YEMEN - The head of the Yemeni Ansarallah terrorist organization, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, boasted in a national address on Thursday that his jihadists had turned American aircraft carriers into “obsolete weapons.” Houthi’s group, which controls the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and received significant backing from state sponsor of terror Iran, declared war on Israel in October in support of fellow jihadist terrorists Hamas. The Houthis’, as they are commonly known, main contribution to terrorism in the Middle East has been a campaign against commercial shipping in the Red Sea in which they use drones, missiles, and other often rudimentary weapons to attack random civilian vessels in the region.

IRAN - Given the calamitous track record of Iran’s so-called “moderate” leaders, it would be naive in the extreme to believe that the election of former heart surgeon Masoud Pezeshkian as the country’s next president will lead Tehran to adopt a less confrontational approach towards the West. On the contrary, with the Iranian regime edging ever closer to developing its own nuclear weapons, and Iranian-backed terrorist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah continuing to destabilise the Middle East, Pezeshkian’s victory should be seen as nothing more than a token gesture to the millions of ordinary Iranians who long for an end to their rulers’ brutal repression.

USA - A long-running heatwave that has already broken records, sparked dozens of wildfires and left about 130 million people under a high-temperature threat is about to intensify enough that the National Weather Service has deemed it “potentially historic”. The NWS on Saturday reported some type of extreme heat or advisory for nearly 133 million people across the nation – mostly in western states where the triple-digit heat, with temperatures 15F to 30F higher than average, is expected to last into next week. By midday Saturday, Las Vegas ended up tying its daily heat record of 115F, the NWS said, as it pleaded with people to be mindful of leaving children or pets inside vehicles in the extreme heat.

USA - Officials have issued evacuation warnings after a forest fire in Santa Barbara spread to nearly 5,000 acres in the span of a day. A wildfire, dubbed the Lake Fire, that erupted at around 3:45 pm yesterday has left more than 300 acres of land charred in the Los Padres National Forest. The blazing Lake Fire had spread to about 4,673 acres before 11 pm, according to Los Padres officials. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office has since issued evacuation orders for areas around Figueroa Mountain Road to the Forest Station to Chamberlin Ranch as well as areas north of Zaca Lake Road, east of Foxen Canyon Road and south of the Sisquoc River, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. Scott Safechuck, a Santa Barbara Fire Department spokesman, said temperatures had reached 90 degrees and relative humidity was nine percent in the fire area as of last night.

ISRAEL - Israel will only be able to claim complete victory over Hamas and Hezbollah once Iran's nuclear programme is wiped out, according to an Israeli politician. An Israeli politician has issued a chilling five-word warning to Iran as he argued stopping Teheran from expanding its nuclear programme is key to defeating terror organisations in the region. Avigdor Lieberman, a member of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu faction of the Knesset, insisted Israel must use "all the means at our disposal" to stop Iran.

USA - The US media has finally turned on Joe Biden. Conservative outlets always disliked him, of course, but liberal-leaning journalists have provided cover for years – hitting Trump, praising Biden and downplaying the president’s physical decline. But at the June 27 debate, the evidence became irrefutable. Biden, mumbling and confused, looked like a man who’d spotted a light and was tempted to walk towards it. The Washington Post called his performance “ninety minutes of pain”. The New York Times concluded, “To serve his country, President Biden should leave the race.” Yet Biden’s weakness had been obvious for a long time before the debate. The White House did its best to cover it up; the liberal media, say critics, colluded – even gaslit the public. The story of how reporters turned from enablers to critics of this administration is a tragedy of politics and ethics.

USA - The White House has described the latest Hamas ceasefire proposal for Gaza as a “breakthrough” establishing a framework for a possible hostage deal, but warned that difficult negotiations remained over the implementation of the agreement. A senior US official said the Biden administration received the latest Hamas offer “a couple of days ago” and had been studying it ahead of a 30-minute telephone call between Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. “The conversation was detailed, going through the text of the agreement, constructive and encouraging, while also clear-eyed about the work ahead [and] the steps that must be put in place to finalise this deal and then begin the implementation,” the US official said of the call.

USA - Top Democrats are so alarmed about Joe Biden's ailing health some fear a shadowy cabal is keeping him in power so they can pull levers behind the scenes, it is claimed. The astonishing theory was detailed in the liberal New York magazine. Its reporter Olivia Nuzzi revealed that even Democrat elites are stumped as to how and why the fast-declining 81 year-old is being allowed to continue his re-election bid. Nuzzi said she had heard questions being posed by high-ranking Democrats on the east and west coasts about whether Biden is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by another group of secretive Democrats. She highlighted the irony that this is the same theory espoused by many on the MAGA right, with Donald Trump himself previously alleging that former President Barack Obama is the real power behind the Biden White House.

CHINA - Experts fear a Chinese bond bubble could be about to burst in what would be a disastrous outcome for the economy. China's economy has been dogged by a downturn in the property market and volatile stocks over recent months, but now it could be on the precipice of a bond bubble burst. The yield on China’s onshore 10-year government bond, which is a benchmark for a wide range of interest rates, plummeted to 2.18 percent on July 1 - the lowest since records began in 2002. Last year Joe Biden described the Chinese economy as “a ticking time bomb”, with slow growth and soaring youth unemployment threatening to spark resentment towards Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

USA - Texas officials added 81 additional counties to the state’s disaster declaration in preparation for Hurricane Beryl’s arrival. The storm’s forecasted path shifted the expected landfall to the north and east of previous projections. The latest addition to the disaster declaration list brings the total number of Texas counties to 121.

IRAN - Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian has won Iran's presidential election, securing 53.3% of the vote and defeating his conservative rival Saeed Jalili, the national election authority announced on Saturday. The snap election was called after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province on May 19. The candidates were approved by Iran’s Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists that holds veto power over legislation passed by parliament and determines who can seek office in the Islamic Republic.

UK - Sir Keir Starmer will become the prime minister after Labour won the general election with a landslide and the Tories suffered a historic wipeout. Rishi Sunak conceded the election just before 5am, congratulating Sir Keir on his victory and telling Tories who had lost their seats: “I am sorry.” The Tories were braced for a terrible night after the exit poll showed Labour was on course to return 410 MPs, with the Conservatives expected to return just 131 seats - a fraction of their 365 MPs in 2019. It would be the worst result for the Tories in terms of seats in modern history, with Mr Sunak expected to resign. Sir Keir will enter No 10 as the seventh Labour prime minister with vast power, with his party on course to secure a huge majority of 170.

EUROPE - Guy Verhofstadt has slammed Brexiteers for their decision to leave the EU single market, claiming it had backfired disastrously and that the UK would most likely seek re-entry to the bloc in the near future. The former Belgian prime minister has been a vocal critic of Brexit and the UK's decision to leave the European Union. He has once again taken aim at Tory hardliners and their decision to go for a hard Brexit. In an interview with Politico, Mr Verhofstadt claimed the biggest mistake Brexiteers made was to leave the EU's single market. Mr Verhofstadt believes that after the General Election, the UK will gradually return to the EU fold, a process he claims is already happening.

LEBANON - Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claims to have launched more than 200 rockets and drones targeting Israeli military positions on Thursday in response to the killing of a senior commander. A Hezbollah source told Al Jazeera that Thursday’s barrage, the second major attack in as many days, was retaliation for Israel’s killing of Muhammad Nasser in southern Lebanon a day earlier. His death prompted Hezbollah to launch more than 100 rockets into Israel on Wednesday. followed by Thursday's barrage. Nasser, also known as Hajj Abu Nimah, was the third high-ranking Hezbollah fighter killed in almost nine months of cross-border fighting sparked by the Israeli war in Gaza. The growing tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been causing concern of an escalation into an all-out war in the Middle East.

GERMANY - Berlin must not back any call for a truce that would see Kiev admit defeat, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said. As Scholz took questions from members of the Bundestag on Wednesday, Left lawmaker Gesine Loetzsch asked about Germany’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the possibility of a ceasefire. “In my view, a ceasefire that involves Ukraine’s capitulation is one that we as Germany must never support,” Scholz replied, according to the state broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The German chancellor argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s truce terms amounted to Ukraine’s surrender, calling Moscow “cynical” and not interested in ending the conflict. The chancellor admitted that “many people do not agree with the support for Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia,” but refused to change his policy.