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Gianni Infantino looked every bit the “King of Football”, as US President Donald Trump likes to call him, when the two allies sat together watching the World Cup final less than two weeks ago.

Sure, there were some boos inside MetLife Stadium near New York when the two men walked across the turf to present the trophy and medals to Spain and Argentina players on July 19.

Still, that 104th and final game capped the biggest-ever tournament seen as a vindication for the FIFA president – a consensus success on the field and a financial bonanza for global football. Infantino could look ahead to his likely re-election coronation next March.

The sunny scene must now feel an age ago since Infantino caused a seismic rift in global football.

The intensifying fallout has threatened the 56-year-old Infantino’s job after he seemed untouchable until this week.

Did Infantino have any choice but to abandon FIFA World Cup investment plan?

Infantino’s misstep was inviting private investors, led by Joshua Kushner, to buy a stake in future profits from World Cups and all FIFA events. The ensuing backlash – which included pledges by European nations to boycott FIFA events and claims from senior staff that Infantino deceived everyone – led Infantino to announce Friday that he was abandoning the plan.

“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” he said in a statement.

Infantino left New York City last week with letters pledging election support from about 200 of FIFA’s 211 national member federations who vote for their leader every four years.

Now, even after scrapping his divisive investment project, his support remains unclear at best.

What would the private investment plan have done to for FIFA?

Infantino’s proposal would have created a subsidiary – known as FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) – for the money-making parts of the not-for-profit football body’s work: running tournaments like the World Cup, selling broadcasting and sponsorship, tickets and hospitality.

Private equity and petrostate sovereign wealth money has been normalised in European club football, yet it still seems unthinkable to many observers in the context of the World Cup. Football’s ultimate prize is seen as being about glory, not money, and fans have long believed it belongs to them.

FIFA proposed raising $4.2bn from investors buying a stake of about 20 percent in FFE, based on an equity valuation of $20bn. The “anchor investor” would have been Thrive Eternal, launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is a son-in-law of Trump.

FIFA’s 211 member federations – already effectively the owners of the governing body as a nonprofit association under Swiss law – were offered $20m each. The deadline to accept was September 19.

The members already are due $10m each from FIFA over the next four years, funded largely by its record $15bn revenue over 2023-26 tied to the World Cup that just ended.

FIFA says under FFE, that would have doubled to $20m each, then rise to $22m each through 2034, and $24m to 2038.

That’s a huge sum for tiny football federations in places like Andorra, Montserrat and Papua New Guinea. Deep-pocketed football powers like England, Spain or France have other priorities.

Who were the main opponents of Infantino’s plan for FIFA and World Cups?

Some FIFA vice presidents, some of its top executives, all the European football federations, the football bodies of Asia and North America, Britain’s prime minister, the global group of national leagues, a lot of fans worldwide.

Essentially, everyone.

Infantino was looking increasingly friendless on Friday. His senior adviser, former Goldman Sachs banker Carlos Cordeiro, resigned and called it a bad deal. FIFA chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, gave a stinging statement to The Associated Press news agency in defence of colleagues that all but invited his boss to fire him.

A key move Thursday was European football body UEFA pledging to boycott all FIFA competitions until Infantino dropped the plan.

Europe’s teams routinely dominate and win FIFA trophies like the men’s World Cup and Club World Cup, which are its biggest revenue earners.

They collectively feared that private investors would seek – and demand – value from more games and bigger competitions that threaten the balance of global football.

That could jeopardise attention and revenues for club football, including the UEFA Champions League.

Fixture calendars are already congested, elite players are at their limits, broadcast and sponsor money is not unlimited.

All are angry that Infantino seems not to have consulted anyone while planning the project over the last year, when he was so focused on spending time in Trump’s orbit. Even Trump said Friday he had not spoken with the FIFA chief on his plan to sell stakes in the tournament.

Did Infantino have any support for his plans for FIFA and World Cups?

Infantino’s traditional support base in Africa, which has 54 of the 211 voting members, had been neutral about the offers of game-changing money for many of them.

The 10-nation South American group CONMEBOL said on Friday it had received the proposal and would evaluate the issue “with the rigour it demands”. CONMEBOL is led by FIFA’s vice president, Alejandro Dominguez of Paraguay, who is relying on Infantino expanding the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams.

That would give more games to minority cohosts Argentina, Paraguay and inaugural 1930 World Cup host Uruguay, who currently are set to get just one game each of the 104. The rest are in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

What happens now for Infantino in his role as FIFA president?

