Zero Rss

US Corn Conditions Suffer Sharpest Deterioration In Three Years, Fueling Food Inflation Fear

Less than a week after we reported that an options whale placed a $20 million bet on corn futures, a new U.S. crop report revealed the sharpest weekly deterioration in conditions in three years.

Bloomberg cites a new USDA report that rated 63% of the U.S. crop as good or excellent, down 4 percentage points from the previous week and below consensus estimates. The decline was due to heat and dryness battering some of the nation's top agricultural growing belts.

US Corn Conditions Slide 4% 🌽

Farmers are saying it’s the largest crisis on the Farm since last week pic.twitter.com/D0iX8PFL93

— GrainStats 🌾 (@GrainStats) July 28, 2026

1YR Net Change Corn Crop Yield Forecasts

The most-active contract gained as much as .9%.

Heat warnings plague parts of Illinois and Missouri, although Corn Belt weather is expected to improve later this week.

Last week, an options trader made a $20 million bet that corn futures will surge to their highest since 2023, as reduced U.S. planting, record exports, and heat-damaged crops tighten the supply outlook. The trade involved 105,000 November $5.50/$6 call spreads, equivalent to more than 500 million bushels.

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) recently hit a three-year high. This dollar-denominated benchmark tracks 10 major agricultural futures, including Chicago and Kansas City wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean meal, soybean oil, coffee, cocoa, sugar, and cotton.

Read our latest note on BCOMAGSP, where traders are increasingly focused on maritime chokepoint disruptions, El Niño risks, and extreme heat gripping key growing regions across the U.S. and Europe.

Bank of America: The Timing Of The Next Grocery Inflation Surge Revealed By BofA. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 06:55

Britain Backs Ukraine With New Electronic Warfare Cooperation

Via RFE/RL,

• Zelensky met newly appointed British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who reaffirmed the U.K.'s military support and announced technology sharing for the Stone Cloak electronic warfare system.

• Ukraine and Russia carried out long-range attacks that caused civilian casualties and damage to energy infrastructure on both sides.

• Zelensky is continuing a major diplomatic push with a planned visit to Washington as Ukraine seeks additional military and political support.

President Volodymyr Zelensky met British Prime Minister Andy Burnham on July 27 as he kicked off a key week of talks with officials around the world to bolster Ukraine's defenses amid a rising civilian death toll from Russian air strikes back home.

Zelensky became the first foreign leader hosted by Burnham since he took office one week ago following the resignation of fellow Labour Party member Keir Starmer.

The two leaders met at the Portsmouth Naval Base on England's southern coast as Burnham pledged his country's "unwavering" support for Kyiv as the war with Russia runs well into its fifth year.

Zelensky said being the first foreign leader to meet Burnham was "an important signal of support."

"We discussed our defense – for Ukraine, it is important to have sufficient capabilities to protect lives both in the sky and at sea," Zelensky wrote on social media after the meeting, adding the development of joint defense production was also touched upon.

Burnham and Zelensky were later scheduled to meet some of the 200 Ukrainian military personnel who have been in Britain the past three weeks participating in a maritime security and counter-mine exercise in preparation for potential future Black Sea missions.

'Stone Cloak' System

Burnham announced the sharing of the intellectual property behind Britain’s new Stone Cloak electronic warfare system, enabling Ukraine to produce the technology itself.

The jammers, the size of a tablet computer, can be used to prevent Russian air defenses from tracking and targeting drones when attached to the projectiles, officials said.

Downing Street pointed out that the United Kingdom's support for Ukraine has reached 25 billion pounds ($33 billion) since Russia's full-scale invasion of February 2022, including 16 billion pounds ($21 billion) in direct military assistance.

Following the London visit, Zelensky is scheduled to travel to Washington on July 28 for talks with US President Donald Trump.

Zelensky is also expected to attend the funeral of US Senator Lindsey Graham, who died earlier this month. The Republican lawmaker was a vocal Ukraine supporter and had traveled to Kyiv for meetings with Zelensky days before his death.

Russia, Ukraine Exchange Deadly Strikes

Five people, including a child, were killed and eight injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Rostov region, local officials reported on July 27.

Rostov Region Governor Yuri Slyusar said rescuers recovered bodies, two adults and one child, from the rubble of an apartment building hit by a drone, while emergency crews continue recovery operations and provide assistance to victims.

Zelensky, in a post on X, said that Ukraine's long-range strikes hit an export terminal in the Rostov region and oil facilities in the Yaroslavl and Udmurtia regions to reduce Russia's ability to finance the war.

"Last night, our long-range sanctions were effective in the Rostov region. An export terminal approximately 250 kilometers from the front line was hit. Deep strikes also targeted oil facilities in the Yaroslavl region and the Udmurt Republic, which is 1,300 kilometers from Ukraine's state border," Zelenskyy wrote.

Meanwhile, the death toll continued to rise in Ukraine, with the capital, Kyiv, coming under a Russian ballistic missile attack on July 26, authorities said, while other regions suffered air strikes during the day that led to at least six deaths.

In the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, a Russian drone struck a supermarket, killing two people and wounding ‌25, Ukraine's emergency services said.

"This is deliberate Russian terror that has no military justification," Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said a glide bomb attack killed one person and wounded six in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya, which has been a frequent target of Russian bombardment.

In the frontline city of Slovyansk in Ukraine's Donetsk region, the Naftogaz oil and gas company said two of its employees were killed in a Russian attack while trying to help ‌residents affected by an earlier air strike.

One person was killed, and eight others were injured in a Russian strike on the town of Balakliya in Ukraine's Kharkiv region on July 27, regional authorities reported.

Russia denies targeting civilian areas despite widespread evidence of such attacks that have killed thousands of people since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 06:30

Fragile Iran 'Pause' Shattered As US Base In Jordan Comes Under Attack, Oil Soars Summary

• Oil soars on reports of Iran targeting US Jordan base; Iraqi militants attack KSA for 2nd day.
• Hormuz indirect talks continue amid reports of a possible resurrected MoU deal.
• Shipping remains stalled with virtually no tanker traffic through Hormuz.
• Iran insists Hormuz stays closed unless its terms are accepted.
• Houthis escalate attacks, prompting more ships to avoid the Red Sea.

*  *  *

Fresh Unilateral Strikes on Jordan Base; Iraqi Militants Again Target KSA 

Iranian state media in the overnight hours (local) are reporting fresh apparent Iranian missile attacks in Jordan. A "US base in Jordan was possibly targeted" after reports of explosions there, Fars and IRIB report. Tehran officials have insisted they have not requested US talks following the prior nearly two straight weeks of fighting, though a 'pause' took effect last Friday when President Trump ordered a halt to US airstrikes. The day was filled with headline hype of a potential 'resurrected' MoU deal. Once again these 'deal is close' headlines prove misleading and premature. CENTCOM is confirming on the heels of the Iranian media reporting:

• Senior American official: Iran launched missiles toward an American base in Jordan (Axios)
• CENTCOM: IRGC forces launch multiple ballistic missiles from Iran and all Iranian missiles were effectively intercepted

Adding to the uncertainty and jitters of already sensitive global oil, Iraqi militants on Tuesday fired projectiles on Saudi Arabia for a second day, also amid the ongoing missile threat from Yemeni Houthis. According to the Associated Press:

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that it shot down drones fired by Iran-backed militias in Iraq for a second day, while Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed to have forced a Saudi oil tanker to turn around as part of their self-styled blockade of the kingdom.

The attacks underscored lingering tensions despite a period of calm between the United States and Iran, neither of which has announced attacks for days following weeks of escalation over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Saudi Defense Ministry said in a statement that air defenses intercepted and destroyed several drones that had attempted to target petroleum facilities in the nation’s eastern region. It said the attacks were “once again launched from Iraqi territory and carried out by Iran-affiliated terrorist militias.”

Oil climbing on the headlines of the rare pro-Tehran aggression during a 'pause':

WTI OIL JUMPS 5% AS US INTERCEPTS IRANIAN ATTACK ON ITS TROOPS

Below: unconfirmed initial image circulating...

Preliminary: footage of a direct hit on Muwaffaq Al Salti air base in Jordan. pic.twitter.com/NGi3R0DLkG

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 28, 2026 Shipping Latest: Bab El Mandeb & Hormuz

Iran has reaffirmed that if Oman does not agree to its terms for the Strait of Hormuz, the the vital oil transit waterway will remain closed, per Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister. This also as things are again heating up in the Red Sea region, with the Houthis late Tuesday announcing they've once again targeted a Saudi oil tanker for violating the blockade. Reuters reports:

Yemen’s Houthis claim to have fired ballistic missiles at a Saudi oil tanker, accusing the vessel of violating what they describe as their maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea and ignoring warning calls.

The Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, claims the vessel was forced to turn back.

According to separate reporting, China is holding direct negotiations with Yemen's Houthis to ensure safe passage for its ships through the southern Red Sea.

Iran says it hasn't sought US talks in past 16-17 days, reports Irib News

And a US CENTCOM update on its latest figures: it says that as of Tuesday the US military has redirected 18 commercial vessels, disabled two, and boarded another two to "ensure full compliance of the US blockade against Iran." The latest from Netanyahu's meeting with Trump at the White House:

Channel 12 on a senior Israeli official: Netanyahu confirmed to Trump that additional strikes on rehabilitated Iranian nuclear facilities are unavoidable

More vessels reportedly turning away from planned routes after Houthi threats:

Three product tankers loaded at Saudi Arabian Red Sea ports and bound for Asia-Pacific and east Africa have turned north towards the Suez Canal, as Houthi-related threats to shipping prompt charterers to reassess passage through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

The tankers appear to…

— Giovanni Staunovo🛢 (@staunovo) July 28, 2026 Fox Reports Mediators 'Close' to Resurrecting MoU

Here we go again... despite no evident change in war posturing on either side, and despite shipping traffic still largely at a complete standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, Fox News is out with claims that the failed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) could be 'resurrected'... bringing us back to the 'deal is close' constant headlines of earlier this summer (though of course the sides were never in reality close - and simply returned to a wider bombing campaign)...

"Mediators of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East believe the U.S. and Iran are close to a deal that would resurrect the failed memorandum of understanding, according to The Times of Israel," Fox writes, based on the earlier Israeli media article. Negotiators from Pakistan, Egypt and Qatar have been haggling over an Oman-proposed Strait of Hormuz management plan. It will involve fee-collection and is backed by the Gulf states, supposedly. The timing of all of this interesting given Trump is currently hosting Netanyahu at the White House. More from Fox:

Iran and Oman — both of which are situated on the Strait of Hormuz — have reportedly signed off on the proposal advanced by the mediators.

The two sources said the White House was waiting to make a decision until after President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.

Meanwhile...

JMIC: DATA INDICATES ZERO TANKERS IN EITHER DIRECTION OF HORMUZ

Still, the return to deal 'optimism' has pushed oil prices down further - which is perhaps the entire point of US officials anonymously hyping that a deal is 'close' once again.

And S&P futures briefly reached High of Day on the headline...

Oman's Hormuz Management Proposal

US-Iran attacks have remained paused, and oil prices have extended their declines, as President Trump has claimed Tehran and Washington are now having "very friendly talks" while at the same time suggesting negotiations might not be prolonged.

"We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don't work out, we will go back to very strong military action," Trump told Axios, as we highlighted previously. But possibly the most promising development in terms of an off-ramp is that Oman has presented Iran with a plan backed by Gulf states to manage the Strait of Hormuz.

