USA - The Federal Reserve could be forced to step in and bail out Wall Street in the event of a stock market meltdown, an executive at the banking giant ING has said. Bob Homan, global chief investment officer, said the US central bank could mimic efforts by the Japanese government in 2002 and 2009 when it took stakes in failing financial institutions during banking crises. Stock markets have endured sharp corrections this year as a result of the Iran war and concerns about surging valuations among AI-linked companies. The benchmark S&P 500 on Wall Street dropped nearly 8 percent following the outbreak of the Middle East conflict but has climbed 19 percent since then as tech stocks have rocketed. Many analysts have raised concerns that stocks linked to AI are beginning to show signs of entering bubble territory, echoing the era before the dotcom crash in the early 2000s.

UK - The ritual for an incoming prime minister, unchanged for decades, has never been so fraught with significance. Soon after Andy Burnham enters No 10, he will be taken to a secure room where Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the Chief of the Defence Staff, will brief him on how to authorise a British nuclear strike. At that moment, Burnham will join the handful of world leaders with the individual power to inflict a greater measure of destruction than has ever been wrought before. Burnham will be inducted into the dreadful prime ministerial function of overseeing Britain’s ultimate deterrent and deciding this country’s nuclear policy. That responsibility is heavier and perhaps more bleakly consequential today than ever before. The reasons go beyond the simple fact that Vladimir Putin is now waging Europe’s bloodiest war since 1945 on the battlefields of Ukraine.

GERMANY - Volkswagen (VW), Europe’s biggest auto-maker, and once the proud symbol of Germany’s industrial strength, is finally taking the bold action needed to try and save the company. The carmaker will halve the number of models, and, if it can secure the agreement of the unions, it will cut 100,000 jobs from its workforce. Yet it is surely too little, too late. The only rescue plan worth considering is breaking the business up into VW, Audi, Porsche and Skoda and letting each one sink or swim. Every other plan leaves it on the road to complete ruin. Volkswagen has been in decline for years, but the crunch now appears to have finally arrived.

ETHIOPIA - Leaders of northern Ethiopia’s breakaway Tigray region say the peace deal that ended a civil war in 2022 has collapsed and they are preparing “to fight the coming disaster”. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the main political party and militia in Ethiopia’s northernmost state, fought a two-year civil war beginning in 2020 against the federal government, led by Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister. The Tigray war is considered one of the deadliest of the 21st century, with as many as 600,000 people — mostly civilians — believed to have died from the violence and an ensuing humanitarian crisis, including famine. The conflict was officially ended by the Pretoria Peace Agreement, brokered by the African Union, though implementation of the deal has been contested.

UKRAINE - Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign is pushing deeper into Russia, increasing pressure on Moscow’s energy system and forcing the Kremlin to defend targets far beyond the front lines. Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s largest refinery in Omsk on Monday, sparking fires nearly 1,500 miles from Kyiv-controlled territory. The strike marked a major expansion of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign, which had largely focused on European Russia. The drones used in the Omsk operation can fly as far as 2,100 miles, according to Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point. That range puts more of Russia’s oil-and-gas industry, military facilities, pipelines and pumping stations within reach.

USA - This thing is honestly pretty wild. MIT engineers built a robot inspired by the Atlantic puffin. The same wings let it fly through the air… then paddle and move through the water. Most drones are built for one environment. This one switches between both. The part that caught my attention is what happened during testing. The robot took off directly from Lake Geneva without catapults, boosters, or any outside help. It lifted itself out of the water using the same flapping wings. That has been one of the biggest challenges for hybrid drones. Water is dense. Air isn’t. Designing one set of wings that works well in both has been a huge engineering problem. Now imagine where this goes next. Ocean research is the obvious answer. Military surveillance is another. A drone that can disappear beneath the surface, then pop into the air and keep flying creates a very different kind of reconnaissance platform. That’s probably why defense companies are already paying attention. It may look like a robotic bird. But it feels more like the first step toward a whole new class of drones.

USA - What happens when the water dries up? Much of the American West is close to finding out. John Wesley Powell led the first expedition through the Colorado River Basin in 1869, filling in the last blank spot on the map we now call the United States as the country celebrated its 93rd birthday. As America turns 250, the reservoir that bears his name is in danger of hitting dead pool, marking a crisis point for the river complex and the 40 million people who rely on it.

USA - Giant storms filled with potentially deadly fungal spores are set to sweep across at least 11 US states this summer, with the worst conditions still weeks away. Meteorologists and health experts have warned that dust storms in the Southwest will stir up dangerous fungal spores from the soil through September, potentially exposing millions to Valley fever. This common illness is a lung infection caused by breathing in microscopic fungus particles called Coccidioides that live in dry soil frequently blown around by strong desert winds.

