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New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani congratulated Abdul El-Sayed on winning Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, praising his focus on healthcare and cost of living. He dismissed Republican claims branding El-Sayed a ‘mini Mamdani’, joking, ‘he can lift a lot more than I can’.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — Iran and Oman are in the final stages of a joint agreement to manage commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, agreeing on a route for ships Wednesday, the Iranian foreign ministry said.

However, Iran will not open the strait to traffic until the United States ends its blockade, the ministry said, CBS reported.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state-run media that there is agreement between Iran and Oman on proposed inbound and outbound shipping routes in the strait, CNN reported.

Iran and Oman are on opposite sides of the strait, a major commercial waterway used for much of the world’s oil and gas supplies. They’ve been in negotiations over it for about three weeks. Before the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, the strait was an open international waterway, but Iran closed it in response to the attacks.

“The geographic coordinates of the route envisioned by both sides have been agreed upon,” said Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for the Iran Foreign Ministry, told the country’s state news agency, as reported by The New York Times. “If certain third parties do not obstruct the process, a joint statement by the two countries,containing the principal considerations and points of agreement, is currently in the final stages of review and drafting.”

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters there has been a lot of progress on reopening the strait and that it will reopen “soon,” perhaps even as soon as Wednesday or Thursday. However, Gharibabadi denied again that Iran is negotiating in any way over the waterway with the United States, CNN said.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Dr. Erica Schwartz as the leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, finally installing a new director for the agency after nearly a year.

Schwartz was deputy surgeon general during President Donald Trump‘s first term. She is a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer and Navy physician.

The vote Wednesday was 51-44, mostly along party lines, NBC News reported. Sen.Tim Kaine, D-Va., voted with Republicans to approve Schwartz.

Schwartz succeeds Dr. Susan Monarez, who was fired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in August after less than a month in the job, allegedly because she disagreed with Kennedy about vaccines.

Monarez was followed by several acting directors — first Jim O’Neill, Kennedy’s deputy secretary, and then Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health.

The White House nominated Schwartz to fill the role in April. Kennedy said that he hadn’t spoken to Trump about nominating her.

Schwartz has a background of supporting and guiding vaccination programs for the government. She said at a Senate hearing in July that vaccines are safe and effective, although some health experts said she didn’t do enough to distance herself from some of Kennedy’s views, NBC News reported.

“As CDC director, my sacred responsibility is to provide the American people with public health guidance that is clear, honest and evidence based,” Schwartz said. “I will never betray the science.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chairman of the Health, Education,Labor and Pensions Committee and a medical doctor, criticized Schwartz during the hearing for allegedly dodging his questions.

However, he said he chose to vote for Schwartz on Wednesday after they were able to talk again.

“I am confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not,” he said during a committee meeting in July. “If confirmed, I look forward to working with Dr. Schwartz to protect children’s health and regain trust in the CDC. There’s more to do to repair the damage that has been done to the U.S. public health response, but this is a start.”

The National Public Health Coalition, an advocacy group containing many former CDC employees, said last month that it would not support Schwartz’s nomination based on the July hearing.

“The public needed to hear clear commitments about how she would protect CDC guidance from political pressure,” it said in a statement. “Too often, her stated commitments were incomplete, vague or missing.”

Aug. 5 (UPI) — Hungary is facing an energy crisis as the Danube River, which cools the nation’s largest power plant, dries to record lows.

Water levels of the 1,800-mile river, which flows through 10 countries in Europe, has fallen amid a three-month drought across the continent.

The Danube is an integral component in the running of Paks, Hungary’s only nuclear power plant, as it flows into the reactor and cools it down.

Three of the plant’s four reactors were not in operation on Wednesday, while the fourth is operating at 50% power, CBS News reported.

The plant is responsible for generating half the electricity needed by the country’s 10 million people.

“Several factors will determine whether Hungary’s most important power plant can avoid a complete shutdown in the coming days,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, CBS News reported.

“There are a few critical days left — today and tomorrow are certainly that,” Magyar added, according to the outlet. “I ask everyone to continue the national unity that has developed in the country. Let’s do what our country demands.”

But the drying of the Danube has brought a silver lining for some. Residents and researchers have marveled at several discoveries that have emerged as water levels drop.

In Serbia, researchers have found some 200 boats that had been hidden deep in the Danube, including World War II-era Nazi warships, Smithsonian magazine reported.

