7/3), 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 6-4 in the late match.

The U.S. Air Force is targeting an approximately $10 million unit price, excluding sensors and certain other systems, for a drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. The cost of a fully kitted-out Reaper today is generally reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force is also now pushing to accelerate the program to acquire the new drones, dubbed the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), amid what it admits are “concerning” Reaper losses in the course of recent operations against Iran.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters that the goal was for the MMAs to be “closer to half” the cost of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), at a roundtable at the Pentagon yesterday, according to Breaking Defense. He also said the service was hoping to see the price tag on its future CCAs fall to around $20 million after full-rate production of those drones gets underway.

Beyond cost, the Air Force has previously said that it wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.

With all that in mind, Niemi’s MMA cost “estimate includes only the cost of the air vehicle, without being fully missionized,” an Air Force spokesperson clarified after yesterday’s roundtable, per Breaking Defense.

The MQ-9A is out of production, but, as mentioned, the full cost of each one in Air Force service today is generally pegged at between $30 million and $50 million, depending on the sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment they carry. Speaking yesterday, Lt. Gen. Niemi explicitly used the $50 million price point to underscore the MMA program’s unit cost target, as well as explain why the Air Force does not view the newer, in-production MQ-9B as a path to meeting its current needs. General Atomics developed the MQ-9B from the Reaper, but the former is a significantly evolved design with substantial differences from its predecessor.

“If you don’t like losing an MQ-9A that cost on the order of $50 million, with the sensors, you’re probably not going to like losing an MQ-9B at a higher price point,” Niemi said at yesterday’s roundtable, according to a separate report from Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“There’s a, I think, sort of a misconception that because the MQ-9B is in production, we can walk down there with a big fat check and have 100 of them this year,” the general also said, Breaking Defense also reported. “That’s not reality.”

Niemi acknowledged that tradeoffs will have to be made to find an MMA design that is substantially lower cost compared to the MQ-9A.

“You’re going to have to certainly give up something,” he said, per Breaking Defense. “There’s no doubt if we try and pursue the exact same approach that we had with things like the MQ-9, we’re going to get something that costs about the same as an MQ-9.”

However, “what makes the MQ-9 special has nothing to do with the aircraft itself. Like there is no cutting-edge technology for how fast it flies, how high it flies, how far it flies, all that is proven, decades-old technology,” he added, according to that outlet. “So, if you’re focusing on the truck, and you do it in a way where you’re able to make some smart design compromises … we do think you can drive the cost down.”

Niemi said that he expected the MMA, in very general terms, to look much like an MQ-9, including that it would likely also be turboprop powered and have a similarly shaped main wing.

“I think it’s all going to be proven stuff, because that’s how I’m going to drive down the cost so I can get to that goal that I laid out,” Niemi, added.

For its part, General Atomics has had choice words in the past regarding discussions about the costs of the MQ-9A and MQ-9B, as well as their capabilities, particularly in light of recent losses. We will come back to the matter of attrition in a moment.

“Some say we need cheaper, disposable aircraft, so that we can use them and throw them away, or lose them and not feel bad about it. No one is talking about actual capability, ready today,” C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for the company, told TWZ back in June after new discussions about a Reaper successor for the Air Force first began to surface. “No one is talking about all of the hard lessons, already learned, about icing and weather and weapons integration. No one is talking about the multiple survivability upgrades available for the existing platforms and the lack of investment in those.”

“These make-believe weapons that don’t exist have the luxury of being anything you imagine them to be,” Brinkley added at that time. “Unscratched lottery tickets, promising all of the win and none of the lose [sic].”

“I think it’s really unfortunate that MMA has been branded as a ‘Reaper replacement’ because it misrepresents what America needs now and what we need later,” he told us last month. “We need an immediate backfill solution to a critical shortage of unmanned MALE [medium altitude, long endurance] ISR/Strike. We need to get going on that now. MMA isn’t a backfill solution, or even a bridge to a backfill solution. This isn’t that.”

Brinkley was speaking here in the context of a discussion about Wildfire, a new drone General Atomics is now developing in response to the MMA requirements.

Wildfire “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank,” Brinkley also told Breaking Defense for its story yesterday.

All of this brings us back around to the matter of MQ-9A losses and the Air Force’s efforts now to accelerate the schedule for the MMA program.

Exactly how many MQ-9As the Air Force has lost due to enemy fire or for any other reason in the course of operations against Iran this year is unknown, but it is reliably reported to be in the dozens. The service is also understood to have lost dozens more Reapers last year during operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. The service is on record saying that its Reaper fleet had shrunk to 135 airframes as of May, down from an official total of 165 as of the start of Fiscal Year 2026. It is also important to note here that these inventory numbers do not include Reapers operated by the Marine Corps or the Central Intelligence Agency.

Air Force officials have offered glowing assessments of the MQ-9A’s performance in operations against Iran, despite these losses, but have also said that the level of attrition is worrisome. That reality, in turn, had major impacts on discussions that led to the current MMA program.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Niemi said yesterday, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

When the MMA program was first announced in July, the stated goal was to have an initial operational fleet of 20 of the drones in service by 2031. The Air Force is now working to push that timeline to the left, but still sees fielding of the new drones as being around three years away, at least. The service eventually hopes to acquire at least 180 MMAs.

“I can’t buy an MMA today. The reality is, based on the budget and other constraints, that I’m not going to buy a whole lot of MQ-9Bs today either,” Niemi conceded, per Breaking Defense.

It is important to remember here that the Air Force has already tried multiple times to develop a replacement for the MQ-9 without success. In that time, the idea of what a successor to the Reaper would look like has changed dramatically. As we’ve written previously:

“The Pentagon has long worked on the basis that a future conflict with a peer rival, and especially with China in the Pacific, would see it facing highly robust anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) scenarios. With that in mind, previous Reaper replacement studies had suggested that low observability would need to be incorporated into the design.”

“The latest thinking seems to reject that, or at least reorient the program toward a lower-cost platform of the kind that the Air Force would be able to field in mass, as well as to absorb the anticipated attrition in a high-end conflict. This does not preclude this airframe from featuring low-observable elements. In fact, it most likely will. But those would be more aggressively balanced against cost.”

MMA is also looking at a wider slate of potential vendors. General Atomics, which has long had a monopoly on the U.S. MALE combat drone market, is not the only one angling now for an MMA contract.

Overall, as we have previously written in the context of the Air Force’s latest effort to move beyond the Reaper:

“…the U.S. drone landscape has changed considerably in terms of manufacturers. A few years ago, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics would have been seen as the front-runners for the MQ-9 replacement. Now, there are more contenders, often with a founding focus on rapidly scaling up production at low cost. Still, these firms have much to prove, especially considering the risk in replacing an aircraft as important as the MQ-9. At the same time, in the more advanced drone space, the legacy defense ‘prime’ contractors are also making major progress in leveraging new technologies to reduce production costs and migrating away from exquisite, very expensive drones as their default offerings.”

The possibility was reportedly raised yesterday that the MMA program could ultimately lead to the fielding of multiple types of drones through successive incremental development cycles. This is exactly how the Air Force is running its CCA program now.

With the Air Force now pushing for a more aggressive schedule for the MMA effort, more details about the designs it is considering may begin to emerge relatively soon. The service certainly has a pressing need already for these drones after so many MQ-9A losses.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

US sanctions Turkish bank over alleged IRGC ties, accusing it of facilitating millions in transactions for Iran.

The United States Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on a Turkish bank and its subsidiaries over alleged ties to Iran, as Washington seeks to economically isolate Tehran.

The Treasury Department accused Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi Anonim Sirketi (Golden Global Bank) on Friday of facilitating “tens of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force” and providing the Iranian government with banking access to move its funds internationally.

Washington alleged the bank “was established for the purpose of enabling Iran’s rahbar network [shadow banking system] to transfer oil revenues from China to Turkey” using gold and cash.

Golden Global Bank responded on Friday, saying it fulfilled all local and international banking compliance rules and would take legal action against the US-imposed sanctions.

There are no transactions conducted by Golden Global Bank that could substantiate the claims made by the US, the bank said in a news release.

“We will exercise all our rights of objection and legal recourse in the most effective manner and will take the necessary actions at the earliest against these allegations and the decision,” the Turkish bank added.

“Financial institutions continue to find out the hard way that we are serious about Operation Economic Outcast,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent in a statement published by the department on Friday.

The sanctions place the bank and its two subsidiaries on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)’s Specially Designated Nationals list, cutting off access to the US financial system.

The bank said individuals and entities named in the OFAC decision “have never been and are not currently customers” of Golden Global.

US Ambassador to Turkiye Tom Barrack said on Saturday that it would be a mistake for Turkish officials “to read [the US’s] narrow measure as a judgement upon Turkiye”.

“The health of the Turkish financial system is not in question; the conduct of one institution was,” Barrack said on X.

Last week, the US took steps towards severing the UAE operations of Egypt’s second-largest bank from financial access after accusing it of processing transactions for companies linked to Iran’s shadow-banking system.

Bessent said on Tuesday on the sidelines of a G20 summit that Washington would likely announce a bank sanction this week and another next week, as it ramps up its economic campaign against Tehran.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Staff nurse Razia Noreen was at a medicine cupboard on the nursery ward of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Islamabad’s largest public-sector hospital. She was two doors from the babies in her care, preparing the morning’s injections.

As she shut the cupboard door, she saw through the nursery’s glass panel a light too sharp and too red to be anything ordinary. She did not wait to understand what it was.

It was 6:38am on Wednesday, August 26. Elsewhere in the ward, her colleague, Sister Nasreen, was already running out, shouting for help.

At 56 seconds past 6:38am, according to security camera timestamps later logged by a government inquiry committee, Noreen rushed into the nursery.

Eight seconds later, she emerged carrying a baby. She tried to go back in. She could not. By 6:40am, the room was gone, swallowed by smoke so thick that the security cameras could no longer see through it.

