July 24 2026 News

US President Donald Trump is close to making a decision on whether to launch a new major combat operation against Iran, he told Axios on Thursday. “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it,” he said. Trump added that Israel “would join in two minutes if I ask them to,” but that there would be “consequences” to it joining the strikes, and that the United States didn’t need any assistance.

As fighting and rhetoric escalated between the US and Iran, Tehran threatened a strike on Tel Aviv if US forces should target Tehran and civilian infrastructure. Two Iranian sources told The New York Times that if Trump follows through on threats to attack Tehran and critical infrastructure, Iran would expand the conflict by striking Tel Aviv and asking the Houthis in Yemen to close the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. During the first phase of the war, which began on February 28, the IDF participated in strikes on Iran as Tehran responded by launching hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel. Israel has not taken part in the latest round of fighting, however, and Iran has not targeted the country in recent weeks.

Following the terror attack Friday morning near the Arab village of Tal, IDF soldiers are preparing for extensive counterterrorism operational activity in the sector. Accordingly, soldiers’ leave across the sector has been postponed, and reinforcement of soldiers across the sector has been implemented. Overnight, IDF soldiers apprehended nine wanted suspects who had incited terrorism and terrorist attacks, questioned additional suspects, and located weapons. Over the past week, IDF soldiers apprehended more than 80 wanted suspects throughout Judea and Samaria, including individuals who incited terrorism, Hamas affiliates, perpetrators of stone-throwing and Molotov cocktail attacks, and terrorists involved in the manufacture and use of explosive devices.

“The €27 billion investment will modernize NATO’s existing fuel facilities and the infrastructure for fuel storage and distribution,” NATO wrote in a statement on Thursday. It added that the investment will be used for new facilities and pipelines in Eastern and Southeastern Europe to “ensure that NATO forces have the energy supply required for combat readiness.” The 5,300-mile pipeline network in central Europe was built in the late 1950s to supply alliance forces with fuel during the Cold War. Upgrading the system will take about 25 years.

The United States Space Development Agency (SDA), in support of the U.S. Space Force, has awarded contracts to L3Harris Technologies and Sierra Space Corporation to build and deliver 36 Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 (AMDT3) space vehicles (SVs) designed to operate in four distinct orbital planes. Part of the Tracking Layer for Tranche 3 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the space vehicles will support the White House’s space-based segment ‘Golden Dome for America’ antimissile defense system to expand the country’s missile tracking and defense network, with a projected delivery date of 2028.

A proposed law called the AI Kill Switch Act would let US government officials order the shutdown of AI systems “that can cause catastrophic harm,” the bill’s sponsors said today. If approved by Congress, the bill would let the Homeland Security chief decide when an AI company must block user access, disable or restrict a particular capability, or shut an entire AI system down completely. The bill would require AI makers to deploy technical capabilities allowing them to throttle or shut down the systems when ordered to do so by the government.

Space datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and be “catastrophic” for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts. Tech companies have collectively proposed millions of “orbital datacenters” and are pressing forward with plans, which require Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval. Among other issues, pollution from satellites and rockets burning up upon re-entry appears to be accumulating in the stratosphere at alarming levels. The spacecraft release black soot, rare metals, aluminum oxides and other pollutants with unknown effects.

More than 1,000 people have died of Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to official figures released Thursday, with the outbreak showing no sign of slowing. Health workers have recorded 2,536 cases of Ebola, as well as 1,033 deaths, since the conflict-torn central African nation declared an epidemic May 15.

Earlier this month, a newly published peer-reviewed study in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science. The published study was carried out by retired U.S. Air Force Major Thomas F. Haviland, who is a data analyst and mathematician, along with independent researchers Lauro Kasner and Dr. Daniel Santiago, a Doctor of Pharmacy. The researchers performed four annual cross-sectional surveys (2022–2025) targeting active embalmers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The aim of their study was to record, via anonymous surveys, the frequency of reported sightings of these strange white fibrous structures, the percentage of corpses impacted, and the timeline of their initial appearance. The study indicated that, between 2022 and 2025, “across 808 total responses [to the survey], the proportion of embalmers reporting observation of these structures ranged from 66% to 83%. Weighted average prevalence in affected corpses ranged from 19% to 27%.” Among those who had witnessed them, only 14–17% claimed to have seen them in 2018 or 2019, which rose to 37% in 2020 and reached 80% in 2021. When the results from multiple years are aggregated, 75.2% of embalmers indicated they had seen white fibrous clots, with these structures estimated to be found in 23.4% of all embalmed bodies.