Trump Pauses Iran Strikes as Interceptor Stocks Dwindle and the War Widens

DNC Panel Keeps South Carolina First on the 2028 Primary Calendar

Four Advanced Reactors Reach Criticality, Beating Trump's Nuclear Deadline

Starship Survives Splashdown Intact for the First Time

Pogačar Wins Fifth Tour de France as Wildfires Shorten Final Stage

Trump Pauses Iran Strikes as Interceptor Stocks Dwindle and the War Widens

The war between the United States and Iran is increasingly an international one. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday he will hand Washington evidence that Russian reconnaissance satellites surveilled four air bases hosting U.S. troops — two in Bahrain, one in Jordan and one in Kuwait — on July 19 and 20 alone, reinforcing U.S. intelligence reporting that Moscow is passing Tehran targeting data on American ships, aircraft and troop positions. Tehran's arsenal is itself a coalition product: its ballistic missiles are built on decades of North Korean designs and components, the Shahed drones it once sold Russia for use in Ukraine now come back upgraded with Russian anti-jamming navigation and swarm tactics, and its sharpened targeting has drawn on Chinese commercial satellite imagery that exposed U.S. air defenses. The fighting is spreading geographically as well: Yemen's Houthi rebels have declared a blockade of Saudi shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and struck two Saudi oil tankers, threatening the Red Sea route Saudi Arabia was using to move crude around the restricted Strait of Hormuz — the attacks that drove oil past $100 a barrel last week. Ukraine, meanwhile, struck Iran-linked vessels in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor and drawing Tehran's condemnation.

The United States halted airstrikes on Saturday — the first day without new attacks in two weeks — and the pause held through Sunday with Tehran also holding fire, while Iranian and Omani officials met in Tehran to discuss safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway carrying roughly one-fifth of the world's oil. U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that the military had been poised Friday to open an intensive strike campaign lasting up to two weeks, but President Donald Trump delayed it so diplomacy could proceed and amid warnings from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine that stocks of Patriot and other air-defense interceptors are running low — a risk factor for renewed major combat. The naval blockade of Iran remains in effect, Trump says the military is "locked and loaded" if talks fail, and the pause came days after the House voted 214-208 to direct an end to U.S. involvement in a war Congress never voted to authorize while the Senate narrowly refused. Markets read the lull as real: Brent crude slid toward $90 Monday morning.

NPR / WSJ / CBS / CNN / Al Jazeera / The Hill / Fortune / Military.com / The Week / Trading Economics

DNC Panel Keeps South Carolina First on the 2028 Primary Calendar

The Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee voted Friday to recommend South Carolina hold the party's first presidential nominating contest of 2028, on Jan. 22. South Carolina won the panel's vote with 26 votes to Nevada's 19 and New Hampshire's 4, and would be followed in the early window by Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia through February. The recommendation keeps the order Democrats set in 2024, when they moved South Carolina ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire — a sequence widely regarded as favoring the party establishment over its progressive wing. Supporters framed the vote as reaffirming the party's commitment to Black voters. The calendar is not final until the full DNC ratifies it at its meeting in August.

NPR / NBC / UPI

Four Advanced Reactors Reach Criticality, Beating Trump's Nuclear Deadline

President Trump, joined by nuclear industry executives at the White House on Friday, announced that four advanced reactor startups — Antares Nuclear, Deployable Energy, Aalo Atomics and Valar Atomics — have achieved criticality, the point at which a reactor sustains a nuclear chain reaction, with new small reactors under a Department of Energy pilot program. The results exceed the target Trump set in May 2025 executive orders, which directed Energy Secretary Chris Wright to get at least three advanced reactors to criticality by July 4, 2026. The White House cast the milestone as proof that its regulatory streamlining is compressing reactor development timelines that historically ran a decade or more, and officials said the administration is also eyeing offshore reactor deployments. Trump reiterated his goal of quadrupling U.S. nuclear capacity from roughly 100 gigawatts to 400 gigawatts, and the Energy Department aims to add 2.5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2027 and 5 gigawatts by 2029. Criticality in four privately built microreactors within about a year is a concrete step toward meeting surging electricity demand from data centers and AI — and a signal that federal test-bed authority, rather than traditional Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing alone, is becoming the administration's fast track for new designs.

PBS / The Hill / DOE

Starship Survives Splashdown Intact for the First Time

SpaceX's Starship survived its return to Earth more completely than ever before on Friday, descending upright into the Indian Ocean more than 10,000 miles from its Texas launch site while its Super Heavy booster also came through splashdown largely intact. The hourlong mission from Starbase was the 13th test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built and the first since the company's record-setting June stock offering, which briefly made founder Elon Musk a trillionaire. Along the way, the spacecraft released 20 of SpaceX's most advanced Starlink internet satellites. The intact recovery gives engineers their most detailed data yet on the heat shield — the key unsolved problem in making the rocket fully and rapidly reusable — after earlier versions repeatedly broke apart during reentry on what was only the second flight of the upgraded Version 3 vehicle. NASA is counting on a Starship variant to land astronauts on the Moon under its Artemis program later this decade, and a fully reusable super-heavy rocket would sharply lower the cost of reaching space — promises SpaceX, newly answerable to public shareholders, must now deliver on a market timetable.

CNBC / Spaceflight Now / Phys.org / Space.com

Pogačar Wins Fifth Tour de France as Wildfires Shorten Final Stage

Tadej Pogačar of Slovenia won the 2026 Tour de France on Sunday, finishing the three-week race in 73 hours, 56 minutes and 26 seconds — nearly six and a half minutes ahead of runner-up Remco Evenepoel of Belgium. The victory is Pogačar's fifth, tying the all-time record shared by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin. Organizers shortened the closing stage's route because police and security personnel were reassigned to fight the wildfires burning in southwest France.

NPR

JULY 27, 1949: FIRST COMMERCIAL JET MAKES TEST FLIGHT

On this day, the British De Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet‑propelled airliner, completed its maiden test flight in England. Powered by jet engines that allowed it to climb faster and fly higher than propeller planes, the Comet heralded a revolution in commercial air travel by dramatically cutting long-distance flight times.

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