Venezuela

• Pres. Maduro did what any insecure dictator would do after being embarrassed by Elon Musk on X: he banned X nationwide for (at least) 10 days.
• In the days after Maduro's fraudulent reelection, he's become increasingly sensitive about critical social media posts like Musk's calling him out for "great electoral fraud."
• He even challenged Musk to a cage fight on national TV last week in response to Musk's criticism. Musk quickly accepted and proposed an elegant wager: "If I win, he resigns as dictator of Venezuela. If he wins, I give him a free ride to Mars."
• Separately, a 33-year-old political science professor and aid worker was disappeared from Caracas airport. She's only the latest of many Venezuelans who have been detained since the election.

• The U.S., Egypt, and Qatar said they were ready to present Israel and Hamas with a "final" ceasefire and hostage release proposal - even though the two sides look farther than ever from an agreement after Israel assassinated Hamas's political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
• PM Netanyahu at least said he would agree to meet with mediators, but it's not clear whether Hamas would - or who it would even send to meetings now that Haniyeh is dead.

• Most accounts suggest Ukrainian armored columns are still advancing into Russia - with up to 1,000 men, according to an estimate from Russia's top general.
• Ukraine hasn't officially acknowledged the offensive, but Pres. Zelensky obliquely alluded to it in his address last night: "Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done."
• Separately, Ukraine also launched a wave of drone attacks on Russian infrastructure near an air base in Lipetsk.

• The UN's hunger monitoring system confirmed an ongoing famine in the Zamzam camp for displaced people in North Darfur.
• The ongoing civil war and resulting restrictions on aid flows led to only the third-ever designation of Integrated Food Security Program Classification (IPC) Phase 5 - meaning one in five households severely lack food and face starvation and destitution - since the IPC system was instituted in 2004 (the other two were in Somalia in 2011 and South Sudan in 2017).

• The Vietnamese and Philippine coast guards began their first-ever joint exercises this morning.
• The two were previously regional rivals, but are now banding together against a common enemy: China.
• Seven countries claim all (China) or parts (the other six) of the South China Sea; Vietnam and the Philippines are the two that have most assertively contested China's vast claims.

• Libya's National Oil Corp. declared force majeure at Sharara oilfield - the country's largest.
• Khalifa Haftar's son Saddam halted production at the eastern oilfield to penalize Spain - which operates the field - for issuing a warrant for his arrest on weapons trafficking charges (Haftar denied ordering Sharara to shut down - but doesn't deny the weapons trafficking charges).

• A U.S. judge threw out cases against six of eight American gun manufacturers that Mexico sued for making the guns that fuel Mexican drug cartel violence. The judge called the cases against the six absolved companies "gossamer-thin at best." Mexico plans to appeal.