A gas flame is seen in the desert at Khurais oil field, about 100 miles from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. File photo by Ali Haider/EPA
July 5 (UPI) — Eight OPEC+ nations on Saturday agreed to increase their crude oil production by 548,000 barrels per day starting in August.
Of the dozen Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, five voted to increase the output: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates. There are 10 subset members with Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman joining the member nations in boosting production.
OPEC nations not voting to increase output are Iran, Venezuela, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria.
The increase represents half of a percent of the worldwide production.
In April, the group increased production by 411,000 barrels a day. Also, there were changes in November 2023.
The nations said the change was based on “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.” It also was in accordance with a decision on Dec. 5 to start a gradual and flexible return of the 2.2 million barrels per day starting April 1.
They said the “increases may be paused or reversed subject to evolving market conditions. This flexibility will allow the group to continue to support oil market stability.”
The two largest oil producers are Saudi Arabia at 9.8 million barrels per day in August and Russia at 9.3 million. Iraq is third at 4.1 million.
The United States, which is not a member of OPEC, produced an average of 13.4 million barrels of crude oil a day in August 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Global Commodity Insights, a research firm, has said it expected supply would outpace demand by 1.25 million barrels a day in the second half of this year. These changes come amid the summer driving season and more oil for air conditioning amid heat waves in many places around the world.
The eight OPEC+ countries will next meet on Aug. 3 to decide on September production levels.
The Saudis have been seeking to boost production to please U.S. President Donald Trump, who has fostered a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia and UAE, The New York Times reported analysts as saying.
On Friday, August West Texas Intermediate oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel, a decline of 50 cents. It dropped to $57.13 on May 13, which was the lowest since January 2021. The rose to $80.04 on Jan. 15 with it hitting $120.67 in June 2022.
Lewis Hamilton was left satisfied with a “better” feeling Ferrari in Qualifying for the British Grand Prix, with the seven-time World Champion not giving up on a podium after taking P5 despite earlier looking to be in the fight for pole.
After hinting at good pace earlier in the weekend – having set the pace in the weekend’s opening practice session – Hamilton followed this up by going fastest during Q2, sparking celebratory scenes amongst his fans in the crowd.
The Briton went on to claim P2 during the first runs of Q3 but was not able to improve, leaving him in a final position of fifth.
Reflecting back on his final effort, Hamilton said: “The lap was pretty decent at the end and then I lost a bit of time in the last corner, which probably would have put me on the front row or at least third.
“We were right on the knife edge I think, other than that squeezed everything I could out the car.”
Pushed on whether he is taking the positives from being in the position to fight again as he continues to adapt to the SF-25, the 40-year-old responded: “I definitely feel a lot better in the car this weekend.
“This track is incredible, the crowd’s been amazing but we needed just a little bit more, like another tenth of performance in the car just to nudge us a little bit closer to the front guys.”
And while he is not starting as far up the order as he might have liked, Hamilton has not given up on dreaming of a podium at his home event.
“Of course, I’ll dream of it tonight and I’ll try and execute tomorrow,” he explained. “I think the weather’s going to be interesting, I’d imagine it’s dry probably for the race but it would be cool if it’s drizzling or… yeah, we’ll see.”
Team mate Charles Leclerc had also looked strong during the early stages of Qualifying but, like Hamilton, did not put his final lap together perfectly and wound up in P6.
Asked if he had been left frustrated by the session, the Monegasque conceded: “Yeah, horrible. Nothing really to say, I think the pace was there for the front row but I eventually didn’t do the job when I needed to. I lost the car in the last two corners and lost a lot of lap time.
“That’s been the story of the season, I need to find back my rhythm in Qualifying because I’m really struggling and I’m not putting everything together, and all the time I get out of the car there’s always one thing that hasn’t gone my way in Qualifying, so I’m very frustrated with myself more than anything.
“I know that in the race I’m doing a really good job generally, but I’ve got to put everything together.”
In terms of whether he still has a good race car for the main event – with Ferrari often faring better in race trim than Qualifying form – a downbeat Leclerc added: “As always yes, but when you are starting P6 then it’s going to be very difficult.”
Trinity College Dublin now has Ireland’s first and only BioBrillouin microscope, which will enable researchers to make giant strides in the fields of inflammation, cancer, developmental biology and biomedical materials, among others.
Cellular and tissue mechanics are potent regulators of disease, dysfunction and regeneration, and understanding them is thus a major focus of biomedical researchers. But existing methods are invasive and limited in the information that they can provide.
However, the incredible new Brillouin microscope can map and quantify the compressibility, viscoelasticity and the detailed mechanics of materials and biological tissues, using non-invasive light. This enables researchers to assess the mechanical properties of live systems (such as cells and tissues) without interfering with them, allowing them to monitor a system and how it changes over time. It is based on light scattering from the result of interactions between a photon of light and the acoustic phonons of a material, which are impacted by the material’s mechanical properties.
