UK - Britain cannot afford a fresh spending binge, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned Andy Burnham. The Washington-based body said the UK Government should be “very selective in accommodating new demands” for spending and instead focus on reducing the deficit. It cautioned that the UK faces serious “challenges” from high debts, rising interest bills and the increasing costs of healthcare and pensions linked to an ageing population. However Mr Burnham will use a speech on Friday to pledge to be “unashamedly” Labour, suggesting he will tax and spend more. Speaking at a special conference that will see him crowned as Labour’s leader, he will argue that rebuilding the economy will require “a new path to the one we’ve been on for the last 40 years”.

UK - More than 600,000 people in Britain are too fat to work, research suggests. A University of York study has demonstrated the impact of Britain’s weight problem on the economy and its contribution to worklessness. Official data show 15 million adults in Britain are obese and the researchers found that around four out of every 100 obese people were likely to be unemployed solely because of their body weight. The effect of obesity on employment was also stronger in men than women, data showed. Experts warned of “substantial economic losses” because of the number of people whose weight was hindering daily activity, and driving them out of work. The Government has announced pilot schemes in which the unemployed will be given weight-loss jabs to get more people back to work.

UKRAINE - The Ukrainian drones hovered over the shipping lanes in the Sea of Azov until they caught sight of their prey. Spread out on the waters below, Russian tankers – sluggish, defenceless vessels of around 7,000-ton capacity – were sailing towards the occupied Crimean peninsula. Explosions lit up the night sky as the drones swooped down, one after another, after another. In the morning, satellite imagery picked up smoke still rising from the hull of one of their crippled victims. This July 14 attack brought the number of Russian vessels hit in the Sea of Azov to 116 in a week-long campaign, according to Ukraine’s drone forces. These intense strikes on a maritime trade route – equivalent to one every two hours – have effectively halted traffic on a key supply line, in a campaign with few parallels in the history of modern warfare.

UKRAINE - The four-year stalemate in Ukraine has suddenly broken. For the first time in modern memory, Russia is having to import fuel to keep its economy and society afloat. The speed of events is extraordinarily rapid and portends a tectonic shift in the global balance of power, dramatically improving the strategic fortunes of Europe. Ukraine’s drone force of “Magyar’s Birds” has struck 30 oil and gas tankers in the Black Sea region since Wednesday. It claims to have hit 147 vessels linked to Russia in 10 days, effectively closing the Sea of Azov and tightening the blockade of the Crimean peninsula. It is attacking refineries at will, continuously, from St Petersburg to Siberia, crippling Russia’s biggest plant some 2,250km into the interior at Omsk. The range has jumped fivefold since early last year. “Russia no longer has a safe rear, and distance is no longer protection,” said Sergiy Makogon, from the Centre for European Policy Analysis.

GERMANY - German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has proposed replacing the expiring UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon with an EU-mandated force to prevent a security vacuum, he told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. The UNIFIL mission expires on December 31, 2026. Germany's parliament extended the country's participation in the mission for the final time just weeks ago. Wadephul said Lebanon, with a stabilizing government, represented "one of the most hopeful developments in the region at the moment." An EU-mandated force could "create the conditions for the Israeli army to withdraw without Hezbollah returning with its terror," the minister added. The proposal comes as European nations seek to maintain regional stability while balancing relations with Israel and Lebanon.

USA - As grim as the political scene is in Israel today – with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition bulldozing through contentious and damaging legislation on the final days of the Knesset before the October election – the view on the other side of the world in Washington regarding Israel is just as worrisome. Two events overnight Wednesday emerging from the US Capitol, one a vote and the other an interview, exemplified the rockslide – turning into an avalanche – of anti-Israel sentiment that has taken hold in the hallowed halls of decision-makers. The degree to which both the Republican and Democratic parties are sharpening their claws against Israel and hyper-focusing on it to the exclusion of critical issues indicates that the long-standing US-Israel bond is in a real crisis.

PUERTO RICO - Puerto Rico announced water rationing measures on Thursday as a drought grips the US territory, worsening chronic water shortages that have forced the governor to declare a state of emergency. Thousands of people in the island’s northeast region face 48-hour rationing periods from Friday, said Luis González, executive president of the island’s water and sewer authority. The rationing program will affect several communities in the cities of Canovanas and Rio Grande as temperatures keep rising. “There’s just not enough water,” he said, adding that rationing will likely be extended to other areas.

ISRAEL - The United States is accelerating its military buildup in Israel amid escalating fighting and expanded strikes against Iran, with 10 additional US Air Force refueling aircraft expected to arrive Friday and Saturday, ynet has learned. Unlike previous waves of aircraft, the new tankers will not be stationed at Ben Gurion Airport. More than 60 American refueling planes have arrived in Israel so far, including 33 that were parked at the country’s main international airport. Trump has not yet made a final decision, according to Axios. However, officials said he appeared prepared to intensify the fighting enough to inflict major damage, pressure the Iranian regime to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and force Tehran to accept his nuclear demands. American and Israeli officials said Trump could order a broader escalation within days.