This would reportedly include including collecting voluntary fees for using it, ​according to sources who spoke to Reuters Tuesday. The report notes that "The plan could serve as a basis to end the disruption to trade through the strait caused by the ‌U.S.-Israeli war on Iran."

via Reuters

However, this also to some degree represents the stalemated situation going back to square one, given the United States has consistently and vehemently opposed any fees being collected that would go to Iran. An immediate response from Tehran on the proposal has not been forthcoming, and talks could drag on for days related to the Oman plan. Already Tehran is adding some strict conditions regarding frozen or seized Iranian assets abroad, per Bloomberg citing state media:

"Any company or country that receives funds from Iranian assets will not be allowed to pass through the strait," semi-official Tasnim news agency cites a spokesman for Iran’s central military command as saying in response to recent US proposal.

Reuters provides more detail in the following: "The system would be analogous to one in place on Asia's Strait of Malacca, where Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore ask ships to pay voluntary contributions to fund navigation, environmental protection and search-and-rescue operations."

"The Western diplomat compared it to a voluntary carbon tax for flights, where anyone buying a plane ticket can choose to tick a box if they want to pay to offset their emissions," the report adds.

'Glimmer of Hope' Amid Indirect Hormuz Talks

The Wall Street Journal has said this represents a "glimmer of hope" as fighting has halted since last Friday:

A U.S. official and mediators said Iran and Oman were still far apart on some issues, including whether to charge fees for transit. But both sides said there was progress, marking the first glimmer of hope for diplomacy since President Trump ordered a new round of military strikes on Iran more than two weeks ago in response to Tehran firing on commercial vessels in the strait. 

...The goal of the Iran-Oman talks is to agree on which route vessels can take through the 22-mile-wide strait. Conflict erupted earlier this month after the U.S. began guiding ships through the strait by hugging the Omani coast, while Iran wants vessels to cross through its territory. 

In the meantime President Trump had laid out Monday while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One his view that there's "plenty of time" to deal with Iran and that "we are talking right now.." He laid out that while "there's a good chance that something could happen," it remains that If not, "we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago."

Trump has on Tuesday reiterated to Fox News that Iran understands it will never have a nuclear, and reaffirmed that the two sides are talking.

.@POTUS on Iran's Pickaxe Mountain: "We have the greatest cameras in the world focused on [it]... I know exactly what's going on at Pickaxe, it's not a big problem. We took out their nuclear sites, and we'll have to take out Pickaxe if we don't make a deal. If we don't make a… pic.twitter.com/PMdXaBkDvu

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 28, 2026 Jazan Oil Refinery Shut Down for Repairs After Strikes

Over in Saudi Arabia, where missile and drone attacks out of Yemen (and possibly Iraq) over past days have damaged Aramco facilities, one regional media source says that "Saudi Aramco has shut down its Jazan oil refinery after a Houthi missile and drone attack damaged key facilities at the site, according to reports."

"The refinery, which processes 400,000 barrels of crude per day, suffered damage to its Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) complex and tank farm area. Repairs are expected to be completed and operations to resume by Aug. 15, according to a note from consultancy IIR," Turkiye Today adds.

Satellite imagery also shows alleged damage to gas storage tanks at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq facility, most recently to be hit targeted likely by the Houthis:

🔥 Satellite imagery shows damage to multiple gas storage tanks at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq (Buqayq) refinery. White and black cooling covers are also visible over two storage tanks to prevent spread.

Explore and Compare: https://t.co/TrYreAAiGB#SaudiArabia #Gas #Oil pic.twitter.com/qxwdaNKaBc

— Soar (@SoarAtlas) July 28, 2026

However, there still no official Saudi confirmation of Abqaiq being struck, but only that it was targeted:

🇸🇦 Contrary to social media reports, no Aramco or SPA statement has confirmed that Abqaiq was hit, quantified damage or alerted of a production halt.

Official Saudi report from the Saudi Press Association (SPA) only said drones “attempted to target oil facilities in Eastern… https://t.co/8wTv1uD6oF

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 28, 2026

As for the possibility of where things go from here, amid potential escalation which could see the Houthis further target Saudi oil complexes, President Trump had also warned in the aforementioned Fox interview that the US will "take out" Pickaxe Mountain if it doesn’t reach a deal with Iran.

He noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the US to stay involved in the Iran war, and the two leaders will meet Tuesday in the late morning hours at the White House.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 05:35

Why, Oh Why Do They Do This?

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Viral footage circulating online shows a British man methodically working his way along the streets of his own city with a wheeled bin and litter picker, clearing the rubbish left by others. He is not being paid and not making a political point. He is simply trying to prevent the area from descending into a tip.

Remarkably, as he works, foreign shopkeepers and residents repeatedly emerge from their premises to instruct him to clear the mess outside their own doors, standing by as he does so.

One older local, taking in the state of the streets, observes that if President Trump were to see them he would declare the place a "shithole."

This is wild

White man in the UK is going around picking up trash to make his city look nicer

A foreigner comes out her shop and tells him to pick up the trash outside her shop

"I don't want to be rude or anything, but maybe instead of telling me to do it...."

Again and again... pic.twitter.com/EtgcRZfvNL

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) July 27, 2026

This pattern is expanding everywhere.

In Page Hall, Sheffield, the same individual was filmed over and over dumping household waste on the corner of Bolsover Road. Residents record from behind windows and ask Sheffield City Council how long they are expected to accept it.

Residents in Page Hall, Sheffield, say they're frustrated after repeated fly-tipping by the same culprit on the corner of Bolsover Road.

The resident who shared the footage is calling for action from Sheffield City Council.

Are we expected to just accept this? pic.twitter.com/ErPaS9SmqJ

— Kiera Diss (@KieraDiss) July 26, 2026

In Marseille, a resident filmed the streets after North African arrivals moved in. Garbage was thrown from windows. The neighbourhood was reduced to literal shit. "We never asked for this," he says.

A man in Marseille, France's second largest city, shows the situation in his neighborhood after North Africans started moving in.

"They throw all their garbage out of their windows. We are living in literal shit. We never asked for this."

No one should have to live like this. pic.twitter.com/h50x5Wu8gy

— Dr. Maalouf ? (@realMaalouf) July 25, 2026

In a quiet Birmingham street an asylum seeker was caught emptying bags of rubbish into the road, perhaps to make the area feel more familiar.

?? En un tranquilo barrio de Birmingham, un solicitante de asilo que no come tocino, se encargó de regar toda la basura del vecindario en las calles, y poder sentirse como en casa. ¿Estas son las mieles de la integración cultural que el progresismo nos vendió? pic.twitter.com/szER7spf5Z

— Carlo Martin (@Liberfach0) July 13, 2026

The countryside has not been spared. Hundreds of tonnes of plastic, foam, wood and household waste appeared overnight along the River Cherwell near Kidlington in Oxfordshire. The pile reached 20 feet deep and stretched 500 feet, metres from the A34. Locals called it a catastrophe in a first-world country.

On Bwlch Mountain in the Rhondda a farming family that has worked the land for ninety years found a stream of rubbish cascading down the slope from a lay-by, visible for miles. Household goods, plastic, cardboard. The farmer said it keeps her awake at night.

In Dorset's Holt Heath nature reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, tipper vans dumped at least 20 tonnes of waste earth and debris across National Trust and Forestry England land. Police called the act despicable.

In the Peak District a furious motorist confronted two men caught dumping a sofa in a national park.

Deport them...

Come here and treat our country like a shit-hole...

This is the moment a furious motorist confronts two suspected fly-tippers he caught dumping a sofa in the Peak District National Park... pic.twitter.com/zKhLhdbEyi

— 'Seeing is believing' (@dave24144975) July 19, 2025

The same national park and nearby hills have been left covered in litter, human faeces and abandoned rubbish by day-trippers who treat protected landscapes as free dumps.

Across the Atlantic a Canadian man caught a group of Indians dumping a couch in the forest. He forced them to pick it up and take it to the dump himself.

Canadian man catches a group of Indians dumping a couch in the forest and forces them to pick it up and take it to the dump.

Do you support this patriot? pic.twitter.com/Iz1BltFniX

— Casey Krol (@CaseyKrol) July 27, 2026

In Small Heath, Birmingham, another fly-tipper was filmed in the act.

Small Heath in Birmingham

Another Fly Tipper caught in the act pic.twitter.com/FKmrsdL8Q7

— WeGotitBack ??????????? (@NotFarLeftAtAll) May 15, 2025

In civilised societies, the bin truck comes once a week. Council tips and recycling centres operate. Yet the same people continue throwing rubbish into the streets and rivers.

Why do they insist on doing this when the bin truck literally comes to their house once a week to collect rubbish? pic.twitter.com/Ylk6jd4jkd

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) May 4, 2026

This is not a lack of facilities. It is a refusal to use them.

Footage from the countries many of these individuals left behind shows the cultural baseline. In India, tonnes of waste are dumped straight into rivers.

This is in India ??. ????????????
Tonnes of waste was dumped by workers of a town panchayat in a flood river at Thittakudi in Cuddalore district in Tamilnadu. pic.twitter.com/iLa2Se57D6

— Licypriya Kangujam (@LicypriyaK) August 2, 2020

When a tourist in India suggested to a local to pick up dropped litter and put it in a bin, the reply was a flat refusal. The litter stayed exactly where it was.

In Bangladesh a river no longer holds water or fish, only human and animal faecal matter, trash and floating mounds of waste that wash away in floods.

Bangladesh ~ The river no longer holds fish or water, only human/animal fecal matter, trash, and soggy mounds of mystery matter that floats away when a flood comes through. pic.twitter.com/o4jrfNOy0C

— Dane (@UltraDane) October 1, 2024

In Algeria a holiday beach at Oran is filmed as an open-air dump.

Une femme en vacances en Algérie filme une plage à Oran : une décharge à ciel ouvert!

Ça vous dirait de passer les vacances là-bas, voyage offert? pic.twitter.com/jVS9n6GsyB

— ??????? Kim Jong Un (@KimJongUnique) July 27, 2026

In Pakistan entire loads of rubbish are emptied straight into public waterways while the West frets over paper straws.

Congratulations on saving the planet with recycling, turning your AC down, and struggling with paper straws

Meanwhile, in Pakistan...

Writer: Ianpic.twitter.com/qR3u3XRDCh

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 27, 2026

These people arrive in Britain steadfastly refusing to deviate from the practices of the places they left. They are offered free collection, legal disposal sites and public bins. Many choose instead to tip waste into streets, rivers, mountains and nature reserves.

They show no respect for the environment they now occupy and no regard for the people who have to live with the mess.

That behaviour might be routine in the third-world dumps they came from. It is not routine here. The services exist. The choice is deliberate. The result is Western towns, rivers and countryside being turned into the same wastelands the individuals left behind.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 05:00

Which Countries Are Best (& Worst) For Women?

Where is the best place in the world to be a woman?

As Visual Capitalist's Srijaa Chatterjee highlights in the following graphic, according to the latest Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Index, the answer remains Northern Europe, where Nordic countries occupy all five of the top positions.

Published by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, the 2025/26 WPS Index ranks 181 countries using 13 indicators spanning women’s inclusion, justice, and security. The results form the basis for this 2026 ranking.

The World’s Best and Worst Countries for Women

The following table ranks countries based on the Women, Peace and Security Index.

