Plus, the mystery Boeings flying Sudan's war routes.

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Daily Briefing

Daily Briefing

By Kate Turton

Hello. The US launches a fresh wave of strikes on Iran, Moscow and Kyiv battle over the Black Sea, and how soccer has helped shape national identities in England and Argentina. 

In the US, drought pits farms against towns and industry and ICE suspends traffic stops in the wake of fatal shootings.

Plus, the US army veteran and the mystery Boeings flying Sudan’s war routes.

Today's Top News

 

Still image from handout video said to show a drone being launched by Iran from an unknown location to attack US positions at Azraq base in Jordan. IRIB/Handout via REUTERS

War in Iran

  • Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has threatened to close "all other export corridors that benefit the US and its allies", Iranian media reported, after Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz and the US reimposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports. Follow our live updates.
  • Having choked off shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is now signaling it could play its most dangerous card yet: using Yemen's Houthi allies to shut the Bab el-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea, opening a new front against Washington and putting two of the world's most vital energy arteries at risk.

In other news

  • ICE suspends most vehicle stops nationwide after agents fatally shot two men in less than a week, neither of whom was the intended target of their operations. Correspondent Kristina Cooke tells the Reuters World News podcast the pause may signal the agency is taking a hard look at its training and tactics.
  • The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted  to pass ‌a bill making daylight saving time permanent and ending the twice-yearly practice of changing clocks that has been observed across most of the United States since the 1960s.
  • One of the people arrested on suspicion of having started the fire in a historic forest near Paris was a volunteer firefighter who confessed, French media said, citing the local prosecutor, as fire ‌brigades continued to battle the blaze near one of France's best-known royal palaces.
  • Russia and ‌Ukraine stepped up their battle over the Black Sea and key trade routes, with Moscow killing three people in an attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and Kyiv's drone forces striking Russian shipping. Our graphics team looks at how Ukrainian drone strikes choke Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov.
  • Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has widened ‌his lead over right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in the run-up to October's presidential election, a Quaest poll ⁠commissioned by brokerage Genial showed.
 

Business & Markets

 

A turkey vulture circles over low water levels at San Carlos Reservoir near Peridot, Arizona. REUTERS/Rebecca Noble

  • Farmers and ranchers, and Americans in small towns and suburbs talk to Reuters about how they are coping as the drought-stricken West gets even drier. The drought is pitting farmers against residents of cities and suburbs as well as industrial users including data centers, solar projects and semiconductor plants.
  • China has an increasingly important buffer against oil price shocks: electric taxis. Across Chinese cities, taxi usage and ridesharing are booming. In May, people took 3.05 billion trips, ‌with government data showing trips have grown 6% since the Iran war began.
  • Payments company Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal Holdings Inc. for $60.50 per share, in a deal that would value the payments company at more than $53 billion, ‌two people said.
  • SpaceX's slip close to its initial public offering price risks turning a marquee stock-market debut into a confidence test, potentially unsettling retail investors and complicating decisions for other companies weighing high-profile listings.
  • Fender, the US maker of the iconic Stratocaster electric guitar played by ‌Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, has widened its legal campaign to defend the guitar's design with a notice letter sent to Yamaha, the Japanese company told Reuters.
 

The US army veteran and the mystery Boeings flying Sudan’s war routes

 

Reuters tracked three Boeing aircraft flying from N’Djamena, Chad, to key logistics hubs used by the Rapid Support Forces, including to Kufrah, Libya and to Nyala, Sudan.

Companies owned by a longtime US government and military contractor have been operating several airplanes linking regional supply routes to the stronghold of a paramilitary force accused of genocide in Sudan, a Reuters investigation has found.

To the outside world, Steven Shaulis, a 63-year-old US Army Special Forces veteran, is the head of the Singapore-based CADG, formerly known as Central Asia Development Group, a global firm that has held US and United Nations contracts for over 20 years. Shaulis’ companies have earned at least $419 million from American taxpayers through military and foreign-aid projects, government records show.

Behind the scenes, Reuters found, Shaulis-controlled firms have operated at least three aging Boeing aircraft flying to key logistics hubs used by the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group accused of atrocities in the Darfur region.

Read our visual investigation
 

And Finally...