Fire at #Iran’s largest oil refinery kills 1 in the country’s southwest. TEHRAN, Iran — A fire at Iran’s oldest and largest refinery in the southwest killed one person, state media reported Sunday.

A leaky pump in an under-repair unit at Abadan refinery caused the fire on Saturday, killing a worker, according to the state-owned IRAN newspaper. Firefighters put out the blaze in two hours and operations remained unaffected, the report said.

Iran’s deputy parliament speaker, Ali Nikzad, confirmed Sunday that some workers were also injured, media outlets said.

Abadan oil refinery, some 670 kilometres (nearly 416 miles) from the capital Tehran, began its operation in 1912. It is the biggest in the Islamic Republic, producing about 25 per cent of the country’s fuel with more than 5,200,000 barrels of oil refined daily.

Several fires have broken out across Iran over the past week at residential and commercial buildings, with authorities saying gas leaks and electrical short-circuiting were to blame.

Iran is one of the world’s major producers of oil, though sanctions by Western countries have limited its sales.


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Chief Justice Mandisa Maya has given respondents until Tuesday to oppose the MK Party's Constitutional Court application.


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#MOSCOW, July 20. #Russia’s automotive industry has not merely survived after the flight of foreign partners but has managed to expand production, Russian President Vladimir #Putin said.

"Such enterprises as Avtovaz have not only to prevented a collapse of the entire sector but managed to revive it and move forward, adding to its marketability and raising productivity," he said in an interview with VGTRK host Pavel Zarubin when asked about the situation in Russia’s automotive sector.

According to the Russian president, labor productivity diagrams at Avtovaz, Russia’s flagship car manufacturer, speak for themselves. "Moreover, one job in the automotive sector creates ten jobs in related sectors. And these are high-technology sectors," he added.

During his working trip to Magnitogorsk earlier, Putin said that the Russian government is working on a system of support for the domestic automotive sector that would take into account the interests of both manufacturers and clients.


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Any new nuclear facilities Iran decides to build will be destroyed, US President Donald Trump said.

"All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or obliterated. It would take years to bring them back into service and, if Iran wanted to do so, they would be much better off starting anew, in three different locations, prior to those sites being obliterated, should they decide to do so," he wrote on the Truth Social platform.

NBC News reported earlier, citing sources, that only one of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities had been fully destroyed in US strikes in June. According to the broadcaster’s sources, the other two suffered far less damage and may resume operation in a few months. However, the White House rejected this assessment. White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told Reuters that "Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities."

CNN reported on June 24, that the US intelligence community believed the US strikes had failed to achieve a complete destruction of key components of Tehran’s nuclear program. A preliminary US intelligence inquiry suggests the attack likely only set Iran’s nuclear weapons program back by several months. This was concluded by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which noted low confidence in the accuracy of their own assessment.

On June 25, US President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited new intelligence data, claiming Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, struck overnight June 21-22, had been "obliterated." The White House additionally assured that, according to Washington’s information, Iran had failed to remove nuclear materials from these sites prior to the strikes.


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#Congo and #Rwanda-backed rebels sign declaration of principles to end conflict in eastern Congo.

#DAKAR, Senegal — Congo and Rwanda-backed rebels on Saturday signed a declaration of principles in Qatar to end decadeslong fighting and commit to a comprehensive peace agreement that would include a withdrawal of the insurgents from key eastern cities.

Congo and the #M23 rebels committed to “building trust” through various measures, including an exchange of prisoners and detainees as well as restoring state authority in rebel-held areas, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz bin Saleh Al-Khulaifi, Qatar’s minister of state, said at a briefing.

Backed by neighboring Rwanda, the M23 is the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups fighting for control in Congo’s mineral-rich east. With 7 million people displaced in Congo, the U.N. has called the conflict in eastern Congo “one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth.”