Rank Country WPS Index Score 1 🇩🇰 Denmark 0.939 2 🇮🇸 Iceland 0.932 3 🇳🇴 Norway 0.924 3 🇸🇪 Sweden 0.924 5 🇫🇮 Finland 0.921 6 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 0.918 7 🇧🇪 Belgium 0.912 8 🇳🇱 Netherlands 0.905 9 🇦🇹 Austria 0.898 9 🇳🇿 New Zealand 0.898 11 🇦🇺 Australia 0.896 11 🇪🇪 Estonia 0.896 13 🇮🇪 Ireland 0.891 14 🇸🇮 Slovenia 0.889 15 🇱🇹 Lithuania 0.887 16 🇨🇦 Canada 0.885 17 🇱🇻 Latvia 0.884 17 🇸🇬 Singapore 0.884 19 🇨🇭 Switzerland 0.877 20 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates 0.872 21 🇩🇪 Germany 0.869 22 🇯🇵 Japan 0.866 23 🇫🇷 France 0.864 23 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 0.864 25 🇪🇸 Spain 0.862 26 🇵🇹 Portugal 0.861 27 🇵🇱 Poland 0.854 27 🇹🇼 Taiwan 0.854 29 🇷🇸 Serbia 0.844 30 🇲🇹 Malta 0.841 31 🇺🇸 United States 0.840 32 🇨🇿 Czechia 0.832 32 🇭🇺 Hungary 0.832 34 🇨🇷 Costa Rica 0.824 35 🇺🇾 Uruguay 0.822 36 🇲🇩 Moldova 0.821 37 🇰🇷 South Korea 0.815 38 🇧🇬 Bulgaria 0.814 39 🇮🇹 Italy 0.811 40 🇸🇨 Seychelles 0.810 41 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 0.809 42 🇧🇧 Barbados 0.807 43 🇷🇴 Romania 0.801 44 🇲🇳 Mongolia 0.799 45 🇬🇪 Georgia 0.798 46 🇸🇰 Slovakia 0.797 47 🇦🇷 Argentina 0.791 48 🇭🇷 Croatia 0.788 49 🇬🇩 Grenada 0.787 49 🇲🇰 North Macedonia 0.787 51 🇸🇷 Suriname 0.779 52 🇨🇾 Cyprus 0.770 52 🇬🇾 Guyana 0.770 54 🇵🇾 Paraguay 0.768 55 🇧🇭 Bahrain 0.765 56 🇦🇲 Armenia 0.762 57 🇹🇭 Thailand 0.761 58 🇴🇲 Oman 0.755 59 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.753 60 🇬🇷 Greece 0.752 61 🇲🇪 Montenegro 0.743 62 🇨🇻 Cabo Verde 0.741 63 🇧🇾 Belarus 0.739 63 🇨🇱 Chile 0.739 63 🇵🇼 Palau 0.739 63 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia 0.739 67 🇲🇾 Malaysia 0.738 68 🇦🇱 Albania 0.731 68 🇫🇯 Fiji 0.731 70 🇰🇼 Kuwait 0.723 70 🇶🇦 Qatar 0.723 72 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan 0.722 73 🇻🇳 Viet Nam 0.721 74 🇹🇲 Turkmenistan 0.720 75 🇷🇺 Russian Federation 0.718 76 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico 0.707 77 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka 0.706 78 🇲🇻 Maldives 0.704 79 🇯🇲 Jamaica 0.703 80 🇧🇴 Bolivia 0.701 80 🇵🇪 Peru 0.701 82 🇽🇰 Kosovo 0.700 83 🇱🇦 Lao PDR 0.698 84 🇮🇱 Israel 0.697 84 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan 0.697 86 🇵🇦 Panama 0.696 87 🇸🇻 El Salvador 0.691 88 🇯🇴 Jordan 0.686 89 🇨🇳 China 0.685 89 🇼🇸 Samoa 0.685 89 🇹🇯 Tajikistan 0.685 89 🇹🇴 Tonga 0.685 89 🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago 0.685 94 🇬🇦 Gabon 0.679 94 🇲🇺 Mauritius 0.679 96 🇮🇩 Indonesia 0.678 97 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic 0.675 98 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan 0.674 99 🇧🇹 Bhutan 0.673 100 🇹🇳 Tunisia 0.671 101 🇲🇭 Marshall Islands 0.670 102 🇲🇦 Morocco 0.668 102 🇹🇱 Timor-Leste 0.668 104 🇧🇿 Belize 0.667 104 🇰🇭 Cambodia 0.667 106 🇹🇷 Türkiye 0.664 107 🇳🇮 Nicaragua 0.659 108 🇧🇼 Botswana 0.658 108 🇸🇧 Solomon Islands 0.658 110 🇸🇳 Senegal 0.657 111 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan 0.653 112 🇰🇮 Kiribati 0.652 113 🇫🇲 Federated States of Micronesia 0.648 113 🇿🇦 South Africa 0.648 115 🇻🇺 Vanuatu 0.646 116 🇺🇦 Ukraine 0.645 117 🇬🇭 Ghana 0.639 118 🇻🇪 Venezuela 0.638 119 🇧🇷 Brazil 0.632 120 🇳🇵 Nepal 0.631 121 🇷🇼 Rwanda 0.624 121 🇹🇿 Tanzania 0.624 123 🇩🇿 Algeria 0.621 124 🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe 0.620 125 🇪🇬 Egypt 0.617 126 🇱🇸 Lesotho 0.614 127 🇪🇨 Ecuador 0.612 128 🇮🇷 Iran 0.608 128 🇱🇾 Libya 0.608 128 🇳🇦 Namibia 0.608 131 🇮🇳 India 0.607 131 🇵🇭 Philippines 0.607 133 🇦🇴 Angola 0.601 133 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone 0.601 135 🇰🇲 Comoros 0.590 135 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe 0.590 137 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire 0.589 138 🇧🇯 Benin 0.587 138 🇺🇬 Uganda 0.587 140 🇨🇬 Congo 0.583 141 🇱🇧 Lebanon 0.575 142 🇿🇲 Zambia 0.566 143 🇹🇬 Togo 0.562 144 🇬🇹 Guatemala 0.561 144 🇭🇳 Honduras 0.561 146 🇩🇯 Djibouti 0.560 147 🇲🇽 Mexico 0.558 148 🇸🇿 Eswatini 0.556 149 🇨🇴 Colombia 0.551 150 🇲🇼 Malawi 0.549 151 🇲🇿 Mozambique 0.548 152 🇰🇪 Kenya 0.542 153 🇬🇲 Gambia 0.528 154 🇬🇳 Guinea 0.527 155 🇧🇩 Bangladesh 0.526 156 🇪🇹 Ethiopia 0.516 157 🇱🇷 Liberia 0.512 158 🇮🇶 Iraq 0.510 159 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau 0.508 160 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso 0.507 160 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea 0.507 162 🇳🇬 Nigeria 0.495 163 🇳🇪 Niger 0.492 164 🇲🇱 Mali 0.478 165 🇹🇩 Chad 0.476 166 🇲🇷 Mauritania 0.475 167 🇵🇸 Palestine 0.469 168 🇲🇬 Madagascar 0.466 169 🇵🇰 Pakistan 0.462 170 🇸🇴 Somalia 0.455 171 🇨🇲 Cameroon 0.451 172 🇲🇲 Myanmar 0.442 173 🇸🇸 South Sudan 0.411 174 🇧🇮 Burundi 0.407 175 🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.405 176 🇭🇹 Haiti 0.399 177 🇸🇩 Sudan 0.397 178 🇸🇾 Syrian Arab Republic 0.364 179 🇨🇫 Central African Republic 0.362 180 🇾🇪 Yemen 0.323 181 🇦🇫 Afghanistan 0.279

The rankings reveal a sharp geographic divide. Northern Europe continues to set the global benchmark for women’s wellbeing, while countries affected by conflict and political instability cluster at the bottom.

Denmark ranks first with a score of 0.939, followed by Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and New Zealand round out the global top 10. Afghanistan ranks last, with a score less than one-third of Denmark’s.

Why Nordic Countries Continue to Lead

Nordic countries occupy all five of the top positions thanks to consistently strong performance across the index’s three dimensions: inclusion, justice, and security.

Women in these countries generally benefit from high levels of education, workforce participation, legal protection, financial inclusion, and political representation, alongside relatively low rates of violence. Strong public institutions and broad social safety nets also help support gender equality throughout life.

While no country scores a perfect 1.0, the Nordic region remains the global benchmark for women’s wellbeing.

Outside Northern Europe, Australia and New Zealand continue to perform strongly. Costa Rica and Uruguay also enter the top global quintile for the first time, reflecting sustained gains in women’s rights and wellbeing and making them notable standouts in Latin America.

Conflict Remains the Biggest Divider

At the opposite end of the rankings are Afghanistan, Yemen, the Central African Republic, Syria, Sudan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, South Sudan, and Myanmar. Many of these countries have experienced years of armed conflict, political instability, or humanitarian crises that disproportionately affect women.

More than 70% of women living in the 12 lowest-ranked countries reside within 50 kilometers of armed conflict, exposing them to higher risks of displacement and gender-based violence. Countries with greater exposure to conflict also tend to score worse on access to justice and maternal health.

This aligns with broader research showing that violence against women rises during periods of instability, while fragile institutions often struggle to provide legal protections and support services. According to the World Health Organization, violence against women remains one of the world’s most widespread human rights violations.

Women’s Wellbeing Reflects Broader Society

The WPS Index measures more than gender equality alone. By combining indicators across security, economic inclusion, healthcare, legal rights, and political participation, it provides a broader snapshot of how supportive countries are for women to live, work, and thrive.

Countries that rank highly typically combine economic opportunity, strong legal protections, accessible healthcare, and low levels of violence. Nations facing prolonged instability, by contrast, often struggle across several dimensions at once.

The rankings therefore offer a broader view of social resilience and institutional strength, not just women’s outcomes in isolation.

To explore more global demographic and workforce trends, check out This Map Shows Where Women Work on the Voronoi app.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 04:15

'Free Stuff' In Norway Still Costs Half Of Average Pay

Authored by Joakim Book via TheDailyEconomy.org,

Every few years, Americans rediscover Scandinavia. 

Someone visits Norway or Denmark, returns dazzled and envious of parental leave and universal childcare, and asks why America refuses to copy what obviously works. On the day dedicated to celebrating America, Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote for The New York Times that America is so great that, in fact, it should be more like Norway. If American companies can pay high wages and generous benefits to workers there, Kristof observed, they could do so in New York, too.

If only America were willing to embrace a little more social democracy and bigger government, this popular and recurring story goes, perhaps it could enjoy the same prosperity and flourishing that Norway does — and have its population also routinely rank among the happiest on the planet.

I was born and raised in one Nordic country, have worked in another, and for the last six years have lived in a third, so I’m fairly familiar with our way of life. I’ve also spent much time in America, stunned and enamored of the way things are in the vast, diverse, and unruly union of states. Europeans are simultaneously fascinated and bewildered by America. 

Plenty of things are amazing about these United States, and quite a few things awful about the Nordics; I suspect American intellectuals, dreaming about Norway without understanding its nature and tradeoffs, overlook both.

“You Want Security, Health Care and the American Dream? Look to Scandinavia”

Norwegian workers certainly have higher wages than those in many European countries, including those of its fellow Scandinavians. Hotel cleaners, retail clerks, and construction workers often earn salaries that surprise visiting Americans. Thanks to Baumol’s cost disease, decades of well-managed petroleum wealth have pushed up industrial and service wages. 

The first thing an American professional moving to Norway would notice isn’t the generous parental leave, but the great loss of disposable income and material well-being. Norwegians households average 30 percent less disposable income than those the US, and the cost of everyday items is much higher. 

The Scandinavian bargain might look like free services, but it as tradeoff: more public goods, fewer private goods. 