With the support of the European Research Council (ERC) and Research Ireland, the Brillouin microscopy system has been installed in the lab of Prof. Michael Monaghan in the School of Engineering at Trinity, where it is housed in the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute.
”Being the first commercial system in the world, we have tremendous technical support from the vendor, CellSense Technologies GmbH, with whom we have worked closely with to get the system on the ground. Our success is their success,” said Prof. Monaghan, who is a contributor to an expert consensus paper published today in leading international journal Nature Photonics.
This statement gathers the expertise of international experts in the application of Brillouin microscopy in biomedical applications.
Studying the mechanical properties of live systems is hugely relevant in myriad fields, and promises to enable leaps forward in our understanding of the ways in which inflammation and cancer develop, for example.
However, it’s also important to understand its use is not limited to biomedical research and related applications – it will help scientists push boundaries even further in fields such as materials science, ICT, energy storage, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices and diagnostics. This groundbreaking equipment will help us advance frontier science, and we anticipate scientists will travel from all over the world to use it – we have welcomed some already.”
Prof. Michael Monaghan, School of Engineering at Trinity
Source:
Journal reference:
Bouvet, P., et al. (2025). Consensus statement on Brillouin light scattering microscopy of biological materials. Nature Photonics. doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01681-6.
The most vivid sequence, perhaps the only real piece of content in this 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 third round victory for Jannik Sinner against a semi-fit Pedro Martínez, came midway through the second set on Centre Court.
To that point the entire contest had felt like the tennis equivalent of watching an injured lemur being run down, idly, by a slightly bored big cat. Martínez had come into this match with an injured shoulder. Hmm. How’s that going to work out? And pretty much from the start each break saw the Spaniard’s shirt off, shoulder pounded furiously by medical orderlies, eyes boggled, chest hair damp with sweat, while a few yards away Sinner sat completely still and unmoved, a neat man in a cap, thinking.
There was the traditional middle Saturday sports-stars shindig in the royal box, albeit one that dished up pretty much the same approved gallery that seems to have been coming here since 1903. Ainslie. Redgrave. Hurst. Kenny. A certain IT Botham (how many Test wickets have you lot got then?). It was also a day to close the roof on Centre Court as a light drizzle fell outside. The roof really is a magnificent suburban spectacle, the greatest side return conservatory in south-west London. Beneath it Centre Court becomes Kew Gardens, steamy, fragrant, echoey with lunchtime chitter-chatter.
Sinner is a slightly strange sight even in the warm-up. Here we have a super athlete, the boy who could have gone with skiing or football but decided instead to become world No 1 at his third-favourite boyhood sport, but who is also gangly and skinny-legged, with the air on court of a slightly hunched and mannered junior actuary. Right up, that is, until he starts stretching his limbs and doing standing jumps and – hang on – suddenly he’s floating above the Wimbledon turf like a white-shorted vampire.
Sinner is also a fascinating world No 1, in large part because he lacks any really obvious point of fascination. Sinner is very, very good at tennis. How is he good? By being good at tennis. His victories are often described as suffocating. But he isn’t exactly relentless or repetitive. There are angles, aggression, power, off-your-seat winners. His tennis is great product, like a meal in a high-end restaurant in an air-conditioned mall where everything is fine, good, top-notch, well done but still somehow hard to think about too much in the abstract.
Martínez came out ready to mix it up, his only real chance of making any impact. There were some netted volleys, missed first serves, an early dropped service game. Seven minutes in he already looked surrounded. So he came to the net and volleyed more. He chucked in a 76mph high-kick first serve. Twenty minutes in: 5-0 Sinner. A 6-1 first set felt like a minor salvage job.
The second seemed to heading the same way until, at 4-2 down, and with Martínez already serving like a man leaning back in a rocking chair and listening to his neck creak, that brief moment of tension arrived. It looked like a combination of endorphins and what-the-heck professional pride. Either way Martínez managed to muster a couple of games that lasted almost as long as the match to that point.
Jannik Sinner took less than two hours to defeat Pedro Martínez. Photograph: Visionhaus/Getty Images
The first extended deuce did feel like like an act of mild torture. Martínez began to groan and breathe heavily. But he took the game to huge cheers, showed heart and skill, punched the air, and even grinned occasionally.
Sinner’s calm through this was also notable. He aced out break points. He stuck to the processes, still wearing the same shrewd, wary look. His footwork, side to side, never back, is deceptively quick and precise. He has that astonishing way of taking balls bouncing just in front of him on the forehand side, taking balls at full power right by his ankles just by bending his knees and whipping those unusually fast hands.
