July 23 2026 News

Iranian drone attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf have prompted US intelligence analysts to investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or advanced drone technology, say four people familiar with US intelligence. These people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters, say US intelligence officials have not yet reached firm conclusions about the possible Russian involvement in the attacks on CIA facilities. But they cite the strikes’ effectiveness and apparent precision, as well as Russia’s broader technical support for Iran, as possible evidence. Reuters and other media have reported — and US officials have acknowledged — that Russia has provided targeting and other support for Iran in its strikes on US targets in the Gulf region generally, but the intelligence community’s investigation of possible Russian involvement in supporting the CIA facility attacks has not been previously disclosed.

The Iranian-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen claimed on Wednesday that it had targeted two Saudi oil tankers with missiles and drones in the Red Sea. It would be the first such attack since the group announced a blockade aimed at Saudi Arabia. The Houthis said in a statement that the Encelia and the Layla were violating the blockade. The group claimed that the strikes had caused large fires to break out on both vessels. Saudi Arabia’s transportation authority confirmed an attack the Encelia in a statement published by state media, and said the ship’s crew was safe after a fire broke out. It did not specify the attack’s origin or mention the other tanker the Houthis claimed to have struck.

As the sun set on Wednesday evening, the Jewish people entered Tisha B’Av (the Ninth of Av), the national day of mourning marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Across Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, worshippers gathered in synagogues to read the Book of Lamentations (Eicha) and recite traditional elegies. Tens of thousands are expected to assemble at the Western Wall Plaza for prayers and the recitation of “kinot,” traditional prayers of mourning, near the remnant of the Holy Temple.

Amid mounting regional instability, the British government has temporarily pulled its diplomatic personnel out of Iran, leaving the embassy to function on a remote basis. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) confirmed the precautionary measure on Wednesday, citing deteriorating security conditions. The FCDO said it “continues to warn against any travel to Iran and is prompting British citizens in the country to evaluate the necessity of staying.”

On Tuesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report entitled “Science: A New Golden Age,” in which it lays out how it has viewed science, found it lacking, and believes the Trump administration is in the perfect position to fix things. It’s a bit unexpected coming from an administration that has been proposing crippling funding cuts to research and trying to enable political appointees to terminate grants awarded based on scientific merit. The report presents itself as the spiritual successor of “Science, the Endless Frontier,” a policy document that laid out the case for government-funded science in the wake of World War II. The New Golden Age (SNGA) says that, while the concepts promoted by the original remain vital, the circumstances have changed such that we need major revisions to how the government is implementing things.

In city council chambers across the country, officials have celebrated the removal of Flock Safety cameras as a privacy victory. Within months, Axon installation crews often appear on the same poles, bolting in replacement plate readers. According to TechTimes, 53 cities have canceled Flock contracts, citing unauthorized federal data access, false alerts, and mass surveillance of innocent drivers. Many aren’t abandoning license plate readers altogether — they’re switching vendors. The surveillance footprint isn’t shrinking. It’s rebranding.

Entrepreneur and “longevity guru” Bryan Johnson has taken a different approach to how he will manage his autoimmune disease: cloning himself. “I just cloned myself … as a newborn,” Johnson, 48, wrote to his followers on X. He added that for now, “baby Bryan” currently lives in a Petri dish. “With this clone, I can become my own blood boy, test therapies on the clone, grow organs for transplantation, develop new treatments and inject young cells,” Johnson wrote. He said the process involved doing a blood draw, extracting his cells, exposing them to Yamanaka factors and resetting them to an “embryonic-like state.”

According to new maps, revealed at the Apophis T–3 Years workshop in Padua, Italy, this is close enough for most of the planet to see the asteroid with the naked eye. As the asteroid, officially named 99942 Apophis, passes by, an estimated 7.6 billion people will be in line for a once–in–a–millennium stargazing spectacle. Scientists say the asteroid will look like a bright star slowly travelling across the sky and will be visible for hours to some lucky stargazers in the Northern hemisphere.

Russia’s worsening fuel shortage has triggered growing demand for unconventional services, with fortune tellers, magicians, and practitioners of esoteric rituals increasingly marketing ceremonies they claim can reduce fuel consumption or “attract” gasoline to vehicle tanks, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU).