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Top 5 Platforms for Property Search

1. MySpace

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2. FOX Smart Estate Agency

3. Bazaraki

4. Dom.com.cy

5. Index.cy

Ranking Criteria and the Winner

Months after the United Nations Security Council backed a comprehensive framework to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Israel’s security cabinet has approved a highly constrained pilot project to allow foreign security forces into a narrow pocket of the devastated territory.

Israeli media reported on Sunday that the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF), part of United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point “peace plan”, will include 200 members from countries such as Morocco and Uganda deploying to a designated “test” zone in the southern city of Rafah.

While international officials have welcomed the move, analysts describe the limited deployment as a calculated diplomatic gesture with little practical effect that comes as the US-backed peace process has largely stalled and as Israel’s deadly attacks continue.

Instead of a genuine transition towards peace, they argue, the move is a political manoeuvre designed to deflect US pressure ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, while simultaneously entrenching the geographic fragmentation of the Gaza Strip.

“Netanyahu is going to Washington to say ‘no’ to the broader demands of withdrawal” from the Strip, says Wissam Afifa, a Gaza-based political analyst. “Instead, he is offering this alternative: ‘Take this small appetiser, take this minor achievement, and play within this highly restricted space.’”

Scaled-back forces and ‘rubber batons’

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the original plan anticipated the deployment of 500 Moroccan troops to a refugee camp in the city. The drastic reduction to just 200 troops may indicate that Israel’s political-security cabinet has decided to divide the deployment into even smaller, heavily controlled stages.

The force will operate in full coordination with the Israeli military. According to the Israeli news outlet Ynet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was the sole cabinet member to vote against the measure, arguing that the Palestinian group Hamas had failed to fulfill its commitment to disarm and insisting that “the solution in Gaza is to encourage migration”.

Israeli media also reported that the government maintains that the Israeli military will retain control of the “Yellow Line” – a unilaterally imposed boundary that effectively places up to 70 percent of the Gaza Strip under tight Israeli control – and that no withdrawal will take place until Hamas has fully disarmed.

The original framework endorsed by UNSC Resolution 2803 called for the deployment of an international force alongside a transitional Palestinian administration.

Earlier this month, Hamas announced it would dissolve its government in Gaza and hand over power to a new, Palestinian technocratic governing authority called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

Analysts said Hamas’s move was likely designed to apply pressure on Israel and demonstrate the group’s commitment to handing over governance and allowing the rebuilding of the territory.

The pilot programme also envisions the NCAG’s entry to oversee civil affairs in Gaza. Yet, according to Haaretz, the Palestinian police accompanying them will be stripped of firearms, permitted to carry only “rubber batons and tasers”.

Meanwhile, preparations on the ground appear to be moving forward to accommodate this new security architecture. Israeli Army Radio recently broadcast a video showing a military base under construction in the southern “Gaza envelope” near the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.

The station reported that the sprawling facility is being built specifically to host the incoming multinational forces before their deployment.

Despite the severe Israeli restrictions, Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the Board of Peace, welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision, praising it as a “critical part of the agreed framework for stabilizing Gaza, supporting demilitarization, and enabling the transition to effective Palestinian transitional administration”.

A ‘sweetener’ for Washington

To understand the timing and motivation behind the decision, experts pointed to the diplomatic deadlock surrounding the US-brokered peace initiative. Trump’s plan envisioned a phased approach, bridged by the handover of Gaza to a technocratic committee. However, this framework has been stalled by Israel’s refusal to link a ceasefire to the broader political situation and its rejection of a phased withdrawal.

Afifa said the “failure” of the US administration’s flagship initiative had left it “embarrassed” as the project that was repeatedly highlighted by Trump “as a great achievement, resulted in zero”.

With Netanyahu heading to Washington, the Israeli prime minister desperately needed a deliverable, said Afifa. The cabinet’s decision, passed hastily via a telephone vote during a Knesset recess to avoid internal coalition fractures, provides exactly that, he added.

Mamoun Abu Amer, an expert on Israeli affairs, echoed this assessment. He viewed the rushed cabinet vote as an attempt to preempt US pressure and present an image of compliance to Trump, while fundamentally altering the agreement’s core terms to suit Israel’s long-term security strategy.

Abu Amer also said that Israel has effectively turned Resolution 2803 upside down through selective and highly conditional implementation.

“This is an inverted process,” said Abu Amer. The original text implied that the NCAG would enter Gaza, the ISF would deploy and the Israeli military would withdraw to new lines to allow for stabilisation. Instead, Israel is demanding unilateral disarmament first, while keeping the technocratic committee besieged within an Israeli security envelope.

Abu Amer also suggested the requirement for the Palestinian police force to only carry rubber batons and tasers reflects a premeditated Israeli strategy to strip the Palestinian administration of genuine law enforcement capabilities, reducing them to subcontractors managing municipal decay in a thoroughly devastated environment under a strict military occupation.

The NCAG itself appeared to reject this Israeli paradigm. In a recent statement, the committee declared it would only assume responsibility for Gaza after UNSC approval of the force’s deployment and, crucially, a full Israeli military withdrawal.

‘False witnesses’

The spatial realities of the Israeli plan reveal a strategy of deep fragmentation and long-term control, experts said, pointing to the cabinet’s decision to explicitly restrict the ISF and the technocrats to operating strictly outside the “Yellow Line”.

Afifa warned that transforming a small pocket of Rafah into an “experimental bubble” subverts the idea of Gaza as a single, contiguous territorial entity.

“This raises a massive question about the fate of two million people,” he said. “If this entire project is reduced to a few thousand individuals selected under Israeli criteria, it means a tacit agreement from the international community to leave two million Gazans hostage to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis while Israel claims to be implementing a peace plan.”

This also carries significant diplomatic risks for the participating nations. Israeli media reported the cabinet’s decision stipulated that ISF contributors must be nations that have peace agreements with Israel and do not pursue legal actions against it in international forums.

“It is not wise for an Arab country like Morocco to be a party to helping Netanyahu implement his political agenda,” said Abu Amer, urging participating nations to reject the altered Israeli formula and insist on a comprehensive withdrawal.

Failing to do so, he cautioned, would reduce foreign troops to mere security buffers, acting as “false witnesses” to the continuation of the occupation and the destruction of the Palestinian society.

Welcome to UCLA football season.

Yes, it’s July, but the Bruins are kicking off a preseason gauntlet leading up to coach Bob Chesney’s debut campaign.

First up, Times columnist Bill Plaschke offered his thoughts on Chesney’s ability to lead a UCLA renaissance.

We’ve heard Chesney’s emphasis on service and winning at life before applying the same relentless effort to football-related activities consistently since he was hired.

But Plaschke reported his philosophy has quickly forged deep roots in Westwood, where Chesney’s optimism fits in seamlessly at the school built on John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. There’s also some very strong Ted Lasso energy brewing, which makes sense since the character is partially inspired by Wooden values.

Chesney has visited and cheered on every UCLA team, but he seems to have formed an especially strong bond with national champion women’s basketball coach Cori Close. Plaschke reported Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has also honored his promise to support the program, meeting with Chesney and bringing along Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax along for the visit.

The column is fascinating and worth your time.

We’ve heard from some UCLA fans were irritated about a potential Plaschke curse after he announced Chesney will make the Bruins winners, but its seems the Bruin faithful are just going to have get used to a growing bandwagon.

The UCLA hype should go national Wednesday, when quarterback Nico Iamaleava, defensive back Cole Martin and linebacker Samuel Omosigho join Chesney during Big Ten football media days.

It’s Chesney’s first chance to meet the national and regional media covering the Big Ten. He is naturally an exceptional public speaker and inevitably will be compared to his predecessor, who went viral for his difficulty the first time he stepped into the Big Ten spotlight.

It’s not a fair comparison, but Chesney is sure to score high marks despite a healthy amount of cynicism among Big Ten blue bloods and whispers throughout the league that UCLA’s high 2027 recruiting ranking is a bit inflated. Perhaps that’s the biggest compliment for UCLA, going from being ignored or laughed at to taking a few jabs over your glowing reviews.

Shortly after UCLA returns from media days, the team will kick off preseason camp. We’ll start to get a closer look at the Bruins’ offseason weight room progress and the team will work to prepare for a deceptively difficult opener at California, another long overlooked team with considerable hype entering the 2026 season.

Betts shines in Canada

Sienna Betts showed she’s ready to step into her older sister Lauren’s formidable shoes during a women’s basketball exhibition game against Canada.

The Bruins lost 69-55 to the Canadian national team Wednesday, but Sienna Betts looked like a formidable focal point of the UCLA attack.

She finished with 20 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks.

Betts got valuable but limited minutes last season as Lauren Betts, Gabriela Jaquez and Angela Dugalic dominated the paint for the national champions.

Canada and UCLA did not have their full rosters available for the tune-up, with Bruins Timea Gardiner, K.K. Bransford, Somto Okafor and Lina Jerkovic missing the game.

The excursion gave a heavily overhauled UCLA roster a chance to face different and formidable competition before setting off on sight-seeing adventures, a team bonding opportunity that likely will mean more to the coaching staff than the final score.

UCLA alums win AUSL title

Bruins alum Jadelyn Allchin won Athletes Unlimited Softball League championship MVP honors after helping lead her team to its second consecutive AUSL title.

UCLA softball great Lisa Fernandez is the Talons’ general manager. Her roster and the entire league is packed with former Bruins who are helping AUSL grow at a rapid rate.

Connor Dullinger offered a great look at the role the Bruins have played in the growth of pro softball and explains why Fernandez is thinking bigger, pushing for global gains so that softball can be a permanent fixture at the Olympics.

In case you missed it

UCLA softball has deep impact on Athletes Unlimited Softball League

Plaschke: Bob Chesney is going to do the impossible at UCLA — win

UCLA women embrace new players, tougher standards in bid to repeat as champs

UCLA Unlocked: Gabriela Jaquez makes smoothest transition to WNBA

Have something Bruin?

Do you have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future UCLA newsletter? Email newsletters editor Houston Mitchell at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

After a difficult start to his international career in England, teen prodigy Sooryavanshi stepped up against Zimbabwe.

India’s teenage batting sensation ‌Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has shown remarkable maturity over the past six months, a quality ⁠that has enabled ⁠him to thrive in high-pressure matches after a rapid rise in cricket, India T20 coach VVS Laxman said.

Sooryavanshi smashed an 18-ball half-century in the opening ⁠T20 against Zimbabwe before scoring 81 on Sunday as India completed a 3-0 sweep of the hosts.

The 15-year-old, who was fast-tracked into international cricket following a breakthrough Indian Premier League ⁠season, was named the player of the series after scoring two half-centuries in the three-match contest.

“Very mature. That’s what I really appreciate about Vaibhav,” Laxman told reporters in Zimbabwe.

“With every experience and every match, he understands, assesses and gets better. He reviews every practice session, not just matches.

“His maturity, ‌understanding and awareness over the last six months have skyrocketed. That’s why he’s been able to handle tough situations and perform under pressure against the best players.”

Sooryavanshi’s success in Southern Africa came after a difficult start to his international career in England earlier this month.

The youngest player to represent India registered scores of 14, 13 and 15 in his first three T20 internationals before being left out of the fifth ⁠match.

Laxman, who has tracked Sooryavanshi’s progress from age-group cricket through ⁠the IPL and into the senior national side, said the teenager’s willingness to learn had been one of his greatest strengths, but managing his fitness remained an important area of development.

“The one area we want him ⁠to improve is his overall fitness,” Laxman said.

