Shaken Continents, Stuck Straits, And A Rocket That Flamed Out

World & Security

A magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, trapping many under rubble in Cali, Pereira and Manizales, with the death toll above 100 by evening. The disaster landed on a brand-new administration: the United States had just pledged a $1bn security package to President Abelardo de la Espriella after he promised an ‘all-out war’ on drug cartels, and Colombia's military, days into his term, killed an alleged rebel leader.

The Strait of Hormuz stays shut: Iran insists the waterway will remain closed until Washington meets its demands, while Trump said he will demand compensation for the deaths of US soldiers and Iran's own civilians. Yemen's military blamed a Houthi attack on the port of Mocha for seven dead and 30 wounded. Nearby, Netanyahu rejected the US-backed 15-point plan for Gaza and promised no withdrawal until Hamas is ‘genuinely disarmed’, while Al Jazeera says Israeli earthmovers are demolishing homes in southern Lebanon.

The long-range war over Ukraine has more range than defence. Russia says it intercepted 456 Ukrainian drones in one night, with attacks reaching Tatarstan, where a refinery strike killed at least 13 people. In the DRC, the WHO says the Ebola outbreak began in February, months before it was declared, and the BBC quotes the agency warning that it is still chasing the virus.

Markets & Economy

Oil is doing the one thing the models didn't order: staying calm. Brent climbed 4.3% to $87.14, a level last seen on July 31, even though an analysis in Dawn notes the world has lost more than 2.6 billion barrels since the war with Iran began — and, except for one spike, prices stayed away from triple digits. Analysts quoted there credit strategic reserve releases and weak Asian demand; China is the biggest shock absorber, having slashed imports and, according to a RAND study cited separately, stockpiled as much as 1.4 billion barrels. The war is also subsidising the EV transition: electric vehicles displaced an estimated 1.4 million barrels a day of Chinese oil demand in the first half of 2026.

The tariff machine, meanwhile, works in reverse as often as it works forward. US Customs has refunded more than $38 million, plus interest, to five listed Chinese firms, boosting expected earnings. In Geneva, China asked to join Brazil's WTO complaint against US ‘forced labour’ tariffs of up to 37.5%, warning that Washington could apply comparable measures to Chinese products. And at the checkout, US beef is 12% pricier than a year ago, even while a South Dakota rancher says he is not profiting more.

Technology & Industry

Space remains the original hard-tech industry. China's Long March 7A exploded less than ninety seconds after launch, a rare failure that also took out the ChinaSat-4B satellite, while Europe's ESA chief warns of a shortage of domestic rocket launchers by 2030 unless programmes are expanded. Rocket science: still rocket science.

Down on Earth, the AI buildout got bigger and cheaper at the same moment. Nvidia is in talks with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock's infrastructure arm, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR over a $500 billion AI infrastructure package, while enterprise AI inference prices fell to a 2026 low of about $1.16 per million tokens, driven by a price war and cheap Chinese open-source models. Contradictions are scaling well.

Elsewhere in Chinese industry: researchers released an open-source AI tool to shorten the rare-disease ‘diagnostic odyssey’, and Shanghai's AgiBot overtook Unitree as the world's top humanoid vendor, shipping about 8,400 robots for a 44% market share in the first half. Some of their small cousins are grounded, though: drone shows have been cancelled in more than eleven provinces and regions, often with no clear reason published.

Politics & Policy

The US is testing a novel public-health theory during its worst measles outbreak in decades. Trump signed an order shrinking the recommended childhood schedule to eleven shots; The Guardian reports it would also split the MMR vaccine into three separate injections and recommend each shot at its own visit. The CDC, not the White House, is the agency charged with recommending vaccines — a detail the administration appears to have treated as optional.

Law enforcement got a new face: Trump's former personal lawyer Todd Blanche was sworn in as attorney general after a 50-49 Senate vote, with another former Trump attorney administering the oath. The State Department, meanwhile, says more than 175,000 visas have been revoked since January 2025, most after criminal or national-security findings.

Russia's Supreme Court barred Yabloko, the only anti-war party, from September's elections, after the nationalist pro-Kremlin party Rodina filed the challenge. Ankara, by contrast, passed a limited amnesty for PKK militants in a peace-process step — but pointedly excluded jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan. And Bernie Sanders called on Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic to stop building AI systems humans cannot control, suggesting the Senate will step in if they do not.

Human Stories / Social Trends

An Al Jazeera remembrance of Gaza's slain journalists keeps the names Anas and Mohammed in the light, documenting a profession that lost homes, offices and colleagues while covering a war sealed to most foreign media. For those still living in displacement camps, a rat-and-weasel plague has become another daily fight: residents' phrase, ‘if we sleep they bite’, says most of what needs saying.

Britain's Prevent programme is meant to catch extremists; the data show it is also catching autistic people. Nearly one in five referrals from October 2024 to September 2025 had autism recorded, Middle East Eye reports, with Asian and Black people overrepresented and referrals classified as Islamist extremism down to 8%. As one researcher puts it: Prevent has been plagued by accusations of bias since its inception.

Finally, two stories about resources. In Badakhshan, Afghanistan's gold rush has farmers like 74-year-old Muhammad Amin watching their river turn unusable — ‘the water is not drinkable; you can't even wash your body with that water’ — even as mining officials say they have closed 225 damage-causing sites. And in Sydney, the gardener behind the destruction of 287 protected trees for a harbourside mansion's view was fined almost $200,000; the council responded by hanging a huge banner promising to keep the regained view obscured until the trees grow back.