Hormuz talks put a price on reopening — and oil jumps 5%

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• A major earthquake struck western Colombia. A magnitude 7.4 quake hit near San Jose del Palmar in the Choco region, about 400 kilometres west of Bogota. AP reported at least 111 deaths, 87 injuries and roughly 1,600 damaged buildings, including at least 61 that collapsed; President Abelardo de la Espriella declared an emergency and the United States announced $15.5 million in response aid. 5
• Missiles hit Kyiv before dawn. Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital early Tuesday, setting warehouses in a central district on fire and injuring one person, city officials said. A separate strike on Zaporizhzhia injured two people and damaged several buildings. The reports describe local effects; they do not establish the wider military outcome. 6
• Nvidia is turning AI demand into a financing market. The chipmaker said it signed memorandums with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR for platforms intended to raise more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure. Nvidia disclosed neither individual commitments nor a deployment timetable, so the headline figure is a target, not cash already invested. 7
• Meta returned to open-weight AI. Meta released Muse Glimmer, a smaller model designed to run agentic tasks on a Mac or PC with one graphics card, and said larger models would follow. Mark Zuckerberg also announced a $1 billion fund to address community opposition to data-centre construction, while arguing that U.S. policy should reduce barriers to open-weight models. 8
• Ukraine cut its grain-export forecast. Kyiv now targets 38-40 million tonnes for the July 2026-June 2027 season, down from a previous 43 million-tonne forecast. The agriculture ministry cited Russian attacks on Odesa ports; it said the disruption could create an 11 million-tonne storage shortfall, while more than 90% of Ukraine's grain exports normally leave through seaports. 9
• Iran gave a hardliner a central security role. Mohsen Rezaei, a former Revolutionary Guards commander and close ally of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, became secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. He replaced Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr; Rezaei's previous public skepticism about negotiations makes the appointment a signal worth watching, not proof that talks are over. 10
• Baltic states hardened critical infrastructure. Lithuania sent troops to help guard its liquefied-natural-gas and oil terminals, a power link with Poland and the Kruonis hydro plant. Latvia increased security around a dam and underground gas storage, while a Baltic intelligence official described a possible Russian false-flag attack using Ukrainian-made drones; another regional official said the timing could range from now to never, and Moscow denied the warnings. 11
• The White House changed its childhood-vaccine recommendations. An executive order says routine protection for all children should cover 11 diseases, down from 18 in the CDC schedule cited for 2024. It recommends separating the combined MMR vaccine into three shots and administering vaccines in separate visits; the order also tells states with school requirements to consider updating their rules. 12
• Western Europe is heading into another heat wave. The U.K. and France are preparing for the fifth heat wave of the season, with temperatures approaching 40°C in southeastern France and forecasts of 36°C in England. Copernicus put the average western-European temperature for June-July at 21.62°C, above the 2022 record; July's average sea-surface temperature outside the poles reached 20.96°C, its highest July reading. 13

Quote of the day

"We're going to ask for money for the damage they've done over a 50-year period."

— Donald Trump, on his demand that Iran pay compensation. 1

Further reading

• Wall Street giants partner with Nvidia on $500bn AI financing deal — The Financial Times reports on the financing structure, the private-capital investors involved and the concentration risks around Nvidia-backed AI expansion.
• Asian carmakers cash in as high petrol prices lift US demand for hybrids — The Financial Times follows the oil shock into the auto market, where July U.S. hybrid sales rose while overall car sales fell.