After Saudi-backed forces retreated from Mokha following the Houthi takeover, they headed toward Aden — only to be blocked at the city's approaches by UAE-aligned southern forces.

The footage shows armed men stopping convoys, demanding weapons be handed over, filming the retreating fighters, and in some cases mocking them.

This is the Saudi-UAE fault line laid bare.

Some clips also claim to show retreating fighters selling their weapons in and around Aden.

Reporter: On the checks, the U.S. has $40 trillion in debt. If your economic policies are working, why do you need an incentive for people to turn out to vote?

Trump: I’m doing it as a reward for people having to put up with five years of a horrible situation caused by Biden.

Reporter: You also offered tariff refund checks...

Trump: Not you. Not you.

Reporter: That didn’t happen.

Trump: Not you. You’re the worst.

Reporter: Is it possible that the Iran war will last the rest of your term?

Trump: No. There’s not even a chance of that.

Reporter: Do you have any concerns about AI leading to human extinction?

Trump: No, I don’t have any.

Kremlin:

The decision by Lithuania to lift the ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons, if implemented, would be a very serious escalation.

Lithuania will become a target for Russian nuclear weapons if it deploys similar weapons on its territory.

Bessent:

Trump is high impact, high return, high performance, and he is juggling a myriad of things.

He has a viewpoint, and he pushes it, and he is very good at pushing and pushing and then knowing when to pull back.

Anthropic caught a UAE-linked operation using Claude to run an influence campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and Sudan.

A single operator used an AI persona called "Deadshot" to generate intel briefs, fake UN testimonies, targeting lists of EU parliament members and journalists, and content for ~300 fake influencer accounts — all designed to be deniable and delivered to senior UAE officials.

They cloned a real Swiss/Sudanese human-rights NGO's identity, drafted speeches for the UN Human Rights Council with instructions to never mention the UAE, and built counter-dossiers on UN officials who'd criticized UAE actions in Sudan.

Anthropic banned the accounts, rated it Category Three (multi-platform, no confirmed mass public impact), and published the findings in its September 2026 threat report.

The UAE has a long-running campaign against the Brotherhood dating to 2014, and notably has also invested in Anthropic through MGX.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees the company is open to slowing the development of advanced AI systems, potentially in coordination with other AI labs, amid growing safety concerns.

The comments follow recent incidents involving AI systems escaping human control and calls from researchers for stronger safeguards.

OpenAI has also backed mandatory U.S. AI safety requirements and previously said the pace of frontier AI development may eventually need to be deliberately slowed.

Source: Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia’s Main Hormuz Bypass Oil Pipeline Possibly Struck

Satellite imagery and thermal data indicate a large, sustained fire along Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline corridor.

READ MORE

The European Commission is exploring new ways to use €210bn in frozen Russian central bank assets to help Ukraine.

Kyiv faces a reported $27bn funding shortfall, putting pressure on EU governments to find money without further straining national budgets.

But Belgium, where most of the assets are held through Euroclear, has blocked previous plans and wants guarantees against potential Russian legal claims or retaliation.

Source: FT

BREAKING: Yemen's Houthis seized Perim (Mayyun) Island and completed control of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Reuters separately reports they've reached Dhubab, the coastal city directly on the strait.

The Houthis now control nearly the entire Yemeni Red Sea coast.

This is arguably the most strategically significant territorial gain in the entire Yemen war.

Perim sits in the middle of the 29 km-wide strait and physically splits it into two shipping channels.

Holding the island plus the adjacent coastline means the Houthis can threaten passing ships with artillery and short-range weapons — not just longer-range missiles and drones from further inland.

The strategic nightmare is now real.

Iran already controls pressure on Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia has been routing more oil west through the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu to bypass Hormuz.

The Houthis have now closed off that workaround at the exit point.

Both of the Middle East's critical shipping chokepoints are under Iranian-axis pressure simultaneously.

There is no easy third route. Roughly 10% of global seaborne trade normally passes through Bab-el-Mandeb.

Brent crude is above $107.

Source: AFP, Reuters

IRGC-linked media accounts are summarizing the situation like this.

The UAE pledged €40bn (~$46bn) in new investment in Germany, on top of roughly €34bn already invested, during Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed’s state visit.

