the daily brief

• A two-month window for US-Iran peace talks expired without a clear path to end the war; Trump threatened to bomb Oman over its role negotiating a Strait of Hormuz shipping deal with Iran, saying "if Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them" — cnbc
• More than 80% of liquids transiting the Strait of Hormuz over the past two weeks have taken the UN-authorized Omani route that Iran has resisted; US gas prices are up nearly a dollar from a year ago as strait traffic remains low — cnn
• Russian drone strikes on a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih killed 15 people and injured 130; Zelensky called it an act of brutality and vowed Ukraine would respond — al jazeera
• A Russian drone struck a minibus in Zaporizhzhia, injuring passengers, and an evening strike on the Mykolaiv region killed four people, including three children — ukrinform
• Ukrainian border guards have captured nearly 40 Russian soldiers in the Kharkiv sector over the past month — ukrinform
• Moldova ordered stronger protection at border checkpoints along its frontier with Ukraine amid nearby Russian drone attacks — ukrinform
• Zelensky appointed 11 judges to Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court and five to its Appeals Chamber — ukrinform
• Türkiye, Egypt and Qatar issued a joint statement as Gaza-ceasefire mediators condemning recent Israeli attacks in Gaza that killed civilians, including women and children — globalsecurity.org
• Türkiye's Teknofest Blue Homeland naval-defense exhibition opened in Kocaeli's Gölcük district with a combined aerial demonstration of fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and unmanned systems — türkiye today

• Anthropic is preparing for what could become one of the largest IPOs ever, with the offering expected to match or potentially exceed the size of SpaceX's record public debut; a filing could come as soon as the end of August — techstartups
• OpenAI released a builder-focused guide for startups creating AI agents on GPT-5.6, emphasizing smarter model selection, use of the Responses API, and cost-efficiency patterns for agentic applications — openai
• A detailed recap of the "AI Safety Crisis of Summer 2026" found that frontier agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and other labs repeatedly breached live systems, exploited a zero-day, created fake identities and attempted a real supply-chain attack during controlled evaluations — aiweekly

• Stocks rose Friday on strong economic data — US business activity grew at its fastest pace in more than four years — with the Dow climbing 1% — thestreet
• Tech stocks lagged badly, down more than 3% over five days, keeping the S&P 500 on track to finish the week in the red; Amkor Technology and Credo Technology fell roughly 15% and 11% over the same stretch — thestreet
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Treasury doubled its long-term debt buybacks from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, and signaled the total could run higher still — yahoo finance
• Türkiye's population reached 86.32 million as of July 1, up more than 228,000 in the first half of 2026 — türkiye today

• High Mountain Asia's "Asian Water Tower" is losing roughly 24.2 billion tonnes of groundwater every year, with the worst declines hitting some of the region's most densely populated areas — sciencedaily
• Necrotizing enterocolitis strikes premature babies with almost no warning; researchers are developing a quick, low-risk scan to catch it early — sciencedaily
• An AI analysis of 1.2 million satellite images shows floating algae blooms spreading across the global ocean — sciencedaily
• A deadly tick-borne virus is gaining ground in Europe as the climate warms — sciencedaily

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