Noreen was recalling this eight days later, in a plain office beside the hostel warden’s room at PIMS, dressed in a pale pink shalwar kameez, her dupatta loose over one shoulder.

“There was a proper blast,” she told Al Jazeera. “Everything turned to smoke.”

Fifteen newborns had been in that nursery. Fourteen died. The baby Noreen carried out was the only one who lived.

On Thursday, Noreen was given an award by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for her courage. But for the nurse, the trauma of that Wednesday morning was still raw.

Barely two hours after meeting the prime minister, she sat down and talked, at length, about what happened inside.

‘Save the babies’

Noreen had been on duty since 8pm the previous night, working a routine dawn medication round with Sister Nasreen, with less than two hours left before the end of her shift.

When she saw the light through the nursery glass, she says she did not stop to work out what it was.

“I just told my sister nurse, save the babies,” she told Al Jazeera. “I went in. I didn’t think about what would happen next.”

Noreen said the fire was coming out of the side of the air-conditioning unit facing her.

“The AC was right in front of me, and the fire was coming out of its side,” she said. “We don’t know what was happening behind it. That’s just what I saw.”

The government’s interim inquiry, submitted on August 28, states that the precise cause of the fire “is not yet conclusively established”, with evidence pointing variously to the air conditioner, an incubator or an electrical short circuit.

Inside the nursery, Noreen reached the nearest baby. There was no time to choose between 15. She carried the infant out and handed her to Dr Abdul Rehman, a doctor who had been inserting a feeding tube in the next room and emerged into the corridor moments after her. Then she turned back.

“I thought I’d get five, six, seven, eight more of them out,” she said. “But the fire was moving faster than I was.”

A second doctor, Dr Rimsha, who had been doing rounds nearby and saw the same light Noreen had, followed her in.

The two of them, and later Sister Nasreen, tried to crawl back through the smoke below the worst of the heat. A sudden loss of power plunged the room into darkness. They could not get through.

Noreen’s phone, left behind on the medication table when she ran in, sat inside the burned ward overnight. Hospital guards found it and returned it to her the next afternoon. Its case is still scorched and cracked.

Noreen, Dr Rimsha and Sister Nasreen instead moved to where a separate rescue team was lowering babies from an adjoining gynaecology ward. They stood there catching newborns and running them to the neonatal intensive care unit until the smoke became too thick to remain.

The government’s inquiry later found that the available evidence “does not support generalised allegations that front-line medical and nursing staff simply abandoned the newborns”.

Ask Noreen what a nurse is to a newborn separated from its mother, and she has one answer: its first mother.

“A mother who gives birth endures a pain no one else can stand in for,” she said. “But once a baby is in our hands, no one else is watching over it the way we are, checking their oxygen, their feeding, whether they’re breathing right, every two hours, whatever else is happening around us. That is why we are their first mother.”

‘I am very happy with the children’

Noreen, 38, has spent 21 years in government nursing, the last 17 of them at PIMS. She trained in Karachi right after school, at the age of 17, before a transfer brought her to PIMS in 2009. She has never married.

“Thank God, I am very happy with the children,” she said, when asked about it directly.

Born in Punjab’s city of Sahiwal, she was one of seven children. Her father, Victor John, was a pastor; he died when she was in the eighth grade. Two of her sisters have died; a third, also a nurse, lives in Lahore.

Her mother, 83, a retired government school teacher who is hard of hearing, lives in Lahore with one of Noreen’s brothers.

Noreen herself has lived in the PIMS staff hostel, across from the ward where she works, for most of the past two decades.

With her own phone trapped inside the burning ward, Noreen could not call her family herself.

Noreen’s niece happened to be staying with her that week. It was the niece the warden found, and who got word to the family in Lahore: Noreen was safe.

‘It’s always the two of us’

On the morning of the fire, Noreen and Sister Nasreen were the only two nurses on duty in a nursery holding 15 babies, backed by two doctors, one of them two rooms away. She says it was not an unusual night.

“Sometimes there are 20 babies, sometimes 25,” she said. “It’s always the two of us.”

Doctors on her ward work 36-hour shifts, she said, arriving at 8am and going off duty at 2pm the following day.

Handover between nursing shifts, checking each baby’s medication, feeding and vital signs, takes roughly 45 minutes given the numbers involved. The cost of drugs can also run to tens of thousands of Pakistani rupees per injection, all provided by PIMS to its patients.

“Sometimes we get a break, sometimes we don’t,” she said. “When the workload is heavy, even the water we carry with us goes back home untouched.”

No fire drill had been run in the nursery before August 26, not even after an earlier fire at a nearby PIMS hostel in July.

Asked what is required after an incident like this, she does not hesitate.

“We should all have proper drills. If a fire starts, everyone needs to already know what to do.”

She lists what should follow: extinguishers within reach, cross-ventilation to clear smoke, and a rehearsed evacuation route for babies who cannot walk or call out for help.

‘Golden letters in history’

Until the fire, almost nobody outside her own ward knew her name, Noreen says.

“I have almost no presence in the main hospital,” she said. “Nobody there knows who I am. I work in the nursery, in my own department. I never imagined that saving one baby would take me this far.”

She travelled on Thursday to meet the prime minister in a car the government sent.

During the meeting, Sharif called her “the nation’s daughter” and said her act would be remembered “in golden letters” in Pakistan’s history.

He confirmed Noreen will formally receive the country’s Sitara-i-Khidmat (Star of Service) award at a ceremony on March 23, and handed her a cheque for 10 million Pakistani rupees ($36,000).

She used the meeting to say what she had already told her own colleagues privately.

“My fellow nurses work with just as much dedication,” she said. “This was a very heartbreaking incident.”

‘I haven’t slept since that day’

Eight days on, Noreen is unwell. She has had a fever of 102 to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9C to 39.4C) on and off, and a cough she says came from smoke she breathed in from the fire that morning — a morning she will never forget. She takes an antibiotic and sleeping tablets at night. Neither has worked as it should.

“I haven’t slept, not since that day,” she said. “I take the tablets, I drink the cough syrup, but sleep doesn’t come. I close my eyes, and I open them again.”

Asked whether the same dawn shift keeps replaying in her mind, she did not need the question finished.

“The whole incident. The same babies. The mothers’ screams, and the babies’ screams, how they must have screamed. Those are the things that don’t let me sleep.”

She was signed off on medical rest only the day before this interview. Colleagues have been steadying her since.

“I would just start crying, sitting there,” she said. “They supported me like I was a child.”

But the nights are still hers alone.

“It comes back to the same thing,” she said. “When I’m in the hostel, when I’m alone, it all comes back.”

‘That, I regret’

The baby Noreen carried out — she hasn’t been named yet, according to the nurse — remains in the neonatal intensive care unit a week on.

Born preterm at just over a kilogramme (2 pounds, 3 ounces), the baby was already unwell before the fire. She remains critical.

Noreen met the baby’s parents for the first time the day before the meeting with the prime minister.

“She [the baby’s mother Asifa] hugged me and thanked me, and cried, and I cried with her,” Noreen said, “because for the rest of the children, my heart is still exactly where it was.”

She has told the mother the same thing she tells herself.

“I said, look, your child survived such a huge storm, she will survive what comes next, too. You pray, and I will pray.”

Asked what she would tell other nurses, Noreen urged them to work with honesty and without conditions.

“When you work somewhere with honesty, the reward comes eventually,” she said. “It came to me after 21 years. Work with the same loyalty. That is our real strength.”

Then, unprompted, she returned to the 14 babies who died.

“I do regret it,” she said. “I could not save the rest of the children. That, I regret.”

Authorities say seven people are still missing after deadly explosions at a facility storing pyrotechnic material.

Two explosions at a military facility in the Bolivian city of Viacha have killed at least 10 people and injured dozens of others, authorities said.

The blasts occurred on Friday in an area used to store pyrotechnic material, about 30km (18 miles) from the administrative capital, La Paz, Bolivia’s Ministry of Defence said.

Viacha health director Rita Nebraska told a local television station that between 10 and 15 people were believed to have been killed and 62 others were injured.

She said 14 of the wounded were transferred to hospitals in La Paz, including a girl with third-degree burns.

Fireworks were stored at the military facility, but the cause of the explosions remains under investigation, police spokesman Roger Roca said. He added that seven people were still missing.

Firefighters warned that a heat source remained at the site, Nebraska said, urging residents to stay at least 150 metres away because of the risk of another explosion.

Police said dozens of nearby homes were damaged and that many civilians were injured by shattered glass.

About 50 civilians and six military personnel injured in the explosions “have been treated … by the different medical centres of Viacha”, Deputy Minister of Defence Ernesto Justiniano Urenda said in a statement.

An investigation is under way to determine the cause of the explosions, how the pyrotechnic material was stored and whether anyone was responsible, he added.

Footage posted on social media showed one of the explosions shattering windows in nearby buildings and sending debris into the air as thick black smoke rose from the facility.

Caracas, September 4, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Dozens of campesino families in Bolívar State, southeastern Venezuela, are calling for support from the acting Delcy Rodríguez government after their land title was arbitrarily revoked.

“This should not happen. We have worked the land which we fought for and secured legally,” campesino spokeswoman Zurima Carvajal told Venezuelanalysis.

Carvajal belongs to the “Ojo de Agua Las 3 Raíces” campesino council, which brings together 41 families in a 470-hectare land estate with the same name located in the Padre Pedro Chien municipality of Bolívar state.

The rural organization denounced that their collective land title was arbitrarily revoked in 2024 but local authorities did not give any notice for more than two years. In recent weeks, the campesino families have denounced intimidation and attempts at eviction.

“A few days ago there were shots fired against my house,” Carvajal stated. “Local police came and wrote a report, but then nothing happened.” 

