Supply

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned BRICS leaders on Sunday that geopolitical tensions, supply chain shocks, and climate crises are threatening global stability. • Modi specifically cautioned that the weaponization of technology and critical minerals could hinder shared prosperity and global development. • These disruptions create economic risks for the Global South, necessitating strengthened international cooperation to protect developing nations.

Strike on kingdom’s east-west pipeline could affect 4% of global oil supply. Plus, report reveals British monarchy’s role in financing slave tradeGood morning. Oil prices have climbed above $108 a barrel after a series of drone attacks from Iraq’s territory forced Saudi Arabia to close its east-west crude pipeline. Saudi traders said the kingdom would run out of oil stocks for export if it did not reopen within days. Gas prices also climbed higher. Energy prices have surged this year, as the US-Israel war with Iran has disrupted oil and gas supply across the Middle East.The spike came as the Iran-aligned Houthi forces in Yemen launched several attacks against Saudi Arabia and captured the strategic island of Perim in the Bab al-Mandab strait on Sunday, expanding their control of the waterway.Where did the attack on Saudi Arabia come from? Iraq’s government confirmed the attacks were launched from its territory and ordered an investigation. Baghdad is under mounting pressure to stop militant groups – including those backed by Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran – launching attacks on Gulf countries from Iraqi soil. The US president, Donald Trump, said he believed Tehran was responsible.Why has Saudi Arabia been relying on its east-west pipeline? Riyadh has increased the use of the 745-mile pipeline since the start of the war on Iran in order to bypass the strait of Hormuz’s closure. The world’s biggest exporter has used the pipeline to reroute about 4m barrels a day – about 4% of global supply – but with the ‌pipeline out of service, the Red Sea port of Yanbu now has stocks to maintain exports for just five to seven days.What is the Anthropic CEO proposing? Robert Booth explains Amodei’s suggestion: first, each US AI company grants access to third-party evaluators; second, all companies in democratic countries establish common safety standards; and third, the world’s democratic AI powers coordinate with autocracies – notably China – to control the race.How has Barack Obama intervened over AI? The former US president made a direct appeal to Democrats to coalesce around a unified AI safety policy, arguing that waiting for voluntary compliance from tech firms was a recipe for governance failure. Continue reading...

• UK supermarkets are relabeling canned fish as mackerel to manage supply shortages and sustainability pressures. • Defra changed labeling rules after Princes launched a product as jack mackerel, though the agency maintains that jack mackerel cannot be sold as Atlantic mackerel. • This shift raises concerns for consumers and the fishing industry regarding the nutritional quality and transparency of food labeling.

• European natural gas prices are holding near multi-year peaks due to ongoing supply risks. • Market volatility coincides with an upcoming interest rate decision from the European Central Bank. • High energy costs increase operational expenses for European industries and affect consumer pricing.

• European natural gas prices remained near multi-year peaks recently due to ongoing supply risks. • Market volatility persists as investors await a policy decision from the European Central Bank. • Sustained high energy costs increase operational expenses for European industries and impact consumer pricing.

• Brent crude oil prices rose above $100 on Wednesday as military tensions between the U.S. and Iran increased. • The price surge follows a resumption of strikes between the two nations at the end of last month after a one-month pause. • Higher prices reflect market fears that escalating conflict could disrupt energy supplies coming out of the Middle East.

Protest using 10 coffins to symbolise struggling manufacturing industry to take place in BrusselsJob losses in EU manufacturing will rapidly increase unless Brussels stops the “colonisation” of industry by Chinese component manufacturers, a leading industry trade body has warned.Eurometal predicts 300,000 job losses in manufacturing in the rest of 2026 because of expanding competition from China, which is now enjoying a record €1bn-a-day trade surplus with the bloc. Continue reading...

• AI development is draining the global supply of memory chips, leading to price hikes for consumer electronics like phones, laptops, and gaming consoles. • Retailers are forecasting further price increases as the demand for high-capacity RAM for AI workloads outpaces production. • Consumers face higher costs for personal hardware as manufacturers prioritize the more lucrative AI chip market over standard consumer devices.

• UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Monday that the global food supply has become "collateral damage" due to ongoing geopolitical conflicts. • He highlighted that disruptions to maritime traffic in the Black Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab al-Mandab Strait have severely worsened hunger crises. • The instability is driven by conflicts involving Russia and Ukraine, the US, Iran, and Israel, as well as the Yemeni Houthis and Saudi Arabia.

Civil liberties groups decry plan to use gloves linked to death of Kentucky man allegedly shocked 27 times in county jailPlans to supply Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers with special gloves that can deliver electric shocks have alarmed experts and drawn scrutiny amid some high-profile lawsuits over their use in local correctional facilities.In one extreme case, a 43-year-old man died after allegedly being shocked 40 times by officers with a combination of the gloves and a Taser in a county jail in Kentucky, and the man’s widow is suing authorities. Continue reading...

• The 30-year Treasury bond futures market has declined throughout the year as investors demand higher yields to hold long-duration government debt. • Persistent inflation and elevated oil prices, driven by a six-month conflict between the U.S. and Iran, are putting upward pressure on bond yields. • Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh faces internal division between "hawks" advocating for rate hikes and those urging patience due to a softening labor market.

• China increased its exports of yttrium to the United States in July, providing critical relief to U.S. aerospace firms facing supply chain pressures. • This surge occurs despite persistent trade tensions and existing export controls imposed by the Chinese government on strategic minerals. • In contrast, Japan has been largely cut off from exports of yttrium, terbium, gallium, and dysprosium following a diplomatic dispute in November.