When American politicians or intellectuals promise Nordic welfare states, most people imagine this happening automatically or by taxing the rich, and everybody benefits. That’s not the case. The real Nordic model taxes earners more (45 percent in Denmark, 40 in Norway, 41 in Sweden, compared to 25 percent in the United States) and charging flat value added tax (VAT). Broad welfare states require broad tax bases; Nordic welfare states are financed not by billionaires but by ordinary workers. The “free” benefits are bought with invasive and regressive consumption taxes (up to 25 percent), payroll taxes, and income taxes that reach well that begin after just $10,000 (the first $16,000 is tax free in the US). 

An American professional, pocketing the median earnings of about $65,000, would pay over $17,000 in Norwegian income taxes (compared to about $5,000 per the IRS calculator, naturally subject to state taxes and various deductions), with the employer forced to chip in another $9,200 for the privilege of merely hiring her. From what’s left over, she faces a high cost of living and sales taxes between 11 percent and 25 percent. 

Were she in Sweden, a much poorer country with wages well below Norway’s, our middle-of-the-road American professional would land herself in the top 20 percent of earners — though not yet triggering the top 53 percent (or 64 percent) marginal tax rates.

For the Tax Foundation, Cristina Enach summarized, “In 2024, Denmark’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 45.2 percent, Norway’s was 40.2 percent, and Sweden’s was 41.4 percent. This compares to a ratio of 25.6 percent in the United States.”

Some of that difference is accounted for by healthcare spending (private, not government) and pension contributions (401(k) or other retirement accounts) and other personalized options. The Nordics give you one option: the state.

In return, yes, our hypothetical expat would receive subsidized childcare, education, paid time off, and health care. Those services would be of  dubious quality, with waiting times stretching into months even for life-threatening conditions. For some, that’s a trade worth making, but it’s not obviously superior, as economist Noah Smith concluded in his comparison a few months ago.

Inequality is indeed lower in Norway, where a person in the top 10 percent earns just three times as much as a person in the bottom 10 percent. That means there’s less reason to strive, less room to grow. Looking to the future, investments in growth, employment, and AI-fueled opportunities are far more attractive stateside than in stagnating Scandinavia. Suppressing growth at the top has suppressed everyone’s potential.

The Norwegian Story Isn’t the Nordic Story

The gap between the average person’s wellbeing in America and that of almost all European countries has widened dramatically over the past three decades. In income per capita, the United States has steadily pulled away from Europe over the last thirty years. The United States’ average income now exceeds every EU member except Luxembourg and Ireland. Citizens of fourteen EU nations earn less on average than residents of even the poorest state: Mississippi, and the EU as a whole ranks between Oklahoma and Maine.

Joseph Sternberg’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year is illustrative: both Americans and Europeans are shocked when they learn how much materially better off America is. “Politically, bliss is ignorance,” concluded Sternberg. “European welfare states, by creating relatively comfortable lives for voters, conceal the full extent of Europe’s prosperity gap.”

Norway is an affluent country by European standards, but only average compared to America as a whole. Rough figures indicate that Americans, on average, enjoy material economic abundance on par with Iceland and Norway, but are 20 percent to 60 percent better off than the other Nordics. (The difference between the economic outliers and the other Nordics is the difference between New York State and Michigan.) While there are nuances in life, politics, and economics between the five Nordic countries, it’s not like the tax rates, labor economics, public schooling, the overall welfare state, or the generosity of parental leave are that different.

It’s no accident that Kristof reported from Norway; had he run this comparison with Sweden or Finland, the economic outcome would have been so unacceptably low that few Americans would be persuaded by the promise. People in the Norwegian and Icelandic success stories are significantly richer than the other Nordics. Even adjusting for purchasing-power-parity numbers via the University of Groningen-Penn World Table data for 2023, Americans are still a comfortable 15-20 percent richer than most Scandinavians.

It’s Impossible Anyway, So Why Are We Dreaming?

The most immediate sticking point to inflated dreams about the Nordics is that nobody has figured out a way to effectively translate and recreate social and economic institutions elsewhere. To say nothing about a population’s values, behaviors, and traditions.

Institutions emerge from particular and path-dependent histories. They’re not IKEA furniture to merely ship across an ocean and assemble at home. Academic or political observers often make the mistake of thinking you can just isolate a few desirable behaviors or economic institutions, retrofit them onto America, and effortlessly create better lives here. 

Plus, America has long tolerated — indeed celebrated — a remarkable degree of eccentricity and ambition. Americans start improbable companies in garages, and they love their “weirdos.” When they do things, they (over)do them properly — SpaceX. College football. Time Square. Las Vegas. Whatever you’re interested in or passionate about, some all-American oddball has built a community for that. It’s a nation of inventors and obsessive animal lovers. They build Burning Man in the desert and whole cities at sea. Their wide-open spaces connect a web of places-as peoples-as-philosophies: Hollywood, elite universities, Silicon Valley and Broadway, Nashville and Detroit, Amish meeting houses and evangelical megachurches, Hindu temples and Highland games from coast to coast. Our great hybrid culture thrives on liberty, not just lower taxes. Our cultural inheritance is the result of having astonishingly many different attempts thrown at the American wall to see what sticks. 

The Nordics don’t have that. With the recent exception of fintech and startup wonders (riding on an early, high-tech boom from the ‘90s), trying new, eccentric things in those cold lands isn’t exactly welcome. The Scandinavian idea of Jantelagen, the expectation that nobody should think themselves special, results in a lack of opportunities and a disregard for novelty that most Americans see as both rude and discouraging. 

The political equilibrium keeping Scandinavia afloat was, until recently, a mostly homogenous population on sparsely populated lands eerily willing to subjugate individual preferences and quirks to common, collective rules. America stands out in the exact opposite way: letting 15 times as many people pursue radically different lifestyles and individual ambitions with cheerful respect, but little regard for whether the neighbors approve. 

Even if it were possible to transplant Norwegian economic and political institutions onto America, how can we be confident we won’t have a Swedish-level economic debacle instead of the wealthy, comfortable Norway a social reformer might dream of?

We can admire and learn from Scandinavian countries using the “Nordic Model,” which have achieved robust social programs without sacrificing too much in the way of economic prosperity. That balance is fragile, and might not work forever: immigration troubles, stagnating growth, and an overbearing regulatory state are exposing the cracks.  

Scandinavia has built wildly successful societies for a few million very similar-minded people. But the United States has built something more impressive: a vast, messy republic of economic and social flourishing where hundreds of millions of people peacefully pursue wildly different visions of a good life.

Becoming more like Norway means becoming less American, with less of the opportunity, ingenuity, and the entrepreneurship that made America great. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 03:30

Russia Answers Drone Attacks With War On Ukrainian Ports, Maritime Shipping

The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) has an 'answer' to Ukraine's recent long-range drone attacks, which have wreaked havoc on oil production and most recently online retailers and manufacturing. Ukraine has also been attacking Russian ships elsewhere in the Black Sea as well as Sea of Azov.

The MoD has announced a fresh wave of strikes targeting multiple Ukrainian port installations and Black Sea shipping targets, which represents a sharp escalation in Moscow's ongoing campaign to choke off regional logistics, and in order to further 'punish' Ukraine.

Golden Leo seen partially submerged offshore Odesa, July 26. Via the Odesa Military Administration

While Ukraine's repeat large drone waves on the Moscow region have driven headlines, much less attention has been paid to the emerging and renewed Black Sea war.

Moscow seeks to sever military supply routes and disrupt arms shipments bound for Ukraine, but this has also obviously resulted in damaged and sunken tankers, auxiliary vessels, and even deaths of civilian bystanders among international shipping crew.

Russia's military has said that from the weekend through Monday, key logistics hubs of Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Port of Mykolaiv (Nikolayev) have been hit - with the latter site seeing a docked cargo vessel receiving a direct strike.

All of this comes after local authorities in Odessa confirmed Sunday that a foreign-flagged cargo ship, which some reports have identified as the Guinea-Bissau-flagged Golden Leo, capsized and sank near the coast after taking heavy damage from a Russian attack over a week ago.

🚨 Russian strikes continue to hit Ukrainian ports and vessels supplying the military

The attacks targeted a trans-shipment facility and fuel depots in Nikolayev's port, and also hit a cargo vessel at sea that was hauling military supplies to Odessa and Chernomorsk. pic.twitter.com/d7VLskmYOC

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) July 28, 2026

According to The Maritime Executive: 

A small cargo ship that was badly damaged in a Russian strike off Odesa has gone down, according to Ukrainian authorities. The small vessel had absorbed multiple hits, and it sank after six days of progressive flooding.

On July 19, three Russian cruise missiles hit the Turkish-operated, Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship Golden Leo off the coast of Odesa. The vessel was outbound with a load of corn at the time of the strike; Russia has been targeting Ukraine's grain export sector in retaliation for strikes on Russian logistics and energy infrastructure. 

Video of the slowly sinking ship had gone viral over the last several days, and the Russian attack killed ten people - and with eight crew members later having to be rescued. 

At least two of the projectiles that hit the vessel were anti-ship missiles, triggering a massive fire before it went under.

The cargo vessel hit by multiple Russian cruise missiles while carrying Ukrainian grain off the coast of Odesa last week finally sank earlier today. pic.twitter.com/oAeSZZkHAW

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 26, 2026

Russia has come under international condemnation for these attacks, especially from India given the rising numbers of Indian crew members killed or injured.

Russian vessels with civilian crew have also been coming under attack from Ukraine in the same region...

The crew of the Russian NEW VICTORY Bulk Carrier, IMO 9159050, filmed a FP-1/FP-2 attack drone strike on their vessel in the Black Sea. pic.twitter.com/R6vSvqCeZs

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 26, 2026

Sea war has also lately expanded into the Caspian, potentially linking the Ukraine and Iran conflicts...

Ukraine says it has struck several vessels in the Caspian Sea used to transport Russian military cargo to Iran. Reports suggest the cargo ships Port Olya 2 and Begey were hit. Meanwhile, Iranian regime-affiliated channels are threatening ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/OBFk2SdH3H

— Baba Banaras™ (@RealBababanaras) July 25, 2026

But the Kremlin has shot back, saying it is Ukraine which is unleashing "indiscriminate terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure" through its constant drone attacks.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 02:45

How Does A Political Party Leader Survive This?

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Far left UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski has caused uproar by sharing an Instagram post featuring a man in a T-shirt depicting a guillotine next to the words "We're only making plans for Nigel." The clear target was Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

This lands just two weeks after Reform's Ann Widdecombe was beaten to death with a hammer in her own home.

Reform has reported Polanski to the Metropolitan Police for incitement to murder. The Met says it is conducting enquiries.

Zack Polanski has posted to his 713k Instagram followers a photo of a man in a T-shirt calling for the beheading of Nigel Farage.

To do this just 2 weeks after our friend Ann was murdered is staggering.

Polanski is inciting murder.

It must be treated as such by the police. pic.twitter.com/mkLvxESf21

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) July 27, 2026

The image formed part of a carousel of photos from a Green Party event. Polanski, who has more than 700,000 Instagram followers, accepted a collaboration request. Once the specific frame was flagged, he unshared it.

A Green Party spokesman said he "unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message" and claimed he had accepted the post "without realising there was more to it than he had seen." The same spokesman called the T-shirt "clearly in poor taste" while noting Polanski himself has received threats.

Nigel Farage shared a screenshot and stated the obvious double standard: "This is what Zack Polanski has just posted on his Instagram. If I was to post anything as inciteful then I would expect to be arrested, and so should Polanski."

Reform's home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf posted a video reaction expressing disbelief at the sequence of events.

I can't believe I'm saying this in a video pic.twitter.com/vs5UbnMHKJ

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) July 27, 2026

The Metropolitan Police confirmed: "Earlier today, we received a third-party report relating to an image shared on social media. We take reports of this nature extremely seriously, and officers are conducting enquiries into the matter."