The UEFA-led resistance succeeded in stopping the sell-off plan. Will that satisfy Infantino’s opponents to allow him to remain in office?

Does Infantino have the credibility to stay in office after interventions Friday by Lamour and Cordeiro that surely would make most presidencies untenable?

November 18 is the deadline for candidates to enter the next presidential contest, exactly four months ahead of the March 19 vote in Rabat, Morocco, where FIFA has its African headquarters.

Infantino was re-elected unopposed in 2019 in Paris and 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda. FIFA statutes allow him one more four-year term in office.

The FFE spinoff seemed a way to create a commissioner-like role for Infantino beyond 2031, likely paying much more than his current annual salary and bonus deal of more than $6m.

It would take 106 votes to ensure a majority in a contested election. Continents surely do not vote uniformly en bloc, but most of Europe’s 55, plus CONCACAF’s 35 and Asia’s 46 would be a solid base.

Speculation on a likely direct challenger typically lands on Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi and the Canadian FIFA vice president, Victor Montagliani.

Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the AFC’s longtime president from Bahrain, narrowly lost the FIFA presidential election to Infantino in 2016, so may decide to run again.

All such talk seemed fanciful until this week, despite long-term unease with Infantino’s style and previous attempts to force through unpopular projects.

The talk has never seemed more likely to become action.

United States President Donald Trump has been triumphal since the announcement that Palestinian group Hamas had agreed to hand over its weaponry in Gaza.

But the terms of Thursday’s disarmament agreement also stipulate that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian enclave, and gradually transfer power to a Palestinian administration – conditions that have been met with a frosty reception by Israeli politicians and in the Israeli press.

The Israeli government has yet to officially comment, but one unnamed senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday that, despite “various publications” reporting “diplomatic progress in the Gaza Strip”, there would be no withdrawal from Israel’s current positions within Gaza before what it determines to be “the genuine disarmament of Hamas”.

Trump, for his part, has said that Israel was “very happy” with the deal.

Electoral suicide

Many Israelis continue to espouse a hard line towards Palestinians in Gaza after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which was launched from the territory. That is despite Israel subsequently conducting a genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and destroying the enclave.

A May poll found that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza – the same poll found that 56 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes too.

Another poll, a month later, found that 64 percent of those surveyed believed there were “no innocents” among the Palestinians in Gaza.

And many Israeli politicians – including government ministers – have said that illegal Jewish settlements, akin to the ones dividing the occupied West Bank, will soon come to Gaza.

The prospect, therefore, of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and steps towards the enclave’s reconstruction are unpalatable to many Israelis, with politicians quick to condemn the disarmament agreement.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir denounced it as “unacceptable”.

“A commitment to stop the assassinations of [Hamas’s] murderers is tantamount to agreeing to Hamas organising for the next massacre,” Ben-Gvir wrote on social media. “The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of emigration must happen. Israel must win.”

The term “encouragement of emigration” is widely regarded as referring to ethnic cleansing.

Politicians regarded as centrists, such as former chief of staff and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leading rival in the coming election, Gadi Eisenkot, were equally sceptical. He said that any deal that stopped short of the war’s objectives – the destruction of Hamas’s military-political power – was a total failure.

“Nearly three years have passed since the morning of October 7,” Eisenkot wrote, “and Hamas has renewed its strength with a number of terrorists similar to the evening of October 6.”

Politics of peace

Netanyahu has yet to comment, but US-Israeli pollster and consultant Dahlia Scheindlin suggested the stakes are high for the prime minister with an election only a few months away.

Netanyahu’s likely best chance of avoiding a jail sentence if he is found guilty of numerous corruption charges rests on him winning the October elections.

But the opposition are currently leading in many polls, and may be able to gain enough seats to form a government.

“Netanyahu’s considerations have nothing to do with public trauma [from the October 7 attack],” Scheindlin said, and everything to do with politics. “He will care primarily – probably exclusively – about what his current coalition partners think.”

Withdrawing from Gaza was out of the question, Scheindlin said, adding that whatever gambit Netanyahu undertook to maintain his coalition and encourage right-wing voters to support him had to be accomplished without further alienating his allies in the US, who appear to have grown increasingly frustrated with him.

“[Netanyahu] will not want to be seen by Trump and the Americans as undermining any possible moves towards implementing this agreement. And so, therefore, he might manage some very symbolic moving of the Israeli army within Gaza,” she said.

One tactic, Scheindlin suggested, could be for the Israeli military to withdraw back to the positions it was supposed to be in as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. Israel has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians since that agreement, and also repeatedly expanded the territory under its control, ignoring the deal.