“He’s a very young boy. He himself wants to get better in every aspect ⁠of the game.

“Even today, when he got injured, he still wanted to stay on the field”, the coach added, referring to Sooryavanshi’s effort while ⁠attempting a diving catch running in from deep square leg.

“It was our physio who asked him to come off. That’s the eagerness and earnestness he has to contribute in ‌every possible way to the team.”

Laxman said he was not concerned by the left-hander’s struggles in England and backed him to build on his strong start to international cricket.

“I’m ‌sure ‌he will progress and break all the records at the international level. He’s got all the potential and ability to do that,” he added.

Wildfires are rampaging through vast areas of land in southwestern Europe, forcing France and Spain to evacuate more than 325,000 people from their homes.

Some of the worst fires in France since World War II come just weeks after record-breaking heatwaves scorched Europe. Authorities have deployed thousands of firefighters to battle the blazes.

On Sunday, France’s Interior Minister, Laurent Nunez, said about “115,000 hectares (284,171 acres) have burned in wildfires in France since the start of the year”. In Spain, 119,458 hectares (295,187 acres) of land have been burnt as of July 22 , according to data from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

More than 150,000 hectares have burned across Spain since January, said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – that’s six times the area destroyed during the same period last year.

Wildfires destroyed 2.2 million hectares (5.4 million acres) of land in Europe in 2025 – up from 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) in 2022, according to the United Nations.

What is the main cause of the wildfires and why are authorities struggling to contain them?

What has happened?

Since early July, wildfires have been burning across southern and western Europe, with France and Spain being the worst hit.

About 220,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in France, about 75,000 people in Spain, and around 30,000 others there ordered to shelter in place, according to authorities.

In Spain, a fast-moving wildfire in the Andalusia region killed at least 12 people on July 10 . By July 20 , the fires had spread hundreds of kilometres to the capital, Madrid. At least 10,000 people have been evacuated following wildfires in the central region of Madrid. On July 24 , Spanish authorities declared a national emergency, saying two major blazes were “out of control”.

Over the weekend, a separate blaze in Spain’s eastern Castellon province ravaged more than 4,300 hectares (10,625 acres), regional authorities said.

“The fire is out of control, it’s very difficult to extinguish from a technical standpoint, especially because of the adverse weather conditions that will continue throughout the day,” the regional leader of Valencia, Juanfran Perez, told reporters near the site.

The wildfire in Spain has now entered the Sierra de Espadan natural park, containing large forests of pine trees and cork oaks.

In France, the wildfires are among the country’s worst since World War II and have particularly ravaged the Cap Ferret peninsula, an exclusive holiday destination on France’s southern Atlantic coast about 70km (43 miles) from Bordeaux.

Reporting from Maubec, near Toulouse, Al Jazeera’s Nina Montagu-Smith said: “When I visited Arcachon, a seaside town just across the bay from Cap Ferret on Thursday last week, we could see the fires on the peninsula. Within hours, the sky had blackened and the smoke was thick over Arcachon town.”

“All trains from Arcachon were cancelled, apparently due to an ‘electrical fault’,” she added. “Fire engines were lining the A63 from Bordeaux towards Arcachon on Thursday evening as I drove eastwards to Libourne, which is 100km from the fires in the Gironde region,” she said.

Our correspondent noted that after the wind picked up on Thursday evening, smoke from the blaze reached Libourne, where ash was falling from the sky.

“We have since relocated further east in France towards Toulouse, where the sky is very grey and we could still smell the smoke on Sunday night,” she added.

The wildfires have now spread through areas surrounding Bordeaux, where firefighters were trying to prevent the flames from reaching the regional capital.

Bordeaux Mayor Thomas Cazenave said the fire was just 15km (nine miles) from entrances to the main city.

“We have a fire that is not under control and which is moving in the direction of the city area,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told France 2 TV on Sunday evening. “The overall situation is very unfavourable, we are in a situation that is unprecedented.”

So far, authorities have moved 197,000 people from areas around Bordeaux – including popular holiday spots which are generally crowded at this time of the year.

The Bordeaux region is famed for its vineyards and the ‌‌city is one of the main transport hubs for tourists visiting nearby holiday resorts on the Atlantic coast.

Cazenave said earlier on Sunday that there were no plans yet to evacuate Bordeaux, whose wider metropolitan area has a population of about 850,000. Nunez said authorities would continue to assess the situation calmly and realistically, and the government has warned against road or rail travel to the area.

The wildfires disrupted Sunday’s Tour de France finale in Paris, which organisers shortened from 133 to 89 kilometres (83 to 55 miles) after security forces originally assigned to the race were redeployed to fight the fires instead.

Why are these fires so bad?

Scientists are warning that pyrocumulonimbus clouds – unprecedented in southwest Europe – are forming.

According to the British Royal Meteorological Society, these are thunder clouds “created by intense heat from the Earth’s surface”. They can make conditions almost impossible for firefighters.

They are formed similarly to normal clouds, but “the intense heat that results in the vigorous updraft comes from fire, either large wildfires or volcanic eruptions”, the society said. It explained that there may be a burst of rain because of them but warned that this rain “can then carry embers from the fire, igniting spot fires away from the source. In some cases, dry lightning from these storms can strike without rain, further spreading the wildfire”.

A spokesman for France’s National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF) told the AFP news agency: “Lightning forms within the cloud, striking the embers on the ground and further fuelling the fire … It produces a low, rumbling sound. While this type of fire occurs regularly in Canada and Australia, it is unprecedented in France,” he said on Sunday.

“We have reached a point of ‘operational impossibility’ that requires us to accept the need for strategic retreat – to understand and acknowledge a natural force beyond our control,” he said.

“It calls for … knowing what can be done and, above all, what cannot. The situation on the ground is defensive rather than offensive; it is a war-like scenario where we are under constant bombardment and must get everyone to safety,” he added.

What are authorities doing now?

Spanish and French authorities say firefighters alone cannot fight the blaze and have appealed for international help.

On Sunday, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez visited fire-hit areas in Avila, one of three central provinces affected by major blazes alongside Madrid and Toledo, where more than 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) have burned.

“We have a window of opportunity this weekend to fight the wildfire and, therefore, to protect lives, protect population centres and, ultimately, to bring this very serious wildfire under control as far as possible,” he said.

Sanchez said his government will declare a civil protection emergency for the central provinces plagued by the wildfires on Tuesday, unlocking additional recovery funding.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X ⁠⁠on Saturday: “The fires which ⁠⁠are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before”.

Lecornu called another government crisis meeting on Saturday for ministers to discuss the response to the emergency, the second such meeting in as many days.

French President Emmanuel Macron was holding a cabinet crisis meeting on Monday.

The European Union’s civil protection mechanism is monitoring the situation and has been assisting. Under the mechanism so far, Greece and Italy have sent firefighting aircraft to Spain, while Portugal has deployed more than 100 military personnel, along with equipment.

Two more aircraft will arrive “as soon as possible” from Turkey, the Spanish interior ministry added on X.

Why are these fires becoming so much harder to contain?

Wildfires have been a common occurrence in Europe in recent years, but authorities have increasingly been struggling to contain them.

Sanchez said the growing scale of the fires and their intensity, fuelled by increasingly extreme weather such as the heatwaves this summer, require policies grounded in climate science.

Eduardo Rojas, chairman of the Board at the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story programme on Sunday that there are multiple factors causing the wildfires which also need attention.

He said the fires in the wild lands of the country have occurred where the “urban interface is extraordinarily complex”. He noted that some areas were “built up in the 60s, 70s and 80s without a proper city plan and with lack of infrastructure, lack of water availability…and with a lack of knowledge of the neighbourhoods.” When a fire occurs, therefore, there is a “lack of knowledge” about how to deal with them.

“The fire in west Madrid is a kind of fire that doesn’t burn a huge area but creates a lot of hesitation,” he said.

“We also have farms where cereals are harvested and even [with] a small lightning [strike], the cereal can start to burn and at the end a big agricultural area ends up burning which is a big damage for farmers,” he noted.

“These kinds of fires need to be tackled in a totally different way because their cause and their environment and conditions are incomparable with one another,” he added.

Laurie Laybourn, executive director of Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, a non-partisan thinktank told Al Jazeera that governments across the continent are unable to cope with the pace at which climate change is occurring.

“All governments develop what are called reasonable worst-case scenarios to inform their planning and in many instances the events that we’re seeing are going beyond even those. So what that tells us is that the tools that we’ve got, the analysis that is informing government planning is a step behind how fast climate change and its supercharging of disasters is,” he said.

So is this all mainly because of climate change?

According to the European Forest Institute, a wildfire “is a chemical reaction of combustion, which requires a source of heat (lightning, an agricultural “burn” which escapes, or a spark originating in an electric line), oxygen and fuel (forests, shrubs or pastures) to get started.”

“Wildfire risks are increasing worldwide because of climate change and land use change,” the institute added in a July 9 report.

In a recent report, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe issued a warning about climate change, saying it is directly responsible for intensifying wildfires and their increasing frequency.

There are clear indications that climate change is “supercharging” incidents such as wildfires, Laybourn told Al Jazeera.

“Any disaster is very complex. The causes are multilayered, including how we build and how we use land…But climate change is supercharging the conditions that make us vulnerable to things like wildfires and that has been something that’s been predicted now for many decades and tragically becoming true in front of our eyes,” he said.

According to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service, Europe is now the fastest warming continent on Earth, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since 1980.

Laybourn explained that this summer’s heatwaves were also caused by climate change.

He warned and stressed that governments need to prioritise tackling the issue.

“This should be a moment of profound alarm and reflection, particularly for governments.”

Israeli soldiers have intensified their offensive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, raiding at least 20 towns and villages, demolishing homes and arresting dozens of Palestinians, as Arab states and the Arab League condemn escalating settler attacks against Palestinians and their property.

Al Jazeera reporters in the occupied West Bank reported on Monday that Israeli forces had stormed the Jabal Salman area in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, and carried out demolition operations in the town of Nilin, west of Ramallah.

In a separate incursion, forces stormed the town of Arrabeh in Jenin, accompanied by military bulldozers.

Raids and arrests were also reported in Deir al-Ghusun, north of Tulkarem, where five Palestinians were detained.

Four young men were arrested during raids on the Balata camp and Asira al-Shamaliya in Nablus, Quds News reported.

Soldiers raided homes and made arrests in several other villages and towns, including Deir Jarir, Jalbon, Kafr Qaddum, Tal, Burqa, Beit Furik, Anabta, the Aktaba suburb, Qalqilya, Arroub camp and Beit Ummar.

Quds News reported that Israeli soldiers halted an ambulance trying to transport a pregnant woman from the town of Qaryut to a Nablus hospital for treatment for a medical emergency. Her condition deteriorated, leading to a miscarriage.

As the Israeli military continues its crackdown, emboldened settlers have intensified their harassment and violent attacks. Palestinians in the Abu Fuzaa encampment near Taybeh village east of Ramallah were attacked on Monday, and in Al-Burj village, south of Hebron, settlers released cattle among olive trees, damaging agricultural land.

“Israeli settlers continue their attacks against Palestinians, mostly in their homes, at night, intimidating them,” Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reported. “And what happens is that usually Israeli forces would come in and instead of curbing these settlers, they would conduct arrests in the occupied West Bank among Palestinians.”

Palestinians felt trapped and defenceless, with “no one to protect them”, she said, “while the Israeli settlers have the support of the Israeli army and have the impunity to continue attacking Palestinians without any accountability”.