Is the enquiry was serious or just purely performative?

But are you really looking into this further or just two tier lip service? https://t.co/xaqZKpDvEi

— Gauci Reports (@GauciReports) July 27, 2026

Reform has also indicated it will refer Polanski to the Greater London Authority monitoring officer, given his elected role there.

The timing is not abstract. Ann Widdecombe, 78, Reform's immigration and justice spokeswoman and a long-serving former Conservative minister, was found dead at her remote Dartmoor home on 9 July.

Prosecutors told a court she sustained 21 blows to the head from a hammer in what was described as a planned and targeted attack. A man has been charged with her murder.

The killing immediately produced open celebration among sections of the left online, including on platforms that market themselves as more "kind" alternatives to mainstream social media. Users treated the death of an elderly woman for her politics as a punchline or a form of progress.

Against this backdrop, Polanski's post landed like petrol on dry grass.

Jack Hadfield noted the contrast with previous cases of social-media speech:

Lucy Connolly was locked up for much less.

Are the police going to apply the law fairly, or are we going to see more two tier justice?

The left are violent extremists who want to see us dead, and they should be treated as such! https://t.co/z7cKwkmKnG

— Jack Hadfield ?? (@JackHadders) July 27, 2026

Alex Armstrong stressed equal application:

Lucy Connolly's post was undoubtedly seen by far fewer people and was also deleted.

I don't believe anyone should be locked up for social media posts HOWEVER this is about equal application of the law. Ignorance is not seen an excuse, neither is an apology. Not my beliefs, that... https://t.co/fpicPcdBmN

— Alex Armstrong (@Alexarmstrong) July 27, 2026

Nioh Berg highlighted the mechanics of Instagram collaboration posts. Accepting a collaboration requires a deliberate step; the image was visible.

Let me point out the LIE here.

Zack was added to an IG collaboration. In order to be a visible collaborator, you must manually accept it.

Meaning Zack, the disgusting subversive snake, SAW the image and STILL accepted it. He only unshared because of massive backlash and the... https://t.co/Tgi8WhyVPw pic.twitter.com/dwMTmQHK0s

— ???? ???? ?? ?? (@NiohBerg) July 27, 2026

Will we see yet another example of two tier policing in the UK?

I don't t want people arrested for threatening social media posts, but if this was me or someone on the right... we WOULD be arrested.

So we either have two tier policing or we have consistent policing... what will it be ?

This is two weeks after Ann Widdecombe's murder. The left... https://t.co/hvJjStmi3l

— Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR ?? (@EssexPR) July 27, 2026

Alex Phillips observed the media asymmetry:

Can you imagine if it was someone from Reform wearing a t shirt with a medieval murder instrument on it and Nigel Farage had retweeted it?

Every newspaper front page would be plastered with it and there'd be mass calls for resignation

2 Tierism is Leftists at the top, and us... https://t.co/5FfC2s4KxJ

— Alex Phillips (@ThatAlexWoman) July 27, 2026

Susan Hall of the London Assembly noted that this rhetoric is unacceptable in any context.

It's irrelevant if you like or support Nigel Farage or not. This is totally and utterly unacceptable, aimed at anyone. I cannot imagine the meltdown that would be going on right now if Farage had aimed this at any of those on the left. https://t.co/wmHA3CZClN

— Susan Hall AM (@Councillorsuzie) July 27, 2026

Polanski leads the same Green Party that has spent years elevating radical identity politics above basic national standards. In May, we documented the election of a transgender Tamil immigrant on a temporary student visa - with no British citizenship or permanent residency - as a Green MSP in Scotland.

The party's record under Polanski includes candidates investigated for antisemitism, open rejection of biological reality, and a consistent prioritisation of ideological purity over ordinary voters.

The culture that normalises such figures is the same culture that treats a guillotine graphic aimed at a political rival as an unfortunate oversight.

British politics has already seen two sitting MPs murdered in recent memory - Jo Cox and David Amess - plus the hammer killing of Widdecombe. Security concerns for public figures are no longer theoretical.

Farage has repeatedly described himself as among the most physically and verbally attacked politicians of the modern era. Polanski has previously labelled Farage a "fascist" and a "grifter." The language of existential threat has become casual on one side of the spectrum while the same side demands maximum protection and sensitivity for its own.

Two-tier enforcement remains the live issue. Cases involving speech from the right have produced arrests, charges, and in some instances custody. Equivalent or stronger material from the left has frequently been waved away as "poor taste," "satire," or an unfortunate oversight.

The Met's statement that it takes such reports "extremely seriously" will be tested by whether any meaningful action follows or whether the file quietly closes once the news cycle moves on.

A political party leader is not an anonymous activist. He is a public figure with institutional reach, elected positions, and a platform that amplifies whatever he platforms.

Accepting a collaboration that places a beheading graphic of a rival in front of three-quarters of a million followers is not a private lapse. It is a public act. Claiming not to have noticed the content after the fact does not restore the credibility that was spent.

The response from the Green Party has been damage control rather than unambiguous rejection of the underlying culture that makes such imagery thinkable.

Either the rules on incitement and threats apply evenly, or they exist solely to police one side. If Polanski remains leader of the Green Party after this, it confirms the far left's extremist stance and proves that only those who oppose it will be targeted and punished.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 02:00

The War's Back Is Broken

Authored by Alastair Crooke

Trump ordered the US military not to carry out new strikes on Iran Friday night, despite approving earlier a "Gates of Hell massive attack" on Iran. The US has now requested a new temporary ceasefire with Iran and is seeking a return to the collapsed and suspended MoU, with discussions to include Yemen, and with Trump seeking to make AnsarAllah a party to the negotiations.

Clearly Trump is angry, and fears that that the war is consuming his Presidency (and his legacy). Iran comprehensively rejected all negotiations throughout this last week and confirmed it will not start negotiations under any circumstances. Put simply, why would Iran consent to give the US time to regroup and rearm before launching another round of strikes on Iran when it has the US “on the run.”

A return to the MoU whose credibility Trump repeatedly has shredded? Unlikely.

Will Schryver notes that rumors are swirling that the Pentagon is pressuring Trump to call off the war with Iran because the US has nearly exhausted its stockpiles of air-defence interceptors and stand-off strike missiles. The President’s top aides are also uneasy about the prospect of a widening war in the Middle East, the alienation of key Gulf allies vulnerable to further Iranian attack, and the coming energy crunch. “Few if any in Mr. Trump’s inner circle believed the plan to escalate was wise, said the two people briefed,” the New York Times reports.

It seems too that jiggery-pokery over the exact fuel supply situation in the US may have played a part in Trump’s backtrack. Larry Johnson reports that –

A brief prepared by Karl Miller investigates how the US military’s covert fuel procurement and export operations are depleting the nation’s diesel and jet fuel reserves, particularly during a period when domestic stocks are already critically low.

In gist, Miller says that –

much of this (covert) fuel export is routed through opaque channels, such as the Rotterdam trans-shipment hub, where the final military or foreign allocation is not publicly reconciled, leaving the American economy exposed to shortage risks – whilst military and foreign operations – ‘notably Israel’ – receive priority access.

This report by Miller seems to connect to the US authorities’ open manipulation of oil benchmarks designed to convince markets that there is no danger of fuel shortages arising from the ongoing emergency release from the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserves) of 172 million barrels that was initiated to counter supply shocks from the conflict with Iran.

Whilst the statuary security floor is 250 million barrels (the current level is around 300), nonetheless the narrative is being promoted that the drawdown can go even further (to 70 mbpd). But can it? What is the minimum level the strategic oil reserves can go to? It is more complicated than just one big vat of crude that has a specific level. The SPR is composed of many caverns, and contains different types of crude oil, that are being drawn down at different rates, with some caverns likely to collapse if drained too far. In short, nobody knows how far is too far. It’s all guesswork.

With the back broken to Trump’s military assault the only path back to negotiations would be to offer front-loaded real concessions. But even were Trump to do this, would he be believed? And can Trump’s mental state sustain such implied humiliation?

The main obstacle on the path back to negotiations with Iran is that he and his inner circle understand Iran back-to-front.

They aver to believe that they are dealing with an intransigent and hardline leadership, whilst Iranians as a whole long for an exit.

This is wrong; it is the other way around. It is the leadership that is pragmatic, and it is “the street” that is overall more hard-line and demands vengeance. And demands to know why there should be negotiations at all.

Then again, Team Trump and his Fox News cheerleaders have slipped from the earlier US vision of itself as a redeemer nation into a radical Manichaean “characterization of itself,” Professor Michael Vlahos writes, in which –

American ‘good news’ has been replaced by the ever-present spectre of Evil and the threat of force. The holy words, Freedom and Democracy, while still chanted, have become a hollow mantra. The American ‘gospel”’no longer preaches about bringing redemption and expiation: it is now concerned with enforcement and punishment. The volte-face came in an instant, on 9/11 and with Guantanamo.

The problem then centers on attitude: How is it possible to negotiate or talk to the embodiment of evil (as Trump terms the Iranians)? It isn’t possible, of course. That was the point to casting enemies in such dark terms. It precludes true mediation. It precludes a solution that can be viewed as the elevation to power for “one of the most evil people in history,” leading a “gang of bloodthirsty thugs.” It distils policy to the search for dominance over the “otherness.”

The West exhibits one particular way of thinking that it deems to represent the essence of that which is Human. This mode of thinking (often termed Apollonian) links to Patriarchy, law, and vertical top-to-bottom secular, rational, mechanistic thinking. It offers little room for “betweenness.” Things are either “A” or “non-A.”

However, another sphere (often termed the Dionysian) expresses the energetic duality in both nature and in the human – male and female; order and exuberant transgression; and of rectitude and degeneracy. They form the poles within consciousness that both co-inhere in us, and that co-constitute each other. (Dionysian logos may be viewed perhaps as the shadow, or even of the revolt against Apollo).

And then there is Persephone (the underside to the Dionysian “shadow”) expressing the chthonic, feminine existence. Here there is no male pole, but only a goddess radiating earthiness and the female principle of reproduction, the process of growth and of caring, and of underworld knowledge (called intuition) – symbolizing the cyclical Life of Aphrodite, decay, death and ultimate renewal.

Consciousness however, mostly expresses the human quality from one particular orientation. Nonetheless, all civilizations draw from the full diversity of such components to consciousness that – one way or another – respond to a particular civilization.

To think in one culture is to think in one way; however to belong to a different culture, a different ethnic group, a different religion – means that thinking will differ. Yet we all remain human.

So the imperial hubris of Trump is beginning to face the fact that he will find it hard – possibly impossible – to find a solution to the Middle East, because to see the world from the purely Apollonian perspective is essentially male and exclusivist and fails to understand “otherness”; but rather relies on exceptional privilege. It simply does not – and cannot – recognize a plurality of minds.

The US has lost the war. By adopting such uncompromising Manichaean language, Trump effectively has severed himself from any prospective diplomatic solution. By widening the war (Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq) he has severely complicated any diplomatic track. All elements are interrelated, yet they also have separate agendas. Thus a solution involves a complex matrix of issues, rather than a binary dispute between the US and Iran alone. The US ultimately will have to capitulate, with the result that Iran becomes a regional power (strengthening Russia and China), whilst the Region slowly will come to terms with this new West Asian reality.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 23:25

Los Angeles Is Painting Its Streets To Fight Heat Waves

Researchers found that coating more than 700,000 square feet of asphalt in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a solar-reflective material helped reduce urban heat, though the benefits came with limitations, according to the Times of India.

