🇮🇷🇴🇲⚡️ — Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told today's cabinet meeting that negotiations with Oman over the management of the Strait of Hormuz are in their final stages and are nearing completion.

📍 🇫🇷 👨‍🚒 In just a few seconds, here’s a recap of the mega wildfire that devastated the Gironde region.
A fire of this magnitude had not been seen since 1949.

📎 Virginie Sigonney

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦 Over the last few weeks, the situation for Ukraine on the frontline has rapidly deteriorated in an unprecedented manner not seen since early 2025.

In the northeastern corner Kharkov Oblast, Russia has achieved two localised breakthroughs, threatening to encircle more than 360 km² of Ukrainian-controlled territory.

In the Dobropolye direction, one of the most formidable Ukrainian strongholds which has stood for over a year has been breached, with Russian forces now flooding Ukrainian positions in the urban agglomeration between Pokrovsk and Dobropolye.

In the Kramatorsk/Slavyansk direction, Ukraine has been unable to slow down Russian advances, with Russia now coming within 4.7 km of both Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, and coming close to fully capturing the crucial tactical ridgeline east of these two final Donbas cities.

In the Konstantinovka direction, Russia has captured Chasov Yar after 840 days of battles, and has almost completed the capture of Kostantinovka. The salient west of Chasov Yar is falling apart day by day as Ukraine withdraws.

In the Druzhkovka direction, Russia achieved a localised breakthrough of up to 6 km, capturing 3 villages and entering 3 others, coming within 5.1 km of Druzhkivka, and threatening the Ukrainian salient west of Kostantinovka with encirclement.

In the Omelnyk direction, Russia has finally captured the Ukrainian stronghold town of Zaliznichnoe after over 7 months of battles, and are making new advances west of the Gaichur River towards Vozdvizhevka.

In the Stepnogorsk direction, Russia has halted the Ukrainian counterattacks and have begun retaking previously lost ground, advancing northeast of Kamenskoye and north from Malye Shcherbaky.

In the Kupiansk direction, the crucial Ukrainian bridgehead east of the Oskol River continues to shrink day by day, with Russian forces expanding their zone of control in the area of Novosynovo, Kovsharovka, Peshchanoe, Petropavlovka, and Kupiansk itself.

Ukraine is losing incredibly important defensive positions necessary for holding the frontline in the future, especially the areas south of Dobropolye which should not be falling this quickly. However, they are seemingly intent on concentrating their assault forces in counterattacks north of Lyman, west of Komar, and south of Novopavlovka, which have questionable (at best) strategic reasoning for the heavy cost being endured.

The new Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Mikhail Drapaty has inherited a situation that is getting worse by the day, and will have to make some serious and difficult decisions in order to try stabilise it towards the end of Summer.

📝 Mark Ames: We may soon learn that Zelensky expended unsustainable levels of Ukrainian manpower in the first half of 2026 to create his "Ukraine turning the tide" PR campaign to try to win over Trump by the July NATO summit. And now the damage is coming due.

🔗 AMK Mapping

🇲🇦🇪🇸 While most of the Moroccan migrants who assaulted Ceuta left, the ones that remained inside the Spanish city have begun to fight amongst each other.

Seen here are groups of Moroccans throwing stones at each other near the CETI welfare & social services center in Ceuta.

@CIG_telegram

🇪🇸 A Spanish soldier deployed in Ceuta has claimed troops are “only authorised to ask” migrants to return to Morocco.

🔗 Europa.com (@europa)

🇲🇦🇪🇸🇪🇺📝 The Moroccan government tried to steal Spanish territory by sending 60k people over the border, overshadowing all previous migrant crises involving the cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the EU did absolutely nothing.

In 2021, a little over 8.000 migrants jumped the border fence with Ceuta and Melilla, in 2026 the number was close to 8 times higher and all the EU president, Ursula von der Leyen could muster in response to this blatant act of hostility by Morocco towards one of its member states was to say that "thankfully the migrants in Ceuta and Melilla didn't find any ferries to jump on and reach Spain proper". Problem solved.

Spanish PM, Pedro Sánchez, reinforced the border with a few dozen soldiers and then attacked other European governments calling for Spain's suspension from the Schengen Area, providing migrant statistics which indeed show Spain is not the number one entry point for illegal migrants into the EU, a poor deflection from the situation which isn't really about illegal migration, but a hostile act from Morocco.

In 2021, the EU sanctioned the Belarusian airline, Belavia, several hotels, bus companies, a state owned tourism agency and several chiefs of the Belarusian state border guards for their involvement in transporting migrants to the Polish and Lithuanian borders. Why isn't the EU punishing Morocco for this act of aggression, which was far worse and more dangerous than anything Belarus has done?

The reason is simple, Morocco is too important for the EU economy to be punished. Take for example the significant reliance of the French automotive industry on Morocco.

According to a promotional video made by the Renault Group, one in six Renault cars (including its branches like Dacia) are made in the Renault car factory in Tangier. The French government directly benefits from every Renault car sale as it owns a 15% stake in the company. Sanctioning Morocco could derail the European automotive industry. The best selling car in the EU in 2024 and 2025 was the Dacia Sandero, a model that is entirely built in Renault's Moroccan car factories in Casablanca and Tangier because of Morocco's low labour costs making it extremely cheap and capable of competing with Chinese, South Korean and Japanese alternatives.

German companies invested heavily in Morocco in recent years to build factories for intermediate products used in the automotive industry like electrical wiring, logistics companies invest in warehouses as Morocco is a transit route for Chinese products into Europe and more recently, pharmaceutical companies like Bayer are expanding to the country too.

Spain's car brand, SEAT, because its part of the Volkswagen group, also relies on the same Moroccan electric wiring manufacturers as Germany

Without Morocco, a lot of goods EU citizens buy for cheap will become a lot more expensive or be replaced by East-Asian alternatives.

The 2026 Ceuta and Melilla migrant crisis reveals how incapable not just the Spanish government is to assert its sovereignty, but more so Brussels, as Brussels or the European Commission to be precise, wants to be the sole authority responsible to protect the sovereignty of the EU and by extension its borders.

If the EU can't stand up to Morocco, how does it expect to be able to stand up to Russia, the U.S. or China or even a regional power like Turkey? The lack of a response from Spain and Brussels will embolden Morocco to try this again in the future until it forces a Spanish withdrawal from what it considers "rightful" Moroccan territory.

@CIG_telegram

🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇳 China draws 'red lines' around its economic model ahead of EU, US trade talks

China is energetically defending its economic policy mix that favours advanced industries over consumption, adopting a posture analysts see as demonstrating increasing confidence ahead of looming trade talks with Europe and the United States.

President Xi Jinping and U.S. counterpart Donald Trump plan more face-to-face meetings ‌this year, while Brussels has set an October deadline for Beijing to settle disputes as worries grow over China's trillion-dollar-plus trade surplus.

Western countries frame China's policies as mercantilist and opposing ‌global trade rules, saying its priority for producers over households pushes cheaper goods into global markets, hollowing out industry in nations seeking more balanced growth.

But a meeting of top Communist Party leaders signalled policy continuity on Thursday, calling for targeted support rather ​than the consumer-focused stimulus and structural changes long urged by China's trading partners and many economists.

Days earlier, the commerce ministry accused the West of protectionism in a position paper on "so-called industrial overcapacity" that rejected the notion as rooted in "logical flaws" and "ulterior motives".

The ruling Communist Party's flagship theoretical journal, Qiushi, also defended China's low consumption in July, as a "historically justified" outcome of the investment-led, catch-up development model.

Such messages stop short of telling the West that China will not change course, said Xu Tianchen, a senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, but send two posturing signals.

"The first is about hoping others understand where it comes from. A better mutual ‌understanding helps in negotiations," Xu said. "The second is about drawing a red ⁠line."

The commerce ministry paper "made clear that China doesn't accept discriminatory measures against its firms and products," he added.

China says its model reflects the needs of a country still converging with advanced economies. Its products are not only cheaper, but increasingly better, while its tech and science investments can ⁠benefit the entire world.

Now the European Union, whose trade deficit with China averaged $1 billion a day last year, is pursuing its own industrial and domestic procurement policies to defend its market.

But the latest statements from China suggest Beijing's confidence is growing that it can soften trade disputes without making significant concessions.

🔗 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-china-draws-red-lines-170613120.html

🇺🇸🇧🇭🇰🇼⚡️ — Reporter: There is a report that says you are moving U.S. troops out of Kuwait and Bahrain. Are troops being moved out of the Middle East?

Trump: I don't want to comment on that.

🇺🇸 Credit markets think Oracle is riskier today than during the 2008 Financial Crisis:

Oracle's 5-year credit default swap (CDS) has surged to a record ~215 basis points, surpassing its Financial Crisis peak of ~200 basis points.

This implies a default probability of more than 16% over the life of the swap, according to Societe Generale.

More broadly, the average AI hyperscaler is now ~80% more likely to default than the typical investment-grade company, a sharp reversal from 5 years ago, when hyperscalers were roughly ~66% less likely to default than their investment-grade peers.

Investors are increasingly comparing today's AI boom to the 2008 credit crisis rather than the 2000 Dot-Com bubble, since today's hyperscalers are highly profitable but also heavily leveraged, unlike the largely unprofitable, lightly indebted dot-com companies of the past.

Unlike the capital-light FANG stocks of a decade ago, today's AI hyperscalers face recurring costs for power, memory, and compute with every AI query, the opposite of the near-zero marginal costs that made the FANG business model so profitable.

Even so, companies remain reluctant to slow spending, as the risk of falling behind in the AI race is widely seen as greater than the risk of overinvesting.

Credit markets are already sending a warning: the AI boom now has to prove it can generate returns large enough to justify the debt behind it.

🔗 Global Markets Investor

🛢 WTI crude oil price falls by 6% as Trump announced "new talks" with Iran and OPEC promised to increase production.

📝 Trita Parsi: Yet another apocalyptic threat, followed by another self-congratulatory climbdown. The pattern is becoming tiresome by now: Unable to escalate his way out of the self-inflicted debacle, Trump tries to bluff his way out.

Except, Tehran is not falling for it. Rather, it is confidently raising the stakes, calculating that Trump will only fully commit to a diplomatic solution once he has internalized that he does not have a military option.

It’s a risky strategy - with potential attacks in Egypt and cyber attacks in the US - but one that the new and far less restrained military leadership believes is more likely to achieve security than giving in to Trump.

🔗 https://www.fxleaders.com/news/2026/08/02/oil-prices-dive-brent-and-wti-crude-breach-80-on-iran-talks-and-opec-adding-supply/