A ship that likely sank in 1937 was exposed in Croatia.

And in Bulgaria, residents discovered the remains of a woolly mammoth.

The stock was down more than 13 percent as investors were spooked by the company’s heavy investments.

SpaceX share price has plunged more than 13 percent, a day after the Elon Musk-run company reported its first quarterly earnings as a publicly listed company.

On Wednesday, the stock closed down at $108.10, down 13.6 percent from Tuesday’s close of $125.33.

Investors have been spooked by the increase in the company’s capital expenditure. At $18.37bn, it was a six-fold jump from last year, and much higher than the $13.2bn that analysts had forecast.

The majority of that investment, $15.8bn, is earmarked for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, which includes specialised compute, storage, networking and software systems required to build, train, deploy and operate AI models at scale. SpaceX has said it wants to increase the capacity of its data centres from 1.4GW currently to 2GW by year-end.

Investors across the technology sector are questioning whether the large investments in AI infrastructure will actually yield returns.

“We’ve watched the same scrutiny land on Big Tech this earnings season, where investors have questioned open-ended wallets and started demanding a visible return on them,” said Josh Gilbert, lead analyst at trading platform eToro.

“SpaceX faces that test with an added degree of difficulty because it’s asking shareholders to bankroll data centres in orbit.”

SpaceX has said its computing capacity not only serves its Grok models but is also actively sold, with $14.1bn in cloud-services agreements lined up.

The one area that SpaceX saw some profit was from the “connectivity” business, with revenue jumping 66 percent from a year earlier as the number of subscribers to its Starlink satellite communications service doubled to 12 million, bringing in $1.66bn in operating income.

SpaceX’s share price faces another test on Thursday, when the first tranche of the post-IPO lock-up expires, making up to 911.5 million shares, roughly 20 percent of restricted holdings, eligible for sale.

Melissa Otto, head of Visible Alpha research at S&P Global, told Al Jazeera that the stock is “likely to be volatile” once the lock-up lifts.

SpaceX’s IPO was priced at $135 per share and climbed to $225 within days of its June 12 debut, briefly catapulting Musk as the world’s first trillionaire. The stock has since dropped.

The announcement comes as Lula warns of foreign interference and polls show a tightening presidential race.

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has named conservative Congressman Alfredo Gaspar as his running mate, ending weeks of speculation over who would join his presidential ticket in October’s election against incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The announcement on Wednesday also highlighted the challenges facing Bolsonaro’s campaign, which has struggled to build alliances beyond his own Liberal Party and failed in an effort to recruit a woman to the ticket in hopes of broadening its appeal.

Gaspar, 55, has represented the northeastern state of Alagoas in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies since 2023 and served as its public security secretary.

Accepting the nomination, he described himself as “a simple person from the northeast” whose life had been defined by “hard work and honour”, saying he would work alongside Bolsonaro “to transform Brazil into a fair and decent place”.

Gaspar led a congressional investigation into Brazil’s National Social Security Institute (INSS), the agency that oversees the country’s public pension and social security system. Fabio Luis Lula da Silva, the president’s son, is under investigation over allegations that he received improper payments linked to an alleged pension fraud scheme involving that agency.

Political analyst Lucas de Aragao, a partner at consultancy Arko Advice, said the choice was surprising but gave Bolsonaro someone well-placed to attack Lula on an issue that has become politically sensitive.

“He has the authority to deal with an issue that is uncomfortable for Lula. He also speaks extensively about public security,” Aragao said.

Gaspar emerged as the Liberal Party’s preferred choice after several higher-profile figures courted by Bolsonaro, including Senator Tereza Cristina of the Progressive Party and former Caixa Economica Federal chief Daniella Marques of the Republicanos, failed to get their own parties to support them in joining the ticket.

Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, has struggled to expand his coalition, with several centre-right parties choosing to either back Lula’s broader coalition or remain neutral in the election in hopes of maximising their representation in Congress and appealing to anti-Bolsonaro voters in the country’s northeast.

A Quaest survey published on Wednesday found Lula leading Bolsonaro 44 percent to 39 percent in a simulated run-off, down from an eight-point lead in mid-July. In a first-round scenario, Lula was on 39 percent support to Bolsonaro’s 30 percent. If no candidate wins more than half the valid votes in the first round, the top two candidates advance to a run-off.

Launching his re-election campaign on Sunday, Lula cast the October vote as a battle to defend Brazil’s sovereignty amid growing concerns over foreign influence.

