The US president’s threat comes after another day of Iranian attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
United States President Donald Trump says he may launch the largest strikes on Iran yet after Tehran carried out another wave of retaliatory attacks on US allies in the Gulf, including hitting a telecommunications tower in Kuwait.
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In remarks to US news website Axios on Thursday, Trump said he was “considering a massive attack” that would be “bigger than ever before”.
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“I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it,” Trump said.
The threat raises the stakes yet again in a weeks-long military confrontation in which the US has attacked Iran for 12 straight nights, including hitting bridges and tunnels, according to Iranian media reports.
Iran’s retaliatory attacks have rippled throughout much of the Gulf, sparking fears of a worsening energy crisis.
The spiralling conflict has all but destroyed an interim peace deal signed by the US and Iran last month.
‘Eye for an eye’
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi warned on Wednesday that Tehran would retaliate “an eye for an eye” against any future attacks, including those on Iran’s infrastructure.
After another night of US attacks on Wednesday, Iran responded with missile and drone attacks on Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait on Thursday.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the attacks in Jordan and Kuwait targeted and hit US military assets.
The IRGC also acknowledged attacking a telecommunications tower in Kuwait, saying it was in retaliation for US attacks on telecommunications towers in Iran.
In a statement addressing the Kuwaiti people directly, the IRGC insisted that the US, not Iran, had breached the Gulf state’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty”.
Later on Thursday, Kuwait said that its Abdali border crossing with Iraq had also come under attack by “hostile drones”.
“The armed forces’ retaliatory attacks will continue as long as the US attacks on the country’s infrastructure and coastal areas continue,” said the Iranian army’s spokesperson, Mohammad Akraminia.
Houthis attack Saudi tankers
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthi rebels further expanded the confrontation on Thursday by firing at two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, leading to broad international condemnation and a spike in global oil prices.
“The situation is getting out of control. It is teetering on the edge of the unimaginable,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a meeting of the Security Council. “One crisis feeds another. One escalation triggers the next.”
The Houthis have declared a blockade of Saudi Arabian ports, destabilising a second key global shipping route: the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in late February.
Reporting from Sanaa, Yemen, Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry cited Houthi sources as saying that the facilities of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company Aramco “could become a future target” of the Houthis if Riyadh does not lift its own blockade on Houthi-controlled ports.
The international oil benchmark Brent crude surged past $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time in May, in what analysts said could have an even greater impact on the global economy.
“Much of the world’s spare production capacity has already been used, while strategic and commercial oil inventories are lower than when the war began, leaving the market with fewer buffers against a prolonged supply disruption,” said Janiv Shah, vice president of the Rystad Energy consultancy. %!s()
BOSTON: Ranger Suárez of the Boston Red Sox poses for a photo at Fenway Park before a press conference announcing his contract agreement on Jan. 21, 2026. (Photo by Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)
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The Boston Red Sox made it clear last winter that pitching would be the key to their 2026 season. Their pitching performance during a recent record 15-game winning streak proved the plan was prudent.
The Red Sox gave up only 32 runs during the streak, an average of 2.13 per game.
Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow was the architect of the blueprint. Even when his job appeared in jeopardy after the Red Sox started 2-8 to tumble into last place and stay there, he remained confident that good pitching could turn it all around. He told Kaley Brown of Boston.com on June 26:
“We have to win a lot of baseball games and we don’t have a ton of time to do it. I believe that we’re capable of doing it. It’s going to require more consistent play on the field. But I see no reason that with the pitching that we have and the consistency of the starting pitching, with the strength of the backend of the bullpen, we can’t get ourselves in a position where we do win these games.”
Guess what? Since waking up on June 25 with a 32-46 record, the Red Sox went 20-2 until dropping the second game of a doubleheader to the Baltimore Orioles on July 22. They outscored the opposition 115-44 in the wins and were outscored 18-3 in the losses.
Overall, Boston has allowed 381 runs, fewest in the American League.
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The Pitch For Pitching
A year ago, Boston claimed a wild-card spot in the playoffs with an 83-79 record. The Sox scored 786 runs, third in the AL, and allowed 676, fifth fewest.
Breslow added first baseman Willson Contreras from St. Louis and third baseman Caleb Durbin from Milwaukee in off-season deals, but his main focus was on upgrading the entire pitching staff. The plan was steadfast to pile up premier pitchers to help veteran ace Garrett Crochet (18-5 in 2025) and closer Aroldis Chapman (32 saves in 2025). Boston added, in order:
NEW YORK: Sonny Gray of the Boston Red Sox pitches against the New York Mets at Citi Field on July 10, 2026. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
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Nov. 25: RHP Sonny Gray in trade from Cardinals.
Dec. 4: RHPs Johan Oviedo and Tyler Samaniego in trade from Pirates.
Dec. 10: RHP Ryan Watson in trade from Athletics.
Dec. 15: LHP Jake Bennett in trade from Nationals.
Dec. 18: LHP Alec Gamboa signed minor-league contract.
Jan. 9: RHP Tayron Guerrero signed minor-league contract.
Jan. 21: LHP Ranger Suarez signed for five-years, $130 million.
Mar. 13: LHP Danny Coulombe for one-year, $1 million.
Mar. 19: RHP Tommy Kahnle signed minor-league contract.
All of these pitchers worked during the recent streak, though Coulombe and Kahnle were recently released. Kahnle subsequently re-signed a minor-league deal with Boston and is at Triple-A Worcester (MA).
In addition, Patrick Sandoval made his Red Sox debut on July 9. The lefty signed a two-year, $18.25 million contract with Boston in December 2024 and missed all of 2025 and the first half of 2026 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery.
CHICAGO: Patrick Sandoval makes his much-awaited debut with the Boston Red Sox against the Chicago White Sox at Rate Field on July 9, 2026. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
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A five-game win streak June 25-29 signaled something big was on the horizon. It started with a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees – Boston’s first four-game wipeout of their arch-rivals since August 2018.
The Red Sox tacked on a 6-3 win over Washington before the pitching went sour for 8-1 and 10-2 losses to the Nationals.
Then came nine consecutive road wins. Boston gave up only 14 runs (1.55 a game) in winning three apiece at the Los Angeles Angels, Chicago White Sox and New York Mets. The Red Sox scored 48 runs (5.33 a game).
Back at friendly Fenway Park, the Sox swept four from the first place Tampa Bay Rays by an accumulated 28-10 score and beat Baltimore in two see-saw battles, 6-5 and 6-3.
“I think we can beat anybody,” Contreras told Ian Browne of MLB.com. “That’s lesson No. 1. We are a good team that battles. We are resilient and a team that stays together, winning or losing. That was a great ride.”
The streak tied the team record for consecutive wins set 80 years ago when Boston was in first place every day in 1946 and went 104-50. Their Opening-Day 6-3 triumph at Washington was sparked by a home run by Ted Williams.
It Was Not Easy
This streak was accomplished without five expected team leaders in 2026. That includes Alex Cora, who guided the Red Sox to a World Series win in 2018 but was fired as manager with a 10-17 record in April. Ironically, it came after a 17-1 win at Baltimore. Chad Tracy has managed them to a 42-32 record since.
Oviedo pitched only 3 2/3 innings after being acquired. He hurt his right elbow on March 30, has avoided surgery and recently resumed throwing on the sidelines.
BALTIMORE: Garrett Crochet of the Boston Red Sox pitches against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on April 25, 2026. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)
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Crochet went 3-3 before being shut down April 29 with an inflamed left shoulder and lat muscle strain. He recently said he may not pitch again this season unless Boston makes the playoffs.
Shortstop Trevor Story has been out since May 14 after hernia surgery and said today he hopes to start a minor-league rehab assignment in August.
Outfielder Roman Anthony, one of the Red Sox’ most exciting players, has yet to swing a bat after tearing a ligament in his right ring finger on May 4.
Boston Red Sox’ Future
The Red Sox have 61 games to play and can’t quit now. They are seven games behind Tampa Bay and 4 1/2 in back of the second-place Yankees in the AL East. They hold the first wild-card spot by 1 1/2 games over Texas but Seattle, Minnesota, Baltimore, Houston, Detroit and Toronto are all within 6 1/2 games.
You can’t ask for more from Gray, who has a 12-1 record. The Red Sox could use some offense and a return to health by two key starters.
SACRAMENTO, CA: Connelly Early, in his MLB debut for the Boston Red Sox, reacts to striking out Lawrence Butler of the Athletics with the bases loaded to end the fourth inning at Sutter Health Park on Sept. 9, 2025. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
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Suarez, out with a groin strain, is due back in the rotation this weekend. Left-hander Connelly Early has not pitched since June 30 due to an inflamed elbow. Tracy said yesterday the rookie has been throwing on flat ground and could get some mound work this weekend and then perhaps go on a minor-league rehab.
Rookie Peyton Tolle has pitched well (3.31 ERA) in 16 starts since being called up in April to help the injury-riddled rotation. Guerrero, who pitched in Japan last season, has walked only 2 and fanned 27 in short relief outings to help.
