INDIA – AUSTRALIA
India and Australia have reached an agreement on uranium exports to India, which will be used by the nuclear industry. Delhi aims to meet its target of producing 100 gigawatts of energy from nuclear power stations by 2047, whilst Canberra is seeking to diversify its trade to reduce its dependence on China, its main trading partner.
BANGLADESH
A further eight Rohingya people have died in Bangladesh, in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, following a landslide caused by heavy rain. The victims were seven schoolgirls and a teacher who were swept away whilst at an Islamic study centre. Since Sunday, Bangladesh has been hit by monsoon rains, causing mudslides and debris flows in the camps, where over a million refugees live.
MIDDLE EAST
The United States has launched a new series of attacks against Iran, which has responded by striking Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar once again. US President Donald Trump stated that the recent attacks mark the end of the ceasefire, but speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, he also said that it was “the Islamic Republic of Japan” that had fired missiles at a US aircraft carrier, confusing the Land of the Rising Sun with Iran.
PAKISTAN
The wreckage of a cargo plane has been found south of the port of Ormara following a deep-sea search operation. The aircraft was located approximately 12 hours after it went missing off the coast of Karachi. Rescue operations are now under way to attempt to recover the five crew members as well, Pakistani authorities have reported.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korean delivery riders have lost a long legal battle today: the Supreme Court has ruled that CJ Logistics, the company responsible for the majority of parcel deliveries in South Korea, is not obliged to enter into collective agreements with delivery riders, but may continue to use recruitment agencies, even though the riders often work almost exclusively for CJ Logistics.
RUSSIA
Ramzan Kadyrov will once again stand for election as head of Chechnya: his candidacy has been approved by United Russia. Kadyrov has held this post for 19 years, and this year he had been excluded from the party’s list of leaders for the first time. The Chairman of the Chechen Government, Magomed Daudov, announced the nomination, and President Vladimir Putin has once again backed his candidacy. In 2016, 98 per cent of voters cast their ballots for him, and in 2021 the figure was 99.7 per cent, in elections held without independent observers.
TAJIKISTAN
In the first half of 2026, 142 families in Tajikistan were advised to relocate from areas prone to hazardous geological processes to safer areas, as announced by Ilkhom Oymukhammadzoda, head of the Department of Geology of the Dushanbe government, based on the results of geological and engineering surveys conducted as part of the “State Service for Monitoring Exogenous Geological Processes” project, under which specialists carried out surveys in 55 villages across various regions of the country over a six-month period.