Keeping Trump happy

Managing US expectations of Israel is likely to be a problem, not just for Netanyahu, but for all of the politicians vying for leadership of the country.

One anonymous US official has already said that Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel did not adhere to the disarmament agreement.

“Netanyahu already faces an uphill battle in forming any government, more so if he agrees to this,” said Dov Waxman, professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Netanyahu has previously been able to sidestep requirements placed on Israel when it comes to Gaza, maintaining unity within his far-right coalition, with some members repeatedly threatening to bring the government down if the war ended without Hamas’s total defeat.

He may be silent on the latest deal for now, but he will eventually have to speak.

“That could be a real problem,” Waxman said, “because, if he criticises the deal, he risks angering Trump who – though he hasn’t endorsed him [in the Israeli election] yet – he must be hoping will deliver him some kind of present during the election cycle, whether that’s a further call for his pardon or normalisation with Saudi Arabia, maybe both. But he has to keep Trump on his side.”

And while the Israeli public has grown sceptical that Israeli security remains at the forefront of the Trump administration’s priorities, the need for the US security umbrella is accepted by the vast majority of the public and political establishment, elements of which have seized upon any potential fracturing in it as a means to criticise Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu has shown himself to be very good in the past at handling these kinds of things,” Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, said.

“He’ll make sure Trump gets his announcement, his signing ceremony and all the optics are in place, but I don’t see him withdrawing from Gaza,” Goren said.

“I think the idea of him withdrawing goes further than just public opinion,” the Israeli analyst added. “It goes against his whole philosophy, ideology and worldview: that Israel needs to be present beyond its borders and everywhere bad intentions could be turned into action. If anything, I see him escalating in the build-up to the election rather than discussing withdrawal.”

Houthis say Red Sea route remains free to use, pushing back on report of new shipping fees.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have denied planning to charge ships for passing through the Red Sea, saying passage through the waterway remains free.

The denial came in a statement issued Saturday by the Houthi-run Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC), which oversees vessel movement through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. It said its “safe transit service” was voluntary and free of charge, adding that anyone demanding payment for passage did not represent Yemen or the HOCC. It urged shipping companies not to make payments or share information with unauthorised parties.

The statement follows a Reuters news agency report on Wednesday, citing regional sources, that the Iran-aligned Houthis were considering imposing fees on ships transiting the strait – a week after the group declared a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia. Those sources said the idea was raised with Iranian officials during a Houthi visit to Tehran earlier in July, with Iranian advisers reportedly helping set up an authority to regulate the fees.

The Bab al-Mandeb Strait is a vital chokepoint linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, used by ships carrying oil and other cargo between Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Any fee on passage would echo Iran’s own efforts to charge ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely shut since the US-Israel war on Iran began earlier this year.

Yemen’s foreign minister-designate, Afrah al-Zouba, said on Tuesday that the Houthis were seeking to “copy the Iranian model”.

A toll on Bab al-Mandeb would hit Saudi Arabia especially hard, since the kingdom has increasingly relied on the strait as an alternative export route while Hormuz remains disrupted.

The Houthis have waged a long campaign against Red Sea shipping, beginning in 2023 after the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and only pausing attacks after a ceasefire last October. A United Nations expert report found that the group may have collected significant informal fees from shipping agents in 2024, though this was never independently verified. Traffic through the strait has still not recovered to pre-2023 levels.

In response to the renewed threat, Saudi Arabia this week announced a 14-nation maritime coalition aimed at protecting freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The US Department of Justice has moved to dismiss its case against Olympian David Hearn over damage to the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC. The DOJ says new evidence points to flawed installation by the contractor, not vandalism.

The former president and his wife were sentenced to 15 years last year after being convicted of money laundering.

Former Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has been released from prison after the country’s Constitutional Court overturned his 15-year prison sentence for a case linked to a globe-spanning corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

Humala was serving his sentence at a special detention facility in eastern Lima that houses several of Peru’s jailed former leaders. The 64-year-old and his wife, Nadine Heredia, were found guilty last year of money laundering for receiving illegal contributions from Odebrecht, now known as Novonor, and the Venezuelan government in two presidential campaigns.

Heredia subsequently received asylum in Brazil.

“It has been decided to declare the entire criminal proceedings against Ollanta Moises Humala Tasso null and void,” read the Constitutional Court ruling dated July 15 and published on Thursday.

