The US-Iran truce broke apart in the Strait of Hormuz, tankers were hit and Trump called the ceasefire over, then walked it back a day later. Ukraine flew 2,500 kilometres to strike Russia's largest refinery, pushing claimed refining damage past 40 percent. Venezuela's earthquake toll passed 3,800. A Thai court cleared a 12 billion dollar loan, and NATO leaders met in Ankara.
Two shocks defined the week, and both are about oil. The first was the collapse of the US-Iran truce in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea lane through which about a fifth of the world's oil passes. On 6 and 7 July at least three ships were attacked. Two tankers, the Qatari gas carrier Al Rekayat and the Saudi supertanker Wedyan, were hit by projectiles.
The US-Iran truce broke apart in the Strait of Hormuz, oil jumped back toward 78 dollars and the dollar hit a 13-month high as money ran for cover. A hawkish new Fed chair, a soft US growth nowcast and ten economies pulling in different directions, from a rate-cutting Israel to a rate-hiking Czechia.
One event set the tone for the whole week: the collapse of the US-Iran truce in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea lane through which about a fifth of the world's oil moves. When tankers were struck on 6 and 7 July and President Trump declared the ceasefire "over," the oil price stopped falling and jumped.
The Iran truce broke down and oil spiked, yet Wall Street closed the week near record highs, cushioned by a semiconductor rebound and a record 26.5 billion dollar US listing from SK Hynix. Under the calm surface, a sharp rotation out of chips, a firm dollar and a hawkish Fed reshaped who is winning.
The week's biggest market shock came from the Strait of Hormuz. When the US-Iran ceasefire broke down and tankers were struck on 6 and 7 July, oil spiked as much as 5 to 6 percent intraday on fear that the world's busiest oil chokepoint might close. Brent crude jumped toward 78 dollars a barrel before easing as tankers kept moving.
Bitcoin dipped near 61,000 dollars on the US-Iran strikes then clawed back toward 64,000 by Friday, while spot ETFs finally snapped a painful ten-day outflow streak. Two national rules that took effect on 1 July are the real story: Russia legalised crypto for sanctioned trade, and Europe switched off the grace period for its MiCA licensing regime.
Crypto traded like a risk asset this week, which means it moved with the war news. When the US-Iran truce broke down and the US struck Iran on 6 and 7 July, Bitcoin slid toward 61,000 dollars, then rebounded to just under 64,000 by Friday as a chip-led stock rally and a calmer oil price steadied nerves.
The AI frontier stayed crowded as SpaceXAI launched Grok 4.5 and OpenAI floated giving the US government a 5 percent stake, while Anthropic redeployed a model it had briefly restricted over a cybersecurity jailbreak. Big Tech capital spending is set to hit about 725 billion dollars this year, and TSMC's 16 July results will test whether the AI buildout has a ceiling.
The artificial-intelligence race did not pause this week. SpaceXAI, Elon Musk's AI company, launched Grok 4.5 on 8 July, which Musk described as an "Opus-class" model, meaning he claims it rivals the strongest models on the market, a marketing claim to treat as a claim.
An Ebola emergency in Central Africa has passed 1,500 cases and 500 deaths, with a second, rarer virus surfacing in the same region. The US approved a first-of-its-kind kidney drug and a precision cell therapy, opened cheap weight-loss drugs to millions on Medicare, and screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, keeps spreading through Texas. Southeast Asian dengue is, for once, mostly falling.
The dominant health story of the week is a double outbreak in Central and East Africa. The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, caused by the Bundibugyo strain and declared a global health emergency on 17 May, has now reached at least 1,561 confirmed cases and 506 deaths in Congo alone, with 20 cases and two deaths in Uganda and one.
South Korea turned its trial digital-nomad visa into a permanent one, with an easier income bar for under-35s, while Australia warned travellers that paid content-making on a tourist visa in Bali is now a visa violation. Europe keeps closing the cheap-nomad era; Thailand and Georgia stay steady. Visas, best and worst places, setting up a company, and the week's news.
This desk covers the week of 3 to 10 July 2026. The biggest news is a country making it easier: South Korea turned its two-year trial digital-nomad visa into a permanent programme, effective 30 June and formally announced on 7 July, with a lower income requirement for younger applicants and a longer maximum stay.
Messi dragged Argentina through an Egypt thriller as the 48-team World Cup reached the quarter-finals, Wimbledon set up its first ever all-Czech women's final, and Charles Leclerc won a dramatic British Grand Prix. A quiet box office, a record World Cup anthem, and a Thai video that pulled 77 million views in a day.
This desk is the light one, built for the conversation you walk into on Monday. The single most talked-about moment of the week was Lionel Messi dragging Argentina through a 3-2 comeback against Egypt in the last 16 of the World Cup, his eighth goal of a tournament in which he now leads all scorers.
The out-of-the-ordinary desk: the first living goblin shark ever filmed in the deep sea, a faint gravitational-wave signal that might, just might, be a black hole older than the stars, and a Michigan city tearing out four dams to bring back the rapids it was named for. Wonder, mystery and good news, all sourced.
This is the desk for the news that fits no map and no other section: the strange, the wonderful and the genuinely good. Everything here is real and sourced, and nothing here repeats the health or technology desks. Where a finding is early or disputed, we say so plainly, because the most remarkable stories are the ones most often exaggerated.
