Funeral for a supreme leader.

1. Iran buried Ali Khamenei on the second day of funeral ceremonies in Tehran. President Masoud Pezeshkian attended Sunday's rites alongside members of the team currently negotiating with Washington over the 60-day ceasefire, a juxtaposition that captures the country's position: mourning its old leadership while bargaining over its future under new terms. The 14-point interim agreement halts fighting on all fronts and sets out reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but the succession now underway in Tehran will decide who actually signs off on it.

Turkish President Erdogan warned separately that Israel must not be allowed to "dynamite" the memorandum, a reminder that the deal has as many spoilers as signatories. (Sources: dw.com, lemonde.fr, aljazeera.com) · regime-shift · Relevant · Not relevant

2. Vladimir Putin donned fatigues for a staged visit to a military installation near the front. The trip, choreographed to counter a narrative of Russian stumbles after a wave of Ukrainian drone strikes at home, produced what analysts at the Institute for the Study of War called exaggerated claims of advances made in a meeting with commanders on July 3. Zelensky, meanwhile, said Ukrainian long-range strikes reached Perm — over 1,500 km from the frontline — underscoring how deep Kyiv can now hit Russian military-industrial sites. (Sources: nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, ukrinform.net) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

3. Gaza's ceasefire remains, on paper, in force; on the ground, bodies go unclaimed and rats have moved into the rubble. Medical sources said Israeli forces killed four Palestinians since dawn Saturday alone, part of at least seven killed over 48 hours, while demolitions continued in Gaza City. Hundreds of protesters gathered in Stockholm on Saturday to condemn what they called ongoing ceasefire violations and aid blockages — a sign the deal's credibility problem has gone beyond the region it covers. (Sources: cnn.com, aljazeera.com, aa.com.tr) · analysis · Relevant · Not relevant

4. Kevin Warsh was sworn in as Federal Reserve chair on May 22, ending months of pressure on his predecessor. Jerome Powell had faced both Trump's public attacks over rates and a Justice Department probe into headquarters renovation costs that was later dropped; the Supreme Court then blocked Trump's attempt to remove Governor Lisa Cook in Trump v. Cook, leaving the central bank's independence formally intact but politically bruised. Warsh now argues for lower rates on the strength of an AI-driven productivity story even as June hiring came in weaker than expected, a combination that gives him room to move and less certainty about which way. (Sources: theregreview.org, qz.com, abcnews.com) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

5. Brent crude drifted toward $70 as traders priced in a calmer Iran and a looser OPEC+. The group is set to approve a modest production increase even as Iraq threatens to withdraw from the arrangement, and a supply wave from non-OPEC producers is reviving fears of a global glut rather than a squeeze. Weak manufacturing data undercut the diplomatic optimism; lower oil helps inflation only if demand doesn't fall with it. (Sources: businessreport.co.za, businesstimes.com.sg, voiceofemirates.com) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

6. The EU activated its trade pact with Washington, formally opening a new commercial phase after Brussels and the White House ended a tariff standoff. Separately, EU-US goods trade hit a record €875bn last year despite the tariffs, though the figures conceal a sharp slump in European auto exports to the US. Brussels has also given Beijing an October deadline to fix unfair trade practices or face retaliation — two fronts, one trade policy. (Sources: democrata.es, aawsat.com, msn.com) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

7. A Chinese chip start-up is betting on 3D stacking to route around US export controls entirely. Dongfang Suanxin, headed by China Semiconductor Industry Association vice-president Wei Shaojun, has come out of stealth with a design that stacks memory and logic rather than shrinking transistors — the approach Washington's controls were not built to stop. It arrives alongside a broader onshore IPO rebound for Chinese AI and chip firms, and a $1.15bn packaging-plant investment from JCET, all pointing the same direction: self-reliance is now a funding thesis, not just a slogan. (Sources: scmp.com, memeburn.com, interestingengineering.com) · juncture · Relevant · Not relevant

8. China resumed soybean purchases from American farmers under a new trade agreement, though volumes remain well below pre-trade-war levels. Farm groups called morale improved but the outlook "daunting," a fair description of a relationship that swings between thaw and freeze roughly every planting season. Kyiv, meanwhile, signed its own agreement with Beijing opening the Chinese market to Ukrainian wheat flour exports — a small but telling sign that Ukraine is diversifying export markets rather than waiting on Washington or Brussels. (Sources: kiowacountypress.net, world-grain.com) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

9. A UCLA team has found a hidden weakness in small cell cancers that have resisted new treatment for decades. Tumors that lose the RB gene become critically dependent on a protein called E2F3, and blocking it shuts down tumor growth in lab models using existing FDA-approved drugs. "Discovering a vulnerability like this opens the door to thinking about entirely new treatment strategies," said senior author Dr. Owen N. Witte, adding that survival statistics for these cancers have barely moved since he first encountered them as a medical student "more than 50 years ago." (Source: sciencedaily.com) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

