The launch comes as South Korea and the United States plan to conduct major joint military drills from August 17 to 27 to prepare against North Korea’s evolving nuclear and weapons capabilities

International News via Reuters:

North Korea fired an unidentified projectile towards the east, the Yonhap news agency said on Wednesday, citing the South Korean military.

The launch comes as South Korea and the United States plan to conduct major joint military drills from August 17 to 27 to prepare against North Korea’s evolving nuclear and weapons capabilities.

North Korea earlier this month fired a short-range ballistic missile towards the sea, according to the South Korean military.

Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Chris Reese and Ed Davies

Oil prices gained and global shares retreated amid renewed pessimism about a quick end to the conflict

International News via Reuters:

The United States and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis reported separate attacks on shipping on Tuesday as prospects for ending the five-month-old Iran war appeared to dim, with Tehran saying the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed unless Washington accepts its conditions.

Oil prices gained and global shares retreated amid renewed pessimism about a quick end to the conflict. Brent crude futures climbed 1.4% to settle at $88.91 per barrel and U.S. crude rose 1.3% to $83.20.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, who said on July 20 they would impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, attacked a Saudi ship carrying military equipment in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Houthi-run news agency Saba reported.

There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of that attack, but Yemen’s Transport Ministry said four crew members were killed in a suspected Houthi attack on a small cargo vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday. The fatalities aboard the Egyptian-owned vessel Tihamah would be the first deaths in a Houthi strike on shipping since the Iran war began. 

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said a U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles to disable the steering gear of a Panama-flagged cargo ship after it ignored repeated warnings to stop violating a naval blockade on Iranian ports. Maritime sources told Reuters the ship was hit off Pakistan while sailing into the Gulf of Oman.

STEPPED UP RHETORIC

Both Iran and the United States have stepped up rhetoric in the past two days.

Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, said on Tuesday that the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route will remain closed unless the U.S. accepts Iran’s conditions to end the war –  the release of Iran’s frozen assets and an end to wars throughout the region, including in Lebanon and Gaza.

That followed a new demand from U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday that Iran should pay compensation for people killed in 50 years of wars, attacks and protests.

Throughout the conflict, Trump has alternated between threats of escalation and claims that a peace deal is imminent.

In an interview released late on Monday, he suggested the current uncertainty could last for a while, saying he might just “bop along.”

“I’m sort of negotiating,” Trump told Real America’s Voice. “They’re very devious negotiators.”

The comments from Rezaei, appointed on Sunday as second-in-command of the body that coordinates Iran’s security and foreign policy, were the strongest indication the Strait of Hormuz would not reopen to shipping anytime soon. The waterway handled a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flow before the war.

“As long as America does not change its behaviour and does not accept Iran’s conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened,”  Rezaei said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. 

There was no immediate comment from Washington on Iran’s latest comments.

Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28. 

Iran struck U.S. assets and infrastructure in countries including Oman, Jordan, Kuwait, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Raising the prospect of further escalation, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an adviser to the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said on Iranian state TV on Tuesday that the corps was developing the ability to carry out operations “on enemy soil.”

“We need to be able to move the operations to the enemy’s soil, whenever this is needed and ordered,” he said. “This is the characteristic of the offensive doctrine that has to be attained.”

Reporting by Tala Ramadan and Elwely Elwelly, Writing by Sharon Singleton, Alison Williams and David Brunnstrom, Editing by Andy Sullivan, Timothy Heritage and Sanjeev Miglani

Brent futures rose $1.19, or 1.4%, to settle at $88.91 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose $1.07, or 1.3%, to settle at $83.20

International News via Reuters:

Oil prices edged up to a one-week high on Tuesday as doubts about a potential U.S.-Iran peace deal fueled concerns that Middle East supply disruptions would persist. 

Brent futures rose $1.19, or 1.4%, to settle at $88.91 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose $1.07, or 1.3%, to settle at $83.20.

Those were the highest closes for both crude benchmarks since July 31 for a second day in a row after both contracts jumped about 5% on Monday as hopes for a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran started to fade.

The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed as long as the U.S. does not change its behavior and accept Iran’s conditions to end the war, the newly appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said on Tuesday. About 20% of global oil supply passed through the strait before the start of the Iran war on February 28.