The campesino leader denounced that a local family who claims to own the land has ties to military officials, National Assembly legislators, and Bolívar State Governor Yulisbeth García. Carvajal added that she has received recurring threats and that a group of men hired to intimidate the campesino council destroyed a fence, causing the families to lose five heads of cattle which ran into nearby fields.

“We urge national authorities, from Acting President Delcy Rodríguez to Agriculture Minister Vladimir Padrino, as well as the Land Institute (INTI), to investigate this case and restore our land deed,” Carvajal concluded. “There has to be a mechanism to protect those who work the land.”

The Ojo de Agua campesino council began its struggle in 2016, reporting to authorities that vast tracts of land were abandoned in the Padre Pedro Chien municipality. Shielded by Venezuela’s Land Law, which protects rural collectives who occupy and produce in idle estates, the campesino families began to settle in the area in 2018.

Carvajal recalled that the organization immediately faced intimidation and violence from would-be landowners who could not produce any property deeds after the INTI opened an investigation. However, they repeatedly destroyed the campesinos’ crops, while bringing legal charges that led to the jailing of several activists.

The Ojo de Agua organization had a decisive breakthrough after joining the 2018 Admirable Campesino March that saw hundreds of rural activists march for hundreds of kilometers to demand that the Nicolás Maduro government address agrarian issues, including landowner violence and the judicial persecution of local organizers.

With support from other campesino organizations, Ojo de Agua received its land title from the Maduro government in 2020. Carvajal affirmed that the land has been permanently productive, with a variety of crops including corn, sugar cane, beans, and vegetables, as well as a small herd of cattle.

Land struggles have recently intensified in rural Venezuela, with a growing number of rural collectives denouncing the arbitrary revocation of titles. Opposition party Vamos Vamos Venezuela, backed by agroindustrial and cattle rancher lobbies, has campaigned for the repeal of the landmark 2001 Land Law, approved by former President Hugo Chávez, in order to turn Venezuela into “a country of property owners.”

Campesino movements have vowed to fight to defend the popular gains in the countryside.

The Venezuelan acting government and parliament have yet to comment on a potential reform to the Land Law. However, the National Assembly preliminarily approved a law to “protect cattle rearing activities,” with legislature President Jorge Rodríguez publicly criticizing the nationalization of large land estates under Chávez.

In parallel with land issues, Venezuelan rural organizations have also denounced that national production is at risk due to unrestrained imports of foodstuffs such as corn, rice, and sugar. Small-scale producers have pointed the finger at agribusiness corporations for resorting to imports during harvest season in order to drive down crop prices.

The US is the second largest source of agricultural imports to Venezuela by volume, totaling $758 million in 2025. Researcher Felipe Pacheco reported that corn imports from the US more than quadrupled in the first five months of 2026, compared to the average of the prior five years.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Philadelphia, USA.

Fans had travelled from across the UK and the world to see the rapper, including Prince Dean Sithole, who hailed Jay-Z as one of his role models.

“I think he’s very impacting, especially for us black people because we don’t get a lot of recognition,” the 19-year-old from Leeds told BBC Newsbeat.

“Seeing him today shows that dreams are possible and you can be that person that you want to be.”

Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, broke through with his 1996 debut album, but it was his third record, Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life, in 1998 which landed him the top spot in the US charts for the first time and a best rap album Grammy.

He went on to establish himself as one of the most influential figures in hip-hop, releasing 13 solo studio albums and several collaboration records, which have secured him 25 Grammy Awards.

He was also the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2017, as well being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.

Over the years, he has also become one of the most prominent music mogul’s in the world, with his company Roc Nation representing a host of top talent and, in recent years, it has been behind the Super Bowl half-time show.

In 2019, he was declared hip hop’s first billionaire by Forbes, having built an empire based on music, property, fashion and investments alongside his wife Beyoncé.

The power couple have three children, daughter Blue Ivy, 14, and 9-year-old twins, Rumi and Sir.

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s caption reads:

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Vincenzo Morrison, right, a metal worker, and Chief Warrant Officer 4 Daniel Opper II, an engineer equipment officer, both with 1st Maintenance Battalion, 1st Combat Readiness Regiment, 1st Marine Logistics Group, utilize an underground bunker to repair a drone’s flight controller during a field exercise on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, Aug. 19, 2026. The FEX focused on increasing proficiency in tactical communication networks, analog processes, field intermediate maintenance and supply operations, as well as refining Marine combat skills in an expeditionary environment in order to prepare for Exercise Steel Knight 27 at the end of the year. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Desiree Ruiz) 

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• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

The Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) has been described as a successful solid platform since its creation. It increasingly attracts guests from widely different countries, especially leaders of China, India, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Myanmar. The leaders of Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Laos, and Thailand have visited it in various capacities. The business segment of the forum has long gone far beyond the geographical boundaries of Eurasia. Its frequent unprecedented large number of guests includes businesspeople from South America, Africa, and the Middle East. That, however, it remains open for entrepreneurial contacts with everyone whose natural interests are primarily in the trade, economic, and social spheres. This cross-platform cooperation between the structures is developing, growing deeper and creating a new agenda. The most essential feature is that the platform is guided by the principles of equality, mutual benefit, and honest dialogue, which are entirely different from those of Western-oriented structures. 

The EEF, which opened on 1st-4th September, in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, has become a solid platform for open and constructive dialogue among business leaders, government officials, and members of the expert community. It has also become a unique venue for discussing the strategic development of the Russian Far East and the country as a whole, while fostering and strengthening potential partnerships with counterparts, particularly from the Asia-Pacific region, in food production, infrastructure, logistics, industry, energy, and many other sectors of the economy. While recognizing the huge untapped economic potential of the region, it is also understandable that the development of the Far East largely depends on human capital, entrepreneurial efforts, and the ability of regions to create the necessary conditions for realizing the practical expectations.

On 2nd September, as part of the business program, the “Towards a Common Future: Inclusion as a Development Resource for the Far East” discussion was held with a strong focus on how to create an equal opportunity environment, develop human capital, and engage diverse groups in economic and social life. The following day, the majority of the participants in the “Inspiring Investments: A Development Strategy for Growth and Scaling” session touched on funding mechanisms for creative projects, opportunities to enter foreign markets, and collaboration between businesses, investors, development institutions, and government agencies. The key point focused on the development of the creative economy and international cooperation with Asia-Pacific countries, industry investments, the export of intellectual property and creative products, the media’s role in the development and positioning of regions in the Far East, new content formats, and training personnel for the economy of the future.

As part of the discussions at the forum, Russia and the United States continued their business dialogue, headed by Robert Agee, president and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia (AmCham Russia), and with the participation of US representatives. It was spearheaded by the Roscongress Foundation in Russia.  Anton Kobyakov, Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, noted, however, that there is a strong appetite on both sides for direct professional engagement. What matters most is to sustain the momentum and possibly broaden the agenda to include bilateral entrepreneurial partnership. 

“There is the need to facilitate more networking to identify specific strategic areas for cooperation,” said Robert Agee, president and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, and unreservedly agreed to continue their work on developing business ties and prepare for the participation of American representatives in the Russian Federation.

With many Asian and Pacific participants, explored opportunities for developing small and medium-sized enterprises. This is becoming increasingly important amid structural changes in the economy, as businesses look for new avenues for growth. The EEF made it possible not only to exchange experience but also to find concrete solutions that will help entrepreneurs adapt to changing conditions and unlock new opportunities for growth.

Developing trade, strengthening of interstate ties, and the creation of a common space for interaction among Asia-Pacific countries have assumed a new trend with Russia. The argument was logically based on Russia’s historical experience of cooperation with East Asian countries. It was further underlined that Russia and the Asia-Pacific attract politicians and entrepreneurs from around the world. In these current geopolitical circumstances, Russia needs to seek out new opportunities for development, particularly from the Asia-Pacific region, and with reference to the emerging new multipolar world. At the heart of the forum program was the search for new sources of growth and resilience for SMEs amid structural changes in the economy, from raising productivity and adopting new technologies to managing risks and adapting business models. One section of the program focused on the role of automation and artificial intelligence, changes in business processes, employees’ readiness to work with new technologies, and ways of improving productivity. 

In addition to the above, a special session was devoted to analysis where experts outlined the key economic trends across the Asia-Pacific region. As monitored, this session was set out in the analytical review entitled “Asia Trends 2026: The AI Boom, Industrial Relocation, and Geopolitical Fragmentation,” prepared ahead of the opening of the Eastern Economic Forum on 1st September. The review clearly noted, among other things, that Asia accounts for around 60% of global GDP growth and is becoming the world’s new center of trade, industry, technology, finance, and military power. Within the region, however, economic growth is highly uneven, while technology and capital are concentrated in a small group of states, making consolidation difficult. The ASEAN countries, meanwhile, face competition from Chinese manufacturers while also coming under growing geopolitical pressure from Washington. More broadly, the Asia-Pacific region is more exposed than any other to the effects of the energy crisis and to climate risks such as a super El Niño. 

According to the International Monetary Fund, Asian GDP grew by 5% in 2025, significantly ahead of global growth of 3.5%. Within the region, however, countries face a range of specific challenges, from high labor costs and insufficient industrial capacity to balance-of-payments difficulties and currency instability. These factors are driving increasingly divergent development paths among Asian economies. The region’s advanced economies, such as Japan and South Korea, posted lower growth rates, at 1.2% and 1%, respectively, in 2025. Asia’s emerging economies grew by 5.5% overall over the same period, with performance ranging from a 2% contraction in GDP in Myanmar to an 8% surge in Vietnam. 

Countries with the strongest growth prospects are attracting investment, leaving others with fewer opportunities to draw in capital. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, developing countries in Asia attracted US$644 billion in foreign direct investment in 2025. That is around 40% of the global total and more than 70% of all investment in developing countries. Capital flows are unevenly distributed: eight of the ten largest recipients of foreign direct investment among developing countries are in Asia, and together they account for around 60% of all inflows to developing economies and more than 80% of inflows to the region. 

