“An explosion in Poland left a 10m-wide crater after Russia launched an overnight missile attack on Ukraine. Polish armed forces are investigating a possible missile incursion after fighter jets were scrambled and sirens sounded in the eastern border city of Lublin in response to the Russian attack. Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian city of Lviv overnight, near the Polish border, in a huge overnight bombardment of 74 missiles and 284 drones spanning east to west Ukraine. The operational command of the Polish armed forces said on Thursday morning that at least 12 missiles had been observed over western Ukraine, but they had not identified what had crashed into its territory.” (07/30/26)
“The Federal Reserve left its key interest rate unchanged Wednesday despite persistently high inflation and a spike in energy prices caused by the Iran war. The Fed’s rate-setting committee reached the 9-3 decision after two days of deliberations, marking the fifth straight meeting at which the benchmark rate was kept at around 3.6%. Dissenting in favor of a quarter-point interest rate hike were Beth Hammack, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed; and Lorie Logan, president of the Dallas Fed. Inflation has been stuck above the central bank’s 2% target for more than five years.” (07/29/26)
“Todd Blanche’s hopes of becoming US attorney general seemed to be in jeopardy on Wednesday after the Department of Justice did not provide written assurances to a key Republican senator that a $1.8bn slush fund was dead. The US Senate judiciary committee postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination. … Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, is already serving as acting US attorney general. He needs the vote of every Republican on the Senate judiciary panel to advance his nomination to land the role on a permanent basis. … But a swing vote on the committee, John Cornyn of Texas, told reporters on Wednesday he would not support Blanche’s nomination until he received written confirmation that the fund was not moving ahead.” (07/29/26)
“Courts in Myanmar have sentenced nine activists to up to 37 years in prison for involvement in a protest calling for a boycott of the elections last December, an activist group said Wednesday. May Hnin, a spokesperson for the Anti-Junta Forces Coordination Committee-Mandalay, said eight members including prominent activist Htet Myat Aung were sentenced to 37 years on Tuesday by two courts in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, after being convicted under the electoral law and counterterrorism Law. A ninth activist was sentenced to 27 years after being convicted under the counterterrorism law, she said. Htet Myat Aung and the others were arrested days after staging a flash protest in downtown Mandalay on Dec. 3 calling on the public to reject the elections, abolish the military conscription law and release political prisoners detained after the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.” (07/29/26)
“Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye appeared to collapse in court on Wednesday during a trial in which he is facing treason charges. Besigye, 69, who has been detained without bail for several months, shouted the word ‘stop’ many times before he fell backward in the dock. The court proceedings were postponed as prison guards moved to attend to the high-profile defendant. Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate, has been repeatedly denied bail. His main attorney, Erias Lukwago, has also been arrested and charged with alleged failure to report acts of treason. In recent days, prosecutors have moved to present evidence they say will prove Besigye and others plotted to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni.” (07/29/26)
“Yemen’s government has accused the Iran-backed Houthi rebels [sic] of working with Tehran to establish a system for charging fees to commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, describing the alleged plan as a major threat to global shipping and energy markets. Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani said on Wednesday (July 29) that recently obtained intelligence indicated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was helping the Houthis create a technical and administrative framework to collect payments from shipping companies using one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. … Reuters reported that senior Houthi officials travelled to Iran in July to attend the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, where Iranian officials discussed the possibility of introducing transit charges for ships passing through the Bab el-Mandeb.” (07/29/26)
“Four women speaking to CBS News’ partner network the BBC have accused actor and band frontman Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct when they were teenagers. One woman said the Oscar-winning actor and ‘Thirty Seconds to Mars’ band frontman sexually assaulted her in a motel when she was 17, while another told the BBC said she had sex with Leto in California when she was the same age — which would qualify as statutory rape. A third woman told the BBC that Leto threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 while she was alone with him in a hotel room. Another alleges the star groomed her as a teenager, on one occasion suggesting they should have sex. … Leto has been plagued by allegations of sexual misconduct for years, but has denied all wrongdoing. No criminal charges have ever been filed against him.” (07/29/26)
“French authorities have moved to expel from the country Xenia Fedorova, a Russian media star who has courted controversy for her pro-Kremlin narrative. Fedorova, the former head of the Kremlin-backed RT France news outlet, was handed an expulsion order by the Paris Prefecture of Police, which handles immigration matters for foreigners living in the French capital, according to a report by French newspaper Libération published Wednesday that was confirmed by POLITICO. ‘By spreading her narratives, [Xenia Fedorova] acts as a conduit for disinformation campaigns led by Russian authorities,’ with the aim of ‘destabilizing public order’ in France, reads the document, seen by Libération. It also accuses Fedorova of ‘contribut[ing] to the spread of disinformation and destabilization’ in order to manipulate public opinion.” (07/29/26)
“A California man accused of deliberately damaging automated license plate readers was identified with the help of other surveillance cameras near the devices, authorities said Tuesday. Marcus Bee, 40, of Pismo Beach, was arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism after investigators linked him to damage involving at least three Flock Safety cameras in Monterey County, the county sheriff’s office said.” (07/28/26)
“OpenAI has updated its blog post about the rogue agent that breached Hugging Face and admitted that it also infiltrated other other third-party accounts and services to achieve its goal. In the updated post, the company said it has been finding ‘a small number of cases where the models identified and used publicly exposed credentials at the account-level on other publicly-available services’ during its ongoing review. So far, it has determined that the rogue agent used the credentials of ‘four accounts’ to infiltrate ‘four services’ as part of the Hugging Face incident. It also said that it accessed a ‘few accounts’ as part of other evaluations.” (07/29/26)
