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During Iraqi Prime Minister al-Zaidi’s visit to Washington in mid-July 2026, Iraq signed 48 deals worth over $60 billion with U.S. energy firms, led by Chevron on major pipeline work along with ExxonMobil, Shell, and others.

The flagship project is the revival of the long-defunct Kirkuk-to-Baniyas crude oil pipeline through Syria for Mediterranean exports, which would allow Iraq to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely, diversify revenue away from Iran-threatened routes, strengthen U.S. economic ties, and improve global oil supply security — though it faces challenges from Syria’s stability and will take years to complete.

Economics & Markets:

Geopolitics & Military Activity:

On July 19, 2026, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the ninth consecutive night of airstrikes on Iranian military targets.

The operations, which began at 7 p.m. ET, focused on degrading coastal defenses, missile sites, surveillance infrastructure, and maritime capabilities used to attack commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. continues enforcing a naval blockade on Iranian ports to restrict oil exports and pressure Tehran into compliance.

Space:

On July 18, 2026, Skyroot Aerospace successfully completed its historic “Aagaman” (Sanskrit for “Arrival”) demo flight, launching the Vikram-1 rocket — India’s first privately developed orbital rocket — from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The mission reached low Earth orbit, deployed several technology demonstration payloads (including satellites and a robotic arm), and marked a major milestone for India’s private space sector by validating the vehicle’s performance on its maiden flight.

Statistic:

Largest assets on Earth by market capitalization:

🥇 Gold: $27.845T
🇺🇸 NVIDIA: $4.912T
🇺🇸 Apple: $4.901T
🇺🇸 Alphabet (Google): $4.223T
🥈 Silver: $3.189T
🇺🇸 Microsoft: $2.925T
🇺🇸 Amazon: $2.659T
🇹🇼 TSMC: $2.066T
🇺🇸 Broadcom: $1.764T
🇸🇦 Saudi Aramco: $1.729T
🇺🇸 Meta Platforms (Facebook): $1.639T
🇺🇸 SpaceX: $1.633T
🇺🇸 Tesla: $1.430T
₿ Bitcoin: $1.294T
🇰🇷 Samsung: $1.126T
🇺🇸 Berkshire Hathaway: $1.058T
🇺🇸 Eli Lilly: $1.051T
🇺🇸 Vanguard S&P 500 ETF: $978.06B
🇺🇸 Micron Technology: $958.79B
🇺🇸 Walmart: $909.13B
🇺🇸 JPMorgan Chase: $906.71B
🇰🇷 SK Hynix: $896.49B
🇺🇸 iShares Core S&P 500 ETF: $880.30B
🇺🇸 AMD: $808.38B
🇺🇸 SPDR S&P 500 ETF: $782.18B
🇺🇸 Visa: $681.88B

History:

Human gene editing is the culmination of more than 160 years of genetics research, beginning long before scientists understood DNA itself. In 1865, Gregor Mendel discovered the basic laws of inheritance through pea plant experiments, laying the foundation for modern genetics. In 1869, Friedrich Miescher first isolated DNA, although its role remained unknown for decades. During the early 1900s, scientists established that genes were carried on chromosomes, and in 1944 Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty demonstrated that DNA—not protein—carried genetic information. This was confirmed by the Hershey-Chase experiment (1952), followed by James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins revealing DNA’s double-helix structure in 1953. The genetic code was deciphered during the 1960s, allowing scientists to understand how DNA directs protein production. The first recombinant DNA experiments by Paul Berg (1972) and the pioneering work of Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen (1973) demonstrated that DNA could be cut, combined, and inserted into living organisms, launching the biotechnology industry. Ethical concerns surrounding genetic manipulation led to the Asilomar Conference (1975), where scientists voluntarily established safety guidelines for recombinant DNA research. Through the 1980s and 1990s, technologies such as PCR, invented by Kary Mullis, automated DNA sequencing, and the Human Genome Project (1990–2003) dramatically accelerated genetics by mapping nearly all human genes and providing the blueprint needed for precise gene editing.
Modern gene editing began with tools capable of making targeted cuts in DNA. The earliest widely used systems included zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) during the 1990s, followed by TALENs (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases) around 2010, both of which could target specific genes but were expensive and difficult to design. The field changed dramatically in 2012 when Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier demonstrated that the bacterial immune system known as CRISPR-Cas9 could be programmed to edit DNA almost anywhere in a genome. CRISPR was rapidly improved by researchers including Feng Zhang, George Church, and many others, making gene editing faster, cheaper, and far more accessible. Since then, scientists have developed increasingly precise technologies including base editing (2016), created by David Liu’s laboratory, which changes individual DNA letters without cutting both strands of DNA, and prime editing (2019), also developed by Liu’s team, allowing even more accurate insertions, deletions, and corrections. Researchers have also expanded beyond the original Cas9 enzyme to systems such as Cas12, Cas13 for RNA editing, CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) to turn genes off, CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) to increase gene activity, epigenetic editing that changes gene expression without altering DNA sequences, mitochondrial gene-editing approaches, and experimental RNA-editing platforms that make temporary genetic changes rather than permanent ones. Together, these technologies now allow scientists to delete genes, repair mutations, insert new DNA, regulate gene activity, edit RNA, and engineer cells with unprecedented precision.
Today, gene editing is one of the fastest-growing fields in biotechnology and medicine. The primary focus is treating single-gene diseases such as sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia, transthyretin amyloidosis, inherited blindness, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and certain immune disorders. Scientists are also engineering immune cells to fight cancer through advanced CAR-T cell therapies, developing virus-resistant crops, improving livestock, creating disease-resistant mosquitoes to combat malaria, studying xenotransplantation using genetically modified pigs, and exploring ways to slow aging and regenerative medicine. In 2023, the United Kingdom became the first country to approve the first CRISPR-based therapy for sickle cell disease, followed shortly by approvals in the United States, marking a historic milestone as gene editing entered routine clinical medicine. Most current human gene editing occurs in somatic cells, meaning only the treated patient is affected and the edits are not inherited by future generations. In contrast, germline editing, which changes sperm, eggs, or embryos and would permanently alter future generations, remains prohibited or tightly restricted in most countries following the controversial 2018 announcement by He Jiankui, who claimed to have created the first CRISPR-edited babies in China, triggering global condemnation and renewed ethical oversight. Today, the field is centered on improving precision, reducing unintended off-target edits, developing safer delivery systems using viral vectors and lipid nanoparticles, expanding in vivo editing that works directly inside the body, and making gene-editing therapies more affordable. Gene editing is now viewed as one of the most transformative technologies of the 21st century, with the potential to fundamentally change medicine, agriculture, biotechnology, and human health while continuing to raise profound scientific, ethical, and societal questions.