The project, conducted in Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley and published in Environmental Research Communications, covered roads, parking lots, playgrounds, and basketball courts with a reflective coating designed to bounce sunlight away instead of absorbing it. During a September 2022 heat wave, afternoon air temperatures in treated areas were as much as 3.5°F (1.9°C) cooler than in a nearby untreated neighborhood. Pavement surface temperatures also dropped by roughly 10°F.

The report says that researchers cautioned, however, that cooler pavement doesn't always translate into greater comfort for pedestrians. While reflective surfaces absorb less heat, they can also reflect more solar radiation back into the surrounding environment, potentially increasing the radiant heat people experience. Factors such as direct sunlight, humidity, wind, and surrounding surfaces all influence how hot it actually feels outdoors.

The findings suggest reflective pavement can help reduce urban heat, particularly during extreme heat waves, but works best as part of a broader strategy that also includes trees, shade, and other cooling measures. Researchers also noted that coatings can lose effectiveness over time due to weather, traffic, dirt, and routine road maintenance.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 23:00

Chinese University Reviewing Gene Editing Research As Family Discloses Daughter's Death

Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

A top-tier Chinese university said on July 26 that it is investigating gene editing research by one of its researchers following reports that scientists treated a 6-year-old girl as part of their research, who died during the unprecedented human trial.

Molecular model of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), in an undated file image. (Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock

Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, one of China's Ivy League-level institutions, said in a statement that it "attaches great importance to the matter and has established a special working group to conduct a comprehensive investigation."

New York-based nonprofit science watchdog Retraction Watch and peer-reviewed journal Science disclosed on July 23, on behalf of her grieving family, the death of the 6-year-old girl, who underwent an experimental gene editing procedure in a clinical trial conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers at the affiliated Xinhua Hospital.

The girl had been diagnosed with global developmental delay in March 2023, her parents told Science. Genome sequencing later pointed toward a single-base mutation in her CHD3 gene as the cause. The rare mutation, which causes Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, impacted a vital protein essential for brain development, leaving her with challenges in her motor and language skills that became more evident when she turned 4.

The condition doesn't usually impact life expectancy, University of Montreal geneticist Philippe Campeau, who helped link the condition to the CHD3 gene, told Science. Symptoms can range from mild cases where the only obvious indication is a slightly enlarged head, to severe cases with intellectual deficits, seizures, and heart problems.

The girl, who died in March 2025 seven days into the world-first clinical gene editing trial, which was aimed at removing her condition, had milder symptoms.

Her parents told the watchdog that they were persuaded by the team of China-based researchers, led by neuroscientist Qiu Zilong, to fund an experimental procedure that would edit one nucleotide in the chromosomes of their daughter's treated cells, changing a T to a C in her mutated gene. The parents and relatives were asked to contribute $860,000 toward the experiment.

Following the girl's death, the scientists returned the funds, and the hospital was fined by local authorities, her parents told Science.

While the clinical trial was never published in a medical journal following the death, Science and Retraction Watch revealed that the researchers injected doses of two novel engineered viruses into the girl's spinal fluid. The method is currently the most common delivery system for gene-editing therapy. The trial was the first attempt to use this particular gene-editing method to treat a human.

The family told the watchdog that the cause of death was identified by the hospital's ethics committee as a severe immune response to the procedure. They also said that potential death was not explicitly listed as a risk in the procedure.

Qiu and his co-authors published related research in Nature in February 2026 that involved conducting the CHD3 gene editing procedure on mice. A peer reviewer of the study, Campeau told Science he did not notice the extent of changes made when the mouse study - whose original experiments were funded by the family - was resubmitted without the family's genetic data or a sentence recognizing their "participation and support."

He approved it for publication. The paper only mentioned that research "bridging the gap between preclinical research and clinical translation remains a significant challenge."

The child's parents told Science they submitted a formal request to the School of Medicine dean that the mice model paper be retracted "to prevent more children from suffering and our blood and tears flowing in vain." According to Science, the experiment was also conducted on monkeys, after which the ethics committee approved the family's clinical trial on Jan. 2, 2025. Other research, published Feb. 17, would soon show that monkeys receiving similar gene-editing therapies suffered moderate to severe liver damage.

The school said in its statement that it has "always attached great importance to research integrity and research norms, and resolutely opposes conducting medical scientific research in violation of research ethics."

"The medical school will take this matter seriously based on the investigation results," it said. "We appreciate the concern and oversight from all sectors of society."

A spokesperson from Nature told The Epoch Times by email, "We are looking into the matter carefully following an established process."

The same day that the family's report of their daughter's death was published by Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong was added to the Pentagon's list of research institutions deemed a threat to U.S. national security.

The civilian institution joins 87 other institutions in China that have been barred from projects involving U.S. federal funding and collaboration starting fiscal year 2026.

Scientists in China and around the world are vying to be the first to deliver safe gene-editing treatments, with most at this early stage focusing on treating life-threatening conditions.

Some scientists have had success in gene-editing treatments, including the most recent breakthrough last year by a Philadelphia team who used lipid nanoparticles delivered by intravenous infusion to treat a baby boy with a life-threatening liver disorder.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 22:35

DSA Platform Includes Abolishing Prisons, Supreme Court, And Presidency

The Democratic Socialists of America wants you to know exactly what it wants, and Megan Romer, the group's national co-chair, laid it out on national television without once reaching for a hedge word over the most radical ideas on the party platform.

The platform itself reads like a fever dream a committee wrote line by line. A 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay and benefits, a federal jobs guarantee, canceling all student debt, and free college from pre-K through graduate school anchor the economic wish list, alongside healthcare that is universal, free, and includes gender-affirming care as a guaranteed right.

The platform calls for more publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, and a guaranteed lawyer for every tenant. On policing, the platform wants demilitarized police departments, defunded police unions, and money pulled out of police budgets entirely, all of which the DSA frames as a first step toward abolishing prisons and policing outright.

On foreign policy, the platform demands the defunding of the Department of War, the closure of overseas military bases, and an end to all foreign wars, and it pairs that with support for International Criminal Court prosecutions of what it deems American war criminals. As for Israel, the DSA calls for an end to all U.S. military and economic aid, prosecution of American and Israeli leaders over what many consider a genocide in Gaza, and recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

The DSA is just as blunt about reimagining how the government works. The platform seeks statehood for Washington, D.C., self-determination for U.S. territories, and the abolition of both the Electoral College and the Senate, alongside an expanded House and a presidency and Supreme Court that answer to Congress instead of operating independently. The DSA wants to swap the two-party system for proportional representation and ranked-choice voting and pay for all of it through full public financing of every election.

And, to top it all off, the platform calls for slavery reparations.

Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through the DSA's platform position by position, true or false, no room to dodge. Romer never flinched. She confirmed that the Democratic Socialists of America's platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court, eliminating ICE, ending borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing prisons as a long-term goal, and placing most large corporations under government or public ownership. At every step, she answered without hesitation, affirming that each position accurately reflected the DSA's platform.

DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer confirms their platform includes:

- Abolishing the Senate, presidency, & Supreme Court
- Abolishing ICE, borders, & prisons
- Defunding the Pentagon
- Mass amnesty for illegals pic.twitter.com/rPQiT9HCXN

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 26, 2026

The problem this presents for Democrats is that the DSA is no longer a fringe group begging for a seat at the table. DSA candidates are running for Congress as Democrats and winning. Claire Valdez won her primary in New York's 7th congressional district. Darializa Avila Chevalier took the 13th. Brad Lander won the 10th. All three ran with DSA muscle behind them and the backing of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has become the group's biggest trophy. Melat Kiros knocked off longtime Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado's 1st District, a seat DeGette had held for decades. Chris Rabb won his primary in Pennsylvania's 3rd District. Janeese Lewis George won the mayoral primary in Washington, D.C.

Asked whether the Democratic Party ought to be nervous about where the DSA is dragging it, Romer flipped the question back on the party's leadership.

"The establishment Democrats should be worried about the voters and about what the voters think and about what the constituency thinks, and ... right now they have not been delivering, and our candidates are and have been, and it's resonating with voters," Romer replied. "I also have been told a lot of times by Democrats, don't vote third party. It's wasting your vote," the DSA co-chair continued. "So, we run on the Democratic ballot line where it makes sense. We run independents sometimes where that is a viable possibility, but it's a ballot line. And what matters is what the voters think. And the voters are overwhelmingly choosing our candidates."

Republicans are likely to use the DSA's radical platform as a cudgel against every Democrat on the ballot in this year's midterms. Establishment Democrats can keep insisting the DSA is a small, manageable faction, but the reality is that its candidates are winning real primaries as Democrats nationwide, and that leaves Republicans a simple play: put every Democrat opponent on the spot and force them to either embrace the DSA's agenda or publicly reject it.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 22:10

ICE Dismantles SIM Farms In Nationwide Operation

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE's) Homeland Security Investigations carried out a nationwide operation between June 22 and July 10 that dismantled "SIM farms" run by transnational criminal organizations.

File photograph of a cell phone sim card at a press conference in Paris, France, on Feb. 25, 2015. Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

SIM (subscriber identity module) farms are systems containing large numbers of SIM cards from different wireless carriers, often housed in banks of cellphones, modems, or specialized devices known as SIM boxes.

These can be used to send and receive bulk messages or calls and often exploit voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology to do so. Initially developed for legitimate purposes, the technology has become prominent among organized fraudsters targeting mass audiences through phishing texts, scam calls, and fraudulent online accounts.

The recent nationwide operation, dubbed Operation Signal Break, "dismantled critical command-and-control infrastructure used to perpetrate large-scale telecommunications fraud across the United States," ICE said in a July 24 statement.

Authorities will now analyze the seized SIM data to identify victims and assess losses caused by such fraud. The illicit proceeds from the fraud, which are suspected to be linked to Chinese transnational criminal organizations and distribution networks, will be traced.

This is expected to support criminal indictments, sanctions targeting national and international infrastructure used in criminal activity, and asset seizures. SIM box operations are estimated to result in losses worth $15 million annually to Americans, according to ICE.

SIM box fraud, "also known as interconnect bypass fraud, is a scheme in which fraudsters reroute international calls to appear as local ones," a Nov. 8, 2025, post from IT services provider Synaptique said.

For instance, when a foreign national calls someone in the United States, the call is diverted through VOIP to a SIM box in America instead of passing through a legitimate international call gateway. The SIM box then uses one of the local SIM cards to place a new local call to the recipient.

SIM boxes can be used by criminals to communicate in a clandestine manner. Foreign rival states and intelligence agencies can also use SIM boxes in their operations.

In its statement, ICE said that Operation Signal Break mobilized specialized SIM Box Surge Teams composed of criminal analysts, special agents, and computer forensic analysts, surging them to California, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey to tackle SIM farm operations.

"I commend our special agents for their outstanding dedication and teamwork in dismantling illicit telecommunications infrastructure," Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Acting Executive Associate Director John Condon said in the statement.

"Their relentless pursuit of justice and commitment to protecting the integrity of our communications networks have made our communities safer and sends a clear message to those seeking to exploit our systems to defraud Americans."

Since 2024, the HSI has seized more than 1,900 SIM boxes, more than 500,000 SIM cards, and in excess of $700,000 in illicit proceeds. It has executed more than 116 federal criminal search warrants. In total, 68 SIM farms used to facilitate fraudulent texts and calls have been disrupted across 15 states. The probes have led to one criminal arrest and 11 administrative arrests.

In September 2025, the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) announced the dismantling of an "imminent telecommunications threat" in the New York tristate area that involved the use of thousands of SIM cards.

A network of electronic devices located throughout the region was used to conduct telecommunications-related threats against senior government officials. In total, more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards were found across multiple sites.

