Artists in Gaza painted a mural honouring former Burger King employee Arianna Hamilton.

A second supertanker appeared moored at Saudi Arabia’s main oil export terminal inside the Persian Gulf, a further sign that loadings at the hub may be picking up as the kingdom’s alternative shipping route through the Red Sea comes under threat.

Kyiv and Moscow have been trading attacks on each other's grain warehouses, as concerns mount that global food prices could rise as a result. Russia struck Ukraine's largest grain shipment port on the Danube overnight, causing damage and setting off a fire. The attack came a day after Ukraine hit Novorossiysk, a major grain hub in Russia's part of the Black Sea.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the suspect was allegedly recruited by Russia's secret services.

Chinese state media have released footage of a joint naval drill with Indonesia in waters east of Taiwan.

US senators call for inquiry as USS Lincoln has record-long period without port stop amid war on Iran.

A widening deficit and Ukrainian strikes are testing Russia's economy, even as war in the Middle East lifts oil revenue.

Oil snapped its run of recent gains, as limited progress over a deal to end the Iran war left traders parsing how much oil is crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Francisco Blanch, Head: Commodities & Derivatives Research at Bank of America, discusses the global energy crunch and commodity outlook. (Source: Bloomberg)

The winning country in Eurovision will be ineligible to host the contest the following year if involved in an armed conflict or a "sensitive geopolitical situation" that could impact the safety of the event, organisers said on August 12. The rules for the contest were updated following an annual review by the European Broadcasting Union.

Russia's jet-powered drones are more challenging to intercept than their predecessors powered by propellers.

Analysts say Saudi Arabia is strengthening its position with regional allies as the Houthis increase their attacks.

Amid the rubble and debris of Gaza's bombed-out landscape, beekeepers are rebuilding their livelihoods, handling swarms and collecting what little honey they can from the colonies that survived the war. Ibrahim al-Dabbeh, head of the Cooperative Association of Beekeepers in the Gaza Strip says "the war destroyed more than 95% of the bee sector". Rebuilding these hives means trying to revive an industry pushed to the brink of extinction.

Israeli forces on Thursday moved against rogue settlers laying siege to Palestinians amid unusually strong US criticism, even as Israel inaugurated an emblematic settlement elsewhere in the West Bank. Our correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky tells us more.

President Vladimir Putin visited Russia's far-eastern Kuril islands for the first time on Thursday, prompting protests by Japan which also claims the territory.

A Russian drone attack on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in southern Ukraine killed two people on Thursday. Our correspondent Emmanuelle Chaze tells us more.

Iran asserts full control over the Strait of Hormuz, challenging US claims of dominance in the strategic waterway.

The 27-year-old Israeli player has used his platform to defend Israel amid the genocide in Gaza.

Ukraine has damaged Russia’s grain export terminals in an attack on the Novorossiysk port.

Inquiry follows security concerns over reported visits of dozens of women to Bruno Foucher’s official residence France has opened disciplinary proceedings against its ambassador to Central African Republic over allegations of misconduct, after claims he brought dozens of women into his official residence, raising potential security concerns. The investigation comes as Paris seeks to rebuild relations with CAR after their sharp deterioration in recent years amid Russia’s expanding influence in the former French colony. Continue reading...

A Ukrainian passenger train in the Odesa region fell victim to a Russian drone strike, leading to the unfortunate demise of the driver and assistant. Simultaneously, Ukrainian military forces conducted a successful operation against a large oil refinery in Bashkortostan, causing extensive fire damage. This series of events serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing hostilities plaguing the region.

Michigan-based group leads class action lawsuit against US government and defence contractors over Lebanon war abuses.

Robert Gilman, a U.S. Marine veteran, was imprisoned in Russia for over four years and now faces a long road to recovery, says a hostage crisis expert who advocated for Gilman's release.

Syria's economic capital Aleppo was left largely in ruins by the fighting that raged there between regime and rebel forces from 2012 to 2016. A 2023 earthquake also caused severe damage to the old city. But reconstruction is now well underway, in particular of Aleppo's treasured historic monuments.

Iran’s central bank chief said Thursday that the country is set to join the BRICS New Development Bank.

Taiwan urged citizens to postpone travel to Uganda after a series of passport disputes, the latest sign of growing pressure on the island’s international presence in Africa.

Ukraine's Air Force has reported two attacks with the KN-23 since late July after a months-long pause.

The US and Iran continue their standoff in the Strait of Hormuz as mediators try to coax talks.