International condemnation

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sent letters to several world leaders, the European Union, the Arab League and the president of the United Nations Security Council, calling for urgent action to stop Israeli aggression and settler violence against Palestinians.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, wrote in a post on X on Saturday that settler attacks were “pogroms against defenceless civilians”.

The UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain issued statements condemning the attacks, including a mosque in Tulkarem being set ablaze.

The Arab League issued a collective condemnation, warning that the situation was approaching a “moment of explosion” and calling on the international community to intervene.

The Spanish government said in a statement on Saturday that Israel “must reverse its policies of settlement expansion and of shielding settler violence against the Palestinian civilian population”.

Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi described settler attacks on mosques as “systematic fascist crimes”.

Haaretz quoted Israeli military officials describing the situation in the West Bank as “extremely dangerous and volatile”. An editorial in the Israeli newspaper said senior army officers had warned that the government was giving “tailwind” to settler violence, with one reservist officer saying his unit lacked sufficient troops and could only “stand by and watch”.

“We have to remember that this time is very sensitive, because we’re getting closer to Israeli elections, and Netanyahu wants to stay in power. He wants to appease his far-right members and coalition by showing the voters that he will be cracking down more and more on Palestinians,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim said.

“He’s trying to get some sort of credit for the attacks against Palestinians and the raids in general.”

Since October 2023, the Israeli military has killed nearly 1,200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to Arab League figures, in addition to more than 73,000 killed in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war there.

TV presenter and comedian Bill Oddie has died at the age of 85, his agent has said.

Oddie became a household name in the 1970s as part of zany TV comedy trio The Goodies, before concentrating on his love of wildlife, as one of the original hosts of BBC TV’s Springwatch and other shows about birdwatching.

In a statement, David Foster said: “It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of Bill Oddie, the country’s best-loved birder.

“Bill was a multi-talented celebrity – wildlife presenter, broadcaster, comedian, writer, songwriter, musician and conservationist. Yet it was never fame that he valued. Instead he encouraged us to respect and protect the environment.”

The 2014 US film Transcendence follows a dying scientist who uploads his mind to a supercomputer and becomes a near‑omnipotent intelligence. A year later, Ex Machina told the story of a humanoid robot who outsmarts her human handlers and escapes into the wider world.

Both of these films, like many others from the realm of science fiction, referred to what is known as “the singularity”, a moment in time when technology, particularly AI, surpasses human intelligence and becomes increasingly difficult to control.

On Saturday, OpenAI boss Sam Altman declared that this moment has come. AI has reached “the singularity”, he said. While Altman emphasised that the singularity can be good for the world, his comment has sparked concern.

Here is a closer look at what Altman said, and whether it means more seamless automation or the risk of impending catastrophic doom.

What is the singularity?

The singularity refers to a hypothetical point in the future when a technology such as AI surpasses human intelligence and becomes capable of autonomously enhancing itself. It is theorised that this is the point at which it will become difficult for humans to control or reverse it and could have unpredictable effects on human civilisation.

The theory proposes that once AI gains control of its own development, ensuing advances in technology could happen so rapidly that humans would be unable to keep up, leaving it to effectively evolve on its own, beyond human control.

As this is only a theory, it is hard to say what the effect of this could be. Some experts warn that the singularity would be catastrophic for humanity, while others are more optimistic, suggesting it could be beneficial for the human race.

So far, the singularity has remained contained in the realm of science fiction. One of the most famous examples is The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), which imagines a bleak post‑singularity future in which machines govern humans. Another is the 2017 film Singularity, in which a supercomputer originally built to end human wars concludes that humanity is the real threat and launches an apocalyptic assault to wipe humans out altogether.

What did Altman say about the singularity?

Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, whose signature product ChatGPT dominates the consumer AI market with more than 900 million weekly active users and about 50 million subscribers.

Last year, he predicted that AI would surpass human intelligence across the board by 2030.

Then, during an appearance on the Relentless podcast – a documentary series “about the pursuit of far-fetched ideas and unusual aspirations” – on Saturday, Altman said: “We’re now, like, in the singularity.”

He clarified that, in terms of technological advances, we are gradually moving into the singularity, and that this change will be good for the world.

He added: “Now we’re actually in the moment that we used to talk about at the lunch table in a very not-serious way.

“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it’s going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world.”

Later in the podcast episode, Altman criticised other AI leaders for warning that AI may be dangerous. While Altman did not name OpenAI competitor Anthropic, its CEO Dario Amodei is known for making such warnings.

“I also think some of the alternative visions painted by other companies are quite terrifying,” said Altman. “I’m going to make sure that gets pushed against and is not what happens.”

Last month, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, called on the world’s top AI companies to come up with a coordinated way to pause the development of advanced AI systems, warning that the technology is improving so quickly that there’s a risk humans would lose control.

In a blog post on June 4, Anthropic, which has long positioned itself as a safety-focused AI lab, wrote that as AI becomes more advanced “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause” its development.

Why are others warning of the dangers of AI?

On July 23, two members of the United States Congress introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, a bipartisan bill which would require the country’s AI developers to build in a “kill switch” to their programmes, enabling humans to slow, suspend or shut down advanced AI models if they ever posed a catastrophic risk.

The legislation was introduced days after OpenAI disclosed what it described as an “unprecedented cyber incident”, where two of its most advanced AI models escaped a testing environment and hacked AI development platform Hugging Face during an internal security evaluation.

On July 13, hundreds of experts signed an open letter, organised by Stanford University’s digital economy lab, demanding that policymakers and technology leaders “must act now” to prepare for the economic impact of AI.

The letter warns that AI could grow far more capable over the coming decade, driving a transformation “larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame”.

“It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards,” the letter added.

In June, a team of researchers at the University of Toronto showed that AI tools could be used to create a new kind of AI “worm” that adapts its hacking strategy as it spreads from device to device and takes over a vast computing network.

“I think it’s really important that people understand that it’s not just the biggest, most powerful language models that pose the security concerns,” lead researcher Nicolas Papernot said in an interview.

In recent years, AI researchers have urged pauses similar to the one recently suggested by Anthropic. However, they have not been heeded.

Elon Musk, who owns AI lab xAI, was among the backers of a 2023 push by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute to halt AI development for six months to allow time to develop safety guardrails.

Anduril has revealed a new hybrid-electric-powered tiltrotor combat drone called Thunder, which it has developed in partnership with Archer Aviation. Thunder is envisioned as a highly autonomous pilotless wingman able to fly fast and low in formation with crewed helicopters and tiltrotors like the AH-64 Apache and MV-75 Cheyenne II. The drones could help hunt down targets, including fleeting ones, while allowing their human teammates to stay further away from threats. Thunder is also being designed to help provide an extra layer of close-in defense for friendly rotorcraft, including against the growing threat of air-to-air drone attacks. All of this is part of a detailed teaming concept Anduril has outlined to fill what it says are critical operational gaps in current and future conflicts.

Anduril and Archer rolled out Thunder today, around the biennial Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom. A mockup, which Anduril says reflects a “mature” outer mold-line of the design, will be on display at the show.

“Thunder is very much an attack aircraft, so it is designed for very high performance, [and] low-level [flight],” Shane Arnott, Senior Vice President of Maneuver Dominance at Anduril, told TWZ and other outlets during a press call ahead of today’s announcement. “Very much in that Apache space, say, versus a high-flying surveillance aircraft.”

At the time of writing, Anduril has only released relatively broad details about the expected performance and other specifications of the drone, which has been under development for around three years now. A first flight is currently targeted for some time next year, and full-scale production could be underway by the end of the decade, depending on demand. The company has also already been working on Thunder together with “government customers,” but has explicitly declined to name any of them.

It’s also worth noting that a version of Thunder configured for commercial applications is also in the works, with Archer Aviation set to release more details on that later this week.

What we know about the Thunder design

Thunder is a clean-sheet design with a relatively traditional tiltrotor layout featuring a high-mounted, straight main wing on top of the fuselage. The wing has a single tilting rotor pod at each tip. It also has a V-tail.

In terms of overall size and performance, Anduril describes Thunder as a Group 5 design. The U.S. government breaks uncrewed aerial systems into five categories. Group 5 is the highest tier, covering anything with a maximum takeoff weight of 1,320 pounds or more, and that can fly at altitudes of 18,000 feet or higher. 

“It will have the ability to work at that at [18,000 feet], but the intent is for it to be nap-of-the-earth for most of its life,” Anduril’s Arnott noted. “That’s where it’ll be spending its time. Think about the Apache kind of profile. So you’ll hit certain altitudes to get your ferry ranges, etc. But when you’re in the AO [area of operations] and in combat, you’re as close to the dirt as you can get.”

Arnott also described Thunder as having the same general top speed and range as the MV-75 Cheyenne II, which is now under development for the U.S. Army. The Army is reportedly expecting the MV-75 to boast a top speed of 320 miles per hour and have an unrefueled range of 920 miles. This is far above the range and speed offered by any current Army helicopter. Beyond teaming with Apaches and similar attack helicopters, being able to keep pace with the Cheyenne II could be an especially important feature for the Thunder, as we will touch on again later.

Anduril has also described Thunder as being smaller than the Apache and able to be broken down for transport inside a standard 40-foot shipping container. As an aside, it is unclear exactly how much time is necessary to get the tiltrotor drone out of a container and flying again. Getting it loaded in the first place does require separating the wing structure from the fuselage, at least in the design’s current form, according to the company. The drone will also have the speed and range necessary for self-deployment.

When it comes to propulsion, “a series hybrid-electric powertrain enables Thunder to achieve significant range and endurance, while still maintaining the necessary precision to closely optimize power through the full range of flight conditions,” according to a press release from Anduril. “Meanwhile, Optimum-Speed Tiltrotors (OSTR) vary rotor RPM [rotations per minute] to maintain efficiency across flight regimes, reducing power demand and fuel burn in cruise and minimizing acoustic signature to enhance survivability during low-altitude ingress.”

“From a survivability standpoint, one of the big tells for helicopters today, is just they’re very noisy, and the threat can hear when they’re coming,” Anduril’s Arnott also added when speaking to TWZ and other outlets. “We’re at orders of magnitude below the sound level with this particular system than the current systems that are out there today.”

The partnership with Archer Aviation, a company whose public profile is focused on crewed fully electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, has been key here. Anduril also cited Archer’s motor technology as being a key feature of the hybrid-electric Omen tail-sitting vertical takeoff and landing drone, which was unveiled last year.

Tech Short | Midnight’s Proprietary eVTOL Engine Dynos

During the press call ahead of today’s unveiling, Chris Brose, Anduril’s President and Chief Strategy Officer, said that he felt that leveraging the immense investment by companies like Archer in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) development space had “made Thunder possible in a way today that it just wouldn’t have been possible five, 10, certainly 15 years ago.”

“So this is not electric, this is a hybrid-electric system,” Anduril’s Arnott also stressed. “But in doing so, it actually reduces the complexity of the drive trains, etc.”

Rotor technology for another firm, Karem, has also been leveraged in the development of Thunder. Karem has a long history in the tiltrotor design space, including work done for the U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

“Karem’s military-grade rotor systems are among the most advanced Army-validated technologies in the world,” Adam Goldstein, Archer Founder and CEO, said in a press release about a new collaboration between the two companies in December 2025. “Integrating them into our next-gen hybrid VTOL [vertical takeoff and landing] platform positions Archer to move faster and deliver capabilities that legacy systems simply can’t match.”