Saturday’s signing is the first direct commitment by both sides since the rebels seized two key cities in eastern Congo in a major advance early this year. A final peace deal is to be signed no later than Aug. 18, and it “shall align with the Peace Agreement between Congo and Rwanda” facilitated by the U.S. in June, according to a copy of the declaration seen by The Associated Press.

M23 had been pushing for the release of its members held by Congo’s military, many of them facing the death sentence. Congo had requested the withdrawal of the rebels from seized territories.

“The Declaration of Principles signed today paves the way for direct negotiations towards a comprehensive peace that addresses the deep-rooted causes of the conflict,” the Qatari minister said.

The document touches on most of the highlights of the peace deal Congo and Rwanda signed on June 27, including the protection and safe return of millions who fled the conflict.

A key issue is whether Rwanda will pull their support for the rebels, including the thousands of troops that the United Nations experts said are in eastern Congo.

When Rwanda and Congo signed the peace deal in Washington, Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said Rwanda agreed to lift its “defensive measures” — suggesting a reference to its troops eastern Congo — once Congo neutralizes an armed group whose members Kigali accuses of carrying out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Analysts have said it is going to be difficult for the M23 rebels to withdraw from the eastern Congolese cities of Goma and Bukavu and that it would depend on concessions Congolese authorities agree to make. There were also been doubts about long-lasting peace if justice for victims of the war is not addressed.

Massad Boulos, s senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, said “it is time to find a final solution” to the conflict.

One of the most important articles of the principles is the affirmation of state control in rebel-held territories, he said. “However, there is this an ongoing conflict. The issue requires dialogue, and following up on this dialogue and requires persistence.”

Chinedu Asadu, The Associated Press

Associated Press journalists Ahmed Hatem in Cairo, Egypt and Jean-Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo contributed to this report.


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Deadly violence in Syria could reshape domestic and regional alliances.

The Druze and other minorities increasingly mistrust a central government run by a man once affiliated with al-Qaida, even though he has pledged to protect Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups since helping to oust Bashar Assad after a nearly 14-year civil war.

This sectarian turbulence within Syria threatens to shake-up postwar alliances and exacerbate regional tensions, experts say. It could also potentially draw the country closer to Turkey and away from Israel, with whom it has been quietly engaging since Assad’s fall, with encouragement from the Trump administration.
The spark for this week’s violence

Deadly clashes broke out last Sunday in the southern province of Sweida between Druze militias and local Sunni Muslim Bedouin tribes.

Government forces intervened, ostensibly to restore order, but ended up trying to wrest control of Sweida from the Druze factions that control it.

Hundreds were killed in the fighting, and some government fighters allegedly executed Druze civilians and burned and looted their houses.

Driven by concerns about security and domestic politics, Israel intervened on behalf of the Druze, who are seen as a loyal minority within Israel and often serve in its military.

Israeli warplanes bombarded the Syrian defence Ministry’s headquarters in central Damascus and struck near the presidential palace. It was an apparent warning to the country’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led Islamist rebels that overthrew Assad but has since preached coexistence and sought ties with with the West. The Israeli army also struck government forces in Sweida.

By Wednesday, a truce had been mediated that allowed Druze factions and clerics to maintain security in Sweida as government forces pulled out — although fighting persisted between Druze and Bedouin forces. Early Saturday, U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack announced a separate ceasefire had been brokered between Israel and Syria.
Worsening ties with minorities

This past week’s clashes aren’t the first instance of sectarian violence in Syria since the fall of Assad.

A few months after Assad fled and after a transition that initially was mostly peaceful, government forces and pro-Assad armed groups clashed on Syria’s coast. That spurred sectarian attacks that killed hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority to which Assad belongs.

Those killings left other minority groups, including the Druze in the south, and the Kurds in the northeast – who have a de facto autonomous area under their control -- wary that the country’s new leaders would protect them.

Violence is only part of the problem. Syria’s minority groups only have been given what many see as token representation in the interim government, according to Bassam Alahmad, executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, a civil society organization.