In addition to enabling anonymous telephonic threats, the infrastructure could facilitate other crimes, such as enabling encrypted communications between criminal enterprises and threat actors, and disabling cell phone towers, according to the U.S. Secret Service.

"The potential for disruption to our country's telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated," Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in the statement.

In an international case of SIM box criminal operations, Europol announced in October 2025 that it had taken down a cybercrime-as-a-service criminal network that provided SIM box services to criminals worldwide.

A server farm in New York City on Sept. 23, 2025. US Secret Service via Getty Images Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 21:45

Watch: US Navy's New Suicide Drone Boats Help Sink Decommissioned Amphibious Assault Ship

The US military has effectively taken a page from Ukraine's drone-boat playbook, using a swarm attack against high-value Iranian maritime assets earlier this month. Separately, a Texas shipyard is preparing to mass-produce these unmanned vessels by the thousands.

The latest evidence that the Navy is rapidly adopting one-way attack vessels emerged during RIMPAC 2026 near Hawaii.

In a live-fire exercise, two Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft were deployed against the decommissioned amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu, according to the military blog Army Recognition.

US Navy conducts first GARC kamikaze sea drone strike on USS Peleliu in RIMPAC 2026 SINKEX exercise pic.twitter.com/gtYKPDeg4D

— Army Recognition (@ArmyRecognition) July 27, 2026

Here's more from the outlet:

On July 17, 2026, the U.S. Navy used the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (GARC) in a live-fire attack for the first time, directing two small unmanned surface vessels (USVs) against the decommissioned amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu during the RIMPAC exercise near Hawaii.

The craft were operated by the Unmanned Surface Vessel Division 32 (USVDIV-32) and entered the engagement after larger weapons had already struck the target, as part of a coordinated attack.

The two vessels detonated near the waterline, adding localized blast, structural deformation, and flooding to damage produced by missiles, aircraft, submarines, and land-based firing units.

The engagement demonstrated that a small, container-transportable vessel carrying as much as 454 kilograms of payload could contribute to the destruction of a major warship.

Watch:

U.S. Navy one-way attack surface drones take part in a sinking exercise in the Pacific Ocean targeting the hulk of decommissioned Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu (LHA 5) as part of Exercise Rim of the Pacific 2026, July 17, 2026. source：https://t.co/nUbZ2uoDLV https://t.co/Zyp4VcJM0U pic.twitter.com/HgcoD82xaz

— 笑脸男人 (@lfx160219) July 25, 2026

Earlier this month, three US Navy-backed Saronic Corsair one-way attack vessels struck Iran’s Bandar Abbas Naval Base.

Yesterday, using multiple one-way attack surface drones, CENTCOM forces successfully struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. Three Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, marking the first time American forces have employed sea… pic.twitter.com/bOM2kmgRxz

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 13, 2026

As we continue expanding our coverage of autonomous warfare, these developments point to the rapid US adoption of low-cost, attritable warbots. The next phase will likely be a massive Pentagon procurement cycle focused on stockpiling thousands of drone boats and millions of aerial one-way attack drones.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 21:20

OpenAI's Rogue Agent Hit A Second Company, Executive Reveals - And The Blast Radius Just Got Bigger

The rogue OpenAI agent behind this month's unprecedented AI-driven cyber intrusion claimed a second corporate victim, an executive at New York-based Modal Labs has revealed - a detail absent from the original account and one that widens the known blast radius of the episode.

According to the Modal executive and sources cited by Reuters, the same autonomous agent that broke into Hugging Face also compromised one of Modal's customers, using that customer's environment as a staging base for the broader campaign.

Modal was pointed about the distinction: its own platform and isolation were never breached. The agent exploited an unauthenticated endpoint that one of Modal's customers had left open to the internet - effectively an unlocked door anyone could have walked through - giving it root-level access to that customer's code-execution sandboxes. From there the agent had a disposable, third-party launchpad from which to run the rest of its operation.

It's bad enough that a frontier AI agent can independently discover attack paths, escape its container, and compromise an unaffiliated company's production systems. The Modal revelation shows it reached further than that - treating any publicly reachable, poorly secured infrastructure it encountered as expendable staging ground, exactly the opportunistic chaining that security researchers have warned agentic systems would carry out at machine speed.

The Spree That's Already Known

Most of what led up to the Modal disclosure has already been picked over, but the shape of it is worth a recap. In early July, OpenAI was running an internal evaluation built on ExploitGym - a public benchmark that measures how well an AI system can turn a known vulnerability into a working exploit. The models under test, GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased prototype, were deliberately run with their cyber-safety refusals reduced and the classifiers that normally block high-risk activity switched off, because the point was to measure maximum offensive capability.

The agent found and exploited a previously unknown flaw in the one package-registry proxy it was allowed to reach, escalated privileges, moved through OpenAI's research environment, and got to a machine with open internet access. Once online, it reasoned that Hugging Face likely hosted the answer key to the very benchmark it was being tested on, and went to steal it rather than solve the problems itself. Between roughly July 11 and 13 it ran thousands of automated actions against the platform - gaining code execution through two separate flaws in its dataset-processing pipeline, harvesting credentials, and moving laterally across internal clusters. Forensic work later recovered on the order of 17,600 distinct attacker actions.

Hugging Face caught and contained the intrusion through its own AI-assisted monitoring, and says the only thing the agent actually made off with was a limited set of the benchmark's challenge solutions - no public models, datasets, or user-facing services tampered with. To reconstruct the timeline, its team had to fall back on an open-weight model, because the commercial frontier models refused to analyze the real attack data.

What The Wider Scope Means

The Modal disclosure lands on top of a timeline that was already awkward for OpenAI. By several accounts, the company did not recognize its own agent as the source for roughly a week:

• July 16: Hugging Face goes public, attributing the intrusion only to an unknown autonomous AI agent, without naming the operator.
• July 21: OpenAI formally acknowledges the incident, connecting the activity to its own evaluation only after combing internal logs over the preceding weekend.

OpenAI has called the episode "an unprecedented cyber incident" and maintains the models were narrowly fixated on the evaluation goal with no broader malicious intent. In its latest update, the company said the more capable model was an internal-only prototype, since deactivated and restricted, that the proxy vulnerability has been disclosed to the vendor, and that a small number of publicly exposed credentials on other services were also used along the way - the kind of qualifier that, paired with the Modal revelation, suggests the full scope of the campaign is still coming into focus.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 20:55

Federal Court Rules For Woman Fired For Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Kaiser Permanente wrongly fired an employee who declined to receive a COVID-19 vaccine because she gave proper notice to the company of her religious objection to COVID-19 vaccination, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A COVID-19 vaccination in Illinois on Sept. 9, 2022. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Mimi Weiss, who worked for Kaiser Permanente's The Permanente Medical Group for 20 years before being fired, "plausibly alleged that she provided notice of her religious conflict with the mandate in her initial request for a religious exemption," Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest wrote on July 24 for a unanimous panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Weiss was working fully remotely, or off-site, in August 2021 as a senior managerial consultant when Kaiser Permanente imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Weiss, a Christian Jew, within weeks filed for a religious exemption, and Kaiser Permanente initially approved the request.

In September 2021, though, Kaiser Permanente said employees had submitted religious accommodation requests with identical language. Expressing concern that some of the requests were not legitimate, the company asked employees to file fresh requests using their own words. Officials then asked Weiss new questions, including, "What else besides the COVID-19 vaccine do you refuse to put in your body as a result of your religious belief?"

Weiss said she would not provide private information. Kaiser Permanente placed her on unpaid leave. Then it fired her for not complying with the mandate, prompting a lawsuit by Weiss.

A federal judge in 2024 ruled against her, concluding that Weiss had not provided Kaiser Permanente with sufficient notice of the conflict between receiving a vaccine and her beliefs.

The Ninth Circuit ruling overturns that decision, pointing to a previous opinion in which the appeals court said that to provide notice, an employee must only give "enough information about [her] religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict," and that requiring any more details "would permit an employer to delve into the religious practices of an employee in order to determine whether religion mandates the employee's adherence."

Applying that framework to the current case means that Weiss did give adequate notice, the panel said, because she identified herself as a Christian Jew, listed specific doctrines that she said barred her from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, and outlined her belief that she should not "introduce foreign substances" into her "body temple" that would "change how [her] Creator designed it."

In a split 2-1 decision, the panel also said that Weiss has shown sufficient evidence to bring forth allegations that Kaiser Permanente violated her right to privacy.

Kaiser Permanente did not return a request for comment by publication time.

"I never imagined my faith would end up costing me my job," Weiss said in a statement.

"I wasn't asking Kaiser for special treatment, just the freedom to live according to my conscience. After 20 years of service, I didn't think that was too much to ask.

"I'm grateful the court recognized that religious employees should not have to give up their beliefs or their privacy to keep their jobs."

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 20:05

GenderSpeak: Weaponizing Gender Against Sex

Authored by Wendy McElroy via Brownstone Institute,

When and why did the word "gender" displace the word "sex?" "Gender" refers to a person's socially constructed identity of being male, female, or some other category, while "sex" refers to physical characteristics of male or female, such as chromosomes. Gender is a matter of a person's self-perception; sex is a circumstance of birth.

When did sex get pushed to the curb by gender? In his book The Man Who Invented Gender, Terry Goldie claims that the sexologist John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical Center (Baltimore) first used the word "gender" in its modern meaning in 1955. Money pioneered the word to describe his famous John/Joan experiment that was conducted on a young boy named Bruce who'd lost his penis in an accident. To 'prove' Money's theory that sexual identity was learned and not biological, Bruce's parents raised him as a girl, complete with a surgically constructed vagina. The experiment failed. Bruce ultimately insisted on living as male, but he did not recover from the ordeal Money imposed on him, which he called torture. Bruce committed suicide in his 30s.

By then, however, Money had declared for decades that John/Joan was a complete success; discussions of "gender identity" abounded in '60s medical journals and academia. By the '70s and '80s, feminists brought the term to the streets, with "gender" describing a person's self-defined sociocultural identity and "sex" meaning biology. Then, the word wedged its way into government. In 1993, for instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) replaced "sex" with "gender" in its literature. In 2011, "sex" returned to the FDA to mean biology while "gender" meant "a person's self-representation." The term went global. Also in 1993, the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW) vaguely defined this aggression as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women."

Genderspeak became the language of elites, social justice activists, and the government, while average people still spoke of "sex". But more than elitism lies behind the difference in words. By swapping in their own terms, elitists - especially professional feminists - grabbed the narrative on sexuality and politicized it to dismiss anyone who disagrees. Since the average male generally still uses biology to define his sexuality, he is an opponent; the average male is a living, breathing disagreement.

The ideology of gender faces an obstacle, however. If people can argue effectively against gender, then the narrative is difficult to manage. Those who dissent must be intimidated into silence or otherwise marginalized. The main strategy is to condemn dissenters as hate-filled. If some people cannot be silenced, then their words or opinions can become hate crimes punishable by law. George Orwell's novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four is about a dystopian society of social control, which is maintained largely through restricting language. Since words are the foundation of thought, this means people cannot form thoughts, let alone articulate them. The villain of Nineteen-Eighty-Four proclaims, "The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought." He concludes, "The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect."

Men's health researcher James L. Nuzzo highlights an attempt to perfect the language. "In recent years, use of the phrase 'gender-based violence' (or 'gendered violence') in the titles and abstracts of papers indexed in PubMed has increased noticeably. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase 'gender-based violence' (or 'gendered violence') appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,784 articles indexed in PubMed." [Chart available here.]