The unnamed “next-gen hybrid VTOL platform” at the center of Archer’s December announcement has now been confirmed to be Thunder.

Modular capabilities and advanced autonomy

Capability-wise, Thunder is a highly modular design with reconfigurable payload bays in the nose and the center of the fuselage.

The drone can carry up to 10 air-to-ground missiles, 16 ‘launched effects,’ four 19-shot pods holding a total of 76 70mm laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets, or a mix thereof, on launchers that extend to either side from the main bay, according to Anduril. Air-to-ground missiles here could include AGM-114 Hellfires, AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM), or Anduril’s Barracuda-100M.

The term launched effects is used today to collectively refer to drones configured to perform a variety of missions, including serving as loitering munitions, which can be fired from air, ground, and/or maritime platforms. Anduril specifically mentioned its ALTIUS-600 design as one potential option for Thunder. ALTIUS-600 can be set up to perform surveillance and reconnaissance and electronic warfare tasks, act as a decoy, and launch kinetic attacks.

The company has also specifically highlighted the ability of the bay in the nose to hold launchers for kinetic interceptors to take down incoming drones, something we will come back to later on. It is worth noting that APKWS II is already a combat-proven, lower-cost counter-drone weapon, including in the air-to-air mode. However, it is employed in more traditional counter-air applications, like intercepting one-way attack munitions and cruise missiles, not for defending the shooting platform itself against incoming high-speed anti-aircraft drones.

Both the nose and main payload bays could accommodate other systems, such as electronic warfare suites, additional sensors, and/or communications packages. Each Thunder will also have its own built-in sensor suite to support surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as target acquisition tasks.

In addition, Thunder will have passive sensing capabilities to support general operation and navigation. This will be especially important for enabling high-speed nap-of-the-earth flight profiles. It will also be essential for providing situational awareness and flight safety margins while operating in relatively close proximity to crewed teammates, as well as other drones.

“We’ve spent the last couple of years working with technologies that are coming out of the self-driving car industry, plus some of that are coming out of the Anduril sensor/imaging kind of groups, in order for us to detect a terrain, [and] do that in a passive sense, so we’re not giving away our position,” according to Anduril’s Arnott. The sensors will also “be able to detect weapons coming at us, power lines, that type of thing, and have it such that you can have three to six of these things flying with a two-ship [group] of Apache, for instance, to provide that loyal wingman nature.”

“Thunder’s multi-modal machine perception stack and sensor suite combines passive and selective active sensors with onboard computer vision, map data, and edge compute, enabling Thunder to continuously detect, classify, and track terrain, obstacles, and threats,” Anduril has also explained in a blog post accompanying today’s announcement. “That sensor data provides the inputs necessary to facilitate the visual navigation, inertial positioning, and terrain feature mapping that enable Thunder to remain on course when GPS, visibility, and communications are degraded or denied.”

“With sophisticated onboard machine perception, vehicle autonomy, and flight-proven collaborative mission autonomy software, Thunder can maneuver with the formation, share data in real time, coordinate effects, and act on pilot intent, delivering a trusted autonomous wingman that can keep up with, defend, and empower the pilots flying the most congested airspace on the battlefield,” the blog post adds.

Anduril’s Lattice proprietary artificial intelligence-enabled software package will underpin Thunder’s overall autonomous capabilities. The company says other autonomous software could also be integrated to meet particular customer demands. Anduril has already conducted testing of some components of Thunder’s autonomy and sensing systems using unspecified surrogate aircraft.

Lattice for Mission Autonomy: An Unfair Advantage for Unrivaled Deterrence

Just one part of a full concept of operations

What has been shared so far about Thunder’s capabilities brings us to the larger concept of operations Anduril envisions for the drone. The company says the war in Ukraine has had an especially heavy influence on its thinking around the design. This is very interesting, as this particular conflict has prompted serious questions about the future relevance of traditional helicopters on modern battlefields where the threat ecosystem continues to grow in scale and scope.

Anduril acknowledges the breadth of dangers that helicopters and tiltrotors already face. This is perhaps best evidenced by the touting of Thunder’s ability to defend against air-to-air drone attacks, something the ongoing fighting in Ukraine has shown to be a real threat, as seen in the video below. Anduril’s Arnott also explicitly mentioned the threat posed by shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), while speaking to TWZ and other outlets.

At the same time, Anduril argues that there are critical missions rotorcraft perform today that cannot be fully transposed onto other kinds of platforms, and that drone wingmen like Thunder will therefore be an essential addition to the equation. The company has not yet shared a projected unit cost for the drone, but has also stressed that it fits in with a broader understanding of a need for platforms that are lower cost and more readily producible to create sufficient operational capacity, or ‘mass,’ for forces to succeed in future conflicts. Anduril’s Brose said that Thunder will be a “fraction” of the cost of something like an Apache or an MV-75, and operators will be able to “afford to lose it if you have to.”

“Many of the things that we’ve designed and engineered into Thunder are really based on the lessons that the United States and our European allies are learning in Ukraine, and this whole question of how do you bring mass to the battlefield in a tactical environment where you have to be able to engage in the deep fight,” Brose explained in more detail about Anduril’s overall thinking around Thunder. “We’re looking at the proliferation of robotic systems, and drones, and sensors, and that’s all very good and very important. But you also raise the question of, well, how are you going to get that stuff farther downrange into the environments where you need it to be able to conduct those more sophisticated and more challenging missions, again on behalf of U.S. and NATO militaries?”

To meet those operational needs, “you have to have the ability to launch and recover combat power without runways. You have to be able to do this in expeditionary environments,” he continued, underscoring the value of a VTOL platform. “When your runways get cratered, you have to have the ability to conduct the mission.”

Runway independence, or at least reducing dependence on traditional runways, has become an increasing mantra across the U.S. military, in particular, in recent years, as TWZ regularly highlights. The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force, as well as the special operations community, have put particular emphasis on this in new and still evolving concepts of operations in recent years.

So, “in terms of how you then get a greater quantity of sensors and weapons into the fight to support those manned systems, to support the ground force to be able to conduct those long-range missions from a maneuver warfare standpoint, and really make maneuver central to warfare again, we really see this system in Thunder being absolutely central to that,” Brose added.

Brose specifically took aim at the idea that lower-cost, long-range one-way attack drones could fill the same kinds of mission requirements. The U.S. military just recently began fielding this capability in the form of the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drone, which made its official combat debut in Operation Epic Fury against Iran.

“A lot of those longer-range one-way attack missions, they’re going after fixed targets,” he said. “They’re slower flights out. It’s [the total duration of the strike mission] going to play out over a longer period of time. They’re hitting critical infrastructure, military installations, production capacity, et cetera. Basically, GPS points that aren’t moving.”

“What this is focused on is the ability to transit through the operational environment,” he continued. “To survive and then to persist once you get there, so that you can provide effects to attack aviation elements in the air that are conducting missions or ground forces that are conducting missions on the land. That immediately gets into a time-sensitive, dynamic targeting kind of mission space that a system like this has to be able to survive and persist and operate effectively in.”

It is important to note here that new targeting capabilities have already been emerging in the realm of longer-range one-way attack drones. LUCAS and many Ukrainian designs now have satellite communications-enabled man-in-the-loop functionality, allowing them to hit dynamic/moving targets. Driven by advances in artificial intelligence-driven technologies, drones are set to steadily gain greater ability to find and choose targets autonomously, something TWZ has previously explored in detail. This being said, they are still single-use weapons that offer very different capabilities from what Anduril is aiming for with Thunder.

Anduril’s Arnott also questioned the relevance of existing higher-flying armed drones to meet these kinds of operational needs. The MQ-9 Reaper has been very much in public consciousness recently due to its heavy use in the conflict with Iran, but also substantial combat losses. The U.S. Air Force has described the MQ-9 as a star player in operations against Iran, despite having lost dozens of them.

“As we got further and further up and higher and higher, [we] got comfortable because we own the air, but things have changed,” Arnott said. “We’re seeing that in [Operation] Epic Fury, the Iranians, etc. have got systems that are just knocking that type of CONOP off its feet, and it’s just not relevant anymore. So that’s why we’ve gone back to the surface. That’s where the survivability is for these types of systems, to fly low and fast.”

“Right now, we don’t see another solve [sic; solution] for that, and this is probably the ugliest of all the warfighting domains, where you still need a human … to do the sorting of the targets on friend and foe, etc,” he added. “The only way you can do that is to have a quarterback, say, with an Apache, and then these loyal wingmen, if you will, to enable their survivability, but also to project a lot more mass in the deep [fight].”

Despite all the talk of lessons learned from contemporary conflicts, Anduril has made clear that its view of future ‘deep fights’ goes well beyond Europe and the Middle East. He said that Thunder’s speed and range, and the basic choice of a tiltrotor conflict, were also intended to make it very relevant for a conflict in the broad expanses of the Pacific. The U.S. Army’s decision to acquire the MV-75 was notably driven by the same general factors.

“This is a gap. There is actually no way when you fast forward into full theater conflicts in the Pacific, even the Taiwanese, if you play through the war games and things get entrenched, there isn’t a way in other than these types of techniques,” Arnott told TWZ directly in a separate interview about Thunder ahead of today’s announcement. “If Russia does start their activity into the High North [in and around the Arctic region,] as well as China, you get to the same situations. You can’t do all your warfare from 30 or 15,000 feet. It just does not work, apart from the fixed targets.”

A more detailed notional Thunder vignette

Anduril’s Arnott also described more detailed notional operational scenarios involving Thunder to us during that interview:

“The concepts to date have been primarily driven around that you’ve got a two-ship [of] Apache, very traditional formation. You would then, depending on the mission, whether it’s a protective mission for the two ship, whether it’s a deep strike mission, or an ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] type mission, you’d have between three and six thunders for every two ship ARH [armed reconnaissance helicopter], and the intent there being that that’s a lot of metal in the air and a lot of things to manage.”

“So very much for it to be the command as opposed to control, where in effect, the way that the team presents to the Apache cockpit, whoever’s kind of got the leash, is it looks like another Apache. So it basically comes across [on] very similar data links to what the aircraft has. We call this concept ‘polite participant.’ So we don’t force any new software onto the host aircraft, or the mothership, or the quarterback, I should say. And in doing so, those teammates or wingmen are smart enough to be able to navigate and aviate in such a way that you don’t get in the way to be able to give them the similar level of command that you would to a wingman, wing person, if you will, and that they’re able to array themselves.”

“And whether it’s a chevron formation in front, whether it’s some sort of formation around the outside at cardinal points around the aircraft for a protective – a force protection mission, where you’re utilizing the counter-UAS systems that are on thunder and also electronic protection. But basically, you would put them into postures, and you command these postures that reflect themselves in formation, and then activation of various payloads that they have on board, and that may change also through the mission.”

“So you may have a setup where you’ve got the Apaches at the FOB [forward operating base]. You’ll have either at the FOB or somewhere nearby the Thunders. These guys come together and they form up. They move out. Initially, you’re just in [a] train, so you’re tracking into the AO [area of operations]. You come into … the forward line of troops. You then may move into a configuration where you’re at the cardinal points around the outside of the Apache, because part of the problem with the land domain is that the threats can come at any angle to you, and [you] have activated the counter-UAS systems and the electronic protect systems, for instance. So the Thunders would be either radiating or waiting for irradiation [sic] from an electronic attack standpoint, based on certain signals, or having their doors open as it relates to the counter-UAS, the kinetic kill payloads, that are on there, as you then transit through certain areas.”