Humala, a former army officer who led the country from 2011 to 2016, was the first Peruvian ex-leader to face trial in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, which has also tainted three other former presidents.

He had filed a habeas corpus petition – a legal request asking the court to examine whether he had been unlawfully imprisoned – which the Constitutional Court declared to be “well-founded” because it found that he had been convicted for conduct that was not legally defined as money laundering when the campaign contributions were received.

The former president’s lawyer, Wilfredo Pedraza, said that his side has received the judgement “with considerable satisfaction”.

In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to pay $3.5bn in penalties after having spent $788m in bribes to foreign leaders and government officials in order to win infrastructure projects across Latin America.

Odebrecht admitted to having paid at least $29m in bribes to Peruvian officials between 2005 and 2014.

Mérida, July 31, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) held a formal working session with SpaceX executives to establish the legal, technical, and financial parameters for the regularized rollout of Starlink’s satellite internet services nationwide.

CONATEL Director General Enrique Quintana led the bilateral meeting with representatives from the Elon Musk-owned company: Emmanuel Cárdenas, SpaceX’s Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs for Latin America; Catalina Castellanos, regional telecom legal advisor; and Rebecca Hunter, Director of Market Access.

During the sessions, the regulatory body requested that SpaceX initiate the formal homologation process for its satellite hardware via CONATEL’s digital platform. This step assures that user terminals and ground equipment comply with national standards for data security, spectrum allocation, and operational quality. The talks also focused on data transport infrastructure and the formal authorization for radio frequency bands required under Venezuela’s Organic Telecommunications Law.

SpaceX’s delegation reportedly expressed full willingness to align the company’s legal and corporate status with Venezuela’s regulatory requirements. Quintana, on behalf of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, highlighted the importance of the working group to promote telecommunications throughout the country.

While imported Starlink receiver dishes have already been circulating among private buyers for years, the satellite service officially made its signal available across Venezuelan territory following the January 3 US strikes on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro. At the time, SpaceX offered a free promotional connectivity window for both newly registered local users and existing international roaming hardware.

CONATEL’s engagement accelerated following the June 24 double earthquake, which damaged communications infrastructure in central coastal regions. To assist with emergency management and humanitarian relief, CONATEL granted SpaceX a temporary pilot authorization.

This operational exemption allowed civil protection and disaster relief teams to deploy Starlink terminals in hard-hit areas, notably across La Guaira state, where damaged fiber-optic networks had disrupted local communications.

Acting President Rodríguez thanked Musk and his team via social media. 

“Thank you, Elon Musk and the Starlink team, for helping those affected by the earthquakes in Venezuela with free internet access. Every connection counts in times like these,” she wrote at the time.

In addition, CONATEL highlighted that expanding satellite internet options complements existing state-owned and private telecommunications providers, offering critical redundancy during natural disasters or power disruptions.

The institutional dialogue between state regulators and SpaceX unfolds a political history, following clashes between President Nicolás Maduro and company CEO Elon Musk.

Tensions peaked in August 2024 following Venezuela’s presidential election, when Musk used his social media platform X to launch verbal attacks against the Venezuelan government, accusing Maduro of electoral fraud and calling for foreign intervention.

In response, Maduro denounced the tech billionaire for using his digital platform to incite hatred, destabilization, and political violence inside Venezuela. “Out of Venezuela, Elon Musk!” he said in a public rally.

CONATEL initially enacted a 10-day suspension of X in the Caribbean nation which was later extended. In recent weeks, Venezuelan telecom and mobile service providers have unblocked access, though CONATEL has not formally announced the reinstatement of the social media platform.

Musk has drawn scrutiny across Latin America and internationally for his open alignment with far-right political figures and reactionary causes.

The outspoken billionaire has frequently used his global platform to endorse far-right politicians, express support for neoliberal deregulation, and launch hostile commentary directed at progressive and leftist governments.

Starlink has also been embroiled in controversy as a result of Musk’s direct control and political views. The company introduced a “whitelist” to ban access to Russian users in an effort to disrupt communications amid the war in Ukraine. In Gaza, Starlink has operated in integration with Israeli occupation forces, raising concerns of complicity in war crimes.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

The jet went down near the Miramar airbase in San Diego and aerial video showed a plume of black smoke rising from the wreckage in a dirt field.

An F-35B stealth fighter plane has crashed in California, but its pilot ejected and is expected to survive, the US Marine Corps said.

The jet went down on Friday near the Miramar airbase in San Diego. “The pilot ejected, was transported to a local medical facility in stable condition for evaluation and treatment of non-life-threatening injuries,” the Marine Corps said in a statement.