“Too many people are poking their fingers into our business. Too many people are interfering in our land. And that is going to stop,” he told supporters.

In July, Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who Lula said were being sent to “meddle” in the elections.

The diplomatic rift deepened on Tuesday, when the Trump administration said it was temporarily revoking the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington in response to Brasilia withholding approval for Trump’s ambassadorial nominee.

Lula has pointed to those tensions, along with Trump’s public support for Flavio Bolsonaro and US tariffs imposed on Brazilian goods, as evidence that Brazil’s sovereignty is under pressure.

“As long as I’m president, no one from outside will interfere in Brazilian elections,” Lula said on Wednesday.

Law enforcement in the US state of North Carolina has reported a fatal mass shooting in the city of Prospect Hill.

“Deputies arriving on scene found multiple people who had been shot. One person was transported to Duke University Hospital with a gunshot wound, and there are multiple other fatalities,” the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Wednesday.

“SBI Crime scene investigators are on scene processing evidence and conducting interviews. There is NO THREAT to the general public.”

More to come…

Aug. 5 (UPI) — Officers arrested a woman accused of stabbing four men in London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, the Metropolitan Police said Wednesday.

All four victims — aged 34, 39, 42 and 52 — were transported to the hospital. Two have been released, while the other two were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Chief Superintendent Jason Stewart said officers responded to the area — a dining and entertainment district — “within minutes” of receiving reports of the attacks.

“While still at an early stage of the investigation, we would like to reassure the community that we currently believe this to be an isolated, mental-health related incident,” he said in a statement on X.

“A visible police presence will remain in the area while evidence is gathered at the scene and we thank the pubic for their understanding.”

People who worked in the area told The Guardian the suspect was known in the area and often displayed erratic behavior. Witnesses said it appeared she chose the victims at random and used scissors in the attack.

Arjan Gjorga, who works at a restaurant near the incident, told The Guardian he witnessed the attack.

“I see her all the time, she’s a homeless person. She walks around up and down asking for help, she visits the church at the top of the street,” he said.

Police cordoned off part of the area, including St Mungo’s homeless shelter. A representative for the facility told the BBC they couldn’t “confirm whether anyone from St Mungo’s is involved at this stage.”

The suspect was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and assault.

The pontiff’s first Latin America trip will take him back to Peru, where he spent decades as a missionary and bishop.

Pope Leo XIV will return to the region that shaped much of his ministry, making his first trip to Latin America as head of the Catholic Church in November.

The Vatican announced on Wednesday that Leo will travel to the three South American countries — Uruguay, Argentina and Peru — from November 6 to 17.

Pope Leo’s stop in Peru is especially significant. He spent decades, on and off, in the Andean country, first as a missionary and later as a bishop for the Diocese of Chiclayo in northern Peru.

The trip will also mark the first papal visit to Argentina and Uruguay in nearly 40 years.

The itinerary includes stops in the cities of Montevideo, Paysandu and Florida in Uruguay from November 6 to 8; Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Lujan in Argentina from November 8 to 11; and Lima, Chiclayo, Cusco and Pucallpa in Peru from November 11 to 17. More details about the pope’s itinerary will be released closer to the trip.

Pope Leo’s return to Chiclayo is likely to be one of the most emotional moments of the tour.

Although born in Chicago, Pope Leo first arrived in Peru in 1985 at age 30. Over the next three decades, he moved between the United States and Peru as a missionary.

In 2014, Pope Francis appointed him to the Diocese of Chiclayo. He became a Peruvian citizen the following year and led the diocese until 2023.

Upon his election as pope in 2025, he thanked the diocese in his inaugural address — and the city embraced him as the first “papa chiclayano”, the first pope from Chiclayo. Thousands of people gathered in Chiclayo’s main square to celebrate the results of the papal conclave.

The Argentina leg of the visit is also heavily symbolic. Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, was born in Argentina but never returned to his home country during his 12-year papacy, despite repeated invitations from multiple presidents.

Pope Francis made his final trip to South America in 2018, when he visited Peru and Chile. Pope Leo will become the first pope to visit Argentina since John Paul II travelled there in 1987.

Latin America and the Caribbean are considered the regions with the largest Catholic populations.

In a survey of religious distribution in 2013, the Pew Research Center indicated that 39 percent of the world’s Catholics were located in Latin America and the Caribbean, compared to 24 percent in Europe, the next largest region.

