International News Bulletin — August 7, 2026

Politics

• Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan sign joint defence pact – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed a trilateral defence agreement in Mecca on Friday under which an armed attack on any one of the three states is to be treated as an attack on all. The text covers military coordination, intelligence sharing, defence-industrial cooperation and capacity building, and extends to Turkey the mutual-defence commitment Riyadh and Islamabad concluded bilaterally in September 2025. Turkey said the pact is consistent with its NATO obligations, Tehran issued no official response, and Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei wrote that Saudis must know a paper agreement will not bring them security.
• Colombia’s new president sworn in under heavy guard in Cali – Abelardo de la Espriella, 48, took office as Colombia’s president on Friday at the Arena of the Universidad Santiago de Cali, breaking with the tradition of inaugurating presidents in Bogotá, with about 11,000 troops deployed to secure the city. He succeeds Gustavo Petro after winning a close runoff on 21 June against Senator Iván Cepeda, and has said he will end the peace negotiations his predecessor pursued under the strategy known as Total Peace. De la Espriella has given armed groups 100 days from the start of his term to surrender and has promised a tougher military response and new maximum-security prisons.
• Mossad chief dismisses two officials over failed Iran plan – Mossad director Roman Gofman removed the head of the agency’s intelligence directorate and the chief of its Iran division over a plan to bring down the Iranian government that was never carried out, Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported. The scheme, drawn up in coordination with Washington, envisaged backing opposition groups and Iranian minorities and reviving mass protests under Israeli and American air cover. Security sources told the broadcaster that Gofman’s relations with both men had been strained from the outset and that the dismissals are part of a wider shake-up of the agency’s leadership.
• Uganda’s parliament approves troops for Gaza stabilisation force – Ugandan lawmakers voted on Thursday to authorise a deployment to Gaza as part of the International Stabilization Force proposed by the Board of Peace, the body created under United States President Donald Trump’s plan for the territory. The motion, brought by the defence minister, is Kampala’s first public commitment to the mission, and Morocco has also pledged troops. Opposition lawmaker Hassan Kirumira said the deployment raised diplomatic concerns for a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and asked which side Uganda’s army would be fighting on.
• Armenian church leader appears in court as feud deepens – Catholicos Karekin II, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, appeared in court on Friday alongside six senior clergymen accused of defying a judicial order to reinstate a defrocked bishop, a charge carrying up to two years in prison. Prosecutors say he obstructed enforcement of a legally binding judicial act while exercising his powers as chairman of the Supreme Spiritual Council. Shortly after the hearing his lawyer Ara Zograbyan said the judge had recused himself and the case would pass to a new judge, welcoming a move he described as a refusal to become part of a shameful proceeding.

Economy

• US payrolls fall 23,000 in July, defying forecasts – The Labor Department reported on Friday that non-farm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, the first decline in months, against a Dow Jones consensus of an 83,000 gain. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.1 percent from 4.2 percent while the labour force participation rate slipped to 61.4 percent, its lowest in more than five years, and May and June payroll gains were revised down by a combined 103,000. Local government education shed 50,000 posts and retail trade 19,000, while health care added 22,000.
• Wall Street rallies as weak jobs data lifts rate-cut bets – The Nasdaq Composite closed Friday at 26,690.62, up 342.26 points or 1.30 percent, the S&P 500 at 7,757.64, up 47.68 points or 0.62 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 54,036.93, up 151.83 points or 0.28 percent, according to Yahoo Finance. Traders read the payrolls miss as reducing the likelihood of a Federal Reserve rate rise in September. Over the week the Nasdaq gained about 5 percent and the S&P 500 close to 3.5 percent.
• STOXX 600 closes at a record after four winning weeks – The pan-European STOXX 600 finished Friday 0.3 percent higher at a record 660.25 points, its fourth consecutive weekly advance, capping a heavy earnings week that produced several record closes. Technology shares rose 1.9 percent on the day, tracking Wall Street, and were the best-performing sector over the week, while health care added 1.2 percent. Investors read the United States payrolls report as lowering the chance of a Federal Reserve rate rise in September.
• China’s July exports rise 23.9 percent as surplus narrows – Chinese customs data released on Friday showed exports up 23.9 percent year on year in July to 397.85 billion dollars, ahead of forecasts of about 22 percent but slower than June’s 27 percent. Imports rose 27.5 percent, narrowing the trade surplus to 112.5 billion dollars from 125.6 billion in June. Semiconductor exports almost doubled in value from a year earlier and high-technology shipments overall rose 40.7 percent, with analysts citing artificial-intelligence demand and front-loading ahead of possible new United States tariffs.
• Gold posts its best week since January as crude slips – Gold settled Friday at 4,404.70 dollars an ounce, up 105.10 dollars or 2.44 percent on Yahoo Finance’s reading, heading for its strongest weekly performance since late January after the weak United States employment data. A separate futures settlement was quoted at 4,401.82 dollars, a divergence recorded here rather than reconciled, and UBS said it expects gold to reach 5,000 dollars an ounce by the first half of 2027. Oil moved the other way, with West Texas Intermediate settling at 76.97 dollars a barrel, down 32 cents or 0.41 percent, and Brent at 82.05 dollars, down 44 cents or 0.53 percent, according to Investing.com.