Capital is becoming increasingly concentrated not only in a small number of countries but also in a narrow range of sectors, particularly artificial intelligence, clean energy, semiconductors, and critical minerals. In the longer term, this could deepen inequality and worsen the position of countries without a strong presence in these fields. Asia is one of the principal beneficiaries of the global AI boom. The investment cycle associated with its development has driven up demand for semiconductors, memory, servers, network equipment, and related electronics. The region occupies a central position in the global supply chain for these products. Technology exports will remain a powerful engine of economic growth in Asia, although the benefits will be distributed unevenly depending on each country’s position in the value chain.

South-East Asia’s role as an industrial center is growing as production capacity relocates there from China, which is no longer a low-cost manufacturing base. Chinese companies have begun redirecting production to Vietnam and Indonesia in particular in order to mitigate the impact of US tariffs. At the same time, China has increased its exports of industrial components and capital goods, supplying the equipment and parts needed by manufacturing centers in other countries. Exports of intermediate goods, including memory chips, other semiconductors, and industrial components, rose by 9% in 2025. Part of this represented an indirect offset to reduced shipments to the United States, as components, particularly in electronics, were used by manufacturers in other countries to produce goods that were subsequently exported to the US. A fall of roughly US$15 billion in smartphone exports, for example, was matched by a comparable increase in shipments of components, notably to India. 

In many other cases, however, the growth in exports of components and equipment was not linked to replacing sales China had lost in the US. Instead, it supported the expansion of production in third markets, especially developing ones, reinforcing China’s role as a supplier of production inputs rather than an exporter of finished goods. The result is an integrated supply chain taking shape across the region, encompassing research and development and the manufacture of high-technology components in China, assembly and packaging in an ASEAN country such as Malaysia or Vietnam, and the subsequent shipment of products to markets within the region and beyond. 

Amid the fragmentation of the global economy and trade, the development of the Eurasian space calls for resilient regional supply chains and logistical connectivity between states. Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District can play a strategically important role here. Thanks to its location, the district can serve as a resource and logistics gateway within the transport corridors linking European Russia with Asia. For a long time, infrastructure constraints held back the expansion of ties between Russia and Asian states, but the situation has begun to change with the development of the Eastern Operating Domain, which comprises the Baikal–Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway. 

A program to modernize the Eastern Operating Domain has been under way since 2013, aimed at eliminating bottlenecks on the railways of Siberia and the Far East. Over that period, its carrying capacity has increased by 84%, reaching 180 million tonnes in 2025. The modernization is expected to raise that figure to 210 million tonnes by the end of 2030 and 270 million tonnes by the end of 2032. The development of the rail network and port infrastructure will largely determine the prospects for Eurasia and for the Asia-Pacific region in particular, as the world’s economic, financial, and trade center shifts towards the region. 

Emerging trends are reshaping the world; South-South economic partnership is seemingly becoming both the political and economic architecture. Logically, developing collaboration with Asian partners, anchoring discussions on technological leadership, and making breakthroughs in scientific fields and adopting innovative technologies are increasingly reshaping the world. Today, the role of academic institutions is to build a solid scientific and technological foundation that addresses applied industrial challenges while enhancing business efficiency, eco-friendliness, and sustainability. It is only through this synergy between science and the real economic sectors that can bring true multifaceted sovereignty. In conclusion, Asia-Pacific and Russia have to create a new model of economic and business and trade relations in the Global South.

As monitored from official reports, Russia is creating practically a new model of development of the Far East with maximally comfortable conditions for enterprises, as well as legal innovations for the investment climate in the region. Therefore, potential Asia-Pacific investors have to work on new ideas and new strategies for developing trade, agro-processing, industry, and other economic sectors in the Far Eastern region. The Eastern Economic Forum was held from September 1 to 4 on the campus of the Far Eastern Federal University. This year’s theme: “The Far East: Development for the Benefit of People.” It was the 11th EEF and organized by the Roscongress Foundation.

Israeli forces bar Israeli and Palestinian activists from delivering food and medicine to homes besieged by settlers.

Israeli police have killed a Palestinian man in Jerusalem and the Israeli army has blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching an occupied West Bank village besieged by settlers for weeks.

Officers opened fire on a 33-year-old Palestinian near Damascus gate in Jerusalem on Friday. Israeli police said its border guard “neutralised” the man, claiming he was attempting to stab one of them.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency identified the man as Ibrahim al-Hendi from East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighbourhood. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Following the incident, Israeli forces deployed around Damascus Gate and the surrounding area of Jerusalem’s Old City, Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera.

Separately, the Israeli army said that it arrested Palestinians in the town of Qabatiya in the West Bank, alleging they were “planning to carry out an attack” against Israelis and security forces.

Ten other Palestinians were arrested during a 48-hour Israeli army operation in Nablus in the West Bank. The Israeli army said it seized more than “30 weapon production machines used to manufacture weapons” during the operation.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers and soldiers carried out attacks across the occupied West Bank on Friday, Wafa reported. Settlers stormed the Khirbet al-Hamra community in the northern Jordan Valley and assaulted one resident.

Israeli settlers, accompanied by soldiers, also attacked Khalet a-Nahlah in southern Bethlehem. Israeli forces also fired tear gas and concussion grenades at a crowd of Palestinians who gathered to resist the attacks.

Blocking access to Qusra

As violence and harassment of Palestinians continues across the occupied territory, the Israeli army on Friday also prevented around 100 peace activists from delivering food and medicine to Palestinians who have been under siege in the town of Qusra for 28 days.

Since August 9, Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian homes in the northern occupied West Bank village, while the Israeli army has also prevented the families from entering or leaving them, claiming the area is a “closed military zone”.

“Day 28 of the blockade on Qusra. About 100 activists arrived to deliver supplies to the besieged families,” the Israeli Peace Now movement said in a post on X.

“The army blocked us at first, claiming Qusra was a ‘closed military zone.’ Then let us in but on the way back detained us for ‘violating a closed military zone’,” it added.

Qusra Mayor Abdel Azim Wadi also told the state-run Turkish Anadolu news agency that the Israeli army has been “preventing the delivery of basic necessities to three families trapped on Mount Ras al-Ain”.

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Israeli public broadcaster Kan on Friday that settler violence against Palestinians is “damaging the image of Israel as a nation and a people, warning that Israel “needs all the friends it can get” and “doesn’t need more enemies”.

Around 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and carry out attacks aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians, according to Palestinian figures.

World number one Aryna Sabalenka’s straight-sets US Open win against Kamilla Rakhimova stopped by smell of cannabis.

World number one Aryna Sabalenka had an unusual interruption during ⁠her US Open third-round ⁠match, stopping play to alert the umpire to a strong smell of cannabis drifting onto the Louis Armstrong Stadium court.

Sabalenka, who ⁠had made a fast start to go 3-0 ahead before securing a straight-sets win against Uzbekistan’s Kamilla Rakhimova, raised the issue during her second service game on Friday, pointing ⁠out the smell before play resumed.

“Someone is smoking weed,” top seed Sabalenka told umpire Eva Asderaki-Moore as she was serving 30-0 up. “Would you mind to… because it’s so strong.”

Sabalenka later told reporters she was not objecting to anyone enjoying themselves, but asked for the smoking ‌to be kept away from the court.

“I was like, Guys, you can do whatever, you can smoke whatever, you can relax as much as you can, but please to not do it around the tennis courts,” a smiling Sabalenka said. “It’s a bit tricky to handle that smell while you’re trying to compete at your best.”

The odour of cannabis has become a familiar — if unwelcome — feature at ⁠Flushing Meadows, with players complaining about the distraction in the ⁠past.

While smoking is not permitted inside the grounds, recreational cannabis is legal for adults 21 and older in New York, and smoke from people in the surrounding Flushing Meadows-Corona Park can drift into the tennis ⁠complex and onto the courts.

Sabalenka said she had smelled cannabis before during the tournament but never so strongly during a ⁠match, with Friday’s wind apparently carrying the odour into ⁠the stadium.

“That strong, yeah. Also, because it was a bit windy,” she said. “I don’t know if it was coming from the crowd or was from the outside because the wind blows it into the stadium.

“I ‌just hope they are a bit more aware of that stuff,” she added, before laughing when the questions returned to the subject. “Come on, guys. I think there is ‌nothing ‌else to say about weed. I’m just asking people not to smoke it next to the tennis court.”

It’s the dead of night when the buzz of the engines of a series of Shahed-136 one-way attack drones breaks the silence. Carrying their lethal payloads the drones slip into the darkness with a distant supply base as their target. Tracking, identifying, and then destroying this swarm of drones is no easy task.

The unmanned aircraft system (UAS) threat environment is changing rapidly with an increasing variety of killer drones that demand differing methods of tracking and identification to engage and defeat them. Operational users are learning from rapidly-evolving- conflicts, and modern air defense methods increasingly rely on scalable, layered, and persistent sensing teams that can detect and track small, fast, low-altitude, and even swarming, aerial threats in all kinds of complex situations, on land or at sea.

Ray Bischoff served active-duty with the U.S. Army for nearly 25 years, and he’s now the senior director of business development at Leonardo DRS, specialising in evaluating tactical formations and defensive requirements at all operational levels throughout the Department of War and allied nations. He is particularly focused on emerging threats from drones..

Bischoff spoke at length with TWZ’s Jamie Hunter about the use of tactical radar systems as part of a layered counter-drone system that is sufficiently versatile to tackle the toughest drone problems now, and what may come in the near future.

JH: Can you set the scene with regards to how you see the counter-UAS mission right now from a sensing perspective.

RB: The counter-UAS environment is changing and advancing very quickly. At the top level, we need to employ a variety of sensor systems – in this particular case we’re talking about tactical radars – but there are many other types of sensors, and at the highest end of the threat level it’s about connecting these together into a networked architecture.

Layering different systems in depth is vital, both from a communications architecture perspective and physically layering them in different places to protect different routes or avenues of approach, or sensitive facilities.

