Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on the 26th condemned the U.S. blockade as criminal, said Cuba poses no threat to the U.S. or any other country, and described Cuba as a victim of a U.S. policy he called a 'cruelly planned genocide'.

Oil has rebounded toward $100/bbl, reviving inflation and rate-hike concerns for major central banks. The Fed, Bank of England and Bank of Japan may show varying degrees of vigilance while the ECB has signalled readiness to tighten; market pricing now assigns a meaningful chance that several central banks act as early as September. Emkay Global’s Madhavi Arora says Brent’s rally is no longer driven solely by Strait of Hormuz risks and recent Red Sea disruptions: visible traffic through the Strait has fallen to near zero, global inventories have been drawn down to near exhaustion, and fresh supply interruptions are tightening the market. Russian fuel exports remain constrained after months of Ukrainian drone strikes, and Kazakhstan has cut output following a Caspian Pipeline Consortium export-terminal shutdown, adding to supply-side strain.

The Exploration Company GmbH is negotiating to raise at least $300m, including part of the financing from the EU’s European Scale‑up Fund, in a deal that would value the company at over $2bn. The round is not finalised and is earmarked to support development of Europe’s first reusable space capsule to ferry cargo to the ISS and planned successor stations. The company previously raised about $160m in 2024 with French and German government‑backed support, funding development of its Nyx reusable capsule.