World News

• Houthi missiles wound civilians in Saudi Arabia’s Najran province – Saudi-led coalition spokesman Major-General Turki al-Maliki said a Houthi attack on Najran province on Friday injured seven Saudis, one Yemeni, two Egyptians and one Pakistani, among them a four-year-old with second-degree burns, while a Saudi official told Reuters that a separate strike on Thursday wounded 11 civilians. The attacks followed Thursday’s missile and drone strikes on Yemeni government military camps in Hadramout and Marib provinces, which the government said killed at least 30 soldiers and wounded 15, the deadliest escalation of the civil war since 2022. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed hundreds of casualties, a figure the Yemeni government has not confirmed.
• Russian strikes kill at least six across Ukraine – Regional authorities said Russian attacks killed at least six people, with two dead and six wounded in Dnipropetrovsk on Friday after five deaths there on Thursday, two killed in Kharkiv by cluster munitions, one in Donetsk and a 77-year-old woman in Kherson. Ukraine’s military said it struck a Wildberries logistics facility in Yekaterinburg, about 2,000 kilometres from the front line, arguing the e-commerce company supports the war effort; Wildberries denied any involvement. Kyiv says a 40-day campaign has hit 14 refineries, oil depots and loading terminals along with 14 aircraft and four airfields inside Russia.
• Red Cross transfers first detainees released by Kinshasa to M23 – The International Committee of the Red Cross said it moved 15 people freed by Congolese authorities from Beni through Uganda to Rutshuru territory in North Kivu on 6 and 7 August and handed them to the AFC/M23, in what it described as the first such transfer under the Doha mechanism signed in September 2025. All 15 consented to the operation, and the agency is acting as a neutral intermediary at the request of both parties. Stephanie Eller, who heads ICRC operations, said she hoped the handover would bring some comfort to families separated for so long and open the way to further releases.
• Spain-led raid dismantles Mediterranean smuggling network, 78 arrested – Europol said on Friday that a Spanish-led investigation run by the Guardia Civil and the National Police since 2023 had broken up one of the largest criminal networks operating across the Western Mediterranean, with 78 arrests and the seizure of 18 high-speed boats on an action day held on 16 June. The group moved synthetic drugs, cannabis, weapons and fugitives southward towards Algeria and migrants northward to Spain’s south-eastern coast and Ibiza, working, in Europol’s description, like a logistics company for organised crime groups. Investigators attribute to it at least 64 smuggling operations that brought more than 2,000 people to Spain and generated more than 24 million euros.
• Three inmates killed in Sri Lankan prison riots – One prisoner was killed and 10 injured when about 40 inmates broke out of their cells at the New Magazine Prison in Colombo late on Thursday, and two more died with 14 injured in a second riot at Kuruwita prison, roughly 80 kilometres from the capital, on Friday morning. Police and special forces regained control of both facilities, and unrest at an open prison in Negombo, about 40 kilometres from Colombo, was contained after officers fired tear gas. The government linked the violence to narcotics dealers and rival criminal gangs in an overcrowded prison system.

Bulletin automatically generated on August 7, 2026.