Global Summary

The NATO summit in Ankara closed this week with two divergent tracks: a US pledge to license Ukraine to build Patriot interceptors domestically, and a collapsing US-Iran memorandum of understanding after strikes that have now spread to US-linked bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan. Vladimir Putin has told Kremlin associates he intends to keep fighting despite Ukrainian strikes that have cut roughly a third of Russia's refining capacity and forced Moscow into a full diesel export ban. In Sudan, the European Parliament has voted to call for the Rapid Support Forces to be designated a terrorist organization as the group tightens its siege of El Obeid, while Ebola in eastern Congo is spreading faster than any prior outbreak in that country. Venezuela's earthquake response has shifted from rescue to disease prevention, and East Asia is absorbing a second storm system in a week as Typhoon Bavi, blamed for deaths in the Philippines, bears down on Japan's southwestern islands before a Chinese landfall.

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