MIDDLE EAST - The US has launched its third round of strikes in a week on Iran after the regime said it had closed the Strait of Hormuz “⁠until further notice and until the end of US interference” in the region. US Central Command (Centcom) said it had begun a new wave of strikes hours after Iran’s navy “blatantly attacked” M/V GFS Galaxy, a Cyprus-flagged container ship travelling through the waterway. The attack caused a fire and “significant damage” to the vessel’s engine room, forcing the ship to halt in the waterway, Centcom said. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO) said the crew had abandoned ship and was currently in a lifeboat. Centcom had earlier claimed a civilian crew member was missing. Centcom wrote on X: “Iran was provided yet another opportunity to demonstrate adherence to the Memorandum of Understanding after being held accountable for earlier attacks on commercial vessels but has again failed. In response, the United States is imposing a heavy cost by continuing to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the strait.”

IRAN - A mafia system without a godfather doesn’t immediately collapse: it fractures into infighting as rival oligarchic clans, once kept in line by a single strongman, turn on one another in a struggle for power and resources. That is Iran today, in the aftermath of the war. Much of the media in the West wants you to believe the Islamic Republic has emerged “stronger” from the Iran War – but that conclusion is not correct.

UKRAINE - Analysts warn of Russian retaliation on Ukraine-linked ships after wave of drone attacks on tankers and bulkers targets bridges and accommodation blocks. Ukraine’s drone forces have struck 21 Russian-flagged vessels in the Sea of Azov in the space of 72 hours, according to Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi. The ships were all operating in the Sea of Azov and were struck as part of Ukraine’s attempts to choke off fuel supplies in Russian-occupied Crimea. One ferry was hit, along with one bulker and 19 tankers, the commander said. Even before the latest nine attacks were reported, Ambrey said the dozen attacks to 7 July represented the highest number of vessels targeted within a 48-hour period since the war in Ukraine began. “Ambrey assesses a realistic possibility of reciprocal Russian action against Ukraine-linked shipping in the coming days," it added.

GERMANY - It seems that barely a week goes by in Europe without a demonstration of Russian aggression, be it a provocation in Poland or a land-grab in the Baltic. But for Jan Nolte, the defence policy chief for Alternative for Germany (AfD), prophecies of a looming war between Moscow and NATO are plain silly. “Russia has us on its radar when it comes to hybrid warfare, but I don’t see Russia attacking us, I consider that completely unrealistic,” Mr Nolte said in an interview with The Telegraph at the hard-Right party’s conference in Erfurt. “As to what the [German] government is saying about Russia attacking NATO in 2029 and basically starting a Third World War, I also consider that to be a clear exaggeration,” he added, batting aside similar warnings from British and Polish officials. Sympathy towards Russia is a major vote-winner for the AfD, which draws much of its support from the former communist East, where there is deep nostalgia for Russian rule.

GERMANY - The weapons will close an important strategic gap in European defence, but may take a while to materialise. Germany’s chancellor has announced a long-awaited deal to buy long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States. The weapons will plug an important hole in the European wall of deterrence against the Kremlin, providing a ground-launched system that can implicitly “punish” any invasion by hitting bases and other strategic targets deep inside Russian territory. It may be some time before the Tomahawks are delivered because the US is estimated to have used up more than 1,000 of the missiles in its strikes on Iran, depleting a pre-war inventory of about 3,100.

IRAN - Iran’s leaders have learnt a fundamental lesson from the war with the United States: the West runs on oil, and Iran sits astride the routes that carry it. That calculation now drives Tehran’s preparations as the ceasefire unravels into open conflict. The US struck 90 targets overnight, killing more than a dozen people. Iran launched retaliatory missiles and drones at American bases in Kuwait and Bahrain “in the first phase of punitive response against the American covenant-breakers”. “Any renewed aggression on the part of the enemy must be met with a response that directly targets the vital interests of the United States and its allies,” it said.

UK - The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is “not fit for purpose”, according to a report from an internal government review. This overused phrase begs an obvious question: what is its purpose? PIPs, introduced in 2013, are non-means tested payments to help those with disabilities with living costs. Total PIP claims in England and Wales now stand at four million, up from 3.6 million when Labour took power. Around £3 billion a year is paid to people with mental health problems such as ADHD, something that until relatively recently would not have qualified. More than 100,000 people with ADHD as their main condition now receive PIPs, an increase of 40 percent in such cases since 2024.