“It’s a transitional period. We should have a dialogue, and they (the minorities) should feel that they’re a real part of the state,” Alahmad said. Instead, with the incursion into Sweida, the new authorities have sent a message that they would use military force to “control every part of Syria,” he said.

“Bashar Assad tried this way,” and it failed, he added.

On the other hand, supporters of the new government fear that its decision to back down in Sweida could signal to other minorities that it’s OK to demand their own autonomous regions, which would fragment and weaken the country.

If Damascus cedes security control of Sweida to the Druze, “of course everyone else is going to demand the same thing,” said Abdel Hakim al-Masri, a former official in the Turkish-backed regional government in Syria’s northwest before Assad’s fall.

“This is what we are afraid of,” he said.
A rapprochement with Israel may be derailed

Before this week’s flare-up between Israel and Syria, and despite a long history of suspicion between the two countries, the Trump administration had been pushing their leaders to post-Assad to work toward normalizing relations – meaning that Syria would formally recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations, or at least enter into some limited agreement on security matters.

Syrian officials have acknowledged holding indirect talks with Israel, but defusing decades of tension was never going to be easy.

After Assad’s fall, Israeli forces seized control of a UN-patrolled buffer zone in Syria and carried out airstrikes on military sites in what Israeli officials said was a move to create a demilitarized zone south of Damascus.

Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, said she believes Israel could have gotten the same result through negotiations.

But now it’s unlikely Syria will be willing to continue down the path of reconciliation with Israel, at least in the short term, she said.

“I don’t know how the Israelis could expect to drop bombs on Damascus and still have some kind of normal dialogue with the Syrians,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a New York-based organization that focuses on global security challenges. “Just like Netanyahu, al-Sharaa’s got a domestic constituency that he’s got to answer to.”

Yet even after the events of this past week, the Trump administration still seems to have hope of keeping the talks alive. U.S. officials are “engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between two sovereign states,” says Dorothy Shea, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Shea said during a UN Security Council emergency meeting on Thursday that “the United States did not support recent Israeli strikes.”
Syria could be drawn closer to Turkey

During Syria’s civil war, the U.S. was allied with Kurdish forces in the country’s northeast in their fight against the Islamic State militant group.

But since Assad’s fall, the U.S. has begun gradually pulling its forces out of Syria and has encouraged the Kurds to integrate their forces with those of the new authorities in Damascus.

To that end, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces agreed in March to a landmark deal that would merge them with the national army. But implementation has stalled. A major sticking point has been whether the SDF would remain as a cohesive unit in the new army or be dissolved completely.

Khalifa said the conflict in Sweida is “definitely going to complicate” those talks.

Not only are the Kurds mistrustful of government forces after their attacks on Alawite and Druze minorities, but now they also view them as looking weak. “Let’s be frank, the government came out of this looking defeated,” Khalifa said.

It’s possible that the Kurds, like the Druze, might look to Israel for support, but Turkey is unlikely to stand by idly if they do, Khalifa said.

The Turkish government considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey. For that reason, it has long wanted to curtail the group’s influence just across its border.

Israel’s latest military foray in Syria could give its new leaders an incentive to draw closer to Ankara, according to Clarke. That could include pursuing a defence pact that has been discussed but not implemented.

Turkish defence ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity according to procedures, said that if requested, Ankara is ready to assist Syria in strengthening its defence capabilities.

Abby Sewell, The Associated Press


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#Fashion startup founder charged with $300 million fraud.

Christine Hunsicker, 48, of Lafayette, N.J., was charged with six counts, including fraud, aggravated identity theft and false statement charges in the indictment in Manhattan federal court.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a release that Hunsicker forged documents, fabricated audits and made material misrepresentations about her company’s financial condition to defraud investors in CaaStle Inc. and P180.

The indictment said Hunsicker, once portrayed as an on-the-rise fashion entrepreneur, portrayed CaaStle as a high-growth, private company with substantial cash on hand when she knew it faced significant financial distress.