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Sinner steered Martínez gently to 5-3, with an injection of precision, finding angles with his backhand drives, then closing the set with a perfect diagonal half-court volley. At times the power of his groundstrokes was startling. Playing against him involves always shuffling backwards. It must be utterly exhausting, There are of course elements of beauty too. The sudden slice, the drop shot when he’s pummelled you back, the inside-out forehand winner with no change of body position, just a small shift of the wrist.
Martínez was done by now. The final set disappeared in a haze of creaks and groans, with an effortless reassertion of crisp, clean baseline control. And at the end the question of how to beat Sinner, how to ruffle his low-tick intensity, was no closer to being answered, at least for anyone not called Carlos Alcaraz.
Sinner has been No 1 for more than a year now, although Alcaraz is favourite to win this tournament, in part because of his excellent head-to-head record. It already feels like a final this Wimbledon is hungry for, a place that has always thrived on rivalries and face-offs.
The styles are a good match. Alcaraz’s superpower against Sinner is being good enough to change the angles, to come forward and leave the baseline graveyard. But it will also help Sinner that he was able to move through this match without taking anything out of himself.
At the end he talked up the quality of the rallies and shrugged at Martínez’s physical state, praising his ability to carry on. No Italian player has ever won a Wimbledon singles title. On current form the list of people with a fair shot at preventing that sequence from ending this year still stands at one.
Casio’s G-Shock watches are known for their rugged design and fitness-packed features, but they usually come with a hefty price tag. However, the Casio Amazon storefront is currently offering a significant 27% discount on the G-Shock GW2320FP-1A2 watch, reducing the price from $150 to just $109.50. Camel’s price history suggests that the offer is the lowest-ever price recorded for this model.
The main highlight of the Casio G-Shock GW2320FP-1A2 watch is solar-assisted charging, which offers up to 11 months of power reserve in normal use and up to 26 months in total darkness on a single charge. The digital display is pretty simple, adorned with world time across 31 time zones, a calendar, five daily alarms, a stopwatch, a battery level indicator, and a full auto electro-luminescent backlight.
For those who want functionality beyond basic timekeeping, the watch offers a 1/100-second stopwatch, a day window, and a countdown timer ranging from 1 minute to 24 hours. Another praiseworthy aspect of the watch is 200 m (20 bar) water resistance, making it ideal for light water sports activities such as swimming and snorkeling. Unfortunately, there’s no Bluetooth connectivity here.
The G-Shock GW2320FP-1A2 watch is built with a lightweight resin case and band complemented by an aluminum bezel, making it significantly lighter at 64 grams (0.14 lbs). Before making a final buying decision, we always recommend checking out a reliable review. You can learn more about the G-Shock GW2320FP-1A2 watch in the review video attached below.
That said, if you have been eyeing a sporty and fitness-feature-packed G-Shock, then this might be the right time to grab the Casio G-Shock GW2320FP-1A2 watch, especially at this discounted price point.
Some 27 people, including nine children, have been confirmed dead after flash floods in the central of the US state of Texas, authorities said on Saturday, as rescuers continued a frantic search for survivors, including dozens still missing from a girls’ summer camp.
The sheriff’s office in Kerr County, Texas, said more than 800 people had been evacuated from the region as flood waters receded in the area around the Guadalupe River, about 137 kilometres northwest of San Antonio.
“We will not stop until every single person is found,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a news conference.
At least 23 to 25 people from the Camp Mystic summer camp were missing, most of them reported to be young girls. The river waters rose 29 feet rapidly near the camp.
The US National Weather Service said that the flash flood emergency has largely ended for Kerr County, the epicentre of the flooding, following thunderstorms that dumped as much as a foot of rain early on Friday. A flood watch, however, remained in effect until 7pm for the broader region.
Kerr County sits in the Texas Hill Country, a rural area known for its rugged terrain, historic towns and other tourist attractions.
First responders survey rising flood waters of the Guadalupe River after flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas, the US on July 4. — Reuters
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said up to 500 rescue workers were searching for an unknown number of people who were still missing, including many who had come to the area for an Independence Day celebration by the river.
“We don’t know how many people were in tents on the side, in small trailers by the side, in rented homes by the side, because it was going to be the Fourth of July holiday,” he said on Fox News Live.
US President Donald Trump said the federal government was working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding. “Melania and I are praying for all of the families impacted by this horrible tragedy. Our brave first responders are on site doing what they do best,” he said on social media.
Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, the county seat, told reporters on Friday that the extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, precluding authorities from issuing advance evacuation orders as the Guadalupe River swiftly rose above major flood stage in less than two hours.