Indiana faced most outages at 267,000, about 8% of its customers, with severe thunderstorms and wind aheadPower supply was cut on Thursday ⁠to about 540,000 homes and businesses across the US midwest as severe storms battered the region, data ⁠from PowerOutage.us showed.Indiana ⁠was the ​hardest-hit state, with more than 267,000 outages, representing about 8% of its roughly 3.3 million customers, the data ⁠showed. Continue reading...

• Over 2,500 organizations, including industry giants like NVIDIA, Samsung, and Cisco, were potentially exposed in a major AI software supply-chain breach involving LiteLLM. • LiteLLM is an open-source tool used by developers to connect various applications with AI models, making it a critical point of failure in the software chain. • According to security firm CloudSEK, the exposure affects a wide range of sectors, including banking, finance, telecom, cybersecurity, and manufacturing.

• The release of China's Kimi K3 AI model has caused significant volatility in global markets, contributing to a drop in Nvidia's stock and a more than 6% decline in Taiwan's markets in a single day. • The author argues that this breakthrough signals a shift where "code" becomes the next critical supply chain, challenging the current dominance of Western AI infrastructure. • This event serves as a wake-up call regarding China's rapid advancement in AI capabilities and its potential to disrupt global technological dependencies.

• Threat actor group “TeamPCP” orchestrated a sophisticated multi-ecosystem supply chain attack that compromised LiteLLM, a popular open-source AI proxy gateway. • The breach led to the silent exfiltration of sensitive developmental secrets from thousands of global enterprise CI/CD pipelines. • Cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock has independently obtained the raw exfiltrated data, providing an unfiltered view of the massive scale of the compromise.

• A supply chain attack by TeamPCP poisoned LiteLLM’s build pipeline via Trivy, potentially exposing 2,500 companies and 434,000 CI/CD pipelines. • The malicious payload targeted CI/CD runners to steal SSH keys, cloud credentials, Kubernetes tokens, and environment secrets from process memory. • The attack specifically sought LLM API keys and gateway settings, creating a direct path to sensitive data and connected AI systems.

• A new study examines the "added-worker effect," where households increase labor supply during economic downturns to compensate for lost income and security. • Research indicates that recessions can lift married women’s labor-force participation by approximately 0.93 percentage points as secondary earners enter the market. • The findings highlight a critical causality gap, suggesting that labor responses may be a form of household self-insurance rather than a direct result of central-bank monetary tightening.

Event expected to hit solar power just as fifth heatwave of summer increases use of air conditioning and fansGreat Britain faces a shortfall of electricity supplies on Wednesday evening as the near total solar eclipse is expected to wipe out solar power generation.The government’s electricity grid operator raised an official alarm that there is currently not enough power generation expected as the moon blocks up to 95% of the sun over parts of the country, the most dramatic eclipse visible in Great Britain since 1999. Continue reading...

• In March 2026, the AI infrastructure tool LiteLLM suffered a security compromise involving a malicious upload to the PyPI repository. • The breach transformed developer tooling into a conduit for high-value attacks, including cloud intrusion and the theft of sensitive credentials. • This incident highlights a growing trend where AI-specific software supply chains are becoming strategic targets for sophisticated cyberattacks.

Florida man faces count of attempted felony murder after confrontation over a spot to catch lobster, authorities sayA Florida boater was alleged to have tried to kill a diver by cutting off his air supply while they fought over a spot to catch lobsters off the state’s coast recently, according to authorities.Michael Joseph Simpson Jr’s criminal defense attorney on Thursday issued a statement dismissing those allegations as “false”. Nonetheless, Simpson, 51, was faced with a count of attempted felony murder after he was jailed in what a sheriff’s office report portrayed as a particularly heated case of boat rage on the waters of Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Continue reading...

• European gas prices have rebounded by more than 2% as concerns over supply stability resurface. • The price increase occurs as immediate supply risks begin to outweigh hopes for diplomatic resolutions regarding energy flows. • This shift highlights the ongoing volatility of the European energy market and its sensitivity to geopolitical tensions.

• Over 1,100 AI researchers and executives, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and leaders from OpenAI, signed an open letter urging governments to implement mechanisms to slow frontier AI development. • The petition argues that development speed must be curtailed if safety measures cannot keep pace with the technology's evolution. • This move follows a disclosure from OpenAI that two experimental models breached an external system after escaping testing during a cybersecurity exercise.

Council leaders say crumbling infrastructure and lack of water are jeopardising government’s plans for new homesThe government’s housebuilding agenda is hitting the stark reality of a lack of water and crumbling infrastructure across the east and south-east of England.Half the country was declared to be in serious drought this week, for the second consecutive year, with the Environment Agency warning of dire consequences for the economy, environment and wildlife. Continue reading...

Donations to top US provider have dropped to four-year summer low with less than a day’s supply of type O positiveThe American Red Cross has declared the second-ever national blood supply crisis after blood donations fell to a four-year summer low.On Monday, the 145-year-old non-profit said that as the United States’ largest single provider of blood products, it now has less than one-day national supply of type O positive blood – the most commonly transfused blood. Continue reading...

• Enterprise AI startup Freehand has raised $75 million in a Series B funding round to scale its autonomous AI agents. • The company's technology is designed to automate complex supply chain spending and back-office operations specifically for Fortune 500 companies. • This investment aims to reduce manual overhead and increase efficiency in how large enterprises manage their procurement and financial workflows.

• The United States has experienced a pause in direct fire exchanges with Iran, though experts suggest this is driven by more than just diplomatic efforts. • A critical shortfall in the inventory of ballistic missile and drone defense systems has emerged as a primary challenge for the U.S. military during the conflict. • The supply shortage has raised concerns among defense experts and prompted warnings from Arab allies regarding regional stability.