Look at the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, which is a vast area, with a layered and networked system to maximize the depth of coverage. The primary reason for this is that the biggest enemy in many situations like these is time. That networked architecture and having sensors in depth really gains you time, which gives you opportunities to make a better decision, time to reposition, to better evaluate. You need time to evaluate what different things in space are doing, where they’re going or where they’re coming from.

JH: When you say layered, are you talking about different systems that can look in different ways over different distances and systems in different positions that help you with that time element? What does layered actually mean?

RB: You can layer different types of sensors. Think of baseball. If all your players are home-run hitters, you probably aren’t going to do very well. You need to have different skills across your team to succeed, and it’s the same thing here. Layering of radar sensing bands, different types of technology such as electro-optic and infra-red that “see” in long, short and midwave, acoustic sensors, electronic warfare sensors to look for signals and other types of energy. It’s also about physically layering them in space, or depth.

We often see large exquisite sensors that have a lot of range and cover a large area. But this makes them susceptible to being targeted and destroyed. Layering sensors gives you redundancy, retaining the ability to defend. So, this is layering both in physical location, and in different types of technology.

This way, if one of your sensors is taken down by any means – for example by electronic countermeasures – your other systems can theoretically continue to operate. Just think how you can see, smell, touch, taste – it’s the same concept with layering different types of technologies, which is exactly what we at Leonardo DRS do and we integrate them so we can interact and share information to maximize the benefits of this layered approach. A team ultimately makes the sensors more effective across networks and architectures.

JH: Presumably you get good indicators on developments from the current operations in Ukraine. You already mentioned the Strait of Hormuz as well. What are the big lessons that you’re getting here about different types and sizes of drones?

RB: Without going into the details of combat operations, the bottom line is you have to advance your technologies at the rate or as close to the rate of the advancement of the weapons systems that are being utilized. We’re seeing a mixture of things when it comes to the UASs; that’s larger craft that are getting faster and can carry heavier payloads, or smaller ones with longer ranges that can move through areas almost undetected. 

There’s been so much investment in UAS technology, and they are becoming cheaper and easier to manufacture. People can 3D-print these things in their houses now. So, looking at this from a sensing perspective, that layering is becoming increasingly important.

We are looking to do things to counter these developments, such as maybe elevate the sensors to “see” across the top of the trees or place a sensor down in a valley – so that adds layering in altitude or elevation to remove blind spots. Just like the military, if you’re setting-up a defensive position, you have to cover what we called “dead space” where you can’t see with eyes or sensors from ground level.

JH: Can we dig further into the role of tactical radars in counter-UAS, specifically Leonardo DRS’ 202 Expeditionary Skid, which I believe is based on your Extended Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar [exMHR].

RB: Radars “see” things that are physically present in space and time, and that’s why they are such great tools in the counter-UAS kit bag of sensors. That said, some radars are affected by weather and other factors, some work better in particular environments.

The 202 Expeditionary Skid is a new system from Leonardo DRS that uses our long-range exMHR, which is a software-defined AESA [Active Electronically Scanned Array] pulse-Doppler radar. It operates in the S-Band and that’s a very reliable band for all weather conditions including strong performance in dust storms and rain. When you get into K, Ku, and X-bands, they typically have smaller beams and therefore greater accuracy, but they suffer in poor weather and can become extremely degraded. S-band radar suffers significantly less degradation in that environment.

The 202 Expeditionary Skid, also known as U-KIT-0091, has a single radar panel that has a search area of 90 degrees by 90 degrees, so we often mount them in groups of four to provide full 360-degree coverage. Each panel has a really fast scan rate, much faster than a traditional spinning radar set. Plus, having multiple radar faces to make up a complete system is much more survivable. They can also overlap their field of regard without impairing each other.

We have sought to provide a solution that marries an appropriate level of range, accuracy, capability, and performance, that can still be very flexible in its ability to relocate or change mission sets. This is designed to be extremely versatile, meaning that it operates in different environments quickly. U-KIT-0091 has been purposefully designed to be mobile in a compact system that can either be used by itself or networked and fused together with other systems. Back to the baseball analogy, this is the kind of guy you really want on your team because you can use them wherever you need them.

The radar or set of radars sit on a small skid system that can slide into the back of a pickup truck, into the back of a tactical vehicle, onto a trailer, you can set it just about anywhere and it occupies a four-by-four-feet position. It has its own power generation, its own positional information that works in denied environments, basically it’s capable of working by itself from the get-go. The best part is that it’s truly mobile – the operator doesn’t have to stop the vehicle to make it work. You can turn it on and set-off. It’s working. If you come to a stop, it’s still working. It can be mounted on a ship, it can be taken airborne by an aircraft, so it’s got land, sea, and air applications. We’ve installed these on all types of ground platforms, water-based platforms, on top of a building or some sort of structure and it’s already in service, but I can’t specify where. It tracks drones very well, but of course it can track just about anything that can exist in that space.

JH: So you could strategically locate several of your radars to look in different directions or be positioned to look in a certain direction if you knew the expected paths that the threats would use?

RB: The system is designed exactly for things like that. Instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, you disperse your eggs, and focus on different avenues or approach angles so that you can then have sensors strategically located where they can pick up these things and then as long as they’re networked back into weapons systems that have the overlapping fields of fire or bubbles – coverage areas – then you can protect your area. 

Any time you can decouple a sensor from a weapon system or multiple types of sensors from each other, you stand a far greater chance of survivability and optimizing accuracy. If you put all your eggs in one basket, and if you lose that basket, you lose everything. In addition, if you separate sensors, you gain accuracy because you have different angles and you can leverage simple geometry.

JH: Could you depict what an end-to-end engagement might look like using your tactical radar.

RB: The radar sensors will typically be emitting energy as they search for objects in a particular space. If something is detected and determined to be a valid target then the data is sent from the radar to some type of a command and control system, which may well be receiving information from other complementary sensors too. It then fuses that data and passes it to an effector, whether that’s a non-kinetic or a kinetic system, for engagement.

Meanwhile, the radar continues to track and it can determine whether that object was removed or if its path changed, and so on and so forth. But you know, a lot of these radars operate in a way whereby they can be turned on or off by different sensors to avoid them having to constantly transmit energy, they’re very customizable to meet the requirements and the emissions that are needed, whether that’s air defense, counter-drone, etc.

They can operate independently too, maybe covering a small area that needs to be protected, and integrated with a localized weapon system, or, as I already explained, they can be networked into a much larger set-up, they are modular, open system architecture and easily incorporated.

Most customers tend to choose their own command and control systems, which is why the plug-and-play part of our system is so important. It really doesn’t matter what they want to partner it with, what we provide enables that very easily.

JH: To be clear, your tactical radars could be deployed to defend the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S., they could be positioned to defend an air base, or they could be used to defend a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

RB: The architecture can scale geographically through a distributed, networked sensor approach. The specific coverage area depends on factors including sensor density, the threat environment, command-and-control integration, and the available effectors.

Customers can deploy multiple radars and feed them into a single command-and-control system, positioning sensors to optimize coverage for the operational need. For example, one radar set could cover a valley vulnerable to low-flying drone ingress, while another positioned on higher ground provides longer-range surveillance. The key is a modular capability that enables users to tailor coverage and layer sensors where they are most needed – without relying on one large radar system to see everything from a single location.

JH: I’m keen to know what you consider to be the most challenging drones to detect and track. Is the challenge the speed they’re traveling out at, maybe new low observable designs, or the fact they’re flying very low. What are the big issues you’re seeing?

RB: It’s really all of the above. The other really challenging problem is when something is flying very low to the ground. The lower they bring them in altitude, they are harder to track as an independent target.

The challenge with drone swarms isn’t detection – if you can see the drones, you can track them. The harder problem is managing those tracks, deciding which threats matter most, and assigning the right effector to each one.

If 100 drones are inbound, it’s not just about having 100 weapons available. It’s about coordinating a fast, cost-effective response across a large number of simultaneous threats.

Ultimately, pairing radars and electro-optical/infrared sensors together is the way to go, because each of those have their own strengths. One of those sensors is going to see the drone better than the other, plus you have the redundancy that at least a couple of them will “see” the threat and give you enough information in sufficient time to prosecute it. Fitting into that team, however it is constructed, is exactly how we position our 202 Expeditionary Skid U-KIT-0091 radar.

Contact the write: Jamie.Hunter@teamrecurrent.io

Ukrainian crews operating Australian-supplied M1A1 Abrams tanks say the battlefield has become so saturated with Russian drones that their tanks cannot currently be used in combat, but they reject the idea that main battle tanks have become forever obsolete.

Since receiving these tanks last year, the crews, serving with Ukraine’s 425th Separate Assault Regiment “Skala,” have used the Abrams in two combat operations in the fight for Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistics hub and part of a defensive belt of towns in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. They recounted their experiences to Hromadske, an independent media channel in Ukraine.

Чому «Скеля» їхала на Abrams у Покровськ / hromadske

Fighting around Pokrovsk

The first major deployment described by the crews took place in December of last year, when Abrams tanks were used to support assault groups entering Pokrovsk.

The crewmember with the callsign Kent described moving into the city behind a mine-clearing tank and ahead of two infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) carrying assault troops, during a mission that was deliberately aggressive.

“Since a tank is a priority target — my task was to draw their attention, while our infantry dismounted and moved in successfully.”

The Abrams was also assigned three target points to engage along the route.

“We went right in there, poured it on, and drove back out,” he recalled.

A video showing the 425th Separate Assault Regiment in action in August 2025, soon after receiving the Abrams:

Танки Abrams в 425 ОШП “Скала” [Серпень 2025]

The second operation, on March 31, involved an attempt to enter and hold an industrial area near Pokrovsk to help block Russian movement toward Hryshyne, a contested village in the district.

The operation was prepared for more than two weeks. Ukrainian forces conducted reconnaissance flights, examined difficult sections of the planned routes, and provided crews with extensive video and imagery.