Aerial video from a news helicopter showed a plume of black smoke rising from the wreckage in a dirt field, with multiple military and firefighting vehicles and people standing nearby. What appeared to be white flame retardant covered the ground, and at least one person was spraying the wreckage with a fire hose.

Candace Hadley, a spokesperson for San Diego Fire, said firefighters were on scene to respond to a vegetation fire that sparked near the crash site. She referred additional questions to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

The base used to host the Navy fighter pilot training school depicted in the original Top Gun movie and was known as “Fightertown USA” in its heyday. The school was relocated to Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada in 1996 after the base was transferred to the Marine Corps.

The US Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force together have more than 630 F-35s, according to a 2024 analysis by the Government Accountability Office. The F-35B is one of several versions, and has an engine designed for short takeoffs and vertical landings. A single F-35B costs about $109m. The report estimated that the overall F-35 programme will cost roughly $2 trillion after the military buys more than 1,800 more jets and operates them for decades to come.

At least seven other military aircraft have crashed in the United States this year, according to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety Network database.

The most serious incident involved a B-52 bomber that crashed shortly after taking off in California’s Mojave Desert in June, killing all eight people on board.

Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least two Palestinians and wounded at least 10 others, hours after Hamas agreed to a draft peace deal drawn up by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. The agreement would have Hamas disarm in phases, matched by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has moved to drop a criminal charge against former Olympic athlete David Hearn, in a remarkable about-face.

In a motion filed on Friday afternoon, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro acknowledged that the accusations levelled against Hearn — blaming him for vandalising the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — did not appear to be substantiated.

“The damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism, as initially represented by [the Department of the Interior],” Pirro wrote.

Earlier this month, the prosecutor had accused Hearn, an Olympic canoeist, of “forcefully and violently” ripping the newly installed liner of the Reflecting Pool, part of a renovation project Trump had championed.

She described his actions as “an affront to the dignity of our shared history” and warned that Hearn could face up to 10 years in prison for the destruction of government property.

But in Friday’s court filings, a different narrative emerged.

Pirro repeatedly emphasised she did not receive the new information until after the criminal indictment against Hearn had been returned. She blamed, in part, the “barebones police reports” her office had received.

“It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents to the [US Attorney’s Office for Washington, DC] indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor,” Pirro wrote.

She added that the pressure to finish the Reflecting Pool renovation project before the Independence Day holiday — marking the 250th anniversary of the US — contributed to the renovation’s failure. Trump had planned several events for the occasion.

“The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed,” Pirro explained, citing delayed installation work, inclement weather and repeated testing failures.

Reshaping Washington, DC

The Reflecting Pool project is one of several changes to the landscape of Washington, DC, that Trump has pursued during his second term in office.

In seeking to leave his mark on the US capital, the Republican leader has torn down the East Wing of the White House, gilded statues with a fresh coat of gold leaf, and proposed to build a large triumphal arch on the road to the Arlington National Cemetery.

Just this week, he unveiled a $22.5bn project to revamp the Dulles international airport, the main air terminal for the capital region.

Several of his public works projects have been challenged in court, including an attempt to affix his name to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The Reflecting Pool renovation was among Trump’s most controversial.

The 618-metre (2,028-foot) pool has served as the backdrop for many iconic moments in US history, including the 1963 March on Washington, when civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

It sits between the Washington Monument, a large obelisk, and the Lincoln Memorial, two popular tourist sites mere blocks from the White House. But the pool had long struggled with leaks along its granite edge and concrete bottom.

In April, Trump abruptly announced he would address the problem by resurfacing the Reflecting Pool’s bottom with swimming pool coating in a shade of “American Flag Blue”.

The project, he added, would be finished “long before July 4” and at relatively little cost to the government.

By early June, Trump had announced the project was complete. But within days, a thick layer of green algae appeared on the surface of the pool, and the blue coating appeared cracked, with sheets of paint flapping in the water.

The project also attracted criticism for how the government contract for the renovations was awarded.

The Trump administration granted a $13.1m contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a company he claimed to have worked with as a real estate developer, led by one of his donors. The deal was struck without taking competitive bids, as is standard, on the basis that the renovation was necessary immediately.

Within two days of the site’s final inspection, on June 11, a National Park Service engineer observed that the Reflecting Pool’s new lining had begun to peel, according to Pirro.

Citing the engineer’s report, Pirro wrote that the damage to the pool appeared to have been caused by “over spraying and delamination”.