But the Catholic Church is grappling with declining influence across Latin America. Polling by the public opinion firm Latinobarometro found the share of people in the region who identify as Catholic fell from about 80 percent in 1995 to 54 percent in 2024. Evangelical Christianity, meanwhile, has seen its influence grow in the region.

Since assuming the papacy, Pope Leo has ramped up his international travel schedule.

Before heading to South America, he is due to visit France from September 25 to 28, his first trip to the country as pope, and he visited four African countries, as well as Spain, earlier this year.

A deal between the US and Iran could be signed within 48 hours, according to US officials. The agreement would reportedly focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and could mark a first step towards broader negotiations.

Al Jazeera’s Marah Ryan has the latest.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — Police in Miami responded to the home of celebrity blogger Perez Hilton on Tuesday after receiving reports that he was livestreaming “acts of self-harm” on social media.

Hilton, 48, was seen on TikTok harming himself with a knife and making cuts on his body, ABC News reported. His torso and face were reportedly bloodied.

Multiple people watching the livestream called the police, prompting deputies with the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office to be dispatched to his home.

Law enforcement spoke to several members of his family and found out he was alone in the house.

Upon arrival, deputies “tactically disengaged while continuing to monitor the situation.”

“In many incidents involving a person experiencing a mental health crisis or actively harming themselves, deputies prioritize de-escalation by creating time, distance, and opportunities for communication,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement provided to news outlets.

“Unless there is an immediate threat to others, slowing the situation and utilizing crisis intervention techniques can reduce the likelihood of a suicide-by-cop encounter and minimize the risk of injury to the individual, deputies and the public.”

Hilton, real name Mario Lavandeira Jr., first came to prominence in the early 2000s with his celebrity gossip blog. He has three young children.

“We are aware of the concerning content circulating online involving our client, Perez Hilton,” Golden Artists Entertainment said in a statement to Variety. “At this time, we have not been able to make direct contact with him, despite our ongoing efforts to reach him.”

“Our primary concern is Perez’s health and well-being, as well as the well-being of his family,” the statement continued. “Until we have confirmed information, we will not speculate or comment further.”

Egyptian football star Mohamed Salah has been greeted by hundreds of fans upon arriving in Istanbul wearing Trabzonspor’s burgundy-and-blue kit ahead of his expected move to the Turkish Super Lig club.

Ex-Liverpool star Mohamed Salah arrived in Istanbul on Wednesday to complete his move to Turkiye club Trabzonspor.

Mohamed Salah arrived at an Istanbul airport on Wednesday, smiling and wearing Trabzonspor’s burgundy and blue kit before his expected move to ⁠the Turkish top-tier side, as hundreds of fans jostled to get a glimpse of the Egyptian forward.

Trabzonspor announced a day earlier they were in negotiations with Salah, who left Liverpool at the end of last season, and club chairman Ertugrul ⁠Dogan said they expected to sign the 34-year-old on a free transfer at a ceremony in the Black Sea city on Thursday.

“Trabzon, are you ready? I can hear you. See you very soon,” Salah said in a video posted by the club on X.

“Everywhere is Trabzon to us,” he added, referring to the club’s motto while wearing a Trabzonspor ‌kit.

Upon arriving at Ataturk Airport, Salah was met by hundreds of fans. He waved at supporters and initiated a traditional chant with them, before departing for a medical check and a later planned flight east to Trabzon.

Salah spent nine years at Liverpool, scoring 257 goals in 442 appearances and winning the Premier League twice and the Champions League once.

In the 2024-25 season, Salah scored 29 Premier League goals and provided 18 ⁠assists, equalling the league record for most goal involvements in a single ⁠season and setting the record for a 38-game campaign.

He was named Premier League Player of the Season and won the Golden Boot and the Playmaker Award, becoming the first player to take all three in one campaign.

His output waned last season, with ⁠seven goals and seven assists in 27 league matches, and he was left on the bench in Champions League games, leading to a public ⁠spat with Liverpool’s then-manager Arne Slot.

Salah started his career in Europe ⁠at Swiss side Basel in 2012 and later joined Chelsea. He also had brief stints at Fiorentina and AS Roma between 2015 and 2017 before joining Liverpool.

Trabzonspor – generally considered to be the fourth biggest team in Turkiye after Istanbul sides Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, ‌and Besiktas – finished third in the Super Lig last season and will enter the Europa League playoff round. The club’s last league championship was in the 2021-22 season.