Costs at the pump are unlikely to come down significantly until Donald Trump can strike a lasting deal with Iran.

"Disruptions will be more prevalent in the future," shipping giant Maersk's CEO Vincent Clerc tells Bloomberg's Guy Johnson and Tom Mackenzie on The Opening Trade citing bottlenecks across Africa, Europe, and China. (Source: Bloomberg)

The U.K. economy is showing further signs of a long-awaited rebound, but the picture is complicated by the fallout from the Iran war and high energy prices.

Israel carts away Gaza's rubble to destroy war crimes evidence and make the landscape unliveable, rights groups say.

At least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured in Ukraine in July, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission said.

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman tells me 70% of President Trump's mindshare ("maybe plus or minus 5%") goes to his gilding, construction, renovation, renaming and tribute projects. • "He is spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects, beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self," Haberman told me for Axios' "Behind the Curtain" video series. "[T]here is no precedent in U.S. history of a sitting president devising such endeavors in their own name." Why it matters: That mental map by Haberman — co-author with Jonathan Swan of "Regime Change," which has sold 600,000 copies and on Wednesday hit seven weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list — is a Rosetta Stone to what motivates and fascinates Trump. • "What interests him are things that you can see and touch," she told Axios. The backstory: Haberman had earlier made the 70% estimate about Trump's mindshare during an interview with her Times colleague Ezra Klein, saying that it's "a legacy thing." • Maggie and I worked together in the early years of Politico. Her relentless reporting has made the New York City native a top expert on how Trump thinks. So I asked her to unpack her eye-opening stat: Zoom in: Haberman and Swan visited Trump in the Oval Office in March for an hourlong interview for the book, which is now in eight printings and is the nonfiction bestseller of the year. • "It was very clear," Haberman recalled, "what his mind was on while we were there. And what it was not really on was the war," which he'd launched just over two weeks earlier.• "He didn't really want to talk about that. He didn't really want to talk about policy specifics. He wanted to describe himself as winning. And he wanted to show us how he had remade Washington." Behind the scenes: "You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments — who knows," Haberman continued. "He picks up these pictures, and [they're] of maple trees. And he says: 'I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.' I'm paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said." • "Under that were designs of the ballroom. And he starts talking to us about the columns and how some of the columns are evocative of Rome. And then on the other side, the columns are evocative of Athens. And he's happy that they are a little bit either wider or more spaced apart or both than the columns at the Supreme Court. And that was like the first 15 minutes of this hour that we had." Go deeper: Share the video.

Senate Democrats are demanding answers about conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during the aircraft carrier's record-setting deployment.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have muscled their way back into AI's elite ranks, defying early obituaries to close the gap on a new generation of Silicon Valley startups. Why it matters: Recent gains by tech giants SpaceX and Meta — long stuck in AI's second tier — are putting new pressure on a hierarchy dominated by OpenAI and Anthropic. State of play: Both companies released models this week featuring a combination of performance and price that would have been hard to imagine from either lab a year ago. • SpaceX's Grok 4.6 scored essentially even with OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Max on the closely watched Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, and just behind Anthropic's Fable 5 Max.• Promising "something special," Musk said Grok 4.7 should arrive in three to four weeks and predicted it will "exceed all current models" after additional training on a massive trove of SpaceX data. Meta, meanwhile, is trying to squeeze the frontier from below. • Its new models deliver competitive performance at dramatically lower cost — including Muse Glimmer, an open-weight system small enough to run locally on a laptop.• Zuckerberg cast the push as "superintelligence for everyone" in a sweeping manifesto this week, reviving Meta's open-AI ambitions as the U.S. races to regain ground from China. Catch up quick: As OpenAI and Anthropic pulled ahead, Musk and Zuckerberg answered with the full force of their empires — spending billions on talent, infrastructure and acquisitions. • Zuckerberg overhauled Meta's AI effort after the disappointing launch of Llama 4, then invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought aboard its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead the push.• Musk went even further, folding xAI into SpaceX and agreeing to acquire Cursor for $60 billion — bringing massive computing power, proprietary SpaceX data and a fast-growing AI coding platform under one roof. Between the lines: The AI race is starting to reward more than raw intelligence, as price becomes a decisive advantage for many users. • "You don't need to be the highest performing, most expensive model in the market to be able to be successful," Sonali Basak, chief investment strategist at iCapital, told Axios.• Basak said that raises a more consequential question for Musk and Zuckerberg: whether their AI advancements can "fuel the core businesses" that financed their comeback. Reality check: The frontier labs still hold pole position — with even more capable models waiting in the wings, including systems deemed too sensitive for public release. • "I wouldn't say they've caught up to OpenAI or Anthropic," said John Belton, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds.• A Meta employee told Axios the company still feels behind the frontier labs in model performance and development. What we're watching: Turbulence at Google could create an opening for either company to seize its place as Wall Street's public-market AI champion. • Google had emerged as the established tech giant best positioned to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic, pairing elite talent with enormous resources and early momentum.• That position suddenly looks shakier after an exodus of top AI talent — including Google's chief scientist — and setbacks involving its flagship model Gemini. The bottom line: OpenAI and Anthropic built their lead through years of technical excellence. Musk and Zuckerberg are nipping at their heels with decades of scale and resources.