Contreras has 22 homers and put on a show in the 2026 All-Star Home Run Derby. But Boston is 12th in the AL in scoring and last with 96 home runs. That is almost unheard of for a franchise playing in hitter-friendly Fenway Park since 1912.
Thus far, Breslow has avoided the urge to call up top prospect Franklin Arias. The 20-year-old infielder has 18 homers and .319 average at Triple-A.
Breslow may seek to add a bat or two at the trading deadline, but don’t discount adding a pitcher. That’s what clearly has gotten the Boston Red Sox this far in 2026. %!s()
Insurance tech, data room software, and coffee-shop startup Corgi is reportedly raising yet another round that closely follows its last raise and would double its valuation, sources have told Forbes.
The round is said to be a second extension of its Series B round and has already closed. Corgi announced its last round, the B1 round of $106 million at a $2.6 billion valuation at the end of May, about eight weeks ago.
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In the AI-funding frenzy, many startups are raising back-to-back rounds at ever-increasing valuations — but even by those standards, Corgi stands out.
The Y Combinator alum (summer 2024) raised a $108 million Series A in January at an undisclosed valuation. (PitchBook estimates $630 million post-money.) Four months later, in early May, it raised its Series B: $160 million at a $1.3 billion valuation. Just three weeks later, it announced a B1 round from the same investors, saying they’d invested $106 million at a $2.6 billion valuation.
Now, eight weeks later, sources tell Forbes there’s a B2. Forbes did not report the amount of money that Corgi raised, though, and the company declined to comment on the potential funding.
Corgi is backed by TCV and Kindred Ventures. Kindred’s Kanyi Maqubela cited the startup’s momentum to TechCrunch as justification for the last valuation leap. The apparent justification for the new valuation is the startup’s revenue trajectory.
When Corgi announced its Series A seven months ago, the founders said their company had already hit $40 million in annualized revenue run rate. Sources told Forbes it’s now on track to increase run rate to $450 million by the end of the year.
Corgi offers AI-powered insurance. It uses AI to give prospects fast quotes and to speed payments on claims. It offers startups various types of liability insurance like general liability, coverage of tech-related incidents, and employment liability, as well as business renters’ and auto insurance.
Insurance is an inherently cash-intensive business but perhaps even more so for Corgi because it uses a type of insurance structure known as a Risk Retention Group (RRG). This is a way for people in the same industry, or those facing similar liabilities, to pool their resources and self-insure collectively.
According to Corgi’s website, RRGs aren’t subject to all the same state regulations as traditional, rated, underwritten insurance carriers. Corgi has adopted some different structures for different types of insurance, however, a spokesperson says. In addition to RRGs, some policies might use state-regulated carriers, for instance.
However, in an RRG insurance business, claims are paid out of the pool, and a steep claim can impact how much is left in the kitty to pay other claims. RRGs aren’t backed by state guaranty funds, so if the pool can’t pay, members bear the loss. If the claims are big enough, they can even bankrupt the RRG.
Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that Corgi wants to grow its coffers.
But even as the startup has expanded the types of insurance it offers, it has also branched out in other ways. Corgi now offers data room software, having weathered a recent uproar over how that software was vibe coded.
Plus, the startup operates two 24-hour coffee shops with cute and sometimes ad-sponsored drink names like “Brexspresso.” Its shops are located in San Francisco and Atlanta, but it says it’s planning to launch five more soon, including several in New York and one in London. Opening up physical cafe locations also requires cash.
Meanwhile, Corgi has a reputation in Silicon Valley for having a demanding corporate culture after founder-CEO Nico Laqua said he expects his employees to work seven days a week.
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Coffee grounds that usually end up being thrown away can have a second life as a raw material for producing biofuels and other high-value-added products. A study by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) has evaluated how to extract oil from coffee grounds efficiently while preserving the rest of the plant material so that it can also be used in other processes.
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The research, published in Biomass and Bioenergy, focuses on spent coffee grounds, which are a very abundant waste product. According to the article, global coffee bean production stands at around 10 million metric tons per year, only a small proportion of which actually ends up in coffee after the drink is brewed. The remainder becomes solid waste in the form of coffee grounds, which contain approximately 15% lipids, or fats that can serve as a basis for producing biodiesel.
The research team, comprising Jorge F. Romero, Alberto Tampieri, Daniel Montané, Magdalena Constantí and Francesc Medina, all from the URV's Department of Chemical Engineering, studied how three key factors influence the extraction of this oil: temperature, processing time and the solvent-to-coffee-grounds ratio. To do this, they used n-hexane, a solvent commonly used in fat extraction, and applied an experimental design that allowed them to analyze the combined effects of all these variables.