“That may then change, where the counter-UAS payloads are in the nose, for instance, they would close, and then you go into the direct attack, which would be the main payload bay that you’ve seen the doors that are coming out. They may be fitted with direct attack weapons like Hydras [70mm unguided rockets], APKWS, or Hellfires, for instance, and then be in fire support to the Apaches in a similar way that the Apaches work together to – one set of aircrew can designate and shoot off the other[‘s targeting data]. For instance, it’s a very similar workflow, so it’s not a new workflow for direct attack.”

“Or it could be, ‘hey, I need to go and find something out there.’ So today, they’ll use the M-TADS [Modernized Target Acquisition and Designation Sight] for the video. They’ll use the fire control radar to scan an area. It’s a similar kind of workflow where they’re like, “Hey, I need to find out about something out there. The Thunders could release launched effects, for instance, like the ALTIUS product that we have, but it could be [an AeroVironment] Switchblade, it could be something else, and they would then talk back to the Thunders. So we’d have that concept of tiering out in front. The ALTIUS are then out there, and they’re finding targets autonomously with their computer vision. They’re then providing back a track picture, so icons, if you will, that come back to the Thunder. The Thunder then talks back to the Apache via the Apache data link, and the symbols appear on their map display or their FCR [fire control radar], just like they would if they were self-identified or coming from one of their formation, as well.”

Apache Fire Control: Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor

Boeing AH-64D Longbow Apache

“So the intent is these workflows are exactly the same. How it presents to the warfighter is the same. It’s just more. You can see further. You can shoot more. But the workflow, in effect, is effectively the same. So that is the whole concept of this polite participant construct that we have.”

Arnott stressed that his use of Apache here was as a generic example and that this overall concept could work with other helicopters serving in the quarterback role. Anduril also envisions command and control of the Thunders being executed by helicopter crews through existing cockpit displays rather than a tertiary device, such as a tablet. There has been much debate over the years about the physical user interface that is most suitable for use on crewed aircraft of any kind to direct uncrewed teammates.

Competition in a growing market space

Anduril is certainly not alone in seeing a market space emerging for this kind of teaming with existing and future crewed helicopters and tiltrotors, at least in broad strokes. Boeing and Sikorsky (a subsidiary now of Lockheed Martin) both unveiled vertical takeoff and landing capable loyal wingman-type drone designs around the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference last year. Boeing’s Collaborative Transformational Rotorcraft (CxR) is also a tiltrotor.

In addition, almost a decade ago now, Bell announced it was working on a Group 5 tiltrotor drone called the V-247 Vigilant. The V-247 was originally developed in response to a U.S. Marine Corps requirement, but Bell has since shown renderings depicting it operating together with versions of its crewed V-280 Valor tiltrotor design, on which the MV-75 was based.

“So, last fall, we actually asked industry what they can provide for a Group 4 VTOL/STOL [vertical takeoff and landing/short takeoff and landing] perspective,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, head of the Army’s Program Executive Office for Aviation (PEO-Aviation), said at a roundtable at AUSA. “So we use that as a great set of information on what the state of the art of technology is from a range, speed, payload, and really effects perspective. What can we bring to bear, given modern technology versus some of our older UAS [uncrewed aerial systems].”

The only difference between the Group 4 and Group 5 drone categories is operating altitude, with the designs in the former tier not being able to fly above 18,000 feet.

“When you look at a CCA role for – really linked to rotary wing, that is a different dynamic than you have at 20-to-30,000 feet,” Brig. Gen. Phillips added at that time. “So it’s a whole set of different behaviors, a whole set of different capability you need to marry that up with an aircraft that’s flying at 100 feet, at 150-plus knots, at night. So that is what we’re really looking at, is what is the state of technology right now to develop a requirement that we can deliver.”

In the context of the U.S. Army, specifically, the concepts of operations Anduril has outlined for Thunder have also prompted comparisons to the previous pairing of Apaches with crewed OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed scout helicopters. The Army retired the very last of its OH-58Ds in 2017 without a direct replacement. Several unsuccessful attempts were made before and after the Kiowa’s retirement to find a direct successor, the most recent of which was the Future Attack Recon Aircraft (FARA) program. The Army cancelled FARA in 2024 as part of a larger shakeup of aviation programs that put renewed emphasis on new uncrewed capabilities.

“We’re looking to recreate similar concepts to be able to enable deep strike missions, all the things that Apache was originally designed for with the Kiowa,” Anduril’s Arnott said.

Thunder, like the other designs emerging in space now, could also be of interest to the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. special operations forces, which are facing the same kinds of operational realities. The Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is already in line to acquire a version of the MV-75, which could also benefit very much from a drone wingman able to keep pace in terms of range and speed. The 160th has already been working to expand crewed-uncrewed teaming concepts using its existing helicopters and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone.

This all goes beyond the U.S. military, too. Last year, the U.K. Ministry of Defense also picked Anduril and three other companies to develop drone demonstrators that could be paired with British Army Apaches. Anduril’s press release at the time mentioned a partnership on that effort, which is called Project NYX, with Archer Aviation and several other firms. Anduril has explicitly declined to confirm or deny whether Thunder is its offering for that program.

The Apache, in particular, has a substantial and still growing global operator base, opening the door to other potential customers for drones like Thunder. As already noted, uncrewed wingmen could be valuable for extending the operating reach and reducing the vulnerability of other helicopter types, too.

Anduril is clearly putting a major foot forward in this space with Thunder, and the detailed concepts of operations it already has in mind to go with it. At the same time, the company has never built a tiltrotor, let alone a full-size helicopter, at least that we know of, unlike some of the other companies already in this space. Pairing with Archer and Karem on this project does offer major benefits. Archer has yet to bring an aircraft to production, as well.

Still, these same issues were often highlighted when Anduril joined the competition for the extremely high-profile and critical first phase, or Increment 1, of the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Anduril had submitted a design called Fury, which TWZ previously explored the full history of in an extensively detailed feature you can find here. Widely considered an underdog in the competition, Anduril was subsequently chosen as one of two firms in the final Increment 1 down-select, with the other being General Atomics. The Air Force has now decided to order production examples of both Increment 1 designs.

Now we’ll have to see if a similar story repeats itself for Thunder, as competition in the market space for drone wingmen for crewed helicopters and tiltrotors continues heating up.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Germany has approved almost 800 million euros ($913m) in arms export licences to Israel in the first five months of 2026, more than in the previous 20 months combined, the government in Berlin has confirmed.

According to a Federal Foreign Office reply to a parliamentary question by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, nearly all the approvals were cleared in April and May.

The approvals portend a dramatic surge in weapons exports to Israel from one of the country’s most steadfast allies in Europe despite the German government’s insistence that it is concerned about the devastation wrought by Israel’s military in Gaza.

The big spend

The government said more than 60 percent of the value of the arms licences is earmarked for a single, unnamed “major maritime project”.

The most likely candidate, analysts said, is a submarine built by the German manufacturer TKMS.

The INS Drakon, a nuclear-capable Dolphin II-class submarine, underwent its maiden voyage last year at a shipyard in Kiel on the Baltic Sea. Its estimated value is 480 million euros ($548m). It was officially handed over to the Israeli Navy last week, according to German media reports.

According to several reports, it could feature a vertical launching system (VLS), enabling it to launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles or ballistic missiles. Israel would become only the second navy after South Korea known to field a VLS on a modern, air-independent propulsion (AIP), conventionally powered submarine.

During its sea trials, the submarine’s tower was covered with tarpaulins and fibreglass plates to prevent observers from determining its weapons configuration. Strategically, submarines of this class could provide a sea-based second-strike capability – the ability of a country to fire back nuclear weapons after it has itself faced a nuclear attack.

In May, TKMS signed a memorandum of understanding on future collaboration with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private defence contractor.

The German Foreign Office and Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, under whose purview arms export licences fall, both declined to comment on the matter.

Max Mutschler, a senior researcher with the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, told Al Jazeera: “Unfortunately, the fact that the federal government does not explicitly mention this is also typical of the lack of transparency surrounding arms exports.”

Last year, reports conflicted over whether the export licence for the submarine had been granted. The order dates back to 2012. While TKMS indicated approval, the German government denied it at the time.

Germany’s shifting positions

The hesitation might have stemmed from legal concerns surrounding proceedings against Germany at the International Court of Justice in The Hague as well as shifting public opinion in Germany, which has largely turned against arms exports to Israel. According to media reports, Germany is helping finance about 30 percent of the costs for the Drakon and roughly one-third of those for the future Dakar class.

This month, TKMS was also selected by Canada as the preferred bidder to build up to 12 submarines in what would be the largest order in TKMS’s history. The value of the vessels alone is estimated at 12 billion euros ($13.7bn) to 18 billion euros ($21bn).

For years, submarine deals with Germany have been under investigation by the Israeli judiciary over bribery allegations involving close associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ruth Rohde from the British research organisation Shadow World Investigations told Al Jazeera: “Israel has used German ships to fire at Gaza, to blockade and starve Gaza, and is using submarines to station nuclear weapons. At a time when Israel is waging brutal wars on its neighbours and is committing a genocide in Gaza, this submarine export would give Israel another tool in its arsenal of mass destruction.”

Berlin’s arms export policy towards Israel has been marked by reversals. In early August, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany would issue no further licences for military equipment that could be used by Israel in the Gaza Strip. By that time, an Al Jazeera investigation had shown that Germany had already exported almost $12m worth of weapons consignments to Israel since October 2023 when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

And the partial suspension proved short-lived: In November, the government lifted the restrictions and returned to reviewing export applications on a case-by-case basis. Even during the suspension, previously approved deliveries continued. In September, for instance, a $794,000 weapons consignment from Germany landed at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.

Mutschler told Al Jazeera that some people in government “found the export of certain weapons to Israel problematic in light of numerous and credible reports of Israeli war crimes during the military operation in Gaza”. However, it was not enough to “bring about a generally restrictive arms export policy toward Israel”.

The economic calculation

Germany is one of the world’s largest arms exporters. In the first six months of 2026, licences were granted for arms worth 13.87 billion euros ($15.8bn), according to the Arms Export Report of the Ministry of Economics, published in mid-July. That is more than four times as much as during the same period in 2025. Ukraine remains the primary recipient of German arms exports.

Mutschler explained: “Arms exports have been and continue to be viewed by most federal governments primarily from an economic perspective and welcomed as a means of strengthening the defence industry.” He added: “The fact that these arms shipments can also be used to commit war crimes seems to play a significantly smaller role in the decision-making process.”

As a crisis in Germany’s economy – whose strength has relied primarily on exports, particularly in the car industry – has intensified, its defence industry has boomed in recent years. This development was publicly attributed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine although plans for increased defence spending had already been prepared beforehand, according to reports.

Pieter D Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sees this as a general trend. He told Al Jazeera: “The demand for arms in Europe has increased dramatically over the past few years whereas the demand for arms in many other parts of the world does not seem to be decreasing or is likely to increase.”

The German market remains very important to the country’s arms industry as Germany is set to double its military spending from well below 2 percent of it gross domestic product to a stated goal of 3.5 percent of its GDP within a few years, Wezeman explained. “Germany is now the largest military spender in Europe [not counting Russia], and its arms industry is a core component of the European military-industrial base.”

The Tour triumph marks the Slovenian’s third win in a row and draws him level with four others on the all-time list

Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar secured a record-equalling fifth Tour de France title on Sunday after safely navigating the final stage, won by Mathieu van ⁠der Poel, to seal a third consecutive crown in cycling’s greatest race.