10. Meta says its next model, internally called Watermelon, has caught up to OpenAI's GPT-5.5 on internal benchmarks. Alexandr Wang, head of Meta Superintelligence Labs, told employees the gap has closed; independent verification is, as ever, absent. The claim lands the same week Sam Altman called any OpenAI IPO valuation below $1 trillion a "nonstarter," which tells you more about where the real competition is being fought than any benchmark does. (Sources: storyboard18.com, fool.com) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

11. Donald Trump delivered a Fourth of July address on the National Mall marking America's 250th anniversary. The speech mixed soaring rhetoric about American exceptionalism with what several outlets described as a darkly political turn against his opponents, even as record heat gripped Washington. A new Elon University poll found Americans entering the milestone with mixed feelings — pride in the anniversary, unease about nearly everything surrounding it. (Sources: nytimes.com, latimes.com, elonnewsnetwork.com) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

12. The Trump administration rolled back dozens of federal gun regulations in a single action. Critics say it returns policy to where it stood before the Biden administration; the White House frames it as restoring rights rather than removing safeguards. It's the kind of rollback that generates headlines for a day and case law for a decade. (Source: nytimes.com) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

13. South Korea will create a sovereign fund from tax revenue generated by its semiconductor boom. Seoul plans to funnel the windfall into new growth engines rather than let it sit as a one-off bonus from the AI memory cycle. It's a small but pointed hedge against the same cycle turning: China's YMTC now has a bigger patent portfolio than Samsung or SK Hynix in the post-HBM memory market, and Beijing's "golden window" is narrowing fast for everyone else. (Sources: asia.nikkei.com, en.bloomingbit.io) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

14. Media & IP: Apple told a federal court that scraping public YouTube videos for AI training is fair game under the DMCA. The company filed a motion to dismiss a class action from three YouTube channels alleging it illegally used their copyrighted videos to train its AI models without consent, arguing the plaintiffs never showed Apple bypassed any access controls. The case turns on a distinction — public availability versus permission — that copyright law has never had to resolve at AI's scale before. (Sources: hothardware.com, ithinkdiff.com, phoneworld.com.pk) · catalyst · Relevant · Not relevant

15. Markets & Startups: Kalshi posted a record $31bn in June trading volume, up from $17.9bn, as the World Cup drove prediction markets to new highs. Polymarket also hit records the same month, and a newer platform called Rothera reportedly managed $2bn in volume of its own. Regulated speculation keeps finding fresh sporting inventory to price, which is either a maturing market or a bubble with better branding. (Sources: cnbc.com, newscord.org) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

16. Spain: Juanma Moreno was sworn in for a third term as president of the Junta de Andalucía, promising "respect" and "fair" funding for the region. PwC's latest consensus still expects the Spanish economy to grow despite the Iran-linked inflation bump, though 66% of respondents criticized the government's economic response. Nebius, meanwhile, signed an 18MW data-centre lease with Merlin Properties in Madrid, its first foothold in Spain — a quieter marker of where the AI buildout is actually landing. (Sources: democrata.es, mlq.ai) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

17. Canada: US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra used his Fourth of July party in Ottawa to push Canada on two fronts at once. "Next year, hopefully we can all take a toast of American bourbon legally in the province of Ontario," he told the crowd, referencing provincial bans imposed last year in retaliation for US tariffs, before revealing Canada will receive its first F-35s on October 14 at Luke Air Force Base. The reminder came days after Canada and Mexico failed to get Washington to renew the USMCA for another 16 years, triggering an annual review process instead. (Source: cbc.ca) · spectacle · Relevant · Not relevant

18. Puerto Rico: A federal audit found only 25% of the $14bn obligated for Puerto Rico's power grid after Hurricane Maria has actually reached the island. Nearly a decade after the storm razed the grid, lawmakers who released the audit are left explaining why federal money authorized years ago still hasn't arrived. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez separately marked the tenth anniversary of PROMESA, the federal oversight law meant to fix Puerto Rico's finances — a decade on, both the debt board and the grid rebuild remain unfinished business. (Sources: washingtonpost.com, vannuysnewspress.com) · analysis · Relevant · Not relevant

19. Surprise: A Connecticut man fought off a black bear with a shovel for 40 minutes to save his pet goat. Joe Reda was clawed in the struggle; his bulldog Heavy and a few warning rifle shots from his wife helped drive the animal off, and the goat, Cole, survived. Wildlife officials have logged 110 nuisance bear calls in the state since January, 96 of them since April — twenty of those encounters involved bears breaking into homes. (Source: patch.com) · spectacle · Interesting · Not interesting