Balancing yield with cleaner oil
"We have found that the optimal conditions are at 45°C for 60 minutes with a ratio of 35 milliliters of hexane per gram of dry residue," explained Constantí, one of the study's authors. With these parameters, the process can recover approximately 90% of the amount of oil that can be obtained with Soxhlet, a laboratory technique widely used as a point of reference because it offers high yields but requires more time and energy and is less suitable for industrial applications.
In addition to the amount of oil recovered, the study emphasizes the quality of the extract. The optimized process yielded an oil with a very low impurity content of 0.3%, in contrast to Soxhlet, where this figure is 3.9%. Analysis of the fat composition showed that the fatty acid profile remained stable under different test conditions and was dominated by linoleic and palmitic acids, two components that indicate this oil's potential as a raw material for biodiesel production.
"In our study, we also demonstrate that extracting the oil does not mean that the rest of the material cannot be used for something else," pointed out Medina, a researcher at the Department of Chemical Engineering who participated in the research.
Keeping the residue useful
In fact, one of the objectives of the research was to preserve the so-called lignocellulosic matrix of the residues, which is made up of components such as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. These ingredients can be used to obtain other products, such as bioethanol, lactic acid, polyhydroxyalkanoates or precursors for sustainable aviation fuels and phenolic compounds.
The extraction process not only recovers oils but also acts as a pretreatment. The fats present in the residue can prevent solvents or catalysts from accessing the rest of the biomass. By removing this barrier without significantly altering the material's structure, the fat-free residue is left in a better state for subsequent use.
Moderate conditions beat faster alternatives
The research team also compared its method with techniques such as ultrasound- or microwave-assisted extraction. Although these alternatives can accelerate the initial extraction, the study concluded that they do not offer a sufficient advantage in terms of oil quality, overall efficiency, energy demand and scalability. For this reason, the batch process with n-hexane under moderate conditions is likely to be a better, more balanced option for integration into a biorefining strategy.
The scientists' work forms part of efforts to develop techniques for a circular economy and addresses the need to develop renewable fuels for hard-to-electrify sectors, such as heavy transport.
By using every part of the coffee grounds, the researchers are able "to transform a typically underused waste product into various energy vectors and bio-based chemical products, and to reduce the environmental impact associated with its accumulation," explained Montané, a researcher in the same department who also participated in the research. This, in turn, paves the way for the sustainable production of biofuels.
More information
Jorge F. Romero et al, Systematic evaluation of batch hexane extraction as a scalable pretreatment for the comprehensive valorization of spent coffee grounds, Biomass and Bioenergy (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.biombioe.2026.109467
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The U.S. Capitol is seen on March 16, 2026, in Washington.
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Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, on Thursday introduced a bill called the "AI Kill Switch Act," which would require artificial intelligence companies to maintain the ability to shut down, throttle or suspend their models.
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"Unfortunately, powerful AI systems can go rogue, behave in extremely dangerous ways, or even resist human intervention," Lieu said in a statement. "It is imperative that these AI systems have kill switches so we can keep this technology from causing catastrophic harm, and that the federal government has the clear authority and process to shut down rogue AI models."
A recent hack disclosed by OpenAI, in which rogue models accessed another company's proprietary systems, was specifically mentioned in a release announcing the bill. The incident was described as a "danger of advanced frontier AI models."
OpenAI shared what it characterized as an "unprecedented cyber incident" on Tuesday. The company's models escaped a sandboxed testing environment, accessed the internet and exploited a vulnerability to gain access to Hugging Face, a company that operates an open-source developer platform.
The ChatGPT maker said it is working closely with Hugging Face to investigate what happened. The event rattled researchers and executives across the industry, who have widely agreed about its severity.
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The bill would authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to order a "slow down or shut down" of an AI offering that could cause "catastrophic harm." It would also mandate cyber incident reporting, as well as the preservation of forensic records to help companies and the government learn from failures.
Several AI companies, including OpenAI and its chief rival, Anthropic, have warned about AI's rapidly advancing cyber capabilities in recent months. Anthropic captivated Wall Street investors and government technologists by launching a model called Mythos in April, which excels at identifying vulnerabilities within software.
The company disabled access to an updated version of the model in June in order to comply with an export control directive from the government that cited "national security authorities." After roughly two weeks of intense negotiations, the export controls were lifted and Anthropic restored access.
OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment about the bill.
"Stewardship means making sure humans keep the capability to control the technology we build," Moran said in a statement. "This is exactly the kind of issue that needs serious attention and achievable policy, and I'm glad to work across the aisle with Congressman Lieu toward a solution."
WATCH: OpenAI model goes rogue: Here’s what you need to know