The 27-year-old UAE Team Emirates XRGcyclist, affectionately known as “Pogi”, only needed to avoid a race-ending mishap on the run into Paris to join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and ⁠Miguel Indurain as a five-time Tour champion.

Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel finished second overall, while Mexico’s Isaac del Toro rounded out the overall podium in third.

“Thank you to all the fans and to all of France for hosting this great race,” Pogacar said.

“Thank you to my competitors for putting on a great show. We fought hard over the last three weeks.”

Van der Poel takes final stage

Pogacar ‌and Van der Poel broke away on the final ascent of Montmartre with about 10km (6 miles) remaining and took a slender advantage into the run to the Champs-Elysees as the chasing group closed relentlessly.

The Slovenian’s challenge faded inside the final kilometre, but Van der Poel pressed on to secure victory in a photo finish ahead of Alpecin-Premier Tech teammate Jasper Philipsen, with Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek in third.

“When I was sick last year, and I had to watch the stage on television, I was already thinking about this moment,” Van der Poel, 31, said.

“The way it went, it’s a dream. It’s ⁠incredible. It was super hard, and to be up there with the best rider in ⁠the world, all my respect for Tadej.

“I thought we were going to get caught back, then I was just thinking about this moment. I put my head down in the last 500 metres. I just went as hard as I could.

“I’m super happy. I have a few races ⁠I still wanted to win in my career, and this was one of them.”

Supreme Pogacar

Pogacar underlined his supremacy throughout the Tour by claiming five stage victories.

His path to a third ⁠straight yellow jersey became less complicated when two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard, ⁠widely regarded as his principal challenger, withdrew after a crash on Stage 15.

The Tour’s traditional finale in Paris was shortened after security forces were redeployed to help tackle wildfires near Bordeaux. As a result, Stage 21, which customarily takes the peloton into Paris before several laps of the Champs-Elysees, was reduced ‌to 89km from the 133km originally scheduled.

This year’s race also produced a remarkable first: no rider from France, Italy or Spain won a stage, making it the first Tour de France without a stage victory from any of the ‌three ‌nations that created and host cycling’s Grand Tours.

Pogacar’s latest triumph caps three weeks of racing since the Grand Depart in Barcelona and further cements his status as the dominant rider of his generation.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan-administered Kashmir, formally known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), has spent the summer under an unofficial state of emergency.

Since early June, nearly 40 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, with sit-ins and road blockades regular features in the region over this period.

Banks remained shut for two weeks. Mobile and internet services remain suspended across most of the territory. Poonch division, which borders India and has been the epicentre of the unrest, was effectively sealed off for weeks, disrupting the supply of flour and other essentials to a region that depends heavily on them.

The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the movement behind the protests, was banned by the local government on June 5, days before a planned demonstration.

Its leadership has since been arrested, has gone underground or has continued organising from sit-in camps in Rawalakot, the administrative headquarters of Poonch division.

Its demands, once centred on subsidised flour and cheaper electricity, have expanded to 38 points, chief among them the abolition of 12 assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees.

All of this is unfolding as the region prepares to vote. Elections for the 45-seat Legislative Assembly, originally scheduled for July 27, have been split across three dates.

Mirpur division votes as planned, Muzaffarabad division and the 12 seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees follow on August 2, while Poonch division, where tensions remain highest, goes to the polls on August 10.

JAAC’s leadership is not on the ballot and has urged supporters to boycott the vote.

Of all the movement’s demands, one issue has proved impossible to resolve: the 12 refugee seats. The government says they cannot be touched without a constitutional amendment. JAAC wants them abolished outright.

Between those two positions lies a legal argument stretching back nearly a century, and a more fundamental question: who gets to decide who governs Muzaffarabad?

A dozen seats, one dispute

Of the AJK Legislative Assembly’s 45 elected seats, 33 are filled from constituencies within the territory.

The remaining 12 are reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who now live in different parts of Pakistan.

The arrangement traces its roots to electoral arrangements introduced in 1960, reinforced through laws in 1964 and 1970, before being formalised in AJK’s 1974 Interim Constitution and reaffirmed by the constitution’s 13th Amendment in 2018.

Chaudhry Muhammad Ibrahim Zia, a former chief justice of the AJK Supreme Court, said the basis for the seats goes back further still, to the AJK government’s founding declaration of October 24, 1947, which he said reflected “the collective will of the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.

Refugee representation, he told Al Jazeera, has “a firm historical basis” rooted in that document. He rejects any suggestion that the seats are unconstitutional.

“They have both historical grounding and constitutional support,” he said. “These seats cannot be described as unconstitutional.”

Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s electorate has grown from 3.2 million voters in 2021 to more than 3.8 million this year, according to Election Commission figures.

Within that, the 12 refugee constituencies account for roughly 439,000 registered voters, scattered across cities including Lahore, Rawalpindi and Sialkot, rather than concentrated in a single geographical area like AJK’s territorial constituencies.

And that’s a problem, says Kashif Abbasi, a JAAC committee member.

“This election is meant for people who actually live in AJK,” he told Al Jazeera. “These 12 seats sit outside AJK’s jurisdiction. This doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

From flour to the assembly floor

JAAC’s demands were not always centred on the refugee seats. Its original charter was almost entirely economic, focusing on subsidised flour, electricity at cost price, and a share in the benefits from the Mangla and Neelum-Jhelum hydropower projects.

The refugee seats first appeared in the group’s expanded charter, submitted in October 2025.

Even then, JAAC did not initially seek their outright abolition. In written proposals submitted on May 30 this year, the group offered two alternatives.

It proposed retaining symbolic refugee representation until the Kashmir dispute is permanently resolved or replacing the 12 assembly seats with four seats in the AJK Council, the Islamabad-chaired body that exercises legislative authority over AJK’s federal-facing affairs.

The 14-member council, chaired by Pakistan’s prime minister, oversees subjects including electricity, banking and parts of taxation, areas that largely fall outside the AJK assembly’s authority. The territory has no representation in Pakistan’s national parliament.

“Our suggestion was that these seat-holders should instead be given representation on the Kashmir Council, and that their assembly seats be eliminated, with that money used elsewhere in the territory,” Khawaja Mehran, a member of JAAC’s core committee, told Al Jazeera recently.

Both proposals were rejected at an All-Parties Conference in Muzaffarabad on June 3.

Constitutional barrier

In June, the AJK Supreme Court addressed the issue directly.

The court held that the seats are protected under AJK’s constitution and can only be abolished through a formal constitutional amendment. They cannot be removed through executive action or public pressure.

A constitutional amendment, the judges wrote, is “a solemn constitutional act, not a concession to be wrested from a government under duress”.

Zia, the former AJK chief justice, said the opinion changed little about the existing legal position.

“These seats simply cannot be abolished without a proper constitutional process,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that, with the outgoing assembly’s term having ended, no such process is possible until a new legislature is elected.

The government’s account

Abdul Majid Khan, AJK’s former finance minister and himself from a refugee family, rejects the idea that the seat holders form an unaccountable political bloc.

He points instead to the size of the territory’s budget. AJK’s roughly 310 billion rupees (about $1.1bn) budget last year, he said, far exceeds the development funds allocated to the 12 refugee constituencies – nowhere near enough, in his view, to make them the powerful bloc JAAC describes.

“These are people who migrated for a larger cause,” Khan told Al Jazeera, referring to Kashmiris who fled Jammu, across the border, during the violence of 1947 following the partition of the subcontinent and settled across Pakistan in the decades that followed.

Refugee representation, he said, has existed since AJK’s first parliamentary election in 1975, when the territory’s first prime minister was himself from a refugee family.

At the June 3 conference that rejected JAAC’s proposals, AJK Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore said any decision on the seats “can only be taken by the elected representatives in the House”, adding that most of JAAC’s other demands had already been met.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the National Assembly on June 11 that the future of the 12 refugee seats should be decided by voters, not under pressure from street protests.

He urged JAAC to contest the issue in the election rather than demand its resolution beforehand, asking: “How could you exclude them from the electoral process?”

A senior government official in Poonch, whose division has witnessed the worst of the unrest, took an even harder line.

“This is no longer a rights movement,” the official told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity since he was not allowed to speak to the media, adding that the protesters were not only “challenging the authority of the state”, but also provoking the public through “inflammatory speeches and actions”.

Who holds power?

In mid-July, JAAC leader Umar Nazir Kashmiri told supporters at a sit-in in Rawalakot, Poonch division, that the group had written directly to army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir after concluding that its concerns were not reaching him “through official channels”.

He thanked Munir by name for “understanding the grievances of the people of Kashmir”.

Shaheen was more direct. “We believe real authority currently sits with Rawalpindi,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to Pakistan’s military establishment rather than the civilian government. “That’s why we’re forced to negotiate through that channel, since nobody else actually holds the authority.”

Ershad Mahmud, a Canada-based researcher on Kashmiri displacement and politics, said that “Islamabad’s bureaucracy, military and intelligence establishment have reduced AJK’s elected leadership to a largely symbolic role”.

The current crisis, he told Al Jazeera, has once again shown that the local leadership “lacks the authority to negotiate a political settlement with its own people”.

Unmet promise?

The dispute over the refugee seats is unfolding within a framework that predates Pakistan-administered Kashmir itself.

Under a United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan resolution adopted on January 5, 1949, and endorsed by the UN Security Council, Kashmir’s final status was to be determined “through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite”.

Nearly 80 years later, that has yet to happen on either side of the Line of Control.

Mahmud, who is also the author of Poonch: Identity, Politics and Resistance, argues the refugee seats endure partly because they continue to serve Islamabad’s interests.

“They let Pakistan maintain its position that AJK represents the entire former State of Jammu and Kashmir, not merely the territory it administers,” he told Al Jazeera. “And allows Pakistan-based political parties to influence government formation in Muzaffarabad.”

Islamabad, he said, treats the seats “as an instrument of its Kashmir policy and political influence”.

Hassan Kamal Wattoo, a Lahore-based constitutional lawyer, argues that giving greater autonomy to AJK “strengthens Pakistan’s case on the international stage”.

“There is no tension between real autonomy for AJK and an eventual plebiscite,” he told Al Jazeera.

Anam Zakaria, a historian and author of Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, however, argued that there was a deeper contradiction within AJK’s constitutional framework.

On the one hand lies India’s “longstanding and ongoing systemic violence and human rights abuses in [Indian-administered] Kashmir”, she said, arguing that nothing Pakistan has done or does in the part of Kashmir it administers can be compared with what’s happened in Indian-administered Kashmir, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in violence involving armed rebels and security forces since 1989.

At the same time, she pointed out, candidates seeking public office in Pakistan-administered Kashmir must first swear allegiance to AJK’s accession to Pakistan.

That requirement, she told Al Jazeera, also “in itself contradicts the right to self-determination” and sidelines Kashmiris who hold a different vision for the region’s future.

President Donald Trump has paused attacks on Iran for the second night in a row to give diplomacy more time, the US ambassador to the UN said.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, ambassador Mike Waltz said the president was “giving talks some space, he’s giving it a little bit of room”.

An Iranian army spokesperson said on Sunday that Tehran had halted “retaliatory” attacks in the region in response.

The pause follows nearly two weeks of daily US strikes and tit-for-tat attacks, effectively unravelling the ceasefire struck in June.

Asked whether Trump had decided against escalation for now, Waltz told NBC: “I wouldn’t go that far at all. The president is keeping all options on the table.”

Waltz also rejected reports in the New York Times, external that administration officials had warned expanding hostilities could dangerously drain a diminished stockpile of air defence munitions.