“They knew every meter of the route,” another of the unit’s commanders, with the callsign Kubik, said.

Weather was considered essential. The Ukrainians waited for fog and rain, hoping to limit the effectiveness of Russian drones.

“Without the right weather we wouldn’t have been able to pull off operations like that,” Kubik said.

The operation nevertheless resulted in the destruction of four out of five armored vehicles, some of which are seen in the video embedded below.

The commander acknowledged that the Russian side may have had advance knowledge of the operation.

“I can’t rule out the possibility that the enemy knew our plan,” he said.

His Abrams was not immediately destroyed. According to the crew, it completed its task and the assault troops dismounted before the weather changed.

“Once the fog lifted, they started working on it with an FPV drone,” the commander said.

Why use tanks at all?

The losses prompted criticism from Ukrainian military commentators, particularly after footage of the destroyed vehicles was published.

However, the crews defend the decision to use armored vehicles for the missions. According to the men of the Skala interviewed, the alternative was often to send infantry over several miles on foot while carrying weapons, ammunition, water, and other supplies.

“That takes more time,” Kubik explained. “And the enemy isn’t standing still — the enemy is moving toward them.”

The argument that infantry could simply move more stealthily on foot also has limitations.

“Every day the Mavic drones are flying, the fixed-wing drones are flying,” he said. “No fog, guys are visible.”

Combined witu IFVs, the Abrams can provide the ability to rapidly move troops while simultaneously delivering heavy direct fire against enemy positions and offering substantial protection to its crew.

The crews argue that this capability remains worthwhile even when the tank itself may eventually be lost.

One commander was asked whether deploying a roughly $5-million tank makes sense if a single sortie can result in its destruction.

“Yes, of course it makes sense to deploy it,” he replied.

“First and foremost — it saves the lives of the crew inside it.”

A tank under attack by drones

The Ukrainian crews repeatedly highlighted the Abrams’ accuracy and survivability.

“What are the biggest advantages of the Abrams?”, Kent was asked.

“Accuracy.”

Its biggest disadvantage, he said, is equally obvious on a modern battlefield: “It’s very tall — and very large — so it’s hard to conceal.”

A video showing a U.S.-supplied Abrams under attack from Russian FPV drones:

Kent described surviving an engagement in which his tank was struck repeatedly while on the move.

“More than 20 drones hit me,” he said of one operation into Pokrovsk.

He attributed the Abrams’ survival to the combination of its armor and additional anti-drone protection fitted to the vehicle.

“All of it together is effective,” he said.

He pointed to fairly basic modifications including rubber strips and a foldable wire cage mounted on the turret, as additional layers of protection against drone attacks.

“A drone doesn’t hit the actual penetrating element directly — it just can’t reach it,” he explained. “It hits the rubber, and then the blast wave travels from there.”

Even with their tanks festooned with explosive reactive armor (ERA) bricks, the crews acknowledge that such protection has limits.

Kent also noted that the Abrams was still missing the ‘hedgehog’-type protective coverings that have been seen on Russian tanks.

“They also protect very well. An effective thing,” he said.

For now, the drone threat has led the regiment to keep its Abrams out of combat, as we will return to later.

The Abrams as a machine

The crews’ assessment of the Abrams included praise for its mobility, roomy interior, gun, and fire-control system.

Kubik said he had personally driven an Abrams to 50 miles per hour cross-country.

“The engine is an absolute beast,” he added.

The tank can also rapidly perform a pivot turn, which the crews consider particularly useful when maneuvering in confined spaces. Despite its prodiguous weight, it only rarely becomes bogged down after the kind of very heavy snow-melt that effects all vehicles on the battlefield.

Its disadvantages include its demanding maintenance requirements. The running gear was described as particularly sensitive, with crews inspecting, lubricating, and replacing components after every sortie.

Fuel consumption is another major burden. The crew cited roughly 400 to 700 liters (106 to 185 gallons) per 100 kilometers (62 miles) depending on terrain and operating conditions.

“On asphalt it burns about 400 liters,” one said. In boggy terrain, consumption can reach “700 liters or more.”

The Abrams thirsty gas turbine engine and extreme logistical demands have always been a criticism of the platform.

The crews said the vehicle’s ability to operate on different fuels is useful, although diesel provides the best engine-hour performance in their experience. Prior to delivery, the gas turbine engines of the tanks were reconfigured to use diesel fuel instead of the standard JP-8 aviation kerosene, according to earlier reports.

They also praised the Abrams’ protected ammunition storage and crew space compared with Soviet-designed tanks.

The version operated by the Ukrainians is an M1A1 rather than the latest Abrams configuration, with less sophisticated electronics than newer variants. It also lacks the classified armor found on its U.S. Army counterpart.

“For me — as a tanker — this configuration, what we have right now, is more than enough,” Kubik said. “The sight is absolutely excellent. The gun is also great.”

Waiting for a solution to the drone problem

The interview ultimately presents a more complicated picture than either the declaration that tanks are obsolete on the Ukrainian battlefield.

At the time of writing, at least 25 Abrams have been confirmed visually to have been destroyed, damaged, or abandoned in Ukrainian service. This is from a total of 31 provided by the United States and 49 from Australia.

“For now, we’re not using them further — there’s no way to,” Kubik said. “The enemy has developed their drone component very heavily, and for now we don’t have the means to counter that.”

While tanks remain exceptionally powerful direct-fire and protected mobility platforms, the proliferation of inexpensive uncrewed aircraft has made operating them increasingly difficult.

M1A1 AIM Abrams tanks of the 425th Assault Regiment 🇺🇦.
The reinforced upper glacis and turret roofs are clearly visible. pic.twitter.com/Sn9h8OWZ9P

— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱 🦩🇬🇪🇺🇦🇺🇲🇬🇷 (@TheDeadDistrict) June 21, 2026

“If someone had told me, as a tanker, back in 2022: ‘Take this — we’re giving you an Abrams, we’ll give you time to train and you’ll fight in it,’” Kubik said, “I would never have climbed out of it.”

“I’d only be saying: ‘Bring me shells. I’ll drive non-stop wherever needed, arrive and work.’”

As it stands, reconnaissance drones can find the Abrams, FPV drones can attack it, and persistent surveillance makes concealment difficult. Experience has shown that without more effective counter-drone capabilities, even a heavily protected tank can eventually be overwhelmed.

But Kubik believes that will change.

“The day will come when one of our bright minds figures out some excellent solution against drones — and we’ll start using them again.”

Asked whether the era of tanks is over, his answer was unequivocal.

“It’s not over … They’re just waiting it out for now, biding their time. Writing off tanks — in my opinion — is still too early.”

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

As the war drags on in Ukraine, its civilians are again suffering.

Thirty-eight people were killed in the village of Myla on August 29, when a Russian drone attack struck an ammunition depot. Another 12 were killed in attacks across the country on September 1.

Civilian deaths have sharply increased this summer as Russia is using jet-powered drones, which fly at about half the speed of a passenger jet and are more difficult to intercept than propeller-powered drones.

Jet-powered drones numbered about 2,800 in August, said Ukraine Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, compared with about 1,500 in July, several times the number launched in June. Ukraine has an interception rate of more than 90 percent against propeller-powered drones, but only 60 percent against the jet-powered variant, Ihnat said.

Ukraine said Russian forces suffered 42,020 casualties last month, as Moscow’s territorial gains dropped to a fraction of last year’s rate of advance.

Ukrainian armed forces figures showed Russia’s monthly casualties were only slightly below July’s 42,860 and well above the 39,290 in June.

Al Jazeera cannot independently verify casualty estimates by either side, but if accurate, those summer figures – 25.8 percent higher than the casualties Ukraine inflicted in the spring – suggest the high Russian casualty rate is not a passing event.

Russian recruitment rates are thought to be well below those totals, estimated by Ukraine at about 32,500 a month this year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly shared intelligence suggesting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will conscript 300,000 or more troops next month.

Zelenskyy has said that up to 80 percent of Russian casualties were inflicted in Kostiantynivka, the southernmost of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” of cities in the eastern Donetsk region, whose capture Putin has repeatedly prioritised.

Russian forces are thought to control only a portion of the city, but have infiltrated more than 70 percent of it with scattered individual troops sent to drop supplies and await reinforcements. Ukrainian drone operators have been targeting the troops as Russia replenishes them.

This week it was revealed that Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi, reinforced the Donetsk front around Sloviansk and Dobropillia, north and south of Kostiantynivka, respectively, but kept the Kostiantynivka front largely unchanged. That suggests Ukraine may be adopting the tactic of fighting a prolonged rearguard in the urban landscape to inflict attritional losses, as it did in the battles of Bakhmut, Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.

The fight for Kostiantynivka has sapped troop strength elsewhere on the front line, where Ukraine liberated 130sq km (50 square miles) of its land in August, limiting Russia’s overall advance.

Russia seized just over 90sq km (35 square miles) in August, estimated the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that assesses territorial gains using open-source geolocated sources.

While still a net gain, that is less than a fifth of the land Russia seized in August last year.

During June, July and August this year, the ISW assessed that Russia gained firm control of 160sq km (60 square miles), compared with 1,440sq km in the summer months of 2025 (560 square miles) – a 90 percent decrease.

Ukraine’s response

Ukraine has turned its focus from Russian refineries to strikes against Russian air defences, radar systems and drone launch sites.

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) destroyed 33 air defence elements in August, increasing the annual total to 263.

Ukraine also kept up some strikes on refineries, hitting 12 in August, along with two gas-processing plants and three oil transshipment terminals, according to its defence ministry.

During the past week, Ukraine struck the Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl and the Kirishi and Ust-Luga refineries near Leningrad, all 800km (500 miles) from its border.

Those strikes have caused petrol shortages, further hurting Russia’s economy.