In a statement, defence lawyers Michael Levy and Anna Skotko said prosecutors “have chosen to present to the public an incomplete and very distorted picture in today’s indictment,” despite Hunsicker’s efforts to be “fully cooperative and transparent” with prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There is much more to this story, and we look forward to telling it,” they said.

Hunsicker did not comment as she left the courthouse with Skotko after entering the not-guilty plea and agreeing to the rules of her $1 million bail, which included not having any contact with former or current investors or employees.

According to the indictment, Hunsicker continued her fraudulent scheme even after the CaaStle board of directors removed her and prohibited her from soliciting investments or taking other actions on the company’s behalf.

She “persisted in her scheme” even after law enforcement agents confronted her over the fraud, the indictment said.

Before the fraud allegations emerged, Hunsicker seemed to be a rising star in the fashion world after she was named to Crain’s New York Business “40 under 40” lists, was selected as one of Inc.’s “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs” and was recognized by the National Retail Federation as someone shaping the future of retail, the indictment noted.

At a time when the business was in financial distress with limited cash available and significant expenses, CaaStle was valued by Hunsicker at $1.4 billion, the indictment said.

Hunsicker was lying to investors in February 2019 and continued to do so through this March, prosecutors alleged.

They said she fed investors falsely inflated income statements, fake audited financial statements, fictitious bank account records and sham corporate records.

She allegedly told one investor in August 2023 that CaaStle reported an operating profit of nearly $24 million in the second quarter of 2023 when its operating profit that quarter was actually less than $30,000.

The indictment alleged that she carried out the majority of the fraud by bilking CaaStle investors of $275 million before forming P180 last year to infuse CaaStle with cash before its investors could discover her fraud.

Through misrepresentations and omissions, she cheated P180 investors out of about $30 million, the indictment said.

It said CaaStle filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last month, leaving hundreds of investors holding now-worthless CaaStle shares. Hunsicker was forced to resign from CaaStle’s board in December and formally resigned as chief executive in March.

In a related civil filing, the SEC said Hunsicker’s “fake financials” supported her narrative that CaaStle was nearing an initial public offering or sale in late 2022 as it enjoyed rapid and steady revenue growth after launching a new monetization model called “Clothing-as-a-Service.”

“In reality, CaaStle’s revenues were shrinking, its losses were increasing, and the company was never profitable,” the lawsuit said. “Not a single existing or prospective CaaStle investor received accurate monthly, quarterly, or annual CaaStle financial statements from Hunsicker.”

Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press


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How Vancouver’s urban #orcas create connections and community among followers.

But after encounters with whales in the urban waters of Vancouver the photographer now feels a deep sense of connection, and he’s found community with fellow enthusiasts.

“It’s a switch from that feeling that I used to have before to, I don’t know, let’s say (a) warmer feeling,” says Jaksuwong, who moved to the city from Thailand about two years ago.

He grows emotional as he describes the new-found sense of expectation when he gazes at the ocean.

“You know there’s something there that makes you feel OK.”

Jaksuwong is among a growing community of whale fans who track and share the surging number of sightings around Vancouver.

Experts say the return of orcas, humpbacks and other marine mammals has been decades in the making, following the end of commercial whaling in British Columbia in the late 1960s along with the wind-down of the large-scale culling of seals and sea lions, the primary food for certain killer whales.

Andrew Trites, who leads the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of B.C., says whales are the “ambassadors of the Salish Sea,” and their recovery is an opportunity to boost public awareness and encourage protections for their habitat.

“People care about what they see, and unfortunately, they see very little below the water’s surface to understand the richness of life and the need to maintain a healthy ocean,” says Trites, a professor in the school’s zoology department.

Jaksuwong once saw a whale from a distance during a tour off Vancouver Island. But he says he never expected to see whales from shore in the city.

“Now I’m obsessed with orcas,” he says, laughing. “It’s my thing now.”