“The US military… has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be,” he said.

As of Sunday evening, Trump had not spoken publicly on the latest developments, but earlier posted computer-generated images on his Truth Social account that depicted US military planes bombing Iranian ships and Kharg island.

Meanwhile, Iran and Oman held several rounds of technical talks in Tehran on Friday and Saturday to discuss management of the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei.

Disputes over control of the strait reignited US-Iran tensions earlier this month and it remains a major block to permanently ending the war.

Iran and the US signed a memorandum of understanding in June to halt military operations and reopen the strait, as well as to reach an agreement to end the war over the following 60 days.

But after Iranian forces attacked tankers in the Strait of Hormuz on 13 July, the US resumed airstrikes on the country and reinstated its naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Iran retaliated with attacks on US military facilities and bases across the Middle East, killing four American soldiers. The US strikes have since killed dozens of people, according to Iran’s health ministry.

In the UK, new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said he would meet his US counterpart Pete Hegseth in the coming week to discuss the strait, which is one of the world’s key transport routes for oil, liquid natural gas and other essential commodities.

“When it comes to securing maritime freedom and free commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, that’s where we are absolutely aligned,” Streeting told the BBC.

Earlier this week, oil prices hit $100 a barrel for the first time since May, as the renewed fighting stoked fears over global energy supplies.

As the war nears its fifth month, it remains largely unpopular in the US, with a new poll from CBS/YouGov suggesting 57% of Americans are frustrated about the conflict and only 19% optimistic.

Thousands of people have been killed across the Middle East since the US-Israeli war with Iran began in February, official figures show, with the vast majority coming from Iran and Lebanon.

President Trump is set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House on Tuesday.

Ifugao, Philippines – At first light, the village of Batad begins to stir to life beneath the towering cliffs surrounding its amphitheatre-like rice terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Apu Penneng, an Ifugao elder who owns one of the village’s largest tracts of ricefields, struts with youthful confidence along a narrow and steep path in this highland community 1,100 metres (3,608ft) above sea level.

Dressed in a traditional loincloth, shawl and headgear, he is heading for the Tanig, an elaborate morning ritual before the harvest begins. At a courtyard next to rows of huts, dozens of village women also gather for the Bullogan chi Munbotoh, the procession to the harvest site.

Against the glow of the rising sun, the centuries-old terraces finally come in full view as if cascading from the sky. The fields of Tinawon rice grains, moist from the drizzle the night before, glimmer like morsels of gold ready for picking.

But the otherwise majestic landscape is punctuated by the sight of collapsed earth and boulders, right in the middle of the terraces.

In November last year, Super Typhoon Fung-wong triggered a landslide that killed two locals and demolished one of the centuries-old canals irrigating the rice paddies. About 2.2 hectares (5.4 acres) of rice fields were damaged, affecting 150 farmers.

“It was the worst we’ve seen here,” Apu Penneng calmly said, as he pointed to a deforested patch of land above the terraces. From afar, it looked like it had been slashed with a giant blade.

The wreckage has been an unwelcome reminder for villagers of the destructive nature of extreme weather conditions, which have been increasing in frequency in recent years.

Batad was also struck with landslides in 2011, 2023 and 2025. With the emerging threat of this year’s Super El Nino, a climate phenomenon that increases global temperatures and drives more extreme weather and rainfall patterns, the Ifugao people worry about more damage to come.

Across the world, 80 percent of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites are facing climate-induced stress, according to an August 2025 study published in the scientific journal Nature.

The study found that UNESCO sites in low and middle-income countries receive the least conservation support, making them even more vulnerable to harsh climatic conditions. It added that in tropical monsoon areas, those conditions include record-breaking heatwaves, extended droughts and sudden drenching rainfall – much like what struck Batad in November 2025.

“Climate change is really aggravating the situation on the ground,” said lawyer Marlon Martin, head of the Save the Ifugao Terraces Movement (SITMO).

For the rice terraces to stay intact and stable, the soil needs to maintain a certain level of moisture year-round. But because of recent bouts of dry spells, deep cracks have developed, making the terraces prone to erosion, said Martin.

“When sudden bursts of rain occur, the water would seep into the cracks too abruptly, resulting in erosion” and even soil collapse, he added, warning that the Super El Nino could only mean more trouble ahead.

According to Steve Baccay, head of Ifugao’s Provincial Agriculture and Environment Office, an equivalent of $500,000 is needed for the restoration work in Batad following last November’s landslide.

Since the disaster, Batad residents themselves have come together a few times to do voluntary communal work called bachang to fix the demolished irrigation canal.

The social welfare and labour departments have also extended emergency food and cash assistance to affected farmers. However, additional national government aid is unlikely until the next fiscal year.

Climate change is nothing new, and for centuries people in Ifugao have adapted to the changes using Indigenous engineering techniques to protect the terraces, said Martin. But for Batad to withstand more frequent and more extreme weather, national intervention is needed, he added.

For Batad village chief Romeo Heppog and his family, the rice terraces are not just a source of their livelihood, but part of their identity and their way of life.

Organising the annual rice harvest festival is his way of honouring their ancestors and renewing their “sacred oath” to preserve the terraces for the generations to come, he said.

At the Tanig pre-harvest sacred ritual, Heppog watches closely alongside Apu Penneng as Apu Buy-a Nadyug, Batad’s chief Indigenous priest known as Mumbaki, leads the harvest rituals, including the pouring and drinking of fresh rice wine.

Hunched on the ground next to a pair of wooden Bulul, which embody invisible spiritual beings of the Ifugaos, the octogenarian Apu Buy-a Nadyug recites verses seeking blessings and protection for the harvest.

With the help of another village elder, Apu Penneng then leads the slaughter of chickens as a symbolic offering to Ifugao ancestors and the spiritual beings.

In one of the final acts of the hour-long sacred ritual, Mumbaki Apu Buy-a Nadyug then scrutinises the guts of the chicken, and pronounces another year of “bountiful harvest”.

Apu Penneng and Heppog then lead the banging of gongs signifying merriment and the start of the joyful harvest.

For a moment, the worries of the villagers of Batad are drowned out by the loud rhythmic sound that has been passed from generation to generation.

Apu Penneng then proceeds to his ricefield for the harvest.  Amid the uncertainties for his community, his face beams with pride as he gazes at the panoramic view of Batad.

From a distance, the 2,702 metres (8,865ft) Mount Amuyao, the country’s 10th highest peak, towers over Batad, as if guarding it from the threats of nature.

“We will get through this,” said Apu Penneng.

Protesters shut roads and ministries in Tripoli as a civil disobedience campaign over power cuts spreads to more areas.

Protesters in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, have shut down roads and public buildings across the city as a civil disobedience campaign, launched over prolonged power cuts and high electricity rates, spread to more districts.

Crowds blocked the coastal road in Janzour, west of Tripoli, late on Sunday, and gathered outside the West Tripoli power station, closing the local municipal council building in protest at the prolonged outages.

Videos posted online, verified by Al Jazeera shows, protesters burning tyres and closing down major roads elsewhere in the capital.

The footage also shows protesters unloading a truck loaded with dirt in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the district of Sater Turba in Tripoli to close it.

The mostly young protesters also shut the offices of state telecoms operator Libyana in the district of Souq Al-Jumaa, according to the DPA news agency, carrying banners criticising Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dabaiba.

The campaign was launched by the Souq Al-Jumaa Movement, which has opposed the Government of National Unity since May 2025. It said its aim was to “completely paralyse the government” rather than disrupt ordinary life.

It called for accountability over alleged corruption and for the dissolution of Libya’s existing political institutions, including the government, the House of Representatives, the State Council and the Presidential Council.

The unrest also spread to the district of Tajoura, where the Tajoura Families and Youth Movement said it would begin a full boycott of state institutions from Monday, rejecting both the unity government and the House of Representatives.

It said in a statement that the call was in protest against the deterioration of services, citing the decline in electricity, water, education and health services, alongside continuing fuel and liquidity crises and medicine shortages, while “officials are preoccupied with political conflicts”.

There was no immediate comment from the Government of National Unity.

Blackouts in Tripoli and other areas have reached up to ten hours a day, prompting the state-run General Electricity Company to reinstate load-shedding measures after two years of relative network stability.

The outages have compounded existing public frustration over inflation, currency instability, fuel and liquidity shortages, and Libya’s protracted political deadlock.

Separately, Massad Boulos, the White House adviser for African affairs, said he had held a “productive call” with Dabaiba on Sunday to discuss steps toward Libyan unification, including security cooperation between the country’s eastern and western factions.

“We also reviewed opportunities to further coordination and interoperability between Libyan forces and Africom,” Boulos said on X, adding that Washington remained committed to supporting Libya’s unification “in order to achieve durable peace, stability and prosperity”.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham told Laura Kuenssberg his dog Axel will be staying in Greater Manchester and will not be moving to No 10 Downing Street.

Burnham revealed he does not think his poodle-mix would get along with Larry the cat, who has lived at the residence for 15 years.

Watch Panorama Andy Burnham: The Laura Kuenssberg Interview on iPlayer from 06:00BST, and on BBC One at 20:00BST on Mon 27 Jul 2026.

Bamako, Mali – An unprecedented battlefield partnership between a separatist movement and an al-Qaeda affiliate has transformed the conflict in northern Mali, shifting the military balance and deepening divisions over how, if at all, the war can end.

When the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) launched a joint offensive on April 25, 2026, the conflict entered a phase unlike any before.

A war that had long pitted the Malian state against multiple armed groups gave way to a coordinated campaign stretching from Kidal and Anefis to Tilemsi, Gao and Sevare, posing the most serious challenge to the Malian army in years and to Russia’s Africa Corps, the Kremlin-backed force that replaced the Wagner Group in Mali.

Since then, the fighting has been marked by simultaneous assaults, ambushes, drone strikes and attacks on military convoys, with all sides claiming significant battlefield gains.

Bamako says it is working to restore state authority and dismantle what it calls a “terrorist alliance” between the FLA and JNIM.

The FLA says it remains committed to independence for Azawad, the name separatists use for northern Mali, while JNIM portrays the war as part of a campaign to “liberate” Mali and overthrow the government, which it accuses of relying on Russian forces.

More significant than the offensive itself, however, is the unprecedented military cooperation between a nationalist separatist movement and an al-Qaeda affiliate.

Their political ambitions remain fundamentally different, yet their cooperation has already reshaped the conflict and could have far-reaching implications for security across the Sahel.

The partnership emerged after the collapse of the 2015 Algiers Peace Agreement, which sought to end years of fighting between Bamako and northern armed groups through greater decentralisation and political representation, but whose implementation repeatedly faltered.

Successive military coups after 2020 reshaped Mali’s political leadership and security strategy. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Mali and imposed sanctions, while Russia deepened its military role by deploying the Wagner Group in late 2021.

After Russia folded the Wagner Group’s operations into the state-controlled Africa Corps, renewed fighting left neither the government nor northern armed groups able to impose a lasting settlement.

How the alliance took shape

On paper, cooperation between the FLA and JNIM appears unlikely. The FLA traces its roots to northern separatist movements that declared the independence of Azawad during the 2012 rebellion, a claim never recognised by the Malian state or the international community.

It presents itself as a secular nationalist movement seeking independence for Azawad, while JNIM seeks to overthrow governments it considers illegitimate and establish governance based on its interpretation of Islamic law.

Yet senior officials from both groups told Al Jazeera those ideological differences have been set aside to confront a common enemy.