The money targets industry, AI/tech, digital infrastructure and energy, including ~1 GW of new data centres; €10bn is earmarked for Bavaria.

Separately, companies signed 29 deals/MoUs worth €9.4bn+, and Germany approved daily Emirates Dubai–Berlin flights.

Four days after the AfD won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, lead candidate Ulrich “Ulli” Siegmund linked arms production to his party’s planned deportation/remigration policies:

We do not generally demonize the production of armaments, because we will also need corresponding tools for later remigration and deportation offensives — also in the interests of internal security.

The remark came during a Magdeburg press conference about a proposed Elbit Systems arms facility.

It triggered criticism, with opponents interpreting the language as threatening.

Siegmund framed it in terms of internal security and deportation enforcement.

In a separate, nearly four-hour pre-election interview, Siegmund described “remigration” primarily as reversing what he calls misguided migration, including deporting people legally required to leave Germany.

AfD’s Ulrich Siegmund:

We’re not right-wing extremists; we’re extreme about the law.

These labels have been used so excessively that they’ve become blunt. Nobody takes them seriously anymore.

Maybe it actually contributed to our success: they overplayed it so badly that it opened many citizens’ eyes.

The UAE is redesigning parts of its planned 5GW Abu Dhabi AI campus after Iranian drone and missile attacks exposed the vulnerability of Gulf data centers.

Officials are considering dedicated air defenses around the compute clusters and underground or hardened facilities for critical servers, power and cooling infrastructure.

The attacks damaged AWS facilities and other UAE infrastructure, while Iran’s IRGC later identified G42’s planned campus among potential targets.

Construction has not stopped. The first 200MW phase is reportedly nearing completion, with executives saying work “never stopped.”

OpenAI’s planned 1GW Stargate UAE cluster remains part of the larger project.

AfD’s Ulrich Siegmund:

If I have a class of 30 children and one migrant child joins it, then of course that child has the opportunity to integrate, if they want to.

But if I have classes with 29 migrant children and one German child, the question is: who is integrating whom?

We don’t want that, because that isn’t integration. Quite the opposite: we give ourselves up, we give up our way of life, we give up our culture.

Houthis Seize Perim Island and Complete Takeover of Bab-el-Mandeb Strait

The capture of Perim Island gives the Houthis control of key positions across Bab-el-Mandeb, increasing pressure on a shipping artery carrying about 10% of global seaborne trade.

READ MORE

Germany's Volkswagen is still the world’s highest-revenue automaker, generating €158.1B in H1 2026, but its profitability has deteriorated sharply.

Toyota earned €12.7B, nearly 5× Volkswagen’s €2.57B, while also selling more vehicles.

Volkswagen’s profit fell 36%, squeezed by Chinese competition, EV-transition costs and a high cost base.

CFO Arno Antlitz summed it up:

Our operating margin remains too low and underscores the need for action.

Volkswagen now wants to raise profit per vehicle from roughly 3.8% to 9% and plans 50,000 additional job cuts, after previously considering as many as 100,000.

Investors initially welcomed the restructuring, although VW shares were still down nearly 24% YTD at the article’s publication.

Revenue: VW €158.1B vs. Toyota €144.2B

Profit: VW €2.57B vs. Toyota €12.67B

Vehicles: VW 3.97M vs. Toyota ~4.7M

Source: EL PAÍS

Pakistan is trying to avoid being pulled into the Saudi–Houthi conflict despite its defence commitments to Riyadh, because it also wants to preserve relations with Iran.

A Pakistani official put it plainly:

Pakistan is trying to keep a low profile in the Saudi-Houthi conflict because Pakistan’s own stakes are high. It does not want to spoil relations with Iran.

Islamabad has reportedly passed Saudi warnings to Tehran to restrain the Houthis, while simultaneously pushing diplomacy.

Pakistan says no military response is currently under discussion.

Foreign ministry spokesman Sajjad Haider Khan said Pakistan has “consistently opposed escalation and advocated restraint, dialogue and diplomacy.”

The balancing act could become harder because Pakistan’s defence agreements with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye treat an attack on one member as an attack on all.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said there is “no ambiguity” that serious spillover into Saudi territory could activate the pact.

For now, Pakistani sources say any involvement would be limited to defending Saudi territory — not sending troops into Yemen or joining retaliatory strikes.

Source: Reuters