Accusations of vandalism

But Trump had aggressively pushed accusations that the algae and tears in the Reflecting Pool’s new bottom had been the result of vandalism.

“We caught some people vandalising our beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump said at a news conference in June. “They took a cutter, a box cutter, or something very sharp. Can you imagine? Where do these people come up with this? And they threw a little fertiliser in the water.”

Separately, he suggested those responsible should face “years in jail” for their alleged crimes.

Hearn, a three-time Olympian representing the US, has said he was among the members of the public drawn to the hullabaloo surrounding the Reflecting Pool’s controversial renovation.

In media interviews, he admitted he bicycled past the pool, reached in and felt the peeling sealant, out of curiosity. He has adamantly denied, however, damaging any property.

Hearn was among at least seven people arrested or cited over alleged damage to the Reflecting Pool. His indictment was announced at a news conference held by Pirro on July 2.

Friday’s motion to dismiss arrived just four weeks later. In it, Pirro acknowledged the peeling was not caused by vandalism.

She wrote that the revelation came around July 17, when her office inspected the Reflecting Pool site, which had once again been drained for repairs.

“It was at that time that [the US Attorney’s Office] first became aware of the significant damage throughout the pool and accordingly requested all documents from [the Department of the Interior] concerning how the pool was lined,” Pirro said.

Her office received “695 megabytes of additional documents” in return, revealing “a rushed and flawed installation process”.

Since indicting Hearn, Pirro’s office has faced questions about whether it was pursuing justice — or simply doing Trump’s political bidding, as he seeks to save face after the botched renovation.

The withdrawn indictment also comes as courts have repeatedly pressed the Department of Justice about prosecutions that appear to be hastily submitted and lacking in evidence.

“ Did you ultimately decide to charge this so harshly at the president’s direction?” one reporter asked Pirro at the outset of Hearn’s case.

“I didn’t charge anything harshly. I charge according to the evidence,” she replied at the time.

In a statement, Hearn’s legal team called the case an “abuse of government power”. They added that the Trump administration owes their client an apology.

Washington, DC – A Senate committee hearing this week has once again shone a spotlight on the political divisions over the United States government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wednesday’s hearing, held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, continued years of criticism, mainly from Republicans, against immunologist Anthony Fauci, who led the government’s response to the pandemic.

Spearheaded by committee chair Rand Paul, several Republicans rehashed claims that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, emerged from an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, China, and did not naturally transfer from animals to humans.

Stephen Morrison, the director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the hearing was a reflection of the deep, enduring partisan divides over the issue.

But he added that the meeting with Fauci did little to shed new light on the pandemic after years of investigation, hearings and political posturing.

“There’s no space for any civil discussion around any of these issues. There’s no desire really,” Morrison told Al Jazeera.

“So, what’s the lasting impact of this? I mean, it continues to impose unconscionable pain and suffering on [Fauci] and his family. It doesn’t advance the debate one inch on the whole question of COVID origins and what was past US policy and what should US policy be going forward.”

Wuhan lab leak theory

Wednesday’s hearing was based largely on a previous 520-page report from 2024, created by the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

That report claimed it was likely that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese research facility. Senator Paul has embraced this viewpoint, as has President Donald Trump.

In April of last year, shortly after Trump took office for his second term, the White House launched a webpage purporting to reveal “the true origins of COVID-19”, largely based on the report.

The site highlighted several claims that experts say pave over the nuanced scientific debate about the origins of the virus.

Drawing on the 2024 report, the White House asserts that SARS-CoV-2 “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and that “data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans”, setting it apart from previous natural pandemics.

Joel Wertheim, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, told Factcheck.org that both claims were false.

While COVID does contain a characteristic to enter cells that is not found in its closest coronavirus relatives, that quality does exist in other coronaviruses more broadly. As Wertheim put it, “It is most certainly found in nature.”

Meanwhile, a pair of studies released in 2022 found at least two unique paths through which initial human infection occurred, contradicting the White House’s claim that the pandemic arose from a “single introduction into humans”.

The White House webpage also focuses on Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until 2022 and served as the chief medical adviser to former US President Joe Biden, Trump’s election rival.

Biden pre-emptively pardoned him in January 2025, fearing the physician might be arrested under the second Trump administration.

Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Trump took the opportunity to renew his derision of Fauci, writing on Truth Social that the medical expert’s “ideas were CRAZY”.

Trump also accused Fauci, without evidence, of orchestrating a cover-up for China, where COVID was first documented. The Republican leader was serving his first term as president when the pandemic began.

