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Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief. The highlights this week: Economic policies loom over Zambia’s election, Spain comes up with a plan for the more than 1,000 Moroccan children who remain in Ceuta, and Colombia’s new administration recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. Zambians head to the polls on Aug. 13 for an election that will test President Hakainde Hichilema’s economic policies amid intense rivalry between the United States and China over the country’s critical minerals. Although analysts initially expected Hichilema to secure a comfortable second-term win, a newly reorganized opposition that emerged out of the Patriotic Front, the former…

This report contains sexually explicit language and references.  Rumors about the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sexuality have circulated for years. Snopes readers have contacted us in large numbers requesting information about it. As a fact-checking outlet, Snopes is not in the business of outing anyone or making judgment calls on a person’s gender or sexual identity. Before his death in July 2026, Graham repeatedly dismissed claims he was gay.  Rather, considering our readers’ strong interest in Graham’s personal life — some of whom allege hypocrisy in his policymaking regarding LGBTQ+ rights — this report lays out what prominent people…

Oil leaking from a tanker grounded off the coast of Oman is not only endangering a nearby island but has now also reached beaches on the Gulf Arab country’s mainland, to the north of the island, Oman’s Environment Authority said Wednesday. Crude oil has been leaking from the tanker Caroline Bezengi – a sanctioned tanker believed to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” – that was carrying nearly 1 million barrels of oil when it reported an explosion in June. No party has claimed responsibility for the incident and the cause of the explosion has not been revealed. Environmental experts…

Nurses are collapsing during shifts amid “inhumane and impossible” conditions caused by extreme heat, their union has warned, as Andy Burnham promised to grapple with “the bigger questions” of climate adaptation.Amid growing pressure from Labour backbenches to fully acknowledge the urgency of adaptation measures as the climate crisis bites, Burnham said he was for now focusing on the immediate crises caused by an ongoing summer of extreme heat.Speaking after a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee, Burnham refused to say if the summer had made the case against renewed drilling in the North Sea, which his government is considering.“It…

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.Google just announced its new flagship Pixel 11 series, including the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold. The phones include upgrades to the processor, cameras, and storage, making them a worthy upgrade for Pixel fans or those looking for a change with their mobile device. Also: Every Pixel device announced at Made by Google 2026: 11 Pro Fold, Pixel Watch 5, and moreRight now at T-Mobile, you can find several offers on the Pixel 11 series, including savings on the Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and more. (You…

WhatsApp has begun a limited beta rollout of Scam Alert, an optional feature that uses an on-device machine learning model to flag suspicious messages from non-contacts.  The company says the tool is designed to work alongside end-to-end encryption rather than around it, with classification happening entirely on the device and no automatic reporting to WhatsApp or parent company Meta. Once a user enables the feature, a model is downloaded to the device and evaluates incoming messages for patterns associated with known scams, drawing on conversational structure and linguistic cues.  If a message is flagged, only the recipient sees a warning…

In brief Bill Swearingen’s noRecognition project generates patterns that stop camera software from classifying what it covers—people, faces, or cars. The patterns defeated all 11 open-source detection algorithms he tested, including the software behind Flock license plate readers, Axon body cameras, and Clearview AI. The first public test came Friday at Def Con in Las Vegas: a 2009 Toyota Yaris wrapped in the pattern, driven past a Flock camera. Bill Swearingen spent the past year running one experiment over and over from his home in Kansas City, where he co-founded the SecKC security meetup. About 31 million tests later, he…

The barren lunar landscape has some important resources, such as water and minerals like iron and titanium, but extracting and processing them will require special equipment. Where those resources can be found will dictate where to land and how to mine them. To help with that, Lunar Station Corp. is using a wealth of NASA data in multiple computer models. “With 60 years of lunar data available to us, we help our clients understand the environmental factors for any given location on the Moon,” said Blair DeWitt, CEO of Lunar Station. Combining disparate data from different sensors used by NASA…

Indonesia holds the world’s largest nickel reserves and has rapidly expanded production, which a new study says has grown roughly tenfold over the past decade.Nickel mining can fragment wildlife habitat as mines, roads and associated infrastructure expand, threatening biodiversity in areas of global conservation importance.Researchers say protecting the most important biodiversity and carbon areas could substantially reduce environmental risks, but doing so could also constrain nickel supply.Even with greater adoption of low- or no-nickel battery chemistries, total nickel demand could continue to grow because the metal is also used extensively in stainless steel, renewable-energy infrastructure and other applications, the…

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief. The highlights this week: The new security pact among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey delivers Islamabad a boost in the Middle East but not in its own backyard, Bangladesh lashes out at India over an event involving former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and the Taliban deny detaining an Afghan-U.S. dual citizen who disappeared in Kabul four years ago. Mecca Pact Is Mixed Blessing for Pakistan Last week, Pakistan inked a new security pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, known as the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. The deal cements Islamabad’s place in the Middle…