Ukraine’s military intelligence reported that certain Russian exports had fallen by 80 percent compared with pre-war levels. Oil has been among the hardest hit, as Ukraine has struck terminals and hundreds of tankers carrying Russian oil in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

Russian oil exports from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk fell from 800,000 barrels a day in July to 350,000 barrels per day in August, said Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.

“The Russian side acknowledges that its Black Sea Fleet ships are effectively blockaded in Novorossiysk due to our drone strikes and are unable to operate at sea,” said Zelenskyy.

“Since the Russian fleet is unable to provide escorts for the commercial and shadow fleet …  one of the solutions being considered is to equip civilian ships with small arms, electronic warfare (EW) equipment and military personnel,” he said. “We will prepare appropriate countermeasures.”

The strikes on the oil industry have not only reduced exports. They have reverberated across the Russian economy, creating queues at petrol stations and raising prices for motorists.

This week, Russia extended its ban on diesel exports to the end of September to keep its army and transport industry supplied and sought to import petrol.

Occupied Crimea, where petrol distribution has been restricted to government-owned vehicles, has been hard hit.

The Russian-appointed governor of the region, Sergei Aksyonov, said on September 2: “Fuel supplies to the region are currently not fully meeting the needs of the residents. Unfortunately, some residents of Crimea will, at this stage, face limited access to gasoline”.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun praises the release and thanks US President Donald Trump for his efforts.

Four Lebanese citizens who were held in Israel have been released and handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the day after a first prisoner was freed.

In a statement on Friday, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun thanked the United States after the Red Cross facilitated the transfer. The US has been brokering talks between Beirut and Tel Aviv aimed at ending hostilities between the neighbouring countries.

Aoun expressed his gratitude “for all the efforts exerted, particularly by the US under the leadership of President Donald Trump and by international bodies, especially the ICRC”.

The ICRC confirmed that “at the request of the relevant parties, [it] facilitated the transfer to Lebanon of five individuals released from Israeli detention”.

Associated Press and Anadolu news agency reporters said they saw a convoy of ICRC vehicles heading towards the Naqoura border crossing on Friday morning and later returning. The convoy then entered a Lebanese army barracks in Tyre.

The release follows a pledge by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that authorities would free five Lebanese prisoners.

The prisoner released on Thursday was identified as Malek Ghazi.

It was the first such handover since the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war six months ago.

Other released prisoners include Hussein Ayash from the village of Harouf and Mohammed Juheir, a fisherman from the border town of Naqoura, AP reported.

Dozens of Lebanese citizens are believed to be held in Israeli detention centres, including civilians as well as Hezbollah members captured during fighting in southern Lebanon.

The ICRC called for its teams to be granted access to the remaining prisoners unjustly held by Israel, noting that it has not had access to detainees held in Israel since October 2023.

“Many families in Lebanon are still waiting for answers about the fate of loved ones who may be detained, deceased or otherwise unaccounted for,” it said.

Clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah began after Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. That led to over a year of hostilities that escalated into a full-blown war in 2024.

Two years later, Lebanon was fully drawn into the conflict when the US and Israel launched a war on Iran. Hezbollah, a key ally of Iran, fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with air strikes and a ground invasion that have killed at least 4,300 people in Lebanon.

Lebanon began direct talks with Israel in April. Aoun’s government has vowed to fulfil the terms of the US-brokered framework agreement.

He said it would pave the way for “the full restoration of Lebanese sovereignty, without giving up an inch of our land or a single one of our people”.

China is buying ninety percent of Iran’s oil exports, settling transactions in renminbi, and hiding the rest beneath layers of shell companies. This is not defiance. It is a demonstration, conducted in plain sight, of exactly how far American economic reach actually extends.

Scott Bessent promised, when he launched Operation Economic Outcast last week, that no one would be above the reach of US sanctions. China’s foreign ministry responded by saying Beijing would do everything necessary to safeguard its own rights and interests. That exchange, watched by the rest of the world, is not really about Iran. It is about whether the threat of American secondary sanctions can force a country that has already fought several trade wars with Washington to a standstill into changing its economic behaviour. The answer, which China has been demonstrating methodically for months, is no.

How China Made Itself Immune to US Secondary Sanctions

The architecture of Chinese-Iranian trade has been specifically designed to sit outside dollar-system jurisdiction. Chinese banks and companies that buy Iranian oil settle transactions in renminbi or through barter arrangements, making them effectively immune to American extraterritorial authority. The handful of Chinese entities that still touch dollar-denominated transactions do so through shell companies that can be discarded and replaced faster than Washington can identify and sanction them. The result is the regulatory whack-a-mole problem that American Treasury officials privately acknowledge, eliminate one entity, and three more appear in its place, each more obscured than the last.

Washington could escalate by sanctioning major Chinese banks and companies that have no Iran ties at all, using them as leverage to pressure Beijing to rein in those that do. That option exists on paper. In practice, it would constitute a declaration of economic war against China’s financial system at a moment when the US economy is already strained by six months of conflict with Iran, oil prices are elevated, and midterm elections are eight weeks away. The Trump administration knows this, which is why Bessent’s ultimatum came with no major Chinese institution on the sanctions list. The threat was real. The enforcement mechanism was not.

What a US Victory in Iran Would Cost Beijing

China sources roughly forty percent of its oil imports from the Gulf, with Iran accounting for ten percent of that total. If the US wins this war convincingly, meaning Iran’s government collapses or capitulates and Washington reinstalls itself as the dominant security guarantor across the Gulf, the energy architecture that China has spent two decades building becomes dependent on American goodwill. Every barrel of Gulf oil that China buys would effectively pass through a security framework Washington controls.

The regional knock-on effects compound that problem. The Mecca pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, the SCO’s deepening trade and financial architecture, the China-brokered Saudi-Iran normalisation of 2023: all of these represent years of Chinese diplomatic investment in a Middle East that is gradually reducing its security dependence on the United States. An Iranian defeat that pushes regional states back under the American umbrella undoes that investment at a stroke. From Beijing’s perspective, the cost of buying Iranian oil at a discount and absorbing American secondary sanctions is considerably lower than the cost of losing the regional influence that Iran’s survival helps sustain.

Neither Ally Nor Bystander

The SCO summit in Bishkek last week illustrated Beijing’s position with more precision than any official statement. Xi met Putin and Modi bilaterally. Iran’s President Pezeshkian attended the summit and held consultations at foreign minister level. He was not invited to Beijing. He did not get a Xi bilateral. That calibrated distance is deliberate, and it reflects a Chinese calculation that is more sophisticated than either alliance or abandonment.

Beijing does not want Iran to lose. It also does not want Iran to win so completely that Tehran’s regional hegemony destabilises the Gulf relationships China has been cultivating. The Chinese position, buying Iranian oil, refusing to arm Iran, keeping diplomatic engagement at arm’s length, is designed to keep Iran functional without making China responsible for Iranian behaviour. It is the foreign policy equivalent of keeping a fire burning without touching it.

Xi’s scheduled visit to Washington later this month, coming directly after the Bishkek summit, reinforces this reading. Beijing is simultaneously demonstrating to Iran that it has economic backing and demonstrating to Washington that it has strategic restraint. Both demonstrations serve Chinese interests. Neither requires China to choose a side.

Five Things Worth Watching

• Whether Xi’s Washington visit produces any concrete understanding on Iran-related secondary sanctions. If the two sides agree on a framework that gives China cover to quietly reduce Iranian oil purchases over time, the sanctions architecture gains traction it currently lacks. If the summit produces only standard language about constructive competition, Operation Economic Outcast’s China problem remains unresolved.
• The SCO Development Bank’s progress toward implementation. If the bank moves from agreement to operational institution in the coming months, it creates dollar-independent financing infrastructure that makes secondary sanctions significantly less effective not just for China-Iran trade but for the broader Eurasian trade network the SCO is building.
• Whether any Chinese entity on the August sanctions list is large enough that its designation produces real disruption rather than being absorbed and routed around. The signal from August’s first wave was that Washington sanctioned deliberately small targets. The size and visibility of the next wave’s targets will tell you how seriously Washington is willing to press China.
• India’s position on renminbi settlement for its own Iranian oil purchases. If Delhi follows Beijing’s approach and expands non-dollar settlement for energy trade, the secondary sanctions architecture faces a second major exemption that Washington is even less able to address given how carefully it has been courting India.
• Iran’s currency trajectory. The rial has hit record lows despite Chinese oil purchases continuing. If the currency continues to deteriorate even with Chinese demand stable, it suggests Operation Economic Outcast is landing on Iran’s non-oil economy in ways that the Chinese lifeline cannot fully offset which changes the pressure calculus regardless of whether Beijing complies.

The Bottom Line

Washington designed Operation Economic Outcast to isolate Iran. What it has demonstrated is the outer boundary of American economic jurisdiction in a world where China has spent a decade building the infrastructure to sit outside it. Renminbi settlement, dark fleet shipping, teapot refineries, shell company networks, these are not improvised workarounds. They are a parallel financial architecture, constructed precisely for this contingency, and it works well enough to keep Iranian oil flowing at volumes Washington cannot stop.

The deeper problem for the Trump administration is not that China is defying its sanctions. It is that China is proving, transaction by transaction, that the sanctions cannot be enforced against a country of sufficient size and sufficient preparation. That demonstration has an audience well beyond Beijing and Tehran. Every country currently watching whether to comply with American secondary sanctions is learning the same lesson: the reach of US economic power has a ceiling, and China has found it.

Funerals have taken place for two Palestinian teenagers who were shot dead this week when settlers and soldiers entered a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.

The killing of Omar al-Naasan and Khalil Abu Alia comes amid near-daily attacks by Jewish settlers in the village of al-Mughayyir, south of Nablus.

“We expect that when our sons walk in the street, they are likely to return to you injured or killed,” Mohammed Al-Naasan, Omar’s father, told the BBC.

Israel’s military says it fired on “instigators of a violent riot” and that the incident is under review.

The United Nations says more than 80 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the territory since the beginning of the year.