In one encounter last month, he raced to catch up with a pod of whales reported to be passing Stanley Park. He caught a bus, then ran to the middle of Lions Gate Bridge that overlooks the city’s Burrard Inlet in hopes of an overhead shot of the whales using his telephoto lens.

“I’ve never run that fast before (with) the gear and stuff, right?” he recalled in an interview. “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. That’s what I thought.”

He was greeted with scenes worthy of a wildlife documentary — the whales were hunting a seal. Several of his photos show blood in the water roiling around the orcas.

“I’ve never seen this ever in my life. I feel so lucky, to be honest, to see that here, in nature,” he says.

Jaksuwong was “over the moon” to capture a photo of a young orca leaping out of the water, a moment he had been waiting for, he says.

He shared the photos with the Facebook group “Howe Sound and Sea to Sky wildlife sightings,” devoted to tracking and sharing encounters with orcas and other wildlife in the region. It has almost 27,000 members.

That day, June 14, the orcas had a bigger audience than usual — a crowd was gathered at Locarno Beach to watch a triathlon, with the whales stealing attention from the finish of the men’s event.

Jaksuwong joined the Facebook group in May, when a grey whale known as Little Patch spent several weeks feeding in Vancouver’s waters.

Since then, he’s become friends with fellow enthusiasts.

“We share our interests and we kind of like text each other, ‘whale here, whale there,’ and then we go see them together,” he says.

Erin Gless, executive director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, which represents 30 companies in both B.C. and Washington state, says there has been an “exponential increase” in sightings around Vancouver in recent years.

It has given whale-watching operators the opportunity to share stories about the whales as individuals, fostering a sense of personal connection, she says.

“We’re going to tell you that this humpback is nicknamed Malachite, and he was born in 2021, and he goes to Mexico in the winter,” Gless says.

“That’s what we’re really trying to do is put a much more personalized spin on these animals, so that they’re not anonymous.”

Trites says he came to B.C. around 1980 and “never thought” he’d see a humpback in local waters in his lifetime, after whaling decimated the population.

“It took the humpback whales a century to find their way back here again,” he says.

There were no other marine mammals to be seen regularly either at Vancouver’s Spanish Banks beach or the Stanley Park seawall, he says, after the culling of seals and sea lions in the name of safeguarding fisheries.

The end of the cull around 1970 laid the groundwork for the long-term recovery of Bigg’s killer whales, also known as transient orcas, which hunt mammals.

“So, we go basically from looking at what I would say was a relatively empty ocean in terms of marine mammals to one now that literally any day I can go and find a whale or a seal or a sea lion or a dolphin or a porpoise,” Trites says.

The seal population has been stable for some years, kept in check by the orcas; but they have spread out to areas where people are more likely to see them, he adds.

“To me, it’s a sign that if people just got out of the way, then Mother Nature can heal itself,” he says.

There is an exception, however, in the story of recovery, Trites says.

Bigg’s orcas differ from the southern resident killer whales that frequent the Salish Sea in the summer months. That population is endangered and at risk of extinction due in large part to declining numbers of their preferred prey, chinook salmon.

In Vancouver’s busy waters, whales are also at risk of ship strikes, Trites says, while noise from vessels disrupts their ability to feed and communicate.

Gless says people are lucky to be part of the story of the whales’ return, but “we need to keep it that way.”

“We can’t be like, ‘Oh, they’re recovered enough, so now let’s go ahead and build this new pipeline or increase shipping traffic.’ Those are all things that still concern us.”

Jaksuwong, meanwhile, continues to watch for whales, monitoring sightings and making his way to the seawall as often as he can, alerting others along the way.

“You see the look on their face when they see the orcas,” he says. “It’s rewarding for me too.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 18, 2025.

Brenna Owen, The #Canadian Press


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An #Israeli strike on Gaza’s only Catholic church killed three people on Thursday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said, as Israel said it “never targets” religious sites and regretted any harm to civilians.


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