MEXICO - A powerful magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas on Friday, shaking buildings as far away as Guatemala and El Salvador, though authorities ‌said there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said emergency protocols were ‌activated but that neither Chiapas nor the neighboring state of Tabasco reported issues, and Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said there were no deaths. In some parts of Guatemala, ​residents in their homes and office workers spilled onto the streets.

IRAN - Three US Navy-backed Saronic Corsair one-way attack sea drones struck Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base on Sunday, according to US Central Command. The operation marks the clearest sign yet that the US military has taken a page directly from Ukraine's maritime warfare playbook, using expendable, autonomous, suicide stealth drone boats to penetrate a heavily defended naval facility - much cheaper than a million-dollar missile. More broadly, the combat debut of suicide drone boats and AI-enabled loitering munitions shows how technologies once thought to be in the future - perhaps the 2030s - are being pulled forward into the present.

USA - Picket Defense Systems is developing a next-generation counter-drone turret designed to eliminate the delays conventional systems face when targeting fast-moving, one-way attack drones or incoming swarms. This is a major vulnerability confronting the US military and allied forces as drone threats proliferate across modern battlefields that Picket plans to solve. Its Inferno RTC uses a 54-barrel hemispherical array that continuously maintains 360-degree coverage, allowing the turret to select and fire the optimal barrel without needing to rotate and lock onto the target first. Picket appears to be targeting the civilian counter-drone market with a dual-use turret designed for critical infrastructure, data centers, energy facilities, airports, stadiums, and commercial ports. Our late-January note revealed a shocking reality that many high-value assets around the world remain largely vulnerable to low-cost kamikaze drones.

MIDDLE EAST - Early this Sunday, Iran launched its widest single-night attack of the war so far: mixed salvos of Zolfaghar ballistic missiles and drones simultaneously targeting US facilities in five countries – Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Prince Hassan air base in Jordan and Duqm harbour in Oman. As ever, damage reports vary, but it does seem that casualties were light. The significance, however, lies in one of the reasons the missiles got through. Many had reportedly been upgraded to make use of China’s encrypted BeiDou-3 satellite-navigation system. This made them significantly harder to stop and much more expensive to do so. This is because there are basically two ways to stop a missile which is coming at you, or at something you are trying to protect. “Hard kill” involves hitting the incoming threat with a projectile of some sort, usually an interceptor missile of your own, sometimes a cannon shell or a bullet. That’s spectacular, filmable and – in the case of interceptor missiles – typically very expensive. “Soft kill” defeats the enemy missile without touching it: jamming or spoofing its seeker head or navigation, or seducing it away from the target with active or passive decoys, flares or chaff.

UK - In a nondescript building in Wokingham, Berkshire, sit hundreds of people who have one of the most important jobs in the country. The control-room engineers at the National Energy System Operator (NESO) balance Britain’s electricity supply and demand. If they don’t get it right, the lights go out. Their job has changed drastically over the last decade. Gone are the days when operators could call up one of 40 gas or coal power plants to ask them to crank up the juice. Now operators deal with more than 3,000 generators, most of them wind and solar farms, which are uncontrollable and unpredictable. This is, in part, why I have been approached by multiple whistleblowers from within NESO who are concerned that it is getting harder to keep the lights on in Britain. Few things can be more serious. As we saw in last year’s Iberian blackout, without electricity, people die. That is not me being overly dramatic; it is a simple and tragic fact.

UK - Families are being encouraged to claim sickness benefits to help cover their energy bills, a government review has found. Last week, a report by Sir Stephen Timms, the social security minister, said Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) were not working “as intended” and predicted the cost of disability handouts would reach £41 billion a year at the end of the decade. The rise has been fuelled by a sharp rise in the number of recipients claiming PIPs for mental health conditions such as anxiety and ADHD.

USA - On Sunday night, armed sea drones were deployed for the first time in combat by the US military. Three unmanned boat-like vessels struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. The 24-foot Corsair drones were manufactured by Texas-based Saronic Technologies, which was founded in 2022 by a former member of the US Navy Seals, the elite special operations force. The attack is the latest demonstration of how rapidly the nature of warfare is changing, and the impact of a growing legion of start-up defence tech companies on global conflicts. Ukraine has been called the “first AI war” and the first large-scale drone war, with AI-powered drones and software playing a critical role in defending Ukraine against Russia. As tensions escalate between powerful nations, some of the world’s biggest investors and businesses are positioning themselves to profit from the shifting nature of war and the prospect of future conflicts, or even a Third World War.