Salah had been close to joining Besiktas, ‌but ‌negotiations had stalled over financial and image-rights demands, according to local media.

Details of the contract Salah is expected to sign have not been disclosed yet.

Every Palestinian born in the West Bank before the start of the occupation in 1967 has witnessed the extent to which Israel has transformed the landscape through spatial planning, military closures, and settlement, infrastructure and road construction. Sixty years on, what used to be a straightforward journey from point A to point B within the West Bank has become an arduous and frequently hazardous undertaking.

As a foreigner living in the West Bank in the 1980s and visiting it off and on ever since, this transformation revealed itself in incremental leaps and bounds, on each occasion provoking a shock of recognition mixed with consternation at how things looked the same but different.

I remember driving from Jerusalem to Ramallah in the 1980s, for example. The two cities were linked by a single highway with an Israeli army checkpoint at Qalandia refugee camp. To get to my destination would take me from 20 minutes to half an hour, at most, depending on traffic and the mood of the soldiers that day.

Fast forward to 2000. I had not visited for several years on the day I took my rental car along the old road out of Jerusalem. Ten minutes into my journey and not having taken any turns, I suddenly found myself inside an Israeli settlement, a suburb of occupied East Jerusalem.

Backtracking, I discovered that the way to Ramallah now required leaving the main highway for a lesser road. I proceeded. Yet before another 10 minutes had passed, I ended up at the entrance to another Israeli settlement, this time in the occupied West Bank, having again missed the relevant exit.

Looking back at those days, I now remember such unexpected forced deviations as annoyances that barely consumed additional time. Today, by contrast, travelling from Jerusalem to Ramallah can take an hour, or hours, as the army slows down or holds up traffic at all the available access points to Ramallah at will.

For Palestinians, the experience is 10 times worse. Ever growing in number and impact, Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement have come in various types. One class includes army checkpoints, both stationary and mobile, on West Bank arteries, makeshift earthen embankments blocking roads to villages and refugee camps, and steel gates that the army can close and open via remote control.

A second category involves access to occupied East Jerusalem and Israel, which is possible only by obtaining a permit from the military authorities. This affects Palestinians wishing to visit Islam’s and Christianity’s holy sites as well as those employed inside Israel.

And a third category of restrictions concerns West Bank Palestinians’ ability to travel abroad via the Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan.

Movement restrictions intensified after the October 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel. Their cumulative impact has been to fragment Palestinian society and the way it functions. They have disrupted the economy, in particular.

A combination of military no-go zones and settler violence has made the 61 percent of the West Bank that constitutes Area C, where most agricultural lands are located, increasingly inaccessible.

Curbs on movement have affected trade, raising the cost of commerce when transport is delayed at checkpoints and perishable goods spoil.

Imports and exports also face impediments, harming a Palestinian economy that is heavily dependent on trade with Israel and the outside world (representing roughly 67 percent of its GDP).

Restricted hours at Allenby and an untransparent, elastic definition of “dual-use” goods cause costly delays for imports, stymying development. Traders’ inability to meet their Israeli counterparts in person forces them to use intermediaries at additional expense.

Movement restrictions have created their own self-perpetuating cat-and-mouse dynamic as Palestinians find ways to circumvent them and the army imposes additional curbs, forcing people to pursue evermore inventive bypass tactics. But their clever manoeuvring may carry additional costs or even risks to their lives.

Take, for example, efforts by Palestinians – desperate to put food on the table – to illegally cross into Israel for work. Some have been shot dead when breaching Israel’s separation barrier while others have been detained.

In the months before October 2023, about 193,000 West Bank and Gaza workers were employed in Israel or Israeli settlements, mainly in construction and agriculture, contributing 20 to 25 percent to the Palestinian GDP.

Israel stopped workers from crossing the Green Line on the heels of the Hamas attack, citing security concerns, even though it has offered no evidence that Palestinian workers employed in Israel in any way played a role in the events of October 2023. Since then, the number of those permitted to go to their Israeli jobs is estimated at a mere 44,000, mostly in skilled professions.

The loss of what may be a family’s primary income has been calamitous, affecting about 750,000 people (based on an average family size of five) in a population of about 3.3 million. Meanwhile, an economic downturn has further swelled the ranks of the West Bank unemployed. Poverty rates have shot up.

