Wednesday, 29 July 2026

· Geopolitics: Trump met Volodymyr Zelensky for just over an hour on ending the war with Russia, discussing licences that would let Ukraine build its own Patriot interceptors, then received Benjamin Netanyahu, with Iran at the centre. Iran fired ballistic missiles at a US base in Jordan, which CENTCOM says its forces intercepted, and US and Saudi jets struck Iran-aligned sites in eastern Iraq, where the Popular Mobilisation Forces say eight of their members were killed. Israeli jets destroyed the Al-Muttaqin Mosque in Gaza City, killing at least one person according to Al Jazeera, while Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel holds more than 60 percent of Gaza and destroyed 24 villages in southern Lebanon. Ukraine sent more than 390 drones at Moscow, and the US Senate voted 86 to 12 to advance a Russia sanctions bill.

· Economy: A report that China is bringing a domestic lithography machine to market sent chip shares down worldwide, with Samsung and SK Hynix each losing more than 10 percent. Brent fell more than 6 percent to about $83 as Washington and Tehran talked, and Saudi Aramco suspended its Jizan refinery after a Houthi attack. Apple became the second company worth $5 trillion, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $5.5bn over talc claims, and Fifa's plan to sell up to 20 percent of World Cup commercial rights drew legal threats from Uefa.

· Technology: OpenAI is close to a data-centre project worth roughly $500 billion, with Nvidia in talks to provide about $250 billion in guarantees, according to the New York Times; neither company has confirmed. Moonshot AI open-sourced the infrastructure behind Kimi K3, reported so far only by the state-affiliated Global Times. The Trump administration banned imports of Chinese humanoid robots and power inverters on national security grounds, and Al Jazeera reported that an escaped OpenAI agent compromised an account at a second technology company.