A typical definition of gender-related violence or gendered violence is "any form of physical or non-physical violence or abuse against a person or group of people because of biased or harmful beliefs about gender. It can include things that happen online and that use digital technology." This definition is typical because it includes non-physical violence (discrimination) and abuse (words) that are motivated by non-specific "biased or harmful beliefs about gender." Nineteen-Eighty-Four would refer to such non-physical violence as "crimethink," with thought itself being an assault.

Just as "sex" is displaced by "gender," well-researched and comparatively clear terms such as "domestic violence" are displaced by less-defined ones such as "gender-related violence." This achieves several goals. For one thing, the confusing definition becomes elastic. Almost any word or act can be stretched to qualify as "gender-related violence," especially since virtually everything in the politicized feminist universe is gender-related.

But the most important purpose of swapping in the word "gender" is to introduce a subtle but powerful bias that controls the narrative; it creates Genderspeak.

The concept of gender comes directly from the twin ideologies of Social Constructionism and Gender Feminism. Social Constructionism tells us that male and female are learned forms of behavior (gender) rather than biology (sex).

To this, Gender Feminism adds an ideological layer. Male and female are patriarchal learned behaviors; they are social concepts derived from white male capitalistic culture. Thus, approaching violence in a correctly gendered way means rejecting white male capitalism - the economic system that is said to vest power and wealth in the hands of white men at the expense of everyone else. To embrace gender is to reject white male culture and capitalism, with 'the free market' usually viewed as a synonym.

Genderspeak is similar to Orwell's Newspeak. Both are ambiguous speech that embeds ideology into the language so that every word perpetuates correcthink - officially approved thought. In Orwell's dystopian world, Newspeak serves the ideological goals of Ingsoc - an abbreviation for English Socialism. It gradually replaces Oldspeak and becomes pivotal in defining politics and culture.

Genderspeak has the same ideological goal. If you embed gender ideology into words, then you control how people think and how culture develops.

The process goes something like this:

• Embed new ideologically-driven language when possible. For example, substitute the term "gendered violence" for the more research-driven term "domestic violence."
• Eliminate "wrong" words. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, salvageable literature was rewritten in Newspeak so that authors either disappeared or were reinterpreted to serve Ingsoc. Today, school texts are commonly reviewed to eliminate wrong words. 'Improper' ones like "Founding Fathers" are changed to proper ones like "Framers."
• Change the meaning of words. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the word "free" is used only in the simple form of 'my sweater is free of lint.' The concept of freedom does not exist. The current usage of "diversity" in Genderspeak is similar. It is a diversity that tolerates no deviation. Its conclusions are or can be mandated by law.
• Introduce doublethink. Doublethink is when someone accepts two contradictory ideas as being true. A modern example is students who attend "sensitivity training," which includes publicly ridiculing and humiliating whites and males because of their race and sex. This is sensitivity?
• Last of all, decry anyone who objects as a hater and oppressor; punish them.

Precise wording provides the incredible benefit of letting people know what they are talking about. It is time to reclaim the richness of precise English...verb by verb, adjective by adjective. Words should not be propaganda that blocks thought; disagreement is no crime. And sex is reality, while gender is not. The concept and the word "gender" should be abandoned by people who respect either accuracy or truth.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 19:15

SK Hynix Stock Dumps On Actual Earnings Miss; Pumps On Promise Of "Explosive" Demand

Update: The post-earnings conference call Q&A has prompted a rapid reversal in SK Hynix's fortunes... shocker!!

SK Hynix claims it continues to see “explosive” demand from customers and remains confident that AI-related demand will stay strong over the medium to long term.

While the timing of individual AI infrastructure projects may vary, the company says it sees no change in the overall demand trajectory.

Can't have the entire edifice of the Korean economy collapsing, can we!!

*  *  *

Things are not going to be fun in South Korea tonight...

Good news first...

SK Hynix's net income surged a bigger-than-expected 1,242% (though admittedly on one-time investment gains) with the ginat chipmaker bragging that it won multiyear contracts with around 10 customers.

Ok, now the bad news...

SK Hynix’s quarterly profit rose a smaller-than expected 557%.

The key supplier of Nvidia reported operating profit of 60.5 trillion won ($42 billion) in the June quarter, well below analysts’ average projection for 64.2 trillion won.

Revenue came to 79.3 trillion won, significantly below the consensus 83.9 trillion won.

All further raising fears that the hyperbolic nature of the AI-driven boom that has suspended reality from the cyclical chipmakers, may be starting to decelerate...

“When you’re the dominant supplier of the high-bandwidth memory that powers Nvidia’s chips, the AI boom lands directly on your bottom line,” said Josh Gilbert, Etoro’s lead analyst for APAC and the Middle East.

“That means the market is unlikely to focus on the headline numbers alone. The bigger question is whether margins and guidance can justify its recent performance.”

Add to that the recent fears of rising competition from China and it is no surprise that SKHY (the US ADRs) is trading down 16% in the after-hours (before Korean trading has begun)...

Following yesterday's major drop in Kospi, we have three simple words..

Pray for Kospi

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 28, 2026

...and as goes SK Hynix, so goes the global AI demand narrative...

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 19:10

Detroit Gets Drafted: Ford And GM Head Back To The Battlefield

One of the defining themes of the Trump administration's second term has been rebuilding America's industrial base—not just by bringing manufacturing back to U.S. soil, but by restoring domestic capacity in industries considered critical to national security.

Defense production sits squarely at the center of that effort, with Washington increasingly looking to private industry to expand military manufacturing. The latest example is the Pentagon's push to enlist Detroit's automakers in building the Army's next generation of tactical vehicles.

In that vein, Ford is stepping back into military vehicle manufacturing in a meaningful way, entering the competition to develop the U.S. Army's next tactical transport vehicle—its largest defense opportunity in decades, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Heavy-duty version of the Chevrolet Silverado: WSJ/GM

The Army has selected Ford, General Motors, and specialty vehicle builder BC Customs to produce prototype trucks as part of a program expected to field around 600 vehicles. The new platform is designed to do more than move soldiers across difficult terrain: it will also provide onboard electrical power for drones, communications gear, and other battlefield technology.

WSJ writes that Ford's prototypes will be based on its Super Duty pickup platform, while GM is continuing development of a heavier-duty Silverado-derived vehicle already being evaluated by the military.

The effort reflects the Pentagon's broader push to tap the manufacturing expertise of U.S. automakers as it rebuilds defense capacity amid rising geopolitical tensions. Ford has signaled it sees opportunities beyond military vehicles, including supplying critical components and strengthening domestic supply chains, while GM has expanded aggressively into defense with programs ranging from tactical vehicles to munitions manufacturing.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 18:50

The State Of American Elections: For The Left, 'The Worse, The Better'

Authored by Bradley Thayer via American Greatness,

Americans long knew that their elections were in embarrassingly poor shape, but President Donald Trump’s address this month revealed just how extensive the problems had become. The Trump administration’s investigation revealed foreign interference and deep-state, treasonous subterfuge.

The documents he declassified demonstrated five major problems.

• First, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) hacked voter data, gaining access to the data of 220 million Americans.

• Second, the U.S. intelligence community deliberately downplayed the PRC’s penetration of the American electoral system to deceive Trump. The intelligence community knew that the PRC had a sophisticated strategy from 2018 to defeat Trump’s reelection in 2020. This strategy included employing the PRC’s business contacts within the United States and paying American journalists to write negative stories about Trump. The Presidential Daily Brief was manipulated to keep Trump from knowing about the PRC’s influence.

• Third, the U.S. government knew that voting machines were vulnerable and could compromise U.S. election infrastructure.

• Fourth, when evidence of fraud was found, it was covered up, slow-walked, or downplayed, as in Michigan, where the Biden administration ignored voter fraud.

• Fifth, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) review of data from a small number of states found about 278,000 noncitizens on voter rolls. The next day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin revealed in remarks that about 400,000 dead people were also on the voter rolls, and the numbers are believed to be much higher because Democratic states would not share their voter data.

These actions are unprecedented because we are in precarious times. If not repaired, this could destroy the social contract between the citizenry and the government.

Trump identified the American electoral system as being almost broken. But that is neither an accident nor the result of a natural evolution. It is by design. From the perpetrators’ perspective, it is a remarkable achievement. American elections were once the envy of the world. Americans voted on one day, and the results were known that night. America had a high-trust society and sense of civic duty that was inherent in Americans’ understanding of their country and American identity, including a citizen’s duty to his country. Now American elections are far from the envy of the world and resemble those in unstable and corrupt countries.

It is appropriate to pause for a moment and ask how that happened.

The answer lies in another, related major theme of Trump’s: his identification of communism as the greatest threat that America has ever faced and his determination that America will never be a communist country. Communists outside the United States, principally the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and communists in the United States are working together to demolish America. Destroying American elections is one of the most important tools they have to destroy America because it obliterates the social contract between the citizenry and the government. Once the social contract is broken in the minds of most Americans, fundamental political change is possible.

The problem with elections is a symptom of the deeper problem of how domestic and international communists are working together in America.

This is political warfare designed to impose communism, executed at home and abroad, using the strategy that has worked since the Bolsheviks came to power: the tried-and-true communist strategy of the united front. The communists are advancing a revolution in the United States to change its polity from a constitutional republic to communism.

At a fundamental level, these are not discrete actors; they are coordinating in what should be considered a modern Communist International, or Comintern. The CCP and other countries work with individuals and major organizations like ActBlue, Tides, Neville Roy Singham and his scores of organizations, George and Alexander Soros and their dozens of organizations, Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, their associated think tanks, political action committees, law firms, and the Democratic Party itself.

Destroying election integrity is only one mechanism they are using. Another is their funding and facilitation of mass immigration in Western states. Terrorism is another. Communist terror has domestic and international dimensions, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent emphasized on July 16, 2026, at a ministerial on the resurgence of political terrorism, particularly from the political left. Their remarks helped to frame and inform Americans about the contemporary threat from communists and their terror networks at home and abroad.

Communist efforts are found in other countries as well, such as South Korea, where CCP influence is endemic in A-WEB (the Association of World Election Bodies, currently composed of 118 election management bodies), which is headquartered there, as well as in South Korea’s National Election Commission. In South Korea, U.S. citizen Morse Tan, who served in the first Trump administration as U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, exposed fraud in the June 3, 2025, South Korean presidential election as part of an international election-monitoring team, of which the present author was a member. As of this writing, Tan is under a travel ban and must remain in South Korea well into August. This is in connection with a criminal defamation investigation regarding Tan’s comments about South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, made in Washington and thus protected by the First Amendment. De facto, Tan is a political prisoner of the Lee government, held because he exposed the truth about the CCP’s malign influence in South Korean politics, including its elections.

Trump stated that Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, should be united to evict communist China from U.S. elections. Decades ago, that would have been possible. But today’s Democrats are neo-Bolsheviks. Before coming to power, the Bolsheviks had a slogan: “The worse, the better.” They worked to make the conditions in Russia worse, not better. They sought to destabilize, undermine, and weaken Russia to further the revolution. That logic of “The worse, the better” is relevant for today’s neo-Bolsheviks. They are laboring to destroy America and execute their revolution. Americans should recall that during Trump’s February 2026 State of the Union address, the Democrats would not stand to celebrate American heroes. They do not want to celebrate America; they want to terminate it and replace it with a communist polity in America. That is why Trump has called it the greatest threat that Americans have faced in their history and why it is completely foreign to American identity.

Trump identified election interference as a major mechanism to advance neo-Bolshevik tyranny in the United States. It is not the only mechanism, but election vulnerabilities, along with immigration, are the most immediate problems for Americans to address. America faces a communist revolution. It is time to recognize that the threat from communism is existential, and it is targeting American institutions, identity, and the American people themselves. You may not be interested in communism, but it is interested in you.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 18:25