Movement restrictions have also disrupted family networks, limiting participation in large gatherings, such as weddings and funerals, as extended families are spread throughout the West Bank. Curbs on movement additionally complicate access to emergency or specialised medical care and even to education. Since October 2023, Palestinian institutions of higher education have reduced in-class teaching as students have faced repeated delays – often of unpredictable length – in coming to school. Online classes can only partially compensate for this disruption.

What purpose do the myriad movement restrictions serve? Palestinians often describe their experience of navigating army checkpoints as a humiliation and a form of harassment, an effort by Israeli soldiers to both show who is boss and make the population’s life difficult. Many Palestinians see in soldiers’ conduct a way of taking revenge for the Hamas attacks.

Yet by increasing the occupation’s severity, checkpoints and other restrictions on Palestinians’ movement could well have the opposite effect of triggering greater violence and thus making Israel and its citizens, including those residing in illegal settlements, not more but less secure.

While the Israeli army might argue that a certain checkpoint at a given location and time is justified on the grounds of maintaining security, in their ubiquity and seeming arbitrariness, these restrictions have, over the years, gone far beyond what could reasonably be termed a security rationale.

A motive other than maintaining security must, therefore, be at play. It is not hard to find one when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a two-state solution and champions annexing the occupied West Bank to Israel while some members of his cabinet, like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, openly espouse policies that would encourage West Bank Palestinians to emigrate.

Whatever the declared policy, the compounding impact of Israel’s movement restrictions has been to break up the West Bank into smaller zones that the Israeli army and intelligence apparatus can more easily penetrate and control. Palestinian politics remains vibrant in these localities (elections to West Bank municipal councils were held most recently this past April) while national politics and governance have eroded, partly as a result of obstacles to movement.

And Israel has been able to suppress, for now, armed resistance to the occupation, which has assumed an increasingly local character. The army made short work of small armed groups like the Lions’ Den, for example. These had emerged five years ago in the northern West Bank, spontaneously and largely uncoordinated between localities.

Yet even as Israel splits Palestinian society into separate enclaves, it has found no effective answer to Palestinians’ enduring aspirations to free themselves from the military occupation. To the contrary, it is sowing the seeds for further resistance through its annexationist agenda and unremittingly punitive actions.

A version of this article appeared first on Al Jazeera Arabic’s website. 

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

SEOUL, Aug. 5 (UPI) — Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, warned Wednesday that Pyongyang could adopt “additional military options” against Japan, accusing Tokyo of becoming a “war state” through its expanding military capabilities.

Kim made the remarks in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

“Japan, a war criminal state, is accelerating its transformation into a war state,” she wrote, claiming that Tokyo was exploiting growing geopolitical tensions to boost its offensive military capacity.

She cited Japan’s recent test-firing of U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles from a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean and its March deployment of long-range surface-to-ship missiles and high-speed gliding projectiles at bases in Kumamoto and Shizuoka prefectures as examples of Tokyo’s changing military posture.

Kim also pointed to Japan’s participation in U.S.-led military exercises in the Philippines in May, where it launched offensive missiles outside its territory for the first time since World War II.

Kim claimed that Japan’s growing arsenal of long-range weapons was transforming its Self-Defense Forces into an offensive military.

“The mass possession of different kinds of long-range strike means with an unexpectedness of preemptive attack and a drastic increase in the radius of their operation … make Japan reorganize its overall armed forces as a formation of preemptive attack and overseas aggression,” she wrote.

Kim also accused the United States of driving Japan’s military expansion, saying Tokyo and Seoul were acting as Washington’s “shock brigade” in the region.

“Japan’s military expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, which is being turned into the world’s biggest hotspot due to the U.S. exclusive and aggressive foreign policy … seriously threatens international peace and stability,” she wrote.

North Korea has repeatedly criticized the administration of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a hawkish conservative who took office in February, over efforts to strengthen Japan’s military and broaden its regional security role.

Tokyo has bolstered its defense posture since adopting a new National Security Strategy in late 2022 that calls for acquiring “counterstrike capabilities,” including long-range missiles intended to strike enemy launch sites if Japan comes under attack.

In a commentary published in KCNA on Tuesday, North Korea condemned a recent U.S.-led multinational naval exercise in Hawaii and criticized military cooperation among Washington and its regional allies, including the Pentagon’s recent move to upgrade U.S. Forces Japan into a joint force headquarters with expanded operational responsibilities.

Kim said North Korea should make Japan “regret” its growing military ambitions.