Ongoing debate

To be sure, there has been criticism from within the international scientific community that the lab leak theory was discounted too swiftly in the early days of the pandemic, as it became seen as political.

Trump and other world leaders had been quick to use anti-China rhetoric when discussing the virus.

There currently remains no conclusive evidence proving either the lab leak theory or that the virus had a natural origin. The vast majority of infectious disease scientists, including Fauci, have said neither possibility can be ruled out.

Still, a preponderance of experts say evidence indicates that the virus was most likely transferred from an animal, likely a bat, to humans, in a process called zoonotic spillover.

A 2024 survey of virologists and other scientists, conducted by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI), found most respondents believed natural transmission was considerably more likely than a lab leak, although most acknowledged it was impossible to definitively dismiss the theory.

Following three years of research, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory board released a report in 2025 that also concluded “the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover”.

Still, WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cautioned, “As things stand, all hypotheses must remain on the table, including zoonotic spillover and lab leak.”

Inside Fauci’s diary

Fauci has long argued the scientific evidence indicates that the virus emerged from natural animal transmission, but he has repeatedly rejected the notion that he has outright dismissed the lab leak theory.

In a 2024 letter to the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, his lawyers maintained (PDF) it was “completely wrong” to say that Fauci had ever called the possibility a “conspiracy theory”.

Instead, they said Fauci and his allies rejected an array of conspiracy theories that have been tied to the lab leak theory, including the idea that he had “sneaked unnoticed into the CIA headquarters to try to convince CIA officials to debunk the lab leak theory”.

Wednesday’s hearing was preceded by the release of entries from Fauci’s private diary, stored on a government computer drive.

They were obtained through Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic and Fauci critic, who passed them along to Senator Paul.

In one entry, Fauci described a claim that he “deliberately” worked with the Chinese to create the virus as a “way-out conspiracy theory”.

He and his legal team have also repeatedly rejected Republican claims that he leveraged millions in grant money to compel scientists to change their views about COVID’s origins.

The White House website, for instance, asserts that Fauci “prompted” an early study on COVID origins to downplay the lab leak theory. No evidence has been presented to support those claims, which have also been rejected by the scientists involved.

Did Fauci mislead?

On Wednesday, several Senate Republicans charged that Fauci’s diary entries showed he had intentionally misled the public by downplaying the possibility the virus had emerged from the Wuhan lab.

Fauci’s supporters, however, have said the diary fails to prove any deliberate attempt to mislead. They argue his public and private statements were consistent in the early days of the pandemic, when scientists’ understanding of the virus was shifting daily.

Fauci’s diary entries indicated he met with a group of experts in February 2020, noting “there was not total agreement” on the likelihood the virus had been created via human manipulation. Senator Paul and others said Fauci did not adequately reflect that view in his public statements.

Republicans also seized on a January 26, 2020, entry in which Fauci wrote that initial data suggests “the first infection was in early December and was not connected” to the wet market in Wuhan.

“Now we know the market was not the source but the amplifier,” he wrote.

During the hearing, Senator Paul said the diary revealed that Fauci was “repeatedly saying in public something different than what he believes in private”.

Fauci’s defenders have pointed to a USA Today interview he gave shortly after the diary entry, floating the idea that the market could have been an “amplifier”. Others have argued the diary entries do not contradict the view that the virus was of natural origins.

Public restrictions

Republicans on Wednesday also focused heavily on Fauci’s role in issuing public guidance about how to slow the spread of the COVID virus.

Several states saw schools close and businesses shutter amid social-distancing recommendations.

But those closures became a political lightning rod and featured prominently in the 2020 presidential elections and 2022 midterm races.

Indeed, new studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of social distancing rules. Others indicate mask mandates may have been less effective than previously presented, although research still generally supports that masks may slow the spread of the disease.

As NIAID director, Fauci had no direct authority to impose public health mandates, which were typically introduced by state and local officials. While he had a role in issuing federal guidance, his work was part of a wider government effort involving other agencies and officials.

Speaking on Wednesday, Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, accused Republicans of “relitigating history” and seeking to “turn one person into a scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across the Biden and Trump administrations were responsible for handling”.

Still, Fauci’s diary does contain uncomfortable revelations about how he wielded his high-profile position. In one instance, he recounted how he offered then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio encouragement to close city schools. He did the same with an aide to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“I advised De Blasio to go ahead and do it,” he recounted. “I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in NYC… He said that he would base this on my recommendation.”

Why now?