As the United States and Iran exchanged attacks this week, one date was increasingly looming over the conflict.

The US midterm elections on November 3 could prove a pivotal moment in the war, as senior advisers to President Donald Trump seek to prevent the conflict from returning to all-out war before the polls when Republicans will be defending narrow majorities in both houses of Congress.

The push for restraint comes as Washington turns to economic pressure on Iran instead of military force. In August, the Trump administration announced its so-called “Economic D-Day”, imposing sanctions on 60 entities that it says facilitate oil revenues for trade with Iran and threatening other countries doing business with Tehran with secondary sanctions.

At the same time, the US naval blockade of Iranian ports in and around the Strait of Hormuz continues to exert pressure on Tehran’s oil exports.

Vice President JD Vance has meanwhile sought to downplay the war, which the US and Israel launched with attacks on Iran on February 28, as rising fuel prices and public opposition in the US threaten to become political liabilities for Republicans before the vote.

But there are clear limits to the restraint the Trump administration can show, with US forces continuing to strike Iran in recent days, and US leaders insist that further military action remains an option. Vance said this week that “everything that could happen is on the table,” including economic, military, diplomatic and covert pressure.

That leaves the coming two months as a particularly tricky period to navigate. Washington will want to avoid an all-out war while ratcheting up economic pressure, but Iran has its own calculations and could respond militarily anyway, potentially forcing the US into an escalation it would rather avoid before Americans go to the polls.

Here’s what we know.

Why do the midterms matter for Trump?

The midterms will determine whether the Republican Party can retain its narrow control of Congress. If the war escalates again before then, that could persuade more people to vote against the Trump administration.

Containing the fighting until November, therefore, may help prevent an already deeply unpopular war from dominating the political agenda.

A late-August Reuters/Ipsos poll suggested that just 31 percent of Americans support the war, compared with 63 percent who oppose it. Trump’s approval rating has also fallen since the outbreak of hostilities, from 40 percent to 33 percent, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.

Observers say the Trump administration did not expect things to get to this point.

In early March, Trump insisted the war would last for “four or five weeks”. Instead, the conflict has dragged on, and unexpected consequences – including Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz causing energy prices to spike – have made it even more unpopular with US households.

US diesel prices hit a record high on Thursday, surpassing the previous peak recorded in 2022, as higher crude oil prices and refining bottlenecks drove up the cost of a fuel that underpins much of the US economy.

That is particularly damaging for a president who campaigned partly on a promise to dramatically reduce energy costs – as well as not to get involved in “unnecessary” wars.

The fallout from the war has not stopped at the petrol pump. Sustained increases in fuel and transport costs feed into the price of groceries, manufactured goods and other everyday purchases – potentially worsening inflation when Democrats are making the cost of living a defining issue for the midterm campaign.

A Politico poll conducted in August suggested that 61 percent of Americans believe the Iran war had made life more expensive for their families, four percentage points higher than a month earlier.

Can Trump keep the war contained until November?

There are signs that his administration is trying to do exactly that.

In recent weeks, Washington has intensified its campaign to economically isolate Iran, threatening severe sanctions against countries that continue trading with it while maintaining military pressure around the Strait of Hormuz.

With strikes on Iran earlier this week, Trump has also indicated he is willing to engage in sporadic attacks, while trying to keep the war from escalating back to all-out conflict.

Senior administration officials have simultaneously sought to play down the scale of the military confrontation. Asked at a White House briefing whether the Iran war would be resolved before the midterm elections, Vice President JD Vance said he “wouldn’t call it a war” and claimed there was “no active shooting right now”.

Asked when Iran would stop attacking commercial shipping, Vance said: “You would have to ask the Iranians.” He also said the conflict was having “less effect day by day” on global energy markets. The US claims it is escorting about 30 ships per night through the Strait of Hormuz – and officials claimed some 18 million barrels of oil were transported through on Tuesday this week. However, shipping data does not appear to fully support this claim.

Trying to maintain a strategy of “no war, no peace” with sporadic attacks is high-risk, analysts have warned. Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera this week: “Tehran will not capitulate under [economic] pressure. Both sides may believe they can control the escalation, but every new exchange increases the risk of a wider regional conflict.”

One of the US attacks this week is also believed to have hit a civilian home where a wedding was taking place in Kuhestak, southern Iran, killing at least four people, including children, and wounding dozens.

Furthermore, The Washington Post reported on Sunday that senior Army, Navy and Air Force leaders have warned Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth in a written assessment that continuing the war at its current pace is unsustainable and risks undermining US military readiness in other parts of the world.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera that this week’s attacks point to a US strategy that remains deeply unsettled.

“I think it’s quite likely that what we’re seeing right now is just complete military, strategic disarray on the American position in which the positions, the actions, the tactics, the strategies keep on getting changed,” Parsi said.

Washington had imposed sweeping economic sanctions on Iran in an apparent attempt to make further military intervention unnecessary, he noted. “Seven days later, the US is back into bombing Iran.”

The US appears to be “jumping from one position to the other”, he added.

What are Iran’s calculations?

While the most recent attacks between the US and Iran have been less intense than the heavy exchanges seen in the early weeks of the war and during the two flare-ups in July, the risk of escalation is high. And it may be in Iran’s interests for that to happen sooner rather than later.

Iran has excelled at the use of asymmetric warfare against an enemy with considerable military might – using cheap, mass-produced drones to exhaust US supplies of very expensive defensive systems, and launching attacks on US allies around the Gulf, sowing disharmony.

In particular, Tehran has demonstrated that it can severely disrupt maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, causing global economic consequences.

Continued Iranian attacks on US or regional military assets, shipping or energy infrastructure would place pressure on Washington to retaliate more strongly than via the few attacks it has carried out this week, creating the possibility of an escalatory cycle that could return the two countries to a much wider war regardless of the White House’s electoral calculations.

Furthermore, Washington’s economic strategy to isolate Tehran – an attempt to move away from open warfare – may in fact create a greater Iranian incentive to retaliate.

Parsi told Al Jazeera that Iranian officials appear to believe Trump ultimately intends to restart the war on a larger scale but is just waiting until after the midterms.

That creates a potentially dangerous calculation for Tehran, where it is better to escalate now – while Trump is at his most politically vulnerable. “The reaction of the Iranians to that might be to actually trigger the war themselves early right before the midterm elections in order to maximise the pain that will impose on the US president,” Parsi said.

What happens after November?

Reuters reported on Wednesday that senior White House officials are already considering whether to intensify military operations against Iran after the November 3 vote, although no decision has been made on returning to full-scale conflict, it reported.

A Republican victory in the midterms could give Trump greater political room for this option, particularly if the administration interprets the result as approval – or at least lack of enough disapproval – for the war despite the economic consequences for voters.

A Republican defeat presents a more complicated picture, however. On the one hand, losing one or both chambers of Congress will constrain the administration, as Congress controls government funding. Democratic control of the House or Senate would also give Trump’s opponents greater scope to hold hearings, investigate the US conduct of the war and challenge requests for additional military spending.

Conversely, with Trump no longer facing a congressional election, he may feel less pressure to contain the war, experts fear.

Parsi warned that an electoral defeat could therefore have the opposite effect to what Tehran might expect.

“I’m not so sure that it’s going to pay off necessarily for the Iranians because a Trump that is humiliated at the elections, who is faced with a Democratic [majority] House [of Representatives] and potentially a Democratic Senate, may also become a much more desperate and reckless president,” he said.

Resignations come after documentary alleges party arranged for overseas company to fund polling.

Two officials from Britain’s Reform UK have stepped down amid the latest in a series of funding scandals for the far-right political party.

Party officials James Orr and Dan Jukes announced on Friday that they would step down, following the broadcast of an investigative television documentary. The party, which has seen support slide amid numerous reports regarding infringement of party donation rules, said it would launch a probe into the latest allegations.

The undercover investigation by Channel 4 News alleged that the Reform UK officials breached political donation rules by arranging to have polling paid for by an overseas company.

In the documentary, Jukes is seen suggesting to an undercover reporter how to evade electoral law to make donations to the party from abroad.

Sitting at the table, Party leader Nigel Farage says all is “above board” as the reporter tells him that he has been in talks with Orr for some time.

The resignation of long-term Farage aide Jukes, and Reform’s head of policy Orr, comes on the eve of the party’s annual conference.

Farage – who has been dogged by questions over money received on a personal basis as well as by Reform in recent months – insisted on Friday in a radio interview that the party has “broken no laws”.

However, he added, “entrapped conversations don’t look good, and that’s why we’ve [launched the party investigation]”.

A spokesperson for London’s Met Police said it was “aware of media reporting … involving political party donations and an alleged breach of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 relating to polling”.

The ruling Labour Party, as well as the opposition Liberal Democrats, said they had reported Reform to the police following the revelations, which the anti-immigration party initially dismissed as a “hoax”.

Farage sought to hit back by accusing other political parties of “selling peerages”.

“In the world of political funding, all sorts of things have been done over decades that are wrong,” he asserted. “We as a party have done nothing wrong. A couple of our contractors have said things that shouldn’t have been said.”

Amid the series of funding scandals to have hit Reform in recent months, the disclosure of an undeclared personal gift of 5 million pounds ($6.7m) to Farage by cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne has done the most damage so far.

Both criminal and parliamentary investigations into Harborne’s donations – he has also given Reform more than 25 million pounds ($33.6m) – are continuing.

Scrutiny is focused on Tether, Harborne’s cryptocurrency, which has been widely linked to drug cartels, fraud and human trafficking.

Amid the storm, Farage made international headlines by resigning his parliamentary seat to prompt a by-election, in which he cast himself as taking on “the establishment”.

With other major parties dismissing the move as a stunt and refusing to put up candidates, the populist leader won comfortably, although the nearly 10,000 votes achieved by his closest rival, “intergalactic space warrior” Count Binface, illustrated significant opposition.