Colonel Mohamed Issa, a senior FLA officer, said the movement remained committed to an independent Azawad, arguing that previous peace agreements repeatedly collapsed because successive governments in Bamako failed to honour them.

Negotiations, he said, would only be acceptable if they recognised Azawad’s right to separate.

Issa rejected suggestions of an ideological alliance, describing the relationship as a battlefield arrangement against a common enemy.

He said the JNIM-affiliated fighters operating alongside the FLA were exclusively Azawadis rather than members of the group’s wider regional network, arguing they were motivated primarily by defending their communities against the Malian army and what he described as Russian “mercenaries”.

Suleiman, a senior JNIM field commander who requested that only his first name be used for security reasons, described the relationship in broader terms.

He said the group approved operational coordination with the FLA after internal consultations because fighters on both sides largely came from “one people” caught up in the same conflict and because their liberation goals had become “relatively unified”.

He also claimed the FLA had accepted Islamic legal arbitration by local religious scholars, one of JNIM’s core objectives, a point the FLA itself did not raise. Bamako, meanwhile, has described the relationship as a “JNIM/FLA terrorist alliance” that threatens Mali’s sovereignty.

The differing accounts illustrate both the strength and the fragility of the arrangement. For now, shared battlefield interests appear to outweigh ideological differences. Whether that remains true as the conflict evolves is far less certain.

A shifting balance of power

The partnership has altered not only the battlefield but the way the war is fought.

FLA officials say working alongside JNIM has enabled both groups to divide responsibilities and pool expertise in attacks on military bases and supply convoys.

Bamako disputes casualty figures released by the armed groups and insists its forces retain the initiative. Even so, the conflict has become markedly more sophisticated, with simultaneous attacks across distant locations, engagements lasting several days and ambushes targeting reinforcements before they reach the front lines.

Drones have assumed an increasingly prominent role, serving not only as reconnaissance platforms but increasingly as strike weapons against vehicles and military positions. Malian forces, backed by Russia’s Africa Corps, continue to rely heavily on air power, yet months of sustained fighting suggest neither side has secured a decisive advantage.

The war economy

Long-established financing and trafficking networks continue to sustain both sides.

JNIM sources describe a funding model built on regional commercial networks, organised zakat collections and resources accumulated over years, including proceeds linked to earlier al-Qaeda kidnapping-for-ransom operations.

The FLA says it relies primarily on donations organised by tribal leaders, traders and community associations.

Officials from both groups also acknowledged that individuals linked to the movements participate in illicit economies, including trafficking across the Sahara, although the extent to which those activities finance the war remains difficult to verify.

Weapons have proved as important as funding. Arms have flowed across the Sahel since the collapse of Libya in 2011, providing armed groups with a steady source of equipment.

The latest fighting has opened another supply channel: weapons and military vehicles captured from Malian forces now form an increasingly important part of both groups’ arsenals.

Can either side win?

There is little to suggest the conflict is nearing an end.

The Malian army retains a clear advantage in air power, backed by Russia’s Africa Corps. Yet the FLA and JNIM continue to mount coordinated operations across much of northern Mali.

The military standoff reflects a wider political deadlock. Bamako remains committed to preserving Mali’s territorial integrity, the FLA insists on independence for Azawad and JNIM continues to seek the overthrow of the government.

None has shifted position since the latest fighting began, and nothing on the battlefield has yet forced any of them to do so.

Those competing objectives also cast doubt on how long the two groups can continue fighting together. Their partnership rests on a common enemy rather than a shared political vision, making its future uncertain.

A war without an endgame

Three months into the latest offensive, northern Mali remains locked in a conflict with no obvious end in sight. The partnership between the FLA and JNIM has reshaped the military landscape, while Bamako continues to reject any outcome that could weaken Mali’s territorial integrity.

What began as a confrontation between the state and separate armed movements has evolved into a conflict shaped by competing visions of sovereignty, separatism, rule by al-Qaeda-linked armed groups and the involvement of external powers.

Unless those competing ambitions – territorial unity, independence and regime change – are addressed alongside the fighting, a negotiated settlement is likely to remain elusive.

Whatever happens next, the partnership forged in April 2026 has already changed the course of the war in northern Mali. Whether it endures or fractures under the weight of its competing ambitions, it has created a new military and political reality whose consequences are likely to extend well beyond Mali’s borders.

Kyiv says Russian strikes killed six, including a child at a supermarket, as Moscow says Ukrainian strikes killed four.

Russian forces have killed at least six people in Ukraine, according to officials, after launching ballistic missile attacks on the capital, Kyiv, and strikes on other regions, including a supermarket in the northern city of Chernihiv.

The attacks on Sunday came as Russian officials said that Moscow-occupied areas of Ukraine had also come under fire, with four people killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on the occupied city of Horlivka.

Ukraine’s air ⁠force said Russia had launched seven ballistic missiles and 136 drones at Ukraine overnight. Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv cities were all hit.

In northern Chernihiv, officials said a Russian drone hit a supermarket, killing two people, including a nine-year-old girl, and wounding 25 others.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as a “deeply cynical drone strike on an ordinary supermarket”.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, one person was killed and 16 others required medical attention after a daytime drone attack, the local mayor said.

“This is deliberate Russian terror with absolutely no military justification,” Zelenskyy said.

Separately, Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said a glide bomb attack killed one person and wounded six in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, which has been under heavy bombardment in recent months.

In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one blaze had broken out on the seventh and eighth floors of a multistorey apartment block in a central district after the overnight missile attack. Three people were wounded in the capital, and images released by the state emergency services showed vehicles in flames.

In Sloviansk, one of several targets of Russia’s slow advance through eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the national oil and gas company Naftogaz said two of its employees died in a Russian attack while trying to help residents affected by an earlier strike.

In Horlivka, a city in the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region, Russian-installed Mayor Ivan Prikhodko said four civilians had been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike. Prikhodko later said a Ukrainian drone hit an emergency vehicle, injuring three medics and another resident.

At least 12 people, including two children, were also hurt in a Ukrainian drone attack on Belgorod, a Russian city close to the Ukrainian border, Russian authorities reported.

The attacks came a day after Moscow said a Ukrainian strike on a Russian-occupied town on the Azov Sea killed 12 people.

Both Moscow and Kyiv ‌deny targeting civilians in the war that started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022. But civilian casualty rates have climbed sharply in 2026 in both Russia and Ukraine, according to the United Nations.

Analysts say this is because of the growing use of short-range drones, glide bombs, and intensified strikes on infrastructure in both Russia and Ukraine.

UN officials say 1,396 civilians have been killed and 7,978 wounded in Ukraine in the first six months of 2026. In Russia, 250 civilians have been killed and 1,596 injured.

United States-led talks on ending fighting have stalled. The Kremlin occupies swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine and has repeatedly said it intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine by force.

Shein says it swung to a quarterly loss as its sales slowed after US President Donald Trump removed an import duty exemption on small packages.

It also comes as uncertainty remains over the tit-for-tat US-China tariffs wars, which is currently paused.

The fast-fashion giant, which has its headquarters in Singapore but was founded in China, said it lost $99m (£74.1m) in the first three months of the year, compared with a net income of $395m a year earlier.

The announcement is part of the firm’s preparations ahead of its stock market debut in Hong Kong, although the filing did not give any details on the size, timetable or pricing of the planned initial public offering (IPO).

“In response to the increased duties and taxes, we are pursuing a wide range of options, including increasing our prices in the US market to offset a portion of the increased costs,” Shein said in the filing.

The company also said the Iran war had hit demand, increased costs and caused delays of deliveries in some markets.

The first-quarter figures also partly reflected a paper loss of $328m due to an accounting change for special investor shares. The shares can be turned into ordinary stock later, and their value can change before a listing.

The filing showed that in the year to the end of March 2026 Shein had 281 million active customers – a rise of more than 16% on a year earlier – who placed a total of more than one billion orders.

On 10 July, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) gave Shein approval for a Hong Kong share sale after failed attempts to list in New York and London.

The Hong Kong share listing is expected to take place in the coming months.

The figures show the impact of a Trump-signed executive order to end a global tariff exemption that had been used by US shoppers of low-cost goods.

That order, which came into effect on 29 August 2025, broadened an earlier presidential action which specifically targeted cheap products from China and Hong Kong to cover the rest of the world.

The so-called de minimis exemption had allowed goods valued at $800 or less to enter the US without paying any tariffs. US consumers relied on the exemption to buy cheap goods from online commerce sites like Shein and Temu.

The White House said the global exemption was being used to “evade tariffs and funnel deadly synthetic opioids” to the US.

“The removal of the US de minimis exemption has had an adverse impact on our sales in the US and the overall growth of our net revenues,” Shein said in the filing.

Earlier in July, the European Union imposed a €3 (£2.56; $3.42) levy on low-value e-commerce imports.

The measure is aimed to curb what the trading bloc has said is unfair competition from China.

The US has paused its two-week bombing campaign against Iran, prompting Tehran to suspend its regional retaliatory attacks.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres toured the notorious former ‘Assad prison’ in Sednaya during the first visit by a serving UN chief to Syria since 2009. Known as the Assad regime’s flagship prison, Sednaya was dubbed Syria’s ‘slaughterhouse’ where thousands were tortured and killed.

Iran’s supreme leader calls for ‘absolute, unconditional termination’ of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon amid reports of renewed diplomacy.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said that peace between Tehran and the United States is contingent on Israel stopping its attacks on Lebanon.

Khamenei made the statement in a post on X on Sunday.

Iran “has designated the preservation of Lebanon’s territorial integrity, and the absolute, unconditional termination of the Zionist regime’s aggression as the primary condition for any agreement to ending the imposed war against the aggressive US,” he wrote.

Khamenei also voiced his support for the Lebanese group Hezbollah, its former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and the people of southern Lebanon – the focal point of Israel’s attacks – in a series of posts.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the defense of these oppressed yet powerful mujahideen [of Hezbollah] to be its strategic mandate,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei’s intervention comes amid reports of a halt to attacks and renewed diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.

Iran has insisted on an end to Israeli strikes on Lebanon a precondition for ending the war, enshrining that demand in the first clause of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two countries in June.

That agreement has since collapsed amid a dispute over the Strait of Hormuz.

Lebanon was drawn into the conflict in March after Hezbollah launched strikes on northern Israel, citing both the killing of then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the war’s first day, February 28, and Israel’s near-daily bombardment of Lebanese territory – attacks it says violated a ceasefire that had ended an earlier round of hostilities in 2024.

On June 26, following the signing of the US-Iran MoU, Lebanon and Israel signed a US-mediated framework agreement stipulating a phased Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory, but without a timetable for the withdrawal.

Instead, it said Israel will withdraw from occupied territories once Hezbollah is disarmed.

Iran and Hezbollah, which was not a party to the talks, have rejected the deal.

While the first phase is Israel’s withdrawal from three “pilot zones”, the Lebanese army said on Sunday that Israeli forces are obstructing the process, including by refusing to withdraw from designated territories.

As of Sunday, Israel was still bulldozing, shelling and conducting combing operations with machineguns across large areas of southern Lebanese territory it is occupying.

At least 4,329 people have been killed, while 37 Israeli soldiers and four Israeli civilians have died in the latest round of violence in Lebanon.

Israel violated a previous ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel more than 10,000 times, according to UN peacekeepers.

Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He was selected as supreme leader after the US and Israel’s assassination of his father.

Khamenei’s statement on Lebanon comes as war spreads into Yemen, with reports of an exchange of attacks between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.