Thailand's Constitutional Court cleared a 400 billion baht emergency loan in a split ruling, and the opposition says the money trail already looks pre-arranged. The Strait of Hormuz truce fell apart for good this week: Iran hit five Gulf states, Kuwait says it intercepted 32 drones in one morning, and ship traffic through the strait fell to a handful of vessels a day. Venezuela's earthquake toll jumped by roughly a thousand in eight days. Moldova's prime minister quit over a nepotism scandal, and Czechia reversed a year of 'not one crown for weapons' with a token payment.
This week's lead story is Thailand. On 9 July the Constitutional Court cleared the government's emergency borrowing decree, 400 billion baht, about 11.95 billion dollars, which is roughly 2 percent of Thailand's 550 billion dollar economy.
The Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz disruption are now showing up directly in the numbers, from Czech and Georgian rate hikes to Chinese factory-gate prices to a Fed pricing hike risk instead of cut risk. Oil swung from 77 to 86 dollars in a single week. Ten economies, from a rate-cutting Thailand to a two-quarter recession in Moldova.
One thread runs through almost every economy in this brief: the Iran war and the disruption it caused in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea lane that carries about a fifth of the world's oil.
Oil spiked and a sharp global rotation out of chip stocks hit Wall Street, Tokyo and Shanghai on the same Friday, after the United States struck Iranian military assets following attacks on three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and after TSMC paired a record profit with a much larger AI spending plan that spooked investors. The S&P 500 fell for the week even as Thailand, Argentina and Hong Kong kept climbing.
Two shocks hit markets this week, and neither one alone explains Friday's selloff. The first came from the Strait of Hormuz: the United States struck Iranian coastal and military assets after attacks on three commercial vessels, and President Trump declared the ceasefire over.
Bitcoin held near 62,850 dollars this week, but the two trackers everyone relies on to size the market, CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, disagree by about 70 billion dollars on total market value and even on which direction it moved. The bigger story is regulatory: the US stablecoin law turns one year old tomorrow, and Russia's law letting exporters accept crypto for sanctioned trade is now fully in force.
Bitcoin closed the week near 62,850 dollars, little changed after slipping from about 64,980 dollars on Wednesday, 15 July, to the low 62,000s by Friday, 17 July. Ether held near 1,829 dollars. Those two prices are about the only numbers the market's two biggest trackers, CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, agree on this week.
TSMC posted record revenue and said its packaging lines cannot keep up with orders, yet the week still closed with roughly 1.3 trillion dollars wiped off global chip stocks on fears that AI spending has outrun AI revenue. The EU and UK jointly sanctioned Russia's FSB hacking unit for the first time, Anthropic lined up bankers for a possible IPO, and a scrubbed SpaceX Starship launch was a reminder that even the best-funded projects still have to work.
The AI industry's argument with itself came to a head this week: is the spending justified by demand, or has it outrun it? TSMC, which makes almost all of the world's most advanced chips, reported second-quarter revenue of 40.2 billion dollars, up 33.7 percent on the year, and said its advanced-packaging lines are so full that they are now the thing limiting.
Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now the third-largest outbreak on record, with the death toll rising by roughly 50 in 100 in about ten days and healthcare workers among the casualties. The US approved the first pill version of a cholesterol-lowering PCSK9 inhibitor and a breast cancer drug with a genuine absolute gain in time before the cancer progressed, though several of the week's approvals still rest on lab markers rather than proven patient outcomes. Medicare's flat-fee bridge to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs began, and Southeast Asian dengue trends split sharply between a falling Thailand and a doubling Vietnam.
The lead story this week is the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, caused by the Bundibugyo strain, which has become the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record.
Thailand's Cabinet approved cutting most tourist visa-free stays from 60 days to 30 or fewer, but the change is not in force yet and will not be until 15 days after Royal Gazette publication. South Korea's digital-nomad visa gets easier again, Bali's content-creator crackdown now covers unpaid barter, and we correct a widely repeated claim that Uzbekistan has a nomad visa. It does not. Visas, best and worst places, setting up a company, and the week's news.
This desk covers the week of 10 to 17 July 2026. The lead story is Thailand's Cabinet decision, reported in mid-July, to abolish the 60-day visa-free entry that 93 countries and territories currently use.
The World Cup final is set for Sunday: Spain against Messi's Argentina, after a stoppage-time winner sank England. Wimbledon crowned Jannik Sinner and first-time champion Linda Noskova, Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' opened to the best reviews of his career, and a 49-second novelty song became the summer's real viral breakout.
This desk is the light one, built for the conversation you walk into on Monday. The single biggest story of the week, and the one still building, is the World Cup final.
The out-of-the-ordinary desk: two teams find the faintest exoplanet ever directly imaged, hiding unrecognised in telescope archives for a decade, a T. rex tooth turns up embedded in the face of its prey, and a Michigan zoo welcomes only its second gorilla birth in a century. 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.