“One effective way is to make Japan feel that its security has been exposed to greater danger due to its greediness,” she wrote. “We will never remain a passive onlooker to the military evolution of Japan which may pose a grave threat to the security of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

“I make it clear upon authorization that the armed forces of the DPRK and the military leadership will set up additional military options which are obviously due to Japan’s transformation,” she added.

Seventeen people were injured when an Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi encountered severe turbulence, dropping nearly 300 feet mid-air before landing safely in Delhi.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — Social media platform X said it was challenging a Turkish court order to restrict access to the official presidential candidacy office account of jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

X’s global government affairs team said in a Tuesday statement that the order requires the platform to block the account in Turkey while leaving it accessible to the rest of the world.

“Although Turkey’s laws force us to comply with the order, we are challenging the order in court and, in the spirit of full transparency, are sharing the court order,” the team said, adding that it is challenging the order “because we believe keeping the platform accessible in Turkey is vital to supporting freedom of expression and access to information.”

Not complying with the order could trigger “severe sanctions,” according to X, including throttling the entire platform in Turkey.

According to the order shared by X, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office was investigating allegations of of public disseminating misleading information.

“As a result of open-source research, it was determined that the account identified below had shared content alleged to constitute the offense under investigation and that the content was of a nature capable of disturbing public peace,” the document said. The content in question was not specified.

Though the election is not scheduled until 2028, Imamoglu is widely seen as the main political rival of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian president, who has been in office for nearly 12 years, after previously serving as prime minister for 11 years.

Imamoglu’s presidential candidacy office X account was created in November 2025 and has more than 225,700 followers.

Access to his personal account, which has more than 9.4 million followers, was restricted in May 2025.

Turkish authorities detained Imamoglu and more than 100 people on March 19, 2025. He was formally arrested and remanded in custody four days later on suspicion of unlawfully recording personal data, accepting bribes, rigging tenders conducted by public institutions and establishing an organization for the purpose of committing crimes.

Prosecutors allege that an organization led by Imamoglu defrauded public institutions of about $3.9 billion since 2015. If convicted, he faces 1,929 years in prison.

Imamoglu and his Republican People’s Party have denied the allegations.

Human Rights Watch has described his initial detention as “a politically motivated move to stifle lawful political activities.”

Aug. 5 (UPI) — An Indian cargo ship has sunk after being struck by a projectile off Yemen, officials said, raising concerns that the Middle East war’s maritime front is expanding.

It was unclear who launched the projectile, but the vessel, identified as the MSV Faize Noore Oliya, was hit in the Red Sea off Hodeidah, a port controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis.

The attack occurred amid a Houthi-declared maritime blockade targeting Saudi Arabia and Saudi-linked shipping in the Red Sea.

All 14 sailors on the ship were safely rescued by the Yemeni Coast Guard and transported to the Port of Mokha, India’s minister of ports, shipping and waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal, said in a statement Tuesday.

Of the 14 sailors rescued, 13 were Indian. Their condition was not known.

“India strongly condemns this unprovoked attack on the defenseless mechanized sailing vessel,” he said, adding that he instructed the director general of the Maritime Administration to coordinate with all relevant agencies to ensure the “absolute security of Indian seafarers in the region and provide all necessary assistance to the rescued crew.”

India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a separate statement that its embassy in Riyadh was closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with the Yemeni authorities concerning the safety and security of the crew.

While no group has yet claimed responsibility, the Yemen government-aligned National Resistance Forces has blamed the Houthis.

“The Houthis targeting today of the Indian ship is an extension of their terrorist behavior directed against the Yemeni people,” Maj. Gen. Sadiq Dwaid, spokesperson for the National Resistance Forces, said in an online statement.

“They have previously targeted oil export ports — the main source of salaries for state employees — and Yemeni ports in general, as well as commercial ships, and their support and management of piracy operations in collaboration with the pirates of the African Horn.”

The Houthis, who are locked in a civil war against the internationally recognized Yemeni government, imposed their blockade on July 20, specifically preventing Saudi Arabian ships from transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Iran-backed militia accuses Saudi Arabia of laying an “unjust and oppressive siege” against it by supporting the Yemeni government in the civil war.

The Houthis have struck at least two Saudi tankers since. If the Houthis are confirmed to have carried out the attack, it would be the first known strike on a non-Saudi vessel since they declared their maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia on July 20.

