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News

The US House voted 214-208 to direct Trump to withdraw forces from hostilities with Iran, with four Republicans defecting, on the 145th day of a war that has cost $37.5bn and killed 18 US service members.

Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has reached the minimum acceptance threshold for its takeover bid for Vienna-based Addiko Bank, but rival bidder, Slovenia’s NLB.

A senior Houthi adviser said the movement's naval blockade of Saudi Arabia will expand from Jizan to Jeddah and Yanbu, the Red Sea terminal Riyadh has used to bypass the closed Strait of Hormuz, after Trump threatened military retaliation.

Nato has pledged to defend Bulgaria against Iranian retaliation after parliament voted 136 to 13 to host up to eight US KC-135 refuelling aircraft at Bezmer Air Base from July 24, defying warnings from Tehran.

Bulgarian fuel and lubricant prices rose 26% year on year in June, the steepest increase in the EU and nearly double the bloc's 13.7% average, though down from 33.9% in May as monthly prices fell across all member states.

Tech

Recognised as next-generation provider delivering banking and banking-like services primarily through digital channels without relying on traditional bank branches.

Bubble Cloud Mozambique will operate two availability zones in Maputo City and Beluluane after becoming the only company licensed in INTIC's advanced category, under a new framework for cloud operators.

Russia's government is weighing plans to turn the Gosuslugi state services portal into a social network with family chats, local communities and news feeds, drawing on its 120mn verified users under a strategy running to 2035.

Three crypto protocols lost $35.55mn in 24 hours, with AFX Trade drained of $24.15mn after bridge validator keys were compromised. July hack losses have reached roughly $97mn, ahead of June's $75.32mn.

The European Commission has fined Google €890mn under the Digital Markets Act for favouring its own services in search results and blocking app developers from steering users to cheaper offers.

Opinion

With Putin’s war and economy going badly, the suggestion is that China will soon be seen as the clear number one strategic partner to the Kazakhs.

OSW analysts say PM Péter Magyar's sweeping constitutional changes aimed at restoring the rule of law relied "on tools similar to those for which Fidesz was criticised for years".

Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure are reshaping fuel markets without significantly reducing Moscow's oil export revenues, analyst argues.

From prison cell, launches blistering attack on collapse of judiciary that will silence political dissent ahead of all elections.

The rising costs of the Ukraine war have forced the Russian government to increase spending, causing the federal budget deficit to expand further. High spending growth is making it hard for the CBR to cut rates and revive the economy.

Data

Trust in Mykhailo Fedorov has surged since President Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed him as defence minister on July 15 as part of a surprise government reshuffle, with a new Rating Group poll putting him second only to the former commander-in-chief.

Kosovo's trade deficit widened 16.1% year on year to €578.3mn in June as imports reached €680.3mn against exports of €102mn, leaving export coverage of imports at 15%.

Poland’s unemployment rate rose 0.7pp year on year (y/y) to 5.8% in June, the country’s statistical office GUS said on July 23.

Albania registered 11,567 new businesses in the first half of 2026, up 7.5% y/y, with fully foreign-owned company registrations jumping 35.7% to 1,240. Real estate led sectoral growth at 35.8%, while Tirana took over half of all new entities.

As energy prices rise on renewed fighting in the Middle East, lingering hopes of monetary easing in the months ahead could be dashed.

Features

Tashkent is seeking to place its Islamic intellectual heritage at the centre of its national identity and foreign diplomacy, while preserving a firmly secular political system.

Wars are reshaping countries’ thinking on how to get goods in and out.

An Ankara conference has urged a Turkey, Russia, China and Iran alliance to deter the US. The treaty may never be signed, but the trade flows, pipelines and payment systems suggest the bloc already exists in all but name.

Central European economies are emerging as unexpected beneficiaries of the global artificial intelligence boom, with Poland and Hungary seeing growth in exports linked to AI infrastructure.

Russia’s deepening fuel crisis is spreading beyond filling-station queues into freight, agriculture, retail and public services, threatening to deliver a fresh inflationary shock as the country enters its peak harvest season.

Blogs

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.

Ukraine just got a new Prime Minister, Serhii Koretskyi, an oil and gas man that cut his teeth as an oil trader in the private sector before going to run Ukraine’s two biggest energy companies: Ukrnafta and Naftogaz.

Tehran's cafés and traffic jams are back weeks into renewed war, but residents interviewed say inflation and the cost of rebuilding now dominate conversation, with little appetite for another round of fighting.

The European Union's renewed drive to expand eastwards could face its biggest political obstacle yet if French far-right leader Marine Le Pen wins the 2027 presidential election.

bneGREEN

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.

The Caspian Sea's decline owes more to climate change than to dams or river abstraction, a water policy researcher says, with the Volga's navigation-focused dams limiting draw-off and Tehran's groundwater and wastewater plans making little progress.

Energy Dome, a Milan-based energy-storage developer, plans to build a battery in County Offaly that uses carbon dioxide rather than lithium to store power.

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