His comments are the strongest indication so far that any deal in talks with Oman over the waterway would not immediately reopen it to shipping if the U.S. does not also abide by its commitments in a memorandum of understanding toward ending the conflict reached between Washington and Tehran in June.

Shipping data showed that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped to six vessels on Monday, compared with a 10-day average of about 11 vessels. Before the war, daily traffic through the waterway averaged between 125 and 140 vessels a day. 

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis attacked a Saudi ship carrying military equipment in Bab el-Mandeb, between the Red Sea and the open Indian Ocean, Houthi-run news agency Saba reported, while sources reported a missile attack on a container ship off Pakistan in a suspected U.S. strike.

Some producers in the Middle East are likely to struggle to restore oil output to pre-conflict levels by the end of 2027, even if trade patterns return to normal by early next year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.

SUPPLY DISRUPTION IN LIBYA

In Libya, renewed violence in the strategic city of Zawiya has disrupted the oil industry, with state oil firm the National Oil Corporation saying it could declare force majeure if drone attacks on energy assets in the city continued. Libya is a member of OPEC.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is offering spot crude in a tender, its eighth issued since the start of June as the UAE state oil company works to move oil from inside the Strait of Hormuz, trade sources said.

In Europe, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it attacked an oil refinery in the Russian city of Orsk, the second-largest city in the Orenburg region and an important industrial hub.

The combination of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and the Iran war has limited global supplies and boosted global energy prices — Brent futures are up about 44% so far this year.

Russia was the world’s third-biggest crude oil producer behind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in 2025, according to U.S. energy data, and is a member of the OPEC+ group of countries, which includes OPEC and allies.

U.S. OIL INVENTORIES

The oil market was waiting for weekly storage reports from the American Petroleum Institute trade group later on Tuesday and the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday.

Analysts estimated energy firms pulled 0.5 million barrels of crude from storage during the week ended August 7.

If correct, it would be the second time stockpiles had declined in three weeks. Stockpiles increased by 3.0 million barrels in the same week last year and have increased by an average of 3.1 million barrels over the past five years (2021 to 2025). [EIA/S] [API/S]

Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York anAnushree Mukherjee and Ishaan Arora in Bengaluru; Editing by David Goodman, Mark Potter, Paul Simao and Sanjeev Miglani

Five years after the Taliban returned to power, about 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan are unable to attend secondary school, while more than 2 million primary school children are out of school

International News via Reuters:

Restrictions on women pursuing higher education in Afghanistan are expected to exacerbate a shortage of female teachers, further diluting education quality in a country where millions of children are already unable to attend school, UNESCO said on Wednesday.

• Five years after the Taliban returned to power, about 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan are unable to attend secondary school, while more than 2 million primary school children are out of school, the UN education agency said.

• Women have been banned from universities since December 2022, reversing nearly two decades of progress in girls’ education, and are barred from teaching boys.

• UNESCO estimates Afghanistan will have a deficit of more than 11,000 qualified female teachers by 2030.

• “Many teachers have left the country … and those who were in the system are banned from continuing teaching,” Hoda Jaberian, the UNESCO programme coordinator for education in emergencies, said in a briefing.

• “This decision to ban women from teaching boys has not only, of course, removed a substantial number of qualified teachers and educators from the education system, but it also resulted in boys being taught by unqualified male teachers,” Jaberian added. “We are left with unqualified male teachers or no teachers at all.”

• UNESCO said over 90% of 10-year-olds cannot read a simple text, with national literacy rates at 37%.

• Many schools are overcrowded and poorly equipped. Nearly half of schools lack water, sanitation or heating, UNESCO said.

• In 2025 alone, some 3 million people returned to Afghanistan, either forced or voluntarily, placing further pressure on the schools, and since 2021, natural disasters including earthquakes and floods have forced the closure of 1,000 schools, UNESCO said.

• Afghanistan is the only country in the world to formally bar girls and women from accessing education after primary school.

• UNESCO estimates that the ban on female education could cause 600,000 Afghan women to leave the workforce by 2066, cause $9.6 billion in cumulative income losses and increase the risk of early marriage.

• The Taliban took power again in Afghanistan in 2021 after U.S. troops withdrew from the country.

Reporting by Lewis Macdonald; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Toby Chopra