During the Wednesday hearing, Fauci invoked his constitutional right to remain silent roughly 100 times, drawing significant public scrutiny.

The 85-year-old Fauci, who enjoyed bipartisan support as NIAID director throughout much of his 38 years in the role, decried the hearing as an attempt to entrap him with perjury.

Critics, including several Democrats on the committee, have also questioned the timing of Wednesday’s hearing, which comes just three months before November’s midterm elections.

Republicans are expected to face an uphill battle in maintaining control of the House of Representatives, and they also risk losing their slim control of the Senate in the vote. A defeat in either chamber would serve as a major setback to Trump in his final two years in office.

The party has struggled to find a defining issue to campaign on, amid affordability woes fuelled by the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran.

The hearing also comes at a time when polls have shown public trust in federal health agencies has plummeted since Trump took office.

For instance, a June poll conducted by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab suggests that just 50 percent of respondents said they trusted recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That marks a decline from 77 percent in the spring of 2025.

About 69 percent also felt that federal health agencies’ recommendations were too influenced by their leaders’ public opinions.

But Morrison, the health policy expert, saw the hearing as a personal attack on Fauci, with Senator Paul and Secretary Kennedy pursuing an ideological “vendetta”.

Fauci, he said, has come to represent for some Republicans the “iconic embodiment of everything that they have come to believe is craven and corrupt in the US government response” to COVID.

He warned that their approach, though, could chill any desire for top scientists to wade into government.

“People will say Tony Fauci could have done things a little differently, he made a few mistakes, and he could have admitted those,” Morrison said.

“But the ‘big but’ is certainly none of that warrants what’s happening here.”

Israeli settlers vandalised a Palestinian cemetery, smashing stonework marking the graves of deceased Palestinians during a march near the village of Tal in the occupied West Bank.

Residents said Israeli forces accompanied the march and fired tear gas at Palestinians.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Depleted stockpiles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FIFA’s World Cup 2026 expansion was their first since 1998, but the 2030 edition could rise to 64 teams.

FIFA is studying whether to expand the World Cup from 48 to 64 teams for the 2030 edition in a move that could reshape football’s showpiece tournament when it celebrates its centennial.

World football’s governing body wants to appoint an independent agency to assess the ambitious expansion plan, which would add another 16 nations to ⁠a tournament that had already grown from 32 to 48 teams in 2026.

“FIFA wishes to appoint an independent agency to determine whether and how expanding the FIFA World Cup from 48 to 64 participating national teams, starting with the 2030 edition, would impact on the tournament proposition,” it said in a research brief seen by the news agency Reuters.

South American confederation CONMEBOL had officially proposed hosting the 2030 World ‌Cup with 64 teams last year, allowing more countries the opportunity to join in the celebrations for the tournament’s centennial edition.

The 2026 edition in the US, Canada and Mexico was the first since 1998 to move away from the 32-team format, adding four more groups and an extra knockout round in the process, resulting in 104 matches over more than five weeks.

The accelerated study comes on the heels of FIFA’s plan to create a $20bn subsidiary to run the World Cup and its other events with external investors, a move that has attracted criticism and a ⁠UEFA decision to boycott FIFA events.

Al Jazeera has contacted FIFA for comment.

UEFA and FIFA could be on another World Cup collision course

UEFA President ⁠Aleksander Ceferin said last year that expanding the World Cup to 64 teams was not a good idea.

The European governing body’s position has not changed since then, while Asian Football Confederation President Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa had also voiced opposition, questioning last year where further expansion ⁠might end.

FIFA’s proposed analysis is meant to assess whether the proposed expansion can strengthen the tournament or whether concerns such as competition dilution, calendar congestion, operational complexity and market saturation ⁠outweigh the potential benefits.

The study will examine the potential impact of expanding ⁠the tournament to 64 teams, including the effects on the competition, competitive balance, qualification, player welfare and the international calendar.

It will also estimate the revenues that could be generated from ticket sales, sponsorship and media rights under the proposed format.

“The final recommendation should demonstrate not only whether a 64-team tournament ‌can generate incremental value, but whether that value is sustainable,” the document added.

FIFA said a decision on selecting the agency would be made on August 14 and they would have only four weeks to deliver their analysis by September 11.

The ‌2030 ‌World Cup is being jointly hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain, while Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay will host one match each to celebrate the tournament’s 100th anniversary.

FIFA is already facing a dispute with its confederations due to a plan to sell stakes in World Cups and other events to private investors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An autumn offensive?

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

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

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

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

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

Long-range strikes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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