It also comes as Iran has been enforcing a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is on the northeastern side of Saudi Arabia.

Bangladeshi journalist and fact-checker Qadaruddin Shishir investigates extrajudicial killings and disinformation following the student-led protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024.

As Bangladesh continues a political transition under new governance, he turns his focus towards debunking fake news and misleading narratives spreading online. Determined to safeguard his nation’s democratic integrity, he launches an independent organisation to expand his work and mentor a new generation of fact-checkers.

As Bangladesh struggles to rebuild trust after political turmoil, Shishir pins his hopes on a new generation willing to defend the truth.

Footage shows some of the more than 200 Bolivian police and military officers patrolling its border with Brazil. A wave of violence linked to clashes between Brazilian criminal groups fighting to control drug routes has left at least nine dead.

Aug. 4 (UPI) — Sen. Susan Collins said Tuesday that she will vote against Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, further narrowing his path to confirmation.

“While I believe Mr. Blanche is a capable lawyer, the Department of Justice has become increasingly political. Mr. Blanche has taken several actions that have further eroded the department’s independence, and that is the basis for my vote to oppose his confirmation,” Collins, a Republican from Maine, said in a statement.

Collins cited Blanche’s handling of Trump’s anti-weaponization fund, his commitments to anti-abortion groups to restrict the mailing of abortion medication and the Justice Department’s failed attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video encouraging active-duty service members to reject unlawful orders.

“For these reasons, I will vote against this nomination,” she said.

Trump tapped Blanche, the president’s former personal lawyer, to lead the Justice Department in June. He has served as acting attorney general since Trump fired Pam Bondi in April.

But his confirmation as attorney general has been anything but smooth.

Collins’ announcemeent came hours after Blanche’s nomination was advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it had stalled after two Republican senators — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — said they would not vote in his favor without written, binding proof that a so-called anti-weaponization fund had been rescinded. Blanche provided that proof late Sunday.

With his nomination advanced to the full Senate, he will require a majority vote to approve confirmation. However, all 45 Democrats and both independents are expected to vote against him. With Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., still absent and Collins stating she will not support his nomination, Blanche can afford to lose the support of only one additional Republican.

Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, who had indicated he might not support Blanche, said Tuesday that, following “robust discussions” with the the acting attorney general, he would vote for him, leaving the votes of Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska unknown, neither of whom has commented.

Blanche has been criticized by Democrats, democracy advocates and legal experts for allegedly further politicizing the Justice Department and using the department to further Trump’s aims, including targeting the president’s perceived political opponents.

He approved the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund to distribute taxpayer money to those who claim to be victims of the Biden administration’s Justice Department, including those convicted on crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection of the Capitol.

The fund was part of a settlement reached to resolve a case Trump brought against the federal government seeking $10 billion in damages stemming from an Internal Revenue Service contractor leaking his tax returns to the press.

Democrats and even Republicans balked at the fund.

Also part of the deal was language protecting Trump, his two adult sons and the Trump Organization from certain audits.

Last month, more than 1,200 former DOJ employees spanning 14 administrations issued a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Blanche’s nomination, arguing that the consequences of his politicization of the department leave “communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected and our national security more vulnerable.”

Loaded pistol and rifle among items found in suspect’s pocket, car and home following arrest, police say.

A man carrying a loaded handgun and hollow-point ammunition has been arrested at Donald Trump’s Los Angeles-area golf club, days before a scheduled visit by the US president, local authorities said.

The man, arrested on Sunday at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, was identified by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as 38-year-old Jeanine John Taele. The department said he had been seen photographing and filming the grounds while appearing to monitor security preparations ahead of Trump’s scheduled appearance at a Republican Party fundraising dinner on Tuesday.

Deputies said they found a 16-round magazine loaded with ammunition in his pocket, and later recovered a loaded pistol with a round chambered, along with a second loaded magazine, from his vehicle in the golf course car park.

Officials said Taele had already been under investigation by the El Segundo Police Department over a separate robbery case.

On Monday, detectives working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force searched Taele’s Downey home, where they said they recovered an illegally modified rifle, a second pistol, body armour, high-capacity magazines, bulk ammunition and other radio signal devices and notebooks containing what officials described only as “concerning statements”.

The sheriff’s department said it had not identified any credible threat to the public and that Taele is being held without bail while prosecutors weigh charges.

Trump’s visit is part of a broader campaign swing through California and Nevada ahead of the November midterm elections.