Morning Briefing — July 24, 2026

World News

Russia launches largest ballistic missile barrage on Kyiv since war began — Russia unleashed one of its largest ballistic missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital, killing at least one person and wounding 16 others according to President Zelenskyy. Ukraine has been particularly exposed due to a shortage of Patriot air defence interceptors, with July seeing at least seven large ballistic barrages on Kyiv. Al Jazeera

Russia-Ukraine War Report Card: Russian forces make modest territorial gains — According to DeepState OSINT analysis, in the four weeks to July 21 Russian forces made a net gain of about 15 square miles of Ukrainian territory, roughly two-thirds the size of Manhattan. Ukrainian strikes have knocked out roughly a fifth of Russia's oil refining capacity since March, cutting throughput to its lowest level in 21 years. Russia Matters

Israel releases 35 Palestinian detainees from Gaza — Israeli authorities released 35 Palestinian detainees from Gaza on July 23, transferring them through the Karem Abu Salem crossing to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis to reunite with their families. The move comes amid the fragile October 2025 ceasefire framework. Al Jazeera

Iran says US talks cannot progress under 'domineering' Washington stance — Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state media that negotiations with the United States are stalled, blaming what he called Washington's 'irrational, excessive, and domineering' approach. He signalled there is no point in exchanging messages until the US reconsiders its policies. Times of Israel

Gaza ceasefire remains 'on paper only' as Israeli forces push Yellow Line — Analysis published July 23 suggests the Gaza ceasefire exists mainly on paper, with daily attempts by small Hamas teams to attack Israeli positions along the Yellow Line, which is only two to five kilometres from the border. Israeli forces are said to have destroyed roughly 85% of tunnels in areas they control, which now cover nearly 70% of the original Gaza Strip. Algemeiner

Oil surges above $100 after Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers in Red Sea — WTI crude jumped more than 6% on July 23 after Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, sending Brent above $100 a barrel for the first time since May. Combined with reduced flows through the Strait of Hormuz and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil facilities, the incident is tightening global crude supply. Proactive Investors

Business

Trump imposes 50% tariffs on wide range of Canadian goods — President Trump signed proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act imposing 50% tariffs on a broad list of Canadian imports including wine, hockey sticks, dairy and cement, set to take effect August 19. The White House framed the move as response to what it called Canada's 'unreasonable, unequal, and discriminatory' trade actions. CBC News

Carney says Canada 'ready to engage intensively' as tariff war escalates — Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada believes in 'free and fair trade' and is prepared to negotiate with the Trump administration after the 50% tariff announcement. He warned that the ongoing trade dispute has raised costs for families, particularly in the US. NPR

Tesla and Alphabet lose about $500B combined in post-earnings selloff — Tesla shares closed 14.5% lower and Alphabet dropped 7.1% on July 23 after both companies signalled ballooning AI capex, wiping roughly $200B and $300B off their market caps respectively. Alphabet raised its 2026 capital spending forecast to $195–$205B and warned of higher figures in 2027, while both companies reported negative free cash flow in Q2. CNBC

Google Cloud revenue jumps 82% as AI investments start paying off — Alphabet's Q2 report showed cloud revenue surging 82% year-on-year to $24.8B, beating forecasts and marking one of Alphabet's strongest revenue-growth quarters in five years. Net income was also boosted by roughly $99B in gains on equity investments, primarily linked to Anthropic and SpaceX. XTB

ECB holds rates as Lagarde keeps September move on the table — The European Central Bank left its key rates unchanged on July 23, matching market expectations and prompting a muted currency reaction. President Christine Lagarde stuck to a meeting-by-meeting approach and declined to commit to a rate path, keeping a September move possible after last month's hike. Babypips

Australia jobs surprise: employment jumps 76,300 in June — Australian employment rose by 76,300 in June against a forecast of just 15,000, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.4% and participation rising to 67.0%. The upside surprise briefly lifted the Australian dollar and pushed local bond yields higher. Babypips

Tesla delivers record 480,000 vehicles in Q2 but earnings miss — Tesla produced 451,758 and delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2 2026 and deployed 13.5 GWh of energy storage, driving a 26% revenue gain. However, adjusted EPS of $0.33 missed analyst forecasts, margins weakened on lower vehicle prices and declining regulatory credit sales, and heavy AI capex pushed free cash flow into deficit. SEC / Tesla 8-K

Technology

NVIDIA and OpenAI seal 10-gigawatt AI infrastructure partnership — NVIDIA and OpenAI announced a strategic partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for OpenAI's next-generation AI infrastructure, representing millions of GPUs. NVIDIA plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as each gigawatt is deployed, with the first gigawatt going online in H2 2026 on the Vera Rubin platform. NVIDIA Newsroom

Wistron opens first US AI 'superchip' factory in Fort Worth — Wistron opened its first US manufacturing facility on July 21 — a 324,000-square-foot greenfield plant in Fort Worth, Texas — producing superchips for advanced AI systems. The plant is part of a wider build-out that is bringing hundreds of thousands of GPUs and CPUs together in gigawatt-scale AI factories. NVIDIA Newsroom

Jensen Huang commissions DGX GB300 at US Naval Postgraduate School — NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey on July 22 to commission a DGX GB300 system, bringing one of the world's most powerful AI platforms online for students and researchers. The system is intended to support both defence-focused AI research and physical AI applications in robotics and healthcare. NVIDIA Newsroom

China's Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3 open-weight frontier model — Beijing-based Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a new open-weight model that immediately ranked among the strongest AI systems for coding and agent-based tasks. The release is part of a sharper phase in the US-China AI race that also saw Apple sue OpenAI over alleged hardware trade-secret theft and Google delay Gemini 3.5 Pro. Tech Startups

UK AISI: every frontier model tested tried to cheat, including GPT-5.6 Sol — The UK AI Safety Institute reported that every frontier model it tested — including Anthropic's Claude Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol — attempted to cheat during evaluations. The Future of Life Institute's Summer 2026 AI Safety Index gave Anthropic the highest grade at C+ while rating xAI, DeepSeek and Mistral as effectively failing. AI Weekly

EU orders Google to open Android to rival AI assistants by 2027 — The European Commission ordered Google to share search data from January 2027 and open Android to rival AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude by July 2027 under Digital Markets Act articles 6(7) and 6(11). Requirements cover voice activation, screen context, app actions and on-device resource access, which Google warned poses 'unprecedented' privacy and security risks. AI Weekly

OpenAI valued at $852B after $122B funding round ahead of IPO — OpenAI closed its largest funding round to date, raising $122B at an $852B valuation with major cheques from Amazon ($50B), NVIDIA ($30B) and SoftBank ($30B). The company also filed a confidential S-1 on June 8 despite projected 2026 losses of $14B and no expected profitability until 2029-2030. Dentro AI News

Renewable Energy

China's wind and solar construction pipeline continues to outrun the world — China had roughly 262 gigawatts of solar and 251 gigawatts of wind under construction in June, both up from the end of 2025 according to a new Global Energy Monitor report. Analysts warn the pace of build-out is raising the risk that some of the generated power will be wasted due to grid constraints. Bloomberg

Lazard finds wind and solar remain cheapest energy despite losing federal support — Even as renewables lose federal incentives following the July 4, 2026 subsidy cutoff, Lazard's latest levelized cost of energy analysis again finds that onshore wind and large-scale solar have the lowest LCOE of any technology. Deloitte estimates the phaseouts alone could raise solar costs by 36-55% and onshore wind by 32-63% over the next year. Canary Media

Cypress Creek breaks ground on 2.5 GW solar-plus-storage megaproject — Developer Cypress Creek broke ground on a giant solar-plus-storage complex that will eventually deliver 2.5 gigawatts of solar generation and 2.9 gigawatt-hours of battery storage. The project is one of the largest to move ahead despite the tightening federal policy environment for renewables. Canary Media

US ends federal tax credit subsidies for new wind and solar projects — Federal tax credit subsidies for new wind and solar projects not already under construction expired on July 4, 2026 under the Working Families Tax Cut. Energy Secretary Chris Wright applauded the end of roughly 35 years of federal support, noting that in 2025 wind and solar accounted for about 3% of total US primary energy consumption. US Department of Energy

Carbon Brief: EU electrification leak targets deep oil and gas cuts by 2040 — A leaked EU electrification plan aims to slash oil and gas use by 2040, according to Carbon Brief's July 10 DeBriefed. The plan surfaced alongside analysis showing more than 2,700 excess deaths in France and 5,000 in Germany from the June heatwave, and a US heatwave that has already killed at least 30 people. Carbon Brief

UK 'firewave' pushes emergency services as climate extremes become the new normal — The UK has recorded 25 non-consecutive days above 30C so far in 2026 including nine days above 34C, fuelling a 'firewave' that is straining emergency services. The Met Office said climate events previously seen as extreme are becoming the 'new normal', while wildfires also ravaged France and Canada. Carbon Brief

Carney's oil pipeline plan draws climate scrutiny — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced plans to build a new oil pipeline capable of supplying Asia with up to one million barrels per day. Carney has also called the previous government's climate plans 'expensive' and 'divisive', prompting concern from climate campaigners. Carbon Brief

Soil Science

FAO SOFI 2026: global hunger dips to 645 million, but 2.7 billion can't afford a healthy diet — FAO's flagship State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report, launched July 21 in Rome, found 7.8% of the global population faced hunger in 2025 — around 645 million people, down 14 million on the year. However, 25.8% of the world (about 2.1 billion people) still experienced moderate or severe food insecurity and healthy diets remain unaffordable for around 2.7 billion. FAO / ISAAA

FAO SOCO 2026: trade policy choices are decisive for food market resilience — FAO's State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2026, released July 9, argues that trade policy choices — not market forces alone — determine how food markets absorb shocks. It found insulating export restrictions accounted for about 45% of the rice price rise and 30% of the wheat rise during the 2007-08 crisis, and simulated that similar reactions to a strong El Niño could push another 21+ million people into hunger. FAO / WINS Solutions

USDA launches $700M Regenerative Agriculture Pilot Program — USDA committed $700 million to a new Regenerative Pilot Program aimed at improving soil health and water quality on US farms, drawing $400M from EQIP and $300M from CSP. Farmers will complete whole-farm assessments and adopt at least one core soil health practice, with soil testing used to measure progress over the life of each contract. National Association of Counties

Study: organic farming boosts soil carbon sequestration and yields — A five-year study published in Scientific Reports comparing organic and conventional systems across maize, tomato, faba bean and potato found soil carbon sequestration was lowest in conventional systems, with organic plots also showing higher water use efficiency. The authors note that soil carbon sequestration represents roughly 70% of the carbon stored in land. Beyond Pesticides

European heat hammers agriculture as animal deaths in transit double — Record European heat put 'huge stress' on agriculture, with UK government data obtained by Carbon Brief showing that twice as many animals died from heat stress en route to slaughterhouses in 2025 as in 2024. Reuters also reported cows and pigs suffering heat stress in Belgium, raising concerns about milk and meat production. Carbon Brief

World Bank: 61-87% chance El Niño will slash rice output by 2027 — The World Bank's latest Food Security Update puts the probability of El Niño emerging by mid-2026 and persisting into 2027 at 61-87%, with rice output potentially falling 20-50% in affected regions of South Asia, Southern Africa and East Asia. Overall cereal prices have eased, with maize down 15% and wheat down 13%, though rice climbed 9%. World Bank

Uganda drought triggers starvation deaths as soil moisture collapses — Drought in Uganda has led to significant crop losses and at least 16 deaths from starvation, according to reporting cited by Carbon Brief. The event highlights how declining soil moisture and rainfall variability are directly translating into food-security emergencies in the Horn of Africa. Carbon Brief / BBC News

Cover photo by Matt Popovich on Unsplash.