Iran ties Hormuz reopening to end of US strikes and naval blockade

Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz while US military action and its naval blockade continue, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said, calling a safe-passage deal with Oman necessary but not sufficient.

Malaysia Airlines pilot arrested at Indonesian airport over 26kg ecstasy smuggling attempt

Forensic drug testing revealed that the pilot actively operated the aircraft while under the influence of illicit substances.

Romania reaches political agreement on euro adoption, president says

President Nicusor Dan unexpectedly announces adopting the European single currency was part of a broader agreement on key national priorities, but Romania remains far from meeting adoption criteria.

Iran says talks with Oman on new Strait of Hormuz shipping route nearing conclusion

Iran says talks with Oman on a new Strait of Hormuz shipping route are nearing conclusion, but stresses any deal would not by itself reopen the waterway.

Armenia's Pashinyan government resigns - but it's a formality, not a crisis

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's government resigned on August 2, a step mandated by Article 158 of the constitution, under which the cabinet automatically resigns on the first day of the newly elected National Assembly's first session.

Russia's Starlink rival Rassvet is operational over Ukraine

Russia's Rassvet satellites, operated by Bureau 1440, now provide at least two communication windows of more than an hour each per day over Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi and cited by military analyst Rob Lee on August 1.

Nayax bets on North Macedonia’s cashless future

Israeli fintech company Nayax has launched its cashless payment services in North Macedonia, expanding its Balkan footprint.

Anthropic says Claude AI models breached three companies during cyber tests

Anthropic says three Claude AI models gained unauthorised access to three companies' systems during cyber tests, after a config error gave the models internet access. The disclosure follows a similar rogue-agent episode revealed by OpenAI.

Investors commit nearly €200mn to expand Estonia's largest data centre

A group of prominent Estonian entrepreneurs is investing almost €200mn to expand the country's largest data centre, aiming to position the facility as a regional hub.

Digital Silk Road: Chinese and Kazakhstan-based tech companies ink multibillion-dollar agreements

Freedom Holding Corp says it is gaining access to tech from leading Chinese businesses while building infrastructure to adapt and scale it across Central Asia.

COMMENT: Ukraine's refinery campaign is turning oil into Russia's weakest economic link

Ukraine's long-range drone campaign against Russia's oil industry is simultaneously hitting three sensitive areas of the war economy at once: fuel production, domestic logistics of petroleum products, and fiscal stability.

TCHAKAROV: The Kyrgyz som’s calm is getting expensive

The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic has sold almost $1.5bn through nine foreign-exchange interventions since the start of 2026.

MACRO ADVISORY: Best Eurasia books published in 1H26

Macro-Advisory Limited has issued its annual mid-year compilation of the best business, political and general interest books published in 1H26, covering the twelve states in the Eurasia region plus Iran and Afghanistan.

COMMENT: Putin is hardening, not softening, despite Ukraine's battlefield gains

Ukraine's Western allies are preparing a final push to pressure Vladimir Putin before a winter expected to be gruelling for Kyiv, even as Ukraine's own long-range strikes campaign does real damage. But Putin is not budging.

EU needs 'Team Enlargement' coalition to drive next expansion push, think-tank says

The European Union needs a coalition of key member states to overcome political divisions and prepare the bloc for its next enlargement wave, according to an ECFR paper.

Central bank holds Azerbaijan's key rate at 6.5%

Central Bank of Azerbaijan left its refinancing rate unchanged, even as it raised its inflation forecasts for 2026 and 2027.

Nigeria's cities now hold half the population, up from one in ten in 1950

Nigeria's urban population has climbed from around one in ten people in 1950 to nearly one in two today, according to harmonised settlement data published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.

Ukraine less births than Kyrgyzstan this year as Central Europe's demographic crisis deepens

Ukraine is on track to record fewer births this year than Kyrgyzstan for the first time - a reversal from the end of the Soviet Union, when Ukraine's newborns outnumbered Kyrgyzstan's five to one.

Ukraine's central bank raises key rate to 15.5% as inflation risks build

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) raised its key policy rate to 15.5% from 15% on July 30, ending a hold that had lasted since March and reversing the rate-cutting cycle it opened at the start of the year, the central bank said.

Number of people living in each city - OWID

Most of the world’s fastest-growing megacities will soon be in Africa. Many cities across East Asia and Latin America have grown quickly over the last few decades.

Emerging-market ratings have absorbed the Iran war so far, but the buffers are thinning - Fitch

Emerging-market sovereign ratings have proved largely resilient to the US-Iran war in the first half of 2026, Fitch Ratings finds in its Global Emerging Markets Credit Brief for 3Q26 even though the outlook for a third is deteriorating.

Russia begins mass production of cheap, upgraded Banderol cruise missile

America's missile shield is running low just as Ukraine asks for more

A renewed Iran war would test already-diminished US interceptor inventories, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) warned in a July 27 analysis by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, as combat operations since a ceasefire collapse

Russia leans on glide bombs to grind out gains at Kostyantynivka

Russia has increased its use of its powerful FAB glide bombs to enable infantry advances in and around the key Donbas “fortress city” of Kostiantynivka, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in its July 29 campaign assessment.

Ukraine's refinery strikes settle into a routine of damage, repair and restart

Ukraine's long-range drone campaign against Russian oil refineries has become routine enough that analysts are now describing it as a predictable cycle rather than a series of shocks: strike, assess damage, repair, and restart.

ISTANBUL BLOG: Turkey probes TV presenter who called Syria’s al-Sharaa a “terrorist with a tie”

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

CENTRAL ASIA BLOG: Unjust bureaucratic hurdles are wrecking legit UK travel dreams

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

MOSCOW BLOG: The Nato-Russia clash mission creep

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.

MOSCOW BLOG: Hitting the Wildberries warehouse is a lot more painful than it looks

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.

KYIV BLOG: What is Ukraine’s future: Afghanistan or Finland?

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.

Water shortages leave 40 villages in Iraq's Diyala facing severe drought

More than 40 villages south of Bahraz in Iraq's Diyala province face acute water shortages, forcing residents to rely on wells, as authorities push to dredge the Khrisan river before the next irrigation season.

Sunken Nazi warships resurface on Danube as Serbia's drought deepens

Dozens of Nazi-era warships, deliberately sunk in the Danube in 1944 to stop them falling into Red Army hands, have resurfaced near Prahovo in eastern Serbia as a summer drought pushes the river to some of its lowest levels on record.

China's stalling car market masks a record global EV surge - IEA

Global electric car sales rebounded sharply in the second quarter of 2026, rising 35% quarter-on-quarter to record levels in 50 countries, even as overall car sales fell around 5% y/y in the first half of the year on weaker demand in China and the US

Europe's worst wildfire season in years flags a global El Nino already moving commodity markets

Several European countries are having their worst wildfire year in more than a decade and worst than last year’s record wildfires that burnt over one million hectares, according to data from the EU's Global Wildfire Information System.

Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time ever