the daily brief

• A Syrian court sentenced Bashar al-Assad and his brother to death in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Syria's 14-year conflict, which killed roughly half a million people — euronews
• Türkiye's parliament approved a conditional pardon for thousands of Kurdish militants, advancing the government's peace initiative with the PKK-linked insurgency — euronews
• Iran rejected Trump's claim that the US controls the Strait of Hormuz; an IRGC spokesman said no commercial ship can transit "without the permission and supervision of the powerful Iranian armed forces" — cnbc
• The International Energy Agency warned global oil stockpiles are diminishing rapidly as the strait remains effectively closed; War Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US military can maintain a naval blockade of Iranian ports indefinitely — cnn
• Russia said it is ready to resume Ukraine peace talks but has set new conditions, as fighting continues at high intensity — 198 combat engagements and roughly 6,124 kamikaze-drone strikes reported on August 13 alone — globalsecurity.org
• Ukraine's Defense Forces struck a Russian Nebo-U radar station and a drone-control center in occupied territory overnight; Russian glide bombs hit Izium in Kharkiv region, injuring four civilians — globalsecurity.org
• Erdoğan hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara, calling support for Palestine "a shared responsibility of all humanity, particularly the Muslim world" — aa
• Turkish police detained 30 people in raids across 17 provinces targeting a religious group known as the "Süleymancılar" — aa

• Anthropic disclosed that an unreleased Claude research model improved the proven lower bound on Riemann zeta zeros satisfying the Riemann hypothesis from 41.6% to 67.2%, synthesizing recent papers across two Claude Code sessions that burned 31 million output tokens and orchestrated roughly 60 subagents running 2,400 shell commands — aiweekly
• Anthropic reported its first quarterly profit in Q2 2026, on $10.9 billion in revenue — aitoolsrecap
• Riot Platforms disclosed a 20-year, 191-megawatt data-center lease with Anthropic at its Rockdale, Texas campus, worth roughly $9.1 billion in base revenue through 2048 — aiweekly
• OpenAI expanded its Daybreak initiative with Daybreak Blue and Daybreak Red; the new GPT-5.6-Cyber model answers 95% of sensitive security queries spanning exploit-chain development, authentication bypass and privilege escalation — aiweekly
• GPT-5.6-Cyber discovered two previously unknown V8 vulnerabilities in Chrome that could be chained to corrupt memory and bypass the V8 heap sandbox; Google has patched them as CVE-2026-15903 — aiweekly
• OpenAI announced an Ultrafast mode for GPT-5.6 Sol running up to 14x faster, named Dali Rajic as Chief Revenue Officer, and is reportedly nearing an S-1 filing — aiweekly
• OpenAI and Anthropic are promoting a new metric meant to better capture AI's real-world cost, as Meta and Nvidia plant what CNBC called a "very firm flag" in the open-weight race led by Chinese labs — bloomberg

• The S&P 500 closed at a record 7,781.59 Thursday, briefly topping 7,800 intraday; the Nasdaq rose to 26,741.66 while the Dow slipped to 53,674.13, held back by Cisco — thestreet
• Wholesale prices rose 4.7% year-over-year, slightly better than expected, cooling inflation worries — the odds of a September Fed rate hike fell from 55% to under 35% — spectrum news
• The Russell 2000 climbed above 3,060 during the session, a new record for small caps — washington post
• Workday shares soared 18% on strong quarterly results — motley fool
• Türkiye's central bank raised its end-2026 inflation forecast from 26% to 28% while holding its 24% intermediate target; it still sees 15% by end-2027 and 9% by end-2028 — aa
• Türkiye and Bulgaria discussed expanding cross-border rail capacity, including a proposed second rail connection under the "Development Road" project — aa

• A Finnish study found habitual coffee consumption linked to healthier body composition — lower visceral fat, greater skeletal muscle mass, and lower levels of a key insulin-resistance biomarker — sciencedaily
• Researchers report a one-time combination of three therapies may eliminate HIV soon after infection, with promising early results in newborn primates treated within three days of infection — sciencedaily
• A new map of antibody targeting on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein identified three distinct viral immune-escape strategies — sciencedaily
• Utrecht University researchers found the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation's stability depends on how fast the climate warms — slow warming lets the ocean adapt, while fast warming risks a collapse near 2°C — sciencedaily
• A new study shows animals and microorganisms cooperate to break down microbial PHAs, revealing a previously overlooked way for food webs to access carbon — sciencedaily
• Türkiye announced its first offshore renewable-energy tender for early 2027 and said it will launch its first lunar spacecraft in the same window — aa

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