State emergency management officials had warned as early as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats, citing National Weather Service forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.
The forecasts, however, “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw”, W Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, told a news conference on Friday night.
The weekend disaster echoes a catastrophic 1987 Guadalupe River flood in which 10 teenagers drowned when trying to leave a church camp, according to the National Weather Service.
“That was an extremely tight Qualifying session, with two very close and competitive performances by Oscar and Lando, although not quite enough to take Pole.
“Ferrari have been strong all weekend, and Max and George pulled off an exceptional performance, especially in their last run. This has created a very compact top six, which creates some uncertainty for tomorrow. The team executed the sessions very well, putting together a good performance in tricky conditions with the ever-changing wind, and the engineers worked well to constantly tune the set up to find the optimum solution for Qualifying. Undoubtedly, though, it remains very close.
“We’ll be working hard overnight to put ourselves in the best condition possible for a strong result, but it should be an exciting race for the fans at Silverstone tomorrow. ”
Heading into Sunday’s six tricky Tarmac stages, Crugnola holds a narrow advantage over two-time ERC champion and fellow Pirelli runner Giandomenico Basso, while Michelin-shod Miko Marczyk is third, 8.7sec down on Crugnola.
But after an off-form run through Saturday’s deciding stage, Crugnola conceded there’s room for improvement. The Citroën C3 Rally2 driver said: “If I lost time it is because my driving wasn’t enough. I have to understand why and work on myself for tomorrow as the lead is quite tight and we have to be perfect.”
After sharing the fastest time with Basso on SS2 to take the lead, Marczyk stretched his advantage to 2.6sec with the fastest time through the first run of Torre di Cicerone, the longest of the season at 34.57 kilometres, despite a moment on a right-hander. But an overshoot on SS4 dropped him to fourth, 1.3sec off first place at the midday service halt in Fiuggi.
“It was a good day,” said Marczyk, who, like Basso, is armed with a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2. “Last year it was hard to get to the top 10 times and now we are at the speed of the Italian guys. We will see what are the possibilities for tomorrow but it is good we are here in one piece. It was not a day without action.”
Mabellini ended Saturday sitting fourth in the battle for victory
Andrea Mabellini, running first on the road, had been ahead of Marczyk but dropped to fourth on SS6 after he went 14.1sec slower than stage winner Crugnola. “I don’t know what happened, I was trying not to overheat the tyre,” Mabellini said following the second pass of Torre di Cicerone. “It seems like they did not overheat because I was slow.”
Having banked his maiden fastest ERC stage time on SS5, Roberto Daprà demoted Mads Østberg for sixth place on Saturday’s deciding run, which he also won to underline a strong performance from the WRC2 event winner. The 2023 ERC4 champion is 15.0sec adrift of first place but could have been closer to the lead had he not spun on today’s second stage.
“Unluckily we spun in SS3, we did a really stupid mistake with the handbrake in a junction left,” Daprà said. “I was trying to push more but I think it was too much. Without the spin, we are talking eight or nine seconds, we could have been closer [to the lead].”
For Østberg, simply starting Rally di Roma Capitale represented a significant achievement after a crash on last year’s event left his then co-driver Patrik Barth with injuries that ultimately forced his retirement from competing. The Norwegian is less than 20 seconds off the lead after a fine drive by the Norwegian.
Østberg enjoyed a strong day to remain in the fight for the win
Boštjan Avbelj started Saturday’s opening stage leading by 0.4sec after he won Friday evening’s super special stage in front of the Colosseum in Rome. He’s seventh overnight followed by Simone Campedelli and 2022 ERC champion Efrén Llarena with Czech champion Dominik Stříteský rounding out the top 10.
Simone Tempestini, a winner of the Romanian championship on nine occasions, is 11th, one place ahead of four-time Hungarian title winner Norbert Herczig, who driving his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 on Tarmac for the first time.
Marco Signor is 13th with Jon Armstrong battling set-up issues to hold 14th. Fabio Andolfi, who was delayed by a damaged front-right tyre on SS4, completes the top 15 followed by Roope Korhonen on his first start on asphalt for Team MRF Tyres.
Hankook-shod Junior ERC champion Mille Johansson reported handling issues and is 18th overnight with Roberto Blach 17th. WRC2 frontrunner Jan Solans is 21st behind Jarosław Kołtun and Antonio Rusce, who is second to Basso in the Master ERC order.
It proved to be challenging day for Max McRae which ended prematurely when he rolled in stage six. Driver and co-driver Cameron Fair emerged from the incident unscathed.
Rally di Roma Capitale concludes tomorrow (Sunday) with a further six stages over a competitive distance of 98.34 kilometres. The 11.58-kilometre Guarcino – Altipiani stage is up first from 08:25 local time.
