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News

Houthi forces say they fired ballistic missiles at the Saudi tanker NCC Ghazal in the Red Sea, forcing it to turn back. It is the third reported attack on Saudi-linked shipping in a week. Traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb has fallen by about 60%.

Any European warship approaching the Strait of Hormuz is a legitimate target, Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal affairs has said, adding that Tehran's policy is that the waterway will never return to its pre-war condition.

Ukrainian long-range missile-maker Fire Point aims to produce three missiles a day by the end of the year — roughly 90 a month, matching Russia's own pace — its co-owner Denys Shtilerman said in in an interview posted on YouTube on July 27.

Iraq's oil ministry is preparing to import diesel as queues lengthen at Baghdad filling stations, eight months after the prime minister ordered fuel imports halted on the grounds that the country had reached self-sufficiency.

Angola raised $321mn from the sale of a 15% stake in state-owned mobile operator Unitel, completing the country’s largest IPO to date.

Tech

Russia and its tech sector are largely absent from the global conversation about artificial intelligence, despite a historical track record of technological breakthroughs and a highly qualified workforce.

Syrian super app Labby has raised $10mn from UAE and Saudi investors, in what officials call the first direct foreign investment in a Syrian technology startup. The ride-hailing and delivery platform was announced at a signing ceremony in Damascus.

Serbian insurtech startup Ominimo raised a Series B funding round that valued it at $1.6bn, making it the country's first startup to achieve unicorn status.

Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT surged 472% on its Shanghai debut, briefly becoming the most valuable listed company on the mainland and staking a domestic challenge to Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron in the global DRAM market.

Russia has adopted a law aimed at regulating artificial intelligence in the country, inadvertently admitting that the country has next to nothing in the area of "sovereign AI."

Opinion

Russia’s war on Ukraine is entering a new phase in which the odds of escalation are rising even without any single dramatic turning point, says Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Is Volodymyr Zelenskiy more focused on his own political survival than on winning the war? That is the question The Spectator's Owen Matthews asked after the Ukrainian president's reshuffled his government.

“Zelensky bombed the Iranian vessel on the Caspian for the same reason his people paid Loomer to come to Kyiv and interview him: a PR campaign to try to win over Trump.”

Public discourse increasingly casts Central Asia as shedding Russian influence – through decolonisation, a pivot to China, or a push for greater sovereignty – but the reality on the ground is far messier.

Nothing screams political impotence like a national leader losing control over key military appointments at the time of war.

Data

Annual increase supported by growth across all major retail segments.

Russia's central bank cut its key rate for the tenth consecutive time on July 24, by 25 basis points to 14%, while raising its inflation forecast for 2026 to 6-7%. That's a contradiction and no one is clear where rates will go from here.

Iran's monthly inflation halved to 3.6% in the month to July 22, but the consumer price index stood 83.9% above its year-earlier level. Housing and utilities led the monthly rise. Tobacco was the only category to fall.

China now accounts for roughly 28% of global manufacturing value added, more than any other country or bloc and over triple its share in 2004, according to World Bank data.

Central bank opts to maintain a cautious monetary policy stance despite a continued slowdown in inflation, citing persistent external risks linked to geopolitical tensions and elevated energy prices.

Features

Climate change, water scarcity, geopolitical tensions and volatile markets are creating new vulnerabilities that threaten both agricultural production and consumer access to nutritious food, says new FAO report.

If Afghanistan’s rulers lose control of Badakhshan province, route to Chinese border will be blocked and calculations in Central Asia’s capitals may change.

Germany is paying roughly five times more for natural gas than it did before abandoning long-term Russian supply contracts, Berliner Zeitung reported on July 24.

Ukraine's Caspian strike killed an Iranian sailor and drew a retaliation threat from Tehran. Kyiv calls it interdicting the Iran-Russia arms route, but firing on a third state's vessel outside any declared war raises a harder question.

Rising oil prices will force central bank to hold effective borrowing rates higher for longer.

Blogs

Dubious rise to the top is questioned. Watchdog says remarks “incompatible with foreign policy vision”.

Tourist visas denied based on highly subjective assessments of financial means and intentions to use “return” section of plane ticket.

The stochastic war continues to escalate into a brutal tit-for-tat missile war with both sides continuously rolling out new and improved weapons that could eventually lead to a direct clash between Nato and Russia.

The tit-for-tat missile war escalated at the weekend after Ukraine hit the largest distribution centre belonging to Wildberries, the “Amazon of Russia.” The Kremlin hit back the next day with a massive drone and missile barrage.

What is in store for Ukraine? There are two starkly different possibilities. It can become Finland — a country that lost a war, lost a tenth of its territory, swallowed neutrality, and then got rich. Or it can become Afghanistan.

bneGREEN

This summer’s extreme temperatures have broken the normal “Bell curve” distribution of temperature variations and pushed it sharply to the right into record breaking highs. This is not normal – literally.

Iran added 668 MW of generating capacity in a week, including 70 MW of solar and a 160 MW combined-cycle unit at Asaluyeh, as Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi pointed to weekly additions amid summer power shortages.

Exceptionally low water levels on the Danube are threatening to disrupt river navigation in Serbia and have slowed imports of petroleum products, adding pressure to fuel supplies amid high demand and elevated global oil prices.

Sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific have remained above the +2.0°C threshold for a "super" El Niño for more than a week, reaching an anomaly of around +2.1°C by mid-July — more than a month early.

Unlicensed rooftop and self-consumption solar capacity in Turkey reached 24.2 GW by May 2026, taking total installed solar capacity to around 27 GW, according to grid operator TEİAŞ data.

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