Military escalation continues for days after the Yemeni government announced it is attacking Houthi positions.

Data: Generation Lab; Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios More than a quarter of younger Americans (27%) believe they or someone they know has lost a job because their employer replaced them with AI, according to a new Axios-Generation Lab poll of 18- to 34-year-olds. Why it matters: Research suggests the actual share of job losses from AI is smaller. But the survey reflects the suspicion, mistrust and fatalism in how Gen Zers and young Millennials see the technology — sentiments driving their views on politics, the economy and social interactions. • Asked which political party they trust more to bring down the cost of living, respondents' top choice was neither (36%) — over Democrats (26%) and Republicans (22%). What they're saying: "They're kind of thumbs-down on everything — how the president's doing, how the economy's doing, both political parties," said Generation Lab CEO Cyrus Beschloss. "AI is a pretty big disruptor; it's easy to point to one faceless thing as the cause." • Despite fears of AI stealing jobs, 71% said they're as comfortable or more comfortable with it than they were a year ago; 61% said they'd used ChatGPT in the past month, while 48% reported using Gemini and 20% Claude. What we're watching: 96% are concerned about the cost of rent, groceries, gas or utilities, including 40% who are "extremely" concerned. • 48% rate the national economy as "poor."• 35% said if they were looking for a job today it would be "very difficult." Another 43% said it would be "somewhat difficult."• More than half say home ownership is a top goal. But only about half think they'll own a home in the next decade, and 28% say it's very unlikely. By the numbers: 66% disapprove of President Trump's handling of his job, 54% strongly. • 64% disapprove of Trump's handling of the war with Iran, 50% strongly. Two-thirds believe the war has left the U.S. worse off than before. Looking ahead to 2028 presidential election, name recognition appears to be a significant factor. • Among Democratic respondents, former Vice President Kamala Harris led a field of prospective presidential candidates (28.7%), followed by former First Lady Michelle Obama (14.9%) and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (11.7%).• Independents favored Michelle Obama (11.4%), AOC (9.2%) and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (7.4%).• Among Republican respondents, Vice President JD Vance was the clear leader (31.5%), followed by the president's son Donald Trump Jr. (10.7%) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (9.7%). Zoom in: Last November, an Axios-Generation Lab poll found that 67% of two- and four-year college students had a positive or neutral association with the word "socialism" compared with just 40% with a positive or neutral view of "capitalism." We wrote then that this reflected college students' left lean as well as economic conditions. • But this latest poll captures the broader sentiments of Americans under 35, including some long done with college and others with only high school degrees or no diploma — and the results weren't that different.• 68% of respondents say they view socialism positively or neutrally, while 47% have positive or neutral views of capitalism. Negative views of capitalism outweigh negative views of socialism by more than 2 to 1. "I don't think it's young people sitting around thinking about what economic models are most beneficial to society at large, or reading Plato's Republic and pondering economic theory," Beschloss said. • "They may be thinking it's a radical way to shake things up, shake up the status quo — a way to give things to the working class, an anti-establishment thing, more than the clear workings of socialism." Methodology: This poll was conducted July 29-Aug. 4, 2026, from a representative sample of 1,075 adults ages 18-34, including 244 with high school degrees or less, 457 with some college or an associate's degree and 374 with bachelor's degrees or higher. • 37% of respondents identified as Democrats, 26% as Republicans and 29% as independents.• The overall margin of error is +/- 3.01 percentage points.

Three startup teams share what cofounders should agree on early, from equity split and domain ownership, to conflict resolution and exit scenarios.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Thursday denounced a siege by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank village of Qusra as a "horrific act of terror". Huckabee, an evangelical Christian pastor who in the past has embraced Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, said the Israeli army intervened on Wednesday after a US request, but the soldiers failed to remove the settlers.